The financial news that actually matters
The age at which Social Security pays a full benefit has been quietly climbing for decades, and it has now reached its final step. Anyone born in 1960 or later must wait until 67 to collect an unreduced retirement check, the last increment of a change Congress set in motion back in 1983. The shift…
For more than four decades, millions of retired public servants watched a chunk of their Social Security disappear because they also earned a government pension. Two provisions written into law in the late 1970s and 1980s reduced or erased benefits for teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other workers whose jobs did not withhold Social Security…
A stubborn myth keeps some older widows and widowers from ever walking back down the aisle: the belief that a new marriage automatically ends the Social Security survivor benefit tied to a late spouse. For people who marry later in life, that fear is misplaced. Social Security draws a bright line at age 60, and…
Every autumn, the size of the following year’s Social Security raise lands with real weight for tens of millions of retirees who budget month to month. For 2027, the early math points to one of the larger increases in recent memory, though nothing is locked in until the government runs the final inflation numbers. Analysts…
A new federal tax break aimed squarely at older Americans is now in effect, and for many retirees it can meaningfully lower a tax bill. Created by the tax law passed in 2025, the deduction lets people age 65 and older subtract an extra $6,000 from taxable income, on top of the standard deduction they…
A drug that has carried one of the highest sticker prices in the American pharmacy is about to cost Medicare far less. Beginning in 2027, the program’s negotiated price for the semaglutide family sold as Ozempic and Wegovy falls to $274 a month, down from a list price near $959. The reduction is one of…
Social Security’s spousal benefit quietly rewards a lifetime of unpaid work at home, letting a husband or wife with little or no earnings record draw a monthly check built on their partner’s career. The provision can pay a lower-earning or non-earning spouse up to half of the higher earner’s full retirement benefit, and it does…
A federal retirement incentive years in the making is now scheduled to take effect, and it is built to reward modest savers with government money deposited directly into their accounts. Under the program known as the Saver’s Match, the Treasury will contribute up to $1,000 a year to eligible workers who set aside their own…
When a homeowner dies, the family house is often the asset that drags the estate into probate — the court-supervised process that can take months, run up legal fees, and play out in the public record. A single legal document is designed to route the home around that entire proceeding. A transfer-on-death deed names in…
Millions of federal student loan borrowers who parked their debt in the SAVE plan spent more than a year in a court-ordered holding pattern, making no payments while the program was frozen by litigation. That pause is now ending on a fixed schedule, and the government has attached a countdown to it. Once a borrower…