The financial news that actually matters
Low-wage workers in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, D.C., and Chicago woke up to bigger paychecks on July 1 as a new round of minimum wage increases took effect across multiple states and cities. Alaska jumped a full dollar to $14.00 per hour, D.C. climbed to $18.40, and Chicago reached $17.05, while Oregon recalibrated its regional tiers…
Taxpayers who filed electronically and chose direct deposit this season received refunds in fewer than 21 days in the vast majority of cases, while those who mailed paper returns faced waits of six weeks or longer. The IRS issues more than nine out of ten refunds in less than 21 days when both e-filing and…
Taxpayers who have not yet maxed out their 2026 IRA still have months of runway. The contribution deadline does not expire on December 31 but instead tracks the federal income tax return due date, which for calendar-year filers falls on April 15, 2027, or the next business day when weekends or legal holidays intervene. With…
Every person in the United States can now pull a credit report from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion once a week, every week, at no cost. The three major bureaus made this access permanent through AnnualCreditReport.com, expanding on a federal law that originally guaranteed only one free report per bureau per year. For anyone applying for…
Tens of thousands of workers at some of the largest U.S. technology companies have lost their jobs in recent months, with employers increasingly pointing to artificial intelligence as the reason. Oracle attributed workforce reductions to AI adoption and deployment in its fiscal year 2026 annual filing. Meta slashed 8,000 jobs, equal to 10% of its…
Bitcoin slid back toward $62,000 on Tuesday as a broad selloff in technology stocks rippled across global markets. The decline came less than a week after the Federal Reserve released updated economic projections following its June 16–17 meeting, showing a higher expected path for interest rates and firmer inflation forecasts. Regulated futures positioning added to…
Connecticut residents booking hotel rooms, buying event tickets, or signing up for services will now see a single advertised price that includes every mandatory fee a business plans to charge. The state enacted PA 25-44, a law that requires companies to fold all required add-on costs into the sticker price shown to consumers. Attorney General…
Millions of Americans who earn a paycheck face federal tax rates that can reach 37%, while the profits they collect from selling stocks or real estate held for more than a year are typically taxed at just 15%. The IRS confirmed this gap again when it published inflation-adjusted ordinary income brackets for tax year 2026,…
The FBI recorded more than one million online crime complaints last year, with total losses reaching $20.9 billion, a figure that dwarfs the prior year’s tally of more than $16 billion. The jump of roughly 149,000 additional complaints, from 859,532 to 1,008,597, raises a pointed question: are Americans actually being victimized at a faster rate,…
Homebuyers and refinance candidates caught a modest break this week as the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate slipped to 6.43%, its lowest reading in seven weeks. The decline, recorded in Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey, arrives while housing affordability remains stretched and prospective sellers sit on the sidelines guarding lower locked-in rates. Whether this…
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