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The Daily Money: I spent 8 hours on hold with the IRS

Updated June 29, 2026, 10:36 a.m. ET

Good morning! It’s Daniel de Visé with your Daily Money.

I wrote a rare first-person account last week about my experience with the IRS telephone system while tracking my late mother's tax refund.

How did it go? Well, suffice to say, I wouldn't have written a column if it had gone well.

Is the lottery curse real? We tracked lottery winners to find out.

While we're in the first person:

I have always wondered if the lottery curse was real. If you win millions of dollars, does it inevitably follow that you will lose it all, or die an untimely death, or succumb to some other unpalatable fate?

To find the answer, I tracked the fortunes of more than 30 real lottery winners over more than a decade. Here's what I found.

Is remote work to blame for the loneliness epidemic?

We'll close with a story from Jessica Guynn that asks, Is remote work making us lonely?

📰 More stories you shouldn't miss 📰

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Daniel de Visé covers personal finance for USA TODAY. The Daily Money breaks down complex consumer and financial news.Subscribe here.

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