1 Social Security Move Absolutely Everyone Should Make Before 2026

With the final quarter of 2025 now underway, your mind is probably already looking ahead to the holiday season. But this is also the time to consider end-of-year financial moves. Those might include things like doing a Roth IRA conversion or boosting your 401(k) contributions.

But there's also an important Social Security move you should make before we ring in 2026, even if you're not yet claiming benefits. Skipping it could have serious consequences for the size of your future checks.

Image source: Getty Images.

How the Social Security Administration calculates your benefits

The Social Security Administration looks at your average monthly earnings over your 35 highest-earning years, adjusted for inflation, when calculating your benefit. It plugs this amount, known as your averaged indexed monthly earnings (AIME), into the Social Security benefit formula to figure out how much you'll get.

To calculate your AIME, the Social Security Administration needs to know how much money you paid Social Security taxes on during those years. It tracks that in your earnings record. The IRS shares data about how much income you paid Social Security taxes on each year with the agency, so that isn't something you have to report yourself.

However, it's important to ensure the information in your earnings record is accurate. Mistakes are rare, but they do happen. If, for example, you forget to notify your employer about a name change, or you or your employer mix up some digits in your Social Security number on your employment paperwork, some of your income may not get reported in a given year.

In the worst-case scenario, such errors could result in your earnings record reporting no income at all for some years, even though you actually worked during them. Even one zero-income year in your benefit calculation can meaningfully reduce the size of your Social Security checks in retirement.

Fortunately, you can often get those mistakes corrected if you act quickly.

How to find and correct errors in your earnings report

You can view your Social Security earnings record through your my Social Security account. If you haven't set yours up with the agency, you can do so at any time. You'll have to answer some identity-verification questions first to prove that you're you, but after that, you'll be able to log in and see an array of information about the benefits you'll be entitled to.

Look over your earnings record for any figures that look out of place, and particularly, make sure there aren't any years where the record shows no income when you know that you worked. These could be signs that there were mistakes in reporting your income for those years.

It's worth noting that the figures shown for each year will not match a person's actual earnings if they earned more than the taxable wage base in a given year. The taxable wage base is the maximum amount of a person's income that is subject to Social Security taxes in a given year. In 2025, it's $176,100, but it was lower in past years.

You don't pay Social Security wage taxes on anything you earn over this amount, but that also means that income won't be reflected in your benefits calculation. If you're a high earner, there's a chance you'll see the taxable wage base in your earnings record instead of your actual income for some years. This is not an error.

If you spot something that looks amiss in your earnings record, act quickly. Fill out a Request for Correction of Earnings Record form and submit it to the Social Security Administration along with any proof you have of your income for the year or years in question. That might be W-2s or an old tax return.

Typically, you have three years, three months, and 15 days from the end of the year in which you earned the income to request a change to your earnings record. If you don't do this within that window, you may have a more difficult time getting the Social Security Administration to update your earnings record.

That's why it's a good idea to make checking your Social Security earnings record an annual habit. This way, you can catch any errors quickly, and you'll likely still have the tax documents you need to prove your real income for that year. Make it part of your end-of-year financial review so you don't forget about it in future years.

The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.