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.
Many families treat a gift to an adult child or grandchild as a simple act of generosity, or as a way to shrink an estate. When a nursing home enters the picture, that same gift can become a costly mistake. Medicaid, the program that pays for most long-term nursing home care in the United States,…
Most class-action settlements ask the people they benefit to do something: find the notice, file a claim, meet a deadline. A proposed $11 million deal over an obscure charge buried in certain life-insurance policies is built differently. If a judge signs off next month, eligible policyholders would receive refund checks automatically, with no form to…
An identity-theft victim’s hardest task is often simply proving what was stolen. The records that show which account was opened, what was ordered, and where it shipped sit inside the retailer’s systems, and getting them released can decide whether a police report goes anywhere. A federal order against Amazon has now made clear that handing…
Cash that a brokerage customer leaves uninvested does not simply sit there. It is swept into a bank deposit program that earns interest, and how much of that interest reaches the customer has become one of the most closely watched disputes in the investment industry. Oppenheimer & Co. has now agreed to pay $70 million…
The price a shopper sees online may not be the same price the next person sees, and the reason could be sitting in that shopper’s own digital trail. Federal regulators have now put a name to the practice and opened a formal review of it. The Federal Trade Commission is proposing rules of the road…
Millions of Americans who bought a home in recent years may be owed a cash payment from a $120 million legal settlement, and the window to claim it closes soon. The fund resolves antitrust claims over the way real-estate commissions were set, and it covers buyers of homes that were listed on a Multiple Listing…
Somewhere in a state government database may sit a forgotten paycheck, an old security deposit, a dormant bank balance, or an insurance refund that was never delivered. Across the country, states are holding billions of dollars in what is formally called unclaimed property, money that belongs to ordinary people but lost its way when someone…
Utility bills have quietly become one of the fastest-growing costs for American households, and the reach of the current wave of increases is striking. A running tally of electric and natural gas rate changes shows that the great majority of the country is now facing higher bills, with a large share of customers already paying…
A quieter change to food assistance is set to shrink the monthly benefit for hundreds of thousands of households, and it has nothing to do with the widely reported work requirements. Instead, it changes the accounting behind how much help a family receives, by altering how utility costs are factored into a SNAP calculation. The…
The price of a steak or a package of ground beef has become one of the more painful lines on a grocery receipt, and the reason runs deeper than a temporary blip. The nation’s cattle supply has thinned to a level not seen in generations, and federal forecasters expect the cost of beef to keep…