Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
The Social Security system is not going bankrupt, but the checks retirees receive could shrink meaningfully within the next decade. The 2025 Trustees Report projects that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund will run dry in 2033, and after that point, incoming payroll taxes would cover only a fraction of promised benefits. For tens…
Social Security pays the average retired worker $2,071 per month, but that figure obscures a wide range of outcomes. For someone who spent decades earning at or near the taxable maximum and delayed claiming benefits, the monthly check at age 83 can be roughly double the national average. Understanding how the program treats high earners…
Millions of retirees will open their Social Security statements in 2026 and find less money than they expected, not because benefits were cut on paper, but because a series of automatic deductions will quietly shrink what actually hits their bank accounts. The combination of a sharply higher Medicare Part B premium, aggressive overpayment recovery rules,…
The 2025 Social Security Trustees Report, released today, projects that the combined Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance trust funds will run dry by 2034, one year sooner than last year’s estimate. That does not mean checks stop arriving. It means the program would shift from paying what retirees were promised to paying only what incoming…
Social Security’s financial clock just accelerated. The 2025 Trustees Report, released today, projects that the combined Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance trust funds will run dry by 2034, one year earlier than the previous estimate. With reserves still measured in the trillions but an unfunded obligation now exceeding $25 trillion in present value,…
A retiree earning just $50 more than a federal income threshold can lose hundreds of dollars in annual Social Security benefits, not because of a gradual tax but because of rigid bracket cutoffs that punish small earnings bumps with outsized financial penalties. The mechanism behind this problem sits at the intersection of Medicare premium surcharges…
Social Security faces a convergence of financial pressures heading into 2026 that could accelerate the program’s already deteriorating fiscal outlook. Three distinct forces, a rising cost-of-living adjustment, the fallout from a major benefit expansion law, and a trust fund depletion timeline that just moved closer, are combining in ways that demand attention from anyone counting…
The Social Security system just moved one year closer to an automatic benefit cut that would shrink retirement checks for tens of millions of Americans. The 2025 Trustees Report, released on June 18, 2025, projects that the combined Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance trust funds will run out of reserves by 2034, at…
The Working Families Tax Cuts package, promoted by House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith as delivering “No Tax on Social Security,” actually creates a temporary $6,000 deduction rather than eliminating taxes on benefits. That gap between the political branding and the statute’s fine print carries a real cost: income taxes paid on Social Security…
Every year, a growing number of retirees discover that a portion of their Social Security benefits is subject to federal income tax. The reason traces back to income thresholds written into law in 1983 and 1993, thresholds that were never adjusted for inflation. Because those dollar figures remain frozen while wages, pensions, and investment returns…