Tag: retirement benefits

Disability Benefits for Senior Citizens

Many older folks are asking me about getting disability benefits from Social Security. I’ll offer some tips on how to go about doing that in a minute. But first, here are some ground rules that vary depending on your age. If you are over your full retirement age, forget about it. Once you reach that…


Reduced Benefits Explained

Before I start today’s column — a word of warning. It’s going to involve a lot of messy math, and I don’t like math. To be more precise, I don’t like including too much math in my column because I’ve learned over the years that putting lots of numbers in a column just confuses the…


Don’t Overthink Social Security Starting Date Questions

I frequently get emails from readers who turn a little molehill of an issue into a big mountain of a problem, and it has to do with the starting date for their Social Security benefits. The Social Security retirement application asks a question that goes something like this: “Which month do you want your benefits…


Don’t Blame the Government — Blame Yourself

Sometimes people will write to me complaining that the government, specifically the Social Security Administration, has messed up and cheated them out of benefits they might have been due. But many times, the fault (to trivialize a famous line from Shakespeare’s play, “Julius Caesar”) is not in our government, but in ourselves. Here are some…


Angry Al and Me

I get lots of emails from my readers. Most are from nice people who have questions about their particular Social Security situation. I like responding to these people and helping them out. Then there are those guys (and it’s almost always guys) who rant and rave and gripe and groan about some perceived injustice involving…


Over 1,000 Kellogg’s US Cereal Plant Workers Go on Strike Over Cut to Benefits and Pay

Over 1,000 Kellogg’s cereal employees went on strike for more than 18 hours at various plants across the United States on Oct. 5, amid failed negotiations over the payment and benefits terms of a new contract for workers. The food manufacturing company has been at loggerheads with union members for more than a year over over a dispute…


Retirement Benefit Calculation—the Advanced Course

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who just want to know the time and those who want to take the clock apart to see how it works. I’m sure most of us fall into the first category. I sure do. But of course, there are always those who need to disassemble…


The ‘Spousal Bump’

Recently, I’ve received emails from several readers who asked questions about something they call the “spousal bump.” It’s a term I never heard before, and it made me chuckle. It sounds to me like some kind of “dirty dancing” move done by an old married couple in a shady nightclub! I can just see a…