Personal Finance
Day-to-day money decisions for individuals and households. Practical guidance on budgeting, saving, spending, credit, debt management, and financial planning.
Latest in Personal Finance
Federal Lifeline gives qualifying low-income households up to $34.25 off the phone or internet bill every month — but most who qualify never sign up to claim it
Roughly 30 million American households qualify for a federal discount on their phone or internet bill, yet fewer than 8 million are currently enrolled. The...
Federal rules cap any unclaimed-property or heir-finder fee at 10% of what they recover — and the official state search at unclaimed.org is always free anyway
The letter arrives out of nowhere, usually on official-looking letterhead: a company claims you are owed money and offers to recover it for a fee....
Paying a credit card down to about 9% utilization beats paying it to zero for your FICO score — lenders want to see active but controlled use
Average credit card interest rates remain above 20 percent as of the most recent Federal Reserve consumer credit data, which means even a modest FICO...
A $1 million personal umbrella policy costs about $200 a year and protects your home, savings, and future paychecks from a single liability lawsuit
A guest slips on icy front steps, breaks a hip, and sues for $800,000. The homeowner’s policy covers $300,000. The remaining $500,000 becomes a personal...
Cell carriers offer quiet “loyalty” discounts of $5 to $15 a month — but you have to call retention and ask; the operator never volunteers them
Your wireless bill probably has room to drop by $5 to $15 per line, per month. T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T all maintain some version of...
Ashley Furniture is paying $9 million over mattresses that leaked fiberglass into homes — owners can claim a store voucher per mattress through July 17
If you own an Ashley Furniture memory foam mattress and have ever found tiny, irritating glass-like fibers on your sheets, walls, or clothing, you may...
One late payment dents your score for years — but a short “goodwill letter” asking the lender to delete it often works if your history is otherwise clean
A single credit card payment that arrives 31 days late can shave roughly 60 to 110 points off a FICO score, depending on where the...
If you owned a life insurance policy before 2000, insurers like MetLife may owe you stock worth thousands — 60 million shares went unclaimed
Somewhere in a state treasurer’s vault or a federally regulated trust account, shares of MetLife stock are sitting uncollected, waiting for people who may not...
The security deposit your old utility or landlord never returned is likely sitting with your state — a free search reunites owners with billions each year
You moved out, forwarded your mail, and never saw that security deposit again. Your old landlord may have mailed a check to an address you...
A 2024 data breach at insurance broker Alera Group pays anyone notified up to $3,500, or about $50 with no proof — but claims close June 29
What happened at Alera Group Alera Group, one of the largest independent insurance brokerages in the United States with more than 4,000 employees and over...
Hospitals quietly offer “prompt-pay” discounts of 10% to 30% — but only if you ask before the bill goes to collections
Somewhere in the billing office of nearly every nonprofit hospital in the country, there is a written policy that could knock 10% to 30% off...
Max your HSA, invest it instead of spending it, and save your receipts — it’s the only account never taxed going in, growing, or coming out
A $350 eye exam receipt sitting in a Google Drive folder doesn’t look like a retirement asset. But for anyone running a Health Savings Account...
Americans are sitting on $29 billion in U.S. savings bonds that quietly stopped earning interest — and a free Treasury site finds yours by Social Security number
A savings bond your grandmother slipped into a birthday card in 1987 hit its 30-year maturity in 2017, stopped earning interest that same month, and...
Hospitals routinely overcharge — request an itemized bill, and you can dispute the errors that studies find on most of them
Picture a three-night hospital stay for a broken ankle. The summary bill arrives: $47,000. But when the patient calls the billing department and asks for...
A wrong line on a FEMA flood map can force thousands in flood insurance you don’t need — and you can appeal the designation off your home
Your neighbor pays nothing for flood insurance. You pay $2,500 a year. The only difference? A line on a federal map that places your property...
Filing a single home-insurance claim can raise your premium for years — because a hidden report called CLUE tracks every claim you’ve ever made
Last spring, a homeowner in suburban Denver called her insurance company about a slow leak behind the dishwasher. The damage was minor. The repair bill...
One in seven Americans is owed money they don’t even know about — states are sitting on billions in forgotten paychecks, deposits, and refunds, free to claim in minutes
Government agencies across the country are currently holding more than $80 billion in unclaimed property, according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA)....
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...
Paid medical bills and balances under $500 no longer show up on your credit report — a quiet change that has lifted credit scores for millions of Americans
Not long ago, a $200 lab bill that fell through the cracks of insurance could land on your credit report, knock 30 or 40 points...
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...