Somebody is going to read this and think it does not apply to them.
It applies to them.
Roughly 70 percent of people turning 65 today will need some form of long-term help with daily activities before they die. Not a nursing home necessarily. Help. Getting dressed, getting up the stairs, getting to the bathroom at 3am.
That is not a fringe scenario. That is the majority outcome, and yet almost nobody plans for the version of retirement where their body files a complaint.
Here is the strange thing about becoming disabled after you have already retired. The rules are completely different from becoming disabled while working, and most of what people think they know comes from the working version.
You are about to learn something that surprises nearly everyone: the disability benefit you spent forty years paying into does not exist for you anymore.
And that is not as bad as it sounds. Stay with me.