Stock market gyrations. Inflation. Layoffs of federal workers. A possible recession. Children may overhear their parents talking about these things and not fully understand what’s going on or how it may affect their family’s finances. But if the children have questions, parents should be ready to talk, experts say. “Parents are the biggest influence on kids’ financial learning,” said Ashley LeBaron-Black, an assistant professor of family life at Brigham Young University. Here are some tips for having conversations about money. Children don’t pay attention to the national economy, right? The nation’s economy seemed on solid ground at the beginning of the year, but economists expect that growth slowed in the first quarter amid uncertainty surrounding President Trump’s tariffs. Inflation has steadied, but the threatened tariffs could push prices higher again. At the same time, high borrowing costs are weighing on households, particularly those with lower incomes, and more people are late in paying their credit card bills. The stock market has whipsawed as Mr. Trump has repeatedly revised his tariff plans. And consumer expectations for the economy over the coming months have soured. Parents shouldn’t assume their children are oblivious to these issues, said Rebecca Maxcy, director and principal investigator at the University of Chicago’s Financial Education Initiative. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Children may not grasp the details, but they’ve overheard adults discussing prices at grocery stores and restaurants. And they’re probably hearing unfamiliar terms, like tariffs, from television or online or from friends at school. This month, for example, news reports discussed the possible impact of the Trump administration’s proposed tariffs on the pricing and availability of the new Nintendo Switch 2 video game console, an item of interest for many children. “It’s everywhere, it’s so in your face, and kids are hearing it and seeing it,” Ms. Maxcy said. Children are intuitive, she said, and can pick up on concerns their parents have about the cost of living or the effect of market swings on their retirement savings or college savings. How can I talk about money without making my child anxious? If a child wonders how the family may be affected by changes in the economy, talking through the concerns can help reduce fear and confusion, said Maureen Kelley, a certified financial therapist in Denver. “You want to keep it honest but age-appropriate.” Rather than saying the family may need to cut back on spending, Ms. Kelley said, you can try “We’re being more careful with our money right now” or “We’re adjusting how we spend our money.” Parents can emphasize any steps they have taken to prepare for financial potholes — like creating a rainy-day savings fund, said Deana Healy, vice president of financial planning and advice with Ameriprise. They might say, “Yes, things are perhaps uncertain, but here’s what we’ve done.” If your child asks what all this may mean for your family, it can be a “prime moment” to have a conversation because that will make any potential belt-tightening more understandable, Ms. Maxcy said. “You can say, ‘We’re making some changes,’ instead of all of a sudden saying ‘No’ all the time,” she said. Avoid having money talks with children when you’re stressed, Ms. Maxcy said. If you’re busy and not ready to talk, say you’ll find time to chat when things are quieter. “Maybe don’t have the conversation if you just opened your 401(k) statement,” she quipped. Robin Gurwitch, a psychologist and professor at Duke University Medical Center, recommends broaching the subject with children even if they don’t ask, because they have probably heard about economic concerns, especially if they’re on social media. “You can say: ‘There’s a lot of talk about our economy and tariffs. I’m wondering what you’ve heard about that.’” Once parents understand what the child knows, they can address any concerns or correct misperceptions. Because some teenagers may brush off inquiries from parents, Dr. Gurwitch said, it can help to address their concerns indirectly. Perhaps you can ask, “What do your friends think about this?” If your teenager says her friends are worried they may not be able to buy a dress for prom, she’s probably concerned as well. Then, Dr. Gurwitch said, you can reassure her that the family can afford a new prom dress, if that’s the case or, if money is tight, discuss a budget. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The overall message to children, she said, should be, “We are here to support you even if things are uncertain or scary.” John Lanza, who has written books about allowances and family finances, said including children in budgeting could help give them some sense of control. “Kids want to be a part of the solution,” Mr. Lanza said. If, for instance, a household goal is to eat at home most nights instead of dining out, make it a game by having children suggest meals and help cook them. And if you can swing it, offer to give your children some of the savings as pocket money. What if I’m not confident in talking about money? Parents may feel that they need to have all the answers, but “it’s fine to admit you’re not an expert,” said Scott Rick, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s business school who has studied financial decision making. If your children ask about tariffs, for instance, and you don’t have enough knowledge on the topic, you can encourage their curiosity, and show that it’s all right to ask about money, by offering to research the subject with them. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “You might say: ‘I’d like to get a better handle on that myself. Can we look into it together?’” Dr. Rick said. Some parents may avoid talking about money with their children because they feel guilt or shame about past financial mistakes, said Yanely Espinal, a financial educator and an author. But it’s smart to talk about money at home “early and often,” she said. Research suggests that education from parents during childhood is linked to healthy financial behaviors in young adults, she said, particularly responsible credit card use. How can I start conversations with my children about money? You probably already have some resources handy. Simply sharing a receipt after going to the store, for instance, can lead to talks about how much things cost, said Cynthia Fitzthum, a financial education expert at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Dr. LeBaron-Black’s parents once gathered her and her siblings around a stack of Monopoly money and counted out how much income they made each month, she said. “I thought, ‘That looks like a lot,’” she recalled. Then her parents started subtracting: the amount they spent for the mortgage, heat, electricity and food. By the end, there was still a little left. But the point was made. The family’s needs were covered, but they had to spend wisely. Reading and discussing books, including those not explicitly about money, can start conversations about why characters make the choices they do and how money may have played a role, Ms. Maxcy said. For young children, she suggested “A Bike Like Sergio’s,” about a boy who desperately wants a cool bicycle. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Dr. Fitzthum suggests a book for third to fifth graders, “Beatrice’s Goat,” about a young girl in Uganda who receives a goat and the impact it has on her family. Without using wonky terms, it introduces concepts like income, savings and even opportunity costs — the economic principle that making one choice can mean you miss out on the benefit of making a different one. Kelly Li said she had decided to write the “Little Economists” series of books for children ages 3 to 8 after becoming a mother and learning that many Americans lacked savings. (Ms. Li, who previously worked in finance, wrote the books — with titles like “What Is Money?” and “What Is Inflation?” — under the surname Lee.) The Council for Economic Education, which focuses on economic and financial instruction in kindergarten through high school, offers a free Financial Fun Pack on its website with exercises families can use at home.

In the balmy late afternoon of Aug. 25, 2024, Sushil and Radhika Chetal were house-hunting in Danbury, Conn., in an upscale neighborhood of manicured yards and heated pools. Sushil, a vice president at Morgan Stanley in New York, was in the driver’s seat of a new matte gray Lamborghini Urus, an S.U.V. with a price tag starting around $240,000. As they turned a corner, the Lamborghini was suddenly rammed from behind by a white Honda Civic. At the same time, a white Ram ProMaster work van cut in front, trapping the Chetals. According to a criminal complaint filed after the incident, a group of six men dressed in black and wearing masks emerged from their vehicles and forced the Chetals from their car, dragging them toward the van’s open side door. When Sushil resisted, the assailants hit him with a baseball bat and threatened to kill him. The men bound the couple’s arms and legs with duct tape. They forced Radhika to lie face down and told her not to look at them, even as she struggled to breathe, pleading that she had asthma. They wrapped Sushil’s face with duct tape and hit him several more times with the bat as the van peeled off. Several witnesses saw the attack and called 911. Some of them, including an off-duty F.B.I. agent who lived nearby and happened to be at the scene, trailed the van and the Honda, relaying the vehicles’ movements to the police. The F.B.I. agent managed to obtain partial license plate numbers. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Danbury police officers soon located the van. A patrol vehicle activated its emergency lights and tried to make a stop, but the driver of the van accelerated, swerving recklessly through traffic. About a mile from where the chase began, the driver careered off the road and struck a curb. Four suspects fled on foot. The police found one hiding under a bridge and apprehended him after a brief chase. Within a couple of hours, the other three were located hiding in a wooded area nearby. The police, meanwhile, found the shaken Chetals bound in the back of the van. Detective Sgt. Steve Castrovinci of the Danbury Police Department had the day off when the shift commander called him at home about the incident. “We got a kidnapping, a legit kidnapping,” he remembers the shift commander telling him. Castrovinci called a few of his detectives to get up to speed and then stopped at the crime scene before driving to the station to speak to the suspects. Based on information provided by one of the suspects in custody, two more assailants were found and arrested the following morning at an Airbnb rental in Roxbury, a 30-minute drive from Danbury, where the white Civic was also parked. For Castrovinci, it was a strange and dramatic case. Danbury is a well-off, quiet place, and while the police there did get the odd kidnapping case, they were almost always related to child custody. A violent midday abduction was unheard-of. There was no apparent connection between the suspects and the Chetals, and, stranger still, law enforcement discovered that the suspects — men between the ages of 18 and 26 — had traveled to Connecticut all the way from Miami. They’d rented the van on the app Turo. “This is a case — you may only get one of these, one or two of these, in a career,” Castrovinci, who has been in law enforcement for 