Hello Any thoughts you could give me would be wonderful.
Currently I receive $685 SSDI. I was born completely blind in 1973. Up until eligibility off my own record, I received some off my dads (also blind) through DAC, Then I got married. I first applied and received SSDI off my own record when I was around 24 (1996). The amount was around $384. This was based off very minimal earnings at the time over few years, Approximately $6700 being max year.About a year later I received one very small increase due to earnings and any other increases where due to COLA. Then Lost my Job had very minimal work, many -0- years, So understandably no increases.

Seven years ago. I started a part time job. First year was great, earning approximately $22,000, Which pushed SGA and I lost SSDI for about 3 months. Later that year, the company cut my hours and I was able to do a expedited reapp. They where reinstated where I left off at around $645. I hoped during the re-ap that since I had earned more maybe they would have been little higher, but unfortunately not. For the last 6 years I have averaged income of around $14,500 to $15,500 from my part time job. I do know my income does show correctly for previous years right up to 2020 in the MySSA online portal.

It seems from what I have been told, my benefits should have gone up at least a little due to earnings and automatic recalculations every year. However, they have never increased other than COLA. It has been suggested to me by friends (That really don't know much more than me) that I call and ask for a "manual recalculation". However, I am unsure of what info I should make sure is correct. For example, One person informed me that I should make sure the "Onset date" is correct, but even that I have conflicting information. One telling me it should be 1973 since I was born Blind and another telling me it should be 1996 when I first applied, another saying it should be the reapp date and even yet another saying it actually doesn't matter and has no effect on amount. I am also told that since I am Blind and have been that way since birth and have always received benefits in someway from very young age, calculations are little different that what you usually read online, although I don't fully understand how, Something about not calculating full 35 years and such.

So my question is, would hurt to call and ask for a recalculation or does it sound like my thought that they should have gone up little are incorrect and would I be wasting my time. If I should, could you give me idea if there are any specific things I should inquire about to make all ducks are lined up properly in the gov'ts computers? And last can asking for manual re-calculation lower or some reason stop my benefits? Any info you could give me would be fantastic. Thanks Linda

Hi Linda,

Computing Social Security disability (SSDI) benefit rates is a complex process. Basically, SSDI benefits are based on an average of a variable number of years of a person's Social Security covered wage-indexed earnings. The younger that a person is when they qualify for SSDI, the fewer the number of earnings years used in the computation.

The earliest that you can qualify for SSDI is when you meet the minimum work credit requirement. Since you were born blind, you could have met the earnings requirement for SSDI with as few as 6 quarters of Social Security coverage (QC). That's the rough equivalent of one and a half years of earnings. Your onset date for SSDI can't be established any earlier than when you first meet the minimum earnings requirement, so your established SSDI onset date wouldn't be your year of birth. Instead, it would probably be sometime within a couple of years after you started working and paying into Social Security.

If you had enough credits to qualify for SSDI no later than age 24, your SSDI benefit rate was almost certainly initially calculated based on an average of your highest 2 years of Social Security covered earnings. They call that a disability freeze computation. So, it doesn't sound like any zero earnings years are being used to calculate your benefit rate. Disability freeze computations can be recomputed to credit a person with subsequent higher years of earnings, but some earnings years can't be used in a freeze computation.

Social Security could alternatively use a non-freeze disability computation to recompute your SSDI benefit rate, but that would mean using an average of more than 2 years of earnings. So, the bottom line is that I can't tell you whether or not your benefit rate would increase as a result of a recomputation. Social Security would use whichever computation method yields the highest benefit rate if and when your SSDI rate is recomputed.

In theory at least, your benefit rate could be lowered if you ask for a recomputation, but that would only happen to correct a prior computational error. The only way that I can imagine your benefits stopping as a result of a request for recomputation would be if new earnings information that affects your SSDI entitlement came to light during the processing of your request. Neither of those possibilities is likely to happen if you request a recomputation, but I can't give you any guarantees.

If you do want to request a recomputation of your SSDI benefit rate, you should submit a written request to Social Security on a form SSA-795 (https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-795.pdf) and include a copy of your W-2 form from the most recent year in which you had earnings.

Best, Jerry