Qualifying for Social Security Disability Benefits
Applying for Social Security disability benefits can be complicated and typically involves a variety of paperwork and perhaps interviews or hearings. This lady offers several useful suggestion.
Lady: Social Security Disability Insurance or SSDI is a benefits program that provides monthly disability income to those who’ve become seriously disabled and unable to work. Benefits are typically available only in cases involving severe continuing disabling conditions.
In order to qualify for Social Security Disability benefits you must be disabled to the point that you can no longer do the type of work that you did before, you cannot adapt to another type of work and your disability is likely to last for at least one year or even result in death.
In some cases, a disabled person’s dependent spouse and/or children under the age of 18 may also be eligible for benefits based on his or her work and income history. The amount of SSDI that you are entitled to receive on a monthly basis depends on your work and income history.
The application process can sometimes be complicated and typically involves a variety of paperwork and perhaps interviews or hearings. For more information about qualifying for Social Security disability benefits contact an attorney in your area today.
Ask Deanna: Social Security Questions
Sue Winder asks a couple of questions about Social Security benefits, and gets a great answer from John Bishop.
Deanna Sauceda: It is Tuesday and time for Ask Deanna. This week’s questions comes from Sue Winder: “I’m 53 and my husband is 65. If something were to happen to him, would I be eligible to receive his Social Security? And then once I reach retirement age, do I get both benefits?
Phone Voice: Please try your call again later.
Deanna Sauceda: Well, that’s what I got on one of my calls to the most obvious place to find the answer – the 1-800 number for the Social Security Administration. And if I was more patient I probably would probably would have found the answer there eventually. I tried 2 more times and I got this:
Phone Voice: Okay, I’ll transfer you for agent service. Your estimated wait time is greater than 10 minutes.
Deanna Sauceda: So I went to the yellow pages and called Action Disability Representatives and talked with John Bishop.
John Bishop: The answer is probably. If he has earned enough credits by paying enough into Social Security for her to be eligible, she would get benefits from whichever account would pay higher (pay more money).
Deanna Sauceda: Alright. So Sue, you would get his SSA until you were eligible and then the Social Security Administration does an assessment and gives you the higher of the two, but not both.
And next week’s question has to do with a favorite subject around here: fishing. [...]
Disability Plans Explained
Partner Victor Fusco of Fusco, Brandenstein and Rada explains Social Security Disability at a September 2009 Scleroderma Foundation conference.
Victor Fusco: I’m going to focus on Social Security because Social Security is not the only disability benefits law. And sometimes what we try to do is tie in other benefits to the Social Security.
Social Security Disability
Most of you know about Social Security, that’s a benefit that you pay for when you work. You’re paying FICO tax, part of that tax funds a disability policy. The first thing I want everybody in this room to understand is that it’s not a handout. Social Security Disability is not a handout; you paid for it and you paid a lot money for it, okay?
Supplemental Security Disability
Supplemental Security Disability is a secondary program which pays a supplemental benefit if your Social Security benefit is really low, or if it’s zero. And it might be zero if you’ve never worked. Say you’ve been a homemaker for many years and the breadwinner dies and you’re not eligible for widow’s benefits, which we’ll talk about, because you’re too young.
Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
You might be eligible for supplemental security income. Children are eligible for Supplemental Security Income. That’s typically called SSI, please don’t confuse it with Social Security Disability. People get the two confused and they’re quite different. What is similar is the disability standard. The benefit and the other criteria are very different; we’ll get into that a little bit.
Workers’ Compensation
Another thing is Workers’ Compensation. Why do I mention it here today? Well, it’s interesting that Workers’ Compensation, which really just implies to on-the-job injuries, also applies to a condition which is aggravated or exacerbated by a work related accident or work related conditions. So sometimes we look to see if we can make a Workers’ Compensation claim if there was something in the work environment that may have not necessarily caused, but activated or aggravated underlying disease such as scleroderma. And by coming to these conferences I learn that there are some things that happen in the workplace that can incite aggravation of scleroderma. So whether it’s scleroderma or any other type of disease, we always try to look for what type of work did you do to see if there is a connection and another benefit that we can look for in addition to Social Security.
