You need to earn a lot more money than you think to max out your retirement benefits.
Maxing out your Social Security checks will give you a payment that is well above what the average retiree collects.
In 2026, for example, the average Social Security benefit is around $2,071 per month. That’s after applying the Social Security COLA, which increased benefits by 2.8% compared to 2025. The maximum benefit, though, is $5,251 in 2026.
Obviously, a monthly income of $63,012 is significantly better than a monthly income of $24,852 — especially given that Social Security benefits are guaranteed to last for your whole life while your savings and most other income sources aren’t.
But how can you actually get such a large benefit? Unfortunately, you need to earn a really substantial amount of money. In fact, the income necessary to max out your Social Security benefit in 2026 is much higher than you might expect.
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This is how much income you’d need to earn to max out your Social Security payment
If you want to be on track to collect the maximum monthly Social Security benefit, the amount that you would need to earn in 2026 is $184,500.
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This is an increase of $8,400 compared to the $176,100 in income that you would have needed to earn in 2025 to be on track to maximize your monthly payments.
Of course, you’ll probably notice that both income levels are very high — perhaps surprisingly so.
The Social Security Administration reports that only around 6% of covered workers earn income at or above these levels each year. So, that means a very small percentage of the population is maxing out their retirement checks.
Why is the income so high?
The income thresholds at which you max out your Social Security benefits are high because you need to earn a lot of money to be eligible for $5,251 in monthly retirement benefits.
Benefits are only designed to replace a small percentage of the income you earn during your working life. That percentage is typically around 40% of pre-retirement income. However, because benefits are regressive and high earners get less of their salary replaced, benefits actually replace a little less than 40% of income at these earning levels.
If you’re collecting $5,251 per month in Social Security, and that huge check is replacing only a small percentage of what you earned, obviously, your salary had to be pretty substantial.
In fact, benefits are based on average wages throughout your highest 35 earning years, so to get such a large benefit, you’d have to earn a lot of money for at least that long.
Why is there a max benefit?
Since income is based on average earnings, you may be wondering why $5,251 is the maximum benefit. After all, some people earn millions of dollars per year. So, don’t they get even higher benefits to reflect their earnings?
It’s simple. In 2026, you only pay Social Security taxes on $184,500 in income, no matter how much more you earn. And you only get credit for $184,500 in income, even if you earn far more. The $184,500 limit is called the wage base limit.
The wage base limit is adjusted each year due to inflation, but it’s always high because it creates a cap on Social Security benefits. In other words, there is a maximum benefit because of the wage base limit. This limit prevents huge earners from getting huge Social Security checks, while also ensuring Social Security remains an earned benefit, with everyone collecting benefits based on what they paid in.
How exactly can you max out your Social Security check?
Since the wage base limit caps the amount of income counted in your benefits, you can max out your standard benefit by earning income equal to or above the wage base limit every single year for at least 35 years.
If you do that, this gives you the highest standard benefit possible. But you still have the opportunity to increase that by earning delayed retirement credits. These increase your standard benefit for every month you wait to claim Social Security after your Full Retirement Age. If you want the maximum $5,251, you must delay your claim until age 70 when delayed retirement credits max out.
So, if you’re earning at least $184,500 this year, you’re on track to meet the income requirement. You just have to earn the inflation-adjusted equivalent of that amount for at least 35 years, then wait until 70 to start your checks.
If you can’t do that, you’ll get less than the max. You should look at your mySocialSecurity account to see what benefit you are on track for, and take that into account as you make your retirement plans.