You do!
I’ve now registered my SSA account!
3 Likes
If anyone has a Social Security statement handy, I’d be particularly interested in knowing that multiple.
Take the maximum family benefit and divide it by your spouse’s monthly benefit (ETA: the survivor benefit if you die… not your spouse’s benefit on their own earnings record) and please post the quotient.
Note that you don’t need to actually have a spouse or kids in order for this info to appear on your statement.
In that case, see my last post and you can tell me what the multiple is. I’m curious if my 3 <= X < 4 is accurate.
From the site booklet
Maximum family benefits
There’s a limit to the benefits we can pay to you and
other family members each month. The limit varies
between 150 and 180 percent of the deceased worker’s
benefit amount
Ben/Family max
Spouse caring for child 42.8%
Spouse starting at full retirement 57.1%
Oh, so that implies that X is between 2 and 2.5. Huh… I thought they didn’t knock the benefit down until after three kids. I wonder what it varies on.
In that case my $91K is a little high.
Ah, so X = 2.36 in that case. Interesting.
If I did that right… I get X=2.33 in my SSA account
Thanks twig, now I’ve gotta buy more coverage! /s
Yeah 91K is high. $65K +/- a few K for high wage earner is probably closer.
Ok, fixing my dumb rounding error and using a multiple of 2.33 instead of 3 the annual benefit would be $71,277.03.
Sorry for misleading, but still not a trivial benefit.
2 Likes
Still $71,277.03 more than I thought they’d get
2 Likes
Same. I tried to register it a while ago and got some site error, and never went back to it. Probably a good thing to at least be casually aware of, even though I won’t (hopefully!) be using any SSA benefits for a good while.
I registered earlier this year, it was easier than I thought. I think I tried to register years ago when they stopped sending annual statements and it was pain with getting a letter from them with a password that expired in x-days and if you didn’t take care of it right away you had to start over. But this time took no more than 10 or 15 minutes. If you do get a site error try a different browser. Some websites crap out with the wrong browser.
Dammit, Dan!!! Grading won’t kill you; it’ll just make you lose a bit of your will to live!!! 
1 Like
15 minutes can save you reveal up to 15% 100% of your SSA benefits.
3 Likes
I have term life through my employer. What happens in the event I take ill, quit my job due to the illness, then die a few months later? Do my heirs collect? We have the savings to pay premiums out-of-pocket for a few months.
Great questions!
Most, but decidedly not all, group term life insurance comes with a Waiver of Premium provision, or WOP. This says that if you become disabled your coverage continues at no cost. It’s a very sensible provision because many people who die during their working years DO become disabled first. It’s usually a fairly strict definition of disability though. I’m not sure how familiar you are but deciding at what point someone becomes too disabled to work can be an extremely subjective call, and one that can vary by profession. If you’re in a coma, clearly you are too disabled to work and no one, not even the Social Security Administration, would argue otherwise.
If I am a dumbass and sever two fingers I can still work; I just might type slightly slower. If a brain surgeon is a dumbass and severs two fingers his career as a brain surgeon might be over. But is he too disabled to work? He could become a GP or teach at a medical school or work for an insurance company reviewing claims. But he doesn’t want to work for a soul-sucking insurance company, and who can blame him? So we have different definitions of disability describing exactly how disabled you have to be before you qualify.
WOP is typically a pretty strict definition… you have to be pretty badly disabled to qualify. A surgeon with two severed fingers wouldn’t cut it. (pun intended)
But even if you don’t qualify, or if you are laid off or are fired or quit to take a better job and die during the week you took off between jobs, you can continue the coverage. I believe all 50 states require that you have the option to continue your group term life insurance by simply filling out a form saying you want to and then paying the premium. The insurance company must charge you no more than their regular premium for a comparable individual life policy. You have 30 days to sign up for it. If you die during the 30 days it’s assumed that you intended to sign up for it and your beneficiaries get your death benefit less the pro-rated portion of the first month’s premium that you hadn’t gotten around to paying.
So the main thing to check is, does your group policy have Waiver of Premium? Even if it doesn’t, you’ll still have the right to convert it to an individual policy when you stop working there… for whatever reason.
1 Like
BTW, the above is not true of group disability insurance. You have no right to take that with you if you are fired / laid off / quit. If you become disabled the day after you stop working there and you haven’t started another job that has group disability insurance then you are SOL.
Social Security does have a disability coverage but it’s a pretty strict definition of disability, and the benefits aren’t that great. They are indexed for inflation though, which is nice. So if you’re Social Security disabled then you at least get something.
Annuities aren’t underwritten because, ummm, weird and awkward for applicants to have an incentive to demonstrate poor health. For payout annuities or deferred annuities with GLBs we assume above-average health. For structured settlements, we have medical data so there is a rating system. For deferred annuities without GLBs, we assume poorer health than with GLBs but still don’t underwrite.
2 Likes