The department-store company will stop matching contributions to its workers’ retirement plans on Jan. 31.

Memo to self: Being clueless about money is no longer affordable, not after this year.

The publisher of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune asked a judge for approval to pay prebankruptcy and future contributions to union pension plans.

The reductions in matching contributions put a new strain on America’s tattered safety net as workers watch their retirement accounts fall with the stock market.

The nation’s largest pension fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, named an investment strategist, Anne Stausboll, as its chief executive.

Companies whose pension funds suffered big losses this year will not have to replenish the money quickly under a relief measure that flew through the Senate Thursday.

Sam Zell, the chief executive of the Tribune Company, literally mortgaged its employees’ future to pursue what one analyst at the time called “a childhood fantasy.”

Investing with the idea of improving the environmental actions of corporations is catching on among some big pension funds.

G.M. appears to have enough money in the fund to pay its more than 400,000 retirees their benefits for many years — a result of its conservative pension management.

Some of the nation’s biggest companies want Congress to roll back rules requiring them to put more money into pension funds.