20 years, including five with the New York Police Department, told me. “Not in this area. We don’t deal with stuff like this.” For weeks, the police said very little. Castrovinci and his team worked to piece together a motive. It was hard to believe that the Chetals were targeted because of Sushil’s senior position at an investment bank. As a vice president at Morgan Stanley, he would have had an enviable salary, but nothing out of the ordinary for Danbury. And if money was the kidnappers’ motive, it was bizarre that they left behind the Chetals’ Lamborghini, which was found abandoned in the woods. None of it seemed quite right. A few days after the attempted kidnapping, though, Castrovinci says his team received a tip from the F.B.I. that cast the case in a strange new light: a possible connection to an enormous cryptocurrency heist, one that happened just a week before the attack. A group of young men, some of whom connected on a Minecraft server, were suspected of taking a quarter of a billion dollars from an unwitting victim, setting off an incredible chain of events that involved an online network of cybercriminals, some of them teenagers; a group of independent digital detectives who track their efforts; and several law-enforcement agencies. Now, it seemed, the whole thing had culminated in the kidnapping of the Chetals — a real-world spillover from the brazen lawlessness of this expanding digital underworld and the culture that surrounds it. The chain of events began a couple of weeks earlier when a resident of Washington, D.C., began receiving suspicious sign-in notifications on his Google account. The logins appeared as though they were coming from overseas. Then on Aug. 18, he received a phone call from someone claiming to be on Google’s security team. The caller said the user’s email account had been compromised. The call appeared to be legitimate — the caller knew the D.C. resident’s personal information. The account holder, the caller said, would need to shut down his account unless he could verify certain personal information over the phone, which he did. Shortly after the call with the supposed Google agent, the same D.C. resident, whose identity remains concealed in federal court documents, received a second call from someone who said they were a security-team representative from Gemini, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange. Like the supposed Google employee, he had the man’s personal information; he explained that his Gemini account, which held about $4.5 million worth of coins, had been hacked and that the man needed to reset his two-factor authentication and transfer the Bitcoin in his account to another wallet to keep it safe. The person on the phone then suggested that the account holder download a program that would provide additional security. The man agreed, not knowing that he was downloading a remote-desktop app, which would give the caller access to his computer — and access to a second crypto account, exposing him to an even more staggering theft. It turned out that the D.C. resident, an early investor in cryptocurrency, had more than 4,100 Bitcoin in total. Ten years ago, that much Bitcoin was worth about $1 million; that day, it was worth more than $243 million. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Within minutes, it was all gone. A central paradox of crypto is that, although coin owners are generally not identifiable, transactions are recorded on a public ledger known as a blockchain. This means that when the currency moves, anyone can see it. This paradox has enabled a new class of sleuths who can identify suspicious transactions on the blockchain. One of the best of these digital detectives goes by the handle ZachXBT, an independent investigator of crypto-related crimes. ZachXBT is a well-known and elusive figure in the crypto world. He regularly posts threads detailing his investigations on X, where he has about 850,000 followers, exposing supposed wrongdoers, sometimes by name. Often, he shares his findings with law enforcement. Wired described him as “the most prolific independent crypto-focused detective in the world.” He doesn’t share his real identity online. Minutes after the D.C. resident’s funds were liquidated, ZachXBT was walking through the airport on his way to catch a flight when he received an alert on his phone about an unusual transaction. Crypto investigators use tools to monitor the global flows of various coins and set alerts for, say, any transaction over $100,000 that goes through certain exchanges that charge a premium for having few security safeguards. The initial alert that day was for a mid-six-figure transaction, followed by higher amounts, all the way up to $2 million. After he cleared airport security, ZachXBT sat down, opened his laptop and began tracing transactions back to a Bitcoin wallet with roughly $240 million in crypto. Some of the Bitcoin in the wallet dated back to 2012. “At that point it didn’t make sense,” he told me. “Why is a person who held their Bitcoin for this long using a sketchy service that typically sees a lot of illicit funds flow through it?” He added the wallets associated with the transactions to his tracking and boarded the plane. Once he connected to in-flight internet, more alerts arrived. Throughout the day, the Bitcoin traced to the wallet was being liquidated through more than 15 different high-fee cryptocurrency services. After he landed, ZachXBT messaged a few other investigators who specialize in cryptocurrency theft. Among them was Josh Cooper-Duckett, director of investigations for Cryptoforensic Investigators, one of a growing number of independent firms that track crypto theft and fraud and help law enforcement recover currency for the victims. Cooper-Duckett, a 26-year-old from London, developed an early interest in crypto, and after working in security at Deloitte for three and a half years, started investigating crypto theft, focusing on cases where the financial loss is at least $100,000, of which there are a lot these days. ZachXBT told Cooper-Duckett and the other investigators what he discovered, and they all agreed it was suspicious to see a quarter-billion-dollar wallet liquidated this way. “Somebody like that, that has that much money, does not wake up one day on the weekend and decide, Well, I’m just going to start sending to a bunch of exchanges and trying to convert for Monero and Ethereum — they don’t do that.” The crypto investigators contacted the exchanges and services to inform them of the theft so they could freeze the currency and coordinate with the authorities. Some did; others didn’t. “In this case, it was a lot of Whac-a-Mole,” Cooper-Duckett says. “They’re trying a lot of different exchanges, a lot of different services to see what works. I mean, they have $240 million to launder. That’s a lot of money.” On X, ZachXBT notified his followers about the heist in progress. “Seven hours ago a suspicious transfer was made from a potential victim for 4064 BTC ($238M),” he wrote. Funds were transferred to THORChain, eXch, KuCoin, ChangeNOW, RAILGUN and Avalanche Bridge, all crypto services. ZachXBT noticed that the victim had received bankruptcy payouts from Genesis, a lending platform, which filed for bankruptcy in 2023, related to the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. Using his network, he was eventually able to connect with the victim over email. The shocked D.C. resident hired ZachXBT, Cryptoforensic and another crypto investigation firm to help track his stolen funds. That same day, he filed a police report with the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, and ZachXBT messaged his contacts in law enforcement. (The F.B.I. and the Department of Justice declined to comment for this article.) Cryptocurrency theft is growing at such a rate that federal investigators struggle to keep up. According to its latest report, the Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 69,000 claims in 2023 regarding financial fraud involving crypto, resulting in more than $5.6 billion in reported losses, a 45 percent increase from 2022. Although just 10 percent of all financial fraud complaints were crypto-related, the losses associated with those complaints accounted for nearly 50 percent of the total. Cryptocurrency’s decentralized nature, the irreversibility of transactions and the ability to move digital coins around the world make it appealing to criminals and difficult for the F.B.I. to recover funds, the report said. In 2022, the F.B.I. created a special unit to combat crypto theft, called the Virtual Assets Unit (V.A.U.). Because of the scale of the crimes and the difficulty combating them, government agencies — including the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service, even the I.R.S. — rely on private firms and individuals who have a deep knowledge of the digital criminal underground, experts say. “Josh and Zach, they’re so good and so fast at the tracing,” says Nick Bax, founder of the cryptocurrency analysis firm Five I’s. Bax has worked with ZachXBT on several cases but has never seen his face; in their early meetings, ZachXBT used a voice-altering software that made him sound like Mickey Mouse. “Like, I’m very good, but they’re — I will never be as good as them,” Bax says. “And I think their brains are, like, legitimately altered, because they started doing this at a young age.” Crypto investigators use fake accounts to immerse themselves in the forums where cybercriminals gather — Telegram, Discord and other platforms — to plot and brag about their exploits. The thieves are generally young and cavalier and sometimes leave a trail of clues in their wake. After ZachXBT’s X post about the heist, a source reached out to him through a throwaway account with potential clues about the identities of the thieves. The source sent ZachXBT several screen-share recordings, which he said were taken when one of the scammers livestreamed the heist for a group of his friends. The videos, which totaled an hour and a half, included the call with the victim. One clip featured the scammers’ live reaction when they realized they’d successfully stolen $243 million worth of the D.C. resident’s Bitcoin. A voice can be heard yelling: “Oh, my god! Oh, my god! $243 million! Yes! Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Bro!” In private chats they used screen names like Swag, $$$ and Meech, but they made a crucial mistake. One of them flashed his Windows home screen, which revealed his real name in the start icon pop-up at the bottom of the screen: Veer Chetal, an 18-year-old from Danbury — the son of the couple who were kidnapped. A quiet honor student who had recently graduated from Immaculate High School in Danbury, Veer Chetal was about to begin studying at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 2022, he completed a “future lawyers” program, and a story that year on the Immaculate website showed a photo of a smiling kid with glasses wearing a Tommy Hilfiger windbreaker over a red polo. Classmates remember Chetal as shy and a fan of cars. “He just kind of kept to himself,” says Marco Dias, who became friends with Chetal junior year. According to another classmate named Nick Paris, this was true of Chetal until one day in the middle of his senior year, when he showed up at school driving a Corvette. “He just parked in the lot. It was 7:30 a.m., and everyone was like, What?” Paris says. Soon Chetal rolled up in a BMW, and then a Lamborghini Urus. He started wearing Louis Vuitton shirts and Gucci shoes, and on Senior Skip Day, while Paris and many of his classmates went to a nearby mall, Chetal took some friends, including Dias, to New York to party on a yacht he had rented, where they took photos holding wads of cash. Chetal said that he had made his money trading crypto; Dias says Chetal showed him trades on his phone as proof one morning during homeroom class. Once, Chetal rented a large house in Stamford, Conn., and hosted a three-day gathering with friends. “I was in the basement at one point, and I was just messing around with my friends, and I just see him, like, just on the couch, just like on his phone, pretty much avoiding everyone at the party,” Dias says. “And I thought, Oh, that’s kind of weird.” Paris remembers that during a school parade, the police stopped Chetal in his Lamborghini Urus for a traffic violation. “He literally called his lawyer on the spot before answering the cops’ questions, which everyone was like: Wow, this guy’s got, like, something going for him. Like, this guy’s got serious money.” Independent investigators say Chetal was secretly a member of the Com, also referred to as the Comm or the Community, an online network of chat groups that has its roots in the hacking underground of the 1980s and functions as a kind of social network for cybercriminals or aspiring ones. In an affidavit from an unrelated case, an F.B.I. agent described the Com as “a geographically diverse group of individuals, organized in various subgroups, all of whom coordinate through online communication applications such as Discord and Telegram to engage in various types of criminal activity.” According to the F.B.I. affidavit and experts who study the Com, the various subgroups’ activities include swatting, which entails making false reports to emergency services or institutions like schools to trigger a police response; SIM swapping, when hackers take over a target’s phone number, sometimes by tricking customer-service representatives; ransomware attacks, using a malware that denies users or organizers access to computer files; cryptocurrency theft; and corporate intrusions. Allison Nixon, the chief research officer of Unit 221B, a collective of cybersecurity experts, has been following this growing corner of the internet since 2011 and is widely considered to be a pre-eminent expert on the Com. She says most Com members are young men from Western countries. In group chats, many talk about college and taking classes in cybersecurity, which they use to their advantage, she says. The gateway for many is through video games like RuneScape, Roblox and Grand Theft Auto. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT By the mid-2010s, a more sinister world was also blossoming within Minecraft — the creative building game — facilitated by the advent of online servers, owned and operated by users, that allowed gamers to kill one another in teams, or “factions.” On these servers, Minecraft evolved into a highly competitive battle zone. With that came opportunities to monetize and scam. Servers soon began to introduce in-game purchases that gave players upgrades, like the ability to fly and to fight with more powerful weapons and armor. Other in-game purchases bought users stylish character outfits, which were wielded to show status online. As players gravitated toward these competitive servers, a large black market for in-game items and valuable user names started to blossom on Discord. With Minecraft dominated by young players, the black market became ripe for fraud. Users agreed to trade in-game items for real money via PayPal, but once the money was received, scammers would block the user’s account. This became so rampant that people started advertising themselves as verified middlemen who would take both the money and the in-game item and then hand it off to each party for a fee. One prized possession in this world is high-value user names, often no more than four letters — such as Tree, OK, Mark, YOLO or G, any of which could go for upward of $10,000. As faction-based servers and the Minecraft black market thrived, so did cryptocurrencies, which eventually supplanted PayPal on these servers. It was this combination of a consequence-free training ground for competition, gambling and fraud, with a growing familiarity with crypto, that turned Minecraft servers into a cesspool for budding cybercriminals. When the price of Bitcoin began to rise rapidly in 2017, Com members made an easy shift from Minecraft fraud to crypto theft. One of the popular Com forums was called “OGUsers.” It was initially dedicated to discussing and buying social media accounts and user names, but it evolved into a platform for cybercrime, including SIM swapping and Twitter account hijackings. “Very, very quickly these antisocial communities turned into overnight millionaires and propagated this culture, because people notice when other people turn into millionaires overnight, and they want to learn how they did that,” Nixon explains. “The size of the Com exploded.” A common tactic used by the Com today to steal cryptocurrency is what’s called social engineering, which entails manipulating users into divulging sensitive information. Com members put together long lists of potential victims, obtained through data breaches, and then directly target them, which is what occurred in the case of the D.C. victim. They will sometimes post job listings online to recruit people to help them with their schemes. One listing posted on Telegram that Nick Bax, the crypto investigator, shared with me promised “5f a week” — that is, five figures — “if ur not slow” to phone potential targets. “American professional customer service voice is required,” it read. Sometimes, Com members will then return to the Minecraft black market to launder their stolen crypto by buying valuable game items and selling the items for real dollars using PayPal. After ZachXBT had Veer Chetal’s name, it didn’t take long for him and other investigators to figure out the identities of others involved in the crypto heist. In the recordings ZachXBT obtained, the thieves referred to one another by their Com aliases, but also in some cases by their real first names. One name frequently uttered was Malone. This was Malone Lam, a known figure in the Com who went by the aliases Greavys and Anne Hathaway. Lam was a 20-year-old from Singapore and a notorious Minecraft player with bangs roughly chopped at his eye line. He had been banned from Minecraft servers only to maneuver his way back in. In the spring of 2023, when he got into a minor disagreement with the managers of the server Minecadia that resulted in him losing in-game items, he doxxed the staff, releasing their addresses and Social Security numbers online and, in at least one case, sending emergency services to their house, according to several users and Discord chats from the time. It was within Minecraft that Chetal and Lam first connected, playing together on a faction led by Lam. In October 2023, Lam arrived in the United States on a 90-day visa. He had largely stopped playing Minecraft. According to court documents, he began funding his lifestyle with other crypto-related fraud. After the August 2024 crypto heist, ZachXBT was able to track Lam through what’s called OSINT — open-source intelligence. In other words, social media. In Com chat groups, word was spreading that Lam was on a wild spending spree. Nobody seemed to know the source of his money, but they spoke of his lavish exploits at Los Angeles nightclubs. ZachXBT researched the most popular nightclubs in the city and then searched Instagram stories from partyers and the clubs themselves. In one post, Malone was filmed wearing a white Moncler jacket and what appeared to be diamond rings and diamond-encrusted sunglasses. He stood up on the table and began showering the crowd with hundred-dollar bills. As money rained down, servers paraded in $1,500 bottles of Champagne topped with sparklers and held up signs that read “@Malone.” He spent $569,528 in one evening alone. At one nightclub, Lam and his crew trolled ZachXBT, getting clubgoers to hold up signs reading “TOLD U WE’D WIN,” while another read, “[Expletive] ZACHXBT.” Over the course of a few weeks, Lam bought 31 automobiles, including custom Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches, some valued as high as $3 million. On Aug. 24, he apparently sent a photo of a pink Lamborghini to a model. “I got you a present, we’ll call it an early birthday gift,” he texted her. She wrote back, “I am taken once again.” He replied, “idc” — I don’t care. On Sept. 10, after a 23-day party spree in Los Angeles, Lam headed to Miami on a private jet with a group of friends. There, he rented multiple homes, including a 10-bedroom, $7.5 million estate. Within a few days, Lam had filled the driveway with more luxury cars, including multiple Lamborghinis, one with the name “Malone” printed on the side. Every few days, ZachXBT sent the intelligence he’d collected to law enforcement. The information generally flowed one way, but federal authorities were conducting their own investigation simultaneously. According to court filings, the supposed co-conspirators used sophisticated money-laundering methods to hide the funds and mask their identities, using crypto exchanges like eXch, which does not require personal customer information, and VPN connections that disguise their locations. But in at least one instance, according to the authorities, one of them was sloppy, neglecting to use a VPN when he created an account with TradeOgre, a digital currency exchange, which connected to an I.P. address that was registered to a $47,500-per-month rental home in Encino, Calif. It was leased to Jeandiel Serrano, 21, who went by VersaceGod, @SkidStar and Box online. By the time the authorities identified Serrano, he was on vacation in the Maldives with his girlfriend. On Sept. 18, Serrano flew back from the Maldives to Los Angeles International Airport, where the authorities were waiting for him. He was wearing a $500,000 watch at the time of his arrest. Serrano initially denied knowledge of the theft and agreed to speak with law enforcement without a lawyer. But he soon acknowledged his involvement, according to court reports, specifically to impersonating a Gemini employee. Serrano admitted that he owned five cars, two of which were gifts from one of his co-conspirators, given to him with proceeds from a previous fraud. He also confessed to having access to approximately $20 million of the victim’s crypto on his phone and agreed to transfer the funds back to the F.B.I. At the same time, agents in Miami were preparing to raid one of Lam’s rented mansions. Lam knew it was coming: Immediately after Serrano’s arrest, Serrano’s girlfriend called to warn his co-conspirators. They then deleted their Telegram accounts and other incriminating evidence from their phones. Later that day, a team of F.B.I. agents working with the Miami police raided a mansion near Miami Shores. Agents blew open the front metal gate while another group entered by boat via a small saltwater canal in the rear. The sound of flashbangs rang in the neighborhood as the agents entered the home. Moments later, an agent escorted a handcuffed Lam, who wore a long-sleeve white top, maroon basketball shorts and sneakers, as smoke hung in the air, followed by at least five other people who were in the house with him. Serrano and Lam were charged with money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They