Cost of Fuel Impacting Social Security Benefits
Thursday, October 15, will be the day that the government announces the annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) that decides whether benefits will increase for Social Security payouts for the next year. Economists are predicting that there will be no increase this year, for only the third time since COLA has been implemented, and many blame the falling price of gas over the previous year. Polina Vlasenko, an economist with the American Institute for Economic Research, says that in order for us to see a COLA increase this year prices in other sectors would need to see a large increase to compensate for the fall of fuel prices, something that is not very likely to happen. This problem is exacerbated for 30 percent of those on Medicare that are seeing an increase in premiums for Medicare Part B, whose payments are automatically taken out of their Social Security checks every month. Stephen Ohlemacher with the Associated Press goes over this problem in more detail in this article that can be read with ABC News.