Most people assume that if you get hurt on the job, the system catches you. Workers compensation exists. Disability insurance exists. Social Security exists. The safety net, conventional wisdom says, is there. Glenn Underwood, 55, a Baltimore auto mechanic who owns a small repair shop off Harford Road, would like a word with that conventional wisdom.
I first connected with Glenn in early February 2026, after he posted in a private Facebook group for people approaching retirement age. His post was brief and understated — a single paragraph asking whether anyone had experience applying for SSDI after a workers comp denial. Something about the way he framed it, quietly specific and clearly exhausted, made me reach out via direct message. He agreed to talk the following week.
The Injury That Started Everything
When I sat down with Glenn Underwood over the phone on a Tuesday afternoon, the first thing he did was correct my assumption that his situation was recent. The injury happened in September 2024 — a hydraulic lift failure at his shop that sent a partially elevated Ford F-150 lurching sideways. Glenn braced against it instinctively and ruptured two discs in his lower back.
He was back at the shop within three weeks, he told me, because he had no real choice. He is the shop. He employs one part-time assistant and handles most of the diagnostic and mechanical work himself. But the pain was serious enough that he could no longer work more than four hours at a stretch, and some days not at all.
His workers compensation insurer denied the claim in November 2024, citing what they described as degenerative disc disease that predated the accident. Glenn had no attorney at that point. He didn’t contest it immediately. He was focused on keeping the shop open and managing the medical bills that were piling up.
By December 2024, he had put approximately $19,400 across three credit cards — emergency room visits, an MRI, a specialist consultation, and physical therapy copays. His shop revenue had dropped from roughly $8,200 a month to just under $4,600 because of the hours he could no longer work.
No Retirement Safety Net — and No Plan B
Glenn has been self-employed for most of his adult life. He opened the shop at 34, after a decade working at a dealership. He never set up a SEP-IRA. He never opened a solo 401(k). His divorce in 2019 wiped out what little he had accumulated in a joint savings account — roughly $31,000, split and mostly gone to legal fees and a move into a smaller apartment.
At 55, his retirement savings balance is zero. Not approximately zero — literally zero. He knows this is not a comfortable fact to share publicly, and he paused for a few seconds before confirming it to me.
Glenn’s situation is not as unusual as it might seem. According to the Social Security Administration, self-employed workers are significantly underrepresented in private retirement plan participation. For someone in his position, Social Security — whether retirement or disability — often becomes the only structured benefit available.
Filing for SSDI — and Running Into the Wall
Glenn filed his SSDI application in January 2025, roughly four months after the injury. He did it online, without an attorney, and told me the process felt manageable at first. He submitted his medical records, his MRI results, and documentation of his reduced work capacity.
The Social Security Administration denied his initial claim in April 2025. The denial letter cited insufficient medical evidence that his condition prevented all substantial gainful activity — the legal standard for SSDI approval. At the time of our conversation, Glenn had filed for reconsideration and was waiting on a response that was already three months past the estimated processing window.
The timeline matters enormously for someone in Glenn’s financial position. The SSDI process has a built-in five-month waiting period from the established onset date before benefits can begin — meaning even if he is ultimately approved, he will not receive back-pay for those first five months. And the average wait for a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge, if reconsideration is also denied, currently runs between 12 and 18 months in many SSA field offices.
What Changed — and What Still Hasn’t
The turning point, Glenn told me, was a conversation with a legal aid organization in Baltimore that connected him with a disability attorney willing to work on contingency. Under federal rules, SSDI attorneys can only collect fees if the case is won, capped at 25% of back pay or $7,200 — whichever is less, according to SSA fee guidelines. He had nothing to lose financially by getting representation.
His attorney immediately flagged two problems with his original application: he had not submitted a functional capacity evaluation from his treating physician, and his documented work hours — still averaging 20 per week at the shop — complicated the argument that he was unable to perform substantial gainful activity. The threshold for 2025 was $1,620 per month in earnings for non-blind individuals.
In the meantime, Glenn has reduced his shop hours further and is trying to document his limitations more consistently. He applied for a hardship payment plan with two of his three credit card issuers. One agreed. One did not. The third sent the account to collections in January 2026.
Where Glenn Stands Today
As of late March 2026, Glenn’s reconsideration is still pending. His attorney has submitted the functional capacity evaluation and additional physician notes. Glenn is cautiously optimistic — his words — but he used that phrase in the way people do when they’ve already been disappointed once and don’t want to be caught hoping too hard.
If approved for SSDI, his estimated monthly benefit based on his earnings record would be approximately $1,480 — not enough to cover his current expenses without drawing down on what little operational cash the shop still generates. He has started thinking about whether he could eventually hire someone to run the shop floor while he manages the business side from a seated position, though he described this plan as more aspiration than strategy.
What struck me most in talking with Glenn was not the financial complexity of his situation — though it is genuinely complicated — but how much of it stemmed from a single assumption: that the systems around him would function the way he had been told they would. Workers comp would cover workplace injuries. Hard work would build something worth selling. The safety net would catch him.
None of those things turned out to be automatic. Glenn’s case is still open, his outcome still uncertain. He checks his SSA online account every few days. He told me he’s gotten good at not getting his hopes up before noon.
I’ll follow up with Glenn when a decision arrives. Whatever it is, his story is a reminder that for millions of Americans approaching retirement without savings, Social Security is not a supplement — it is the plan. And the plan has a 67% first-denial rate.
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