We realize it may be a stretch for ordinary people to want to keep up with the comings and goings of the Social Security Administration, but sometimes circumstances permit where someone does want to follow the latest news regarding the agency due to a possible retirement or disability interest. This blog is an ongoing piecemeal of recent stories that have involved Social Security. Some are tidbits and some are important things that should be known in the world of retirement or disability and others are just interesting stories and nothing more.
Plan For The Future
We constantly talk about how important Social Security is to the lives of millions Americans, which is true, but those who have to live singularly off of either Social Security retirement or disability benefits will probably struggle to provide a decent living for themselves. Both disability and retirement monthly payments from Social Security a worker would be eligible for are similar monthly amounts, but neither will come close to replacing a pay a worker received from employment. Estimates are that lower income workers will get about 50 percent of their employment salary through either Social Security disability or retirement benefits and higher earners about 40 percent. The more someone earns while working the less Social Security benefits will cover their former salaries. Now there is a lot of talk about how Social Security will be bankrupt by the time younger generations retire and they should not count on Social Security for their future. This is completely wrong. Although Social Security will be unable to meet 100 of its obligations by 2034 it will still be able to meet 80 percent of full payment after this year if nothing is done to fix the problem, but there will certainly be efforts made to fix the problem. Regardless of whether full Social Security payments are there for future generations, no matter who you are you should think about other retirement options in addition to Social Security. It is difficult to save for retirement in a private savings account, individual retirement plan or through a 401K, but even a little bit of money that can be tucked away each month will make retirement a bit easier when it is time to collect Social Security.
Things Are Not Getting Better At Social Security
The National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) recently released case load analysis on Social Security’s first nine months of fiscal year 2016, which began last October and the news is not promising. Among the highlights of the report included:
- Based on caseload receipts and dispositions Social Security was only able to handle about 89 percent of the work it received.
- There were a total of 977,736 cases pending before the Social Security Administration in October 2015 and more than 1.1 million by the end of June this year.
- Overtime hours of Social Security employees have fluctuated greatly, increasing when the agency receives needed appropriations and declining in other instances. One highlight of the fluctuation was that there were close to 49,000 overtime hours in November of 2015, but less than 86 overtime hours in March of 2016.
- A valuable tool Social Security has used in the past is to use a senior attorney advisors to try and make favorable decisions on severe disability cases that are waiting for a hearing. This was done only 732 times between October of 2015 and June of 2016, which is much less than previous years.
