Paper Trails Can Be Useful

Going paperless is a laudable effort because it saves trees, cuts waste and generally provides faster access to key information. But sometimes you have to wonder about the wisdom of doing away with certain paper records.

Take those yearly earning statements that Social Security mails out — what you'd get if you retired at 62, at 66, at 70. In an effort save money and steer more folks to the Social Security website, those statements will soon stop arriving in workers' mailboxes.

Good idea? Not so fast.

In the financial arena, you already may be flooded with e-mails from other sources – everything from your advisor about IRA funds and your bank with monthly statements, to credit card accounts and debt refinancing.

Your e-mail inbox can be just as cluttered with electronic messages as your U.S. mailbox with paper ones and, WMB suspects, a whole lot less secure.

Security At Risk

The government plans to provide the statements online by year’s end, if it can resolve security issues, Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue says. If that fails, the agency will resume the paper statements, which cost $70 million a year to mail, he says.

“We're just right now trying to figure out the most cost-effective and convenient way to provide that (online access) to the American public,” Astrue tells The Associated Press. The statements, mailed to 150 million people each year, project future benefit payments, helping workers plan for retirement.

Advocates for older Americans say they’re sympathetic about the agency's budget problems, but several say an online option is insufficient, especially for people who may not have computer skills or access to computers.

“As far as the information being available online, that's not going to help a lot of people we work with,” says Max Richtman, executive vice president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“This (statement) was a concrete piece of paper, a document that workers would receive that would give them confidence in the program (solvency),” Richtman notes. “Otherwise, they hear a lot of the debate in Washington. It's going to be there; it's not going to be there.”

What We See

WMB believes Richtman is absolutely correct when he talks about the statements representing something tangible and useful, especially in terms of seeing your time horizon in relation to earnings and retirement income.

Few people would argue the same about Internet websites, which come and go and are subject to hackers’ whims at any time, regardless of how great the site’s security features claim to be.

Since the 1980s, Social Security statements have been mailed each year to workers older than 25. They include a history of taxable earnings for each year — so people can check for mistakes — as well as the total amount of Social Security and Medicare taxes paid over the lifetime of the worker.

The statements provide estimates of monthly benefits, based on current earnings and when a worker plans to retire. The statements are mailed throughout the year; so many people have already received them this year. Tens of millions have not.

The agency does offer a benefits estimator on its website that Astrue says can be even more helpful than the annual Social Security statements.

Workers can enter their Social Security numbers on the website and get estimates of future benefits, depending on when they plan to retire.

“You can go online and you can get a very accurate estimate of your likely retirement benefits,” Astrue says. “You can run scenarios.”

The website, however, does not provide the detailed earnings and payroll tax history that workers had been receiving in the mail each year.

Mary Johnson, a policy analyst at The Senior Citizens League, says the detailed paper statements help workers ensure they are getting credit for their proper earnings each year.

“When we get these we realize just how modest our benefit will be, and the need for savings, and to work as long as we are able to,” Johnson says.

No-Brainer Needed

Johnson is correct, and Social Security should shelve the idea of going paperless. Saving money is an admirable goal, but it should not come at the expense of serving the public interest, WMB believes.

The idea of giving personal e-mail addresses to the U.S. government and having to come up with yet another set of passwords and user ID to access Social Security information is not very appealing.

Let’s face it; we’re buried in web security issues. This paperless effort by the government just adds more for the average person to fret over and provides another target for hackers and spammers.

Ken Cocuzzo

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