00:00 Speaker A
This is the first report that goes into the data that social security puts together to determine what the cost of living adjustment will be for next year, for 2027. So they take the inflation data from July, August, and September, and they average those together, compare it against last year at the same time, and they come up with with that number that’s going to be the cost of living adjustment for social security checks next year.
00:33 Speaker A
Now, they’ll announce that in mid- October as you mentioned and it gets started in January. But this year we had a 2.8% jump.
00:46 Speaker A
And that came to about, you know, $56 a for us a social security check, which the average check is around $2,000, say, $2,081 this year.
01:03 Speaker A
Um, next year, the experts I talked to, depending on what we see uh with this inflation information that we’ll get started with tomorrow, um, is they’re saying it could be between a 3.6 and 3.8% jump in the cola as compared to that 2.8% I mentioned earlier.
01:29 Speaker A
And that would translate to about $74 to $75 a bump in the paycheck for social security recipients. So that’s good news. But the big question, Brooke, is is this really keeping up with real world inflation for seniors? And in fact, many experts I talk to say, absolutely not because the rising cost of health care, the rising cost of housing, the rising cost of prescriptions really hits seniors in a way that these inflation numbers that are used by the social security administration
02:22 Speaker A
really don’t hit because that inflation number they use is based on the index for urban wage earners as opposed to the elderly index. I know that sounds nuanced, but it is a big deal when you start thinking about what they’re measuring for inflation. So I think that’s something to be concerned about.
02:47 Speaker A
The final thing is um Medicare premiums are also expected and deductibles also expected to bump up next year. And that again will not be announced till the fall, but the fact is that could eat up a percent or so of that increase we might see. So that’s what seniors have to to face as we look into 2027 and they hit inflation is taking on their checks.
