Jonathan Peterson

Social Security {...} has an endless assortment of rules, variations on the rules, exceptions to the rules, and exceptions to the exceptions to the rules.

I'm not yet at retirement age but my oldest siblings are, and I've grown interested to know the basics of Social Security both for my own financial planning and so I can benefit from my siblings' experiences as they enroll.

This is a typical "for Dummies" book in terms of layout (outline organization, section headings, graphics, sidebars). Its content is accessibly written -- with lots of repetition, but that allows you to dip in and out of chapters at will rather than needing to read from beginning to end or needing to read the chapters about benefits that are not relevant to you.

There's more content here than I'd expected. This second edition (c2015) covers not only Social Security's retirement benefit but also its benefits for worker disability or death AND Medicare's health-insurance benefit. I'm in a male/female/two-income marriage and came away with a good grasp of the basic rules, and a better-than-expected grasp of the variations and exceptions to the rules (e.g. for divorced, or same-sex married, or single-income, or foreign-residing couples), plus a trove of resources and contact info for estimating my specific benefits and planning when/how to file for them. I feel I've gotten a good start.

(Review based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.)… (más)