Social Security: Simple & Smart: (Updated for 2025)

Reading this book is a must for those facing the social security years or for those who are helping their relatives and friends navigate that system. Shut out the current media's noise on social security and instead educate yourself about the system in general and your situation in particular. The author has a clear simplistic writing style that reduces a sometimes complex and even convoluted topic into a straight forward and easily understandable one. Chapters are broken up into various topics for easy future reference. This short book is easily absorbable in a few hours. Highly recommend!

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Well written and concise, this book explains the Social Security program and provides the information you need when deciding when to begin taking benefits.

Book is good to read if you're ready for social security.

I bought it for my wife as a reference book. She just enrolled in the Medicare program at 65. Tom Margenau lived S.S. for 32 years. He oughta know.

You can finish it in a day and get so much information about SSA. It will be a great investment for your retirement. Highly recommend.

Tom Margenau’s *Social Security: Simple & Smart* is a well-intentioned guide that delivers a solid foundation for understanding the complexities of Social Security. The updated 2025 edition includes timely revisions like the 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), updated earnings limits, and new benefit thresholds, which are clearly outlined and relevant for both retirees and those planning ahead.The book’s fact sheet format is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allows readers to jump directly to topics like spousal benefits, disability claims, or taxation of benefits without wading through unrelated content. On the other hand, the segmented structure can feel disjointed, and the lack of narrative flow may leave some readers struggling to connect the dots between related concepts.While Margenau’s decades of experience with the SSA lends credibility, the writing occasionally slips into bureaucratic language. Terms like “primary insurance amount” and “delayed retirement credits” are used without much simplification, which could be intimidating for readers unfamiliar with the system. A glossary or more real-world examples would’ve helped bridge that gap.Visually, the book is sparse—no charts, infographics, or visual aids to break up the text or reinforce key points. For a topic as number-heavy as Social Security, that’s a missed opportunity. While there are some general instructions for filing social security I didn’t get enough from these few paragraphs. Be mention of the Medicare process.In short, this book is a moderately useful reference for readers who already have a basic understanding of Social Security and want to stay current with 2025 changes. That said I didn't learn anything new. But for true beginners hoping for a “simple” walkthrough, it may require a second read—and a notepad. A decent resource, just not quite the streamlined guide the title suggests or better yet, skip this book and just make an account on the SS site and read through the materials there for free.

This book is well organized, easily readable, and thoroughly understandable. That is something you cannot say about the regulations it covers.