In October TD Bank pled guilty to both civil and criminal charges including conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act related to money laundering. As a condition of the settlement, TD Bank will pay a $1.8 billion criminal penalty which when added to the civil fines brings the total to $3 billion dollars that the bank will pay to settle these charges. The terms of the settlement require TD Bank to cooperate in full with the continuing investigation of the Justice Department into the activities of TD Bank’s officers, directors and employees in regard to the money laundering violations that…

Our nation’s student debt crisis is a multi-faceted issue with several factors that make it considerably worse over time. Rooted in the problem is the rising costs of higher education, which are difficult for families to estimate or plan for. There are also more and more college degrees that have a negative return-on-investment (ROI) each year, which leave students paying huge sums for degrees that don’t lead to higher earnings or better job opportunities. There’s also a problem when it comes to both federal and private student loans, both of which can allow students or their families to borrow considerable…

Let’s start with a question. Do you agree with this statement? People, in general, are more often SOLD goods and services rather than BEING A THOUGHTFUL CONSUMER. In today’s US economy, goods and services are largely made up of layers of sales processes. The further removed from the original source, the more layers and fees become involved. If you purchase a used car directly from the person selling it, you will likely get the best deal because the seller doesn’t have to pay any commissions or have a facility to maintain. If the owner of the car has a dealership…

Millions of borrowers may see big increases to their monthly student loan payments next year, as several key Biden administration initiatives are imperiled or will expire in 2025. Many borrowers with federal student loans have been in income-driven repayment, or IDR, plans. IDR plans use formulas applied to a borrower’s income and family size to calculate their payment amount, with annual adjustments. Typically, a borrower may qualify for student loan forgiveness after 20 or 25 years in repayment. However, many borrowers in IDR plans may be in for an unexpected jump in their monthly payments next year. And for some,…

Andrea Woroch, a consumer savings expert in Bakersfield, California, told me she earned $60 in cash-back rewards through one of the apps last year, which made it easy for her to purchase gift cards for her children’s teachers at no extra cost to her. “Let that cash accumulate then put it toward shopping,” she says. “I love getting free money.” So do I. So I decided it was finally time for me to try out a cash-back app, just in time for my holiday shopping. Picking the right appFirst, I had to choose the right one for me. NerdWallet’s review…

Delinquencies on auto loans are expected to stabilize this quarter and decline in the final three months of 2025 as the overall economic picture improves and consumers are feeling better about their personal financial positions, according to a report released Wednesday by global information and insights company TransUnion. The TransUnion 2025 Credit Forecast predicts the percentage of auto loans more than 60 days delinquent this year will come in at 1.45%, just about flat with the 1.42% rate in 2023, but then fall to 1.38% in the fourth quarter of 2025, a seven basis points improvement. What’s happening is some…

The festivity of December is replaced all too quickly by the due dates of January, when the bills from holiday spending and travel arrive. This kind of financial hangover can make the start of the year a little less joyful, but there are ways to prevent it.“People often go into the holiday season without a plan. They might know who they want to give gifts to, but may not put numbers to it or think of what they want to spend overall, and that’s where people get into trouble,” says Rob Wurzburg, a Chicago, Illinois-based financial advisor at Forum Financial…

The boom in generative artificial intelligence touched off in late 2022 has changed our lives in a number of ways — and the job market is no exception. December of that year saw the release of the first consumer version of ChatGPT — an app capable of writing high-school, if not college-level, essays in seconds. Since then, ChatGPT creator Open AI has released several upgrades of its signature software, which hit 100 million users a week within its first year while inspiring a host of other tech companies to enter the field. Cue existential crisis. Workers began worrying about the…

Money meets mission in America’s latest healthcare frontier. Currently, 1 in 5 children experiences a mental health condition, while more than 50% of these young patients cannot access appropriate care. It’s numbers like these that have sparked a gold rush among investors like Khadijah Robinson, General Partner at Fictive Ventures, to support entrepreneurs like Hafeezah Muhammad, CEO of Backpack Healthcare, an A-I driven mental health platform for children, to transform the industry into a catalyst for innovation and representation. The Breakdown You Need To Know: Youth mental health care’s current investment landscape is quite telling as startup investments jumped from…

The incoming Trump Administration has been sending mixed signals about the fate of Medicare. But if Trump advisers and GOP lawmakers are serious about slashing government spending it is hard to see how they will ignore the program, which last year cost $850 billion and accounted for about one out of every six dollars the federal government spent. Trump’s problem: Cutting Medicare spending risks the fury of both recipients and providers. And any effort to accelerate the shift to Medicare Advantage, which has strong support among Trump advisers, could increase federal spending even as it limits the government’s role in…