According to a recent AARP survey, about 1 in 4 U.S. adults aged 50 and older say they never expect to retire and 70% are concerned about prices increasing faster than their income.

For those who plan to stop working, determining the right amount of money to set aside can be tricky as several factors come into play, like your spending habits, lifestyle, and location.

A GoBankingRates study, for example, found that you'd need over $1.1 million to fund a 25-year retirement in Miami, Florida, compared to nearly $570,000 in McAllen, Texas – based on the annual cost of groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, and healthcare costs.

One way to benchmark your savings is to see how you compare with others in your age range, though, as Edwards Jones points out, it won't "tell you how close you are to your goal."

"The relevant data point isn’t what others your age have saved but how much money you need yourself. The answer depends almost entirely on you, your habits now and your plans for later," the financial services firm noted on its website.

Data from the Federal Reserve's most recent Survey of Consumer Finances (2022) indicates the median retirement savings account balance for all U.S. families stands at $87,000.

Below are the median amounts for individuals, categorized by age:

The average retirement savings account balance for all families is higher, at $333,940, since the wealthiest households tend to drive the average up. This also applies to individual account balances, as illustrated in the following table.

If you're looking for another way to track your progress, Fidelity developed a savings guideline that factors in your age and salary.

It says by age 30, you should aim to have the equivalent of one year's salary saved. So, if your annual salary is $60,000, your 401(k) balance should ideally be $60,000.

Here's the full guideline from Fidelity:

• By age 30: Save 1x your income
• By age 35: Save 2x your income
• By age 40: Save 3x your income
• By age 45: Save 4x your income
• By age 50: Save 6x your income
• By age 55: Save 7x your income
• By age 60: Save 8x your income
• By age 67: Save 10x your income

However, it's important to remember that while this can be a useful tool, it's not a mandate.

"These milestones are aspirational. You likely won't meet all of them," Fidelity explained on its website. "But they can serve as goalposts to help you make a plan to save enough to maintain your lifestyle in retirement."

The Associated Press and Nexstar's Addy Bink contributed to this story.

The search for a better salary has caused some nurses to travel the country or to drop out of the profession altogether. Uncompetitive pay has also caused nurses across the country to grab their picket signs and go on strike for raises and better working conditions.

According to MoneyGeek, which analyzed nurses' salaries in over 100 metro areas in the U.S., compensation can vary drastically based on location, tax implications, and living costs. Not to mention local governments in some states make decisions that either help or hurt nurses in the area.

The average salary for a registered nurse in the U.S. is $86,070 in gross pay. Of the metro areas that MoneyGeek analyzed, less than one-third surpass that average. When adjusted for taxes and the cost-of-living index, you're left with $65,414 on average.

For metro areas where registered nurses are making the least, it isn't always that the salary is low. In many cases, it's that the cost of living and taxes in these areas affect take-home pay drastically.

For example, at No. 1, Washington D.C.'s pre-tax salary is $98,000, but the adjusted take-home pay is $48,000, according to MoneyGeek's analysis. That's nearly half of the salary lost to high cost of living and taxes.

Honolulu isn't far behind D.C. with $50,000 adjusted take-home pay, but in this case the gross pay is much higher: almost $134,000.

The metro areas that are toughest for registered nurses, after you consider taxes and local cost of living, are:

On the other end, two states in particular had several metro areas that surpassed the average salary for registered nurses: California and Texas.

California has four cities ranked in the top 10 for registered nurse salaries after the cost of living and taxes are taken out. The Sacramento area finished No. 1, with registered nurses taking home $88,847, almost $10,000 more than any other metro area in the country.

Texas had three cities in the top 10, with Houston sliding into No. 2 at $79,520.

Here's the top 10 list of metro areas where registered nurses are taking home the most money:

With the salary for nurses varying so much depending on where in the country they work, there has been a growing trend in travel nurses across the U.S. The latest National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report from NSI (Nursing Solutions, Inc.) shows that the average travel nurse can make up to $102 an hour, or a little over $212,000 annually, depending on where they work. That's more than double what the average registered nurse makes.

Most travel nurses work 13-week contracts and are free to move from one role to another with each new contract, according to Trusted Nurse Staffing, meaning they can choose where to go to make the most money by year's end.

Factors such as the time of year or a crisis in an area can also boost pay for travel nurses. During COVID, some travel nurses were making up to $5,000 per week. 

A look at the demographics for travel nurses by Zippia shows what they would make on average in each county in the country if they were to work there for the year.

Zippia also found that almost 59% of all travel nurses are over the age of 40, with 28% between 30 and 40 years old, and 14% under 30.

Recent polling shows that the economy and inflation are top concerns for Americans going into the election, gaining in importance specifically in states where President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are on the ground campaigning. Seven states — Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina — are expected to sway the election.

An April YouGov survey for CBS News ranked “the economy” and “inflation” as the two top issues in the U.S. today.

The comparatively gentler pricing in key counties and districts could make a difference in which candidate voters choose at the polls, as studies suggest that incumbent presidents tend to win in elections when economic conditions are more favorable.

"Different inflation rates could indeed be significant in swing states. I think the cumulative inflation rate over the past 3-4 years is probably the most important to consumers thinking about their personal situation," Jeremy Horpedahl, an economist at the University of Central Arkansas, told The Hill.

The national annual inflation rate was 3.5 percent as of March. It has remained between 3 and 3.7 percent since last June after dropping fast off a 9-percent high in mid-2022. 

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged a lack of progress toward the Fed’s 2-percent target rate, saying that “so far this year the data have not given us [the] greater confidence” to start cutting interest rates.

Economists say the lower swing state inflation could be related to housing prices, which are directly propelled by interest rate increases and are now the primary driver of overall inflation.

Different regions of the country, with different zoning and permitting rules, may have been able to process housing cost pressure more effectively, and they may be converging in 2024 battleground states.

"We know that across the country housing affordability differs. To meet the extra demand that we had during the pandemic, you needed to build more and some parts of the country are better at building more," Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist now with New Century Advisors, told The Hill. "Those were the areas that were able to meet the demand."

"It's the kitchen table stuff that at the end of the day ought to affect how people vote," she said.

Some economists see small differences in inflation as a trivial matter for election outcomes.
“Small differences in inflation across states will not be a big deal,” economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, a left-leaning think tank, told The Hill, conditioning that perceptible changes in housing costs could have electoral consequences.

“We know that the rents of marketed units have stopped rising rapidly and may even be falling somewhat. This will be a big help where people see that. Also, if we see any fall in mortgage rates before the election, that will likely help Biden,” he said.

Arizona

In Maricopa County, Arizona, which Biden took from Trump in 2020 as only the second Democrat to win there since Harry Truman, consumer prices advanced just 2.2 percent on an annual basis in February of this year, the last time data was reported for the Phoenix area by the Labor Department.

Grocery prices in Phoenix have deflated 0.4 percent since Feb. 2023, with meat prices down more than 3 percent and dairy prices down more than 5 percent. Housing costs are still elevated just as they are nationally, with shelter up 2.7 percent and primary rent up 4.1 percent.

Maricopa County’s 2.2-percent inflation rate is also notable because it fell from a 2022 high of 13 percent — a full 4 percentage points higher than the national peak of 9 percent reached in that year. That’s a drop in price expansion of more than 10 percent in under two years, nearly double the 5.5-percent drop experienced nationally.

Unemployment in Phoenix is at 2.6 percent, which is also significantly better than the national number at 3.8 percent. A recent analysis by USA Today that compared income levels to the cost of essential expenses determined Arizona to be the third most affordable state to live in.

Michigan

Michigan, where Trump visited Saginaw County Wednesday just six weeks after Biden’s own trip there, is another battleground state where inflation is well below the national average at 2.8 percent in the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn area.

That metropolitan district has also experienced a larger drop in inflation than the U.S. as a whole, falling from a high of 9.7 percent in June 2022. 

Shelter costs are more expensive in the Detroit area, while certain foods are cheaper, including meat and dairy products. Unemployment in Saginaw County stood at 5.2 percent in March of this year, higher than the national level.

In the battleground Kent County, unemployment stood at 3.1 percent in February. Grand Rapids-area unemployment also beat national levels at 3.2 percent that month, though weekly wages were $217 shy of the U.S. average.

Georgia

The economy around Atlanta, Georgia, which has a number of pivotal counties for the election and has seen dynamic changes in voting patterns in recent years, tells a stronger story, with inflation falling to 3.3 percent in February off a 2022 high of 11.5 percent.

Unemployment in the Atlanta region was 3.0 percent in January compared to 3.9 percent nationally while average weekly wages came in $37 above national levels. In contested Cobb County, Georgia, which has pulled back from the GOP in recent years, unemployment was a low 2.7 percent.

While headline inflation in Atlanta is 0.2 percentage points lower than the national CPI, both food and energy inflation are considerably higher there, at a 3.9 percent annual increase in February for food and a 3.6 percent increase for energy costs. That’s compared to a 1.9-percent deflation in energy costs as measured on the national level.

Wisconsin

Regional inflation data for Wisconsin is listed under neighboring Minnesota by the Labor Department but provides a similar picture of lower-than-average price increases in the northern midwest at 2.7 percent.

Grocery prices are deflating by 2.1 percent on the year, with fruits and vegetables 6.7 percent cheaper than they were in 2023. Deflation in some energy categories and motor vehicle prices is being offset by predictably high inflation in housing.

Wisconsin’s two highly contested “boomerang counties,” which voted for former President Obama, then Trump and most recently Biden, are Door County and Sauk County. 

Data from Kewaunee County, which abuts Door County, has unemployment beating the national average by nearly a full percentage point at 2.9 percent, which is true of nearby Brown County, as well. Unemployment in Madison, which is close to Sauk County, is at a very low 2.3 percent.

Pennsylvania

Economic conditions in metropolitan areas of Pennsylvania more closely map the national story than some of the other swing states, with inflation falling from a high of 8.8 percent in 2022 to 3.4 percent in February in the Philadelphia region.

Food and shelter cost pressures are both weighing on pocketbooks while energy deflation is offering a bit of price slack, with household energy costs down by more than 3 percent on the year.

The economic situation in boomerang Erie County is less favorable, with unemployment at 4 percent and weekly wages trailing the national average by a substantial $357.

Nevada and North Carolina

The Labor Department doesn’t track price data in metropolitan areas in either Nevada or North Carolina, so only broader regional-level data is available for those states. 

Inflation is higher than average in the West at 3.6 percent and in the South at 3.8 percent annually.

However, economists in North Carolina have touted the state’s affordability due to its relatively homogenous rural dispersion.

“Data from the federal government for 2022 — the latest available — show the cost of the same products and services bought by a typical household was 5.8 percent lower in North Carolina compared to the nation,” North Carolina State University agricultural economist Mike Walden wrote in a January brief.

“The cost of housing … is 18 percent lower than the national cost. A big reason is that the percentage of North Carolinians living in rural regions of the state is more than twice as high as in the nation,” he noted.

Unemployment is higher than the national average in Carson City, Las Vegas and Reno, with the Nevada average at 5.1 percent in March. Unemployment in North Carolina in March is in sync with the national average at 3.5 percent.

Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March. And it was well below the 233,000 gain that economists had predicted for April.

Yet the moderation in the pace of hiring, along with a slowdown last month in wage growth, will likely be welcomed by the Federal Reserve, which has kept interest rates at a two-decade high to fight persistently elevated inflation. Hourly wages rose a less-than-expected 0.2% from March and 3.9% from a year earlier, the smallest annual gain since June 2021.

The Fed has been delaying any consideration of interest rate cuts until it gains more confidence that inflation is steadily slowing toward its 2% target. Rate cuts by the central bank would, over time, reduce the cost of mortgages, auto loans and other consumer and business borrowing.

Stock prices jumped and bond yields fell Friday after the jobs report was released on hopes that rate cuts might now be more likely sometime in the coming months.

“A slowdown in payrolls to a decent pace to start the second quarter, coupled with a slowing in wage gains, will be welcome news to (the Fed’s) policymakers," said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. “Current readings also support the view that rates cuts – and not hikes – are the base case scenario for the Fed this year.’’

The state of the economy is weighing on voters’ minds as the November presidential campaign intensifies. Despite the strength of the job market, Americans remain generally exasperated by high prices, and many of them assign blame to President Joe Biden.

Even with the April hiring slowdown, last month’s job growth amounted to a solid increase, though it was the lowest monthly gain since October. With the nation’s households continuing their steady spending, many employers have had to keep hiring to meet their customer demand.

Though the unemployment rate ticked up from 3.8% to 3.9% in April, it was the 27th straight month in which the rate has remained below 4%, tying the longest such streak since the 1960s.

“Certainly a cooler jobs report than we’ve seen,’’ said Michael Pugliese, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “But it’s not like it was disastrous: 175,000 is still pretty strong, and unemployment below 4% is still pretty healthy.’’ He expects hiring, which averaged a vigorous 242,000 from February through April, to continue to decelerate.

Last month's hiring was led by healthcare companies, which added 56,000 jobs. Warehouse and transportation companies added 22,000 and retailers 20,000. Government at all levels, which had been hiring aggressively, added just 8,000 jobs in April, the lowest monthly total since December 2022.

Local governments didn’t add any jobs at all last month. Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics noted that state and local government revenue has recently slumped.

Temporary help jobs fell by more than 16,000. These positions are often seen as a potential indicator of where the job market is headed because companies sometimes try out temps before committing to full-time hires.

The share of the adult population that either has a job or is looking for one was unchanged at 62.7%, well below pre-pandemic levels.

America’s job market has repeatedly proved more robust than almost anyone had predicted. When the Fed began aggressively raising rates two years ago to fight a punishing inflation surge, most economists expected the resulting jump in borrowing costs to cause a recession and drive unemployment to painfully high levels.

The Fed raised its benchmark rate 11 times from March 2022 to July 2023, taking it to the highest level since 2001. Inflation did steadily cool as it was supposed to — from a year-over-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.5% in March.

Yet the resilient strength of the job market and the overall economy, fueled by steady consumer spending, has kept inflation persistently above the Fed’s 2% target.

The job market has been showing other signs of eventually slowing. This week, for example, the government reported that job openings fell in March to 8.5 million, the fewest in more than three years. Still, that is a large number of vacancies: Before 2021, monthly job openings had never topped 8 million, a threshold they have now exceeded every month since March 2021.

On a month-over-month basis, consumer inflation hasn’t declined since October. The 3.5% year-over-year inflation rate for March was still running well above the Fed’s 2% target.

Steven Kramer, CEO of WorkJam, an online platform that helps businesses like retailers and hospitality companies manage their hourly workers’ tasks and training, said that he is noticing that pressure to raise wages has eased. But he is seeing companies focusing more on offering flexibility in shifts for workers who are increasingly juggling multiple jobs to pay their bills in the face of still stubborn inflation. “They’re allowing workers to swap a shift or pick up a shift,” he said.

Onur Kutlubay, CEO of You Parcel, a Totowa, New Jersey-based company that provides shipping services to small e-commerce businesses, said that it’s still challenging to find skilled workers like forklift operators and supervisors, while unskilled workers are easier to find.

You Parcel has 43 workers across eight warehouse and storage facilities, most of them in New Jersey. Kutlubay said he’s had to keep increasing wages for its highly skilled employees. In 2020, skilled workers started at $16; now, hourly wages start at $25. For unskilled workers, the starting wages are now $16; in 2020, the figure was around $11.

He noted people are preferring to work as Uber drivers or work for delivery companies such as DoorDash.“The jobs give them the opportunity to get some tips from customers, ” he said. “They tend to be more attractive to people. That keeps them away from regular jobs like the ones that we have.”

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D'Innocenzio reported from New York.

The IRS now has the funding to take a closer look thanks to an influx of cash from the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, the agency said. "Prior to IRA, more than a decade of budget cuts prevented the IRS from keeping pace with the increasingly complicated set of tools that non-compliant taxpayers use to shelter or manipulate their income to avoid taxes."

The audit rate of millionaires fell by more than 70% from 2010 to 2019 and the rate on large corporations dropped by more than 50%. The IRS estimates there's now a $683 billion tax gap made up of taxpayers underreporting income, underpaying what they owe, or not filing at all.

As it audits more taxpayers, the IRS says there are some groups it will be targeting more:

• Wealthy individuals whose income tops $10 million
• Companies with assets above $250 million
• Complex partnerships with assets more than $10 million
• Corporations and high-income taxpayers using business aircraft, like private jets, for personal use

People making under $400,000 and small businesses won't be subject to more audits as a result of the changes, IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said.

The IRS says it also wants to take the focus off Black, low-income taxpayers, who have disproportionately been the target of audits. A study from January 2023 involving university researchers and the Treasury Department found that IRS data-driven algorithms selected Black taxpayers for auditing at up to 4.7 times the rate of non-Black taxpayers.

The study also said the IRS disproportionately audited people who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is aimed at low- to moderate-income workers and families: While Black taxpayers accounted for 21% of the claims for that break, they were the focus of 43% of the audits concerning the credit.

