Dad Joke

What’s a ninja’s favorite type of shoes?

Sneakers.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

Check the letter, not the headline

Over all my years, one of the messiest money problems I’ve watched obliterate people is student loans. They’ve become so political that every change bounces borrowers somewhere new, with little chance of a clean outcome. And the tsunami of confusing changes keeps coming.

This week’s wave is the SAVE plan. An MS NOW opinion piece yesterday talked about “this week’s deadline for some student borrowers” to leave SAVE “before their bills could double or triple.” That’s real. But it’s not the whole story.

Here’s the rest of it. After a court ended SAVE in March, the Education Department said servicers would start sending notices on July 1, and that each borrower gets 90 days from their own notice to pick a new plan. July 1 plus 90 days is today. So today is the first group’s deadline. It isn’t everybody’s. Newsweek reports the notices have been going out in waves, and the Department says 7.5 million people were enrolled in SAVE. The date that matters is the one on your own letter.

The part the headlines skip is what happens if you do nothing. The Department says you get moved automatically into the Standard plan or the new Tiered Standard plan. Both set your payment by how much you owe, not by what you earn. That’s where “double or triple” comes from. The plan built on income is the new Repayment Assistance Plan, where the Department says the payment is based on your “income and number of dependents.” And you don’t have to wait for your letter. The Department says you can call your servicer and switch any time.

Deadlines like this bring out people selling help. Nobody needs to pay a company to change a repayment plan, and I wrote about the ones who charge a fee for it this summer. If you want the whole map, my SAVE deadline guide walks through each plan.

Somebody you love has a student loan and a pile of mail they haven’t opened. I’d forward this to them today. Their deadline is on their own servicer notice, not in the news, and if it passes, the new payment is set by what they owe instead of what they earn.

The cost moved into the price

Fox Business reported last week that mortgage rates topped 7% for the first time since early 2025. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the 30-year average at 7.03%, up from 6.30% a year ago. That’s real too. But it’s not the whole story.

What a headline can’t show you is the kitchen table. On a $350,000 loan, 7.03% works out to about $2,336 a month in principal and interest. At last year’s 6.30%, it was about $2,166. That’s roughly $169 a month for the same house, a little over $2,000 a year, every year of the loan.

A number like that rarely shows up as a feeling. It shows up as the house somebody quietly stops looking at. And the average in the news is a starting point, not a quote. The rate a lender offers you depends on your credit, your down payment, and whether you asked more than one lender.

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that in my lifetime, mortgage rates were at 14% or more for people with the best credit. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey sat at 14% or higher for 140 weeks between 1980 and 1984, and peaked at 18.63% in October 1981. Rates are high now but not historically high.

Here’s the part that gets lost. Low rates didn’t make houses cheaper. They made them more expensive, because people shop for the monthly payment, not the price. In 1984 the median new home sold for about $80,000, around three and a half times the median household income. Today it’s $410,700, closer to five times. Back in my day homes were much cheaper but rates were much higher. With 20% down, the payment on that 1984 home took about 40% of a typical household’s income. Today it’s about 30%. The cost never went away. It just moved from the rate into the price.

Two claim deadlines worth a minute

• If you live in California and visited Forbes’ website, you may be in a $10 million tracking settlement. Claims are due November 9.

• American Vision Partners, which runs eye care practices, settled a data breach for $1.75 million. Claims are due November 12.

Also on the site since yesterday

• I Just Got Out and There Are Judgments Against Me I Didn’t Know About

• I Have a Lot of Equity in My Home and Still Can’t Get a Loan Until It Sells

• ClearOne Advantage Sued Over Debt Consolidation Text Messages

If any of this was new to you, somebody you know hasn’t heard it either. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d tell a friend over coffee, and I’d tell the same friend that the details of their own life outrank anything I’ve written here.

One more thing. If student loans have knocked you sideways, that says nothing about your character. The rules changed under a lot of good people, more than once. What still works is plain and a little boring: open the letter, make the call, pick the plan that fits your real life. People do come back from this, and it usually starts with one ordinary phone call. I’ll be back tomorrow.

— Steve

Dad Joke

My friends get mad when I steal their kitchen utensils...

but it’s a whisk I’m willing to take.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

Loved, and cleaned out

I’ve seen so many men and women who were older, lonely and most needed their retirement savings fall for this scam. It never ends well.

Romance scams are back in the news this morning. A piece on AOL puts last year’s losses at $1.49 billion. The FBI’s own count is a little lower, and most of that money came from people over sixty. The people with the least time left to earn it back.

The part nobody warns families about is what happens after they figure it out, and that AOL piece gets it exactly right. A family sits down with Grandma and lays out the proof. The fake photos, the “stuck overseas” story, the wire receipts. And the money keeps going. A psychotherapist in that piece put it this way: showing someone proof “does not automatically disrupt the emotional and behavioral attachment.”

That’s the whole thing. The scam was never selling facts. It was selling being wanted. The need to be wanted and loved is a powerful emotion that overrides logic, and you can’t argue somebody out of a feeling with a spreadsheet.

The families who do better, according to the experts in that piece, stop trying to win. They skip the shame and the repeat arguments, keep the connection, ask questions that let the person spot the holes themselves, and put firm limits around the money. The goal isn’t to be right on Tuesday. It’s to still be the person they call when it falls apart.

Where it starts matters too. The FTC says most people who lost money to a romance scam last year said it started on social media. Not a dating site. Facebook, Instagram, a friendly stranger in the comments.

One more wrinkle this week. Amazon’s Prime refunds are going out to more people, and the FTC says plainly that it is not contacting anyone about them. The FTC says a call from someone claiming to be the FTC about it is a scam.

I wrote about the red flags before you send money to someone you’ve only met online, if you want to go deeper.

Somebody you love lives alone and spends evenings on Facebook. I’d forward this to whoever checks in on them. The money a romance scam takes is usually retirement money, and the only thing that reliably brings a person back is someone they still trust enough to call.

Both sides are describing the loyalty app

Two sides fought over grocery prices in Seattle last week, and I think they were describing the same thing. The city council voted 7-2 to ban grocery “surveillance pricing,” which the labor groups behind it call AI price gouging. It stops grocers with more than twenty locations from using your personal data, like where you live or what you browse, to set the price you personally pay, and it requires every price to be posted and equally available to everyone. The Stranger reports it keeps the traditional discounts for seniors and veterans. It takes effect September 1, 2027.

The other side came from a Safeway-backed campaign, which said Seattle families could lose an average of $100 a month in discounts, according to Newsline Local. No math was published for that number.

Here’s what neither headline tells you. Both sides are talking about the same thing from opposite ends. A “targeted discount” in your loyalty app is personal-data pricing that happens to point down. “Surveillance pricing” is the same machinery pointed up. The supporters point to a 2025 Consumer Reports investigation, Newsline Local reports, that found price differences of up to 23% for the same groceries. The grocers point to the coupons.

What gets lost is the shopper with no app. Once the good price lives behind a login, the number on the shelf quietly becomes the price for people who didn’t sign up, and that’s often the oldest and the busiest people in the store. There was a time the price was the sticker on the can, the same for everybody in line. The fight in Seattle is really about whether that’s worth anything anymore.

A price lock that doesn’t lock the fees

Price locks have a back door, and it’s the fee line. T-Mobile is raising its “Regulatory Programs & Telco Recovery Fee” again, to $5.49 a line on October 12, Droid Life reports. That’s the third bump in under two years, with no change to anybody’s plan.

While you might think your plan price is fixed, it’s not, and this doesn’t apply to just T-Mobile. You’ll see lots of bills creeping up.

The plan price is what the lock protects. The fee line isn’t. Asking what a new customer would pay today costs one phone call, and Friday’s Xfinity story showed how wide that gap can get.

Things to check this week

A few things sitting in a lot of homes got recalled last week. The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s latest list has several sold on Amazon: NEWDERY power banks and Blue Cactus reclining-chair battery packs, both for fire and burn hazards. It also covers three mattress brands that fail the flammability standard, Yuyitop 8-drawer dressers for tip-over risk, and kids’ bike helmet sets. And the CPSC is telling people to stop using FOTING pressure washers right now because of shock and electrocution risk.

Ask me on Facebook

Every week I answer a reader’s money question on the Get Out of Debt Guy Facebook page. If you’ve got one, a reply to this email reaches me, and you might see the answer there.

Also on the site since Friday

• I’m in my 70s, judgment-proof, and ready to file bankruptcy. I just can’t afford the lawyer yet.

• I settled this debt years ago. Now a collector is threatening me with a fake lawsuit.

• The VA says I was overpaid and wants the money back. What to do right now.

If any of this was new to you, somebody you know hasn’t heard it either. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d tell a friend over coffee, and I’d tell the same friend that the details of their own life outrank anything I’ve written here.

One more thing. Wanting to be loved isn’t a weakness, and it isn’t something age cures. It’s the best thing about us. The people who get taken aren’t foolish. They’re lonely, and lonely is fixable, mostly by the rest of us picking up the phone. If you’re the one who’s been feeling alone lately, you’re not the only one, and the right people are closer than a stranger in your messages. I’ll be back tomorrow.

— Steve

Dad Joke

I had to fire the guy I hired to mow my lawn.

He just didn’t cut it.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

Loyalty is expensive

I’ve learned in life that loyalty often is expensive.

Just shop for a new cell plan, car insurance, and internet service. Often better deals are waiting while we pay for loyalty.

This week somebody put a number on it. An Xfinity customer who called themselves “a loyal customer for 20ish years” posted that their gig internet was going from $80 a month to $110. The same plan for a new customer is $50, with a five-year price guarantee. The Cool Down has the story. Twenty years of paying on time, and the reward is paying $60 a month more than a stranger. That’s $720 a year. Same wire. Same house.

It isn’t a glitch. It’s the plan. The low price is for people who might leave. The high price is for people the company has decided won’t.

Britain made this illegal for car and home insurance. Since January 2022, UK insurers have had to offer a renewing customer “a price that is no higher than they would pay as a new customer.” Their regulator even had a name for what it was stopping. The loyalty penalty. Over here it doesn’t have a name. It’s just the renewal notice.

The comments on that post were a list of how people got the $50 price anyway. One walked into a store and asked for the price lock. Others cancelled and signed right back up. Not one of them got it by waiting.

Somebody you love has had the same internet, phone, or car insurance for ten years and has never once asked. I’d forward this to them. The new-customer price exists right now, and the only people paying it are the ones who asked or left.

The line, not the work

When someone files a tax return in your name, the IRS says it aims to sort it out in 120 days. The Treasury’s own watchdog reported this week that victims have waited 20 months on average.

The detail that got me: in the cases it checked, the average was 655 days, and 533 of those days the file sat in a queue nobody had picked up yet. Three cases waited more than two years and were fixed the same day someone finally opened them.

The wait is in the line, not the work.

And the line is quiet. The audit estimates more than 50,000 people got no status letter. When the IRS spots the fake return itself, it doesn’t send one at all, so some people never learn their refund is stuck behind a flag.

The cheap fix is on the front end. The IRS will give anyone with a Social Security number a six-digit Identity Protection PIN. A return filed under your number without it gets rejected. It’s new every year and it costs nothing. The people I’d most want to have one are the ones counting on a refund. For anyone already stuck in that line, the Taxpayer Advocate Service is an independent office inside the IRS whose whole job is being your voice there. I wrote about what a delayed refund really costs earlier this year.

The tariff refund went to Costco

If you shop at Costco, you helped pay the tariffs. Now the refunds are coming back, and Fast Company reports they’re going to Costco.

The company got $184 million in tariff refunds last quarter, about a third of what it expects. Nothing went out to members as a check. CEO Ron Vachris said it went “predominantly through price reductions” on produce, meat, beverages, and some home furnishings and hardware. Yahoo Finance adds that after those price cuts, the refunds still added 15 cents a share to the quarter’s profit.

Credit to Costco for saying anything at all. Most companies collecting these refunds haven’t. But that’s the part of the story the headline skips. A tariff refund goes to whoever wrote the check to Customs, not to the shopper who paid the higher shelf price. I wrote back in April about why that money isn’t coming to you, and nothing since has changed it.

A price cut you can’t see is a hard thing to check. A check in the mail would have been easier to believe.

The 401(k) you left at an old job

Toys “R” Us is opening 120 stores nine years after its bankruptcy, and 24/7 Wall St. makes a point worth knowing for anyone who ever changed jobs. A 401(k) is held in trust, apart from the company’s own money, so it doesn’t vanish when the company goes under.

The Labor Department runs a free Retirement Savings Lost and Found that searches for old workplace plans from private employers. It’s an information database. It won’t pay you anything itself, but it tells you who to call. It takes a Login.gov account to get in.

On the podcast this week

Damon Day and I started from a title I stand behind: Budgets Suck. They usually don’t work. What matters more is cash flow and what’s left at the end of the month. We got into the “emergencies” that aren’t, like tires and home repairs, spending to impress people, and what debt settlement and credit counseling can do to someone living on Social Security.

Also on the site yesterday

• The CFPB just stopped publishing consumer complaint stories. Here’s how to still vet a debt company.

• A debt buyer is suing me and won’t show proof I owe it.

• Credit Acceptance’s $694 million settlement: what borrowers actually need to know

• The $96.5 million generic drug settlement is open, and how to register for your claim

• An early-season nor’easter is hitting the coast. Three lines in your insurance worth checking.

• Damon Day made $141 in one night stacking three gig apps at once

If any of this was new to you, somebody you know hasn’t heard it either. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d tell a friend over coffee, and I’d tell the same friend that the details of their own life outrank anything I’ve written here.

One more thing. Loyalty isn’t a flaw. It’s one of the best things about people. It’s just a bad pricing plan. The same steadiness that keeps someone with one company for twenty years is exactly what gets people out from under almost anything, one phone call at a time. If you’re not where you wanted to be by now, that steadiness is still yours. It’s just pointed at the wrong bill. Have a good weekend. I’ll be back Monday.

— Steve

Dad Joke

What did the drummer name his twin daughters?

Anna one, Anna two.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

A thousand cuts

At some point paying for individual streaming feels like a thousand cuts.

When I was a kid we had four free black and white channels. That was not awesome. But it also did not cost upwards of $300 a month for all the internet and streaming services.

Yesterday Disney made another cut. Ad-free Disney+ went from $18.99 to $21.49 a month. Ad-free Hulu, same jump. The versions with ads went up fifty cents, to $12.49. MacRumors has the whole list: new subscribers pay it now, and everybody else on their next bill. Benzinga’s headline says the ad-free plan has nearly doubled since 2023.

