The financial news that actually matters
A server at a Chicago restaurant earns a $20 tip on a credit card. Before that money reaches her, the bank that issued the customer’s card skims a percentage off the top as an interchange fee. Starting July 1, 2026, Illinois law was supposed to stop banks from collecting that cut on tips and sales…
Put a number on it: a family closing on a $400,000 home this month at 6.6 percent will write a check for roughly $2,509 in principal and interest every month for the next 30 years. The same loan in early 2021, when 30-year fixed rates briefly dipped below 3 percent, would have cost about $1,686….
Fill up a midsize SUV once a week this summer, and the proposed federal gas-tax holiday would save you about $1.60 each trip. Over five months, that adds up to roughly $35, less than what most families spend on a single weeknight takeout order. The bill behind those numbers landed in the Senate in May…
The sales pitch was simple: bring in artificial intelligence, streamline operations, do more with fewer people. A growing body of research now suggests the “fewer people” part happened on schedule while the “do more” part has not. Two working papers from the National Bureau of Economic Research, drawing on U.S. Census Bureau survey data and…
A customer with $25,000 sitting in a standard savings account at JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo will collect roughly $98 in interest over the next 12 months. Move that same balance to a high-yield online savings account at a bank like Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Ally, or Capital One 360, and the…
Some widows, widowers and surviving divorced spouses have been opening their bank statements in recent months to find Social Security deposits several hundred dollars larger than expected. They did not file a new application. They did not call anyone. The Social Security Administration simply bumped them up. Under rules that have been on the books…
A household earning $80,000 a year, right at the national median, can comfortably afford a monthly mortgage payment of roughly $1,870 under standard lending rules that cap housing costs at 28 percent of gross income. The problem: the actual payment on a median-priced U.S. home now runs closer to $2,960 a month, assuming a 20…
A retired school aide in Ohio. A former truck driver in Florida. A grandmother in Texas who co-signed a loan for a grandchild who never finished college. Across the country, millions of Americans over 55 are heading toward retirement with almost nothing saved, and a federal debt-collection mechanism that was dormant for years is now…
Maria Gonzalez, a preschool teacher in suburban Dallas, watched the pump display tick past $65 on Tuesday morning and pulled the nozzle early. She still had half a tank to go. “Last summer I could fill up for under fifty dollars,” she said. “Now I’m doing math in the parking lot, figuring out which errands…
When Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation voted to lower personal-lines rates by an average of 8.7% this spring, it marked the state-backed insurer’s first rate cut in eight years, according to reporting from the Associated Press and contemporaneous news coverage, though Citizens has not yet published a formal press release or board resolution confirming the…