Social Security and You: Book Updates
Over the past couple of months, hundreds of you have written to me because you've had trouble getting my book called "Social Security: Simple and Smart" from Amazon. And other times, the problem was that you wanted to get the 2024 edition of the book and you were sent a prior edition.
I won't bother sharing with you the tales of woe my publisher and I have had with Amazon trying to get this fixed. But the good news is the problem seems to be resolved. You can now order the book from the online merchandizing giant. And if you ask for the 2024 edition of "Social Security: Simple and Smart," you will be sent the 2024 edition. Yay!
And here is an interesting sidelight. The original cover of the book had a facsimile of a Social Security card. But where you'd normally find the Social Security number, this facsimile had the title of the book and my name. I thought it was clever and cute. Well, my former employers, the Social Security Administration, didn't. They sent a letter to my publisher telling us we could not have the image of a Social Security card on the cover. So we are in the process of designing a new cover.
That's an update on "Social Security: Simple and Smart." But I'm going to spend the rest of this column reminding you that I have another book. It's called "Social Security: 100 Myths and 100 Facts."
I think the best way to tell you about that book is to reprint here the introduction that you'll find at the very beginning of the book. It goes like this.
"Social Security touches the lives of every American. We all have a Social Security number. Most of us work at jobs in which Social Security taxes are taken out of our paychecks, while others have their own businesses and pay self-employment taxes into the Social Security system.
"Sixty-five million people are receiving monthly Social Security checks. They are getting either retirement or disability benefits, or they are the spouse or child of someone getting such benefits, or they are the widow, widower or child of a worker who has died.
"The trillion-dollar funding of the Social Security program makes up about one-fourth of the entire federal budget of the United States.
"So, a government program that is so huge and that affects every one of us is bound to be the focus of many rumors, misunderstandings, half-truths and outright lies.
"I have spent the last half-century debunking all those myths. And now, for the first time, I have compiled a list of the top 100 myths about Social Security into one easy-to-read and easy-to-understand guidebook.
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Copyright 2024 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
