My Mom Worked Her Whole Life, But Only Gets My Dad's Social Security — Feels Like a Scam

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Disclaimer- Didn't read the thread and know little to nothing about social security.

So social security payments are based upon your income during your working years.

But there is an option to collect from someone else, so your income is basically irrelevant (assuming it's less than your spouse) if you are married.

And I'm assuming everyone is paying for this benefit.

Something about this doesn't seem right

The difference between social security and a retirement account is that social security is like car insurance. You pay a premium every month, and if you never get into an accident then that money is just gone. Same with social security: if you never get old enough to use it, it’s just gone. And when you die, it’s just gone. That money goes to pay people who continued living. Just like your car insurance premiums go to pay people who got into accidents.

This is in contrast to a retirement account, which still exists and goes to your children when you die.

The only reason some people seem confused here is that they think the wife’s benefits somehow went away. They didn’t go away. She could have taken her own benefits if she wanted, but instead she reasonably chose the much greater benefit of her husband’s survivor benefit. You can’t double dip. One person is alive, not two.

[Anonymous]

OP: i get what you’re upset about. This is different because:

- American employees must pay into ss

- The money is gone if not taken (including if the decedant died before he could have taken it)

- if your mom remarried, she couldn’t get your dad’s higher amount

OP’s point is fair…a mandatory withdrawal from income should be available to the earner. That’s not how it works, but I understand the seemingly unfairness of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP: i get what you’re upset about. This is different because:

- American employees must pay into ss

- The money is gone if not taken (including if the decedant died before he could have taken it)

- if your mom remarried, she couldn’t get your dad’s higher amount

OP’s point is fair…a mandatory withdrawal from income should be available to the earner. That’s not how it works, but I understand the seemingly unfairness of it.

Because it was also their if the OP Mom or Dad became disabled at age 45 or had a kid who was disabled or Dad died at age 40 with X kids at home all of them would collect until age 18. So it is there to help the infirm/disabled along the way as well. So it's a safety net for people who might have never paid in or will never pay in (in case of disabled at a young age).


IMO, the surviving spouse should be entitled to the full amount until they die, but that will never happen. And it is not inline with pensions approach---most of those go to 50% benefits if the pensioner dies. So logical SS would do the same (or less).

[Anonymous]

I'm not seeing what the issue is. They have to calculate that some won't get all of their money back.

If the top earners paid their fair share, the lack of funds would not be an issue. But people earning more than $175K or so do not pay social security taxes on earnings over that amount. If they did, the funding problem would be solved.

[Anonymous]

I have been a SAHM most of my life. The money I put for several years in social security I can never claim. Instead, I will get an amount from my DH social security which is much higher than what I made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not seeing what the issue is. They have to calculate that some won't get all of their money back.

If the top earners paid their fair share, the lack of funds would not be an issue. But people earning more than $175K or so do not pay social security taxes on earnings over that amount. If they did, the funding problem would be solved.

Top earners do "pay their fair share". Their payout when they hit 62+ is based on the $175K (or whatever the max is). Someone making $10M collects the same as someone who made $175K for the last 10 years of their working life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been a SAHM most of my life. The money I put for several years in social security I can never claim. Instead, I will get an amount from my DH social security which is much higher than what I made.

So you are "claiming your amount" and then supplementing it with the difference between yours and your DH (which is higher). Not sure why you think you "can never claim".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been a SAHM most of my life. The money I put for several years in social security I can never claim. Instead, I will get an amount from my DH social security which is much higher than what I made.

I've also been a SAHM but I will start claiming SS at 62, and then my DH will wait to collect his. We used this website to calculate the optimal times to begin collecting. https://opensocialsecurity.com/

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If it's so good and self funded why not make it optional

Because it's for the greater good of all. Those of us who make more help those who make less. It's our social contract, far less stringent than many countries.

No thanks. Hopefully there will be a buyout option before they get rid of it similar to fork.

I look forwarded to the email and replying with

RE: Payout

Yeah, you don't seem to get it. And people like you disgust me. It is a bare minimum we do to help the less fortunate.

My Millions in taxes over the last 35+ years have also done a lot to help the less fortunate. At somepoint you cannot just take take take when the people receiving largely dont' care to better themselves (and are capable of doing so)

If you think you have paid "millions" on OASDI taxes, you are exceedingly stupid. This year, the earnings maximum is $176,100. The OASDI employee tax rate is 6.2%. That means that the most an individual employee will pay in OASDI taxes this year is $10,918. Even if the earnings cap had been the same for the past 35 years (which it obviously wasn't), you will have paid a grand total of $382,137.

Doesn't the employer also pay the same, those considerations of taxes required go into salaries offered by companies. For example when bidding a job as a contractor my rate is based on self employment tax which is 16% so if there was no employer required SS then in theory you would get a higher salary?

"In theory" doing a lot of work there. And even if I did get paid 7.65% more it would not be a good deal compared to getting Medicare from age 65 for the rest of my life and Social Security.

medicare tax is 1.45% from the employee and company, so 2.9% and that is on ALL income, no cap.
If you have any investment income in retirement, medicare is "not free". So you have paid high taxes on it and yet still have to pay. My spouse and I will have to each pay over $600/month for Part B alone.

