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Avengers Endgame has biggest opening day ever 

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Avengers Endgame has biggest opening day ever 

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This article focuses on how much money Avengers Endgame has made for the weekend. The movie has made $300 million in just 3 days. It made $150 million on its first day.

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'avengers: endgame' has biggest opening day ever - cnn

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'Avengers: Endgame' has biggest opening day ever

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"Avengers: Endgame" made $156.7 million at the domestic box office for its opening day on Friday. That makes it the biggest opening day in history.

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Hulu subscriber base grows to 28 billion 

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Hulu subscriber base grows to 28 billion 

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This article explains how much money Hulu is making and how many subscribers they have gained in the last year. Hulu is still far behind Netflix though because Hulu has ads and Netflix doesn't.

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hulu subscriber base grows to 28 million - cnn

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Hulu subscriber base grows to 28 million

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Hulu said on Wednesday that it now has 26.8 million paid subscribers on its service, with an additional 1.3 million who use promotional accounts.

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This article explains that you should preserve your credit as insurance. The line of credit could also be used to support in-home care or other health expanses to avoid institutional living.

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The final use for a reverse mortgage is to preserve the line of credit as an insurance policy against a variety of retirement risks. Preserving credit as insurance involves setting up a HECM reverse mortgage as early as possible and then leaving it unused until needed. The up-front costs for the reverse mortgage could be treated as an insurance premium that may never need to be used if everything else goes well in retirement. However, a variety of potential pitfalls face retirees, and implementing a reverse mortgage earlier in retirement could support a sizeable pool of contingency assets.

I have already discussed one aspect of this insurance protection in which a line of credit is opened and then used to support retirement spending only in the event of portfolio depletion. In this regard, the insurance provided by the HECM is against market losses that risk the ability to meet retirement-portfolio distribution goals. This was one of six strategies to coordinate portfolio spending with home equity. In this edition of the book, the slower growth of the line of credit reduces the strategy's competitiveness with other coordinated strategies, but it does remain as a viable option.

Another aspect of the insurance that could be provided by a HECM line of credit is to treat it as a large contingency fund to help meet unplanned expenses. For example, a reverse mortgage could help as part of a divorce settlement. In this scenario, the reverse mortgage could allow one ex-spouse to stay in the home, with the reverse mortgage used to pay a necessary portion of the home's equity to the other ex-spouse. Alternatively, the home could be sold with the proceeds split, and then each of the ex-spouses could use his or her half of the home equity with a HECM for Purchase to obtain a home of similar value to the original. The line of credit could also be used to support in-home care or other health expenses to avoid or delay institutional living in the face of long-term care needs.

The focus of this article is a final insurance aspect that requires a bit more explanation: using the HECM as a way to protect the value of your home. With the current HECM rules, those living in their homes long enough could reap a windfall when the line of credit exceeds the home's value. This potential windfall is amplified by today's low interest rates. Even if the value of the home declines, the line of credit will continue to grow without regard for the home's subsequent value. Though this strategy remains, I will explain how the updated rules from October 2017 have dramatically reduced the likelihood for this strategy to create benefits for newly issued loans.

Combining the principal limit with the fact that a HECM is a nonrecourse loan means that the HECM provides a valuable hedging property for home prices. What is the specific probability that the value of a standby line of credit will grow to exceed the home value? I have sought to answer this by simulating future home prices and future one-month LIBOR rates that will guide the growth of the line of credit. With each of these values projected over time, we can determine how frequently a line of credit may exceed the value of the home across a large number of simulated futures.

For this example, I assume the borrowers are sixty-two years old, the ten-year LIBOR swap rate is 2.25 percent, the current one-month LIBOR rate is 1.25 percent, the lender's margin is 2.25 percent, and up-front costs will be financed from the investment portfolio. This combination results in an expected rate of 4.5 percent and a principal limit factor of 43.9 percent.

The initial effective rate is 4 percent (1.25 percent LIBOR, 2.25 percent lender's margin, and 0.5 percent mortgage-insurance premium). If interest rates never rose, it would take far too long for a 1 percent spread in the growth rate (4 percent less 3 percent for an assumed home-value growth rate) to allow the line of credit, which is initially 43.9 percent of the home value, to grow and surpass the home value. But if we forecast one-month LIBOR rates to gradually increase in the future, the increased variable rates for the HECM line of credit improve the odds for the principal limit to eventually exceed a randomly fluctuating home price.