"We have taken swift initial action to dramatically reduce the number of those audits. We have also made changes to the selection criteria for those audits,” Werfel said.

The discriminatory audits, he told reporters, “degrade trust in our tax system.”

“We are overhauling compliance efforts to advance our commitment to fair, equitable, and effective tax administration and hold ourselves accountable to taxpayers we serve,"the IRS wrote in its annual update.

The IRS plans to refocus its audit targets by tax year 2026.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The new proposal won't legalize recreational weed nationwide, but it would reclassify marijuana so it's no longer considered a Schedule I drug alongside heroin, LSD and ecstasy.

Instead, marijuana would move to the less tightly regulated Schedule III tier next to drugs like ketamine and anabolic steroids, which have accepted medical uses. The change would open the door for new research and ease the tax burden on cannabis businesses.

"It's a necessary step because it opens up people's minds and understanding that this plant does have medical utility," said Saphira Galoob, executive director of the National Cannabis Roundtable.

But rescheduling marijuana, which Galoob called an "incremental step," won't address all of the challenges facing the legal cannabis industry, particularly when it comes to accessing loans at major banks.

Here's what the proposal could mean for companies and consumers.

What's the biggest change for businesses?

Rescheduling will lead to lower tax bills for marijuana companies that haven't been able to take the same deductions as other businesses.

Under the federal tax code, businesses associated with "trafficking" Schedule I or Schedule II substances can't deduct expenses like rent and payroll, which other companies can write off. Cannabis industry groups say their businesses often end up paying tax rates that are 70% or more.

For some, the current tax burden has added up to as much as $80 million a year in extra costs, a Chicago-based CEO told the Chicago-Sun Times.

If marijuana is reclassified as a Schedule III substance, the federal deduction rule would no longer apply, cutting cannabis companies' taxes significantly.

Aaron Smith, CEO of the National Cannabis Industry Association, told NewsNation the tax implications would have a "significant positive impact" on legal cannabis businesses that have been subjected to the "unfair" provision of the tax code.

Galoob called the existing tax rules "unacceptable" and said the barriers have held back small businesses in the sector.

Will weed cost less at the dispensary?

The good news for consumers is that lower tax bills for businesses could lead to better prices at the dispensary.

"I would expect some of that savings to be passed along to consumers," Smith said.

More broadly, the tax savings will make it easier for businesses to reinvest and grow their companies. In turn, that will create more jobs and put more money into the economy, Smith pointed out.

Galoob thinks those positive spillover effects will lead to a more efficient cannabis market, ultimately reducing price pressures. That shift would also help restrain the illegal market, which continues to thrive.

"As a regulated market becomes more efficient, the illicit market goes away and goes down," she said.

Today, the price of weed varies significantly from state to state and any future price reductions are sure to reflect local supply and demand.

In Illinois, where the cannabis market is dominated by a few major brands, the average item price was almost 90% higher than the rest of the U.S. in 2023, according to Headset — a cannabis market research company. By comparison, Washington state has over 1,000 distinct brands and prices are among the lowest in the country.

Other states, like Oregon, have already seen retail prices plummet in recent years due to a weed surplus that's resulted, in part, from restrictions on interstate sales.

Will it be easier for marijuana businesses to get loans?

Major banks have long been reluctant to do business with cannabis companies due to the drug's legal status and experts say rescheduling is unlikely to change that.

"Cannabis would still be illegal under federal law, and that is a line many banks in this country will not cross," Blair Bernstein, a spokesperson for the American Bankers Association, told the Associated Press.

For that reason, marijuana businesses may still have trouble securing loans and setting up accounts — a longstanding challenge for the industry.

Today, only about 10% of U.S. Banks and roughly 5% of all credit unions provide cannabis-related businesses with accounts, Reuters reported.

The difficulty accessing capital has led operators to rely entirely on cash, making them targets for robberies. That credit crunch has also limited the opportunity for small businesses to grow.

Advocates say the persistent financial barriers underscore the importance of the bipartisan SAFER Banking Act. The bill — which is currently being considered by federal lawmakers — would provide protections for federally regulated financial institutions serving legitimate marijuana businesses.

"Businesses that are operating in this space deserve to be able to pull every lever and access every aspect of growing, building, and developing a thriving, highly regulated business like everyone else does," Galoob said.

Smith echoed the need for federal legislation and called on Congress to pass the bill "without further delay."

The central bank kept its key rate at a two-decade high of roughly 5.3%, where it has been since last August.

Here's what to know:

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR BORROWERS?

Credit card rates are at or near all-time peaks, and mortgage rates have more than doubled in recent years.

According to LendingTree, the average credit card interest rate in America today is 24.66%, unchanged from last month, though that rate has risen for 24 of the last 26 months.

“That isn’t likely to fall anytime soon, despite the Fed taking its foot off the gas,” said LendingTree Credit Analyst Matt Schultz. “That’s likely the unfortunate reality for the next several months.”

In the battle against credit card debt, 0% balance transfer cards “are still your best weapon,” according to Schultz, but “they’re getting harder to get and their fees are rising.”

With delinquencies and debt totals also increasing for consumers, some banks are becoming more hesitant about taking on transferred balances, he said, meaning consumers will need good credit to get approval.

WHAT’S IN STORE FOR SAVERS?

Yields on savings accounts and certificates of deposit (CDs) have been hovering at high levels, thanks to the Fed's increased interest rates, according to Ken Tumin, banking expert and founder of DepositAccounts.com. That said, “several banks have been lowering deposit rates (with the) expectation that the Fed will start cutting rates at some point this year.”

Certificate of deposit rates have been the first to fall, and a few online banks have also started lowering online savings account rates. Ally Bank dropped its rate to 4.25% from 4.35% and Discover to 4.25% from 4.30%.

Even so, most online banks held their online savings account rates steady in 2024, and several online banks still offer yields of 5.25%. The highest online yield is currently 5.55%, with the average online 1-year CD yield 4.94% as of April 1st, according to DepositAccounts.com.

Tumin notes that “brick-and-mortar bank deposit rates continue to be slow in their movement higher,” saying that while their average rates have gone up sharply in the last year, "they are still very low compared to online rates.”

The average savings account yield for all banks and credit unions, of which the vast majority are brick-and-mortar, is 0.52% as of April 24th.

WHAT ABOUT MORTGAGES?

The Fed doesn’t directly set mortgage rates, but it does influence them. The bond market, inflation, and other factors all contribute to the high mortgage rates currently facing consumers.

The average rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage recently rose to above 7% for the first time since November. LendingTree Senior Economist Jacob Channel notes that mortgage rates can shift even as the Fed holds its benchmark rate steady, and that consumers should consider many economic data points before deciding to take on a mortgage.

“Even in the face of relatively steep mortgage rates and high prices, now could still be a good time to buy a home,” he said. “Timing the market is virtually impossible... In that same vein, there are a lot of people who won’t be able to buy until the market becomes cheaper."

High shelter and rent costs have contributed to steep inflation in recent months.

A Bankrate study found that renting is cheaper than buying a typical home in all 50 of the largest U.S. metro areas. As of February, the typical monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home in the U.S. was $2,703, while the typical national monthly rent was $1,979. That's a nearly 37% gap between the costs of renting and buying a home.

“While it would be nice if the Fed could fix everything on its own, it probably can’t, at least not without causing a great deal of weeping and gnashing of teeth,” said Channel.

I NEED TO BUY A CAR. WHAT’S THE OUTLOOK FOR AUTO LOANS?

While vehicle prices have steadied through late 2023 and early 2024, Bankrate Chief Financial Analyst Greg McBride predicts that high interest rates on auto loans will linger for those with weak credit profiles. Borrowers with stronger credit may see more competitive rates, but the Fed's decision will continue to make auto loans expensive, even if vehicle prices decline. The average car loan hasn't been this pricey since 2008.

McBride predicts five-year new car loan rates will reach an average of 7.0% and four-year used car loans, 7.5% by the end of 2024.

In the past year, borrowers have f aced especially expensive monthly payments due to high interest rates, and auto loan delinquency reached its highest rate in nearly thirty years. The average monthly car loan payment was $738 for new vehicles and $532 for used ones in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to credit reporting agency Experian.

New vehicles cost an average of $47,218 in March 2024, according to Kelley Blue Book, a price that, combined with high interest rates, pushes many buyers out of the market for new cars.

IS THE FED MAKING PROGRESS ON SLOWING INFLATION?

Not as quickly as it would like.

Several recent reports on prices and economic growth have undercut the Fed’s belief that inflation was steadily easing.

“Inflation has shown a lack of further progress toward our 2% objective," said Chair Jerome Powell.

While inflation has cooled from a peak of 7.1% to 2.7%, average prices remain well above pre-pandemic levels, and the costs of services continue to grow — including for rents, health care, restaurant meals, and auto insurance.

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“The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.”

Nearly every U.S. state has at least one billionaire, according to Forbes' latest report on the richest people. This is the second time Forbes has produced this list since 2019.

As of May 2024, only three states are without a billionaire, the report found, including Alaska, Delaware, and West Virginia. Forbes explained last year that West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice once had billionaire status but lost it due to heavy debts in the early 2020s.

Overall, the 54 people who made Forbes' list (some tied for the wealthiest resident in their state) are worth $1.6 trillion. That's up $100 billion from 2023's report.

Also new this year, some states have lost their richest person. That includes Washington, which saw Jeff Bezos relocate to Florida in recent months. Bezos' departure cleared the way for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to rank as the wealthiest Washington state resident.

Tesla's (and Texas') Elon Musk maintained his rank at the top of Forbes' list overall, sporting an estimated net worth of $195 billion. Bezos isn't far behind at $194 billion. Rounding out the top five are California's Mark Zuckerberg, Nebraska's Warren Buffett and Washington's Gates.

The interactive table below shows the wealthiest person in each state, their state of residence, their estimated worth in billions, and their estimated net worth Forbes listed in 2023 (if applicable).

For best viewing on mobile, turn your device horizontally.

There are some newcomers to the list. Among those, Forbes highlights Todd Graves, the founder and CEO of the Raising Cane's fast-food chain. He surpassed Gayle Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, as Louisiana's wealthiest resident.

Also profiting from fast food is Georgia's Cathy family — Dan and his children, Bubba and Trudy Cathy — of Chick-fil-A fame. Jim Walton, the youngest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, ranks as the wealthiest Arkansas resident, while his nephew, Lukas Walton, is the wealthiest Illinois resident.

In eight states, the richest person is a woman, according to Forbes. The wealthiest among them is Virginia's Jacqueline Mars, granddaughter of Frank C. Mars, the founder of the Mars candy company. With an estimated net worth of $38.5 billion, Mars falls just behind Oregon's Phil Knight of Nike by $2.4 billion.

You can view Forbes' full list here.

If you're hoping to land on Forbes' list of wealthiest people, you may want to consider moving to Alaska. Leonard Hyde and Jonathan Rubini of JL Properties are tied as the richest residents — both have an estimated worth of $400 million, Forbes reports.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that Southwest Airlines is required to provide compensation as part of a deal reached after its 2022 "holiday meltdown that stranded millions of passengers across the country."

Flyers can receive a Southwest LUV Voucher if their flight is canceled or delayed within seven days of departure, they arrive three or more hours later than planned, and the delay or cancellation was caused by something Southwest could control, such as maintenance or staffing.

Passengers are not eligible for the the extra voucher when a Southwest flight is delayed or canceled by things out of the airline's control, such as weather. However, if that is the case, the DOT recently created new rules that make it easier for passengers to get a quick refund.

“After the 2022 holiday meltdown, our department held Southwest Airlines accountable—and now the airline is required to compensate passengers for lengthy delays and cancellations that they cause,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “We're pleased to bring these benefits to passengers, and further show the flying public that the Biden-Harris Administration has their back.”

Passengers can apply for a voucher through an online form that must be submitted within one year of the delayed/canceled flight. Southwest will respond to the email within 30 days of receiving the request form.

Vouchers will be transferrable and valid for at least one year after the date its issued.

The Department of Transportation says they will "be closely monitoring" the program. An annual report will be filed every May for the next three years detailing the voucher expenditures.

The National Education Association, the largest teachers' union in the U.S., released its newest data on teacher salaries on Tuesday.

On average, teachers in the U.S. are making $69,544. At the highest end, teachers in some states are making almost six figures, NEA found, while at the lowest, teachers make only about $50,000.

Educators just starting out are making far less at $44,530. NEA reports that is 3.9% more than in the 2021-2022 school year, but, when adjusted for inflation, "starting teacher salaries are now $4,273 below the 2008-2009 levels."

Overall, NEA says teachers are receiving 5% less than they did 10 years ago because of inflation.

The interactive map below shows the average salary per state for the last school year, as well as the previous year's average and how each state ranked in both years.

On mobile? For best viewing, turn your phone horizontally.

Nowhere was the average teacher salary higher than in California. There, according to the NEA, the average teacher is making more than $95,100 annually. That's up almost $7,000 from the previous school year, bolstering California from No. 3 to the top of the list.

California dethroned New York, where teachers are making $92,696 on average. In only one other state, Massachusetts, the average salary is more than $92,000. Rounding out the top five on NEA's list were Washington ($86,804) and the District of Columbia ($84,882).

In almost 20 states, the average salary fell below $60,000.

At the bottom of NEA's list is West Virginia, where teachers are making less than $53,000 annually. Florida ($53,098) and South Dakota ($53,153) were close behind. Also in the bottom five were Mississippi ($53,354) and Missouri ($53,999).

In many states, that average salary is barely enough to bolster teachers into the middle class. Amie Baca-Oehlert, president of the Colorado Education Association, told Nexstar's KDVR that in some cases, teachers have to be more than just educators.

"So many of our educators still report having to work two to three jobs to just feed their families," said Baca-Oehlert.

Colorado educators, who received a slight increase in pay from the previous year, are making roughly $60,775 on average. That puts them at the very bottom end of the "middle class" in Colorado, according to a new report.

Baca-Oehlert noted that many Colorado teachers can't afford to live in the community they teach in, forcing many to commute one to two hours to get to work.

"When you can't be in the communities that you serve, build those relationships that are so crucial to student achievement, it's our students who suffer in the end," said Baca-Oehlert.

While the low salaries significantly affect teachers' lives, Baca-Oehlert said the biggest impact of a teacher's salary is on the students. She added that higher pay for teachers needs to be a group effort between voters, legislators and districts.

NEA President Becky Pringle echoed those sentiments.

“While some elected leaders are doing what is right, too many students remain in schools where decision-makers have driven away quality educators by failing to provide competitive salaries and support, disrespecting the profession, and placing extraordinary pressure on individual educators to do more and more with less and less,” Pringle said in a news release.

Last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation that would set the minimum pay for public school teachers at $60,000 a year following calls from President Joe Biden to give teachers raises. That bill was sent to a Senate committee in March 2023.

While it fell roughly in the middle of NEA's list, Texas is where a teacher's pay goes the furthest, according to a recent report from personal finance firm MoneyGeek. After reviewing the average salaries of educators across the nation's largest cities, MoneyGeek found that teachers in McAllen, Texas, have the highest purchasing power. Honolulu fared the worst, with educators having a take-home income of just $22,677.

Since 2021, the FCC has provided eligible households (those with an income below 200% of the poverty line, or those in which someone was receiving a government benefit like SNAP, Medicaid, or WIC) with cheaper internet or phone service through the Affordable Connectivity Program. More than 20 million households are enrolled in the program, which is set to run out of funding soon. 

Through April, those households have benefited from $30 subsidies on their internet or phone bills. In May, that maximum subsidy will drop to $14. Those who live on tribal lands will see their maximum monthly benefit drop from $75 to $35. 

Come June, however, bills will likely return to their pre-program total, unless a customer opts for the lower-priced plans many providers are promoting. It’s also possible Congress approves more funding. 

In January, Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) introduced companion bills that would provide additional funding for ACP. Both bills have, however, stalled.

In a statement shared with Nexstar via email on Monday, Welch said the program “ helps liberal and conservative, urban and rural areas alike.”

“The partial benefit of $14 in May won’t be enough for many – and Congress needs to act before the program is depleted entirely,” he continued. “This week we’re considering legislation in the Senate Commerce Committee to provide supplemental funding as requested by the ‘Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act’ that is fully paid for. Congress must pass legislation funding the program as quickly as possible and I’ll keep pushing to ensure families stay connected.”

Clarke, in an emailed statement to Nexstar, shared similar sentiments. 

“We cannot turn back on the progress we’ve made in closing the digital divide by allowing this vital program to lose its funding – nor can we accept Congress’ inaction with so many lives and livelihoods on the line,” Clarke said. “Whether they belong to rural or urban communities, Americans of every background and demographic are depending on us to secure their access to the internet in an increasingly digital world. It’s critical we urgently pass the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act.”

As The Hill reported earlier this month, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel penned a letter to Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a member of the House Committee on Appropriations, calling for the passage of the bills that would provide an additional $7 billion for ACP.

