Main Street Dollars

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On September 25 the IRS announced that a new app, called simply the IRS app, replaces IRS2Go. The app is free on the Apple App Store and Google Play, and its listed services include checking a refund, viewing an available balance and retrieving an Identity Protection PIN. Five more services round out the eight the…

Fresh vegetables are forecast to cost 5.7 percent more this year

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Of the food categories in USDA’s September price outlook, only beef is forecast to climb faster than fresh vegetables. The Economic Research Service predicts the fresh-vegetable index will average 5.7 percent higher in 2026 than in 2025, and it labels that figure a forecast. The year is not over, so the number can still move.…

The FCC has paused Verizon’s copper landline shutdown in nine states

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in Utilities & Energy

Verizon cannot count on a quiet exit from copper landlines in Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia. According to the trade publication Inside Towers, the Federal Communications Commission pulled Verizon’s application to retire that legacy service out of the automatic-grant process on September 25, 2026. The FCC…

Diesel costs $2.63 a gallon more than a year ago, and gasoline is up $1.35

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Two subtractions explain the headline. On-highway diesel averaged $6.382 a gallon in the week ending September 28, 2026, against $3.754 a year earlier, a gap of $2.628. Regular gasoline averaged $4.465 against $3.118, a gap of $1.347. Both figures come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly survey. The arithmetic, line by line The EIA’s…

New Fair Market Rents take effect today and reset what every housing voucher pays

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in Housing & Rent

HUD’s Fair Market Rents for fiscal year 2027 take effect today, October 1, 2026. The rents are the benchmark behind every Housing Choice Voucher payment standard, so a new set matters to the households holding vouchers, the landlords renting to them and the local housing agencies that sit in between. The notice gives one national…

NHTSA says its final mileage rollback cuts $1,290 from a new vehicle’s price and raises gasoline use 4.6 percent

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has published its final fuel-economy rollback, and the agency’s own estimate has two sides. NHTSA says the rule reduces average up-front vehicle costs by about $1,290, and that it raises national gasoline consumption by 4.6 percent through 2050. The rule takes effect November 30, 2026. A rule with a…

USDA now forecasts egg prices falling 29.4 percent this year

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Eggs cost 23.0 percent less in August 2026 than in August 2025, and that is the number that has actually been measured. The bigger figure in the headline, 29.4 percent, belongs to a different category of claim. USDA’s Economic Research Service now forecasts that egg prices will fall 29.4 percent across calendar 2026, a prediction…

Senators are pressing HHS to release $4 billion in heating aid by November 1

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in Utilities & Energy

November 1, 2026 is a date written into a federal funding law, and 29 senators want the Department of Health and Human Services to beat it. The law, as the senators describe it, requires HHS to distribute at least 90 percent of its total Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program allotment by that day. Their…

Heating oil households are projected to pay 31 percent more this winter

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in Utilities & Energy

“Heating oil costs are projected to soar by 31% this winter.” That sentence, in a September 23 press release from Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, is the only support for the 31 percent figure behind this headline. The release names no forecaster and links no data. The number is best read as the…

USDA’s own 2027 grocery forecast runs from a 5 percent fall to a 9 percent rise

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