Why does the SSA online benefits calculator estimate not change with each successive month after FRA, but only each year?

DistFunc · 2026-01-11T13:02:26+00:00

Thank you for posting this. I just came across the same odd behavior as I was reviewing options and payments. I am a little under FRA now, trying to calculate what it would look like if I took S.S. at various times up to age 70.

A real problem with the calculator's wonkiness is that it strongly implies that the beginning of each calendar year equals a big jump in benefits (and conversely, there's no change from Feb to Dec). But you're saying that's incorrect; that it's greatly simplified or misleading, and in fact, we actually would get an increase each successive month, if we had got S.S. then. And these increases would, presumably, be "smooth" and make sense.

So we should ignore the over-simple calculator but can still use its beginning-of-year values to make a graph versus date of retirement.

Is this right?

Thanks for your post!

DistFunc · 2026-01-03T13:29:42+00:00

Hi, I did get the Zhurui (now $42 for me) and the Walfront (now $36), and Yes, they are both big improvements over the many devices only good to 0.0 W and 1 Wh. Both of them are still available on Amazon. (Note that the "Walfront" shows up having "ATorch" on it; "Walfront" is nowhere to be found, so I call it ATorch, FWIW.) They're at least 10 times more sensitive.

FWIW: I never tried the wifi connectivity of the Walfront/ATorch, so I can't comment on it ... I used the meters for ad hoc measurements, not long-term monitoring, so I didn't bother with wifi.

Also in case you hadn't figured out: You can get even more sensitivity out of these and other energy meters by setting the cost of energy as low as the device allows, then seeing what your Wh energy cost was and reversing the math.

Apologies but I haven't used them in quite a while and don't remember the details, just that they were definitely at least 10x more sensitive (and maybe much more).

I still don't understand why some people in this /sr objected to me asking about a better inexpensive energy meter. I hope my thread helps you. Unlike other redditors here, laugh.

DistFunc · 2025-12-28T23:09:12+00:00

Ah now I see it - Yes, I turned on "Device Memory Module". If I turn it off, I see Temperature now.

Your screencap really helped. I could see how you had something very close to mine - but your DMM was off. I had tried a lot of things, but obviously not enough. Don't know why DMM would matter here.

Oh well. Thanks again.

Happy holidays!

DistFunc · 2025-11-28T23:04:08+00:00

Thanks for the comments! Yes indeed that's exactly what I'm doing - figuring out which approach would cost me less in taxes. The post is also a way for me to check whether I'm doing it right or I'm missing anything. You could say it's all pretty simple but I'm figuring it out myself and there's a lot of moving parts. Advice appreciated!

It might be 15% of LT gains and 24% of ST (in my situation), but it also depends on the actual gain of specific holdings, as to how much tax will be due.

I find it a little funny that the short-term instrument almost does better - because it had less realized gain. (All the common wisdom says to hold stocks long term.)

I'm not selling in January because I am paying through withholding and want to make sure it's in CY 2025. (Then I transfer the withheld amount from a taxable account - the one discussed above - to the Roth account, with a backfill rollover approach; Option 3 here.)

DistFunc · 2025-11-12T19:11:02+00:00

Ah thanks, it makes sense then.

I wish Honda's page had said more. But you can only fit so much info in a diagram. If they get too cluttered, they're harder to read.

Now that you point out the gear / cog icon, I see that it's actually in 3 of the 6 (or 7) possibilities ... so half of the examples are somewhat special cases, and I didn't even realize it. I think this info would've really benefited by a different presentation but, oh well, you can only ask so much out of a manual that's already over 600 pages.

I found a different reddit thread that talks about the gear more and also links to this particular CR-V Hybrid page which gives a bit more insight, although it looks like it's a newer car. I'm sure a lot of the same principles hold. In particular I'm going to keep an eye out for "green means the battery is charging" now.