“To fully participate in the digital age economy, every household needs access to broadband … We have come too far to allow this successful effort to promote internet access for all to end,” she said.

Fast-food workers now make at least $20 an hour after a new law took effect in April, which has led to some chains raising menu prices by as much as 8%.

Chick-fil-A decided on the biggest price hike this month, and a chicken sandwich can now run for more than $8. Other meal combinations are costing more than $12.

Wendy's has raised prices by roughly 8% and Chipotle has raised prices by 7.5%, while Taco Bell raised prices by 3% and Burger King went up by about 2%, according to data from Kalinowski Equity Research.

KER compared prices at 25 restaurants for each chain and conducted a side-by-side comparison of specific menu items before and after the wage hike. McDonald's executives warned that it would also increase menu prices following the wage increase, but KER found that this has not yet happened.

Democrats in the California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 1228 last year, increasing the minimum wage for fast food workers from $16 to $20 an hour.

Advocates have been applauding the move, but critics say it will lead to higher prices and layoffs.

Economists say raising prices needn't be a given. Owners could cut executive pay or shareholder benefits or accept a decline in corporate profits instead of laying off workers or passing the costs onto consumers.

Labor unions have applauded the law raising wages in a state known for its high cost of living. The Service Employees International Union said California fast-food workers sometimes live in poverty and must rely on public assistance due to low wages.

NewsNation's Brooke Shafer contributed to this report.

Since 2014, fast-food restaurants have raised menu prices by 60%, nearly double the rate of inflation over the same period, according to a recent FinanceBuzz analysis of twelve different chains.

According to the study, prices at McDonald's have gone up the most, surging 100% over the past ten years. These days, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal will set you back $11.99 on average, up from $5.39 in 2014, per the report.

Other chains, including Popeyes (+86%), Taco Bell (+81%), Chipotle (+75%) and Jimmy John's (+62%), have also hiked prices much faster than inflation over the past decade, FinanceBuzz determined. Meanwhile, Starbucks and Subway (+39%) have raised prices almost in line with inflation.

Part of the recent increase can be attributed to higher labor costs, which have swelled more than 30% at limited-service restaurants over the past four years.

The price pressure from higher wages has become a hot-button issue in California, where most fast-food workers now make at least $20 an hour after a new law took effect in April.

"It absolutely helps those folks that are getting the paycheck on Friday, but it absolutely hurts their core customer who can't afford to go there on Friday," said Dan Roccato, a clinical professor of finance at the University of San Diego.

In the run-up to the change, California led the nation in menu price inflation, according to Dataessential, a food and beverage analytics company.

Which chains have raised prices the most?

Across the dozen chains analyzed by FinanceBuzz, menu prices at McDonald's rose the fastest from 2014 to 2024, followed by Popeyes and Taco Bell.

However, prices can vary significantly from city to city. For example, last year, a Big Mac sandwich cost as little as $3.49 in Oklahoma but more than $8 in Massachusetts, according to the McCheapest price tracker.

Part of the gap between restaurant chains is likely due to different franchising models, Roccato pointed out. McDonald's franchisees, who own the majority of U.S. stores, may be more responsive to changes in local labor costs, whereas Starbucks doesn't franchise at all.

"McDonald’s franchisees are given a high level of autonomy in setting menu prices for individual locations, which can make it difficult to accurately source historical data to compare to the present," FinanceBuzz noted in the report.

When reached by email, a McDonald's spokesperson said the study's numbers are inaccurate and added that the 2024 prices cited are "significantly inflated."

"As the report itself notes, pricing is set by individual franchisees and varies by restaurant," the company told NewsNation.

The spokesperson did not say how much menu prices have changed over the past decade.

Inflation: +31% across all items (Jan. 2014 to Jan. 2024)

Change in average menu prices for ten popular items over the past decade, per FinanceBuzz:

1. McDonald's: +100%
2. Popeyes: +86%
3. Taco Bell: +81%
4. Chipotle: +75%
5. Jimmy John's: +62%
6. Arby's, Wendy's, Burger King, Chick-fil-A: +55%
7. Panera Bread: +54%
8. Starbucks, Subway: +39%

Which popular fast food items are more expensive?

Former staples of the McDonald's dollar menu, the McChicken and McDouble, now cost around $3 on average, the analysis found.

Taco Bell's Beefy 5-layer Burrito and Chalupa Supreme are also twice as expensive as a decade ago. At Wendy's, a small Frosty will set you back twice as much compared to ten years ago.

Here's which popular menu items are up the most, according to FinanceBuzz.

McDonald's:

• McChicken
  • 2024: $2.99
  • 2014: $1.00
  • Price increase: +199%
• McDouble
  • 2024: $3.19
  • 2014: $1.19
  • Price increase: +168%
• Medium Fries
  • 2024: $3.79
  • 2014: $1.59
  • Price increase: +138%
• Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal
  • 2024: $11.99
  • 2014: $5.39
  • Price Increase: 122%

Popeye's

• Regular Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
  • 2024: $4.19
  • 2014: $1.79
  • Price Increase: +134%

Taco Bell

• Beefy 5-layer Burrito
  • 2024: $3.69
  • 2014: $1.59
  • Price Increase: +132%
• Chalupa Supreme
  • 2024: $4.59
  • 2014: $2.19
  • Price Increase: +110%

Wendy's

• Small Frosty
  • 2024: $2.09
  • 2014: $0.99
  • Price Increase: +111%

Where will prices go from here?

Moving forward, Roccato expects price hikes to slow down as fast-food giants see their core customers push back.

"To the extent that consumer becomes more stretched, more stressed, [fast food chains] are going to respond in kind," he said.

During the company's quarterly earnings call in February, McDonald's CEO Chris Kempcinzski said there was a drop-off in visits and spending among customers who made $45,000 or less per year.

"The battleground is certainly with that low-income consumer," Kempcinzski said. "And I think what you're going to see as you head into 2024 is probably more attention to what I would describe as affordability."

McDonald's is expected to report slower sales growth for the fourth consecutive quarter during its earnings call Tuesday, according to Reuters. However, the company's net income grew 37% from roughly $6 billion in 2022 to almost $8.5 billion in 2023.

Other fast-food chains have also re-prioritized affordability recently.

Earlier this month, Wendy's ran a promotion offering some of its most popular items for $1 through its app. In January, Taco Bell launched a new Cravings Value Menu with ten items for $3 or less.

But Californians may have to grapple with rising prices a bit longer. Over the past two months, chains like Chick-fil-A (+10.6%), Starbucks (+7.8%), Chipotle (+6.9%) and Taco Bell (+4.9%) have all raised prices in major California cities, the Wall Street Journal reported.

TAMPA (BLOOM) — Let’s face it: the allure of getting your favorite food delivered right to your door without lifting more than a finger (okay, maybe a few taps on your smartphone) is hard to resist. But have you ever paused midway through placing an order on apps like UberEats or DoorDash and wondered why your wallet suddenly feels lighter? You’re not alone. Many of us are scratching our heads (or begrudgingly entering our payment details) as we ponder the high costs associated with these super convenient services.

Understanding Food Delivery Apps

Before we dive into the "why" behind those extra fees, let's break down what exactly a food delivery app does. Essentially, these platforms act as a middleman between you and your favorite dining spots. You choose a restaurant, select your meals, andboom! A driver magically appears at your doorstep with food in hand. Popular players in this field include UberEats, DoorDash, Grubhub, and Postmates.

Why Are We Paying More?

Service Fees and Extras

First up are the various fees tacked on to every order. Service fees, delivery fees, and sometimes even a small order fee if you’re just craving that single taco. These fees can vary wildly by app and city, making it hard to know just how much you’ll pay until you hit checkout.

Restaurant Markups

Ever noticed that your $10 salad from the restaurant costs $12 on the app? Many restaurants bump up their prices on these platforms to cover the commissions they need to pay back to the app. Yes, that means you’re essentially helping the restaurant break even.

Driver Compensation

Those delivery drivers don’t work for free! Part of your payment goes to the drivers, who often juggle multiple orders and navigate traffic to bring you your meal hot and fresh. It's a tough gig, especially when they’re racing against time and the elements. More on this later.

Operational Costs

Running a high-tech platform isn't cheap. These companies spend big bucks on technology, customer service, and marketing to keep their apps at the top of your mind (and your smartphone).

Surge Pricing: Because Time Is Money

Choosing to order during a rainstorm or the latest episode of your favorite show? Expect surge pricing—a dynamic pricing model that hikes up fees when demand spikes. It’s the price we pay for convenience during peak times.

Driver Compensation: The Reality Behind the Wheel

When you place an order through a food delivery app, a portion of your payment goes to the driver who brings your meal to your doorstep. However, the reality of how these earnings break down can be sobering. Despite the crucial role they play, delivery drivers often receive only a small slice of the pie, with the majority of your payment going back to the company.

Understanding Driver Pay Structure

Delivery drivers are typically paid per delivery, with their earnings composed of a base rate plus any tips they receive. The base rate can vary dramatically depending on the company, the order, and the geographic area. Some apps also offer incentives for completing a certain number of deliveries within a specified time frame or during busy periods, but these are not consistent.

The Role of Tips

Tips can make a significant difference in a driver's take-home pay. In fact, for many drivers, tips exceed their base pay from deliveries. This reliance on tips to supplement income highlights the precarious nature of their earnings. While customers are encouraged to tip generously, especially during high-demand times like bad weather or holidays, the necessity for tips to make a decent wage underscores the inadequacy of the base compensation provided by the apps.

The Costs Drivers Bear

What’s often overlooked are the costs that drivers incur while making deliveries. These include fuel, vehicle maintenance, insurance, and depreciation of their vehicle. Unlike traditional employees who might receive benefits or reimbursements for such expenses, gig economy workers like food delivery drivers typically cover all these costs themselves, further diminishing their actual earnings.

Majority of the Fee Structure

A significant portion of what customers pay doesn’t go into drivers' pockets. Instead, it feeds into various other channels:

• Platform Fees: A large share of the costs associated with each order are "service fees" or "delivery fees" that go directly to the company, not the driver. These fees contribute to the company's overhead, such as technology development, marketing, and administrative support.
• Operational Costs: These include the costs of running the platform, customer service, and sometimes even costs associated with partnerships and promotions.

The Discrepancy in Earnings

The disparity between what customers pay and what drivers actually receive is stark. While the food delivery companies tout flexibility and the opportunity to earn significant income through their platforms, the reality for many drivers is a challenging hustle to make ends meet. This system places a heavy burden on drivers to manage high operational costs and unpredictable income streams, all while the bulk of the money paid by consumers goes back to the company.

Traditional Delivery vs. App Delivery: A Shift Towards Monopoly?

The rise of food delivery apps has certainly transformed the way we think about dining at home. But how does this new norm stack up against the traditional delivery systems that were once the backbone of local restaurants? And what happens when it seems like nearly all delivery options have been outsourced to these third-party apps?

Traditional Delivery Systems

Traditionally, delivery was a service offered directly by restaurants. It was mostly limited to pizza places and a few other types of eateries that could afford to hire delivery drivers as part of their staff. These establishments typically charged a small delivery fee, or none at all, and the prices of the dishes remained consistent whether you dined in or ordered out. The direct relationship between the customer and the restaurant facilitated a personal touch—knowing the driver or the person taking your order wasn't uncommon, and it added a layer of trust and customer loyalty.

The Rise of App-Based Delivery

Enter the era of UberEats, DoorDash, and others, where the variety of food available for delivery exploded beyond the usual pizza and Chinese food. These apps offer convenience, a multitude of options, and the simplicity of a single interface for ordering from multiple restaurants. This convenience, however, comes at a cost—literally. As discussed, app-based deliveries often include multiple fees and higher menu prices, which can make a typical meal significantly more expensive than ordering directly from a restaurant.

Outsourcing to Apps: Near-Monopoly Conditions

A significant shift has occurred in recent years: many restaurants, even those with their own delivery systems, have started outsourcing deliveries to these third-party apps. This move is partly due to the massive customer base these platforms command and the marketing power they wield. Restaurants feel compelled to be visible on these apps to stay competitive, even if it means paying hefty commissions and losing direct contact with their customers.

This outsourcing trend has led to what can feel like a monopolistic environment where a few major apps control a large portion of the food delivery market. This concentration raises several concerns:

• Higher Costs for Consumers: With fewer direct delivery options available, consumers are often pushed towards using these apps despite the higher costs associated.
• Pressure on Small Restaurants: Small businesses feel obliged to join these platforms to remain viable, even if the fees diminish their profits.
• Reduced Customer-Restaurant Interaction: The direct line of communication between restaurants and customers diminishes, potentially impacting customer service and satisfaction.
• Market Control: The dominance of a few players allows these apps to dictate terms and conditions, potentially stifling competition and innovation within the market.

Is There a Way Out?

While the convenience of these apps is undeniable, the growing dependency on them for delivery needs calls for a balance. Restaurants might start exploring hybrid models—using apps for broader reach while also maintaining their own delivery services for local customers. Some areas might see a push for more regulations to ensure fair play and reasonable commission rates.

In essence, while app-based delivery services have reshaped the landscape with their convenience and range, the near-monopoly they're creating could have long-term implications for consumer choice and the viability of local restaurants. It's a complex dance of convenience versus cost, and the market will continue to evolve as stakeholders strive for equilibrium.

Pandemic and Prices

The COVID-19 pandemic has supercharged the food delivery industry, with more people opting to dine at home. Increased demand has naturally led to higher prices, as apps manage more orders, more drivers, and yes, more fees.

Solving Problems or Selling Solutions?

The convenience is undeniable, but so is the sticker shock that often comes at checkout. However, these companies are not just passive players; they're actively developing strategies to mitigate the very costs they've helped escalate. Here’s how they're selling us solutions to problems they've largely contributed to creating.

Subscription Services: A Double-Edged Sword?

One of the more popular strategies to combat high delivery costs is the introduction of subscription models like Uber Pass and DashPass. For a regular monthly fee, these programs offer perks such as reduced delivery fees and zero service charges on orders over a certain amount. On the surface, this seems like a win for consumers, but it’s worth a closer look.

The Illusion of Savings

While subscribers can save on individual orders, the monthly fee ensures that the delivery app earns a steady income, regardless of whether the user orders enough to make the subscription worthwhile. Essentially, these apps are betting on the appeal of potential savings to keep subscribers paying every month, even during those when they order less frequently. This model benefits the company by smoothing out income fluctuations and guaranteeing revenue—even if it's from customers paying to potentially save money later.

Promotions and Discounts: More Than Meets the Eye

Delivery apps frequently offer promotions and discounts, which can seem like a great deal at first glance. However, these offers often encourage users to order more frequently or spend more per order than they otherwise might. A discount on a minimum order of $30, for example, might prompt customers to add a few more items to their cart just to qualify.

Temporary Relief from Permanent Markups

These promotions can also act as a temporary relief from the inflated prices seen on the app. By providing a discount, the apps effectively give back a small portion of the markups they charge, making the deal appear more attractive while still maintaining a higher overall price point compared to direct ordering from a restaurant.

Encouraging More Frequent Use

Another subtle way these apps cut costs for consumers is by subtly encouraging more frequent use. The more familiar and dependent people become on these services, the more likely they are to consider the subscription models or to take advantage of promotions that ultimately benefit the app's bottom line.

Are These Real Solutions?

The irony is not lost on consumers who realize that these "solutions" are often just ways to make the original problem—the high cost of convenience—more bearable without truly solving it. While these strategies can indeed lower costs for regular users, they also reinforce dependence on the service, ensuring that the cycle of high fees and strategic discounts continues.

Looking Ahead: Will It Get Better?

As we navigate the landscape of convenience versus cost, it's natural to wonder what the future holds for food delivery apps and their pricing schemes. Here are a few factors that could influence whether things might get more wallet-friendly:

More Competition, More Choices

The food delivery market is booming, and with more companies jumping into the fray, increased competition could lead to better deals for consumers. Companies might start lowering their fees or offering more attractive promotions to snatch up market share from their competitors. More options mean more power in the hands of the consumer to choose services that offer the best value.

Technological Advancements

Technology is at the heart of the food delivery business, and as it evolves, so does the efficiency with which these services operate. With improvements in routing algorithms, order batching (grouping multiple orders together), and even the potential rise of drone deliveries, operational costs could decrease. Lower operational costs could translate to lower costs for the consumer—if the savings are passed on.

Regulatory Changes

As food delivery apps become an integral part of our dining habits, they might attract more regulatory attention. Some cities have already started to cap the fees that platforms can charge restaurants during emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic. If similar regulations become more widespread, they could help stabilize or reduce the costs associated with these services.

Consumer Pressure

Never underestimate the power of consumer demand. As users become more savvy and vocal about their preferences, food delivery apps might adjust their pricing strategies to retain their customer base. Social media and user reviews play a huge role in shaping these services, and companies are often quick to make adjustments if they see a significant backlash or demand for change.

