Thank you, thank you. So, let’s jump right in. Gina submitted a question on the website. Gina’s not a partner, but I’m assuming she must have been listening to some of our talks about Social Security because she says, “I was married to my first husband for about 12 years and had three children. After divorce, and six years later, I remarried and had one child, then divorced four years later. I’m now 60 and pondering the future. Would I be eligible for additional social security benefits based on one of those marriages? What do you think?”
Well, first Gina, welcome. I see that you’re not a partner. I’m happy that you’re asking this question because this is a fantastic question regarding ex-spousal benefits and ex-survivor benefits possibly here. So, to jump into it, Gina, the first husband that you had, you do qualify for ex-spousal benefits right now. But you’ll have to be at Social Security claiming age to actually start receiving those, which is going to be age 62 in this case. Your second spouse that you had after that, you won’t qualify because you weren’t married long enough.
However, now that you are age 60, this is actually interesting. If you remarry again, even though you may be eligible for your first spouse’s ex-spousal benefits, you’ll also be eligible for your current spouse at that time since you’re over age 60. These Social Security laws can be very nuanced, but based on the information you gave me, that’s your eligibility there. I do recommend talking to a supervisor at the ssa.gov. If you call the National Hotline and talk to a supervisor, they’ll be able to lay out all of your options and it sounds like you’re going to have a few options for claiming them.
So, this ex-spousal benefit is pretty unique in the sense that once you get to Social Security claiming age, which is 62 for you, being able to take the ex-spousal benefits, if your first husband has passed, you may also be eligible for the ex-survivor benefits from your first spouse. Those would be two options there depending on the situation, which you haven’t indicated here. So yes, please call into ssa.gov, the National Hotline there, and ask for a supervisor to see if they can help you with your Social Security claiming options.
The other additional topic I wanted to mention is that if you have any minor children, which is not clear here, that may add to possible additional benefits you might have as well. If that is the case, I want you to still talk to a supervisor. So that’s the key point: talk to someone who knows and can go through your options here with your particular situation. So, that’s a really great question, Gina. I’m glad you asked about that.
Good stuff. So, you know, we’ve been encouraging people to go onto SSA.gov and register if they’ve never registered there because, you know, we used to get those statements in the mail around our birthday every year. It would be a little brochure showing what our earnings history was and what our benefits are projected to be at certain ages, and all of those things that we could potentially qualify for. And now, with the world of the internet and all that, it’s good to go online and register at SSA.gov because they don’t send them in the mail anymore, or at least I don’t get them if they do.
In private practice, we do some income planning for our clients and one of the things that we encourage them to do is to go to the SSA.gov and download their statement, as well as another file that we can load into one of our programs to do more detailed planning. But Jason, we were talking about a recent incident where someone was telling you what happened when they went to register for their SSA.gov account. Would you share that with the listeners?
Absolutely. This is something brand new that hasn’t happened since I’ve been following Social Security claiming since 2020. This happened recently, this year, that I think is just prudent for partners and anybody listening. If you are going onto SSA.gov, the official online account to create your account, the Social Security Administration has added a few additional identification login mechanics. We’ve found recently that some people are running into roadblocks where they cannot create an account. When that happens, they tell you to call the national hotline—there’s only one number for that—or go to your local Social Security Administration office. We know the wait times have increased dramatically to hours of waiting if you call the hotline, so maybe going into your local office will speed up that process.
What we found out is that no one’s answering questions right now on why this is happening. So without speculating about what it could be, all we know right now is that if you go into the office or call the number, they’re probably going to send you or mail you a specific pin that will allow you to create the online account. Again, this is new information. So we want to just warn everyone that it’s okay; they’re not answering questions about whether or not something’s happened with your Social Security number, but it seems like an additional layer of identification is required.
That’s interesting to me and it creates more questions than answers for me as to why this is happening. Because when you’re logged into SSA.gov, all you can really do is access some information; it’s not like you can change your address. It’s not like you can start or stop your benefits. It’s important for people to remember, too, that the Social Security Administration won’t call you. So if somebody calls or emails you, you’d be better served by going into a Social Security Administration office.
Jason, another thing we were talking about is what JD Vance has been saying. Yeah, so when going into what JD Vance was covering about the number one fraud in America right now, I do want to note that Social Security can schedule appointments via the national hotline where they will call you for a scheduled appointment. So there is a case where they will call you, but it isn’t out of the blue. That’s normal with our government.
But JD Vance has talked in interviews I’ve watched, about the number one fraud situation being stolen Social Security numbers. With antivirus and special protections in our licensing field with cybersecurity, we’re getting notifications all the time about corporations leaking our numbers and data. JD Vance has talked about that being a problem and how they, the Trump Administration, are looking to fix those problems. So this kind of lines up with those additional requests and requirements.
I’m sure that’s probably Project 2025. Right, for disclaimer reasons, I have not read Project 2025, but I have listened to some commentary on it. Anyway, we won’t go down that rabbit trail. But yeah, I think that’s very interesting to know because we do have somewhere between 10 million and, unadmittedly, some people estimate the number at 30 million people who have come into the country. Even J Powell has made reference to the immigrants in our job system. I’m working on some interesting research because you hear these claims that migrants or immigrants can register to vote. I’m following a couple of rabbit trails on that, but I don’t have anything yet.
If you haven’t set up your SSA.gov account, I recommend you do that. If you have any personal experience doing that, we’d love for you to send an email to the ministry and share that with us.
Well, Jason, let’s spend about the last minute or so just refreshing everybody on the year-end campaign here at Financial Issues. What would you like to share with our listeners?
I’ve seen where the campaign is sitting now, and that’s fantastic and very encouraging. I want to encourage those who aren’t monthly warriors to consider it. Dan talked about in the past, maybe $25 a month—it’s something you don’t think about every day. Ever since Dan, I’ve been a monthly warrior myself with it. You don’t miss it, you don’t really notice it—just $20, $25.
So my encouragement is maybe for those who are already monthly warriors to consider increasing that amount. I’ve considered that myself and I’m still thinking about it, but it’s something I think would help the ministry. It’s an amount I’m also going to forget, so I encourage those that are already monthly warriors to maybe increase that amount by a little bit. It’s very exponential and also compounds in that sense, so I’d like to encourage people to do that.
Great, thanks for that. We appreciate the feedback and encouragement because you may not miss it, folks, but somebody might miss us if we don’t have the opportunity to stay on the air and continue to expand the networks that we’re on. We just encourage you to do that.
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How Much Should You Depend On Social Security For Retirement: Part 3