Discover a Whole World of Retirement Possibilities
Reading Time: 2 MinutesLast Updated: November 3, 2023
Christopher Columbus might be one of the most famous explorers in America. He’s credited with discovering the New World, though Native Americans were here long before the Italian sailor.
Centuries later, there are new horizons to explore and you can do it from the comfort of your home or office. With Social Security, you can discover a new world of information and services on our website.
For example, you can apply online for Social Security retirement benefits. Not sure whether you’re ready for retirement? We can help you plot your course with our online benefit planners. Perhaps the most impressive of these planners is the online Retirement Estimator, which you can use to get quick and accurate estimates of your retirement benefits based on different scenarios. You also can apply online for disability benefits and even apply online for help to pay the costs of the Medicare prescription drug program on our website.
One of our most powerful tools is our website: my Social Security. Create your personal my Social Security account and then you’ll always have quick and easy access to see and update your information. You can use my Social Security to get estimates of your retirement, disability, and survivors benefits; view your earnings record; and get estimates of the Social Security and Medicare taxes you’ve paid.
If you already receive Social Security benefits, you can use your account to get an instant benefit verification letter, check your benefit and payment information, and to change your address, phone number, and direct deposit information. If you receive Medicare, you can get a replacement Medicare card using my Social Security. Whether you receive benefits or not, you may be able to apply for a replacement Social Security card in certain states, all online.
We’ve made exploring your bright future secure and easy on our website. Remember, we’re with you through life’s journey. Social Security online tools will help you decide when to weigh anchor, and venture into the seas of retirement.
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Tags: Medicare, my Social Security, my Social Security account, retirement, retirement benefits, Social Security benefits
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Doug Walker, Deputy Commissioner, Communications
Deputy Commissioner, Office of Communications
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e-commerce s.
great article.i have been collecting social security in a few days ago
thank you for a great information
tony
I plan to collect Social Security disability until I can collect Social Security retirement. Lazy people like myself can collect disability for mental illness. Who doesn’t fell depressed or have anxiety about working. I can use a bunch of excuse too, so I don’t have to work and collect the free disability money. A few trip to the psychiatrist/psychologist office and you can collect the free entitlement money. Medicaid is free for most people, so they don’t even have to pay the psychiatrist/psychologist. Medicaid is the largest payer of mental health services. Since SSI doesn’t pay for dependant benefits like SSDI, they get their children treated for a mental disorder too.
Marc
Riiiight. In a few months we’ll see you posting about how unfair the system is because you got denied. It’s not anywhere near that easy and you know. Your have to be the stupidest troll I’ve seen on this site.
tony
I have been collecting Social Security disability for a few years now. The SSA is so backlog on the CDR from all the people receiving the free disability money that I might not even get a full medical review. I will probably get the short form SSA-455-OCR-SM and have my CDR deferred.
tammy
There is NO bright future under a system that uses “rules” to justify their discrimination against certain people (in this case, adult disabled children and their ability to marry whomever they wish- including able bodied persons).
If you are a physically disabled person (an adult disabled child) and you happen to marry an “able bodied person” you will be loosing out on a lifetime of benefits, all because of a one word “rule” that prohibits you from marrying an “able bodied person”. Best of all, they never tell you about their “Rule” so that they can justify cutting off any benefits that you may be due.
Because you are physically disabled (adult disabled child) and you choose not to marry another adult disabled child or disabled person drawing off socialist security, you WILL LOOSE ANY AND ALL BENEFITS FOR LIFE. This means that the SOCIALIST SECURITY system is TELLING YOU WHO YOU ARE ALLOWED TO MARRY and who you are
NOT ALLOWED TO MARRY! It is a discriminatory act “rule” and should be ILLEGAL!
Even though I am permanently and totally disabled, if I marry an “able bodied person”, somehow that marriage makes everything ok and I am no longer considered disabled (in the eyes of the socialist security system). Magically (because I married an able bodied person), the pixie fairies come down and cure my disability, because now I can just go out and find gainful employment, no one will discriminate against my physical disability and everything will be grand, right? Somehow magically, marrying an able bodied person makes my physical disablility dissappear and now I am cured, right? WRONG!
