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.
Apple’s $250 million Siri settlement pays by the device, not by the person, and the most any single device can bring is $95. Owners of the covered iPhones have until December 21, 2026 to file, and that is also the last day to opt out or object. Affiliate links — we may earn a commission….
February 2027 is a test date for the Federal Trade Commission, not a deadline for Amazon Prime customers. If too few customers have accepted their Prime refunds by then, the agency has set a further round of automatic payments to begin by April. The FTC lays out the sequence in its September 17, 2026 announcement…
Three separate tests decide whether an Amazon Prime refund reaches a customer on its own, and one of them puts a ceiling on how much of the membership a person used. The Federal Trade Commission says the payments are automatic, with no form to file, and that Amazon had issued more than $845 million by…
On USDA’s food restriction tracker, four state rows have no date where a start date used to be. Colorado, Iowa, Tennessee and West Virginia carry a court note instead, and nothing on the page replaces it. The agency has published no restored start date for any of the four since a federal judge struck down…
Nebraska has not been cleared to stop soda and energy drinks from being bought with food stamps, and the earliest it could be is a date USDA has not yet set. The state’s request sits in a Federal Register notice published October 2, and the agency says it will follow with a separate notice that…
A store clerk in Indiana, Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, Florida or Arkansas is now working under a food stamp restriction whose start date has already passed, and the National Association of Convenience Stores says the penalty for getting it wrong is steep. In its summary of the state programs, the trade group says retailers…
The agency that runs SNAP, the Food and Nutrition Administration at USDA, put 18 state requests to restrict what food stamps can buy out for public comment on September 15, and written comments on them are due October 15. A separate notice for Nebraska, published October 2, carries the one timing promise USDA has put…
Amazon has agreed to put $309.5 million in cash into a settlement over returns that were never refunded, refunded late or charged again after the item went back. Not everyone covered by the deal has the same job to do. One group is paid with no paperwork, and the other has until December 1, 2026…
About 45 of every 100 American families finished their last credit card payment and still owed something, and for those families the median balance was $3,100 in 2025. The figure comes from the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, which the Board released on Oct. 9. In the Fed’s summary report, 44.7 percent of…
Once or twice a week every summer starting in 2014, cafeteria workers in Plymouth, Massachusetts, sliced deli turkey and ham that were not for students. The meat was bound for the Snack Shack, a seasonal stand on Sandy Neck Beach in Barnstable run by the district’s own food services director. On Oct. 7, Patrick Van…