What will the 2020 COLA increase be?
There’s no shortage of people who want to be an early prognosticator, especially when it comes to predicting what next year’s Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) will be for Social Security recipients. Some economists even started predicting the 2020 COLA as early as the first quarter of 2019. In this article, Kiplinger staff columnist David Payne offers his prediction that the 2020 COLA increase will be 1.6%. But since COLA is determined by comparing the Consumer Price Index (CPI) performance in the 3rd quarter of this year to the same period last year, the actual COLA will not be known until mid-October (after the 3rd quarter of this year is completed). Nevertheless, Mr. Payne offers his opinion that Social Security recipients can look forward to a benefit bump of 1.6% next year, which is probably a fairly safe forecast unless some major economic event influences CPI performance in the months of August and September. Click here to read the Kiplinger article about COLA increases.