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.
The cost of heating oil jumped 10.1 percent in a single month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week, making it the steepest monthly move of any energy line in the August Consumer Price Index. Over the past year, the fuel used to heat roughly 4.8 million American homes has climbed 52 percent, far…
Nursing home care routinely runs past $100,000 a year, and Medicaid becomes the payer for millions of older Americans only after their income and savings are spent down to program limits. What often goes unmentioned at that point is the second half of the deal: federal law does not treat that spending as forgiven. States…
The U.S. Treasury is holding roughly $29.7 billion in savings bonds that have already reached final maturity, according to figures the National Association of State Treasurers has compiled from Treasury’s own bond records. An estimated 80 million individual bonds make up that total, most of them decades old and no longer earning any interest for…
Aetna Inc., described by the Justice Department as a national insurer incorporated under the laws of Pennsylvania, has agreed to pay $117.7 million to the federal government to resolve allegations that it used inaccurate and untruthful diagnosis codes to inflate the payments it collected for its Medicare Advantage members, the department announced in March 2026….
The Federal Trade Commission has now sent more than $49 million in refunds to people who say University of Phoenix lured them in with false claims about job placement and corporate partnerships, and the agency’s newest round of payments is reaching those who missed out the first time. The FTC is depositing Zelle payments directly…
The Federal Trade Commission has sent a second round of refund checks to thousands of people who paid a company that promised to erase or shrink their student loan payments and then pocketed the money instead. The payments close out a case the agency has pursued since 2019, and they matter for borrowers and cosigners,…
Anyone who bought a home listed on a multiple listing service anywhere in the United States and paid a real-estate commission as part of the deal may be entitled to a payment from a $120 million antitrust settlement, but the notice attached to the case draws a hard line: people who only sold a home…
People who bought bacon, pork chops, ribs or other raw pork products at grocery stores in two dozen states and the District of Columbia between 2014 and 2018 can now file for a share of five settlements resolving antitrust claims against the country’s largest pork processors, and the filing window closes in seven weeks. No…
A government watchdog has put a dollar figure on how often the Department of Veterans Affairs failed to follow its own legal notice requirements before cutting a veteran’s disability check. In a report released August 31, 2026, the VA’s Office of Inspector General found errors in roughly a third of the cases where the Veterans…
A second, less publicized change buried in the same federal guidance shortens how far back Medicaid can pay for care a beneficiary already received before applying. Currently, the program can cover medical bills going back three months before an application is filed, a protection for people who did not realize they qualified or could not…