Social Security benefits can be a huge blessing to some people. For most seniors in the U.S., this is the primary source of income coming into the house. After retirement, it can be almost impossible to continue to earn enough money to support the same standard of living, and Social Security is designed to help make this process a lot easier.
Social Security is available for anyone who is a U.S. citizen, although there are some work requirements that must be met. Typically, this means that 10 years of paying into Social Security, but there are exceptions, especially in the case of widows and widowers (more on this below). This is something that is automatically taken out of your paycheck most of the time. You must be a minimum of 62 years old to apply for benefits, although benefits do not reach their largest amount until you are 67 years old. There are cases where applying for benefits early is the smart choice, though. If you’re not sure, a financial advisor might be able to shed more light on this subject.
Social Security has received a lot of scrutiny in recent years and many have speculated that it will disappear in the next couple decades. Although these concerns have been around for a while, the government has repeatedly stated that the concerns are being addressed and that SS is not going anywhere. Still, it is always smart to save money for retirement on your own. Social Security is a reliable source of income, but it will not be the same amount of money that you were earning while working fulltime.
One of the concepts that a lot of seniors get confused about is regarding what happens in the case that one spouse dies. Social Security does provide benefits for widows, and this can be a comfort in an otherwise distressing period of life. Depending on how old you are, this may or may not be a good idea–a financial professional can help you to better evaluate this.
A final thing to remember here is that widow’s benefits can often be collected years after the collected. For example, if a husband dies at an early age, the wife can collect benefits as she enters retirement, given that a few key criteria are met. For some, this can be an amount of money that they were not expecting and actually go a long way toward helping to improve the quality of life that is lived during retirement years. It might even be something that can help you to acquire the type of senior care that you were hoping for, rather than relying on Medicare to provide nursing home assistance. These questions can be better answered by a Social Security professional.
In the end, Social Security can be quite confusing and difficult to navigate. If you have concerns or have an issue that you can’t seem to resolve on your own, contacting an attorney that specializes in this kind of work is probably your best bet. There are a lot of pitfalls that you can get stuck in, and working with an experienced and trusted attorney is the best way to avoid them.
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