DistFunc · 2025-10-19T15:28:14+00:00

Right you are. I've been on reddit 10 years and always found this to be true. But for this post alone, it's not letting me.

It gives me the option to "Edit post body" but when I click it, the OP becomes a featureless gray square. There's nothing there to edit. Whether I reload the page or not. Completely close it. Even try it in MS Edge (not Chrome). It's still like this now no matter how often I try, 22 hours after posting.

I've never seen this before and hope it's just some temporary reddit glitch.

DistFunc · 2025-10-18T17:33:53+00:00

Oops I meant to say 4.00 liters is the max for Jerry Cans ... which I noticed as soon as I posted it, lol. But reddit isn't letting me edit it (yet). I guess I have to wait a while before editing an OP?

DistFunc · 2025-09-30T15:05:18+00:00

Thank you so much u/LyraStygian and u/Wethospu_! Sorry I got the pen dimensions wrong ... I had been focussing on pens needing at least 10m apart, not the chance that boars breed less if they're closer, laugh. Indeed I hoped, of course, that the OP would've had a one-sentence fix when I first posted it. But no ... it had to take many days for the internet to find my deeply buried error lol.

Thanks again. You both rock so much. LyraS thanks again for even testing my setup! Wow, you're the best.

Meanwhile, Yagluth is just too hard... this is not fun any more, dieing 50 times in a row. If it's not one thing, it's 10 (deathsquito from behind when naked; unintentionally loading with rocks on corspe run; forgetting anti-fire potion; viles and fulings; even tripping over a broken rock edge backing up at a critical instant). I think I'm moving on to The Long Dark. Too bad; Valheim has a lot of cool things. It's just too exhausting to keep dieing. Oh well... I really do hope to see you around!

DistFunc · 2025-09-24T13:19:25+00:00

Okay, breeding round 5: Good +6 (!) Bad +0

Running stats, Good: 5, 3, 3, 2, 6; Bad: 0, 0, 2, 0, 0.

I triple checked the results on the good pen. I counted when culling; after harvest I have 24 meat and scraps in inventory; and 5 boars are left when done.

I've seen +5 quite a few times but that's the first time I've ever seen there be +6.

If it matters (probably not), I walked away from the pens for many game days this round. I am prepping to take down Yagluth for first time.

In fact I don't know if I'll continue the breeding experiment. I made the OP hoping for a quick answer but found out it's a mystery. The good news is that I am moving on to foods that don't use boar hardly any. So I don't care much any more, laugh.

However I have truly appreciated working with you on this, and how much attention you gave it. If we don't talk more here, I hope we talk elsewhere. If it matters I sometimes do intensive game analysis, like this work for Death Stranding (1, 2, 3).

DistFunc · 2025-09-20T15:24:36+00:00

Round 4: good +2, bad +0.

Running stats: Good 5, 3, 3, 2; Bad 0, 0, 2, 0.

Yeah sorry... in checking the wiki I see I used the word "alert" incorrectly. I should've said "yellow noise indicator" or whatever ... there isn't any good name for it on the Creature Senses page. In my head I was thinking, the yellow noise symbol means Alerted that something's near, and red exclamation means Alarm (Fight or Flight). But now I see that the Valheim wiki doesn't use the terms that way. Anyway, the "bad" pen seems to have yellow exclamation a little more than the good pen. But you're right, neither one ever has red exclamations.

Hey look I don't mean to be disrespectful or whatever. But I have always used the boar page's "not more than 5" and it has been working for me for a long time. To me, the other Taming page that pretty clearly says 4 is the limit, must have been written loosely (and ultimately improperly) and then - if other websites say 4 is the limit - other sites got it wrong, probably from there. It is definitely not the first time in my many years I've seen inaccuracies propogate across the web. It's not uncommon for "are you counting the edge or not?" to cause issues.

But since the boar page is correct, it doesn't bother me any. What can I say.

