Americans who receive the payments will receive two payments this month.
Americans who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments will receive two payments this month.
The second SSI payment will go out on Dec. 29, about four weeks after the first one was sent on Dec. 1,
according to the Social Security Administration’s schedule.
The reason why two payments are sent is due to scheduling that happens several times a year, and it’s because the first day of the next month occurs on a holiday, which in this case is New Year’s Day. According to the schedule, there were several other months with double SSI or Social Security payments because the first of the month fell on a holiday or a weekend.
SSI benefits are provided to people who have a qualifying disability or to low-income people who are either blind or age 65 or older with limited resources, says the SSA’s
website. They are separate from Social Security retirement benefits but are sent by the same federal agency.
Other than providing taxpayer-funded checks to adults and children with disabilities or blindness who have low income, SSI payments are also
made to people aged 65 and older who have no disabilities and meet the low-income threshold.
Some individuals receiving SSI will receive less than the maximum amounts, which are reduced by subtracting the monthly countable income. For purposes of calculating the amount of SSI benefit payments, countable income is defined as income or items that an individual receives that can be used to obtain food and shelter. This includes earned income, like wages, earnings from self-employment, or royalties.
Although SSI is run by the Social Security Administration, it is funded by general taxes, while taxes that fund separate Social Security are separate, according to the agency. Social Security payments and SSI payments are separate, and some critics have described SSI as a federal “
welfare program.”
As of 2023, the federal maximum SSI benefit rate is $914 for an individual and $1,371 four a couple, which will rise to $943 and $1,415, respectively, in 2024 under the agency’s 3.2 percent cost-of-living adjustment that was
announced in October. A person who lives with someone getting SSI and is providing that person with needed care can get a maximum monthly payment of $458, which will rise to $472 in 2024.
December, meanwhile, is the final month that SSI or Social Security recipients will receive payments with the 2023 cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, of 8.7 percent, which was the highest increase in about four decades. The COLA is
determined by the year-over-year Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rates in the third quarter of the previous year.
“In general, monthly amounts for the next year are determined by increasing the unrounded annual amounts for the current year by the COLA effective for January of the next year,” the Social Security website
says. “The new unrounded amounts are then each divided by 12 and the resulting amounts are rounded down to the next lower multiple of $1.”
While the Bureau of Labor Statistics is soon to release November’s CPI data in just a few days, October’s inflation was flat compared to the previous month, according to figures from the
agency released last month. The CPI for October increased 3.2 percent from a year ago, down from 3.7 percent in September, the figures
show.
With the 8.7 percent COLA, “the reality is that the dollar amount of the COLA increase received is meager at best, with the average monthly retiree benefit only $1,790 in 2023,” said the Senior Citizen’s League advocacy group. Citing its own survey, about 45 percent “of those participating report spending less than $2,000 on monthly expenses in 2023, as detailed below in the following table,” it said in
September.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell last week
indicated that after a series of rate hikes to curb inflation, “it would be premature to conclude with confidence” that it has raised it enough times. During the remarks, the Fed chair said that it would be “premature to” speculate on when the rate hikes will stop.