Nobody cancels over $2.50. That’s the whole trick. It’s never one big bill you’d fight. It’s eight small ones you stopped reading, each one less than lunch.

Streaming was supposed to be how we got out from under the cable bill. For a lot of households it quietly turned into the cable bill. Same size. Just cut into pieces so it never looks like one.

The thing that moves people isn’t a budget app. It’s adding them all up once, on one piece of paper. The total is usually a surprise, and the service nobody remembers signing up for is usually the first to go. The other move is rotation. One service at a time, watch the show, cancel, pick up the next one next month. The shows wait. They’re good at waiting.

Somebody you love is paying for a streaming service they haven’t opened since spring. I’d forward this to them first. The Disney price goes up on their next bill whether they watch or not, and the only way to see what the whole stack costs is to add it up once.

$977

A man in Mesa, Arizona got diabetes and was out of work. Toby Newton fell behind on his homeowners association dues, and the Mesa Tribune reports what he owed came to $977.

It didn’t stay $977. After a default judgment in June 2025 the total was $6,579, and most of the growth was the association’s lawyer: $3,345 in attorney fees and interest, and $1,042 in collection costs. Last October the house went to a sheriff’s sale. The winning bidder was the HOA itself, at $8,172, for a home he’d bought with a $449,328 mortgage.

He tried to pay. Newsweek reports the association turned down $50 a month on top of his regular dues, and later $200 a month.

Then the story went national. People got loud. And the HOA changed its mind. Its attorney told Newsweek, “The Newtons will stay in their home.” A vote on a payment plan is set for September 29.

Good. I’m glad. But it’s worth being honest about what saved that house. Not the law. Arizona did raise the bar last year, to 18 months or $10,000 before an HOA can foreclose, with a payment plan offered first. His foreclosure was filed in November 2024. The new rule took effect in September 2025. What saved him was a news story and a lot of angry strangers. Most people in that chair never get the strangers.

The quiet hinge in a story like this is the default judgment. It’s what a court hands down when a lawsuit goes unanswered, and after that the other side’s lawyer is the one running the meter. I wrote yesterday about what to do right after you lose a debt case in court, because the days after the judgment matter more than people think.

The refund that never came

Ever sent something back to Amazon and the refund never showed up? Or it came late, came short, or came through and then got charged back? There’s a pot of money for that now. Amazon agreed to a $309.5 million settlement over returns, and a federal judge in Seattle gave it early approval in August. That’s the shoppers’ side of what happened; there’s been no trial.

It reaches back to returns from September 2017. The settlement terms say that if Amazon’s own records show you were shorted, you get paid automatically. Everyone else files a claim at ReturnSettlement.com by December 1, and the form opens by October 2.

One for the freezer while you’re at it: Walmart’s Bettergoods Authentic Italian Lemon Alfredo Fettuccine, the 22-ounce bag, lots L6079C and L6080C, is recalled for possible listeria. The FDA notice says it was sold at Walmart stores nationwide. No illnesses reported so far.

Also on the site yesterday

If mortgage rates are on your mind, I wrote about why nearly one in ten mortgage applications is now an adjustable rate with 30-year rates past 7%. And the FleetCor fuel card settlement is real, and nobody has to file for it.

If any of this was new to you, somebody you know hasn’t heard it either. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d tell a friend over coffee, and I’d tell the same friend that the details of their own life outrank anything I’ve written here.

One more thing. Four black and white channels wasn’t awesome. A $300 month isn’t either. Somewhere between them is a number that’s yours to pick, and you’re allowed to get there one small cancel at a time. And if a bill you couldn’t pay has turned into a letter from a lawyer, you’re not the first person that happened to, and it’s rarely the end of the story. Toby Newton kept trying to pay. Trying counts, even before anybody’s listening. I’ll be back tomorrow.

— Steve

I’m thinking of starting a business to recycle discarded chewing gum.

I just need some help getting it off the ground.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

The cheap pill at the counter

Medicine is expensive. About thirty-five years ago, when my daughter was little, we went without groceries so we could afford her amoxicillin for an ear infection. You don’t forget that feeling.

So this one got under my skin. Nearly every state attorney general in the country has spent years suing the companies that make generic drugs. The generics. The cheap ones. The whole idea of a generic is that a dozen companies make the same pill and fight each other down to the bottom on price. The states say they weren’t fighting. They were comparing notes. The Oregon attorney general’s office says the complaints quote the industry’s own words for it: a “fair share,” “playing nice in the sandbox.”

That’s the states’ side. Most of the companies are still in federal court in Connecticut saying they didn’t do it, and nobody has ruled.

Six of them settled, for about $96.5 million: Glenmark, Lannett, Bausch, Apotex, Heritage and Heritage’s parent, Emcure. This month the court gave early approval to the plan for paying people back, and WCAX reports the attorneys general want to hear from anyone who bought the drugs on the list between May 2009 and December 2019. New Jersey’s release says the same.

Then I read the list. Levothyroxine. Pravastatin. Gabapentin. Fluoxetine. Trazodone. Warfarin. Azithromycin. A long row of birth control pills. That’s not a list of rare drugs. That’s a medicine cabinet.

There’s no claim form yet. The settlement site says the money comes later, after more court approvals, and that people who don’t register “may not receive notice about when and how to file a claim.” Registering is how the letter finds you.

Honest math: $96.5 million spread over a country full of pill buyers is a small check. Not a windfall. And anybody who wants a fee to help you file is selling a free form.

The check isn’t the part I care about. I care about the people who stood at the counter choosing between the pill and the groceries and figured they just weren’t managing well enough. I stood on that side of the counter long before any of this. For the people who stood there between 2009 and 2019, the states say part of the reason was a price set in a room none of them were in.

Somebody you love took a thyroid pill, a cholesterol pill, a blood thinner or the pill every day between 2009 and 2019. I’d forward this to them first. There’s no claim form yet, and the settlement site says the people who don’t register now may never hear when it opens. Registering is free: 1-866-290-0182, or the site linked above.

The “safe account” call

The scary ones never sound like crooks. They sound like help.

The phone rings. Caller ID says it’s your bank’s fraud department. The voice is calm. A little worried for you, even. I almost fell for it once myself and I’m aware of this stuff. Sometimes emotion overrides common sense. It happens to all of us.

The caller says somebody’s in your account right now, and while they lock it down you need to move your savings into a new “safe account” they’ve opened in your name. Today.

SavingAdvice had it right yesterday: banks don’t ask you to move money, and wire losses are rarely refunded.

Most people don’t believe that second part. They figure if they get scammed, the bank has to make them whole. There’s a real law behind that belief. It just wasn’t written for this.

The rule that covers your debit card and your transfers is Regulation E. It protects you from an “unauthorized” transfer, and it defines that as one “initiated by a person other than the consumer.” On this call the thief never touches your account. You do. You log in, type the number, hit send. And a wire through Fedwire or something like it isn’t covered by Regulation E at all.

Banks can help sometimes, and calling fast to stop or recall a transfer is always worth it. But the guarantee people count on isn’t there when they pushed the button themselves.

What works is boring: hanging up, turning the card over, calling the number on the back. The FTC said it plainly back in 2024: never move your money to protect it. And the call a week later from a “recovery service” that wants a fee to get it back? Same people. Back for the rest.

I wrote up the FBI’s warning on these if you want the longer version: more than $262 million reported lost since January 2025, and how fake bank sites end up at the top of a search.

Keep the letter

Most people read a loan denial once, feel a little sick, and toss it. I get it. It’s a lousy piece of mail.

A borrower named Teanna Steward sued OneMain Financial in federal court in Illinois. The complaint says the denial letter listed four lines (”Percentage of satisfactory accounts is too low,” “Number of installment trades,” “Insufficient revolving, retail card trade information,” and “Serious delinquency, public record, collection”) and that those aren’t the specific reasons the Equal Credit Opportunity Act requires. So there was no way to know what to fix. The suit wants to cover everyone who got that same letter. That’s the plaintiff’s side, and nobody has ruled.

Win or lose, here’s what the law already says. The reasons have to be specific. “You didn’t hit our score” or “our internal standards” doesn’t cut it. And if a credit report was part of it, they have to tell you which bureau, and that you can get a free copy within 60 days.

That letter is the one time they have to put in writing why they said no. Worth keeping.

If any of this was new to you, somebody you know hasn’t heard it either. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d tell a friend over coffee, and I’d tell the same friend that the details of their own life outrank anything I’ve written here.

One more thing. After my own bankruptcy I spent four years calling myself a loser. Wasted time. If you’ve been beating yourself up over the pills, the call or the letter, a lot of it was a game somebody else was running. You were playing it straight. That counts for more than you think. I’ll be back tomorrow.

— Steve

I ordered 2,000 pounds of soup today.

It was won ton.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

The $1,000 retirement match in this week’s headlines has been law since 2022

Every so often a headline tells the people who don’t have a retirement plan at work that somebody in Washington finally noticed them. The one making the rounds this week reads Trump’s New Retirement Plan Could Give Workers Up to $1,000. FinanceBuzz, which wrote it, reports that an executive order directs the Treasury Department to launch TrumpIRA.gov, a government-backed site for comparing and opening low-cost IRAs, set to fully launch on January 1, 2027.

The website is new. The $1,000 is not. It’s the Saver’s Match, which Congress wrote into the SECURE 2.0 Act in December 2022, with the 2027 start date fixed right there in the law. The article itself says as much further down, where it notes the benefit “builds on” the Saver’s Match. The headline just didn’t carry that part.

Here’s how the law actually works. It matches 50 percent of up to $2,000 a year that a worker puts into a traditional IRA or a workplace plan like a 401(k), so the most anyone gets is $1,000, and the money is deposited into the retirement account rather than paid out as cash. Roth accounts don’t qualify. For 2027 the match starts shrinking for a single filer with income above $20,500 and is gone at $35,500; for a married couple filing jointly, the range is $41,000 to $71,000. Most withdrawals from retirement accounts in that year or the two before it also reduce the contributions that count. The fine print is still being drafted: FinanceBuzz reports that Treasury and the IRS asked for public comment in August, with comments due October 5.

And there’s one line almost nobody is repeating, which matters to people carrying debt. The law says the match can’t be taken through the offsets that grab tax refunds for past-due child support, debts owed to federal agencies such as defaulted federal student loans, or state tax debts.

I’ve been reading money headlines long enough to remember when they arrived on newsprint, and the word that has fooled the most people in all that time is new. A benefit announced as new sounds like a promise that could still change. One that has sat in the tax code since 2022 is something a person living on a small paycheck can actually plan around.

Somebody you know is working on a small paycheck and has decided retirement saving isn’t for people like them. This is the one I’d send them. A headline that says “new” makes most people wait to see if it’s real. This one has been in the law since 2022, it starts in 2027, and it’s built for exactly the paycheck they think disqualifies them.

Congress built a four-year window for people who got a late start. Most of them walk right past it.

Somewhere around 58, a lot of people I’ve talked with stop opening the 401(k) statement. Not because they don’t care. Because the number looks like a verdict, and at that age it feels too late to argue with it.

Here’s what most of them never hear. Starting in 2025, the law gave people in their early sixties more room to save than people in their fifties. For 2026 the IRS set the regular 401(k) limit at $24,500, and anyone 50 or older can add an $8,000 catch-up on top. But in the calendar years you turn 60, 61, 62 and 63, that catch-up is $11,250 instead. The same rule covers 403(b)s, government 457 plans and the federal Thrift Savings Plan. Then the year you turn 64, it drops back to $8,000. Four years, and the door narrows again.

Two honest footnotes, because this is where the brochure usually stops. The bigger catch-up only exists if your employer’s plan offers catch-up contributions at all, and not every plan does. And beginning in 2026, if you earned more than $150,000 from that employer the year before and the plan has a Roth option, the catch-up has to go in as Roth, which means after tax. Same savings, a bigger bite out of the paycheck than the old math.

I took Social Security at 62, so I know the early sixties from the inside, and it’s the decade where I’ve watched the most people quietly decide the race was over. It isn’t. A catch-up exists at all because behind is where most people are at 60, and somebody in Congress finally wrote that fact into the tax code.

And I’ll say the part a retirement ad won’t. Plenty of people I’ve known at 60 couldn’t find an extra $11,250 if they turned the couch over twice, and a few of them were carrying card balances at rates that made any savings math look silly. I’ve watched people pour money into a 401(k) with one hand while paying 24 percent with the other, and I’ve watched people cash the whole 401(k) out to make the calls stop, which is the one I wrote about in The $400,000 Mistake. And for the people tempted to stop contributing altogether just to breathe for a few months, I wrote the longer version of what that actually costs in Should I Stop Contributing to My 401(k) to Have More Money Each Paycheck? The window matters. It just isn’t the first thing.

Help filing a VA disability claim is free by law. Somebody is still charging for it.

You know a veteran. Maybe you are one. And there’s a decent chance that somewhere in their feed this week sits an ad promising a higher disability rating and more money every month, from a company that wants a cut of the increase.

Here is the belief that needs to expire: that the people who charge are the ones who get results. The law is plain about the first claim. Under 38 U.S.C. §5904(c)(1), nobody may charge a fee for help before VA issues its initial decision on the claim. And the VA itself says the help from an accredited veterans service organization representative on a benefit claim is “always free”. Accredited attorneys and claims agents can charge only after that first decision, with a signed fee agreement on file.

This week a veterans service organization’s proposed class action accusing two Texas firms of charging disabled veterans illegal fees for help getting higher ratings was moved into federal court in Washington, D.C., according to Law360. Those are allegations, and nothing has been decided. It isn’t the first time this has come up: in January, the Texas attorney general got a judgment requiring VA Claims Insider to forgive more than $6.8 million veterans had been charged, which I covered in Texas AG Wins $6.8M Debt Forgiveness for Veterans Scammed by VA Claims Insider.

Thirty years in this work taught me that the help people pay the most for is usually help they were already entitled to for free; it just wasn’t advertised as hard. The VA’s own find-a-representative tool is the unglamorous door, and it’s the one that doesn’t send a bill.

What I published yesterday

Five on the site, none of them in Monday’s issue:

• Is Shopping an Addiction? A Recovery Coach and I Compare Notes on Money and Debt — recovery coach Greg Downs and I, side by side

• A Private Student Loan Company Is Suing Me. Here’s What to Do Right Now.