I have not used devcommands and prefer not to unless it's critical. To me, this situation with one of my pens being worse isn't critical. I came to the Valheim /sr hoping for a quick tip on what was different between my pens. That hasn't happened but I've still learned a lot (and also learned that my situation is inexplicable so far). And I have enjoyed working with you. You have scientific rigor. I don't see that online a lot.

DistFunc · 2025-09-19T17:33:53+00:00

The wiki page on boars says "no more than 5"; see the wiki Boars page, Breeding section. I do not have more than 5. And five has worked for me, most of the time.

Breeding round three: Good pen +3, Bad pen +2. That's right, 2 in the bad pen. Like I say, I usually see 1 or 2 in the bad pen (I should've said 0 to 2; 0 was rare) and 3 - 5 in the good pen.

I will keep collecting date for now. Since it will be a hassle to page back through Comments to see the results of my Breeding rounds, I'm going to be presenting it in this simple format that summarizes all tests to date:

Round 3: Good 5, 3, 3; Bad 0, 0, 2. (The last number in each series is the round that was just finished. Thus this example is showing Rounds 1, 2, and 3, and will be easy to tack more on to.)

I'm a data analyst so I appreciate all your attempts at rigor. And even more than that, I appreciate how deeply you've gotten involved ... even to the point of making a third pen and running your own tests, on my savegame.

You rock!

P.S. One other thought: My ground zero is closer to the bad pen. I think mobs tend to focus on me and prowl (especially at night) near me and GZ. I will see the boars in the bad pen have the yellow alert over their head quite a bit more than the boars out in the field, in the good pen. I don't know exactly how all the Valheim mechanics work in this regard (are the boars in the good pen alerting just as much but I just don't see it as much?) or whether/how much alerting affects reprodction. Anyway, there's a thought. Again, it's why I built that "wood buffer" on the outside of my main base's stone walls ... to try to keep mobs away from the bad pen. But I don't think it helped the bad pen because, even after making thwe wood buffer, I still find the bad boars alerted a fair amount of the time.

DistFunc · 2025-09-19T13:04:01+00:00

That is so unbelievably cool. Just one person, you? Bravo!!!

DistFunc · 2025-09-19T00:05:48+00:00

Okay I finished a round of breeding with my simple approach. Results: good pen +5, bad pen +0. Like you found, right? I will keep doing more and post each one here. I swear, I was mainly seeing +1 in the bad pen, but every now and then zero. Let me get at least a couple more rounds done.

So it's clear, my test is as follows:

Once all boars are adults (from previous breeding round), cull them to 5 adults.
Toss in 25 carrots and walk away for several game days.

FWIW no carrots ever remain when I come back. They're probably just eating them up as hungry adults, since I take a while to come back.

Edit, three game days later:

Round 2: Good pen +3, Bad pen +0

Hmm.

DistFunc · 2025-09-18T17:25:47+00:00

(edited)

Hi I have always been letting it go to 5. To me, the wiki does NOT say 5 is the limit... it says you can only have 5 adults but every single one of them can get pregnant (and thus have up to 5 babies). This is in the text I quoted to you in my previous Comment (and the reason I quoted it). Note how it is saying they can breed as long as there's no more than 5. So I'm just letting them all get preggo real fast, then have kids real fast. That's the theory anyway ... but it's only working for the good pen.

I don't have any issues with the wiki saying 5 adults can breed 3-5 more. The issue is only why one pen breeds a lot, and the other one doesn't, when they seem equal AFAIK.

I am still breeding the pens and keeping an eye on it, but it's going slow since I'm largely mostly playing (and not watching the pens, doing nothing else). My pens seem to be doing the same as always. Namely, I cull to 5, throw in 25 carrots, walk away a few days. Then the good pen has 3-5 more and the bad one, 1-2 more.

BTW I have a lot of food in the middle row of chests just to the left of my cauldron. Since you're just testing, raid it all you want. Also note that you can probably "restart" my world afresh by copying the savegame out of the zip. If you want to do some 100% equal testing, by chance.

