Parents, beware: Your offspring are in the crosshairs of financial scammers. According to AllClear ID, an identity-theft protection company, children are 35 times more likely than adults to be identity theft victims.
The Social Security Administration has just made it a lot easier to find out what your benefit checks will look like when you retire. Current projections, dynamic tools and more are all available on the my Social Security website.
The Social Security Administration has implemented a variety of new rules and features for 2013. Here's a look at some of the recent Social Security changes that go into effect this year, and how they'll affect your payments.
When Congress and President Obama make a budget deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, they're likely to use something called "chained CPI" to tweak how Social Security calculates cost of living adjustments. Here's a plain English explanation of what that means, and how it will effect your retirement.
Antisa Khvichava of the Republic of Georgia died earlier this month at a reported age of 132. And if none of us are going to live quite that long, her example is still a good reminder that our ever increasing life span has some critical implications for our long-term financial planning.
Over the past few years, the benefits that America offers its citizens have become the center of a huge debate. But who actually qualifies for benefits, and how are they designed to work? If you're interested in where entitlement spending goes, take a peek at our little quiz.
GOP governors have balked at carrying out a key part of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law -- setting up new private health insurance markets in their states. But increasingly, it's looking like Washington will just do it for them.
For $10, identity thieves can access the full name, Social Security number and other personal information of a dead person through a list of millions of deceased Americans, known as the Death Master File.
When it comes to taxes, the news for parents is generally good. Here's a brief look at some of the ways that having children can help you save on your tax return.
Using the Social Security Administration's online system, you can run tailor-made scenarios showing how much you'll get from the government benefit when you retire. And from there, you can plot out your master retirement plan.
Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't be robbed. Identity thieves steal the personal information of about 2.4 million deceased Americans each year to apply for credit cards, cell phones and anything else requiring a credit check.
If you're divorced, your ex-husband or ex-wife might still be able to help you feather your nest in retirement. And there's at least one former-spouse benefit you won't need to go to court to get access to: payments based on their Social Security earnings record.
Each year, some 14,000 people are wrongly declared dead by the Social Security Administration, CNNMoney reports. Data-entry errors can lead to major financial turmoil for victims of these mistakes, who they can lose their benefits and credit.
For years, policymakers have reassured the public that Social Security will be solvent for decades. But outlay and income data from the Treasury reveal that Social Security is already deep in the red -- by $76 billion in 2010 alone. That's just the beginning.
Besides the unemployed, nobody is getting hurt worse in this economy than seniors. Prices on many commodities are skyrocketing, but the Consumer Price Index, which is the yardstick used to adjust Social Security for inflation, is virtually unchanged.
A provision that allows retirees to correct the mistake of tapping their benefits too early has been used by some as a fairly lucrative investment strategy. Now, the Social Security Administration wants to end the practice.