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Cash may feel safe for investors because it insulates them from stock market volatility.
But holding too much cash can be dangerous for households due to inflation.
Savers generally do need some cash on hand for unexpected financial emergencies.

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Cash may seem like a safe parking space for your money. But holding too much can hurt savers over the long term — especially if it comes at the expense of owning stocks, the growth engine of a portfolio. 
“Cash can feel safe, but it doesn’t grow your wealth,” Gargi Chaudhuri, chief investment and portfolio strategist, Americas, at BlackRock, an asset manager, wrote this month in an investment commentary.

Why?
While cash is insulated from the whipsawing nature of stocks, it’s at risk due to a more insidious threat: inflation.

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For example, $10,000 in cash stuffed under the mattress 30 years ago — and earning zero interest — would be worth about $4,700 today after accounting for inflation, according to a BlackRock analysis. That’s a loss of roughly 53%, it found.
In other words, that pile of money can buy about half of what it could three decades ago.
Meanwhile, $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index would be worth about $92,600, a return of about 826%, according to BlackRock.

Inflation touched its highest level in about 40 years in 2022. While it has fallen considerably since then, inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s long-term target around 2%.
“Having too much excess cash is not the best thing,” said Uziel Gomez, a certified financial planner and the founder of Primeros Financial in Los Angeles. “If you keep everything in cash, you’re essentially losing money year to year.”

He uses the example of a cup of coffee to demonstrate the point to clients.
In the early 2000s, for example, a cup of coffee cost roughly $1, but today might cost more like $5 to $6, depending on where people live, said Gomez, a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council.
“That cup of coffee won’t be $6 in 40 years; it’ll be much higher,” Gomez said. “You’re still going to want to buy that cup of coffee, take that vacation, in 40 or 50 years. How do you do that? It’s by investing.”

Why cash still matters

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Of course, there are some caveats.
For one, households generally shouldn’t avoid cash altogether.
Households do need at least some cash on hand, whether for emergencies or perhaps for savings toward a short-term purchase like a car or house, according to financial experts.
It generally wouldn’t be wise to subject a down payment for a home to the volatility of the stock market, for example, Gomez said.
And, households should generally think of holding two to six months of additional cash in an emergency fund for unexpected financial shocks, he said. Some people should hold more, perhaps if they are employed in an industry at relatively high risk of layoffs, he said.

Different types of cash accounts

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Further, not all cash is created equal.
“Cash,” in finance lingo, is shorthand for liquid, readily available funds invested conservatively and subject to relatively little market risk.
It could refer to many different things: perhaps U.S. dollar bills stuffed under a mattress, money held in a checking or savings account at a traditional brick-and-mortar bank, a certificate of deposit, money market fund or high-yield savings account offered by an online bank.

If you keep everything in cash, you’re essentially losing money year to year.

Uziel Gomez
founder of Primeros Financial

Some cash accounts, like high-yield savings accounts and money market funds, generally pay relatively higher interest rates than some other forms of cash.
For example, $10,000 invested in a money market fund 30 years ago would still have lost value due to inflation, but less than physical bills under a mattress, according to BlackRock. It’d be worth about $8,850 compared to $4,700, Blackfound found.
Interest rates on cash moved higher as the Fed raised its benchmark rate to combat inflation. Now, however, interest rates are moving down again, meaning savers can expect their cash returns to fall, too.
“With rates moving lower, holding too much cash could mean losing purchasing power if inflation stays sticky,” wrote BlackRock’s Chaudhuri.
For example, the top high-yield savings account on the market paid almost 5.6% interest rate in July 2024, according to Bankrate. Today, that rate is just over 4.2%, it found.
“With the Federal Reserve still undecided on a possible rate cut in December, yields are likely to stay relatively flat into early 2026, pending clearer economic signals,” Stephen Kates, CFP, a financial analyst at Bankrate, wrote in an email.

