Social Security Equals Independence for This 87-Year-Old Ex-Real Estate Agent

“It never occurred to me to look to him for support,” says Jones. After all, the two had divorced more than 30 years earlier and had both remarried.

An agent at Jones’ local Social Security office explained that she was indeed eligible for survivor benefits as a divorced spouse. (Remarriage can be disqualifying, but not if you’re at least 60, as Jones was when she tied the knot again.) They started the paperwork over the phone. After that, she says, “I just had to come into the office and present my marriage certificate and some other documents.”

Focused on work

Jones met Sedgwick in 1960 while she was working in the collections department of a Los Angeles bank. She had a 2-year-old daughter from a brief marriage after high school; after they married, she and Sedgwick had two more girls.

Though her new husband earned a good living, Jones enjoyed working. While the children were young, she worked part-time for a general contractor and assisted a real estate appraiser. Once her youngest started kindergarten, she returned to full-time work as a teller at a Bank of America branch in Claremont, California.

She was promoted to head of the escrow office and helped start up the bank’s residential real estate loan programs. In 1985, the year she and Sedgewick split up, she left the bank to become a mortgage broker.

Fourteen years later, a client offered Jones a job at Century 21 as a real estate agent. “He said, ‘Come work for me, you’ll be rich,’ ” she recalls with a laugh. “I found out he told that to everyone in the office.”

Throughout her career, Jones said was so focused on the present, she never thought much about Social Security. Her retirement plan was simple: Keep working.

But at a party for her 65th birthday in 2002, she received a cake decorated as her Social Security card. As Jones passed around slices by her condo’s pool, her boss pulled her aside and urged her to start collecting her benefits.

Jones demurred, saying she wanted to keep working, but her boss assured her that as she had reached full retirement age — still 65 at the time — she wouldn’t see her benefit reduced for continuing to work.

Her benefit was modest, but with work income still coming in, she was usually able to bank it in her savings account. “That little amount that I got was just enough to take the pressure off if I didn’t have any commission coming in,” Jones says. “Social Security became something I relied on.”

A Social Security surprise

Switching to the survivor benefit in 2017 more than doubled Jones’s Social Security income. In addition, she got a lump-sum payment for back benefits — what she would have received had she filed when she became eligible. “The first time they sent me a check, I thought they’d made a mistake,” she says.

Today, she collects about $3,700 a month, enough for her to live entirely on her benefits.

“Social Security has allowed me to live a life — not like the Kardashians, but I’m very comfortable,” she says. She’s been able to stay in her own house and continue cooking monthly dinners for her daughter, son-in-law, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren who live nearby. She can treat herself to a pedicure, get her Lhasa Apso, Lily, groomed and, every other month, have her hair done.

“I’m so lucky I have that amount because I know of other people that don’t have that, that have to live with their children. They’ve lost their independence,” she says. “Being able to be on your own, have your own things, is what keeps a person moving and growing and looking forward to things.”

When she learned AARP’s CEO would be dropping by to talk about Social Security, Jones took a closer look at her full financial picture, which includes a savings account and a small stock portfolio. “I thought, Holy cow,” she recalls. “Without any additional income, [bills] would chew into my savings in no time at all, and then I’d have to sell the house” and move in with one of her daughters, she adds.

“I’m grateful for all of it, and I know that there are people that have so much less than I do,” Jones says. “All I can do is offer prayers up for them and hope that there are programs for them that … will take them through the rest of their years.”

With Social Security’s trust funds projected to run short of money in less than a decade, Jones also wants young people to understand what’s at stake, and to have the peace of mind she’s reached in retirement.

“I never thought about it until it was time to use it,” she says. “There’s security [in knowing] that I have this amount of money coming in every month, and I know how much is going out, and I know how much is left.”