{"id":11946,"date":"2015-12-09T17:05:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T17:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=11946"},"modified":"2015-12-09T17:05:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T17:05:11","slug":"social-security-has-arrived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=11946","title":{"rendered":"Social Security has arrived"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"retirement_road\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The phone rang; caller ID\u00a0informed me,\u00a0“U.S. Government.”<\/p>\n

I answered. The lady on the other end said, “May I speak with John Kanelis?” Yes, I said. You are speaking to him.<\/p>\n

It was the Social Security Administration and after answering some “security questions” — Mom’s maiden name, place of birth … that kind of thing — the nice lady told me my Social Security benefit has been approved.<\/p>\n

My head is spinning.<\/p>\n

She told me when it would start arriving. She gave me the amount. She answered a couple of questions regarding my eligibility to keep earning income outside of Social Security. I thanked her, hung up the phone and now am wondering: How many of these four part-time jobs I am working do I want to keep?<\/p>\n

I think I’ll keep all of them … at least for the time being.<\/p>\n

The biggest head-spinner of all is the speed with which I received the call.<\/p>\n

I applied online for the SS benefit on Sunday. Today is Wednesday. It’s the morning of the third business day<\/em> after I\u00a0submitted my application. I had received an e-mail from Social Security that informed me I could check after five<\/em> business days on the status of my application. I reckon I don’t need to check now.<\/p>\n

This is utterly amazing.<\/p>\n

What in the world ever happened to the federal government that supposedly took forever to do anything<\/em> on request? Furthermore, whatever happened to the cold-hearted, borderline rude federal bureaucrats with whom one dealt whenever one had an issue with the government? The individual with whom I spoke was courteous, pleasant and answered my questions with ease.<\/p>\n

I told you the other day I was a happy fellow.<\/p>\n

Today, I am even happier.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement. The phone rang; caller ID\u00a0informed me,\u00a0“U.S. Government.” I answered. The lady on the other end said, “May I speak with John Kanelis?” Yes, I said. You are speaking to him. It was the Social Security Administration and after answering some … Continue reading Social Security has arrived<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1702,3920,4301],"class_list":["post-11946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-federal-government","tag-retirement","tag-social-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11948,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11946\/revisions\/11948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}