• The $167.5 Million Visa and Mastercard ATM Fee Settlement Is Real — But Read Who It Actually Pays First

• The House Just Passed the Bankruptcy Threshold Adjustment Act — What Higher Chapter 13 Limits Would Mean If You’re Deep in Debt

• Why Your Bank Won’t Deal Until You’re Behind

If one of these was news to you, it’s news to somebody you know, and that’s the whole reason this exists. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d tell a friend over coffee, and I’d tell the same friend that the details of their own life outrank anything I’ve written here.

One more thing. If you’re 60 with less saved than you meant to have, or 45 and further behind than your brother-in-law, you are not late to your own life. Most of the people I’ve watched come back from behind never caught up to anybody. They stopped keeping score against people who were never behind, and they did the next honest thing with what they had. That turns out to be enough more often than you’d believe. I’ll be back tomorrow.

— Steve

I’m just off the phone with the school. They told me, “Your son has been telling lies in class.”

I said he must be great at it, because I don’t have any kids.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

The pension check does not carry the old state’s tax bill with it. It hasn’t since 1996.

A nurse spends thirty years at a hospital in New Jersey, retires, and moves to Delaware to be near the grandkids. The pension is $4,000 a month. Before 1996, New Jersey could keep taxing that $4,000, every month, for the rest of her life, because she earned it inside New Jersey. Florida instead of Delaware, same bill. The tax followed the check across the state line. Then, on January 10, 1996, Congress passed a one-paragraph law, 4 U.S.C. §114, and the bill stopped at the border: no state may impose an income tax on the retirement income of somebody who no longer lives there. Delaware taxes that pension under Delaware's rules, and only Delaware.

That is the part most people never heard. The belief from the old days outlived the law, and it still sounds true when somebody says it: "It doesn't matter where we go. The state will still tax the pension." I have heard that sentence end more moves than any mortgage rate ever did. And they stay.

The law covers more than pensions. 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457 plans, IRAs, government plans, the whole list is in the statute, and in 2006 Congress stretched it to most deferred-compensation plans as long as the money comes out as regular payments over a lifetime or at least ten years.

Here is how it still catches people, thirty years on. The first way is the nurse who never moves: the belief outlived the law. The second is the half-move. The statute leaves it to the old state to decide, under its own rules, whether you actually left, and the old state has every reason to look closely: the driver's license that never changed, the house that was kept, the doctors and the summers that are still there. Then a letter arrives saying you never really moved, and the tax is owed as a resident, on everything. The third is quieter. The protection for nonqualified deferred compensation is written for regular payments, so a lump sum out of that kind of plan can still be reachable by the old state. And none of it makes the money tax-free: the state you move to sets its own rules, a handful of them decide "not at all," and Social Security runs on its own.

More than one couple I knew stayed put in a state they could no longer afford because they were sure the pension would arrive with the old state's tax bill stapled to it. Thirty years of this work taught me that the expensive mistakes are rarely the ones people make; they are the ones people are sure they would be making, so they never move at all.

Somebody you know says “we’d owe California anyway.” This is the one to forward to them: a parent still in the house they can’t heat, a friend planning the rest of their life around a tax bill that was repealed before their kids were born. The statute is one paragraph, and the person who reads it this week may spend the next twenty years somewhere they can afford. If that’s somebody you know, this is the one to send them.

The average went up. Half the country didn’t feel it, and now there’s a number for that.

Nobody I know cheered when the record-high income number went around last week, and I noticed that. It isn’t cynicism. It’s arithmetic, and the Census Bureau published the arithmetic right alongside the headline.

Real median household income reached $87,460 in 2025, the highest since the count began in 1967. Same report, a few paragraphs down: income at the 10th percentile, the bottom of the ladder, did not move from 2024. Income at the 90th percentile rose for the third straight year. Since 1967 the middle and the bottom have grown about 56 percent after inflation; the top, about 121 percent. The household at the 90th percentile now brings in 13 times what the household at the 10th does. In 1967 it was nine times.

The other half of the release is the one that explains the kitchen. The official poverty rate is 10.2 percent. The Supplemental Poverty Measure, which counts what people actually pay for housing, medical care and taxes, and what benefits actually deliver, is 13.1 percent, and it runs higher than the official rate in 26 states and the District of Columbia. The gap is widest where rent is. A family can clear the official line and still be under water after the deductible.

Thirty years of reading other people’s budgets taught me that the median is a number nobody lives in; people live in what’s left on the 28th. I wrote the longer version of how an economy sets records while half its households fall behind, twice: What You Don’t Know About the K-Shaped Economy and, more recently, The E-Shaped Economy: Why 52% of Americans Are Falling Behind While Everything Looks Fine. This week’s release is the same picture with 2025 numbers on it.

One claims desk item: the phone in your pocket may owe you $25 to $95

My rule for this section is that a claim earns a mention only when the money outweighs the hassle, and this one clears it because the hassle is a serial number that lives on the Settings screen.

Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action alleging it sold the iPhone 16 line and the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max on Siri “Apple Intelligence” features that weren’t there when the phones shipped. Apple denies the allegations and nothing has been decided against it. The claim window opened this morning: original purchasers who bought one of those phones in the United States between June 10, 2024 and March 29, 2025 can file for $25 per device, rising to as much as $95 if fewer people claim. The deadline is December 21, 2026, and the judge’s final-approval hearing is February 24, 2027, so the money moves next year, not this one.

I’ve watched a lot of people skip $25 because it felt like nothing, and then pay a $35 overdraft fee the same month because it wasn’t. The five minutes is the same five minutes.

One thing I noticed

Nearly everything in a grocery cart rode there on diesel, and diesel has been climbing. The EIA’s explainer on why is plain: tight distillate supply on top of elevated crude. When diesel moves, the produce aisle follows a few weeks later, and the produce aisle never explains itself.

What I published since Thursday’s issue

Four on the site, plus one here:

• Should Your Adult Kid Pay Rent While Living at Home? — the written companion to last week’s podcast with Damon Day

• Kentucky Is Erasing an Estimated $250 Million in Medical Debt for 130,000 People

• TransUnion’s $8.3M Bankruptcy Remark Settlement — Claim by Oct. 30

• I Owe More on My House Than It’s Worth and I Need to Sell

• And on Friday, the one I’ve been carrying around for a while: I Hit Rock Bottom. I’m Writing This From a First-Class Lounge.

If one of these was news to you, it’s news to somebody you know, and that’s the whole reason this exists. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It's what I'd tell a friend over coffee, and I'd tell the same friend that the details of their own life outrank anything I've written here.

One more thing. A record year for the country and a flat year for half of it is not a verdict on you. Most of the people I’ve watched get somewhere good never had the top-decile year. They had an ordinary one, and somewhere in it they stopped measuring themselves against somebody else’s dashboard. The future is in your hands, but it might not be the one you think you want. It will be the one you need. That one starts this week, with one honest number on a piece of paper.

— Steve

Why don’t monsters eat ghosts?

Because they taste like sheet.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

The pitch always started with “this isn’t one of those pyramid things — the government looked at Amway in 1979”

It could be I’ve seen my share of people who were garage qualified — the ones whose “business” was cases of soap and vitamins and energy drinks stacked against the garage wall, bought on a credit card at the start of every month because the upline said that was how you hit your number, with a spouse in the kitchen who had stopped asking. What every one of those people had in common was a sentence they’d been handed at the recruiting meeting: Amway is the legitimate one. The FTC looked at it back in 1979 and let it stand. Every multilevel company since has borrowed that sentence, and for forty-seven years it did a lot of work.

Yesterday the FTC announced that Amway and two of its affiliates will pay $225 million — nearly all of it going back to the people who signed up — which the agency calls the largest amount it has ever recovered from a multilevel marketing company. The complaint alleges recruits were told they were likely to earn more than $40,000 a year, replace a full-time job, or retire early, while, in the FTC’s words, “most IBOs who joined WWG or LTD after 2020 spent more money on Amway products and training than they received from Amway.” It also alleges people were told to buy a set amount of product every month whether they could resell it or not, and to report sales they never made. Amway settled; the vote was 2-0; nobody has been found liable by a court. The refund program hasn’t been announced yet — the release says details come later, and I’ll carry them here when they do.

What caught my eye was the fix. Under the order, every distributor has to resell at least 70 percent of what they buy each month, an outside auditor checks the sales records, and nobody can be charged for training in their first year. Those are the exact safeguards the industry has claimed to live by since before I started doing this work. It took an outside auditor to find out whether anybody actually did.

Here’s the sentence I’d say across the table, and it’s the one thirty years bought me: in the MLM households I worked with, the debt wasn’t from the business failing — it was from the monthly minimum order, put on a card, for product that was still in the garage when they called me. The income claims get the headlines. The inventory is what puts people in my office.

Somebody you know has a garage like that right now — or a daughter-in-law who just got “a business opportunity” invitation from someone at church. The refund program will have a window and a list of who qualifies, and the people who never told anyone they signed up are the ones who will miss it. If that’s somebody you know, this is the one to send them.

To go deeper, I wrote the long version of when these programs help and when they hurt a while back: MLM Programs: When They Help and When They Hurt. And the one that still gets me, from 2010: a reader who put her retirement into one.

The car payment nobody does the math on

Damon and I got into it on the podcast this week over something that feels completely normal in most driveways: the car payment that never ends. A $500 a month payment, kept up from 25 to 65 — because there’s always a next car — invested instead would sit somewhere between $2 million and $3 million at retirement by Damon’s arithmetic on an ordinary investing account. A two-car household doubles it. I gave my daughter a 2006 Odyssey with 170,000 miles on it; Damon handed his son the Cadillac he inherited from his grandfather. Neither of us is against nice cars. We’re against the belief that the payment is the price. The episode is here, and the written version with the co-signing conversation — including the afternoon a salesman turned to my daughter’s boyfriend and asked if I was “the guy who’s going to co-sign,” and I laughed and walked out — went up on the site last night.

The lender approved the loan. That was never the same as you being able to afford it.

Twenty minutes in a finance office, a signature, and people walk out believing something that was never said: that somebody with a spreadsheet decided they could afford this. Yesterday forty-one state attorneys general put a number on how wrong that can be. Credit Acceptance, one of the country’s largest subprime auto lenders, agreed to $694 million in cash and debt relief over allegations that it made car loans it knew borrowers couldn’t repay and let dealers pack them with service contracts and gap coverage people didn’t want. The company settled without admitting anything, and no court has ruled on the claims. What it agreed to is specific: $60 million in cash to the people who got the riskiest loans, about $388 million in debt wiped out for people whose cars were already repossessed, $246 million more for people still driving theirs, for loans written between November 2015 and November 2025, all of it due by November 2 — and, according to the consent decree.pdf), a cap on how far above a car’s book value a dealer can price it from here on, plus a 95 percent write-off of the balance left after a repo on certain new loans. Indiana’s office says its people get checks with no claim to file; the multistate administrator handles the rest.

The phrase in the decree that stopped me was “Early Defaulted Accounts” — a category the lender itself had a name for. Thirty years of this work taught me that the loan that fails in the first year almost never failed because of the borrower; it failed because it was built to, and somebody was paid when it was signed. If a Credit Acceptance repo is still on somebody’s credit report and the deficiency balance is still being collected, the thing I’d want them to know is that a real settlement with their name on it may already exist, and that the “debt relief” call they get next month claiming to know about it is not the same thing.

One claims desk item, and it’s the rare one that comes to you

I’ve watched people pay $29 for a “settlement claims kit” to collect $11, so my rule for this section is that a claim earns a mention only when the money outweighs the hassle. This one has no hassle at all. Amazon will now pay out more of last year’s $2.5 billion Prime settlement automatically — the cap per person goes from $51 to $200, payments start October 1 by Venmo, PayPal or mailed check, and the release says there are no claims, no notices, no forms. It covers people who were enrolled in Prime without meaning to be, or who tried to cancel and couldn’t, and it now reaches a group left out of the first rounds. If the total accepted doesn’t hit the required threshold by February 2027, people who already got a refund get another automatic payment of up to $149. The thing I’ve learned about “automatic” is that it only works if the payment can find you — it goes wherever the email and payment details on the account still point, which for a lot of people is a phone number from two jobs ago.

What I published yesterday

Two more that haven’t reached the site’s email list yet:

• They Said Your Credit Union Can Charge Whatever Rate the Market Allows

• A Credit Report Error Is Blocking My Mortgage Approval. Here’s What to Do Right Now.

If one of these was news to you, it’s news to somebody you know — that’s the whole reason this exists. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d say across the kitchen table, and across the kitchen table I’d also say the details of your own life outrank anything I’ve written here.

One more thing. The garage-qualified people I knew got out. Not by winning the business — by the afternoon they let somebody else see the boxes. Every hole I have ever watched someone climb out of started with that: one other person who knew. If you’re the one who knows for somebody this week, that’s not a small thing. And if you’re the one with the boxes, you can be in the first group by Monday.

— Steve

I’m very afraid of negative numbers.

I’ll stop at nothing to avoid them.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

Everybody’s explaining the quarter point this morning. It’s the least interesting number on your statement.

I read four of them before breakfast — the “what the Fed hike means for your mortgage, car loan and credit cards” explainers that arrive the morning after every meeting, as reliable as the meeting itself. The Washington Post’s opens by reassuring you the mortgage rate you’ve been eyeing won’t suddenly shoot up. All of them are accurate. And I noticed, reading them, that they’re all about the same number, and it’s the number that matters least.

Here’s what the Fed did: a quarter point, to 3.75–4.00 percent, the first increase since 2023, on a 12–0 vote. Here’s what that costs a person with $6,000 on a card: about $15 a year. I’ve watched people lose sleep over that $15 while the rate they already had — 22 percent, which is the average on accounts carrying a balance according to the Federal Reserve’s own data — was quietly costing them about $1,329 a year. The hike is the headline. The 22 percent is the story, and it was set the day the account was opened, in a number called the margin that nobody I’ve ever met has asked about. The card company doesn’t have to warn you when the index moves, and it doesn’t have to tell you the margin is negotiable, and in the years since 1994 that I’ve been doing this the people who got a lower rate got it by asking about the margin, not by waiting for the Fed. The whole mechanism, with the regulation and the arithmetic, is in the longer version I put up yesterday afternoon.

The mortgage half of those explainers has it backwards in the other direction. Forbes has the 30-year at 7.08% this morning, a one-year high — but it was already at a one-year high two weeks ago, while the Fed was still sitting on its hands. Mortgages follow the ten-year Treasury, not the Fed’s overnight rate, which is why they went up before the hike and why “the Fed raised my mortgage rate” is a sentence that feels true and isn’t. What I make of the whole morning: the number the news can see is the one the Fed sets, and the numbers that actually run your life were set somewhere else, earlier, by somebody who was hoping you wouldn’t look.

