The final round of Social Security retirement benefits for September will be paid this week. Social Security benefits are paid directly into bank accounts each month by the Social Security Administration (SSA), with the payment date being set according to when the claimant was born. On Wednesday, September 25, Social Security recipients with birthdays that […]
Some young people are splashing out on luxuries like travel and designer clothes instead of saving, in a trend that’s being characterized as “doom spending” on social media. Doom spending is when a person mindlessly shops to self-soothe because they feel pessimistic about the economy and their future, according to Psychology Today. The practice is both “unhealthy and […]
The Labor Department will release September inflation data on Oct. 10, and shortly thereafter the Social Security Administration will announce the official cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for 2025. COLAs protect the buying power of Social Security by ensuring benefits increase at the same rate as inflation. Retirees are eager to know how much additional Social Security […]
Americans in their 40s and 50s are waking up to the rough reality that they’re behind on retirement savings — but is it too late to catch up? After decades of financial missteps, market crashes and mounting debt, Gen X is scrambling to make up for lost time. Recent data from Fidelity shows they’re making progress, […]
A new survey from a global investment firm recently uncovered a rare point on which Republicans and Democrats seem to agree: America faces a retirement savings crisis. Only about half of American households have retirement savings accounts. The Social Security program may soon run short of funds, and those benefits were never meant to cover […]
There are few certainties when it comes to investing. The stock market can seem to gyrate with little rhyme or reason, guided up or down by unpredictable news cycles and fickle investor sentiment. Average stock returns have historically trended up over long time periods, but their trajectory is hardly assured on a daily, monthly or […]
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Family offices are the most bullish they’ve been in years, putting their cash to work in stocks and alternatives as the […]
The idea behind saving for retirement is to provide yourself with income between when you stop working and when you die. But try to put an exact figure on that amount of time, and things can get tricky. One way to think about it is life expectancy. The average American lives to 77½ years old, […]
On today’s episode of Wealth!, Host Brad Smith breaks down key personal finance stories, from anticipated interest rate cuts to a lookahead to the holiday shopping. Traders have been pricing in a 25-basis-point interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve at its September meeting next week. Crescent Grove Advisors co-chief investment officer Andrew Krei notes […]
The annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security for 2025 is projected to be the smallest since 2021 amid cooling inflation. The annual COLA, which boosts beneficiaries’ monthly benefits to account for inflation, is determined using the average inflation rate over July, August and September in comparison to the prior year as measured by the […]
A recent Fidelity Investments report found that there are currently about 497,000 401(k) accounts with at least $1 million. That’s a 2.5% increase from earlier this year when the number of 401(k) millionaires was 485,000. It’s also a new record. Accumulating $1 million in retirement savings is a key milestone, one that’s worth celebrating. Depending […]
Some of the tax cuts that were passed as part of the 2017 Tax and Jobs Act (informally known as the Trump tax cuts) have an expiration date at the end of 2025, which brings a potentially significant increase in some taxes for Americans. This may be of special interest to retirees, who are already […]
