Social Security in August: Recipients to receive their checks on these dates. How can you make the most of it?
More than 71 million Americans will soon get their social security payments for the month of August. Some recipients will see two payments this month - but zero payments in September, reports Democrat and Chronicle.For most recipients, Social Security payments are issued on Wednesdays throughout the month. About 7.4 million Americans who are disabled or have limited resources receive monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefit payments. About half of those who receive SSI also receive Social Security.
ALSO READ: $1,390 stimulus checks from IRS coming soon: Are you on the list? Check key date, eligibility and more
The SSA sends regular monthly payments (SSA benefits) but the dates can vary- generally depending on the day you were born.Social Security retirement, disability, and survivor (RSDI) beneficiaries who filed claims after May 1, 1997, are assigned either the second, third, or fourth Wednesday of the month. If the 1st falls on the weekend or holiday, as is the case for September, then the payments are typically issued on the previous weekday. Those who received benefits before May 1997 also have a specific payment date. Regular Social Security retirement benefits are slated to be distributed on the SSA's usual schedule:
Friday, Aug. 1: People who started receiving Social Security before May 1997Wednesday, Aug. 13: Birthdates between the 1st and 10thWednesday, Aug. 20: Birthdates between the 11th and the 20thWednesday, Aug 27: Birthdates between the 21st and the 31stSSI payments in August will be dispersed twice- on August 1 and August 29 since Labour Day falls on September 1, 2025. Therefore, September's payment will be issued on the previous weekday in August.
ALSO READ: Stimulus payments August 2025: These US states will receive financial benefit. Do you qualify?
In case you have not received electronic payment on the scheduled date, you should contact your bank or financial institution first, as per the Social Security Administration. It notes that it "may be experiencing a delay in posting your payment."Those who still need to report a late, missing, or stolen Social Security payment should call the Social Security Administration at 1-800-772-1213 (TTY 1-800-325-0778) or contact their local Social Security office. "We will review the case and if the payment is due, we will replace it," the administration says on its website. It also suggests that if you don't receive your payment on the expected date, allow three additional mailing days before contacting the agency; most arrive on time because 99% of beneficiaries are paid electronically.
ALSO READ: Social Security eyes massive reform in US: New policy could hit 3.4 million Americans this month
You can start collecting reduced Social Security benefits as early as age 62. However, waiting until you reach your full retirement age will result in a higher monthly benefit. Full retirement age has been gradually increasing—rising by two months for each year of birth. For instance, if you were born in 1958, your full retirement age is 66 years and 8 months; for those born in 1959, it's 66 years and 10 months.Adults who qualify for SSI generally do not have monthly wages above $2,019.Those eligible for SSI can begin the application process online, in person at your local Social Security office, or by calling 1-800-772-1213 (TTY 1-800-325-0778) from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time during the work week.-Reducing non essential costs like reviewing your bank or credit card statements to spot recurring charges can help you free up money for the things you really need.-You should call and check if retailers, grocery stores, and transportation services offer senior discounts for people aged 60 and older as it could save money.-Combining your auto and home insurance under one provider could lower your premiums and this could allow you to use the extra income for other monthly expenses.-Use budgeting app or worksheet to track spending as it helps you prioritize essentials and avoid unnecessary purchases, helping you stretch your dollar a little bit further.
