Go see your Social Security Office. You'll should call and make and appointment first. As other posters have said, the rules are many. If you have also worked and paid social security taxes, that will be considered. Basically, the amount you might get is computed in several ways and then the maximum benefit one is used. The various cases may be (1) your wages and lifetime contribution alone, ( 2) 50% of your spouce's amount, or (3) if disabled, the disabled amount. If you were born after a certain date, the full retirement age is increased above 65. At one time, the full retirement age was to increase in steps from 65 to 67. I have been retired long enough to have lost track of the current rules. If you are elgible at age 65 for full retirement, you can take early retirement (as early as 62) with a reduction in payments. The reduction is based on the average life expectancy. When I retired, life expectancy was age 77, e.g., half of your population group will have expired by age 77. The reduction works out to be 5/9 percent per month early, thus if you retire 3 years early, the reduction is (36 months x .05)/9 or 0.20 which is 20%. Is this bad? It depends on how long you will live. If you do not expect to live beyond 77, then early retirement is not a loss. You loose only if you live beyond 77. Here's why. If you retired at the normal age of 65, then the time span to 77 is 12 years; if retired at age 62, the time span to 77 is 15 years. Check it out. You'll find that the total money paid out over the longer time is exactly the same as that of the shorter span. For example, suppose the normal payout was $100 per month. The amount for 12 years is 12 x 12 x 100 = 14,400. Now suppose that you retired 3 years early. The payout is $80 per month. The amount for 15 years is 15 x 12 x 80 = 14,400. After age 77, the early payout plan is less than the other and the difference increases each year. Since I retired, life expectancy may have increased to 78 years. These calculations give amounts based on the current value of the dollar. As time goes by, there are COLA increases that will increase the payout to offset inflation to some degree. In my experience, the SS cost increase numbers do not fully cover the real inflation of the basics.

I did all my application for SS this last time via phone. They set up a phone appt with me and THEY CALLED ME! I had called them in response to a letter I got, waited a really long time on hold- like 45 min or longer to talk to someone, who actually couldn't help me; her only job was to make a phone appointment for someone to call me back who could help me. I had to wait weeks to get a phone appt because they make so many phone calls! Social Security DOES make phone calls! I think what you mean is they don't initiate things the first time, via phone. You won't get a cold call from SS asking for something about your account. But they most definitely will conduct business with you via phone and they will call you! I was told I could also go for an in person appt at my local office, but if I remember correctly, she couldn't make me an appt there, only for a phone appt. If I wanted in-person, I had to stop by the office and make one myself. This all happened within the last 6 months. I think your woman just works in another division and not the phone appointment department and maybe is unaware that SS does make phone calls to you!

I signed up for Social Security at age 62. I applied online. A day later a Social Security worker phoned me to ask one question and told me the amount I would receive and the date SS would start. Painless. Then about three months before I turned 65 I received my Medicare card through the mail. Because I was already getting SS I was automatically sent a Medicare card. Both Part A and Part B are shown on the card. If I chose not to pay for Part B the instructions said to mail back the card and they would send me a card for Part A only. If I chose to keep Part B with premiums deducted from my SS checks I was to separate the Medicare card from the rest of the paperwork they sent and put it in my wallet. Nothing more needed to be done. Easy peasy. I never drove anywhere to stand in any line to sign up for either Social Security or Medicare. Kessala

I also have a (slightly irrational) fear of identity theft. I do as Elizabeth does, I remove anything with name/address from junk mail, and that goes into the shredder. The shredded paper is used to start our wood stove. When we leave town, I collect up sensitive documents (bank statements, CC bills, etc) and put them in an unlikely spot. Our house is fairly secluded, and if anyone was bent on stealing data, they could spend hours in our house and nobody would know. I have info on tenants, which include applications with every piece of ID-theft data in one spot. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't protect that and someone got it. My document collection process takes me about 5 minutes, and I sleep better at night. With all of that, I don't take extra effort to protect tax records. They're in filing cabinets in an out-of-the-way closet, but they're there. They take up a lot of space, with two businesses, so I'm not sure what else I could do with them.