The issue is a special “Rule” that the Socialist Security System uses to discriminate against “certain” people. If you are a “physically disabled person” (AKA-certain people) and happen to marry an able bodied person, then the SOCIALIST SECURITY system will use special “Rules” to legally discriminate against you and deny you benefits, even if you appeal online.
The SOCIALIST SECURITY system has caused me a lot of economic hardship all because I married an able bodied person. The SOCIALIST SECURITY system thinks someone who is physically disabled (permanently and totally disabled) marries an “able bodied person”, that somehow magically they are cured of their physical disability and two people can survive off the able bodied persons income. WOW, talk about a bunch of bureaucratic idiotic thinking, that somehow this would not cause a financial hardship….. amazing.
The rules that the Social Security Administration uses to legally discriminate against persons who are “Adult Disabled Children” who happen to marry an able bodied person, are discriminatory. This is loosely referred to as the “marriage penalty” but I call it exactly what it is, a legal form of discrimination.
I firmly believe this rule, is an act of bias, prejudice and discrimination against people who (by no fault of their own) are born disabled and happen to marry an able bodied person
Please write your Congressional Representative and tell them to end this modern day form of Legal Discrimination. In this day of fairness and equality, there are still some people suffering from an outdated and oppressive bureaucratic rule.
(PS. notice how the only thing any of these SOCIALIST SECURITY workers ever say are quotes of the rules or processes, like a worker drone. They are unable to address any topics that fall outside of their rule books). Typical bureaucracy and bureaucratic responses, like trying to argue over lost change with a vending machine!
Marc
I cannot even begin to imagine where you may have obtained this incorrect information. I married an “able-bodied person” and didn’t lose any benefit – but then, I am on SSDI, which is Social Security Disability Insurance, and you were probably on SSI, which is a benefit for disabled people who didn’t work enough to qualify for SSDI and who are extremely low income. SSI is not an earned benefit like SSDI and therefore is driven by your income and resources, unlike SSDI which is based on your income and your work history. If you married someone who works and your household makes more than the maximum then you’re not low income, and therefore not entitled to SSI. But either way, your entire statement is incorrect and false.
tammy
The information is correct, please do your research before engaging marc. The situation I speak of is neither SSI or SSDI but an entirely separate category and does not go by income.
From the text of the Socialist Security website, it states-
A child under age 18 may be disabled, but we don’t need to consider the child’s disability when deciding if he or she qualifies for benefits as your dependent. The child’s benefits normally stop at age 18 unless he or she is a full-time student in an elementary or high school (benefits can continue until age 19) or is disabled.
For a child with a disability to receive benefits on your record after age 18, the following rules apply:
•The disabling impairment must have started before age 22, and;
•He or she must meet the definition of disability for adults.
Adults Disabled Before Age 22
An adult disabled before age 22 may be eligible for child’s benefits if a parent is deceased or starts receiving retirement or disability benefits. We consider this a “child’s” benefit because it is paid on a parent’s Social Security earnings record.
The “adult child”—including an adopted child, or, in some cases, a stepchild, grandchild, or step grandchild—must be unmarried, age 18 or older, and have a disability that started before age 22.
As you can see, this is an entirely different issue and I firmly believe that “marriage” should not play any part in it.
AJ
This woman puts this same post on every blog. She was getting benefits as a DISABLED ADULT CHILD from one of her parent’s work records. One of the criteria for that type of benefit is that you are DEPENDENT on the parent for support. When she married a person that was NOT disabled, she was no longer DEPENDENT on her parent for support. It’s that simple. There are things that can cause SSA benefits to stop so it’s always a good idea to check with SSA beforehand.
tammy
Absolutely true AJ (and thanks for acknowledging my postings). If the benefit is for a disability that started when one was a child and paid off a parents record, then why should the benefits stop because one marries? If I needed the money off my parents record when I was living with them, then how can one justify cutting that benefit just because I got married to an able bodied person?
