If you're a baby boomer heading into retirement, here's a number that might make you feel a little better about those decades of payroll deductions: you're likely to get back far more than you paid in.

A new analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) finds that people born in the 1960s are scheduled to receive Social Security benefits worth about 133% of the combined payroll taxes paid by them and their employers, measured on a present-value basis. That's essentially your contributions back, plus interest, and then another 33 cents on top for every dollar you and your boss kicked in.

If you only count the worker's own share, the picture gets even rosier: benefits are projected to be about 265% of what you personally paid.

And the lower your income, the better the deal. CRFB estimates that the lowest-income quintile will get benefits equal to about 266% of combined taxes, while the middle quintile gets 147%. For the highest earners, benefits are roughly equal to combined taxes, though still about double their own contributions.

To put it in concrete terms: a median-wage worker retiring in 2027 could receive about $730,000 in scheduled lifetime benefits while paying less than $200,000 in combined worker and employer taxes. That's 3.7 times total taxes paid, and 7.4 times the worker's direct contributions.

Sounds like a great deal, right? Well, there's a catch, and it's a big one.

Social Security isn't a personal savings account. It's a pay-as-you-go system, where today's workers fund today's retirees. And the math is getting ugly. CRFB projects that over the next 75 years, the program will cost about 135% of the revenue it collects. Without changes, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund is projected to run out of reserves in the fourth quarter of 2032. At that point, incoming revenue would only cover about 78% of scheduled benefits, meaning an automatic 22% cut for everyone.

So why the disconnect between what people think they're owed and what the system can actually pay? CRFB argues that the reform debate is muddied by the belief that Social Security simply returns your own money. That's not how it works, and it never has been.

The political path forward is anything but clear. Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), a longtime House advocate for expanding Social Security, lost his primary and won't be in the next Congress. Meanwhile, proposals range from raising payroll taxes to trimming benefits, with no consensus in sight.

One analysis of potential fixes found a real tradeoff between economic growth and the burden on future retirees. Some benefit-cut approaches could boost long-term growth more than tax-heavy plans, but they'd also ask more of the people who depend on those checks.

CRFB's bottom line: the solution doesn't have to mean indiscriminate cuts, but lawmakers need to act on taxes, benefits, or both before the trust fund problem turns into a full-blown crisis. The clock is ticking.