The Social Security Administration announced a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) of 8.7%, which has been praised many times as the program's biggest raise in decades.
Even though an 8.7% COLA may seem like a great deal, it's not the biggest Social Security raise that has ever been given.
In fact, the greatest rise gave out since the beginning of the COLA system in 1975 far beyond the 8.7% threshold.
Over the past year and a half, Americans of all ages have had to deal with inflation that has gotten out of control.
And that was shocking because the rate of inflation had mostly stayed the same for many years before 2021.
In fact, one of the main things that Social Security recipients complained about in the years before 2022 was how low their COLAs were.
On the other hand, inflation was so high earlier this year that some experts thought the COLA for 2023 could be as high as 11%.
Now, let's talk about that 8.7% COLA again. Compared to the 5.9% COLA that seniors got going into 2022, it's a huge difference.
And it’s certainly far more generous than the 1.3% COLA Social Security recipients got the year before.