{"id":177543,"date":"2025-12-10T17:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T17:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/177543\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T17:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T17:04:07","slug":"key-change-coming-to-social-security-retirement-age-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/177543\/","title":{"rendered":"Key change coming to Social Security retirement age in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social Security\u2019s full retirement age will hit a new threshold in 2026, according to CBS News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The age will reach 67 for everyone born in 1960 or later. That means anyone born that year won\u2019t qualify for full benefits until 2027, rather than 2026, CBS said.<\/p>\n

The change is the final step in a series of scheduled increases put in place through a law in the 1980s to shore up the Social Security system\u2019s finances. Before those reforms passed, anyone could claim full benefits at age 65.<\/p>\n

The law gradually pushed that age higher.<\/p>\n

Workers can claim Social Security as early as age 62, but doing that permanently reduces the monthly benefit by about 30%, according to CBS. Waiting for the full retirement age eliminates the cut.<\/p>\n

The increase in full retirement age isn\u2019t the only change coming to Social Security in 2026.<\/p>\n

Benefits under the program will increase 2.8% next year<\/a>. The Social Security Administration announced the raise in October.<\/p>\n

The hike will result in an average benefit increase of $56 a month. The increase takes effect in January.<\/p>\n

The increase is the program\u2019s annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA. The raise is tied to inflation.<\/p>\n

The increase benefits 75 million Americans. Over the last 10 years, Social Security benefits have increased about 3.1% per year, on average, according to the administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social Security\u2019s full retirement age will hit a new threshold in 2026, according to CBS News. The age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":{"0":"post-177543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}