Marlon Wright articles

Taking out a $20,000 loan to buy NFTs once seemed like a calculated risk in a booming digital market. Now those tokens are effectively worthless, leaving the borrower with debt and few options. The central question becomes whether this financial loss can be realized and claimed as a capital loss, typically requiring a sale or proof of worthlessness/abandonment under IRS rules. NFTs sit at the intersection of emerging technology and established financial law, creating uncertainty about how losses are treated. Traditional lending rules still apply to the loan, yet digital assets operate in volatile markets with evolving regulations. The tension between innovation and established legal frameworks makes recovery complicated.

Getting turned away from your own bank for a small withdrawal feels absurd. But the reason behind it isn't laziness or policy stubbornness. It goes back decades, and the rules are stricter than most people realise.

Buy Now, Pay Later services promise seamless checkout experiences with zero-interest financing that splits purchases into manageable installments. The pitch sounds reasonable during holiday shopping frenzies when credit card limits approach maximums and gift lists keep expanding beyond initial budgets. Retailers embed BNPL options directly into checkout flows, making it absurdly easy to approve $150 here, $89 there, and $220 somewhere else without calculating cumulative debt across multiple platforms. What felt like smart budgeting during December shopping sprees becomes financial chaos by January when payment notifications arrive from Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, PayPal Pay in 4, Zip, and Sezzle simultaneously.

Not every tax season brings good news for retirees. This one does. A new deduction landed in the 2025 tax code that puts real money back into seniors' pockets. It's claimable right now.

You're staring at your email confirmation, concert date circled on your calendar, adrenaline pumping for the show you've waited months to see. Then comes the gut-punch: The expensive tickets that you finally decided to pull the trigger on...are fake. And Stubhub won't do a thing.

Retirement checks arrive with a promise of financial security after decades of work. But 8 states quietly reduce those benefits through taxation and create an unexpected burden for retirees. Understanding which states take a cut matters.

Money and family make strange bedfellows, and nowhere is this more apparent than when a well-intentioned loan transforms into a source of festering resentment for both parties. One gives the nephew a $5,000 loan with visions of graduation caps and promising futures, only to discover those funds financed RGB lighting and a graphics card powerful enough to render entire digital universes. The betrayal stings, but before writing off both the money and the relationship, there's a path forward that addresses the financial wound as well as the emotional fallout. The conversation can be awkward, but it's the only way out.

Everything about the transaction looked professional on the surface. The website was polished, and the onboarding team was reassuring to anyone trying to gain control of their finances. A $2,000 fee was a serious investment in long-term stability. When the promised budget plan arrived as a single PDF, it felt underwhelming—but patience lingered because ongoing guidance had been implied. That patience ended when communication abruptly stopped, and the situation shifted from simple dissatisfaction to genuine concern. Cases like this live in an uncomfortable middle ground where coaching lacks regulation. Knowing where ordinary disappointment ends and where behavior becomes serious enough to report is what brings clarity to cases like this.

That sinking feeling when you open an envelope from the IRS and see a five-figure number staring back at you is genuinely stomach-churning. You thought you were being smart and thrifty by filing your own taxes, maybe using some free software or just winging it with the forms. Fast forward a few months, and suddenly you're facing a $14,000 bill that feels like it appeared out of nowhere. Your mind races through worst-case scenarios: wage garnishment, property seizure, maybe even jail time. But here's the thing about IRS debt that most people don't realize until they're knee-deep in it. You're probably not so doomed as you think you are, and that terrifying number isn't necessarily set in stone.