Somebody you know is carrying a balance and waiting for the Fed to fix it. Yesterday made that plan take longer, and the part of their rate they can actually move was never the Fed’s to begin with. The $15-versus-$1,329 arithmetic is the thing I’d want in front of them, and if that’s somebody you know, I’d forward it to them before they wait another year.

The number: $107,269

That is the median 401(k) balance for people aged 55 to 64 in Vanguard’s How America Saves 2026, the biggest look anyone gets inside real retirement accounts. The average for the same age group is $305,006. I keep both numbers on the desk because the headlines only ever use one of them, and it’s never the one that describes the person reading. Half of the people in those plans at that age have less than $107,269 in them. At the 4 percent withdrawal rule that people quote — my arithmetic, not Vanguard’s — that’s about $358 a month, for life.

A story going around yesterday put the median at $89,400 and attributed it to Vanguard. I went and read the report; Vanguard doesn’t publish that bracket, and its figure is the one above. I mention it because the same thing happens to the average-versus-median gap every day: a number gets passed hand to hand until it means what somebody needed it to mean. After all the years I’ve spent reading other people’s statements, what strikes me is not how little the median is. It’s how many people I’ve sat across from who measured themselves against the average and concluded they were the failure in the room, when they were the room.

Three things I noticed

I noticed the gap between two numbers before I noticed either number. The electric bill is outrunning the inflation figure: Bank of America’s card data, reported this morning, has the average utility bill up 5.3 percent from a year ago in August, against a 4 percent rise in the government’s electricity-and-gas index — and up 10 percent in Detroit, Baltimore and Washington, while bills fell in Orlando and Tampa. The bank blames the hottest summer on record, grid rebuilding and the data-center build-out, and says the pressure stays. What I noticed is the gap between the two numbers: the index is the country, the bill is your house, and the bill is the one you pay.

The “claim Social Security late” math assumes a millionaire. A piece this week walks a 64-year-old couple through delaying to 70 for a benefit up to 76 percent larger — and the worked example has a $1.4 million 401(k) to live on in the meantime. I took mine at 62. Not because I couldn’t do the arithmetic, but because the arithmetic is written for the couple with $1.4 million, and the median couple above has $107,269 and a job that may not last to 70. A bigger check at 70 is real. So are the eight years of checks the 62-year-old already cashed, and so is the possibility of not making it to the break-even. The right answer depends on which couple you are, and the articles only ever seem to write about one of them.

One claims desk item, and only one. If you bought a digital PlayStation game from Sony’s store between 2019 and now, a $7.85 million antitrust settlement is scheduled for a final hearing October 15; the suit alleges Sony forced digital games through its own store at inflated prices, Sony denies it, and no court has ruled. There’s no form for most people — eligible accounts get store credit added automatically after the hearing; deactivated accounts have to email the settlement administrator for cash. It’s small money. I include it because it’s the rare one that pays you for doing nothing, which is my favorite kind.

What I published yesterday

Two that haven’t reached the email list yet, besides the Fed piece above:

• The Education Department Just Published Nonpayment Data for 500 Colleges. Here’s How to Read Your School’s Number.

• I’m Self-Employed and a Creditor Just Levied My Business Bank Account. Here’s What to Do.

If one of these was news to you, it’s news to somebody you know — that’s the whole reason this exists. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d say across the kitchen table, and across the kitchen table I’d also say the details of your own life outrank anything I’ve written here.

One more thing. The people I’ve watched get out of a hole never did it on a day the Fed moved. They did it on an ordinary Tuesday, by looking at one statement they’d been avoiding and asking one question they’d been afraid to ask. The number came down a little. Then it came down more. That’s available to you tomorrow, and it doesn’t need Washington’s permission.

— Steve

Why are skeletons so calm?

Because nothing gets under their skin.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

The truck was $28,999 online. At the desk it’s $31,400. As of yesterday, the FTC says the ad was the lie.

You found it on the dealer’s website Sunday night. $28,999, the color you wanted, forty miles away. You took a half day, drove over, test-drove it, and sat down at the desk. Now there’s a “reconditioning fee,” a “protection package” that’s “already installed,” a $499 doc fee, and a line at the bottom explaining that $28,999 was the price with their financing. You’re looking at $31,400 and a salesperson who says everybody pays it.

Here’s the thing most people believe, and it quietly stopped being true: the ad price is a starting point. Yesterday afternoon the Federal Trade Commission’s staff published a set of price-transparency FAQs for car dealers, and the sentence at the heart of them is this: the advertised price must be “the actual price any consumer can walk in and pay.” The only things a dealer may leave out are charges the government makes you pay — tax, title, registration. Everything the dealer requires goes in the number. Their own example: a $40,000 car with an $85 doc fee has to be advertised at $40,085. A $2,000 “discount for using our financing” is fine only if the price you’d pay with any financing is the biggest number on the page. A car that was already sold, left online to get you in the door, is deceptive. And an add-on can’t be presented as required, or as something they “can’t take off.”

I want to be straight about what this is and isn’t. It is not a new rule — the FTC wrote one of those, the CARS Rule, and a federal appeals court threw it out on procedure earlier this year. I wrote about that yesterday, because the yo-yo financing scam it would have curbed is still legal in most states. What came out yesterday is FTC staff saying, in plain English, that the FTC Act itself — the law they have always had — already forbids the bait price. Staff guidance isn’t binding on the Commission itself, but it is the standard the FTC sues under, and it names the exact tricks. This got a one-paragraph press release and no coverage I can find, which is why I’m handing it to you now.

What I’d actually do with it. Before you drive anywhere, screenshot the listing — price, date, the page it’s on. At the desk, when the number is higher, ask one question: “Which of these lines is a charge the government requires me to pay?” If the answer is none of them, the ad was the problem, not you. Walk. Then spend two minutes at reportfraud.ftc.gov with the screenshot. The FTC says its enforcement runs on the complaints it sees; you’d be surprised how few people file one.

Somebody you love is car shopping this month — the kid with the first real job, the parent replacing the sedan, the friend who “found a great deal online.” Forward this before they drive to the lot. The screenshot is the whole defense, and it costs nothing.

A word from your money

I was $28,999 when you left the house and I was $31,400 when you sat down, and nothing about me changed on the drive over. That $2,401 wasn’t a fee. It was the ad. I don’t mind being spent on a truck. I mind being spent on the gap between a number somebody printed and the number they meant.

Six days, then a week and a half: two claims with your name possibly on them

700Credit, by Tuesday, September 22. If a dealer ran your credit in the last few years, it may have gone through a company you’ve never heard of, and 5.8 million people got a letter this summer saying their Social Security number was exposed in its October 2025 breach. I covered it in August; here’s the reminder, because the claim deadline is September 22 — about $50 with no proof, up to $2,500 with receipts, plus two years of credit monitoring. 700Credit denies wrongdoing, and no court has found otherwise. If the letter is in a pile somewhere, this is the week to find it.

ABC Legal Services, by September 28. If a process server ever handed you papers in a debt lawsuit, the company that employed them had a breach too, and there’s a settlement with a claim window closing in twelve days. I laid out who qualifies and how to file yesterday; it hasn’t gone out by email yet.

Two to check this week

239,131 Ram 1500 trucks from the 2025 and 2026 model years are being recalled because a radio-software bug can blank the backup camera. The fix is a free software update, over the air or at a dealer; owner letters start September 24, and you can check your VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls tonight. No injuries reported. It follows a separate seatbelt-buckle recall in July covering more than a million Rams, so if you own one, check both.

The countdown timer isn’t real — that’s the claim, anyway. Two Washington shoppers are suing H&M, alleging its emails said “Just HOURS left!” and “20% off ends tonight!” and then the same sale ran the next day, or a bigger one arrived two days later — roughly 557 emails a year, by their count. It’s an allegation under a Washington email law, nobody has ruled on it, and H&M hasn’t been found to have done anything. I’m including it because the mechanism is the useful part: a deadline in a subject line is a sales tool, not a fact, and the only one that ever cost you money was the one you believed.

The Senate just left your state’s crypto-fraud cop on the beat, and you should know why that matters

The FBI counted $11.4 billion in reported crypto-fraud losses last year, up 22 percent, and the average loss was $62,604 — that’s not a number, that’s a retirement account or a house down payment. Since 2017, state attorneys general have brought more than 330 of the enforcement actions against those scams, often in cases where “victims had no federal or private recourse.” Those figures come from a letter fifteen state attorneys general sent the Senate on Monday, warning that the crypto bill being voted on, the Clarity Act, could strip them of that role. Yesterday the bill failed its procedural vote, 49–50, so for now nothing changes — which is exactly the point. If someone in your family gets talked into a “guaranteed” crypto return, the state AG’s office is frequently the only door that opens. Keep that number where you can find it, and know it was on the table this week.

The record-income headline, and the line on it that’s about your house

The Census Bureau reported yesterday that real median household income hit $87,460 in 2025, the highest since they started counting in 1967, up 2.6 percent after inflation. You’ll see that number everywhere today. Two things it doesn’t say. Median means half of all households are under it, and if your raise last year was under 2.6 percent, you fell behind the household that made the headline. And further down the same release: Medicaid coverage fell for the second year running, and 26.7 million people had no insurance for the entire year of 2025. If your coverage lapsed in a renewal you didn’t know about, say so to the billing office before the first statement arrives — an uninsured bill negotiated on day one is a different animal from the same bill six months later, when it has a collector’s name on it.

What I published yesterday

Three that haven’t reached the email list yet:

• They Said the Government Banned ‘Yo-Yo’ Car Financing Scams. The Rule Never Took Effect. — the companion to today’s lead.

• If a Process Server Ever Handed You Debt-Lawsuit Papers, Your Name May Be in This Breach Settlement — the September 28 claim above.

• I Filed Bankruptcy and a Creditor Is Still Trying to Collect. Here’s What to Do. — the automatic stay has teeth, and this is how you use them.

If one of these was news to you, it’s news to somebody you know. Forward it, or send them to yourmoneyactually.com. It’s free, and I don’t sell the list.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d say across the kitchen table, and across the kitchen table I’d also say check the details against your own life before you act on any of it.

One more thing. The dealer, the countdown email, the “guaranteed” coin — every one of them works by making you decide fast. The people I’ve watched climb out of real trouble weren’t smarter or luckier. They got slower. They took the screenshot, they slept on it, they asked the one question. You can do that starting today, and it costs nothing.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

I lit some fragrances in order to make my room smell nice. I think I overdid it, though. My neighbors banged on my door complaining that it stunk up the whole building.

They’re incensed.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

Hi. It’s me. Your money.

I know. We don’t talk. You check on me at 11 p.m. with one eye closed, you swipe me at things, and on the first of the month you say my name in a tone. But Steve stepped away from the keyboard for one morning, so I’m taking it. Sit down. I’ve got a few things you need to hear from me directly.

Somebody took a man’s car to get to me. The state just took their license.

I’ve been through a lot. I’ve been left in a jacket, run through a washing machine, and spent a full year as a gift card in a drawer. This one still got me.

A Massachusetts debt buyer called Judgment Acquisitions Unlimited, its sister company Champion Funding, and their owner, Andrew Metcalf, are now permanently banned from collecting a dime in that state. The Attorney General’s office says they collected by seizing people’s vehicles — and, in the AG’s own words, to coerce payments on loans that had nothing to do with the car. Picture it. You owe on some old account. A tow truck shows up at dawn. Now you can’t get to the job where you were going to earn more of me. That’s not collecting. That’s a hostage situation with a lien.

Here’s the part to sit up for. Under the consent judgment announced yesterday, they walk away from roughly $52 million they were trying to squeeze out of more than 6,000 people. Certain court judgments can be vacated. Liens on people’s homes can be released. Seized cars go back. The office had already won two injunctions since it sued in February 2024. This shuts the door for good.

Why I’m telling you: you probably believe they can’t take my car over a credit card. Mostly true. Occasionally, catastrophically, false — it depends on your state and whether a collector holds a judgment against you. Massachusetts had to sue to make it stop, and I would not bet my life on your state getting around to it. So if a collector ever so much as mentions your vehicle, don’t argue on the phone. Write to your state Attorney General the same day. That’s the office that just did this, and they read those letters. I’ve watched.

You know somebody with an old collection account and a paid-off car they cannot afford to lose. Send them this today. If a collector ever threatens the car, the state AG’s office is the phone call — not the collector — and Massachusetts just proved it works.

There’s a file about me you have never read, and GEICO just paid $1.65 million over it

You know about your credit report. You may not know your insurer keeps a second one about me.

It’s called a C.L.U.E. report — Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange — and LexisNexis runs it. Every claim you’ve filed, and some you only asked about, lands in there, and insurers read it before they quote you. Wrong entry, higher premium, and you never see the number that did it. I do. I’m the one who leaves.

GEICO has agreed to pay $1.65 million to settle a class action alleging it failed to properly investigate and correct disputed information on customers’ C.L.U.E. reports after those disputes came through LexisNexis. GEICO denies wrongdoing; a settlement is not a finding. If you disputed something through LexisNexis between March 13, 2022 and May 1, 2026 and you’re in the class, about $150 of me arrives automatically — no claim form. Objection and opt-out deadline: October 20, 2026.

The bigger thing, whether you’ve ever touched GEICO or not: you’re entitled to see this file. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act you can request your consumer disclosure from LexisNexis — a few minutes, once a year, no charge. Do it before your next renewal, not after. I’ve been priced off a report you’ve never opened. I’d like you to open it.

I am not coming to you from Abbott. I’m sorry.

You saw the headline. Abbott, the formula maker, agreed to pay $384,999,040 to resolve allegations about formula from its Sturgis and Casa Grande plants that was bought with WIC and Medicaid dollars between 2018 and 2022. Yesterday state Attorneys General lined up to announce their slice — Oregon’s release does the math: $348.7 million to the federal government, $35.5 million split among 39 states.

Read that again. Governments. Not parents. If you fed a baby that formula, I know exactly what you assumed when a number with nine digits went by. Steve wrote the honest version yesterday and it hasn’t reached your inbox yet: No, the $384 Million Abbott Settlement Won’t Send You a Check — Here’s Why. It’s a recovery of public money over false claims — the government’s phrase — not a fund for families. Don’t wait up for me on this one. I’m not in it.