How does the marriage to an able bodied person somehow make me able to earn a living working a regular job?
It doesn’t.
If I needed the DEPENDENCE for my disability when I was living with my parents then I will probably still need that DEPENDENCE throughout my adult life as well. Getting married is not going to cure my disability and I will still have the same struggles in life, even after I get married.
I truly hope the people making rude or sarcastic comments on this blog, never have to find out what it is like to have a child with a physical disability or to live the rest of their lives with a physical disability. Watching your physically disabled child struggle through life and having to deal with a society that treats physically disabled persons like lepers, is truly hell on earth.
Karma is an ugly thing but I have seen it happen, so please keep that in mind before posting. You might get away with it for a while but we all have to answer for our actions someday.
Tony S.
Social security needs more settlements to benefit the consumer economy and wages of the beneficiaries they occasionally rob of more than a COLA. For instance, I want the maximum allowable disability and retirement, for doing all the Actuary, Commissioner and Treasury’s work, not to mention the OMB, during their time of disability, when I am 42, the lowest rate of disability of my life. To benefit the economy SSA owes a 3% COLA CY 2016 paid for with by accounting for their own 2.4% DI 10.0% OASI tax rate for 2016. Furthermore, today’s edition of the Social Security Amendments of January 1, 2016 http://www.title24uscode.org/ss1.htm includes Sec. 20 $700 mo. After 42 month $600-$699 (Revelation 13:10). To automatically pay social security beneficiaries $700 mo. after 42 months of receiving between $600 and $699 a month (Revelation 13:10). There was no COLA between 2009 and 2011 and SSI benefits were cruelly stalled out at $674 mo for three years. The consumer economy did not pick up until after social security beneficiaries had received their COLA. There was no COLA in 2016 and the economy has slumped to perpetuate more low inflation estimates. This is not a religious test, do not send it to state disability determination, this is federal bribery, graft and conflict of interest, many people have died and everyone has been impoverished. SSA must take command of 3% inflation with an annual 3% COLA to free the economy from governmental micro-manipulations of the CPI that was seriously abused 2009-2011 to sustain economic growth. SSA must agree to account for a 2.4% DI 10.0% OASI tax rate for FY or CY2016 to make the 3% COLA law without any need to test the biological effects of subjecting any member of Congress to such brutal calculus until the Baby Boomers have retired and the rates stabilize in 2018, and Congress has been released from the custody of the pirates abolished in Sec. 18. Since the 1980s inflation in the consumer price index has averaged 3% worldwide. In 2000 secular humanists, who believe the government to be God, attached a lot of significance to the number of the beast in conjunction with Y2K. The Social Security Amendments of 2000 created CMS and a six year term for the Commissioner, although in nature two years was the average time served by Commissioners and two years is the reasonable term set forth in this Act. The 2000 amendments are also thought to have been the beginning of the career of the Actuary who has never successfully performed the extremely difficult OASDI tax rate calculation and burdens Congress with the physically disabling week long calculation 2016-2010. When did the SSA Chief Actuary start? The obsession with the senatorial number 6 entered number of the beast status with the $66.60 Medicare premium in 2004. The majority of the mentally ill and retarded disability beneficiary’s pay entered conflict around 2006 when the United Nations was enraptured by the unconstitutional European prosecutor and 42 months definitely marks the Great Recession, The pay of the bribed homeless disability and maybe retirement beneficiary victims remains between $600 and $699 and must be immediately redressed to $700 plus 3% annual COLA. The cost of paying about 3.5 million beneficiaries stuck between $600 and $699 an average of $50 mo. is crudely estimated at $175 million a month, $2.1 billion a year. http://www.title24uscode.org/ss1.htm
Marc
Your post is so garbled and nonsensical that it leads one to conclude that you receive SSI benefits for a severe mental disability. Hopefully you were just being sarcastic; if not, and you truly believe these ravings, you may want to consider asking your psychiatrist to increase the dosage of your meds.
tony
I retire after 2034. It The amount I am suppose to get all a lie.
