📋 Ways to Stretch Your 2025 Social Security COLA (AARP Article)

[Winter2025VA]

FROM THE ARTICLE: 5 Ways to Stretch the Social Security COLA.

Try these tips if the 2025 adjustment isn’t keeping up with your costs.

By Diane Harris, AARP.

*** There are 13 Comments on the AARP website. Stop by to add yours. ***

Published December 09, 2024.

The 2.5 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security benefits, the smallest increase since 2021, is a double-edged sword.

On one hand, it’s a sign that inflation has been tamed since reaching a 40-year high during the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s good news for consumers, retirees included.

USE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE: https://www.aarp.org/social-security/stretch-social-security-cola/

[fffred]

I stretch my COLA the old fashioned way.... writing rubber checks !!  

[Winter2025VA]

[2/19/25] Lol @fffred , remember the OLD DAYS when it took about a WEEK for checks to clear? Gave you SOME TIME to ward off the bill collectors when I was age 18. 🤣😂 I finally gave them up several years ago while still living in Florida. Now in Virginia I use a debit card. Thanks for stopping by!!! Nicole 👵

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[*** @fffred wrote:

I stretch my COLA the old fashioned way.... writing rubber checks !!  ***]

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[fffred]

Debit cards are indeed a good way to budget. No surprise bills end of the month. Either the money's there or it's not.

So, the Florida hurricanes drove you away? I do not miss them and the worry about them.

[Winter2025VA]

No @fffred , in 2015 my only child (daughter) had gotten an AWESOME engineering job offer in Arlington, VA. I followed her as I was NOT staying in Florida without her. 🙄

Then in 2017, she went back to Florida. HATED Virginia.

I on the other hand fell in luv with the Virginia mountains and 4 seasons EXCEPT winter and summer. Too cold and too hot (older NOW and have NO idea how I drove cars in Florida with NO air conditioning).

It took awhile to switch to debit card as I luved ordering those "pretty" checks.

NOW I am glad I did switch as way too much FRAUD with checks!!!

I will have to return to Florida IF my daughter is still there when I can NO longer drive. She swears she is NEVER leaving AGAIN.

To be honest I was SHOCKED she had left. That was her 1st time leaving. She was born there 38 years ago.

Lastly, I also LUV my Medicare gang, dental and eye team here in Virginia.

NOT looking forward to the Florida set up. 😭

But meanwhile, I and Mister 🐈 (cat I inherited last year May 2024, his humans moved and left him behind) are growing old together on my hill.

Beautiful from my Studio Apt which has a view of the surrounding mountains. 👵