In my 32 years of experience working for the Social Security Administration and the 27 years I’ve been writing this column, one of the more common complaints I’ve heard from people goes something like this: “I don’t think I am getting the right Social Security benefit amount. It’s less than it should be.” Or like this: “Based on what all my friends are getting, I am sure they figured my benefits incorrectly and they are not paying me enough.” Or sometimes something very blunt such as this: “The government is cheating me out of my hard-earned Social Security!”
And here is something interesting: Not once in the past five decades have I heard something such as this: “I think Social Security is paying me too much money!” I guess that’s just human nature. People tend to expect the worst (especially when it comes to government services) and/or they believe they are being cheated out of something that everyone else is getting.
