My Social Security Retirement Saga: Part II

Things are starting to smell a little Musky around here

Parts I already happened. It was last year, when I thought I could retire with my full Social Security benefits at the age of 66, as opposed to the 65 I was promised in my youth.

Then, I learned the Biden Administration had moved my start date back another 8 months, which, for me, meant April of this year.

Joe, to know you is to loathe you, as I have since 1988. First your bankruptcy deform, then your shitty presidency, and now this.

I have a state & county employee’s pension coming as well, so I waited until Social Security announced it had incorporated the Social Security Fairness Act(cosponsored by Senators Sherrod Brown & JD Vance of Ohio), which stopped the Feds from giving me less Social Security because pension. In my case, it gives me another $800 a month in total retirement, which pays the mortgage and homeowner’s insurance, so yes it is a Big Fucking Deal to me.

The last thing I needed was to have to request an administrative hearing to clear that up because I applied before some bureaucrat got around to changing the procedure, so I waited until Social Security said they were all cool with that.

That happened last month, and so I reapplied. Begin Part II. I applied online, everything went well. I was just waiting for a confirmation email that never came.

Then I saw news stories that Elon Musk’s enthusiastic demolition crew for all things Federal, except weapons & national security grift, had messed with Social Security, and that now the deadline for making an appointment for a phone application was March 31, 2025.

Uh-oh. I’d better call, thought I to myself, thought I. I took today off and called, and I learned some things.

First, there is a callback option. I was told it would come in 70 minutes, it took 85, but a Social Security agent did call. A nice lady in Florida, as it turned out, with a Midwestern accent.

The Social Security Administration’s wait list for telephone appointments is long and getting longer. Mine is not until May 19, which means if their IT help desk can’t fix the glitch that is preventing me from applying online, I won’t be receiving any actual Social Security retirement until June if I’m lucky.

If you can retire due to age within the next three months, you need to call Social Security before close of business this coming Monday if you don’t want to be faced with the choice of navigating the online application process or having to go to a Social Security office, if there’s one open near you, and hope you can be seen that day.

There will be no more telephone appointments after March 31, unless enough MAGA folks push back hard enough to get Trump to change course.

I should be all right. I’ll either figure out how to get everything done online, and if not I can afford to wait until July or August if I have to before getting actual payments(and back pay), since I have some savings and my pension will come through regardless, but I can’t live on my pension alone for very long.

The problem is that a lot of other people may not be all right, and I see a lot of people ridiculing them online. I have a college degree. I’ve worked for government agencies for decades and have some idea of how to navigate the federal bureaucracy, and even I run into problems with submitting what should be a simple application.

What the Trump Administration is doing is going to hurt a lot of Trump’s own voters down the line. I hope enough of them complain loudly enough he’ll decide Eau du Musk is not an appealing political scent.

I’ll keep you updated on how this goes in the hopes it spares someone else, anyone else, a little bit of grief.

Thank you for reading, good day or night, and good luck.

If you appreciate my scribbling, please share this post if you think it relevant, and consider making a one-time donation or becoming a paid subscriber at the lowest rates available on Substack to help me keep scribbling.