Veterans’ Disability
Veterans’ disability – there are a lot of presumptions for veterans on the Veterans’ Disability law, and a lot of them have to do with a lot of veterans who served in, say, Vietnam, and were subject to exposure to various chemicals and things of that nature. So there are a lot of veterans who are missing the boat because they don’t think they are entitled to anything, who may be entitled to Veterans’ Disability or they’re getting something service connected but don’t realize they can get more than what they’re getting.
Disability Pensions
So that’s part of the mosaic on disability. Another thing is disability pensions. Just at the break someone told me about their mother who has worked for the postal service and is looking for a disability pension. A lot of public employees – federal, state and local – have various disability pension programs, a lot of which depends upon what tier of the pension system they’re in, where they work. But most public employees are entitled to some sort of disability pension. A lot of union employees are entitled to a disability pension from their job. The union plans frequently are predicated on receipt of Social Security disability – you got to go for both.
Private & Group Disability Plans
And finally, private and group long term disability plans. Typically these are found in larger companies, more often than not in white collar jobs, but today we’re starting to see them in some of the higher paying blue collar jobs. What a long term disability plan does if it is a group plan, is it will pay maybe 50%, 60%, 70% of salary, it may or may not be taxable depending on who paid for the benefits. If you paid for the benefit through your employer, when you get that benefit check it’s not taxable. If the employer paid then it is taxable. It usually sits on top of Social Security disability. So if you’re making $60,000 a year and that benefit is paying, say, $30,000 a year, you may be getting $20,000 in Social Security; it will pay you the difference, you’ll get the $10,000.
Private disability plans or disability plans that you buy from your insurance companies, your broker, can provide for a number of things. They can provide for two years of benefits, they can provide benefits if you can’t do your occupation, benefits if you can’t do any occupation. You need to be careful when you buy, you need to be well educated so you know what it is you’re getting and what you will entitled to if you can’t work.
Will Social Security Be There For You?
Tim Rosen shares his thoughts on how to protect yourself from the consequences of a dwindling Social Security trust fund.
Tim Rosen: Today, the U.S. News & World report came out with their findings that Social Security is broke. And to most of you, that is no surprise. They’ve actually updated the numbers that, as of last year, they reported that Social Security is good through 2017, referring to the trust fund for Social Security. They’ve now changed that and updated it to 2016. What I’ve tried to do here at TimRosen.tv and Conservative Money Talk, is to take the news and interpret it and to share it with you in a way that you can either benefit from it or protect yourself from it. So what do we do with this news that most of you knew anyways that Social Security is broke? What do we do with that?
Well, one, if you’re already retired, you have priority here as far as your Social Security benefits go. You’re already drawing, you’re pretty much safe. For those of you that are still working and are hoping to get Social Security at some point, well, you’ve got a challenge there. Expect to see them increase the amount of Social Security that you pay into as a percentage of every pay check. Right now it’s 7.5%; you could expect that to go to 8.5% so they can make up for this deficit. You should also expect to see them draw out and extend the date, the age that you qualify for Social Security benefits.
Bottom line, what does it all mean? Don’t count on Social Security for your retirement. When it first came out it was designed to keep you from being destitute, from being hungry. And if you’re lucky enough to get some, maybe that’s what it will do. But my encouragement to you… what does it all mean? Pay yourself, build up your wealth. You can pay yourself monthly and nowadays, with online banking, ING and Direct Capital One, maybe your credit union has a savings that you can add to automatically every month. Out of sight, out of mind. You can make it happen. You can also invest in the market. There are great opportunities if you have time to be in the free markets right now and benefit over time to keep ahead of inflation and to have some resources from which to draw from to create your retirement income.
That’s today’s news.
Room and Board Agreements for SSI Recipients
Attorney Mark Biernath offers suggestions regarding room and board agreements for SSI recipients.
Mark E. Biernath: Hi, my name is Mark Biernath. I’m an estate planning attorney here in the Atlanta area, with a special emphasis on special needs planning.
I’ve got a question here: “Our son is on SSI and is living at home. The case manager said that his SSI benefit is being reduced by one third because we are providing him housing. What should we do about that?”
By providing your son housing you’re providing what Social Security calls “In-Kind Support”. Since you’re providing housing, Social Security takes the view that they don’t have to. And so they’ll reduce his benefit by the value of that in-kind support. And the one third reduction is simply the easy way for Social Security to calculate that. That’s the presumed maximum value, or PMV, is one third reduction. And so one third of his SSI benefit is reduced simply because someone else is providing either for his food or his shelter cost.
