I need some information about SS retirement benefits and I can't it on the net.

[SheilaT]

5. You have to be poor to get Medicare at all.

But they are state run programs, although they use federal money, so just how poor depends on what state he lives in.

The earliest you can collect social security is age 62, so he couldn't possibly collect at 58.5 anyway.

And while disability hasn't come up in this thread, in case your friend is thinking he can go for that, there are two basic things to keep in mind. First is that you have to be truly disabled in some way and really not able to work. Just because you have some chronic disorder impacting your life, as long as it does not keep you from work, you can't get disability. The other thing about SSI that I want to bring up here is that it's not a supplement to social security. If you retire and get SSI, at age 62 you simply get switched over to regular SS. Which also means if you become unable to work and you're already 62, you simply file for SS.

I am now 65, and when I was in my twenties there were already people my age blithely assuming SS wouldn't be around forty years later. I told those people then, and I tell young people now, that it will be around for them.

I knew a woman who managed to sneak outside the system when she was in her thirties and always be paid cash for the work she did. When she turned 65 she was still eligible for Medicare because she'd worked inside the system long enough in the past. She also was entitled to some SS, and was at first fearful that the system would come after her because of all the undeclared income she'd had in the intervening years. I persuaded her that they weren't going to care about that, and that she'd earned the SS and should collect it. She did.