Imagine you’re a public school teacher or police officer in, say, California.
You’ve reached retirement age, but because of the way your pension was structured, you don’t qualify for Social Security benefits, or at best, you’re receiving a much-reduced amount.
Now there’s good news: You might be able to receive Social Security after all, or see an increase in your monthly benefit.
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This scenario is the case for more than 3 million Americans who have received, or are expected to receive, a retroactive payment this year for Social Security benefits they missed in 2024, as well as a bump in their monthly benefit.
Are you one of them?
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You could be if you fall into one of the employment categories affected by the Social Security Fairness Act (SSFA), which President Joe Biden signed into law on January 5.
What has changed?
The act ended two provisions known as the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). These provisions reduced or eliminated Social Security benefits for some public employees in certain circumstances.
This included teachers, firefighters and police officers in some states; federal employees covered by the Civil Service Retirement System; and people whose work had been covered by a foreign social security system.
These are people who didn’t pay into the Social Security system because they were covered by a pension for government employees.
However, at some point in their lives, they held jobs in which they did pay the Social Security tax, but the WEP kept them from collecting their full Social Security benefits in retirement.
The GPO also prevented them from claiming spousal or survivor Social Security benefits.
With the new law, these employees will see a bump in their monthly Social Security benefits or be able to claim benefits for the first time.
Some are also owed retroactive payments from 2024 and might receive a lump-sum payment for that.
The jump in the monthly benefit can be hefty. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that eliminating the GPO would increase monthly benefits by an average of $700 for 380,000 spouses and $1,190 for 390,000 surviving spouses.
Eliminating the WEP would increase monthly benefits by an average of $360 for 2.1 million Social Security beneficiaries.
The amount of monthly benefits could vary greatly, depending on factors such as the type of Social Security benefit received and the amount of pension income.
What you can do
In some cases, the adjustment will happen automatically, but no one with money coming to them should leave things to chance.
Here are a few things you should do:
Update your information. Whenever you move or change banks, it’s easy to forget who needs your new information. The SSA suggests that you check and/or update the mailing address and direct-deposit account that the government has for you in its records to ensure that you receive your payments in a timely manner.
Be patient. With more than 3 million people involved, this won’t be an overnight fix for everyone. The SSA says that it was able to expedite payments by automating the process.
However, complex cases will take longer, requiring additional time to manually update records and pay both retroactive and new benefit amounts.
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Check your benefits. Create an online account with the SSA to track what you’re owed and take action if there are any mistakes, you have questions or you need clarification about the information you seek. You can create an account on the Social Security Administration (SSA) website.
Be proactive. Take matters into your own hands. For example, consider filing for spousal benefits if that applies to you. You can apply on the SSA site.
Share this information. If you know others who might be affected by the SSFA, share this information with them so they can act and benefit, as well.
This situation is especially important to me because a large number of my clients fall into the employment categories covered by these changes. I receive questions almost daily about the changes and how they impact my clients and their individual situations.
Get in touch with someone who can help you understand what the SSFA means for you.
Make sure you don’t leave money on the table. It’s about maximizing your retirement benefits, not minimizing them.
Ronnie Blair contributed to this article.
The appearances in Kiplinger were obtained through a PR program. The columnist received assistance from a public relations firm in preparing this piece for submission to Kiplinger.com. Kiplinger was not compensated in any way.
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