Let's settle the big one first, because it is the thing people actually lie awake about.

Your own retirement benefit, once you have earned it and started receiving it, is about as secure as anything in American finance.

You cannot lose it by owning too much. You cannot lose it by inheriting money. You cannot lose it by moving, by remarrying, by getting sued, by having a bad year, or by any means test, because there is not one.

Forty credits and you are in. Permanently.

So if the worry is that Social Security might be taken away from you personally, the answer is no. Breathe.

Now the honest part.

Almost everything else in the system is losable. Benefits based on someone else's record, disability benefits, SSI, and benefits for dependents all come with conditions, and those conditions can end them.

The people who get hurt are almost never the ones worried about the retirement benefit. They are the ones who did not know their type of benefit had rules attached.

Here is the whole map.

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