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    Retirees Are Filing for Social Security Earlier. Why?

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    An additional 276,000 people filed for Social Security benefits so far this fiscal year, up 13% from a year ago. Anxiety appears to be a driver.The morning after his 67th birthday, Marty McGowan filed for Social Security. That wasn’t his original plan. He had intended to wait until he was 70 to claim benefits, in exchange for a heftier payment that would have yielded an extra $800 a month.But like other retirees in recent months, he was watching the Trump administration’s shake-up at the Social Security Administration during a time when the broader economic outlook appeared increasingly uncertain. Concerns about the economy and access to benefits nudged him to file earlier than he had anticipated, even if it might cost him over the long run.He wasn’t the only one: An additional 276,000 retirees claimed benefits on their earnings record this fiscal year through April, according to the Urban Institute, a research group, a 13 percent jump from the same period a year ago. Officials inside the Social Security Administration called the rise “dramatic,” and though there were some other reasons for the surge, program experts say anxiety appeared to play a meaningful role.“It is worrisome because for most people, claiming early is not a good decision,” said Jack Smalligan, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute. “They’re nervous about the threats to the Social Security Administration and their benefits, while simultaneously looking at their 401(k), if they have one, and worrying about that.”The Trump administration’s crusade to diminish the federal bureaucracy did not spare Social Security, which rattled insiders at the agency and Americans close to or in retirement. Many of them feared that job cuts and other policy changes could threaten their access to benefits, causing them to jam phone lines and overwhelm offices. Elon Musk, the tech billionaire whose Department of Government Efficiency drove many of the changes, continued to spread false claims about widespread fraud at the agency, which only added to the confusion.That situation, coupled with wider economic uncertainty, seemed to influence some retirees’ real-world financial decision-making. Agency officials acknowledged this during their recent operational meetings, along with other strains on the system.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 Tariffs Could Cause Car Insurance Costs to Rise

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      New tariffs are expected to push up prices of vehicles and car parts, and that could raise premiums as much as 16 percent. Here are some tips on how to try to keep costs down.Add this to worries about the likely impact of tariffs: costlier car insurance.The new tariffs on imported cars, metals and parts announced by the Trump administration are expected to raise vehicle prices by thousands of dollars if they remain in place. And because parts used in auto repairs will also become more expensive, the average cost of automobile insurance is expected to increase.The average annual premium for a full-coverage auto policy was just over $2,300 at the end of last year, according to an analysis by Insurify, an insurance comparison shopping website. The site initially estimated that premiums would increase just 5 percent this year, based on factors like inflation and insurer losses.How much of an impact could tariffs have on car insurance costs?With the addition of the tariffs, Insurify now projects premiums to rise at least 16 percent, or $378, to almost $2,700 on average nationally — about $256 more than without tariffs. The analysis includes the tariffs on steel and aluminum, those on imported cars and those on imported auto parts scheduled to take effect May 3. (Tariffs announced in February on products from Mexico and Canada were adjusted to exempt some goods, including cars and auto parts, that comply with the free trade agreement President Trump negotiated in his first term, according to Insurify. If that exemption is lifted, the increase in automobile premiums could be as high as 19 percent, the analysis found.)An Insurify spokeswoman said the Trump administration’s announcement on Wednesday, pausing double-digit global tariffs for 90 days, didn’t change the company’s projections. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in response to a reporter’s question after the announcement, indicated that the pause didn’t apply to certain tariffs like those on automobiles.“Things that increase the cost of repairs impact prices,” said Robert Passmore, vice president of personal lines with the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, whose members are big insurance companies. About 60 percent of parts used in auto shop repairs are imported from Mexico, Canada and China, the association has said.The price of car insurance has soared in recent years for a variety of reasons, including more claims resulting from driving habits that deteriorated during the pandemic, the use of more expensive technology in cars, and damage from strong storms and hail. While increases had recently begun to moderate, the cost of motor vehicle insurance still rose 7.5 percent in March compared with a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.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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      Buying a Home? Without the CFPB, You Need to Be Your Own Watchdog.

