That sounds a little low. I paid $104,300 from 1966 to 1996 (the max every year) I started collecting at age 64 last fall and they pay me $1605.20 a month (before taxes). That is 5.4 years to get all my money back ... assuming zero interest on the money they held for all that time.
Sometime if I get bored I will make up a spread sheet and see what that would have returned at the prevailing CD rates over those years, My guess is a quarter million or more. I probably do not want to know ;-)
Probably no more illegal than laminating a dollar bill...
clipped
Thanks. Fortunately, the matter is only a minor irritation and a little funny, in consideration of the ease at which I think it could have been handled by SS. And fortunately, there has been no loss or deprivation brought to me as some might have encountered by SS mucking around.
The people that claim we get back more than we put in piss me off because if it were ours to save we would have collected interest. If I had it put in my 401k, I'd probably get twice as much back and for a much longer period even with conservative investments.
One of my work mates managed to duck all the layoffs and stayed until
2007 (Paying in a whole lot more) His check is almost the same as mine but he did start drawing at 62.The people who get a lot more than they paid are our parents who put in pennies a paycheck.
On 3/2/2011 2:50 PM, Higgs Boson wrote: (snip)
Personally, I don't want them or their staffs doing errands for me, unless maybe I run into a total brick wall. I want them doing their damn job out on the floor, and passing some damn appropriations bills, something they collectively have gotten at best a 'D' on, the last several years. That is their main job duty, and they can't even get THAT done.
My bad. I should have said "some of my money". If I got it all back, and at any decent rate of return, I could go on an endless cruise. Some retirees do that, as living on a cruise ship is cheaper than a nursing home. I wouldn't do that, but I sure could cruise a little, spend time in my favorite places, and if I got bored, or the furniture got dusty, I'd be off to find a new one.
I think the creators of SS must be spinning in their graves, but I secretly think they knew what would REALLY happen. Like trusting your child NOT to get into the piggie bank or cookie jar.
SteveB
Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Download the book $10
We had an old Teamsters joke:
How many Teamsters and how long does it take to get my freight here?
Who cares? You got a problem wit dat?
Change a couple of words and you got the U. S. Government when you have a problem.
SteveB
Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Download the book $10
Too bad they were too stupid to give the states read-only portals to the various secure federal databases behind the federal ID cards of various flavors 2-3 million of us already carry. The HSPD 12 cards EXCEED 'Real ID' standards. I once submitted a suggestion through channels that TSA recognize the Federal ID cards for their now-dormant 'trusted traveler' program. (In DC alone that would speed up the airports a bunch.) After about a year, I got a reply back that it would be impossible, because TSA couldn't trust the background investigations done by other federal agencies. Your tax dollars at play.
Always grates on me a little at airports, that a glorified rent-a-cop with less of a background check than I had, is frisking ME?
It isn't an annuity. It was set-up on a pay as you go basis, meaning that I was paying for Dad. The problem is that there are not enough sons and daughters to pay for me and my compatriots. The problems are made worse by the bipartisan changes in the 80s where they upped the taxes and then put them into NON-marketable treasury securities. Of course those at the time never got around to designating an income stream to repay the securities, let alone the interest. Double your pleasure, double your fun.
BTW, I wasnt' doubting your experience. Just didnt' want to leave the impression dealing with the SSA was always this hard.
"mm" wrote
Exactly. Sometimes it is harder. They had my birth date wrong. Took me two years to get it resolved.
Last year though, I signed up for Medicare and that went easy. I did it on line.
He obviously stated in his explanation that he got a form letter from the Social Security Administration informing him that his intended request was considered incomplete... This means that his mailing was received, opened, looked at and then rejected due to its incompleteness and then put aside for the person who deals with the rejection exceptions to the normal flow control in document processing...
The postal service doesn't return anything once it has been opened, and the SSA could not determine the request was incomplete without opening the envelope... So what he received back was a new letter from the SSA returning his submitted documents to him for resubmission as a proper and complete request rather than holding onto them at the office and waiting for him to mail back what was needed...
Many government departments have cut back on staffing and usually the first people to go are the ones who answer phone calls and the people who sort and organize the files...
~~ Evan
You can thank budget cuts for that... Fewer people opening the mail, fewer people to sort and organize it... Even the IRS uses "seasonal" clerks to open and process the returns into the master computer which enslaves the entire IRS agency...
Be glad that they sent back your documents... They could have quite possibly LOST them inside the office if they had held onto them...
~~ Evan
So you needed to CHANGE your social security number ?
That seems like an odd thing to do... Unless you had specific reasons like identity theft or something and that requires a lot of documentation...
Umm... You see it as going through circles... It really isn't...
Most people out there NEVER change their name, especially men... So requiring a court document officiating the name change is fairly routine...
Why did you change your name while you were married, that sort of issue only usually applies to the female in a marriage ?
~~ Evan
I kept my maiden name for my first marriage, and took his name for my second. The plain and simple truth is that I liked my name better than #1's, but I preferred #2's name to my maiden name.
I was 22 when I married bachelor #1, and 32 when I married bachelor #2. I'm 54 now.
Cindy Hamilton
If you are having to provide a thumbprint to obtain a driver's license, your state is going overboard and that is NOT a federal requirement of the Real ID program... I am aware of two states who fully comply with the Real ID system which was more about standardizing the security features and information displayed on driver's licenses as well as using information technology systems which were compatible so that a national database was available for every state's DMV/RMV and law enforcement personnel to be able to request info on a person and get back a history of where that person has been and if the license they have presented is in fact still valid... Up until about five years ago, many times you couldn't verify out-of-state ID's without someone making a phone call to a state police official in the state the ID was issued so that it could be verified by someone inside that system... The connections between systems were very buggy and would decide themselves whether or not they wanted to work that month/week/day/hour/minute or not...
So the Real ID system established a set of behind the scenes rules for the way that state authorities who issue driver's licenses must comply with in order for the system to work with much more stability and have everyone's IT infrastructure be compatible and collect the same information...
~~ Evan
There are only about three federal agencies that actually do any background checking... Most of it is handled by the FBI... Then there is the Diplomatic Security Service at the State Dept, and the Secret Service at the Treasury Department...
If the TSA can not trust the FBI then there are serious problems, as the FBI has MUCH HIGHER security clearances than any TSA agent has -- every agent in the FBI has at minimum a Top Secret clearance and the background investigation for that goes back to kids you used to play in the sandbox with in kindergarten...
The military has its own background checking folks, and they do about as rigorous a job as the FBI does for civilians...
All the TSA amounts to is a force of rent-a-cops who are very poorly trained and not given much authority to actually use what limited brain power they possess at all... Not many TSA agents are armed -- that portion of airport security usually falls upon the State Police or transportation authority operating the airport to provide that function...
~~ Evan
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