Financial related news.
WASHINGTON — Home sales are booming. Stocks are setting record highs. Industrial production is clambering out of the ditch it fell into early this year. And yet the U.S. economy is nowhere close to regaining the health it achieved, with low unemployment, free-spending consumers and booming travel, before the coronavirus paralyzed the country in March. [...]
If you earn a decent income but have trouble saving, the culprits could be the roof over your head and the car in your driveway. Retirement savers who contribute more to their 401(k)s often spend less on housing and transportation than their peers, according to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and J.P. [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's the paradox of a pandemic that has crushed the nation’s economy: 12.9 million people have lost a job and a dangerous rash of businesses has closed, yet the personal finances of many Americans have remained strong — and in some ways have even improved. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC [...]
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely and his colleagues at Duke University's Center for Advanced Hindsight have a pact. Every week, the group of 50 people picks one small business in Durham, N.C., and each person spends $100 there. A one-time $5,000 infusion wouldn't make a difference to Amazon, Costco or any other large retailer, but it [...]
You don't have to make another federal student loan payment in 2020. Now is the time, though, to decide what to do before your bill arrives in January 2021. Federal student loan borrowers were already in an automatic interest-free pause on payments as part of the original coronavirus relief bill, known as the CARES Act. [...]
The national coin shortage has been an unusual side effect of the pandemic. Among its victims? Retailers, laundromats and even the tooth fairy. The Federal Reserve announced in June that the supply system for coins had been severely disrupted by the pandemic. While there are still enough coins out there, they aren't circulating as freely [...]
ATLANTA — Getting her job back should have been a relief for Leesa Huddleston. A kitchen worker at an Indiana casino, Huddleston returned in June after a three-month furlough caused by the coronavirus. She felt fortunate to no longer be among the roughly 30 million Americans who remain jobless and are now struggling with suddenly [...]
NEW YORK — The stock market is not the economy. Rarely has that adage been as clear as it is now. An amazing, months long rally means the S&P 500 is roughly back to where it was before the coronavirus slammed the U.S., even though millions of workers are still getting unemployment benefits and businesses [...]
No one wants to waste money, but some of us go overboard trying to get the best possible deal. I have spent nearly as much time researching which hiking socks to buy as I have choosing a new car. Others of my species — we're called "maximizers" — might miss locking in a good mortgage [...]
For the millions of Americans who struggle to afford an unexpected expense, high-interest payday and online loans may seem like acceptable options despite the inherent risk. But guidance issued by federal regulators in the spring could bring a competitor to small-dollar lending: banks. The guidance omits a previous suggestion from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. [...]