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A common criticism of Social Security is that Americans would be much better off financially if the money paid into the retirement program through payroll taxes were invested in private investment accounts. The same logic can be applied to Social Security checks – seniors would have much greater wealth if they invested their checks as soon as they received them.
But is this a reasonable request for most people, especially those on fixed incomes? To help find the answer, here’s a closer look at how much you could make by investing your Social Security check over a decade.
Investing Social Security Benefits: How Much You Would Have Earned
For seniors who are able to invest all of their Social Security checks, the potential payout is substantial. The following table shows how much you would have made if you had invested each Social Security check into the S&P 500 over the past 10 years, from now, from 2015 to 2025.
The data includes average Social Security checks year over year, as previously reported by GOBankingRates. It also includes the average annual returns of the S&P 500 from 2015 to 2025, as cited by Macrotrends (other sources may show different returns).
A few things to keep in mind: The figures below are based on annual averages only, meaning they do not include the month-to-month fluctuations that occur with the stock market. They also don’t include other types of investments – like crypto or real estate – which would have yielded very different returns.
| Year | Average Monthly SS Check | Total SS Payment for the Year | S&P 500 returns | Profit/Loss for the 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 | $2,006.69 | $24,080.28 | +1.96% | +$471.97 |
| Net profit (loss | +$23,439.54 |
Should you invest your Social Security check?
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 more than $20,000.
Such returns should please financial gurus like Dave Ramsey, who recommend applying for Social Security retirement benefits as soon as possible. For example, you can begin collecting benefits at age 62 instead of the full retirement age of 66 or 67 and then invest every monthly payment immediately.
There’s just one problem with that argument. A large percentage of seniors do not 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 money to pay the bills.
For nearly half of American seniors, Social Security provides at least 50% of their total retirement income, according to research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. For nearly one in four seniors, Social Security provides at least 90% of income. These people have a hard time making ends meet, let alone putting their Social Security checks into various investments that may or may not pay off.
Still, for those retirees who can invest their benefit checks, there’s a good chance those investments will pay off in the long run and boost their retirement savings.
Vance Carriga contributed reporting to this article.