Page 4 of ‘Your Social Security Statement’

Subscribing to my site guarantees you don't miss any new content. Choose either E-Mail Feed or RSS Feed. Thanks for visiting!

Please click on the thumbnail to the left to see a sample of Page 4 of Your Social Security Statement. The numbers highlighted in red are explained, and expanded upon, in the post below.

Medicare is made up of two separate programs:

• Part A coverage is for hospitalization.
• Part B is for doctors’ services and other services, such as, surgeon fees and physical therapy.

Long term care (LTC) coverage is not included with Medicare and must be purchased separately. As part of the financial planning process, I often model the costs of buying LTC coverage. This is probably the single biggest potential drain on a person’s assets later in life, if they have to self fund a nursing home stay.

In my opinion, LTC coverage is not one of the first things you need to be worrying about in your 30’s and 40’s. You can start looking towards addressing LTC issues in your early 50’s.

The longer you delay receiving your social security benefits the more you will be entitled to. Delaying the start of benefits past your normal retirement age will increase the PIA (primary insurance amount, which is another way of describing your social security benefit). This increase is, in addition, to any cost of living increases that are applied to all benefits.

Like I’ve said before, Social Security is not just for the old. As much as 20% of all SS benefits are paid out to Americans under the age of 62.

A spouse who is age 62 or older may receive 50% of the retirement benefits of the employee covered by Social Security, whether or not the spouse had any SS earnings.

Beginning at age 62, a divorced spouse is entitled to 50% of a workers PIA when the marriage has lasted at least 10 years and the divorced spouse has not remarried.

While we all want to believe that we’ll be healthy as we approach retirement age, the fact is that 42 percent of men and 28 percent of women will die or become disabled before they reach retirement. Social Security helps insure the American worker and his or her dependents against these hazards.

For those who have reached full retirement age, no amount of earned income will reduce the Social Security retirement benefits received. For individuals under full full retirement age, however, benefits will be reduced by $1 for every $2 by which earned income exceeds $12,960 for 2007.

and There are a lot of great online resources for getting information on Social Security. The website listed in both of these sections (www.socialsecurity.gov) is the official site of the SSA and an excellent place to begin.

While researching these social security posts all week I spent a great deal of time on this site and highly recommend going there if you want to learn more about Social Security.

Well, I hope the next time you get your social security statement in the mail it’s a little more palatable…

Tags: Social Security, Your Social Security Statement