Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
By 80, the typical middle-class retiree is living on less than they did in their late 60s, but their budget is also leaner and more focused on essentials. Spending drops as people age, yet the mix of costs shifts toward health care, housing and help with daily life, while travel and big-ticket purchases fade into…
Retirees are discovering the hard way that government benefits alone rarely cover a modern retirement. With living costs rising and health care eating a larger share of household budgets, relying on Social Security as the primary paycheck in your 70s is a recipe for stress. Building a portfolio of high-yield exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, is…
Most people obsess over hitting a “magic number” for retirement, then discover that the real challenge is turning that pile of savings into a life that actually feels secure and meaningful. The simple plan that tends to be ignored is not a hot stock tip or a complex tax shelter, but a basic structure for…
Social Security is hurtling toward a funding cliff that would trigger some of the largest automatic benefit cuts in the program’s history, and the calendar is no longer on Washington’s side. With projected reductions arriving in roughly six years, President Donald Trump is finding that his past promises to protect retirees are colliding with the…
The richest Social Security retirement checks in 2026 will top $5,000 a month, but only for workers who hit very specific earnings targets over their careers. The key is not just earning a high salary once or twice, but consistently reaching the program’s taxable wage ceiling for decades. To understand the exact income you need,…
Telehealth is about to hit another cliff, and this one is measured not in policy jargon but in people. If Congress fails to act within days, 67 m Americans could see virtual visits with their doctors cut off or sharply curtailed, as temporary rules that have governed remote care since the early pandemic finally run…
A guaranteed $3,000 monthly pension is turning into one of the most powerful financial levers in retirement planning in 2026. Instead of obsessing over whether their nest egg is big enough, retirees with that level of steady income are rethinking how much risk they actually need to take and how aggressively they can invest the…
President Donald Trump is promising to make homes cheaper and easier to buy, but he is drawing a clear line at letting Americans raid their retirement savings to get there. As housing costs squeeze buyers from Miami to Milwaukee, the White House is pitching a mix of supply-side construction plans, investor crackdowns and new mortgage…
The federal government has quietly approved a new data‑sharing rule that could expose the international movements of millions of people who rely on Social Security. Instead of asking travelers to report every trip, the Social Security Administration is turning to Department of Homeland Security records to see who is leaving and reentering the country. For…
Social Security is running out of political road, and one of the country’s most prominent retirement economists is no longer pretending it can be “fixed” with painless tweaks. Instead, she is warning that the program is structurally underfunded and that workers who rely on it as their primary lifeline are courting disaster. Her answer is…