Consumers in a handful of states are paying to help make the mattress industry more eco-friendly — and more states may follow suit?

Four states — California, Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island — now levy a flat fee on any mattress or box spring residents purchase online or in a brick-and-mortar shop.

The retail fees, which range from $16 to about $23, help finance state recycling programs that divert used mattresses from landfills — part of a growing policy initiative to boost the circular economy across common household items from plastic packaging to paper products and electronics.

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Americans discard about 15 million to 20 million mattresses each year — an average of 50,000 a day, according to the Mattress Recycling Council, a nonprofit formed by the bedding industry to operate state recycling programs.

Yet, more than 75% of a mattress is recyclable, according to MRC: its wood, steel, foams and fibers can be stripped, sold and reused.

Oregon implemented a recycling fee on Jan. 1. State residents who buy a new mattress or box spring pay an extra $22.50 per unit, reflected as a “stewardship assessment” on consumers’ receipts.

California and Connecticut raised their retail fees to $16 per unit at the beginning of 2025, up from $10.50 and $11.75, respectively. Rhode Island raised its per-unit fee to $20.50 last year.

The industry is also working with lawmakers in Massachusetts, Maryland, New York and Virginia to establish similar programs, according to MRC spokesperson Amanda Wall.

A directory compiled by the Mattress Recycling Council lists just 58 companies nationwide that recycle such products. Those in states that haven’t enacted recycling laws generally charge fees to consumers for drop-off and home pickup. (I recently paid $95 for such a service in New York City, for example.)

Oregon officials say their program will make it easy for consumers to recycle unwanted mattresses and reduce illegal dumping.

It aims to establish “new convenient locations in every county for residents to drop off their mattresses” and also create recycling sector jobs, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality website.

The state recycling efforts are examples of “extended producer responsibility” laws gaining traction in the U.S.

“With EPR, producers of products or packages become responsible for managing them when they become waste,” according to Reid Lifset, a resident fellow in industrial ecology at Yale University and editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology. EPR programs provide a new source of funding to make the recycling system sustainable, Lifset said.

In the case of state mattress programs, retailers pass along the consumer fees to the Mattress Recycling Council to fund each state’s respective program, Wall said.

In Oregon, for example, more than half (about $12) of the $22.50 retail fee will fund program operational costs in 2025, with the remainder funding things like start-up costs, administration, and public education and advertising.

There are more than 300 mattress collection sites in states with recycling programs, according to MRC. The sites accept discarded mattresses at no cost. (They may charge for home pickup, however.)

If your federal student loans were forgiven in 2024, you may be wondering if there are any tax implications.

Many borrowers have benefited from education debt cancellation under the Biden administration. While in office so far, President Joe Biden has cleared nearly $180 billion in federal student loans for 4.9 million people. More than 1 million people had their debt cleared in 2024.

If you’ve had your debt excused last year, here’s what to know at tax time.

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 made student loan forgiveness tax-free at the federal level through the end of 2025, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. That means you won’t owe anything to Uncle Sam on any federal education debt cleared throughout 2024.

It shouldn’t matter under what program the loans were forgiven, be it Public Service Loan Forgiveness, an income-driven repayment plan or Borrower Defense. The Biden administration has delivered most of its relief through one of those avenues.

(In case you aren’t familiar: PSLF leads to student debt erasure for certain public servants after a decade of qualifying payments. Meanwhile, IDR plans conclude in debt cancellation after a certain period of payments, typically 20 years or 25 years. And Borrower Defense wipes away the debt for students who’ve been defrauded by their schools.)

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Even canceled private student debt shouldn’t trigger a federal tax bill thanks to the terms of the American Rescue Plan, said Carolina Rodriguez, director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program, based in New York. That law is set to expire Dec. 31, 2025.

Meanwhile, student debt excused in bankruptcy should never be subject to federal or state taxes, Kantrowitz added.

Despite the current federal policy on forgiven student debt, it’s possible a borrower could still face state taxes.

