What will your Social Security be 10 years from now? - AOL.com
In the fall of every year, media stories abound about how Social Security benefits will go up next year, thanks to the annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). It’s almost always framed as good news, rightfully so, because how could a higher monthly Social Security check be anything else? Largely, the only complaint heard when next year’s COLA is announced each October is that it isn’t enough to keep up with the inflation already experienced. And that is true.
Nevertheless, the annual COLA is an important factor which offsets at least some of the inflated prices we experience every year. As this AOL.com article by Laura Beck suggests, take a moment to see how your monthly Social Security check will look ten years from now. Using the average COLA awarded over the past decade, someone with a monthly Social Security benefit of $1,796 today can expect that benefit to be about $2,322 ten years from now. Although that likely won’t be enough to have fully offset inflation experienced over the preceding decade, a $500+ increase will sure help to pay for those higher prices ten years hence. Or will it?
Unless Congress acts soon to fix Social Security’s existing financial woes, in about ten years the Social Security Trust Funds will run dry, precipitating an across-the-board cut of about 23% to everyone’s benefit. If that happens, instead of a 2033 benefit of about $2,322, your monthly check will be about $1,788. In other words, you’ll lose all of the COLA increases you enjoyed over the last ten years. Not a pretty outlook, as explained in this article by Laura Beck appearing at AOL.com.
The thing is, that cut doesn’t have to happen. If, instead of automatically opposing anything the other side proposes Congress adopts a bipartisan attitude, a solution to restore Social Security to full solvency could be easily achieved. As an example of the leading thoughts on reforming Social Security, the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC, Inc.) believes Social Security must be preserved and modernized. This can be achieved without tax increases by slight modifications to cost of living adjustments and payments to high income beneficiaries plus gradually increasing the full (but not early) retirement age. AMAC Action, AMAC’s advocacy arm, supports raising the thresholds at which benefits are taxed and then indexing for inflation, and calls for eliminating the reduction in people’s benefits for those choosing to work before full retirement age. AMAC is resolute in its mission that Social Security be preserved for current and successive generations and has gotten the attention of lawmakers in D.C., meeting with many congressional offices and staff over the past decade.