NEW YORK - Santa’s on a budget this year. Toy retailers and makers plan to make the best of it by offering more deals and cut-price versions of more expensive toys that they hope will spur parents to spend even if they’re scrimping elsewhere. Two influential lists of expected hot holiday [ Read More → ]

Winter’s coming, but breathe easy. While the average cost of heating oil in the Northeast is expected to rise to $2.73 a gallon this season, that’s only 7 cents higher than last winter - and nowhere near what it was in the summer of 2008, when a [ Read More → ]

WASHINGTON - The recession has hit middle-income and poor families hardest, widening the economic gap between the richest and poorest Americans as rippling job layoffs ravaged household budgets. The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans , those making more than $138,000 each year , earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by [ Read More → ]

WASHINGTON - Medicare is looking like a big fat piggy bank for health care overhaul. President Barack Obama and the Democrats want to pay for much of their plan to cover the uninsured by cutting hundreds of billions from the Medicare budget over the next 10 years. From its inception, the health [ Read More → ]

Savers are being tempted with the certainty of fixed rates of return, but with the risk that future increases in inflation and variable returns could leave today’s top deals looking less competitive tomorrow. Most of the recent changes affect fixed-rate cash inidual savings account (Isa) products. In his [ Read More → ]

CHICAGO — Few words sting like the ones that inform you that you’re being laid off — especially today, with jobs so hard to come by. If you’re a homeowner, the blow of a job loss can be even worse. In households with more than one wage earner, halving the monthly [ Read More → ]

LANSING, Mich. — With only a month left to strike a budget deal, House Speaker Andy Dillon said Tuesday that legislative leaders and the governor are still having trouble because they don’t have enough federal stimulus money to fill large deficits over two years. Asked if tax increases are guaranteed, he [ Read More → ]

DALLAS - The lack of a Social Security cost-of-living adjustment next year will have a ripple effect on some Medicare premiums, experts say. Many older adults were quick to lament the prospect of no COLA for 2010 when federal budget experts said earlier this year that beneficiaries probably shouldn’t expect one [ Read More → ]

AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin is pulling out of the National Merit Scholarship Program to focus on needs-based financial assistance. The 50,000-student university — second only to Harvard University in the number of merit scholars enrolled — said budget pressures were causing it to end its participation [ Read More → ]

All babies are given a £250 Child Trust Fund voucher as well as another once they turn seven, which can be topped up by their families until they turn 18. But as the first children to benefit from the scheme receive their seventh birthday present, it has been [ Read More → ]