What can we do in order to restore that full amount of SSI benefit? And one of the most common things is somehow your child has to pay for his room and board. And you can do this through a Room and Board Agreement or Rental Agreement and simply charge a set amount of money per month for his room and board. By having this room and board agreement, you are then able to establish to Social Security that the SSI recipient is paying for their room and board. The Room and Board Agreement should be in writing, it should reflect a reasonable amount; it has to be fair market value.
And one of the questions I have heard comes up from Social Security is they’ll ask you if you’re the landlord, “Would you charge a complete stranger living in your home this amount of money?” And I’ve heard some parents say, “Well, no. We’d charge them more”. Well, if you charge a complete stranger more to live in your home, then you’re not charging your child fair market value. That means also if you’re not charging him the full amount, you are again supplementing or subsidizing the amount that they pay for their living expenses. Also, it does include boards. So the meals at home are included in that cost.
And so if you have a child that either eats a lot or has a specific diet, of course, that would then increase the cost of that. Be prepared to explain that if it is significantly more, than somewhere in that 450-500 dollar range. But once you have that Room and Board Agreement in place, that needs to be presented to the case manager so that they can evaluate it and then restore the full benefit. Now, there is an issue about who can enter into the agreement. If your child has capacity, they can enter into the agreement. Once they’re over the age of 18 legally they have capacity unless, of course, you have been to court and have had that child declared incapacitated through a guardianship proceeding. If there is a guardianship in place then it must be the guardian who signs the agreement.
As a planning consideration for the future, you may wish to consider whether your special needs trust contains a provision allowing the trustee to either charge the beneficiary room and board for whatever housing the trust is providing, or in the alternative, does the trustee have the discretion to accept a reduced SSI amount. Often times one of the main concerns of parents who are planning for the kids is: “What kind of living environment are they going to be in?” And if your plan is to have your house and your primary residence be owned by the special needs trust so that your child can continue to live there, your trustee needs to either be able to charge them Room and Board, or in the alternative accept that reduced SSI payment.
I hope you find these videos helpful. If you have any questions or comments, we welcome you to write those below if you’re on YouTube in the comment section. Or you can send us an email at mark@biernathlaw.com
Ron Paul: “Politicians Must Stop Stealing from Seniors and Our Future”
Here’s a great commentary by Congressman Ron Paul. He quotes an economist who says that if the original methodology of CPI had not changed, Social Security checks would be nearly double what they are today!
Ron Paul: There has been a lot of talk in Washington recently about senior citizens, mostly about how various healthcare reform models would help or hurt them. But there is another critical issue that has quietly devastated seniors financially over the last few decades. It concerns how the cost of living is calculated. How does the administration justify not giving a cost of living increase to Social Security recipients this year?
According to the official Consumer Price Index calculation, life has gotten cheaper for the first time in decades. If the government can show statistically that the cost of living has gone down, not up, then they can make the case for not giving a cost of living increase to social security recipients. But does this match reality? Using older calculations of CPI, the cost of living has actually increased – by roughly 5 percent!
The CPI (Consumer Price Index) is a calculation based on the average price of a fixed basket of goods that was initially designed to help businesses adjust for inflation. The government eventually started using it to determine cost of living adjustments for entitlement programs. Couple that with politicians’ discovery that they could raid the social security trust fund to pay for new spending programs, and you have a perfect storm to deny seniors what they were promised, while hiding the true size of the deficit. For politicians, it is a win-win.
For seniors, it is a different story. Economist John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics has estimated that if the original methodology of CPI had not changed, Social Security checks would be nearly double what they are today. This represents a lot of money that politicians have been able to literally steal from seniors, to spend on their own wasteful programs. One example of how they do this is to substitute hamburger for steak, which lowers the average price of that basket of goods. But living on hamburger, or maybe dog food, instead of steak does not represent a constant standard of living. This renders the measurement virtually meaningless, even though politically it comes in very handy.
