Personal Finance

In this article SCHW MoMo Productions | Taxi | Getty Images When it comes to building wealth, many Black Americans are facing an uphill battle. The median annual wage for Black workers is about 30% lower than that of white workers, according to a McKinsey & Company report. The report also found that 3.5 million

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and President Joe Biden arrive at the U.S. Capitol for a Senate Democratic luncheon on July 14, 2021. Drew Angerer | Getty Images News | Getty Images Senate Democrats aim to fund a $3.5 trillion budget measure partly on the backs of higher taxes for corporations and the wealthy,

kate_sept2004 | E+ | Getty Images It’s a historic day for U.S. families with children. Roughly $15 billion has been sent to 35.2 million families in the first of six advance child tax credit payments, according to the U.S. Treasury Department and IRS. The average payment in the first round is $423, and will reach

Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images Medicare — the health insurance program relied on by most older Americans — would cover dental, vision and hearing under a budget agreement announced late Tuesday by Senate Democrats. The proposal for expanded coverage was included as part of a plan to spend $3.5 trillion over the next decade

A Social Security Administration office in San Francisco. Getty Images There’s new leadership at the Social Security Administration. A number of retirement advocates are applauding the move. President Joe Biden fired Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul on July 9. Saul, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, locked heads with Democrats earlier this year over

Bill Oxford | E+ | Getty Images Roughly 4 million refunds will be sent this week to people who overpaid taxes on their 2020 unemployment benefits, the IRS announced Tuesday. Due to the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, which became law in March, up to $10,200 in 2020 unemployment compensation was excluded from taxable

10’000 Hours | DigitalVision | Getty Images Target-date funds have ballooned in popularity over the past 15 years — yet many investors aren’t using them the way they were intended. The funds were designed as a one-stop shop that put retirement savings on autopilot. Investors are meant to park their nest egg in one fund,

Allyson Felix celebrates with her daughter Camryn after finishing second in the Women’s 400 Meters Final on day three of the 2020 U.S. Olympic Track & Field Team Trials in Eugene, Oregon. Patrick Smith | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images When runner Allyson Felix heads to Tokyo to compete in the Olympics, she’ll go

Reykjavik, the capital city of Iceland. Cavan Images | iStock | Getty Images The coronavirus pandemic transformed the way we work almost overnight, most notably in the fact that for millions of Americans, cubicles and commutes disappeared from their way of life. Yet there’s another, just as significant, change that could be happening to work

If a student invested $1,300 in Netflix stock in 2014, after three years they would have $4,527. Jill Brady | Portland Press Herald | Getty Images Teenagers haven’t had a better summer for employment since 1953. In June, the unemployment rate for teenagers aged 16 to 19 was 9.9%, the lowest it has been since

Lindsey Gamard, 38, quit her job at a technology company during the pandemic. Courtesy: Lindsey Garnard Lindsey Gamard, 38, knew she wanted to quit her job when she saw many of her co-workers leaving. “It was like a sinking ship,” said Gamard, a data analyst who lives in San Tan Valley, Arizona. It didn’t help

Ines Fraile | iStock | Getty Images The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency — which oversees loans of 8.5 million student borrowers — announced it would not renew its contract with the federal government when it ends later this year. Consumer advocates applauded the news because PHEAA, a quasi-governmental student aid organization created in 1963 by

lisegagne | E+ | Getty Images Some 39 million American families on July 15 will get the first of six advance monthly payments of the enhanced federal child tax credit. However, some of those families should elect to not receive the monthly payments, say financial experts, and instead wait to claim the entire credit when

ljubaphoto | E+ | Getty Images Millions of individuals and families stand to receive money from the government through stimulus checks and monthly child tax credit payments. However, many are still waiting on their stimulus checks, while others may not know how to sign up for the child tax credit payments. The IRS this weekend

Trevor Williams | DigitalVision | Getty Images The eldest millennials are now approaching 40 and have experienced a few major setbacks that have kept them from building wealth in their adult lives. First, they were hit by 2008 recession — at the time, the worst economic downturn the U.S. had seen since the Great Depression

