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 examples of what I mean.
Q: I am 72 years old. I have been getting my own reduced Social Security retirement since age 62. I have chronic arthritis and fibromyalgia and I just learned I could have been getting higher disability benefits all these years. So, I called Social Security about this, and they said it’s too late! What? Why didn’t someone from Social Security ever tell me about this? They messed up and they owe me 10 years’ worth of disability benefits.
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