I have introduced legislation to keep politicians in Washington from ever raiding the Social Security trust fund again. HR 219 The Social Security Preservation Act would assure that all monies collected by the Social Security Trust Fund would only be used in payments to beneficiaries, or be placed in interest bearing certificates of deposit. This would at least stop the bleeding of the fund, and take away some incentive to tease and torture the numbers in order to give seniors the minimal amount. This would also cut off a source of funding for government growth, so it is not likely to get easy support from many politicians.
It is bad enough that Washington imposes high payroll taxes on American workers. The least Congress could do is use the tax dollars for their stated purpose. Instead, seniors will have a harder and harder time trying to survive on a fixed income in an economy based on variables and deception. For them, it is too late to start over. Today’s young people will be forced to pay into the system for years to come. The first step towards solving the impending crisis facing Social Security is to stop politicians from raiding the trust fund and to significantly cut federal government spending.
Denied for Disability? Stay Positive and Let the People at Social Security Do Their Job
Here’s another great video in our Social Security Disability series. Harold Cameron of Haroldsays tells us what to do when experiencing a delayed response to an appeal for getting on Social Security disability. Most importantly: Remain patient and positive! There’s a huge backlog, but the people at Social Security are working very hard for you. And the best thing is this: Your money starts accumulating on the day you originally applied, and you’ll get it all once you get approved!
Well, greetings YouTube subscribers, followers, and friends. Harold Cameron here, chief of helping people at Haroldsays and consumer advocate here.
I got a question from someone on YouTube regarding their Social Security disability claim. They filed all the paperwork, went through the process and they were denied. And they got a lawyer and it’s been a few months and the lawyer has all the medical documentation and paperwork and they were a little frustrated because they hadn’t heard anything. They were wondering why weren’t they getting a phone call or some kind of action from their lawyer.
Well, the good news is if the attorney is a Social Security benefits lawyer, that is, they represent people who are trying to get a Social Security claim… they’re doing their job. Here’s the problem: there is a backlog of cases before administrative law judges – they’re called ALJs – there’s a backlog of cases of appeals that, in some cases, extend as far as 12 to 18 months. So what that means is from the time you filed your appeal, it could be up to 18 months before you will have a hearing. So don’t get discouraged from the standpoint of ‘your attorney is not doing his or her job.’ They can’t move any faster than the wheels of progress grind at the Social Security Administration in the division where they do the hearings.
So, what do you do? Well, who was it that said, “Let them eat cake”? It was Marie Antoinette, I think, or somebody, when the little people didn’t have any bread and it was in France and she living high on the hog and so what do the little people do? “Let them eat cake”. Well, there was no cake. That’s kind of the attitude of some people in political circles: “Well, they’re little people, poor people. You will always have the poor with you, you can’t help everybody.”
Now this is not the attitude of the people I’ve worked with in Social Security Administration and the law judges. It’s not their attitude. It’s not the attitude of a most of the lawyers that I’ve ever communicated with. The problem is not the people; the problem is the system. And the problem is that there are just not enough judges to handle the backlog of cases and get them processed quickly.
Because this isn’t merely and simply looking at one or two sheets of paper and making a decision. Oh no, no. There are files and files and records that they have to go through. So, it’s a long process. It’s a difficult process. It you don’t have any money or any income, apply for state benefits while you’re waiting, apply for food stamps, apply for energy assistance; whatever benefits you can.
And I’ll share one other very, very important thing with you that always, always, always is important, no matter what challenge you’re facing, no matter what experience you’re going through, and as hard as it is, don’t fret and anguish over what you haven’t got. Rather, be appreciative and grateful for what you do have, express gratitude for what you do have. Express gratitude whenever and wherever you can. Express positive thoughts, say positive things, watch funny movies, listen to positive music. In other words, do everything that you humanly can to encourage your brain and your heart to hold on, to think positive and to be grateful and to express gratitude and you will be surprised. You will be surprised, pleasantly so, at the results.
I know. I know from first hand and personal experience. So although the road may be long and the challenge may seem formidable, though the foe may seem as though Goliath, hang in there. Fight the fight. Be positive, be grateful and appreciative and be persistent. And in so doing if your cause is just and right, in time I know your battle will be won.
If you have any questions or thoughts for me feel free to reach out to me and I’ll be delighted to respond to you as I can. Thanks for watching and I do hope that you enjoy a positively terrific day today. Thank you and bye for now. And remember – I forgot – love wins. I’m out.
