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Social Security and You: Inability to Work Creates Disability Qualification

By Wendy Leung, Ventura County Star, Calif. on

Published in Senior Living Features

Q: I am 63 years old and have been getting Social Security disability benefits for about five years. When I am switched to retirement benefits at age 66, will I be able to start working again?

A: Yes. Once you are 66 years old and getting retirement benefits, you would be able to work and make as much money as you want without jeopardizing your eligibility for those benefits.

But the fact that you even bring this up raises a few questions in my mind. The reason you are getting disability benefits in the first place is because you are supposedly unable to work. (As I've pointed out many times in this column, you get Social Security disability benefits not simply because you have a disabling condition, but rather because you have an impairment that keeps you from working.)

In other words, it is the inability to work, not just the disability itself, that makes you eligible for benefits. The fact that you seem so eager to work, which of course by itself is admirable, causes me to wonder if you are still legally disabled for Social Security purposes.

Having said that, I should point out that there are incentives built into the law that are designed to encourage you to try working even while you are getting disability benefits. Those incentives are far too numerous and complex to detail in this column. But in a nutshell, they say that you can work for up to nine months, and make as much money as you can, and still keep your disability benefits. After those nine months, if you are making more than about $1,000 per month, your disability benefits would stop. And because of your age, you would then be switched to reduced retirement benefits.

 

But again, if you put off searching for work until you are 66, you won't have to worry about those special disability work rules.

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If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has the answer. Contact him at thomas.margenau@comcast.net. To find out more about Tom Margenau and to read past columns and see features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.


(c) Ventura County Star, Calif.

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