I am now breaking into old childhood piggy banks in search of vintage coins that might be worth money.

This is how terrified I am of losing social security. Not to mention the crashing stock market.

Some of my old hand-blown glass piggy banks offered no way of retrieving the coins except to shatter them with a hammer. Gazing at these sturdy 65-year-old banks with their sweet piglet faces I just didn’t have the heart to destroy them. The sentimental value still outweighed what treasures I might find inside.

But my old coconut head bank was easy to crack open with its screw-out rubber stopper for quick retrieval.

Koko “A Nut Rrom Florida”  featuring a real coconut, hand painted with coin slots sat on my bedroom bookshelf for years as did an identical one in my brother’s room both souvenirs from my grandparent’s 1957 winter Florida vacation.

Now I have been hunched over my desk sorting through piles of once shiny pennies deeply tarnished with age that Koko had stored all these years.  Holding a jeweler’s loupe close to my eyes I examined each dull coin, literally separating the wheat from the chaff in search of WWII-era Lincoln Wheat Pennies. These coins can be valuable and the odds of one resting in a bank from the late 1950s increases the odds.

Koko and the drove of piggy banks their bellies filled with coins, followed me from home to home, from apartments in the city to houses in Huntington. Sometimes they were stored in cardboard boxes sometimes displayed on shelves, but always with me.

Not for a moment did I ever consider taking a coin out of these banks for over 65 years. Not for an Archie comic book, a Mad Magazine or a Mars bar. Never once, not even through my proverbial starving artists days would I have ever dreamed of opening up the banks.

Mom had instilled in me as a four-year-old to diligently place pennies, nickels, and dimes in my piggy banks for that proverbial rainy day.

The rainy days are here, and there’s a doozy of a storm approaching.  I never for a moment thought there would be a monsoon in my golden years.

Social Security is under attack.

Of course, I outgrew my piggy banks as my vehicle for saving money.

Along with investments,  I was always under the assumption that through the Social Security program, our government was helping me save my money. Not an entitlement as it is derisively called by the Trump administration but money I was entitled to because I earned it.

For over half a century I earned, it secure in the knowledge Uncle Sam was saving it for me.

Social Security Works For You When You Work

By the time I turned 18, I had moved past babysitting gigs and was ready to move on to a real paycheck.

Growing up in Nassau County, Long Island it was, as it is now, a Republican stronghold. Republicans ran the town and the county. My father, the president of his local Republican club was chummy with one-time N.Y. Senator Al D’Amato who in the 1970s was the Town Supervisor of Hempstead.

It was slim pickings when it came to getting a good summer job the summer before I left for college. However, to get a plum county job for the summer working at Jones Beach, my Dad promised to deliver up two Republican kiddies with the return promise of a good-paying job in the summer of 1973.

Dad delivered, as I registered for the first time at 18 as a Republican.

This, despite always identifying as a Democrat, and whose bedroom wallpaper was plastered over with political paraphernalia including posters of  Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern For President.

But for a beach bum like myself, a good-paying job that included sun and surf was too sweet to pass up. I figured I could surreptitiously switch parties for a great summer gig. Who would ever know?

And the pay was top-notch.

I remember the excitement of getting my first paycheck and quickly tearing open up the envelope. But when I saw the diminished amount on the printed check I was taken aback. Annoyed even.

Where did all that money go?

My parents reminded me that when you receive your paycheck a portion is automatically deducted for Social Security and Medicare taxes which fund retirement and disability benefits. That money, my earned money would come back to me in social security checks after I was 65.

I had been issued a social security card when I was in second grade and it is the same one I use today for identification. It was the one I showed in order to get this first-paying job.

I had no real sense of how very important Social Security was, how vital and a life-saving program that had been instituted under their beloved Franklin Roosevelt was.

At 18, retirement let alone 65 seemed so far into the future all I could do was fume. I sure could have used that extra money to buy another Huckapoo shirt.

I had dim recollections of the comic books explaining social security we were given in fifth grade. The same year Walt Disney told us girls all about Menstruation in a females-only film, my classmates were all handed out booklets issued by the government social security.

On the back cover were these words:

Social Security is an exemplar universal program. We all contribute to it, we all rely on it, and its broad scope has given it equally broad appeal and strength.

President Franklin Roosevelt, who signed Social Security into law, designed it this way for this very reason. As he told an adviser, the taxes everyone pays in give people “a legal, moral, and political right” to the benefits, which means “no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”

He’s talking to you Trump!

Let them Eat Cake

Revised Social Security Card For the Trump Years

Today our clueless Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnik just claimed that real Americans won’t mind if they miss a Social Security check.

As tone-deaf as Marie Antoinette, this ex-Wall Streeter pointed out how his 94-year-old mother-in-law wouldn’t complain if her Social Security check didn’t arrive this month.

Well, I don’t have a billionaire son-in-law to fall back on if that check didn’t show up.

Most Americans don’t.

In fact, I don’t have a safety net, and yes, I’d complain. I’d yell and scream. And I’m not a “fraudster, as Lutnik suggested anyone complaining must be.

I’m a nearly 70-year-old woman who counts on this money to get by, the money I put into for nearly half a century.

I once counted on the security promises of the U.S. government.

Instead, today I’m counting pennies.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.