Some Americans will receive one less Social Security payment in June due to how the payments are scheduled.
Generally, the Social Security Administration (SSA) sends out a Supplemental Social Security Income (SSI) payment to people with disabilities and older adults with little or no income on the first of each month.
June 1 falls on a Saturday, so the payments that would normally go out in June will be sent on Friday, May 31, according to the agency’s payment schedule for 2024 and 2025.
The two May SSI checks recipients aren’t getting extra money from the federal government, merely and early payment for the following month. The next SSI payment will come on July 1.
A similar payment quirk is scheduled to happen two more times in 2025, occurring in the months of August and November, according to the SSA’s payment schedule.
For June, there will be no change to the standard Social Security payments that all retired Americans receive. Generally, those payments are sent out the second, third, and fourth Wednesdays of each month, depending on the recipient’s birth date.
According to a Social Security Administration report issued in 2023, about 7.4 million people receive SSI payments each month. The program is designed to guarantee “a minimum level of income for aged, blind, or disabled individuals,” while the National Council on Aging says that the payments “vary from person to person.”
Earlier this month, the SSA said that it would to “expand access” to the SSI program starting in September.
“The expanded definition will allow more people to qualify for SSI, increase some SSI recipients’ payment amounts, and reduce reporting burdens for individuals living in public assistance households,” the agency said earlier this month.
The maximum a person can get under SSI is $943 per month, while a couple can get $1,415, according to the council. Those figures, like standard Social Security payments, are also subject to cost-of-living adjustments (COLA), which are in turn based on inflation.
“But not everyone who is eligible will receive those exact benefit amounts ... for example, you might receive more than $914 if you live in a state that provides additional monthly financial assistance. Or your payment could be lower, depending on how much countable income you have, and other factors,” the council says on its website.
While retirees got an increase to their payments in 2024, many have reported having issues paying for certain services due to relatively high inflation. A survey that was recently published by Atticus discovered that about 62 percent of retired people are dissatisfied with the 3.2 COLA increase for this year.
As of April, the average benefit paid to retired workers was $1,915 per month, said the Social Security Administration, or about $80 more than last year.
As for next year’s Social Security and SSI payments, a policy group predicted that they would increase 2.66 percent, based on predictions around the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).
Because the CPI-W was 3.4 percent in April 2024, it was “slightly lower than the inflation trends indicated last month based on February’s CPI-W data,” according to the Senior Citizens League.
However, a measure that is followed closely by the U.S. Federal Reserve rose, according to data released by the government on Friday. The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index increased 0.3 percent in April, matching the gain in March, said the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Grocery prices eased last month, according to Friday’s report, though they’re still up significantly from before the pandemic. The prices of long-lasting goods also dropped, led by less-expensive new and used cars, furniture, and appliances. The cost of used cars has declined nearly 5 percent over the past year.
