The financial news that actually matters
Many retirees treat the widely quoted $250,000 figure on federal deposit insurance as a hard ceiling — the most a bank will ever protect if it collapses. It is closer to a starting point than a wall. The limit applies per depositor, per insured bank, and separately within each category of account ownership, so the…
Savers who move money to a credit union sometimes worry that their deposits are less protected than they would be at a traditional bank. They are not. Federally insured credit unions carry government-backed coverage that works almost identically to the insurance behind bank deposits, protecting up to $250,000 per saver, and that guarantee is backed…
Homeowners who have paid premiums faithfully for decades are discovering that the check after a roof claim is a fraction of what it once would have been. As insurers overhaul how they cover aging homes, many are moving older roofs off full replacement-cost coverage and onto “actual cash value,” a settlement method that subtracts years…
There is a clock running on almost every unpaid debt, and once it stops, the balance changes character entirely. Every state sets a statute of limitations, a window of a few years during which a creditor or collector can sue to force payment. After that window closes, the debt becomes “time-barred,” and while it does…
The document is supposed to be a safeguard. A power of attorney lets an aging parent hand a trusted person the legal authority to pay bills, manage investments, and handle money if illness or age makes it hard to do alone. But the very breadth that makes it useful is what makes it dangerous: once…
It begins with something as low-tech as a fishing line. A thief lowers a sticky trap or a baited string into a blue collection box or an unlocked residential mailbox, pulls out whatever envelopes come with it, and looks for one thing above all: a paper check. From there the fraud turns almost surgical. Using…
Money slips out of people’s hands without any theft or loss: a final paycheck from a job left years ago, a utility deposit never refunded, an insurance payout mailed to an old address, the balance of a bank account that quietly went dormant. When a business cannot reach the owner for long enough, it is…
Nearly $29.7 billion in U.S. savings bonds have reached the end of their earning life and are simply sitting in the Treasury’s records — fully matured, drawing no interest, and waiting for owners or heirs who often do not know the bonds exist. Paper certificates tucked into drawers, safe deposit boxes, and old files quietly…
The tax law passed in 2025 created a deduction that lets many tipped workers subtract a large share of their gratuities from taxable income, up to $25,000 a year. It is one of the most talked-about pieces of the package, and it reaches a group of earners that includes plenty of older Americans who wait…
Two data-breach settlements are handing out cash to people who were never asked to prove a single dollar of loss, and both filing windows shut in early fall. Circle K, the convenience-store chain, and American Consumer Credit Counseling, a national nonprofit that helps households dig out of debt, have each set up funds that pay…