Warren Cohen, Author at The Financial Wire

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A new proposal would cap Social Security at $100,000 per couple — it would close one-fifth of the funding gap but cut checks for 1 million retirees

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago013 mins

Picture a married couple, both former engineers, who each earned six figures for most of their careers and waited until 70 to start collecting Social Security. Under current rules, their combined annual benefit can top $100,000. A proposal gaining traction among fiscal policy researchers would put a hard stop right there, capping any household’s total…

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The 30-year mortgage rate averaged 6.36% this week — and the 10-year Treasury at 4.53% means rates are heading higher, not lower

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago011 mins

Homebuyers scanning rate sheets this week found a number that looked, at first glance, like a small break: 6.36% on a 30-year fixed mortgage, down from the prior two weeks of increases. On a $400,000 loan, that translates to roughly $2,490 a month in principal and interest (calculated using standard amortization at 6.36% over 360…

Existing home sales rose just 0.2% in April — inventory hit 1.47 million homes but the median price still set an all-time record at $417,800

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago010 mins

The spring housing market was supposed to wake up. Instead, it barely stirred. Existing-home sales rose just 0.2% in April from March, the National Association of Realtors reported, a gain so slight that most economists would call it flat. The number of homes on the market swelled to 1.47 million, the highest April inventory reading…

Smartphone screen displaying chatgpt app details.

OpenAI launched a personal finance dashboard inside ChatGPT that connects to 12,000 banks through Plaid

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago016 mins

OpenAI wants ChatGPT to know how you spend your money. A new personal finance dashboard, currently in preview for U.S. Pro subscribers, lets users connect bank accounts, credit cards, and investment portfolios through Plaid, the financial data network behind Venmo, Robinhood, and hundreds of other fintech apps. Once linked, users can ask plain-language questions about…

Trump showing a chart with reciprocal tariffs

Trump’s tariffs are now the largest U.S. tax increase since 1993 — the average household is paying $1,500 more in 2026

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago011 mins

A new washing machine costs more this spring. So does a car, a laptop, and the copper wiring inside a house under construction. The reason traces back to a series of tariff actions that, taken together, now represent the largest effective tax increase on American households since President Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act…

A man is using a credit card Through computer

Credit card delinquencies hit 13.1% — the highest in 15 years — even as total balances dropped $25 billion last quarter

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago012 mins

More than one in eight credit card accounts in the United States is now past due. That is not a projection or a warning. It is the current state of American consumer credit, and the country has not seen anything like it since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The 30-plus-day credit card delinquency…

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The average homeowner who locked in at 3.2% in 2022 would pay $900 more a month to buy the same house today at 6.46%

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago013 mins

In January 2022, a borrower closing on a $400,000 house with 10% down could lock a 30-year fixed mortgage near 3.2% and walk away with a principal-and-interest payment of roughly $1,560 a month. That same borrower purchasing that same house in June 2026, now priced closer to $440,000 after cumulative appreciation, would face a rate…

Home prices hit a median $417,700 — an all-time record — but year-over-year growth slowed to 0.9%, the weakest pace since 2011

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago012 mins

The typical American home has never cost more, and the market has rarely moved this slowly. In April 2026, the median existing-home sales price, a non-seasonally-adjusted nominal figure reported by the National Association of Realtors, reached $417,700, surpassing every previous month on record, according to data tracked through the Federal Reserve’s FRED database. Yet the…

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Fidelity flagged a $15 billion fraud wave targeting Americans’ savings — scammers send 100,000 texts a day and AI voice clones need just 3 seconds of audio

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago016 mins

A grandmother in Texas picks up the phone and hears her grandson’s voice, panicked, saying he has been in a car accident and needs bail money wired immediately. The voice is his, down to the slight drawl and the way he rushes through sentences. Except it is not him. It is a synthetic replica generated…

Student loan borrowers have 48 days to pick a new repayment plan — miss the July 1 deadline and you get auto-enrolled in the most expensive option

Warren Cohen2 months ago2 months ago011 mins

Roughly 8 million federal student loan borrowers are about to lose the repayment plan they signed up for, and the clock to pick a replacement is already running. The U.S. Department of Education has declared the SAVE plan unlawful and is winding it down. Loan servicers have begun sending notices to affected borrowers, each triggering…

Warren Cohen

The 30-year mortgage rate averaged 6.36% this week — and the 10-year Treasury at 4.53% means rates are heading higher, not lower

Existing home sales rose just 0.2% in April — inventory hit 1.47 million homes but the median price still set an all-time record at $417,800

OpenAI launched a personal finance dashboard inside ChatGPT that connects to 12,000 banks through Plaid

Trump’s tariffs are now the largest U.S. tax increase since 1993 — the average household is paying $1,500 more in 2026

Credit card delinquencies hit 13.1% — the highest in 15 years — even as total balances dropped $25 billion last quarter

The average homeowner who locked in at 3.2% in 2022 would pay $900 more a month to buy the same house today at 6.46%

Home prices hit a median $417,700 — an all-time record — but year-over-year growth slowed to 0.9%, the weakest pace since 2011

Fidelity flagged a $15 billion fraud wave targeting Americans’ savings — scammers send 100,000 texts a day and AI voice clones need just 3 seconds of audio

Student loan borrowers have 48 days to pick a new repayment plan — miss the July 1 deadline and you get auto-enrolled in the most expensive option

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