The financial news that actually matters
When Maria Gonzalez opened her homeowners insurance renewal letter in April 2026, the number had jumped again. Her premium for a three-bedroom house in a fire-adjacent community east of Los Angeles climbed 19% in a single year. She is not alone, and her experience is not unusual. For the fifth consecutive year, homeowners insurance premiums…
For more than 20 years, workers over 50 have been able to stash extra money in their 401(k) on a pre-tax basis, shaving thousands off their annual tax bill in the process. That option just disappeared for a significant slice of the workforce. As of January 2026, any employee whose employer-paid wages topped $145,000 in…
A daily pill just became the cheapest branded GLP-1 weight loss drug on the U.S. market, and it does not require a single injection. Eli Lilly’s Foundayo, containing the active ingredient orforglipron, received FDA approval in early April 2026 for chronic weight management in adults with obesity or overweight who have at least one weight-related…
For years, American families absorbed the cost of tariffs on imported goods every time they bought a car, replaced an appliance, or filled a grocery cart. Those tariffs are now gone, struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional. And roughly $166 billion in collected duties is now being refunded to the companies that…
Millions of Americans who paid IRS penalties on tax returns filed between 2020 and 2023 may be entitled to get that money back. The potential refunds range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on the penalty type and amount originally assessed. But there is a hard deadline approaching: July 10. After that,…
A gallon of regular gasoline now costs $4.39 on average nationwide, after prices lurched up 9 cents in a single day on June 2, 2026, according to AAA’s daily fuel gauge. For the driver filling a typical 15-gallon sedan tank, that works out to roughly $66, up from about $45 before hostilities between the United…
When State Farm locked in a 17% rate hike on California homeowners policies this spring, it confirmed what many policyholders already suspected: the January 2025 wildfires that burned through Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and surrounding communities did not just destroy neighborhoods. They broke the economics of insuring a home in the nation’s most populous state. Insurify,…
As of late May 2026, roughly 8 million federal student loan borrowers enrolled in the defunct SAVE repayment plan have about 62 days before loan servicers start sending notices that will force a decision. Beginning July 1, 2026, those servicers will notify SAVE borrowers that they have 90 days to switch to a different repayment…
A single parent who waits tables and picks up overtime shifts could see tens of thousands of dollars vanish from her taxable income this year. A retiree on a fixed income gets a fatter standard deduction. A family financing a new American-assembled truck can write off the loan interest. None of this is hypothetical. These…
Michael Burry is holding millions of dollars in put options against the two most widely held index funds in American retirement accounts. That alone would be worth noting. But the timing of his bet coincides with a set of structural shifts in how stocks enter major indexes, shifts that could force 401(k) plans to buy…