Of all the National (fill in the blank) Weeks we celebrate, only one runs two whole weeks. Go on, take a stab at it. What do you think it might be?
Hello, February! Let’s add some excitement and spice up the gray days ahead with a bold pop of color!
Many economists forecast a recession in 2023. The Federal Reserve does not forecast a recession but forecasts tepid economic growth, with the economy growing at only 0.5%, and slowing job growth. Inflation was at a 40-year high in 2022 but job growth was strong. What will 2023 bring?
When I was in grade school, my classes participated in Valentine’s Day card swaps. My classmates and I decorated small paper bags (or boxes) with red hearts, cupids with arrows and more festive symbols of the holiday. We placed the open bag or box at the end of our desks, and on Valentine’s Day, the students walked around the room dropping their special little cards into each decorative container.
As we are firmly in the New Year, there is no better time to reassess our current savings plan and how a clear understanding of goals will help guide us to financial comfort. It isn’t “news” that we are living in a different time right now – everyone who has a voice in the financial world is banging the recession drum and telling everyone to stop making large purchases. With unemployment levels still historically low, we aren’t exactly sure what the next year will hold for us; but we know that we can create a savings plan that will help ease our minds and make us feel as though we are achieving some financial goals.
In February of 1909, a group of prominent African Americans including W. E. B. Du Bois, Archibald Grimke, Mary Church Terrel, and Ida B. Wells met in New York with White progressives Henry Moskovitz, Mary White Ovington, William English Walling and Oswald Garrison Villard, with the goal of creating an organization to champion equal rights, eliminate racial prejudice and advance voting rights, education, employment and legal justice for colored citizens. The effort was made as a response to continued unfair treatment and segregation of the African American population and was in part a result of the 1908 Springfield race riot when a white mob burned down 40 Black homes in the area and murdered two Black citizens.
People often ask me, “what is your favorite place you’ve been to?” This really is a silly question, because “favorite” has a tendency to change based on who you are there with and the purpose of your trip.
Serve this dessert as a decadent ending to your special Valentine’s dinner, whatever it may be … and wait for a sweet reward!
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.
