If your claim is approved, congratulations! You can rest easy knowing that you have consistent income so you can buy food, pay your rent, or get the medical care and equipment you need. You will receive a letter showing how much money you will receive every month and how much you will receive in back pay - the benefits you should have gotten while your application was pending. If you have a lawyer, they may be paid out of those back pay benefits. If you have a dependent spouse or minor children, you can apply for additional benefits for them, called auxiliary benefits.

Social Security will check in on you every few years to see if your condition has changed. These “continuing disability reviews” are nowhere near as difficult as being approved for benefits in the first place. If you are receiving SSI, make sure you know about the asset and income limits and how they will impact your benefits. There are rules and programs for working part time or trying to go back to work, allowing recipients to see how it goes for a number of months without losing their benefits. If you do start working, make sure you understand how it will affect your benefits.

It is incredibly important to update Social Security any time something changes in your life - you get married or divorced, have a child, move to a new house, start working (even part time), live in another country for more than a month, begin receiving other disability benefits, are convicted of a crime, and more. You must report these changes right away - within a few days after the month when the change happened ends. You can be penalized for failing to update this information. The reason for this requirement is that life changes often impact the amount of the benefits you can get. You may be missing out on a larger amount of benefits, or you may end up being overpaid and having to pay a lot of money back to Social Security.

More information about how things work after you have been approved for Social Security Disability benefits can be found here. More information about how things work if you are receiving Supplemental Security Income benefits can be found here.