The financial news that actually matters
July 27, 2026
- Social Security’s full retirement age is now 67 for anyone born after 1959.
- Social Security’s one-time death benefit is just $255, frozen since 1954.
- Claim Social Security early and keep working, and the government holds back $1 for every $2 you earn over $24,480 in 2026.
- Divorced after a marriage that lasted at least ten years, you can claim Social Security on an ex-spouse’s record without ever affecting their check.
Latest Insights
Social Security’s full retirement age is now 67 for anyone born after 1959.
The age at which a retiree can collect a full, unreduced Social Security benefit has finished a slow climb that lawmakers set in motion decades ago. For everyone born in 1960 or later, that age is now 67 — not the 65 that still lives in many people’s minds, and not the 66 that applied...
Read MoreBanking & Regulation
Deposits and Withdrawals
Money parked in payment apps like Venmo or Cash App can lose federal deposit insurance if the app collapses.
Payment apps have become a routine way to split a restaurant bill, send money to a grandchild, or collect a refund, and it is easy to let a balance sit in one for weeks or even months. The apps look and feel like bank accounts, complete with a running balance, transfers, and a debit card....
Deposits and Withdrawals
I bonds and Treasury bills now pay far more than the average savings account, which still yields under half a percent.
Enormous sums of retiree savings sit in ordinary bank savings accounts earning almost nothing, even as safe government options pay far more. The national average interest rate on a savings account remains well below half a percent, while Treasury bills and Series I savings bonds have generally paid considerably higher yields. For a saver living...
Deposits and Withdrawals
Federal insurance covers $250,000 per person, but a joint account doubles it to $500,000.
Federal deposit insurance guarantees up to $250,000 for one person’s money at a single bank, and that basic figure is where most savers stop reading. The detail that matters for many retirees is the next line: a joint account owned by two people is insured up to $500,000 at the same bank, because each co-owner...
Deposits and Withdrawals
The average savings account still pays just 0.38%, far below inflation near 3.5%.
The typical savings account in the United States pays about 0.38 percent a year, a number that has barely moved even as top accounts pay more than ten times as much. At the same time, consumer prices are rising at roughly 3.5 percent. Put those two figures side by side and the problem is plain:...
Deposits and Withdrawals
The Fed is expected to hold rates steady on July 29, keeping the best savings accounts and CDs above 4% for now.
The Federal Reserve meets on July 29, and traders overwhelmingly expect it to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged. For borrowers that is a familiar holding pattern. For savers, and especially for retirees living on interest from cash, it is the reason the best savings accounts and certificates of deposit are still paying north of...
Deposits and Withdrawals
Top CDs pay about 4.30% now, while the average one-year CD pays just 1.65%.
The gap between the best certificate of deposit and a typical one is wider than many retirees realize, and it comes straight out of interest that idle savings could be earning. Right now the strongest one-year CDs advertise yields near 4.30 percent, while the national average one-year CD pays roughly 1.65 percent. For an older...
Housing & Real Estate
Mortgages and Insurance
Downsizing a home in retirement frees up cash, but moving costs, taxes, and a higher mortgage rate can eat much of the gain.
Downsizing is one of retirement’s most appealing money moves on paper. The idea is simple: sell the big family house,…
Mortgages and Insurance
Home insurance keeps climbing for older homeowners, and shopping every year or raising the deductible can trim the bill.
For many retirees, the mortgage is paid off but the house still comes with a bill that keeps rising: homeowners…
Mortgages and Insurance
A reverse mortgage still requires you to keep paying property taxes and insurance, and falling behind can cost you the house.
A reverse mortgage is often pitched as a way for older homeowners to turn built-up equity into cash without a…
Retirement & Social Security
Social Security
Social Security’s full retirement age is now 67 for anyone born after 1959.
The age at which a retiree can collect a full, unreduced Social Security benefit has finished a slow climb that lawmakers set in motion decades ago. For everyone born in 1960 or later, that age is now 67 — not the 65 that still lives in many people’s minds, and not the 66 that applied...
Social Security
Social Security’s one-time death benefit is just $255, frozen since 1954.
When a Social Security recipient dies, surviving family members often assume the program will help cover the immediate expenses that follow. What Social Security actually offers as a one-time death benefit is a single payment of $255 — an amount that has not changed in roughly seventy years. For a generation that has watched the...
Social Security
Claim Social Security early and keep working, and the government holds back $1 for every $2 you earn over $24,480 in 2026.
A large share of Americans claim Social Security the moment they become eligible at 62, and many of them are still working when they do. What often comes as a surprise is that a long-standing rule can hold back part of that early check for anyone under full retirement age who earns more than a...
