October is shaping up to be a pretty big month for Social Security beneficiaries. You’ll get your first look at what your checks will look like next year with the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) announcement on Oct. 15. If you’d been receiving paper checks in September, you’ll also receive your first electronic payment in the coming weeks.

There’s also a chance that you could get more than one benefit check this month. More than 2.5 million beneficiaries are set to receive three checks in October, and some married couples could receive as many as six next month.

How the Social Security payment schedule works

Paying Social Security benefits to millions of Americans each month is no easy feat. The government manages this by assigning specific payment dates based on the day of the month you were born. It goes like this:

• Born between the 1st and the 10th: Second Wednesday of every month
• Born between the 11th and the 20th: Third Wednesday of every month
• Born between the 21st and the 31st: Fourth Wednesday of every month

In October, this corresponds to the 8th, 15th, and 22nd. This is when you’ll receive your regular monthly check, whether that’s a retirement benefit, a spousal benefit, a survivor benefit, or a disability benefit.

The rules are different for those who qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), though. SSI is a separate benefit available to the blind and disabled, as well as low-income seniors. If you qualify for SSI and Social Security, you’ll receive your Social Security payment on the third day of each month, regardless of your birthday, or the last preceding business day if the third is a weekend or holiday.

SSI payments are typically sent on the first day of each month, unless that day falls on a weekend or a holiday. Then, it’s sent on the last business day before the first.

Why 2.5 million Americans will get three checks in October

Seniors on Social Security and SSI will get their October payments as scheduled on the first and third of the month. They’ll also get their November SSI payment on Oct. 31 because Nov. 1, 2025, falls on a Saturday.

This means that some seniors will receive three benefit checks in October, and married couples could get up to six checks if both spouses are claiming Social Security benefits and SSI.

But it’s important to remember that that third check isn’t a bonus. It’s just you getting your November SSI payment a little bit early. You won’t receive an SSI payment again until Dec. 1, 2025, so you’ll need to stretch your benefits until then.

If you don’t receive your checks as scheduled, the Social Security Administration requests that you allow three additional mailing days before contacting it about the payment. However, most electronic payments, like direct deposit or prepaid debit cards, show up in your account pretty quickly.

Those who recently switched from paper checks to electronic payments will want to take special care to make sure their October payments show up as scheduled. If not, reach out to the Social Security Administration as soon as possible after allowing for the three mailing days to see what’s going on. It’s possible that something went wrong when you elected a new payment method. In that case, you might not get checks again until you’ve sorted this issue out.

After you’ve confirmed that you’re getting your checks as scheduled, you can relax a bit and look forward to your checks coming in on or around their assigned days in November.

Social Security plays a huge role in the budgets of many American retirees. About half of households with someone age 65 or older receive at least 50% of their income from Social Security. About one-quarter receive 90% of their income from the government program.

So the annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, is of huge importance for many seniors. Without that bump in payments each year, many seniors would struggle to keep up with the rising costs of housing, healthcare, and groceries.

While we’re still a few months away from the official COLA announcement, history can offer some ideas of what to expect for next year. Here’s what you need to know.

How the government calculates your COLA

Congress established automatic cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security based on inflation starting in 1975.

The metric used to determine how much prices have climbed from the prior year is the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, known as CPI-W. The CPI-W measures the increase in the price of a theoretical basket of goods weighted for the average spending of a working-age city dweller. It includes everything from housing to groceries to clothing to recreation.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics gathers thousands of data points from all around the country every month to calculate the CPI numbers. It releases those numbers monthly, typically in the second week of the month following the survey.

The Social Security COLA is automatically determined by the average year-over-year increase in the CPI-W for the third quarter of the year. So when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the September CPI-W numbers in early October, the Social Security Administration is able to announce the following year’s COLA.

But considering it’s already July, we can look at recent history to get a good idea of what to expect for next year’s COLA.

What history says could be coming in 2026

If you want to figure out what next year’s COLA will be, you have to start by figuring out what inflation will look like. Luckily, we already have inflation data from the first five months of the year, which is generally the best predictor of what the inflation data will look like over the next few months.

May’s CPI-W number was 314.839. That’s a 2.2% increase from May of 2024. However, early 2024 saw a rapid increase in inflation before it cooled off in the summer. That means continued increases in inflation from month to month through the end of the summer could result in a much higher cost-of-living adjustment.

Since 1974, when Congress first enacted automatic COLAs based on inflation, the CPI-W reading has increased about 0.65% from May to July, 0.94% from May to August, and 1.3% from May to September.

That includes periods of extreme inflation like the late 1970s and early 1980s. Inflation was even worse in that period than in 2021 through 2023. The Federal Reserve has been able to keep a better handle on inflation since then, so it might make sense to remove or reduce the weight of that period in our analysis. If we look at average inflation since 1985, the increases drop to just 0.41%, 0.61%, and 0.89%, respectively.

If we use the historical average dating back to 1974, next year’s COLA will be 3% if inflation increases in line with the average. If we use the historical average since 1983, next year’s COLA will come in at 2.6%.

Both of those numbers are above recent forecasts from the Senior Citizen’s League and independent analyst Mary Johnson. Both expect a 2.5% COLA for 2026, based on their proprietary models. On the other hand, the Social Security trustees expect next year’s COLA to come in between 2.4% and 3%, with 2.7% as their intermediate assumption.

We’re still a little over a month away from getting our first data point that counts toward next year’s COLA. As we get closer, retirees will get more clarity on what to expect. But based on history and expert models, they can expect a COLA roughly in line with, or perhaps a little higher than, last year’s 2.5% increase.