Fun and games with Social Security

I turned 66 last month and began collecting my Social Security monthly benefits last year. I plan to be around for a long time so I figured it would be better to collect more smaller payments than to hold off for another ten years and collect a few larger ones.

Tried setting up an online account last year and kept trying, the website would say that I had entered incorrect information and they would lock me out for 24 hours. I finally went in to the Bellingham office to discover that they had my date of birth wrong.

Been wanting to change my medical insurance so I tried last week to set up the online account and it took my SSN, my DOB and then proceeded to ask a series of questions about my history - car loans, credit cards from what institutions, streets and phone numbers I once had. Only problem was that about half of these questions would be a positive answer for my Father and not me. We share the same first and last names but he did not have a middle name whereas I do.

Finally went into their office today and got everything straightened out - they set up an initial stub of an account and gave me a sheet of paper with an activation code so that bootstrapped me into setting up the account. Odd that they did not get their data correct but nice that they had such an easy work-around for it...