Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
President Donald Trump’s push to let Americans raid their 401(k)s for home down payments is being sold as a shortcut to the housing ladder, but Peter Schiff argues it is more likely to torch retirement savings than build real wealth. He sees the plan as a way to encourage buyers to overpay for homes at…
For decades, retirees have watched cost-of-living increases lift their Social Security checks, only to see a chunk clawed back at tax time. A new proposal in Congress would upend that pattern by scrapping federal income taxes on benefits altogether and reshaping how the program is funded. The stakes are enormous for the roughly 75 m…
For many baby boomers, the hardest part of retirement is not what to buy, but what to finally let go of. I see the same pattern again and again: clinging to big-ticket assets out of habit or emotion, even when the numbers and the lifestyle trade-offs clearly argue for selling. Here are five things boomers…
Spouses in their seventies and eighties are quietly holding up a large share of America’s long-term care system, often with little pay, minimal training, and their own health problems. As care needs stretch from months into years, the combination of unpaid labor, medical bills, and lost work can hollow out even carefully built nest eggs….
For older Americans who spent their careers in high-paying jobs, Social Security is not a token benefit. It is a sizable, inflation-adjusted income stream that still matters at age 83, even for people with substantial savings. To understand how much support an affluent octogenarian can expect, I looked at what the data says about upper-class…
Retiring on a budget in 2026 no longer has to mean giving up walkable neighborhoods, good hospitals or a lively social calendar. I focused on cities where housing, healthcare access and everyday costs line up with what fixed-income retirees say they value most, while still offering enough culture and community to avoid feeling squeezed. From…
Dave Ramsey has stirred up a familiar retirement debate by urging many Americans to start Social Security at 62 instead of waiting for a bigger check later. His argument leans on investment math and the risk that some retirees will not live long enough to benefit from delaying. I see his advice as a useful…
Social Security beneficiaries are seeing some of the largest payments on record hit their bank accounts, with top checks reaching as high as $5,181 for certain high earners. Those sizable deposits are landing alongside a broader 2.8% cost of living increase that is lifting average benefits and reshaping budgets for retirees and disabled workers. The…
Retirement in America is no longer a clean break from work. A growing share of people keep punching the clock even after they start collecting Social Security, and the pattern is not random. Nearly half of older Americans now work after claiming benefits, largely for two starkly different reasons: some are driven by financial strain,…
For millions of retirees, the biggest Medicare shock in 2026 is not a new benefit or a coverage gap, but a line item buried in their premium notice. The Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount, or IRMAA, is quietly turning routine health coverage into a costly surprise for roughly 3.5 million higher income beneficiaries who discover too…