Social Security checks with the latest cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) will start arriving next Wednesday for some retirees, according to the agency’s payment schedule for 2024.
For payments sent out this year, more than 71 million Social Security recipients will get a 3.2 increase, marking the third straight year that an increase has taken place due to relatively high inflation. The previous year saw a 8.7 percent increase, while the year before that saw a 5.7 percent bump.
How much a retiree receives depends on multiple factors, including the age they retire. The most a person who retires at age 70 can get in 2024 is $4,873, according to the Social Security Administration. If one retires at 62, the maximum benefit will be $2,710, the SSA says.
Social Security is financed by payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers. The maximum amount of earnings subject to Social Security payroll taxes will be $168,600 for 2024, up from $160,200 for 2023.
The 2024 retirement benefit payments will increase by about $50 per month, the SSA also said when announcing the COLA.
The COLA is calculated according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index, or CPI. But there are calls for the agency to instead use a different index, the CPI-E, which measures price changes based on the spending patterns of the elderly such as health care, food, and medicine costs.
The COLA increases will appear on Social Security checks will go out depending on a recipient’s birthday.
The first group to get paid this month will get Social Security checks this coming Wednesday, Jan. 10, applying to those who were born on the first to the 10th day of a month. The second group will get payments on Jan. 17 for those born on the 11th to the 20th day of a month, and the third group will get their payment on Jan. 24 if they were born from the 21st to the 31st day of a month, according to the Social Security Administration.
Those who filed for benefits before May 1, 1997, should have received their payments already, on Jan. 3. People living in a foreign country have their payments issued on the third Wednesday of the month, while people getting Supplemental Security Income due to disability, age, or blindness should have already received their payments with the 2024 adjustments, on Dec. 29, 2023.
If a retiree gets both Social Security and SSI, the payment schedule differs. Those who qualify will get their Social Security payment on the third day of each month and their SSI payment on the first day of the month, according to the agency.
People who receive spousal or children’s benefits from another person’s work history will get their payments on the same day as the spouse or parent, according to the agency.
Due to high inflation, the COLA may not be enough for some retirees, according to some analysts.
“The lower COLA for 2024 implies that the increase in Social Security payments might be insufficient to keep up with the escalating costs of essential goods and services,” Jonathan Rosenfeld, the founder of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers, told Newsweek. “Seniors could encounter financial challenges, and the anticipated relief from the COLA might be more limited than what was experienced in the previous year.”
Meanwhile, The Senior Citizens League advocacy group warned in a recent report that more than two-thirds of older Americans say their monthly budget for essential items such as medication, housing, and food is about 10 percent higher than a year ago.
“Housing, motor vehicle insurance, the cost of hospitals and care of invalids at home—these are the savings-draining black holes even when inflation is low,” Mary Johnson, with the group, said in the release. “Yet these are the very categories seeing the most persistent and painful inflation right now,” she added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.