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      The C.F.P.B. had kept a close eye on mortgage lenders. But with the bureau hobbled, consumers should take several steps, starting with shopping for the best mortgage rates.House prices are stubbornly high, and mortgage rates remain substantially above their prepandemic level. Now, with the spring home buying season looming, shoppers have a new worry: A major federal consumer watchdog has been hobbled.Without the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency responsible for overseeing most aspects of the home buying process, consumer advocates say home buyers need to be their own watchdogs.“Now, when you buy a house, you are much more vulnerable to being misled,” said Sharon Cornelissen, housing director with the Consumer Federation of America. “It’s important to be on guard, because guardrails are being taken away.”Buying a home is the biggest financial decision most Americans will make in their lives. The typical home price is about $397,000, according to the National Association of Realtors, but prices are far higher in some parts of the country. In several California counties, for instance, the median price at the end of last year was over $1.5 million, with monthly mortgage payments over $8,000.What role has the consumer bureau played in home buying?The consumer bureau was created after the financial and housing crisis in 2007-8 to streamline oversight of lenders and financial companies serving consumers. Over the years, the bureau has moved to ease the mortgage shopping process by offering simplified forms and educational tools, and has taken action against an array of banks and lenders. In 2022, for instance, the bureau ordered Wells Fargo to pay $3.7 billion for mishandling a variety of customer accounts, including improperly denying thousands of requests for mortgage loan modifications that in some cases led borrowers to lose their homes to “wrongful” foreclosures.On Jan. 17, in the final days of the Biden administration, the bureau reached a settlement with Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corporation for discouraging borrowers from applying for loans to buy homes in majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago and Boston. In an email, the lender’s lawyers said Draper and Kramer “considers the matter closed and denies” the bureau’s claims, but chose to settle in part to avoid “protracted legal costs.”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 Consumers Can Protect Themselves With the CFPB on Pause

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      Rules on bank and credit card fees, medical debt and payment apps are in limbo. One thing you can do is carefully check your financial statements, one expert says.With the government seemingly stepping back from regulatory duties, consumers may have to act as their own financial watchdogs.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the independent federal agency created after the 2008 financial crisis to shield people from fraud and abuse by lenders and financial firms, has been muzzled, at least temporarily.“Everything is on pause right now,” said Delicia Hand, senior director of digital marketplace with Consumer Reports. “So it’s back on consumers to be extra diligent.” Ms. Hand previously spent nearly a decade in a variety of roles at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, including overseeing complaints and consumer education, before departing in 2022.In early February, the Trump administration ordered the consumer bureau to mostly cease operations. It closed its Washington headquarters, fired some employees and put most of the rest of the staff on administrative leave, and opted not to seek funding for its activities. Several lawsuits are challenging the administration’s actions. On Feb. 14, a federal judge in Washington ordered the bureau to halt firing workers and not to delete data, pending a hearing scheduled for Monday.The administration, however, has already dialed back enforcement — dropping, for instance, a suit accusing an online lender of promoting free loans that actually carried high interest rates. On Thursday, the bureau dismissed a lawsuit that it had brought in January accusing Capital One of cheating customers out of some $2 billion in interest.It’s a stark change for an agency that had been energetic in adopting rules and filing lawsuits aimed at aiding consumers. Under the Biden administration, the bureau moved to reduce or eliminate various fees charged by banks and other financial firms and to remove unpaid medical debt from credit reports, and it fined a major credit reporting bureau for misleading consumers about credit freezes.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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      Did You Sell Concert Tickets or Clothes? You May Owe Taxes

