Social Security for Millennials: Will It Be There for Us?

If you're a Millennial, there's a decent chance you've already written Social Security out of your future. In one national survey, 47% of Millennials agreed with the statement that they will not get a dime of the benefits they've earned [10]. You've paid into the system with every paycheck since your first job, and you're not sure if what you're doing with the rest of your retirement plan is right, partly because nobody will give you a straight answer on this one giant variable.

Here's the thing: the straight answer exists. The government publishes it every year, in painful actuarial detail, and the brand-new 2026 edition came out in June. The realistic bad case, straight from the government's own actuaries, is 78 cents on the dollar.

I'm a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® (CFP®) professional in Nashville, and this post walks through what the data actually says, why both the doom take and the complacent take lead to bad plans, and the single number I'd use instead.

TL;DR

• The 2026 Trustees Report projects the retirement trust fund is depleted in late 2032. Even then, with zero action from Congress, incoming payroll taxes still cover 78% of scheduled benefits [1, 2].

• If the retirement and disability funds were combined (which requires Congress), full benefits run to 2034, with 83% payable after [2, 5].

• "Depleted" and "gone" are different words. Social Security is primarily pay-as-you-go: as long as people work, money flows in.

• Nearly half of Millennials expect nothing [10]. The math has never supported that expectation.

• My planning stance: count 75% of your projected benefit. Covering the entire remaining gap costs a 35-year-old about $163 a month.

What Millennials Actually Believe

The pessimism runs deep. Beyond the 47% who expect nothing [10], a December 2025 Cato Institute/YouGov survey found 30% of Americans believe the program will not exist when they retire, and 70% expect benefit cuts [9]. T. Rowe Price research found Millennials expect to receive just over half of their scheduled benefits, while Boomers expect 88% [11]. None of this is new; SSA's own research, spanning surveys back to 1971, finds surprisingly high shares of young workers in every era expecting nothing [14].

Some skepticism is healthy. The program genuinely has a funding gap, and Congress has genuinely not fixed it. But there's a difference between discounting a promise and zeroing it out, and the zero crowd has quietly lost the argument with the actuaries every single year.

The Trust Fund Math (Not as Scary as the Headlines)

Here is what the 2026 Trustees Report, released June 9, actually says. The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund, the one that pays retirement benefits, is projected to run out of reserves in the fourth quarter of 2032, one quarter earlier than last year's projection. At that point, continuing payroll tax income covers 78% of scheduled benefits [1, 2, 13].

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If Congress allowed the retirement fund to share resources with the disability fund, which is projected to stay solvent for the full 75-year projection window, the combined funds pay full benefits until 2034 and 83% after [2, 5, 7]. That combination requires legislation, but it has precedent; Congress has shuffled resources between the funds before.

The key concept the headlines bury: Social Security is mostly a pay-as-you-go system. Today's workers fund today's retirees through a 12.4% payroll tax on wages up to $184,500 in 2026 [4]. The trust fund is a buffer on top of that flow, not the source of it. When the buffer empties, the flow continues. That's why "depleted" produces 78%, not 0%.

So the conventional wisdom on both ends is wrong. The doomers are wrong that it disappears. The complacent are wrong that nothing changes. Absent reform, every beneficiary takes roughly a 22% haircut starting in 2032 or 2033, which the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes would hit when today's youngest retirees turn 68 [5].

Why the Date Moved Up (and What Could Change It)

The depletion date moved one quarter earlier this year for two main reasons: the 2025 tax law reduced how much revenue the program collects from taxing benefits, and the trustees revised their fertility and immigration assumptions downward [4, 8]. The program's 75-year shortfall now measures 4.42% of taxable payroll, the largest in nearly half a century [5].

The demographic driver underneath it all: five workers supported each beneficiary in the 1960s, versus roughly three today and falling [15]. The trustees also publish the repair menu. Fixing the gap today would take raising the payroll tax rate from 12.4% to 16.65%, cutting all benefits by 25.2%, or some combination. Waiting until depletion makes every option harsher [3].

Will Congress act? History leans yes. In 1983, with the fund months from depletion, Congress passed reforms that kept full benefits flowing, and letting an across-the-board cut hit tens of millions of voters is political suicide. But "Congress will probably patch it" is a prediction, not a plan, and the patches themselves (higher taxes, later retirement ages, trimmed benefits for higher earners) mostly land on people our age. Plan accordingly.

The Two Ways Millennials Get This Wrong

Mistake one: planning for 100%. Take your Social Security statement at face value, plug the full number into a retirement calculator, and you've built a plan with a known 20-something percent hole in its largest guaranteed income source. If reform trims benefits for younger or higher-earning workers, the hole grows.

Mistake two: planning for 0%. This one masquerades as prudence, and it's usually just fear wearing a spreadsheet. Zeroing out a benefit the math says will pay at least three-quarters forces you to over-save, with real costs: unnecessary frugality, delayed goals, or the paralysis of a target so huge you never start. For a typical earner, Social Security replaces about 40% of pre-retirement wages [12]. Pretending that's zero roughly doubles the portfolio you think you need.

Both mistakes come from treating an uncertain number as either fully certain or fully worthless. There's a third option.

What to Actually Do: Plan for 75%

I plan for 75% of projected benefits. Slightly more conservative than the trustees' own 78% worst case, comfortably above zero, and it respects the real funding gap without pretending the program vanishes.

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Here's how to put it to work:

1. Pull your real number. Log into ssa.gov/myaccount and get your projected benefit from your actual earnings record, not a guess.

2. Multiply by 0.75. For context, the average retirement benefit in 2026 is $2,071 a month [6]; at 75%, that's $1,553. Your number will differ; use yours.

