hey thanks for making it to Veterans infot tap I'm glad you made it let's talk about Cola the cost of living adjustment the the pay raise effectively that we all anticipate that is being looked at right now the data is coming in uh month after month the three months that are used for those that don't know are July August September the last quarter of the fiscal year or the third quarter of the calendar year depending on which thing you're reading the bottom line is is we're 2third of the way through we're now in September we should be getting the August numbers here in a week or so week and a half and uh we'll be able to get another projection out there what we can probably all I guess agree on is that it will be lackluster it's probably going to be in the mid twos uh you know somewhere around a 2 and a half% increase for our benefits whether it's Social Security benefits disability benefits uh your dependency andity compensation all of that type of stuff now this video is not so much a projection or anything like that with regard to our Cola our cost of living adjustment but rather a peak into what could we be looking at differently is there any other things that we could do as a group to Warrant a better calculation for Cola now I have my own thoughts and I'm going to give you a couple things here and I just want to see some comments on on you know maybe a better way of doing this because again I think we can all agree that over the years this is the line of inflation this is the line of the cost of living adjustments sure they're both upward trajectory but there's a gap and that Gap is getting bigger and bigger as the years go by ask anybody who's been on Social Security and a fixed income for more than 10 years 15 years 20 years um you know they feel as though things are the same as when they first retired or whatever and uh the answer overwhelmingly will be no so with that hit the thumbs up subscribe share with a friend all that good stuff I really appreciate it every thumbs up uh helps the channel every uh minute watched helps to push it out if you want to support the channel in other ways consider being a member you can go to the homepage you'll see highlighted members and a join button thank you to all your members I truly appreciate you all right so I'm going to save kind of the the big one uh here for you and share that in a minute so there has been in the past different pieces of legislation over the years calling for different ways to calculate um Cola cost of living adjustment um you know most commonly the thing that we see is uh utilizing the CPE okay instead of the CPI W so the CPI e is a indic within the over all consumer price index that is focused on elderly hence the E and the spending habits of that group primarily now it's a smaller indic so there's less there's less data points to come up with the average spendings and all that stuff so there is a little bit of that concern I think but from what I've read and I mean whatever I could be wrong there's something else out there but from what I've seen there are over the past I don't know maybe 20 years of data if you take the CPI W and you take the CPE figures for July August September and calculate a cost of living adjustment uh year over year over year over year you would have realized an additional about quar per or so um average per year increase now one time that's nothing but when you add that on top of it it's kind of like compound interest right it's just kind of adding on top of each other right so it's it just gets bigger and bigger um so it in the end it becomes a little more substantial now is it is it great it would be awesome to get an extra quarter is not that big of a deal in the big picture but um anything higher is probably better um I've talked about maybe maybe we look at a CPI W more data but with a plus figure in there right like a CPI W adjustment plus one right so in this example if if this year was 2 and a half% well then they would make it a three and a half because it's a plus one uh now I get it money's not growing on well sometimes they act like it is with the printing presses and all um obviously there's a lot of other things that have to um be taken into consideration and um fixed as far as our uh our our our own internal United States uh budget is concerned um you know fiscal uh deficits and so forth uh but if pretend just for a second that that wasn't an issue and we could figure this out just simply based on the output instead of figuring out where the money's coming from I know social security has its own issues obviously on top of that so pretending that all that is fixed you know what is something that makes sense that would actually bring us closer in line with um the the true inflation right I mean we all we all see it it's it's like a slap in the face when you get when you get the number of what the cola will be in October October whatever uh 12th or whatever it is you get the number okay your Cola is going to be X but it's not going to go into effect until your paycheck in January for disability compensation meanwhile all of the sudden magically it seems like things start to get a little more expensive as you move into the holidays and you know things are going a little bit wild and you know spending's through the roof and that money that was supposed to be an upward adjustment just gets a roded in a few months it it seems to me it just always seems like okay great we got this increase that we don't realize for a few months and then finally when we realize it it's like it's already gone so um you know what what are some options now I'm going to tell you what I think is amazing here what if the VA was able to just come up with its own Cola for VA purposes right well they do many people aren't aware but the VA itself created uh its own Cola for a couple different programs chapter 35 and Veterans uh um uh vr& veterans Readiness and employment those two programs uh get affected by a cola as well and in fact the VA on their letterhead I pulled up the last one we should be getting a new one here very soon because their Cola goes into effect October 1st uh of 2024 now we don't have that number yet but I will share that with you as soon as I find it um last year it came out September 19th and it came out on a uh uh basically a bulletin from the VA VA U you know logo and all that good stuff on there and it actually says VR and E which is Veterans Readiness and employment Cola veterans Readiness and employment Cola okay so it is a they're calling it a cola increase takes effect October 1st 2023 so this is the one for last year and uh if you all remember what did we get for uh disability benefits was it 3.2 okay so 3.2 and how was that calculated well again it's the three months right uh July August September Social Security Administration figures out what it's going to be boom they um uh call out their Cola for Social Security then by law every year uh it gets passed that the VA is able to mirror that um Cola from Social Security so basically every year legislator puts in something that says you know hey the VA um can go ahead and Implement a cola for recipients and uh utilize the Social Security administration's uh Cola calculation so then the VA says great yay everybody you're going to get a cola uh for the year and we're going to wait to see what the Social Security Administration says boom that information comes out in October and the VA says we're adopting that and that's what you get so 3.2 is what we had for our regular benefits what did they the VA internally do for Cola for their uh two programs vr& and chapter 35 6.2 6.2% I'm just going to read the very top here it says greetings veterans Readiness and Employment vr& Program participants veteran Readiness and employment vr& would like to inform you that a 6.2% co uh cost of living adjustment Cola to vr& Veterans subsidence allowance rates goes into effect October 1st 2023 the subsidence allowance is a monthly benefit and it is based on the rate of attendance and training blah blah blah blah blah so that's it the VA has the uh authority to adjust those what if the VA had the authority to utilize the same calculations now I don't know if it would be better or worse last year alone obviously better um for uh the VA to calculate its own Cola for uh disability compensation and you know dependency and dity compensation and and such that's the question all right with that thanks so much for watching I appreciate you have a great one and remember if we don't don't take care of each other something went wrong