The COLA has risen sharply over the past year and will rise again next year in the United States. The COLA percentage increase is always between 5% and 8%. This percentage means that Social Security needs to increase so that retirees can live a peaceful and quiet life. If the Social Security retirement benefit is not enough to meet the COLA, you may have a problem. That’s why it’s important to know all the possible tricks to maximize Social Security to meet the COLA.
If you are thinking about retiring soon to start collecting unemployment benefits, this information may be very good for you. It is not necessary to apply all the tips we give you today, but you can apply some of them to be able to achieve a quiet retirement and with enough money to face the COLA, since every year it can go up and unbalance our accounts.
Anyway, any advice we give you can be checked in a local office, especially if you have doubts about which year is better for you to retire. It all depends on our years of work and the amount of money we will receive in Social Security. If you think it is a low amount, it is best to follow some of these tips.
Tips for increasing Social Security
There are many useful tips for increasing Social Security. As we have previously discussed, you can check with any United States Government office to receive all the information about your particular retirement benefit. If you already have that information and think your benefit needs a raise, pay attention:
- Don’t ask for your retirement too early: The minimum age to ask Social Security for your retirement benefit is 62, but that will cause you to lose about 20% of your benefit.
- Ask for your retirement at the right time: You can ask for retirement as early as age 62, of course, but it is much better to wait until age 67 to do so. If you ask for retirement at age 67, you will receive 100% of your Social Security benefit.
- Work until age 70: If you think you will need an increase in your retirement benefit, working until age 70 may be the best option. Each year worked will increase each month’s check a little.
- You can work while receiving the retirement benefit: Remember that you can work while receiving the retirement benefit. This option is perfect for people who have a low benefit. If you choose this option, you should be careful about taxes. If you have any doubts as to whether or not you should file taxes, hire an advisor to help you with this.
- Pension plan: many banks give the options of pension plans. This benefits the retirement benefit from the Social Security. There are many different pension plans and we should look for the one that best fits us.
You can follow one of these tips to make your Social Security retirement benefit a little larger. Tackling the COLA can be difficult, so we will happily take whatever benefit we can find.