Exhibit 1.1 shows the probabilities by age ninety-two that the HECM line of credit has grown to exceed the home's value for a sixty-two-year-old borrower. With these simulations, there is a 50 percent chance of this and the potential to obtain a windfall from the line of credit, since it represents a nonrecourse loan. This serves as protection, especially when the value of the home declines during retirement.

For the applicable rules for loans issued before October 2017, I previously reported that this median break-even age was eighty-one, so the new rules have increased the age by eleven years-reducing the odds that retirees will benefit from the strategy. When considered with the increased up-front costs for reverse mortgages triggered by the new rules, I do not expect many retirees to open reverse mortgages now with a primary intention of treating the HECM as a protection on the value of their home.
Exhibit 1.1: Probability that HECM Principal Limit Exceeds the Home Value for a 62-Year-Old
A few caveats of this strategy to hedge home prices with the HECM are worth discussing. First, these probabilities may actually be underestimated, because any given home may experience more price volatility than the overall Case-Shiller index for home prices. David Blanchett has estimated the volatility of individual homes at double the level of overall home price indices used in these simulations. Individual homes are at more risk of experiencing substantial price declines relative to the index, creating more opportunity for the hedging value to be realized. The line of credit becomes valuable in cases when the home price falls. In financial language, it is essentially a "put option" on the value of the home. The line of credit can provide a positive net payment when the home value declines.

Second, there is an important aspect of timing the decision about when to access the line of credit. The longer you wait, the greater the potential growth for the pot of funds that can be obtained. Generally, the principal limit, loan balance, and line of credit grow at the same rate. But for any loan balance, the growth reflects the growing interest and mortgage premiums due rather than growing access to new funds. Waiting is advantageous, but if you wait too long and suddenly die, it's too late and the line of credit is no longer available. Estates and nonborrowing spouses cannot take advantage of the windfall after the sudden death of the borrower. It is best not to become too greedy once a windfall has developed from the nonrecourse aspects of the HECM program.

Finally, to be clear, this use of a HECM line of credit as home-value protection can be considered a "loophole" in the current program. Opening a reverse mortgage and then not using it works against the interests of some lenders and the government's mortgage-insurance fund. The lender is not able to charge interest, which could create real difficulties for lenders that have reduced up-front costs by providing a higher margin and have paid a commission to the loan originator. Also, the mortgage-insurance fund is unable to collect further premiums to support coverage of any shortfall to the lender when the borrower gets more out of the home than it is worth. This surely explains part of the justification for the government to close a large portion of this "loophole" for new loans issued since October 2017.

With this approach, borrowers may also be encouraged in subtle ways to let the value of their home decline so that they can make a smaller repayment. Thus, while this option is available today-and I could say that it is even encouraged with the heightened government efforts to reduce the speed at which borrowers use up their lines of credit-I expect that the government will eventually work to further weaken or eliminate this hedging opportunity.

As new businesses are increasingly able to offer real-time estimates of home value, one possibility for future borrowers is that the borrowing capacity will be capped at the appraised home value. Another possibility is that the government could begin to charge the mortgage-insurance premium on the value of the principal limit rather than on the loan balance. This would vastly increase the cost of the insurance strategy, possibly overturning its value completely. However, for the time being, these insurance opportunities exist within the current HECM program.
This is an excerpt from Wade Pfau's book, Reverse Mortgages: How to Use Reverse Mortgages to Secure Your Retirement (The Retirement Researcher's Guide Series), available now on Amazon

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Preserve Credit As An 'Insurance' Policy

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The final use for a reverse mortgage is to preserve the line of credit as an insurance policy against a variety of retirement risks. Preserving credit as insurance involves setting up a HECM reverse mortgage as early as possible and then leaving it unused until needed.

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Working longer in America:Prospects and problems 

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Working longer in America:Prospects and problems 

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This article focuses on how older people are still working when they should be retired. It is also hard for older people to find jobs though because employers think people over 45 aren't creative, etc.

