Social Security 2025: What is the payment schedule for checks?

New York’s Staten Island — The almost 70 million Americans who receive Social Security payments may be wondering when they will receive their monthly checks in 2025, as the new year approaches.

The answer is a little nuanced because the date of birth determines when recipients get their monthly benefits.

Benefits are paid out on the second Wednesday of the month to people whose birthdate falls between the first and the tenth.

Checks are issued on the third Wednesday of each month to individuals born between the eleventh and the twentieth, and on the fourth Wednesday to those born between the twenty-first and the thirty-first.

There are a few exceptions, though.

Checks will arrive earlier in the month for those who have been receiving Social Security payments since before May 1997 and for those who receive both Social Security benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

SSI benefits will be paid to members of those categories on the first of the month, while Social Security benefits will be paid on the third of the same month, a few days later.

A detailed benefit payment schedule for 2025 is made available to the public on the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) website.

According to the SSA, around 67 million Americans received Social Security benefits on average each month in 2023, with over $1 trillion in benefits paid out over the course of the year.

According to the agency, for Americans 65 and older, Social Security benefits account for almost 30% of their total income.

Enhanced Advantages in 2025

Tens of millions of Americans who receive Social Security will see an increase in their monthly benefits of around $50 beginning on January 1, 2025, as a result of the SSA’s announcement in October of a 2.5% cost of living adjustment (COLA) for 2025.

With the COLA average 2.6% for the previous 20 years, the 2.5% increase is the lowest since 2020, when monthly payments increased by just 1.3%. Nevertheless, it is comparatively consistent with previous increases.

Third-quarter data from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) for the months of July, August, and September are used to calculate cost-of-living adjustments.

The COLA rate for the following year is calculated by adding the inflation for those three months, averaging them, and comparing them to the third-quarter average from the prior year. The percentage difference between the current year and the prior year is used.