How to find it: Log in or create an account at www.ssa.gov/myaccount. (AARP offers a step-by-step guide to setting one up.)
What to do with it: Your benefit is calculated based on the average of your 35 highest-paid working years. You can start collecting benefits as early as age 62, but many financial advisers suggest waiting. Every year that you delay claiming up to age 70, your benefit grows by 5 to 8 percent.
3. Retirement savings balance
Why you need to know it: In retirement, withdrawals from your 401(k), IRA and other savings can supplement your Social Security income. (Ditto a pension, if you’re fortunate enough to have one.) Knowing exactly how much you have in retirement savings can help you determine what changes you need to make, if any, to reach your goal, such as making catch-up contributions to retirement accounts.
How to find it: Log in to your retirement accounts and other bank accounts to check the balances. Add up the values to see the full size of your nest egg.
What to do with it: Divide the amount by 25 to see how much you could comfortably pull out of your retirement account annually. This is a variation on the 4 percent withdrawal rule that helps you estimate how long your savings will last in retirement. Let’s say there’s $250,000 in your 401(k). If you were in your 60s and quitting work today, $10,000 is roughly how much you could safely withdraw from savings in your first year of retirement.
Add that number to what you’d get from Social Security and other sources. Would it be enough to support the retirement lifestyle you envision? If not, you may want to start saving more, push back your planned retirement date or both.
4. Credit score
Why you need to know it: Lenders use this three-digit number to assess your trustworthiness as a borrower for products ranging from credit cards to auto loans to mortgages. Most creditors and lenders consider a potential borrower’s FICO score, which ranges from 300 to 850. The higher your credit score, the more likely you are to get approved for loans and the better the interest rate if you are approved.
How to find it: Many banks offer customers access to free credit score estimates. If yours doesn’t, consider signing up for a free service such as American Express’s MyCredit Guide, CreditWise by Capital One or Chase Credit Journey. Regularly checking your credit report for errors is also a good habit, but your credit report doesn’t contain your actual credit score — it’s a record of your credit history.
What to do with it: If your credit score needs a little TLC, you can take steps to boost it, such as paying down revolving credit card balances and keeping your credit utilization — the total amount you’ve borrowed on cards and other lines of credit divided by your total credit limit across all your accounts — below 25 percent, says Gerri Detweiler, author of The Ultimate Credit Handbook.