BTW, that $198/mo I get is after the effect of the WEP. It would have been $495/mo.

Anyway, back when I began planning for retirement conventional wisdom was that there would be no SS by the time I retired. Even if the system was still in existence, people like me who were planning for their own financial security in retirement would have, by doing do, forfeited their benefits through means testing or some other mechanism.

Of course, that was just as much malarkey then as it is now. But it did mean I didn't include SS benefits in my retirement planning, mine or my wife's, so now that we're getting them they're a windfall. What ever shall we do with that money?

We're paying our income tax with it. SS sends it to us, we turn it around and send it to the IRS. That makes all our other income effectively "tax free".