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.
Amazon has now paid out more than $845 million to consumers under the record $2.5 billion settlement it reached with the Federal Trade Commission a year ago, and the agency says more money — reaching more people — is on the way. The FTC announced this week that a federal court approved a revised order…
A federal data-breach case against the mortgage lender On Q Financial has reached a proposed settlement that will pay eligible customers up to $5,000 apiece, and the deadline to file a claim is October 28. The case covers a breach the company disclosed occurred on or around February 20, 2024, when unauthorized access exposed customers’…
The Federal Trade Commission has started mailing refund checks and sending PayPal payments to more than 640,000 Grubhub drivers and diners, and the agency’s own guidance means anyone holding one of the paper checks needs to cash it before a deadline that falls in mid-November. The payments, totaling more than $23.8 million, went out in…
State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company is several months into paying out a one-time $5 billion policyholder dividend, the largest cash-back payment the insurer has issued in more than 100 years in business. The company began sending checks and payment-portal notices to qualifying auto customers on July 31, and it has said the nationwide rollout…
A federal law signed in the summer of 2025 quietly reversed protections that Congress had built into the food-stamp program just two years earlier. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act ended three special work-requirement exceptions that had shielded people experiencing homelessness, veterans, and young adults leaving foster care from SNAP’s standard benefit time limit. States…
Families paying privately for nursing-home care often assume that once the money runs out, the resident’s placement is at risk. Federal law says otherwise: a nursing home that participates in Medicaid cannot discharge or evict a resident simply because that resident has spent down their savings and shifted from private pay onto Medicaid coverage. The…
Florida’s minimum wage rises to $15 an hour on September 30, the final step in a six-year schedule voters wrote directly into the state constitution, and the required cash wage for tipped restaurant workers climbs alongside it to $11.98 an hour. For servers, bartenders and other tipped employees across the state, many working past a…
Nineteen states raised their minimum wage on January 1, lifting pay for roughly 8.3 million workers in one of the largest coordinated rounds of state-level increases the country has seen in years, according to labor-focused research groups that track the changes annually. For older workers who stayed in the workforce past a traditional retirement age,…
State plans to bar SNAP recipients from buying soda and candy with food-stamp benefits are being pushed back in several states after the U.S. Department of Agriculture asked for more time to sort out the rules following a federal court ruling this summer. South Carolina, North Dakota and Ohio all had waivers approved to start…
Moving to attend a different school, or switching from campus classes to an online course load, can change a veteran’s GI Bill deposit before a single class begins. The Post-9/11 GI Bill’s Monthly Housing Allowance is not a flat number; it is pegged to local rental costs near the school a veteran actually attends, and…