Finance
Many people still struggling to juggle debts, but some financial aspects see improvement
Many Americans continue to struggle with credit and debt issues, but there have been some improvements in credit scoring, medical debts and other areas. Still, most people aren’t comfortable.
Medical debt could soon be barred from credit reports. What we know.
The Biden administration is proposing a plan that would bar all medical debt from being reported on credit reports. Here’s what we know.
Americans are feeling a bit better about their finances in some ways, with recession fears abating but lingering anxiety over high prices. Debt, credit and spending issues have received a lot of attention lately in studies, surveys and other commentaries. Here are some recent perspectives:
Tips for keeping impulse purchases at bay
It’s tough for a lot of people to keep spending under control, whether its from online shopping or passing by a storefront. But financial author Sharon Lechter offers some simple tips that can help.
Lechter, who has authored 28 books including her latest, “How Money Works for Women,” starts by suggesting what she call the two-minute rule: Before making a sizable purchase, “Walk away from the item for two minutes,” she said. “If you really want it, go back and get it.” But often, a short break will be enough to cancel the urge to spend. You might even delay for 24 or 72 hours.
Another tip is to follow what she calls the one-in/one-out rule, in which you resolve to sell or donate a belonging for any new one that you acquire. This too helps to control spending while keeping clutter at bay.
“I have to force that one on myself,” said Lechter, a retired certified public accountant who lives in Scottsdale. “A lot of us tend to be hoarders.”
And rather than pull out credit cards routinely, Lecter suggests shopping with gift cards, with fixed dollar limits. For people who strive to get the best deals, she suggests using a price-tracking browser extension such as CamelCamelCamel or Honey. You might discover that an item isn’t such a bargain and doesn’t need to be bought immediately.
8 signs you’re on the right financial path
Money Management International, which helps struggling households deal with high debts, poor credit, unaffordable housing and other pressures, has put together a list of eight signs that point to financial success.
Four are obvious and deal with basic budget issues. They consist of spending less than you earn, always paying bills on time, having a minimum cash reserve (at least $500, the group recommends) and generally planning ahead to meet larger expenses without hoping for a big tax refund or other windfall.
The other indicators are more vague, such as having a sufficient amount of savings/assets, a reasonable debt load and appropriate types of insurance, without defining those terms or amounts. Also, Money Management International suggests that consumers aim for a “prime” credit score of at least 740, on the standard scale that ranges from 300 up to 850.
Enthusiasm for new loan type
Borrowers who have used Buy Now, Pay Later loans generally express satisfaction with them, according to a TransUnion survey of 1,200 consumers.
The loans are made at the point of sale to finance a one-time, unsecured purchase. Borrowers typically repay these loans in multiple, equal payments instead of a lump sum. More than 100 million consumers have used BNPL loans, and that could increase, according to TransUnion, which found that about half of nonusers are open to trying the loans if they had the potential to exert a positive impact on their credit scores.
Currently, information for most BNPLs isn’t submitted to credit reporting agencies. Yet including more of these loans would attract consumers struggling to rebuild their credit or have been left out of the system entirely, TransUnion said.
“Consumers deserve to have their BNPL credit included in their credit history, which could lead to more access to credit for a generation of consumers who have embraced BNPL as an alternative to traditional borrowing,” said Jason Laky, executive vice president and head of financial services at TransUnion.
Would $186,000 make you feel secure?
Americans indicate they would need to earn $186,000 annually to feel financially secure, based on an average of responses in a new survey by Bankrate.com. That’s slightly more than double what Americans earn on average, so there’s room for improvement.
Only one in four respondents said they are completely financially secure, down from 28% in 2023, according to the Bankrate poll. About three in 10 Americans predict they never will be secure. As for feeling rich, Americans in general figure they would need to earn about $520,000 a year to reach that level of comfort.
Rising prices have led to an “affordability crisis” that has eroded Americans’ sense of security, said Mark Hamrick, Bankrate’s senior economic analyst, in a statement. But cooling inflation and ample employment opportunities could help close the affordability gap, he added.
Medical debts show improvements
Medical debts remain a burden on millions of Americans, though not quite as much as they were previously.
In large part, a new Urban Institute study credits changes implemented by major credit bureaus to ease, though not eliminate, the problem. According to the institute, credit bureaus removed paid medical collections from credit reports and stopped reporting unpaid collections until they were at least one year old, compared to the prior grace period of six months. Also, medical debts in collection no longer are used to calculate Vantage credit scores, and medical collections below $500 no longer appear on credit reports.
“Medical debt has constituted most of the debt in collections on consumer credit reports for the past decade, lowering consumers’ credit scores and thus limiting their access to credit,” said the report’s authors. “The reporting changes have erased medical debt in collections from most consumers’ credit reports but do not affect the underlying debt consumers owe to health-care providers.”
In 2013, 19.5% of Americans had medical debt in collections. By 2023, that had fallen to 5%. Other favorable factors include fewer uninsured households and higher average incomes.
Reach the writer at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com.
TORONTO — Insurance provider Intact Financial Corp. says it had higher catastrophe losses and large losses in the second quarter than it initially expected.
Intact Financial reported that its combined catastrophe and large losses were $247 million above its expectations for the second quarter on a pre-tax and net of reinsurance basis.
The combined higher losses amount to $1.08 per diluted common share after tax.
Total catastrophe losses reached $416 million on a pre-tax basis during the second quarter and net of reinsurance.
