The financial news that actually matters
Taxpayers who owe the IRS money they cannot pay in one lump sum face a real threat: federal tax liens attached to their property and levies that can seize wages, bank accounts, and other assets. A formal installment agreement, set up through the agency’s Online Payment Agreement tool for a $22 fee, triggers a statutory…
Investors who parked savings in bond funds expecting steady, low-risk returns are watching those funds lose value as Treasury yields climb across maturities. The relationship is mechanical: when interest rates rise, the market price of existing bonds falls, and bond fund net asset values follow. Funds holding longer-duration bonds have absorbed steeper losses than their…
Anyone saving for retirement, a home down payment, or a child’s college fund can estimate when their money will double with a single division problem: take 72 and divide it by the expected annual return. At a 9 percent annual rate, an investment doubles in roughly 8 years. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission promotes…
Half of the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting participants now project at least one interest-rate increase before the end of 2026, a sharp shift that arrived alongside the removal of language that had long signaled the central bank’s preference for easing. The June 16-17 FOMC meeting produced a statement that dropped the forward-guidance sentence referencing “the extent…
Consumers who want to help a partner, child, or friend build a credit profile can add that person as an authorized user on an existing credit card, effectively sharing the account’s payment history with someone who may have little or no credit record of their own. The practice is legal, widely used, and backed by…
Investors who pull money from a variable annuity before the contract’s surrender period expires face fees that can consume a significant share of their principal, with a typical first-year charge starting around 7% and declining by roughly one percentage point each subsequent year. The surrender period on these contracts often runs six to eight years,…
Anyone who has ever had a credit card opened in their name without permission knows the damage takes months to undo. A single, free step can prevent most of that harm: placing a security freeze at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Federal law requires all three bureaus to freeze a consumer’s credit report at no cost,…
Anyone who buys a Series EE savings bond from the U.S. Treasury today receives a federal guarantee: hold it for 20 years and it will be worth at least twice the purchase price. That promise is not a marketing slogan. It is written into federal regulation, backed by a one-time adjustment mechanism, and has been…
At Home, the Texas-based home decor chain that built its business model around high-volume imports, is shutting down 32 stores as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. The closures are already underway, with liquidation firm Hilco Consumer-Retail managing store-closing sales across two separate waves. The retailer’s near-total reliance on overseas-sourced merchandise left it exposed…
Bank of America analysts have declared that the Federal Reserve’s inflation problem has gotten “unambiguously worse,” projecting that the central bank will raise interest rates at its September, October, and December meetings this year. The call follows the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2026 Consumer Price Index release on June 10, 2026, which showed persistent…