Taxes and inflation will have a huge impact on our retirement income.  Scott Burns explains how our Social Security benefits are taxed at retirement.

For a couple, the taxation of benefits begins when your other sources of income plus one-half of your Social Security benefits exceeds $32,000. Today the average Social Security check is $1,048 a month, or $12,576 a year. So an average two-earner couple may have benefits of $25,152. Subtract one-half of this amount from $32,000 and you have the amount of income they can have from other sources before benefits become taxable — $19,424.

Once their other income exceeds $19,424, every additional dollar causes either 50 cents or 85 cents of benefits to be added to their taxable income.