Zoey Chong wrote on CNET: “iPhone users in the US are spending more and more on apps and in-app purchases. Spending climbed to an average of $40 per person last year, according to research released Monday by Sensor Tower. This is up from $35 in 2015. Gaming continued to lead the way, accounting for more than 80 percent of Apple App Store revenue in the US. Spending in that category increased from $25 on average per person in 2015 to $27 last year. This may not be the biggest surprise, given that 2016 witnessed the rise of Pokemon Go, which crossed $1 billion in revenue worldwide last month.” (cnet.com)
Health Officials Recommend Not Sleeping Near Your Phone
California’s Department of Public Health has released a draft document outlining health officials’ concerns about cellphone radiation exposure. The document, Cell Phones and Health, are summaries of scientific studies that suggest long-term cellphone use may increase the risk of brain cancer, among other health problems. CBS San Francisco reported:
The draft fact sheet states that radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs), a type of radiation, are emitted from cellphones and that because they are “used frequently and kept close to the head and body, cellphone EMFs can affect nearby cells and tissues.” Health officials’ overall recommendation is to “increase the distance between you and your phone” by using a headset, the speaker phone function and text messaging. Health officials recommend not sleeping near your phone and not carry it in your pocket or directly on your body, unless it is off. The fact sheet also states that “EMFs can pass deeper into a child’s brain than and adult’s” so suggests parents limit their child’s cellphone use to texting, important call and emergencies.
Husband’s Viral Photo Diary Of Going To IKEA With His Wife
This Husband’s viral photo diary about the shopping trip to IKEA is pretty familiar to all couples. The massive layout to showcase ready-to-assemble furniture is confusing and painful for those who hate shopping. Husbands follows their wives to shopping mall sometimes feel as useless as the “g” in lasagna.
This husband apparently hates shopping for furniture and had a full blown existential crisis while visiting IKEA with his wife. The viral photos have received several million views. Enjoy the photo dairy adventure around IKEA!
“We are here. Our apartment is furnished. I am not sure why we are returning.”
It’s Getting a Lot More Expensive for Smokers in Australia
Just quit smoking to save money. That’s the message Australia wants smokers to know. It’s not easy being a smoker as the country plans to keep increasing taxes until a packet of cigarettes costs AUD$40. To minimize the number of smokers in the country, Australia was the first country in the world to introduce mandatory plain packaging for tobacco products as reported on BBC.
“Now, smoking is prohibited within 10m (33ft) of a playground, within 4m (13ft) of the entrance to a public building, at rail platforms, taxi ranks and bus stops,” said Mark Driver, Sydney’s Park and Recreation Planner. Those are the rules in New South Wales, but they are mirrored in many other states. Smoking is banned on many beaches, and most Australian states have now banned cigarettes in jail. All states ban smoking in vehicles if children are present. Fines vary, but in some places you may be fined AUD$2,000 (USD$1,515) if you smoke in the wrong place. And even if you don’t, you’ll be paying more than that each year by 2020, if you smoke just one AUD$40 pack a week… These days, smoking is often taken up by people who are on the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder, Simone Dennis, an associate professor at Australian National University, points out, “and that adds a burden of shame to people who might already be marginalised.” If it’s the poor who are now the most likely to smoke, it’s hard to see how they will ever afford the AUD$40 (USD$30) pack of cigarettes.
(bbc.com)
Scraping by on Six Figures? Tech Workers Feel Poor in Silicon Valley’s Wealth Bubble
Even with six-figure income, tech workers in Silicon Valley still feel poor. I didn’t become a software engineer to be trying to make ends meet,” said a Twitter employee in his early 40s who earns a base salary of $160,000. It is, he added, a “pretty bad” income for raising a family in the Bay Area. The Guardian reported: “Silicon Valley’s latest tech boom, combined with a housing shortage, has caused rents to soar over the last five years. The city’s rents, by one measure, are now the highest in the world. The prohibitive costs have displaced teachers, city workers, firefighters and other members of the middle class, not to mention low-income residents. Now techies, many of whom are among the highest 1% of earners, are complaining that they, too, are being priced out.”
