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.
Residential electric customers served by Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. in North Dakota could see their monthly bills climb by roughly $19 if state regulators approve a 14.5 percent rate increase the company filed for on June 30, 2026. The request, logged as Case PU-26-241 with the North Dakota Public Service Commission, is titled “2027 Electric Rate…
A 77-year-old man lost $390,000 of his retirement savings after scammers convinced him to convert his holdings into gold bars and hand them to a courier. His case fits a pattern that federal prosecutors have been charging across multiple states, from Arizona to Ohio to Missouri, with individual victims losing hundreds of thousands of dollars…
Air travelers who get stuck with a canceled flight or a missing suitcase no longer have to chase their airline for a refund. A Department of Transportation final rule, codified at 49 U.S.C. Section 42305 and 14 CFR Part 260, now requires carriers to issue automatic cash refunds for cancellations, significant schedule changes that passengers…
Tens of thousands of gig workers who cleaned homes and assembled furniture through the Handy Technologies platform are now receiving refund checks from the Federal Trade Commission. The agency is distributing more than $2.7 million to 62,893 recipients who performed work between January 2019 and November 2024, resolving allegations that the company used deceptive earnings…
AES Indiana customers are set to absorb roughly $9.50 more per month on their electric bills after the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission issued a final order in mid-June 2026 approving a base rate increase in Cause No. 46258. The decision caps a contested rate case that drew opposition from the state’s consumer advocate, the Indiana…
American car buyers financing a used vehicle now face a monthly bill that has reached roughly $531, a figure that reflects years of rising vehicle prices, elevated interest rates, and expanding loan balances. That number, drawn from Federal Reserve data tracking motor vehicle loan flows, signals a growing strain on household budgets at a time…
American car buyers now face the steepest affordability barrier on record: 42.2 weeks of median household income to cover the average new vehicle, which has climbed near $52,000. The figure comes from the Vehicle Affordability Index, a joint monthly series from Cox Automotive and Moody’s Analytics that tracks how many weeks of earnings a typical…
People affected by past data breaches can still collect cash payments from active settlements, and several of those claim windows close in September. Some of these payouts require little or no documentation beyond a valid name and email address, which lowers the barrier for consumers who never got around to filing. The Federal Trade Commission…
Patients whose personal and medical records were exposed in the Onsite Mammography data breach have a narrowing window to file claims for a cash payment, with the deadline set for August 11. The breach, logged with Massachusetts regulators as case 2025-698, traced the exposure to unusual activity in an employee email account. Categories of data…
American households carrying credit-card debt are falling behind on payments at rates not seen since the aftermath of the Great Recession. Serious delinquencies, typically defined as accounts 90 or more days past due, have climbed to a 15-year high even as total revolving balances now exceed $1.25 trillion. The Federal Reserve’s own research ties this…
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