Not quite ready for the rocking chair but I have been looking at the future.

I have a small 401K and will hopefully get SS when I retire. ** although I plan to work part time as long as my health holds.

But my wife ( who is about 10 years younger) normally does not work outside the home a lot, and what little she does is music lessons and the such where she is paid cash.

What happens when she turns 65 ( or 67 now) she has paid in some though the years but not a lot and none recently.

She needs to go down to the SS office and speak to them to see if she has enough "credits" in her SS account and if she does have enough credits what would her monthly benefit amount be? She may have enough credits or she may need more. Hard to tell until she goes down and asks.

It sounds like your wife has been working "under the radar" so to speak - not paying into the SS system as a self-employed person, I assume. However, if in her past she has paid in (perhaps she has had a job as a teenager, for example), then she may be able to collect something - as Twinkie says, if she has enough "credits." She should be receiving an annual status report from the SS administration that would provide a summary of her wage history and an estimate of benefits she can expect at age 65. She can also request a statement here:
https://secure.ssa.gov/apps6z/isss/main.html

You can also play with the retirement estmator to see what happens under different scenarios, such as if you were to start collecting SS even though you have earned income - see: Benefits Calculators: About the Social Security Retirement Estimator (http://www.ssa.gov/estimator/)