face up to 20 years in prison for each charge. Exactly one month after the heist, the party was over. In Danbury, in the days and weeks after the kidnapping of the Chetals, Castrovinci and the police worked with federal investigators to build cases against the group from Florida. They obtained emergency access to the suspects’ phones, where they could view group chat exchanges and record the groups’ movements. They learned that the trip was organized and paid for in part by Angel Borrero, a 23-year-old from Miami who went by Chi Chi. In the group conversation, Borrero wrote to the others, “If this go good we out to Cali next,” which federal investigators took to mean the group was planning something else in California. The same day, Josue Alberto Romero, who used the nickname Sway, sent a message to the group: “Chichi we are more ready than ever.” The chats indicated that the group began coordinating as early as 7 a.m. and spent part of the afternoon surveilling the Chetals. By then, the authorities had established a motive: The men, the police believed, had targeted the Chetals to hold them ransom for the money their son had. Independent investigators think that at least one member of the group, Reynaldo (Rey) Diaz, who they say went by the alias Pantic, was a member of the Com; ZachXBT speculates that the thieves might have made themselves targets by sharing stories of their spending with other Com members. “You would think you commit a crime, you would shut up and keep to yourselves,” he says. “But they kind of have to compensate, showing off to their friends — who they think are their friends. But they might not be their friends.” On Aug. 27, Danbury police filed charges against the six suspects in the case: multiple counts of first-degree assault, first-degree kidnapping and reckless endangerment. Federal charges followed. On Sept. 24, a grand-jury indictment filed in Federal District Court in Connecticut charged the six Florida men with kidnapping, carjacking and conspiracy crimes. The six Florida men reflect a growing faction of the Com, those less interested in online schemes and more concerned with using brute force. Diaz was himself shot in Florida two years earlier when he was the target of a robbery attempt. In the F.B.I. affidavit, an agent said the Com regularly commits “brickings, shootings and firebomb attacks.” In 2022, according to reporting from Brian Krebs, an independent investigative journalist, a young man who went by the moniker Foreshadow was kidnapped and beaten by a rival SIM-swapping gang and held for a $200,000 ransom. In October 2023, a 22-year-old named Patrick McGovern-Allen of Egg Harbor Township, N.J., was sentenced to 13 years in prison for participating in violence-for-hire jobs after being contracted by a group of cybercriminals. Last November, it was reported that the chief executive of a Toronto-based crypto company was kidnapped and held for a $1 million ransom. A few weeks later, after a 13-year-old known as the Gen Z Quant Kid created a crypto coin and inflated its value, the crypto community responded by doxxing him and his family and, it is rumored, kidnapping his dog. In January this year, a founder of the French crypto company Ledger was kidnapped with his wife; the kidnappers mutilated his hand and demanded a multimillion-dollar ransom in cryptocurrency. But increasingly, people who have nothing to do with the Com are being targeted, says Nixon, the researcher. Some alleged Com members participate in what are known as harm groups, whose members coerce young women and girls into committing acts of self-harm and violence. Seven years ago, Nixon says, there were maybe a few dozen people in the Com worth being concerned about; today, there are thousands. “Right now,” she says, “we are seeing an evolution from disorganized crime to organized crime, and we are somewhere in the middle point of that.” The twin episodes — the crypto heist and the kidnapping — suggest that the complete lawlessness of Com members’ online lives allowed them to imagine that they could get away with similar exploits in the real world. “I don’t think they really learn,” ZachXBT says. “I’ve seen a lot of them, after they either get either arrested, have assets seized, et cetera — I see a lot of them go back to what they were doing before.” This year, five of the six Florida men pleaded guilty to federal kidnapping and conspiracy charges. They could face 15 years in prison. In a Hartford court in January, 19-year-old Michael Rivas apologized for his actions, calling them “dumb” and saying he was helping another man carry out a “vendetta,” although he didn’t elaborate. In February, a 22-year-old Georgia man named James Schwab was indicted in connection with the kidnapping plot. According to the federal criminal complaint, Schwab had an altercation with Veer Chetal in a Miami nightclub a month before the kidnapping, and he helped fund the plot and arrange transportation and lodging for the attackers. He pleaded not guilty. On March 25, ZachXBT posted a new message to his original thread on X chronicling his investigation into the stolen crypto. “Update: Wiz (Veer Chetal) was arrested,” he wrote. “Here is his mug shot.” The photo attached featured a young man in a white T-shirt with bushy hair, a dark beard, a downturned mouth and exhausted eyes. He bore little resemblance to the kid pictured on the Immaculate High School website. The charge listed in jail records is a federal misdemeanor offense but doesn’t specify what that offense is. According to ZachXBT, the stolen Bitcoin he traced to addresses belonging to Chetal is now in a wallet controlled by law enforcement. The matte gray Lamborghini Urus — the one that Sushil and Radhika Chetal were driving the day of the kidnapping — is still sitting as evidence in a secure police lot in Danbury. It’s the same Lamborghini their son once drove to school.

Literally and metaphorically, luggage is the freight of air travel. It’s not just fees that deter fliers from checking bags; it’s the time and hassle involved in reclaiming them as well as the risk they’ll be lost, damaged or delayed. Nearly seven in 1,000 airline passengers globally experience mishandled bags, according to SITA, an airline technology provider. Promising to reduce travel friction, luggage-shipping services have flourished in recent years, offering unburdened transit and the delight of finding your bags waiting for you in your destination. The convenience often comes at a cost above a checked-bag fee. So, we wondered, is it worth it? How Shipping Works Shippable luggage ranges from carry-on bags to large items like golf clubs, skis, bikes, trunks and cardboard boxes. Travelers begin the process by scheduling a shipment online with details about the size and weight of the bag, and pickup and delivery dates, which will influence the price. The bigger the bag and the faster the shipment, the higher the cost. (Most companies advise scheduling a shipment to arrive one business day before you do.) Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Shipping distance and how you initiate the transit may also affect the price. Services such as Lugless and Ship&Play allow you to drop off your items at a shipment center like FedEx or UPS to save a little money, though pickup is also available. More premium offerings like Luggage Forward and Luggage Free specialize in door-to-door service, collecting bags from private addresses. Delivery destinations can include homes, hotels and offices. Most shipping services recommend that travelers let their hotels know about the shipment and its expected arrival date. Prices vary widely. On Luggage Free, I priced a carry-on-size bag shipped from a New York hotel to a San Francisco hotel at $94.99; a full-size suitcase would have cost $114.99. Standard golf clubs were $109.99, skis $139.99 and a bike $209.99. By comparison, airline fees for a checked bag start around $35 and often include standard sports equipment like skis and golf clubs. The same carry-on and full-size bags shipped with another luggage specialist, ShipGo, were about $70 and $80. On the same route, ShipGo priced a golf bag from about $80, skis from $95 and a bike from $180. Lugless came in cheapest, with the smallest suitcase starting at $38, if given a week to make the delivery. Pros and Cons Travelers who use shipping services generally praise their convenience. Sally Brooks, an actress based in New York and Los Angeles, has been using Lugless to ship bags since 2011. She said she usually pays less than $40 for a small case, making the service competitive with an airline. “The less distraction and stress at the airport, the better for me,” Ms. Brooks said. Stephanie Fisher, an agent in Key Largo, Fla., for Brickell Travel, has sent clients’ bags with Luggage Free, particularly on complicated trips. In one case, a client traveled to Paris and then on to a fishing trip in Spain that required different wardrobes. “If they have varied itineraries, it can be easier to ship bags and switch out gear,” Ms. Fisher said. Planning ahead is key. Shipping companies require travelers to have their bags ready well in advance of travel to get the best rates. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Jeremy Abelson, who works in finance, regularly uses Ship&Play for work trips. “You can save half an hour to 45 minutes on the way out of the airport because you don’t have to go to baggage claim,” he said. But packing in advance has made it harder for the Denver father of four to use it as regularly on family trips. Price is also a deterrent. But when multiple bags are involved — many airlines charge $150 for a third bag — shipping may be the cheaper way to go. Testing the Service I tried on numerous occasions over several months to ship a bag and found that I usually wasn’t organized enough to get it out in time. But for an April trip from Chicago to Aspen, Colo., I sent my ski bag ahead with Ship&Play. It was easy enough to stuff ski clothes, which I wouldn’t need until I arrived, around my skis, poles and helmet in a soft-sided case five days before its scheduled arrival (and six days before mine) to get the cheapest price. I would dedicate a carry-on to ski boots and other clothes. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The ski bag weighed under the specified limit of 50 pounds for the lowest rate, $84.99. With taxes and fees, the total came to $98.97 and included up to $2,000 in insurance with delivery to my lodgings (in this case, my sister’s house). I opted to drop the bag at a local FedEx store. Normally, leaving a bag with an airline doesn’t induce anxiety. But somehow abandoning such a conspicuous object behind a retail counter did. Nonetheless, the bag arrived safely three days later, ahead of schedule, without damage. I appreciated the convenience of not having to haul the unwieldy bag to and from the airport on the way out. But on the return, I checked it with my airline, which was free to me as a holder of the airline’s branded credit card but otherwise would have cost $40, according to an airline employee at the airport. Paying an extra $60 to $100 for shipping seemed indulgent. But when I factored in a $50 cab ride, which I needed to help me manage the ski bag, a wheeled carry-on and backpack, compared with a $5 train fare, the equation evened out a bit. Still, the shipping payoff depends on how much you value convenience. I might ship ahead again, especially with multiple bags or an awkward item like skis.

