Category: Your Money

Millions of American car buyers are stretching their budgets further than at any point on record, with total outstanding auto loan debt hitting $1.68 trillion and a record share of new-vehicle purchasers now locked into monthly payments of $1,000 or more. The strain is not limited to luxury buyers. Rising sticker prices, elevated interest rates,…

Bank customers across the United States lost a combined $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, and one of the fastest-growing tactics behind those losses is deceptively simple: a phone call or text that appears to come from a trusted bank. Federal regulators and law enforcement are now pressing the same countermeasure on every account holder….

American households are carrying more credit card debt than at any point on record, with the average balance reaching $6,580. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau documented this milestone in its 2025 Consumer Credit Card Market report, formally published in the Federal Register on January 7, 2026. The figure lands at a time when fewer consumers…

Sixteen class-action settlements are accepting claims this month, and eleven of them require no proof of purchase or documentation at all. Among the highest-profile cases, the Federal Trade Commission is actively processing refunds tied to Amazon Prime subscriptions, with claim notices first sent out in January 2026. For consumers who qualify, the barrier to collecting…

Investors who hold a single total stock market index fund gain exposure to thousands of companies in one transaction, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That breadth of ownership, achieved without juggling multiple accounts or paying active management fees, sits at the center of a long-running debate: do retail investors need several funds…

Borrowers applying for mortgages, auto loans, or credit cards face a system where their creditworthiness is compressed into a three-digit number, most often on a scale from 300 to 850. Lenders generally treat scores above 670 as “good,” but the same person can hold several different scores at the same time, each generated by a…

A single car repair, a trip to urgent care, or an unexpected school fee can force a household to choose between draining a checking account and reaching for a credit card. Federal data shows that roughly four in ten U.S. adults say they would handle a $400 surprise expense by borrowing or charging it to…

A cardholder sitting on a $5,000 credit card balance who sends in only the minimum each month can spend more than a decade paying it off, according to the federal formulas that issuers are required to use when printing repayment estimates on monthly statements. That estimate assumes no new purchases are added to the card….

Anyone who picks up the phone and hears a caller claiming to be from the IRS, FBI, or Social Security Administration demanding payment by gift card, cryptocurrency, or wire transfer is hearing from a scammer. Every major federal agency that handles law enforcement, taxation, or consumer protection has issued the same categorical statement: legitimate government…

Borrowers juggling multiple debts are measurably more likely to eliminate all of them when they start by paying off the smallest balance first, according to peer-reviewed research built on real client records from a debt-settlement firm. The finding, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, traced the effect to a simple mechanism: closing even one…