If you are part of a group of United States citizens in the next few days you could get one of the Social Security checks. This check is exclusively for retirees who meet certain requirements and the payment will include an extra $160 or so.
Therefore, check well the requirements to determine if you are going to get one of these payments or not. It is a good idea to be very clear about the day on which you will collect your Social Security benefit in order to organize the money you have available during the month.
The news is even better if we take into account that this new payment will also include the COLA 2024. This COLA was already added in the previous months, for that reason the Social Security for the months of January and February has been higher than in all of 2023.
Still, it is true that the amount of the check does not influence the day we get the benefit. Each new payment is totally independent in that respect. What does have a direct bearing on the payment of the benefit is the retiree group to which we belong. By knowing which Social Security group we belong to we will know what day we will collect our new check.
Who gets the next Social Security benefit with an extra $160?
The amount of $160 extra is an average estimate of all COLA increases received by Social Security beneficiaries. Therefore, it is not that all Americans will get that much extra money in retirement.
Each beneficiary gets the Social Security COLA based on how much he or she was collecting previously. Retirement payments increased by 3.2% as of January of this year. And that’s the percentage your benefit will increase if you take the COLA into account.
So for every $1,000 you were collecting in March 2023 you will get an extra $32 in this March 2024. That’s the big difference from one year to the next. And to get the March 20th payment it doesn’t matter what amount or type of benefit.
That said, we will need to have applied for Social Security as of May 1997. If our check is after that date, we will only need to meet one more requirement. This other requirement is to have a birthday between the 11th and 20th of the month. This is the only way we will be able to collect this new benefit.