The financial news that actually matters
A 62-year-old worker who maxes out her 401(k) in 2026 will be allowed to contribute $35,750, roughly $670 per week before her employer even chips in. That ceiling is $11,250 higher than what a colleague under 50 can defer and $3,250 above the limit for most other catch-up-eligible workers over 50. No other age group…
The U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs in April 2026, nearly doubling the 60,000 that forecasters in the Bloomberg consensus survey had expected. On most Fridays, that headline would have carried the morning. But a second federal survey, published in the same Bureau of Labor Statistics employment situation report, told a sharply different story: 226,000 fewer…
The number on Layoffs.fyi ticked past 128,270 in late May 2026, each digit representing a person who opened a calendar invite or a Slack message and learned their job no longer existed. Engineers at Microsoft, which confirmed a performance-focused reduction spanning thousands of roles across divisions. Product managers at SAP, where leadership tied a sweeping…
Picture a borrower we will call Maria: she carries a $6,600 credit card balance, makes her minimum payments on time every month, and assumed the Federal Reserve’s three rate cuts between September and December 2024 would eventually lower her interest charges. They never did. The average annual percentage rate on credit card accounts assessed interest…
The price tag on a pound of uncooked steak at the average American grocery store now reads $12.74, the highest the Bureau of Labor Statistics has ever recorded in its decades of monitoring beef costs. That figure reflects the March 2026 monthly reading from the agency’s consumer price tracking, and it has held at that…
The clock is ticking for millions of federal student loan borrowers, and the math is unforgiving. If you are among the estimated 8 million people who enrolled in the SAVE repayment plan, that plan is being shut down. Starting July 1, 2025, loan servicers will begin sending notices giving each borrower 90 days to choose…
The U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs in April 2026, nearly doubling the roughly 65,000 that forecasters in the Reuters consensus survey as reported by the Associated Press had expected. The unemployment rate held at 4.3 percent. On the surface, that looks like resilience. But zoom out five months and a very different picture comes into…
For the second month in a row, artificial intelligence was the single most cited reason American companies gave for eliminating jobs. In April alone, employers announced 21,490 AI-driven cuts, roughly 26% of every layoff disclosed nationwide, according to the latest monthly report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the outplacement firm that has tracked corporate layoff…
Every month, tens of millions of American households make their credit card payments and watch most of the money vanish into interest charges. On a balance of $6,600, which is close to the national average for households carrying revolving debt, a 21% APR generates roughly $1,386 in interest over a year. That money never reduces…
PayPal is preparing to shed roughly 4,760 jobs over the next two to three years. Upwork, the freelance-work marketplace, already eliminated about 24% of its workforce in what the company’s SEC filing describes as a restructuring plan adopted in May 2026. Both companies pointed to artificial intelligence as a driving force, and both made their…