Last year the Social Security Administration announce they would stop sending those annual statement that give us important information about our projected benefits and earning history. They decided that mailing these annual statements was too expensive.

Instead of the statements, they promised access to an online version of the statement. Unfortunately the online statement did not include all of the information that people were relying on in the printed version. The new online calculator only showed the amount that you might receive in retirement benefits at Full Retirement Age, and it did not include information about your earnings history.

They must have heard quite a few complaints about this new statement. Early this year they began sending the paper statements again, beginning with folks who are at least 60 years of age. Later this year they’ll start mailing statements again for everyone who is at least 25 years old. In the mean time, they’ve also improved the online version so that now it includes earnings history and other data that’s in the written statement. You can check it out at here.