Retiring with both a pension and Social Security raises its own set of questions: how the Social Security benefit is figured, what a spouse or survivor can receive, and whether a pension changes any of it. Here is what Kroger employees should know going into that decision.

How are Social Security benefits calculated?

Social Security looks at up to 35 years of a worker's highest earnings, adjusts each year for wage growth, and averages them into a figure called the average indexed monthly earnings. A formula then converts that average into the primary insurance amount, the base benefit before any adjustment for the age benefits start.

Full retirement age is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later. Starting benefits at 62, the earliest allowed age, permanently reduces the monthly amount by about 30% compared with waiting until full retirement age.

Waiting past full retirement age instead, up to age 70, increases the benefit by 8% for each full year of delay, for anyone born in 1943 or later; a benefit also keeps receiving its annual cost-of-living adjustment once it starts, and claiming does not have to happen on the same date retirement does.

What can a spouse, former spouse, widow or widower receive?

A spouse with fewer than 40 credits, or whose own benefit is smaller, can receive up to half of the other spouse's benefit amount at the other spouse's full retirement age, with a reduced amount available as early as 62; the marriage generally needs to have lasted at least a year before spousal benefits can start.

A divorced spouse can qualify on a former spouse's record if the marriage lasted at least 10 years before the divorce became final, the divorced spouse is 62 or older and currently unmarried, and their own benefit is not larger. This benefit does not reduce what the former spouse or the former spouse's current spouse receives, and two marriages to the same person within a 10-year span can sometimes be counted as one if the remarriage happened by the calendar year after the divorce.

If a spouse has died, a surviving spouse's benefit starts at about 71.5% of the worker's benefit at age 60 and rises the longer the survivor waits, reaching 100% at the survivor's own full retirement age for survivor benefits.

Does a pension affect Social Security?

Two Social Security rules used to cut benefits for a worker who also received a pension from work not covered by Social Security taxes: one known as WEP reduced the worker's own benefit, and one called the Government Pension Offset reduced a spousal or survivor benefit. The Social Security Fairness Act, signed January 5, 2025, repealed both rules for benefits payable after December 2023, and SSA has been sending retroactive payments to affected beneficiaries since February 2025 covering the increase back to January 2024.

A pension from noncovered work no longer reduces a Social Security benefit under either rule. Someone applying for Social Security for the first time, who was not already receiving it before the repeal, still follows the normal retroactivity rules: generally up to six months before the filing date, not an automatic restoration to January 2024.

Does a pension count as earned income for Social Security?

Pension payments are not counted as earned income by Social Security. When figuring how much to deduct from benefits under the retirement earnings test, which only applies before full retirement age, Social Security counts only wages from a job or net profit from self-employment; pension payments, annuities and investment income are left out, so a pension on its own does not reduce a benefit under that test or add to a worker's earnings record.

Where can you look up your own Social Security numbers?

A personal my Social Security account lets a user review their earnings history for accuracy, pull up their Social Security Statement, and use planning tools that estimate the benefit payable at different starting ages.

How those rules line up with a pension, in terms of timing, survivor options and overall income, is the next piece worth working through with Kroger's own plan details.

How does Kroger's pension pay a retiree or a survivor?

Kroger offers more than one pension path, and which one applies depends on how a person spent their career there. The frozen Kroger Consolidated Retirement Benefit Plan, which stopped building new benefits for most non-union participants by the end of 2019 and finished freezing the last bargaining units by the end of 2024, counted 13,402 participants in its newest filing. At retirement it pays out as a lump sum, a life annuity, a joint and survivor annuity, or, after age 55, a contingent annuity set at 50%, 75% or 100% of the original payment. Kroger's separate Local 876 pension plan instead defaults to a life annuity for an unmarried participant and a 50% joint and survivor annuity for a married one unless another form is chosen. Which form lines up more closely with a spouse's Social Security benefit is worth sketching out before deciding.

Is a Kroger pension a company plan or a union fund?

Kroger's Local 876 pension plan is sponsored directly by the company as a single-employer plan, separate from the roughly dozen multiemployer union pension funds Kroger also contributes to under other collective bargaining agreements, two of which name Kroger as the fund's fiduciary. Kroger's quarterly filing for early 2026 states the company was not required to put additional money into its own pension plans that year, while it expects contributions to several of the multiemployer funds to keep rising because most of them remain underfunded. Knowing which type of plan applies first helps when weighing what a Kroger pension adds alongside Social Security.