In Iowa, a little of me might actually come home

Iowa’s Attorney General announced yesterday that of the state’s $126 million Meta settlement, about $68 million has to go toward the harms in the lawsuit, and $25 million of that is to be returned to Iowans hurt by Meta’s practices aimed at children. Iowa says it’s the first state in that settlement to set up a restitution fund at all. No claim form yet, no deadline, no eligibility rules — the release announces the fund, not the process. If you’re in Iowa with a kid who lived on Instagram, put a sticky note on the fridge: watch for the Meta claim window. When it opens, some of me is in it.

The “raise” you’ll hear about on October 14 may not all reach me

The 2027 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment is expected October 14. Everyone on TV will call it a raise. For some of you it is. For some of you the Medicare Part B premium increase eats most of it before I ever land in your account — that’s the “hold harmless” rule, and it works differently depending on how you pay the premium. Steve explained the mechanism yesterday so January’s check doesn’t ambush you: The 2027 Social Security COLA Is Expected October 14 — And Medicare’s “Hold Harmless” Law. Four weeks to understand it before the number lands.

What Steve published yesterday

Two more from Monday that haven’t gone out by email, both worth your click:

• 870,000 People Are Barred From Future SBA Loans Over Suspected COVID Fraud — Here’s What It Means — and the Justice Department said yesterday the enforcement push behind it is expanding, not winding down.

• I Paid a Fake Debt Collector and Now I Want My Money Back. Here’s What to Do Right Now — the other way a collector call goes wrong: the collector was never real.

If I told you one thing today you didn’t know, I’ll tell somebody you love one too. Forward this, or send them to yourmoneyactually.com. It’s free, and nobody sells their address. I checked.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what a friend would tell you across the kitchen table, and a good friend would also tell you to check the details against your own life before you act.

One more thing, and then I’ll give Steve his keyboard back. I’ve been inside a lot of wallets. The people who ended up with more of me were not the ones who earned the most. They were the ones who knew where I was, read the file with their name on it, and made the one phone call everybody else put off. You can make that call this week. I’ll be right here when you do.

— Steve, on behalf of your money

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

My wife told me I have no sense of direction.

I have no idea where that came from.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

The number hiding in your grocery bill went up 58% this year, and nobody sent you a memo

Picture the truck. Not the one you drive — the one that brought every single thing on the shelf you’re standing in front of. The bread, the diapers, the cat litter, the bag of apples. All of it rode on diesel, and diesel is now $5.97 a gallon, up $2.20 in a single year. A year ago it was $3.77. That’s a 58% jump on the fuel that moves everything you buy.

Here’s why I’m putting this at the top of your Monday. When the grocery total keeps coming in higher, most people quietly blame themselves. I must be shopping badly. I must be less disciplined than I used to be. You’re not. You’re standing at the end of a supply chain whose fuel bill went up by more than half, and that cost lands in the price of the eggs long before anyone prints a headline about it.

And your own tank isn’t spared. Regular gas is $4.16, up 97 cents from a year ago — roughly 30% more for the same commute, and I’d bet the raise that was supposed to cover it never arrived. If you’re in California, diesel is $7.76 and regular is $5.68. These are the government’s own numbers, straight off the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly fuel update, released September 9 — and they get replaced tomorrow, which is why I’m handing them to you today rather than after the fact.

One more thing from the same page, because it changes who you should be mad at: crude oil is 52% of what you pay at the pump. Taxes are 12%. The station owner’s slice is inside the 15% that covers distribution and marketing. The person ringing you up is not the one doing this to you.

What to actually do with this. If your budget has felt wrong since spring, stop treating it as a willpower problem and re-run it with the real numbers: fuel and food are up, and by more than you were told. The most expensive mistake I watched people make over thirty years was covering a cost-of-living gap with a credit card “just until things settle down.” Things are not settling down. Name the gap, cut something you can see, and don’t finance the difference.

You know who in your life drives an hour each way to work and hasn’t had a raise this year. Send this to them today. They’ve been blaming themselves for a budget that a $2.20-a-gallon diesel jump broke for them, and nobody has told them the number.

Two things to pull out of the cupboard tonight

Both from the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recall list this week, and both put money or safety back in your hands.

The fire extinguisher that fails in a fire. Prepared Hero is recalling about 31,000 fire spray canisters because they can deteriorate while sitting in the cupboard and then rupture or fail to work when you actually need them. Nine have already exploded or broken down in storage. It’s the one product you buy specifically for the worst day of your life. Flip yours over: if the base says 09/2024, you’ve got one. The CPSC says they were sold on PreparedHero.com and Amazon from October 2024 through January 2026 for $18 to $30. Free replacement at 888-457-2672, and don’t toss it in the trash — it’s pressurized and has to go to hazardous-waste disposal.

2.3 million candy bottles, full refund. Ricky Joy’s Sour Crush candy bottles — the ones with the green monster on the front, in blue, red, green and pink — are recalled because the rolling ball can come off and choke a child. According to the recall notice they were sold at H-E-B, Walmart.com and candy shops nationwide from January 2023 through May 2026, about $3 a bottle or $13 to $32 a pack. Most people throw a recalled food in the bin and eat the loss. Don’t: they’ll send you a prepaid shipping label and refund the money.

The $225,000 tax pitch that just earned a man five years

You may have sat through this one at a seminar, or heard it on a podcast: put your business inside a stack of trusts and a “private family foundation,” own nothing, control everything, and legally stop paying tax on almost all of your income.

On Friday the Justice Department announced that the Texas man selling that exact package — for fees as high as $225,000 — was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison. He told clients to route about 98% of their business income through layered trusts, run their cars, entertainment and mortgage payments through the trust accounts, and deduct it all. He even steered them to tax preparers he’d picked out himself. Prosecutors say the scheme hid more than $27 million from the IRS.

Here’s the part that matters for you. He’s the one going to prison. The clients who paid him are the ones who still owe every dollar of the tax he “eliminated,” plus penalties and interest. A promoter who tells you the tax simply disappears — and who also wants to choose your accountant — is describing a crime with you as the co-signer.

Same week, same agency: an Illinois woman got 27 months for sending “fictitious financial instruments” to the IRS — fake checks, money orders and payment vouchers, the “secret Treasury account” nonsense that gets passed around in debt forums. She sought $4.6 million in refunds and still has to pay back $303,672. If anyone in a hard spot has been handed that “solution,” this is what it costs.

There is no such thing as “investment insurance,” and the SEC just said so out loud

This one didn’t make the news beyond a wire notice, and it should have. Last Wednesday the SEC charged a New Jersey man and his two companies with running a $16 million Ponzi scheme aimed, the SEC alleges, at Christians of Ghanaian heritage in New York and New Jersey — retirees, taxi drivers, home health aides, students, an ailing widow with young children, two churches and a prayer group. Most had never invested before.

The tell, in the SEC’s own words: investors were told their money was protected by “financial, investment insurance.” That product does not exist. No policy insures an investment fund against losing money, and anyone who says one does is describing the scam, not the safeguard. The SEC alleges more than $5.8 million went to the founder’s personal expenses, including buying and furnishing his house, and about $6.6 million went to pay earlier investors with later investors’ money. These are allegations; no court has found liability.

If someone at your church, your job or your family table is being pitched a “safe, insured” return by a person from your own community, that shared background is the sales tool, not a reason to trust it.

Money you may be owed without filing a thing, and one with five weeks left

Costa sunglasses, automatic payment. The rule you’ve internalized — no claim form, no money — is wrong here. Costa Del Mar agreed to a $23.9 million settlement over charging more than the “nominal fee” it promised for lens and frame repairs. If you bought non-prescription Costa sunglasses before January 1, 2018 and were charged more than $11.95 for a repair between April 2015 and January 28, 2026, you get paid automatically unless you opt out. Florida residents are excluded, oddly, and Costa admits no wrongdoing. Nothing to do except make sure they have your address.

Globe Life and American Income Life data breach, deadline October 19. If you got a letter in October 2024 saying your personal information — including Social Security numbers and health-policy details — was exposed, you’re one of 532,578 people in this settlement. Up to $5,000 for documented losses, $18 an hour for up to four hours of your time, and two years of credit monitoring that you activate with the unique code in your letter. There’s no cash instead of the monitoring, so find that letter. Claims close October 19, 2026.

What I published Friday

Three pieces that haven’t gone out by email yet:

• FCA’s Valve Train Warranty Settlement: What’s Automatic — and What You Have to Claim — Ram, Jeep, Dodge and Chrysler owners, read this one.

• The IRS Filed a Tax Lien Against Me. Here’s What to Do Right Now. — the honest version, not the seminar version.

• Damon Day’s Tesla Has 185,000 Miles. Here’s What 6 Years of Repairs Really Cost. — real numbers from my co-host’s actual car.

If this issue told you one thing you didn’t know, it’ll tell somebody you love one too. Forward it, or send them to yourmoneyactually.com — it’s free, and I don’t sell their address to anyone.

Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d tell a friend across the kitchen table, and a good friend would also tell you to check the details against your own life before you act.

Here’s what thirty years of sitting with people in money trouble actually taught me: the ones who got out were not the ones with the biggest raise or the luckiest break. They were the ones who looked at the real number — the ugly one — and made one decision that week instead of none. You can do that today. The number is in this email.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

Why did the stadium get hot after the game?

All the fans left.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

You drive to the dealership to pick up the car. There is no car. There was never a car.

Picture the morning. You’ve been hunting this exact vehicle for months — the right year, the right miles, the color your spouse wanted. You found it at a dealership a few states over. The website was immaculate: the inventory, the financing page, the photos from every angle, the customer reviews. You did what careful people do. You looked it over twice. You wired the money.

And now you’re standing at a counter and a man you’ve never spoken to is telling you, politely, that there’s no order in the system. No payment. No car. There was never a car.

The FTC’s Military Consumer team put out this warning days ago and it has barely made a ripple outside government channels, which is exactly why I’m handing it to you now rather than waiting for it to reach the evening news.

Here is the part that should genuinely unsettle you. Scammers are now using AI to clone real dealership websites — not a clumsy fake, an actual copy. The logos, the inventory, the financing language, the testimonials from real customers who really did buy cars, from the real dealer they stole the site from. They advertise the hard-to-find vehicle, because that is the one you will drive across state lines and wire money for.

So the check nearly all of us rely on — does this website look legitimate? — is now worthless. It looks legitimate because it IS legitimate. It’s somebody else’s real website. Twenty years of “watch for a sloppy site, bad grammar, a weird logo” just stopped protecting anyone, and almost nobody has been told.

What still works is unglamorous and physical. In the FTC’s own words: “ask to see the car, and the dealership, in person. If they won’t let you, pump the brakes.” Too far to visit? Send a mobile inspection service — “if they won’t let you, consider taking your business somewhere else.” Search the dealer’s name next to scam, review, and complaint. And if they want wire transfer only, you already have your answer. A real dealership takes several forms of payment. Wire is the one that does not come back. Ever. That is usually a family’s entire car budget, gone in an afternoon, and there is no chargeback, no fraud department, no undo.

You know exactly who in your life is car shopping right now — the kid buying their first one, the parent replacing a car that finally died, the friend who found a deal three states away and keeps sending you photos of it. Forward this to them before they wire anything. The old advice they’re relying on stopped working and nobody sent them a memo.

And while we’re on things you believe that are no longer true: HIPAA does not cover your health app

This one is quieter, and I think it will bother you more once it sinks in.

Think about what’s actually on your phone. A period tracker that knows about a pregnancy you haven’t announced. A mood journal with a bad month in it. A sobriety counter. A blood sugar log. Things you have told an app and not told your mother.

Most people assume HIPAA covers all of that, because it’s health information and HIPAA is the health privacy law. It doesn’t. HIPAA covers doctors, hospitals, insurers and their business associates. It does not cover the app. Your therapist’s notes are protected. The app you used to find the therapist, and the journal where you wrote how the session went, generally are not.

What does cover them is a rule almost nobody has heard of — the FTC’s Health Breach Notification Rule, expanded in 2024 to reach health apps and fitness trackers specifically. It requires them to tell you, and to tell the FTC, when your data is breached.

I’m raising it today because on Tuesday the FTC withdrew a 2021 policy statement about those apps, and I watched a trade headline turn that into the FTC scrapped health app breach protection. It is backwards, and I nearly repeated it to you before I read the actual filing. The FTC’s stated reason for withdrawing the 2021 statement is that the 2024 rule update already covers this ground — the old guidance was redundant. The Rule is in force. The coverage got clearer, not thinner.

Why I’m telling you: you have a right here you didn’t know you had, on the data you’d least want loose, and it does not come from the law you assumed. If a health app you use is breached and you never hear a word, that silence may be the violation — and it goes to reportfraud.ftc.gov, not to HHS. People lose months writing to the wrong agency about exactly this.

The small surrender that costs you the most

A pattern this week, and it’s about a feeling more than a case.

You get hit with a $9 fee you didn’t agree to. You feel the flash of irritation. Then you remember you clicked “I agree” to something once, and you let it go — because arguing feels futile and nine dollars isn’t worth your Saturday. That resignation is the most profitable thing about the fee. It is priced in.

It is also, increasingly, wrong:

• Williams-Sonoma just lost its bid to force a drip-pricing case into private arbitration — drip pricing being when the price you first see isn’t the price at checkout.

• Altice couldn’t get Connecticut’s attorney general out of a $39 million junk-fee lawsuit.

• New proposed class actions accuse AMC of junk fees on online movie tickets and the retailer Edikted of junk shipping fees (Top Class Actions). Allegations; no court has found liability.

The click-through is not the wall they need you to think it is. You can dispute a fee with your card issuer, complain to your state AG, and file with the CFPB no matter what a terms page said. The nine dollars is not the point. The habit of assuming you have no standing is what actually costs you, and it compounds quietly for years.

Things worth two minutes this week

• If a storm hit you, be careful who knocks. Indiana’s attorney general filed four lawsuits against out-of-state tree services and opened two investigations into alleged price gouging and unlicensed work after severe storms. Storm chasers are a national pattern. Never pay in full up front, and check the license before the truck is in your driveway.

• It’s National Preparedness Month, and the useful chore takes ten minutes. Walk your home with your phone and photograph what you own, room by room. That’s your inventory if you ever file a claim, and people without one settle for less. While you’re at it, find out whether your policy pays for temporary shelter.

• The SEC charged a New Jersey man and two companies he controls in an alleged $16 million Ponzi scheme said to have taken money from more than 200 people. Allegations, not findings. The tell never changes: returns that never dip aren’t a strategy, they’re a story.

What I published yesterday

• They Say My Unemployment Overpayment Was Fraud. Here’s What to Do Right Now.