Currently, a handful of states tax certain kinds of student loan forgiveness, Kantrowitz said. That could be because their state tax code doesn’t conform to the federal one or hasn’t been updated to reflect the American Rescue Plan.

You’ll want to check with your state or a tax professional to learn if your relief triggers any liability.

Many states mirror their student loan forgiveness tax policy on the federal government. As a result, if the American Rescue Plan’s provision expires, more states could levy the forgiven debt again, too.

Bitcoin prices soared in 2024. But you may want to tread with caution before euphoria leads you on a hasty buying spree.

Bitcoin and other crypto should generally account for just a sliver of investor portfolios — generally no more than 5% — due to its extreme volatility, according to financial experts.

Some investors may be wise to stay away from it altogether, they said.

“You’re not going to have the same size allocation in bitcoin as you would Nasdaq or the S&P 500,” said Ivory Johnson, a certified financial planner and founder of Delancey Wealth Management, based in Washington, D.C.

“Whenever you have a real volatile asset class, you need less of it in the portfolio to have the same impact” as traditional assets like stocks and bonds, said Johnson, a member of the CNBC Financial Advisor Council.

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, was the top-performing investment of 2024, by a long shot. Prices surged about 125%, ending the year around $94,000 after starting in the $40,000 range.

By comparison, the S&P 500, a U.S. stock index, rose 23%. The Nasdaq, a tech-heavy stock index, grew 29%.

Prices popped after Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election win. His administration is expected to embrace deregulatory policies that would spur crypto demand.

Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission also — for the first time — approved exchange-traded funds that invest directly in bitcoin and ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, making crypto easier for retail investors to buy.

But experts cautioned that lofty profits may belie an underlying danger.

“With high returns come high risk, and crypto is no exception,” Amy Arnott, a portfolio strategist for Morningstar Research Services, wrote in June.

Bitcoin has been nearly five times as volatile as U.S. stocks since September 2015, and ether has been nearly 10 times as volatile, Arnott wrote.

“A portfolio weighting of 5% or less seems prudent, and many investors may want to skip cryptocurrency altogether,” she said.

Bitcoin lost 64% and 74% of its value in 2022 and 2018, respectively.

Mathematically, investors need a 100% return to recover from a 50% loss.

So far, crypto returns have been high enough to offset its additional risk — but it’s not a given that pattern will continue, Arnott said.

There are a few reasons for this: Crypto has become less valuable as a portfolio diversifier as it’s gotten more mainstream, Arnott wrote. Its popularity among speculative buyers also “makes it prone to pricing bubbles that will eventually burst,” she added.

BlackRock, a money manager, thinks there’s a case for owning bitcoin in a diversified portfolio, for investors who are comfortable with the “risk of potentially rapid price plunges” and who believe it will become more widely adopted, experts at the BlackRock Investment Institute wrote in early December.

(BlackRock offers a bitcoin ETF, the iShares Bitcoin Trust, IBIT.)

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A 1% to 2% allocation to bitcoin is a “reasonable range,” BlackRock experts wrote.

Going beyond would “sharply increase” bitcoin’s share of a portfolio’s total risk, they said.

For example, a 2% bitcoin allocation accounts for roughly 5% of the risk of a traditional 60/40 portfolio, BlackRock estimated. But a 4% allocation swells that figure to 14% of total portfolio risk, it said.

“In Vanguard’s view, crypto is more of a speculation than an investment,” Janel Jackson, Vanguard’s former global head of ETF Capital Markets and Broker & Index Relations, wrote in January 2024.

Stock investors own shares of companies that produce goods or services, and many investors get dividends; bond investors receive regular interest payments; and commodities are real assets that meet consumption needs, Jackson wrote.

“While crypto has been classified as a commodity, it’s an immature asset class that has little history, no inherent economic value, no cash flow, and can create havoc within a portfolio,” wrote Jackson, now an executive in the firm’s Financial Advisor Services unit.