Q: I think I made a terrible mistake. I recently signed up for my own Social Security and have received a couple of checks. But after talking to friends, I think I should have applied for widow's benefits on my husband's Social Security instead. What can I do?

A: One thing you can do is stop worrying. Nothing you did with the Social Security Administration is carved in stone. So if you need to change your mind and your Social Security plans, you can do it.

But it may ease your mind to know that SSA personnel are required to check all your eligibility options when you file for any kind of Social Security benefits.

In other words, when you applied for your retirement benefits, they would have checked to find out if you were due more collecting widow's benefits on your husband's Social Security account. And they would not have proceeded with the retirement application if you could have gotten a higher rate as a widow.

My hunch is they even mentioned this to you during your retirement interview. But because the whole process can be so confusing and even overwhelming, you probably don't remember the discussion. So I suggest you contact your local Social Security office to go over these issues again. And in the unlikely event that you are due more money collecting widow's benefits, they can easily switch you from one account to the other.

Q: I know you must get many letters asking you important questions. So I hope you have time for an unimportant one. I just received some Social Security correspondence and I noticed it came from Baltimore. I did a little online research and learned that the Social Security Administration headquarters is there. I'm just curious: When every other federal government agency is in Washington, why is SSA in Baltimore?

A: Believe me, it's a relief to get a chance to deal with a little lighthearted history and geography trivia rather than the weighty issues of Social Security rules and regulations. So thanks for the question.

As I'm sure you are aware, the Social Security Administration was one of the many government agencies born during the early years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

And all of those agencies were scrambling for office space in the Washington, D.C., area. Social Security's first administrators didn't have any luck finding a suitable location in Washington, but they did find a big old warehouse in downtown Baltimore, just 40 miles or so north of the capital. So they set up shop there in what was supposed to be a temporary headquarters until they could find the right place in Washington.

To make a long story short, that never happened. The agency just kept growing and adding more and more space to their Baltimore operations. And by the early 1960s, when they had outgrown all their downtown Baltimore locales, they decided to build a new headquarters complex in Baltimore's western suburbs, where they remain today.

Of the agency's 80,000 or so employees, about 12,000 of them are in the Baltimore area, making SSA the city's largest employer.

One personal side note to this story: Frequent readers of this column know that I worked for the Social Security Administration for 32 years. And I spent 12 years of that career at SSA's Baltimore headquarters complex. Prior to that time, I had spent years working in local Social Security offices around the country. Some of those offices had as few as six employees. So when someone in one of those small towns asked me where I worked, I was in a bit of a unique position to say I worked at the local Social Security office. But when I got to Baltimore, it took me a while to get used to the fact that when I told someone I worked for Social Security, the usual response was something like: "Oh, my mother works there, and my uncle is in the computer department, and my cousin has a job in their warehouse!"

Questions may be sent c/o Copley News Service, P.O. Box 120190, San Diego, CA 92112-0190. Or send e-mail to yoursocialsecurity@comcast.net.

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