Is one of your New Year’s goals to better manage your money? Do you often find yourself stressed about your budget, or lack there of? Want to make a real go of saving, paying-off debt and creating financial solvency? Stephen B. Smith for Young Money offers nine suggestions to better manage your finances and to achieve your goals. 9 Nifty New Year’s Resolutions .
May you have health, wealth and happiness in 2017.
Tis the season for giving…
Want to help your teenager or younger child learn more about sharing what they have? Ron Leiber for the New York Times has great recommendations for talking to children about your family’s legacy of both giving and receiving, a history of why you feel it is important to share what you have with others and he offers a simple plan for explaining exactly how you divide the money between various charities.
Six Ways to Give the Gift of Generosity to Children and Teenagers
The attempted merger of AT&T and Time Warner has drawn a lot of attention lately. So much that a Senate hearing was held last week to investigate the possibility of the combined companies forming a monopoly. During the meeting of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, Mark Cuban, internet entrepreneur, made the comment that people should not be concerned with the waning phone business but internet giants, Google and Facebook. Jonathan Taplin, Op-Ed contributor for the New York Times, investigates this further in, Forget AT&T. The Real Monopolies Are Google and Facebook.
Is it possible to have a church that both holds to the doctrine of scripture and is open to all? Sounds like the kind of place we’d all like to attend. A church where the doors are open for all, the sermons biblically based with a refreshing twist on the classic stories and no secret code of membership. One church working toward this model is Hillhurst United Church in Calgary, Canada. Check out the story in Christian Century, Biblical, evangelical—and progressive. What do you think? Are they headed in the right direction?
As demand grows for skilled software designers, so does the market for coding schools. In places like Austin, Texas where there is a concentration of high-tech companies, new coding “bootcamps” are appearing almost daily. This has attracted the attention of the Texas Workforce Commission who is currently stepping up the enforcement of their certification regulations. In the past, coding schools were allowed to operate during the application process without fear of violations, but this may be changing, according to Will Anderson for the Austin Business Journal in his article, Coding schools face increased scrutiny from Texas Workforce Commission. The coding school owners are frustrated with the TWC’s apparent lack of appropriate regulation for their rapidly growing field.
Many teenagers are now creating LinkedIn profiles in order to share a more “adult” view of their achievements with colleges and universities during the admissions process. Some question the health of having our children so future-focused, while others make a living teaching students how to tailor these profiles to best showcase their skills and achievements. What do you think? In the current climate of highly competitive college admissions, should you pull out all the stops in an effort to land the college of your dreams?
During this election season especially, the public has employed more and more tools to influence the online political narrative, or so it seems, according to Amanda Hess for the New York Times in, Memes, Myself and I: The Internet Lets Us All Run the Campaign. What a fascinating read and another look into the ways social media continues to inform our views as a nation. Now, if I could just find the perfect Accounting meme to steer clients my way.
But small manufacturers like Marlin are vital if the United States is to narrow the nation’s class divide and build a society that offers greater opportunities for everyone — rich and poor, black and white, high school graduates and Ph.D.s.
Factories such as Marlin Steel who make very specific products, are still providing jobs in the urban setting where there is a great need for employment. As more and more jobs are lost to automation and outsourcing, these smaller companies are making a difference and creating hope in cities across the U.S.
Read more about this current development here: Small Factories Emerge as a Weapon in the Fight Against Poverty. Maybe there truly is a light at the end of the tunnel for those seeking skilled work in urban settings and for the crisis of unemployment in our country.
After dismal 2015 customer service reviews with only 16% of stores nationwide meeting their goals in this area, Wal-Mart decide to try an almost unheard of idea in the arena of large discount stores. In early 2016, they increased employee wages across the board and began offering more focused training and streamlined schedules for hourly workers. This new investment has already shown promise in both company loyalty and customer reviews. The profit landscape is still not as sunny, but that’s another story. One where Amazon and Target play key antagonists. For now, have a look around your local Wal-Mart store and see if the good cheer, cleaner restrooms and well stocked shelves have reached your neck of the woods.
The statistics show that many more older men are married than older women. Although there is the fact of womens vs. mens longevity, but Paula Span for the New York Times felt this could not be the only reason. What she found was that women, both widowed and divorced were better able to navigate the single life. With already supportive groups of friends, events, book clubs and volunteer jobs, women’s networks helped them blossom. Read more about her fascinating and somewhat familiar findings here, The Gray Gender Gap: Older Women Are Likelier to Go It Alone.