Fletis Humlebacker writes:

the income
anyone had. Of course, now it often is and in some areas, for some people,
it
is more than adequate.


Also, it was designed to be distributed to the recipient for maybe 5 years.
People are living much longer these days.


I don't know if 5 years was the expected lifetime, but I had a paternal aunt
who started drawing the minimum (about 88 bucks a month, IIRC) some time in the
late '50s, after paying in for maybe 6-8 years, and drew it until she died at
about 88, so 23 years. Not much money, but one helluva lot more than she'd paid
in. Her husband was a design machinist who didn't opt for SS until he was 70
because his boss needed his work. I think he kept working until he was about
80, but only part-time, as back then SS limited earnings. That may have been
until he was 70, now I think of it. He couldn't earn over xxx bucks per month
or he'd lose his SS check, or at least part of it.

It's still over-complicated all to hell. I start paying Medicare part A or B
(one is free, one is paid, and I'll be dipped if I can ever recall which). And
I haven't got a clue as to what it covers. You'd think going to the site would
help, but it's more confusing than asking my granddaughter about it. At 13 she
knows it all and is not ashamed to tell you what it all is. Of course, she's
wrong 99.97% of the time, but what the hell...

Drives her aunt up the wall, but the granddaughter is a clone of the aunt, at
least in that respect. In the 8th grade, there was NOTHING she didn't know. She
doesn't remember that today.

Charlie Self
"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in
America." William J. Clinton

http://hometown.aol.com/charliediy/m.../business.html