Where does social security go if you never use it?
 

I just read this on someone's wall. While I generally insulate myself from the more crazy of posts like this... this one made me think. Where does social security go when someone dies, if they never use It? Or even only use some of it? Maybe there is a simple answer and this is a dumb thing... but is it?

Who died before they collected Social Security?

THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT'S CALCULATION OF AVAILABLE SOCIAL SECURITY IS THEY FORGOT TO FIGURE IN THE PEOPLE WHO DIED BEFORE THEY EVER COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK! WHERE DID THAT MONEY GO?

Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did too.
It totaled 15% of your income before taxes.
If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500.
Read that again.
Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny?
We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a government bank to insure you and I, that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government.
Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back.
If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the Government pays on the money that it borrows).
After 49 years of working you'd have $892,919.98. If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit!
If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON
HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME
THAN BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID.
Entitlement my foot; I paid cash for my social security insurance!
Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!
Remember Congressional benefits?
--- free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days.
Now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money.
Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?
It was supposed to be in a locked box.

Shows a lack of how social security actually works.

When you (or you employer more acurately) pays into social security, it does not just sit in some annuity with your name on it. It goes into a pool which is used to pay out to those who are currently drawing on it. So, basically, the working folks are supporting the old and infirm through social security.

That all worked fine in the 40’s through about the 80’s because the baby boomers were a larger working generation than their parents and grandparents and there were more people contributing to the pool than drawing from it. However, the boomers didn’t have children at the rate of their parents and its being strained.

Without people around to pay in enough when we retire, there will be no social security. Best not to count on it being there.

On the flip side, my mom chose to be a stay at home mother/wife, but she ended up getting some social security of her own as a spousal benefit after my dad retired and she herself was old enough to receive it. Even though she never held a job outside the home in her adult life.

However, when my father passed away just a couple years after retirement hers had to be dropped and replaced with the amount my father was receiving.

So if there is a spouse, they will likely get it, IF the decease spouse's amount was larger. Otherwise, I guess it's gone and, as Katie mentioned, isn't a pot of money sitting waiting to be paid out.

And also, if you die before your minor children are of age, or you have disabled children, they will receive your benefits until 18 for healthy children or their life for disabled ones.

I think most people who dislike the social security system want it to work as the above op describes. I put my money in and it should be saved for me. Who cares about anyone else. But, that first generation that received social security were already retired and depended on the workers input. No one figured on smaller familes etc.

And disabled people who never worked would be SOL.

“Extra” money paid to the pot goes to support all those people who didn’t pay enough in or nothing in but who still qualify for the benefit.

The point is to make our Society as a whole more secure.
The problem with that is that for it to work people have to actually care about the Society as a whole.

The only part of social security that currently operates at a surplus is retirement. All the medicares and disability have been dipping into their trusts for awhile. I’ve seen statistics that say that the disability portion of social security will run out sometime in 2018. Thats also one of thd fastest growing draws on social security.

Should be interesting to see what they fo with that in the next year or so.