ALSO READ: 'Rage Against the Regime' protests planned against Trump in US on Saturday: Check key cities, timings and more
-Switch to Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program to lower or stabilize your energy costs.-Plan meals before shopping and stick to a list to avoid impulse buys. You can also consider purchasing from discount stores and browsing the weekly circulars to help lower your grocery bill.-You can try and combine errands into a single outing to help lower transportation costs. These savings can then be used on other necessities, like food or health care.-Opt for free or low-cost drug savings programs that are separate from insurance. This will help you stretch your Social Security check.-If something isn't essential, consider waiting until it's marked down, especially for home goods and electronics.-Consider withdrawing a set amount of cash for non-essentials. Once it's gone, that's it for the month. It is a simple method to control optional spending.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
2 minutes ago
- Time of India
China's July exports top forecasts amid rush to meet Trump tariff deadline
China's exports surpassed expectations in July, driven by manufacturers capitalizing on a temporary tariff truce with the U.S. to ship goods before an impending deadline. Despite this surge, economists anticipate a slowdown in export growth during the latter half of the year due to persistent tariffs and strained relations with both the EU and the U.S. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Popular in International China's exports beat forecasts in July, as manufacturers made the most of a fragile tariff truce between Beijing and Washington to ship goods ahead of a looming deadline later this shipments from the world's second-largest economy rose 7.2% year-on-year in July, customs data showed on Thursday, beating a forecast 5.4% increase in a Reuters poll and June's 4.8% grew 4.1%, following a 1.1% rise in June. Economists had predicted a 1.0% is facing an August 12 deadline to reach a durable tariff agreement with the U.S. administration, after Beijing and Washington reached framework agreements in May and June to reduce non-tariff barriers such as rare earth minerals and technology to avoid further escalating their trade a deal, global supply chains could face renewed turmoil from U.S. duties snapping back to triple-digit levels that would amount to a bilateral trade said on Tuesday the U.S. was close to a trade deal with China and that he would meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping before the end of the year if the world's two largest economies could come to an July trade surplus narrowed to $98.24 billion from $114.77 billion in June. Separate data from the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis on Tuesday showed the U.S. trade gap with China shrank to its lowest in more than 21 years in government advisers are stepping up calls to make the household sector's contribution to broader economic growth a top priority at Beijing's upcoming five-year policy plan, as trade tensions and deflation threaten the top leaders have vowed to step up regulation of aggressive price-cutting by Chinese companies that is pushing prices ever economists warn that reversing the current deflationary slump will be far more difficult than during the last round of supply-side reforms a decade ago, as the downturn now poses a broader threat to employment, which Chinese leaders have emphasised is a core component of social an agreement with the United States - and with the European Union, which has accused China of producing and selling goods too cheaply - would give Chinese officials more room to advance their reform analysts expect little relief from Western trade pressures. Export growth is projected to slow sharply in the second half of the year, hurt by persistently high tariffs, President Trump's renewed crackdown on the rerouting of Chinese shipments and deteriorating relations with the EU.
The Hindu
2 minutes ago
- The Hindu
OpenAI's long-awaited GPT-5 model nears release
OpenAI's GPT-5, the latest installment of the AI technology that powered the ChatGPT juggernaut in 2022, is set for an imminent release, and users will scrutinise if the step up from GPT-4 is on par with the research lab's previous improvements. Two early testers of the new model told Reuters they have been impressed with its ability to code and solve science and math problems, but they believe the leap from GPT-4 to GPT-5 is not as large as the one from GPT-3 to GPT-4. The testers, who have signed non-disclosure agreements, declined to be named for this story. OpenAI declined to comment for this story. GPT-4's leap was based on more compute power and data, and the company was hoping that 'scaling up' in a similar way would consistently lead to improved AI models. But OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft and is currently valued at $300 billion, ran into issues scaling up. One problem was the data wall the company ran into, and OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever said last year that while processing power was growing, the amount of data was not. He was referring to the fact that large language models are trained on massive datasets that scrape the entire internet, and AI labs have no other options for large troves of human-generated textual data. Apart from the lack of data, another problem was that 'training runs' for large models are more likely to have hardware-induced failures given how complicated the system is, and researchers may not know the eventual performance of the models until the end of the run, which can take months. OpenAI has not said when GPT-5 will be released, but the industry expects it to be any day now, according to media reports. Boris Power, head of Applied Research at OpenAI, said in an X post on Monday: "Excited to see how the public receives GPT-5." 'OpenAI made such a great leap from GPT-3 to GPT-4, that ever since then, there has been an enormous amount of anticipation over GPT-5,' said Navin Chaddha, managing partner at venture capital fund Mayfield, who invests in AI companies but is not an OpenAI investor. 'The hope is that GPT-5 will unlock AI applications that move beyond chat into fully autonomous task execution." Nearly three years ago, ChatGPT introduced the world to generative AI, dazzling users with its ability to write humanlike prose and poetry, quickly becoming one of the fastest growing apps ever. In March 2023, OpenAI followed up ChatGPT with the release of GPT-4, a large language model that made huge leaps forward in intelligence. While GPT-3.5, an earlier version of the model, received a bar exam score in the bottom 10%, GPT-4 passed the simulated bar exam in the top 10%. GPT-4 then became the model to beat and the world came to terms with the fact that AI models could outperform humans in many tasks. Soon, other companies were catching on. The same year, Alphabet's Google and Anthropic, which is backed by Amazon and Google, released competitive models to GPT-4. Within a year, open-source models on par with GPT-4 such as Meta Platforms' Llama 3 models were released. Along with training large models, OpenAI has now invested in another route, called 'test-time compute,' which channels more processing power to solve challenging tasks such as math or complex operations that demand human-like reasoning and decision-making. The company's CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that GPT-5 would combine both test-time compute and its large models. He also said that OpenAI's model and product offerings had become "complicated."
