The call came in during the second segment of a Tuesday afternoon drive-time show on WVKO 1580 AM, a Columbus community radio station that occasionally runs call-in segments about local benefits and social services. A man identifying himself only as James said, with complete composure, that he wanted to understand why the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment his mother received in January 2025 worked out to thirty-three dollars — and whether anyone at the station could explain how that was supposed to cover anything.
The host moved on after ninety seconds. But the clip circulated in a benefits-reporting group I follow online, and I spent three days tracking James down through the station’s listener line. When I finally sat down with James Ingram — a 34-year-old custodian at Mifflin Elementary in Columbus — at a Panera Bread on Morse Road in early February 2026, he agreed to the interview with one condition: “Don’t make me sound like I need saving. I don’t need saving.”
He doesn’t need saving. He needs thirty-two dollars and fifty cents to go further than it does.
A School Custodian’s Calendar Is Not the SSA’s Calendar
James has worked at Mifflin Elementary for six years. During the school year, his hours are consistent — roughly 38 hours a week at $14.75 an hour, producing a take-home of just over $1,750 a month after taxes and deductions. When summer arrives, those hours contract sharply. Deep-cleaning contracts go to outside vendors, and James typically works two or three days a week from late June through mid-August, dropping his monthly take-home to approximately $1,350.
“People think a school job is steady,” he told me, turning a paper coffee cup in both hands. “It’s steady when the kids are there. When they leave, so does half my check.”
His mother, Brenda Ingram, is 67 and has lived with James since a fall in her apartment fractured her left hip in November 2022. She receives Social Security retirement benefits — James showed me her December 2024 SSA benefit notice, which listed her monthly benefit at $1,318. She is enrolled in Medicare Part B, and per Medicare.gov, the standard 2025 Part B premium was $185.00 per month, deducted automatically from her Social Security payment before it ever reaches her bank account.
Brenda’s net monthly deposit in December 2024 was therefore $1,133. Combined with James’s take-home during the school year, the household ran on approximately $2,883 a month — for two adults, one of whom requires regular physical therapy and prescription medications not fully covered by Medicare.
The COLA Math James Did on a Napkin
According to SSA.gov, the 2025 COLA of 2.5% was applied to benefits beginning with the December 2024 benefit — paid in January 2025 for most recipients. For Brenda, that 2.5% increase on her $1,318 base worked out to approximately $33, bringing her gross benefit to $1,351. James told me he had done the calculation himself before the January check arrived. He was not surprised by the number. He was surprised by what happened to it.
The Medicare Part B premium for 2026 adjusted to approximately $185.50 per month. After that deduction, Brenda’s net monthly deposit landed at $1,165.50 — a real-world gain of $32.50 over her December 2024 net. James had been telling himself the COLA bump would absorb the physical therapy copays that had stacked up to $218 in December alone. When the actual gain cleared, he did the math again.
James is not wrong about the arithmetic. The Consumer Price Index data that drives COLA calculations reflects national averages, and housing and healthcare costs in Columbus have climbed faster than those averages in recent years. For a household already running thin, the gap between the announced percentage and the deposited dollars felt like something designed to mislead — even though it wasn’t. It was just math applied to a modest base benefit.
What made January 2025 particularly sharp, James explained, was the timing. He had reorganized the household bill schedule around the expected bump. When the net gain came in at $32.50, the budget he’d restructured in his head didn’t work anymore. So he called a radio station.
The Loan That Came Back Around
The COLA frustration was the public version of what James was dealing with. The private version came out slowly over two hours at that Morse Road Panera, and it started in March 2022.
That month, James cosigned an $8,500 personal loan for a childhood friend who needed to consolidate credit card debt. “He said six months, he’d have it paid off. I believed him because I’d known him since we were eight years old.” By September 2022, the friend had stopped making payments entirely. By February 2023, the lender had turned to James as the cosigner. By mid-2023, the account was in collections, and a judgment had been obtained against James’s wages.
As of our meeting in February 2026, the outstanding balance had been reduced to approximately $5,800 — a combination of original principal, accrued interest, and collection fees. The garnishment order requires $187 per month from James’s paychecks, a figure he expects to continue through late 2027 at the current pace.
“I don’t talk about the loan,” James said when I asked about it directly. “I made a bad call. I’m paying for it. That’s it.” He paused. “I just wish I’d known that ‘cosigning’ means ‘you’re the one who’s actually going to pay it.'”
He had been offered help — a coworker referred him to a community center financial counselor in 2023, and a school district employee assistance program offered free sessions. He went once, decided the advice wasn’t built for someone in his situation, and stopped going. James does not have a lot of patience for counsel that doesn’t account for $14.75-an-hour work and a summer income drop. “Those programs talk to you like you have options,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t have options. You have a Wednesday.”
February 2026: What the Numbers Actually Say
When I asked James to walk me through the current household budget — what comes in, what leaves — he laid it out without hesitation, the way someone does when they’ve recited it in their own head many times.
After rent and Brenda’s medical costs, roughly $625 remains each month during the school year — for groceries, utilities, transportation, and everything unplanned. In summer, when James’s income drops by approximately $400, that margin essentially closes. “There’s no cushion,” he said. “There never has been. You just get really good at knowing exactly when each check hits the account.”
Brenda’s Social Security payment arrives on the second Wednesday of each month. She was born on the 9th, which places her in the second-Wednesday payment group under the SSA’s schedule for beneficiaries who began collecting after May 1997, as detailed on the SSA payment calendar. James has that Wednesday marked in his phone with a 6 a.m. alert.
There is something quietly remarkable about that level of precision — and something quietly exhausting about it, too. James has built a mental system around payment dates and benefit amounts that most 34-year-olds are never required to construct. He didn’t choose this expertise. It arrived with Brenda’s suitcases in November 2022, and he’s been maintaining it ever since.
Before I left, I asked what he would want someone in a similar situation — caregiver, irregular income, COLA check that doesn’t reach expectations — to understand. He stopped me before I finished the question. “I’m not the guy giving advice. I cosigned a loan and I’m paying $187 a month for it three years later.” He picked up his coffee. “But if someone asked me, I’d say know your payment dates cold. Know exactly what’s coming in before you decide a single thing about what’s going out.”
That is not a financial strategy. It is the discipline of someone who has spent three years watching thirty-two dollars disappear before it can do anything useful — and who called a radio station because he needed someone, anyone, to acknowledge that the number was real.
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