I was told by ss several times I couldn’t get both ss and rr retirement. I was told you couldn’t double dip. Now I find out years later that you can. I’ve lost out on a lot of money because the people at ss didn’t give me the right answer. Can anything be done?

Hi. You can apply for Social Security benefits now, but you could only be paid retroactively for up to 6 months from the month you apply. However, if you can prove that you were dissuaded from applying sooner due to misinformation you received from a Social Security employee, then you could potentially be paid additional retroactive benefits. Information on establishing misinformation can be found in the following section of Social Security's operations manual: https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0200204008.

For the record, if you're collecting Railroad Retirement (RR) benefits and if you apply for Social Security benefits, the Railroad Retirement Board will offset your monthly Tier 1 RR benefit dollar for dollar by the amount of your monthly Social Security benefit. Therefore, you'll likely only gain by filing for Social Security benefits if your Social Security benefit rate is higher than your Tier 1 RR rate.

Best, Jerry