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
2 minutes ago
- First Post
21 days before India, how Brazil is riding out 50% Trump tariff
The lower stakes for the Brazilian economy give President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva more room to stand his ground against Trump than most Western leaders, after calling him an unwanted global 'emperor' and comparing his tariff threats to blackmail read more A drone view shows a ship and containers at the Port of Santos, in Santos, Brazil April 3, 2025. Reuters Brazilian goods imported by the United States will soon carry one of the highest tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, but that will not likely derail Latin America's largest economy, due to ample exemptions and stronger trade ties with China. The lower stakes for the Brazilian economy give President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva more room to stand his ground against Trump than most Western leaders, after calling him an unwanted global 'emperor' and comparing his tariff threats to blackmail. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Lula has said he is open to negotiating a trade deal, but dismissed Trump's complaints about the trial of right-wing ally Jair Bolsonaro as a threat to Brazilian sovereignty and judicial independence. Brazil's Supreme Court is trying the ex-president for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2022 election he lost to Lula. Those tensions, stoked by Bolsonaro's house arrest on Monday, are likely to make negotiations about the 50% U.S. tariff on Brazilian goods between Washington and Brasilia thorny and drawn out, even as the fallout for Brazil's economy looks limited. Unlike Mexico and Canada, which sell about three-quarters of their exports to the United States, Americans buy just 12% of Brazilian exports. By comparison, Brazil's exports to China have doubled in value over the past decade, now accounting for 28% of the country's total shipments. After exemptions laid out in Trump's executive order last week, including on aircraft, energy, and orange juice, the tariff taking effect on Wednesday will apply to just under 36% of Brazilian exports to the U.S. by value, according to estimates in Brasilia. Many of the affected exports are commodities such as beef and coffee, which should find alternative markets at modest discounts, according to economists. 'We were already expecting a limited impact, but it dropped further with the exemptions,' said Luiza Pinese, an economist at XP, who halved her forecast for the tariff impact on Brazil's gross domestic product this year to 0.15 percentage points. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Goldman Sachs maintained its projection for Brazil's economy to grow 2.3% this year in light of the 'notable' exemptions, adding that government support for affected sectors, expected in the coming days, should further soften the economic blow. 'Brazil depends on the United States, that's true, but also on BRICS countries, on Europe, on Mercosur,' Planning Minister Simone Tebet said at a public event last week, referring to major developing nations such as China, India, and Russia and a South American trade bloc. She said almost half of Brazil's agribusiness trade, an engine for Brazil's economy in recent years, is concentrated in Asia, compared to just 10% with the United States. 'When it comes to industry, the ratio is four to one - four times more to Asia than to the United States,' she added. Smaller role for trade Brazil is far less open to trade than most major global economies, limiting fallout from trade disruptions. Exports and imports amounted to 36% of its GDP last year, less than half the share in Mexico and nearby Paraguay, and just a quarter of the level in trade-focused Asian economies such as Thailand and Malaysia, according to World Bank data. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Much of Brazil's exports are commodities easily redirected to different markets over time, said Thiago Carlos, a PIMCO portfolio manager for emerging markets. In the short term, more domestic food supply may even help to bring down inflation, he added. 'With inflation likely to trend lower, the central bank may find room to begin easing monetary policy sooner than expected,' said Carlos, noting the benchmark rate at the current level of 15% keeps monetary policy extremely tight, dragging on growth. Analysts polled by Reuters estimated that even without a U.S. trade deal and before exemptions, Brazil's growth outlook for 2026 would remain virtually unchanged from their consensus of 1.6%-1.7%. Still, Luis Otavio Leal, chief economist at asset manager G5 Partners, warned of potential knock-on effects if government aid is not well targeted to protect vulnerable sectors and jobs. 'Exemptions applied to nearly 700 products - and Brazil exports about 4,000 different goods to the U.S.,' said Leal. 'A large number of firms that sell to the U.S. were not covered.' Brazil's central bank said on Monday that U.S. levies on Brazilian goods could have 'significant' effects on specific sectors, but broader macroeconomic effects are uncertain and will depend on negotiations and market risk perceptions. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Flavio Ataliba, a researcher at Brazilian university FGV, noted that the vast country's regional variety will result in uneven impacts. The Northeast region, in particular, could be hit harder due to its export base of low-value-added, labor-intensive goods such as fresh fruit, seafood, textiles, and footwear - all now subject to the full 50% tariff, he added.
