Since its launch in 2016, the AMAC Foundation’s Social Security Advisory Service has served well over 25,000 seniors and has distinguished itself as an invaluable source of guidance for individuals struggling to make the right choices for their retirement security. Our six accredited Advisors have fielded questions covering virtually all major areas, from the very basic to the obscure (some would say cryptic) regions of the rulebooks. Along the way, we’ve compiled an extensive body of knowledge that has become the reference library we use to serve our constituency. Many of our readers are familiar with the initiative we launched a few years ago called “Ask Rusty,” through which we provide weekly Q&A articles to a national audience. In these publications, we take a real-life question and explain the Social Security rules governing that situation. We publish each “Ask Rusty” to over 7,000 media outlets across the country and include one of the publications in each AMAC magazine, and the response has been incredible. The “Ask Rusty” publications are also carried on our Social Security Report website (www.SocialSecurityReport.org) in both text and audio formats, both attracting attention from a public hungry for insight into Social Security and its effect on their retirement. Based on the interest we’ve seen, we elected four years ago to publish a compendium of the first 80 “Ask Rusty“ issues, and two years ago published a second book titled “Ask Rusty: What’s So Hard about Social Security” further showcasing the value of our Advisory Service. Now, with this newest Foundation publication, we’re again expanding the circulation of our “Ask Rusty” series with an updated book that explores the mysteries of Social Security, how it is financed, how it works, and what its future holds, supplemented by related Ask Rusty Q&A articles previously published. The approach we’ve taken with this book is different, in that we’ve made it both informative about the program’s structure and instructive about the rules, using understandable terms meant to take the mystery out of this complex program. We’ve grouped the major Social Security subjects into categories presented in the main body of the book, followed by a supplemental selection of actual “Ask Rusty” Q&A publications illustrating real-life examples of the rules in action. This hot off the press book is divided into ten chapters: Program Structure and Financing, Worker Benefits, Dependent Benefits, Rules Applying to Everyone, Rules Applying Only to Some, Medicare, Social Security Solvency, Fallacies, Unique Case Studies, and Parting Words, followed by a supplemental section containing related Ask Rusty articles. The book is an easy read and intended for the lay person who wants to better understand the program. The Fallacies section is quite an intriguing part of the book, as it takes aim at the various claims many have thought to be true for some time, except that each is patently false. A few examples include Social Security is Going Bankrupt, Full Retirement Age is 65, Benefits Are Based on Final Work Years, and I’ll Never Get Back What I Paid In. All are false, and the answer to the last fallacy is three to five years! Surprised? It’s not the only golden nugget in this highly readable book.
