Personal Finance

The BLS June 2026 CPI report shows the all-items index fell 0.4% month over month, driven largely by a 9.7% drop in gasoline prices, while core inflation was flat and food costs continued to rise. The headline decline does not reflect every household's experience, since individual spending patterns differ from the urban-consumer market basket used to calculate CPI. The July 2026 figures are scheduled for release August 12 and will serve as the first of three monthly inputs used to calculate the 2027 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish July 2026 real average hourly and weekly earnings on August 12, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. ET, alongside the July Consumer Price Index. The report will show month-over-month and 12-month purchasing power changes for private nonfarm workers, using CPI-U and CPI-W deflators applied to two worker groups. The most recent available data, from June 2026, showed real hourly earnings up 0.8% for all employees month-over-month and up 0.1% over 12 months, but July figures depend on deflators and hours data not yet published.

Block Inc. faces two distinct legal resolutions over Cash App: a CFPB order requiring between $75 million and $120 million in direct consumer restitution, and a separate $45 million payment to 46 state attorneys general that does not produce additional consumer payments. Eligible consumers are being identified automatically by settlement administrator Epiq, with checks mailing in rolling batches since June 8, 2026, and no claims process exists for users not already identified. Both settlements also impose ongoing operational requirements on Block, including mandatory live phone and chat support hours and prohibitions on misleading safety claims.

Enova International's application to acquire Grasshopper Bancorp for approximately $369 million remains under Federal Reserve and OCC review as of mid-July 2026, with no hearing date or approval timeline announced. Two separate attorney general coalitions — one of 20 states seeking broader denial of bank charters to high-cost lenders, another of 15 states requesting a public hearing on the Enova deal specifically — have filed objections centered on whether a bank charter would allow Enova's consumer lending products to bypass state interest-rate caps. The regulatory outcome will depend on standard merger-review criteria including CRA compliance, consumer-protection records, and financial stability, none of which have been adjudicated in this proceeding.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners released its first national homeowners insurance market analysis on August 5, 2026, documenting company-initiated nonrenewal rates that rose between 96% and 216% across four U.S. regions from 2018 to 2024, totaling over 2 million nonrenewals in 2024 alone. The Southeast saw the steepest increase at 216%, while the Western Zone accounted for 42% of all nonrenewals nationwide. The report gives regulators and policymakers a baseline dataset for monitoring market conditions, though it stops short of mandating specific remedies or attributing nonrenewal increases to particular weather perils.

The IRS updated its Tax Withholding Estimator on March 18, 2026, to incorporate deductions for tips (up to $25,000), overtime pay premiums (up to $12,500 per individual), passenger vehicle loan interest (up to $10,000), and an additional $6,000 deduction for taxpayers age 65 or older, all effective for tax years 2025 through 2028. Workers can enter these figures through the W-4 Deductions Worksheet, with results flowing to Step 4(b) of the updated Form W-4. Several details remain incomplete in current IRS guidance, including the senior deduction's full phase-out formula and the 2026 Child Tax Credit calculation, so taxpayers should verify household-specific figures against the estimator's live instructions before adjusting withholding.