The financial news that actually matters
Homeowners in states with high property and income taxes have spent years bumping up against a federal limit that capped how much of those taxes they could write off. The new federal tax law loosened that limit substantially. It raised the cap on the state and local tax deduction, often called SALT, to $40,000, a…
A quiet piece of the new federal tax law could ease the cost of financing a car for buyers who qualify. It created a temporary deduction for the interest paid on a car loan, worth up to $10,000 a year. The catch is that it applies only to certain new vehicles and phases out at…
For years, families with a paid-off home, a small business, or farmland lived with a nagging question: would a future change in the tax law expose their estate to a federal tax bill when they died? A recently enacted federal tax law has answered that question for the vast majority of households. It set the…
Most people assume a husband or wife has to wait until at least age 62 to collect anything on a spouse’s Social Security record. There is a long-standing exception that many families never hear about, and it can put a benefit in reach years earlier. When a spouse is at home caring for the worker’s…
For the first time, Medicare is helping some older adults pay for the popular weight-loss injections Wegovy and Zepbound, drugs that have carried price tags high enough to keep them out of reach for many retirees. The coverage comes through a new temporary program that sets the cost at about $50 a month for people…
Americans who buy their own health insurance rather than getting it through a job or Medicare are absorbing a sharp increase this year, with average out-of-pocket premiums on the marketplace roughly doubling. The jump traces to enhanced federal subsidies that expired at the end of last year and were not renewed. Congress is now fighting…
A change buried in last year’s federal budget law is about to produce its first real consequences at the grocery checkout. Under the new rules, many adults who receive SNAP food assistance must document 80 hours a month of work, training or volunteering, and the current reporting period closes September 30. Recipients who fell short…
Kroger, the country’s largest traditional supermarket operator, is in the middle of shutting roughly 60 of its stores, and for many older shoppers the loss is about more than groceries. A closing supermarket often takes a pharmacy counter with it, forcing retirees to move prescriptions and drive farther for both food and medicine. The company…
The federal government says it has struck pricing agreements with 17 pharmaceutical companies that, taken together, sell roughly 86 percent of the branded drugs Americans buy. The centerpiece of the announcement is the promise of far cheaper weight-loss injections, with popular GLP-1 medications like Wegovy advertised at prices starting around $149 a month for some…
Older Ohioans who carry a Humana Medicare Advantage plan are about to lose in-network access to one of the state’s largest health systems. Beginning October 1, 2026, the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, the James Cancer Hospital and OSU’s affiliated physicians will be treated as out of network for Humana Advantage members, the result…
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