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How much will the 2024 COLA be?
Social Security beneficiaries will receive more money in 2024 because of the annual increase, and the final amount will be released shortly.
Social Security beneficiaries will be able to see an increase in their monthly payments starting in 2024 thanks to the increase in the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA).
Year after year, the Social Security Administration (SSA) makes an increase to the COLA with the goal of equalising beneficiary payments with the inflation rate in course. In this way, acquisitive losses are avoided for the beneficiaries when the inflation rate is high.
The COLA is calculated by comparing the Consumer Price Index for Salaried Workers in Urban Areas and Administrative Workers (CPI-W) of the third quarter of the current year with that of the third quarter of the previous year. The difference between one and the other is the increase in COLA.
COLA Increase 2024: Possible amounts of Social Security checks
Because inflation reached a two-decade high in 2022, the COLA that year was 8.7 percent; the highest in the last four decades. However, in recent months Inflation has been slowing, which means that the increase for next year will be lower.
According to a projection made by The Senior Citizens League, one of the largest non-partisan groups of seniors in the American Union, the increase to the COLA would be 3.2 percent for 2024, or the equivalent of $57 dollars for the checks of retired workers, who represent the majority of beneficiaries.
Taking into account the percentage of the possible increase, this is how other Social Security payments would look like:
- Retired workers: From $1,827 to $1,885
- Elderly couple, both receive benefits: From $2,972 to $3,067
- Widowed mother and two children: From $3,520 to $3,632
- Elderly widow(er) alone: From $1,704 to $1,758
- Disabled worker, spouse and one or more children: From $2,616 to $2,699
- All disabled workers: From $1,483 to $1,530
It is worth mentioning that this is only a projection. The figure with the official increase to the COLA will be announced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on 12 October. Once this happens, the COLA increase would take effect in December so that the increased payments begin to circulate from January 2024.