It has been my custom for most of the past 28 years to write a year-end column summarizing the Social Security updates scheduled for the following year. I already discussed some of these updates in a column back in October when they were first announced. But it doesn’t hurt to repeat them here. (They all grow out of the annual cost-of-living adjustments that have been part of the program since 1973.)
However, before I proceed, I need to address a related and misleading ad that appears almost daily on my cell phone and iPad, and I’m sure it does on your devices as well. The headline goes something like this: “Here are 6 major changes to Social Security coming in 2026 that you probably don’t know about.” If you open it up (and maybe get sucked in by all the other ads on the site), you will learn that those “major changes” are just the routine COLA adjustments that have been part of the program for over 50 years now. I’m sharing those routine adjustments with you today—without all the hype.
