The financial news that actually matters
Homeowners filing claims with the largest property insurers in the United States now face odds that look more like a coin toss than a safety net. An analysis of insurer data found that State Farm, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, USAA, and Farmers did not pay out on more than 44% of claims they resolved in 2025….
Americans planning to make financial gifts in 2026 can transfer up to $19,000 to any single recipient without triggering a federal gift-tax return. The IRS confirmed that figure as part of its latest inflation adjustments, holding the per-person annual exclusion steady for a second consecutive year even after legislative changes introduced by the One, Big,…
Medicare beneficiaries who let 63 or more days pass without prescription drug coverage after they first become eligible face a late enrollment penalty, or LEP, that gets added to their Part D premium for as long as they carry drug coverage. The penalty does not expire after a set number of years. It stays attached…
Victims of so-called pig-butchering investment scams lost more than $225 million in cryptocurrency that federal agents have now frozen, the largest single recovery the Justice Department has ever made from crypto confidence fraud. The civil forfeiture complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, targets exactly 225,364,961 USDT held across a network…
Millions of Social Security and VA beneficiaries could see an extra $200 added to their monthly checks for six months under a House bill introduced during the 119th Congress. The measure, titled the Social Security Emergency Inflation Relief Act, arrives just months after the Social Security Administration set the 2026 cost-of-living adjustment at 2.8 percent,…
Millions of Americans age 65 and older can now claim an extra $6,000 tax deduction, but the benefit shrinks dollar by dollar once modified adjusted gross income crosses $75,000 for single filers or $150,000 for joint filers. Enacted as part of Public Law 119-21, the provision applies to tax years 2025 through 2028 and is…
Residential electric customers served by Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. in North Dakota could see their monthly bills climb by roughly $19 if state regulators approve a 14.5 percent rate increase the company filed for on June 30, 2026. The request, logged as Case PU-26-241 with the North Dakota Public Service Commission, is titled “2027 Electric Rate…
Retirees and disability applicants who depend on the Social Security Administration are now competing for help from a shrinking workforce. The agency announced plans to cut roughly 7,000 positions from a baseline of about 57,000 employees, aiming for a target of 50,000. Some field offices have shifted to phone-only service, and about 1,000 customer-service representatives…
Troy Murray, a 57-year-old from Hickory, North Carolina, was sentenced to 121 months in federal prison for selling the personal information of more than 7 million elderly Americans to scammers based in Jamaica. The scheme ran from 2016 through 2023, generating lead lists that fueled fraud operations responsible for stealing more than $9 million from…
Medicare has locked in lower prices for Wegovy and 14 other high-cost medicines starting January 1, 2027, after federal officials completed a second cycle of drug negotiations. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says the new Maximum Fair Prices, or MFPs, will apply to treatments for cancer and chronic disease that are widely used…