Dad Joke
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
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.