When Social Security finds that a beneficiary was paid too much, the default is now to hold back half of each monthly benefit until the balance is cleared. The rate used to be 10 percent. The agency’s own instructions and its overpayment page also describe a window: a waiver request or an appeal filed before…

A late report to Social Security about a change in income, living arrangement or marital status can cost an SSI recipient a penalty of $25 to $100, taken out of the payment. Late is measured against a calendar that ends 10 days after the month in which the change happened. Lying or leaving out information…

Rep. Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat, has proposed letting workers in physically demanding jobs collect full Social Security retirement benefits at 60, seven years before the current full retirement age of 67. Under today’s rules, a worker born in 1960 or later who claims at 62 takes a permanent 30% cut. The idea is a…

A $300 Social Security check does not wipe out Supplemental Security Income, but it comes close to a dollar-for-dollar trade. In the Social Security Administration’s own worked example, the federal SSI payment lands at $714, because only $20 of the check is ignored and the other $280 comes off the $994 federal benefit rate. Two…

A widow or widower who has a disability and collects Social Security as a surviving spouse received an average of $985.57 a month in August 2026. Nondisabled widows and widowers averaged $1,934.37, so the disabled group’s average was about 51% of the other. The figures come from the Social Security Administration’s monthly statistical snapshot, and…

Some 893,000 children of disabled workers received Social Security benefits in August 2026, and the average payment was $529.79 a month. Children on retired workers’ records averaged $961.26, so the disability-side check ran $431.47 lower. The Social Security Administration’s monthly statistical snapshot also shows that spouses on disabled workers’ records fared worse than the children…

Social Security’s retirement trust fund would run out of money in fiscal 2032, and automatic law would then trim every retired-worker check by about a quarter, according to an analysis of the Congressional Budget Office’s new projections by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The figures are projections, not a scheduled cut, and Congress…

August’s inflation numbers arrived with one figure Social Security watchers track more closely than any other: the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W, up 3.5% from a year earlier. That is the specific index the Social Security Administration uses to calculate its annual cost-of-living adjustment, and August’s reading is…

A household collecting Social Security benefits from one worker’s record can hit a ceiling called the family maximum, and that ceiling can lower everyone’s check to fit under it. Social Security’s family benefits amount page draws one clear line around that limit: payments to an ex-spouse do not count toward it. A current spouse and…

One application at age 62 can start two Social Security claims at once, whether or not the person filing realizes a second benefit is attached to it. Under what the agency calls deemed filing, a claim for a worker’s own retirement benefit at 62 automatically counts as a claim for any spousal benefit that person…