Main Street Dollars

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Somewhere in a drawer, in a folder of things you meant to deal with, or long since thrown out, there may be a letter from Ernst & Young telling you that your personal information turned up in a 2023 data breach. That piece of mail is the eligibility key to a $100 payment. It carries…

An Arizona senior-living operator will pay $250,000 after the EEOC said it sent a worker alone with a resident who had harassed staff

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in Workplace Rights

Two hundred fifty thousand dollars is what an Arizona senior-living operator agreed to pay to close a federal sexual harassment lawsuit. The detail worth a working person’s attention is who the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said did the harassing: not a supervisor and not a coworker, but residents of the facility the employees were hired…

Twenty-four Anaheim hotel workers will split $2.75 million after California said the hotel ignored a law requiring their rehire

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in Workplace Rights

Almost everyone who gets laid off assumes the job is gone and that whoever the company hires next is none of their business. In one slice of the California economy, that assumption is wrong and expensive. A covered hotel, event center, airport food operation or building services contractor that laid workers off for a pandemic-related…

Regulators say NewRez billed more than 4,200 homeowners for insurance they already had; it will pay $15.5 million

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in Credit & Debt

Buried in the escrow section of a mortgage statement, under the property taxes, there is a line for hazard insurance. Most months nobody reads it. But if that line has ever carried a charge for a policy you did not buy, from an insurer you never chose, in a month when your own homeowners policy…

Ohio State’s hospitals go out of network with 16 Humana plans on October 1

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in Medicare

Take the Humana card out of your wallet and read the plan name printed on it. The full name is what matters here, not just the word “Humana,” because Ohio State has published a list of sixteen specific Humana plans and the list is the whole story. On October 1, 2026, every plan on it…

Help with a high heating or cooling bill is available through federal LIHEAP

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in Utilities & Energy

When an energy bill outruns the budget, a lot of households quietly go without, turning the heat down too far in winter or the air conditioning off in a heat wave. There is a federal program built for exactly that squeeze, and many of the people it could help have never heard of it. The…

Teachers, firefighters and other public retirees are getting bigger Social Security checks and back pay under a 2025 law

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in Social Security

For decades, a retired teacher or firefighter who also earned Social Security through other work could watch a big chunk of that benefit vanish because of a pension from a job that did not pay into the system. A 2025 law ended that. The Social Security Fairness Act repealed the two provisions responsible, and as…

Social Security’s 2027 raise is now projected near 3.6%, about $70 more a month

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in Social Security

Every fall, tens of millions of retirees wait to learn how much bigger their Social Security check will be, and the early forecasts are starting to come in. One closely watched estimate now puts the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment near 3.6 percent, which would add roughly $70 a month to the average retiree’s benefit. It is…

Storm victims near the San Carlos Apache Tribe have until September 28 to file, penalty-free

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in Rule Changes

When a disaster upends a household, a looming tax deadline is the last thing anyone should have to juggle. The IRS agrees, and for people in the San Carlos Apache Tribe area of Arizona hit by severe storms and flooding, it has pushed a stack of federal filing and payment deadlines out to September 28,…

Turning off debit overdraft coverage stops a $5 charge from triggering a $35 fee

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