The 2026 Social Security COLA adjustment — a 2.5 percent increase effective January 1 — raised monthly benefit amounts but also quietly shifted the parental income thresholds embedded in SSI deeming calculations. For families who had been turned away from the program in prior years because they earned too much, that seemingly small shift meant a reason to go back. Kevin Ramos was one of them, and I happened to be sitting across the waiting room when he finally did.
I met Kevin on a Tuesday morning in early March 2026, at the Social Security Administration field office on Shadeland Avenue in Indianapolis. I was there finishing notes on a separate story about claims processing delays when I noticed a man across the room working through something on a yellow legal pad — ruler out, columns drawn, a printed copy of SSA benefit guidelines folded beside him on the plastic chair. He crossed out numbers and rewrote them. Then crossed them out again.
When I introduced myself and explained what I was reporting on, Kevin Ramos looked up from the pad and said, with something between a sigh and a quiet laugh, “I’ve been doing this math for three months. Figured I’d just come in and ask someone who actually knows.” He agreed to let me report his story.
The Numbers Behind the Barbershop
Kevin has owned Ramos Cuts, a four-chair shop on Indianapolis’s east side, for eleven years. By most measures, business is solid. He told me the shop brought in roughly $108,000 in gross revenue in 2025, with his personal net income — after payroll for two part-time stylists and overhead — landing around $72,000 for the year. By SSI standards, that figure places him comfortably above what most applicants earn.
But comfortably above hasn’t translated to financial comfort. Kevin and his wife, Maria, 44, have a nine-year-old son named Dominic who has a complex set of developmental and neurological conditions requiring round-the-clock supervision. Maria stopped working in 2021 when the demands of Dominic’s care outpaced what any paid aide could manage. One income supports the household, Dominic’s needs, and the unexpected costs that come with them.
Kevin is carrying $11,400 in credit card debt — the bulk of it from a hospital stay Dominic had in the fall of 2024 that left the family with thousands in out-of-pocket costs even with insurance coverage. He’s also underwater on a 2021 pickup truck by approximately $4,200, a loan he took out during a slower period when he needed reliable transportation for a second location he ultimately decided not to open.
“People see the shop and think I’m doing great,” Kevin told me. “And I’m grateful, I really am. But when you have a kid who needs what Dominic needs, it reshapes everything. What you can save. What you can plan for.”
What Brought Him Back to the SSA Office
Kevin first looked into SSI for Dominic in 2023, after a social worker at Dominic’s school mentioned that children with qualifying disabilities could receive Supplemental Security Income regardless of whether their parents worked — depending on household income. He read enough to understand the concept of “parental deeming,” the process by which SSA attributes a portion of parents’ income to a child applicant when evaluating eligibility.
At the time, his income placed him well over the deeming threshold for a two-parent household with one child. He walked away and didn’t revisit the question until early 2026, when the same social worker suggested the new COLA-adjusted thresholds were worth a fresh look.
Kevin had done a rough version of the updated calculation on his legal pad. He believed he might be close to the threshold — perhaps just over, perhaps just under — and wanted an answer from a claims representative, not an online estimator.
What the Claims Representative Told Him
After a wait of about an hour and forty minutes, Kevin was called back. I stayed in the waiting room. When he came out roughly thirty minutes later, the legal pad was tucked under his arm and his expression was harder to read than I expected — not relieved, not exactly deflated either.
The answer was close, but not quite what he had hoped for. Based on Kevin’s 2025 net self-employment income, the claims representative walked him through the deeming formula, which — per SSA.gov — subtracts $457 per month in earned income exclusions for each working parent before calculating deemed income. After those exclusions and adjustments for household composition, the amount attributed to Dominic came out to approximately $312 per month. Because the 2026 SSI individual benefit rate is $992, a benefit would be reduced dollar-for-dollar by deemed income above a certain base, leaving Dominic eligible for a partial payment — the representative estimated somewhere between $150 and $200 monthly, pending a formal medical review.
It wasn’t nothing. But it also wasn’t the definitive relief Kevin had hoped to find. Then the representative told him something he hadn’t fully absorbed before walking in.
Dominic is nine years old. That transition is nine years away. But the representative confirmed that if Dominic’s disability continues to meet SSA’s medical criteria, and if he has limited income and resources of his own at 18, he could likely qualify for the full $992 monthly benefit — with Kevin’s income entirely out of the picture.
The Mixed Outcome — and the Plan Kevin Is Starting to Build
When I asked Kevin how he felt walking out of the office, he paused before answering. “Honestly? A little defeated and a little relieved at the same time. Defeated because I came hoping something would change right now. Relieved because I finally have a real answer instead of a feeling.”
The partial benefit for Dominic — if the medical review confirms eligibility — would not resolve Kevin’s financial picture. The $11,400 credit card balance isn’t going away. The truck loan stays underwater. Maria won’t be returning to work. But Kevin said he was already thinking past those numbers, toward what Dominic’s financial life might look like at 18 and what steps he could take now to protect that future eligibility.
He mentioned he had found information about ABLE accounts — tax-advantaged savings vehicles available to individuals with disabilities diagnosed before age 26, established under the Achieving a Better Life Experience Act — and wanted to understand whether opening one for Dominic now could serve a purpose. That’s a question he said he plans to take to an attorney who specializes in special needs planning. It was not a question I could answer for him, and he wasn’t asking me to.
As we walked toward the exit, Kevin folded the legal pad into his jacket. He said the financial stress — the credit card balance, the truck, the medical bills — was manageable in the moment, even if it didn’t feel that way some nights. What was harder was uncertainty. Not knowing what Dominic’s adult life would look like. Not knowing whether the work Kevin was putting into the shop was building something that would outlast his ability to put in those hours.
“The guilt thing is real,” he told me. “You wonder if you’re doing enough, if you waited too long to look into something. I should’ve come back here in 2024. I didn’t because I assumed the answer was still no.”
His assumption wasn’t entirely wrong — but it wasn’t entirely right either. That gap is the thing about parental deeming rules: they aren’t fixed. They shift with COLA, they shift with family composition, and they disappear entirely the day a child with a qualifying disability turns 18. For Kevin, that last fact seemed to land the hardest. He told me he drove home thinking less about the $180 a month and more about the year 2035.
He came in with a legal pad full of present-tense calculations. He left thinking about the future. That felt like something.
Related: I Almost Claimed Social Security at 62 — The Math That Changed My Mind
Related: Her Child’s SSI Rose With COLA, Then Fell $318 After One Overtime Shift — A Denver Mom’s Painful Discovery
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