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According to New York Life’s new Wealth Watch Survey, nearly half of the "sandwich generation" — folks with children and elderly family members to look after — report being unable to meet basic living expenses in the last year due to caregiving costs, Yahoo Finance reported. Of those surveyed, 90% say they’ve made a "lifestyle change or financial decision" due to the cost of caregiving. The study, which surveyed 1,003 sandwich generation adults between Aug. 31 and Sept. 10, shows how unprepared they are for the expenses of caregiving. It also reveals how they’re adapting. The study also reports a demographic shift in those who make up the sandwich generation. Millennials, 27-42 years old, are increasingly becoming caregivers. In 2023, 66% of self-reported caregivers were millennials while 23% were Gen Xers. Meanwhile, in 2020, merely 39% of caregivers were millennials and 40% were Gen Xers, between the ages of 43-58. Men are also playing a more active role in caregiving, according to the study. For example, in 2023, 45% of self-reported caregivers were women while 55% were men. That’s in stark contrast to 2020, when 64% of self-reported caregivers were women and 36% were men. Though more men are becoming caregivers, women still bear a notable financial and emotional load from caregiving. Women also continue to spend more hours per week caregiving than men, according to the study. Meanwhile, the sandwich generation as a whole is struggling to make ends meet as they care for children and the elderly.

Homebuyers are backing out of deals at the highest rate in nearly a year, a new study found. The culprit: higher mortgage rates, Yahoo Finance reported. Roughly 53,000 U.S. home purchase agreements fell through in September, according to Redfin, equal to 16.3% of homes that went under contract that month. That’s the highest percentage of canceled contracts since October 2022, when mortgage rates surpassed 7% for the first time in two decades. The share is also up from 15.2% a month earlier and 15.8% a year earlier. Pandemic boomtowns where home prices skyrocketed due to the influx of remote workers were hit the hardest by buyers with cold feet, with some areas in Florida seeing contract cancellation rates of over 20%. The reaction from buyers comes as mortgage rates remained at 23-year highs between August and September, convincing rate-sensitive folks to call it quits on their home-purchase plans. Even more cancellations may be on the horizon, as rates hover near 8%.

The Education Department will withhold a $7.2 million monthly payment for a major student loan processor because it failed to send out timely billing notices to millions of borrowers, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Monday move against Mohela, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, comes as the government and the contractors who handle the billing and repayment program enrollment for federal student loans struggle with returning 28 million borrowers to repayment after a more than three-year pandemic-era pause. Around 2.5 million borrowers didn’t receive billing statements from Mohela according to schedule, resulting in 800,000 borrowers being placed in forbearance for their loans, the Education Department said. The payment will be made once the issues are resolved. “The actions we’ve taken send a strong message to all student loan servicers that we will not allow borrowers to suffer the consequences of gross servicing failures,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. (Subscription required.)

Brigit, which operates a personal finance app, agreed to pay $18 million to settle U.S. regulatory charges it falsely promised instant cash advances of up to $250 to consumers who live paycheck to paycheck, and locked them into $9.99 per month memberships that were hard to cancel, Reuters reported. The settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires a judge's approval and was filed on Thursday in Manhattan federal court, where the agency submitted a related civil complaint. It calls for New York-based Brigit, also known as Bridge It, to stop its alleged deceptive marketing, improve its disclosures and make it easy to cancel. The $18 million would go toward refunds for consumers. A spokesman for Brigit said the company strongly disagreed with the FTC's "factually inaccurate" claims, and that customers are told before subscribing that they may be ineligible for $250 advances, but settled to put the matter behind it.

Voters are deciding whether to tax mansions to pay for affordable housing initiatives in a state capital city prized for its desert-mountain vistas, vibrant arts scene and stucco architecture rooted in Native American and Spanish-colonial tradition, the Associated Press reported. The tax on homes sold for more than $1 million is being pitched as a lifeline to teachers, service-sector workers, single parents and young professionals who can’t afford local mortgages or struggle to pay rent amid a national housing shortage and the arrival in Santa Fe, N.M., of high-income digital nomads and affluent retirees. The Nov. 7 ballot measure is the latest bellwether for the popularity of so-called mansion taxes to fund affordable housing and stave off homelessness. It comes on the heels of a voter-approved initiative in Los Angeles and new proposals from Chicago to Massachusetts. If approved, the measure would add a 3% tax on residential property sales of $1 million or more — with no tax on the first $1 million in value. On a $1.2 million home sale, for example, the new tax would apply to $200,000 in value. The buyer would pay $6,000 to the city’s affordable housing trust fund. The city estimates that the tax would generate about $6 million annually for the trust, which underwrites price-restricted housing, down-payment assistance for low-income homebuyers and rental assistance to stave off financial hardship and evictions. The trust awards funds each year to affordable housing providers who can secure matching funds from other government and nonprofit sources, explained Alexandra Ladd, director of Santa Fe’s affordable housing office. But Santa Fe voters have shied away from prominent tax initiatives in the past, rejecting a proposed similar 1% tax on high-end home sales in 2009 and defeating a tax on sugary drinks to expand early childhood education in 2017.