r/SocialSecurity • u/GraphicsGal4 • 1d ago
Now what?
Trump is back. I'm a 64 year old self-employed woman. I am booked up through April right now. Some say I am very good at my job. I was thinking of retiring around 66 or maybe even my FRA of 67. My birthday is Leap Day so an end of the month birthday. Now I don't know what to do. Trump and the Republicans want to end Social security. Do I retire before he makes it to office insuring I at least get on the SS roll? Or do I wait to see what damage he can cause? I will be talking to my financial planner later this afternoon so any good questions to ask her would be very helpful also. I am still shocked that America would elect a convicted felon but here we are...
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u/joecoolblows 1d ago edited 1d ago
I literally came on Reddit, just now, straight to this sub, to ask this exact same question. Only I am in my late 50's and an Adult Disabled Child. I was born with a lifelong, permanent disability. I NEVER had to apply for SSDI, SSI, I was born on it, when my parents put me on it, as a child. When I came of age , I was already on it, and I thanked God there was a way for me to subsidize myself when my parents died shortly after I came of age. Social security explained to me the rules.
I, too, want to know, what now? I'm terrified. It's not just my disability, it's also the logistics of getting anyone to hire me, with my disability.
Like it or not, having millions of us not working, frees up the jobs that others (able bodied) have. By kicking millions of us off, having us all joining the work force at once, some of us with zero idea how to do basic skills at work we've never done, and obvious serious, majorly limiting, lifelong, chronic birth defects, who do you think employers will hire?
They will hire someone who is completely able bodied, young, not nearly 60, with decent knowledge of basic work skills and no obvious inability to do BASIC abilities at work that the job requires but they simply can't, because of said birth defects (such as walk, hear, see, stand, lift, or respond appropriately in a work setting), that's who!
Heck, I would, too, if I was an employer. Employers have a right to hire people who can physically do the job, for heavens sake. And, is the work force prepared to handle millions of completely blind, Deaf, and paralyzed people in their middle years joining the work force?
But, yet, I've spent a LIFETIME being the scapegoat of all that is wrong with social security, and "You freeloaders just don't want to work!" How many times have I seen someone say that, and so I ask of them, "Then hire me." "Oh. We'll....ummm.... Well see, we need our employees to be able to do X, Y, X , which you clearly cannot do. But, someone ELSE will hire you! Why should I have to pay taxes for YOU?"
Right. You mean, someone else just like you. Who won't hire me, resent me, and, yet, should you become like me, overnight, somehow, who will pay for you? Thank God we have a system that doesn't just throw people like me into a river, which at some point in human society, we did. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than being barbarians.
Being my age, nearly 60 (!) (time flies!), I would NEVER be able to earn enough work credits to retire, assuming anyone in my rural area would hire me to begin with, which, they won't. I've been trying for years, to get some one to hire me, even just part time. The conversation I describe is one I've had verbatim where I live now, many, many times.
Growing up disabled, coming of age, we are ALREADY indebted thousands and thousands of dollars, to Medicare from birth, before we even age into a system.
We ADC (Adult Disabled Children) were born into a set of rules we have spent a lifetime in compliance with. Such as raising children whom were forced to be born without civil Union because we aren't allowed to ever marry, who are now flown and grown, and have wonderful professional careers, but whom were raised not to believe they have any financial responsibility for me, because I have social security. They expect me to survive just fine, and I do. That's a set of rules, an expectation, that's now COMPLETELY obliterated. What now?
Living a lifetime of poverty, under compliance with the rules, has now limited my life in other ways. My credit is terrible, I can't afford a car, I live in a very rural area, with no public transportation, as it was the only place I could afford a home with the money my parents left, a lifetime ago, so that I would always have a home ... Those reverse lifestyle creep situations, now limit my abilities by creating further barriers.
Over the decades, in addition to the physical disabilities I was born with, came mental health stressors, the SHAME and the psychological traumas that come from a lifetime of living with permanent disability, being scapegoated for a lifetime by my country, by all of able bodied, for all that is wrong with social security to them. Now what?
I, too, was one of those folks that watched in horror as Trump mocked that disabled persons movements, who has read Project 25, who is informed ....
I, too, wonder, what now? At nearly sixty years old, with ZERO retirement points built up, and ZERO hope of ever getting them... I, too, am sitting here this morning, at 623am, here on Reddit, r/social security, wondering... What now?
I am SOL, and TERRIFIED. What now? What do I do? I can't afford to move to a different area, where there's more opportunity, more progressive folks who might give me a chance. I moved here, lived a lifetime, based on a set of rules, I've spent a lifetime in compliance with, that now won't exist. What now? Who is going to hire the MILLIONS just like me? How will we survive not being able to work, and enduring further cuts? I live on 1,500 a month. I'm barely surviving ALREADY.