People who are retired always worry about when they will get their Social Security payments. But most people will have a rough idea of when it is.
In addition, a lot of new claimants are more interested in the list of requirements for each program and not as much in the specifics of the payment schedule.
To make smart and organized financial plans, you need to know when you will get your retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA). This includes both retirement benefits and other benefits they offer.
At first, it might not look like a simple process, and you might be lost.
But if you start by learning the basics, it will get easier over time, and you might get better at planning your monthly budget. How does the Social Security Administration decide when to pay you? Keep reading for a quick lesson.
How does Social Security decide when to pay you?
Different situations call for different ways for Social Security to figure out when all of its payments should be sent to beneficiaries.
The first step is to admit that the SSA is in charge of many different programs, so sticking to a single date would make things too hard to run. Because of this, the best thing to do is to make a plan and divide payments up based on other factors.
There is an official payment schedule from Social Security that lists payment dates for the whole year. You can even ask that the schedule be put on hold for next year.
While this is useful because you can print it out and keep track of the dates, the payment terms may be hard to understand. That is why we will start with those easy words.
SSA divides its subscribers into two main groups so that monthly payments are easier to understand.
One group is for people who started getting benefits before May 1997, no matter what program they are in, and the other group is for people who started getting benefits after that date. The third of every month, the first group gets paid.
The second group is more difficult to understand when you look at their individual programs. People who get Supplemental Security Income (SSI) get paid on the first of every month. Let us say you get money from a program besides SSI.
This program is called OASDI, which stands for Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance. That is why your payment is subject to an extra condition set by your birth date.
This condition determines which Wednesday of the month your payment is processed. In general, birthdays come in this order:
| Wednesday of the Moth | Beneficiary Birth Date |
| Second | First to the tenth day. |
| Third | Eleventh to twentieth day. |
| Fourth | Twenty-first to thirty-first day. |
Who will get their next payment from Social Security?
As was already said, everyone who gets OASDI and was born between November 1st and November 10th will get their Social Security checks on November 13th.
What does Social Security say about the size of your check?
The program figures out how much you get from Social Security, if you get it, and how your situation fits into the program’s rules and requirements. Because of this, not everyone gets the same amount.
To give you an idea of how much your Social Security benefits will be, here is the most up-to-date information on average payments from the SSA for October 2024:
| Program | Average Amount |
| Retirement | $1,875.82 |
| Survivor | $1,509.29 |
| Disability | $1,404.75 |
| SSI | $697.50 |
How can you be part of Social Security?
There are different requirements for each program, but the table below gives you a general idea of what they are:
| Program | General Eligibility Requirements |
| Retirement | · More than 62 years old.
· Have obtained 40 Social Security credits. |
| Survivor | · Be the dependent of a Social Security-insured worker. |
| Disability | · Be medically declared as blind or disabled.
· Have contributed to SSA for five of the last 10 years. |
| SSI | · Be 65 years old, blind or disabled.
· Have less than $2,000 in assets and earn less than $1,971 |
