Key Points
Even if you’ve got personal savings, you still count on your Social Security checks to cover a good chunk of your retirement expenses. Naturally, you want those checks to go as far as possible so you can stretch your own dollars further and enjoy the highest standard of living you can.
Once you sign up, the only change your benefits usually see is an annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), which is announced in October and enacted with the December payment (received in January of the following year).
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We still don’t have all the data we need to calculate the 2026 COLA, but projections have been climbing for five straight months now, and all signs point to an above-average COLA on the way.
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The latest COLA projection is 2.7%
The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a nonpartisan senior group, makes monthly COLA predictions all year. Its January 2025 prediction was a lackluster 2.1%. That’s far lower than what seniors have gotten used to over the last few years.
But already by February, things were starting to shift. Many predicted that President Trump’s tariffs would increase inflation over the coming months. That caused TSCL to bump its COLA prediction up slightly to the 2.2% to 2.3% range. It stayed there for a few months before it began moving slowly but steadily upward at a rate of 0.1% over each of the last five months.
TSCL’s latest predictions put the 2026 COLA at 2.7%. That’s a little above average compared to the last 25 years. But it still might be disappointing to some seniors. A 2.7% COLA would add just $54 to the $2,007 average monthly benefit as of July 2025.
Spousal benefits, which only averaged about $954 per month in July 2025, would see a $26 increase. However, your checks could see a larger boost if your current monthly benefit is already greater than the average.
There’s still time for the COLA to change
We won’t know the official 2026 COLA until the Social Security Administration announces it on Oct. 15, 2025. That’s when the final piece of information needed for the COLA calculation comes in.
The government bases the COLA on changes in average third-quarter inflation data from one year to the next as determined by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). Basically, it’ll take the CPI-W numbers from July, August, and September of this year, total them up, and divide by three. Then, it’ll do the same thing with July, August, and September of 2024. The percentage increase will be the COLA.
Right now, we’re still waiting on the August and September numbers to come in, and there’s still time for the COLA estimates to change slightly. However, if you’re trying to get a ballpark of what to expect next year, you can use the 2.7% estimate. Add this amount to your current checks to get an idea of how much you’ll receive in 2026.
You can repeat this process once the Social Security Administration announces the official COLA to get an even closer estimate. And you should get a personalized COLA notice in December detailing exactly how much more money you’ll receive next year. Once you have that information in hand, you’ll be able to start putting together a budget for 2026.
It’s possible that even with the COLA, you may still find it difficult to make ends meet. In that case, you may have to explore other options, like reducing expenses, relying more on personal savings, or applying for other government benefits to supplement your checks. Planning ahead can help you avoid unpleasant surprises next year.
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