Make investing ‘boring’

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Investing may feel like a foreign concept to many people, which may paralyze people and prevent them from moving forward, Gomez said.
The first step is to evaluate the financial goal, Gomez said, i.e. why you’re investing: Are you investing for a retirement that’s potentially decades down the road? In that case, one can generally afford to own more stocks, he said. Or, if it is for a more short-term goal, then someone should generally be invested more conservatively, perhaps in cash or bonds, he explained.
“That’ll be the blueprint as to what risk you can tolerate,” he said. “If the why is, I want to save for a home, that investment will look very different than saving for retirement.”
Then, the actual investment comes down to diversification, he said. That means not being too dependent on any one stock or industry, and being diversified across U.S. and global stocks, for example, he said.
Investors can consider owning a one-and-done mutual fund or exchange-traded fund, whereby a professional asset manager handles the diversification for investors behind the scenes, according to financial advisors. Investors also may choose to automate saving money into that fund or funds, too.
“Ultimately, investing should be boring,” Gomez said. “It’s usually set it and forget it.”
“You don’t need to be perfect to start, but you need to start to be perfect,” he said. More

Investors saving for retirement should focus on their income needs, says TIAA CEO. 
TIAA manages $1.4 trillion in assets for more than 5 million people. 
Changes in federal law have made it easier for plan sponsors to add annuities, or insurance products, to retirement plans.

Thasunda Brown Duckett

Fears of an AI stock bubble have many investors watching — and some worrying — about its impact on their retirement accounts. 
TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett, who heads one of the nation’s largest retirement plan providers, says that shouldn’t be retail investors’ greatest concern.

When eyeing the AI-driven market gains, “I think the real question is not knowing if it’s going to burst or boom. It’s about making sure you’ll be prepared for retirement,” Brown Duckett said in an interview on the sidelines of TIAA’s FutureWise conference in Washington, DC, earlier this week.  
The focus of investors saving for retirement should be on building a diversified portfolio that includes a guaranteed income stream, she said. 

‘Income has to be the outcome,’ for retirement savings
“It’s not about timing the market. It’s about how much time you put in the market,” she said. “And as we think about that diversification, how do we ensure that there’s income within it? Income has to be the outcome.” 
That income, she says, could come from annuities or insurance products that provide regular payments for retirement income. 
More than one-third (35%) of 225 decision makers at U.S. defined contribution plans said they will prioritize adding retirement income solutions to their offering in the next 12 months, according to a new survey by Mercer, a global HR and benefits consulting firm. Defined contribution plans include employer-sponsored retirement plans, like 401(k)s and 403(b)s.

TIAA is a major provider of 403(b) plans, annuities, and retirement income products, particularly for the nonprofit sector, including colleges and universities and health care systems. Last year, TIAA entered the 401(k) market, offering lifetime income products in target-date funds. Altogether, the firm manages over $1.4 trillion in assets for more than 5 million people. 

“We have to make sure that the everyday investor in their retirement does not get to a position that they were too far on the risk curve, that they did not have the counterbalance, which is income,” Brown Duckett said, when asked how investors should react to volatility. 
Since 2019, federal laws have made it easier to offer annuities in 401(k) plans. TIAA views this as an opportunity to sell its lifetime income products to a much broader share of the $12.5 trillion defined contribution plan market.
However, research shows most everyday investors don’t understand annuities and retirement income products. While 28% of financial professionals think clients understand annuities “very well,” only 14% of clients agree, according to a 2025 study by the Alliance for Lifetime Income by LIMRA, a non-profit consumer education organization.

Balancing alternative assets risk in retirement plans

Now, the White House is endorsing the inclusion of private credit, private equity, real estate, and other alternative investments in 401(k) plans, too, which can entail greater risk than stocks and bonds – and annuities.

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Before adding those private assets to a workplace retirement plan, Brown Duckett said this question should be answered first: “How do we ensure that we’re educating people along the way so that we don’t get over-excited when you’re in a bull market, and then when that bear hits, you see a real decline that you didn’t anticipate in your retirement plan?” 
“I do think alternatives can be a good thing,” she added, “but I do think it has to be balanced with lifetime income to offset it, because it is riskier.”
Brown Duckett says investors need income in their retirement portfolios so they won’t run out of money, regardless of how long they live or how much markets fluctuate.
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Some shoppers plan to spend big this holiday season — even if it means racking up more credit card debt.
“It’s very much a two-track economy, as we know, and credit cards are a great example of that,” says Ted Rossman, Bankrate’s senior industry analyst.

