The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for 2026 is on pace to be the lowest annual benefit increase in five years, according to new estimates.

But that may change depending on the pace of inflation in the coming months.

The 2026 COLA may be 2.4% in 2026, according to new projections from both Mary Johnson, an independent Social Security and Medicare policy analyst, and The Senior Citizens League, a non-partisan senior group.

If that increase goes into effect next year, it would be lower than the 2.5% boost to benefits Social Security beneficiaries saw in 2025. It would also be the lowest cost-of-living adjustment since 2021, when a 1.3% increase went into effect.

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The Social Security COLA provides an annual inflation adjustment to all of the program’s beneficiaries, including retirees, disabled individuals and family members.

The annual adjustment for the next year is calculated by comparing third quarter inflation data for the current year to the previous year. The year-over-year difference determines the annual increase. However, if there is no increase in the the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W, from year to year, the COLA may be zero. 

The CPI-W, used to calculate Social Security’s COLA, increased by 2.1% over the past 12 months, according to data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the months ahead, two factors may affect retirees’ cost of living, experts say.

Inflation, as measured by the broader Consumer Price Index, sank to its lowest 12-month rate at 2.3% in April since 2021.

Yet tariffs may push the inflation rate higher in the months ahead, if those taxes imposed on imported goods go into effect.

Tariffs would prompt higher consumer prices and inflation. If that happens in the months ahead, the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment estimate for 2026 may move higher.

“This year will be a closer year to watch because of the tariffs,” Johnson said of the 2026 COLA estimate, which is recalculated every month with new inflation data.

The official COLA for the following year is typically announced by the Social Security Administration in October.

The policy would apply to Medicare and Medicaid, in addition to the commercial market, according to the White House.

Changing drug prices would be unlikely to impact the COLA estimate, according to Johnson. But retirees would see an impact to the personal budgets if drug prices came down, she said.

Many details of the executive order still need to be fleshed out, noted Leigh Purvis, prescription drug policy principal at AARP Public Policy Institute. Yet the nonprofit organization, which represents Americans ages 50 and up, praised the Trump administration’s efforts to curb big drug companies’ ability to charge retirees high prices for necessary prescriptions.

“A lot of people are aware that prescription drug prices are too high, and I think a lot of people are aware that we’re paying a lot more than other countries,” Purvis said.

“So any efforts moving us in the direction of paying less and paying something that’s more comparable to the rest of the world, I think is something that people could probably get behind,” she said.

Between their credit card balances, mortgages, auto loans, home equity lines of credit and student debt, Americans owe a record $18.2 trillion, according to a new quarterly report on household debt from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Still, for the most part, borrowers are managing that debt relatively well — with one exception.

“Transition rates into serious delinquency have leveled off for credit card and auto loans over the past year,” Daniel Mangrum, research economist at the New York Fed, said in a statement. “However, the first batch of past due student loans were reported in the first quarter of 2025, resulting in a large jump in seriously delinquent borrowers.”

The delinquency rate for student loan balances spiked after a nearly five-year pause due to the pandemic, the New York Fed found. Nearly 8% of total student debt was reported as 90 days past due in the first quarter of 2025, compared to less than 1% a year earlier.

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Although the student loan delinquency rate is “likely to go up a little bit more,” it is “still comparable to what it was in 2020,” the New York Fed researchers said on a press call Tuesday.

However, in a blog post, the researchers noted that “the ramifications of student loan delinquency are severe.”

Currently, around 42 million Americans hold federal student loans and roughly 5.3 million borrowers are in default, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Another 4 million borrowers are in “late-stage delinquency,” or over 90 days past due on payments.

Among borrowers who are now required to make payments — not including those who are in deferment or forbearance or are currently enrolled in school — nearly one in four student loan borrowers are behind in their payments, the New York Fed found.  

“For many, this had grave consequences for their credit standing,” the New York Fed researchers said.