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Working into your 60s and perhaps 70s is one way to offset a lack of retirement savings and to remain engaged. But how possible is it really?

"More and more of us want, and need, to be working longer than we can," said Ruth Finkelstein, director of the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College at a recent New York City panel she convened on the subject. The three panelists at Working Longer: Prospects and Problems were, as Finkelstein described them, "embedded reporters covering different battles on the front of aging and working."

As you'll see below in my recap , two of the journalists were pretty upbeat, for a variety of reasons. The third took a far gloomier view. As it turns out, all three are correct, because the reality for older workers today is a mixed bag.
Also on Forbes: Working Longer: 2 Optimists and a Pessimist
Chris Farrell and Carol Hymowitz were the optimists, and talked about two trends: older entrepreneurs and employers hiring and retaining older workers. Farrell is a Next Avenue blogger on work, entrepreneurship and unretirement, author of Purpose and a Paycheck and senior economics contributor at American Public Media's Marketplace radio programs. Hymowitz writes about older workers for Next Avenue, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek; she's also a fellow at Stanford Longevity Center.

The pessimist, who talked about his articles on age discrimination by employers: Peter Gosselin, a 2018 Next Avenue Influencer in Aging, senior fellow at the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging and contributing reporter with ProPublica. Last year, Gosselin co-wrote the ProPublica expose about how IBM has cut thousands of its older workers: " Cutting 'Old Heads' at IBM."
Older Worker Stereotypes and the Entrepreneurship Boom
Farrell made a convincing case, based on research, that common stereotypes about older workers are more myth than reality. "Stereotypes like people aren't creative past 45 and they're not productive as they get older," Farrell said. "The evidence shows this is wrong."

Farrell pointed to the growth in entrepreneurship among older Americans. "In 2017, 26% of new business formation was by people age 55 to 64. That's up from 15% in 1997," he said.

The internet and falling technology costs are making it easier to launch a business in midlife, said Farrell. "So now, with most of these businesses, the owners are not touching their 401(k) or 403(b) retirement plans. That makes starting a business less risky for their retirement," he noted.

Farrell maintained that "there is a fundamental shift going on" in America. "The leading edge of this change is entrepreneurship, and a lot of it is solo entrepreneurship," he said. "That's creative: You have to solve a problem and you do it by building on your experience and knowledge."

One irony of age discrimination Farrell mentioned: Often, these days, older workers who are shown the door by their employers due to their age end up starting businesses and then selling services right back to the companies where they'd worked.

He said he'd like to see more cities and towns inviting people 50-plus to start companies there. "Be inclusive. I think it would make a big difference," said Farrell.
How Some Employers Are Enticing Workers to Stay
Hymowitz lately has been reporting on the somewhat surprising trend she sees of certain companies and fields changing policies to better suit older workers' preferences and needs.

"My hypothesis is that more companies are slowly trying to retain and hire older workers age 55-plus and 60-plus," she said. 'I was skeptical at first. But I kept digging and the story started emerging. In manufacturing, health care, transportation, energy and - most surprising of all - Hollywood, I found companies now want older people due to the labor shortage. They need them."

She cited a survey led by North Carolina State professor Robert Clark and the Willis Towers Watson risk management firm that found 44% of companies said they were having difficulty finding workers with the same knowledge and skills as retirees.

What's happening, Hymowitz noted, is that some employers are looking for ways to keep older employees who want to work part-time rather than full-time "and stay on as long as they can be productive."

Hymowitz has been publishing pieces with examples of exactly that lately. See her Bloomberg Businessweek story " Managing Baby Boomer Retirement When You're Not Allowed to Ask" and her Next Avenue piece, " Hooray for Hollywood: The Age Stigma Is Fading."

At the panel, Hymowitz gave the example of industrial equipment maker Ingersoll Rand. "A third of their 55,000 employees are 50 and older. The company looked at its numbers and said 'What are we going to do? We can't afford to lose so many of them all at once.'"

Now, the company asks its workers in their 50s and 60s to collaborate with managers about their retirement plans so they can together come up with part-time solutions.