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      If you received more than $5,000 for online sales of “goods or services” in 2024, you might get a Form 1099-K. Don’t ignore it, an expert says.If you sold personal items like concert tickets or used clothing online last year or received money for services through payment apps, you may get an unfamiliar tax form this year.A tax law change means most online marketplaces and payment apps must send the Internal Revenue Service a form called a 1099-K, with a copy to you, if you received more than $5,000 in payments for “goods or services” in 2024. That’s down from a threshold of $20,000 in payments and more than 200 transactions. (Starting in 2024, the number of transactions no longer matters.)“As the threshold keeps going down, it catches more people,” said Melanie Lauridsen, vice president for tax policy and advocacy at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.Under the old cutoff, the forms mostly went to people running active businesses rather than to occasional or small-time sellers. “This substantial drop in the reporting thresholds could result in millions more taxpayers receiving Forms 1099 this filing season than in prior years,” according to a blog post by Erin M. Collins, the national taxpayer advocate, who leads a group within the I.R.S. that works on behalf of taxpayers.Here’s what to know about Form 1099-K:Who’s eligible to receive Form 1099-K?If you bought several concert tickets, for example, and resold them online at a markup, you could potentially meet the 2024 threshold for getting the form, Ms. Collins said in an interview. Tickets for big-name concerts, she said, such as performances by Taylor Swift, have reportedly sold for more than $1,000 per ticket. If the seller made money, the gain is taxable.The rule doesn’t apply to personal payments, like gifts or transfers of money to friends and family, the I.R.S. says. If you and a friend go to a concert, and your friend pays you for the ticket using a payment app, “you should not receive a Form 1099-K for the reimbursement and, generally, it would not be taxable,” according to “common situations” described on the agency’s website.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 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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      36 Hours After Russell Vought Took Over Consumer Bureau, He Shut Its Operations

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      The agency had been one of Wall Street’s most feared regulators, with the power to issue rules on mortgages, credit cards, student loans and other areas affecting Americans’ financial lives.The day before Linda Wetzel closed on her retirement home in Southport, N.C., in 2012 — a cozy place where she could open the windows at night and catch an ocean breeze — the bank making the loan surprised her with a fee she hadn’t expected. Ms. Wetzel scoured her mortgage paperwork and couldn’t find the charge disclosed anywhere.Ms. Wetzel made the payment and then filed an online complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bank quickly opened an investigation, and a month later, it sent her a $5,600 check.“My first thought was ‘thank you.’ I was in tears,” she recalled. “That money was a year or two of savings on my mortgage. It was my little nest egg.”Ms. Wetzel’s refund is a tiny piece of the work the bureau has done since it was created in 2011. It has clawed back $21 billion for consumers. It slashed overdraft fees, reformed the student loan servicing market, transformed mortgage lending rules and forced banks and money transmitters to compensate fraud victims.It may no longer be able to carry out that work.President Trump on Friday appointed Russell Vought, who was confirmed a day earlier to lead the Office of Management and Budget, as the agency’s acting director. Mr. Vought was an author of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for upending the federal government that called for significant changes, including abolishing the consumer bureau.In less than 36 hours, Mr. Vought threw the agency into chaos. On Saturday, he ordered the bureau’s 1,700 employees to stop nearly all their work and announced plans to cut off the agency’s funding. Then on Sunday, he closed the bureau’s headquarters for the coming week. Workers who tried to retrieve their laptops from the office were turned away, employees said.The bureau “has been a woke & weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals for a long time,” Mr. Vought wrote Sunday on X. “This must end.”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 to Pay Off Credit Card Debt

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      A new report finds that people are spending more on their cards and paying down less. Financial experts offer tips for reducing that debt, starting with looking at your spending habits.Credit card debt is weighing on many Americans.The share of credit card holders making just the minimum monthly payment is at a 12-year high, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported last month. People are spending more on their cards but paying off less, increasing the amount of debt carried month to month and paying more in interest. And more people are late in paying their monthly card bill.“Credit card performance is showing signs of consumer stress,” the bank’s report said.Adding to the stress is the fact that interest rates on credit cards have risen in recent years. The average rate was more than 21 percent at the end of last year, the Federal Reserve said, compared with about 15 percent in 2019.So whether you observe “frugal” February or try a “no spend” challenge, now is a good time to make a plan to chip away at your balances.Right after the new year, “people have so many things on their mind,” said Charlestien Harris, a financial counselor in Clarksdale, Miss., with Southern Bancorp Community Partners. “By February, a person has a chance to settle down. You can begin to focus more and name a goal or two.”If you’re worried about your card debt, there are options that can help you get it under control — such as transferring your balance to a lower-rate credit card, if you qualify. But the first step is to get a clear picture of your spending habits, said Daniel Yerger, a fee-only financial planner in Longmont, Colo.“Before you consolidate or refinance the debt, you have to address the ‘why’ of what’s happening,” Mr. Yerger said. If you are consistently spending beyond your means, moving the debt to a new card isn’t likely to help in the long run. “We can shuffle it around,” he said, “but you want to get ahead of it.”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