COLA is one of the great things that the United States Social Security Administration has created. Thanks to COLA, both Supplemental Security Income and retirement benefits can increase a little each year. This increase gives all Social Security recipients purchasing power in line with price increases and inflation.
Anyone receiving a Social Security retirement benefit or Supplemental Security Income has the potential for the COLA to increase their monthly check. This makes general price increases less of an issue for those individuals, although sometimes it may not seem like enough. In any case, these increases are important. The objective is not that the beneficiaries become rich, but that they can pay all their expenses without problems.
Read more: This is how the COLA affects your Social Security retirement benefits
Claiming COLA for Supplemental Security Income
If you have a Social Security benefit you can get an increase with the COLA. The same is true for Supplemental Security Income. Both the retirement benefit and SSI usually go together, so the increase for both benefits is the same. Knowing this, you need to know how to claim the increase.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do anything to claim the COLA increase in your Supplemental Security Income. This is a great advantage, since you won’t have to submit any paperwork. You don’t have to do any paperwork either, you just need to wait. The increase is fully automatic and it doesn’t matter if you have SSI or a retirement, disability or blindness benefit.
For the COLA increase you do not have to do anything, but you do have to apply for the main benefit. SSI can be applied for through the Social Security website in a convenient and quick way. After completing all the necessary forms, you may receive a notification telling you what steps to take. You can also visit a local office or call.
What will the SSI increase be in 2023?
It is still too early to tell what the exact COLA increase will be for 2023. The Supplemental Security Income COLA will increase in line with inflation and price increases during the months of July, August and September. After these three months, Congress will finalize in October what the percentage increase in cash benefits and benefits will be.
For 2022 we saw an increase of around 6%, but by 2023 it is expected to reach almost 9%. Some people claim that it could even increase to 11%, but all these data are only speculations so far, so we can only wait. Let’s hope that the amount that increases through the COLA will make the Supplemental Security Income sufficient to face inflation.
Read more: Social Security benefits may increase by almost 10% due to inflation
This COLA increase will not only affect SSI, but also all Social Security benefits. So if you are collecting both benefits, you will end up getting a cash increase from both. This is good news for pensioners to have good purchasing power. In this way, inflation and price increases are not such a painful factor every month.