It’s official; I am a senior citizen. At least, that is my new reality according to seniorliving.org. While the site would not specify an age range for seniors, it politely points out that once you turn 55, you start to enter the senior age demographic.
Now that the holidays are over, cabin fever is likely starting to set in. Some people choose to spend the winter days catching up on their reading, going to see the latest movies or participating in other fun indoor activities. Others choose to take to the hills for the thrill of skiing and snowboarding.
In the spring of 1990, I was a college senior working at a donut shop in the small town of Laramie, WY. Moving there from Baton Rouge, LA where I grew up was a bit of a culture shock; but at Daylight Donuts, I found a family of sorts. Regular customers came in each day like clockwork. They ordered the same thing every time, and I had every donut and coffee – including their cream and sugar amounts – committed to memory.
Most of us can remember 2008 when we went through a crisis – a perfect storm of multiple aspects of the financial system collapsing at the same time which caused the Dow Jones Index to drop by 50% and the economy to endure an 18-month recession. The consensus is that the housing market was to blame for the recession, specifically bad loans handed out to finance homes that should not have been purchased. People who didn’t have the income to support high mortgage payments were given low interest rates in order to qualify for lending and when these loans started to go bad, it had a ripple effect across the financial markets. Many investment firms had investments that were filled with these bad loans and took major losses. Other firms that were selling insurance on these investments defaulted as well, which magnified things even further. We all know what happened after that: the government decided that bailing out the companies to stabilize an incredibly fragile financial system was worth the risk.
My family and friends all know how much I love to cook. Nothing takes the chill out of a cold winter day better than a steaming bowl of soup, so I’m celebrating National Soup Month with something I absolutely love to make!
It had been a while since my last visit to the City of Light, but it always feels like coming home.
Hey, you! Yeah, you. That was a great idea you had in the meeting this morning. No, don’t give me any of that negativity. I won’t hear it. It was a great idea and that’s that … and (get this) you are one smart cookie. I mean, you really know your stuff and I am glad to know you.
As we settle in for more months of cold weather, let’s start your New Year’s style with outerwear. Hats, mittens, boots and gloves should all keep you warm, but they most definitely can be the pop, the WOW! factor of an outfit. Cute pom-poms on hats, faux fur cuffs and animal print, camo or plaid details on mittens and fingerless gloves allow you to match shoes, hats or the color of your coat. Quality faux fur (like designs from Fabulous Furs and Jayley) and sleek, wind-resistant Anorak puffers remain in fashion and all can be purchased locally at SHIFT.
The cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11, 2022. This marked a stunning fall for a company that ran star-studded Super Bowl advertisements and owned the naming rights to the arena where the Miami Heat plays. What happened?
Depending on your personality type, a plan can be your best friend or your worst enemy. It isn’t that the plan itself is evil; it is the idea of facing reality that sometimes really terrifies people. This can be something as simple as making plans for the weekend or as complex as figuring out whether you can afford to send a child to college in five years. The task becomes even more daunting when we are planning for something we don’t necessarily have a strong comfort level with, whether it is the complexity of the variables or just the unknown. Oftentimes, the hope is that if we ignore it long enough, it will either go away or just figure itself out. This is especially true when it comes to finances, as statistics show that only 44% of Americans actually follow a budget.
I had big plans to kick off the holiday season of 2004. I would spend Thanksgiving alone at home, with True Crime TV reruns and a frozen turkey dinner.
“Run! Run! As fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man!” – From “The Gingerbread Boy”