Victims of sophisticated online scams are often dealt a double whammy. Not only is their money forever gone, but these stolen sums often generate giant tax bills when the funds are emptied from taxable retirement accounts. Many of these victims are often left wondering what sort of recourse they may have. Tax regulators recently provided some answers, clearing the way for more victims to seek a tax break on more solid footing. In a memorandum released on March 14, the Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Chief Counsel described which types of scams might qualify for tax relief, including many investment schemes and some types of impersonation fraud. But it still excludes other widespread digital crimes, including kidnapping schemes, for example, and romance-related fraud that did not involve investing. “We are aware that taxpayers have suffered losses from various scams perpetrated by unknown individuals operating domestically and internationally,” the memo said. “However, the actual scam may vary, and the application of this advice is dependent on the taxpayer’s specific facts.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT There used to be a more equitable way for people with the largest fraud losses to deduct them from their income, using a tax deduction for victims of personal casualties, disasters and theft. But that and many other individual breaks were eliminated or narrowed as part of the Republican-led tax overhaul known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which helped to pay for broader tax cuts, including a reduced corporate tax rate. The current structure of the deduction, effective from 2018 through 2025, treats victims unevenly. It can be used only in certain situations, even though many of these fraudsters are operating out of the same playbook. The tax deduction, in its pared-down form, says personal casualty and theft losses can be claimed only in situations like federally declared disasters or “transactions entered into for profit.” That means deductibility is an option only if the victims had a goal of profiting when they entered into transactions with scammers — but that definition wasn’t etched into the law. The new guidance provides taxpayers with parameters by laying out several different situations that qualify and a couple that don’t. This includes taxpayers deceived by impersonators who claim to be fraud specialists at the victim’s financial institution, who then urge them to move their money to safer accounts because their existing ones have been compromised. Since the victim intended to safeguard and later reinvest the money, the I.R.S. deems this “a transaction entered into for profit.” In other words, the guidance recognizes that the preservation of the assets qualifies as a profit motive (and is eligible for tax deduction). “That opens the door a bit for more taxpayers to take theft loss deductions,” said James Creech, a director at the tax advocacy and controversy practice at Baker Tilly, a large accounting and advisory firm in San Francisco. “Practically what this means is that if you are audited you can take the memo, show it to the auditor, and most likely that will resolve the question of if the transaction was entered into for profit.” Other qualifying situations include so-called pig butchering investment schemes, which direct unsuspecting people to seemingly legitimate mobile apps or websites where they can buy cryptocurrencies and have the opportunity to earn large profits. As their account value increases, they invest more money — but when they try to cash out, the money vanishes. This, too, is deemed a profit-driven transaction by the I.R.S. In another situation, taxpayers get a phishing email from an impersonator, urging them to call a fraud analyst to ensure their money is safeguarded. The impersonator instructs the victim to click on a link in an email, which gives the impersonator control over the victim’s computer, eventually enabling the thief to empty the victim’s investment account without permission. In all three cases, the taxpayers had contacted their financial institutions and law enforcement and were informed they had little to no chance of recovering the money. The memo also outlines situations that would not qualify, in large part because there is no profit motive. So if an individual was deceived into paying medical bills for a scammer posing as a romantic interest, that would not be eligible for the tax deduction. The same goes for victims who sent ransom money to criminals who had claimed to have kidnapped their grandchild using artificial intelligence to clone the child’s voice. The guidance also clarifies that none of these situations would be eligible for the tax breaks provided to victims of Ponzi schemes, which can be used when an investment fraud meets certain conditions. Regardless of your specific situation, it helps to document everything as soon as you realize you’ve been victimized. File a police report with local officials and federal ones, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Take screenshots of any online platforms or apps that you used to communicate with the criminals, including online conversations, photos or anything related. Create a timeline or narrative of the events. The casualty and theft loss deduction is set to revert to its original form at the end of this year if the sweeping 2017 tax law expires. But Republicans are trying to extend that package. The original federal casualty loss deduction was limited in different ways. It could be claimed only by taxpayers who itemized deductions on their returns, which means the total amount of those deductions had to exceed the standard deduction for it to be worth it. And the deduction applied only to losses that exceeded 10 percent of their adjusted gross income. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Lawmakers, including Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, have drafted legislation to offer more comprehensive relief dating back to 2018. when the deduction was curtailed. But that hasn’t been passed into law. “This I.R.S. guidance provides a good deal of clarity and relief to a lot of scam victims, including a constituent of mine who would have owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes,” Mr. Raskin said in a statement. He added, “But we still have important bipartisan work to do in Congress to make the tax code fairer for all scam victims.” The way the states treat these situations can amplify victims’ federal losses, too, generating significant tax liabilities of their own, tax experts said. But some states are trying to address that. Joseph Vogel, a Democratic state legislator in Maryland, said he had recently introduced a bill with bipartisan support that would make these losses generally deductible at the state level. “The scams are getting better and better,” he said. “These people need some relief.”

Last weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on television and said people who wanted to retire right now were not paying attention to the stock market. On the NBC program “Meet the Press,” referring to those who have “put away for years in their savings account,” he said the following: “I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening.” Is that true? I asked readers of our Your Money newsletter who were on the cusp of retirement whether they were watching the markets and, if so, why? About 400 people replied. More than 90 percent of them said they were looking. They gave me an earful. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT *** “I have Parkinson’s disease and am unable to work in any capacity. Naturally, I closely watch how the market performs on a daily basis.” — Nancy London, Plain City, Ohio “I don’t concern myself with normal market fluctuations, but what’s going on right now is anything but normal. So, yes, I am looking.” — Edward M. Kenny, Brooklyn, N.Y. “They have no idea how ordinary people live.” — Barbara Costanzo, Milwaukee “Of course, I am watching. I am disheartened that he and President Trump seem to be treating my hard-earned savings in such a cavalier manner.” — Cleo LaRue, League City, Texas The word “cavalier” was the adjective that came up most in emails from readers, and Ms. Costanzo’s sentiment — that people in the Trump administration were out of touch — was common. President Trump is not the first person to appoint someone like Mr. Bessent — a former hedge fund manager who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars — to run the Treasury Department. When Bill Clinton was president, he put Robert E. Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs banker, in charge. But when you’re someone like that doing work like this, it behooves you to have some empathy — or at least sympathy — for the struggles of others. “Secretary Bessent is highly engaged in financial literacy and encourages all Americans to invest for the long term,” according to a Treasury spokesperson. He has spoken in the past of having started work at age 9 when his father fell on hard times. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT *** “We are definitely looking at the fluctuations, and likely adding time to our ‘need to work’ timeline. Mr. Bessent is mistaken.” — Becky O’Hara, Havertown, Pa. “I wanted to retire and still wait until 70 to collect Social Security, and that is a delicate balance if the value of my investments has dropped significantly.” — Karen Walrath, Beaverton, Ore. “If I’m faced with retirement from the federal work force now and re-entering the job market at age 59¼, I’m going to have to take a very, very different approach to finances. How the market behaves right now can potentially have catastrophic impacts for me.” — Sue Zwicker, Greenbelt, Md. “I do take a few moments most days to check the markets, mainly out of curiosity, but also to see if I need to rebalance.” — Jeff Schmierer, Brookfield, Conn. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “I just retired 18 months ago, and sequence risk is by far the financial issue I worry about the most.” — Dennis Scholl, Miami Beach *** So about that “sequence risk” thing: All it means is that if you start your retirement when markets are falling, you may be selling assets as your overall portfolio is declining. And when that balance falls (both from market declines and selling assets to pay for everyday spending once you’re not working), it leaves you with less money that could benefit from eventual market recoveries. All of that increases the chances that you’ll run out of money before you die. It’s a big deal — big enough that someone running the Treasury Department would presumably consider it when suggesting that recent retirees aren’t carefully watching their “savings accounts,” which readers took to mean retirement accounts. “Bessent is supposed to be a smart guy, so I doubt that he believes what he is saying,” writes Douglas Frazier of Savannah, Ga. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT When you have to stand up in public and defend a stock market decline that your boss — the president, who likes firing people — caused, it may indeed be hard to believe everything you may be forced to say. But that doesn’t excuse ignoring questions that many people on the cusp of retirement must consider — and how hard it is to answer them when people have retirement “savings” accounts that include stocks. Mr. Bessent is correct that at least some people don’t look each day — it was under 10 percent of my 400 correspondents. *** “Why look and make myself sick? We have an investment plan. I’ll stick to it and keep working a while longer. I like my job. Looking will hurt my head. Working lets me do something positive.” — Teresa Meinders Burkett, Tulsa, Okla. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “We don’t check day-to-day fluctuations. It’s too frustrating and scary, and at this point there’s nothing we can do about it.” — Mindy Evanter, Marblehead, Mass. “I do not look at my portfolio daily, but I certainly monitor the market and, like most others over 60, am alarmed by the market response to the Trump tariffs. Secretary Bessent’s comments may have made sense historically, but when the administration takes actions that impact the global economy and lead to great uncertainty, investors become concerned.” — Patrick Grum, Atlanta *** In a perfect world, you’ve done everything right while getting ready for retirement. You’ve had good jobs when you wanted them and luck with your health along the way. You’ve saved more than what you need to pay for a 30-year retirement. You have several years of money stashed someplace safe to use while waiting out a sizable stock market downturn. You have the fortitude to not panic-sell — or panic-buy — investments at the wrong time. But most people are not that lucky or are prone to worry that their luck will run out right when they want to stop working. For now, some of those people have at least managed to maintain their senses of humor. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT *** “Yes, I am checking. It’s a compulsive behavior right now, though I haven’t looked yet today. Why, I do not know. Please, no tariffs on Xanax.” — Jene Teague, Austin, Texas “Fluctuations look like this: WWWWWWW. I don’t pay much attention.

