The financial news that actually matters
Workers born in 1960 or later who file for Social Security at 62 accept a permanent monthly benefit cut of 30 percent compared with waiting until their full retirement age of 67. That reduction, locked in by federal statute, applies to every check for the rest of the recipient’s life. For someone entitled to $2,000…
Millions of divorced Americans over age 62 could qualify for Social Security benefits based on a former spouse’s earnings record, yet many never file. The qualifying rule is straightforward: if the marriage lasted at least 10 years before the divorce became final, and the applicant meets age and marital-status conditions, a divorced spouse can collect…
Millions of shoppers who have long relied on QVC and HSN for everything from kitchen gadgets to fashion now face real uncertainty about whether those networks will survive in their current form. QVC Group and its affiliates filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions on April 16, 2026, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District…
Commodity Transporters, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Eastern District of California this month, joining a string of trucking operators seeking court relief as freight volumes remain stuck well below trend. The filing, docketed as case 26-12787, lands during a period when the Cass Freight Index shows shipments have failed to recover…
Tens of thousands of Volkswagen workers in Germany face an uncertain future after the automaker’s leadership clashed over the scale and method of its biggest workforce reduction in decades. Internal discussions have put figures as high as 100,000 job cuts on the table alongside the possible closure of four German factories, according to two people…
West Marine, the national boating supply retailer, is shutting down 59 stores while its Chapter 11 bankruptcy case moves through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The closures target underperforming locations as the company works to cut debt and shrink its physical retail footprint. For thousands of recreational boaters who depend on…
A 77-year-old man lost $390,000 of his retirement savings after scammers convinced him to convert his holdings into gold bars and hand them to a courier. His case fits a pattern that federal prosecutors have been charging across multiple states, from Arizona to Ohio to Missouri, with individual victims losing hundreds of thousands of dollars…
Homebuyers shopping for a fixed-rate loan this week face the steepest borrowing costs of 2026. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 6.55%, a level not seen since late August 2025, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. That jump adds roughly $40 per month to a principal-and-interest payment on a $400,000 loan compared…
Most of the $84 trillion baby boomers are expected to pass down by 2045 will land in the accounts of families who are already wealthy, according to a new study from Visa Business and Economic Insights. Of the $36 trillion projected to transfer over the next 20 years, roughly $8 trillion will be spent before…
Kroger plans to close approximately 60 stores over the next 18 months, a decision that triggered $100 million in pre-tax closure costs during the first quarter of fiscal 2025. The grocery chain disclosed the charges in a quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and repeated the same figures in two subsequent regulatory…