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.
Humana told investors on July 29 that it will exit Medicare Advantage plans covering roughly 600,000 members heading into the 2027 plan year, and the company says the cuts fall disproportionately on its own lowest-rated coverage. Nobody enrolled in one of the affected plans is getting a phone call about it. The notice arrives as…
President Trump campaigned on eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits, and he has continued describing the tax-and-spending law he signed in July 2025 as delivering exactly that. The text of the law tells a narrower story. Instead of exempting Social Security income from federal tax, the law added a new deduction for people 65 and…
President Trump has spent more than a year pushing pharmaceutical companies to sell Americans drugs at the same price they charge in other wealthy countries, using an approach the administration calls “most-favored-nation,” or MFN, pricing. The effort is aimed squarely at what Medicare and out-of-pocket patients pay at the pharmacy counter, and it has already…
A marriage that ended decades ago can still be worth real money in retirement. Under longstanding Social Security rules, a divorced person can draw a benefit based on an ex-spouse’s earnings record — worth up to half that ex’s full benefit — even if the ex has moved on and remarried since. The rule surprises…
Medicaid covers the nursing-home and long-term-care bills that Medicare and most private insurance will not, and for many older Americans it is the only thing standing between them and catastrophic care costs. What far fewer people realize is that the program is legally entitled to get some of that money back after the recipient dies….
Most people assume that if they never get around to writing a will, their belongings will simply go to the people they would have chosen anyway. The law does not work that way. When someone dies without a valid will, a set of state statutes called intestate succession takes over and hands out the estate…
When a person dies owning a house in their own name alone, the family often assumes the keys simply pass to the heirs. In most cases they do not. The home and other solely owned assets are first routed through probate, the court-supervised process for validating a will, paying debts, and legally transferring what is…
An annuity is often sold as a safe place to park retirement savings, but the money inside is not always easy to get back out. Deferred annuities are built to be held for years, and the contracts enforce that with a surrender charge — a penalty deducted from the balance when an owner withdraws too…
Most retirees expect their Medicare premiums to stay steady from year to year. For higher-income households, a single unusual year of income can quietly break that expectation and raise those premiums by hundreds of dollars a month. The mechanism is a surcharge known as the income-related monthly adjustment amount, or IRMAA, and its most surprising…
Moving a 401(k) after leaving a job sounds like simple housekeeping, yet the way the money travels can decide whether the whole balance stays tax-sheltered or turns into one of the largest tax bills a retiree ever sees. The difference often comes down to a single choice on a form. Get it wrong, and a…
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