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.
Say you borrow $20,000 from your 401(k) to cover a roof replacement. The paperwork takes a day, nobody pulls your credit, and the interest you pay goes right back into your own account. Eighteen months later, you get a better job offer and give notice. The plan administrator sends a letter: repay the remaining $14,000…
That caller telling seniors they’re owed a “Part D refund” from Medicare’s new $2,100 drug cap is a scam — real Medicare never calls uninvited or collects bank routing numbers The phone rings mid-morning. The caller ID shows an 800 number. A calm, professional voice tells a retired schoolteacher in Florida that Medicare owes her…
A 57-year-old engineer converts $80,000 from a traditional IRA into a Roth in January 2024, planning to let it grow tax-free through retirement. Three years later, at 60, she pulls $30,000 to cover a roof replacement. She is past 59½, so she assumes the withdrawal is penalty-free. Then her tax preparer delivers the bad news:…
A cashier earning $28,000 a year puts $2,000 into an IRA. She files her taxes, qualifies for the Saver’s Credit, and receives nothing. Her federal income tax liability was already wiped out by the standard deduction and the Earned Income Tax Credit, so a nonrefundable credit has no remaining value to deliver. That outcome is…
When Linda and Jim Kowalski retired in 2022, they figured Medicare would handle the heavy lifting on medical bills. Within two years, Jim needed daily help bathing and dressing after a stroke, and Linda learned that the three crowns her dentist recommended would run more than $4,500 out of pocket. Original Medicare covered neither. Their…
A Medicare patient filling a 30-day supply of Eliquis, the blood thinner prescribed to millions of Americans with atrial fibrillation, used to face a list price north of $500 a month. As of January 1, 2026, the federal government’s negotiated price for that same prescription is $231. That single reduction, applied across the roughly 3.7…
A year ago, the federal government told hospitals they had roughly 11 years before Medicare’s main payment account ran dry. That estimate just shrank to eight. The 2025 Medicare Trustees Report, released this spring, projects that the Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will be depleted by 2033, three years sooner than the 2036 date published…
A worker leaves a job, gets a glossy mailer from a brokerage, and rolls a $300,000 401(k) into a traditional IRA before the week is out. The new account may offer cheaper index funds and a slicker app. What it no longer offers is the federal creditor shield that Congress attached to workplace retirement plans…
For years, the most common reason a worker cracked open a 401(k) under hardship rules was a medical bill. That is no longer the case. Preventing a foreclosure or eviction has become the top qualifying emergency cited by participants in Vanguard’s retirement plans, according to the firm’s 2025 How America Saves report, which tracks roughly…
As of May 27, 2026, Parent PLUS borrowers who have not yet consolidated their federal loans have roughly 34 days to file paperwork that will determine whether they can ever access income-driven repayment. After June 30, the door closes for good. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, eliminates…