In health care, what started as a nursing shortage has spread across job categories, Hymowitz said. Now, she noted, many health care firms are letting older workers switch to flexible schedules, sometimes partnering with younger employees in multigenerational teams. "What a lot of health companies did with nurses has now spread to their technical, office and service workers," said Hymowitz.

Then there's La La Land.

"Hollywood is not exactly an industry you would expect to be eliciting older workers. But what's changed is that streaming has been a complete disruption, changing the amount of films being made dramatically," said Hymowitz. "So Hollywood is desperate for talent and is hiring people behind the scenes who hadn't been able to find jobs for five or 10 years. I talked to one 74-year-oild screenwriter who was well known in the '80s but had a dry spell after age 60. Now he's working on [the Amazon police series] Bosch."

But, Hymowitz noted, this trend is hardly universal among employers. "Look at tech and finance," she said. "They tend to be youth-centric. You won't find many 60-plus employees there."
The Twin Scourges of Age Discrimination and Layoffs
Gosselin then took the discussion in another direction. "You've heard a great deal of optimism. Now, we're going to fall off a cliff," he said.

Since the 1990s, Gosselin said, Supreme Court decisions on age discrimination "have made it all but impossible" to meet the standard to win a case. "It now has to be no other fact but age" that led someone to lose a job, he noted. "That's a pretty high bar."

According to Gosselin, the age discrimination laws "have been gutted."

In his IBM research, Gosselin said, the company created spreadsheets that meant employees who had been at the firm a short time were more protected from layoffs than long-time workers.

And in a recent study he did with the Urban Institute's Richard Johnson, Gosselin found that more than half of workers 50 and older get laid off or pushed out of their career positions on their way to retirement. Few of them ever earn what they did before their setbacks.

"When you combine older people who have had involuntary job separations with those forced out due to problems with their health or the health of someone in their family, two-thirds will retire involuntarily,' said Gosselin. "That is not the 'golden years' story we are told."

Gosselin then said "we need changes in the [age discrimination] law" because "it's a basic fairness issue."

He added: "Age discrimination is wasteful, wrong and it's got to stop."

The evening ended with the panelists' addressing the question: Do older workers need to work or want to work?

Said Farrell, "The answer for most people is: Both."

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Working Longer In America: Prospects And Problems

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Working into your 60s and perhaps 70s is one way to offset a lack of retirement savings and to remain engaged. But how possible is it really? "More and more of us want, and need, to be working longer than we can," said Ruth Finkelstein, director of the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College at a recent New York City panel she convened on the subject.

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Netflix price hikes arrive for all US subscribers in May: What to know

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Netflix price hikes arrive for all US subscribers in May: What to know

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This article focuses on how Netflix monthly fees have went up. Netflix states that their prices will go up because they improve more and more on this app.

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Netflix's latest price hike kicks in for all U.S. customers this month as the streaming giant looks to offset the cost of its massive investments in original content.

The price increases were first announced in January and have rolled out gradually in recent months, with all U.S. subscribers affected by the start of the May billing cycle. The hike is the largest in Netflix's history and the fourth price increase overall.

The cost of Netflix's premium plan, which provides access to four Ultra HD streams, rose to $15.99 from $13.99. The standard plan, which provides two HD streams, increased to $12.99 from $10.99, and the basic plan increased to $8.99 from $7.99.

"We change pricing from time to time as we continue investing in great entertainment and improving the overall Netflix experience," the company said in a statement.

Netflix is expected to spend $15 billion on original content alone in 2019 as it looks to lure subscribers amid a growing field of streaming rivals that includes Amazon and Disney. The company had nearly 149 million paid global subscribers as of April, including more than 60 million in the U.S.

Netflix's rate of U.S. subscriber growth slowed in the first quarter. However, the company said in a shareholder letter than it doesn't expect new streaming services to have a major impact on its business.
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"We don't anticipate that these new entrants will materially affect our growth because the transition from linear to on demand entertainment is so massive and because of the differing nature of our content offerings," the company said in a statement. "We believe there is vast demand for watching great TV and movies and Netflix only satisfies a small portion of that demand."

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Netflix price hikes arrive for all US subscribers in May: What to know

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Netflix's latest price hike kicks in for all U.S. customers this month as the streaming giant looks to offset the cost of its massive investments in original content. The price increases were first announced in January and have rolled out gradually in recent months, with all U.S.

