Without government help, Rhodina Garth said she wouldn’t be able to afford the $1,900 a month rent in Woodbridge apartment on top of the grocery bill. Living frugally, she just started collecting Social Security. But at about $800 a month, it’s not enough.
“Now it’s hard for me to buy clothes,” she said. “It’s hard for me to buy gas for the car, to travel. I’m constantly calling my son, saying, ‘I need money for this, I need money for that…'”
Next year, Social Security recipients like Garth will get a 2.5% cost of living adjustment — or COLA — that’s about $50 a month more. But it hardly helps in a state like New Jersey.
“I get so little, it really doesn’t add up to much,” she said.
Evelyn Liebman, director of advocacy at AARP New Jersey, said seniors are especially squeezed by the low COLA adjustment. “It creates real difficulties for older residents, particularly older residents who are on low and fixed incomes,” she said.
Liebman said next year’s 2.5% COLA increase is a continued drop from 3.2% this year, 8.7% in 2023, and 5.9% in 2022. Overall, monthly checks are determined by a recipient’s lifetime earnings.
“The cost of living in New Jersey continues to be high,” Liebman said. “The utility rates are going up. Properties taxes are still the highest in the nation. More older residents are food insecure, and are having a tough time getting the groceries they need at the supermarket.”
Some 1.7 million people in New Jersey collect Social Security benefits, most of them retirees. It’s a high-cost state, so Jersey residents do get a little bit more than the U.S. average.
But Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said these benefit adjustments “…are not increases. These are simply trying to hold the line, making sure people can tread water.”
Altman said Social Security COLA increases should correlate more on a consumer price index calculated specifically for the elderly, who have different financial pressures like healthcare and drug costs.
“In New Jersey, we have about 10% of our seniors who live below the poverty line,” said Maura Collinsgru of NJ Citizen Action. “For them, they will feel the biggest impact.”
“The real question is what can be done to help Social Security be sustained for the long term and also perhaps help better serve those seniors who rely upon it,” said Collinsgru.
Analysts have predicted Social Security will hit a financial wall in 2033 and won’t be able to pay full benefits without a rescue plan from Congress. Yet Democrats and Republicans have very different ideas between service cuts versus tax increases.
