The financial news that actually matters
For years, licensed gun dealers, crypto startups, and faith-based nonprofits have shared a common frustration: banks closing their accounts not because of fraud or unpaid debts, but because regulators quietly flagged their industries as reputational liabilities. On June 9, 2026, a new federal rule is supposed to end that practice for good. The Federal Deposit…
The next time you overdraw your checking account at one of the country’s largest banks, the fee will almost certainly be $29 to $35, the same range it has been for years. A federal rule that would have capped that charge at $5 for big banks was permanently killed before it ever took effect, and…
Millions of taxpayers filed their 2025 returns this spring expecting a refund check in the mail. It is not coming. Not automatically, anyway. Starting with the 2026 filing season, the IRS no longer mails paper refund checks by default. If your return posted without direct deposit information, the agency processes it, calculates what you are…
Someone earning $30,000 a year with $35,000 in federal student loans could soon owe just $10 a month. That is the central promise of the Repayment Assistance Plan, the new income-driven repayment option taking effect July 1, 2026. The catch: borrowers who stay on RAP could carry their debt for up to 30 years before…
If you filed your 2025 federal tax return without direct deposit information and you’ve been waiting weeks for a refund check that never arrived, there is a reason: the check is not coming. Starting with the 2026 filing season, the IRS no longer mails paper refund checks to most individual taxpayers. Instead, filers without bank…
If you bank at Wells Fargo and overdraw your checking account by $6 buying coffee, you’ll pay a $35 fee for the privilege. That was supposed to change. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule in December 2024 that would have capped overdraft charges at the nation’s largest banks at as little as $5….
In 2014, a licensed firearms dealer in Wisconsin opened a letter from his bank and learned his account was being shut down. No fraud allegation. No overdraft. No explanation beyond a form paragraph about a “business decision.” He was one of dozens of gun retailers, payday lenders, and tobacco sellers who reported identical treatment during…
For more than a year, roughly 7.5 million student loan borrowers enrolled in the SAVE repayment plan have been frozen in place. Most were put into administrative forbearance after courts blocked the program in 2024, their monthly payments paused but their futures unresolved. That uncertainty just ended, and the outcome is worse than many of…
Three of the biggest names in online savings just trimmed what they pay depositors, and none of them sent a press release about it. Capital One, Synchrony, and Marcus by Goldman Sachs each lowered their posted annual percentage yields over the past several weeks, according to updated rate tables on their websites. The reductions were…
Sometime in the next few weeks, a borrower earning $3,000 a month after taxes could open a pay stub and find $450 missing. No court hearing, no lawsuit. The federal government will have taken it directly, under rules that allow administrative wage garnishment of up to 15% of disposable income on defaulted student loans. That…