The financial news that actually matters
Retirees watching their budgets stretch thinner each month may finally get some breathing room next year, at least according to the latest estimate of Social Security’s annual raise. A closely followed forecast now puts the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment near 3.6 percent, which would be the largest increase in four years and add roughly $70 to…
Two competing ideas for putting money back in Americans’ pockets are circulating in Washington, and neither one has become law. One is a Senate proposal to send households a rebate tied to the higher prices tariffs have pushed onto everyday goods. The other is the White House’s floated plan to mail out $2,000 tariff “dividend”…
State Farm’s largest customer payout in more than a century is now landing in mailboxes and inboxes across the country. The insurer’s mutual auto arm has begun distributing a one-time $5 billion dividend to people who paid for coverage in 2025, an unusual return of cash at a time when most drivers have watched premiums…
Providence Health Plan, a regional insurer that has covered Oregonians and Washingtonians for more than four decades, is closing its insurance business for good, and the fallout lands hardest on older members. Roughly 64,000 people enrolled in the nonprofit’s Medicare Advantage plans now have to find replacement coverage before 2027, after a last-ditch effort to…
A balance that shows as available is not the same as money the bank has actually collected. When a check is deposited, federal rules require the bank to release the funds on a fixed timetable, but that timetable runs faster than the behind-the-scenes process of pulling the money from the check writer’s bank. In the…
When a homeowner dies leaving only a will, the house rarely passes to the family overnight. It typically goes first through probate, the court-supervised process for settling an estate, and only afterward reaches the heirs. A living trust offers a different route, one that lets a home move to named beneficiaries without ever entering the…
Most health accounts tied to a workplace come with a catch: unspent money vanishes when the year ends. Health savings accounts work on the opposite principle, letting a balance carry forward year after year with no deadline to spend it. That single feature turns the account into a long-term reserve that can quietly cover some…
Long-term care ranks among the largest costs an older household can face, and Medicaid is the program that pays most of the nation’s nursing-home bill once a resident’s own money runs low. Getting there is not as simple as spending down a bank account, because the program looks backward at what an applicant did with…
Most bank accounts do not automatically escape probate when the owner dies. Left with no instructions, a checking or savings balance held in one name typically becomes part of the estate and waits for a court to settle it. A payable-on-death designation changes that outcome with a single form. By naming a beneficiary who will…
During the housing boom of the mid-2000s, many buyers took out two loans at once, a primary mortgage for most of the purchase price and a smaller second lien to cover the rest. After the 2008 crash, large numbers of those second loans went quiet. Statements stopped arriving, and homeowners assumed the debts had been…