Dad Joke
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 read the D.C. budget act as making that October 1 — 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
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.