It’s that time of year when the Social Security Administration (SSA) begins to calculate what the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) increase will be for the next year.
It will still be a number of weeks until when the COLA is officially announced and Social Security beneficiaries will have access to how much their monthly payments could be boosted.
Calculating the COLA Increase
The SSA uses inflation data from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) provided by the US Department of Labor. The data used is from the third quarter of the year (July, August, and September) prior to the COLA increase.
Expectations for the 2024 COLA Increase
Last year, the SSA announced a historic COLA increase of 8.7 percent, due to inflation peaking in June 2022. While inflation has cooled significantly in the United States, the increased cost of living is still affecting families, especially those receiving Social Security. However, beneficiaries won’t see an increase anywhere near the 2023 COLA.
Seniors across the country are struggling to put food on the table, pay their rent, and afford their prescription drug prices.
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Social Security: When will the 2024 COLA increases start and when will I receive them?
The 2024 COLA will be announced once the CPI-W data for September 2023 is released, scheduled for 12 October. Current predictions from the Senior Citizen League, a non-partisan advocacy group for seniors, indicate a 3 percent increase. According to the group’s calculations, that would mean almost $54 more per month based on an average monthly benefit of $1,789.
Social Security recipients won’t know the exact amount that their payments will increase until December when the agency mails notices to beneficiaries.
The boost to payments themselves will be sent with the first payments for the following year, those that correspond to January 2024. Recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) will receive the first increased monthly payments on Friday 29 December. This is because 1 January 2024 is a holiday as well as falling on a Monday, thus the payments are moved forward to the first applicable date that bank transactions can be processed.
