The client newsletter that will never land in your mailbox
I read something this week I wasn’t supposed to see — a trust department’s August newsletter, written for families wealthy enough to need an estate plan. It crossed my desk by accident, and after reading it twice, I realized the interesting part wasn’t the money, it was the advice. You’ve probably seen the headline that $124 trillion is going to change hands by 2048. Here’s the part that doesn’t get repeated: more than half of that — about $62 trillion — comes from the wealthiest 2% of households, and it’s mostly going to their own kids. The bottom half of families will split about 8% of it. So no, this isn’t a tide lifting anyone. But here’s the twist that actually matters to you: the advice in that newsletter — the stuff that supposedly justifies the fee — turned out to be things anyone can do for free. Update your beneficiary designations (they override your will, and almost nobody checks them). Talk to your kids about money instead of hiding the number. Give yourself more than a five-year horizon on anything. None of that needs a trust department. It needs you doing it this week.
Money that might already be yours — and a rule trying to take it back
If your mortgage has an escrow account, the bank is holding your money to pay your taxes and insurance. In New York and thirteen other states, the law says the bank has to pay you interest on that money while it sits there. On May 15 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalized a rule saying federal law overrides all of those state laws — national banks can now decide for themselves whether to pay you anything at all, and it took effect June 18. Ten state attorneys general, led by Oregon, sued to block it on August 11, arguing this hands big banks money that by law belongs to homeowners, while giving national banks an edge over the community banks that still have to pay it. Nothing is decided yet — this is a lawsuit, not a ruling. But if you’re in New York, California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, or one of a handful of other states with a similar law, and you have an escrow account, this is worth two minutes: pull your last escrow statement and see whether interest is showing up on it. If it stopped, now you know why.
Things worth checking this week, because two of them have real deadlines
loanDepot just told its own investors something worth knowing if you were anywhere near its 2024 data breach. I read the actual SEC filing: the company quietly reclassified the breach’s financial risk from “not estimable” to “probable loss,” which is filing-speak for “we now think this is going to cost real money.” That’s usually a sign the company’s own math changed, not yours — if your data was in it, don’t wait on them to tell you. If you own a Keystone RV Passport Western Edition travel trailer bought in California before December 2019, a federal court ruled the company misrepresented the roof trusses as steel when they’re wood, and eligible owners can claim $2,000 — but only until August 28. And if you’re a woman who applied for a truck driving job at Central Transport since 2016 and didn’t get hired, a $5.5 million EEOC settlement opened for claims, deadline September 14.
Claims worth knowing about, every single one still unproven
A class action alleges Apple’s Hide My Email feature doesn’t actually forward mail the way it promises — worth knowing if you’ve been relying on it to keep your real address off spam lists. Ulta Salon is accused of tracking shoppers with Meta’s tracking pixel without consent. A suit claims YouTube Premium subscribers still see ads despite paying for “ad-free”. And CVS is accused of labeling toddler wipes “hypoallergenic” when they allegedly weren’t. Closer to my own beat: a new federal complaint landed against Ascendium Education Solutions, one of the country’s largest federal student loan servicers — the docket showed up this week, the complaint itself isn’t public yet, so I’m not going to guess what it says, just flagging it so you’re not surprised later. Same with a new case against Freedom Debt Relief, the country’s largest debt settlement company — I’ll tell you what it actually alleges once I can read it myself, not before.
The one to warn a friend about
New York’s attorney general just collected more than $700,000 from a private equity firm that bought a defaulted mortgage on a Manhattan condo building, then refused to pay building fees, skipped required safety inspections, and let occupancy permits lapse — while still collecting rent on the unsold units. If you own in a building where the mortgage got picked up by an investment firm after a default, that pattern — silence on repairs, silence on fees, no board handover — is exactly what got this one caught. You don’t have to wait for your own AG to notice. Write down what’s not happening and when, because that record is what makes a complaint to your state’s consumer protection office actually go somewhere.
The door most people don’t know they have
In the seven days ending today, at least 84 federal suits were filed against Equifax, at least 23 against Experian, and at least 23 against Trans Union — over things like accounts reported twice or disputes that never got noted as disputed. Say it plainly: if you’ve disputed something on your credit report and gotten a form letter back, you are not the unlucky one. That’s the median experience, not the exception. And that’s federal courts only — plenty of these get filed in state court too, which nobody tracks in one place, so the real number is higher. Thompson v. LVNV Funding LLC is on the site if you want to read a real one.
If one of these is happening to you right now
Two guides went up this week that are worth bookmarking even if you don’t need them today. If someone told you your Social Security is completely untouchable, that’s mostly true and dangerously incomplete — a private creditor genuinely cannot touch it, but the IRS can take 15% for back taxes and the Treasury can offset it for defaulted federal student loans. And if a creditor who already won a judgment against you is now demanding you show up in court and answer questions under oath about your money, that’s called a debtors exam, it is legal, and there’s a real difference between what it can and can’t force you to do — read it before the date on the notice, not after.
Before you go
This is the fast daily sweep. If you want the fuller version on any one of these — the reasoning worked all the way through, one topic at a time — that’s the GOOD Weekday Briefing, and it’s free. Separately, if you’ve been following Damon Day’s gig-work experiment, he cleared $138 multi-apping in three hours on day four by refusing to chase any offer under $40 an hour, and switched delivery zones for the first time on day five — one good order didn’t prove much, and he says so himself.
And if you know someone whose mortgage statement has an escrow line they’ve never once looked at, forward them today’s email. That’s the one most people have never checked in their life.
— Steve