The financial news that actually matters
A 401(k) loan defaults the moment you leave your employer, turning the balance into a taxable distribution plus a 10% penalty unless you repay within 60 days. Picture handing in your two weeks’ notice, thrilled about a better offer, only to open a tax form the following January showing that the $15,000 you borrowed from…
Every month a 67-year-old waits to file for Social Security, the government adds two-thirds of 1 percent to their benefit. That does not sound like much until you let it compound: three full years of patience, from 67 to 70, produces a check roughly 24 percent larger than the one available at full retirement age….
Every month, an unknown number of Medicare beneficiaries pay a surcharge on their Part B premium that will follow them for the rest of their lives. They missed a sign-up deadline, sometimes by just a few months, and the federal government responded with a penalty that never expires: 10 percent of the standard monthly premium…
A 75-year-old who skipped Medicare Part D at 65 and never held other qualifying drug coverage now owes a permanent surcharge of roughly $561 a year on top of whatever their plan already charges. That penalty showed up on their first premium bill and will appear on every bill after it, for life. Someone who…
A 73-year-old retiree with $500,000 sitting in a traditional IRA owes the IRS a required minimum distribution of roughly $18,868 this year. Skip that withdrawal entirely by December 31, and the penalty alone comes to about $4,717, calculated as 25% of the missed amount. That is on top of whatever ordinary income tax is eventually…
Somewhere in a federal database, there may be a pension check with your name on it. Not a scam. Not a gimmick. Actual retirement money, earned years or decades ago, sitting in government custody because your old employer went bankrupt, merged, moved, or simply lost your address. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation held roughly $424…
Somewhere in the United States, roughly 544,000 people logged into their Fidelity 401(k) accounts at the end of the first quarter of 2025 and saw a balance of $1 million or more. That is the highest count Fidelity has ever recorded. By mid-2026, that data point is more than a year old, but it remains…
For years, families who oversaved in a 529 plan faced an uncomfortable set of options: pay for something that didn’t qualify and absorb a 10% federal penalty plus income tax on earnings, change the beneficiary and hope another family member could use the funds, or simply let the balance sit. That changed when Congress passed…
Social Security’s full retirement age reaches 67 this year for everyone born in 1960 or later – claiming at 62 now locks in a 30% smaller check If you were born in 1960, this is the year you turn 67, and it marks a quiet but significant shift in Social Security history. For the first…
A retired couple collecting a combined $4,200 a month from Social Security might assume the survivor will be fine financially. But the math tells a different story. Say he receives $2,600 based on his earnings record and she receives $1,600 based on hers. When he dies, her $1,600 check doesn’t continue alongside his. The Social…