There is also the flip side of the issue, which is How Can I Get Nothing for Something from the Gubmit."
My husband, who migrated here from Australia to marry me, worked the entire stretch of time between his arrival into the USA and his death. Made an excellent salary, too. Unfortunately, he was not here long enough to have paid into the system for the full 10 years. I received nothing of the spousal benefit after he died.
I pay into Social Security as a self-employed person, meaning I pay the full freight. I have paid into it all my life since I became employed at age 15, either through an employer or as a self-employed person and for many years both simultaneously. Looks like I’ll arrive at retirement age just in time for the program to be gutted.
I understand your struggle but why should you get SS benefits from a spouse who paid little into the system?
If I moved to Australia you can bet they will not be paying me benefits nor should they.
I get it is hard for you but this is not wrong. No more than someone who has never paid into insurance and then gets sick and demands insurance payouts.
I wasn’t complaining. I was merely pointing out that there are people who pay into the system and collect nothing of it, which is the opposite situation to the one about which UberArchtype made his comment.
And no, it’s not hard for me. Just less easy. Please make fewer assumptions.
If you (any you) put in little, you get back little. If you (any you) put in more, you get an ever-decreasing percentage of your ever-increasing inputs.
The absolute worst case is Aspenglow’s late husband. Who paid in largely for (WAG) 9 years. Perhaps more money total than most Americans pay in over 30. But because his 9 years is less than the arbitrary eligibility threshold of 10 years, he (or she on his behalf) don’t get little. They get zero.
There are all sorts of disproportionalities in the system. Some well-founded and some arbitrary. This one feels pretty arbitrary to me.
The general concept of SS was that it was sold to the American people as essentially a forced savings plan where everybody puts in and everybody takes out and there’s some rough connection where more in-> more out. But there are corner cases where the reality doesn’t match the stated doctrine.
Note I’m not talking about how SS is funded. It’s been a “pay as they go” system from the git-go, not a true savings plan. But from the customer POV it behaves like a saving account or a bond: put money in now; receive it back with interest / growth later. Except when it doesn’t.
Sure…as with so many things in the law there are arbitrary cutoffs which can result in weird and unfortunate results.
Thing is you usually need those lines drawn in some manner.
If SS was a literal savings program then you could just say you get back what you put in. But, for better or worse, it isn’t so you start drawing those arbitrary lines and can get unfortunate results because of it.
Kinda like insurance. You do not get to buy insurance only when you need the payout.
Did he work in Australia? If so, it could depend on the details of the US - Australia tax treaty. I’m a little more familiar with the US - Canada tax treaty, and that has a provision that if someone worked in both countries, then the time worked in both is added together to see if he is eligible for retirement benefits. Then the amount of the benefit is prorated by the percentage worked in that country. At least that’s the gist.
This is how my father gets a small Canadian Social Security pension, despite only working there for five years.
Oh, yes – very hard worker all his life. I did inherit the funds in his Australian superannuation account, which is the equivalent of our Social Security system. No mention was made of any option similar to the one you mention with Canada. I simply took the lump sum from Australia and reinvested it here in the States.
None of the funds my husband paid into Social Security entered into that transaction, however. They were beyond my reach because of the cut-off.
To Whack-a-Mole, I totally accept the nature of the arbitrary cut-off and don’t understand why you insist I was attempting to get something for nothing. As LSLGuy kindly and accurately points out (8 1/2 years, by the way), my husband paid a lot into the system. It was not a ‘something for nothing’ situation. It seems important to you to try and cast me in the light of a “taker,” and I don’t understand that. Likewise I have paid heavily for health insurance I almost never use. I would save a good bit of money to self-insure, but I grasp the concept of insurance in the same way as you – and remain grateful it has been money not well spent.
Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that someone is trying to get one over on The System™ merely because they investigated their options under it. And again, my point in making the post was not to complain. I just felt UberArchtype should consider the fact that some pay in a lot and receive nothing in return. Like pretty much every person who dies before attaining the age of 62.
Thank you, suranyi, by the way, for mentioning the treaty with Canada. While I did not investigate that potential option, it’s information from which I may have benefited at the time of his death, for sure. That’s been nearly 10 years ago, now. I just did the best I could with the information I had at the time.
Great idea. I will contact the Social Security offices next week to inquire. His death was so sudden, unexpected and devastating, I was basically somnambulating through the financial processes required to close out a human life. Neither the Social Security folks or the Australian superannuation folks mentioned this as an option – but as in so many instances, one may need to know the right questions to ask in order to obtain the correct answers. I didn’t know.
Thank you for the suggestion!
To the OP – my apologies for derailing the topic of your thread. It wasn’t my intention, but I sure appreciate the responses I’ve received.
As mentioned earlier, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a backstop safety net for the elderly and disabled indigent who do not have enough work credits to qualify for “regular” Social Security. To qualify, you have to basically no income or assets, and the maximum is currently $733/month.
I’m sure they do, but it’s pretty rare to hear of a case, because it requires taking over somebody else’s identity, AND making sure the somebody else isn’t working, filing a tax return, incarcerated, or otherwise on the government’s radar.
As far as the 10-year-cutoff rule, there ARE exceptions to that rule for people who die or become disabled young. Survivor benefits, for example, may be paid to the widow(er) of a worker who died with only a year and a half of work credit, as long as that worker worked in at least 6 of the 13 quarters prior to the death and the widow(er) is caring for a child under 16. Full disability benefits are available for those who became disabled between the ages of 24 and 31 and earned credits in one-half of the quarters between turning 21 and becoming disabled. Other exceptions exist as well.
Aspenglow’s late husband would have definitely qualified under the US and Austraila treaty, however I don’t know if there is a US equivalent to the widows pension and you need to a an Australian resident to claim it from the Australian end.
actually as someone who was on ssi until they realized my dad retired from gm/delco with a very nice retirement/pension they looked it up said id get more through him than ssi and promptly switched me over …in reality its only 250 more , what I need to worry about is if it runs out which I’m told wont be for a decade or more …
Which is almost as fallacious as the post you’re replying to. It used to be common for old farts to insist that their SS payments were their own money being returned to them; they paid in, and now were getting it back. (Emphasis on “entitlement” there.)
I don’t have a current link, but last time I looked, the average SS retiree got back everything they had paid in within 3-4 years. Everything after that, plus the immense costs of Medicare, was “given free by the gubmint”… i.e., welfare.
(Don’t get me wrong; I have no problem with this system in general. Only with those long retired who bitch about anyone else getting “welfare.”)
And thank you again.