The financial news that actually matters
Covers Social Security benefits, eligibility rules, payment calculations, and policy changes. It explains how benefits are determined and how they impact retirement income.
Retirees waiting to find out how much bigger their Social Security check will be in 2027 have a new estimate to work with, but not yet a final answer. The Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan advocacy group that tracks Social Security policy, now projects the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment at 3.6%. The Social Security Administration will…
A group of Senate Democrats is trying to shut down one of the federal government’s oldest debt-collection tools before it takes a bigger bite out of retirees’ checks. Sen. Bernie Sanders announced legislation that would permanently stop the government from garnishing Social Security benefits to collect defaulted federal student loans, a practice that today can…
Social Security beneficiaries who receive an overpayment notice are being placed into automatic recovery at a steeper rate than most expect. Under the agency’s current policy, anyone who does not respond within 30 days of an overpayment notice has half of their monthly Social Security check withheld automatically until the debt is repaid. A short…
September 11 is the date the Bureau of Labor Statistics has set to release the Consumer Price Index for August, the report that completes the three-month calculation the Social Security Administration uses each year to set its annual cost-of-living adjustment. The release is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. It is the last of three…
Two years is the number that matters when an ex-spouse has not yet filed for Social Security. A divorced spouse who meets the program’s basic requirements does not have to wait for a former spouse to submit a claim before receiving a benefit on that record, as long as the divorce has been final for…
Forty credits is the line the Social Security Administration draws between a worker who can collect a retirement benefit on their own earnings record and one who cannot. A person who falls short of that number, even by one credit, receives nothing from their own work history when they reach retirement age. That does not…
Handing another person control of a beneficiary’s Social Security check comes with an unusual amount of federal paperwork attached to it. A representative payee, the person or organization Social Security appoints to manage benefits for someone who cannot manage the money directly, has to track where every dollar went and be ready to report it,…
Two survivors can lose spouses with identical earnings histories and still end up with two different monthly checks, and the gap often traces back to a single decision the worker made years before dying: when to start their own retirement benefit. If a worker claimed early and was receiving a reduced amount at death, that…
Social Security will accept a retirement application no more than four months before the month a person wants benefits to start, a narrow window that surprises people who assume they can apply whenever convenient and simply pick a preferred start date afterward. The rule is not a suggestion buried in fine print; it is the…
Nothing has to be filed, no letter has to be answered, and no new application has to be submitted. When a Social Security disability beneficiary reaches full retirement age, the agency relabels the monthly payment a retirement benefit, and the deposit that arrives the following month is for the identical dollar amount. The Law That…