inflation
Highlighting the Inadequacy of Social Security’s COLA
Much has been written about Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) process and its inability to keep pace with the cost patterns seniors face. The Senior Citizens League, for example, reports on its website that “Social Security benefits have lost…
2025 saw lowest inflation in 5 years, but seniors are still struggling!
The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the government’s watchdog for inflation, and BLS recently announced that the 2025 actual inflation rate was 2.7% – the lowest since the year 2020. Lower inflation is, of course, a good sign,…
Interest rates and future COLAs: A source of concern for beneficiaries
There’s been a fair amount of hype around the recent Federal Reserve actions on key interest rates, most recently a mid-December quarter-point cut. That, of course, was a welcome move for investors, even though its impact had already been largely…
Retirement Readiness and Financial Preparedness Can be Two Different Measures
Many U.S. adults approaching retirement express confidence in their ability to deal with living costs in their later years. An overwhelming majority–89 percent–of responses to a global survey by Prudential said so, yet just slightly more than half said they’d…
Predicting 2026 COLA
In this Motley Fool article, the author indicates that the most likely case is that the 2026 Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) will be about 2.7%. That would yield only about $54 in additional monthly benefits for the average Social…
Why COLA estimates are often wrong
You may have seen the headlines on the latest estimates for the 2026 cost-of-living adjustments (COLA); however, do you know how Social Security calculates it? COLAs are based on increases in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and…
Tariffs, Inflation, and Social Security’s COLAs: An Entanglement with Potential Impact on Seniors
While the tariff wars unfold on the world stage, economists are busy developing forecasts of the relationship between import/export fees and inflation, with opinions leaning toward likely increases in consumer prices. And consumer prices–the money we all spend on goods…
Are you guilty of napkin math?
Are you guilty of “napkin math” when deciding when to take Social Security? I think we all are, but how reliable is the math? Do you have all the necessary information to make an informed decision? Dana Anspac explains how…
The two problems with COLA
The Social Security Administration calculates the COLA by comparing the average of the CPI-W for July, August, and September of the previous year with the average for the same three-month period in the current year. The percentage change is the…
Survey Says: 79% of Americans Agree that a Retirement is At Hand
The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) recently released the results of a survey of working age Americans conducted late last year, revealing that 79% of the more than 1200 respondents aged 25 and older agree with the Chair of…