Another Milestone

Several years ago the company that I worked for lowered their early retirement age from 55 to 50. At that time, I was still in my forties. In July of 1997, I reached a milestone. I turned 50. From then on, I knew things would be different because I could retire if I had to. It did not mean a whole lot, just a little added sense of security.

Earlier this month I reached another milestone. The Social Security Administration lets you go ahead and sign up 90 days before you are eligible to receive your first check. I suppose that gives them 90 days to handle the paperwork. Since I will be 62 in July, I will be eligible to receive my first check August 1. So on May 1, I was able to sign up to draw Social Security and I did just that. Some folks have asked me "why don't you wait for a while so your check will be more?" The best way I can respond is to tell something I learned while I worked for my father at Miller's Garage.

My father ran his business before credit cards became so ubiquitous. Never the less, there were people who needed credit. Then as now for most folks in this part of the world, an automobile was essential for getting to and from work. If your vehicle feel into disrepair and could not be used, you probably would not be able to work and could easily loose your job. So people would bring in their vehicles for my father to work on and, paraphrasing Whimpy, tell him I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for car repair today.

In his office, my father kept a stack of plain receipt books like you could buy in the dime store. He would write the name of the customer along the top line, the nature of the repair on the lines on the left side , dollar amounts in the right hand column and total it up at the bottom. There would be an original and a carbon. The carbon he kept for his records, the original he gave to the customer when they paid up. (Here is where we come to the part that relates to the SSA.) Some of his credit customers would come in and pay with cash but quite a few of them would write him a check. Most of the checks he would take home to mama and she would gather several of them together, fill out a deposit slip and mail them off to the Alexander City Bank. Occasionally someone would come in and write my father a check and after they left, he would go to town to their bank and cash their check. He said that, in their case, he needed to get up there and get his money while they still had some in the bank. I have sized up SSA to be that sort of check writer and that is the reason I signed up to receive my first social security check on August 1.