Category: Your Money

Investors who hold stocks, bonds, or cash at a brokerage firm stand to recover up to $500,000 per customer if that firm collapses and cannot return their assets. The protection comes from the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, a nonprofit created by federal law, which advances funds during a court-supervised liquidation to cover shortfalls in customer…

Cardholders who let a $5,000 revolving balance sit while paying only the monthly minimum can watch that debt linger for more than a decade, according to the repayment math built into federal disclosure rules and the interest rate data the Federal Reserve tracks each month. The dynamic is not hypothetical: federal law requires every credit…

The total amount Americans owe on car, truck, and SUV loans has hit $1.68 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve’s G.19 Consumer Credit release, a record that now nearly matches the entire federal student loan portfolio. That education debt stands at roughly $1.7 trillion spread across 42.8 million borrowers, according to the Department of Education’s…

Millions of American households holding cash in standard savings accounts are watching their money shrink in real terms, even as banks advertise “interest-bearing” deposits. The national average savings rate stood at just 0.39% for the $2,500 tier as of February 2026, a figure that trails consumer price increases by a wide margin. That gap between…

Millions of American households are watching their credit-card statements climb, with the typical balance now sitting near $7,000 per person. That figure, drawn from the Federal Reserve’s tracking of revolving consumer debt, reflects years of rising balances that have not retreated even as borrowing costs have increased. The real pressure falls hardest on households already…

Millions of people avoid pulling their own credit reports each year because they believe the act itself will drag down their score. That fear is unfounded. A consumer requesting a personal credit report triggers only a soft inquiry, which carries zero scoring penalty, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The distinction between soft and…

Every American consumer can lock down their credit files at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion without paying a cent, a protection that federal regulators call the single strongest defense against new-account identity theft. The right has been codified in federal law since the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act took effect, and it extends…

More families are juggling late payments on credit cards, auto loans, and student debt at the same time, according to new credit-bureau analysis prepared for Bloomberg News. Researchers at the Urban Institute report that student loan delinquency has climbed back to prepandemic levels and is now concentrated among borrowers carrying larger balances and more types…

Any consumer in the United States can lock down their credit files at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion at no cost, blocking most attempts to open fraudulent accounts. That right, established by federal statute and in effect since Sept. 21, 2018, requires each bureau to accept freeze requests by phone, website, or mail and to lift…