How Much Money Will I Get If My Claim Is Approved?
We are frequently asked how much someone will get if their disability is approved. This makes sense because you are putting in a lot of time and effort to try and get disability and want to know if you are going to make enough money to survive on. Unfortunately, the answer to this question isn’t cut and dried.
The first thing that is going to determine how much you will get is the type of benefit that you applied for. Usually, when we are talking about Social Security disability, we are talking about two different types of benefits. The first type of benefit is Title II Benefits or Disability Insurance Benefits (DIB) or even Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). All three names mean the same thing, but we will refer to them as DIB throughout the rest of this post. The second type of benefit is Title XVI benefits or Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
What is the difference between DIB and SSI?
The quick explanation of the difference between the two benefits centers around work credits. While working, you should have paid money into Social Security through your payroll taxes. This payment is like paying a premium on a disability insurance policy. The benefit you can get for paying these taxes is DIB. To qualify for benefits, you need to have a certain number of quarters of work, or work credits during a certain period of time, typically 5 of the 10 years, or 20 of the 40 possible quarters, before you became unable to work. The date you are last eligible for DIB benefits is called the “date last insured” or DLI. Your disability must begin before your DLI for you to be eligible for DIB. There are also special cases where you can apply on someone else’s work credits, like a deceased spouse or parent’s work credits, as long as that person met the qualification requirements, but we won’t go into that too much here.
The other type of benefit, SSI, doesn’t require that you have work credits, but it does require that you can show a certain amount of financial need. The rule is that your assets and resources must be under $2,000, if you are single, and $3,000, if you are married. These amounts are so low because Congress has not updated them since the program was started in the early 1970’s. A good rule of thumb is that if you are eligible for Medicaid or food stamps, you will be eligible for SSI. This is, of course, assuming that you are also found aged, blind, or disabled.
How much will the benefit be?
With DIB, the amount that you will receive each month is dependent on the amount of money that you paid into Social Security. This is very similar to how they determine your retirement pay. The national average DIB benefit is about $1,580 in 2025. Social Security provides several ways for you to find out what you would be eligible for.
The best way is to create an account at Social Security online. You can access the site at www.ssa.gov. Once there, click on the “Sign in” button in the upper right. You will be taken to another page where there are several log in options that appear as buttons. Just above those is a link to create an account at login.gov. Click on that link and follow the steps to set up an account. The account set-up is involved and will ask some detailed questions from your credit report.
After successfully creating an account, you can verify your earnings and get your Social Security Statement. Look for a paragraph specifically about disability benefits. The estimated amount of your benefits will be in that paragraph in bold numbers.
Social Security mails Social Security Statements annually to workers who are age 60 and over, aren’t currently receiving Social Security benefits, and don’t have Social Security online account. Social Security also provides several calculators you can use to determine your own benefit based on different scenarios. If all else fails, you can call Social Security and ask them for the estimate or to send you a benefit statement.
Once you have your statement or have logged in to your online account you want to look for the line that tells you whether you have earned enough credits to qualify for disability and provides the amount. That amount is the best estimate for what you will receive if you are approved for DIB.
We are often asked what effect other assets or income will have on your DIB. With DIB, other assets or income do not affect the amount of your benefit, as long as those assets or income are not from earned income related to your work activity. If you are working, and earning over the current limit set by Social Security ($1,620 in 2025) you will become ineligible for disability. However, if you receive $100 a month from an annuity it will not affect the amount of your DIB payment.
If you are filing for SSI, things are a bit different. The federal maximum SSI benefit is adjusted annually. For 2025, it is $967 and the maximum couple benefit is $1,450. The couple benefit in this case being that both members of the couple are on SSI. Now, this is a maximum meaning that the benefit could be lower depending on your situation. Any assets or income available to the person receiving the SSI benefits will be counted against the SSI income the person receives including DIB benefits if the person receives both. The rules for calculation of the SSI amount get quite complicated and are beyond the scope of this article. Just realize that SSI benefits get offset by any resources the individual receiving the benefit might have access to including land, vehicles, cash whether in bank accounts or at home, gold, or any other assets that can be turned into cash. Social Security also counts income from other family members such as a spouse or parent (for child SSI), so a person’s eligibility for SSI can be reduced or eliminated if a spouse’s income is too high. The one major exception to this rule is that Social Security will exclude one house (if you live in it) and one car (as long as it is used for transportation), no matter their value, from this resources reduction.
One common situation is for someone to receive both DIB and SSI benefits at the same time. This can only happen if the amount of your DIB is less than the federal maximum SSI benefit because there is a dollar for dollar offset. For example, if you receive $349 in DIB, you can receive up to $618 in SSI benefits. On the other hand, if your DIB is more than $967, you will not be eligible for ongoing SSI benefits.
This explanation of the benefit amounts and the rules affecting those amounts is very simplified. Specific situations will be different for each individual and can fluctuate from month to month. However, this should provide you with a good understanding of the amount you may be eligible for.
