The financial news that actually matters
Covers retirement planning, Social Security benefits, pension systems, and long-term financial security. It helps readers understand how to prepare financially for retirement.
A retirement account left behind by a parent, sibling, or friend once came with decades of flexibility about when to draw the money down. Since 2020, most people who inherit an IRA or a 401(k) balance face a hard ten-year deadline to empty the account, and a set of final regulations issued in 2024 added…
Long-term care can consume a retirement account in a matter of months, and for years the only way to protect savings once that spending started was to give assets away or wait out a Medicaid look-back period. A less-known option works differently: a long-term care insurance policy that carries a state “partnership” label lets a…
Most Social Security checks are built from a formula that rewards higher lifetime earnings, which is exactly why a home health aide, a school cafeteria worker, or a farmhand who spent three decades at modest wages can end up with a surprisingly small benefit. A separate calculation exists specifically for that group. It is called…
A worker who spends years collecting Social Security Disability Insurance eventually reaches a birthday that changes almost nothing about the check. Once a disabled worker reaches full retirement age, the Social Security Administration relabels the payment as a retirement benefit instead of a disability benefit, but the dollar amount deposited each month stays the same….
Millions of widows and widowers assume their survivor benefit will eventually reach the same amount their spouse earned over a working life. For a large share of them, that assumption is wrong, and the reason has nothing to do with their own record. If the deceased spouse claimed Social Security early and received a reduced…
A once-common Social Security claiming strategy is now available to only a shrinking, specific group of retirees: anyone born before January 2, 1954. That single date determines whether a married or divorced retiree can file what Social Security calls a restricted application, collecting only a spousal benefit for a period of years while their own…
hospital As millions of Medicare beneficiaries begin comparing Medicare Advantage plans for next year, a running list of hospitals and health systems that no longer accept certain Medicare Advantage insurers has kept climbing. Becker’s Hospital Review’s tracker of these contract breaks reached 29 named health systems as of early September, spanning large academic medical centers…
A payment option that barely existed before 2025 is now available in every Medicare drug plan in the country: the ability to spread out-of-pocket prescription costs into level monthly installments instead of paying the full amount at the pharmacy counter. The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan applies to anyone enrolled in a stand-alone Part D plan…
living Millions of Social Security beneficiaries are watching grocery and household bills climb even as they wait for Washington to tell them how much bigger their monthly check will be next year. The irony is that the same tariff policy pushing those prices higher is also one of the forces that could push next year’s…
hospitalHumana and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have resolved a contract dispute that had left thousands of central Ohio Medicare Advantage members bracing for a total loss of access to one of the region’s largest health systems. The resolution, posted directly to Humana’s newsroom and updated this week, draws a narrower line than…
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