Economic Shifts

The broader economic environment also plays a role. In times of economic downturn, discretionary spending on services like food delivery often decreases. This could lead companies to lower prices to encourage more frequent use. Conversely, in a booming economy, prices might stabilize or even increase as more consumers are willing to pay for convenience.

Subscription Models Becoming the Norm

As more people regularly use food delivery services, subscription models like Uber Pass and DashPass may become more popular. These models offer reduced fees and other perks for a monthly fee, providing a way for frequent users to save money. As these become more mainstream, they could pressure non-subscription services to offer more competitive pricing to keep up.

So, What’s the Verdict?

While food delivery apps provide a level of convenience that's hard to beat, it comes at a price that’s not just monetary but also a bit perplexing at times. Whether this convenience is worth the cost is something you’ll have to decide. Next time you're about to place an order, think about whether it’s really worth it—or if it’s time to perhaps cook a meal yourself. Your wallet might thank you—or you might just cave and think, "Eh, I'll deal with it tomorrow."

We Want to Hear From You

What’s your take on the costs of food delivery apps? Have you found ways to save money or are you just embracing the splurge for convenience? Share your thoughts and experiences; we're all in this together, trying to make sense of our high-tech, high-cost love affair with food delivery.

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A new survey from Resume Builder confirms this, showing that 12% of retired Americans will go back to work this year.

In another survey, from Bankrate, 41% of adults say they don’t have enough money to fully retire. And about a quarter of Americans above the age of 50 say they expect to never retire, according to a new AARP study.

55% of those responding to a Bankrate survey said they returned to work because they needed more money. 47% said they were bored and 33% said they needed the job to get health insurance.

“I have a family. We have to have somewhere to live. We have to have food on our table so I put the pride aside,” said Janette Campbell, a retired educator who now works as a community relations specialist at a South Florida non-profit.

One big problem for retired professionals returning to work is taking a job that pays far less than what their old profession paid.

“A lot of them … don't have the job they had before,” said Indiana Senator Mike Braun, the ranking Republican on the Senate Special Committee on Aging. “Somebody else is either filling that or maybe one there as it was. So they're coming back to survival-type wages.”

For many, that means diving into the gig economy, according to AARP vice president Carly Roszkowski.

“Older workers (are) starting their own business (or) driving for Uber or DoorDash – jobs that didn't exist 15-20 years ago.”

For Campbell, it’s a matter of staying on the job as long as her family needs her.

“If I don’t laugh, I will cry, and I don’t want to cry. I want to be positive in whatever I do because I have young peoples around me that is watching me.”

In October 2022, a lawsuit was filed against Walmart, accusing the retailer of “falsely inflating” the weights of certain sold-by-weight groceries at the register, negating any sale pricing customers may have believed they were getting. Walmart has denied any wrongdoing but agreed to the multi-million dollar settlement.

Unfortunately, that is just one case of alleged mischarging. 

Also in 2022, Ohio sued Dollar General for listing items as one price on shelves but charging a higher price at the register. Auditing conducted in one Ohio county found error rates of overcharging between 16.7% and 88.2% at 20 Dollar General stores — well over the permitted 2% the Ohio Department of Agriculture allows, Nexstar’s WTRF reported at the time. 

Late last year, Dollar General agreed to a settlement with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection after inspections found that some of its stores in the state were overcharging customers an average of 17% more than the shelf price on 9% of the surveyed items. 

And just last week, officials in North Carolina announced that more than a dozen stores there (11 of which were Family Dollar locations) had been fined for scanning errors. At one location, an inspection found an error rate of 33%. 

So what can you do to protect yourself and your wallet?

One of the simplest ways is to double-check that the price on an item’s shelf label or sign is the same price you pay at the register. If the prices don’t match, you should alert a manager, Steve Troxler, North Carolina’s commissioner of agriculture, said in a press release earlier this month. 

In most cases, stores that sell an item by weight will have a scale or two in the produce department. Experts recommend using that before heading to the checkout. 

Once at the checkout, you should ensure the register’s scale is set to zero before your item is rung up, authorities in Marin County, California, explain. The weight detected by the scale will likely appear at the bottom of the screen if you’re at a self-checkout and must be visible to you if you’re going through a line with a cashier.

If you are at a self-checkout, Marin County officials also recommend checking the edges of the scale. It may give you an inaccurate reading if its edges are rubbing against the machine. Even if a sale has expired, if a sale sign or tag is still up for a product, the retailer has to honor that price, the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs says.

Should you be overcharged for an item, officials recommend addressing it immediately with store management. In Wisconsin, the state requires that overcharged customers be refunded the difference between the posted price for an item and what they were charged. Retailers can opt to give you the overcharged item for free instead.

“Most businesses are honest, but even honest people make mistakes,” Marin County officials said. “Alert consumers are the best defense against inaccurate transactions.”

Michael Bartiromo contributed to this report.

The woman received the Lucky Day Lotto ticket from a regular customer at a Fas Mart in Loves Park, about 85 miles northwest of Chicago, according to a press release.

The ticket, which only cost $1, matched all five numbers for the midday drawing on Monday, April 22. The winning numbers were 3, 4, 6, 25 and 27.

Choosing to remain anonymous, the lucky jackpot winner hid her face when she took a photo with her big check.

"Everything happens for a reason," she told lottery officials when she claimed her prize.

The woman said that she plans to use the money to buy a new house and car, as well as support her grandfather. Any extra cash will go into her savings, she said.

For selling the winning ticket, the Fas Mart location will receive 1% of the prize amount: $10,000.

The odds of winning the Lucky Day Lotto jackpot are about 1 in 1.2 million. To put that into perspective, your chances of taking home the Powerball or Mega Millions grand prize is much slimmer: about 1 in 292.2 million and 1 in 302.6 million, respectively.

The Lucky Day Lotto is played only in Illinois, however, with twice-daily drawings. More than 4 million winning Lucky Day Lotto tickets have been sold so far this year, with players winning in excess of $22 million collectively, lottery officials said.

Certified financial planner Shinobu Hindert joined NewsNation's "Morning in America" with tips on how to plan for retirement amid rising prices.

Hindert says when planning for retirement, a person should ideally have the equivalent of one year's salary saved by the time they are 30, three times their annual salary by the time they are 40, six times their salary by the time they are 50 and eight times their salary by the time they're 60.

"We're seeing the first generation retire right now without a majority of their income coming from a pension. Those data points will come out in the next 15 years. So for people that are gearing up for retirement, try to save as much as you can. And think about what you want your life to look like when you retire," Hindert said.

For those who may be behind on their saving goals, Hindert recommends focusing on what they can do in the short term.

"If you have an employer sponsored plan like a 401-K, start increasing your contributions by 1% to 3%, target to save 15%. And if you're not there yet, that's okay. Just put a calendar reminder every three months to see, can I bump it up by 1%?"

About 1 in 4 Americans have no retirement savings, according to research released Wednesday by the organization that shows how the aging American population is worrying more and more about how to make ends meet, even as economists and policymakers say the U.S. economy has all but achieved a soft landing after two years of record inflation.

Everyday expenses and housing costs, including rent and mortgage payments, are the biggest reasons why people are unable to save for retirement.

The data will matter this election year as President Joe Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump are trying to win support from older Americans, who traditionally turn out in high numbers, with their policy proposals.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Earlier this week, Wealthy Nickel, a finance blog, reminded currency collectors of an error the Bureau of Engraving and Printing made in the last decade.

As you likely know, every paper note the U.S. prints — from the lowly $1 bill to the $100 bill — is printed with a serial number. Like your Social Security number, there shouldn't be any duplicates. But, according to reports from Numismatic News and paper money grading service PMG, there are more than 6 million $1 bills that share a serial number with another $1 bill.

According to both outlets, 10 years ago, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing instructed its printing facilities in Washington, D.C., and Fort Worth, Texas, to print millions of $1 bills. Unfortunately, those bills sported matching numbers.

To be clear, this misprint doesn't make the money unusable. Serial numbers serve as a way to denote which Federal Reserve Bank issued the bill, the series in which it was printed, and which of the millions printed it is.

In fact, the duplicates seemingly went unnoticed until two collectors, Ed Zegers of Maryland and Karol Winograd of Florida, noticed the inconsistency. They decided to launch an effort to find the error pairs in 2017, according to Numismatic News. By the end of 2020, the pair had found 10 pairs.

Their database of duplicate notes has since been transferred to Project 2013B, which recently reported its 16th match of $1 bills. The project boasts more than 47,000 $1 bills sporting serial numbers from the error batches, the majority of which are partner-less.

As Wealthy Nickel explains, there are three ways to determine if your $1 bill is part of this collection:

• "Series 2013" should appear to the right of President George Washington's image
• To the left of Washington, there should be a seal with a "B" in it
• Below that, the serial number should end with a star, and fall between B00000001 – B00250000 or B03200001-B09600000

It's difficult to say how much these $1 bills could be worth, but they're seemingly better in pairs. A set auctioned by Stack's Bowers sold for $7,200 in 2021. PMG, which graded both bills, ruled the bill from Fort Worth as 66 Gem Uncirculated EPQ (the scale goes up to 70) while its Washington twin was a PMG 35 Choice Very Fine. Another set was reportedly sold on eBay for $25,000.

As with any currency you think may be worth more than its printed value — from wheat pennies and buffalo nickels to $2 bills and error notes — you should speak with a verified expert for evaluation.

“Odd items are always set aside, but that doesn’t make them rare or terribly valuable,” Dustin Johnson, vice president of Numismatics at Heritage Auctions, told Nexstar last year. 

Still, one thing is clear: Students funding their college career with student loans could be paying for years to come. And if a student depends on loans to cover every year of their undergraduate career, they could end up owing about $37,000 when they graduate.

Tuition and fees continue to decrease

If there is good news for new college students, it’s that growth in the cost of higher education has slowed and even decreased modestly in recent years. The money spent on tuition and fees at public, four-year institutions goes further now than 10 years ago and has fallen 9.8% in just the past three years, according to data from The College Board.

However, this drop doesn’t mean higher education is affordable. On average, full-time undergraduates took out about $6,990 in student loans in the 2020-21 school year, the last year for which that data is available from the National Center for Education Statistics. Based on that figure, and a modest assumed growth rate, a NerdWallet analysis estimates a student depending wholly on loans could amass about $36,700 in student loan debt in a five-year bachelor’s degree pursuit.

Student (and parent) tip: This debt is not inevitable. Some students will have savings to draw from, and others will qualify for grants and scholarships. Determining how much to borrow each year involves estimating all of these contributions and figuring out what’s left to cover.

Often, you may qualify for more loans than you need, but you don’t have to accept the total amount available. Be conservative when accepting student loans. If you don’t accept the total award amount and discover you underestimated your need, reach out to your financial aid office. The balance that you didn’t previously accept remains available throughout the semester.

Projected student loans could surpass the federal cap

There are cumulative and annual caps on federal student loans for dependent students. These college students can’t take out more than $31,000 in federal student loans throughout their undergraduate career. So, if they borrow their way through school, they could hit these caps and be forced to find other financing options.

Private student loans and parent PLUS loans are two alternative loan options. About 10% of parents of undergraduate students took out Parent PLUS loans in 2020, according to the most recent data available from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study. A slightly smaller share, 7%, of dependent undergraduate students used private student loans in 2020. Both of these loan types are more prevalent among middle-earning families, as lower-income families typically qualify for grants and depend less on loans overall.

Student (and parent) tip: Prioritize federal student loans after you’ve exhausted aid that doesn’t have to be repaid, and think carefully before opting for other loan types. Private student loans typically require a credit check and do not offer all of the borrower-friendly repayment options of federal student loans. Parent PLUS loans are federal loans, but they don’t have the flexibility of other federal student loans. Parents are cautioned against borrowing unless they’re on track to reach their own financial goals. About 1 in 5 parent PLUS borrowers (21%) regret taking on that debt, according to a 2021 NerdWallet survey.

Despite FAFSA hiccups, it remains a top priority

This year’s high school graduates, facing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for the first time, aren’t getting a fair introduction to the process. Financial aid award letters are going out far later than is typical because the Education Department’s FAFSA redesign and subsequent errors and fixes have stretched months longer than anyone could have expected. The annual FAFSA process is key to families’ college funding plans. Through the FAFSA, the government and colleges determine what types of financial aid a student is entitled to, including federal loans, grants and some scholarships. Ultimately, the hope is after this year’s rocky rollout, the new FAFSA will provide the streamlined experience students were promised, an improvement from the previously cumbersome and long application process.

Student (and parent) tip: Don’t let frustration over this year’s financial aid chaos discourage you from going through the motions next year and beyond. Your eligibility for grants and scholarships — money that doesn’t have to be repaid — is determined through the FAFSA’s questions about family finances. And the form must be completed every year. The application’s new format is said to be far more streamlined than in years past, so plan to carve out a little time to fill it out each fall. Your financial aid office should remind you each year when the application opens, typically Oct.1.

For some, May will be a three-paycheck (or five-paycheck) month.

The easiest way to tell if you will get an extra paycheck in May is to check your bank account. If you were paid on Thursday or Friday, you won't see an additional check in May. If you weren't paid at the end of last week, you're in line for a three-payday May.

Those paydays will fall on May 3, May 17 and May 31 — unless you're paid on Thursdays, then they will each come a day earlier.

These bonus paycheck months happen four times a year, but if you aren't paid weekly, you will only benefit from it twice. The most recent occurrence was in March, at least for those who receive their wages on Fridays (those paid bi-weekly on Thursdays missed out by a day).

If you received an extra paycheck in March, you won't get one in May. While disappointing now, you're still being paid the same throughout the year. Here's why.

For those paid bi-weekly, you will receive 26 paychecks annually (divide the 52 years in a week by two). But if you were to just multiply the number of months in a year by two, you would only get 24. So a third paycheck will go out in a couple of months during the year, usually very early in the month.

If you got three paychecks in March, your next bonus month is August. For those about to receive an extra payout, you'll have to wait until November for your next one.

Alas, while you do get an additional payday that month, keep in mind that the money isn't "extra." Many experts encourage using the third paycheck to tackle any financial goals you have, like paying down debt or investing.

"Where interest rates stand today, there's a lot of variable rate debt that's actually been priced extremely highly, so anything that families and individuals can do to chip away at, that is going to be helpful for them," Arijit Roy, head of consumer segment & solutions at U.S. Bank, told Nexstar recently.

Roy added that the bank has seen an outflow of savings since the last COVID-era stimulus check went out to millions of Americans, so if that credit card debt isn't the most pressing need, he recommends creating or lining an emergency fund. Many financial experts recommend saving three to six months' worth of expenses.

For those struggling to pay off debt or build their bank account, Roy recommends keeping a saver's mentality in the two-paycheck months as well.

“Maybe in the first week, you save $1, or $10 or $100, and in the second week, you save $2, or $20 or $200. There will come a point when you’re like ‘I can’t do more,’ but compounding interest is so powerful,” Roy said.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that a group of Trump allies is crafting ways to chip away at the independence of the central bank — a constant thorn in the side of the former president — should he be reelected in November. They also argue Trump would have the power to oust Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom he appointed to the job in 2017 and then berated through most of his term, despite legal protections from being fired without cause.

The campaign has distanced itself from the plan, and it would face serious obstacles in Congress, where Trump’s previous efforts to sway the Fed in his favor fell flat.

During his first term, Senate Republicans rejected three of Trump’s nominees to the Fed over concerns about their credentials and independence, and several senators told The Wall Street Journal they would oppose the campaign’s potential plan for a second term.

Even so, experts say Trump’s attempts could seriously harm the U.S. and its role as the center of the financial world.

“If it becomes clear that there's going to be a Fed chair that answers to the president, I would expect a dramatic reaction in the markets and the White House would have to deal with that,” said Ian Katz, director at research consultancy Capital Alpha Partners.

“There are plenty of people in the markets who would like to see Trump be president again. I don't think there are plenty of people in the markets who would like to see Trump be de facto Fed chair.”

The Trump campaign declined to provide The Hill with a copy of the plan obtained by the Journal and said it should not be considered an official position.

"Let us be very specific here: Unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.

The Fed is a politically independent agency run by a board of governors appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The president also selects governors to serve as chair, vice chair and vice chair of supervision, roles that also require Senate confirmation. 

The president, however, has no legal power over the decisions of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the panel of Fed board members and regional bank chiefs responsible for setting interest rates. Fed chiefs have been particularly averse to presidential influence since the Nixon administration, when then-Fed Chair Arthur Burns held off on raising interest rates under White House pressure despite rampant inflation.

Under the U.S. system, “You have a certain confidence that the president of the country can't just pick up the phone, jawbone the Fed chair into lowering interest rates … when perhaps that isn't the sound economic decision to make at that moment,” Katz said.

“If you think that the Fed has been manipulated for political reasons, that makes us no better in that respect than many, many countries in this world that we would regard as not having reliable or stable financial markets.”

