The financial news that actually matters
Traditional retirement accounts allow decades of tax-deferred growth, but that deferral was never meant to last forever. Federal law eventually forces money out of tax-favored accounts and onto the tax rolls, and the clock now starts in the year an account holder turns 73. A retiree who lets one of these withdrawals slip past the…
Waiting to claim Social Security usually pays off, right up until it suddenly stops paying off at all. The reward for patience, known as delayed retirement credits, builds month by month after full retirement age and can substantially enlarge a lifetime benefit. But the increases end abruptly at age 70, and any month a benefit…
Claiming Social Security is not the final word on the size of a monthly check. For beneficiaries who keep drawing a paycheck after they start benefits, the government quietly reruns the math every year, and a strong earnings year can bump the payment upward for good. The mechanism rewards people who work into their late…
Kroger, the largest traditional supermarket operator in the United States, is working through a plan to close about 60 of its stores. The retailer disclosed the decision in June and has already gone dark at dozens of locations. For the neighborhoods losing a store, the change removes more than a place to buy groceries, because…
Prison bars did not end one South Florida investment operation. Federal prosecutors say a Boca Raton man kept steering a real estate scheme worth more than $50 million from inside a cell where he was already serving time for an earlier fraud. When the operation collapsed, the losses fell on the investors who had bought…
For four years, an expanded set of federal tax credits held down what many Americans paid for health coverage bought through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Those enhanced credits reached their statutory end on the last day of 2025, and coverage priced for 2026 no longer carries them. The change falls hardest on people in…
A widely publicized idea to send Americans a $2,000 check funded by import tariffs remains exactly that, an idea. Months after the president first floated the payments, no checks have gone out, no money has been authorized, and the proposal has not moved through Congress. The gap between the political promise and the fiscal reality…
UnitedHealthcare, the largest carrier in Medicare Advantage, is drawing up another round of market withdrawals for the 2027 plan year. The insurer is weighing whether to stop offering coverage in 34 counties spread across 12 states, a step that would push the seniors enrolled in those markets out of their current plans. The list is…
Adding a grown child’s name to the deed of the family home is one of the most common do-it-yourself estate moves, usually done with good intentions — to make inheritance simpler or to sidestep probate. On paper it looks free and effortless. In practice, the federal government treats it as a gift, the tax code…
For a household that bought its home decades ago, the sale price on the way out can be several times what was paid on the way in. That built-in gain is exactly what the tax code treats as taxable profit, and on a long-held property in an appreciated market it can reach well into six…