Another round of Social Security benefit payments will be made this week—are you one of the recipients?
Why It Matters
Social Security benefits are paid to tens of millions of Americans every month, and can contribute to a significant amount of income for those who are retired, disabled, or a survivor of a deceased claimant. As of the end of 2024, nearly 73 million people were collecting some form of benefit from the Social Security Administration (SSA) on a monthly basis.
What To Know
Due to the huge number of recipients, not every claimant gets their money on the same date each month, with most being paid according to their date of birth.
However, those who have been claiming since before May 1997, or also collect Supplemental Security Income (SSI) checks, are paid differently. SSI is a federal government benefit that provides monthly payments to adults and children with a disability or blindness and to adults aged 65 and older.
Those in these two groups are always paid toward the beginning of the calendar month. This week, Social Security beneficiaries in these groups can expect their monthly payment on Monday, February 3.
Those who collect SSI benefits are paid on two separate dates—one for their retirement income, and another for their welfare payments. SSI payments for February were made on January 31.
The SSA says you should wait three working days before contacting the government agency if a payment hasn’t arrived as expected. Federal holidays and weekends are not working days.
The amount a beneficiary receives varies based on factors including income throughout their working years and the age at which they retired. The maximum retirement benefit available in 2025 is $5,108—which has been boosted for 2025 thanks to the annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA)—but most recipients get less than this. The estimated average monthly Social Security retirement benefit for January 2025 was $1,976.
At the start of this year, benefits rose for all recipients by 2.5 percent. The COLA is determined using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), which monitors the spending patterns of working Americans. The average CPI-W for the third quarter of the year is compared with that of the same period in the previous year. If there is an increase, it is rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent to establish the new COLA.
The next round of retirement payments will be made on Wednesday, February 12, followed by two more payments for those paid according to their date of birth.