But the Trump campaign plan obtained by The Wall Street Journal would shatter decades of institutional protections built to insulate the Fed from the political whims of the president.

The plan calls for installing a Fed chair who would consult with Trump on interest rate decisions, according to the Journal, which would be a major breach of the bank’s operational autonomy.

The plan also calls for giving the White House more authority over Fed regulations and the Treasury Department a greater role in joint emergency lending programs, such as those deployed during the 2007-08 and 2020 recessions.

While Fed chairs and presidents will meet periodically throughout their terms, the bank and White House always insist those discussions never touch on interest rate decisions. Fed chairs and Treasury secretaries meet more regularly, but also with boundaries around interest rate decisions.

Brian Gardner, chief Washington policy strategist at Stifel Investment Bank, said the proposal to have the Fed chair consult with Trump is unusual, but not as alarming as other potential plans floated in the Journal article.

“Fed chairmen already consult with the Treasury Secretary so there is a well-established communications link between an administration and the Fed,” Gardner wrote. He added that “a chairman cannot force an agreement and has limited (if any) recourse against opposition emanating from the committee.”

Some Trump allies have also floated the former president serving as an acting Fed governor himself, according to the Journal, which Gardner said “would certainly be litigated and the attempt would probably be rejected by the courts.

“However, any effort, even If ultimately unsuccessful, could undermine investor confidence and disrupt financial markets at least temporarily,” Gardner said.

Powell, a Republican, was renominated by President Biden and can serve as Fed chair through the end of his term in 2026. Any attempt by Trump to fire Powell or reshape the Fed board beyond the nomination process would likely end up in court and cause serious losses in financial markets — one of Trump’s preferred ways to gauge his economic success — along the way.

In a 2019 interview, Powell said he did not believe the president has the power to fire him and that he would serve out the remainder of his term. He also stressed the importance of the Fed’s autonomy and political independence, making it unlikely he would yield to Trump.

“The law is clear that I have a four-year term, and I fully intend to serve it,” Powell said.

“We are directed to take, to execute policy, in a strictly nonpolitical way, serving all Americans, and that’s what we do,” Powell said.

Powell faced relentless pressure from Trump to slash interest rates throughout 2018 as the stock market sunk and the former president sought greater leverage in trade battles with the European Union and China. The Fed was in the process of bringing interest rates up from the near-zero levels set during the 2008 recession and was attempting to get ahead of inflation that never materialized.

When the Fed reversed course in 2019 and began cutting rates, Trump still regularly blasted the Fed for refusing to cut back down to crisis levels. The former president questioned whether the Fed chair or Chinese President Xi Jinping were more harmful to the US.

Trump eventually eased up on Powell during the COVID-19 recession, as the Fed slashed rates and deployed trillions of dollars in stimulus to fend off a deeper crisis.

But the former president has nonetheless insisted he would not renominate Powell and raised questions about his motivations as the Fed prepares to cut interest rates after hiking them back to four-decade highs.

“I think he’s going to do something to probably help the Democrats, I think, if he lowers interest rates,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” in February.

Trump added that he thought Powell was “political.”

Consumers can receive up to 10,000 yuan, roughly $1,380, depending on the type of car they replace, China’s Ministry of Commerce and other departments said in a joint statement Friday.

The offer — a one-time trade-in payment — runs until the end of 2024 and marks the latest effort by Chinese policymakers to stimulate the economy, which has struggled to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this month, China's central bank revised car loans to promote trade-ins. That change enabled financial institutions to independently determine the lowest payments they would accept on personal auto loans, scrapping minimums that had previously been set by the government, Reuters reported.

China also unveiled a $72 billion package of tax breaks last June, which aimed to boost EV sales in the world's largest car market. Those policies and other green energy subsidies have helped stimulate the nation's domestic EV sales even amid tight consumer spending.

In March, for example, sales of battery-electric and plug-in gasoline-electric hybrid cars surpassed those of gasoline-powered cars in China’s 35 largest cities for the first time, according to the New York Times.

Government subsidies have also benefitted Chinese automakers, and some, including Elon Musk, think those companies could flood the global EV market without additional trade barriers. Last year, Chinese carmakers produced more than half of all EVs sold worldwide, the Daily Telegraph reported.

China's hypercompetitive EV market has led to a price war, with major automakers like Tesla and Li Auto slashing prices there this week. In April, prices were cut or incentives offered on more than 40 EV models in China, according to the Wall Street Journal.

For now, China's cheap EVs, which cost as little as $10,000, aren't available in the U.S.

However, EV buyers in the U.S. are eligible for government subsidies via the Biden administration's clean vehicle tax credit, which tops out at $7,500. Starting this year, the tax credit became redeemable as a point-of-sale rebate, meaning dealers can knock the price down instantly.

You can find out whether the EV you're interested in qualifies for the tax credit here.

The false claim that stimulus checks were on their way to veterans stems from misinformation that Newsweek reported earlier this year, the department said in an email.

“There is no Veteran stimulus,” a VA official wrote to NewsNation. “This misinformation began with a Newsweek article published several months ago where the reporter misreported and confused the increase in cost-of-living allowance (COLA) with a stimulus. We want to ensure Veterans know any talk of a stimulus is false.”

A 3.2% monthly benefits increase for eligible veterans took effect Jan. 1, following a recent COLA adjustment, the outlet Verify said in an article fact-checking the claim.

That adjustment will affect certain VA benefits, including, but not limited to, disability compensation, clothing allowance, and dependency and indemnity compensation for spouses and children, according to the VA’s website.

Artificial intelligence is likely playing a role in the repetition of false claims about new stimulus checks, AI and foreign influence editor for NewsGuard McKenzie Sadeghi told AARP.

“Content farms” focused on garnering clicks often post about incoming stimulus payments, Sadeghi said.

“The goal is to ‘rank high in search results in some way and attract viewers to their site,’ AARP wrote, citing Sadeghi.

“By bringing viewers and readers to their sites, they are hoping that people will, in turn, click on these advertisements and they will gain financial revenue,” Sadeghi told AARP.

The University of Michigan’s index slipped to 77.2 this month, down from 79.4 in March, according to new survey data released Friday.

It's a sign consumers feel slightly worse about their economic situation — and future prospects — compared to a month ago, although attitudes are better than a year ago (68.5).

April's reading reflects a concern that the slowdown in inflation may have stalled, Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu said in a release.

After a hot inflation report earlier this month, Americans expect prices to go up 3.2% over the next year — the most pessimistic outlook since November, per the latest data.

For the third month in a row, a rising share of consumers mentioned food or grocery prices, which have surged faster than overall inflation in recent years. The share of consumers who said high prices have eroded their standard of living also ticked up, reaching 38% in April from 33% in March, the release said.

As has consistently been the case, there were wide partisan differences in how people viewed the economy. Democrats and independents felt roughly the same about the economy in April as they did in March, while Republicans became more pessimistic. However, sentiment across all three groups is higher now than in each month of 2022.

What's happened in the economy over the last month?

Inflation: Consumer prices continue to rise faster than the Federal Reserve's target rate and went up 3.5% year-over-year in March. That's better than the 9.1% high in June 2022, but in recent months, the annual pace of inflation has accelerated, dampening hopes that the problem is under control.

Stubborn inflation means interest rates may stay higher for longer, which impacts everything from mortgage rates to credit card APRs.

• The Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the PCE price index, also ran hotter than expected in March, according to new data released Friday.

Economic Growth: The nation's economy slowed sharply in the first quarter to a 1.6% annual pace, down from 3.4% at the end of 2023, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. Despite the slowdown, consumer spending grew at a solid 2.5% annual pace, fueled by services like health care and insurance.

Mortgage Rates: After dipping below 7% in March, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 7.17% in April, the highest level since November, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac.

Elevated rates have worsened the "lock-in effect," where homeowners with low mortgage rates are unwilling to sell because they won’t find a better deal. It's a trend that's compounded the nationwide housing shortage.

Labor Market: The economy added another 303,000 jobs in March, the largest gain since last May. Much of that was driven by gains in health care, government and construction roles.

The unemployment rate was 3.8% in March, little changed from the month prior and still near historic lows. Major companies like Tesla and Nike announced job cuts in April, but through the first two months of 2024, total layoffs have remained below pre-pandemic levels.

The recent survey of 1,988 homeowners underscores the extent of the "lock-in effect" — where people with low mortgage rates are unwilling to sell because they won't find a better deal. It's a dynamic that's been made worse by elevated interest rates, which has exacerbated the country's housing shortage and pushed up prices.

By the end of 2023, about 70% of all mortgage holders had rates more than 3 percentage points below what the market would offer them if they tried to take out a new loan, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

From 1998 to 2020, there was never a time when more than 40% of Americans with mortgages had locked-in rates more than 1 percentage point below market conditions, The Times said.

Another recent report from economists at the Federal Housing Agency found that the lock-in effect is responsible for about 1.3 million fewer home sales in the U.S. between the spring of 2022 and the end of 2023.

Baby boomers have been especially reluctant to move and nearly half (45%) don't think they could afford a similar home in their neighborhood now, Redfin found.

"That stands to reason, as baby boomers are more likely to have bought their home a long time ago for a much lower price," the real estate company noted in its report.

Today, empty-nest baby boomers own twice as many large homes as millennials with kids, according to a separate Redfin analysis. With higher mortgage rates and no incentive to sell, that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

"Americans who already own homes benefit from rising values and they can consider themselves lucky they broke into the housing market while they could still afford it,” Redfin senior economist Elijah de la Campa said in a statement. “On the other hand, price appreciation makes the prospect of buying a new home daunting or even impossible for many people who want to move."

This week, the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate climbed to its highest level since late November during what’s traditionally the housing market’s busiest time of the year.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage is now at 7.17%, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. Three years ago, that same rate was under 3%.

Dismal market conditions have now made renting more affordable than buying in all of America's largest metropolitan areas.

Housing experts expect mortgage rates to go down throughout the year, although the outlook has become more pessimistic recently. Fannie Mae predicts the 30-year fixed mortgage rate will end 2024 at 6.4%, up from its 5.9% forecast earlier in the year.

"Interest rates existing in a ‘higher for longer’ state seems to be an increasingly real possibility in the eyes of market participants, as well as some homebuyers and sellers," Hamilton Fout, Fannie Mae vice president, economic and strategic research, said in a statement.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a final rule that requires airlines to provide passengers with automatic and prompt cash refunds when they’re owed.

Previously, airlines were allowed to set their standards for what kind of flight changes were eligible for a refund. That resulted in refund policies that varied by airline and made it difficult for passengers to advocate for themselves, according to a news release the DOT issued Wednesday.

Who’s eligible for a refund?

Under the new rule, passengers can receive a refund if their flight is canceled or significantly delayed, they experience a significant delay in a mishandled baggage return, or the airline fails to provide extra services such as Wi-Fi or seat selection if the passenger paid for those services.

Examples of significant changes include departure or arrival times that are altered more than three hours domestically and six hours internationally, according to the release. People who experience a class downgrade or must make more connections than originally planned may also be eligible for a refund.

Passengers who file a mishandled baggage report may also receive a refund of their checked baggage fee if the airline doesn’t deliver the luggage within 12 hours of their domestic flight arriving at the gate or 15-30 hours for an international flight.

Airlines also must provide travel credit or vouchers if a government restricts a person’s travel or a medical professional advises them not to fly because of a serious communicable disease.

How will airlines issue refunds?

The new rule requires airlines to issue refunds automatically and promptly, meaning within seven business days of refunds becoming due for credit card purchases and 20 calendar days for other payment methods.

They also must be issued in full and delivered in cash or the original form of payment. A full refund includes the ticket purchase price, minus the value of any portion of transportation already used. Refunds must include all government-imposed taxes and fees and airline-imposed fees.

When do the new rules take effect?

The new rules will take effect throughout the next two years as part of a broad administration attack on what President Joe Biden calls “junk fees,” the Associated Press reported.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said his department will let officials in 15 states help enforce federal airline consumer protection laws.

A new report from personal finance site SmartAsset reviewed data from the U.S. Census Bureau as well as the Pew Research Center to determine what it does take — at least on paper — to be considered middle class in all 50 states and 345 of the nation’s largest cities. 

The analysis used the Pew Research definition of “middle income,” which says a middle class salary range is two-thirds to double the area’s median salary. As of 2022 (the most recent Census data), the average median household income in the U.S. was $73,914, meaning the national range for the middle class is roughly $49,271 to $147,828. Across the nation’s largest cities, the range is between $51,558 and $154,590, according to SmartAsset.

Depending on where you live, that range can vary greatly. 

Nowhere was the middle class range as drastic as New Jersey, where SmartAsset determined the difference between the lower class and upper class was a whopping $128,468. Your household would need to earn at least $64,224 to be considered middle class in the Garden State, and earning more than $192,692 would put you in the upper class. 

In addition to New Jersey, you need an annual household salary of at least $50,000 to be considered middle class in 17 states: Oregon, Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, Delaware, Minnesota, Virginia, Alaska, Connecticut, Utah, Colorado, New Hampshire, Washington, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Maryland.

A person considered middle class in New Jersey could easily rank among the wealthiest in Mississippi, which had the lowest middle class range on SmartAsset’s list. In the Magnolia State, earning between $35,142 and $105,438 would put you in the middle class. 

The interactive table below shows each state’s middle class range based on SmartAsset’s report. 

For best viewing on mobile, turn your device horizontally. Still unable to view the table? Click here.

While New Jersey had the highest state-level middle class range, none of its cities ranked among the 10 most expensive cities. Instead, California cities dominated the upper end of the list. 

It was Sunnyvale, a Bay Area city northwest of San Jose, that has the richest middle class range: you need a household salary of at least $113,176 to be “middle income.” If you have your sights set for upper class status in Sunnyvale, SmartAsset determined you would need a salary of at least $339,562.

In six cities — California’s Sunnyvale, Fremont, San Mateo, and Santa Clara; Bellevue, Washington; and Highlands Ranch, Colorado — you need a household salary of more than $101,000 to be a middle-earner. 

A six-figure salary would put you among the upper class in the 10 cities on the opposite end of SmartAsset’s list. The most affordable city, the report found, was Detroit, where an annual salary of just $24,300 would make you middle class. Close behind was Cleveland, Ohio, which had a low-end middle class benchmark of $24,898.

Across the 10 cities with the lowest middle class range, a household salary of at least $30,000 would be enough to qualify as a middle income earner. 

The interactive table below shows the 345 cities SmartAsset analyzed, as well as the lower and upper bounds of their middle class. 

For best viewing on mobile, turn your device horizontally. Still unable to view the table? Click here.

You can view SmartAsset’s full report here.

Though it has tumbled from a peak of 9.1% in the summer of 2022, inflation has remained elevated so far this year. Prices excluding volatile food and energy costs rose 3.8% in March from a year earlier, the same as in the previous month and well above the Federal Reserve’s target. On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that the four-week average number of Americans filing for jobless benefits has remained unchanged, defying efforts by the Fed to cool hiring. 

Last week, in an exclusive interview with Nexstar, the parent company of this outlet, President Joe Biden admitted inflation is being “stubborn and not going down to 2%.” He further called our economy “the strongest…of any country in the world,” but adding, “we’ve got more to do.”

“We’ve created over 15 million new jobs. And the salaries are outpacing the cost of inflation. Lot of good happening,” he added. “But still, it’s those small things that matter in a big way to ordinary people. And that’s what we have to work on.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The move marks the largest expansion in federal overtime eligibility seen in decades. Starting July 1, employers will be required pay overtime to salaried workers who make less than $43,888 a year in certain executive, administrative and professional roles, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That cap will then rise to $58,656 by the start of 2025.

“Too often, lower-paid salaried workers are doing the same job as their hourly counterparts but are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay. That is unacceptable,” acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su said in a prepared statement.

She added that the administration was “following through on our promise to raise the bar.”

Tuesday's news marks a significant jump from the current overtime eligibility threshold of $35,568, which was set under the Trump administration in 2019 — just three years after a more generous Obama-era effort was ultimately scuttled in court after facing pushback from some business leaders and Republican politicians.

Under the federal law, nearly all hourly workers in the U.S. are entitled to overtime pay after 40 hours a week. But many salaried workers are exempt from that requirement — unless they earn below a certain level.

The new rule also expands overtime eligibility for some highly-compensated workers. According to a Labor Department FAQ, the current $107,432 annual threshold for highly-compensated workers is set to increase to $132,964 on July 1 and $151,164 by the start of 2025.

The Labor Department estimates that 4 million lower-paid salary workers who are exempt under current regulations will become eligible for overtime protections in the first year under the new rule. An additional 292,900 higher-compensated workers are also expected to get overtime entitlements.

The July 1 increases update the current salary thresholds using methodology put in place under the Trump administration's 2019 regulation. The new rule's methodology takes effect Jan. 1, the Labor Department said, with salary thresholds set to update every three years based on the latest wage data.

