Roughly 40 percent of Americans approaching retirement age say their biggest fear is not death — it is outliving their money, according to estimates from Social Security Administration policy research. Franklin Womack, 57, is not a statistic. He is a meticulous insurance claims adjuster from Phoenix, Arizona, who can calculate actuarial risk in his sleep — and still cannot stop the anxiety from surfacing at 2 a.m.
I found Franklin through a call for sources I posted on social media in early March 2026. I was looking for people actively navigating government benefits — not in crisis, necessarily, but in the complicated middle ground where income does not equal security. Within hours, Franklin had filled out my intake form with surgical precision: every dollar amount typed, every date confirmed, every question answered in bullet points. That alone told me something about who he was.
When I met him over a video call on a Tuesday afternoon — he was still in his work-from-home setup, a second monitor glowing behind him — he had a yellow legal pad already covered in handwritten numbers. His daughter Nora, age 3, was at daycare. He had exactly 90 minutes before pickup.
The Injury That Changed the Calculation
Franklin had been a claims adjuster for nearly 18 years when, in October 2023, he slipped during a field inspection of a flood-damaged property in Tempe. Two herniated discs. Surgery in December. A six-month recovery that stretched into eight. He returned to work in modified capacity in August 2024, but chronic pain has limited his field hours and, with them, the productivity bonuses that once padded his income.
His employer’s long-term disability policy — the kind he had always advised clients to read carefully — kicked in at 60 percent of his base salary. On paper, that sounded reasonable. In practice, it meant roughly $4,750 per month instead of his usual take-home of around $6,200 after taxes and benefits deductions.
The monthly gap — roughly $1,450 — does not sound catastrophic until you stack the line items. His mortgage runs $2,100 per month. Daycare for Nora costs $1,380 per month, a number Franklin described as “basically a second mortgage payment.” Groceries, utilities, car insurance, and his own medical copays fill the rest. His ex-partner provides no financial support. Nothing is left for savings.
He explored SSDI — Social Security Disability Insurance — after his surgeon suggested it. But because Franklin returned to modified work, he did not meet SSA’s definition of substantial gainful activity impairment at the required level. He did not qualify. That door closed in the spring of 2025.
The Property Tax Problem Nobody Warned Him About
The $4,800 in back property taxes is the number that keeps Franklin up at night most immediately. Maricopa County issued a delinquency notice in January 2026. He has until May 2026 before penalties compound further and the county begins its lien process.
Franklin told me he made a deliberate decision to let the taxes slide during the worst months of his recovery in early 2024. He was prioritizing daycare and his mortgage. “I told myself I’d catch up once I was back to full pay. But full pay hasn’t come back the way I thought it would,” he said.
He is currently negotiating a payment plan with the Maricopa County Treasurer’s office, hoping to structure quarterly installments that fit inside his modified income. He said the process has been more navigable than he expected, but the uncertainty of approval — and the waiting — is its own kind of stress for someone wired like him.
The Longer Fear — Social Security at 67 and a Child Who Will Be 13
The property tax situation is urgent. But Franklin’s deeper anxiety is structural. He was born in 1969, which means his full retirement age under Social Security is 67. That is a decade away. Nora will be 13. He will need income well past the point when most retirement projections assume a person’s expenses drop.
Franklin has been using the SSA’s My Social Security portal obsessively — his word — since his injury. His projected retirement benefit at age 67 currently shows approximately $2,780 per month, based on his earnings history. At age 70, if he delays claiming, that figure climbs to roughly $3,450. The difference is meaningful. The question, as he put it, is whether he can afford to wait.
There is a second variable he has studied closely: the Social Security trust fund. The 2025 Social Security Trustees Report projects the combined OASI and DI trust funds could be depleted by approximately 2033 to 2035, at which point incoming payroll taxes would cover only around 83 percent of scheduled benefits. Franklin is acutely aware of this. He brought it up unprompted before I had a chance to ask.
He also raised something I had not expected him to know about: survivor benefits. Because Nora is under 18, she would qualify for a child’s survivor benefit through Social Security if Franklin were to die before she reaches adulthood. That benefit can equal up to 75 percent of the deceased worker’s primary insurance amount. Franklin said knowing that exists gives him a measure of peace — but only a measure.
What He Has Done, and What Remains Unresolved
Franklin is not passive about this. His methodical nature means he has taken concrete steps, even under financial pressure.
None of these steps resolve the underlying math. His 401(k) balance stood at roughly $214,000 as of December 2025 — real money, but not enough to bridge a multi-decade retirement that begins with a teenage daughter still at home. The LTD policy expires when he turns 65. The gap between 65 and 67 — full retirement age — is something he has not yet solved for.
He told me near the end of our conversation that he had recently started keeping a notepad by his bed — not to write down ideas, but to write down the questions that wake him up so he can look up answers in the morning instead of lying there. I asked if that helped. He thought for a moment. “It keeps the morning productive,” he said. “The night is still the night.”
What Franklin’s Story Reflects About a Broader Gap
Franklin Womack is not a low-income story. He earns well above the national median. He has professional knowledge that most people navigating these systems lack entirely. And he is still exposed — to the limits of employer disability coverage, to the uncertainty baked into Social Security’s projected solvency, and to the particular financial weight of raising a young child alone without a second income.
His situation surfaces a gap that rarely gets discussed: the space between earning a reasonable income and actually being protected. Disability coverage that replaces 60 percent of salary was designed for average expenses, not for Phoenix housing costs, not for $1,380-per-month toddler childcare, and not for a parent with no co-signer on any of it.
When I ended the call, Franklin was already moving — he had eleven minutes before he needed to leave for Nora’s daycare pickup. He thanked me for listening to “all of it,” as he put it. Then he said something that stayed with me: “Most people see the job title and assume the rest. The title doesn’t tell you anything about the gaps.”
He is right. And the gaps, as I have reported on benefits long enough to know, are exactly where the system most consistently fails people who thought they had planned well enough.
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