The financial news that actually matters
A general consumer finance category covering everyday money decisions, budgeting, saving, debt management, credit behavior, and personal financial improvement strategies.
A household subscribing to Netflix’s Premium plan, the Disney Bundle, Max, and one more streaming service now pays north of $1,000 a year for the privilege of watching TV without ads. That threshold, once unthinkable for cord-cutters, became reality this spring after Netflix raised U.S. prices across all three of its tiers in late March…
A dozen large eggs at a Kroger in suburban Columbus, Ohio, rang up at $1.89 last week. A year ago, the same carton cost north of $4. Across the country, the national average for Grade A large eggs has dropped back toward $2 a dozen, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent retail…
You split a $120 sneaker purchase into four biweekly payments, forgot about the third one, and moved on with your life. A year ago, that missed installment would have vanished into the void. Now it can show up on your credit report and chip away at the same FICO score a mortgage lender pulls when…
The deadline to file a claim in the Krispy Kreme data breach settlement is Saturday, June 21, and anyone who received a notification letter has only days left to act. The settlement offers up to $3,500 per person for documented out-of-pocket losses tied to the late 2024 cyberattack that knocked out the doughnut chain’s online…
Starting in July 2026, parents of children born since January 1, 2025, can open a new type of federally seeded investment account written into the tax code under Section 530A of the Internal Revenue Code. The government deposits $1,000 into each account. Parents can add up to $5,000 per year. The money goes into approved…
The price gap between a used electric vehicle and a used gas car has shrunk to just $1,102. According to industry pricing data from Cox Automotive, the average used EV transaction price fell 6.1 percent to $34,653 in early 2026, while the average used gasoline vehicle held near $33,551. At the same time, the national…
The interest charge arrives every month like clockwork. For the roughly 50 million American households carrying a revolving credit card balance, that charge now reflects an average annual percentage rate of about 21.5%, according to the Federal Reserve’s G.19 Consumer Credit release, the most authoritative public measure of what card borrowers actually pay. Applied to…
If you’re carrying a $6,600 credit card balance at 21.5 percent interest, you’ll hand your card issuer roughly $1,462 over the next 12 months without knocking a single dollar off what you owe. That’s more than many households spend on groceries in a quarter, and every cent of it disappears into finance charges. The 21.5…
The price Americans pay for a pound of steak has never been higher, and it keeps climbing. Federal data shows the national average for uncooked beefsteak reached $13.02 per pound in April 2026, the most expensive single month on record. That follows a February reading of $12.74 and a March reading of $12.73, meaning shoppers…
Open your latest credit card statement and look at the section most people skip: the minimum-payment disclosure box. If you’re carrying a balance anywhere near the national average, that box tells a brutal story. At today’s average annual percentage rate of 21.5%, a cardholder revolving $6,600 in credit card debt is forking over roughly $1,462…