The financial news that actually matters
Covers Social Security benefits, eligibility rules, payment calculations, and policy changes. It explains how benefits are determined and how they impact retirement income.
A retiree who claimed too early, or who simply doesn’t need the money yet, has a formal way to reverse course: voluntarily suspending Social Security retirement benefits and letting delayed retirement credits rebuild the monthly check. It’s a narrow window, both in eligibility and in age, but for the right household it can turn a…
Supplemental Security Income exists for people with little income and even fewer assets, and the government’s definition of “few assets” has not changed in decades. A single applicant today runs into the same $2,000 ceiling on countable resources that has applied since the rule was last adjusted, back in 1989. Cross that line, even by…
Most Social Security dollar figures move with the cost of living almost every year. One does not. The one-time payment made to a surviving spouse when a worker dies has been set at exactly $255 since a law passed in the middle of the 1950s, and it has stayed there through seven decades of inflation,…
Identity theft aimed at Social Security numbers is a persistent worry for older Americans, and password protection alone does not always feel like enough. Social Security offers an option that goes further than a strong password or a security question: a total block on electronic access to a person’s record, available at no cost to…
Waiting pays off with Social Security, but only for one type of benefit. A worker who delays a personal retirement claim past full retirement age earns a permanently larger check for every year of delay through age 70. A spouse who delays a claim on a partner’s record past that same full retirement age earns…
Retirement plans do not always survive contact with real life. A worker who returns to a job, receives an unexpected inheritance, or simply regrets filing too early has one narrow legal path to reverse a Social Security retirement claim, and that path comes with strict conditions attached. Social Security allows exactly one withdrawal per lifetime,…
Divorce does not automatically cut off every tie to a former spouse’s Social Security record. When a former husband or wife dies, the person they divorced can, in the right circumstances, claim a survivor benefit based on that person’s earnings, even though the marriage ended years or decades earlier. The rule hinges on one number…
When a husband or wife dies, the surviving spouse is not required to wait until a traditional retirement age to start drawing a Social Security check built on the earnings record of the person who died. Survivor benefits can begin years earlier than most people assume, and the Social Security Administration lays out both the…
A retiree who waits past full retirement age to file for Social Security sometimes receives an unexpected offer buried inside the application: a lump sum covering up to six months of back benefits, paid out as soon as the claim is approved. The offer can look like a reward for someone who simply took time…
A retiree who claims Social Security before full retirement age and keeps working can run into a rule that catches many people off guard: earn too much in a year, and part of the benefit gets withheld rather than paid. The reduction is not a penalty in the usual sense — the money is not…
Retirement Shield
Free retirement updates
Social Security and Medicare change every year, and nobody sends you a memo. The free Retirement Shield newsletter breaks down what changed and what to do.