Never mind the part about the IRA contributions. While I wouldn't be covered by an employer retirement plan, my wife would be and our combined AGI exceeds the upper limit for IRA contribution. Unless there's a back-door way to do that, I wouldn't be able to make deductible contributions.

IRA deduction limits

For the benefit of other readers, all self-employment income is subject to Social Security taxes (up to certain limits) and contributes to your benefits. In contrast, not all employee wages are subject to Social Security taxes or contribute to Social Security benefits. E.g., some local or state governments opt out of SS. If you include that income as SS wages you'll overestimate the amount you'll have on hand.

ESPlanner addresses these differences by including all self-employment income in calculating SS benefits, but includes other wages only if the user specfies they contribute to SS. There's no need to enter self-employment income on the SS tab, but there is a need to record employee wages there if the wages are SS-eligible because ESP can't determine whether they're eligible, or not, without your indicating so.

This explanation is found in the Guide, while on the Future Covered Earnings tab:

"ESPlanner uses estimates of future Social Security covered earnings to calculate future Social Security benefits. All self-employment earnings are covered (subject to taxation) by Social Security. Hence, ESPlanner needs to learn only about future covered employee wages, since self-employment earnings have been entered in the Earnings screen."

Chris