I just read an answer you gave to someone who had just applied for social security benefits and then realized he wanted to change the start date to a month earlier. You told him he could do that by calling the SS office. However, he's still a couple of months out from the date he wants to change to. I want to do the same, but it is August 6, 2017 today, and I want to bump up my start date for actually receiving benefits from October to September. I did not realize when I originally signed up for September that the benefits won't start coming until October. I retired in June (school teacher), but my paychecks will run out on August 10. Waiting until October means I will go two months with no pay coming in!

Thank you for any advice.

Hi,

You'll need to submit a written request to Social Security to change your month of election to start benefits (https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0200204047). The preferred form used for this purpose is an SSA-795 (https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-795.pdf), which they would have on hand at any Social Security office. It may take them a couple of months to process your request, though, so there's no guarantee that you will actually get your first payment by September.

By the way, you may first want to consider running the maximization software on this website. You may have better filing options available to you.

Best, Jerry