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      How to Use an HSA to Save a Lot

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      A new analysis finds that a diligent saver who leaves the money untouched for decades can accumulate $1 million. But not everyone with an H.S.A. can afford to leave the money untapped.It’s possible to amass $1 million in special health savings accounts to use in retirement, a new analysis finds, with several big caveats.You have to start young, contribute the maximum each year and leave the money untouched for decades instead of spending it on medical needs.Health savings accounts, known as H.S.A.s, let people set aside pretax money for health and medical care.To open an H.S.A., you must have a specific type of health plan with a high deductible — an amount you must cover out of pocket before insurance pays. The money can be saved or invested to grow tax-free, and is tax-free when withdrawn and spent on eligible care or products. (The federal government does not tax the accounts, but some states assess state taxes.)Because of their robust tax advantages, H.S.A.s are seen as a valuable tool to save for health needs later in life, including costs that aren’t covered by Medicare, the federal health plan for older Americans. H.S.A. funds can also be spent on nonmedical costs after age 65 without penalty. The money is taxed as ordinary income.The new analysis by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonprofit group, assumes that at age 25, a saver begins contributing the maximum allowable amount each year ($4,300 for an individual in 2025 — the amount is tweaked annually for inflation — and an additional $1,000 for people 55 and older) and continues those contributions through age 64 with no withdrawals, “regardless of whether the individual uses any health care services.” It also assumes the funds are invested and earn a 7.5 percent rate of return.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Which Interest Rate Should You Care About?

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      The Fed’s short-term rates matter, but the main action now is in the 10-year Treasury market, which influences mortgages, credit cards and much more, our columnist says.Watch out for interest rates.Not the short-term rates controlled by the Federal Reserve. Barring an unforeseen financial crisis, they’re not going anywhere, especially not after the jump in inflation reported by the government on Wednesday.Instead, pay attention to the 10-year Treasury yield, which has been bouncing around since the election from about 4.8 to 4.2 percent. That’s not an unreasonable level over the last century or so.But it’s much higher than the 2.9 percent average of the last 20 years, according to FactSet data. At its upper range, that 10-year yield may be high enough to dampen the enthusiasm of many entrepreneurs and stock investors and to restrain the stock market and the economy.That’s a problem for the Trump administration. So the new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has stated outright what is becoming an increasingly evident reality. “The president wants lower rates,” Mr. Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business. “He and I are focused on the 10-year Treasury.”Treasuries are the safe and steady core of many investment portfolios. They influence mortgages, credit cards, corporate debt and the exchange rate for the dollar. They are also the standard by which commercial, municipal and sovereign bonds around the world are priced.What’s moving those Treasury rates now is bond traders’ assessments of the economy — including the Trump administration’s on-again, off-again policies on tariffs, as well as its actions on immigration, taxes, spending and much more.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Banks Sell $4.7 Billion of X’s Debt, in a Sign of Investor Demand

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      The social media company is attracting investor interest because of Elon Musk’s close ties to President Trump and a recent jump in revenue.When Elon Musk bought X for $44 billion in 2022, more than a quarter of that was financed by loans from banks including Morgan Stanley. Banks normally quickly sell off such loans, but in this case they kept much of that debt because investors were reluctant to bet on the social media company’s floundering business.Mr. Musk’s newfound power in President Trump’s administration has helped change investors’ minds.On Thursday, the banks sold roughly $4.7 billion of X’s debt, according to two people familiar with the transaction, more than the $3 billion that they had originally intended to sell. Mr. Musk, who has become a close adviser to the president and is running a government efficiency initiative, has faced increasing questions about whether the companies he leads — including the electric automaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX — are benefiting from his position as Mr. Trump’s right-hand man.X has become a go-to platform for information on the administration’s plans, which Mr. Musk broadcasts to his account’s more than 217 million followers. Advertisers have returned in droves to X, people familiar with the deals said, fueling a boost in revenue. The company told investors that its revenue in December jumped 21 percent from a month earlier, a person with knowledge of the finances said.An X spokesman and Morgan Stanley declined to comment. Bloomberg previously reported the jump in revenue and details of the transaction.Selling the debt — which totaled $12.5 billion at the time of the acquisition — helps Mr. Musk and the banks, which have been saddled with it for two years. Just two months ago, investors were negotiating to buy that debt at a loss of 10 percent to 20 percent for the banks, one person involved in the discussions said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Idina Menzel Climbs to New Broadway Heights in ‘Redwood’

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      The “Wicked” belter scales a 300-foot tree, and a mountain of songs, in a powerful if woo-woo musical about trauma and resilience.The musical “Redwood,” which opened on Thursday at the Nederlander Theater, features two great stars. One is an awe-inspiring force of nature. The other is a tree.The force of nature is Idina Menzel, who sings in 13 of the show’s 17 songs, of which seven are essentially solos. Has anyone ever belted so much, so tirelessly and hair-raisingly?But the size of the role is nothing compared with its emotional complexity and the depth of Menzel’s immersion in it. Her Jesse is a walking panic attack, an avoidant overtalker, an entitled princess and a grief-stricken mother. More astonishing, she is all of these at once, and right from the start. We meet her speeding westward from New York City with a terrible loss in the rearview mirror and no idea where she’s going.We know, though. The musical, by Tina Landau (book, lyrics and direction) and Kate Diaz (music and lyrics), with additional contributions from Menzel herself, is not named “Redwood” idly. Soon Jesse comes upon a grove of the giant trees near Eureka, Calif., and we meet our other star. She — for Jesse not only genders her but also names her Stella — is 14 feet wide and 300 feet tall and centuries if not millenniums old.I am sure redwoods are awesome in real life; I have never seen one. But the tree that Landau and her designers have put onstage is among the most beautiful and wondrous theatrical creations I can recall.Spectacular video by Hana S. Kim renders the tree’s towering swirl of branches on a series of 1,000 immersive LED panels.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NYT Crossword Answers for Feb. 14, 2025

