how much can i earn while on social security in 2025

Don't make this mistake. If you want to take Social Security early, meaning earlier than your full retirement age, make sure you have my Social Security Cheat Sheet. It is free, it is on my website, go get it. Put in your email, it'll automatically go to you right now. It's an automatic program.

Find out when your full retirement age is, it is not 65, and figure out how much you can earn this year. The amount you can earn when you take Social Security early is on the sheet and it changes every year. So for 2023, it is 21,240 bucks. So if I take Social Security at 62, the earliest I can possibly take it, I can make all my Social Security, whatever that is, and earn an additional $21,240 from sweat off my brow, from working this year, from wages, and I can have unlimited passive income. So forget about the passive income. If you don't understand that, go watch my video on passive income.

I'm allowed to make 21,000 for sweat off my brow, for work this year, work I'm doing this year. Well, I didn't know that. So I turned 62 and I have a job. I make 70,000 and I took my Social Security, and I was like, "Yahoo, I get an extra 25 grand, and I'm still working, and this is awesome." Well, you're gonna figure out, next year, 'cause after you pay your taxes and Social Security fees, oops, you went way over the 21,000. 

Then they're going to penalize you for earning too much, and they're gonna take away, for every $2 you earned over that amount, they're gonna reduce your Social Security by $1 next year, or you're not gonna get anything next year. So you're gonna be like, "Well, this was a total mistake." Yeah, many, many, many people make that mistake. You're not gonna make that mistake because you're watching this video.

Help your friends and family not make this mistake. If you want to take Social Security earlier than your full retirement age, you can make $21,240 in 2023. If you're watching this in 2024, it's probably around 23,000, something like that. So you don't have to hit it right on the dollar, but for every $2 you go over, they'll reduce your social security by $1. So if you made 25,000, not a big deal. If you made 30, 40,000, yeah, it starts to become a big deal of the amount of money they're going to withhold.

So you're saying, "Okay, I messed up, but I'm okay with it." I had somebody last week, they said, "I'm okay with it. They took 8,000 out, but I'm okay with it because I still, I was up, I still made more. I worked and I got the Social Security, I'm up." What happens to that $8,000? Well, it's not a true penalty because you could get it all back. So that's the good news. I, generally, don't have a lot of good news to share. You could get that $8,000 back.

They recalculate it when you reach your full retirement age. So at 62, I made too much money. They took eight grand out at 63. At 63, I was like, "Okay, forget it. I'm not gonna do that again." But what happened to that eight grand? Or maybe I kept doing it for years, for the next five years, I made over and they kept taking 8, 10, 12 grand out. What happened to that pile of money they took away? They recalculate your benefit at your full retirement age and they say, "Okay, you earned too much and we took out 8, 10, 20, however much you earned over," that much money out. They take your benefit and they recalculate it and they do their voodoo magic. I can't explain how they do that. And they take your life expectancy and they up your benefit to include that money. So maybe you get an extra 20, 50, $75 a month and if you live long enough, you might get all that money back. Might, you know, you might get all that money back.

The nice thing is it's not a pure penalty where it's just gone, just gone. You could live long enough, let's say, you live to 90, and get all that money back in a slightly higher monthly payment. So that's the good news, but I really don't want you to get to that point. I would prefer that you understand the earnings limit. It does go up every year and try to stay right around that limit, so that you can max out getting your full Social Security, working part-time, to that limit and then, again, getting as much money as you want from your sources of passive income, IRA withdraws, 401(k) distributions, capital gains, rents, royalties, gambling, all those sources of passive income. So you could have a whole bunch of different sources of income in retirement.

If you have questions, there's a lot more information on my website, go check it out. Thanks for watching. Hit the Subscribe button if you learned something. If you like this video, you might really like this video. Check it out. And we'd appreciate if you subscribe to our channel, so you never miss a great video. We put out one every week. Check in the description below this video for a link to our cheat sheet on Social Security and Medicare. And you can also give us a comment if you have a specific question. Always feel free to call us or email us at The Medicare Family.