The Biden administration first announced plans for its new rule in late August and submitted a proposal in September. The Labor Department said it “conducted extensive engagement with employers, workers, unions and other stakeholders” and considered more than 33,000 comments as it developed the final rule.

Critics have argued that the new regulation could saddle companies with new costs and add to persistent labor challenges. In a statement, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican and chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said that employers "are staring down the barrel of billions in annual costs to comply with the rule" while calling the regulation “excessive and heavy-handed.”

Meanwhile, advocates applauded the administration's rule — with some noting that such a move is overdue. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute says that the overtime threshold has not been updated properly for almost 50 years — leaving millions without such federal protections.

"The rule is an important step toward correctly valuing one of the most precious resources workers have — their time,” EPI president Heidi Shierholz said Tuesday. “This rule is an essential milestone in creating a stronger, fairer economy.”

Sales of new construction, single-family homes hit an annual pace of 693,000 in March with the supply of new homes rising to 477,000.

That jump comes as buyers in the resale market struggle with a lack of available homes. The price of a new home also decreased to a median price of $430,700 in March.

While sales of new homes are up, would-be home buyers are still struggling with high interest rates and the high cost of housing, with buyers now needing to make roughly $115,000 a year to afford a home in the U.S.

In all major metropolitan areas in the U.S., renting is now cheaper than buying and Americans are still struggling with the impact of rising costs of necessities like groceries.

With inflation proving to be a stubborn issue, it's unclear when the Federal Reserve might lower interest rates, making mortgages more affordable for buyers.

The study says the world is already headed to a 19% permanent average reduction in incomes due to climate change by 2050. That’s six times larger than the cost of limited global warming by two degrees worldwide.

“Climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world,” said PIK scientist Leonie Wenz who led the study.

In pure dollars, the study estimates that global annual damage from climate change will be $38 trillion. By comparison, the cost of slowing climate change until 2050 will be about $6 trillion.

“This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering non-economic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity,” said Wenz.

He also says the 19% worldwide income loss will increase until the world makes big changes. “We have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately – if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century, amounting to up to 60% on global average by 2100.”

The study predicts the future with numbers from the past: temperature and rainfall levels from more than 1,600 places worldwide measured over the past 40 years.

The study pegged the worldwide average lost income at 19%, but only about 11% in Europe and North America. It says the lost income percentage could be about 22% in South Asia and Africa.

Some of us won’t need — or want — to get involved in someone else’s finances. But others may have to take an active role in helping an older parent manage their money. If that’s the case for you, don’t neglect a discussion about credit. Good credit matters throughout life, so any conversation you have with a parent should focus on building and maintaining healthy credit.

Here are five credit-related questions to ask older parents if you don’t know where to begin.

1. What's your credit score?

Good credit scores can create opportunities and unlock lower interest rates, and they still matter even as we age. Maybe your parent wants to downsize to a new home or settle in a retirement community; having a good score can be advantageous in both scenarios.

Free credit scores are available from personal finance websites, credit card issuers and other financial institutions.

If their score is lower than they had hoped, develop a plan together for elevating it. Paying loan balances on time and using less than 30% of available credit can lift scores. Older parents with limited credit can open a secured credit card to help them build a credit history.

2. Have you reviewed your credit report?

In 2023, data compromises impacted more than 350 million Americans, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. Each data breach presents an opportunity for a bad actor to steal someone’s personal information, which can cause serious financial trouble for the victim. That’s why Liz Kishel, a certified financial planner at Modera Wealth Management in Atlanta, urges older people to examine their credit reports. The three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, offer a free credit report every week.

Signs of identity theft or fraud include credit cards you don’t recognize, discrepancies in loan balances on the report compared with your own records, misspelled names and unfamiliar addresses.

Identity theft victims can remove fraudulent debt and information from their credit report by submitting the following to the credit bureaus:

• An identity theft report from IdentityTheft.gov.

• Proof of identity.

• A letter listing fraudulent debts and information on the credit report.

3. Is your credit frozen?

People can and do recover from identity theft or fraud, but it’s not always easy. Kishel’s advice: Freeze your credit to prevent fraud or theft from happening in the first place. When your credit is frozen, it becomes inaccessible to fraudsters who may want to open lines of credit in your name. For maximum protection, freeze your credit report with all three credit bureaus.

“A lot of [older adults] have wonderful credit scores because of the age of their credit histories,” Kishel says. “Protect the good credit that you’ve fought so hard to build.”

4. Do you have your own credit card?

Older parents should have a credit account in their own name, and women may need to be especially mindful on this point. Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, lenders could deny loans to women without a male co-signer. As such, some older women don’t have their own credit history, leaving them financially vulnerable.

It can be difficult to distinguish the primary or the authorized user on a credit card. Parents could be joint owners, or one could be the primary owner and the other an authorized user. Call the issuer of the card if you’re not sure.

Advise the parent with authorized user status to get their own card. If the account owner dies or removes the authorized user from the card, all account activity is erased from the authorized user’s credit report. That erasure could damage the authorized user’s credit if the account was kept in pristine condition because all of that good credit history goes away.

5. How are you paying off credit card debt?

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s February 2024 Household Debt and Credit Report, 19% of debt held by Americans ages 60-69 was credit card debt and it was 14% for those 70 and older. While many older parents live on fixed incomes, it’s still possible to get out of debt.

A payoff strategy such as the avalanche method (paying off debts in order of highest to lowest interest rate) can infuse a sense of order and progress into the debt payoff journey. Getting another credit card can help pay down debt, too. Balance transfer cards take on debts from other lenders and make it easier to pay them off because they temporarily waive interest, some for a year or more.

Older parents who want professional financial help may benefit from working with a credit counselor, who can put them on a personalized debt management plan. To avoid getting back into debt, they may need to cut their expenses if they don’t plan to rejoin the workforce. The online database BenefitsCheckUp helps older adults find and apply for financial assistance programs to subsidize the costs of medical care and utilities, for example.

In 68 of the largest U.S. cities the average price has more than doubled in less than 10 years, a recent study by Point2Homes found.

"A common home appreciation theory is that residential properties tend to double in value in about 10 years," the study notes. "But this good news for investors spells bad news for buyers, considering that most of the country’s major cities had home prices double even faster than that."

Recent buyers in Spokane, Tampa, and Buffalo, for instance, may look back wistfully to 2017 when the average price was less than half of what it is now.

As recently as 2019, homes in Detroit, where prices have doubled the quickest, were half what they are now, the study found.

Looking at home prices in recent years may be the most painful for new homeowners in Irvine, California, however, which was the most expensive housing market on the list, jumping from $750K to $1.5 million in seven years.

In terms of overall highest prices, eight of the top 10 most expensive U.S. cities in the fourth quarter of 2023 were in California, led by San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara ($1,750,300), San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward ($1,251,000), Salinas ($993,900) and San Diego-Carlsbad ($931,600), according to National Association of Realtors data.

See the top 20 cities when it comes to home prices doubling in the shortest amount of time:

In February, 2024 home prices across the country were up 6.4% year-over-year, according to Redfin, with an average sale price of $411,887.

Cleveland, Ohio led all metros in growth last year (25.5%), followed by Birmingham, Alabama (24.4%); Boca Raton, Florida (22.5%); Richmond, Virginia (19%); Fort Wayne, Indiana (18.6%); Dallas, Texas (16.9%); Miami Beach, Florida (16.7%); Cincinnati, Ohio (15.9%); Meridian, Idaho (15.6%); and Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky (15.5%).

"Homeowners have benefited from housing wealth accumulation. However, many homebuyers have been shocked at high housing costs, with a typical monthly mortgage payment rising from $1,000 three years ago to more than $2,000 last year," said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.

Amid persistently high prices, prospective home buyers have at least one source of hope this year, thanks to a bombshell legal settlement.

In March, the National Association of Realtors announced that it had agreed to pay $418 million to settle lawsuits over commissions traditionally tacked onto the home-buying transaction.

The new rules also allow home buyers and sellers to negotiate lower agent commissions instead of the typical 5-6% of the sale that is currently split by brokers on both sides of the deal.

Changes to the rules will take effect in mid-July.

Now, four years later, some restaurants are plagued by scammers who operate “imposter” restaurants, hijack a restaurant’s online presence, or try to extort restaurants with a flood of bad online reviews.

In Las Vegas, the most recent incident involved more than a dozen online restaurants with names slightly different than very well-known places.

James Trees, the owner of Esther’s Kitchen, discovered an Uber Eats listing for “Esther’s Italian Pasta Kitchen.” The real Esther’s Kitchen doesn’t offer delivery service, so Trees was surprised when friends showed him the imposter listing.

He raised the alarm on Facebook and called out Uber Eats. “How can you allow businesses to be impersonated and damage peoples’ reputations on your platform,” he asked. Uber Eats has not responded to numerous media inquiries about the issue.

A Las Vegas TV station found the source of the "not-really restaurants," a place called New York Bagel and Pizza Place. The owner said he recently started doing “ghost kitchen” business for a third party but stopped when he realized what was happening. He also apologized to everyone involved.

Trees isn’t buying it. “That was a lie,” he told NewsNation. “A ghost kitchen is one where another restaurant’s food is produced under strict understanding about the quality and ingredients to be used. "This person was just using a bunch of well-known restaurants to increase his market share while serving garbage food at higher prices than the restaurants were even offering.”

“It’s absolutely outrageous,” said Al Mancini, publisher of the Neon Feast restaurant guide in Las Vegas. “People think they’re ordering from top local restaurants that have been in business for years, even decades. Instead, they’re getting knockoff dishes from wannabes.”

In other cities, the scams that target both restaurants and customers have taken many forms. In Chicago in 2022, someone set up a fraudulent DoorDash account using the name of a real restaurant, Smoque BBQ.

The fraudster took orders and credit card payments online. DoorDash drivers expecting to pick up orders found the restaurant never got the orders or the payments.

In that case, DoorDash worked with the restaurant to shut down the fake listing.

It was a “click and switch” situation in San Francisco last year where dozens of Instagram accounts pretending to be Bay Area restaurants popped up. In those cases, the fake pages requested people to follow the site and then message followers with various scams.

Another San Francisco–based scam flooded restaurants with negative online reviews and then demanded payment to remove them.

Mancini says online imposters are one more problem that restaurants, especially independent operations, don’t need.

“Restaurants have enough problems with unfair reviews of their food by diners who don’t know what they’re talking about. Now they also have to worry about people reviewing inferior counterfeits of their food on social media.”

But, following multiple years of stubborn inflation, coupled with a housing market that refuses to cool and a trend of mounting debt, achieving the American dream has become, to some, just a dream. Even more recently, an analysis found that most American households would need to spend $10,000 or more just to afford the same goods and quality of life they had in 2021.

A new report, released earlier this month, found that in every state, you need to earn at least six figures to achieve the American dream.

Personal finance site GoBankingRates considered the costs of multiple metrics that could be used to define the “American dream:” being a married couple with two children living in a home for four with a car and a pet; plus annual groceries, pet care, a mortgage, healthcare, utilities, education, and child care. That total was then considered 50% of the household’s income, following the oft-used 50/30/20 budgeting technique (50% for needs, 30% for wants, and 20% for saving or paying down debt). 

Following recent trends (more on that in a moment), the analysis found that in states along the coasts, the costs required for the “American dream” were much higher than in the South, Midwest, and Plains.

Nowhere is the American dream (at least the one described in GoBankingRates’ report) more expensive than Hawaii. Fueled in part by high housing and grocery costs, residents in Hawaii would need almost $260,800 to afford the idyllic life. That’s roughly $15,000 more than California, which only outranked Hawaii in two categories: annual car costs, and annual child care costs. 

In four other states, residents need to earn more than $200,000 to get a house with a picket fence: Massachusetts, Washington, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. 

The cheapest state was Mississippi, where GoBankingRates found you would need less than $110,000. Compared to Hawaii (and most other states on the list), Mississippi had the most affordable housing costs, which largely contributed to top ranking. In six other states, the American dream costs less than $125,000: Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

The interactive map below shows the cost of the American dream in each state based on GoBankingRates’ analysis. Hovering or tapping on each state will also show you the median household income in each, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey’s 5-year income estimates.

In every state, the median income is well below the total costs outlined to afford the “perfect” life. In Mississippi, for example, the median household income was just under $53,000, roughly half the $110,000 needed for the “American dream.” Hawaii and California had the largest disparities between dream-life costs and median household income at roughly $166,000 and $154,000, respectively. It’s worth noting though that the Census defines a household as anyone living within a housing unit, which could be anything from an apartment to a mansion. 

Overall, GoBankingRates’ findings were largely in line with other recent analyses showing how affordable — or unaffordable — life is nationwide.

Earlier this month, Bankrate reviewed home price data and determined that in 22 states, you need to earn at least $100,000 annually to afford a median-priced home. That’s up from six in 2020. California topped the list at just over $197,000, with Hawaii close behind at more than $185,800. 

Mississippi again ranked as the most affordable, where an annual salary of slightly more than $63,000 is enough to afford a median-priced home. The four other most affordable states were Ohio ($64,071), Arkansas ($64,714), Indiana ($65,143), and Kentucky ($65,186). Two of those states, Arkansas and Kentucky, also ranked on the lower end of GoBankingRates’ American dream study. 

Affordability can also vary based on the metro you live in or near. Personal finance site SmartAsset recently ranked 99 of the nation’s largest cities to determine the pre-tax salary needed to “live comfortably” in each. 

In that study, researchers found cities in Texas — a state that ranked roughly in the middle in Bankrate’s and GoBankingRates’ studies — were among the most affordable for individuals and families. Ranking No. 1 in both categories was Houston, a city that also stands as one of the most impacted by rising inflation. 

Regardless of where you live, you’re likely still feeling the effects of inflation: the U.S. now has a record number of cities where the “typical” home is worth more than $1 million; homeownership has become “unaffordable” in 57 counties; and various goods and services — from car maintenance to frozen drinks — are seeing prices rise.

Though it has tumbled from a peak of 9.1% in the summer of 2022, inflation has remained elevated so far this year. Prices excluding volatile food and energy costs, rose 3.8% in March from a year earlier, the same as in the previous month and well above the Federal Reserve's target.

The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate also recently rose to its highest level in five weeks, a setback for prospective homebuyers during what's traditionally the busiest time of the year for home sales. When mortgage rates rise, they can add hundreds of dollars a month in costs for borrowers, limiting how much they can afford at a time when the U.S. housing market remains constrained by relatively few homes for sale and rising home prices.

So even if you live in a relatively affordable state, the dream of a white picket fence may remain out of reach for some time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

CLEVELAND (WJW) — Coming out of the pandemic, American bank accounts continue to feel the sting of inflation, and that includes retirees — and those who rely on Social Security.

The Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan group focusing on issues that affect older Americans, raised its long-term forecast for the 2025 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to 2.6% (up from 1.7% the month prior), after seeing March inflation data.

The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) came in at 3.5%, higher than indicated by February data.

This comes after Social Security beneficiaries saw their monthly checks go up by 3.2% this year and 8.7% in 2023. The average COLA in recent years has been 2.6%, according to FOX Business News.

Of course, the Social Security Administration does not officially announce next year's COLA adjustments — which they base on CPI-W data from July through September — until mid-October.

If the number ends up being correct, Senior Citizens League officials say it may not be enough.

“If the COLA increases by 2.6%, that will be an approximately $45 increase. What can you buy for that? Not much," TSCL director Shannon Benton said in the March report.

She also said the organization is continuing to explore what this means for seniors' dwindling purchasing power.

In the meantime, those affected just have to wait.

The rising cost of electricity has hit Americans especially hard in recent years, with prices up 5% compared to a year ago and roughly 30% since 2021, according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

A recent LendingTree survey found nearly a third of Americans have cut back or skipped expenses to pay for utilities in the past year.

Experts say the electric bill surge is due to several factors, but much of it can be attributed to massive investments in the country's aging energy infrastructure.

"We're spending a lot more money, a lot more capital, on hardening the grid, on replacing equipment," said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston.

As the nation transitions from fossil fuels to renewables, utility companies are spending billions to modernize grids. At the same time, utility providers are working to increase generation capacity to keep up with higher demand that will stem, in part, from artificial intelligence, Hirs noted.

The threat of extreme weather events has also factored into recent investments. Last year, for example, California regulators gave Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) approval to bury 1,230 miles of power lines to reduce wildfire risk. PG&E customers have already seen two rate hikes this year.

In Oregon, Portland General Electric also cited wildfire and weather-related investments to explain its rate increase in January.

From 2022 to 2024, total spending by investor-owned electric utilities is projected to jump by 11% to $167 billion, according to the Edison Electric Institute.

Investments in transmission and distribution together account for more than half of a typical family's utility bill, said Tyson Slocum, the energy program director at consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen.

To make matters worse, the boost in capital expenditures is occurring at the same time interest rates and labor costs are up, which ultimately gets passed on to customers.

