Do Not Mix Social Security Payments With Other Account Funds...

Online, February 16, 2011 (Newswire.com) - For those receiving Social Security and/or Medicare payments, please read this so your money is protected! Erica Sandberg of FoxNews.com has researched this and lets her readers know how to keep their money safe from creditors.

Truth About Social Security Benefits and Wage Garnishment

Dear Opening Credits,

I seem to recall reading that Social Security payments cannot be garnished. If someone were to default on a credit card and have a judgment placed against them, how would a bank know not to honor an attempted freeze and withdrawal from a Social Security-funded checking account? Could this be an issue with 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day?

Thanks,

Dave

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Dear Dave,

Your memory is correct about the laws concerning such government-issued monies. In general, Social Security benefits are indeed exempt from post-judgment collection techniques, including wage garnishment (the process that allows a creditor to take a portion of your paycheck) and bank account levies (the process that allows a creditor take the cash in a checking, savings or investment accounts).

Credit card companies, banks, collection agencies, doctors, hospitals, finance companies and other such creditors do have the right to sue you for nonpayment, and depending on state law, they may also be able to garnish your wages and tap into allowable assets. However, they can't take the money you receive from the Social Security Administration.

Now there are some noteworthy exceptions to the law. For example, if the debt incurred is for child or spousal support arrearage, unpaid federal income taxes or overdue public library fines, then garnishments and levies may be allowed.

OK, I'm just kidding about library fines. But if you owe money for the first two reasons, the cash you receive from Social Security is at risk of being taken and applied to the balance due.

As you gathered, though, problems may arise if you deposit those benefit payments into a savings or checking account and commingle the funds with those from other sources. If creditors for debt not related to the IRS or child/spousal support payments sue you in a court of law and win, the judge may still permit them to use post-judgment collection actions to collect on the debt. This means that if they're allowed to jump into a bank account that has assets from a variety of income sources, including Social Security benefits, it will be very difficult to stop them.
So what can you do to protect the money you receive from the government?

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To read the rest of this article about Social Security benefits, go to FoxNews.com, and find out how to protect your Social Security benefits from creditors.

As the author, Erica Sandberg, states, it is very important not to co-mingle your Social Security payments with your other account funds. This would make it hard for you to show creditors which funds were actually Social Security payments and which were other income funds.

The best protection for your Social Security benefits is to open a new checking account specifically for depositing only Social Security benefits into.

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Will Baby Boomers Be Left With Any Promised Social Security and Medicare Benefits?

Susie here back with more interesting stuff for Baby Boomers. According to this article from one of the most reliable sources, BusinessWeek.com, we Baby Boomers are in trouble in our older age if we haven't prepared ourselves financially ahead of retirement.

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Retirement: Live Long and Don't Prosper

As the 79-million-strong Baby Boom generation starts hitting age 65, demographers and medical researchers are increasingly at odds over how long they'll live. It's a question with major implications on a national level, for how much Social Security and Medicare will cost future generations of Americans. On a personal level, life expectancy complicates plans for saving and spending: Live too long and risk running out of money; die young and you can't take it with you.

At least one member of a 65-year-old couple can expect to live for another 23 years, to age 88, according to 2010 Social Security data. That's just an average, however, and there is a 30 percent chance of living past 92. Moreover, those numbers are based on when current retirees-the baby boomers' parents-are passing away.

Medical advances are keeping more people alive for longer than ever. The current life expectancy for an American at birth is 77.9 years-58 percent longer than in 1900, when the average life expectancy was 49 years. According to the most recent data available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2000 to 2007 the rate of death from heart disease, the leading cause of death, plunged 19 percent, while the rate for cancer, the second-leading cause of death, fell 5 percent. Thanks to medication that controls blood pressure and other advances, 95,000 fewer Americans died of heart disease in 2007 than in 2000, even as the population increased.

Obesity Epidemic

But wait. Deteriorating American lifestyles are taking away some of the gains from advanced medicine. The rate of obesity in the U.S. has risen 48 percent in 15 years, and by 2020, 45 percent of the population is expected to be obese, according to a 2009 study in The New England Journal of Medicine. The study concluded that the rise in obesity, if unchecked, could be enough to outweigh all the positive effects from falling smoking rates.

"This longevity explosion that we have been experiencing in America since 1950 may not continue at the same pace because of the obesity epidemic," says Richard Besdine, professor of medicine at Brown University and medical officer for the American Federation for Aging Research. He adds: "Americans are literally killing themselves through their mouths."

In any case, there is a good chance that even as Americans live longer lives, they will spend more years disabled, needing expensive care. That's already happening: Though deaths from heart ailments or cancer have declined, deaths from Alzheimer's disease have increased, from 49,558 in 2000 to 74,632 in 2007, according to the CDC. "The longer you live, the higher the risk" for Alzheimer's, Besdine says, noting the disease has no good treatments. "What we want to do is extend the nondisabled part of old age."

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Susie back to recap...what are we Boomers to do? To read the rest of this article go to BusinessWeek.com.

I invite your comments and ideas...just click here to go to my Facebook page to leave your comments to Share with your friends.

Thanks, back soon,

Susie

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To read more about Social Security benefits and whether they will actually be available in the future, go to my blog at Susie's Baby Boomer Lifestyle and read about Baby Boomers and Social Security and Medicare benefits.

If you are interested in Baby Boomer issues, check out this article about anti-aging.

To read lots of other interesting articles relating to Baby Boomers and our finances, retirement, fitness, anti-aging, food and wine and lots of other topics of interest, look for my Facebook page by clicking here.