Main Street Dollars

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Federal Student Aid plans to open the 2027-28 Free Application for Federal Student Aid to every applicant no later than Oct. 1, 2026, and the form arrives with a change that breaks from a long-standing Pell Grant rule. For the first time, some applicants who already hold a bachelor’s degree, ordinarily disqualifying under the Pell…

Parents taking out new Parent PLUS loans can borrow no more than $20,000 a year per student and $65,000 in total

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Parents planning to borrow for a child’s college costs this fall are running into a ceiling that did not exist before this year. Federal Parent PLUS loans first disbursed on or after July 1, 2026 are capped at $20,000 per dependent student per year, with a $65,000 lifetime limit for that same student, according to…

New student loan plan borrowers wait 30 years for any balance to be forgiven

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Federal student loan borrowers taking out new loans now have a single income-driven repayment option, and it is built around a much longer payoff clock than the plans it replaced. The Repayment Assistance Plan, available since July 1, 2026, sets any remaining balance to be forgiven only after 30 years of qualifying payments. For households…

More than 50 companies have committed to put money into their workers’ children’s Trump Accounts, Treasury said

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in Checking & Savings

More than 50 companies had committed to contributing money into their employees’ children’s Trump Accounts, the U.S. Department of the Treasury said in a pair of statements this summer. Treasury first announced the figure when the accounts formally launched July 4, 2026, and repeated the identical count more than a month later, on August 11,…

The first wave of SAVE student loan borrowers must pick a new plan by September 29, and a $170 payment can jump to $650 to $1,150

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Borrowers in the first wave of the SAVE repayment plan’s wind-down have until Sept. 29 to choose a new federal repayment plan, and the payment jump waiting for some of them is steep. Forbes reported that one example payment shifts from $170 a month under SAVE to somewhere between $650 and $1,150 once a borrower…

A lawsuit says the Education Department still reports $4.6 billion in cancelled student debt on more than 300,000 borrowers’ credit files

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A federal lawsuit filed Sept. 24 accuses the Department of Education of leaving $4.6 billion in cancelled student debt on the credit files of more than 300,000 borrowers whose loans were supposed to have been wiped out. The suit, Woods v. Department of Education, says loans tied to three shuttered for-profit schools, ITT Technical Institute,…

Washington announces its 2027 minimum wage on September 30, up from $17.13 this year

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in Jobs & Wages

On September 30, Washington’s Department of Labor & Industries will do what it does every year at that point on the calendar: turn a federal inflation index into next year’s minimum wage. The current rate, $17.13 an hour, has applied since January 1, and whatever figure the department calculates this month will take effect on…

Minnesota’s minimum wage rises to $11.87 an hour for all employers on January 1

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in Jobs & Wages

Minnesota will apply the same $11.87-an-hour minimum wage to every employer, regardless of size, when the rate rises on January 1 — the third increase since the state closed the gap between what large and small employers were required to pay. The Department of Labor and Industry sets the new figure each year through an…

Connecticut’s minimum wage rises to $17.48 an hour on January 1

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in Jobs & Wages

Governor Ned Lamont announced in early August that Connecticut’s minimum wage will rise to $17.48 an hour on January 1, a 54-cent increase over the current $16.94. The change did not come from a fresh vote in the legislature. It came from a formula written into state law seven years ago, one that ties the…

Nearly one in five student loan borrowers in repayment is at least 30 days behind

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