Q&A: Disability Benefits & Disabled Workers

Disabled workers have questions about how testing a return to work through Ticket to Work might affect their disability benefits. Ask Rusty has answers.

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Editor’s Note: For citizens that want to try and return to work when they become disabled, the Social Security Administration offers the Ticket to Work program. However, the disabled want to make sure that testing the waters of returning to work does not propose long-term jeopardy to their disability benefits, and often have questions about how any earnings will affect their disability and their Medicare costs. A recent Ask Rusty column in the Revere Journal offers some insights to disabled workers from Russell Gloor, a Certified Social Security Advisor from Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) Foundation.

Reprinted with permission from AMAC Foundation and The Revere Journal.

Disabled Workers Seek Answers to Financial Questions

Dear Rusty: I am 60 and currently getting Social Security Disability, but I would like to return to work as much as possible. I am concerned with how my earned income would affect my Social Security at age 65 (or even at age 70). I understand that Social Security has a “trial work” program that allows me to keep receiving disability for a while, to allow me to test my physical limits. I wish to make sure that my Social Security Disability does NOT automatically convert to the standard (early) benefit at age 62 (Ouch!). I read something about a 96-month period that is crucial. So many factors involved, so I wish to make the right decision. Signed: Wanting to Work While Disabled.

Trial Work Months and Disability Benefits

Dear Wanting: Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, provides eligible disabled workers with a financial lifeline in return for the insurance premiums they’ve paid into the program during their working years. Although the criteria are stringent, once awarded the benefit provides income to partially replace earnings that are lost due to a long-term disability.

Social Security encourages those receiving SSDI benefits to eventually return to the workforce and offers a “Ticket to Work” program to help achieve that goal. This program gives you the chance to test your ability to work for at least nine “trial work months” during a 60 month period, and during this trial work period you’ll receive your full SSDI benefit regardless of how much you earn.

Briefly, any month you earn more than $840 (for 2017) counts as a trial work month. After you have reached nine trial work-months, you can still receive your SSDI benefits for another 36 months, except that you won’t receive benefits for any month that your earnings exceed what Social Security considers “substantial”, which for 2017 is $1,170 (note that these dollar amounts can change annually). If your benefits stop because your earnings regularly exceed “substantial”, and within five years you are again unable to work due to your disability, your disability benefits can be restarted (without having to re-apply).

You can get full details in this Ticket to Work program brochure, but this program should allow you to work and test your physical limits without a negative impact to your Social Security benefits.

To address a few of your other concerns:

  • Your earnings from attempting to return to work while disabled shouldn’t negatively affect your future Social Security retirement benefit at your full retirement age.
  • Your disability benefits will not automatically convert to early retirement benefits at age 62, but they will automatically convert to retirement benefits when you reach your full retirement age (which is 66 years plus 6 months if you were born in 1957). However when they convert, your benefit amount will remain the same as you were receiving in disability benefits.
  • If you are on Medicare and your benefits stop as a result of exceeding the substantial earnings limit, as long as you are still disabled your free Medicare Part A coverage will continue for at least 93 months after the 9-month-trial work period. However, you will still have to pay a Medicare Part B premium in order to receive Part B coverage.

Access the original Ask Rusty column on RevereJournal.com.

About AMAC Foundation

The AMAC Foundation has social security advisory staff, trained and accredited under the National Social Security Advisors program of the National Social Security Association, LLC (NSSA). NSSA nor AMAC Foundation and its advisors are affiliated with or endorsed by the United States Government, the Social Security Administration or any other state government.

Russell Gloor

Russell Gloor has worked in computing technology for Pan American World Airways, the Travel Division of American Express Company and IBM, where he was responsible for IBM Global Services’ worldwide quality assurance program. Russ retired from IBM in 2003 and rejoined the workforce with AMAC in 2013. He is currently an AMAC Foundation consultant and Certified Social Security Advisor assisting seniors with Social Security benefits enrollment decisions.

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