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Social Security’s Lump Sum Death Benefit (LSDB)
Current Social Security rules allow for a one-time death benefit ($255) to be paid to a decedent’s spouse, minor children living in the same home, or a child who has developed a disability at age 21 or younger. If the…
SSA Issues Alert for “Long-Con” Scams
Fraud situations involving Social Security beneficiaries in the past have generally focused on simple telephone contacts. It seems these days that a new more elabortate kind of scam is hitting the airwaves, and their labeled “long-con” portions. As explained in…
Rumor Clean-Up Time: Illegal Immigrants and Social Security
Without question, the issue of immigration is foremost on the minds of many Americans these days. The 2024 presidential election cycle consistently creates commentary about the state of our immigration system, the policies associated with it, and the financial impacts…
Recapping the Key Social Seurity Changes from 2024
To many, Social Security seems like a stable monolith, something that’s just always there and never changing. But that’s not the case at all. Anyone familiar with Social Security in any depth will tell you about the many, many moving…
2024 Election Cycle Alert: Likely Harris Moves that Could Affect Social Security & Retirement
The keyword is “could” because most of what’s been said about Candidate Harris so far lacks specific content. But, based on comments delivered in various forums, it appears that a Harris presidency pledges to focus on saving Social Security via…
Saving Social Security: Is the “Soveriegn Wealth Fund” Viable?
The idea of creating a sovereign wealth fund to solve the Social Security funding problem surfces from time to time, usually concluding that it’s generally a bad idea given the need to have surplus funds available to seed the creation. In…
A Look Ahead at the Future of Social Security COLAs
With the Federal Reserve’s progress toward reigning in the inflationary spiral of the past few years, coupled with its 2% long-term target for inflation, the 2025 cost-of-living adjustment is likely to be well below the average of the past three…
Trump’s Plan to Eliminate Federal Income Tax on Social Security Benefits Rings Big With Many
Despite its impact on Social Security’s precarious financial position, Presidential candidate Donald Trump struck a positive chord with Wall Street Journal poll participants with this idea. 83% of those polled favored the move–a tax that impacts about half of all…
Highlighting Legislative Inertia on Social Security Reform
The term “inertia” refers to the natural tendency for objects at rest to remain at rest. Thinking about Social Security reform as an “object,” then, implies that action on corrective measures to ward off the catastrophe projected to hit beneficiaries…
Social Security’s Reduced COLA outlook–Thoughts on the “Pro” Side
Most people know that the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) applied to benefits in January has been higher than the program’s historical increase for the past three years, averaging just under 6%. Most people also know that projections for the 2025…