Most financial commentators celebrate every cost-of-living adjustment as a win for retirees. Patricia Novak keeps a different kind of scorecard — one written in furnace repair quotes, grocery receipts, and the phone calls she has not made to her adult children because she refuses to let them know how tight things have gotten.
When I sat down with Patricia at her kitchen table in Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood on a gray Tuesday in March, she had a manila folder in front of her. Inside were two estimates for a new furnace, a printout of her January 2025 Social Security payment, and a coupon circular she had driven 20 minutes to pick up from a ShurSave on the South Side. She spread them out like evidence.
The Numbers Patricia Lives By
Patricia Novak is 65 years old and retired from the United States Postal Service after 32 years of service. Her monthly income comes from two sources: a USPS pension of approximately $1,580 and her own Social Security retirement benefit, which she began collecting at 62. As of January 2025, that Social Security check is $1,218 per month — a figure she knows precisely because she checked her My Social Security account the morning her payment posted.
Three years ago, her husband Raymond passed away. His Social Security benefit — roughly $1,490 per month — disappeared with him. Patricia told me she has never fully recalculated her life around that loss, not emotionally and not financially. “I keep thinking I’ll figure it out,” she said. “And then the heating bill comes.”
According to the Social Security Administration, the 2025 COLA was set at 2.5%, adding an average of about $50 per month to retirement benefits across all recipients. For Patricia, whose benefit sits below the national average, that translated to $31 more per month beginning with her January 2025 payment. She got a letter about it in October 2024.
“I remember opening that letter and thinking, okay, thirty-one dollars. That’s something,” she told me. “And then I got my gas bill in January and it was $284. Last January it was $201.”
What a 1960s Home Costs in 2025
Patricia’s house was built in 1964. She and Raymond bought it in 1991 for $58,000 and paid it off years ago. It is hers outright, which she considers one of the only financial facts in her life that has never caused her anxiety. Every other fact about the house currently does.
The furnace is original to the house — a 61-year-old gas unit that her neighbor, a retired HVAC technician, told her last fall was “on borrowed time.” She has received three replacement quotes. The lowest was $5,400. The highest was $7,100. She has not scheduled any of them.
The roof, she said, is a separate conversation. A contractor knocked on her door last September soliciting work in the neighborhood and pointed out soft spots near the rear gutters. His estimate was $9,800. She showed him out politely and has not gotten a second opinion because she is not ready to hear a number she cannot do anything about.
The COLA Math Nobody Talks About
The 2025 COLA adjustment was calculated using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, known as CPI-W, as tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That index measures a broad basket of goods and services — but critics have long argued it underweights the categories where older Americans spend the most: healthcare, housing maintenance, and energy.
Patricia had not heard of the CPI-W before I mentioned it. When I explained how COLA is calculated, she was quiet for a moment. Then she said: “So it’s based on what working people buy. Not what I buy.” That is a simplified version, but she is not entirely wrong in her frustration.
Patricia’s total monthly expenses — utilities, groceries, medications, insurance, property taxes — run approximately $2,540 to $2,700 depending on the season. Her income of $2,798 leaves a margin of roughly $100 to $260 per month. In winter, that margin collapses. In a month with a medical copay, it disappears.
She tracks every dollar in a spiral notebook. She showed it to me without embarrassment but also without warmth — the way someone shows you something difficult because they have made peace with it.
The Pride That Costs Her
Patricia has two adult children. Her daughter lives in Columbus and calls every Sunday. Her son is in the Navy and stationed overseas. Neither knows the full picture of her finances, and she intends to keep it that way.
“I raised them to handle their own problems,” she told me. “I’m not going to call my daughter and say, Mom needs money for a furnace. I just — I can’t do that. Raymond would have hated that.”
When I asked whether she had looked into any assistance programs, she straightened in her chair. She said she had looked at LIHEAP a few years ago and felt she made “too much” to qualify — though she acknowledged she had not checked recently or spoken with a caseworker. The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services administers the program, and income thresholds are updated annually.
This is the part of Patricia’s story that sat with me after I left. The pride that keeps her from calling her daughter is the same pride that may be keeping her from resources she has already paid into through decades of taxes and public service.
What the COLA Letter Did Not Say
Patricia’s October 2024 COLA notification letter from SSA stated her new benefit amount clearly: $1,218 effective January 2025. It did not mention Medicare Part B premium increases, which also took effect in January. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the standard Part B premium rose to $185 per month in 2025, up from $174.70 in 2024 — a jump of $10.30.
For Patricia, that meant her net COLA gain was closer to $20.70 per month after the Medicare deduction. She had not calculated it that way until I walked through the numbers with her at her kitchen table. She looked at the spiral notebook. “So it’s less than I thought,” she said. Not as a complaint. Just as a fact she was filing away.
The Outcome: Survival With No Slack
As of late March 2026 — when I spoke with Patricia — the furnace is still the original unit. It made it through the winter, though she ran it less than she should have and wore a fleece indoors most of January and February. She told me this without drama. “The pipes didn’t freeze, so I was fine,” she said.
She has $4,100 in a savings account she opened specifically for the furnace after the neighbor’s warning. She adds to it when she can. At her current rate, she estimates she will have enough for the lowest quote by late fall 2026 — assuming nothing else breaks first, and assuming next winter’s gas bills do not spike again.
The roof estimate sits in the manila folder. She has not gotten a second opinion. She says she will handle one thing at a time, in order of which one can kill her first. The furnace comes before the roof. The medical savings account comes before both.
What Patricia Wants People to Understand
Before I left, I asked Patricia what she would want someone reading her story to take away. She thought about it for a long moment, longer than she had paused for any other question.
“I want people to understand that this isn’t a poverty story,” she said finally. “I own my home. I have a pension. I have Social Security. By a lot of measures I’m doing okay. But okay doesn’t mean there’s any room. There’s no room for a bad month. There’s no room for a broken furnace. Thirty-one dollars doesn’t create room.”
She closed the manila folder and set it back on the counter next to a coupon circular and a notepad with a grocery list. She had saved, by her count, about $14 on last week’s shopping trip by driving the extra distance. That is the math she is doing every week — $14 here, $31 there — trying to assemble enough margin to survive in a house she has owned for 35 years.
I drove back from Brookline thinking about how often the national conversation about Social Security COLA frames a 2.5% increase as protection against inflation. For Patricia Novak, it is not protection. It is a partial reimbursement for ground already lost.
Sloane Avery Wren is a Senior Benefits Writer at The Daily Check covering Social Security, COLA adjustments, and payment schedules. This story is reported narrative. Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice.
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