Should you apply for Social Security Disability?
The answer to that question really depends on whether or not you’re working or not working.
If you’re not working, then YES – you should absolutely apply for Social Security disability, if you have a medical condition that’s going to prevent you from working for at least one full calendar year. There really are no downsides to applying.
You can apply online, it’s very easy!
There’s no upfront costs associated with applying for social security disability.
If you want to hire a lawyer for your Social Security Disability case, your lawyer will get paid out of the back due benefits that you do if your case has won.
If you decide that you no longer want to pursue your claim, and you want to drop it in just in the middle of the process. You wouldn’t owe your lawyer anything for doing that. So long as you’re not able to work through a medical condition.
There really are no downsides to just getting a disability application file for yourself. If you don’t apply for Social Security disability, or you take a lot of time deciding whether or not you want to apply. There are disadvantages and drawbacks to that.
For SSDI – which is the more favorable of the two programs for disability between SSDI and SSI, the program that pays more has deadlines associated with it, you have to qualify for it before a certain date in order to get the higher amount for disability benefits. Usually, if you have a strong work history, you’ll have five years within which to apply for and get disability benefits. However, it can take up to two years for a claim to go from the application to the hearing level. So you get denied the first time at the hearing level, you’ve already used one of your bites at the apple assuming you have the full five years if you are currently employed in considering applying for disability because your medical conditions are making it harder and harder to do your job. That is a much harder situation to be in to determine whether or not you should apply for disability. Some questions come to mind, the primary one you’re going to need to answer is:
How are you going to support yourself?
Usually it takes about a year and a half to two years for disability claim to go from start to finish.
How will you support yourself while your claim is pending?
Are your doctors going to be willing to support your Social Security Disability claim?
You’re going to want to take a statement to your doctor and have them complete a form for you that talks about what your limitations are. They’re called a either a physical functional capacity form or a mental functional capacity form. If you don’t have a copy of these documents, you can search for them on the internet. I also have copies of them available on my website:
Just download my guide to disability and I attach them for the back of it.
Another question you’re going to want to answer is:
Are you going to be able to continue affording medical care while your disability claims pending?
Disability claims are mostly decided on the contents of your medical records. So if you’re no longer going to be able to get medical care because you quit your job to apply for disability, then that can be a problem for you if you’re no longer able to get medical treatment.
Another thing that you should be able to consider is:
How will continuing to work negatively or will it negatively affect your health?
If you have to a hard job that requires a lift a lot or be on your feet a lot?
Will this cause your physical condition to continue to deteriorate?
Before you quit your job, you should probably talk to a lawyer regarding what’s your chances are to get disability benefits, if you have a poor chance of getting disability either due to your age or to the severity of your symptoms, you’re going to want to know that up front for you quit work so that you don’t waste two years of your life to get to the end of a process where you never really had a shot to begin with.
You should consider prior to quitting if you’re wanting to apply for disability is if you’re on the cusp of getting fired or getting fired from a job. From a storytelling standpoint, it’s more compelling to disability judge than just quitting a job because your conditions got severe. So if you think you might get fired from your job, you might just wait for that to happen instead of quitting.
And finally, before you quit, you should consider whether or not you’re going to be able to live off of your monthly disability benefits if your case does get granted disability paid some doesn’t pay a whole lot if you live by yourself or if you have high overhead expenses. You should certainly call the SSA find out what your monthly benefit would be and know that going into the process so you don’t get yourself in a bind after you quit your job.