Social Security early payment to go out this week

Some Social Security recipients across the country will receive a double payment this month, as the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payment for June has been brought forward to this week.

While normally the SSI monthly payments are issued on the first of each month, they can be rescheduled if the day falls on a weekend or a bank holiday. As June 1 falls on a Saturday this year, the SSI payment that would have gone out on that day will be sent on May 31 instead—meaning that beneficiaries would receive two payments in the same month.

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This is expected to happen three more times this year: in August, November and December. The September 1st payment will be issued on August 30 as it falls on Labor Day. December 1 falls on a Sunday this year, so the payment that should be issued on that day will come out on November 29. And as January 1 is a holiday, the SSI payment for that month will be sent out on December 31—New Year’s Eve.

The maximum monthly SSI payments for beneficiaries this year is $943 for individuals and $1,415 for couples. The exact amount might be lower based on the income of recipients or that of certain family members, their living situations or other factors.

Individual recipients getting the maximum amount would get a total of $1,886 this month, while couples would get $2,830 with the double payment.

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SSI payments, like Social Security ones, are adjusted every year based on inflation—what’s called the annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA. This year, benefits for more than 71 million Americans have increased by 3.2 percent. While the change is significant, it pales in comparison to the 8.7 percent COLA introduced in 2023.

In previous years, the COLA had been more modest: in 2019, the COLA was 2.8 percent; in 2020, it was 1.6 percent; and in 2021, it was 1.3 percent. Already in 2022, the adjustment had risen to 5.9 percent.

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The COLA is currently calculated based on the percentage increase in the CPI-W (Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers) between the third quarter of the previous year and the third quarter of the current year. But activists have long been calling for changes to be made to consider the expenses disproportionately affecting older and vulnerable people—especially the cost of medical treatment.

Representative Ruben Gallego from Arizona, a Democrat, is trying to pass a proposed legislation that would change how the COLA is calculated. The Boosting Benefits and COLAs Act would force the Commissioner of Social Security to use the CPI-E (Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers) to calculate the COLA, unless the CPI-W is higher.

If passed, the legislation would apply to determinations made with respect to cost-of-living computation quarters ending on or after September 30, 2024.