A job seeker fills out an application form during a restaurant and hospitality career fair in Torrance, California, on June 23, 2021. Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images The number of Americans out of work for at least a year jumped by 248,000 in June, underscoring persistent challenges for some households even as the broader labor

An IRS office building in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York. Timothy Fadek/Bloomberg via Getty Images Last December, two Atlanta tax professionals pled guilty to a scheme that defrauded the IRS of more than $250 million in taxes. The scam claimed more than $1.2 billion in fraudulent charitable deductions through so-called syndicated conservation easements,

Miami Herald | Tribune News Service | Getty Images There are no signs that Congress plans to send a fourth stimulus check to Americans. Still, many individuals and families are clamoring for more money. A Change.org petition calling for $2,000 per month for every adult American, as well as $1,000 per child, that was started

Peter Cade | Getty Images While inheriting money is typically a good thing, newer individual retirement account rules may leave some heirs with a smaller windfall. Thanks to the Secure Act of 2019, certain heirs now have less time to take IRA withdrawals. The law stopped the so-called stretch IRA, which allowed non-spouse beneficiaries to

Yamiesha Bell, 27, started a book club focused on personal financial literacy and mindfulness one year ago. Yamiesha Bell In the last year, Raeshanna Mcanuff, 27, a cosmetic chemist, asked for a raise at her job. Adam Sherif, 24, who works at a music talent agency, paid off the first $30,000 of his $60,000 in

Shoppers in San Francisco. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Covid-19 vaccinations are increasing, states are dropping their pandemic restrictions and Americans are feeling good about going out and spending after a year and a half spent mostly inside. “We are now coming out of a cave, basically, and there’s a lot of

Allen Weisselberg, center, chief financial officer of Trump Organization, exits from criminal court in New York on July 1, 2021. David Dee Delgado | Bloomberg | Getty Images The Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded not guilty to tax crimes on Thursday. Experts say the illegal practices the government alleges occurred

Jeffrey Coolidge | Getty Images Rising inflation is a concern for Kevin Linehan, 68, a retiree in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. After a heart attack at age 44, Linehan left his career with the Postal Service early, opting for reduced disability retirement income. “It wasn’t the best financial thing to do,” he said. “But at the time,

The age at which you claim Social Security helps determine how big your monthly retirement benefit checks will be for life. If you wait until your full retirement age — generally 66 or 67 — to claim, you will get 100% of what you earned based on your contributions to the program. And if you

CHUYN | iStock | Getty Images Figures from the IRS show who has received money from the third stimulus checks for up to $1,400 per person — and there are some surprises. In fact, some people with adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 received a cut. The IRS reports 127,751 payments went to taxpayers in that

Twenty/20 We may not know what stocks in the S&P 500 will do next month, or in two years, but over the decades, we have a pretty good hunch that they’ll go up. Most of us also know what a stock is, and that definition hasn’t changed in centuries. None of that is true, of

RealPeopleGroup | E+ | Getty Images If you’re one of the millions of Americans who have quit their job in recent months, you may be eager to move on to whatever is next for you. Yet because our work and the rest of our lives are often interwoven in a number of important ways, you’ll

blackCAT | E+ | Getty Images If you invest through Robinhood, you may get early access to shares when the company goes public. The online brokerage is reserving 20% to 35% of shares to be sold in an initial public offering for its customers, according to its most recent regulatory filing. While it’s uncertain exactly

Brothers91 | E+ | Getty Images Anyone who is receiving — or already received — unemployment benefits in 2021 could discover they now qualify for no-cost or low-cost private health insurance. As of Thursday, zero-premium health plans that come with minimal or no cost-sharing — i.e., deductibles and copays — are available through the Affordable

Tourists visit the Wall Street bull statue in the Financial District, New York City. Drew Angerer | Getty Images Americans are feeling less comfortable about investing in the stock market long-term, even though it’s one of the best ways to get ahead. In 2021, 28% of Americans said that real estate was their preferred way