‘The American dream is not working out here’
“We make over $1m between us, but we can’t afford a house,” said a woman in her 50s who works in digital marketing for a major telecoms corporation, while her partner works as an engineer at a digital media company. “This is part of where the American dream is not working out here.” (theguardian.com)
Tesla Offers Lifetime Insurance and Maintenance to Customers
Tesla is so sure its cars are safe that it now offers insurance for life. By offering lifetime insurance, it incentives Tesla to make their cars as safe as possible. From a Mashable report:
In the self-driving future envisioned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, car owners might be saying “goodbye” to a whole lot more than steering wheels. Musk is so sure of the safety features bundled into Tesla vehicles that his company has begun offering some customers a lifetime insurance and maintenance package at the time of purchase. No more monthly insurance bills. No more unexpected repair costs. “We’ve been doing it quietly,” Tesla President of Global Sales and Service Jonathan McNeill explained on the call, “but in Asia in particular where we started this, now the majority of Tesla cars are sold with an insurance product that is customized to Tesla, that takes into account not only the Autopilot safety features but also the maintenance costs of the car.” “It’s our vision in the future that we’ll be able to offer a single price for the car, maintenance and insurance in a really compelling offering for the consumer,” added McNeill. “And we’re currently doing that today.”
How Does Tesla Maintenance Plan Work?
Maintenance Plans are agreements for multiple annual service inspections paid in advance. Tesla owners are eligible to purchase a maintenance plan. You can choose to not purchase a Tesla maintenance plan and, instead, pay for your individual annual service inspections upon each scheduled service. Tesla maintenance plans are simply prepaying at a discounted rate for your annual service inspections.
When you sell your Tesla vehicle, you can transfer the unused portion of your Tesla maintenance plan to the new owner when the vehicle ownership transfer is processed through Tesla. Of course, you can request to cancel your maintenance plan at any time and receive a refund for the remaining unused annual service inspection intervals.
You’d be a Millionaire Today if You’d Invested $1,000 in These 3 Stocks
Howard Silverblatt of Standard and Poor, using data through the end of 2016, calculated that if you’d invested $1,000 in these 3 stocks in the 1980s, you’d be a millionaire today. That calculation is as follow:
- If you put $1,000 in Apple in 1980, you would have $228,113
- If you put $1,000 in Microsoft in 1987, you would have $546,996
- If you put $1,000 in M&T in 1980, you would have $640,948
By only invested $3,000, you would have accumulated a grand total of $1,485,853. So, what are 3 stocks to invest $1000 in nowadays that will earn you a million dollars when you retire? Don’t bother. No one can predict the future stock market’s performance. Your best bet to retire as a millionaire is to save early and consistently throughout your career while investing in low-cost mutual funds. You can learn these five habits of the millionaires today.
FIRECalc, a Must-Use Tool for Retirement Planning
When you retire you want your money to last. FIRECalc help you to answer this important question by simulating your portfolio in different market scenarios to see whether your financial plan is robust enough or not. First you need to tell FIRECalc how much you have, and how much you’ll be taking out each year. Then FIRECalc will show you how such a combination would have fared for the duration of your retirement. FIRECalc lets you play with different scenario using Monte Carlo analysis that utilizes historical investment returns back to 1871 to calculate the probability behind your investment returns.
You can also input pension, social security, asset allocation and other relevant data to fine tune the calculation. FIRECalc also allows you to add different assumptions depending on your unique circumstances beyond the three key factors: retirement spending, retirement nest egg, and, spending horizon. Even if you are young, you can still use FIRECalc to get a ballpark figure to plan out your early retirement. Once your success rate is close to 100% then you have a much better picture in your retirement planning. As Jonathan Clements in The Wall Street Journal put it, FIRECalc “analyzes what would have happened if you retired in 1871, in 1872, in 1873 and so on. It then calculates how often your strategy would have panned out historically.”
FIRECalc uses historical, not random data. Even though the historical data is certain not to repeat, but serves as an useful proxy as part of a Monte Carlo calculation.
Donald Trump’s Five Points for Replacing Obamacare
President Donald Trump just delivered a nationally-televised speech to a joint session of Congress. Trump said the Affordable Care Act passed under President Obama “is collapsing –- and we must act decisively to protect all Americans.” He has presented five points for replacing Obamacare:
- “First, we should ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions have access to coverage, and that we have a stable transition for Americans currently enrolled in the healthcare exchanges.”
- “Secondly, we should help Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use of tax credits and expanded Health Savings Accounts –- but it must be the plan they want, not the plan forced on them by the Government.”
- “Thirdly, we should give our great State Governors the resources and flexibility they need with Medicaid to make sure no one is left out.”
- “Fourth, we should implement legal reforms that protect patients and doctors from unnecessary costs that drive up the price of insurance – and work to bring down the artificially high price of drugs and bring them down immediately.”
- “Finally, the time has come to give Americans the freedom to purchase health insurance across State lines –- creating a truly competitive national marketplace that will bring cost way down and provide far better care.”