A spike in natural gas prices — and subsequent rise in U.S. exports — following Russia's invasion of Ukraine has also contributed to higher electric bills in recent years, Slocum pointed out.

"Typically, there's a delay in the spike in wholesale price of natural gas and the point at which that spike in price finds its way into your monthly utility bill," he said.

Roughly 40% of the nation's electricity still comes from natural gas, and those prices have dropped recently, which means they could be less of a factor in driving up electric bills over the next year.

The green future and a surge in demand

The nationwide shift toward renewable energy comes with a significant upfront cost. Solar and wind farms are still more expensive to build than natural gas-fired generators, although construction costs for all three have fallen in recent years.

Expanding wind and solar will also require new transmission infrastructure.

"We can't build large solar farms in downtown Chicago or downtown Houston or downtown Boston. These have to be built in rural areas and transmission lines need to be constructed," Hirs said.

Utility customers are feeling the brunt of those investments now, but over the long run, those same sources offer financial advantages, namely, they can generate lower-cost power with less price volatility.

However, higher future demand presents a growing challenge.

By 2030, data centers could account for 7.5% of U.S. electricity consumption, up from 2.5% in 2022, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

That acceleration has been fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence. AI's demand for power in the U.S. could end up being five to six times the total amount needed to charge America's electric vehicles, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Hirs said the growth in AI data centers — not EVs — is now the "greatest concern" for grid planners.

The increase in commercial demand could coincide with a rise in demand at home, which is expected to go up by almost 4% in 2024 due to hotter summer temperatures.

To improve reliability and avoid rolling blackouts, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has recommended expanding the transmission network, adding new power sources and making existing resources more dependable.

All of that will take time and money, which means higher electric bills for consumers, at least for now.

The Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2024 State of Higher Education study, released Wednesday, found 71% of borrowers said they needed to delay at least one major life event because of their student loans.

Survey respondents were most likely to list buying a home, buying a car and moving out of their parents' home as life events that were placed on hold.

Just under 30% said they were delayed in buying a home, 28% said they were delayed in buying a car and 22% said they were delayed in moving out, per the poll. Roughly 20% said they needed to put off starting their own business, 15% said they waited to have children and 13% delayed getting married.

Gallup noted that delay rates of these major life events were similar across demographic groups. Men were more likely that women to say loans delayed them, with 76% of men saying so compared to 64% of women.

The study also found that even those with smaller student loans were delayed in starting major life events. Around 63% of those with less than $10,000 in student loans said they have delayed major life events.

Nearly all respondents with more than $60,000 in student loans said they put off major purchases and events. Ninety-eight percent of respondents who had between $60,000 and $74,999 or more than $75,000 in student loan debt said they delayed their major life events, according to the survey.

The study comes as President Joe Biden continues his effort to alleviate student loan debt. The Biden administration has already given out $153 billion in student debt relief, largely going to those on income-based repayment plans, borrowers with disabilities and people defrauded by their schools.

The Lumina-Gallup study was conducted last year from Oct. 9 to Nov. 16 through a web survey among 14,032 current and prospective college students ages 18-59.

The Democratic president’s pitch comes as Donald Trump, his likely Republican opponent, tries to chart a path back to the White House with tough-on-China rhetoric and steep tariff proposals of his own.

During a visit to the Pittsburgh headquarters of United Steelworkers, Biden said U.S. Steel “has been an iconic American company for more than a century and it should remain totally American.”

Administration officials are reviewing the proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, and Biden said last month he would oppose the deal, saying it was “vital for it to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated.”

But in front of a union audience, he went much further in pledging he may block it.

“American-owned, American-operated by American union steelworkers — the best in the world — and that’s going to happen, I promise you,” he said.

In another step that his administration argues can protect domestic steelworkers, Biden also announced that he will push for higher tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum, aiming to insulate American producers from a flood of cheap imports.

Biden's push on steel reflects the intersection of international trade policy with his reelection effort, although the White House insisted they were more about shielding American manufacturing from unfair trade practices overseas than firing up a union audience.

The current tariff rate is 7.5% for both steel and aluminum but could climb to 25% under Biden's proposal. The president said he was asking his trade representative to seek the increase, and separate tariffs of 10% on aluminum and 25% on steel would also remain in place.

The U.S. imported roughly $6.1 billion in steel products in the 12 months ending in February 2023, but just 3% of those imports came from China, according to Census Bureau figures. Citing existing trade barriers, the American Iron and Steel Institute said China last year accounted for even less — just 2.1% of U.S. steel imports — making it America’s seventh-biggest source of foreign steel.

However, a senior administration official said there are concerns about China ramping up exports, making the higher tariff levels necessary as a preventative measure.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said the “U.S. is making the same mistake again and again” by seeking increased tariffs. In a statement, he also dismissed levies already in place as “the embodiment of unilateralism and protectionism of the U.S.”

Biden insisted that getting tougher on China was sound policy, including when it comes to preventing the exportation of advanced technologies that could “undermine our national security.”

He said he delivered a similar message to Chinese President Xi Jinping during previous conversations, telling him, “You’ll use them for all the wrong reasons, so you’re not going to get those advanced computer chips.”

Biden criticized Trump for failing to take such steps, saying that “for all his tough talk on China, it never occurred to my predecessor to do any of that.”

The administration also promised to pursue investigations against countries and importers that try to saturate existing markets with Chinese steel, and said it was working with Mexico to ensure that Chinese companies cannot circumvent the tariffs by shipping steel there for subsequent export to the United States.

“The president understands we must invest in American manufacturing. But we also have to protect those investments and those workers from unfair exports associated with China’s industrial overcapacity,” said White House national economic adviser Lael Brainard.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai also announced Wednesday that her office, acting on a petition from five national labor unions, was investigating China for “targeting the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors for dominance.”

China's Commerce Ministry responded hours later that the “U.S. petition is full of false accusations.”

It ”misinterprets normal trade and investment activities as damaging to U.S. national security and corporate interests," the ministry said in a statement. “And blames China for the U.S.'s own industrial issues, lacking factual basis and running counter to common sense in economics.”

China produces about half of the world’s steel and is making far more than its domestic market needs. It sells steel on the world market for less than half what U.S.-produced steel costs, senior Biden administration officials said.

The first step to the higher tariffs is the completion of a review of Chinese trade practices. Once Biden gives the official authorization, there will be a public notice and a comment period that could take weeks.

Biden is on a three-day Pennsylvania swing that began in his childhood hometown of Scranton on Tuesday and will include a visit to Philadelphia on Thursday. After ignoring the first two days of Trump’s hush money trial in New York, Biden made a veiled reference to it on Wednesday, joking that his predecessor is “busy right now.”

Biden's announcement on steel tariffs was cheered by U.S. steelmakers. Kevin Dempsey, president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, accused China of disrupting “world markets both by subsidizing the production of steel and other products, and by dumping those products in the U.S. and other markets.”

To coincide with the announcement, Biden’s campaign released a 60-second ad that will air on Pennsylvania television for the next five days. It features a steelworker, who is also a small-town mayor, praising the president’s economic policies.

Higher tariffs can carry major economic risks. Steel and aluminum could become more expensive, possibly increasing the costs of cars, construction materials and other key goods for U.S. consumers. Also, inflation has already been a drag on Biden's political fortunes, and his turn toward protectionism echoes Trump's playbook.

The former president, who has said he would never allow the acquisition of U.S. Steel by a foreign company to go through, imposed broader tariffs on Chinese goods during his administration and has threatened to increase levies on Chinese goods unless they trade on his preferred terms as he campaigns for another term.

An outside analysis by the consultancy Oxford Economics has suggested that putting in place the tariffs Trump has proposed could hurt the overall U.S. economy.

___

Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

Car insurance prices are up more than 22% over the past year, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI). Renters insurance is also up 4.6% year over year, outpacing the overall inflation rate of 3.5%.

Homeowners insurance isn't factored into the CPI, but insurance brokerage Policygenius determined those costs rose more than 20% from 2022 to 2023.

In Florida, where home insurance premiums have skyrocketed, some annual policies now cost over six figures.

Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications at the Insurance Information Institute, says the national rise in insurance costs is not because companies are squeezing consumers.

"The premiums are not keeping up with the loss cost, it's still, in both the home and auto sectors, well above what is being collected in premiums," he said.

Instead, Friedlander said the recent uptick is due to a combination of extreme weather, costlier repairs, more accidents with significant damage and higher reinsurance costs.

Car Insurance

Price compared to a year ago: +22.2%, per the CPI

Avg. cost (Apr. 2024): $2,314 per year for full coverage, $193 per month, according to Bankrate

Largest premium change by state (2023 to 2024): Missouri (+44%), Colorado (+37%), Nevada (+28%), Michigan (+25%), Florida (+24%), per Bankrate

Why are costs higher?

• Repairs are more expensive: New high-tech features have made fixes more costly, helping push the average collision claim up nearly 60% since 2020.
• Accidents are causing more damage: Safety improvements have made cars more likely to absorb damage in a crash, but that fragility means even minor accidents can lead to expensive repairs.
• Driving became more dangerous during the pandemic: Nearly 43,000 people died in U.S. traffic crashes in 2021, the highest number in 16 years.
• Labor and supply shortages: Supply chain disruptions and higher labor costs have also driven up repair costs.

Where do we go from here?

Price hikes are likely to continue in 2024 but at a slower pace than in recent years. Insurify estimates car insurance costs will go up by 7% this year.

Homeowners Insurance

Price change from 2022 to 2023: +21%, according to Policygenius

Avg. cost (National): $1,754 per year, $146 per month, according to Policygenius

States with the highest increases (2021 to 2023): Florida (+68%), New Mexico (+47%), Colorado (+46%), Idaho (46%), Texas (+46%), per Policygenius

Why are costs higher?

• Extreme weather: In 2023, the U.S. experienced a record 28 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. Last year, severe thunderstorms alone led to more than $60 billion in losses across the U.S., the highest level ever, Friedlander said.
• Reinsurance rates are up: Insurance companies pay for their own insurance to protect themselves, and those costs are up by as much as 50% this year.
  • "When your insurance company pays more for reinsurance, that's a pass-along cost to consumers," Friedlander said, noting that those effects may not show up in prices right away.
• Inflation: Residential building and construction labor costs have risen in recent years, pushing insurers to raise premiums.
• A recent Bloomberg Intelligence analysis found that including homeowners insurance in the inflation data could have added about 0.8% to last year's CPI increase of 3.4%.

Where do we go from here?

Insurify projects a 6% increase in 2024, which would place rates at $2,522 by the end of the year, the company said in a recent report.

Renters Insurance

Price compared to a year ago: +4.6%

Avg. cost (National): $148 per year, $12 per month, according to NerdWallet

Most expensive states (2024): Louisiana ($253 per year), Mississippi ($252 per year), Arkansas ($225 per year), Oklahoma ($210 per year), Georgia ($194 per year), per NerdWallet

Why are costs higher?

• Like other types of insurance, as prices for all items rise, so does the cost to insure them.
• "More landlords than ever before are requiring it in lease agreements, so we're seeing definitely an uptick in the volume of renters insurance versus past years," Friedlander pointed out.

Where do we go from here?

Renters insurance has risen at a slower rate than car and home insurance in recent years and remains relatively affordable by comparison. For that reason, Friedlander recommends it as a good way to protect your personal property, which is not covered by your landlord's insurance policy.

But there is hope, which may be found in Southern Nevada.

A recent report by Point2Homes revealed among all major U.S. cities, North Las Vegas has the highest young homeownership rate with almost 40% of Gen Z householders owning their homes.

“In one word, affordability,” said Doug Ressler, manager of Business Intelligence, a division of Yardi Systems that manages property in the real estate market. “The average base price for a new home in North Las Vegas is notably lower than in other parts of the Las Vegas valley, making it more accessible for first-time buyers and young professionals.”   

North Las Vegas also has the lowest median sale price in the state of Nevada. Despite this, home prices are still eight times the median income of Gen Zers. In Las Vegas, homes are seven times their median income.

Meanwhile, Henderson and Reno offer less hope with home prices at 12 and 14 times Gen Zers' median income. The numbers are staggering, especially as homebuyers are encouraged to purchase homes no more than three times their annual income.

Still, real estate experts say when compared to high-cost states like California, where it is nearly impossible for people under the age of 25 to buy a home, buying a home in Southern Nevada is a possibility for Gen Z, although with still a hefty price tag. 

Tips for purchasing a home:

• Save for a down payment over time.
• Explore ways to increase your income, whether that’s through career advancement, side hustles or freelance work.
• Improve your credit score, which could lead to a better mortgage term and save you money in the long run.
• Research local and federal first-time homebuyer programs. Some programs offer down-payment assistance. 
• Consider multifamily properties.
• Shop and compare interest rates from different lenders. Even a small difference can make a big monthly impact.
• Be prepared to negotiate in a competitive market.

Affected users to get up to $100 each if they file a valid claim by April 15.

The lawsuit alleges Verizon customers were hit with an administrative charge as part of a "deceptive scheme." Verizon denies any wrongdoing, but has agreed to the payout.

All Verizon customers in the U.S. who “received postpaid wireless or data services from Verizon and who were charged and paid an Administrative Charge and/or an Administrative and Telco Recovery Charge between January 1, 2016 and November 8, 2023" qualify for a portion of the $100 million fund.

"Postpaid" phone plans are the opposite of prepaid plans. With postpaid plans, you sign a contract with a phone provider, and then you’re billed monthly based on your usage.

Affected customers should have also gotten a notice alerting them of the settlement. If you received a notice, you can use the "notice ID" and confirmation code provided to file a claim online.

People who didn't receive a settlement notice but believe they are eligible can also file online by entering their Verizon account number and last name.

How much each claimant gets ultimately depends on how many people file claims and how long each person was a Verizon customer. The minimum payment is expected to be around $15, and the maximum is $100 per person.

Once the settlement is approved and final, payments will be sent by check or electronic payment. When that happens is still up in the air. Large settlements can face objections and appeals that extend the process.

Verizon plans to keep charging the administrative fee in question, but has agreed to amend its customer agreement to better disclose it, according to the settlement.

In an attempt to soften the blow of Tax Day, plenty of national restaurant chains are offering discounts and freebies on food and drink — and some are even extending their deals well beyond April 15.

Hungry for a budget-friendly bite? Check out the list below to find an offer near you.

Arby's

It's "Free Sandwich Month" at Arby's, meaning customers can get a free sandwich, wrap or gyro when purchasing any other item at participating locations until the end of April. Customers must order online or via the app and have an active Arby's Rewards account.

BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse

As a nod to the 1040 tax return form, BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse is giving customers $10 off any takeout or delivery order of $40 or more. The deal is only valid on Monday using the promo code 10OFF40.

California Pizza Kitchen

Similarly, guests getting takeout or dining in at California Pizza Kitchen on April 15 can get $10 off any orders of $40 or more at participating locations by signing up for the CPK Rewards program.

Dave & Buster's

Dave & Buster's is offering 50% off all food through April 28 to customers who join its D&B Rewards program.

Hooters

On April 15, participating Hooters restaurants will be offering 10 free wings (of any style) with the purchase of 10 wings. Visitors can also order $4 Dos Equis drafts or $4 Legendary Margaritas. Rewards members get an additional perk: a free dessert up to $6.99 in value. (Note: This deal is only valid at select Hooters locations owned by Hooters of America, Inc. See a full list of participating restaurants here.)

Krispy Kreme

Customers who purchase a dozen doughnuts at Krispy Kreme on Monday can get a dozen more Original Glazed doughnuts for the price of sales tax. (Prices will vary by state.) Customers ordering online or for delivery are limited to one dozen, while in-store customers can get two.

Pokeworks

On April 15, Pokeworks will be treating customers to a free scoop of avocado on regular- or large-sized poke bowls at participating locations.

Potbelly Sandwich Shop

Customers ordering online or through the Potbelly app can get a free Original- or Big-sized sandwich with the purchase of an Original- or Big-sized sandwich. The offer is valid only on April 15; customers must use the promo code BOGO.

Smoothie King

Members of Smoothie King's Healthy Rewards program can redeem a 20-ounce Angel Food Smoothie for the discounted price of $4.15 when ordering online or via the app on Monday, April 15.

TGI Fridays

Now through April 30, TGI Fridays is offering Fridays Rewards members a free entrée with the purchase of any entrée of equal or lesser value. The restaurant chain is also offering a limited-time-only "Tax Break" tequila cocktail for $7 through the end of the month.

Biden, the sitting Democratic president, plans to release his income tax returns on Monday, the IRS filing deadline. And on Tuesday, he is scheduled to deliver a speech in Scranton, Pennsylvania, about why the wealthy should pay more in taxes to reduce the federal deficit and help fund programs for the poor and middle class.

Biden is proud to say that he was largely without money for much of his decades-long career in public service, unlike Trump, who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from his father and used his billionaire status to launch a TV show and later a presidential campaign.

“For 36 years, I was listed as the poorest man in Congress,” Biden told donors in California in February. “Not a joke.”

