The financial news that actually matters
Medicare has locked in the starting point for what tens of millions of older Americans will pay for prescription drug coverage next year, and it moved to the top of the range the law permits. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services set the 2027 base beneficiary premium for Part D drug plans at $41.33…
Amid a wave of insurers pulling out of Medicare Advantage for 2027, one federal protection is about to matter for hundreds of thousands of retirees who never expected to shop for coverage. When a Medicare Advantage plan is discontinued and its members are pushed out, those members gain a one-time right to buy a Medigap…
A letter arriving in mailboxes this September will carry unwelcome news for hundreds of thousands of older Americans. Humana, one of the country’s largest Medicare Advantage insurers, is discontinuing plans that cover roughly 600,000 members at the end of 2026, and for most of them the first official warning will be a routine-looking notice in…
Retirees budgeting for next year now have an early read on one of Medicare’s most predictable line items. Federal actuaries expect the standard Part B premium to rise to roughly $209.50 a month in 2027, an increase of about $6.60 from the $202.90 that beneficiaries pay in 2026. The figure is a projection, not a…
Reaching the age when required withdrawals begin is confusing enough. Figuring out how to take them across several accounts is where retirees quietly trip. The rules are not the same for every kind of retirement account, and the difference can trigger a stiff penalty for people who assume one tidy withdrawal covers everything. The short…
Retirement tax breaks tend to reward people who already have money, but one of them does the opposite. The Saver’s Credit hands a direct tax reduction to lower- and middle-income workers precisely for the act of putting money aside for retirement. It can knock up to $1,000 off a single filer’s tax bill, or up…
A private pension is supposed to be the reliable leg of retirement, the check that arrives every month no matter what the stock market does. But companies fail, and pension plans sometimes fail with them. When that happens, a little-known federal agency steps in and keeps the checks coming, though only up to a ceiling…
For millions of older Americans, the retirement accounts they spent decades building eventually come with a catch: at a certain age, the government stops letting the money sit untouched. These required minimum distributions force a yearly withdrawal from traditional retirement accounts, and the current starting age is 73. Miss one, and the penalty can be…
The death of a spouse changes a household’s finances in obvious ways, but one of the costliest shifts is nearly invisible: the tax bill often climbs even as income falls. Surviving spouses frequently discover that the same retirement income, taxed under the rules for a single filer, leaves them with less spendable money than the…
Claiming Social Security early can feel like the right call in the moment, then look like a mistake once a retiree lands a new job, inherits money, or simply realizes the reduced check will fall short for decades. Social Security offers a rarely used escape hatch for exactly that regret: a one-time do-over that erases…
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