Do I repay Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) if I suddenly have income and assets
"There are two types of insurance, which causes some confusion. Social Security Disability Insurance (which you indicate you have) is insurance you can receive benefit from if you earn enough ""work credits"" (payroll taxes) prior to your disability onset. It is not a needs-based program. Supplemental Security Income is a need-based program which does not consider your work history. To qualify for this, your total assets need to be lower than some threshold and your family income also below some threshold. If you inherit a home, or money, I doubt this would jeopardize your SSDI qualification, since your qualification was based on a disabling condition and work history. If you inherit an income property, which you manage (i.e. you become a landlord), this may jeopardize your claim that you are unable to work. Even if you are not making an ""income"" as the landlord, but the work your are performing is deemed to have some ""value"" this too could jeopardize your claim. All of this can be very complicated, and there are some excellent references on the web including SSA website, and some other related websites. Finally, if you become able to work while on SSDI, your benefit may/will end depending on the level of work you are able to perform. But just because you are able to work again does not mean you need to repay past benefits received (assuming your condition has not been falsified). Your local social security office, or the social security main office both offer telephone support and can also answer questions regarding your concern. Here are a couple relevant links:"
Think about how loans work for you personally.  When you charge a $50 dinner for two to your Visa card, you did not earn $50 in income.  You did not pay income tax on that $50.  The money you use to pay back that $50 at the end of the month is not tax deductible.    Interest on a loan is a business expense.    Repayment of principal is not a business expense, just as receiving the loan in the first place is not business income.   Effectively this means the LLC repays the loan with after-tax dollars.  Just like you do with your Visa card.  When I do corporate accounting, payment of loan interest shows up on the expense side of the Profit/Loss statement, and it makes the Balance Sheet net assets go down.   However payment of loan principal is effectively null.  It doesn't appear on the Profit/Loss at all -- and it's a wash on the Balance Sheet, as both Assets and Liabilities fall by the same amount. Some lenders will work with you if you contact them early and openly discuss your situation.  They are not required to do so.  The larger and more corporate the lender, the less likely you'll find one that will work with you. My experience is that your success in working out repayment plan for missed payments depends on the duration of your reduced income.  If this is a period of unemployment and you will be able to pay again in a number of months, you may be able to work out a plan on some debts. If you're permanently unable to pay in full, or the duration is too long, you may have to file bankruptcy to save your domicile and transportation.  The ethics of this go beyond this forum, as do the specifics of when it is advisable to file bankruptcy. Research your area, find debt counselling.  They can really help with specifics.  Speak with your lenders, they may be able to refer you to local non-profit services.  Be sure that you find one of those, not one of the predatory lenders posing as credit counselling services.  There's even some that take the money you can afford to pay, divide it up over your creditors, allowing you to keep accruing late/partial payment fees, and charge you a fee on top of it.  To me this is fraudulent and should be cause for criminal charges. The key is open communication with your lenders with disclosure to the level that they need to know.  If you're disabled, long term, they need to know that.  They do not need to know the specific symptoms or causes or discomforts.  They need to know whether the Social Security Administration has declared you disabled and are paying you a disability check.  (If this is the case, you probably have a case worker who can find you resources to help negotiate with your creditors). "As ApplePie discusses, ""tax bracket"" without any modifiers refers to a single jurisdiction's marginal tax rate.  In your case, this is either your California's ""tax bracket"" or your Federal ""tax bracket"" (not including marginal Social Security and Medicare taxes).  But if someone says ""combined state and federal tax bracket"", they probably mean the combination of your state and federal income tax brackets (again, lot including sales taxes, business and occupational taxes, social security taxes, and medicare taxes).  The math to combine the state and federal marginal tax rates is a bit tricky, because most people can deduct either their state and local income taxes, or their state and local general sales taxes when computing their income for federal income tax purposes.  (The federal ""alternative minimum tax"" restricts this deduction for some people.) For a single person earning $ 100,000 of salaries and wages in California, whose state income taxes are close to their standard deduction, the calculations for the combined marginal income tax rate look something like this: As mentioned above, this understates the tax bite on marginal ""earned income"".  To find the true marginal rate, we need to add in Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, sales taxes, and business & occupation taxes.  The Social Security and Medicare taxes are sometimes called ""self employment taxes"".  This math omits unemployment insurance and workers' compensation insurance, because those taxes are typically capped well below $ 100,000 per year of income.  This math also omits B & O taxes, because this question is California specific. If an employer wishes to increase an employee's pay by $ 1,076.50, the first $ 76.50 will go to the employer's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes.  