How to Shore Up Your Own Social Security Savings

Paycheck after paycheck, year after year, you paid your share of the payroll taxes and now, at retirement, you deserve every penny of your entitled benefits. Unfortunately, there are many things that can affect how much money you receive. MSN Money looked into 10 Things That Can Ding Your Social Security Payments and discovered that while some is out of your control, there are still a few things they say you can do to protect your bottom line:

• Make sure your wage information is correct. Check your earnings history and report any discrepancies.
• Apply for Medicare on time, even if you are not retiring yet. Failure to apply at age 65 could result in late enrollment penalties. Because Medicare payments are taken out of your monthly Social Security benefit, penalties could reduce how much money you receive.
• Increasing Medicare premiums will also mean lower monthly Social Security benefit checks.
• Know your full retirement age. It’s slowly increasing and filing too early could result in smaller benefit payments.
• Pay your taxes, child support, and student loans. The government can garnish your Social Security benefits if you owe any of these. 

And here’s another important thing you can do:

• Tell your lawmakers to pass the Social Security Expansion Act which would help shore up Social Security’s trust fund.

If nothing is done, the trust fund could be depleted within the next ten years resulting in the government only being able to pay a portion of its promised Social Security benefits. The Seniors Trust is fighting for passage of the Social Security Expansion Act to provide long-term solvency, as well as increase monthly benefits. Wouldn’t that be nice – bigger benefits instead of shrinking smaller ones?

Click here to sign The Seniors Trust’s petition to Congress. With your support we can make this a reality.