Your Friends and Neighbors Are Wrong!

Tom Margenau
Tue, 27 Jan 2026 23:00:00 -0800
Lifestyle

Here is a bit of advice from a guy who gives Social Security advice for a living. Don't take any advice from your friends or neighbors about Social Security. It's always wrong!

OK, it's not always wrong. But I've learned from many thousands of readers over the years that it's wrong often enough to make it wise to heed my warning: When it comes to Social Security, don't listen to your friends and neighbors. I'll share examples of what I mean in today's column.

Q: I get my Social Security check on the fourth Wednesday of each month. My wife gets hers on the second Wednesday of each month. And I thought that's the way things work. Social Security checks come out on various Wednesdays. But I have a neighbor who insists he gets his checks on the seventeenth of each month. Why is that?
Updated: Wed Jan 28, 2026

Here is a bit of advice from a guy who gives Social Security advice for a living. Don't take any advice from your friends or neighbors about Social Security. It's always wrong!

OK, it's not always wrong. But I've learned from many thousands of readers over the years that it's wrong often enough to make it wise to heed my warning: When it comes to Social Security, don't listen to your friends and neighbors. I'll share examples of what I mean in today's column.

Q: I get my Social Security check on the fourth Wednesday of each month. My wife gets hers on the second Wednesday of each month. And I thought that's the way things work. Social Security checks come out on various Wednesdays. But I have a neighbor who insists he gets his checks on the seventeenth of each month. Why is that?

A: It isn't like that. Your friend does not get his Social Security check on the seventeenth of each month. I'm not sure why he would say that. But it really doesn't matter. He's just wrong.

For about the first 50 years of the program, Social Security checks always came out on the third of each month. But about 40 years ago, for a variety of reasons, Social Security officials decided to stagger the delivery date of checks based on a person's day of birth. People born on the first through tenth day of each month would get their checks on the second Wednesday of each month. Those born on the eleventh through twentieth would get their benefits on the third Wednesday of each month. And people born on the twenty-first through the thirty-first would get their benefits on the fourth Wednesday of each month. And for reasons a little too messy to explain here, a few folks still get their benefits on the third of each month. But no one, your neighbor included, gets a benefit check routinely on the seventeenth of the month.

Q: I will be reaching my full retirement age of 66 and 10 months in April 2026. I was planning to start my benefits then. But I have a friend who is the same age as me and he insists that anyone who doesn't wait until 70 to start their benefits is a darn fool and is throwing money away. What do you say?

A: Well, I say I must be a darn fool because I started my benefits when I was 62 years old. But I did that for a variety of reasons that I've explained many times in past columns and just don't have the space to get into today.

The truth is, no one really knows when the best time is to start their benefits because no one really knows when they are going to die. For example, your friend could wait until 70 to start his benefits and then get hit by a bus two months later. Then who was the "darn fool?"

All each of us can do is consider issues such as your health, your other sources of income, your marital status and other factors and then just make the best choice you can about when to start your Social Security checks.

And by the way, many financial planners today would say you are right to start your benefits at your full retirement age.

Q: I was talking to a group of neighbors about the future of Social Security. One of them said that Congress will never take any action to fix Social Security until they are forced to pay into the program themselves. Isn't that a good idea?

A: It's a non-starting idea: Members of Congress, the president and all other top officials of the federal government have been paying Social Security taxes since the early 1980s.

Q: Late last year, I got a small increase in my monthly Social Security check. I wasn't sure what that was about until several weeks later when I got a letter explaining what happened. (It was based on earnings I had the prior year that increased my benefit amount.) I was talking to a friend about this. He said the same thing happened to him a couple of years ago. He said the delay in sending letters of explanation was because former President Joe Biden messed up Social Security's computer systems and that President Donald Trump just hasn't gotten around to fixing things yet. What do you know about this?

A: I know your friend is full of malarkey! Why do some people insist on looking for political shenanigans and conspiracies when a very simple explanation is in order?

So why does a letter of explanation come many days, or even a week or so, after a change in Social Security benefits? It's really not a great mystery. And it's not a political conspiracy. It's simply that electronic fund transfers can happen almost instantaneously. Whereas a physical letter takes a while to prepare and mail.

In other words, once the Social Security Administration figures out that someone is due an increase in their benefits, they push a few buttons and a payment is on its way to the beneficiary's bank account. And then after those buttons are pushed, someone else at the SSA has to prepare a letter explaining what happened and then that letter has to go through the SSA's mailroom and then to the U.S. Postal Service and finally to the recipient's mailbox.

Some readers have remarked to me that the SSA should time the delivery of the check to coincide with the delivery of the letter. I remember many years ago, while I still worked for the SSA, being involved in meetings where that issue was discussed. And SSA officials decided that it was best to get the money out to people as fast as possible (it's their money, after all) and live with the consequences of a delayed letter of explanation.