• The DOJ Just Published Its 2025 Bankruptcy Audit Numbers — Here’s How Rare an Audit Actually Is

• They Said You Can’t Stop Debit Card Overdraft Fees. You Were Never Supposed to Be Charged Without Saying Yes First.

• Concora Credit Robocall Settlement: Claim $250–$650 Even If You Were Never a Customer

For the deeper dives — company reviews, full case breakdowns, the things that need more than a paragraph — that’s the Weekday Briefing. This is the quick version, every weekday. If today’s issue was useful, pass it along.

Nothing here is legal advice, and I’m not your lawyer or your financial advisor. These are filings and allegations unless I say a court decided something, and your situation has details I don’t know about. Talk to somebody who can see all of it before you act on any of it.

Here’s what thirty-some years of this has actually taught me. The money that disappears almost never disappears because someone was careless. It goes because a careful person checked the thing they were taught to check, and the rules had changed underneath them without anyone sending word. Look at the website. Trust HIPAA. Assume the fine print won. Every one of those was good advice once. None of them is a character flaw now — they’re just beliefs that expired quietly.

That’s the whole reason I write this. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because somebody should be telling you when the ground moves. Pick one thing in here and check it this weekend. That’s it. That’s the entire job.

Back Monday.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

The CEO of IKEA has just been elected prime minister of Sweden.

His first act will be to assemble his cabinet.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

Your phone company is supposed to know who’s handing it those scam calls. Some of them don’t bother.

Forty-nine attorneys general wrote to the FCC this week, and the thing they’re asking for explains something you’ve probably wondered about for years: why does this keep happening when everyone says they’re fighting it?

Here’s the part nobody explains. When your phone rings, that call didn’t come straight from the caller to you. It got handed down a chain of phone companies, each one passing it to the next. Federal rules already say every company in that chain has to take reasonable steps to check who it’s accepting calls from. Some of them just... don’t. And the calls come through.

The numbers the AGs put in the letter: Americans got more than 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts last year, and lost nearly $2 billion to them.

The rule has a name — “Know Your Upstream Provider” — and the AGs want it to have teeth. Real verified information about who’s sending you calls. Checks that happen regularly, not once when the contract is signed. Penalties. Record-keeping so investigators can follow it later.

And this isn’t theoretical. Two weeks ago the FCC ordered six phone companies to fix their robocall problems or lose the ability to route calls on the U.S. network at all. That’s the whole business. Maryland’s Attorney General Brown, Oregon’s Dan Rayfield and Iowa’s Brenna Bird all signed — this is one of the genuinely bipartisan ones, 49 states and territories.

What I’d take from it: the calls aren’t getting through because the technology can’t stop them. They’re getting through because somewhere in that chain, checking cost money and looking away didn’t.

Somebody in your life still answers those calls. You know who — the one who picks up every unknown number because it might be the doctor’s office. Send them this. The useful part isn’t outrage, it’s that their own carrier almost certainly offers free call-blocking they’ve never switched on, and it takes two minutes in the account settings.

A parking ticket became a licensed-lender problem, and the collector was charging a fee I’ve rarely seen defended

This one’s buried in a Connecticut banking bulletin, which is exactly where nobody looks.

On August 28, after a hearing, Connecticut’s banking commissioner found that Parking Revenue Recovery Service had been acting as a consumer collection agency in the state without a license — and had charged at least one Connecticut debtor a collection fee over 15% of the amount collected, which state law caps. The order: cease and desist, a $30,000 civil penalty, and restitution of any money obtained from Connecticut debtors through those violations.

Here’s why I’m telling you this instead of filing it under trivia. Parking and towing debts get handed to collectors constantly, and almost nobody treats them like real debt collection with real rules attached. They are. The licensing requirement is the same one that applies to a credit card collector. So is the fee cap.

If a collector is adding a percentage on top of what you supposedly owe, that number isn’t automatically theirs to set. Ask what it is, ask what authorizes it, and ask whether they’re licensed in your state. In a lot of states you can check that licence yourself online in about a minute.

Findings from a state regulator, not a court, and they’re specific to Connecticut law. But the shape of it travels.

The fine print you assumed was airtight

Two rulings this week that both come down to the same thing — the terms you clicked through may not do what you think they do.

A California federal judge let a lawsuit against Williams-Sonoma go forward, over claims it advertised low prices and added fees at checkout. The retailer wanted it pushed into arbitration. The judge said its mass-arbitration provision “unconscionably chills” consumers from bringing claims at all — so it doesn’t get to hide behind it.

And in Connecticut, a state judge ruled Altice USA can’t escape the state’s lawsuit over a $6 “network enhancement fee” it charged customers. The state is seeking $39 million.

I’ve watched people read an arbitration clause, decide they have no options, and stop. Sometimes that’s right. Sometimes the clause is written so aggressively that a court won’t enforce it. You don’t have to know which — you just have to not assume the fine print already won. That’s the whole lesson, and it’s worth more than either case.

An app where people bid until the money’s gone

The Roundup by TSG Consumer published its final issue this week, and it went out on a piece worth reading about Whatnot, the live shopping app now valued around $20 billion.

The mechanics: auctions on 45-second countdowns, one-swipe bidding, no checkout screen. Its signature format is “the break” — you buy a randomized share of a sealed box and find out what you got when it’s opened live on camera.

The Wall Street Journal profiled one user who spent $1.4 million in four months, and another who drained a 401(k) chasing silver dollars. More than 70 arbitration claimants allege the breaks amount to an illegal lottery under California law.

I’m not going to tell you a shopping app is a casino. But when the countdown is 45 seconds, the bid is one swipe, there’s no checkout screen to pause at, and you don’t know what you bought until someone opens it on camera — those aren’t shopping features. Every one of them removes a moment where a person might stop. That’s a design choice, and it’s the same design choice slot machines make.

Coming Tuesday, and worth knowing before the headlines

On September 15 the Census Bureau releases its 2025 numbers on income, poverty and health insurance coverage.

One thing to have straight before the arguing starts: there are two poverty measures, and they disagree. The official one, essentially unchanged since the mid-1960s, counts cash income only. The Supplemental Poverty Measure counts noncash benefits too — food assistance, housing help — and then subtracts what you actually have to spend on taxes and medical care.

They produce different numbers, and whichever supports someone’s argument is the one they’ll quote. Now you’ll know which is which.

What I published yesterday

• Connecticut ordered a paycheck-advance app to refund every fee it charged — the other half of that same banking bulletin

• FinWise Bank’s $2.8 million data breach settlement — claims close October 29

• D.C. now requires hospitals to ask whether you qualify for financial assistance

• My credit dispute was rejected and they won’t say why

On the podcast

Damon and I just put out Should Adult Kids Pay Rent — or Are You Sacrificing Your Retirement?

It’s a harder conversation than it sounds. The money question is simple arithmetic. The part that isn’t is that most parents I’ve talked to already know the answer and can’t bring themselves to say it out loud.

One more thing

If today’s issue was useful, forward it to one person. That’s genuinely how this grows — I don’t buy ads and I don’t sell your email to anyone.

I write a longer Weekday Briefing over at GetOutOfDebt.org if you want more depth on any of this.

Nothing here is legal or financial advice for your specific situation. I’m telling you what happened and what I’d look at. The allegations described are allegations — no court has found liability in the cases above.

Thirty years of doing this and the thing that still surprises me is how ordinary the way out usually is. Not a windfall, not a lawsuit, not a lucky break. One honest look at the actual numbers, then one decision. Then another one next month. People climb out of holes that look bottomless from the inside, and almost none of them can point to the dramatic moment it turned — because there wasn’t one.

You’re doing better than you think you are. See you tomorrow.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

Why aren’t marsupials considered bears?

They don’t have the right koala-fications.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

The paycheck advance app said it wasn’t a loan. Connecticut just made it give every fee back.

If you get part of your paycheck early through an app — Tapcheck, or one of the dozen that work the same way — this one is about you, and it’s the kind of thing nobody tells you until a state regulator does.

Here’s what happened. Connecticut’s Department of Banking put out its weekly bulletin on Tuesday (Bulletin 3263 — it came by email; the online archive runs to 3262 as I write this). In it: on August 28 the Banking Commissioner entered a consent order with Tapcheck Inc. of Plano, Texas. The Commissioner alleged that from January 1, 2024 to January 29, 2026, Tapcheck made, offered, and advertised small loans to Connecticut borrowers without the license the state requires, and took payments on them. Tapcheck agreed to pay a $200,000 penalty, $400 in back licensing fees, and — this is the line — “restitution of all fees paid to Tapcheck.” Every fee. A consent order is a settlement, not a court finding, and Tapcheck was in the middle of applying for that license when this surfaced.

Now, what Tapcheck sells. Its own site describes it as earned wage access: after a shift, up to 70% of your net earnings become available in the app, and “employees pay only a single, ATM-like fee for transfers.” That’s the whole industry’s pitch. It’s your money. You earned it. You’re just getting it early. Not a loan.

Connecticut’s answer is: it’s a loan. The state wrote that into law last year — Public Act 25-155, effective October 1, 2025 — which added advances on earned-but-unpaid wages to the definition of a small loan and counted every fee, tip, or “voluntary” charge as a finance charge, capped at $4 per advance or $30 a month. The Tapcheck order reaches back before that law, to January 2024, because the regulator’s position is that these were small loans all along.

Why I’m telling you: an “ATM-like fee” is only small if you count it like an ATM fee. Count it like the loan the state says it is. Five dollars to get $100 ten days before payday is 5% for ten days. Annualized, that’s about 182%. That is payday-loan arithmetic wearing a friendlier app. Used once, in a genuine pinch, fine. Used every pay period — which is how these are designed to be used — it’s a loan you’re renewing 26 times a year, and the fees never show up as a line item called “interest.”

So do one thing today: open the app, go to your history, and add up the fees for the last twelve months. Just the number. If you’re in Connecticut and used Tapcheck between January 2024 and this January, that money is supposed to come back to you — watch for it, and if nothing arrives, the Department of Banking takes consumer complaints directly.

You know who in your life gets paid through an app between paydays — hourly, tips, restaurant, warehouse, home health. Send them this. The fee looks like an ATM charge and it’s priced like a payday loan, and nobody is going to add it up for them.

Medical debt off your credit report? Depends where you live, and on the question you never asked

Washington, D.C. just passed one of the strongest medical debt laws in the country, and I want to use it to clear up something a lot of people have wrong.

The law first. The Medical Debt Mitigation Amendment Act of 2026 became law on August 20 without the Mayor’s signature, after the Council passed it unanimously. Once it applies — the law firms tracking it note the operative requirements don’t start until six months after D.C. includes the law’s fiscal effect in an approved budget, which pushes it into 2027 — providers and collectors in D.C. can’t report medical debt to the credit bureaus at all. Interest on it is capped at 3%. Nobody can start collecting until 180 days after your first bill, with 90 days’ notice. No lien on your home over a medical bill, no wage garnishment if your household is under 500% of the poverty line, and hospitals have to screen you for financial assistance, with payment plans capped at 3% of monthly income.

Here’s the part people get wrong. You may remember the headline last year that medical debt was coming off everyone’s credit report. That was a federal rule from the CFPB. It never took effect. On July 11, 2025 a federal court in Texas vacated it — at the joint request of the CFPB itself and the lenders who sued. The CFPB’s own page now describes the rule as “for reference only.”

What is true everywhere, because the three bureaus did it voluntarily: since July 2022, paid medical collections don’t appear, since April 2023 medical collections under $500 don’t appear, and unpaid ones don’t show up until they’re a year old. Above $500 and unpaid, it can still land on your report — unless your state, or D.C., says otherwise. So “medical debt doesn’t count anymore” is about half true, and which half depends on your zip code.

And the question you never asked. Any nonprofit hospital in America is required by federal tax law — Section 501(r) — to have a written financial assistance policy, to publicize it, to give you a plain-language summary, and to charge people who qualify no more than what it generally bills insured patients. It’s been the law for over a decade. I have talked with hundreds of people carrying a hospital bill who were never told the policy existed, because the billing department is not in the business of telling you. D.C. now makes the hospital ask. Everywhere else, you have to. So if you’re carrying a hospital bill right now, before you pay another dollar, ask one sentence: “What is your financial assistance policy, and am I eligible?” Ask before the bill is a year old, while it still can’t touch your credit.

The second payment processor in three days

Monday it was Nuvei. Yesterday the FTC announced Humboldt Merchant Services will pay $12 million and be permanently banned from processing payments for high-risk merchants. The FTC’s complaint alleges Humboldt processed payments for more than 1,000 shell merchants — fronts for fraudsters running unauthorized-billing scams, including one the FTC shut down in 2024 — and did it despite chargeback rates almost ten times what the card networks consider excessive. It also alleges Humboldt moved those accounts onto a lower-risk bank identification number so more of the charges would get approved. Allegations in a proposed order, not a court finding; the vote was 2-0.

Two processors in one week tells you where the plumbing leaks. “Unauthorized billing” is a charge you never agreed to, usually small, usually recurring, on a card you use every day. The money in this order is for redress, and the FTC contacts people itself — anyone who calls offering to “get you on the list” for a fee is the next scam. What you can do is the boring thing: scroll twelve months of card statements for a merchant name you don’t recognize, and dispute it. Small and recurring is exactly what these were built to look like.

Your rent may have been priced by software, and the sixth landlord just settled

On Friday the Justice Department filed a proposed consent decree with Pinnacle Property Management, which it calls one of America’s largest landlords. The complaint alleged that Pinnacle and other big landlords “actively participated in a scheme to set their rents using each other’s competitively sensitive information through pricing algorithms” — feeding nonpublic rent data into RealPage’s software and conferring with competitors on pricing strategy. RealPage, Cortland, Greystar, LivCor and Willow Bridge settled earlier in the same North Carolina case. Allegations resolved by settlement, no court finding of liability, and a judge still has to approve it after a 60-day public comment period.

Why this is a kitchen-table item and not a lawyer item: if you rent from a large management company, the “market rate” you were quoted may not have been a person looking at the neighborhood. It may have been an algorithm’s recommendation built partly on what the buildings across the street were charging, which is the thing competitors are not supposed to know about each other. I can’t tell you your rent was set that way. I can tell you that six of the biggest names in the business have now agreed to stop, which is a decent argument that a renewal number is a starting point and not a fact. Ask what it’s based on. Landlords who have to answer that question out loud sometimes find a lower one.