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Subway quietly closed more than 1,000 locations in 2018 

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Subway quietly closed more than 1,000 locations in 2018 

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This articles focuses on how many subways have closed in the past years and how it's in a lot of financial trouble.

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Fast food franchise Subway revealed it closed more than double the number of restaurants in 2018 than it previously forecasted, bringing its total to more than 2,300 over the last three years.

The sandwich chain revealed its closures in a regulatory filing on Monday, according to the NY Post, that cited 1,108 restaurants closed in the U.S. last year.

Subway previously forecasted that it planned to close around 500 locations as part an "aggressive" revitalization plan.

Since 2016, the 53-year-old chain has closed 2,331 locations with nearly half of them shuttering last year. In 2017, it had 866 net closures compared to 357 the year prior.

As previously reported by FOX Business in December, in New York City alone, Subway had the single biggest drop in locations at 103 locations last year. The total number of restaurants in the state has dropped to 1,016 from 1,222 since 2016.

For years, Subway has struggled with declining same-store sales and ineffective advertising.

Last June, the chain reportedly hired an outside consulting firm to help it get back on its feet and possibly position itself for a future sale.

While it would not confirm the report, a Subway spokesperson did say that shareholders have expressed their intentions to employees that they are investing in the company and have no intention of selling.
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Last year, a spokesperson told FOX Business that over the next decade, it "anticipates having a slightly smaller, but more profitable footprint in North America and a significantly larger footprint in the rest of the world."

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Subway quietly closed more than 1,000 locations in 2018

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Fast food franchise Subway revealed it closed more than double the number of restaurants in 2018 than it previously forecasted, bringing its total to more than 2,300 over the last three years. The sandwich chain revealed its closures in a regulatory filing on Monday, according to the NY Post, that cited 1,108 restaurants closed in the U.S.

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Gas prices near $3 in these states as US average hits 2019 high

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Gas prices near $3 in these states as US average hits 2019 high

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This article focuses on how high gas is in 2019. It states that gas will surpass $3. California gas prices have already hit $4.
Should gas be this high?

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Gas prices across the country are ticking upward, as the national average hovers at its highest level so far this year.

The national average as of Wednesday was $2.88 per gallon, according to AAA, about four cents higher than last week and up about 63 cents since the beginning of the year.

In terms of the drain on drivers' wallets, a worker making median income would have to work 22 percent more to buy one gallon of gas when compared with the beginning of the year.

And by the upcoming U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend, analysts at AAA expect the national average will surpass $3 per gallon.

As previously reported by FOX Business, a number of seasonal factors were expected to push prices higher this spring, with analysts expecting a peak near $3 per gallon before prices cooled off. However, the Trump administration will end waivers granted to certain countries allowing them to import oil from Iran this week, which could constrain the global oil supply and push U.S. gas prices up even further.
While prices in California have already crossed the $4 per gallon mark, thanks to refinery outages, here are the other states where prices are at or near $3 per gallon, according to AAA:
Hawaii: $3.63 per gallon

Washington: $3.51 per gallon

Nevada: $3.45 per gallon

Oregon: $3.40 per gallon

Alaska: $3.39 per gallon

Arizona: $3.13 per gallon

Idaho: $3.06 per gallon

Pennsylvania: $3.05 per gallon

Utah: $3.04 per gallon
Getting close...
Connecticut: $2.99 per gallon

Illinois: $2.98 per gallon

New York: $2.96 per gallon

New Jersey: $2.93 per gallon
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Gas prices near $3 in these states as US average hits 2019 high

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Gas prices across the country are ticking upward, as the national average hovers at its highest level so far this year. The national average as of Wednesday was $2.88 per gallon, according to AAA, about four cents higher than last week and up about 63 cents since the beginning of the year.

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Military financial literacy improving but it needs to start sooner 

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Military financial literacy improving but it needs to start sooner 

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This article explains how Congress passed a law that requires the Department of Defense have to provide financial literacy to all members of the U.S armed forces.
Imagine if all veterans had this knowledge of financial literacy so they don't end up homeless after they finish with the armed forces.

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As Financial Literacy month comes to a close in April, now is the time to think bigger about improving the financial readiness of our service members.

