No, I simply assumed greater reading abilities in my audience than I should have. Sorry, sometimes I forget who I'm dealing with. I clearly mentioned that I was using the SSA's own calculator's estimates, but I could have called more prominent attention to that, for those who need things spelled out. To put it more plainly: the SSA has an online benefits calculator, which can use your pay in a given year to estimate your SS benefis. To do this, it projects your assumed annual pay forward and back, fom the start of your career to the end, based on average trend lines matched to the earnings for the date given. So, based on that median pay at age 64, they use statistical averages to guess what the person made/will make, from age 17 to age 66. If you plug the assumptions I provided into the calculator, you can have it show you the entire assumed yearly earnings sequence, from the start of his career to the end. Given it was a lengthy post already, you can probably see why I only referred to my methodology in shorthand, assuming, foolishly, people would pick up on it. I'm glad you don't have a job that relies on reading abilities or critical thinking. Last time we discussed this, I naively believed that ignoring the childish plunge into personal insults would help the discussion move beyond them more quickly. This time, I'll experiment with returning insults in kind. If you wrongly insult my number crunching abilities, I'll rightly insult your reading abilities. Deal?