How UPS Eliminates Left Turns to Save Millions of Dollars
Gadgets 360 reported: “UPS, the world’s largest shipping and package delivery service, has trucks deployed all over the world, delivering as much as 15 million packages each day. And these UPS trucks apparently never take a left turn. In the US, and other countries where you drive on the right side of the road, right turns are free, but for a left turn you need to wait for a green light. The idea is simple – removing the turns means less idling at signals, and less fuel consumption, which makes it sound like an idea worth following… Turns out that UPS was right – the idea really paid off. In 2005, a year after it announced that it will minimize left turns, the company said that the total distance covered by its 96,000 trucks was reduced by 747,000 km, and 190,000 litres of fuel had been saved as the company had to deploy fewer trucks on the road to deliver its packages. In 2011, Bob Stoffel, a UPS Senior Vice President, told Fortune that the company had reduced distance traveled by trucks by 20.4 million miles, and reduced CO2 emissions by 20,000 metric tonnes, by not taking left turns. A recent report by The Independent says that the total reduction in distance traveled by UPS trucks now stands at 45.8 million miles, and there are 1,100 fewer trucks in its fleet because of the algorithm. Even by conservative estimates, that’s tens of millions of dollar of savings in fuel costs.”
Natalie Portman Goes Frugal With $65 Topshop Dress on the Red Carpet
Instead of showing off with expensive clothing brand, Natalie Portman opted for a bargained but fashionable Topshop dress that was on sale for only $65 at the Oscars Nominees Luncheon in Beverly Hills. Portman is nominated for best actress at the Oscars for her portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in Pablo Larrain’s “Jackie.” As one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Portman shows that dressing nice can be affordable.
Yay! Vanguard Lowers Expense Ratios Again to Save $143 Million for Investors
Vanguard cut fees again, marking the third time in three months, to save investors a cumulative $143 million in savings across 124 mutual fund and ETF shares. This reduction is a big win for investors like you and me. “While Vanguard is lowering — and will continue to lower — the cost of investing, the so-called fee war is essentially over on the beta battleground. Investors have won,” said Vanguard CEO Bill McNabb. “The demand for low-cost funds and ETFs, along with intense competition, have made investing far more affordable today than ever before,” added McNabb. “With the broad availability of low-cost options, investors – whether on their own or with the help of a financial advisor or employer – need to focus on the other factors that can lead to investing success, including saving more, developing a suitable asset allocation, using broadly diversified funds, and maintaining discipline through market ups and down.”
Americans Are Taking On a Lot More Debt
CNN reported: “Total household debt climbed to $12.58 trillion at the end of 2016, an increase of $266 billion from the third quarter, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. For the year, household debt ballooned by $460 billion — the largest increase in almost a decade. That means the debt loads of Americans are flirting with 2008 levels, when total consumer debt reached a record high of $12.68 trillion. Credit card debts rose by $32 billion to hit $779 billion.”(cnn.com)
Pickings are Slim for Millennials Ready to Buy a Home
Just as Americans buy homes at fastest pace in a decade, millennials are having a hard time trying to acquire their first homes. The Washington Post reported: “For years, millennials looked at owning a home as a distant fantasy. Student debt and a weak job market seemed to conspire to keep this generation stuck in their parents’ basements, if not permanently locked out of the housing market. But as millennials find better-paying jobs, start families and begin searching for their first homes, they’re encountering an unfortunate reality: Just as they’re finally ready to buy, the housing market has the fewest homes available for sale on record. And those that are for sale are increasingly priced at values inaccessible to first-time buyers. As a result, the housing market is booming for those with cash to spare — but not for millennials looking to own their first home.”
Teenager Won The Lottery at 17 and Now It’s Ruining Her Life
Many lottery winners squander their fortunes and eventually wind up unhappy and broke. Jane Park, who won the EuroMillions lottery in 2013 when she was 17 years old, is now blaming the lottery officials for ruining her life. The Washington Post reported: “Buying things for the sake of buying things got old. Instead of finding happiness via conspicuous consumption, Park uncovered an age-old maxim preached by holy men for thousands of years and ignored by enthusiastic lottery winners for almost as long: Money can’t buy happiness, and large amounts of it have a way of, well, complicating things.” Park blames the lotto bosses for “ruining her life.” “I thought it would make it 10 times better but it’s made it 10 times worse,” Park told the Sunday People. “I wish I had no money most days. I say to myself, ‘My life would be so much easier if I hadn’t won.’” After Park won the lottery, shopping became a huge problem for her. She went out and bought more than 50 designer handbags including a Louis Vuitton, a lot of shoes, and a purple Range Rover. Now she’s contemplating about suing lottery company for negligence. “People look at me and think, ‘I wish I had her lifestyle, I wish I had her money,’ she added. “But they don’t realize the extent of my stress. I have material things, but apart from that my life is empty. What is my purpose in life?” [Read more…]
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