Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Five more states stop letting SNAP shoppers buy soda or candy on November 1
Beginning November 1, 2026, SNAP benefits in five states stop covering a list of sugary drinks and candy: Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia. The schedule comes from the USDA’s own state-by-state table of approved food restriction waivers, which the agency last updated on October 2. The five join eight states where restrictions…
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Energy assistance directors project the average household will spend $1,030 on heat this winter
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) projects that the average U.S. household will spend $1,030 to heat its home this winter, an increase of $82, or 8.7 percent, over last year. The figure is a forecast for a season that has not yet played out, and it comes from the group that speaks for…
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UnitedHealthcare members whose plan ends in December fall back to Original Medicare and lose the plan’s drug coverage if they do nothing
UnitedHealthcare is ending some of its 2027 Medicare Advantage plans in parts of the country, and members of those plans who take no action will be moved to Original Medicare on January 1, 2027. If the discontinued plan included prescription drug coverage, that coverage ends with it. The company’s own document says so in plain…
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Families can put $5,000 a year into a child’s Trump Account and nothing comes out until the year the child turns 18
A Trump Account is built to be easy to fill and hard to drain. Treasury and the IRS have set an annual ceiling on what goes in, and a locked stretch that keeps the balance untouched through the childhood years. The temporary regulations that spell out both rules took effect on September 30, 2026, a…
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A gallon of regular gasoline costs $2.61 more in California than in Indiana
Pump prices are not one number. On October 2, 2026, a gallon of regular in California averaged $6.4008 and a gallon in Indiana averaged $3.7902, a difference of $2.61 between the most expensive state and the cheapest in the same daily reading. The spread sits on top of a national average that has climbed sharply…
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A worker born in 1960 or later who claims Social Security at 62 gives up 30 percent for life
A worker born in 1960 or later who starts Social Security retirement benefits at 62 receives 30 percent less each month than the full-retirement-age amount, and the Social Security Administration describes that reduction as permanent. The agency’s age table sets the full retirement age at 67 for everyone born in 1960 or later, which makes…
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Social Security has not set the January raise for 70 million people and the last missing number lands October 14
The cost-of-living adjustment that sets Social Security checks for January has no published number yet. Social Security’s own pages still show only the current 2.8 percent adjustment, and the figure that completes the calculation, September’s inflation reading, is due from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on October 14, 2026. Until then, the January raise cannot…
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Amazon’s next Prime refund round covers customers who used 11 to 20 benefits in one year
A new round of automatic Amazon Prime refunds is scheduled to reach customers who were left out of the earlier payments. The Federal Trade Commission announced on September 17, 2026 that Amazon will begin issuing payments to millions of additional consumers who used between 11 and 20 Prime benefits during a one-year period. The revised…
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A court ordered $15.7 million in restitution in a trading scheme, and a dead defendant’s estate is giving up his house
A federal court in Florida has ordered a Louisiana man and an Arkansas woman to pay $15,732,455 in restitution, or about $15.7 million, for a trading scheme called Fundsz, and the estate of a third defendant who has died is giving up his personal residence. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced the order on September…
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A former bank chief executive was sentenced to nine years and four months over a $25.3 million promissory-note scheme
Tomás Niembro Concha, the 64-year-old former chief executive of Nodus International Bank, was sentenced on September 21 to 112 months in federal prison, which works out to nine years and four months, followed by three years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty on March 19 to conspiring to commit wire fraud and to violating U.S.…