Category: Taxes and Retirement

Summer EBT — also called SUN Bucks — is now a permanent federal program that puts grocery money on a card for kids during summer break, when school meals aren't available. It's in its third year in 2026, and the benefit amount and list of participating states have both changed…

For tax year 2025 (filed in 2026), H&R Block is the strongest mid-market alternative to TurboTax — meaningfully cheaper across every tier, with a comparable guided interview experience and one thing TurboTax cannot offer: the option to walk into a physical office if you want a human to take over.…

Every December, I go through the same three-step process on my taxable brokerage accounts: figure out where my realized gains and losses stand, decide what to sell to offset them, and recheck the numbers before December 31. It's one of the simplest, most repeatable tax moves available to any investor…

TurboTax is still the most widely used tax software in the country. For tax year 2025 (filed in 2026), it has made some real changes worth knowing before you pay — or decide to go elsewhere. The product lineup has been simplified, there are new deductions under the One Big…

If you've been claiming the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) at the reduced post-pandemic level for the past few years, there's good news: it just went up again, and this time it's meant to stay. Starting with the 2026 tax year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)…

Home energy costs keep climbing, and for households on the lower end of the income scale, that's not an abstract budgeting problem — it's a choice between heating the house and paying for something else. The good news is that federal and state energy assistance programs exist specifically to help.…

After submitting your tax return, you may see a message referencing code 1242 and Tax Topic 151 when you check your IRS refund status. Naturally, this can cause stress and worry about what happens next. Here's what it means, next steps, and the expected timeline. Get the latest money, tax…

If you've seen ads for "free Medicare grocery cards" — or had one and lost it this year — here's the straight story for 2026: those benefits got much harder to get. The federal pilot program (VBID) that let many Medicare Advantage plans hand out grocery allowances based on income…

"Maximize your tax refund" gets searched every filing season, but it's worth being precise about what that actually means. A refund is just the IRS returning money you already overpaid through paycheck withholding or estimated payments — getting a bigger one isn't really a win if it means you gave…

Kentucky's unemployment insurance program — managed by the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet (KEWES) — increased its maximum weekly benefit significantly to $720 in 2026, up from $552 in 2025. That's a locked-in 2026 number; whether 2027 brings another jump depends on how much Kentucky's average weekly wage keeps…

Business owners still don't get a "Where's My Refund"-style tracker the way individual filers do. If you're waiting on a business tax refund in 2026, the IRS's own guidance is unchanged from prior years: call the Business and Specialty Tax Line at 800-829-4933 (or +1 267-941-1000 from outside the U.S.)…

A few years back I ended up owing taxes when I filed my return — a tax liability I could have avoided or shrunk if I'd made a few moves earlier in the year. That's still the core lesson here: most of the strategies below only work if you act…

Transaction codes are used on IRS tax transcripts to show filers what has happened with their return processing, reasons for potential delays, when a refund will be paid, or why it's delayed. Given ongoing challenges in getting through to a live IRS agent, many taxpayers are turning to their free…