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Social Security checks only went up by 2.5% in 2025, which means the average person got just $49 more per month. But for many retirees, their expenses went up by more than that, making it tough to keep up.
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We won’t know the exact Social Security increase for 2026 until October 15, 2025. But right now, experts at The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) think it could be around 2.3%, slightly higher than their earlier 2.1% estimate. If that happens, the average monthly check could go up to about $2,025.
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The Social Security Administration figures out cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) by looking at inflation numbers from July, August, and September of the current and previous year. They use something called the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) to do this.
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A bigger COLA sounds great, but it usually means prices are going up, too. So, even though checks might be larger, things like food and transportation cost more, which cancels out some of the benefit.
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Even with yearly COLA increases, Social Security checks don’t stretch as far as they used to. Since 2010, retirees have lost 20% of their buying power because prices keep going up faster than benefit increases.
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The formula used to calculate COLAs (CPI-W) doesn’t focus on retirees' spending. There’s another measure, CPI-E, which looks at what seniors actually spend money on—especially healthcare. If Social Security used CPI-E instead, retirees would have gotten bigger increases in seven of the last ten years.
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