Main Street Dollars

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Anyone who receives a Social Security overpayment notice is allowed to do one thing before paying anything back: ask the agency, in writing, to explain how the number was calculated. Tracing what happens after that request took auditors months. The answer, laid out in a new inspector general audit, is that the process meant to…

Five years of recovery from a substance use disorder ends a Medicaid work-rule exemption

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A federal rule now in effect ties continued Medicaid coverage for millions of adults to a monthly work or activity requirement, but it carves out an exemption for people the government classifies as medically frail. Guidance the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services posted on September 8, 2026 spells out exactly how that exemption applies…

Medicaid will use a diagnosis code, not a doctor’s note, to decide who is too sick to work

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Starting no later than January 1, 2027, states running Medicaid’s new work requirement will decide who is too sick to comply largely by matching a diagnosis code already sitting in a claims file, not by waiting on a letter from a treating doctor. The code comes out of the 2025 Working Families Tax Cut law,…

The same savings limit that decides food stamp eligibility also defines a disqualifying lottery win

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USDA’s Food and Nutrition Administration resets several dollar figures each fall, and the fiscal year 2027 update carries an unusual twist. Starting October 1, 2026, the asset limit that most households must stay under to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits holds at $3,000, while the limit for households with a member age 60 or…

USDA opened a comment window on eighteen states’ food stamp soda bans that closes October 15

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Administration published eighteen separate notices in the Federal Register on September 15, 2026, each one inviting written comment on a different state’s plan to change what a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program card can buy. The states run from Montana and Idaho to Arkansas, Utah and more than…

Montana’s new limits on what a food stamp card buys are delayed to November 1

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Montana households that use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will keep buying candy, energy drinks and other soon-to-be-restricted items for about a month longer than most trackers currently show. The state’s own SNAP program page now states that the Healthy SNAP Food Restriction Demonstration Waiver has been delayed from a September 30 target to November…

Seven in ten Denver rental listings came with a concession last month

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in Housing & Rent

In Denver last month, 71.9% of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom rental listings carried some kind of concession, the highest share among the 50 largest U.S. metro areas Realtor.com tracks. That works out to roughly seven in ten listings offering a discount that never shows up in the advertised rent. The number reflects a metro area…

Rents have fallen for 37 straight months and 43.5 percent of listings now carry a concession

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in Housing & Rent

The median asking rent across the 50 largest U.S. metro areas slipped to $1,699 in August, down 0.9% from a year earlier, according to Realtor.com’s latest monthly rental report. That decline marks the 37th consecutive month rents have fallen on an annual basis, a streak now well into its fourth year. At the same time,…

Eggs cost 23 percent less than they did a year ago

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in Groceries & Gas

For the first time in three years, the egg aisle is moving in the direction shoppers stopped expecting: down. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that its price index for eggs was 23.0 percent lower in August 2026 than in August 2025, one of the largest twelve-month declines recorded for any major grocery item this…

Instant coffee costs 11 percent more than it did a year ago

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