..
Hello Tony. The estimates you obtain via the Retirement Estimator are based on your actual Social Security earnings record and not a lie. It is important to keep in mind that these are just estimates. We can’t provide your actual benefit amount until you apply for benefits. And that amount may differ from estimates provided because your earnings either increased or decreased, cost-of-living adjustments, current law or other factors such as pensions earned through work that is not covered by Social Security. For more information, please see Retirement Estimator.
Emma L.
02 09 2016
My name is Emma Lince I will like have been know about Social Security .please tell me .
sara
very good
see this : http://rahyabmoshaver.com/دانشگاه-علمی-کاربردی-آذربایجان-شرقی/
Patricia R.
GM when I retired in march 2014 I applied for part A not be . I would like to add on part B also. Can I do that on line. Plus I recently mail that I do not have part A. Can I go to the Embassy here in Barbados to resolve this problem.
Thanking you in advance.
Patricia R.
I had part A.
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Hello Patricia. If you are not receiving benefits and you are not currently enrolled in Medicare Part A, you can apply online, it takes less than 10 minutes to do so. Simply visit: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/medicare to get started.
However, if you already have Medicare Part A and now wish to sign up for Part B, you will not be able to complete that application online. You will need to contact your local Social Security office. If you are not living in the United States, please contact your nearest U.S. Embassy by visiting: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/foreign/foreign.htm
K
Sandra,
I have had the same issue here in Oklahoma. I have not gone to SS office yet, but it is frustrating.
Nilda
I have tried several times to sign in and when I provide the information requested your system indicates that it does not recognize the information.
It is not a good tool to access important information when I’m retiring soon.
Sandra P.
I have tried repeatedly to register so I can have access to my social security info and can’t. Your system say’s I’ve been suspended because my info doesn’t match. Do I need to make an appointment with the office here in Chicago on Fullerton St. go in and clear up the confusion. Please help. Thanks Sandy
K
Sandra,
I had the same problem here in Oklahoma. Have not gone to office yet but it is frustrating.
CHRIS E.
We HAD the same problem, but we did go to the SSA office to get it straightened out. The SSN had to be verified as the system had two different entries. It really wasn’t much of a problem, but call and tell them what the problem is and make an appointment.
Tom
Same thing happened to me – it was my bad however a simple phone call fixed it – the toll free number was available on the website..
..
Hello Sandra. We apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing attempting to register for my Social Security. The my Social Security service has a robust verification and authentication process as we want to ensure that our online services are both easy to use, yet safe and secure. We suggest calling our toll free number at 1-800-772-1213, representatives are available from 7 a.m. – 7 p.m. business days. They can review your account and determine if you may need to visit your local office.
Bill
Social Security Retirement Estimator is a wonderful tool that can help people easily see what their monthly benefits will be if they choose 62, full retirement age, or age 70 to begin their benefits.
However, once you turn 66 or your full retirement age, that estimate is blocked from your view and you must go into a SS office to find out what those amounts are.
This is very disturbing from a customer service point of view and should be changed!
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Hello Bill. We are glad to hear that you find the Retirement Estimator helpful. Anyone can use the Retirement Estimator as long as they have enough Social Security credits and are not currently receiving benefits, waiting on a decision for benefits or eligible for a non-covered pension. Everyone else is able to utilize the Retirement Estimator, regardless of their age.
Jerry J.
This is not true for those who have filed and suspended benefits.
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Hello Jerry, Sorry for any confusion. Individuals that “file and suspend” their benefits have technically “filed” for benefits although they have opted to suspend monthly payments. So, you are correct, you cannot utilize the Retirement Estimator if you filed and suspended you benefits.
Bill
I was told by one of your employees, that since I was over 66, I would not be able to see what my benefits were, either on the Retirement Estimator or the Annual Statement, and I have found that to be true!