The National Average Wage Index, which is what Social Security uses to adjust past earnings for inflation,
OK, I went looking for info. The SS website has this,
* "First, a worker’s previous earnings are restated in terms of today’s wages to reflect wage growth."
Looking further:
** "(if collecting in 2017) the person's earnings would be indexed to the average wage index for 2015 (48,098.63). Earnings in a year before 2015 would be multiplied by the ratio of 48,098.63 to the average wage index for that year;"
Increasing that 48,098.63 by 2.2% and then recalculating using the ***"average wage indexing series" does increase the "average wage" used to calcualte the SS earnings.
So I now see how the inflation adjustment is made for future SS collections.
Now my question is, does increasing my "average wage" by use of the "average wage indexing series" actually increase my check by the full 2.2% that the person already collecting will get?
*http://www.myretirementpaycheck.org/Social-Security/How-are-benefits-calculated
**https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/awifactors.html
***https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/awiseries.html
Thanks for the push to get more understanding of this.