What this year's announcements mean for your numbers
Every fall the same thing happens. Social Security announces a cost-of-living increase in mid-October. Medicare announces next year's premiums and income thresholds a few weeks later. The news reports an average, your neighbors report a rumor, and none of it tells you what happened to your own check. This page does that part — using numbers that never leave this device.
Your saved numbers stay in this browser. They are not sent to us, they are not part of an account, and there is nothing to log in to. Clear your browser data and they are gone — which is the trade we chose deliberately.
There is nothing saved on this device yet
This page is built on something we call the Numbers Card: a short list of the five figures that drive nearly every Medicare and Social Security decision. Your benefit at full retirement age. The age you are planning to claim. The income figure that decides your Medicare surcharge, and how you file. The date your Medicare coverage starts.
Fill it in once and the calculators on this site stop asking you the same questions, and this page can tell you each October what the new announcements did to your figures rather than to the national average. The card lives in this browser only. If you also use a tablet, you would fill it in there separately.
Start your Numbers Card on the kit page, where the printable large-type version lives as well — a good many readers prefer to keep it on paper in the folder with their Medicare letters, and that is a perfectly good way to do it.
The October ritual
Put a reminder somewhere for the third week of October. That is when Social Security announces the cost-of-living increase, and the Medicare figures follow within a few weeks. Together they set what actually arrives in your bank account for the next twelve months, and the whole review takes about twenty minutes once a year.
Three things are worth doing while the announcements are fresh. Check what the new premium does to your net deposit, not only to the headline benefit. Check whether the new income thresholds moved while your income stood still. And if your income has dropped since the tax return the surcharge was based on, that is the moment to ask Social Security to use current figures instead — the request has its own form and it costs nothing to make.
We rebuild the figures on The Wise Senior the same week the announcements land, and every change is listed on the what's new page. If you would rather have the year's numbers on one printed sheet, the large-type version is on the kit page. Not sure who to call about any of it? Start here.
Estimates and education only — not financial, tax, legal, or insurance advice. Only Social Security and Medicare can determine your actual benefit, premium, and surcharge.