Warsh Raises Your Card Rate. Medicare's Fine Print Drains Your Savings.

The Federal Reserve just warned every American with a credit card, and it did it quietly, in the notes from its September meeting: most of the people who run the Fed expect to raise rates again before the year is over. Matt walks through why the man doing the raising, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, is the same man President Trump picked because he expected him to cut, and why Trump is blaming the rest of the board instead. Then he splits your money into two piles. The hurt pile is anything with a rate that can change: a credit card averaging 22.36%, a home equity line of credit, and an adjustable rate mortgage, with about 74,000 seven-year ARMs from 2020 hitting their first reset next year. The help pile is anything fixed, plus savings, where the FDIC's national average actually fell from 0.38% to 0.37% the month the Fed raised rates, while the big banks pay 0.01%. Matt gives the three things to check before October 28th. Then he turns to the most boring piece of mail a Medicare member gets all year, the Annual Notice of Change, and the five changes hiding in it before the December 7th deadline: the premium, a maximum out-of-pocket ceiling that just went up $600 to $9,850, a drug deductible that rose to $700, plans that are ending altogether (Humana's exits alone affect about 600,000 people), and doctors and drugs that quietly drop out of your plan. He explains the special window and the guaranteed Medigap right most people never hear about, and the free way to compare every plan at once.

Links Matt mentions in the episode:

Free Medicare plan review with Chapter (sponsor) -> https://auditmycoverage.com

Medicare's Plan Finder -> https://www.medicare.gov