Dad Joke
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