Check to see when your last Social Security Administration (SSA) check arrives before Christmas payments are made. Every month, the SSA distributed approximately 75 million payments to its beneficiaries, ensuring that all are paid in a timely manner so that they can budget their monthly expenses accurately without waiting for late payment dates. The schedule is set every month, with deviations rarely made unless payment dates fall on weekends or public holidays.
Ensuring 75 million SSA beneficiaries are paid on time
With the holiday season approaching, many individuals and families will see an uptick in expenses at this time of the year. These additional expenses often pertain to needing to purchase gifts for family members, covering travel and accommodation costs for those visiting family out of state for the holidays, and the increase in food expenses if family members are staying with you when visiting over the Christmas period. For SSA beneficiaries, this becomes even more of an imperative that their payments are made on time.
Generally, SSA payments are distributed on either the second, third, or fourth Wednesday of the month, depending on your birthdate. However, this general schedule is not the case for beneficiaries who receive payments from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) fund or those who claimed their benefits before May 1997.
For SSI beneficiaries, these payments are always made on the first of the month. If you receive both SSI and Retirement benefits from the SSA, your SSI payments will still be paid on the first; however, your Retirement benefits will be paid out on the third. Beneficiaries who claimed SSA benefits before May 1997 are also paid out on the third of every month.
Last SSA payment before Christmas for this group
On Wednesday, November 19, 2025, beneficiaries who have a birthdate between the eleventh and twentieth of any given month will receive their payments from the SSA. This will be the last Social Security payment from the SSA for these beneficiaries before the Christmas period commences. The next payment for this group of beneficiaries will be made on December 17.
Other payments still to be made this month, before Christmas, will be made for the following beneficiaries:
- SSA beneficiaries with a birthdate between the twenty-first and the thirty-first of any given month.
- These beneficiaries include both Retirement and Disability recipients.
This final November payment will be distributed on November 26, 2025. From there, the Christmas SSA payment schedule will follow the regular schedule the SSA adheres to when making payments, with no exceptions or advances.
New updates for SSA 2026 payments
The final payments for this year will be the last that beneficiaries receive before the new cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) statistic is applied to Social Security payments. The new COLA is announced every October and applied at the end of the year for the 2026 SSA payments in order to ensure that beneficiaries are able to retain the same buying power year on year, despite increases in inflation. This increase in payments is important in order to ensure that the rise in cost of living each year does not impact beneficiaries.
However, many have raised concerns that COLA is not an adequate adjustment for SSA beneficiaries in ensuring that their payments beat the effects of inflation. COLA is based on the changes seen in the third quarter of the year Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). However, CPI-W tracks the spending habits of employed individuals. Critics have argued that this means the spending habits of SSA beneficiaries, the majority of whom are retirees, are not taken into account. Nevertheless, the new COLA for next year was recently announced to be 2.8%.
