I’ve been working with Financial Engines for a couple years now and one of the bigger projects has been their Social Security Planner. Typically their products are only available to employees whose employer buys the Financial Engines services. But today they launched a product that’s available to anyone at no charge!

All you have to do is visit their website and click into the Planner (about halfway down).

You don’t have to be retirement age – you can use it to forecast what you might get – and you can also send this to your parents or adults you care about who are closer to retirement age than you are.

The real intent is to help you figure out how much income you will have in retirement. For most people, delaying Social Security is the smartest thing to do financially. That’s because you’ll actually get more from Social Security in the long run. There are even more opportunities for people who are married.

I never thought I would know so much about Social Security and retirement but I do! I’ve been blogging about it for awhile now (for Financial Engines) and there’s a lot you need to know if you are in the planning stages.

Be sure to check out the Financial Engines website and when you see the videos get excited because I did those (with SwitchVideo in Toronto)!