Obviously directed at US-types. Not asking about a SS number, but do you have the little piece of cardboard? Feel free to add your age, whether you got a replacement for some reason, where you keep it, etc.
I’ve encountered a few instances recently in which the card was required. Personally, I haven’t seen my card for 40 years or so.
Have worked for the SSA for 30+ years tho. Find it somewhat amusing that payroll info from SSA including my SS#, and my photo/chipped security clearance ID is insufficient substitute for that high-tech piece of cardboard. :rolleyes:
Yes. It’s kept in a jar of random crap on a bedroom table. I needed to get a new one at the end of 2001 when I was filling out unemployment office paperwork. They required the actual card. Thankfully the Social Security office was a short walk from the unemployment office. That’s the only time I needed it, and I haven’t used it for anything since.
The last one I physically owned was in a wallet that I lost a couple years ago. No one had asked me to produce the card in eons so I didn’t do the necessary hoops-jumping thing to get a replacement.
Yes, I keep it with my physical birth certificate and my passport. It’s the original one I got around age 18 and it has my old signature on it, which looks nothing like my current signature.
To my surprise, I discovered a few days ago that I do – I found it inside of an old wallet. Before that, I’d been under the impression that it had been inside my purse when it was stolen in 2014, but apparently it wasn’t. Needless to say, I hadn’t missed it particularly.
Not only do I have mine, I still have the original one that was issued to me when I was like 10 years old, circa 1990. My signature was so much neater back then than it is now (I was just learning how to write in cursive at the time, and signing my name wasn’t a routine thing like it is as an adult). What can I say, I’m a very organized person. I currently keep it in a lock box with my passport and other important papers. I used to use it for employment before I got my first passport, but ever since I got a passport I haven’t needed my Social Security card for anything. I could have used it when I got my Real ID earlier this year, but my W2 was considered sufficient proof of my SSN and that was more convenient.
All this is the same for me except for the organized person part. Also, I keep mine in my wallet. When it’d become quite ratty I committed the cardinal sin of laminating it :eek:
Goes for me as well, including the lamination offense. It’s quite yellow and barely readable. Now that it’s come to my attention I think I’ll put it in the lockbox along with a replacement that arrived unsolicited some years back.
I’m not sure when I got it — I’m 71 — but since my siblings and I have consecutive numbers it must have been somewhat after my youngest sister was born in 1961. I rather imagine my father, on whom be peace, took a bundle of birth certificates to the local office and got them then&there. It’s the old (“For Social Security and Tax Purposes – Not for Identification”) style, and my name is typed in.
Same here. I keep it in a fire safe in the closet. I actually did have to produce it, for mysterious reasons still unexplained when I got my Real ID earlier this year. Mine is the original one and it’s pretty beat up but still legible.
I got mine in '85 when I was 10. It’s funny to look how I signed my name (signed my nickname, that everyone calls me, rather than my full first name). It’s currently in our fireproof box with other “very important papers” under our bed.
I had the original paper one I was issued as a teenager, but then like twenty years ago, I figured I didn’t need it so I shredded it. And then this year, I found that it’s one of the documents needed for getting a Real ID driver’s license from the DMV (although there are alternatives), so I filled out the form and waited in the local SSA office for an employee, submitted the form and showed my ID and after a couple of weeks, received a replacement card in the mail. That is now in the same fireproof box that contains my passport.
Ditto; except in my case it’s from the mid 1960’s, when I got my first (summer, I was in high school) job.
Some years ago, they started saying not to carry it with you, as it made identity fraud even easier for anybody who stole your wallet. So now it’s filed; but I do know where. (Not sure how much difference it makes to the potential fraud issue, as these days everybody and their cousin seems to feel entitled to ask for it*; when I got that first one, the number was entirely between you and your employer and the tax people.)
*no, I don’t give it just because it’s asked. But I’m not standing out there next to the fuel oil tank with cash in hand waiting for the delivery truck because setting up an account requires giving my SSN, either.
I used to do that, until I learned that that’s a big no-no, since if your wallet gets stolen it gives the thief all the information required to commit identity fraud. When I learned that I moved it to my “important papers” box. I probably even carried it around in my Velcro wallet I used in middle school, just because it made me feel grown up to have cards in my wallet.