Tyler Foster
Latest Articles by Tyler Foster
The income limits that make Social Security benefits taxable haven’t budged since 1984 — so every year, more retirees owe federal tax on checks they assumed were safe
A retired teacher in Ohio pulling $22,000 a year from her pension and $1,800 a month in Social Security would not strike most people as...
Most major card issuers now generate a one-time virtual card number for online checkout — so a breached retailer never sees your real account
In May 2024, Ticketmaster confirmed that hackers had siphoned personal and payment data tied to roughly 560 million customer records. The breach followed a depressingly...
Skipping your full employer 401(k) match throws away an instant 50% to 100% return — yet one in five workers leaves that free money on the table
Every pay period, employers across the country deposit matching dollars into 401(k) accounts, but only if workers contribute enough to trigger them. For someone earning...
Carrying a $6,000 balance at 21% costs about $1,260 a year in interest — but a 0% balance-transfer card can freeze that interest for up to 21 months
Carrying a $6,000 balance at 21% costs about $1,260 a year in interest – but a 0% balance-transfer card can freeze that interest for up...
About one in five credit reports contains an error serious enough to raise your loan rate — and disputing it online is free and often works within weeks
Picture this: you apply for a mortgage, get approved, and then learn your interest rate is a quarter-point higher than expected because a bank reported...
Brokers are paying up to $1,000 or more to move your investment account over — a cash bonus most savers don’t know they can simply ask for
Last spring, a financial planner in Dallas told me something that stuck: the easiest money most of her clients ever made was a phone call....
Many states knock thousands off a primary home’s taxable value through a homestead exemption — but you usually have to file for it, and millions never do
A homeowner in Texas with a $350,000 house could be paying roughly $1,000 more in school-district property taxes every year than an identical neighbor, not...
Hotels, ticket sites, and rentals must now show the full price up front — a new federal rule banning the surprise “resort” and “service” fees that pad your bill
A $199 hotel room that actually costs $274 after a “resort fee” and an “amenity charge” get tacked on at checkout. A $95 concert ticket...
Your car is quietly sending your driving data to brokers who sell it to insurers — and you can shut it off in the vehicle’s privacy settings
You never signed up for a driving monitor. You never plugged a tracking device into your OBD port or downloaded a telematics app promising a...
Once you owe less than 80% of your home’s value, you can demand your lender drop private mortgage insurance — often $100 or more off every monthly payment
Every month, millions of homeowners write a check that includes a line item most of them would rather not think about: private mortgage insurance. PMI...
DOGE staff copied 300 million Americans’ Social Security records into an unsecured cloud — the largest exposure of the nation’s most sensitive data ever reported
Brittany Borges spent years inside the Social Security Administration helping protect the personal records of hundreds of millions of Americans. When she resigned in May...
Companies must now make canceling a subscription as easy as signing up — a federal “click to cancel” rule aimed at the auto-renewals quietly draining your bank account
Last fall, a Reddit thread titled “Why does it take 47 clicks to cancel but one to subscribe?” collected more than 12,000 upvotes in a...
One in six American households is now behind on its utility bills — and the nation’s unpaid energy debt is on track to hit a record $23 billion this year
When the thermostat hits 95 degrees in a poorly insulated apartment, the arithmetic is brutal: run the window unit and fall further behind on the...
The health FSA limit rises to $3,300 this year — but whatever you don’t spend by December usually vanishes, handing your own money back to your employer
A worker who set aside the full $3,300 in a health flexible spending account for 2025 and spent only $2,400 on medical bills lost $900...
The Child Tax Credit is now $2,200 per child — but it phases out for higher earners and leaves out many of the lowest-income families who need it most
A single mother earning $15,000 a year and a married couple bringing home $350,000 both have children who qualify for the Child Tax Credit. But...
The standard deduction climbs to $32,200 for married couples in 2026 — meaning the first $32,200 a couple earns is now completely shielded from federal income tax
For millions of married couples filing their 2026 federal tax returns, the first $32,200 they earn will not be taxed at all. That is not...