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      Sarah Sinclair wishes all of us, coupled or single, a happy Valentine’s Day.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — Whenever I see Sarah Sinclair’s byline, I know we’re about to see something really entertaining. And I don’t just mean her crosswords, although those are great. Ms. Sinclair has developed a fun habit of sending theme-adjacent photos of herself and her collaborators to Wordplay, which I consider to be a kind of dessert after solving the puzzle.Today’s confection is a video of her barbershop quartet (below her notes) wishing us a happy Valentine’s Day, and I think it’s the perfect end to a lovely solving experience.Tricky CluesToday’s puzzle is a themeless one, but there is quite a bit of good thematic material here, highlighted by the central entry, CATCH FEELINGS, at 36A.14A. [Clean energy?] has minimal or no impact on the environment, but in this puzzle the clue refers to what some believe to be vital life energy. If yours is clean, you have probably racked up some GOOD KARMA in your lifetime.18A. Get your minds out of the gutter, please. These [Bad things to blow] are FUSES.22A. Let’s play our favorite crossword game that doesn’t actually exist: “Is It a Verb or a Noun?” When it’s a noun, a [Parcel] is a package, but the word can also be used as a verb to mean to METE out something.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump and Modi Shove Disputes Into Background in White House Visit

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      Hours after President Trump paved the way for upending the United States’ trade relationship with India with broad “reciprocal” tariffs, he and Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented a united front during a news conference on Thursday at the White House.Mr. Modi became the latest head of state to seek to placate an increasingly power-flexing Mr. Trump by trying to accommodate his demands — even as Mr. Trump’s promised tariffs hung over the White House meeting. Mr. Modi heaped praise on Mr. Trump, using his motto “Make America Great Again” in English, despite mostly speaking through a translator, and applying the motto to India. “Make India Great Again,” Mr. Modi crowed.The warm greetings also extended to Elon Musk, the constant Trump companion barreling through the federal government as the head of an initiative to reshape and cut down the federal government: The two had a meeting and photo op. Mr. Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, owns a number of companies, including Starlink, a high-speed internet service, that have sought to make an entry in India.All the flattery concealed a number of tensions between the two nations, including on two of Mr. Trump’s signature issues, trade and immigration. Mr. Trump hinted at the biggest thorn when he said at the news conference that the United States had a nearly $100 billion trade deficit with India, though he inflated the number — in 2024, the figure was nearly $50 billion.Just hours earlier, Mr. Trump had directed his advisers to devise new tariff levels for countries around the world that take into account a range of trade barriers and other economic approaches adopted by America’s trading partners. India is among the nations that could face particularly significant consequences from the tariffs.At the news conference, Mr. Trump said that he had toyed with that idea during his first term, and noted that he could not get India to lower tariffs against the United States then. Now, “we’re just going to say, ‘whatever you charge, we charge,’” Mr. Trump said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Trump’s Medical Research Cuts Would Hit Colleges and Hospitals in Every State

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      A proposal by the Trump administration to reduce the size of grants for institutions conducting medical research would have far-reaching effects, and not just for elite universities and the coastal states where many are located. Also at risk could be grants from the National Institutes of Health to numerous hospitals that conduct clinical research on […] More

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      Apple and Google Restore TikTok to App Stores in the U.S.

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      The popular social media app was removed to comply with a new law that banned it in the United States.Apple and Google restored TikTok to their app stores in the United States on Thursday evening, several weeks after they removed the short-form video platform in compliance with a new law that banned it in the country.President Trump tried to pause enforcement of the TikTok ban with an executive order, but the companies were reluctant to bring TikTok back until they were certain they were not breaking the law.The law, signed last year, had called for ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner by Jan. 19. The law targeted app store operators and internet hosting companies with steep financial penalties if they distributed or maintained TikTok.Mr. Trump’s executive order prompted confusion among technology companies. While Apple and Google kept TikTok out of their app stores, companies like Oracle, which provided back-end technology support for the app, resumed working with it after a brief shutdown in January.While Apple and Google blocked new downloads of TikTok, the app was largely unaffected if it was already downloaded on American phones. TikTok claims 170 million U.S. users.The return of the app to the stores is a positive sign for TikTok, which now has until early April to find a buyer. It’s also a remarkable turnabout for the company. Just a month ago, it was facing down a ban with wide bipartisan support in Congress. The law was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court — only to be upended by Mr. Trump.TikTok executives told video creators in a briefing call on Tuesday that it was optimistic that Apple and Google would soon reinstate the app, said H. Lee Justine, a TikTok creator and author, who was on the call.“They said that the administration had given them a lot of information that they wouldn’t be penalized and that they were really hopeful that any day now they would put it back in the app stores,” she said in an interview. “It makes me very hopeful that they felt that they could do this because hopefully this means that long term there’s not going to be issues and this will work out.”TikTok declined to comment on its return to the app stores or the briefing.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More