Money & Benefits · Program
Social Security is the federal program that pays retirement, disability and survivor benefits from payroll taxes, administered by the Social Security Administration. Retirement benefits are calculated from the highest 35 years of indexed earnings and adjusted for the age at which they are claimed; disability benefits require a work history and a medical determination; survivor benefits go to spouses, children and dependent parents of workers who have died.
Payments arrive on a schedule set by the beneficiary's birth date: the second, third or fourth Wednesday of the month, with people who began before May 1997 and those who also receive SSI paid on the third. Each January benefits rise by the cost-of-living adjustment announced the previous October, calculated from the third-quarter consumer price index for urban wage earners.
FactFiled tracks the program through the payment schedule tracker, the COLA tracker and the explainers on how each is calculated, plus a notice for any month in which dates move. Every figure comes from the Social Security Administration's calendar, press releases and actuarial tables, which are linked from the pages.
A Social Security ruling that applies from October 1, 2026 sets out how SSA documents and evaluates disability for people aged 18 to about 25, from IEPs and school records to job placements, the age-18 SSI review and payments that continue during a program. It replaces SSR 11-2p.
Six payment dates this month, two of them SSI, and a Saturday that moves the 3rd-of-the-month group to Friday. Every date from the Social Security Administration’s 2026 calendar, plus November for planning.
Your payment date depends on your birthday, or on when you started benefits. Here is the rule, the exceptions, and what to do when the money is not there.