At What Age Do Social Security Disability Benefits Convert to Retirement Benefits
If you’ve been working steadily and you have paid your Social Security taxes, then once you reach retirement age, you’ll be able to begin collecting retirement benefits. However, if you are currently collecting Social Security disability benefits, then you might be curious as to what will happen to those disability benefits once you reach your retirement age.
What Happens to Your Disability Benefits When You Retire?
If you are collecting Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), then once you reach retirement age, you will no longer receive your disability benefit payments through SSDI. Your payments will transition from the SSDI program to the Social Security Administration’s retirement program instead (often called the “old age” program).
However, your benefits will not change in any way, nor will any interruption for any period of time occur, so you won’t have to worry about receiving less. Disability benefits are calculated by how much you contributed (in terms of Social Security tax) over the course of your employment. This is also how to calculate full retirement benefits. Thus, your payments will remain the same.
In fact, there’s actually a real upside to transitioning to the retirement program. When collecting SSDI payments, there are certain income limits. The amount you earn per month while working must remain under a certain amount. If not, you may no longer fall under disability consideration. This limit changes on a yearly basis based on inflation.
Once you reach retirement age, your benefits won’t be subject to those earning limits. This means that if you were making a little bit of money working a part-time job, you no longer have to worry about losing money from your monthly payments as a result of earning too much.
Last, but not least, you won’t have to do a thing once you reach retirement age. Your disability benefits will automatically transition to your retirement fund, which means you won’t have to worry about contacting the Social Security Administration. You also won’t have to worry about having to fill out any paperwork.
When do Your Disability Benefits Convert to Retirement Benefits?
Determining when your retirement age is can be a little bit tricky. Traditionally, it was 65. However, this retirement age only applied to people born in or before 1937. When your full retirement age is depends on when you were born. For example, if you were born from 1943 to 1954, then your retirement age is 66. If you were born in 1960 or after, your retirement age is 67. From the years between 1955 and 1959, the retirement age varies year by year by just a couple of months. Fortunately, finding out the date of your retirement age is not that difficult.
There’s one additional thing to take note of. You can choose to collect your retirement benefits at an earlier retirement age. The earliest you can begin collecting your retirement benefits is at 62. However, because you’re choosing to collect them much earlier, your payments will be smaller. If you’re collecting disability benefits, then you won’t be eligible to collect early retirement benefits. It wouldn’t make much sense to do so anyway since you’d be getting less than your disability benefits if you did.
If you worry about what will happen to your disability benefits once they transition to retirement benefits, don’t. They will stay the same. For additional advice concerning Social Security disability benefits, call 602-952-3200 today for a free consultation with one of our Social Security Disability Advocates. You can also get in touch with us via our LiveChat feature.
This is attorney advertising. SSDA, LLC is a group of attorneys that pursues claims for Social Security Disability benefits on behalf of its clients against the Social Security Administration. SSDA, LLC is in no way a part of the Social Security Administration. Further, the information on this blog is for general information purposes only. Nothing herein should be taken as legal advice. This information is not intended to create, and receipt or viewing does not constitute, a representative-client relationship.
