The financial news that actually matters
A retiree’s Social Security check is supposed to be one of the most protected sources of income in American life, but for older Americans carrying old student debt it is not untouchable. A new proposal in the Senate aims to change that. Sen. Bernie Sanders has announced the Stop Social Security Garnishment Act of 2026,…
About 2,500 older residents of western Massachusetts are facing a squeeze that has nothing to do with the fall enrollment season and everything to do with a contract dispute playing out over their heads. On October 1, primary-care physicians affiliated with Cooley Dickinson will fall out of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts’ Medicare Advantage…
Roughly 600,000 older Americans are about to learn that the Medicare Advantage plan they count on will not exist next year, and for most the messenger will be an ordinary-looking envelope in the September mail. Humana, one of the nation’s two largest Medicare Advantage insurers, is discontinuing a swath of its plans at the close…
For the first time in decades, the interest on a car loan can shave a household’s federal tax bill, and the break is unusually generous about who can claim it. A provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act lets buyers of a new, American-assembled vehicle deduct up to $10,000 of the interest they pay…
A large flow of federal money is moving because of a Supreme Court ruling on tariffs, but very little of it is headed to ordinary households. After the justices struck down a set of import taxes, the government has been returning the duties to the businesses that paid them at the border. That is a…
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…
A long-standing pair of rules that shrank Social Security for millions of public workers is gone, and the money is now landing in their accounts. Teachers, firefighters, police officers and other retirees who spent careers in jobs outside the Social Security system are seeing larger monthly checks, along with retroactive payments reaching back to 2024….
The annual reshuffling of Medicare Advantage is shaping up to be unusually disruptive for 2027. Analysts tracking the market estimate that roughly three million older Americans could be pushed out of their current plans as insurers keep pulling out of counties and product lines they say the government does not pay enough to cover. For…
A tax-season formality could soon carry real legal weight for millions of families that claim the government’s largest refundable credits. Under a rule proposed by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, anyone seeking the refundable portion of the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, the adoption credit or the American Opportunity…
When a scammer talks an older adult into wiring money or emptying an account, the transaction itself is usually the last chance to stop the loss. Two simple, free account settings can create a pause at exactly that moment: naming a trusted contact and turning on alerts for large transactions. Neither hands anyone control over…
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