Investing in choppy markets, especially with an unpredictable president at the helm, can be distressing. It can be even more so if you are relying on these investments to pay for something as important as your child’s college tuition and you need the money in the foreseeable future. Plenty of busy parents found themselves in this position last week, reminded by the recent market plunge that college enrollment was creeping up on them, and some may not have dialed back their risky stock positions, or at least not enough. But situations like this serve as another reminder: Market uncertainty is a constant, yet it is part of the game we are forced to play to finance our future selves’ needs and wants. Markets periodically plunge because of global financial crises, pandemics and technology bubbles, as well as when the president of the United States seemingly pushes it over the edge with his index finger, which is essentially what happened after President Trump announced an aggressive tariff plan that sparked a trade war. When Mr. Trump noticed on Wednesday that U.S. government bond markets were trembling, or getting “yippy,” as he called it, he paused most of his so-called reciprocal tariffs. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The markets rejoiced, sending the S&P 500 soaring 9.5 percent, before sliding nearly 3.5 percent on Thursday and recovering 1.8 percent on Friday, with one measure of volatility reaching levels last seen during the pandemic-induced sell-off in 2020. The S&P 500 has sunk 12.9 percent since Feb. 19, when it reached an all time closing high. Nobody knows what comes next, or how this movie ends. If you have money in a 529 college savings plan — or in another type of investment account — now is the time to reassess whether your mix of stocks and bonds is appropriate for your time frame and your stomach for risk. If you cannot afford to lose a particular pot of money and you need it soon, it is time to develop an exit strategy. For everyone else, you have the luxury of time to come up with a better long-term plan. I need the money now (or really soon). Now what? If you need the money in less than a year, it shouldn’t be in stocks, period. Some financial planners said they would even swallow some losses now (by moving money into cash, even if your investments are lower), but there are several other things you might consider as well. “I’d suggest looking at whether they have other resources to cover the first year — like cash flow, gifts or student aid — while they give investments some time to recover,” said Daniel Milks, a financial planner in Greenville, S.C. If you borrow more than you anticipated during the first year to avoid touching your investments, keep in mind that you can use up to $10,000 of money inside a 529 to pay off federal and many private student loans early (per beneficiary over their lifetime). Another idea: Temporarily pause or reduce savings to pay more tuition directly. I have some time. What should I do? Sometimes the best solution is the simplest — the one that reduces complexity and decision-making and puts things on autopilot. Sure, there may be more precise investing strategies, but there’s a perfectly fine one called a target-date fund. If you have a big tuition bill coming up in September and you were in an appropriate and well-managed fund like this, after these past two weeks of bluster and insane volatility your portfolio is down just 0.35 percentage points. No lost sleep over that. Target-date funds — whose mix of investments gradually gets more conservative as a college enrollment date approaches — can be helpful for people who want a hands-off approach. But that means you’ll need to do a bit of work upfront to analyze the funds, or hire someone to help you out (a fiduciary, always). Many 529 college savings plans provide these funds on their investment menu, but they’re not all created equally. Funds from different providers that have the same enrollment date can have different mixes of investments, and some may be riskier because they have more aggressive stock allocations. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Don’t forget to consider the type of bond and cash investments it holds, too. Bonds typically serve as a ballast when stocks drop, but they are not impervious to all shocks, as we saw this week. You’ll also need to understand how the fund evolves over the years as you approach the enrollment date. How quickly does it change? What does it look like when college is just five or three years away? Would you be comfortable with that mix, at that point in time, if the market dropped 30 percent? And how does that compare with similar funds? What are the costs? (Stick with low-cost index funds, which simply track the performance of large swaths of the market and do not try to beat it.) CJ Stermetz, a financial planer and founder of EquityFTW, a firm in San Jose, Calif., said the funds work especially well in times like these, because parents don’t have to worry. They know their college money is being whisked into safer investments as time marches on. Indeed, the target enrollment date funds are similar to those targeting a retirement date, but the former sheds stocks more quickly given the compressed time frame: The funds generally start with 95 percent in stocks and 5 percent in bonds but then shift about five percentage points of the stocks into bonds each year, Mr. Stermetz explained. If you were buying a Vanguard fund for a newborn now, with an enrollment date of 2043, that’s where you’d start. It was down about 6.5 percent year-to-date, as of Thursday’s market close. But by the time college is three years away (like Vanguard’s 2028/2029 fund), there’s about 25 percent in stocks, 54 percent in bonds and 20 percent in cash equivalents. That fund was down just 1.06 year-to-date as of Thursday. Once college is just a year or two out (2026/2027), 19 percent of investments are in stocks, 47 percent in bonds and 34 percent in cash equivalents, while the target enrollment for the 2024/2025 academic year has just 15 percent in stocks. That’s down 0.35 percent as of Thursday. “This may not be ‘optimal,’ in the sense that it’s a one-size-fits-all product, but most parents are fine with that since it means it’s one less thing they have to think about,” Mr. Stermetz added. Keep in mind that if a fund’s enrollment date that aligns with your child’s feels too aggressive, you can choose one for an older child; it will have less invested in stocks. If you cannot afford to lose any money, Eric Maldonado, a financial planner in San Luis Obispo, Calif., suggests another approach: When your child is in high school, put the cost of the corresponding year of college into cash or money market funds. For example, if your child is a freshman in high school, put your freshman college tuition in cash, and so on. “Whatever your mix of strategies, the key is to shift your mind-set as college nears,” said Mallon FitzPatrick, head of wealth planning at Robertson Stephens. “At some point, the goal isn’t to grow the money anymore. It’s to make sure it’s there when you need it.”

Add this to worries about the likely impact of tariffs: costlier car insurance. The new tariffs on imported cars, metals and parts announced by the Trump administration are expected to raise vehicle prices by thousands of dollars if they remain in place. And because parts used in auto repairs will also become more expensive, the average cost of automobile insurance is expected to increase. The average annual premium for a full-coverage auto policy was just over $2,300 at the end of last year, according to an analysis by Insurify, an insurance comparison shopping website. The site initially estimated that premiums would increase just 5 percent this year, based on factors like inflation and insurer losses. How much of an impact could tariffs have on car insurance costs? With the addition of the tariffs, Insurify now projects premiums to rise at least 16 percent, or $378, to almost $2,700 on average nationally — about $256 more than without tariffs. The analysis includes the tariffs on steel and aluminum, those on imported cars and those on imported auto parts scheduled to take effect May 3. (Tariffs announced in February on products from Mexico and Canada were adjusted to exempt some goods, including cars and auto parts, that comply with the free trade agreement President Trump negotiated in his first term, according to Insurify. If that exemption is lifted, the increase in automobile premiums could be as high as 19 percent, the analysis found.) An Insurify spokeswoman said the Trump administration’s announcement on Wednesday, pausing double-digit global tariffs for 90 days, didn’t change the company’s projections. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in response to a reporter’s question after the announcement, indicated that the pause didn’t apply to certain tariffs like those on automobiles. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Things that increase the cost of repairs impact prices,” said Robert Passmore, vice president of personal lines with the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, whose members are big insurance companies. About 60 percent of parts used in auto shop repairs are imported from Mexico, Canada and China, the association has said. The price of car insurance has soared in recent years for a variety of reasons, including more claims resulting from driving habits that deteriorated during the pandemic, the use of more expensive technology in cars, and damage from strong storms and hail. While increases had recently begun to moderate, the cost of motor vehicle insurance still rose 7.5 percent in March compared with a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When will the increases affect driver policies? Consumers won’t see the impact in their rates immediately, Matt Brannon, a data reporter at Insurify, said. Rather, higher premiums will probably arrive by the end of the year, depending on when your policy renews. Michael DeLong, the research and advocacy associate for Consumer Federation of America’s campaign for fair auto insurance, said that car insurance is regulated by the states and that insurers must gather several months of claims data, rather than blaming tariffs generally, to show their requests for higher rates are warranted. “They have to justify it,” Mr. DeLong said. Can I do anything to help keep my auto premium down? There’s no magic solution to ease the impact of tariffs, said Jon Linkov, deputy autos editor at Consumer Reports. But since the anticipated impact is months away, now is a good time to review your policy to make sure you don’t have coverage beyond what you need or to make other changes that will help tamp down increases from factors beyond tariffs. “If you usually just rubber-stamp your new premium,” Mr. Linkov said, “reach out to your insurer.” Ask what changes the insurer recommends to save money. If your car is old and of low value, you may be able to save by dropping optional protections like collision, which covers damage to your car after an accident, or “comprehensive” coverage, which covers theft and damage from things like falling trees, hail or flood. A rule of thumb suggested by the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, is that you should consider dropping optional coverage if the car is worth less than 10 times the annual insurance premium. (Liability coverage, which pays for injuries to others or damage to property you cause when driving, is required in nearly all states, although minimum coverage amounts vary.) You could also consider raising your deductible, an amount you must pay out of pocket when filing a claim. If you have a $500 deductible, you could lower your premium by as much as 25 percent by raising the deductible to $1,000, Mr. Linkov said. But make sure you can cover that amount, if you do need to file a claim. “Do you have the cash available?” he said. “Make sure you put the savings aside, so you’ll have it if you need it.” If you have young adults on your policy, check to see if it would be less expensive to have them get their own coverage. “It may be time to kick them off,” Mr. Linkov said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT It can pay to shop around, experts said. You can use various online marketplaces, but use a backup email for receiving quotes to avoid being inundated with inquiries from insurers. Have your current auto policy in front of you when you shop to be sure you are getting apples-to-apples quotes for the same coverage, Mr. Passmore said. (And before getting your hopes up, read about my colleagues’ failed experience in shopping for cheaper rates.) Should I try a system that monitors my driving? You can save money by allowing an insurer to install a device in your car that monitors your driving behavior or tracks your driving on your phone, Mr. Passmore said. Discounts of 10 percent are common just for signing up. The systems typically gather information such as how far you drive, what time of day you drive, braking and acceleration, and phone use. Mr. Passmore said he used one himself and found that it had made him a better driver: “I was surprised how much hard braking I was doing.” But both Consumer Reports and the Consumer Federation have concerns about such systems because they lack privacy protections. There’s little regulation, as of yet, about what exactly insurers can do with the data they collect, Mr. Linkov said. If, however, you are driving less — perhaps because you have moved and have a shorter commute or are working at home — by all means contact your insurer with the new mileage total and ask for your policy to be re-rated, Mr. Linkov said. Fewer miles driven means a lower risk of accidents, which should translate to lower rates. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Becoming a safer driver can also help you avoid accidents and speeding tickets. So taking a “defensive driving” course may save you money. “Driver history is still the most important part of how your rate is set,” Mr. Brannon said. Insurers may offer discounts for having premiums taken directly from your bank account or for student drivers who maintain good grades. So ask about those, too. Can I save money in repairs? If you always get service from the dealership where you bought your car, it may be worth checking around to see if an independent repair shop could save you money, Mr. Linkov said. Ask around for references and start out with a basic service like an oil change or tire rotation. If the shop doesn’t turn routine maintenance into a hard sell for more expensive work, consider taking your business there. Should you ever have to file an insurance claim, he said, a knowledgeable mechanic can advise you on issues like whether it’s acceptable to use cheaper “aftermarket” parts for certain repairs or if you should push your insurer to cover parts from the original manufacturer, which is often preferable.

