Social Security and You: You Are Being Paid Properly

Q: I started getting retirement benefits in 2000. And I've always been convinced I'm getting less than I should. This has been bothering me for 24 years! Can I go to my Social Security office now and complain about this?

A: Well, I suppose you could. But nothing is going to happen. The time to question a benefit amount is when those benefits start. Back in 2000, you received an "award letter" when your Social Security checks started rolling in. That letter gave you appeal rights. It would have said you have 60 days to ask for a review of your benefit computation. So that was the time to question your benefit rate -- not almost a quarter-century later.

Q: I, and all other Social Security beneficiaries, are being cheated out of benefits because I recently learned that all benefits are rounded down. How did this injustice come about?

A: For decades, Social Security benefits were always rounded up. But back in the 1980s, a conservative Congress was looking for ways to trim government expenditures in general and Social Security benefits in particular. One of the little gimmicks they came up with was to round down to the nearest dollar all Social Security benefit calculations. So individual Social Security recipients lose a few nickels or dimes every month. But because Social Security is so huge (one-fourth of the entire federal budget), it save billions for the taxpayers.

Q: Millions of teachers like me around this country are being cheated by offsets applied to their Social Security benefits. Please explain this travesty!

A: You are not being cheated out of anything. I've explained the fairness of those offsets hundreds of times in this column over the years. If you want to understand what's going on, I have an entire chapter devoted to this topic in my book, "Social Security -- Simple And Smart."

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If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has two books with all the answers. One is called "Social Security -- Simple and Smart: 10 Easy-to-Understand Fact Sheets That Will Answer All Your Questions About Social Security." The other is "Social Security: 100 Myths and 100 Facts." You can find the books at Amazon.com or other book outlets. (If ordering the "Simple and Smart" book from Amazon, click on "See all formats and editions" to make sure you are getting the 2024 edition.) Or you can send him an email 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.