Americans tend to overspend during the holiday shopping season, and this year will be no different, according to some forecasts.
Despite concerns about the economy, President Donald Trump’s latest wave of tariff hikes and persistent inflation, holiday spending between November and December is expected to rise 3.7% to 4.2% and surpass $1 trillion for the first time, according to the National Retail Federation.

“American consumers may be cautious in sentiment, yet remain fundamentally strong and continue to drive U.S. economic activity,” Matthew Shay, NRF’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
However, other reports show that growing concerns about trade uncertainty and increased prices will weigh on household budgets.

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A separate holiday retail survey by Deloitte found that holiday shoppers plan to pullback. Consumers expect to spend, on average, $1,595 this year as they brace for higher prices, down 10% from last year.
Another PWC report found that holiday shopping trends are a lot less predictable this year, but overall, consumers expect to spend about 5% less on holiday gifts, travel and entertainment compared with the year-ago season.

A growing divide

According to TransUnion’s newly released consumer pulse study, based on a survey of 3,000 adults last month, there’s a growing divide: 57% of Americans expect to spend the same or more this year compared with last year, while roughly 43% plan to spend less.

Holiday shoppers also said they expect to rely more heavily on credit cards to make their purchases this season, with 42% saying it’s their preferred payment method — up from 38% last year, TransUnion found.

In an increasingly “K”-shaped economy, credit card users are roughly split between higher-income consumers who don’t carry a balance and use their cards to rack up reward points and lower-income consumers who are “probably going to make purchases on credit cards because they don’t have the cash,” according to Charlie Wise, TransUnion’s senior vice president of global research and consulting.
Roughly 175 million consumers have credit cards. While some pay off the balance each month, about 60% of credit card users have revolving debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 
“It’s very much a two-track economy, as we know, and credit cards are a great example of that,” said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.
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You could face unexpectedly higher taxes after a spouse dies, but there are ways to reduce the burden, financial advisors say.
The “survivor’s penalty” can happen when you shift from married filing jointly to single filer for tax purposes.
Some survivors see higher taxes due to different brackets, a smaller standard deduction and lower thresholds for other tax breaks.

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Losing a spouse can be devastating, and survivors often face a costly surprise — higher future taxes. But couples can plan ahead to reduce the burden, experts say.
The issue, known as the “survivor’s penalty,” happens when shifting from married filing jointly to single filer, which can lead to higher tax rates, depending on the couple. Single filers have less generous tax brackets, a smaller standard deduction and lower thresholds for other tax breaks.

It’s one of the “most overlooked and financially damaging tax events,” said certified financial planner Gregory Furer, CEO and founder of Beratung Advisors in Pittsburgh. “And it often appears at the worst possible time.” 

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The survivor’s penalty can impact heterosexual couples who typically have different life expectancies, which may require multi-year tax planning, financial experts say.
In 2023, there was more than a five-year life expectancy gap between the sexes, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2023, the life expectancy was 81.1 years for females and 75.8 years for males.
If you inherit an individual retirement account from a deceased spouse, you could have larger required minimum distributions, or RMDs, at the higher tax brackets for single filers, according to Furer.
This can increase federal income taxes, boost Medicare Part B and Part D premiums, and raise Social Security taxes, among other issues. “It is a tax trap that hits widows and widowers at a deeply vulnerable time,” he said.

Surviving spouse could lose ‘flexibility’

The surviving spouse could pay higher taxes on Roth individual retirement account conversions, which some investors use for legacy planning, experts say. The strategy incurs upfront levies but can kickstart tax-free growth for heirs.
“Your flexibility goes down,” said CFP Edward Jastrem, chief planning officer at Heritage Financial Services in Westwood, Massachusetts.

Survivors could also pay more for large withdrawals from pretax accounts. For example, let’s say you need cash to purchase another home. If you withdraw $300,000 from a pretax IRA, your taxes could be higher as a single filer, Jastrem said.
Plus, higher income can trigger additional tax consequences more quickly for single filers, he said. You could pay the so-called net investment income tax sooner, which applies to capital gains, interest, dividends, rents, and more. You could also lose eligibility for certain tax breaks.  

