COLA added 46% to your benefit. How’s that working for you?
Social Security’s annual Cost Of Living Adjustment, or COLA, has boosted your monthly benefit amount by 46% since the year 2000. COLA, of course, is Social Security’s way of making your benefit payment keep pace with inflation, but unfortunately most seniors have found that annual bump to be woefully short of the inflation they’re actually experiencing. In this article by Motley Fool’s Todd Campbell, the author explores how both benefits and COLA are calculated, and how use of the CPI-W as the basis of inflation for annual COLA increase doesn’t reflect what seniors are experiencing in the real world. He goes on to suggest an alternative method using a different Consumer Price Index to compute the annual COLA, but his suggestion is only one of several alternatives being discussed in the halls of Congress.
AMAC has been at the forefront trying to strengthen Social Security by developing and proposing its Social Security Guarantee, and an alternative COLA methodology is at that proposal’s core. AMAC has been discussing and continues to discuss this common-sense solution with Congressional Representatives in its efforts to protect America’s senior citizens who rely on Social Security. To review AMAC’s Social Security Guarantee, click here.
To read Todd Campbell’s article about COLA and inflation, click here.
This posting is presented for informational purposes only and does not represent legal or financial guidance. Any opinions or interpretations presented are either those of the original author or, in the case of articles authored by the AMAC Foundation, are the opinions of AMAC Foundation staff, originally trained and accredited by the National Social Security Association (NSSA) and certified via the AMAC Foundation. Any links included in the article are valid on the posted date; socialsecurityreport.org cannot guarantee the duration of the links’ validity. NSSA and the AMAC Foundation and its staff are not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other governmental entity. To submit a question, visit our website (https://amacfoundation.org/services/) or email us at ssadvisor@amacfoundation.org. Because we are a non-profit organization, there is no charge for these services.