Ask Rusty: What’s So Hard About Social Security?
Since its launch in 2016, the AMAC Foundation’s Social Security Advisory Service has served well over 12,000 seniors and has distinguished itself as an invaluable source of guidance for individuals struggling to make the right choices for their retirement security. Our five accredited Advisors have fielded questions covering virtually all of the program’s 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 a weekly Q&A item. 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. Based on the interest we’ve seen, we elected two years ago to publish a compendium of the first 80 “Ask Rusty“ issues, further showcasing the value of our Advisory Service.
Now, with our newest Foundation publication, we’re expanding the circulation of our “Ask Rusty” series with an updated book that not only includes the Q&A concept, but adds an instructional element providing insight into the logic behind the rules. The approach we’ve taken with this book is different, in that we’ve made it instructive, almost textbook like, with understandable terms. We’ve grouped the major Social Security policies into categories and supplemented each category with a 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 seven sections: Worker Benefits, Dependent Benefits, Rules Applying to Everyone, Esoteric Regulations (like WEP & GPO), Medicare, Myths and Misunderstandings, and Financing Social Security. The book is an easy read and intended for the lay person who wants to better understand the program. The myths 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, Illegal Aliens Get Benefits, Politicians Stole SS Money, and I’ll Never Get Back What I Paid In. All are false, and the answer to the last myth is three to five years! Surprised? It’s not the only golden nugget of info in this highly readable book.
