Blog categorized as Weekly Blog

In 2000, actors Helen Hunt and Kevin Spacey starred in “Pay It Forward.” The premise of the film is that a person repays a favor by offering small acts of kindness to more people. This concept of paying it forward leads to an exponential movement of goodwill.

Social Security works a bit like that. In...

Research has found that over a 150-year period (1870 to 2015), owning a home has proved to be one of the most stable and secure holdings compared to other types of investments. While offering the added benefits of providing shelter and leaving it as a legacy, residential property is generally viewed...

Consumer prices fell by 0.8% on a seasonally adjusted basis in April, the biggest drop in more than a dozen years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Conversely, prices for grocery items jumped 2.6%, the highest one-month increase in 46 years, with eggs rising by 16%.1

What’s going on here? Wel...

In April alone, the U.S. lost more than 20 million jobs — increasing the unemployment rate to 14.7%. Researchers say one of the demographics hit hardest during the pandemic is women workers. Women tend to hold a disproportionate number of jobs in industries such as hospitality, health care and educa...

In normal times, the stock market is often a reflection of the economy. But these are not normal times. Even though April was marked by a global shutdown of businesses, rampant unemployment and low economic growth, the S&P 500 Index ended the month up 12.9%. This represented the highest one-mont...

Sole proprietors in the U.S. caught a huge break in April. The Paycheck Protection Program, borne out of the economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, became available to solo entrepreneurs and independent contractors on April 10, 2020.1

According to a 2017 survey, 36% of U.S. workers are pa...

In past recessions, industries like manufacturing and construction were often the hardest hit. For example, some economists referred to the Great Recession as a “man-cession” because at the outset, more men lost jobs than women. In some households, wives were able to find employment more often than ...

A recent survey by the National Endowment for Financial Education found that almost 90% of Americans were feeling anxious about their money situation.1

• ​39% were worried about job security
• ​48% worried about paying bills
• 28% didn’t know if they could pay their utilities
• ​41% were worried about not havin...

The research firm Spectrem Group estimated that at the end of 2019 there were 11 million millionaires in the U.S. By the end of the first quarter in 2020, that number had dropped by at least half a million. Clearly, the recent stock market woes have taken a toll on everyone, not just the working cla...

On March 27, 2020, President Donald Trump signed into law the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, a historic $2 trillion stimulus package designed to provide economic relief to Americans affected by the coronavirus pandemic, which by now includes every single person in the co...