In three months, I’ll be turning 65 years old. I’ve decided to start collecting my Social Security benefits. Decisions, decisions…While signing up for Medicare I decided to go ahead and start collecting my benefits The full retirement age is 66 and I’ll make a bit less per year but I’ll make it for 12 months more. There will be no difference in the total value of the payments if I live to my projected age. (They didn’t mention what that age is but I was assured that it was true.) I decided that since I was going down to deal with the Social Security bureaucracy to get the Medicare going I’ll go ahead and get the retirement payments. It might save me a trip in a year.

Nothing goes smoothly. Filling out the application online was painless but the “What to do next” line in the instructions kept me busy most of the day. The Social Security Office wants to see an original copy of my birth certificate. I last saw my birth certificate 18 years ago and I remember it being in a manila folder. I had to have it for a security clearance when I started working for Raytheon. I found a manila folder but it was full of photocopies. I finally found the required paperwork but it wasn’t exactly where I remembered it being. During the time when I was my father’s conservator, I collected all of HIS important papers—DD214, marriage certificates, etc. and tucked in with his papers was my birth certificate—Eureka! The upside of never throwing everything away is that you are guaranteed to find it eventually. The downside, of course, is that it may take all day to do it.

October was a busy month and due to the fact that we finished Halloween then ran off to the Camp Quest Summit for the weekend in Phoenix, I’m not fully recovered. I still have the remnants of my display to clean up but I’m also bone tired. That’s the trouble with being retired, you don’t get any days off…