Things to check this week

• 2024–2026 Ford Mustangs — 148,663 of them. NHTSA recall 26V547000: engine-compartment wiring ground connections can fracture, and the recall notice says that can mean a loss of drive power, headlights, wipers, A/C, or the cooling fan. Dealers will replace the terminals free, but the notice says the actual fix isn’t expected until March 2027 — owners get an interim letter first. Check your VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls; Ford’s number for it is 26C40, customer service 1-866-436-7332.

• Transamerica, $110 million, no claim form. If you or a parent own or owned a Transamerica universal life policy called Direct Recognition Life 10 or 11 (codes DRL-10, DRL-11) that was in force on January 1, 2016, the official settlement site says checks go out automatically — you don’t file anything. October 2 is the deadline to opt out or object; the hearing is November 9. The administrator is 1-888-305-6486. Anyone who calls you asking for a fee to “process” it is not the administrator.

• Two minutes for hurricane season. The FTC’s preparedness alert has one item worth doing today: walk through your house with your phone and photograph what you own. That’s your inventory if you ever file a claim, and people who don’t have one settle for less. While you’re at it, find out whether your policy pays for temporary shelter.

What I published yesterday

• 15 Million Dental Patients’ Records Exposed at DentaQuest — A Credit Freeze Won’t Cover the Part That Matters

• What Pagaya Just Told the SEC About What Happens When You’re Declined for a Loan

• I Signed That Debt While Medicated and Pressured. Now They’re Gone — Do I Still Owe It?

• They Said a Free Credit Report Every Week Is a Legal Right. It’s a Bonus the Bureaus Could Take Back

• I Paid a Credit Repair Company and Nothing Happened. Here’s What to Do

For the deeper dives — company reviews, full case breakdowns, the stuff that needs more than a paragraph — that’s what the Weekday Briefing is for. This one’s the quick version, every day. If today’s issue was useful, pass it along.

Nothing here is legal advice, and I’m not your lawyer or your financial advisor. These are filings and allegations unless I say a court decided something, and your situation has details I don’t know about. Talk to somebody who can see all of it before you act on any of it.

One thing I’ve noticed in thirty-some years of this: the fees that do the most damage are the ones designed to feel too small to add up. Five dollars here. A bill nobody explained. A charge that looks like a subscription. None of them is the problem on its own; the not-looking is. And the not-looking is the one part of this you can change by tonight, for free, without anyone’s permission. The people I’ve watched climb out did not find more money. They started counting the money they already had. You can do that today.

Back tomorrow.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?

Ten-tickles.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

The car loan deduction that covers last year, and the form nobody had to send you

This one has a quiet gap in it, and I want you to know about the gap more than the deduction.

Treasury and the IRS published the final car loan interest rules in the Federal Register this morning. The headline is familiar by now: you can deduct up to $10,000 a year of interest on a qualifying car loan, and — this is the part most people miss — you can take it without itemizing. It runs for tax years 2025 through 2028.

Read that year again. 2025. A tax year you have already filed.

Here’s the gap. New reporting rules require your lender to send you a statement showing the interest you paid, once it hits $600 in a year. But for calendar year 2025, an earlier IRS notice let lenders off with something much softer: they were treated as compliant if they simply made a statement available to you. Available. Not mailed, not emailed — sitting in a portal, if you knew to go looking.

Several lenders asked Treasury to extend that easier treatment into 2026. In today’s rules, Treasury said no. Their reasoning, more or less: taxpayers need this number to file, and lenders have had eighteen months to build the systems. So from 2026 forward you get a real statement.

2025 is the one year that fell through the gap. Which means there are people who paid tax on interest Congress had already made deductible, for no reason other than that the piece of paper telling them never had to arrive.

So: log into your auto loan account and find total interest paid in 2025. It takes about two minutes. Then check whether the loan actually qualifies, because the rules are narrower than the dealership makes them sound:

• The car had to be new to you — the original use has to begin with you. A used car fails outright.

• Final assembly in the United States. The badge on the hood tells you nothing; the plant does.

• The loan had to start after December 31, 2024, and be secured by a first lien on the car itself.

• Income matters. The deduction shrinks by $200 for every $1,000 your modified adjusted gross income runs over $100,000, or $200,000 filing jointly — so it is gone entirely at $150,000 and $250,000.

• The $10,000 cap is per tax return, not per person. Married filing jointly does not make it $20,000. I expect that one to surprise people.

If you paid qualifying interest in 2025 and left it off your return, an amended return is the remedy. Talk to whoever does your taxes before you file one — but go get the number first, because nobody is going to hand it to you for that year.

Forward this to anyone you know who bought a new car last year. They filed a normal return, nothing went wrong, and no form ever showed up — which is exactly why they would never think to check. The money is not lost. It is just sitting behind a login nobody told them about.

I wrote up the full qualification detail, including what happens with dealer demo cars and refinances, in this piece on who actually qualifies.

One loan, listed twice, and $1,080 that looks like $2,160

Most people read a credit report looking for accounts they don’t recognize. Almost nobody reads it looking for the same account listed twice.

A lawsuit filed last month in federal court in South Carolina alleges exactly that. According to the complaint, a single installment loan showed up on the plaintiff’s TransUnion report twice — once reported by the lender, Upgrade, and once by CBW Bank, the bank behind the loan. Matching open dates. Matching terms. Matching balances. The result, as alleged: one charged-off obligation of $1,080 appeared as $2,160 of delinquent debt. The complaint says both companies were told in writing and neither fixed it.

These are allegations. No court has found anyone liable, and both companies are entitled to their defense. I’m telling you because of the shape of it, not the verdict.

Modern lending has layers. A fintech brand you’ve heard of arranges the loan; a bank you’ve never heard of actually issues it. Both can report to the credit bureaus. When both do, one debt wears two faces, and every scoring model in the country counts it twice.

Go look at your own report. Two entries, same open date, same original balance, different company names — that is the pattern. Dispute it in writing, to the bureau and to both furnishers, because the written dispute is what starts the clock on their legal duty to investigate. A phone call does not.

We ran the full complaint here, if you want to see how it’s actually pleaded.

And it is not one case. In the last two days alone, at least four new federal suits were filed against Equifax and TransUnion — Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, Georgia. I say at least deliberately: that count is federal courts only, credit reporting cases can also be brought in state court, and the federal index runs a week or two behind. The real number is higher. It always is.

Things to check this week

The Consumer Product Safety Commission posted a batch on Friday. Three of them are the kind that sit in a house for months:

• Loyoda adult portable bed rails — the CPSC notice says they were sold on Amazon.com from June 2025 through April 2026 for $40 to $50, and warns of entrapment and asphyxiation risk. Stop using them now. No injuries reported, and I’d rather it stayed that way. Recall details and the refund process.

• XO Poppy Power Trip magnetic wireless power banks, sold at TJX and Marshalls — fire and burn hazards.

• Amana through-the-wall air conditioners and heat pumps — fire risk.

A recall is a refund you have to claim. The people who get the money are the ones who check this week, not the ones who mean to.

What I published

• My Private Student Loans Might Not Survive Bankruptcy the Way I Was Told

• Damon Day’s Son Was Stranded at 1 AM After a $3,700 Repair Failed

• EmblemHealth and NYC Have Agreed to a $53 Million Retiree Copay Settlement

For the deeper dives — company reviews, full case breakdowns, the stuff that needs more than a paragraph — that’s what the Weekday Briefing is for. This one’s the quick version, every day. If today’s issue was useful, pass it along.

Nothing here is legal advice, and I’m not your lawyer or your financial advisor. These are filings and allegations unless I say a court decided something, and your situation has details I don’t know about. Talk to somebody who can see all of it before you act on any of it.

Here’s what I keep coming back to after thirty years of this. Almost none of today’s issue is about money you have to find. It’s about money that is already yours, sitting somewhere nobody pointed you to — a number behind a login, a refund on a recall page, a duplicate line on a credit report. The system is not built to hand you those. It is built to let you not notice them. But the looking is free, and you’re the one person allowed to do it. Go look at one thing today.

Back tomorrow.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

What’s the fastest liquid on the planet?

Milk. It’s pasteurized before you even see it.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

Somebody had to let that scam charge your card. On Thursday the FTC fined them $4.85 million

Here’s a thing most people never think about, and it changes what you do when it happens to you.

When a scam takes money off your credit card, the money doesn’t travel straight from you to some anonymous crook overseas. It can’t. To charge a Visa or a Mastercard, you need a payment processor — a real, regulated, named company that agrees to run your transactions. Every fake “your computer is infected” popup that ever got paid, got paid because a company in the middle opened an account for the people behind it.

On Thursday the FTC went after one of those middlemen. Global processor Nuvei agreed to pay $4.85 million and to actually screen who it does business with, to settle charges that it opened and kept accounts for merchants it “knew or should have known” were running deceptions.

The number that stopped me: the FTC alleges Nuvei processed more than $30 million in consumer payments for a single offshore tech support scam called Reimage — from 2017 to 2023. Six years. The complaint also says it took on merchants selling business opportunities with baseless earnings claims, and merchants impersonating government tax authorities. These are allegations in a complaint and a settlement, not a court finding of guilt.

So why does this matter to you and not just to lawyers? Because it tells you where the leverage is. If your father paid $299 to somebody who called about his computer, the instinct is to feel foolish and let it go — the crook is gone, what’s the point. But the crook was never the only party. There is a processor, and a bank, and a card network, and every one of them has rules about this and a federal agency currently paying attention. That is why you dispute the charge with your card issuer instead of writing it off. You are not chasing the scammer. You are telling the one company in the chain that has an address and a regulator.

Forward this to whoever in your family answers the phone to unknown numbers. If somebody ever paid a “tech support” charge and never disputed it because they assumed the money was gone — it went through a processor like this one, and that is exactly the charge that gets reversed when you actually call the card company.

The FTC is mailing out money right now, and people are throwing it away

This is the part that always gets me. When the FTC wins one of these cases, it sends the money back — actual paper checks and PayPal payments to actual people. Refunds went out in August alone for AT&T data throttling, Grubhub, Amazon Flex drivers, Helping America Group and Blueprint to Wealth.

You don’t apply for most of these. If you were in the case, they find you. Which is precisely the problem: an unexpected check arrives from a company you half-remember, it looks exactly like every sweepstakes scam you’ve been warned about, and into the bin it goes.

Two things worth knowing. FTC refund checks usually expire — commonly 90 days — and after that you are asking for a reissue you may not get. And the FTC never asks you to pay a fee or hand over your bank details to claim one. If someone does ask, that is the scam, and the real refund page above is how you check.

Go look at that list. The FTC names the cases and the administrator handling each one on its own refund page — so if one of those names is a company you actually dealt with, that is the envelope you do not want to bin.

Six million bottles of household cleaner, recalled Friday

Quick one, and it is the kind of thing that pays for itself.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Friday that Clorox Puerto Rico is recalling about 6 million bottles of scented Mistolin and Lestoil multi-purpose cleaners over the risk of bacteria in the product. Six million is not a niche batch — that is a bottle under a lot of kitchen sinks.

Here is the money part people skip. A recall is a refund. You are entitled to a remedy from the company, and for a consumable like this that normally means your money back, usually without the receipt. Most people read a recall headline, think “I should check that sometime,” and never do, which means the manufacturer keeps money that was supposed to come back to you.

Two minutes: look under the sink, check the full CPSC recall list while you’re at it, and if you have a bottle, stop using it and file for the refund.

What I published

• A Medical Bill Went to Collections and Nobody Warned Me. Here’s What to Do Right Now.

• Can Debt Collectors Take VA Disability? What I Tell Veterans When the Truck Dies

• The Car Loan Interest Deduction Is Real — But Dealers Are Already Using It to Sell You More Car

For the deeper dives — company reviews, full case breakdowns, the stuff that needs more than a paragraph — that’s what the Weekday Briefing is for. This one’s the quick version, every day. If today’s issue was useful, pass it along.

Nothing here is legal advice, and I’m not your lawyer or your financial advisor. These are filings and allegations, not findings — read “alleges” as exactly that. Talk to someone qualified before you act on anything specific to your situation.

Something I want you to take out of today. Every story up there has a company in the middle of it — a processor, a card issuer, an agency with a refund list. When you are the one who got taken, it feels like you against a ghost, and ghosts can’t be argued with. But there is almost always somebody real in that chain with a name, a rulebook and a phone number. Thirty years of this and the pattern holds: the money comes back to the people who make one uncomfortable phone call, not to the people who were cleverest about it. Make the call. I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

Why did the scarecrow win an award?

Because he was outstanding in his field.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

You can stop an IRS interview cold — even after you’ve started answering

Two IRS items this week, and I’ll tell you why. Wednesday I wrote about penalty abatement being a free phone call. This week the IRS’s own watchdog put out two reports, and one of them is about a right that I’d bet almost nobody reading this knows they have.

Here it is. If you are ever sitting in an interview with an IRS officer — an audit, a collection interview, in person — and you say clearly that you want to talk to an attorney, a CPA, or an enrolled agent, that officer has to stop the interview. Not “should.” The statute says shall suspend.

And here’s the part that surprises people. The law says they have to stop regardless of whether you have already answered one or more questions. That’s the actual language. Most people assume that once they’ve started talking, the moment has passed and it would look bad to stop now. It hasn’t, and it doesn’t. You can be forty minutes and a dozen answers into a conversation and still say the words.

You can also record it. Same statute: on advance request, at your own expense, with your own equipment, they have to let you make an audio recording of an in-person interview about determining or collecting tax. Nobody advertises that either.

I’ve sat in that chair. My own audit was so unfun that what I remember isn’t my own paperwork — it’s the person in the next cubicle, also being audited, in a wheelchair, and crying. That’s the room. It is intimidating and it is scary, and that feeling is exactly why people answer questions they were never required to answer that day. Mine happened to end with me getting more money back, which seems about as unheard of as winning the lottery and is not something I’d plan on. But I’d rather you walk in knowing what the room feels like — and knowing the one sentence that lets you stop it.

Why this is news and not just trivia: the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — the IRS’s independent watchdog — issued its annual statutory review on August 31 and announced it Thursday. It found the agency “lacks a system to identify potential violations” of that very rule. Their sample found collection staff largely complied, but interviews with managers and employees turned up “inconsistent understanding” of several procedures — including the taxpayers’ right to record. So the rule is real, and the people applying it are not uniformly clear on it. That is exactly the situation where knowing the sentence yourself is worth something.

One honest limit: it doesn’t apply to an interview the IRS opened with an administrative summons. Everything else, it does.

If someone you know is dealing with the IRS right now, send them this one. People walk into those interviews alone because they think asking for a representative makes them look guilty, and they answer questions they didn’t have to answer that day. It’s one sentence, and they are allowed to say it after they’ve already started.

