What would you do if you discovered that decades of hard work — real, physical, consistent labor — had quietly translated into a Social Security earnings record far thinner than you ever imagined? That was the question sitting at the center of my conversation with Felicia Haddad, a 53-year-old yoga instructor from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it is not a comfortable one to sit with.
I met Felicia by chance. It was a Tuesday afternoon in late February, and I was standing in the produce section of a Whole Foods on Paseo del Norte when I noticed she was staring at her phone with an expression I recognized — that particular mix of confusion and dread people get when they are looking at a government website for the first time. She had just pulled up her Social Security statement on the SSA’s my Social Security portal. We started talking, and twenty minutes later we were sitting in the café near the entrance, her matcha going cold while she walked me through the past two years of her life.
A Life Built Around Flexibility — And What That Cost Her
Felicia has been teaching yoga since she was 31. She built her schedule around her two children, her husband Marcus’s career in civil engineering, and the rhythms of a household that prioritized presence over income. By the time both kids left for college, she was working roughly 18 to 22 hours a week across three studios in the Albuquerque metro area, earning somewhere between $26,000 and $34,000 annually — depending on the season, her client roster, and which studios were doing well.
“I always figured I’d ramp it up eventually,” she told me, stirring her drink without looking up. “I thought, okay, the kids are gone, Marcus is still working, we’re fine. I’ll figure out the money stuff later.” That “later” arrived faster than she expected.
Marcus retired in September 2024, at 57, after a buyout offer from his firm that he described — through Felicia’s retelling — as “too good to walk away from.” The couple had savings, a paid-off house, and modest investment accounts. What they did not have, suddenly, was employer-sponsored health insurance. Marcus had carried the family on his plan for 22 years. That ended with his last paycheck.
Felicia had never been on her own employer’s plan. Yoga studios, she told me, almost never offer benefits to part-time instructors. She had simply always been on Marcus’s coverage without thinking much about it.
When the Insurance Bill Arrived
The couple moved to a marketplace plan through the ACA exchange in October 2024. The first premium notice — for coverage beginning January 2025 — was $1,312 per month for the two of them on a silver-tier plan. A year earlier, their share of Marcus’s employer plan had been approximately $640 per month. The jump was immediate and staggering.
“I didn’t panic at first,” Felicia said. “I thought, we’ll figure it out. We always figure it out. That’s what we do.” But the cost consumed a significant portion of what she was bringing in from her classes. For months during the slow winter season, her yoga income barely covered the premium alone, let alone utilities, groceries, or any savings contribution.
That financial pressure is what pushed her to open the SSA portal on her phone in that grocery store — something she had been meaning to do for years but kept postponing.
Understanding Why Her Number Was So Low
There was no mistake. Social Security calculates retirement benefits using a worker’s 35 highest-earning years, adjusted for wage inflation. For Felicia, many of those years included part-time income between $18,000 and $28,000. Some early years, when the children were young, showed almost nothing. The program averages those figures — including zeros for years with no reported earnings — into what is called the Average Indexed Monthly Earnings, or AIME, which then determines the monthly benefit.
According to the Social Security Administration, the program is designed to replace a portion of pre-retirement income, not all of it — and that portion shrinks proportionally for higher earners while low-and-moderate earners receive a higher replacement rate. Felicia falls into a middle zone where her earnings were real but inconsistent, which produced a projected benefit that felt disconnected from her actual years of work.
Her situation is not unusual. Millions of Americans — disproportionately women, disproportionately caregivers — carry thinner Social Security records as a direct result of choices that prioritized family over full-time employment. The system was not designed with their careers in mind.
The COLA That Arrived — And What It Actually Means for Felicia
In January 2026, nearly 71 million Social Security beneficiaries received a 2.8 percent cost-of-living adjustment, according to the SSA’s official COLA announcement. For existing retirees, that is a meaningful increase — slightly better than the 2.5 percent adjustment in 2025.
For Felicia, the 2026 COLA was a source of complicated feelings. She is not yet collecting benefits. But the adjustment also applies to future benefit projections, and she had started paying close attention to these numbers in a way she never had before.
“I keep thinking about what that number looks like in fourteen years,” she said, referring to when she would reach her full retirement age of 67. “If I keep teaching part time, if I don’t change anything, it’s still going to be a small number. And Marcus’s retirement account is not going to last forever.”
She also raised the question of Medicare — specifically, what happens between now and 65, when she and Marcus would become eligible. According to the 2026 Medicare Costs fact sheet, the standard Part B premium this year is $185.00 per month per person. That number means something to Felicia, even now — because it represents a potential future reduction in out-of-pocket costs once she qualifies at 65, twelve years away.
What She Is Doing Differently Now
When I asked Felicia what had changed since she first looked at her Social Security statement, she paused for a long moment. She described calling the SSA directly, something she had been putting off for months, and asking a representative to walk her through her earnings record year by year.
“There were two years in my early thirties that showed almost nothing,” she said. “I remembered those years. I was home with a newborn, then a toddler. I taught maybe four classes a week. Those years are just… holes.”
She has not made any major decisions yet. She is clear about that. But the posture of passivity — the assumption that things would simply work out — is gone. “I used to think financial planning was something other people did,” she told me, with a dry laugh. “People who were more serious about money than I was. Now I know I was just avoiding it.”
The Reflection: What Felicia’s Story Reveals About the Gaps in Our System
Felicia Haddad is not in crisis. She has a paid-off home, a retired spouse with a solid savings record, and her own growing awareness that she needs to act. She is luckier than many people I have spoken with in years of covering this beat.
But her story points to something systemic that does not get enough attention: the Social Security program, as structured, reflects an older model of labor — full-time, employer-attached, linear. Workers who spent years in part-time or gig arrangements, often because of caregiving responsibilities, face a retirement math that quietly punishes those choices long after they were made.
As I drove away from that Whole Foods in Albuquerque, I kept thinking about that statement. The SSA’s Red Book for 2026 outlines updated thresholds and program rules, but it does not change the underlying calculus that catches people like Felicia off guard. The information is available. The tools exist. The gap is in the moment — often too late — when people finally look.
Felicia is looking now. That, at least, is something.
Sloane Avery Wren is a Senior Benefits Writer at Benefit Beat. This article is reported journalism and does not constitute financial or legal advice. Readers are encouraged to contact the Social Security Administration directly at 1-800-772-1213 or visit ssa.gov for personalized benefit information.
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