How to reduce the survivor’s penalty

Typically, “proactive planning” happens five to 10 years before retirement, when there is still time to “shape future tax outcomes,” Furer of Beratung Advisors said.
For example, some couples may consider “strategic Roth conversions” to reduce pretax retirement balances and the survivor’s future RMDs, he said.
Of course, you’ll need to run multi-year projections to see when you’ll pay the least amount of tax on the converted balance.
You also need to plan for retirement income, such as when to take Social Security, and withdrawals from pensions and taxable investment accounts, which can help “soften the impact on the surviving spouse,” Furer said. More

As health care costs continue to climb, it’s worth making sure you take advantage of strategies and tax laws that apply to medical expenses, experts say.
That can include getting health services now instead of next year if you’ve hit your health plan’s deductible or out-of-pocket maximum.
Consider how to best use the pre-tax money you have in flexible spending accounts or health savings accounts.

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As health-care costs continue to climb, you may want to make sure you’re not leaving valuable tax breaks or pre-tax dollars on the table this year.
Rising premiums, steeper deductibles and higher out-of-pocket maximums have put more pressure on household budgets, making year-end planning important, experts say.

Among employer-based plans — which cover about 154 million people under age 65 — premiums paid by workers could rise by 6% to 7% on average in 2026, according to consultancy firm Mercer. For plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, premiums will more than double next year — on average, by 114% — if enhanced premium tax credits expire at the end of the year as scheduled, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research group.

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While medical expenses often are unpredictable and unwelcome, there may be strategies you can use to make those outlays a little less painful.
Here’s what to know.

Get planned medical services sooner

Depending on your health expenses so far for 2025, you may be able to pay less — or even nothing — for qualifying medical services before the end of the year.
Your deductible is the amount you pay in a year for your medical costs before your plan starts paying for covered services. Your out-of-pocket max is the limit on your total cost-sharing for the year, including co-pays, co-insurance and deductibles.

Once you’ve met your plan’s deductible, as long as the service qualifies for coverage, the amount you pay would be less than it was before you reached your deductible. Once you’ve hit your plan’s out-of-pocket max, you typically pay nothing for in-network, covered services until the new plan year.
“Say you have an outpatient procedure planned for next year — maybe it makes more sense to pull it into 2025 before the plan resets Jan. 1,” said certified financial planner Bill Shafransky, senior wealth advisor for Moneco Advisors in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Gauge medical expense tax deduction eligibility

There is a tax deduction for medical expenses, although it comes with parameters that prevent many taxpayers from using it.
For starters, you can only deduct health-care expenses that exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.
Additionally, you’d need to itemize your deductions instead of taking the standard deduction, which for 2025 is $15,750 for individual tax filers and $31,500 for married couples filing jointly. In other words, that can be a high hurdle to clear. Next year, those amounts will be $16,100 and $32,200, respectively.
Most taxpayers do not itemize, IRS data shows.

However, if you are close to qualifying, the break can be another reason to schedule health appointments and procedures this year rather than wait until 2026.
“Take the time to understand if your medical expenses may be deductible for the year,” said CFP Paul Penke, client portfolio manager at Ironvine Capital Partners in Omaha.
Also, keep in mind that expenses covered by funds from health flexible spending accounts or health savings accounts — both of which already are tax-advantaged — are excluded from counting toward the deduction.

Spend your FSA balance

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If you have an FSA — which lets you save pretax money to use for qualified medical expenses — contributions generally come with a use-it-or-lose-it provision when the year ends. The 2025 maximum contribution to an FSA is $3,300, and for 2026, it’s $3,400.
But it’s worth finding out what your employer’s rules are. Some offer a grace period of up to 2.5 extra months to spend your balance on eligible costs, or allow you to carry over a set amount, up to $660 this year.
Suppose you need to use the money before Dec. 31. In that case, there are many ways you can spend it, from doctor and dentist appointments to prescription and over-the-counter medications, as well as a host of other qualifying health care services and devices.
“I have seen people in the first year of having an FSA not realize it was use it or lose it,” Shafransky said. “They’ve had rude awakenings to see their money is gone.”

