How much of a raise would you actually need to feel like things were getting better?
I met Marlene Chen-Ramirez on a Tuesday afternoon in late March 2026, at a Shell station on the east side of Indianapolis. She was standing behind me at the pump, phone pressed to her ear, voice tight with frustration. “Thirty-nine dollars,” she was saying. “That’s what the raise works out to. Thirty-nine dollars.” I turned around, and she caught my eye with a look that said she knew exactly how absurd that number sounded.
When I introduced myself and explained what I write about, she gave a short, exhausted laugh. “You should write about us,” she said. “Because nobody talks about what these numbers actually look like when you’re living inside them.” Three weeks later, I sat down with Marlene at her kitchen table in a three-bedroom colonial in Indianapolis’s Irvington neighborhood. Her husband, Derek, 29, was in the living room with their three kids — ages 2, 4, and 6. Derek was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2023 and began receiving Social Security Disability Insurance benefits in early 2025, after an 18-month approval process that Marlene called “its own kind of nightmare.”
The Benefits That Were Supposed to Provide Stability
Derek’s approved SSDI benefit came in at $1,412 per month, based on his prior earnings as a logistics coordinator. For a family of five with a stay-at-home parent, it was never going to cover everything — but Marlene had hoped it would serve as a reliable floor beneath her variable real estate income. “I’m in real estate,” she told me. “My commissions go up and down every quarter. Having something steady, even if it’s small, matters.”
What she didn’t anticipate was how quickly the gap between that “steady” number and their actual costs would grow. Derek’s MS medication alone cost the family roughly $340 per month in out-of-pocket expenses after copays. Groceries for five ran about $1,100. According to SSA.gov’s disability benefit guidelines, SSDI amounts are calculated from a recipient’s lifetime earnings record — not from current cost of living in a specific city. That disconnect can hit families hard, and it hit the Chen-Ramirezes harder than Marlene expected.
A COLA That Looks Different on Paper Than in Real Life
In October 2025, the Social Security Administration announced a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment for 2026 — slightly higher than the 2.5% adjustment in 2025, but below the 3.2% increase in 2024. SSDI recipients receive the same annual COLA as retirement beneficiaries. For Derek, the math translated to a monthly increase of approximately $39.54, bringing his benefit to $1,451.54.
“When I read ‘2.8 percent,’ I thought, okay, that’s something,” Marlene told me, pulling up the benefit letter on her phone. “Then I did the math and just sat there.” Their mortgage — a $2,840 monthly payment on a home they bought in May 2022 for $347,000 at the peak of the Indianapolis market — hadn’t moved. Neither had the $18,400 contractor estimate sitting on their kitchen counter for a roof repair flagged as urgent last fall.
Looking ahead, some projections suggest the 2027 COLA could be higher due to inflation pressures. According to SSA’s COLA information, the adjustment is calculated using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners — a formula that can lag behind costs that families like Marlene’s actually face. Initial projections from the Senior Citizens League point to a 2.5% adjustment for 2027, though the Congressional Budget Office expects 2.8%, and some analysts believe inflation could push it higher still.
The Mortgage That Changed the Math
Marlene is candid about her own role in their financial situation. She and Derek bought their home when rates were climbing fast and she was convinced the market was about to soften. “I thought I knew the market because I work in it,” she said, shaking her head. “I bought at the peak anyway.” Their 30-year mortgage locked in at 5.8%, and their total monthly housing cost — mortgage, property taxes, and insurance — runs $3,210.
In her strong months, Marlene earns $9,000 to $12,000 in commissions. In slower quarters, that number can fall to $3,500. A water heater replacement in January 2026 cost $1,900 and wiped out their emergency savings. The roof has been deferred twice. “I’m always in hustle mode or panic mode,” she told me. “There’s no in-between.”
What Marlene Is Doing Now — and What She Wishes She’d Known
Marlene is exploring whether Derek qualifies for additional support through Benefits.gov, including Medicaid waivers that could reduce their monthly medication costs. She’s also in conversations with her broker about a refinance, though current interest rates haven’t made the numbers work. The roof remains unrepaired.
What struck me most, sitting in that kitchen, was how clearly Marlene understood the system she was navigating — and how little that understanding helped. She knew the COLA formula. She knew her options. She described herself as “educated about all of it and still drowning.”
Whether the 2027 COLA delivers a larger increase — projections range from 2.5% to potentially higher depending on how inflation trends play out over the coming months — the Chen-Ramirez family will need more than a percentage point to change their trajectory. What they need, Marlene said, is a run of strong commission months, a roof that holds through another winter, and a stretch of time where nothing breaks all at once.
“I’m not asking for a miracle,” she said as I got up to leave, the kids’ voices rising in the next room. “I’m just asking for a little more breathing room.” That seems like a reasonable ask. Whether the system — or the market — delivers it is a different question entirely.
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