Friday, October 29, 2010
Maybe he can answer my question
Today I wrote to Patrick P. O'Carroll, Jr., Inspector General of the Social Security Administration. In September he wrote (or his staff did) a report on the dead people and convicts who received the $250 stimulus check back in 2009. 71,688 beneficiaries were deceased and received about $18 million and 17,348 beneficiaries were incarcerated and received $4.3 million. I always wondered why I received one because people with teacher's pensions aren't allowed to "double dip" so I don't get a Social Security check. If there's going to be a clawback, I don't want to wait until they've added a few hundred in interest. I won't hold my breath to see if he answers.
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7 comments:
Murray sez:
You wrote " I always wondered why I RECEIVED ONE because people with teacher's pensions aren't allowed to "double dip" so I don't get a Social Security check." Received one what? A S.S. check?
No, the $250 stimulus check.
Murray, I wrote about this in May 2009, and you kindly offered to bail me out of jail if I cashed the check I wasn't entitled to.
http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/05/q.html
Murray sez:
You are right again Norma and I want you to know I stand firm on my commitment. I can probably handle your "double dip" penalty but not the potential one coming with a double dip recession!
Actually if you taught in a system that took FICA out of your check every month, you are totally entitled to receive both a Social Security check and a teacher's retirement check. I have been doing so since 1987. (Although my wife earned more "quarters" and contributed more money to FICA than I, she taught for four years in a system that did not collect Social Security, and when she retired they cut her Social Security by over 50 percent because (direct quote) "she had four free years. She does, however collect Social Security, though her "spousal allowance" if she had never worked in a paying job would be more than she gets from her own contributions. Social security is a weird world.
3 score: The double dipping law was passed in the 80s. I'm not eligible for the SS spousal benefit. There are two terms, windfall and offset. It depends if you are the spouse, or the earner. Because you worked on SS before the mid 80s you get both. My STRS pension "offsets" my SS benefit. Every case is figured differently, near as I can tell. I'm guessing that eventually the gov't will consider all private pensions as well as public pensions like this, or go broke.
As I said, Social Security Agency is a weird world. I have a friend who worked for SS in Washingto before he came to Georgia as a language professor, and he stated that one reason for leaving was that it is a weird world.
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