WHAT! I didn't realize we would have to pay for medicare each month in retirement, WHAT THE HELL. And i bet that can go up. WOW. I am looking at it and it looks like the non pay option only covers hositpial visits and emergency care but if you want a real health insurance which is B you need to pay a premium. THIS IS WILD.

Yup---Part B premiums start at $185/month(per individual) (if you make less than $106K)
and go up to $628 (per individual) if married and make more than $394K/year.
So yes, each individual pays $185/month for Medicare Part B and another $36/month for Part D (Prescription coverage).
So $221 per individual and $442 for a couple making less than $106K.

And IMO, every person (including those over 65) need "real health insurance" and prescription coverage. So Part B and D are not really "optional".

Once again proving that the healthcare in this country is messed up. Doesn't have to be, we waste a ton. And fact is, something like healthcare should never be "for profit" with Aetna, BCBS, UHC, Kaiser, etc making millions yearly and paying the execs $10s of millions yearly. It's healthcare and should be a basic right, not something people are attempting to profit from

I don't understand, why would they charge you more for the same medical coverage if you make more income. At my current job no matter if i make 100k or 500k everyone pays the same amount for health insurance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been a SAHM most of my life. The money I put for several years in social security I can never claim. Instead, I will get an amount from my DH social security which is much higher than what I made.

So you are "claiming your amount" and then supplementing it with the difference between yours and your DH (which is higher). Not sure why you think you "can never claim".

Nope. Did not work enough years to get SS on my own. That money I paid into SS was a waste for me. I will get my DH's SS. It is the amount that did not flow into our HHI when he was earning. So, SS has to be seen like an insurance rather than a pension.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been a SAHM most of my life. The money I put for several years in social security I can never claim. Instead, I will get an amount from my DH social security which is much higher than what I made.

This is what I don't get about the system. Why does a spouse get money related to the person they are married to? Why should this person get anything other than what they put in? Why wouldn't the spouse just get money related to himself? Why does the spouse get 1.5 times what someone would get if both people were working?

[Anonymous]

For instance if a man stays home and doesn't work the wife gets their social security and the non working spouse gets half the rate as well. This makes no sense. The spouse just stayed home and didn't work or contribute. So why do they get anything?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been a SAHM most of my life. The money I put for several years in social security I can never claim. Instead, I will get an amount from my DH social security which is much higher than what I made.

This is what I don't get about the system. Why does a spouse get money related to the person they are married to? Why should this person get anything other than what they put in? Why wouldn't the spouse just get money related to himself? Why does the spouse get 1.5 times what someone would get if both people were working?

I will also get the pension from my DH's work, if I survive him. Is this confusing to you? I am married to my DH. What he (or I) earned constitute a joint part of our HHI. It is not his or her money. It is our money.

Money my DH saved in IRA or paid into SS, came from our bucket of HHI. We had to sacrifice/save our income in the short term to pay into SS for the future. So, the benefits of SS comes to both spouses in the household. This means that I could start withdrawing SS at 62, and my DH could keep working until 70 and paying into SS. We are not divorced and this is a benefit of marriage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been a SAHM most of my life. The money I put for several years in social security I can never claim. Instead, I will get an amount from my DH social security which is much higher than what I made.

This is what I don't get about the system. Why does a spouse get money related to the person they are married to? Why should this person get anything other than what they put in? Why wouldn't the spouse just get money related to himself? Why does the spouse get 1.5 times what someone would get if both people were working?

I love how it's framed as some sort of conspiracy. The program was created when a significant portion of Americans (primarily women) didn't work much outside the home (although this number is much lower than most think- most middle and lower income women had to work outside the home in order to make ends meet). These women thus had little or no earning history, and as such wouldn't collect much if any Social Security benefits when, on average, their husbands would die before them (some things never change). Their family structure was predicated on the husband's income, with the wife providing unpaid labor at home as her contribution. In order to make sure these widows didn't become destitute, the spousal benefit was created for these situations so that these women without their own personal work history, could essentially claim a "marital work history" and thus benefits for themselves when their husbands died.

Like pretty much everything else about the program, the big conspiracy was that they crafted a program aimed at making sure most elderly people weren't destitute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not seeing what the issue is. They have to calculate that some won't get all of their money back.

If the top earners paid their fair share, the lack of funds would not be an issue. But people earning more than $175K or so do not pay social security taxes on earnings over that amount. If they did, the funding problem would be solved.

Top earners do "pay their fair share". Their payout when they hit 62+ is based on the $175K (or whatever the max is). Someone making $10M collects the same as someone who made $175K for the last 10 years of their working life.

Anyone making 10M dollars is only doing so because of the large underclass of folks doing all of the grunt work to keep society functioning. So they can STFU and pay more (ie their fair share) towards the societal insurance scheme that exists primarily to keep said underclass from being utterly impoverished in their old age.

IOW, it’s not an investment scheme or a savings account.