Social Security beneficiaries, including retirement, disability, SSDI and survivors benefits. What’s with this raise and letter they’ve apparently been sending hang out. I have all the details for you right here in this topic. So let’s get into it right now. All right.
So this is a question that I continue to see popping up down in the comment section time and time again over the last few days here. In fact, I’ve probably read this a couple hundred times just in the last couple of days. Well, as I mentioned in previous topics, anytime that I come across a question or something that’s popping up a lot, I usually like to do some more research on that and make a dedicated topic about it, because if there’s that many people asking the same type of question, I know that there’s a lot of other people out there probably wondering the exact same thing that maybe haven’t left a question yet. So that’s exactly what I’m doing right here in this topic. I’ve seen it pop up so many times that I want to address this for you in the topic.
So let’s first talk about this raise, and then we’ll talk about this letter that you probably seen down in the comments section. Some people reaching out saying the letter Social Security letter. What’s going on with this? All right. So let’s talk about the raise first off.
So I’ve seen a number of people over the last couple of days here saying I never got my raise. Where’s my raise? It’s a joke. It was never coming in the first place. No, that’s not the case.
It’s not a joke. You should have gotten your raise. In fact, if you already received your new higher benefit. Well, let me say this much. If you’re watching this, you probably didn’t get your raise quite yet.
So let me just say this much. If you already received your Social Security benefits, whether it’s retirement, SSDI survivors or even SSI so far for the new year. I’m writing this topic in early January of 2022. By the way, if you have already received your first payment for 2022 and you did not receive your raise, you might want to call about that. And the reason I’m saying that is you should have received your higher benefit already as a result of the cost of living adjustment.
However, let’s talk about this a little bit further, depending on the size of your monthly benefits. Here’s what may have possibly happened where it may be actually in your benefit, but yet it doesn’t actually show up. And let me explain why this is. Let’s just say, for example, you get a I don’t know, $400, $500. Let’s just say $500 benefit.
Let’s just say this much. Okay. So let’s just say, for example, you get a $500 per month benefit. Your cost of living adjustment would be about $30 per month. The roughly 5.9% raise, which I’m rounding up to 6%, multiplied by 500 is a $30 raise roughly right about $30.
However, the new Medicare premium has gone up by over $21 each and every month in 2022. So maybe this is what could possibly be happening. You might be getting your new higher benefits as a result of $500 plus $30 from the Cola, minus the new higher Medicare part being premium, which is $21, bringing you right back down to $509, right? 530 -21 brings you down to 509. So maybe that is actually the case of everything that’s going on right now.
So maybe you actually are receiving your benefit and the higher raise as a result of the cost of living adjustments. So that might be something you want to check into a little bit more closely, because I’ve seen a number of comments down below saying I never got my raise. Where is my raise? Why didn’t I get it yet? So I would look into that a little bit more closely and see what is the actual situation.
Is your benefit a little bit higher, maybe just a teeny tiny bit higher. If that’s the case, then I would probably anticipate that’s. Probably what’s happening. You probably got your raise, but rather the cost of living or sorry, the Medicare Part B premium increase is just eating it all up. And many of us know in this community, it’s unfortunate that’s typically what’s happening to a lot of people, which is really sad because the Cola is supposed to adjust for the cost of living, not the Medicare Part B premium jacking up.
Right. So unfortunately, that is something that is actually happening, though. So I wanted to point that out. However, if this is not the case, if you just simply have not received your raise to your benefits, you may want to call the Social Security Administration. However, we’re still early in January as of right now.
In fact, the date that I’m recording this video is January 4. It is Tuesday today. So anyway, my point is, if this is your case, you might just want to wait a couple more weeks until maybe the end of January simply because maybe for some reason your benefits have not been distributed yet. My point is there’s a lot more benefits to be coming here throughout the course of the month. The second Wednesday, the third Wednesday and the fourth Wednesday of the month is going to yield millions of payments going out to millions of beneficiaries.
So I just want to throw that out there as well. As far as all of you receiving SSI, you should have received your payment a few days ago on December 30. For those others of you receiving Social Security benefits, a handful of people received their benefits yesterday on the third, and I even saw some pending people. Sorry, some people coming out over the weekend saying, hey, I got pending payments over the weekend on January 1, which was New Year’s Day, even a holiday. So yeah, you typically don’t see pending payments on a holiday, but I had a few people come out and say, hey, I’m pending and it’s a holiday.
