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To My Readers: Why I Haven’t Been Writing Lately
The truth is I can’t afford to
I am taking a financial risk in writing this, but I feel I owe people who read my scribbles an explanation about my recent dearth of articles. My silence has nothing to do with writer’s block or disaffection with Medium. It has nothing to do with time constraints or my health.
It has to do with Social Security.
I have been paying into Social Security since I got my first job in 1974 at age 16. Every paycheck I have received since then has had money withheld and sent to Social Security to help provide for me during my retirement years. This is a good thing.
This year I finally decided to retire from my teaching career after 36 years in the classroom. As such, I also applied to begin receiving my Social Security retirement benefit, a benefit I have been paying toward for the last 49 years.
Because I am not quite at “full retirement age,” I pay a penalty in the form of s slightly smaller benefit. When my dad retired in 1982, the full retirement age was 65. For me, it is 66 years and 8 months which is November of 2024. For people born in 1960 and after it is 67. Raising the full retirement age to 67 is a cost-saving measure for Social Security because our government lacks the backbone to make wealthy people pay…
