The annual COLA announcement from the Social Security Administration is treated as good news — and technically, it is. But for low-income recipients who also carry Medicare Part B premiums deducted directly from their checks, the raise frequently arrives with one hand and gets partially reclaimed with the other. I did not fully appreciate how that math lands on a real person until I sat down at a kitchen table in Des Moines and watched Wanda Chen-Ramirez walk me through her legal pad, line by line.
I met Wanda through a neighbor at a block party on a warm Saturday in late September 2025. The neighbor mentioned almost in passing that Wanda had run a landscaping business out of her pickup truck for nearly three decades and was “finally on Social Security” but finding it less stabilizing than she’d expected. I asked if she’d be willing to talk. Two weeks later I was in the east-side home she rents a room in, and she was already pushing the yellow legal pad across the table before I’d opened my notebook.
The Numbers She Had Been Counting On
Wanda Chen-Ramirez is 66, born May 15, 1959. She has a direct way of speaking and a particular impatience with vagueness — especially her own. She started collecting Social Security retirement benefits in January 2024, at age 64, nearly three years before her full retirement age of 66 and 10 months. She knew that filing early would permanently reduce her monthly benefit. She did it anyway.
“I had a slow winter, a bad roof, and a truck that needed brakes,” she told me, straightening the legal pad so I could see the columns clearly. “I needed something coming in regularly. My landscaping clients disappear from November to March. That’s just the reality of the work.”
Her initial benefit was approximately $1,260 per month — reduced from what she would have received at full retirement age due to early filing. When the SSA announced a 2.5% COLA for 2025, Wanda calculated a $31.50 monthly increase, bringing her gross benefit to roughly $1,292. She had circled that number and drawn a small star beside it.
Then the Medicare Part B premium adjustment landed. The standard monthly premium rose from $174.70 in 2024 to $185.00 in 2025 — an increase of $10.30. Because Medicare Part B premiums are deducted directly from Social Security payments, Wanda’s real net gain was approximately $21 per month. The star on her legal pad had a line drawn through it.
What $21 a Month Means When Your Roof Is Leaking
Against abstract benchmarks, a $21 monthly improvement is not nothing. Against the estimate Wanda received from a Des Moines roofing contractor in August 2025 — $8,400 to replace the damaged section of roof above the northwest corner of the house, directly above her bedroom — it is effectively nothing.
“I’ve got a contractor’s bucket in my room,” she said, without any particular drama. “Has been there since March. My landlord says the lease makes it a shared-repair situation. I say that’s a fight I don’t have the energy for right now.”
Wanda walked me through her monthly fixed costs without hesitation, the way someone does when they have rehearsed the numbers out of necessity:
- Rent share (split with roommate): $550/month
- Medicare Part B premium: $185/month
- Utilities (winter average): approximately $180/month
- Groceries: approximately $240/month
- Total fixed baseline: approximately $1,155/month
Her Social Security income of roughly $1,292 leaves approximately $137 before any landscaping revenue comes in. The landscaping income, when it arrives, is real — October 2025 brought $2,140 in two weeks of fall cleanup work. January 2026 brought $0. February 2026 brought one commercial snow removal job: $420.
The Payment Date She Got Wrong for Three Months
One of the more consequential frustrations Wanda described had nothing to do with the size of her check — it was about when the check arrived. According to the SSA’s benefit payment schedule, Social Security retirement payments land on a Wednesday determined entirely by the recipient’s birth date: second Wednesday for birthdays on the 1st through 10th, third Wednesday for the 11th through 20th, and fourth Wednesday for the 21st through 31st.
Wanda was born on May 15. That puts her on the third Wednesday schedule. Her roommate, born March 8, receives payment on the second Wednesday. For the first three months after she began collecting benefits, Wanda budgeted as though her check would arrive on the same day as her roommate’s — a week earlier than it actually did.
“Three times I expected money and it wasn’t there,” Wanda told me. “The first time I called the SSA and they explained it. The second time I thought I’d just misremembered. By the third time I finally understood — but by then I’d bounced a payment to my power company.” The overdraft fee was $34. She still has the bank statement clipped inside the legal pad.
The Exhaustion Beneath the Practicality
Wanda is not someone who complains. She has run a business through bad seasons, a divorce in 2009, and a global pandemic that killed two of her largest commercial accounts. She adjusts. What I noticed sitting across from her was not despair but something more specific: the fatigue of someone who has done everything functionally correct and still finds herself behind.
She started a roof repair savings fund in spring 2025 with a goal of setting aside $600 before winter. By July, the fund had reached $380. Then her truck needed a brake job — $390 at a shop she trusts on the south side of Des Moines. The fund went to zero. She started again in September. When I sat with her in October 2025, it held $210.
At a net COLA gain of $21 per month — and with winter income that can disappear entirely for three to four consecutive months — reaching $8,400 for the roof by any near-term date requires either an exceptional spring season or what she said she has not managed to hold onto: “A plan that actually stays a plan.”
Where Things Stood in March 2026
I followed up with Wanda by phone in early March 2026. The winter had been more commercially productive than expected — a property management company brought her on for a multi-site snow removal contract that paid approximately $1,800 across December 2025 and February 2026. Her roof fund was at $640. The bucket was still in her bedroom.
The 2026 COLA adjustment, which took effect with January 2026 payments, again increased her gross benefit — by approximately $32 per month, according to her statement on ssa.gov. Medicare Part B premiums rose again for 2026. Her net position, she estimated, improved by roughly $19 to $22 per month over 2025 levels. Nearly identical math to the prior year.
She was calm about it. “I stopped drawing stars next to the COLA number,” she said. “Now I just look at what actually shows up in my account on the third Wednesday and go from there.”
Wanda told me she has a second roofing estimate scheduled for late April 2026, hoping the number comes in lower. She is heading into her busy season — spring cleanups, mulching, a new commercial client in Ankeny she landed in February. The legal pad has a new column started. The math is not done. It has just moved to a new page.
Sloane Avery Wren is Senior Benefits Writer at The Daily Check, covering Social Security, Medicare, and federal payment schedules.
Related: I Got a 2.5% Social Security COLA Raise — Then Medicare Quietly Took Most of It Back
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