The financial news that actually matters
Maria Gonzalez, a preschool teacher in suburban Dallas, watched the pump display tick past $65 on Tuesday morning and pulled the nozzle early. She still had half a tank to go. “Last summer I could fill up for under fifty dollars,” she said. “Now I’m doing math in the parking lot, figuring out which errands…
Nearly 36 million Xfinity customers had their personal data stolen in October 2023, and Comcast is now paying $117.5 million to settle the class-action lawsuit that followed. The claims window is open, but it closes on August 14, 2025, and anyone who misses the deadline walks away with nothing. The settlement, reached in federal court,…
When Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation voted to lower personal-lines rates by an average of 8.7% this spring, it marked the state-backed insurer’s first rate cut in eight years, according to reporting from the Associated Press and contemporaneous news coverage, though Citizens has not yet published a formal press release or board resolution confirming the…
A dozen eggs cost $4.75 at the average U.S. supermarket in April 2026. Ground beef crossed $6 a pound months ago and stayed there. Cooking oil, bread flour, cheddar cheese: category after category, the receipt at checkout keeps growing, and the pipeline feeding those prices has been moving in one direction since last fall. Federal…
The phone screen showed Chase’s real customer-service number. The voice on the other end said they were calling from the bank’s fraud department and that the account had been compromised. Everything about the call looked right. But it wasn’t Chase. According to a federal criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District…
A generation ago, roughly one in three home sales went to someone buying for the first time. That ratio has collapsed. First-time buyers now represent just 24% of all home purchases, the lowest share the National Association of Realtors has ever recorded in its annual Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, as reported by the…
Consider a homeowner who closed on a house in early 2021 with a 30-year fixed rate of 3%. The monthly principal-and-interest payment on a $405,000 loan came to about $1,707. If that same person sold today and financed an identical amount at 6.58%, the new payment would land near $2,583. That is roughly $876 more…
A family borrowing $30,000 through the federal Parent PLUS program this fall will pay roughly $3,400 more in interest over a standard 10-year repayment than a family that took out the same loan last year. The reason: starting July 1, 2025, new Parent PLUS loans carry a fixed rate of 9.07%, up from 8.05% the…
A 24-year-old carrying a $3,000 credit card balance at 28% APR watches roughly $70 in interest pile up every month. Minimum payments alone would stretch repayment past a decade and more than double the total cost. Miss a few payments entirely, and penalty rates, late fees, and credit-score damage follow, raising the price of car…
Millions of Social Security recipients woke up to their May deposits this morning, May 20, 2026, only to find that the raise Congress promised them in January is already underwater. If your birthday falls between the 11th and 20th of any month, today’s payment includes the 2.8 percent cost-of-living adjustment the Social Security Administration announced…