Approximately 20% of the U.S. population are seniors, and a significant number of them are not receiving Social Security benefits. This issue affects nearly 2 million seniors annually, mainly due to insufficient work history, late-arriving immigrants, or inconsistent work history. To avoid this, seniors should consider working longer to earn necessary credits. Filing mistakes also contribute to this problem, highlighting the importance of consulting financial professionals. Additionally, delaying Social Security benefits may not always be advantageous, and it’s recommended to start taking benefits as soon as eligible to avoid future uncertainties.

Transcript:

Austin, roughly 20% of the population in the US are seniors, but a shockingly high number of them aren’t receiving social security benefits.

So the key question is, what’s going on?

Yeah, this is really a tragic statistic. 3.3 percent of seniors, which is a small percentage, but it’s a lot of people on an absolute basis, fall into a category of what the Social Security Administration calls never beneficiaries.

These are people who will never collect on their social security benefits.

And that adds up to almost 2 million seniors a year, which is really quite tragic.

So what is this non-recipient profile and what is causing this?

Well, there’s a couple of things.

One is some people don’t receive benefits due to insufficient work history or being late-arriving immigrants, or it’s just an inconsistent work history.

So one solution to make sure that you do not fall into this category as a senior is to consider working a little bit longer, even into retirement, because you can earn up to four credits per year based on your wages and self-employment income.

In 2024, you earn one credit for every $1,730 in covered earnings.

It really doesn’t take that much to earn that much on a wage basis, so you might be able to find yourself qualifying by working a little bit further into retirement on some of this part-time wage basis.

Another is filing mistakes.

This one is just unforced errors.

Errors in filing Social Security claims can result in significant financial losses.

There are reports out there of American seniors missing out on at least $100,000 in Social Security payments due to them because of filing errors.

The biggest thing you can do here is consult a financial professional like a CPA who works with seniors, who has experience helping them navigate their claims to ensure that yours are set up and filed correctly to receive your benefits.

This is just an unforced error where a little bit of expert advice can go a long way to help seniors.

Another thing that’s contributing to these 2 million seniors not receiving their benefits due to them are strategies and misconceptions where they might be willingly delaying their social security benefits because as you delay them, your benefits can actually increase by delaying them.

This is purely optional, but again, it’s largely an unforced error because the math ends up netting out to be about the same, but you invite a lot more uncertainty by delaying your social security benefits.

And it may backfire due to potential changes in the system or increased taxes or higher inflation rate.

So we say bird in the hand beats two in the bush any day.

Do not delay taking your Social Security benefits in favor of higher payments in the future.

Start taking them today.

Social Security as a program itself is on much less steady footing than it has been in the past.

And seniors today are better off taking those claims today instead of waiting for a greater payout tomorrow.

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