{"id":1265,"date":"2025-01-30T05:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T10:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/?p=1265"},"modified":"2026-06-30T06:18:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T10:18:20","slug":"cola-social-security-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/cola-social-security-trump\/1265\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Social Security COLA predicted at 2.1%, the lowest in five years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. <strong>Cost-of-Living (COLA) prediction for 2026 is out<\/strong> and Social Security beneficiaries want to know how much their benefits will be going up by next year. There&#8217;s good news and bad news for the millions of Americans who rely on these monthly payments, and retirees make up the group most affected by the effects of inflation.<\/p>\n<p>The fresh Trump administration&#8217;s decisions will also impact senior citizens&#8217; lives, and they have been waiting for clarity. You will find more information on the COLA, inflation, and the Republicans&#8217; stance on Social Security taxes below.<\/p>\n<h2>The annual COLA and how it affects Social Security benefits<\/h2>\n<p>As of the end of 2024, more than <strong>68 million Americans were receiving some form of benefits payment<\/strong> from the Social Security Administration each month.<\/p>\n<p>The SSA was formed in 1935 and administers a number of federal programs. These are the main ones:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Retirement benefits<\/li>\n<li>Disability benefits (SSDI)<\/li>\n<li>Survivor benefits<\/li>\n<li>Supplemental Security Income (SSI)<\/li>\n<li>Medicare<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The amount that recipients are paid depends on a range of factors and eligibility criteria, but each year, the Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) is applied. This is a <strong>percentage increase in benefits across the board<\/strong> from January and it&#8217;s usually finalized in October of the year before.<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone is happy with how the annual COLA is calculated, saying it <strong>doesn&#8217;t reflect the true impact of inflation<\/strong>. Economically vulnerable groups such as the elderly are more affected by inflation, yet the prevailing opinion is that the COLA makes no allowance for their financial pressure.<\/p>\n<p>Social Security has existed for decades, and in 1984, the amount that beneficiaries were paid was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/social-security-benefits-comparison\/986\/\">a fraction of what it is now<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>The COLA forecast for 2026 and the impact of inflation on retirees<\/h2>\n<p>The COLA for 2026 is predicted to be the <strong>lowest in five years<\/strong>, which is bad news, on the surface. However, experts predict a <strong>significant drop in inflation<\/strong> in the United States, which means more money is left in the average citizen&#8217;s pocket.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, when specifically considering retirees, their most important expenses are rising at a rate above the projected Cost-of-Living Adjustment for next year.<\/p>\n<p>For most retirees, Social Security benefits are a vital source of income, and for many, it&#8217;s their only source of income. In 2022, the program raised 22.7 million people above the federal poverty line, and 16.5 million of them were adults aged 65 and above. A poll conducted by the senior advocacy group The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) discovered that<strong> 67% of seniors depend on Social Security for more than 50% of their income<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h3>The COLA for 2026 is expected to be 2.1%<\/h3>\n<p>After looking at recent CPI-W (Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers) data and the December 2024 inflation report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, TSCL <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/401kspecialistmag.com\/early-2026-social-security-cola-forecast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">predicts that the 2026 COLA will be around 2.1%<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The bad news is that this will be the lowest COLA in five years. However, the good news is that it&#8217;s in line with the economy settling down after the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we&#8217;ll see the cost of goods and services rising less rapidly.<\/p>\n<h2>What can Donald Trump do to relieve financial pressure on retirees?<\/h2>\n<p>There&#8217;s a way for the fresh Republican administration under President Donald Trump to support seniors, and that&#8217;s by following through on its <strong>plan to do away with Social Security taxes<\/strong>. The TSCL estimates that this could save a typical retiree approximately $3,000 a year, which works out to around 5% of the average senior&#8217;s budget.<\/p>\n<p>Shannon Benton, Executive Director of The Senior Citizens League, says Congress needs to do more, faster:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Inflation slowing down doesn&#8217;t mean that seniors are catching up. It&#8217;s essential that Congress acts quickly to fix years of sub-par COLAs and help give seniors the quality of life they deserve. The Trump administration&#8217;s plan to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits would make a massive difference. The current thresholds used to determine if you&#8217;ll pay taxes on your benefits were set up back in the 1980s, and we&#8217;ve never adjusted them for inflation.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While the news about the COLA is a mixed bag in terms of a<strong> low increase but accompanied by low inflation<\/strong>, there&#8217;s hope that the Republicans&#8217; suggestion to eliminate taxes comes to pass, which will go a long way toward easing the lives of senior Americans in vulnerable low-income groups.<\/p>\n<p>There are other ways for retirees to maximize their available funds, and one of these is by living in a state where taxes don&#8217;t cut into anyone&#8217;s retirement income. There are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/tax-free-retirement-states\/873\/\">13 states that don&#8217;t tax Social Security benefits<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Cost-of-Living (COLA) prediction for 2026 is out and Social Security beneficiaries want to know how much their benefits will be going up by next year. There&#8217;s good news and bad news for the millions of Americans who rely on these monthly payments, and retirees make up the group most affected by the effects &#8230; <a title=\"2026 Social Security COLA predicted at 2.1%, the lowest in five years\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/cola-social-security-trump\/1265\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about 2026 Social Security COLA predicted at 2.1%, the lowest in five years\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"COLA","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"The Social Security Cost-of-Living (COLA) prediction for 2026 is out and there's both good news and bad news. Retirees also want to know Trump's plans.","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}