I always wondered why my 73 year old mother made such a big deal about working as long as she could at her job with the school district when it seemed to me she'd be ready to retire. Ha!  Now I know!  She understands the Social Security system and I don't.

Thankfully, WomenBloom has Diane Owens to help us understand how things work at the SSA so we can make the best financial decisions for our retirement.  Diane has been with the SSA for over 8 years.  In this article, she simplifies the formula Social Security uses to calculate your retirement benefits and offers some useful tools so you can be planning way ahead.