Most retirement planning advice rests on a quiet assumption that almost nobody examines out loud: that Social Security will simply be there, in full, when you finally need it. For the roughly 40 million American workers who lack meaningful private savings, that assumption is not a comfort — it is the entire plan. And right now, that plan has more cracks in it than most benefits journalists bother to report.
I first heard Linda Dupree’s voice on a Tuesday afternoon in January 2026. She had called into Your Money, Your Future, a benefits-focused segment on WBEZ Chicago’s midday programming, and asked a question that stopped the host mid-sentence: “If the government keeps spending money on wars, does that eventually come out of our Social Security?” The host offered a vague reassurance and moved on. I wrote Linda’s name in my notebook and called the segment producer before the show had finished airing.
When I sat down with Linda Dupree two weeks later at a coffee shop near her apartment in Pilsen, I understood immediately why that question had rattled even a seasoned radio host. At 38, Linda is not someone given to catastrophizing. She describes her money philosophy as “boring on purpose” — automated transfers, conservative spending, a distrust of anything she cannot put in a spreadsheet. But three compounding financial disasters had rearranged her life over the previous four years, and underneath her careful composure was a person who had genuinely begun to wonder whether the one safety net she was counting on would still be intact when she reached it.
Three Hits She Did Not See Coming
Linda has worked as a bank teller at a regional branch in Chicago’s Loop district for eleven years. Her annual salary sits at approximately $38,400 — enough to live on in a modest Pilsen apartment, but without much tolerance for financial shocks. For years, she absorbed none.
The first shock arrived in 2022, when Linda cosigned a $13,500 personal loan for a close friend who was launching a small catering business. “He had a real plan. I believed in the plan,” Linda told me, folding her hands around her coffee cup. “Eight months later, he stopped paying. I didn’t find out until collection calls started coming to my cell phone.” The default lodged on her credit report and consumed the $4,800 emergency fund she had spent three years assembling, as she scrambled to cover monthly payments to limit the damage — a battle she ultimately lost anyway. Her credit score dropped below 600 by the end of that year.
The second hit came in early 2024: identity theft. Someone opened two credit cards in Linda’s name, charged approximately $7,200 across both accounts, and disappeared. The dispute and remediation process with the three major credit bureaus took fourteen months. For most of that period, her score hovered below 580. “I cried exactly once,” she said, without self-pity. “Then I made a binder.”
The third ongoing pressure is her younger brother, Marcus, now a junior at the University of Illinois Chicago. Linda covers roughly $420 per month toward his tuition gap — money she would otherwise direct toward retirement savings. She does not frame this as a sacrifice. She frames it as a decision she made and stands behind.
The Question Behind the Radio Question
What Linda was really asking on that WBEZ segment was something larger than a caller’s curiosity: can external forces — wars, energy crises, geopolitical realignments — actually destabilize the Social Security program that low- and moderate-income workers depend on most heavily? The honest answer is yes, at least at the margins, and the mechanism is not widely understood.
According to SSA.gov’s retirement benefits overview, the Social Security trust funds are projected to face depletion around 2035 under current law, at which point incoming payroll tax revenue would cover only approximately 83% of scheduled benefits. That figure is frequently cited. What gets far less attention is how large-scale military spending, energy market disruption, and dollar-system instability can tighten that timeline.
Analysts covering the economic implications of the Iran conflict noted in early 2026 that sustained U.S. military engagement carries a specific threat to the petrodollar system — the decades-old arrangement by which global oil markets are priced in U.S. dollars, which in turn drives persistent international demand for U.S. Treasury bonds. Those Treasury bonds are precisely where the Social Security trust funds park their reserves. If dollar-denominated assets lose standing in global energy markets, the downstream effect on trust fund investment returns is not theoretical. It is arithmetic.
“I work at a bank,” Linda said when I walked her through this connection. “I understand how interest rate changes create ripple effects through a balance sheet. So when someone tells me the trust fund earns interest on Treasury bonds, and then tells me geopolitical instability could suppress those returns for years, I hear that differently than most people might.” She looked down at the table. “It makes me feel like I’m already behind, and the finish line is moving.”
What Her Social Security Statement Actually Says
The numbers are both reassuring and sobering, depending on your angle. Linda pulled out her phone and showed me the statement she had retrieved from her My Social Security account the evening before we met. Based on her current earnings record, she is projected to receive approximately $1,340 per month if she claims at her full retirement age of 67 — a projection that assumes she continues working at her current earnings level without interruption until retirement.
The 2025 Cost-of-Living Adjustment, according to SSA.gov’s COLA information, came in at 2.5% — down from 8.7% in 2023 and 3.2% in 2024. For current beneficiaries, that translated to roughly $49 added to the average monthly check. Linda tracks this number deliberately, because she understands that the COLA formula is tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, and that energy price spikes — exactly the kind that follow military disruptions near the Strait of Hormuz — can distort that calculation in ways that may not fully compensate lower-income households.
“I have $3,100 saved. I am 38 years old,” Linda said, stating it flatly, without theater. “That number scares me more than anything else I have told you today.”
The Turning Point: Reclaiming the Variables She Can Control
Linda’s brother Marcus is on track to graduate in May 2027. When he does, she has already calculated that $420 per month will free up in her budget. She showed me the spreadsheet on her phone — color-coded, with formulas visible at the top of each column. The allocation is already decided: $250 per month to a Roth IRA, $100 toward rebuilding an emergency fund from its current balance of $640, and $70 to continue disputing residual credit damage from the identity theft.
She has also taken two steps that she says restored a measure of agency. She filed a credit freeze with all three major bureaus — something she wishes she had done before the identity theft. And she activated a My Social Security account to monitor her earnings record annually for errors or signs of fraudulent activity, a precaution that is available to any worker with a Social Security number and an email address.
An Outcome That Is Still Being Written
Linda has not solved her retirement savings gap. At 38 with $3,100 set aside and roughly 29 years until full retirement age, she is operating far below conventional savings benchmarks. She is not where she planned to be, and she knows precisely why. None of those reasons were careless. Most were other people’s failures landing on her balance sheet.
What has shifted is her relationship with information she used to avoid. She no longer skips past her Social Security statement because the projected benefit feels too small to act on. She no longer treats geopolitical headlines as irrelevant noise. “When I see reporting about oil prices or the Strait of Hormuz,” she told me near the end of our conversation, “I don’t change the channel anymore. I think about my COLA. I think about the trust fund.”
As I walked back toward the L stop after leaving the coffee shop, I kept thinking about how many workers in Linda’s position — earning under $40,000, absorbing other people’s financial failures, supporting family on a single income — are essentially building their entire retirement on the assumption that Social Security delivers. For them, the program is not a supplement. It is the structure.
Whether her $250-a-month Roth contributions will close the gap enough, whether Social Security will deliver the $1,340 her statement projects, whether the macro risks stay distant or eventually become personal — those answers are genuinely open. What I know after two hours with Linda Dupree is that she is asking the right questions and losing the right amount of sleep over them. The people who should worry her are the ones who aren’t asking any questions at all.
This article is reported narrative journalism and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Readers with questions about their Social Security benefits or earnings records should contact the Social Security Administration directly at SSA.gov or by calling 1-800-772-1213.
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