The financial news that actually matters
Gas prices have climbed past $4.50 a gallon in much of the country, and for the 66 million Americans who depend on Social Security, that pain at the pump is now showing up somewhere unexpected: next year’s raise. The latest projections from The Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan advocacy group that tracks the cost-of-living adjustment…
A retired teacher in Texas who spent 30 years in a classroom and a decade in private-sector jobs before that might have seen her Social Security check cut by hundreds of dollars a month. A former firefighter in Ohio collecting a state pension could have watched his spousal benefit disappear entirely. For decades, two federal…
A gallon of gas and a barrel of oil are doing what Congress hasn’t: pushing Social Security checks higher. The Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan advocacy group that closely tracks inflation data, now projects the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) at roughly 3.2%, a meaningful jump from the group’s 2.8% estimate just one month earlier. For…
Turn 67 in 2025, file for Social Security with a perfect earnings record, and the government will send you $4,018 a month. That is the absolute ceiling for a worker who earned at or above the taxable maximum for 35 straight years and claimed right at full retirement age. After a 2.5 percent cost-of-living adjustment,…
Somewhere in the United States, a 70-year-old retiree who spent 35 years earning near the top of the pay scale and strategically delayed claiming Social Security is collecting roughly $5,200 a month. Under a proposal to cap individual benefits at $50,000 per year, that check would shrink by more than $12,000 annually. The idea comes…
The first round of Social Security deposits for May 2026 landed in bank accounts on Wednesday, May 14, and for millions of retirees the numbers on screen tell a story they have seen before: a cost-of-living raise that looked decent on paper but shrank considerably after Medicare took its cut. The 2.8 percent COLA that…
The first batch of May Social Security deposits hits bank accounts on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, starting a three-week payout cycle that will reach roughly 74 million Americans. Every payment this month reflects the 2.8 percent cost-of-living adjustment that kicked in back in January, a bump that added an average of about $56 per month…
Walk into certain Social Security field offices without an appointment and you might wait well over two hours before sitting down with a staff member. At one office, the peak wait for a walk-in visitor hit 2 hours and 23 minutes, according to internal agency planning documents. That figure has been cited in federal oversight…
The first batch of May 2026 Social Security payments arrives on Tuesday, May 13, and for the roughly 68 million Americans who depend on these benefits, every deposit this year reflects a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment that kicked in back in January. For the average retired worker, that translates to about $56 extra per month. Not…
About 74 million Americans will receive Social Security payments in May 2026, with the first round of retirement deposits scheduled to hit bank accounts on Wednesday, May 13. The remaining two waves follow on May 20 and May 27, depending on the recipient’s date of birth. For retirees who maxed out their earnings over a…