3. Price the gap. Whatever the 25% haircut removes, that's the income your portfolio needs to replace. On a $2,000 monthly projected benefit, the haircut is $500 a month, or $6,000 a year. At the standard 4% withdrawal rate, replacing $6,000 a year of income takes $150,000 of additional savings (25x the annual gap).

4. Convert it to a monthly contribution. A 35-year-old investing in a 90/10 portfolio (9% nominal return, 5.8252% real after the Fisher equation at 3% inflation, compounded annually with end-of-year contributions) needs $1,956 a year, or $163 a month, for 30 years to build $150,000 in today's dollars. That assumes historical average returns, which are not guaranteed. But look at the shape of it: the entire scary Social Security headline, fully neutralized, for $163 a month.

5. Revisit after every Trustees Report. One update a year, five minutes, done. If Congress acts, you get to redirect $163 a month toward something fun. That's the good version of being wrong.

If you haven't built the base retirement plan this sits on, start with the full millennial retirement guide and then run your own retirement number.

What This Is Really About

The Social Security debate is really a debate about control. The doom headlines feel true because they confirm something Millennials already suspect: the systems we pay into weren't built with us in mind. Maybe. But the response that actually protects you isn't cynicism, and it isn't blind trust. A plan built on 75% works whether Congress performs heroically, adequately, or not at all. The headlines lose their power over you the moment your plan stops depending on them. Every dollar you save toward that gap is a vote for the life you actually want, funded by you, on purpose.

So here's the question: does your retirement plan currently have a Social Security assumption in it at all, or has "who knows" been doing that job? If it's "who knows," you now have a number. Use it.

FAQ

When will Social Security run out? It won't run out in the way the phrase implies. The retirement trust fund is projected to deplete its reserves in late 2032, but ongoing payroll taxes still cover 78% of scheduled benefits at that point. If Congress combines the retirement and disability funds, full benefits run to 2034 with 83% payable after [1, 2, 5].

Should I just plan for zero to be safe? Planning for zero forces you to over-save against an outcome the actuarial math has never supported, which carries its own costs: delayed goals, unnecessary frugality, or a target so large you freeze. Planning for 75% of your projected benefit respects the funding gap without pretending the program disappears.

How much of my income will Social Security actually replace? For a typical earner retiring at 65, roughly 40% of pre-retirement wages [12]. Higher earners see a smaller percentage because the benefit formula is progressive. That's exactly why the rest of your plan matters more than the headlines.

Can Congress actually fix this? The trustees publish the menu every year: today's version requires raising the 12.4% payroll tax to 16.65%, cutting benefits 25.2%, or a blend [3]. Congress fixed a nearly identical cliff in 1983 months before depletion. The realistic risks for Millennials are higher taxes and trimmed benefits, not a vanished program.

References

1. Social Security Administration. "2026 Trustees Report Summary." https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/

2. Social Security Administration. "Social Security Board of Trustees: Projection for Combined Trust Funds Remains Consistent with Prior Year." June 9, 2026. https://www.ssa.gov/news/en/press/releases/2026-06-09.html

3. National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. "Viewpoint: Analysis of the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report." https://www.ncpssm.org/documents/social-security-policy-papers/viewpoint-analysis-of-the-2026-social-security-trustees-report/

4. Bipartisan Policy Center. "2026 Social Security Trustees Report, Explained." https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/2026-social-security-trustees-report-explained/

5. Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Analysis of the 2026 Social Security Trustees' Report." https://www.crfb.org/papers/analysis-2026-social-security-trustees-report

6. CNBC. "Social Security retirement trust fund may be depleted in 2032, new trustees report finds." https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/09/social-security-trustees-report-depletion-dates.html

7. AARP. "Social Security Report Projects Trust Fund Shortfall in 2034." https://www.aarp.org/social-security/trust-fund-report-2026/

8. Kiplinger. "When Will Social Security Run Out of Money? And Medicare?" https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/social-security/when-will-social-security-and-medicare-trust-funds-run-out-of-money

9. Cato Institute. "New Poll: Most Americans Expect Social Security Benefit Cuts; a Third Believe the Program Won't Exist When They Retire." https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/new-poll-most-americans-expect-social-security-benefit-cuts-third-believe-program

10. SSA Reps. "What Millennials Really Think About Social Security" (Nationwide Financial generational poll). https://www.ssareps.com/articles/what-millennials-really-think-about-social-security-why-they-might-not-entirely-wrong

11. Plan Sponsor Council of America. "Social Security Illiteracy Is a Problem" (T. Rowe Price Retirement Savings and Spending Study). https://www.psca.org/news/psca-news/2025/3/social-security-illiteracy-is-a-problem/

12. PLANSPONSOR. "Americans Remain Hazy on Social Security Benefit Details" (Allianz Center for the Future of Retirement study; SSA replacement-rate figure). https://www.plansponsor.com/americans-remain-hazy-on-social-security-benefit-details/

13. Forbes Advisor. "The Social Security Trust Fund Could Be Depleted By 2032: Should You Be Worried?" https://www.forbes.com/advisor/retirement/social-security-trust-fund-depletion-2032-lmandp5/

14. Social Security Administration, Office of Retirement and Disability Policy. "Workers' Expectations About Their Future Social Security Benefits: How Realistic Are They?" https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v81n4/v81n4p1.html

15. The College Investor. "Gen Z May Pay More For Less In Social Security" (worker-to-beneficiary ratio trends). https://thecollegeinvestor.com/59731/gen-z-may-pay-more-for-less-in-social-security/

About The Author

Shaun Melby, CFP® provides fee-only financial planning and investment management services in Nashville, TN through his company Melby Wealth Management. Shaun has over 15 years of experience as a financial advisor in Nashville. Shaun created Melby Money to educate the public about finances.

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