Personal finance

For many older Americans, retirement means freedom to explore beyond your backyard. Before you take off, however, check whether your health insurance travel with you. Assuming you’re on Medicare — most adults age 65 or older are — coverage away from home depends partly on where you travel to, along with whether you’re on basic

Hinterhaus Productions | The Image Bank | Getty Images If your employer is giving you ownership shares as part of your pay, you could be accumulating wealth — or you could be ramping up risk. Equity compensation is a way for companies to reward employees who meet certain performance goals and incentivize them to stay.

For identity thieves, kids are the perfect mark. While adults make prime targets for their account balances, a child’s information, particularly their Social Security number, has even more value to scammers because it is a “clean slate” for opening new lines of credit before someone catches on, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. More

Getty Images People starting out their careers in expensive cities are used to sharing apartments. Now, they’re sharing rooms. Carina Zhao lives in a four-bedroom apartment in San Francisco’s Mission District – with five other people. Zhao, 23 and an analyst at Castlight Health, shares a room with her former college roommate. Another pair of

Elisha Bokman Source: Elisha Bokman Elisha Bokman has been out of school for eight years. Still, her student loan balance is half a million dollars. Today, for her doctorate degree in naturopathic medicine and master’s in acupuncture from Bastyr University, she owes $499,322.69. She and her husband struggled to buy a house because of her

Washington D.C. Danita Delimont | Getty Images About 1.3 million Americans could have their retirement funds at risk if Congress can’t come up with the money to pay the benefits people were promised. That is because a number of multiemployer pension plans are on the brink of running out of money. This week, Congress took

Sunny summer months make it easy to cut loose. Unfortunately, it can also mean cutting loose financially. Most people derail their finances because they don’t have a set budget for holiday weekends, graduation parties, vacations, barbecues and family gatherings, summer camp, activities with the kids and back-to-school shopping. It’s common to use credit more recklessly

Cancer can take a significant toll on your health, your work, your family – and, increasingly, your wallet. There are currently an estimated 16.9 million people in the U.S. who have received a cancer diagnosis. For them, the disease comes with many disproportionate hardships, from the physical and the emotional to the financial. Not only

JPMorgan Chase is trying to make it harder for its credit card customers to sue the bank in court by requiring them to go into private arbitration to settle disputes. The opportunity for JPMorgan Chase credit cardholders to opt out of binding arbitration expires in a month. The bank notified customers in May that their

Getty Images If you’ve been racking your brain about where to retire on a budget, it might be time to think outside the U.S. A new report by International Living, which publishes information about living abroad, lists destinations where you can coast on less than $30,000 a year. To be sure, retiring in a new

We all need stuff, from cars to laptops to clothes. That doesn’t mean you have to walk into a store and plunk down money for brand new items each time. Just as the new car you drive off the lot immediately loses half its value — congratulations on the new used car you just purchased

An American flag battered by Hurricane Michael continues to fly in the in the rose colored light of sunset at Shell Point Beach on October 10, 2018 in Crawfordville, Florida.The hurricane hit the Florida Panhandle as a category 4 storm. Mark Wallheiser | Getty Images Natural disasters lead to billions of dollars in property losses.

Ronnie Kaufman | The Image Bank | Getty Images From affordability and mobility to community and culture, there’s a range of factors those approaching their golden years need to take into consideration when deciding whether to retire in place or put down roots in greener — and less stressful — pastures. Bankrate.com has updated its

Joe Raedle | Getty Images If you’re trying to save money, paying a fee on your credit card might seem counterintuitive. However, it may be worth it under the right circumstances. So, how do you figure out if it is the right thing for you? “It really comes down to whether you are matching the

Planning to reinvest those pesky required withdrawals from your individual retirement account or 401(k) plan because you don’t need the money? Under the Secure Act, a bill pending in Congress right now that aims to improve the nation’s retirement savings, you’d have to start taking withdrawals from your IRA (and most other retirement accounts) at

Student borrower looks for a job. Jonathan Alcorn | Bloomberg | Getty Images Mary O’Mara is worried about her son. Every day the 27-year-old comes home from his job as a supervisor at a big-box retailer and heads right to his bedroom. He doesn’t emerge until the morning. “He just sleeps,” O’Mara, 62, said. “He’s

Tetra Images | Getty Images It’s no secret that Social Security needs to be tweaked in order to fix the program’s solvency. And research from the latest Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey shows just how far Americans think politicians need to go to shore up the system. Just 8% of Americans surveyed said they think the

Walter B. McKenzie | Getty Images Where you live can have a big impact on whether you’re able to amass a security nest egg. Experts generally recommend you have at least six months’ cash on hand in case you lose your job or have a medical or other emergency. However, data from personal finance website

aldomurillo | E+ | Getty Images Before you head to the beach, use this tax-advantaged account to stock up on summer necessities. Flexible spending accounts allow workers to sock away cash on a pretax basis into a savings account. You can take tax-free distributions from your FSA as long as the money goes toward qualified

Nakhorn Yuangkratoke / EyeEm | EyeEm | Getty Images It was fun while it lasted. Only recently have savers reaped the benefits of higher deposit rates — the annual percentage yield banks pay consumers on their money — after they hovered near rock bottom for years. Since the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate