Welcoming a child into the world can be one of life’s unique joys, but it certainly brings with it a good deal of anxiety (and sleep deprivation, which can also further fuel that anxiety). Aside from the usual parenting concerns, financial considerations are also palpable—depending on the estimate, the total…
Is Social Security still solvent?
For decades, Social Security benefits have stood as a linchpin of any properly designed retirement plan. Originally conceived during the Great Depression as a national pension “safety net”, the system remains important for the vast majority of retired workers. More than 50 million Americans currently receive Social Security retirement benefits,…
The student loan landscape shifts once again
After three years of relief, student loan borrowers received a double dose of bad news in June. First, the debt ceiling deal ended the student loan repayment moratorium once and for all, after several extensions. Beginning in late August, all federal student loans will go into active repayment status again,…
Web-based elder fraud surges
The pandemic-related restrictions in 2020 and 2021 led to a surge in all sorts of online activities, from web shopping to Zoom meetings and TV streaming and everything in between. For many older Americans, the last few years have forced a reckoning with technology that had long been ignored or…
Labor market tightness remains
The persistent inflation that has plagued the global economy over the last two years has had multiple causes and phases. First, as COVID lockdowns were lifted, jammed-up shipping ports led to a frozen supply chain, which made many products scarce and essentially unavailable. Those supply chain concerns have now largely…
A primer on cash management
For most of the last decade, decisions about how to manage our cash have been fairly simple and low-stakes—with interest rates stuck at rock-bottom levels in the aftermath of the financial crisis, savers became accustomed to their bank accounts paying little or nothing. Low rates also allowed for affordable home…
High inflation means large inflation adjustments
Stubbornly high inflation was the dominant story in 2022, causing issues for consumers, business owners, and economists everywhere. But high inflation can often come with a silver lining, due to inflation adjustments. Most notably, Social Security recipients will be seeing an 8.7% benefit increase in 2023, marking the largest cost-of-living…
SECURE Act 2.0 becomes law
In what is beginning to seem like an annual tradition, a bill with wide-ranging implications for taxes and retirement account strategies was hurriedly passed into law in the waning hours of 2022. Buried inside the massive 4,100-page, $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill was a smaller retirement plan reform bill widely…
Student loan forgiveness arrives
In late August, just two weeks after the Inflation Reduction Act passed on a party-line vote, President Biden announced a controversial student loan debt forgiveness program, promising what the administration calls “targeted cancellation” of federal student loans for qualified borrowers. Intended mostly for lower-income individuals, the plan’s major provisions are…
When will inflation peak?
The story of the market year so far in 2022 has been persistent inflation, and its impact on Fed interest rate policy. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 8.6% in May on a year-over-year basis, the highest recorded figure in more than 40 years. Increases in the price of…
