The financial news that actually matters
Federal student loan borrowers still enrolled in the SAVE plan face a hard deadline: starting July 1, servicers will begin sending notices directing them to pick a new repayment option. Those who fail to act within 90 days of receiving that notice will be automatically placed into the Standard Repayment Plan, which typically carries higher…
Homeowners along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts face a narrow window to secure flood coverage before the 2026 hurricane season ramps up. NOAA issued its seasonal outlook on May 21, projecting 8 to 14 named storms with a 70 percent probability, while any National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) policy purchased today carries a 30-day waiting…
Workers across the United States face a tightening set of options. April job openings fell to 7.1 million, the lowest reading since 2020, and the quits rate dropped to 1.8%, the weakest measure of worker confidence since 2018. Together, these two figures signal that the labor market is cooling in ways that directly affect bargaining…
Homeowners sitting on record levels of home equity now face a borrowing environment that has shifted sharply in their favor. Average HELOC rates fell to 7.19 percent in May, reaching their lowest point in three years and making home equity lines of credit the cheapest major consumer borrowing option available. That rate drop lands against…
At midnight on June 1, 2026, the public comment window closes on a Labor Department proposal that would let employers place private equity and cryptocurrency funds inside the default investment lineups of 401(k) plans. These are the portfolios workers land in when they never make an active choice, and they hold the bulk of retirement…
For 16 years, anyone who lent money to the U.S. government and then checked what they earned after inflation got the same answer: almost nothing, or less. A retired teacher in Ohio who bought Treasury bonds in 2015 and held them through 2025 preserved her savings in nominal terms but watched her purchasing power flatline….
For a home health aide in Ohio earning $15,200 a year, the $590 increase in the 2026 federal poverty level is not an abstraction. It is the difference between falling just above the eligibility line for Medicaid and falling just below it. As of January 23, 2026, a single person earning up to $15,650 meets…
Every spring, the IRS processes roughly nine million returns claiming the American Opportunity Tax Credit, representing approximately $17 billion in total claims according to IRS Statistics of Income data. Yet millions more eligible families never file for the benefit at all. For the 2026 tax year, the AOTC still offers up to $2,500 per eligible…
A cancer patient waiting on chemotherapy approval. A diabetic whose insulin switch sits in a queue. A psychiatrist watching a patient destabilize while paperwork bounces between a clinic and an insurer’s review desk. These are not hypotheticals. According to the American Medical Association’s 2024 Prior Authorization Physician Survey, 94% of physicians say prior authorization delays…
Twenty-eight percent of traders on the CME FedWatch tool are now positioning for something that hasn’t been on the table since 2023: a Federal Reserve interest-rate increase. As of early June 2026, that share of fed-funds futures positioning implies a quarter-point hike at the Fed’s December meeting, while the earliest rate cut carrying majority odds…