In 2015, Trump declared as part of his candidacy, “I'm really rich.”

The Republican former president has argued that voters have no need to see his tax data and that past financial disclosures are more than sufficient. He maintains that keeping taxes low for the wealthy will supercharge investment and lead to more jobs, while tax hikes would crush an economy still recovering from inflation that hit a four-decade peak in 2022.

“Biden wants to give the IRS even more cash by proposing the largest tax hike on the American people in history when they are already being robbed by his record-high inflation crisis,” said Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign.

The split goes beyond an ideological difference to a very real challenge for whoever triumphs in the November election. At the end of 2025, many of the tax cuts that Trump signed into law in 2017 will expire — setting up an avalanche of choices about how much people across the income spectrum should pay as the national debt is expected to climb to unprecedented levels.

Including interest costs, extending all the tax breaks could add another $3.8 trillion to the national debt through 2033, according to an analysis last year by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Biden would like to keep the majority of the tax breaks, based on his pledge that no one earning less than $400,000 will have to pay more. But he released a budget proposal this year with tax increases on the wealthy and corporations that would raise $4.9 trillion in revenues and trim forecasted deficits by $3.2 trillion over 10 years.

Still, he's telling voters that he's all for letting the Trump-era tax cuts lapse.

“Does anyone here think the tax code is fair? Raise your hand,” Biden said Tuesday at a speech in Washington's Union Station to a crowd predisposed to dislike Trump's broad tax cuts that helped many in the middle class but disproportionately favored wealthier households.

“It added more to the national debt than any presidential term in history," Biden continued. "And it’s due to expire next year. And guess what? I hope to be president because it expires — it’s going to stay expired.”

Trump has called for higher tariffs on foreign-made goods, which are taxes that could hit consumers in the form of higher prices. But his campaign is committed to tax cuts while promising that a Trump presidency would reduce a national debt that has risen for decades, including during his Oval Office tenure.

"When President Trump is back in the White House, he will advocate for more tax cuts for all Americans and reinvigorate America’s energy industry to bring down inflation, lower the cost of living, and pay down our debt,” Leavitt said.

Most economists say Trump’s tax cuts could not generate enough growth to pay down the national debt. An analysis released Friday by Oxford Economics found that a “full-blown Trump” policy with tax cuts, higher tariffs and blocking immigration would slow growth and increase inflation.

Among Biden's proposals is a “billionaire minimum income tax” that would apply a minimum rate of 25% on households with a net worth of at least $100 million.

The tax would directly target billionaires such as Trump, who refused to release his personal taxes as presidents have traditionally done. But six years of his tax returns were released in 2022 by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.

In 2018, Trump earned more than $24 million and paid about 4% of that in federal income taxes. The congressional panel also found that the IRS delayed legally mandated audits of Trump during his presidency, with the panel concluding the audit process was " dormant, at best."

Biden has publicly released more than two decades of his tax returns. In 2022, he and his wife, Jill, made $579,514 and paid nearly 24% of that in federal income taxes, more than double the rate paid by Trump.

Trump has maintained that his tax records are complicated because of his use of various tax credits and past business losses, which in some cases have allowed him to avoid taxes. He also previously declined to release his tax returns under the claim that the IRS was auditing him for pre-presidential filings.

His finances recently received a boost from the stock market debut of Trump Media, which controls Trump's preferred social media outlet, Truth Social. Share prices initially surged, adding billions of dollars to Trump's net worth, but investors have since soured on the company and shares by Friday were down more than 50% from their peak.

The former president is also on the hook for $542 million due to legal judgments in a civil fraud case and penalties owed to the writer E. Jean Carroll because of statements made by Trump that damaged her reputation after she accused him of sexual assault.

In the civil fraud case, New York Judge Arthur Engoron looked at the financial records of the Trump Organization and concluded after looking at the inflated assets that “the frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience.”

While most filers have until the end of Monday, there are ways to sort out the situation if you miss the deadline.

Need more time to file taxes?

April 15 has been the traditional tax filing deadline since around 1954. Filers needing more time are encouraged to apply for an extension by 11:59 p.m. Monday. Taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts have until Wednesday.

“Filing taxes can be tedious. It can be sometimes confusing and frustrating," Russell Fazio, a psychology professor at Ohio State University, told NewsNation. "On the other hand, you do have to meet that deadline, and there's obviously some delight at having accomplished the task.”

The IRS expects 19 million taxpayers to file for an automatic extension, but the agency notes an extension of time to file a return does not grant a filer any extension of time to pay their taxes. 

Ways to file a tax extension

E-File it: Individual tax filers, regardless of income, can use IRS Free File to electronically request an automatic tax-filing extension. Doing so gives taxpayers until Oct. 15 to file a return. Most tax specialists say that at the last minute, this is a taxpayer's best bet. To get the extension, the IRS says filers must estimate their tax liability on the form and pay any amount due.

Make a payment: Taxpayers can also get an extension by electronically paying all or part of their estimated income tax due and indicating that it's for an extension. The IRS says filers can do this by making a same-day payment through their IRS online account, using Direct Pay, using the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System or with a credit or debit card. The agency says if an extension is selected when making a payment, filers won't have to file a separate extension form.

Use an extension form: There are multiple forms available on the IRS website that may apply to certain taxpayers needing an extension. 

Find information from the IRS about filing a tax extension at this link.

Financial stress during tax season can manifest in different ways, whether that's procrastinating on your tax return until the last minute or experiencing intense stress about filing incorrectly. If you’re dealing with financial stress right now, you’re not alone.

“Many Americans experience high stress during tax times, and many Americans are dealing with financial stress,” financial wellness expert Joyce Marter said.

You might think emotions and money don’t go together, but they often affect each other, said Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, financial therapist and founder of Mind Money Balance.

“Our money and mental health intersect because they’re two parts of our overall wellness,” said Bryan-Podvin.

Here are recommendations from experts to reduce financial stress during tax season while still getting your return done by the deadline:

Don't avoid, plan

Financial stress can happen all year long. While tax season is only a window of time, it comes with something that can be daunting: a deadline. Some might find a deadline motivates them to get things done, while others can feel paralyzed by it, said Dr. Tanya Farber, psychologist at McLean Hospital, a mental health facility in Massachusetts.

“If we’re overwhelmed by our anxiety, that’s where it may lead us to avoid thinking about finances or trying to avoid thinking about taxes,” Farber said.

Although you do have an option of filing for an extension, Farber doesn’t recommend prolonging the period when you have to worry about taxes. Instead, a good first step is to make a detailed plan to tackle them.

Farber recommends you break down all of the steps and start completing them one by one. A key step is to start gathering all of your documents, such as your W-2 or 1099 forms, savings and investment records, eligible deductions and tax credits, ahead of sitting down to file your taxes. Once you have a list of steps, scheduling times to complete the tasks will make it easier to build momentum.

While the required documents might depend on your individual case, here is a general list of what everyone needs:

If you need help making a plan, search for tax checklists, which can be a great tool to make sure you have everything you need.

Face your fears

For many, anxiety over filing taxes comes from fear, Farber said. Whether it’s fear of making a mistake in your return or unexpectedly owing thousands of dollars, these fears can overwhelm you to the point of avoiding even looking at your taxes.

If you identify that fear is what’s stopping you from filing, Farber recommends that you ask yourself if whatever you're afraid of is likely to happen.

“When we have fears, they’re possible, probable or definite," Farber said. “And oftentimes anxiety is the highest when we’re assuming the worst-case scenario.”

If thinking about your fears by yourself is not helping, Bryan-Podvin recommends you discuss them with a friend or a family member. In many cases, talking with someone else might help you focus on what might actually happen rather than focusing on the worst-case scenarios.

Focus on self care

If tax season brings a lot of financial stress for you, Bryan-Podvin recommends that you increase the amount of self-care activities you're doing. Activities such as taking a walk, spending time with your dog or getting enough sleep can help soothe stress.

“We are going to be doing things that are difficult and depleting and anxiety-provoking so doing more things that are restorative can help us balance that,” Farber said.

Doing restorative activities can work as a toolbox of coping skills when you’re in the middle of a stressful situation, like filing taxes.

Ask for support

You might feel like you'll be judged if you talk about money, but that's often not the case. Talking about finances with your friends or family can be a moment to receive support, she said.

“Talking with others is going to give you access to more information and resources and also helps remove the shame and stigma because you’re not alone,” Marter said.

Whether it's talking with a tax professional or reaching out to your most tax-savvy family member, proactively seeking support will help you avoid being stressed if you’re filing very close to the deadline.

Additionally, if you are experiencing mental health struggles, there are several resources you can use to find professional help.

In the U.S., you can dial 211 to speak with a mental health expert, confidentially and for free.

Other mental health resources include:

Veterans Crisis Line: call 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Crisis Text Line: Text the word ‘Home’ to 741-741

The Trevor Lifeline for LGBTQ Youth: 1-866-488-7386

The Trans Lifeline: 1-877-565-8860

___

The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

While the majority of those listed on Forbes' "Richest in 2024" list are men, 15 out of the 195 billionaires globally are, in fact, women.

The Madams of money reside in places like France, India and here in the United States, with industries ranging from fashion and retail to technology.

Here's a look at the five richest women in the world and how their bank accounts remain so swelled:

No. 5: MacKenzie Scott (United States)

MacKenzie Scott, 53, is a philanthropist and author who was once married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who's the third richest person in the world. After 25 years in wedlock, the couple divorced in 2019. According to Forbes, Scott received a 4% stake in Amazon at that time.

With a net worth of $35.6 billion in 2024, Scott has pledged to give away at least half of her money to nonprofits over the course of her life, Forbes said. So far, the publication noted she has given away over $16 billion to nearly 2,000 nonprofits.

No. 4: Jacqueline Mars (United States)

Jacqueline Mars, 84, owns about one-third of the candy, food, and pet care firm called Mars Inc., which Forbes said she inherited from her grandfather who founded the company. The fourth richest woman in the world worked at the company for 20 years.

As of 2024, Mars has a net worth of $38.5 billion, Forbes noted. Though she no longer works for the company that made her so rich, she now serves on the board of the National Archives. 

No. 3: Julia Koch (United States)

Julia Koch, 61, inherited a 42% stake in Koch Industries, along with her three children. As explained by Forbes, she received the funds after her husband, David Koch, died in 2019. Koch Industries companies manufacture paper, process minerals, create fertilizers, and refine oil.

Koch and her children have a net worth of $64.3 billion as of 2024, according to Forbes. Just this year, she donated $75 million to fund the Julia Koch Family Ambulatory Care Center, which is located at NYU Langone's West Palm Beach location.

No. 2: Alice Walton (United States)

Alice Walton, 74, found her way to wealth through the popular supermarket chain Walmart, which was founded by her father, Sam Walton. She is his only daughter, with two brothers, Rob and Jim Walton.

With her net worth in 2024 equivalent to $72.3 billion, Forbes said her focus is on the arts rather than working for the Walmart brand, unlike her two siblings. She opened the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, her hometown.

No. 1: Francoise Bettencourt Meyers (France)

Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, 70, has been deemed the richest woman in the entire world with a net worth of $99.5 billion in 2024, according to Forbes. She owes it to the widely known cosmetic care company called L'Oreal, which was founded by her grandfather.

Forbes said Bettencourt Meyers, along with her family, owns more than a third of publicly traded L'Oreal. She currently serves on the company's board and is chairwoman of the family holding company.

The world's richest woman also serves as the president of her family's philanthropic foundation. According to Forbes, it encourages French progress in the sciences and arts.

Methodology

To calculate net worth, financial researchers at Forbes used stock prices and exchange rates from March 8, 2024. More on their methodology can be found here. Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires rankings track the daily ups and downs of the world’s richest people.

A Centennial, Colorado, man, Justin Mauk, was having a boring evening cleaning his apartment when he happened upon a plastic King Soopers bag. Plastic bags are now banned in Colorado, so he decided to post it on Facebook Marketplace to get a few laughs.

Mauk wrote, "Soon to be highly collectable. Keep this one for the grandkids. Profits will be donated to local food bank, I might even frame it for you." He listed the "never been used" King Soopers bag for a cool $50.

"I just like to be sarcastic and spread joy to my friends, and positivity, thinking somebody will get a laugh out of this," Mauk said.

He awoke the next morning to hundreds of messages and comments on the post. That included an unexpected turn: he had a buyer for the bag, the owner of Mother Cutter Design in Aurora.

"She said she liked the idea and wanted to get behind it, and that 'not only will I pay the 50 bucks, but I’ll double it.' And I was like, 'that’s super cool,' and I was like 'if you do that, then I’ll match it,'" Mauk said. "So all of a sudden, we were at $200. My employer, Mike's Bikes, caught wind of it and said they’ll match up to $500."

That money isn't going toward Mauk but rather Secor Cares, a local nonprofit food bank.

"It’s kind of a full-circle moment that a plastic bag that we can no longer use is still bringing money and awareness to our local population," said Lisa Long, with Secor.

Mother Cutter Design now has the bag hanging at its storefront in Aurora for a week, collecting donations for Secor. Donations can also be made through the QR code below.

It was a full-circle moment for Mauk too. He told Nexstar's KDVR that after an injury put him out of work, he went to the Secor food bank for help.

"They helped me out, so I figured it was my turn to give back to them," Mauk said.

Since the start of 2024, stores in Colorado were no longer allowed to supply single-use plastic bags beyond what they already had in stock. Many grocery stores, including King Soopers, switched to paper bags at checkout, and customers still need to pay 10 cents per bag.

In February, the nation boasted 550 "million-dollar" cities where the median home value was north of seven figures, up from 491 a year ago, the analysis shows.

California had the most cities with homes valued over $1 million, totaling 210. New York had 66, while New Jersey -- which experienced the largest year-over-year increase -- had 49.

Zillow noted that limited housing inventory keeps pushing home values up, and according to the National Association of Realtors, prices are expected to remain elevated this spring.

"Affordability is still a big challenge for buyers, but that hasn't stopped prices from growing," Anushna Prakash, an economic research data scientist at Zillow, said in a statement. "If mortgage rates drop later this year, as many expect, we may see a surge in million-dollar cities as even more buyers jump in and drive prices higher."

While million-dollar cities were hit harder than typical U.S. cities when home values dropped in late 2022, they've largely mirrored the national trend over the past year, according to Zillow. Homes in these cities have appreciated in value by 4.6% year-over-year, slightly outpacing the 4.2% national average.

Not all states, however, have experienced the same growth. Florida bid farewell to three million-dollar cities -- Siesta Key, Santa Rosa Beach and Sanibel -- while welcoming one, the Village of Palmetto Bay. Texas lost two in the Austin metropolitan area and gained one outside of Houston, while Delaware's Dewey Beach completely dipped below the million-dollar threshold.

Home prices aren't the only challenge buyers are facing in this tight housing market. The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate has risen to its highest level in five weeks, a setback for prospective buyers during what’s traditionally the busiest time of the year for home sales.

Hannah Jones, Realtor.com’s senior economic research analyst, told the Associated Press that mortgage rates will likely continue to hover between that 6.6% and 7% range until inflation shows convincing progress towards the Fed’s target.

“Eager buyers and sellers are hoping to see more favorable housing conditions as the spring selling season kicks off,” Jones told the outlet. “However, mortgage rates have offered little relief as economic data, as measured by both inflation and employment, remains strong.”

The U.S. housing market has been in a slump for two years due to a sharp increase in mortgage rates and a shortage of homes for sale.

Despite this, the average rate for a 30-year mortgage is still much higher than it was two years ago, standing at 5%. This has discouraged many homeowners from selling their homes because they have fixed-rate mortgages below 3% or 4% from more than two years ago.

While many experts believe that mortgage rates will decrease somewhat later this year, most forecasts predict that the average rate for a 30-year home loan will stay above 6%.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

The personal finance website compared changes in the Consumer Price Index in 23 major metropolitan areas year over year, and over three recent months, and then created a score based on those figures.

Of the 23 cities ranked, WalletHub found that Honolulu and Miami have seen the steepest increases in consumer prices, including groceries, rent, and automobiles, while Detroit and Anchorage have seen prices cool the most.

The U.S. inflation rate hit a 40-year high after the COVID-19 pandemic but has recently settled at 3.5% - still above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.

Cities With the Biggest Inflation Problems

“Residual supply chain troubles contribute to this, although the largest factor is the strong economy with pressure on wages and opportunities for businesses to raise prices to increase profits,” said Gerald Friedman, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “Supply-side policies can help, including immigration reform to address labor supply problems. The Inflation Reduction Act was a good first step in addressing corporate greed.”

U.S. producer prices rose in March from a year earlier at the fastest pace in nearly a year, but the gain was less than economists expected. And wholesale inflation eased on a month to month basis.

The Labor Department said Thursday that its producer price index — which measures inflationary pressure before it reaches consumers — rose 2.1% last month from March 2023 , biggest year-over-year jump since April 2023. But economists had forecast a 2.2% increase, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.