News

The answer depends upon whether you start your benefits before or after your full retirement age - which in 2017 is 6When you start Social Security benefits before your full retirement age, you will be subject to the Social Security earnings test. The earnings test can cause Social Security to withhold your benefits if you earn more than the annual exempted amount. In addition, your initial retirement benefit will be permanently reduced, because you started Social Security prior to your full retirement age. It pays to wait until 6Here's why:.When the average person measures cost changes, one compares the change in the cost of a specific item like a gallon of home heating oil over a specific time frame. For example, the national average cost of home heating oil was .15 per gallon in the first week of January 2000. In the first week in January, 2013 it had increased to .00 per gallon - an increase of .8That's a total increase of 257% over 13 years..That is the bad news..A majority of the 60 million senior and disabled Americans who receive Social Security depend on it for at least 50 percent of their total income, and one–third of all beneficiaries rely on it for 90 percent or more of their income. To help protect the buying power of benefits, TSCL supports bipartisan legislation called the Fair COLA for Seniors Act that would base COLAs on the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly. To learn more, visit..But you can help put a stop to the suspicious phone calls - report them! Here's the info that you will need:.Social Security benefits are one of the few types of retirement income to be automatically adjusted annually for inflation. In 2020, more than 61 million Social Security recipients received a 1.6 percent annual COLA, which raised the average ,460 benefit by .40 per month..Email Sign-up.The stakes are high for retirees, who want Congressional action. Eighty eight percent of those of you who took our 2021 Senior Survey want Congress to reduce prescription drug costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices. Congressional inaction would cost all of us dearly, if lawmakers fail to take action to boost Social Security benefits and enact reforms that would strengthen Social Security's financing for decades to come..Co-pays and coinsurance: This refers to the portion of the cost of services that you pay out-of-pocket. Co-pays are a fixed amount that you will pay for each service. For example, in a Medicare Advantage plan, you may be billed a co-pay of to see a primary care physician and to see a specialist. On the other hand, coinsurance is a variable amount. It is a percentage of the cost of the service. Theoretically if the total cost of the service is ,000 and you pay 20% coinsurance, your cost could be about 0. Under Medicare Advantage your health plan negotiates the cost of service, thus you would want to call your plan to get an idea what your total out-of-pocket costs would be, and whether your provider is a preferred provider. Under most Medigap policies, the Part B co-insurance cost is covered in large part, but there still could be some "excess charges" that you pay out of pocket.