Starting October 1, 2026, the beginning of federal fiscal year 2027, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s resource limit for households with a member who is elderly or disabled will rise to $4,750, up from $4,500, under a cost-of-living adjustment the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Administration published on August 21, 2026. The $250 increase lets those households hold more savings, retirement funds, or other countable assets without losing food assistance, at a moment when grocery costs continue to outpace fixed Social Security checks. It is one of the few pieces of the annual SNAP recalculation that widens eligibility rather than narrowing it.
The FY2027 Asset Limit and the COLA Formula Behind It
The Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 requires USDA to recalculate SNAP’s maximum allotments, income thresholds, and asset limits every year, and the agency’s fiscal year 2027 memo lays out the full set of figures taking effect this fall. General households without an elderly or disabled member remain capped at $3,000 in countable resources, a number that did not move this year, while the limit for households with a member age 60 or older, or living with a disability, climbs to $4,750. The same $4,750 figure also serves as the reporting threshold for substantial lottery or gambling winnings under SNAP rules, so a senior who wins more than that amount must report it as a resource event, not merely as income.
The increase continues a slow climb tied to the same inflation-adjustment process that resets SNAP’s benefit amounts each October. The maximum monthly allotment for a family of four rose from $994 to $1,023 and the minimum benefit ticked up to $25 under the same schedule, while the elderly and disabled resource limit moved from $4,500 to $4,750. For a retiree living on Social Security who keeps a modest cushion in savings for medical bills or a home repair, the wider limit means that cushion no longer has to shrink just to preserve food assistance eligibility.
The jump breaks a longer stretch of inactivity. USDA’s fiscal year 2026 memo shows the elderly and disabled limit remained flat at $4,500 that year, and the general household limit at $3,000 has not moved at all across the past several COLA cycles, even as income and allotment tables reset every year regardless of inflation.
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What Counts Toward the $4,750 Limit — and What’s Exempt
Not every dollar a household owns counts against the resource test. Bank balances, cash on hand, and most stocks or bonds count, but a household’s home, its personal belongings, and its retirement accounts are excluded entirely, according to a summary of federal SNAP eligibility rules from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Most vehicles are excluded as well, since nearly every state has adopted a federal option that removes automobile value from the resource count, even though federal rules technically count vehicle value above a set threshold.
That distinction matters most for the households the higher limit is meant to help. A retired couple with $4,200 in a joint savings account, no retirement plan beyond Social Security, and a paid-off car would have passed the elderly and disabled asset test under the old $4,500 ceiling and comfortably clears the new $4,750 one. A household in the same financial position without an elderly or disabled member, capped at $3,000, would already be over the line before the new fiscal year starts, showing how the same amount of savings produces two different outcomes depending on a single household characteristic.
The elevated asset limit sits alongside other rules that already treat elderly and disabled SNAP households differently because of their fixed and often stretched budgets. Those households can also claim a medical expense deduction for out-of-pocket costs above $35 a month, a benefit unavailable to other SNAP recipients, and they are exempt from the program’s gross income test that applies to working-age applicants. The FY2027 asset increase extends that same logic, giving the same group a slightly wider resource cushion in addition to the income-side flexibility it already receives.
Why Most States Already Waive the Asset Test — and Why That Could Change
The federal asset limit matters less in practice than the headline figure suggests, because most states no longer enforce one. More than 40 states currently use a policy option called broad-based categorical eligibility, which lets a state extend SNAP eligibility to households already receiving a token non-cash benefit funded through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and, in the process, waive the asset test altogether, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In those states, a household with an elderly or disabled member can hold savings well above $4,750 and still qualify for SNAP on the basis of income alone, which makes the new federal limit a backstop rather than the operative rule for most applicants.
That backstop status could soon carry more weight. In November 2025, USDA submitted a draft regulation to the White House Office of Management and Budget that would narrow broad-based categorical eligibility, a change flagged in federal rulemaking records and reported by NPR. The proposal has not been published for public comment or finalized, but a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyst cited in that reporting estimated a rule narrowing the option could push several million people off SNAP nationwide, in states that currently use it to waive income and asset limits for low-income households.
The tension sits squarely inside the population the FY2027 adjustment was designed to help. A rule that narrows broad-based categorical eligibility would push more elderly and disabled households, in states that currently waive the asset test, back onto the federal ceiling USDA just raised to $4,750, turning a number that functions today as a rarely triggered backstop into the deciding line for benefits. Whether that ceiling reflects what an older household actually needs to hold in savings, medical reserves, and emergency funds is a question USDA’s memo does not address, and it will only grow more consequential if the eligibility option now under White House review is narrowed.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed against primary government sources for accuracy.
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