The financial news that actually matters
When a company loses customer records to hackers, the lawsuit that follows can end in real money for the people whose information was exposed. Three of those settlements are open for claims right now, and each has a firm deadline in the next two months. For older Americans who received a breach notice in the…
The 2025 tax law includes a break widely billed as “no tax on overtime,” and it can put real money back in the pockets of people who work extra hours. But the deduction is narrower than the slogan suggests. It covers only part of an overtime paycheck, it caps out at $12,500 for a single…
A guilty plea in a South Florida courtroom has put a spotlight on how the government pursues high-dollar tax fraud. Daniel Liburdi, a 37-year-old Miami man, admitted to filing a false tax return and agreed to repay the IRS more than $34.8 million, while forfeiting a collection of luxury property that included two Ferraris and…
Tax refund fraud starts long before a return is ever filed: a thief only needs a Social Security number and a few other identifying details to submit a fraudulent return in someone else’s name and claim the refund before the real taxpayer files. A free, six-digit code from the IRS closes that door almost entirely,…
Long before a scam call ever reaches a retiree’s phone, the scammer often already knows the retiree’s name, address, age range, and even an estimate of how much they have in savings. Much of that profile comes from data brokers — companies that compile and resell personal information — and consumer regulators say a handful…
A pitch that promises cash today with “no monthly payments” and “not a loan” can sound like relief to a retiree sitting on home equity but short on income. Federal regulators have been warning for more than a year that these home-equity “investment” contracts often cost more than the traditional loan they are pitched to…
A monthly check that arrives reliably for years can look, to a company on the other end of a sales pitch, like a discount waiting to be locked in. Retirees and disabled workers who receive a pension, a structured settlement, or another stream of guaranteed payments are a recurring target for firms that offer a…
A credit freeze remains one of the strongest tools available against identity theft, and it costs nothing to use. Federal law requires the three national credit bureaus to freeze and unfreeze a credit file free of charge, yet many retirees still assume the protection carries a fee or a hassle large enough to skip it…
Four banks have failed somewhere in the United States so far in 2026, a small number by historical standards but a real one, and each failure ended the same way: a healthy bank stepped in over a weekend, insured customers kept their money without interruption, and the FDIC’s $250,000 coverage line did exactly the job…
Two unrelated data-breach settlements are both paying cash to affected consumers this fall, and neither requires a receipt to collect the baseline payment. A $35 million settlement tied to a years-old breach at a Labcorp billing vendor closes to new claims on September 3, while a separate settlement over a December 2024 breach at the…