Investment firms and news headlines reward that thinking ... She is on a waiting list for a subsidized apartment for seniors. Rent will be about $800 a month, roughly half of her Social Security income. “It’s not optimal to just get by,” she ...

But the truth is that your monthly benefit is never truly locked in, because each year, Social Security recipients are eligible for an automatic cost-of-living adjustment (COLA).

But a 2.5% COLA for 2025 stings because it's the smallest one to arrive in years. At the start of 2024, seniors on Social Security saw their benefits increase by 3.2%. And the year prior, Social Security recipients got a record-breaking 8.7% COLA. So a raise of just 2.5% seems awfully meager by comparison.

Seniors awaiting bigger Social Security checks next year may be shocked to discover higher Medicare premiums will eat up a chunk of their cost-of-living adjustment.

Delaying Social Security past full retirement age results in a boosted monthly benefit for life. If your full retirement age is 67, which is the case for anyone born in 1960 or later, then you have an opportunity to increase your monthly Social Security paychecks by 24% by signing up at age 70. That's an appealing thing when you're shy on savings.

But if you work and collect Social Security before reaching full retirement age, you'll risk having some of your benefits withheld if your income exceeds a certain threshold. In 2025, that threshold, known as the earnings-test limit, is $23,400, up from $22,320.

Since 2002, national pollster Gallup has surveyed retirees on an annual basis to gauge how reliant they are on their Social Security income. During this 23-year stretch, 80% to 90% of respondents, including 88% in the latest survey released in April 2024,