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No More rushing to the Bank

Starting Your Direct Deposit Account: If you plan to apply for Social Security benefits, you will be subject to a new law that went into effect March 1, 2013, requiring that you receive your Social Security payments electronically. Treasury can grant exceptions in rare circumstances. Find out if you qualify for an exception at www.godirect.org/about-faq/#exceptions .

The following are the four ways you can start your Direct Deposit Account:

1. If you qualify to receive benefits, you can create a my Social Security account, located at www.ssa.gov/myaccount, and start or change your Direct Deposit Account online.
2. You can sign-up at your bank, credit union, or savings and loan.
3. Contact the Social Security Administration (SSA) at 1-800-772-1213 (TTY 1-800-325-0778) between 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday.
4. Visit or call your local SSA office.

Changing Your Direct Deposit Account: The SSA provides a secure Web environment where you may change your direct deposit information. Through their site, you may change your current Direct Deposit Account to another account or financial institution. To utilize this service, you must establish a password at the Social Security site called my Social Security, located at www.ssa.gov/myaccount . You can also call or visit your financial institution to change your Direct Deposit Account.

Currently the SSA system only allows direct deposit to a single account. Your financial institution may provide services that allow you to transfer deposited funds to multiple accounts.

A Practical Example of How GPO Works

If you receive benefits based on your spouse’s earnings record and also receive a pension for your work that was not covered by Social Security, your monthly benefits may be affected by your pension and you may be subject to a reduction in benefits.  This type of Social Security benefit reduction is called a Government Pension Offset (GPO). For details see “The Government Pension Offset Fact Sheet” located at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf .

Under the GPO, the Social Security Asministration (SSA) may reduce your spousal or widow(er) benefit. (For more information see www.socialsecurity.gov/retire2/gpo.htm.). For example, let’s say that the husband has a Social Security benefit of $1,800 per month and the wife has a state agency pension of $2,400 per month. The GPO will reduce her spousal benefits to zero. The following are step-by-step directions for calculating the GPO reduction:

1. Wife’s Social Security spousal benefits $900 (as stated on the husband’s annual Social Security Statement).
2. Wife’s government benefit of $2,400.
3. Calculation of GPO for spousal benefit, $900 – 2/3 ($2,400) = $900-$1,600 = <$0.
4. The Social Security Spousal benefit is reduced to zero.