Max out your HSA

HSAs are similar to FSAs in that they let you save pretax money to use on qualifying medical costs. However, you can leave the money there for as long as you want — it is not use-it-or-lose-it.
That means whatever you sock away in an HSA — plus any growth if your money is invested — can sit there for as long as you want it to. Its gains grow tax-free, and so are withdrawals, as long as the funds are used for qualifying medical expenses.
“You could also treat your HSA as a hybrid retirement account,” said CFP Benjamin Daniel, a financial planner with Money Wisdom in Columbus, Ohio.
“If you pay for expenses out-of-pocket and create a simple system to save your receipts, you can allow the funds to grow and reimburse yourself later,” Daniel said.

Once you turn 65, you can use the funds for non-qualified medical expenses, but you’ll pay taxes on the withdrawals. Before that age, you’d owe a 20% penalty in addition to taxes if you use HSA money for non-qualified medical expenses.
These accounts are only used in conjunction with so-called high-deductible health plans. This year, the HSA contribution limit is $4,300 for individual coverage and $8,550 for families. In 2026, the cap will be $4,400 for individuals and $8,750 for families. If you’re age 55 or older and not enrolled in Medicare, you’re allowed to contribute an additional $1,000.
The more you can contribute, the lower your taxable income will be, whether you use the money on current health care expenses or you let your balance grow.
If you have an HSA and haven’t maxed out on your annual contributions, you have more time to get it done than you may think: For 2025 contributions, the deadline is April 15, 2026. More

Layoffs in October were 175% higher than a year earlier, according to one private-sector report.
For workers who lose their job, it’s important to consider what to do with their 401(k) account at their ex-employer.
Among the decisions to make is whether to leave the assets in the plan or move them.
If you have an outstanding 401(k) loan when you lose employment, there may options for how to handle it.

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For workers who suddenly find themselves without a paycheck, tackling to-dos related to a 401(k) left behind may not be top of mind.
“Most people are really thinking, ‘How am I going to survive and can I get unemployment?'” said certified financial planner Lazetta Rainey Braxton, founder and managing principal of virtual firm The Real Wealth Coterie. She is a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council.
“There are areas of employee benefits they need to consider,” she said, such as health insurance coverage and loss of disability insurance.
“Usually [dealing with] their 401(k) is not urgent,” Braxton said. “Just don’t forget about what is one of your biggest assets.”

Here’s what to know.

First, how to handle that 401(k) loan

Among 401(k) plans that allow participants to borrow money against their account, roughly 13% of workers had an outstanding loan in 2024, according to Vanguard’s How America Saves 2025. The average balance owed was $11,000. Those numbers have changed little over the last five years.
If you have a loan against your 401(k) account when you leave a company, how it’s handled depends on the specifics of the plan. For example, 44% let you continue repayment on the loan, the Vanguard research shows.
Another possibility: If you get a new job, you may be able to roll over the loan, along with the assets in your account, to the new company’s plan, said Will Hansen, executive director of the Plan Sponsor Council of America.
The share of companies that allow either the loan to leave the plan alongside assets or accept a rolled-over loan is 15%, according to new research from Hansen’s organization. It’s most common among employers with 5,000 or more employees, at 24.4%.
“More plans are allowing a rollover of a plan loan,” Hansen said. “If you get a new job, check with your employer to see if they accept an outstanding loan in a rollover.”

If your plan allows neither of those options, you may have to pay the loan back fairly quickly. Otherwise, the amount will be considered a distribution from your account — in which case you may owe income taxes on it, Braxton said. And if you are younger than age 59½, a 10% early-withdrawal tax penalty could apply, too.
If it is initially treated as a distribution, you get until tax day — typically April 15 — of the following year to put an equivalent amount into an individual retirement account or other qualified account to avoid the tax hit.

Decide what to do with your 401(k) balance

Aside from loan considerations, you’ll need to make decisions about what to do with your 401(k) savings. One option is to leave it in your former employer’s plan — most allow it.
However, if your balance is low enough, the plan may not let you stay. If your balance is below $1,000, your account may be liquidated and sent to you in check form, which would generally be subject to income taxes. And if you’re younger than 59½, you may owe the 10% early-withdrawal penalty.

