Americans are set to receive a Social Security check worth up to $4,800 today, but not all seniors are happy about the increase in monthly payments.
Social Security benefits grew by 3.2 percent this year, in accordance with this year’s calculated cost of living adjustment (COLA).
However, not all payments arrive on the same day.
For a select group of seniors, today is the day you can expect a payment of up to $4,800.
When to Expect Social Security Payments
The arrival of benefits tends to be based on each recipient’s birth date.
Everyone whose birthday falls between the first and 10th of a month earned their benefits on February 14. Meanwhile, today, Social Security payments will go out for everyone with a birthday between the 11th and 20th. And those with a birthday between the 21st and 31st of any month get their payments a little bit later, on February 28.
There’s one exception to this rule, as those who’ve been receiving Social Security since before May 1997 can always expect their payments a bit earlier. For this month, they arrived on February 2.
Before you contact the Social Security Administration about any missed payments, you should wait three days to make sure there wasn’t just a mail lag time.
How Much Money You Can Expect
For this year, the highest-earning Social Security beneficiaries can see payments of $4,873 if they retired at age 70. This is in stark contrast to the average monthly benefit, however.
Across the board, payments increased by roughly $50 a month due to the COLA.
Beneficiaries earn higher payments based on several factors. Those who wait longer to retire generally end up with more money. At the same time, how much you paid into Social Security based on how many years of work you had also impacts the monthly check you’ll see.
Those who retired at the youngest age possible, 62, will earn only $2,710 a month this year. Meanwhile, those retiring at the full retirement age of 67 get a more average check, at $3,822.
While the 2024 COLA adjusted Social Security checks based on inflation, not everyone believes the payment update adequately reflects the price hikes seniors are seeing on healthcare and housing.
“Whether the annual COLA is appropriate for a specific retiree to ensure equal purchasing power as the prior year is highly specific to the life situation of the individual retiree, both in terms of expenses and other sources of income,” Jonathan Price, the national retirement practice leader at employee benefits consulting firm Segal, previously told Newsweek.
In 2024, around $1.4 trillion in payments will be sent to more than 70 million people.
