Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
For anyone eyeing a 2026 retirement date, the rules around Social Security are shifting at exactly the moment decisions start to feel irreversible. The age at which you qualify for a full benefit is finishing a decades long climb, and that “full retirement age” will quietly dictate how big your monthly check is for the…
Flexible spending accounts are one of the few places in your budget where unused money can legally vanish. If you do not act before your plan’s deadline, whatever is left can revert to your employer instead of covering the health costs you are already paying out of pocket. I want to walk through how the…
More Americans are starting Social Security while they are still on the job, turning a program designed as a retirement backstop into a mid‑career cash flow tool. Instead of waiting for the largest possible monthly check, a growing share of workers are trading future income for near‑term flexibility, debt relief, or protection against uncertainty. I…
Reaching a retirement balance of $500,000 has become a psychological dividing line between feeling precarious and feeling at least somewhat prepared. Yet the share of Americans who have actually crossed that threshold is far smaller than the size of the country or the cost of living might suggest. I want to unpack how many people…
Retirees know that the worst time to sell stocks is during a market slide, yet that is exactly when many are forced to raise cash. A straightforward dividend approach flips that script by turning a portfolio into a paycheck, so living expenses are funded by income rather than emergency sales. By focusing on reliable dividends,…
Congress has left Washington for the holidays without a deal to preserve key Affordable Care Act subsidies, and it is not scheduled to return until 2026. That decision effectively locks in steep premium increases for millions of people who buy coverage on the individual market, turning next year’s health costs into collateral damage of a…
Warren Buffett often says you only need to get “a few things right” in life and investing, but those few things matter enormously for retirement. His favorite hiring rule, putting one trait above all others, offers a simple filter for avoiding three common mistakes that can quietly wreck long-term security. I use that rule as…
High earners in their 50s have long relied on catch-up contributions as a quiet but powerful tax break, using extra deferrals to shrink today’s bill while supercharging tomorrow’s nest egg. That familiar playbook is about to change in 2026, and the shift will hit hardest for people who already feel they are racing the clock…
For retirees who depend on their monthly check to cover the basics, picking the wrong moment to file for Social Security can quietly drain tens of thousands of dollars from a lifetime of income. The system is designed so that timing is just as powerful as your earnings history, and some ages are far more…
Thousands of older adults who rely on Medicare gap coverage are about to be caught in a squeeze, as a major insurer’s decision to exit the market collides with sweeping changes to Medicare in 2026. The result is a confusing, high stakes moment in which retirees risk losing financial protection just as premiums, deductibles and…