Personal Finance
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What’s worth streaming in April 2023? There’s almost too much to watch, but here’s where to start.
Feel like there’s just too much to watch these days? You’re not alone. And it’s about to get worse. We’re experiencing an avalanche of prestige television — the single busiest stretch of the year — and it’s all thanks to a tweak in Emmy eligibility rules. This year, in order to qualify for Emmy nominations,…
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‘Your chronological age can do a number on you psychologically if you let it.’ Welcome to the senior-fitness boom.
You don’t need to have rock-hard abs in your 70s, but you have to keep moving if you want to age well. At least that’s the advice of Robin Maginn, a 64-year-old personal trainer, who caters to middle-aged and older adults in her role as health living and wellness coordinator at the Central Lincoln County…
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‘Trapped in the gap’: Many middle-income seniors earn too much for affordable housing but not enough to pay market rates
Deb Morgan, 74, made the decision in 2021 to sell her home in Aiken, S.C., and move closer to her son in Cincinnati. While the booming real-estate market helped her get more for her South Carolina home than she imagined, the market also worked against her when finding a new place to live. Morgan didn’t…
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Who is selling their homes in this uncertain housing market? The same people who are buying houses more than anyone else.
Baby boomers are dominating the housing market, both in terms of buying and selling homes, according to a new report. Boomers are once again the biggest generation on both side of the real estate equation, surpassing millennials. The boomers’ share of selling rose to 52% in 2022 from 42% in 2021, according to an annual report by…
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‘We are surprised and bewildered’: My brother passed away and left his house, cash and possessions to charity. Can his siblings contest his will?
Dear Quentin, My brother just recently passed away in June. Instead of leaving his belongings to his siblings, he chose to donate to charity — that is, his home, furnishings and all of his remaining cash. I don’t understand why he would make such a decision. We are surprised and bewildered. He has left a…
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‘Baby boomers have the upper hand in the home-buying market’: First-time buyers, meanwhile, struggle to get on property ladder
Baby boomers edged out millennial home buyers, according to a new report, thanks to high mortgage rates and home prices. According to an annual report by the National Association of Realtors, baby boomers make up 39% of home buyers, up from 29% last year. At the other end of the spectrum, Generation Z only makes…
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U.S. stocks end sharply higher after inflation report, Nasdaq scores best quarter since 2020
U.S. stocks closed sharply higher Friday, following a softer-than-expected inflation report for February. The Nasdaq Composite ended March with its largest quarterly gain since 2020. How stocks traded The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.26% rose 415.12 points, or 1.3%, to close at 33,274.15. The S&P 500 SPX, +1.44% gained 58.48 points, or 1.4%, to…
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Money is moving out of bank accounts, but not necessarily because customers are panicking
But even before the crisis — which is hopefully subsiding — more retail banking customers said they were already pulling cash from their primary bank accounts, according to new information from J.D. Power. While inflation grinds away at account balances, rising interest rates have lured customers to take more of their money out of lower-yielding…
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How the FDIC has set a ‘baseline’ for troubled commercial real estate
A bank failure can happen in the blink of an eye, but in the case of Silicon Valley Bank, the aftermath is taking longer to play out. And the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s latest action — selling $72 billion of the failed San Francisco bank’s loans to First First Citizens BancShares of Raleigh, N.C., at…
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‘It says I owe $179,000’: Options traders hit with massive margin calls as winning bets against failing banks are left in limbo for weeks
Thousands of retail option traders who made prescient bets against shares of Signature Bank and SVB Financial Group, the Silicon Valley Bank holding company, were relieved on Tuesday when shares of both failed banks resumed trading on over-the-counter markets after a roughly two-week trading halt. It marked the end of what an academic has described…