Social Security's Latest Raise Is Nothing to Write Home About
Each year, millions of Social Security recipients eagerly await news of a cost-of-living increase, or COLA. The COLA has been around for decades, and its purpose is to help seniors on Social Security retain their buying power in the face of inflation.
But there's no set amount for what that COLA looks like -- it's based on yearly data from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). And this year, the CPI-W didn't see a huge uptick in the cost of common goods and services, which means seniors on Social Security are only getting a modest raise for 2020.
Specifically, that raise will amount to 1.6%, which is only slightly more than half of 2019's 2.8% COLA. Of course, 1.6% is better than nothing: In the past decade, there were three years in which seniors got no COLA at all. In fact, 1.6% is actually in line with the raises seniors saw going into 2012, 2013, and 2014.
Source Fool.com
