One common criticism of Social Security is that Americans would be much better off financially if the money they paid into the retirement program through payroll taxes was instead invested into private investment accounts. That same argument can be applied to Social Security checks — seniors would have much more wealth if they invested their checks as soon as they got them.
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But is this a reasonable request for most people, especially those on a fixed income? To help find the answer here is a closer look at how much you could earn by investing your Social Security checks over a decade.
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Investing Social Security Benefits: How Much You Would Have Made
For those seniors who can afford to invest all of their Social Security checks, the potential payoff is considerable. The following table shows how much profit you would have made if you invested every Social Security check over the past 10 years into the S&P 500, from 2015 through the beginning of 2025.
The data includes the average Social Security check by year as previously reported by GOBankingRates. It also includes the average annual return of the S&P 500 from 2015 to 2025, as cited by Macrotrends (other sources might reflect different returns).
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A couple things to keep in mind: The figures below are based only on yearly averages, which means they don’t include month-to-month fluctuations that happen with the stock market. They also don’t include other types of investments — such as crypto or real estate — that would have produced very different returns.
Year | Avg. monthly SS check | Total SS payments for year | S&P 500 return | Profit/loss for year |
2015 | $1,341.77 | $16,101.24 | -0.73% | -$117.54 |
2016 | $1,360.13 | $16,321.56 | +9.54% | +1,557.08 |
2017 | $1,404.15 | $16,849.80 | +19.42% | +3,272.23 |
2018 | $1,461.31 | $17,535.72 | -6.24% | -$1,094.23 |
2019 | $1,455.22 | $17,462.64 | +28.88% | +5,043.21 |
2020 | $1,489.30 | $17,871.60 | +16.26% | +2,905.92 |
2021 | $1,517.98 | $18,215.76 | +26.89% | +4,898.22 |
2022 | $1,615.96 | $19,391.52 | -19.44% | -3,769.71 |
2023 | $1,696.35 | $20,356.20 | +24.23% | +4,932.31 |
2024 | $1,909.01 | $22,908.12 | +23.31% | +5,339.88 |
2025 | $1,976 | $23,712 | +1.96% | +$464.76 |
Total profit/loss |
|
|
| +$23,432.33 |
Should You Invest Your Social Security Checks?
According to the table above, if you invested all of your monthly Social Security checks in the S&P 500 over the past decade, your nest egg would have grown by over $20,000.
That kind of return should bring cheer to financial gurus, like Dave Ramsey, who recommends applying for Social Security retirement benefits as early as possible. For example, you could start collecting benefits at age 62 instead of the full retirement age of 66 or 67 and then immediately invest every monthly payment.
There’s just one problem with that reasoning. A large percentage of seniors don’t have the financial ability to put their Social Security checks into stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, real estate, crypto or other investments. They need the money to pay the bills.
For about half of U.S. seniors, Social Security provides at least 50% of their overall retirement income, according to research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. For about one in four seniors, Social Security provides at least 90% of income. These folks have a hard enough time making ends meet, let alone tossing their Social Security checks into various investments that might or might not pay off.
Nonetheless, for retirees who can afford to invest their benefit checks, there’s a pretty good chance those investments will pay off and boost your retirement savings over the long haul.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: If You Invested Every Social Security Check for 10 Years, How Rich Would You Be?
