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Older workers can now put more savings than ever into their 401(K) accounts, under new rules starting in 2025. Every year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announces the maximum amount savers can put in their workplace retirement account, which is adjusted for inflation. Americans over the age of 50 are also able to put extra cash into their retirement savings with catch-up contributions. From next year, workers specifically between the ages of 60 and 63 will have a higher catch-up contribution limit, the IRS announced Friday. The change is designed to help boost the savings pots of people in their...

It will come as no surprise to the regulars around here that I have soured to the point where I can barely pucker up to the work being done by our corporate, national media these days. My love affair with the profession I gave most of my life to has ended in hurt and disappointment. Our national press too often presents as incompetent fools who are more interested in being led around by the nose than they are in sniffing out stories, including the biggest one of our lives. Our democracy is under attack RIGHT NOW in America, but I...

For three weeks, 85,000 Yotta customers with a combined $112 million in savings have been locked out of their accounts, CEO and co-founder Adam Moelis ... The disruption, caused by a dispute between fintech middleman Synapse and Tennessee-based Evolve Bank & Trust, has upended lives... “We never imagined a scenario like this could play out and that no regulator would step in and help,” . ... his company has been a source of deep pain for thousands of customers who relied on Yotta accounts to receive paychecks, pay bills and save for emergencies. The crisis began May 11, when a...

It’s becoming tougher and tougher for Americans to carry on with their spending spree. Years of elevated inflation and the highest interest rates in almost a quarter century are wearing out the US consumer. Savings accumulated during the Covid-19 pandemic are drying up, borrowers continue to rack up debt and delinquencies are marching higher. Retailers say shoppers are fed up with rising prices and are changing their purchasing behavior.

Lillian Zhang wasn’t even out of college before she started planning for retirement. Zhang was 20 years old when she opened her first retirement account, a Roth IRA, after learning about them from personal finance Youtube channels. She maxed it out for two years using money from her savings and summer internships, and when she got a job after college, switched her focus to maxing out her 401(k). Zhang, now 24, now has six figures stashed across three different retirement funds. (She recently opened a Simplified Employee Pension, or SEP, IRA for her side hustle as a content creator.) And...

A Mexican drug cartel known for gruesome public slaughtering drained $40 million from Americans, and stole many elderly victims’ life savings without a drop of blood in 2022, according to FBI stats. It’s part of a rapidly evolving timeshare scam run by the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG) that is becoming more intricate, and is now estimated to be stealing hundreds of millions from Americans each year. It started as a small operation in the Puerto Vallarta area and expanded to popular tourist spots like Cancun, according to the U.S. Treasury, which issued sanctions against seven fugitives and 19 Mexican...

It’s a pretty terrible sign of the times when a record number of Americans are forced to plunder their 401(k)s. “A record share of 401(k) account holders took early withdrawals from their accounts last year for financial emergencies,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Overall, 3.6% of its plan participants did so last year, up from 2.8% in 2022 and a pre-pandemic average of about 2%.” The whole point of a 401(k) is to keep that money out of reach until you reach age 59 ½ or above. Removing that money earlier is about the worst financial move anyone can make....

Nearly half of Americans have $500 or less in their savings accounts, an amount that leaves them vulnerable to unexpected expenses, according to a GOBankingRates survey of 1,063 U.S. adults conducted in November 2023. About 29% of respondents have between $501 and $5,000 in their savings accounts, while the remaining 21% of Americans have $5,001 or more. Few hold much cash in their checking accounts as well. Of those surveyed, 60% report having $500 or less in their checking accounts, while only about 12% have $2,001 or more. The lack of cash in either savings or checking accounts suggests that...

Florida earned its reputation as the retirement capital of the US.. A fixed income in retirement can go a lot further in some states than others .. ... To make the most of your retirement savings, you should retire in a state where the cost of living and tax rates are friendly to retirees, if you have the resources to. You should also consider factors like the quality of the state's healthcare system and the abundance of activities that you enjoy.' Colorado, which ranked second for the best state to retire in 2024, offers similarly taxpayer-friendly conditions, with no estate...

[…]Small banks, the underdogs of the financial ecosystem, have been hit particularly hard. Rising interest rates, which should spell prosperity for these institutions, have instead become harbingers of doom. Take the sad tale of Iowa-based Citizens Bank. Once a pillar of its community, now the fifth to fall this year, it has been declared insolvent.Regulators from the Iowa Division of Banking have unearthed significant loan losses, ones that had slithered undetected beneath the bank’s watch. Triggered by a spate of bankruptcies in the trucking sector, amidst a nationwide freight recession, the bank’s collapse is but a symptom of a much...

