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Mary Ann, all depends on your husband's plan. I can tell you how it worked for us. Michel was a college prof and his most disabling symptom was speech. When he was 53 his dept chair told him that he really needed to go on disability because his students could not understand him, and had to go to his colleagues to try to find out what he had said in class. We have TIAA retirement and long term disability. The College helped Michel file for disability, which provided 60% of his salary at the time, (with annual cost of living increments) and kept up contributions to his TIAA retirement plan. This 60% was to be reduced by whatever social security disability would pay if SS was approved (it was, the first time). So for many years Michel received payments from both TIAA and Social Security. He passed away a year ago, at age 61. Had he lived to age 65, the disability payments would have stopped, and retirement benefits would have started, both Social Security retirement benefits and his TIAA plan. Social Security benefits would of course have been calculated on his contributions, which would have been low because he hadn't been contributing while on disability. The TIAA plan would have been closer to what he would have had had he continued working, since TIAA disability made payments to TIAA retirement. You of course have Social Security to ask about. Do you have some equivalent of the TIAA plan? I guess no two plans are alike. I wish you well as you work through this. In our case, everyone was very helpful, the College, the TIAA people, and the Social Security people, but it was very hard for Michel to admit that he could not continue working. Teresa Marcy