The Education Department restarted collection efforts on defaulted student loans on May 5, which includes the garnishment of wages, tax returns and Social Security payments.

Until last week, the Education Department had not collected on defaulted student loans since March 2020. After the Covid pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments expired in September 2023, the Biden administration offered borrowers another year in which they would be shielded from the impacts of missed payments. That on-ramp officially ended on Sept. 30, 2024 and delinquencies began appearing on credit reports in the first quarter of 2025.

Both VantageScore and FICO reported a drop in average scores starting in February as early- and late-stage credit delinquencies rose sharply, driven by the resumption of student loan reporting.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York also cautioned in a March report that student loan borrowers who are late on their payments could see their credit scores sink by as much as 171 points as collection activity resumes. 

A separate analysis by TransUnion found that consumers who faced default in recent months have seen their credit scores fall by 63 points, on average. For super prime borrowers — or those with credit scores above 780 — who were seriously delinquent, scores sank as much as 175 points. Credit scores typically range between 300 and 850.

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The Federal Trade Commission’s new guidelines on price transparency — known as the junk fees rule —will change how ticket prices are presented, which is a rare victory for consumers, experts say.

According to the FTC, businesses selling live-event tickets or short-term lodging must prominently show the total cost upfront, including “all charges or fees the business knows about and can calculate,” before asking for payment. They must also “avoid vague phrases like ‘convenience fees,’ ‘service fees,’ or ‘processing fees'” and “conspicuously disclose the amount and purpose of those charges,” the FTC explained.

“More transparency is always a win for consumers,” said Andrew Mall, an associate professor of music at Northeastern University. However, “if there are any consumers who have been expecting fewer fees as a result, they will be disappointed,” he added.

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Consumers have grown increasingly frustrated with ticket sellers in recent years, especially as a number of blockbuster tours tested the limits of what concert goers were willing to pay.

“Concert ticket pricing is a very elastic economic model,” Mall said, “there is no limit.”

Post-pandemic, ticket prices soared, also known as “funflation.”

The prevalence of tacking on “junk fees” as well as implementing “dynamic pricing,” which is when ticket-selling platforms charge more per ticket depending on demand at any given time, caused costs to escalate even more, often unexpectedly. Neither of these strategies are prohibited under the FTC’s new rule.

“This is not about capping fees or saying what fees companies can or cannot charge,” said Teresa Murray, director of the consumer watchdog office for U.S. PIRG, a nonprofit consumer advocacy research group.

“It’s about transparency and it’s about making things fair, not just for consumers but also for other businesses,” she added.

The rule is narrower than what the FTC proposed in 2023. That rule would have broadly banned hidden charges as part of former President Joe Biden’s wide-ranging crackdown on junk fees that drive up costs without providing visible benefits.

Ticket sellers can continue to charge whatever they want for concerts, sporting events, music, theater and other live performances, Murray said. “They just have to give the total price upfront.”

Ticketmaster on Monday launched “All In Prices” in the U.S., which now shows the full price of tickets, including all fees before taxes and shipping charges.

“Ticketmaster has long advocated for all-in pricing to become the nationwide standard so fans can easily compare prices across all ticketing sites, and we commend the FTC for making that a reality,” Ticketmaster COO Michael Wichser said in a statement. “Paired with the recent executive order targeting abuse in the secondary market, it marks a meaningful step forward for our industry and we’ll continue pushing for additional reforms that protect both artists and fans.”

Secondary-market seller SeatGeek also announced in a press release Monday it will now display the price of tickets with fees included upfront on its platform, in line with the FTC’s new guidelines.

“Fans deserve pricing that’s clear from the start,” Jack Groetzinger, SeatGeek’s co-founder and CEO, said in the release. “This is an important step forward.”

There may also be a knock-on effect to come, Murray said.

“In the secondary market, where there is a lot of competition, maybe those companies will shave off a few of those fees so they appear to be the lowest cost,” she said. “We wouldn’t be surprised if some fees went away.”

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