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.
Federal employees who retire under the Federal Employees Retirement System and are younger than 62 on December 1 receive no annual cost-of-living adjustment on their annuity, according to the Office of Personnel Management. The agency’s CSRS and FERS handbook states the bar in absolute terms and then lists four groups that are excepted from it….
The paperwork behind Ticket to Work, the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) return-to-work program for people on disability benefits, is up for a proposed revision. SSA’s estimate is that 65,095 respondents a year deal with it: ticketholders who are working or trying to, the employment networks that serve them, and the state vocational rehabilitation agencies. The…
Two bills that would end the cap on cost-of-living adjustments for Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) annuities, H.R. 491 in the House and S. 624 in the Senate, have been in committee since they were introduced in early 2025. Both carry the short title Equal COLA Act and would put FERS adjustments on the same…
Social Security is taking public comments until November 23, 2026 on a proposal to fold two medical forms used in disability appeals into one. The Social Security Administration (SSA) would revise Form HA-4631, Claimant’s Recent Medical Treatment, to absorb Form HA-4632, Claimant’s Medications, so that a person who has asked for a hearing would report…
Annuitants in the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) who have not reached age 62 receive no annual cost-of-living adjustment, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recognizes four groups of exceptions. The rule returns to attention because the Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to publish the September consumer price index on October 14, 2026,…
Disability claims that turn on a heart condition will be judged against a rewritten set of medical criteria starting Oct. 30. The Social Security Administration’s final rule revises the cardiovascular listings it uses to decide whether an impairment is severe enough to count as a disability, and it adds three listings that did not exist…
Of the people in an inspector general’s sample who were flagged for a Treasury tax refund offset over an old Social Security debt, 34 had seen any money come back by June 2026, and the total was only $53,651. The sample covered 175 people who had received child benefits and later owed overpayments, and the…
The Social Security Administration’s inspector general has estimated that agency employees did not resolve roughly $242.6 million in child-benefit overpayments in line with policy, affecting about 76,904 people. Because the number comes from a sample rather than a full count, the auditors put a 90 percent confidence interval around it, running from $160,020,153 to $325,073,704….
The Social Security Administration’s revised medical criteria for heart and blood-vessel disorders take effect October 30, 2026, replacing the cardiovascular listings that SSA staff use to decide whether a disability claim is allowed on medical grounds. Until that date the current listings stay in force. From October 30, the new text governs both fresh applications…
Fifth Third Bank has taken over the Direct Express program that Comerica Bank ran, and a recipient who receives two kinds of federal benefit can end up holding two separate cards. Existing cardholders were told to expect no immediate disruption, but the public record leaves out the date on which older Comerica-issued cards stop working….