The financial news that actually matters
Opening a prescription bottle to find the plan will not pay for it is a common and stressful experience for Medicare enrollees. What many do not realize is that a drug’s absence from a plan’s covered list is not necessarily final. The rules give enrollees a formal way to ask the plan to cover a…
Choosing among Medicare’s many options can overwhelm even a careful planner, and the advice that arrives by mail or phone often comes from someone with a product to sell. There is a free alternative that most enrollees never use: a nationwide network of counselors, funded by the federal government, whose only job is to help…
A paper benefit check sitting in a mailbox is an easy target, and mail theft has surged in recent years. Moving Social Security payments to electronic delivery removes the physical check from the equation entirely, which closes off one of the simplest ways a thief can intercept a retiree’s income. For most beneficiaries, electronic payment…
Retirees who claim Social Security early and keep working often worry that every dollar they earn or receive will chip away at their benefit. The rules are narrower than that fear suggests. Only certain kinds of income count against the limit that can temporarily reduce a benefit, and a great deal of a retiree’s money…
Many retirees keep the bulk of their savings at a brokerage firm and assume it is protected the same way a bank account is. It is protected, but by a different program with different limits, and the coverage is often misunderstood. Knowing exactly what that protection does and does not include matters most for households…
A growing number of homeowners are learning that their insurance coverage can be canceled because of a photograph taken from the sky, not an inspector at the door. Insurers increasingly rely on aerial images from drones, planes, and satellites to decide whether to keep covering a home, and some of those decisions rest on a…
A class-action settlement tied to a convenience-store data breach is offering eligible customers a modest cash payment with no paperwork required, or a larger reimbursement for those who can document losses. The window to file is closing soon, which makes this a timely example of how these settlements work and how to tell a real…
A years-long scheme that emptied the savings of dozens of older Americans has ended with a prison sentence for the man who ran it. Federal prosecutors described a cold, methodical operation built on a fictional prize, and the victims it targeted were among the most vulnerable savers imaginable, most of them in their eighties. The…
Overdraft fees are one of the most expensive routine charges a checking account can carry, and many older account holders assume the bank simply gets to impose them whenever a balance runs short. For one common category of transactions, that is not how the law works. A federal rule gives every customer control over whether…
Two of the most common ways older Americans pass money to the next generation are a life-insurance policy and a traditional IRA. On a statement the two can look almost interchangeable: a balance with a named beneficiary attached. Once federal taxes are applied, though, the amount an heir actually keeps can differ sharply between them….