Why Your Social Security COLA Is Underestimating Inflation

Inflation and Your Money with Fexingo: Protecting Purchasing Power and Beating Inflation · Jun 21, 2026 · 6m · transcript

In this episode of Inflation and Your Money with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna unpack how the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, is calculated using CPI-W, a measure that tracks spending patterns of urban wage earners and clerical workers. As of May 2026, the all-items CPI stands at 334, but the CPI-W tends to run even higher because it weights gasoline and rent more heavily. With the ten-year breakeven inflation rate at 2.25 percent, down slightly from recent months, the hosts explain why retirees relying on COLA may be losing purchasing power faster than headline inflation…