If Social Security says it paid you too much, a smaller overpayment can now be cleared with a single waiver request rather than a drawn-out fight. The agency treats overpayments of $2,000 or less differently from large ones, allowing them to be waived through a simplified process when the mistake was not your fault. For…

The raise Social Security beneficiaries will see in January 2027 is shaping up to land near 3.5 percent, according to the latest estimates released after this summer’s inflation reports. That is a projection, not a promise — the official figure will not be set until October 14 — but it gives retirees a realistic number…

On August 17, the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders put out a release announcing legislation the Vermont independent has not yet filed. The bill is called the Stop Social Security Garnishment Act of 2026, and it would bar the federal government from withholding any Social Security payment, including disability insurance, to collect a defaulted federal…

The federal SSI payment standard for an individual rose to $994 a month for 2026, up from $967 the year before. The amount of savings an SSI recipient is permitted to hold did not move at all. It remains $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple, the same two figures that governed in…

327.104 is the July 2026 reading of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, the index the Social Security Act names as the measure that sets the annual raise. It is one of three monthly numbers that will decide the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment, and at the moment it is the only…

Recovery of a Social Security overpayment runs on a schedule rather than a negotiation. The agency sends a notice, asks for the money back in full, and waits a fixed period. If nothing arrives and nothing is filed, withholding begins on its own, at half of a Title II benefit, and continues every month until…

The group reached by this change is a narrow one: people applying for Social Security disability benefits whose medical file names one of 14 diagnoses the agency added on August 11, 2026, and the families waiting alongside them for an answer. For that group the change is about calendar time rather than dollars. The additions…

SSA policy makes a deceased beneficiary’s estate liable for an unpaid overpayment. An August audit found the agency did not follow its required recovery order in 59 of 125 sampled cases.

A great deal of Social Security advice quietly assumes the phone is unusable. Call early, call late, expect to be cut off, budget an afternoon. The agency now reports that the hold time behind that advice has effectively disappeared, which changes the calculation for anyone who has been putting off a call for a year…

Two numbers govern Supplemental Security Income, and they have moved in opposite directions for nearly four decades. One of them is adjusted every January for inflation. The other has been frozen since the first Bush administration. The gap between them is the reason a recipient who manages to save a modest cushion can lose the…