Every month, millions of retirees’ bank accounts are filled up with deposits from government programs.
Sometimes, the government needs its money back.
That’s what happened to 74-year-old Roland Taylor, a partly-blind veteran who was, unbeknownst to him, being overpaid by Veterans Affairs for around a decade.
PAYBACK TIME
Taylor, of Griffin, Georgia, reportedly got $120,634 from the government by mistake.
Now, the VA wants him to pay it all back, according to a report by local Fox affiliate FOX 5 last year.
The trouble is, it was paid out over a period of years at $1,000 per month, and he’d already spent it.
He’d applied for disability benefits from the VA in 2012 with the help of friends.
The Vietnam vet was approved and started receiving the extra thousand dollars on top of his Social Security disability benefit.
After getting married, he was told by the VA his household made too much money.
Then, he got worse news.
Because he was already getting Social Security benefits for his disability, he should never have been paid at all.
They told him he needed to pay it all back.
“I ain’t got $20,” he told FOX 5.
“They’ve done paid you too much, and they didn’t realize it at the time, and now they’re going to blame it on you to get it back,” he said.
Ultimately, he got a reprieve — at least temporarily — from the VA, which paused collections on thousands of overpaid veterans like Taylor.
While overpayments by the VA and Social Security are rare, it can be wise to check to make sure you’re getting paid the correct amount.
GOLDEN YEARS?
Millions of Americans are heading for retirement with little or no savings.
That’s left many relying on a relatively small amount of money from the Social Security Administration.
Often, they find that’s not quite enough to have the retirement they want.
Or, they find it’s unreliable — like a set of grandparents who were in “sheer panic” after finding out they’d been overpaid $84,000.
Some have sought expert advice. Financial advise podcaster George Kamel recently shared tips for a 60-year-old with no savings.
One 55-year-old millionaire found that even he didn’t have enough to retire comfortably.
See how one 25-year-old plans to retire early.
