While the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security recipients won’t be official until October, early estimates expect the increase will be minimal. The latest prediction from The Senior Citizens League expects the COLA to come in at 2.8%, the same as it was for 2026.
The non-partisan senior advocacy group says that while an increase is expected, it’s not enough for seniors to keep up with rising costs for goods and services. Last month, TSCL pointed out that premiums for Medicare Part B rose by 9.7% for 2026 — from $185.00 to $202.90 — more than three times the 2026 COLA of 2.8%. The premiums also grew faster than the COLA in 2024 and 2025.
TSCL is also warning seniors of a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that says Social Security’s trust fund will be depleted by 2032. If that were to happen and Congress does not pass any laws to address the funding, it would trigger an automatic 24% reduction in benefits. That means a senior who receives $2,000 monthly would see their payments reduced by $480 to $1,520.
“Years of lackluster COLAs and a looming Social Security insolvency crisis, with its 24 percent automatic benefits cuts, puts a double squeeze on seniors,” said TSCL’s executive director Shannon Benton. “Older Americans already feel like their benefits don’t keep up with inflation, so this risks putting them further and further behind, pushing many into poverty.”
Even without benefits being cut years down the road, TSCL reports most seniors say they already don’t receive enough in their monthly payments to make ends meet. A recent study by the group found that 58% of seniors worry that rising costs will force them to dip into their retirement savings earlier than expected.
TSCL also found that if automatic benefits cuts are made, 73% of seniors say they would struggle to pay monthly bills, 68% would cut back on food or groceries, and 52% would skip or delay medical care or prescriptions.
“Solutions to both the COLA and Social Security’s insolvency are on the table. Most of them are common sense, and many are popular among seniors,” Benton said. “For example, 77% of seniors support eliminating the $184,500 cap on income subject to Social Security taxation, with both Republicans and Democrats broadly in favor. According to the Social Security Administration’s Chief Actuary, this would extend Social Security’s solvency by 68 years, through 2090.”
A different study by TSCL found that 57.6% of seniors have forgone at least one healthcare product or service within the last year to cut down costs.
“Medicare treats dental, vision, and hearing insurance like extras or add-ons for American seniors, but access to these services is essential,” Benton said earlier this year. “Regular, preventive dental care can save you thousands of dollars in the long run, so, as a society, allowing cost to remain a barrier makes no sense.
“Vision and hearing loss also have meaningful connections to cognitive decline, meaning lack of access to this coverage progressively sabotages quality of life for countless seniors.”
Each year the COLA is determined by using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners (CPI-W) for the months of July, August and September. That number is then compared to the same time period from the year prior and the COLA is calculated from there. The CPI-W factors in the spending habits of Americans when it comes to items like food, consumer goods, housing, health care and more.
In 2023, the COLA was 8.7% before falling to 3.2% in 2024, and 2.5% in 2025. The 2027 COLA will be announced in October of this year and go into effect in January 2027.
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