Ariel Skelley | DigitalVision | Getty Images Looking to be happier with your life and finances in 2022? The answer may be finding professional help. People who worked with a financial advisor were found to be nearly three times happier than those who didn’t, according to a study by Herbers & Company. Predictors of happiness
Personal finance
Phynart Studio | E+ | Getty Images When the calendar flips to 2022, certain Medicare costs will creep higher. For the program’s 63.6 million beneficiaries — most of whom are 65 or older — annual adjustments can affect premiums, deductibles and other cost-sharing aspects of Medicare. While each change doesn’t necessarily involve a huge dollar
Marko Geber If you couldn’t max out your individual retirement account in 2021, don’t despair. There’s still time to make a contribution to traditional and Roth IRAs. The deadline for putting money into IRAs for this year is April 15, 2022, giving savers an additional four months to contribute. For 2021, the maximum contribution to
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images New Year’s Day luck could end up making a Powerball player a few hundred million dollars richer. No ticket matched all six numbers drawn Wednesday, which means the jackpot has climbed higher: It’s an advertised $483 million for Saturday night’s drawing, up from $441 million. The top prize
A recruiter hands out information to a job seeker during a job fair in Miami, Florida, on Dec. 16, 2021. Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images Initial claims for unemployment benefits ended 2021 near pre-pandemic levels, after an improving labor market led claims to fall roughly fourfold over the course of the year. However, a
Samuel Corum/Bloomberg Democrats seem to have nixed the idea of taxing returns on unsold stock and other assets, favoring other ways to raise revenue as part of a nearly $2 trillion social and climate bill. Scrapping that tax on “unrealized capital gains” would primarily benefit the richest Americans, who hold the bulk of the country’s
Jose Luis Pelaez Inc | DigitalVision | Getty Images Coming off several years of outsized gains in the stock market, investors may be hoping 2022 is like deja vu again. Don’t count on it. While future performance is impossible to predict with certainty, many financial advisors expect returns will come back down to Earth. “We
FG Trade | E+ | Getty Images Vanguard investors have been grappling with partial website outages over the past several days that have blocked some customers from trade confirmations, certain statements and forms. These interruptions may cause problems for those making year-end transactions, such as required minimum distributions, as there’s a 50% penalty for missing the
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images After making payments on her student loans since 2005, Karen Tongson is finally free of her debt. In November, Tongson, an English and gender studies professor, signed into her loan account and discovered her balance had fallen from $47,000 to $0, thanks to
FatCamera | E+ | Getty Images Open enrollment for the public health insurance marketplace lasts a month longer than usual this year — which means there’s still time to get coverage. Through Jan. 15 — unless your state has a different closing date — you and your family can sign up for a plan through
Marko Geber | DigitalVision | Getty Images Employers are increasingly putting retirement savings on autopilot for their workers. About 62% of businesses with a 401(k) plan used automatic enrollment in 2020, up from 60% the year prior and 46% a decade ago, according to the Plan Sponsor Council of America, a trade group. This feature
Holiday shopping returned with a vengeance this year. But going into debt is one gift you can’t return. After Americans paid off a record $83 billion in credit card debt in 2020, helped by government stimulus checks and fewer opportunities for discretionary purchases, credit card balances are heading higher once again. Overall, credit card balances rose by $17
Victoria Popova | iStock | Getty Images Student loan borrowers got some happy news this holiday season: They’ll have an additional three months before they have to start making their payments again. The payment pause, which has been in effect since March 2020, was scheduled to expire Jan. 31, but the Biden administration announced it
Integrity Pictures Inc | The Image Bank | Getty Images The share of employers allowing Roth 401(k) savings surged last year, giving more workers access to the financial benefits that accompany such contributions. A Roth is a type of after-tax account. Workers pay taxes up front on 401(k) savings, but investment growth and account withdrawals
Whenever Anne Helen Petersen and her partner Charlie Warzel, both journalists, were on a trip, they’d find themselves talking about moving to wherever they were visiting. “It would happen when we went to Santa Fe and to the Catskills,” Petersen said. “It was every single place.” That told them that they weren’t happy in New
The Jet offers one-by-two luxury seating in its 14-passenger coaches between New York and Washington, D.C., along with at-seat attendant service and UV air filtration. The Jet For New York City resident James Gilmer, 28, long-distance travel by bus usually means something very specific: getting to and from his hometown of Pittsburgh during the holidays.
Maria Teijeiro | OJO Images | Getty Images ‘Tis the season for charitable giving, and retirees eyeing a year-end donation may still score a write-off with transfers from their individual retirement account. Qualified charitable distributions, or QCDs, are direct gifts from an IRA to an eligible charity. Investors age 70½ and older may donate up
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting with his administration’s Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force and private sector CEOs in the South Court Auditorium of the White House December 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer | Getty Images Amid concerns about the new omicron virus, the Biden administration will extend the payment pause
RgStudio | E+ | Getty Images It’s almost time to ring in the new year. Before you do, there are some smart money moves you can still make that can set you up for success in 2022 — and beyond. To be sure, practicing good financial health is important all year long. However, there are
The crypto ecosystem has expanded significantly in recent years. While institutions such as the IMF are starting to embrace its innovation, they are also calling for investors to exercise caution. Jakub Porzycki | NurPhoto via Getty Images Cryptocurrency donations to charity are booming, with gifts still rolling in as the calendar winds down. There was