Personal Finance

In early August, MOHELA issued erroneous past-due notices to an unspecified number of borrowers, and a separate data problem caused PSLF qualifying payment counts to drop by as many as 19 months on the StudentAid.gov dashboard. The Education Department attributed the PSLF discrepancies to coding errors and described the review as a technical correction, but neither ED nor MOHELA has publicly disclosed how many accounts were affected by either incident, and no source confirms whether any false delinquency was reported to credit bureaus before correction. Both issues emerged as 7.5 million SAVE plan borrowers began individual 90-day transitions to new repayment plans, a period during which a March 2026 GAO report had already found four of five federal loan servicers failing accuracy standards.

The U.S. Department of Education has kept Administrative Wage Garnishment and Treasury Offset Program collections paused for ED-held federal student loans, with no restart date announced as of early 2026. The New York Fed estimates 3.6 million borrowers defaulted between late 2025 and early 2026, with average credit scores for defaulted borrowers dropping 91 points. Borrowers currently have two voluntary exit paths — rehabilitation and consolidation — each with distinct effects on credit history and repayment eligibility.

The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes for June 2026 are scheduled for release August 25, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. ET, covering existing single-family homes using a repeat-sales methodology across national and metro composites. The most recent available data, from May 2026, showed the national index up 1.1% year over year, with sharp divergence across cities: Chicago gained 6.9% while Las Vegas fell 1.9%. The index measures broad market price levels, not individual property values or affordability, and cannot substitute for household-specific equity or budget calculations.

The Census Bureau reported July 2026 building permits at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,443,000 units, up 5.0 percent from a revised June rate of 1,374,000 and 3.1 percent above July 2025. Single-family authorizations reached 894,000, while five-or-more-unit authorizations stood at 490,000, with the Midwest posting the largest regional monthly gain at 12.3 percent. Because permits are a leading indicator for housing starts rather than a count of completed homes, the Census Bureau cautions that at least three months of data are needed to identify an underlying trend.

The Conference Board's July Consumer Confidence Index dropped to 90.8, driven by a 3.6-point decline in the Present Situation Index, while the Expectations Index held flat at 74.7. The August release is scheduled for Tuesday, August 25, but the article notes the index's predictive value for spending is limited: multiple Federal Reserve studies found that consumer sentiment and actual retail spending have diverged in recent years. Readers will learn what the index measures, how its two sub-indexes differ, and why treating it as a direct forecast of household spending or saving is not supported by the available evidence.