The company says catastrophe losses in Canada were due to weather events, while commercial fires drove losses in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Intact Financial says the increase in large losses included higher-frequency fire claims as well as other property losses across different geographies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 8, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX: IFC)
The Canadian Press
For a company navigating one of the most consequential transformations in its history, financial clarity is not optional—it is essential. Natura &Co, the Brazilian personal care and cosmetics group behind iconic brands such as Natura and Avon, has long been committed to combining purpose-driven business with commercial performance. After a period of strategic portfolio reshaping, including the divestiture of its Aesop and The Body Shop holdings, the company is now sharpening its focus on profitability and operational excellence across Latin America and global markets.
At the center of that effort sits a deceptively complex challenge: understanding, in real time, which revenue and cost factors are driving or eroding gross margin across a highly diversified business. For years, answering that question meant manual reporting, delayed insights, and finance teams spending valuable time on data gathering rather than analysis.
That’s now changing, thanks to a co-innovation initiative developed together with SAP and Numen, a global SAP partner specializing in digital transformation and enterprise software implementation.
From manual reporting to proactive decision intelligence
The project’s goal was to replace a labor-intensive gross margin analysis process with a generative AI application embedded directly into Natura &Co’s financial workflows. Built on SAP Business AI Platform, SAP’s unified foundation integrating business technology, data, and AI capabilities, the application connects directly to data in SAP S/4HANA to provide finance teams with automated insights and narrative recommendations in real time, without the need for manual data pulls or offline reporting.
The application enables users to explore revenue, cost, and margin drivers interactively, identifying at a glance which elements are protecting or eroding margin performance across markets and product lines. Crucially, human oversight remains central to the design: the AI application generates insights, while finance professionals retain full control over interpretation and decisions.
“The implementation of gross margin analysis using AI in SAP S/4HANA marked an inflection point in the analytical capability of our finance area,” said Rogério Dias Garcia, tech manager, ERP Latam, Natura &Co. “We overcame delays and raised the standard of insights by integrating margin analysis from SAP S/4HANA with a large language model connected via the SAP AI Core layer. This architecture allowed us to provide, in an agile, secure, and completely anonymous manner, a stratified and precise view of gross margin offenders and protectors—discriminating exactly which revenue or cost elements were driving market performance.”
A collaborative architecture for scalable AI adoption
Natura &Co’s application derived from a prototype SAP partner Numen created in early 2024 at SAP’s global Hack2Build on business AI, leveraging the generative AI capabilities of SAP Business AI Platform. The solution was designed and developed through close collaboration between Natura &Co, Numen, and SAP. From the outset, the approach was to align AI adoption with concrete business priorities, ensuring the application would be scalable and production-ready rather than a standalone prototype.
Numen brought deep SAP implementation expertise to the project, combining knowledge of SAP S/4HANA architecture with hands-on experience in building solutions on SAP Business AI Platform. The technology stack—SAP S/4HANA, SAP AI Core, SAP Fiori, and SAP Business Technology Platform—provided the secure, integrated foundation needed to connect financial data with generative AI capabilities in an enterprise context.
“SAP enabled the transformation by providing the technological foundation and expert support,” said Carlos Aravechia, head of Data Design & Intelligence at Numen.
The success of the project has validated a broader conviction at Natura &Co: that generative AI, embedded directly in ERP workflows, can fundamentally reposition finance from a transactional function to a strategic business partner.
A blueprint for other businesses
The Natura &Co project demonstrates a pattern that other organizations can replicate, particularly those running SAP S/4HANA. The combination of structured ERP data with the contextual reasoning capabilities of large language models creates a foundation for decision intelligence that goes well beyond traditional business intelligence tools.
The project was built within a six-month co-innovation sprint and went live in August 2025. It is currently in use across Natura &Co’s Equador operations.
Looking ahead, Natura &Co is already planning the next phase: integrating Joule Agents to further automate the extraction of standard analytical content and deepen the AI-driven optimization of financial processes.
“The success of this initiative validates the transformative potential of embedded AI within our ERP,” Dias Garcia noted. “We are now ready to move forward—deepening these insights and integrating the capability of Joule Agents to maximize the extraction of standard content and further optimize our business decisions.”
For SAP customers evaluating how to move from AI experimentation to AI in production, the Natura &Co project offers a concrete, replicable model: start with a high-value, well-defined business process, embed AI directly into existing workflows, and build in human oversight from the start.
A girl from a disadvantaged rural family in central China topped this year’s gaokao, attracting numerous live-streamers eager to finance her education, which she declined.
The home of 18-year-old secondary school graduate Han Yaping in a Henan province village was recently bustling with live-streamers.
This attention came after Han achieved an impressive score of 699 out of 750 in the gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam.
She has received offers from China’s two leading universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University.
Han’s accomplishment is particularly remarkable given her family’s impoverished circumstances.
Her mother suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory arthritis affecting the spine, preventing her from working. Her father, who earns a living through farming and odd jobs, serves as the family’s sole provider. Han also has a younger sister.
-
Los Angeles, Ca21 seconds agoLoved ones search for missing 34-year-old Southern California woman
-
Detroit, MI20 minutes agoChickens, geese found at vacant home after nonprofit reports them stolen
-
San Francisco, CA30 minutes agoWhat’s next for San Francisco Giants as MLB trade deadline approaches?
-
Dallas, TX35 minutes agoDallas millionaire files lawsuit against groundwater district
-
Miami, FL42 minutes ago7 more women arrested at southwest Miami-Dade massage parlors, accused of prostitution in undercover sting
-
Boston, MA45 minutes ago‘They’re my buddies’: 96-year-old Back Bay woman befriends French soccer team
-
Denver, CO50 minutes agoDenver officers cited for separate incidents, 1 fired
-
Seattle, WA57 minutes agoStudy finds dangerous chemicals in the breast milk of Seattle moms
