SSA.tools

https://ssa.tools/

Greg Grothaus

Software engineer and creator of SSA.tools

Greg Grothaus is a software engineer who has built and maintained SSA.tools since 2017. He wrote every guide on the site and the open-source calculator behind it, which checks its results against the Social Security Administration's published rules with an automated test suite that runs on every change. He previously worked at Google and FEMA.

How the guides are written

Every guide on this site starts from the primary sources: the Social Security Act, the Code of Federal Regulations, and the Social Security Administration's own Program Operations Manual System (POMS), which is the handbook SSA staff use to decide claims. Guides cite those sources inline so you can check any rule yourself rather than take the site's word for it.

Where a guide shows worked dollar examples, the newer ones are computed by the same code that powers the calculator, with automated tests that pin each figure so a future change to the math cannot silently drift a published number. Older guides are being moved to the same approach.

How the calculator is checked

The calculator is open source and has been in continuous development since 2017. Its test suite covers the benefit formulas, bend points, cost-of-living adjustments, earnings indexing, spousal and survivor rules, and the strategy optimizer, and is run on every change. The annual SSA figures are updated when the administration publishes them, usually in October.

None of this makes the site infallible. Social Security rules have corners, and SSA's own determination is the one that counts. If you find a case the site gets wrong, please say so; corrections are the most useful mail the site gets.

Background

Greg is a software engineer. He has worked at Google and at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He built SSA.tools after finding that the official estimate tools gave a number without explaining it, and wanted something that showed people how their benefit is actually put together.

Elsewhere

Guides

All of the Social Security guides on this site are written and maintained by Greg. The about page lists the people who have contributed to the calculator itself.