Your Social Security benefits are based on your highest-earning 35 years of work and the age at which you choose to begin accepting benefits. It's not very simple to determine the formula for calculating your monthly payment, though. The easiest way to calculate your potential benefits is to use one of the Social Security Administration's benefits calculators. You can input your basic information or create an account and get benefit estimates for each year from age 62 to 70 so you can decide when to retire.