I will receive my first check this month. I applied and then had a 2 hour phone interview and then received a letter of approval. To be eligible you have to have credits of the years you worked which I have worked since age 16. But I know that City workers and ? State workers do not have social security taken from their checks due to a seperate pension plans offered. That is what happen to my mom working for the city when she retired. But, my husband only worked part time to help me we both have great bosses so we had to use a lot of our saving for bills plus medical bills. This social security will be a very helpful until I am up speed again. I am hoping to beable to go back to work by the end of the year. I won't able to go back to what I was doing which was designing landscaping. I was outside in the sun all day. So it will be back to office work. It will be good to get back to a semi-normal life again.