Tag: Social Security

Social Security supports more than 70 million Americans, ranging from retirees to disabled people and children. But it's also an incredibly complex system, with an operations manual that is 20,000 pages long, covering a tangle of 2,700 rules that can easily trip up claimants and cost them tens of thousands of dollars in lost benefits.Some of the pitfalls are detailed in a new book, "Social Security Horror Stories," by Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff and personal finance writer Terry Savage. In some cases, the errors aren't the fault of beneficiaries, but stem from the Social Security Administration's own missteps. Yet claimants have little recourse for fixing the problem or otherwise protecting themselves.There's a lot at stake in improving the system, Kotlikoff told CBS Mo...

The Social Security Administration said its 2024 cost-of-living adjustment will be 3.2%, a much smaller bump than the 8.7% increase seniors and other beneficiaries received this year. But with inflation still far from its pre-pandemic levels, seniors and other recipients may be at risk of losing financial ground with the smaller adjustment, experts said. The average retirement benefit will increase by about $50 a month, beginning in January, the Social Security Administration said on Thursday. That will boost the typical monthly payment to $1,907 from this year's $1,858, the agency said.Next year's COLA, while lower than the current year, is still above the historical norm for the annual adjustment, which has averaged 2.6% over the past two decades, according to the Senior Citizens League...