Agoraphobia and Social Security
Agoraphobia is a condition where the sufferer becomes anxious in environments that are unfamiliar or where he or she perceives that they have little control. Triggers for this anxiety may include wide open spaces, crowds, or traveling (even short distances). This anxiety is often compounded by a fear of social embarrassment, as the agoraphobic fears the onset of a panic attack and appearing distraught in public. This video contains some great tops on how to get on Social Security with this condition.
I wanted to make a video for people who had agoraphobia and wanted to get Social Security or SSI. I know some people in whom agoraphobia develops overnight, just like it did for myself, and in some people it takes years to get to that point where they are full-blown agoraphobic. So maybe they’ll have a little bit of doctor records and stuff under their belt. For people like me who never got treated for anxiety or depression or anything like that, prior to developing agoraphobia, now we’re stuck in a situation where if we’re going to leave our home, we know we need a doctor. But what are people like us to do who develop agoraphobia overnight and can’t find a doctor or anybody who wants to support us, but yet we need money to support our family?
Well, I’ll share some of the things that I did. If you go to my website, there is a link on there called “Social Security and Me” that talks about my little journey with Social Security and what happened to me in 2007. Basically, I signed up for Social Security in November of 2007, I got my doctor in November 2007, she was a psychologist. Basically she came to my house, and the first mistake that I made … and make sure that if you get a doctor that she will support your claim … because I came to find out that she wouldn’t give Social Security my medical records once I asked her to. And basically she was anti-Social Security and I couldn’t get her to give up my records. So that is a major problem to say the least because the thing about it is when you tell people you got a problem they say, “Well, sign up for Social Security or SSI”. And what a lot of people don’t think about, apparently, is that you need proof; just like in a court of law you need proof to make your claim. That’s the same thing for Social Security or SSI; you need proof. I would say at least 6 months to a year.
If good solid proof of going to a psychologist, psychiatrist – whatever it is under your belt – before you should even file a claim. And make sure that this psychologist or psychiatrist or general practitioner or whoever you are going to, will give up your records. Make sure you have that conversation before you even call Social Security or go to the Social Security office.
Yes, you can call Social Security and sign up over the phone. You can do your interview over the phone where they ask you what is wrong with you and all that good stuff. Another thing that you might be worried about is: “What if I don’t have enough medical records and they want to send me to a doctor?” And the common misconception even with Social Security themselves is … because when I had my interview on December 3rd of 2007, I told the lady that did the interview “Look, I won’t be able to go to a doctor even if they send me” because she said, “You don’t have many medical record to they’re going to most likely send you to a doctor. Will that be a problem?” I said, “Yeah, it will be because I have agoraphobia”. And she said, “Well, you’re pretty much screwed”. I said, “I bet you I’m not” and come to find out in the end I was right. They sent a psychologist to my house to do my evaluation. It can be done. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. One way to make sure this happens is to call your DDS examiner. Your DDS examiner is the person who handles your claims. Social Security doesn’t handle your claims. They let somebody who’s called a DDS examiner handle your claims; that’s the “Disability Determination Service”. Those are the ones that determine whether you’re disabled or not for Social Security. So make sure that when you get the letters in the mail that says, “This person is your examiner or case worker”, you call him every now and then and ask him, “What’s going on with your case, do you need anything?”. And if you send him paperwork ask him, “Was that good enough, do you need more?” Because the only thing this will do is speed up your claim and it keeps you in contact with your DDS examiner.
99% of people apparently don’t even do this; they just sign up for Social Security and they wait for Social Security to send them a letter in the mail saying “We need this” and then they send it back. They don’t even know if Social Security got the letter or not. So, keep in contact, keep in contact, keep in contact with your DDS examiner. Call them. I cannot stress that enough.
