Main Street Dollars

—

by

Social Security has taken a stack of paperwork that once traveled by mail and moved it into the personal online account instead. Starting this month, three hearing-related disability forms, a real-time case tracker and 26 additional notice types are available inside my Social Security, the portal now used by more than 100 million account holders.…

Two of the three months behind the 2027 Social Security raise are now on the books

—

by

Two pieces of the three-month calculation that decides how much larger Social Security checks grow next year are now sitting in the government’s own data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published the August inflation numbers on September 11, adding a second data point to a math problem that will not be finished until one more…

Social Security scrapped a 36-year-old rule on how rent help counts against an SSI check

—

by

Social Security has quietly closed the book on a piece of internal guidance that has shaped how the agency treats reduced rent for Supplemental Security Income recipients since the George H.W. Bush administration. A notice signed by the agency’s general counsel and published in the Federal Register on August 31, 2026, formally rescinds Acquiescence Ruling…

New Social Security heart-disease rules take effect October 30, replacing seven older listings

—

by

A serious heart condition severe enough to qualify for Social Security disability benefits will soon be judged against a different rulebook. The Social Security Administration has finalized a rewrite of the medical criteria used to evaluate cardiovascular disorders in disability claims, the first comprehensive update to those rules since 2006, and the new version takes…

A rewritten Social Security disability rule for young adults takes effect October 1

—

by

The Social Security Administration has rewritten the rulebook it uses to decide whether an 18-to-25-year-old counts as disabled, replacing guidance the agency had followed since 2011. The new ruling, SSR 26-2p, takes effect October 1, 2026, and reaches three separate groups at once: teenagers filing a first disability claim of their own, disabled children who…

Food stamps stolen by card skimmers have gone unreplaced for 21 months

—

by

A federal guarantee that once reimbursed households after thieves drained their food assistance through cloned payment cards expired at the end of 2024, and nothing in Washington has replaced it since. For a family on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, that gap means a card skimmed at a corner store can wipe out a month…

Food stamp applicants over 60 face no cap at all on the rent they can deduct

—

by

Every SNAP household that pays rent or a mortgage can subtract housing costs from the income figure used to calculate a monthly benefit, but for most families that subtraction stops at a fixed dollar ceiling. One category of applicants faces no ceiling at all: households that include someone 60 or older. As federal grocery-benefit rules…

USDA told states to raise every food stamp utility allowance on October 1

—

by

Every autumn, state agencies that run the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program adjust a lesser-known figure that quietly shapes what a household actually receives: the standard utility allowance used to estimate heating, cooling and phone costs. Most SNAP households never have a real utility bill weighed against their case file; the flat allowance stands in for…

States cannot push anyone aged 60 to 64 into a food stamp work program

—

by

A federal guidance memorandum from the U.S. Department of Agriculture has settled a question that left state food-stamp offices in an awkward spot after Congress rewrote the program’s work rules in 2025: an adult between 60 and 64 who receives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits cannot be ordered into a mandatory job-training placement to keep…

Native Americans are newly exempt from the food stamp work clock under three separate definitions

—

by