Financial education is a required part of military training, but military families are twice as likely as civilians to have difficulty making ends meet. At the same time, over nine in ten service members, veterans and their families carry debt, while 38 percent of troops have less than $2,000 saved for an emergency.

In 2016, in response to chronic financial problems plaguing military personnel, Congress passed a law requiring the Department of Defense to provide comprehensive financial literacy training to all members of the U.S. armed forces. Since then, the situation has improved. A 2018 Defense Department study found that 83 percent of service members said their financial situation was better than it was a year earlier.

But while this program is a step in the right direction, it's far too early to declare victory. About 200,000 new recruits enter the military every year, a large percentage without a solid understanding of how to make major purchases, invest in their education or retirements or manage their credit scores. Nearly two-thirds of military families still say they have experienced stress due to their current financial situation.

In my 30-year military career, I have personally seen the impact a lack of financial literacy has had on troops I have counseled. In one instance, I found that a number of men and women in my platoon were trying to limit their consumption by taking small amounts from the ATM machine - in upwards of 20 withdrawals per month - without understanding the implication of the ATM fees.

In another, I found that despite a Savings Deposit Program that allows deployed service members to earn a guaranteed 10 percent return on up to $10,000 during a deployment, only about 10 percent of my battalion enrolled. They simply didn't grasp the value of compounding interest - or the urgency of choosing savings over consumption.

The blunt truth is that if we want military financial readiness programs to be most effective, we need to start earlier. We need to start implementing standard, mandatory financial literacy programs in high schools across the country.

High schools doing 'little or nothing'

Many, if not most, of enlisted service members are being recruited immediately out of high school or soon after. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, around 40 percent of active duty enlisted Army, Marine and Navy troops in 2018 are age 24 or younger; 84 percent of Marine recruits are age 20 or younger.

But according to the National Financial Educators Council, high schools are doing "little or nothing to prepare students to deal with their finances, setting them up for academic success and financial failure." A recent EverFi survey of over 100,000 incoming college students across the country found that most could not answer basic financial literacy questions, and on average answered only two of six questions correctly. More than half said they had never taken a personal finance course.

This lack of financial knowledge is exacerbated by the financial challenges facing today's service members and their families. Debt is a common problem, a combination of a lack of financial literacy, easy access to credit products and predatory practices - lenders and scammers targeting military members because of their steady income and government jobs.

The most effective educational programs include regular and consistent emphasis on the importance of taking early action. For example, if a first lieutenant puts $10,000 in an investment account expected to earn 7 percent annually, in 40 years this account would be worth $160,000. If she adds $5,000 to her savings each year, she will have over $1.7 million after 45 years.

Financial literacy programs in high schools do work. For the 2018-2019 school year, PenFed teamed up with educational software company EverFi to provide high schools in Puerto Rico with courses in personal finance. After the course, students increased their scores on assessment tests by an average of 93 percent.

If we are teaching the fundamentals of personal finance as early as high school, courses service members take when they enter the military will be refreshers, not new knowledge they have to process alongside a mountain of job-related information.
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We owe all military members - and young people - the tools to make informed decisions about the impacts of their actions on their current and future lives. We need to make mandatory high school literacy programs a priority at the national and local levels. Early and consistent education is the key to instilling financial practices that help service members stay out of debt and achieve their financial and lifestyle goals.
Jamie Gayton is the executive vice president of member operations at PenFed Credit Union. After leading teams in the U.S. military for 30 years with combat deployments to Iraq for Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2005-2006, he joined PenFed in 2017. He earned degrees from West Point (B.S.), MIT Sloan (MBA) and Pardee RAND (Ph.D.). He previously taught economics at West Point and culminated his military career by teaching economics at the National Defense University's Eisenhower School from 2015 to 2017.

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Military financial literacy improving, but it needs to start sooner

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As Financial Literacy month comes to a close in April, now is the time to think bigger about improving the financial readiness of our service members. Financial education is a required part of military training, but military families are twice as likely as civilians to have difficulty making ends meet.

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White house asks for $4.5 billion in emergency funds for border 

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White house asks for $4.5 billion in emergency funds for border 

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This articles explains how the white hose wants $5.4 billion for the border wall. The money isn't for building more miles on the wall but for situations along the border.
Would this fund affect us taxpayers?