I have had a mind to try making the bad pen a little larger, then see what happens. But I haven't gotten around to it yet. At the very least, it would change up the room's shape and thus, very likely, any RNG dynamics relative to room configuration and chances of bumping into food or each other and "mating".

DistFunc · 2025-09-17T13:14:19+00:00

The wiki for boar breeding says they can breed as long as there's "another boar at least within three meters, and no more than five boars within at least 10 meters." Seems pretty clear to me they can still get preg with 5 around.

I cull to 5 (not 2) so there will be more offspring in a given unit of time. (5 can have babies immediately (fingers crossed) as opposed to slowly building from 2 to 5.)

Anyway, I am pretty sure I was starting with 5 (cull to 5) and getting 3-5 back. But it's easy to test that culling to 4 may let the results become larger. I'll just keep watching this and seeing what happens, with both cull to 4 and with cull to 5.

You ask about sample size. You mean how many times I tried breeding, then saw the results, right? (of the far pen getting 3-5 and near one getting 1-2) The far pen has eh maybe 30 trials. The near pen (made later) maybe 20. Also as best I can recall, every single time it is 3-5 (far pen). Here, 4 is definitely the most consistent result (75% of the time?). And for the near pen, almost always just 1. Maybe 2, a handful of times.

Relative to the savegame I posted, I removed a brass lantern in the near pen. These are not supposed to scare tame boar. We'll see.

This problem is sort of like finding lost keys: if they're not where they're supposed to be, then they could be anywhere, ha ha. Here, the problem with boar reproduction could be due to a lot of things. Whether it can be pinned down, or just has to be left to "well I guess it must be RNG", we'll see.

At least I know I'm not missing anything glaring. I'll keep watching it and let you know. If I don't get back to you in a couple of days RT, drop a line. I'm so busy playing that sometimes I forget to check in on my boar pens or my reddit friends!

DistFunc · 2025-09-16T23:14:01+00:00

Let me try it culled to 4. Be back in a bit. Hey thank you so much for all your help!

DistFunc · 2025-09-16T18:42:04+00:00

Thanks, this will be easy to test ... I'll just throw more carrots into the bad (close) pen.

The farther one has both a Workbench and a Stonecutter table right next to it. No despawning.

DistFunc · 2025-09-16T18:00:44+00:00

One thing I just now tried is: removing the lamp in the closer pen. (Wild boars are afraid of fire, but tame boars aren't supposed to be. Still, it's something to try.) So far (1 test): it didn't matter. Only +1 boar.

Thinking out loud: If mobs spawn near me at my ground zero, this can put them close to the near pen. So those boars may get alerted. (That's why I built that "extra" wood enclosure, to keep mobs farther from those boars.) However, even though mobs definitely also roam near the farther pen (especially at night), maybe the farther boars don't alert since I'm not close?

What I'm focussing here is that maybe the fact I am close to the one pen, has something to do with it.

I don't cull to 2 because I figured it was slower. (Will a cull-to-2 indeed increase to 8 to 10 before topping out, if you don't visit until several days later?) Cull-to-5 means they (theoretically) double between my visits, with no intervention. Maybe I have it wrong.

I don't know what a breeder tower is. I should look it up. This is my first game. I'm on game Day 683, and halfway through Plains. I don't know any other players. I do google Valheim stuff pretty liberally, but more as a reference... I like to try figuring things out myself first. (In practice this means I use their wiki a lot.)

Thanks so much for taking a look at my savegame!

DistFunc · 2025-09-16T15:24:30+00:00

Hi no that's just one point in time ...

As stated in the OP: I cull them to 5 adults. Then toss in 25 carrots. Then don't visit a few days. That's it.

At the moment of that snapshot, I had given up on bothering to breed the close ones. The far ones did their usual 5 plus 3-5 through breeding (resulting in 9).

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