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 federal court in Chicago has signed off on a $27.5 million settlement covering thousands of former United Airlines employees who say the airline owed them severance it never paid. The checks are not something retirees need to apply for. Under the settlement administrator’s own timeline, the money is calculated automatically around October 1, 2026,…
The U.S. Department of Education is now approving full federal student loan discharges for people who attended the University of Phoenix, were misled by the school’s claims about job placement, and filed a borrower defense application. The relief traces back to a 2019 federal case against the for-profit university, but the loan discharge itself moves…
The Federal Trade Commission is sending Zelle payments to people who owned a Ring security camera or video doorbell during the years the company let employees browse customer footage and left accounts open to takeover. The payments are going specifically to Ring customers who never cashed an earlier refund check or accepted a PayPal payment…
The White House says its TrumpRx marketplace has crossed a new savings milestone. In a release posted September 18, 2026, the administration credited the platform with more than $700 million in savings across more than 1,000 branded and generic medicines. For an older reader weighing a drug’s sticker price against what a Medicare Part D…
A refund case that started with mailed checks and PayPal transfers has moved to direct bank deposits. The Federal Trade Commission is now sending Zelle payments to former AT&T wireless customers who were owed money under a 2019 data-throttling settlement but never cashed a check or accepted a PayPal payment the agency sent them in…
Congress folded new money for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program into the stopgap spending bill it passed earlier this month, and that funding is now sitting at the Department of Health and Human Services. It has not gone out the door. Thirty-one senators, led by New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, spent September 17 publicly pressing…
A stopgap spending law signed at the start of September closes the funding gap that would otherwise have opened on October 1, the first day of the federal government’s 2027 fiscal year. The measure, H.R. 6500, keeps federal agencies operating at their current funding levels through December 11, buying Congress roughly ten more weeks to…
A federal web page built to tell food-stamp recipients who must work to keep their benefits has not caught up with the law that rewrote those very rules more than a year ago. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own page on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program work requirements still describes the age range subject to the…
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts off benefits after three months for able-bodied adults without dependents who don’t log 80 hours a month of work, training or workfare, unless they live somewhere covered by a waiver of that time limit. States used to be able to shield broad swaths of territory from the rule by…
Amazon Prime members who already received a payment under the company’s $2.5 billion FTC settlement could see a second, larger one land automatically, under a revised court order that adds a conditional top-up worth up to $149. The extra money isn’t guaranteed to go out to everyone who already cashed a check — it depends…