One time, when I signed up Social Security that day and I had that lady telling me, “You will not be able to get Social Security because you won’t be able to go to a doctor for evaluation”. I called a lawyer; I got a lawyer even before I got denied for Social Security, because the lawyer knew over the phone they would deny me. So basically what happened was everything that got sent to me had to go through my lawyer to Social Security. So basically what happened was one day they needed a letter from my doctor. My doctor did an evaluation of me and I called her to give it to me telling her I need it for a medical card, when actually I was going to send it to Social Security and try to get a medical card. So she gave me this big evaluation saying, “He cannot work right now. He’s got Generalized Anxiety Disorder, GAD” and all that different stuff. Which was the truth; she didn’t lie. She gave me two copies; I sent one to my lawyer. About a week later I called my DDS examiner – which a lot of people don’t do – and I asked, “Did you get that?” and she said “No”. I called my lawyer, they said they haven’t received it. And then the lawyer said “We haven’t even received it”. So from that point on I skipped the lawyer. I sent the DDS people the paperwork myself. In the end, the lawyer might not have paper work that the DDS examiner might have that they don’t have, but they can always get it themselves. Right now I’m worried about myself. That lawyer wants just $2,500 whenever it goes to court.
But right now I’m just worried about myself. So make sure you call. That’s an example; she wouldn’t even have got that, and that was a really important part of my case, and I handled it myself. So anyway, I got turned down and the reason why I got turned down was I didn’t have any evidence, I didn’t have anything to backup my claim. And people tell you, when you get denied, even if you have evidence, file it. Yes, that’s true. File it. l file it. If you have a doctor, file it if you have somebody who will back you up and say, “He is messed up in the head, he cannot work for at least a year”. You need your doctor to be able to say “For at least a year”, not 6 months or 8 months. That is one of the conditions that in order to get Social Security disability you have to be disabled for at least a year. The doctor has to put on that letter, “I think for the next year he will be unable to work.” And so those are a few tips.
If you have any more questions be sure to write to me, check out my website www.anxiety-agraphobia.com. The link on there is called “Social Security and Me“. It tells a little bit more about documents that Social Security sent me that I have on my website. Even what the denial letter said. So if you’re curious about any of that, why not check it out. If you have anxiety or some kind of other anxiety disorder, or if you got agoraphobia in particular, be sure to check that out.
Denied for Social Security Disability? Watch this video…
Bob shares his experience with getting on Social Security disability. His advice: 1) Most people are denied the first time they apply, 2) always appeal, and 3) after the first appeal, get a lawyer.
Bob: Hi everybody. Bob here with another version of “What The Heck?” This is episode 8. Today we’re going to talk about Social Security, and specifically about disability. If you think the regular Social Security system is screwed up, you haven’t seen anything yet. I’m going from experience here. I’ve been dealing with these people for 19 years, so I know something about this.
Okay, I’m going to give you the exact situation we’ve been in. My wife, Mary, suffered from several brain tumors 19 years ago. They removed four of them with no problems. The fifth one did damage coming out. It actually killed her and they had to bring her back. She suffers from short term memory loss, she has some severe balance problems, she has some vision problems, and she has a decent case of Bell’s palsy as well. And she had a lot of radiation therapy, a lot of chemo therapy. And when all this happened, the insurance company pulled pre-existing clause. Fortunately, the hospital actually sued the insurance company on our behalf, and they won. So they got paid. We made a deal with the hospital that as long as we testified on their behalf, they would never come after us, which is good because that was over a million dollars’ worth. My wife was in the hospital for several months. She actually was in a coma undergoing surgery on our first anniversary. But we’re going to go back to Social Security disability.
We originally filed for Social Security disability not too long after this all happened. About a month later we get an appointment to go see a doctor. Okay, they’re going to evaluate her. He just asked a couple of questions, took one look at her and said, “Okay, thank you” and then we left and we got a denial notice in the mail. Okay, we accepted it and went on with our merry way. I felt, “Hey, I was working, I had insurance, so what the hell. It didn’t really matter”.
So, about two years later my wife gets into a traumatic brain injury program, and there is a social worker there. I can’t, for the life of me, remember her name. I think Mary probably would remember it. But she asked us why Mary wasn’t getting Social Security disability, and we told her she was denied. She asked, “How many times did you appeal it?” I asked, “Appeal it? You can appeal them? I had no idea”. So she put all the paper work together, she had all the doctor’s paperwork from the TVI programs she was in, we pushed it through, and we got her disability.
Now, remember we got denied in our first attempt? Turns out that’s standard operating procedure. They do that to eliminate the people who are doing it fraudulently. Unless you are in a coma, you will get denied; plain and simple. Your first attempt will be denied. Always appeal, that’s the one lesson we learnt: always appeal. Because if you win your appeal, however long it takes, you’re still accumulating money. You see, your money accumulation starts the day you apply.
