The financial news that actually matters
Charles Cole, a 57-year-old from Mooresville, North Carolina, told executives at a technology company he could deliver $55 billion in funding. Federal prosecutors say none of that money existed. Before the deception collapsed, Cole had already collected at least 239 million shares of Infinite Reality, a firm now known as Napster, and used those shares…
Two factors alone account for roughly 65 percent of what determines a consumer’s credit score, and millions of borrowers are making decisions about which one to fix first without clear evidence on sequencing. Fair Isaac has reported that payment history characteristics carry about 35 percent of predictive accuracy, while consumer indebtedness accounts for about 30…
An ex-spouse who was removed from a will can still collect a six-figure payout from a retirement account or life insurance policy if the account holder never updated the beneficiary form. Two Supreme Court decisions, Egelhoff v. Egelhoff in 2001 and Sveen v. Melin in 2018, define where state divorce laws end and federal rules…
Cardholders and merchants who did business with American Express face a fast-approaching deadline to file claims in a settlement tied to the company’s antitrust violations and separate fraud resolutions. The filing window reportedly closes July 15, and eligible claimants who miss it risk forfeiting their share of the payout. The case draws from years of…
Bath & Body Works plans to close 92 stores in 2026, a decision disclosed in an SEC filing dated March 4, 2026, alongside the company’s fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2025 results. The filing, which covers the fiscal year ending January 31, 2026, includes store tables tracking openings and closures by region and sales channel. For…
Borrowers carrying high-interest credit card debt can freeze their finance charges for as long as 21 months by opening a 0% balance-transfer card, but the tradeoff is an upfront fee of 3% to 5% of the amount moved. That fee structure is not uniform across the industry. Wells Fargo’s Reflect card, for example, charges $5…
Consumers who cancel a long-held credit card to simplify their finances risk a score drop that hits harder than many expect, even if the card has been sitting unused in a drawer for years. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warns that closing a credit card can decrease a credit score by reducing total available credit…
Taxpayers who fall short on their quarterly estimated payments face an IRS-imposed addition to tax that has been running at roughly 8% per year, a rate high enough to rival some credit card interest charges. The penalty hits individuals, estates, and trusts that either pay too little or pay late during the tax year, and…
GameStop Corp. cut 727 stores from its U.S. footprint in a single fiscal year, dropping from 2,325 locations to 1,598 between February 1, 2025, and January 31, 2026. The scale of the reduction, disclosed in the company’s annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, amounts to a loss of roughly one in every three…
Millions of workers with access to a 401(k) plan never contribute enough to collect the full employer match, effectively turning down additional compensation they have already earned the right to claim. A matching contribution formula provides additional employer contributions only to employees who make elective deferrals, which means a worker who defers nothing receives nothing…