If you watch television on Sunday evenings, you may have seen the hour-long news program that featured retired people who had received letters from the Social Security office that informed them that they had been overpaid, and they owed the Social Security office thousands of dollars. These people were told they needed to reach the office and make arrangements to repay the overpayment – I don’t recall for sure, but I imagine they were told their Social Security payments would be withheld.
This might not seem important to many people, unless you are retired and know what a struggle it can be to pay your living expenses if you rely solely on your check from Social Security. I’m not sure what those people will do, but I’m betting they will be forced to withdraw from their retirement savings to pay the money back – if they are lucky enough to have a savings account.
Being down in Florida, where there are many, many retired people, I know of a person who had a similar experience. This person told me they didn’t receive a letter, their monthly checks just stopped coming, and there was no explanation until they talked directly to the Social Security office. They were told that the payment they received at the beginning of their disability payments was too high – Social Security didn’t care that the overpayment was over nine years ago, they were withholding this person’s monthly check until it was decided the “overpayment” was paid back. Never mind what this did to this person’s life and ability to pay their bills, the Social Security people didn’t care. Never mind that the payment this person received was agreed upon and suggested by the Social Security office – it didn’t matter to them how difficult this made life for the person they withheld payment from. All they cared about was getting their money back, nine years later.
What doesn’t make sense to me is how Social Security can make these mistakes to begin with. Then, years later, and probably after people are retired, Social Security somehow finds out they made a mistake, and they have all the power to withhold money from people who depend on that money for their living expenses, including food and medications.
I questioned whether this person I know could appeal the decision made by Social Security; they figured it would take years to get to a decision, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
I don’t doubt that this isn’t just my opinion on this topic, but my thinking is that if Social Security makes an error in the money they send to retired or disabled people, they shouldn’t be able to simply withhold the money – the people built their life’s budget around the money they receive. Losing even one payment could set those missing the payment way behind, since many people living on Social Security payments don’t have a lot of extra money once all the bills are paid. I think Social Security should find out who made the error and replace them, and inform the recipient what their payments will be from then forward.
I also wish Social Security and the government would quit calling our Social Security money a “benefit” – it’s the money employees and employers paid into the government on our behalf, and it is OUR money.
Have A Good Week!