An exception to that is called the Rule of 55: If you leave your job in or after the year you turn 55, you can take penalty-free distributions from your 401(k).
Your ex-employer can also roll over balances below $7,000 to an IRA. If that happens, the money may not be invested how you’d prefer. A 2024 Vanguard study showed that 48% of investors with a rollover IRA thought the money was automatically invested, and 46% didn’t know their contributions were allocated to money market funds by default.
Of course, you also can actively move your 401(k) balance to another retirement account, which could include a 401(k) at another employer or an IRA. In either case, you may be able to find the same or similar investments that you’ve used in your 401(k), such as target-date funds or index funds, Braxton said.
The right choice for your money can depend on a host of factors, including available investment options and the fees charged. Additionally, consider any conflicts of interest on the part of financial professionals giving you advice on rollovers.

Be aware of moves that trigger a tax bill

Braxton added, however, that if you make any moves that could affect your tax situation — for example, rolling over 401(k) assets from a former employer to a Roth IRA — it’s important to get some professional guidance. While Roth assets grow tax-free and are tax-free upon withdrawal in retirement, contributions are made on an after-tax basis — unlike traditional 401(k) contributions. So if you convert pre-tax money to a Roth account, you will owe taxes on the amount.
If you have a Roth 401(k), it can only be rolled over to another Roth account, but that move would not trigger upfront tax consequences.

Also, if you decide to move your retirement savings, experts recommend a trustee-to-trustee rollover, which sends the transfer directly to the new 401(k) plan or IRA custodian. Having a check issued to yourself creates potential risks — if there’s a mishap in depositing the funds into a qualified retirement account, it could be treated as a withdrawal and subject to taxes and penalties.
While you’re making decisions about a 401(k) with a former employer, keep in mind that while any money you put in your account is always yours, the same can’t be said about employer contributions.
Vesting schedules — the length of time you have to stay at a company for its matching contributions to be 100% yours — can be immediate or up to six years. Any unvested amounts generally are forfeited when you leave your company. More

The current federal government shutdown, which has set the record for the longest, has also interrupted Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits.
As Washington lawmakers work on legislation to restore government funding and activity, full SNAP benefits should be available to beneficiaries “soon,” one expert says.
Yet other changes to SNAP enacted in July may put future benefits at risk.

A volunteer displays information on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) at a grocery store in Dorchester, Massachusetts, US, on Monday, Nov. 3, 2025.
Mel Musto | Bloomberg | Getty Images

As the longest federal shutdown nears an end, millions of Americans may also see an end to the conflict that has put their food benefits for November on the line.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, helps low-income individuals and families with monthly benefits toward food purchases.

The federal government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, led to delays or interruptions in November SNAP benefits. A deal to end the shutdown is working its way through Congress that would include SNAP funding. The bill was passed by the Senate on Monday night and is now waiting for a House vote on Wednesday evening.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended a pause of a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for November. The delay is slated to last until late Thursday. In the meantime, Congress may reach an agreement to end the shutdown and reinstate full SNAP benefits.
While the federal government is mandated to pay full benefits, the Trump administration said the funding to pay 100% was not available and has supported paying 65% of SNAP benefits during the shutdown through the use of contingency funds. Originally, the administration had said it would pay 50% of benefits.

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The guidance has been changing daily and, in some cases, even hourly, according to Poonam Gupta, a research associate at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
“From the beneficiary perspective, it’s wildly confusing,” Gupta said, and comes at a challenging time — the holiday season tends to drive food spending up.

“The last 10 or 11 days have really highlighted how important SNAP is to the 42 million people across the country who participate in it and how critical it is to combating hunger and helping families put food on the table,” Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, a non-profit focused on fighting poverty-related hunger, said Tuesday.
Experts say the interference with SNAP benefits during a government shutdown is unprecedented. Excluding the current pause, there have been 14 shutdowns since 1980, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Yet this shutdown, which now holds the record for the longest, is the first time SNAP benefits have been affected, according to experts.
In previous shutdowns, “administrations of both parties have been energetic and creative in avoiding an interruption in benefits,” said David Super, professor of law at Georgetown University.
The first Trump administration “really bent over backwards” to make sure there wouldn’t be a SNAP interruption during the 35-day shutdown spanning late 2018 to early 2019, Super said. That is now the second-longest shutdown on record.

