2023: Largest SS COLA In 41 Years Expected As Well As Medicare Premium Cut

There's always the barter system. Trade some of that extra ammo for bread or milk or eggs.
Contrary to the common belief, I do think bartering is actually the oldest profession.
When we were in Egypt, I heard about the Bedouins taking tourists on their camels into the desert to spend the night. I ask one of them "why" they did it.

He said "because its there"...lol. Of course they did it for baksheesh.
 

Anything helps. I won't complain no matter what it will be. At least it's something. Face it...we're never going to get rich at this stage of the game. If you haven't invested long before now and planned for this future, you're never going to get caught up.

We haven't received a dime raise from my husband's pension in 21 years for cost of living, so we're grateful for the pittance we get from SS.
 

Colleen said:
Anything helps. I won't complain no matter what it will be. At least it's something. Face it...we're never going to get rich at this stage of the game. If you haven't invested long before now and planned for this future, you're never going to get caught up.

We haven't received a dime raise from my husband's pension in 21 years for cost of living, so we're grateful for the pittance we get from SS.
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That's how I feel as well, I will take what they give and appreciate it. Same with Medicare, I think it's a great deal. While working I was on one of those high deductable/HSA plans for the last 15 years, my individual deductible was $5K, so a family of four was damn expensive. Now I'm on a Medicare advantage plan and it's like I won the lottery!
 
Liberty said:
There's always the barter system. Trade some of that extra ammo for bread or milk or eggs.
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Exactly.

And as @C50 pointed out, there's a limit to how well people can defend themselves. After the Newtown elementary school massacre I had a conversation with a former acquaintance who'd amassed a frightening arsenal of weapons. He had a mental picture of some rogue domestic or foreign government attacking the US neighborhood by neighborhood, house by house. In his mind, he and his weaponry would fight them off. Murrica...

I said to him, "You're kidding, right? Once you started shooting they'd withdraw. 15 minutes later your house would be hit by a bomb carrying drone. Game over. You'd never even see it coming."

Relieved to say he left California several years ago. Opted for a state with more liberal gun laws.
 
OneEyedDiva said:
Here are the May CPI statistics for goods and services. The newer one for June is due to be published on July 13th. Give the graph a minute to load then under the colored graph click on Show Table.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category.htm
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I tend to look at the entire report. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.htm
Historically, both the CPI-W and the CPI-U have the same baseline of 100, yet the CPI-U has outpaced the CPI-W. The CPI-U stood at 258.115 in March, 2020, while the CPI-W was at 251.375. CPI-U is all urban workers (Salary +Hourly) and the CPI-W is mostly Hourly. The latter, by law, being the basis for C.O.L.A. Currently, CPI-U stands at 292.296 and CPI-W at 288.022.

The weightings are different, as necessities are higher in the (W), compared to (U). Annual family visits to Disney World might not be considered a necessity for the (W) group. Covid put the focus on real necessities, and the CPI-W numbers started to race ahead of the CPI-U numbers. Hence the gap has been closing...
cpiwmom.jpg
The issue would be if/when the reversion back to historical norm of CPI-U pulling ahead of the CPI-W. July numbers are beginning to look a bit shaky. Of course that report won't be upon us, until August.
 

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