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My wife was going to F&S after being laid-off from her last job, but, after talking to local SS Office, we both decided that she should not do that. SS Office told her that "opening, suspending and then re-opening" an SS benefit can be a real pain to do and not recommended at all. IOW, "Red Tape" can get involved and mess things up for the "re-opening" part. She turned 68 this last January and is now collecting her FRA benefit as well as working a nice salaried full-time job. Because of her FRA, she gets her full SS benefit with nothing taken from her. As for me, I was forced into SS Early Retirement at 62 due to UI running out and having an extremely hard time finding a job w/o a college degree and/or certification in the career I'd been working in. Taking Early SS was better than having no money coming in for me at all.
Anyway, one thing is for sure, it is VERY nice getting in the extra money (her SS) each month!
this is not true at all . reopening is no problem at all
It's worth pointing out however that yes one can file-and-suspend online. I did so last month. There's no box to check though. To file-and-suspend, you complete the online application and then in the Remarks section type in "I want to suspend my benefits."
A SS rep will call you and go through the application, including the remarks section, with you. You verify all the information, including that you want to suspend benefits. Easy peasy.
That's great to know...but how did you ever learn that was possible? Why wouldn't they included that an an explicit option?
Well, whatever. All we know is what we were told by two SS Office Clerks and we decided against it. IOW, yes it can be done, but as I told my wife "you start this, then decide to suspend it and then later want to re-open, it may not be that easy to do. There isn't a long line of "distraught" looking people at the SS Office for nothing. As for me, I definitely like to keep some things in life simple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mathjak107
this is not true at all . reopening is no problem at all
That's great to know...but how did you ever learn that was possible? Why wouldn't they included that an an explicit option?
Relatives who had done it told me what to do. I suspect SS didn't make it an application option because they didn't foresee that it would be a "strategy" that people might use at the time they applied for benefits.
They probably assumed that anyone who wanted to suspend benefits had previously filed and started collecting them.
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