About 8% of Medicare Part B beneficiaries are affected by those income-related adjustments, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Social Security benefits are taxed on a formula called combined income — the sum of adjusted gross income, nontaxable interest and half of Social Security benefits. Beneficiaries may pay no taxes on their benefits, if their combined income is low enough, or up to 50% or 85% of their benefits may be subject to federal taxes if their combined incomes are above certain thresholds.

“What we’ve seen with clients is kind of a surge in other income that has caused more of their Social Security to be taxed,” said CFP Brian Vosberg, president of Vosberg Wealth Management in Glendora, California.

For example, retirees who have $200,000 in money market accounts or certificates of deposit are seeing higher interest payments on that sum after the Federal Reserve’s string of rate hikes in recent years. That interest income may require beneficiaries to pay a higher federal tax rate on their benefits, Vosberg said.

Proactive tax planning can help alleviate that situation, Vosberg said. Strategies such as buying an annuity that lets that interest grow tax deferred or reducing income from other areas, such as IRA withdrawals, can help minimize the tax bite, he said.

Retirees should also take note if their incomes have meaningfully changed in the past couple of years, according to Blair. If that’s the case, their monthly Medicare Part B premium rate may no longer be accurate. Beneficiaries can notify the Social Security Administration of life-changing events that affect their incomes and Medicare premiums by filling out a Form SSA-44.  

Thanksgiving is a time to gather with loved ones, to show gratitude for life’s abundance — and, of course, to eat.

And when it comes to Thanksgiving food, it seems Americans are getting relief on their grocery bills this year following a few years of escalating costs.

A “classic” Thanksgiving feast for a party of 10 will cost $58.08 in 2024, on average — down 5% from 2023 and down 9% from 2022, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, a trade group for farmers and ranchers.

Its analysis includes turkey, cubed stuffing, sweet potatoes, dinner rolls, frozen peas, fresh cranberries, celery, carrots, pumpkin pie mix and crusts, whipping cream and whole milk.

Prices for this food basket were at a record high in 2022, at $64.05, the Farm Bureau said.

Households that add ham, russet potatoes and frozen green beans into the mix would pay $77.34 in 2024, on average — an 8% decrease from 2023, the Farm Bureau said.

The annual decline in prices will be welcome news to many households: Nearly half, 44%, of people hosting Thanksgiving this year are concerned about the cost of the event, according to a recent Deloitte survey.

The decrease is largely due to various supply-and-demand dynamics driving down prices for key staples — turkey, most importantly — and an overarching decline in U.S. food inflation, according to economists.

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“Food inflation has been pretty tame,” said Robin Wenzel, head of the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute. “You’re seeing some good relief there.”

That said, a classic Thanksgiving meal is still 19% pricier than it was in 2019, according to the Farm Bureau.

“Declines don’t really erase the dramatic increases we had,” said Bernt Nelson, a Farm Bureau economist.

The national average cost for a 16-pound turkey is down 6% from 2023, according to the Farm Bureau. Overall turkey prices have decreased about 4% in the past year, according to the consumer price index.

Turkey has been a “curious item this year,” Nelson said.

On one hand, turkey supply is down “significantly,” he said. Farmers raised about 205 million turkeys in 2024, down 6% from 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s the lowest figure since 1985, Nelson said.

Largely, that’s because of the impact of bird flu, a lethal and contagious disease among birds that has contributed to the deaths of about 14 million turkeys since 2022, he said.

Lower supply would tend to raise prices, all else equal. But consumer demand has decreased as well. To that point, turkey consumption per capita has fallen by about one pound this year, he said.

The aggregate impact has been lower turkey prices.

For example, in 2022, food prices grew faster than any year since 1979, partly due to a bird-flu outbreak that affected egg and poultry prices, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “compounded other economy-wide inflationary pressures such as high energy costs,” according to the USDA.

Higher costs for energy such as gasoline and diesel fuel translate into higher prices across the food supply chain, such as to distribute groceries to store shelves, experts said.

“Food price growth slowed in 2023 as wholesale food prices and these other inflationary factors eased from 2022,” the USDA said, and it has declined further in 2024.

A menu of completely store-brand items to feed 10 friends and family members would yield a total savings of $17, according to a Wells Fargo analysis.

Consumers often pay a premium for name-brand items, but that’s not true in all cases this year.

For example, name-brand cranberries are cheaper than the store brand, on average, Wenzel said.

“When shopping this year, it really comes back to doing a little bit of research,” Wenzel said.     

Since President Joe Biden took office, the Education Department has canceled the federal student loans of nearly 5 million people, totaling $175 billion in relief, according to the White House.

It has done so mostly by improving existing student loan relief programs that had long been plagued by problems, including the Public Service Loan Forgiveness initiative and income-driven repayment plans.

Those borrowers should be in the clear, experts say.

“Any regulatory changes must be prospective only,” meaning that eliminations to loan forgiveness programs would only impact new borrowers, explained Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit that helps borrowers navigate the repayment of their debt.

“They aren’t allowed to change regulations retroactively,” she added.

For that reason, even borrowers who have been pursuing forgiveness under an income-driven repayment plan or a program like PSLF, but have not yet received that relief, may be safe.

The terms of a loan, which are spelled out in the Master Promissory Note federal student loan borrowers sign when they take out the debt, can’t be change in the middle of repayment, experts said.

In June, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree in Wichita, Kansas, described student loan forgiveness as having an “irreversible impact,” in his decision to block one of the Biden administration’s relief measures.

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The retraction of student loan forgiveness is incredibly rare, Kantrowitz writes in a recent article in The College Investor.

For example, in February, some borrowers saw their debts reinstated under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Yet that only occurred because the debt cancellation was granted through an error, and the borrowers were not yet eligible for the relief.

“Don’t worry,” Kantrowitz said. “The president does not have the legal authority to reinstate forgiven loans.”

Still, borrowers should keep a record of the notices they’ve received about their forgiven debt, and any loan documents showing a $0 balance, Kantrowitz said.

In a new report, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cites, among the errors reported by student loan borrowers, “balance reinstatements,” in which a loan servicer tacks a loan balance back on to one’s account.