When to expect November SNAP benefits

As Congress moves towards finalizing a deal, that should also end the conflict around SNAP November payments, according to FitzSimons.
“We do expect everybody to receive full benefits soon,” FitzSimons said. “It’s just going to take some states more time than others.”

While some states have either moved forward with full benefits for November or announced their intention to pay 100% of benefits, other states have followed plans to pay 65% of the payments in accordance with the administration, FitzSimons said.
To help beneficiaries find out what is happening with benefits, the Food Research & Action Center has launched a shutdown tracker that follows changes in each state.

New ‘big beautiful’ law changes to cut benefits

President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” legislation, passed earlier this year, includes big changes to SNAP that are due to start phasing in.
Adults up to age 65 will have a three-month time limit on their benefits every three years unless they can demonstrate that they have met certain work requirements, with a minimum of 80 hours per month. Those requirements will now apply to veterans, homeless individuals and former foster youth.
The new law also restricts SNAP eligibility for individuals who are not American citizens.

The “big beautiful” law will also shift more responsibility for both the administration of SNAP and the funding of the benefits onto states. SNAP administrative costs will move from a 50-50 share between federal and state to 25% federal and 75% state. Full federal funding of benefits is also due to stop, with states’ share depending on their error rates, or the accuracy of their eligibility and benefit determinations.
“There’s millions of people who are going to lose benefits and people who will lose some of their benefits,” FitzSimons said.
Research from the Urban Institute estimates 22.3 million families may lose some or all of their SNAP benefits as a result of the legislative changes.
Of those families, 5.3 million would lose at least $25 per month in SNAP benefits, according to the report. On average, those families would lose $146 in SNAP funding per month.
The “big beautiful” changes to SNAP that were enacted in July, followed by the limitations on the program during the government shutdown have turned the program into a “political tool,” Gupta said.
“At the end of the day, it’s just meant to be a program to help people afford food for their families,” Gupta said. More

As of mid-2024, individual retirement accounts collectively held $16.2 trillion of assets, according to a March report from the Investment Company Institute.
But many investors overlook beneficiary designations, which dictate who receives the account after you die.
The error could incur significantly higher fees and taxes, or worse, disburse the account to the wrong heir.

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LAS VEGAS — Millions of households have individual retirement accounts, and simple mistakes can be expensive, experts warn.  
One of the most common IRA errors is overlooking beneficiary designations, which dictate who receives the account after you die, according to Brandon Buckingham, vice president for the advanced planning group for Prudential Retirement Strategies.

It’s “the biggest mistake people make,” said Buckingham, speaking at the Financial Planning Association’s annual conference on Tuesday. Some investors don’t name a beneficiary or leave an outdated heir. The latter is particularly problematic, since beneficiary designations override what’s outlined in your will, he said.  
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen an ex-spouse inherit an IRA or 401(k) account,” Buckingham said. “It happens all the time.”

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As of mid-2024, nearly 58 million U.S. households, or about 44%, owned IRAs, up from 34% a decade ago, according to a March report from the Investment Company Institute, a trade organization. These accounts collectively held $16.2 trillion in assets around mid-year 2024.
That growth has been fueled by employer retirement account rollovers, such as 401(k) plans, with nearly 60% of pretax traditional IRAs including rollovers in 2024, the report found.
With trillions of wealth in IRAs, investors need to stay organized with beneficiary designations, which can easily be overlooked when you have multiple accounts, Buckingham said.

The ‘worst beneficiary’ for your IRA

If you don’t name a beneficiary for your IRA, the default is usually your estate, Buckingham said.
“The worst beneficiary you can ever have for a retirement account is the estate, whether it’s on purpose or by default,” he said.
If you name a beneficiary, the account is payable to the heir upon death. But without a beneficiary, the assets go through probate, a legal process to settle the estate after death — which can be costly and time-consuming, Buckingham said.  
In the meantime, income to the estate from the IRA is subject to a “very compressed tax bracket” because it hits the 37% rate once earnings exceed $15,650 for 2025, he said. By comparison, a married couple filing jointly reaches the 37% income tax bracket around $750,000 of taxable income for 2025.    
Another issue is that an estate-owned IRA must be emptied within five years, Buckingham said. Typically, non-spouse heirs have 10 years to deplete inherited IRAs, which provides more time for tax planning. More