The remaining $ 1,000.00 will be subject to the combined marginal income tax rate discussed above, plus will have $ 76.50 go to the employee's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes.  The employee might buy some extra things with some of their extra money, and pay sales tax on them. In 2016, a 9 % sales tax rate was common in California's largest cities. The IRS estimated that (for a single person with no dependents making $ 100,000 per year who did not buy a boat, RV, motor vehicle, or major home construction), about 9 % of their marginal gross income was subject to sales tax." I'm of the belief that you should always put 20% down.  The lower interest rate will save you thousands over the life of the loan.  Also PMI is no different then burning that much cash in the fireplace every month. From Wikipedia Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI), also known as Private mortgage insurance (PMI) in the US, is insurance payable to a lender or trustee for a pool of securities that may be required when taking out a mortgage loan. It is insurance to offset losses in the case where a mortgagor is not able to repay the loan and the lender is not able to recover its costs after foreclosure and sale of the mortgaged property. You are basically paying money each month for the bank to be insured against you not paying your mortgage.  But in actuality the asset of the condo should be that insurance. Only you can decide if you are comfortable with having $50k in liquidity or not.  It sounds like a good cushion to me but I don't know the rest of your expenses. You don't decide what gets to be owed, the government does. In your example, they wouldn't owe 1000, they would determine that they only have enough for 750. So guess what, you're now owed only 750. It's called cutting benefits. "Having dealt with with Social Security, state agencies, and banks more than I'd care to, I would urge you to do the following: 1) Get a 100% clear answer on whether or not you are listed as ""joint"" or ""authorized user/signer"" for an account. This will probably require a call to the bank, but for less than an hour of you and your friend's time you will save yourself a whole lot of hassle. The difference is like this: if you worked at a business that added you as an authorized user for a credit or debit card, this would allow you to use the card to buy things. But that doesn't make the money in the bank yours! On the other hand if you are listed as ""joint"", this regards ownership, and it could become tricky to establish whether its your money or not to any governmental satisfaction. 2) You are completely correct in being honest with the agency, but that's not enough - if you don't know what the facts are, you can't really be honest with them. If the form is unclear it's ok to ask, ""on having a bank account, does being listed as an authorized user on someone else's account count if it isn't my money or bank account?"" But if you are listed as holding the account jointly, that changes the question to: ""I am listed as joint on someone else's checking account, but it isn't my money - how is that considered?"" To Social Security it might mean generating an extra form, or it might mean you need to have the status on the account changed, or they might not care. But if you don't get the facts first, they won't give you the right answers or help you need. And from personal experience, it's a heck of a lot easier to get a straight and clear answer from a bank than it is from a federal government agency. Have the facts with you when you contact them and you'll be ok - but trust me, you don't want them guessing!" Your contributions that you've already made are made and done, and will not disappear. What the Windfall Elimination Provision does is make sure that people do not collect the subsidized low-income payments while also collecting a full pension.  People who did not pay anything into SS are able to collect money - less, but still something - from the system.  Prior to this provision, people on full pensions who were exempt from SS contributions (such as teachers in many places) were able to still collect those amounts (which were never earned through contributions) even though they had quite significant pensions; that led to subsidies being given to people that didn't have as much need for them, as opposed to the indigent people who did need them. In your case, earning for 20+ years and then presumably only earning a small pension, you may be affected by this, but not necessarily severely.   First of all, you are limited in how much your total reduction is to the lesser of a bit over $400 ($413 in 2015) or half your pension amount per month; so if you earn a $200 in pension monthly, your SS benefits are reduced by $100 monthly at most. Second, your percentage (and total cap) is reduced if you have over 20 years of credited work at 62 by 10% per credited year, and if you hit 30 years it's eliminated.  So if you have 25 years right now, your total reduction is more like $200 at most. You also have an option to keep earning via credited work.  Do some part-time work or summer work, for example.  Sell things online.  Whatever you need to do in order to get more years of credited work such that you end up with 30 years at 62.  That will then increase your benefits back to the full amount. This article published on Nasdaq's website explains how this works in detail, including tables of benefit reductions.  And, log in to ssa.gov to check how many years of creditable coverage you have and to see if you can get to 30 years and avoid any issues with this at all. Stephen G. Price is knowledgeable in handling asset division issues while ensuring that you meet all legal obligations. Allow us to assist you in going through the complex financial issues you will have to face, such as pension entitlements and capital gains. http://stephengprice.com/divorce-separation/