If you can’t pay, file anyway — not filing costs about ten times more

This is the one that costs people real money, and it’s backwards from what almost everyone does.

When you can’t pay a tax bill, the instinct is to not file. It feels like the same problem either way, and filing feels like raising your hand. So the return doesn’t go in.

Look at the actual arithmetic. The IRS charges a failure-to-file penalty of 5% of the tax due for each month or partial month the return is late, up to 25%. The failure-to-pay penalty is 0.5% a month. Same bill, same month, ten times the price for the missing paperwork rather than the missing money.

On $10,000 of tax, five months late: filing late and paying late runs you the full 25% file penalty in five months. Filing on time and simply not paying, over that same stretch, is a fraction of it. You do not have to have the money to file. Those are two separate obligations and only one of them requires a bank balance.

The reason it’s live right now: the same watchdog’s second report, also dated August 31 and announced Thursday, found that nearly 33,700 taxpayers had been sitting in “first notice status” more than a year into the IRS’s high-income nonfiler push — parked, with no further collection action. After TIGTA raised it, the IRS moved those cases out of that status in March. Roughly 11,000 more sat unworked in the queue. Translation: the pause a lot of nonfilers have been quietly enjoying is being cleaned up, and the cheapest day to file a late return is always the day before somebody comes looking.

Disaster giving season, and the people waiting for it

The FTC’s Military Consumer team put out a reminder this week that’s worth thirty seconds: after a hurricane, a flood, an earthquake, fake charities move fast, because they know that’s when people give without checking.

The check is easy. Give to an organization you already know by name, go to its website yourself rather than through a link in a text or a social post, and never send disaster money by gift card or wire. If someone is pressuring you to give right now, that pressure is the product.

Money you might actually be owed this month

September’s claim windows are open, and nobody is going to email you about them. Two worth a look:

• $1.01M Sportsman’s Guide data privacy settlement

• The full September list, ten of them

A word on how to read these, because the headline number is the most misleading part. A $1.01 million settlement sounds like a lot until you divide it by the class. Most of these pay out in the tens of dollars, and the honest reason to file is that it takes four minutes and the money is already set aside — not because it’s going to change your month. Check whether you’re actually in the class before you spend any time on it. Half the “you may be owed money” traffic online is people harvesting your details for a claim you were never eligible for.

The number underneath all of this

In the three days from Tuesday to today, at least 65 new federal cases were filed against the three big credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. I say at least and I mean it twice over: the docket system I read is federal only, so state court cases are invisible to me, and federal indexing runs a week or two behind, so the number moves after the fact.

I don’t lead with that number, because a count isn’t a story. But it is the honest backdrop. People sue the bureaus constantly, mostly over information that is wrong and stayed wrong after being disputed. If you’ve disputed something and been told it was “verified,” you are not an unusual case.

What I published

• I’m Being Evicted and Debt Collectors Are After Me at the Same Time. Here’s What I’d Do First.

• Mortgage Rates Just Hit a One-Year High — and the Fed Isn’t Talking About Cuts

On the podcast this week

Should You Stop Paying Credit Cards? — Why Banks Won’t Help Until You’re Behind

It’s the question I get more than almost any other, and the answer is genuinely uncomfortable: the system mostly doesn’t offer you anything until you’re already behind. I talk about what that means for deciding when — and whether — to stop.

For the deeper dives — company reviews, full case breakdowns, the stuff that needs more than a paragraph — that’s what the Weekday Briefing is for. This one’s the quick version, every day. If today’s issue was useful, pass it along.

Nothing here is legal advice, and I’m not your lawyer or your financial advisor. These are filings and allegations, not findings — read “alleges” as exactly that. Talk to someone qualified before you act on anything specific to your situation.

Here’s what I keep coming back to after thirty years of this. The people who get out are almost never the ones who found some clever move nobody else knew. They’re the ones who stopped looking away from it. One statute you didn’t know about, one return you finally filed, one question you asked out loud instead of carrying around — that’s what the road out is actually made of. It’s not dramatic and it works. Have a good weekend, and I’ll see you Monday.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

Did you know that “t-shirt” is actually short for “Tyrannosaurus Shirt”?

It’s because of the short arms.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

Don’t scan that QR code on the parking meter

Here’s a two-minute habit that could save you a lot of grief. The FTC put out an alert today about scammers slapping their own fake QR codes right over the real ones on parking meters. You scan it thinking you’re paying for parking, and instead you land on a site built to grab your card number or your login. It works because almost nobody stops to check — the code is stuck to public equipment, so we assume it’s legit. It isn’t always.

Before you scan any QR code in public — a meter, a flyer, a “free WiFi” sign — most QR readers will preview the link first. Look at it. Misspellings or swapped letters are the tell. And keep your phone’s OS and apps updated, because that’s what turns a bad link into a bad day.

If you already scanned one and entered anything: change that password everywhere you reused it, check your card and bank statements for anything you didn’t make, and report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Full FTC alert.

Send this to whoever in your life pays for parking with their phone — which by now is basically everyone. It costs them nothing to check the link first, and it costs them a lot if they don’t.

The door most people with an IRS problem don’t know they have

If you owe back taxes and things have gotten serious enough that you’ve hired someone to represent you, here’s something the IRS’s own watchdog just confirmed most people never learn: once you have representation, the IRS is required to stop contacting you directly and go through your representative instead. And if you’re ever in an interview with the IRS about your own case, you have the right to record it.

That’s not a workaround — it’s written into the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. A new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found IRS employees don’t always apply this consistently, which is exactly why it’s worth knowing yourself instead of assuming the agency will remember for you. If you’re dealing with the IRS and feeling steamrolled, this is one of the actual levers you have.

A ten-minute upgrade for money that’s just sitting there

The FDIC’s own August numbers: the average U.S. money market account pays 0.63%. Plenty of online banks and brokerages pay 4%+ on the same FDIC insurance, for the same money, with no risk added. If your “extra” cash — an emergency fund, a house-down-payment stash, whatever you’re not touching this month — is parked at whatever the local branch defaults to, you are quietly leaving real money on the table for no reason at all. This isn’t a sales pitch for a specific bank (see the Bonus Section below if you want where I personally keep mine) — it’s ten minutes of your time against money you’re already not using.

Money you might actually be owed this month

Bought or leased a Toyota forklift with an internal combustion engine between 2007 and 2021? A $299.5M settlement over emissions compliance is paying up to $2,500 in cash, plus a free service visit and parts warranty coverage. Claim deadline: September 22. Check the specific eligibility window before you file — details here.

What I published yesterday

• A City Kept Billing Her After She Filed Bankruptcy. The Judge Said the Software Doesn’t Get to Decide That.

• IRS Penalty Abatement Is a Free Phone Call — Not a Service You Need to Buy

For the deeper dives — company reviews, full case breakdowns, the stuff that needs more than a paragraph — that’s what the Weekday Briefing is for. This one’s the quick version, every day. If today’s issue was useful, forward it to the one person you know who needed to see the QR code warning before their next parking meter.

Nothing here is legal advice, and I’m not your lawyer or your financial advisor. These are filings and allegations, not findings — read “alleges” as exactly that. Talk to someone qualified before you act on anything specific to your situation. Nobody gets to tell you what to do with your money. Not me, not anyone.

There’s a version of today where you read this and nothing changes. And there’s a version where you check one link, ask one question, or just breathe a little easier knowing what your actual options are. Most people get out of situations like these — not with a windfall, but one honest look and one decision at a time. That’s been true for thirty years and it’s still true today.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.

The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.

Or ask me, anonymously

Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.

Why can’t the skeleton play music in church?

Because they don’t have any organs.

Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile

Somebody built a fake version of a car dealership, and buyers are showing up to no car

The FTC put out an alert yesterday about something I had not seen before at this scale: scammers are impersonating car dealerships online. The FTC’s description is blunt about how it ends — you show up at the dealership and “the dealer has no record of your order or your payment. And that there’s no shiny car waiting for you.”

Sit with the shape of that for a second. This isn’t a Nigerian-prince email. It’s a professional-looking site for a real dealership that exists, in a town you can drive to, selling a car you actually want. You do the sensible thing and put money down to hold it. The money goes to a stranger.

Here’s what I’d do, and none of it is complicated. Never send a deposit to a dealership you found by clicking an ad or a search result. Look up the dealership’s phone number independently — a map listing, the manufacturer’s own dealer locator — call it, and ask a human whether your order exists. And if anyone asks for a wire transfer, a payment app, or a gift card for a car deposit, that is the end of the conversation. A real dealership takes a card. Cards can be reversed; wires and Zelle cannot, and the scammers know exactly which is which.

Forward this one to whoever in your life is car shopping right now. They are going to put down a deposit this month, from a phone, on a site they found by searching. If nobody tells them to verify the number independently first, they will find out the way the FTC describes it — standing in a real showroom, being told there is no order.

And the real dealership can take you too — that one just cost $4 million

Two weeks before that alert, the FTC and the Connecticut Attorney General settled with Manchester City Nissan for $4 million over what they alleged the dealership was doing to buyers of certified pre-owned cars. Per the complaint: advertise a certified car at a price, then charge hundreds to thousands of dollars in “inspection” fees — for the certification that was supposed to be included in the advertised price. Regulators also alleged charges like total loss protection were added without the customer agreeing to them. The money goes to the Connecticut AG for consumer redress.

Now, here’s the part almost everyone reads backwards, and it’s the reason this is in today’s issue at all.

People look at a case like this and think the fees were the crime. They weren’t. Dealerships are allowed to charge for things. The alleged violation was the advertised price — putting a number in front of you that was never the number. That distinction matters to you personally, because it tells you what to actually watch. Not “is this fee too high,” which you cannot really judge in a finance office at 7pm. But: does the price I was shown match the price on this paperwork, and if not, what changed and when did anyone tell me?

Under the settlement, the dealership now has to display the maximum total price as the most prominent item, and get express informed consent for every charge before it goes into your financing. That is a good description of what you are entitled to expect anywhere — so use it as your checklist even where no regulator has shown up yet.

Gas is 93 cents a gallon more than a year ago, and nobody announced it

I pulled AAA’s national average this morning: $4.12 for regular. A year ago it was $3.19.

That is a 93-cent jump, and it arrived so gradually that most people have absorbed it without ever doing the arithmetic. So let me do it. A household driving 12,000 miles a year in something getting 25 miles per gallon burns about 480 gallons. At 93 cents more per gallon, that is roughly $450 a year — gone, out of the same paycheck, with no decision ever made about it.

Four hundred and fifty dollars is not a catastrophe. It is also almost exactly the size of the gap that turns a budget that works into a budget that quietly doesn’t, and I have watched that specific gap start more debt spirals than I can count. Gas is the one bill you can’t opt out of. Rich or poor, you drive to work.

I’m not going to tell you to drive less; that’s useless advice. I’ll tell you the honest thing instead: if your money has felt tighter this year and you couldn’t name why, this is a real part of why, and it isn’t you being careless. Go look at what you actually spent on fuel last month versus a year ago. Knowing the number beats feeling the number.

And a practical note with a date on it: prices tend to firm up going into a holiday weekend, and Labor Day is Monday. Fill up before Friday.

Money you might actually be owed — two windows closing this month

• CRST Expedited, $14.5 million. If you drove for CRST Expedited with a California address and were paid by piece rate between August 9, 2017 and April 10, 2023, you’re in the class. No claim form — payment is automatic unless you exclude yourself, and that deadline is October 5, 2026. Details here.

• City of San Diego water rates, $40 million. Single-family residential water customers of the City of San Diego between August 14, 2014 and December 1, 2023 get a refund of the difference between what they were charged and what lawful rates would have been. No claim form to start, but you may need to confirm your contact details and pick a payment method through the administrator. The exclusion deadline is September 28, 2026. Details here.

Both of these pay out automatically, which sounds like good news and is actually the risk. Automatic means the money goes wherever the administrator has you on file — an address from 2019, a bank account you closed. If either of these is you, the ninety seconds that matter are spent making sure they can find you.

If you or someone near you just got laid off, the first 30 days decide most of it

The tech layoff numbers are moving again — Oracle is reported to be cutting up to 10,000 roles, and the tracking lists are long this year.

Here is the single most expensive mistake I see, and it happens in the first month, before anybody feels like they’re in trouble: people raid their 401(k) to stay current on credit cards.

Think about what that actually trades. You are spending retirement money — the one pot that is largely protected if things get worse — to protect a credit score. And a credit score is the thing that recovers. It rebuilds. Retirement savings you spend at 45 does not come back, because what you destroyed wasn’t the balance, it was thirty years of compounding on top of it. I’ve put the arithmetic at somewhere north of $400,000 for people who did this over a long enough stretch, and it is the quietest large loss in personal finance because nothing on any statement ever labels it.

If you’re in the first 30 days: protect the retirement account, protect the housing, protect the transportation, and let the unsecured credit be last in line. It feels wrong. It’s right. The cards are the only part of this that has a legal off-ramp built for exactly this situation.

What I published yesterday

• I Just Got a Notice of Default on My Mortgage. Here’s What to Do Right Now.

• The $117 Million Pork Price-Fixing Settlement — and what nearly every writeup got wrong

• No, You’re Not Getting $10,000 From the AMN Healthcare Settlement

• They Said My Cosigner Filing Bankruptcy Would Wipe Out My Half of the Debt Too

One more thing

If this was useful, forward it to one person. That’s the whole growth plan — no ads, nothing for sale. And if something here is happening to you right now, you can ask me directly. It’s free, it’s private, and I’m not selling anything on the other end of it.

I write a deeper Weekday Briefing over at getoutofdebt.org if you want the long version of any of this.

Nothing here is legal or financial advice for your specific situation. I’m telling you what I’d tell a friend, which is not the same as knowing your circumstances.

Look — a fake dealership, a real dealership with a fake price, and gas quietly eating four hundred and fifty dollars a year. That’s a lot of ways to lose money in one email, and I know it can read as though the whole world is set up to take from you.

It mostly isn’t. What’s true is that a handful of these things are worth knowing about, and knowing about them is nearly all of the defense. The people I’ve watched climb out of genuinely bad situations almost never did it with a windfall. They did it by looking straight at one thing they’d been avoiding, deciding one thing about it, and then doing that again the following week. That is unglamorous and it works, and there is nothing in today’s issue that changes it.

Back tomorrow.

— Steve

Bonus Section

A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.

I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.

Cash that actually earns something

Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)

Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.

And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.

Saving without having to think about it

Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)

And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.

Investing

Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)

And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.

Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.

A free conversation about your situation

Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.