So if it takes 2 months to get to you, they owe you 2 months’ back checks. With us, it was 2 and a half years. They had to send us 2 and a half years of back checks. They sent to us all in one check. It was like $10,000 at the time. No, it wasn’t $10,000, it was like $8,000 at the time. But we got about 2 years’ worth of back checks. That was quite nice; that brought me a car. But always appeal it, and if your first appeal doesn’t go through for some reason, get a lawyer. A lawyer costs you nothing. Appeals lawyers for Social Security disability make a set amount. They’re paid by the government, win or lose. Let me say that again – Social Security disability lawyers, win or lose, are paid for by the government. Not paid for by you, although they are your attorney, they are your advocate; they are paid by the government. And it’s not as an employee of the government, it’s the government pays their fee, win or lose. So they’re obviously going to be on your side, because they want you to win. That’s why these people do it. And you see the advertisements on TV every once in a while that say, “Oh, we went all the way up to Alaska to help this guy”. Yeah, because you’re billing the federal government. They get paid a fee. And it’s different for every lawyer, they submit a bill to the federal government, the federal government decides “we’re going to pay you this much,” and they take it. But after the first appeal if you’re still not getting it, get a lawyer.
Now, you’re going to be re-evaluated every 3 years. What they do is they tell you that you have to go to this doctor at this point in time if you want to keep getting your benefits. No matter what, you’ll still keep getting it up until the day they say you’re denied. But it’s called a re-evaluation and usually it’s just a formality. Once you get a number of years in, like we have, I believe after 12 years or 15 years they don’t even bother re-evaluating anymore. We should have had 2 evaluations that we haven’t had. So it might be after 12 years. We should have had re-evaluation last year and we didn’t, and then we should have had a re-evaluation 4 years ago, and we didn’t. So I think they just give up after that.
That’s Social Security disability in a nutshell. Remember these two rules: 1) always appeal and 2) after the first appeal, get a lawyer. And you’ll do fine. To be totally honest, though, on the first appeal you’ll probably get it. Unless you utterly do not deserve it anyway, you’ll probably get it. Because that first denial is just to get rid of the frauds. That’s all.
My name is Bob, this has been “What The Heck?” and if you have opinions different than mine, or if you agree with mine – whichever – please go ahead and comment. I’d love to see your comments and you may just be the one to change my mind. You all have a great day now.
Does Social Security Save $300 Million Per Year By Rounding Down Benefits?
Social Security routinely rounds down the benefit amounts paid to the next lowest full dollar amount – even if the original amount would have included more than 50 cents. For example, if they calculate that your benefit is $685.90, you only get $685. But as there are 90 cents, most people would round it up, not down (if rounding is necessary at all).
This is not an error but an actual policy of Social Security. It wasn’t always that way; the new rule took effect in June 1982, as a result of PL 97-35, The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 (enacted 8/13/81). [thanks to Larry]
Multiplied by 50 million SS recipients, the amount not paid out because of this rule amounts to approximately $300 million per year. What happens to this money? It’s simply not paid out and therefore remains available for future payouts. But some people are worried that somebody else might be collecting their missing cents, which is a pretty reasonable concern, but fortunately not true.
“I got a fifth-grade math problem for Social Security. The question is, I was told that I will get a benefit of $685.90 by their letter to me. But I have been getting only $685. They shortchange me by 90 cents. So my question is what happened with 90 cents? I don’t know. So I called and I was told that they just drop off 90 cents. It just disappears. I don’t know where, but it just disappears. Now, I was taught that when you round to the last one dollar, you’re supposed to round up if it’s more than 50 cents, so that makes sense that I should get a check for $686 and not $685. But they gave me $685 and they’re saying 90 cents they just drop off. They don’t worry about it.
Well, somebody is collecting those 90 cents. Now, the simple same typical math problem, we can extend that, too. Today there are 50 million people collecting Social Security checks every month. So on the average, they’re collecting 50 cents for every Social Security recipient per month and there are 50 million people so they are collecting $25 million per month times 12, that’s $300 million per year. What happened to those $300 million? Why can’t we get that back? Why are these other people, Citigroup, Bank of America, they are still getting… “
Settle Tax Debt Fast!
Get Foreclosure Help