Awesome. Right. So pretty exciting. But anyway, please just remember that there will be many more payments to come here in the course of January. Over the coming weeks here, there will be many more payments coming out, millions upon millions of payments coming out.
So for some reason, by the end of January, if your new higher benefit is not there and you did not get your raise yet, you may just want to call Social Security and ask them what’s going on. Why didn’t you get my higher benefit? And what’s the hold up? Am I going to get something? Is there something going on with the system?
What’s going on? Because with the cost of living adjustments, you don’t need to do anything. It’s just automatically added to your benefit. You don’t need to call. You don’t need to fill out an application.
You don’t need to do anything. They just automatically tack it on to your benefit. So no action is required. So it should have already been there. Well, let me say this much.
You should be getting it. If you’re somebody who has not received your Social Security benefit quite yet this month, just hang out. And when it arrives, make sure that that benefit raised is on there. If it’s not, you may want to consider calling them and just see what’s going on. However, let’s quickly talk about this letter, and this may wrap up some of the loose ends on this raise as well.
Now, again, this is something else I’ve been seeing down in the comments section a lot over the last few days. Here this letter, the Social Security letter. What’s going on with the letter? What’s the letter mean? Yeah.
All right. Let’s talk about this. The letter really quickly. Is this one letter that usually goes out in early December telling you what your new benefit and breakdown is going to be for the following year. So usually around the 7th, the 10th, the 15th, something like that.
Usually sometime in early to mid December. This letter is actually generated and sent out to all Beneficiaries to let you know what your new benefit is going to be for the following year, taking into consideration the cost of living adjustments and the new Beneficiary Part B premiums as well as any other deductions that you may have. It’s usually that long piece of paper. It’s about, I don’t know, 20 inches long. I’m just kind of roughly thinking about what it was.
Probably how long it really is. It’s probably about this long. Yeah. 24 inches, maybe 2024 inches. I’m going to say again, I’m just kind of roughly picturing it in my mind because I’ve seen the letters many times, but anyway, it’s usually about 2024 inches long.
It folds a few times. It has the tear off sides. You open it up and you fold it open and then usually on the back. I believe it has this breakdown of your numbers. It tells you your gross benefit, the total benefit minus off the Medicare for B premium.
It shows you your cost of living adjustment, raise it minuses off any other deductions, and then it gives you a bottom line number and it says your new benefit will be and then it gives you a number. That paper should have arrived sometime in December. However, there’s a number of people down in the comments section saying, I haven’t gotten my letter yet. Or what’s this letter? I just got a letter from Social Security. That’s what it most likely is now, of course, there are other letters that do go out to many people every single day like this. So there’s a lot of letters going out. But I’m saying this is the bulk of the letters.
The vast majority of you should have received this letter back in December. So you should have received this. But I’ve seen a number of people saying I didn’t get my letter. Here’s one thing you can do. If you did not receive a letter, you can always go on to the Social Security website, SSA.
Gov. And you can look up your benefit right there on the website. You need to have login credentials, which again, you can set up a free account right there on the Social Security website, SSA.Gov. If you want to sign up right there, and then you can get all of the real time information right there in your my Social Security account right on their website.
So check that out as well. Totally free to set up over there. And you can see all of the information that you want to know about your benefits, all of that stuff right there on that website as you log in under your specific login credentials. So I hope that helps you out again. If you did not receive that letter, check out the My Social Security on Thessa.
Gov website, and you can check out all of the information right there for you to look at as much as you want. You can even probably print it out if you wanted to. So that’s available to you anyway. This is what I wanted to hit on here really quickly because I’ve seen so many comments talking about this over the last few days here talking about the raise, either. You got your raise.
You didn’t get your raise, the letter. You got the letter. You didn’t get the letter, all of these different aspects of this. And if you didn’t get the letter like, one more thing, too, is the letter is not like the end of the day. If you don’t receive the letter, you’ll still get your race.
That’s not really a big deal, so you can always log on otherwise. I’m sure if you absolutely wanted a paper copy mailed to you, you could probably call Social Security and be like, hey, I never got the letter. Can you generate a new one and sent it out to me? I could probably do that. I’m going to be honest with you.
I’ve never tried that myself because I’ve already received the letter. So I’ve never had to call and do that. But I’m saying if you didn’t receive it for some reason, you could probably call and have them generate one for you. Maybe couldn’t. I’m guessing that’s probably an option.
They should be able to do that for you. Probably shouldn’t be that big of a deal.