The Social Security Administration said on Tuesday that people seeking retirement or survivor benefits could continue to file applications over the phone, reversing a much criticized change that was expected to force tens of thousands of Americans to visit offices in person each week. The agency has been in a state of tumult ever since Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency arrived inside its headquarters, enacting deep staff cuts and other policy and technical changes, which has caused widespread anxiety and confusion among both employees and beneficiaries. The planned restriction on phone services was one of those changes: Social Security said last month that individuals could no longer file for benefits or make changes to direct deposit banking over the phone. The policy, which was to take effect on April 14, was announced as part of a broader effort to reduce fraud, particularly around direct deposits. But the change came as Mr. Musk and other administration officials repeatedly exaggerated fraud levels to the public — providing no evidence for their claims. “The agency has assessed cases of widespread fraud in teleclaims and found minimal instances,” Doris Diaz, the agency’s acting deputy commissioner for operations, said in an April 7 memo obtained by The New York Times, to Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT After backlash from beneficiary advocates and lawmakers, who pointed out that phone restrictions would route more people to field offices as their staff levels were being cut, the phone restrictions were partly rolled back. Less than two weeks after the change was announced, the agency said it would allow people to use the phone to file for disability, Supplemental Security Income and Medicare. Those filing for retirement or survivors benefits, however, were still required to file online or in a field office. But now, those restrictions have largely been reversed. Everyone, including those filing for retirement or survivor claims, will be able to do so over the phone, unless their files are flagged as being suspicious. (In that case, individuals will need to provide identification in person, just as they do when online claims are flagged.) Beneficiaries looking to make changes to their direct deposit accounts, however, will need to do so either online or in person at a field office. To strengthen its fraud capabilities for many telephone claims, the memo suggested installing a fraud analytic tool by April 14. A White House official said the agency’s anti-fraud team established new technological capabilities quickly, and its updated software allowed it to perform fraud checks on phone claims. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Social Security Administration is taking bold steps to transform how they serve the public — improving frontline customer service, modernizing their technology, protecting beneficiaries and securing the integrity of their programs,” said Liz Huston, a White House spokeswoman. The Social Security Administration estimated that it might flag roughly 70,000 of an estimated 4.5 million annual claims filed, according to a post on X, the social media service owned by Mr. Musk. “Telephone remains a viable option for the public,” the agency said, fully reversing its stance from less than a month prior.

Trump administration officials made the rounds this weekend to try to answer the nearly unanswerable: Why tank the stock market by starting a trade war? And are you subtracting trillions of dollars in unrealized losses out of people’s savings on purpose? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” was particularly odd. “Most Americans in a 401(k) have what’s called a 60/40 account,” he said, without explaining what he was talking about. These accounts, he added, “are down 5, 6 percent on the year.” Most Americans in a 401(k) do not have a 60/40 account. By saying so, Mr. Bessent understates the risk in people’s portfolios, the fear they feel and how being frightened can affect their retirement security if they sell while scared. Let’s take this apart a bit. A 60/40 fund, for most people in workplace retirement accounts, is a mutual fund that contains 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds or other investments that tend not to be as volatile as stocks. Often, funds like these have a target date for a year close to when a person intends to retire. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT That 60 percent in stocks may not be all U.S. equities, which is important because many markets outside the United States have done much better this year. And Mr. Bessent is right that these funds are doing better than the overall U.S. stock market this year, which is down around 13 percent. But while many 401(k) investors do put money in funds with a mix of asset types, this is not the correct way to take the temperature of the nation’s retirement investments. According to data on millions of 401(k) plan participants collected by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Investment Company Institute, 68 percent of participants put money in target-date funds as of the end 2022. But only a small fraction of those funds maintain a 60/40 balance like those that Mr. Bessent mentioned, since each fund on offer at any given employer has a different stock allocation. The stock percentage ratchets down over time to decrease risk as you approach retirement, so younger people are likely to have much more than 60 percent stocks in any given target-date fund. According to the Investment Company Institute, just 41 percent of 401(k) balances (the actual dollars at stake) were in hybrid funds like target-date ones at the end of last year. And at the end of 2022, 71 percent of all 401(k) assets were in stocks. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Bessent is in his 60s and wealthy, and when you write or talk about personal finance, it’s easy to fall into the trap of anchoring to your own stage and place in life. Most employers are good about nudging investors into balanced funds, but plenty of people lack that assistance because they don’t have a workplace retirement plan. Instead, they’re on their own, either because their employer has no savings vehicle or because they work for themselves. Mr. Bessent now has access to a federal employee workplace retirement plan that is one of the best such plans in existence, and it’s chockablock with low-cost target-date funds. And while Mr. Bessent may himself have only 60 percent of his money in stocks, younger, less experienced 401(k) investors in their 20s and 30s had close to 90 percent of their investments in stocks at the end of 2022. That kind of sky-high stock exposure means more volatility at a time like this. More volatility raises the possibility of getting frightened and selling all your stocks, particularly if you don’t have 40 years of experience watching your retirement account balance spike and plunge. And fear-based selling could mean missing out on future gains if you don’t start buying stocks again at the right moment. Also, big stock market declines can scare young people away from investing in the first place. Not starting early costs people a lot of money over time, since you miss out on the opportunity to let your portfolio ride over decades. Those 60/40 funds turn out to be a very good thing. My colleague Jeff Sommer regularly points to the merits of a balanced approach to investing. Most of us should allocate our retirement savings this way. But when Mr. Bessent make those funds into some kind of supposedly reassuring touchstone, it ignores the sheer terror of a moment like this and the real pain of stock market declines.

