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If X is her own full retirement benefit, she’ll get the amounts A) X times R, which is the reduction factor she’ll permanently face for filing at 64; plus B) 50 percent of your full retirement benefit less X. Her benefit after full retirement age will then be 50 percent of your full retirement benefit, plus (R-1) times X. Since R is less than 1, if you do what you are considering doing, she’ll end up receiving a smaller total check after full retirement age through the end of her life. So, no, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend your proposed course of action.
But with “earnings sharing,” where they each end up with identical monthly benefits of $1,500 per month, there is nothing extra to bump up to – so Wilma would get no widow’s benefits. Maybe, you and your husband owned a business, you earned a salary and paid into your Social Security account. However, for whatever reason, you didn’t reach the 40 credits you need in order to collect at retirement. In addition to having medical disability, the SSDI program requires that you have a substantial work history with employers who paid taxes to the Social Security Administration . However, if you stayed home for only a short period before becoming disabled, and you had a consistent work history before becoming a homemaker, you may still be eligible for SSDI.
Widows or Widowers
Under Expenses, list all of your bills and obligations, starting with your rent or mortgage payment, food, car payment, utilities, clothes, etc. Anyone they owe has to get in line to be paid, with secured creditors like their mortgage lender in first position. Then come their unsecured creditors, like credit card companies. Once all their debts are paid from their assets, anything that remains is divided up amongst their heirs. If your parents die with few to no assets, their creditors eat the loss.
Moms face significant demands on their time, and often, that means prioritizing family over earnings. Any time a mom pops off her career path, the implications to her future Social Security benefit are significant. It’s common for moms to get a 20% to 25% cut in benefits by moving in and out of the workforce. One other category of moms needs to understand how Social Security works from early in their careers.
Help for Stay at Home Moms: Government Benefits & Grants
How much work over which time period depends on your age, so check with aTexas disability benefits attorneyfor more information about your specific case. Since many stay-at-home moms and dads worked before having children, it is very possible that you qualify for benefits. One exception may be if you have not been in the workforce for more than a few years. Learn which programs you qualify for by checking out 211, which offers links to health services and housing and heating assistance. It includes information on over 1,000 federal and state programs, some specifically for single moms, including grants for victims of domestic violence. The reader brought up a good point and one that there isn’t a great answer to or for.
Moms can replace the early- and mid-career zeroes with real earnings. Their highest 35 years of earnings do not have to happen in consecutive years. There is no definitive answer to when you should collect Social Security benefits, and taking them as soon as you hit the early retirement age of 62 might be the best financial move. If you're married filing a joint tax return, you can contribute funds into two separate IRAs—one for your nonworking spouse and one for you—as long as you have enough earned income to cover both contributions.
Does a housewife get Social Security benefits?
Or when the main caregiver, not employed outside the home, suffers a stroke or has an impairing accident that renders them completely helpless. In the end, the inability to care for one's own needs, denied the right to collect benefits from a system they paid into, is the common denominator. And, your ex-husband is entitled to Social Security retirement benefits or disability benefits.
Well, that means Fred would end up with a Social Security benefit of about half as much as he was due under the current system. In other words, Fred would start getting $1,500 per month when he retired. But his wife Wilma, who had equal earnings on her Social Security record, would also get $1,500 per month. In a nutshell, that would mean that the earnings a married couple have during the course of their marriage would be shared for Social Security purposes. What I have learned, what many people have been shocked to learn, is that the money one pays into Social Security Disability does not remain for all time.
Then one day, out of the blue, your family receives a devastating blow, a heartbreaking medical diagnosis that threatens to destroy your family unit, and its finances. Say, a diagnosis like ALS , the diagnosis my sister-in-law received in August of 2014. But really, it can be any life-threatening illness, one that strikes the family's main caregiver -- be it a stay-at-home mother or a stay-at-home father. In addition to survivor’s benefits, you may qualify for a one-time payment of $255.00 if you were living with your husband at the time of his death, or were receiving benefits on his record.
The first encounter is in our first “real job,” where we are quickly introduced to FICA tax. Also known as payroll taxes, 7.45% of your paycheck gets docked for “FICA”—6.2% goes to Social Security, 1.45% to Medicare. Here you’ve just landed your first job, thinking you’re getting paid pretty well. Now let’s say that the “earnings sharing” rules had been in place all the years that Fred and Wilma were married – meaning they each got half of Fred’s earnings added to their Social Security accounts.
I suggest visiting this Retirement Benefits Planner page to get a complete understanding of your options. In light of that, I recommend filing online 2 to 3 months prior to your 62nd birthday. That way, if there are any questions you need to answer, you can take care of them well in advance. Also, the checks won’t start coming for a couple of months. For more information, see our article on survivor benefits and DWB.
I highly suggest connecting with your local YWCA if you just become a single mother and/or fleeing an abusive relationship. To learn about and find SNAP services where you live, select your state or territory from the list on the See Your States Resources page, and then select the Financial Assistance for Families tab. So, when should we all learn about the income side of FICA?
It is sad that homemakers, given the importance of their role in society, are not somehow given employment credits, because what the author says is true. While raising children, she was not earning points each quarter for her social security “bank” so to speak, and when she became disabled, she could only qualify for SSI, the safety net. Further complicating the receipt of SSI is the household income limitation that does not pertain to SSD. In a perfect world it would be great if hard working homemakers could receive social security credit for working in the home.
Honestly, the second option seems less than rational. Because it occurred to me that we are in an election year. A year where we are all being bombarded by campaign ads and robocalls trying to persuade us to choose a candidate. Again, if you leave the workforce for more than five consecutive years, your credits expire. (I'm repeating myself on purpose here, to drill it into your head.) You're left to fend for yourself. While someone else is using the money you paid into the system.
Do married couples get 2 Social Security checks?
After all, Social Security has been around for 80 years now, and for all of those eight decades, people have been coming up with plans that they think would improve the system. Lots of times, those plans don’t work out under closer scrutiny. In addition to paying into Social Security Disability, the money she paid into the Social Security retirement system is not available to her.
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