The financial news that actually matters
When a scammer talks an older American into wiring money, the hours that follow matter more than almost anything else. Wire transfers are built for speed, and once the money reaches a fraudster’s account it is often gone within a day. Federal investigators do have a tool that can sometimes claw a stolen wire back,…
A fraud alert is one of the simplest and least disruptive tools a person has for guarding a credit file, and like a credit freeze it costs nothing. An alert places a flag on the file that tells any lender pulling it to take extra steps to verify the applicant’s identity before opening a new…
Federal deposit insurance is one of the most trusted guarantees in American finance, but its protection stops at a hard line that many savers discover only at the worst possible moment. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation covers up to $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, per ownership category, and any money above that line at…
A health savings account is one of the most tax-favored tools in retirement planning: money goes in untaxed, grows untaxed, and comes out untaxed when spent on medical costs. For workers who keep saving toward the health expenses that pile up later in life, it can be a quiet powerhouse. But there is a hard…
Inheriting a parent’s individual retirement account used to be a slow, tax-friendly gift. An adult child could draw the money out gradually over decades, taking only a sliver each year and letting the rest keep growing. That era is largely over. For most people who now inherit an IRA, the account has to be fully…
Retirement rarely arrives on a tidy schedule. A layoff, a buyout package, or a decision to step back from full-time work in the mid-50s can leave an older worker needing income from a 401(k) years before the standard access age of 59½. Federal tax law usually punishes an early raid on retirement savings with a…
The individual retirement account, the do-it-yourself savings tool that sits outside any workplace plan, is finally getting a raise. For 2026 the government has nudged up the annual amount a person can put into an IRA, ending a stretch in which the ceiling held flat. The dollar increase is modest, but for late savers and…
Retirement is when many older Americans finally take the long-planned trips — a river cruise in Europe, a visit to family overseas, a winter stretch somewhere warm across a border. Most assume the Medicare coverage they have paid into for decades travels with them. It generally does not. Once a beneficiary leaves the United States,…
A single good financial year can quietly follow a retiree into the future and show up as a higher Medicare bill two years down the road. Sell a house, convert a large sum to a Roth account, or take a big withdrawal, and the extra income can push a household into a surcharge that raises…
For all the ground Medicare covers, three of the most predictable expenses of growing older sit almost entirely outside it. Teeth still need cleaning and repair, eyes still need exams and glasses, and hearing still fades with age. Yet Original Medicare, the traditional government program that anchors coverage for tens of millions of retirees, generally…