Ticket To Work Program - Social Security. updates.

[Nick grosse]

I’m 63.5 collecting ssdi for 6 years I want to work part time but don’t want to participate in ticket to work If I am under the 1430 sga amount will ssa leave me alone if I report the work and the money made or will there be repercussions from employment I make 1690 a month and this economy is forcing me to even consider working as we all must be experiencing 

[broncovet]

Welcome to hadit Nick.   I moved your post from an old 2009 post to get more up to date answers.  

 

While we do sometimes answer social security questions, hadit is mostly about Veterans.

Are you a Veteran?  Have you applied for disability?  

Disability from VA and from social security have some similarities, but also have differences.  

Did you know that you can get social security disability and VA disability also?  (I do).  

The fundamental difference between social security disability is:

1.  With social security you need only show you are "disabled". 

2.  With VA disability, you need to demonstrate not only that you are disabled, but its due to an injury or illness which VA decides is related to your military service.  A doctor or medical professional makes the call.  

     In other words, social security does not care "how" you got disabled, just that you meet their criteria for disability.  However, with VA you not only need to show you have a disability (sounds like you have one), but that it was somehow related to military service.  Some Veterans are awarded benefits as a "presumptive" to military service in some countries.  

     Finally, if you had an entrance physical (before service, its required), and then at your exit from service physical a condition was noted that you did not have before service, then its presumed you got it while in service.    VA can "rebut" the presumption, for example, if you were injured in an automobile accident after service, your maladies could be caused form the accident, not necessarity military service.  You would likely need a medical opinion that your condition was caused by the miltary and not your car accident.  

      As an example, many Veterans with hearing loss got it from service often from exposure to very loud noises, such as gunfire or aircraft. 

Edited September 17 by broncovet (see edit history)

[Rattler]

So coming from someone who is fixing to age out of SSDI and go on SS her is my advice on the "Ticket to Work."

Run hard and fast the other direction. In my option the "Ticket to Work," is just a scam to get you off SSDI. I depend on how the Social Security Administration has disabled you and your age. If you are 55 or over you are considered not retrainable by  Social Security regulations. What this means is you are not retrainable from your previous occupation into a new one. This means that a vocational expert would say that you cannot perform your previous occupation in the national economy and due to your age you cannot be retrained in to a new occupation.

Hear is a personal example. I went to church with someone who's brother in mild mentally retarded. He was drawing SSDI. He was working in what the VA calls a protected environment. The people he worked for screwed up and worked him over the amount of hours he was spouse to work for 2 years. Social Security finally catches on to this and sends him notice that they are going to reduce his check until he pays back his overpayment.

If you decide to go to work you can bet the IRS will reports it to Social Security. (There systems are connected.) You can also bet that someone will be around to see if you are doing something that you said you can't do like mowing the lawn. 

[broncovet]

With VA disability, social security, as well as "other" government benefits, "somebody" has to pay for them. 

And, who is that "somebody"?  Well, for VA compensation, its "us".  We paid for our benefits by agreeing to well below market pay during miltary service.  I was paid, if I recall, $110 per month when I first went into the miltary.  

I checked and the minimum wage was $1.60 per hour.  So, if I do the math I was paid "about" 45 cents per hour.   Remember, if I worked at a regular job for  minimim wage, I would not need to risk my life, and I would work far shorter hours than I did in the military also.  I could "go home" and be with my family at Christmas, which I could not do in the military.  

In other words, paid for my benefits by taking a 75 percent pay haircut.  In other words, I was paid a quarter for every dollar that civilian workers got.  The difference was actually more as I was certainly worth more than minimum wage.  

I have earned every dollar of my VA benefits.  

Ditto for social security.  "If" I was permitted to invest the money I paid into social security in a stock index fund which tracks the s and P 500, such as VOO, I would earn an average return of around 10-13 percent per year even tho, some years it was/is down.  

Should I have been permitted to invest my social security, rather than trust the government to do it, my "social security" benefit would be much much higher, than the average 2.8 percent earned by social security trust fund.  

    In other words we paid for our benefits.  They are not welfare.  If we go to the bank to withdraw money we put in their earlier, no one accuses of us of getting "free" money at the bank.  But, as I explained, we paid dearly for our VA benefits.  Many paid with their lives.  So, we "prepaid" our benefits by accepting a hugely lower salary because, in no small part, the government promised "to take care of us" in exchange for us giving the government 75% of our pay for "VA benefits".  

Our benefits are not free, we are not freeloaders.  No one accuses "workers" of freeloading when they use their insurance benefits, which are often deducted from their paycheck, and they should not accuse Veterans of being freeloaders either.  

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Remember, if I worked for a company, I could sue the company for not paying minimum wage.   But, I earned far less than minimum wage in the military.  Why does the government get away with paying less than minimum wage??:

I checked.  While the minimum wage varies with each state, in California, its $15.50 per hour.  An E1 is paid $23,011 per year.  Someone earning $15.50 per hour (minimum wage) would earn $32,240 in a year.  The military still pays under minimum wages.  

Edited September 19 by broncovet (see edit history)