President Trump has vowed that he wouldn’t cut Social Security benefits, but his administration’s actions, led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, have upended the agency, leaving many beneficiaries concerned that the popular program and their payments may be imperiled. Several players from the private equity world are now embedded inside the Social Security Administration, which is embarking on deep jobs cuts and other policy changes. At the same time, top Trump administration officials continue to perpetuate falsehoods about widespread fraud, even after the allegations are quickly debunked. These rapid-fire changes have unfolded ahead of the arrival of the incoming commissioner, Frank Bisignano, whose nomination was advanced by the Senate Finance Committee but awaits a full vote by the chamber. Many beneficiaries have questions. Here’s what we know. Are my benefits at risk? Only Congress can make changes to the program’s benefits, which are sent to 73 million people each month. But hollowing out critical pieces of the program’s operations also presents risks, current and former employees said, especially at an agency like Social Security, which has complex policy rules and an aging technical infrastructure. The employees serving the public have institutional knowledge that takes time to acquire and master. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But the agency announced plans to cut about 12 percent of its work force, or roughly 7,000 employees, when staffing is already at a 50-year low. Not having enough seasoned staff to handle the rising tide of baby boomers and other claimants, as well as the complex system that pushes out payments, could threaten its ability to serve the public and potentially delay benefits. Some cracks have already begun to show, with increased system outages to the agency’s online services, including my Social Security accounts. Field staff members say various outages have always occurred, but not at the frequency they’re experiencing now. So far, the technology offices are losing 326 members of their 1,600-person staff, according to the union that represents many agency workers. Employees have said more cuts are expected. Employees inside the agency said they agreed that modernization was needed and that there were plenty of efficiencies to be found. But making haphazard cuts to critical staff before making changes to technology and processes is a risky endeavor, current and former employees and executives said. Many of those employees specialize in maintaining Social Security’s complex set of computer systems, in which dozens of web applications are layered on top of a programming language developed in the 1970s. As crucial members of the technical staff leave the agency, there are fewer experienced hands to perform routine maintenance and address issues when they arise. Will it become more difficult to file for benefits? I’ve recently heard from many readers who have had different experiences. Some have filed for retirement benefits online without any issues, and began receiving them within 30 days. But others have been unable to log in to their Social Security accounts to download tax documents, have struggled to make appointments for field offices or have waited for several hours on the phone to reach a customer service representative. Your experience may vary based on where you live, the staffing levels nearby or the phone centers you reach. Calls to the agency have risen 30 percent from last year, according to agency data, with more people getting “polite disconnects,” where a prerecorded message tells callers to try again later. The agency has said it has “not permanently closed or announced the permanent closure” of any field offices. But many of them are losing critical mass. More than three dozen offices are each losing at least a quarter of their staff, as we reported here. The agency has said it plans to reassign more employees to the front lines, but it will take time to retrain workers. Many former executives and policy experts are concerned about rising system outages as more employees depart, which can also affect individuals’ access to benefits. Do I need to go to a local office to prove my identity? If you are already receiving benefits, you do not need to go to a Social Security field office to prove your identity. In fact, the agency recently put out several messages on social media platforms stating that enrolled beneficiaries do not need to do anything. What policy changes are being made? The agency had announced a plan in mid-March to curtail its phone services, forcing everyone to file for benefits online or in person. But after facing fierce backlash, it rolled back the plan less than a month later. Now, everyone, including those filing retirement and survivor claims, can continue to do so over the phone, unless their application is flagged as being suspicious. (In that case, individuals will need to provide identification in person, just as they do when online claims are flagged.) Beneficiaries looking to make changes to their direct deposit accounts, however, will need to do so either online or in person at a field office. What happens when a beneficiary is mistakenly paid too much? During the Biden administration, the agency said it would no longer withhold a full monthly payment to claw back overpayments — which are often caused by agency errors — but would instead withhold a maximum of 10 percent until the balance was repaid. The goal was to avoid creating a financial hardship for beneficiaries, who often rely on these payments. The Trump administration has reversed the policy and resumed collecting the entire check until the overpayment is repaid. Is my personal information at risk? Potentially. The agency keeps vast troves of personally identifiable information, including earnings records and medical information, at least some of which members of Mr. Musk’s team have sought access to. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the agency from granting DOGE workers access to sensitive records stored in its systems, or keeping any data they may have already taken. What sort of false information is circulating about the program? Social Security has a 99.7 percent payment accuracy rate, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, while 0.5 percent of its budget goes to administrative costs. Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Mr. Musk and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have spread falsehoods about rampant fraud inside the program, often even after their claims have been quickly debunked. Many current and former employees, along with policymakers and advocates, are concerned that they’re trying to undermine trust in the program. Mr. Musk continues to repeat unsubstantiated claims that social insurance programs like Social Security are used as a “gigantic magnetic force” that attracts “illegal aliens” from all over the world. There is no evidence to support that, and undocumented workers actually pay more into Social Security than they receive in benefits. The program receives about $20 billion in net cash flow from undocumented workers each year, the agency told The New York Times last year. After learning that millions of people in the database did not have recorded deaths, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump claimed that millions of dead people were receiving payments. As my colleagues have reported, there aren’t zombie beneficiaries, a conclusion the agency reached in 2023, when it said cleaning up the database wasn’t worth the investment because almost none of the beneficiaries were being paid. Mr. Musk, and most recently Mr. Vance, made the false claim that 40 percent of calls to the agency are made by fraudsters. That allegation seems to stem from a statistic that the agency released, but that was misunderstood: Criminals try to redirect beneficiaries’ deposits into their own accounts — and 40 percent of that direct deposit fraud is associated with someone calling the agency to try to change bank information, while the other 60 percent is attempted online. (My colleague Linda Qiu has provided a more detailed explanation.) Musk calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Why? Mr. Musk is not the first to refer to the program as a Ponzi scheme, which is a criminal investment fraud where early investors are paid with money collected from later investors in order to create the illusion of a profit or investment returns. Social Security is not an investment scheme. It’s an insurance program that provides retirement, survivors and disability benefits to roughly 73 million people. But critics like Mr. Musk often turn to that analogy because Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program, which means that the incoming payroll contributions that finance the program are used to pay for benefits to eligible retirees, disabled workers and survivors. What would it mean to privatize Social Security? Social Security is a public program, funded by payroll taxes and run by civic servants, who, like all federal workers, take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Revenue is largely invested in Treasury bonds. The program is not overseen by Wall Street firms, taxpayers do not pay high fees for investment management and its systems are largely operated and maintained by federal employees. Privatizing Social Security, in part or entirely, could take different forms. Instead of running most of the machinery, for example, the government could outsource more of it to for-profit corporations, which would be in keeping with Mr. Trump’s ethos, though it would increase the program’s costs. But privatization usually refers to establishing individual private accounts, an idea that was last thrust into the public debate roughly two decades ago by President George W. Bush, who proposed diverting some payroll taxes into investment accounts. The idea faced fierce public opposition, and it hasn’t gained any traction since. Privatization had been suggested as a way to strengthen the program’s finances, though most proposals would hasten the depletion of the program’s trust fund, reduce guaranteed benefits and require borrowing. It would also fundamentally shift the underpinnings of the program toward becoming one based on notions of property and private ownership, and away from social insurance, where risks are pooled and spread across a population. Proponents of Social Security have laid out incremental changes that would shore up its finances without such major shifts. Larry Fink, the chief executive of the investment giant BlackRock, recently raised the idea at a conference, suggesting private accounts to supplement the program. How is Social Security funded? President Franklin D. Roosevelt intended the program to be self-sufficient. It has a dedicated revenue source, primarily from payroll taxes (also known as FICA taxes). In many cases, workers split the burden with their employers; each currently pays 6.2 percent on earnings up to $176,100, for a total of 12.4 percent. By law, Social Security, unlike Medicare, cannot use money from the federal budget’s general revenues to pay benefits. The payroll taxes go into the agency’s trust funds. When there is a surplus, the extra money is largely invested in a special type of Treasury security that pays interest to the trust fund. Does Social Security contribute to the deficit? No, though it depends on whom you ask. Because Social Security is a self-contained system, cutting benefits would not shrink the deficit. President Ronald Reagan explained its effect on the budget in this 1984 clip: “If you reduce the outgo of Social Security, that money would not go into the general fund to reduce a deficit. It would go into the Social Security Trust Fund. So Social Security has nothing to do with balancing a budget.” Although Social Security is considered “off budget,” economists and government prognosticators may also view it as part of the so-called unified budget, which includes all federal activities when evaluating everything that affects the economy. From that perspective, Social Security can make the deficit look larger. Is the program facing financial trouble? Social Security has experienced a financing shortfall for years, partly because of demographic changes. Falling birthrates mean fewer people are paying into the program, thousands of baby boomers are retiring daily and retirees are living longer and collecting benefits for longer periods. In addition, a larger share of the country’s income base is not subject to the tax, compared with years past. This is because an ever-growing share of high earners’ income is not subject to payroll taxes. As a result of these shifts, the trust fund that pays the program’s retiree benefits is expected to run dry in 2033, when tax revenue will be enough to pay 79 percent of scheduled benefits. That means beneficiaries’ checks would be reduced by 21 percent if Congress did not intervene and make fixes to bolster the program. Several of Mr. Trump’s policy initiatives, if enacted, are expected to worsen that shortfall. How much of Americans’ spending does Social Security account for? Using one measure, U.S. consumer spending is $20 trillion annually. Assuming all beneficiaries spend their payments in a given year — or roughly $1.6 trillion — that would fund about 7.5 percent of spending. “That’s huge,” said Jason Fichtner, who held several positions at Social Security, where he was appointed by Mr. Bush, including chief economist. “Regardless of the measure you use, Social Security benefits provide the economic security for millions of Americans and is the primary source of income for many people over age 65.” “Without Social Security, 22 million more adults and children would fall below the poverty line,” he added. “While the macro economy would withstand a short shock due to a disruption in Social Security benefits, the impact on many households could be insurmountable.” Does the government ‘raid’ the program’s trust funds? No. When there is a surplus of payroll tax revenue, it’s invested in a special type of Treasury security, which pays interest to the trust fund. Since the trust fund money is invested in Treasury securities, the money is essentially being lent to the federal government (to use however it wants, and it must eventually be repaid). That’s where the confusion arises and why some people believe that the trust fund is used to pay for things unrelated to the program. But it’s really no different from what happens when the government sells Treasury securities to other investors, like China.