Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients got a bigger check in January — $27 more a month, for most. The bump comes from a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment (SSA) the Social Security Administration (SSA) applies each year to keep pace with inflation.
It hit accounts with the first payment of 2026. A separate effort in Congress to rewrite bigger chunks of the program is another story: that one’s going nowhere fast, but we all better be prepared if this gets to happen and the SSI program is affected.
For Starters, the COLA Lifts Monthly SSI Payments for 2026
Individual recipients now get $994 a month under the updated federal benefit rate, up from $967. For couples, it’s $1,491, versus $1,450 last year. There’s also a lesser-known third tier — the “essential person,” usually someone living with a beneficiary and providing care — which moved from $484 to $498.
Where do those numbers come from? Well, the SSA ties them every fall to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, known as CPI-W. The 2026 adjustment was announced late in 2025. The first checks went out December 31.
Updated Income Thresholds for Substantial Work and Student Earnings
The agency also moved some of the benchmarks used to calculate eligibility. Non-blind disabled workers can earn $1,690 a month before it starts affecting their disability status—that’s the substantial work activity limit. For people who are statutorily blind, the ceiling is higher: $2,830.
Students under 22 years old who attend school regularly got a slightly wider exemption on their earnings. Up to $2,410 a month can now be left out of the SSI income calculation. Annual cap: $9,730.
What Did Not Change in the SSI Program
The asset limits are the same as they’ve been for years. Single applicants can’t hold more than $2,000 in countable resources; couples top out at $3,000. A house and one car don’t count toward those limits. Pretty much everything else does.
Income exclusions? Also frozen and unchanged, at least for this year. Twenty dollars of any monthly income gets disregarded automatically. For wages, there’s another $65 off the top, then half of what remains. If the income isn’t from work — say, a pension — the only break available is that flat $20.
A Reform Bill in the Pipeline
Three weeks into March, a bipartisan group in Congress dropped the SSI Restoration Act of 2026. It’s an ambitious rewrite. The centerpiece is raising the base benefit to at least the federal poverty level — right now the max sits around 75 percent of that.
The bill also proposes bumping income limits to $10,000 for individuals and $20,000 for couples, both tied to inflation so they don’t erode over time.
Other pieces: scrapping the marriage penalty, which currently pays couples less than two individual benefits combined. And opening SSI to people in Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa — all currently excluded.
None of it is law. No vote has been scheduled in either chamber. For now the SSA’s 2026 figures are what govern the program, and that’s not changing until something actually passes.