Social Security
Divorced after a marriage that lasted at least ten years, you can claim Social Security on an ex-spouse’s record without ever affecting their check.
For many older Americans, a marriage that ended years, or even decades, ago still holds a piece of financial value that quietly goes unclaimed. Social Security allows a divorced person to draw a monthly benefit built on a former spouse’s earnings record, and choosing to do so takes nothing away from that former spouse. The...
Medicare
Medicare now caps yearly prescription costs at $2,100, after decades with no limit.
For most of Medicare’s history, there was no ceiling on what a beneficiary could be forced to spend out of pocket on prescription drugs. A retiree with cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, or another condition treated with an expensive specialty medication could watch drug bills climb into the thousands of dollars a year, with no...
Medicare
Medicare premiums come straight out of your Social Security check, so the 2026 raise shrinks before it lands.
Every autumn brings two announcements that shape a retiree’s budget for the year ahead: how much Social Security checks will rise, and how much Medicare will cost. They are usually reported as separate news items, one about a raise and one about a bill. For most older Americans, though, the two are wired directly together....
Social Security
Social Security can now hold back half your check to recover an overpayment.
When the Social Security Administration pays a beneficiary more than the rules allow, it treats the surplus as a debt to be collected, even when the error was the agency’s own. For years the government recovered those overpayments gently, shaving a small slice off each monthly check. That approach has since hardened, and the current...
Retirement Planning
Delaying the start of a pension or annuity can raise the monthly payout, the same way waiting boosts a Social Security check.
Most retirees know that waiting to claim Social Security produces a larger monthly check. Fewer realize the same principle often applies to a pension or an annuity. Starting either one later, rather than at the earliest possible age, generally raises the monthly payout, sometimes substantially. The reason is not a special reward for patience but...
Retirement Planning
Too much cash in a low-interest account loses ground to inflation.
Cash feels like the safe choice, and for retirees who lived through market crashes, keeping money in the bank can be reassuring. A cushion of ready cash is genuinely smart: it covers emergencies without forcing a sale of investments at a bad moment. But there is a hidden cost to holding too much of it...
Retirement Planning
Most private pensions pay the same amount for life, so inflation erodes the check.
A traditional pension can feel like the most solid piece of a retirement plan. The check arrives every month, it is guaranteed for life, and it does not rise and fall with the stock market. But that stability hides a slow leak. Most private pensions pay a fixed dollar amount that never changes, no matter...
Medicare
Shopping your Medicare drug and Advantage plans during fall open enrollment can cut next year’s costs, yet most enrollees never switch.
Once a year, Medicare hands its enrollees a genuine chance to lower next year’s costs, and most of them let it pass. From October 15 to December 7, anyone with a Medicare Advantage or Part D drug plan can compare every option in their area and switch, with the new plan taking effect January 1....
Retirement Planning
An annuity’s surrender charge can lock your savings away for years.
Annuities are marketed to older Americans as a source of steady, guaranteed income, and for some retirees they deliver exactly that. What the sales pitch often glosses over is how hard it can be to get the money back out once it goes in. Many annuities carry a surrender charge, a fee that penalizes the...
Retirement Planning
Move part of an IRA into a longevity annuity and you can delay required withdrawals while locking in income you can’t outlive.
Two fears shadow most retirements: outliving the money, and being forced to drain a nest egg on the government’s schedule rather than one’s own. A little-known product tucked inside the tax code takes aim at both at once. By moving part of an IRA into a special kind of deferred annuity, a retiree can push...
Retirement Planning
Roth earnings come out tax-free only after age 59½ and five years.
A Roth IRA carries a reputation for tax-free money in retirement, and for the most part it earns it. But the tax-free label comes with fine print that surprises savers who dip into the account early. Pulling out the original contributions is simple and always tax-free. Pulling out the earnings those contributions generated is a...
Retirement Planning
High earners barred from a Roth can still get one through a backdoor conversion.
A Roth IRA is one of the most prized accounts in retirement planning, because qualified withdrawals later in life come out completely free of federal tax. Yet the tax code slams the front door on high earners: past a certain income, direct Roth contributions shrink and then stop entirely. What many well-paid savers never learn...
Retirement Planning
Retire before 65 and COBRA can keep your employer health plan for 18 months, but you pay the full premium your boss once covered.
Plenty of workers dream of leaving the job before the traditional finish line, but one number tends to dictate the timing: 65, the age when Medicare begins. Retire any earlier and there is a stretch with no employer plan and no Medicare card, a gap that can last months, or a full decade for someone...