As Biden sleeps through the Hamas invasion of Israel, that is nothing new. Biden is sleeping through a disastrous downturn in the economy and pretending that Bidenomics is working. It isn’t Joe! The IBD/TIPP U.S. Economic Optimism Index sank to a 12-year low in October as confidence in the near-term economic outlook crashed to the lowest level in the poll’s history. The survey casts doubt on the Federal Reserve’s justification for turning more hawkish last month: robust consumer spending. The overall IBD/TIPP U.S. Economic Optimism Index dived 6.9 points to 36.3, the lowest since August 2011. Readings below the neutral...

Wasting away again with Bidenomics, code for massive Federal subsidies to green energy donors. And incentives to buy impractical EVs. Imagine in an emergency and your car only goes 200 miles (and then you have to wait for an available charger to come open). Well, the top 1% are doing fine. But the bottom 80% of households by income are seeing rapid deplection of savings to cope with the rising costs of Bidenomics. And then we have shrinking home affordability, now at a record low.

US personal savings are being exhausted as The Fed raises rates to fight inflation. I call this phenomenon “low riding” where consumers are being punished by The Federal Reserve and Biden Administration. Meanwhile, large bank loan volumes are shrinking. With money-market fund assets hitting new highs, and banks’ usage of The Fed’s emergency funds facility at record highs, we wonder how much longer The Fed can keep the dream of rising deposits alive (after last week’s massive NSA inflows). On a seasonally-adjusted basis, The Fed says that total deposits dropped $11BN last week (the first decline in 4 weeks). We...

In a study earlier this year (Abdelrahman and Oliveira 2023), we examined household saving patterns since the onset of the pandemic recession. Our study showed that households rapidly accumulated unprecedented levels of excess savings—defined as the difference between actual savings and the pre-recession trend—relative to previous recessions. Our analysis suggested that some $500 billion of the $2.1 trillion in total accumulated excess savings remained in the aggregate economy by March 2023. Since then, data revisions show noticeable changes in household disposable income and consumption, while new data releases indicate that consumer spending picked up in the second quarter. Our updated...

The NY Times has published a series of articles today about the transition to renewable energy. The articles (there are three of them) are interesting both for what they say and also for what they reveal about certain assumptions made by the NY Times itself.In an article titled “The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think” the authors reveal that red states are embracing new technology, not because they are desperate for AOC’s approval but because it makes sense financially.Tulsa, a former boomtown once known as the “Oil Capital of the World” where the minor league baseball team...

Investors throughout the U.S. “are being held hostage by those who … don’t want to maximize retirement profits, but rather seek to push a far left social and political agenda,” according to Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich. “Forcing lower returns on Americans who are trying to build a securer financial future is wrong,” Huizenga said on Wednesday at a House Financial Services Committee hearing titled “Protecting Investor Interests: Examining Environmental and Social Policy in Financial Regulation.” “This approach undermines traditional and, frankly, legal government structures and has turned our financial system into a political battlefield.” “But I’m here to tell you...

There's something about statistics that gets me energized, even on a weekday! I particularly enjoy comparing myself to others and understanding how I measure up. It's only natural to want to know if you're average or above average. This knowledge helps you gauge your position and serves as a valuable reminder of what the future may hold. As a financial planner, understanding retirement averages like these can truly assist both you and me in planning for the future. So, let me share with you my thoughts on some intriguing figures I recently came across in a Wall Street Journal article...

When Sam Dogen retired at age 34 with a net worth of $3million he vowed never to return to his grueling job in investment banking. As a pioneer of the FIRE - financial independence, retire early - movement, he had meticulously planned for 13 years to ensure he had a passive income of $80,000 a year in retirement. But a decade later, Dogen, now 45, is being forced to join the ranks of the unretired. Amid soaring inflation and rising costs, he needs to go back to work to be able to afford his kids' college tuition, which he has...

My questions: 1--Can you direct deposit checks? 2--Is there regulation "D" applied? 3--How do you get cash? 4--Can you pay bills from there? Apple Card Savings Account, a new integration for the Wallet app first announced back in October, is now available with an impressive 4.15% annual percentage rate. Head below for all the details you need to know. In a press release on Monday, Apple announced that Apple Card Savings Account is now available via the Wallet app. It offers a high-yield APY of 4.15%, which is “more than 10 times the national average. There are no fees, no...

Progressive Democrats pushing the ESG (environmental, social and governance) agenda are focused on controlling the private decisions and beliefs of millions of Americans. Worse, they are increasingly willing to lie about what ESG is in order to gaslight Americans into compliance, or at least apathy toward this massive scheme. Take Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who recently penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed with this headline, "Republicans Ought to Be All for ESG." Schumer was expressing his support for a recent Labor Department rule allowing retirement fund managers to use workers’ savings to advance leftist political goals. Before rounding...