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white house asks for $4.5 billion in emergency funds for border - cnnpolitics

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White House asks for $4.5 billion in emergency funds for border

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The White House is asking Congress for $4.5 billion in emergency funding as it confronts an influx of migrants on the southern border, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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Airpods alternative headphones that cost far less than you'd expect

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Airpods alternative headphones that cost far less than you'd expect

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This article focuses on how Apple airpods are very useful and work good but are so pricey. There are alternatives to the airpods but they are not the name brand Apple. These alternatives are way cheaper though.
Imagine if everyone went with the alternative airpods and Apple lost a lot of money.

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Don't get us wrong, we absolutely love our AirPods. They're compact, have a stellar battery life, can charge while you're on the move, offer great audio and microphone quality, have seamless Bluetooth integration with whatever device you're using, and have smart sensors that can turn your music on or off depending on your use. Because of all of these top-notch qualities, they're one of the most high-tech wireless Bluetooth headphone options you can shop right now.

The problem? The price point. Currently, AirPods cost just a hair over $159. And many of us, while we want some of the best everyday Bluetooth headphones money can buy, don't just have that kind of spare cash lying around for a premium pair.

For those who fall into that bucket, know that there are a number of fairly comparable alternatives to Apple's AirPods that won't break the bank. Some (which you can shop below) are even under $40. When we compiled these truly wireless options, the biggest aspects we looked for were price, how similar the functionality was between these buds and their more premium counterparts, and overall customer satisfaction ratings. The result? These nine headphones that pack a punch, but on a serious budget.
Treblab X2 Bluetooth Earbuds ($59.99; Note: The prices above reflect the retailers' listed prices at the time of publication. store.cnn.com)

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AirPods alternative headphones that cost far less than you'd expect

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Don't get us wrong, we absolutely love our AirPods. They're compact, have a stellar battery life, can charge while you're on the move, offer great audio and microphone quality, have seamless Bluetooth integration with whatever device you're using, and have smart sensors that can turn your music on or off depending on your use.

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Insurance Issues to Consider in a Divorce 

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Insurance Issues to Consider in a Divorce 

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The article focused on how to prepare for a divorce because it is very costly and also how a families insurance coverage may change after a divorce.
Should a child's insurance change after their parents divorce?

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Divorce can be a complex and lengthy process with a variety of emotional, practical, and financial implications for both spouses, and any children that may be impacted. During such a stressful time, it can be easy to overlook basic items like the family's insurance coverage. Nevertheless, it's important to review all insurance policies to determine how your coverage may change once the divorce is final and, more importantly, how you can prepare.

The two primary types of insurance that typically come into play during a divorce are health insurance and life insurance.
Health Insurance
It's common for one spouse to be covered under the other, often higher-earning, spouse's employer-sponsored health plan. The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) was passed in 1986 to help non-income-earning spouses after divorce, allowing them to continue their coverage under their ex-spouse's employer plan for up to three years.

While COBRA can be a convenient bridge in coverage, it's typically not the most cost-effective solution for the spouse paying the premiums, which are typically the employer and the employee's share of the premium, plus up to 2% additional for administrative costs. Additionally, the three-year limit makes it a short-term solution at best. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, more affordable health insurance options may now be available for people who don't have access to their own employer-sponsored health plan, even if they have pre-existing conditions. These options are worth exploring before signing up for COBRA.
Life Insurance
Life insurance can be an important consideration in divorce, especially for anyone expecting to receive spousal support. Spousal support typically stops when the payor is deceased. However, unless the recipient of spousal support inherits other assets to replace the spousal support payments, the stream of payments can be sustained by a life insurance policy on the payor.

Sometimes life insurance is required as part of a divorce settlement. When this is the case, it's typically best for the recipient spouse to own the policy and make the required premium payments. This way, the recipient spouse retains control over the policy, ensuring that no changes are made or lapses in payment occur without his or her knowledge.

Finally, any life insurance needed should always be put in place before the divorce is final. If the payor spouse turns out to be uninsurable, appropriate modifications to the divorce agreement can still be made. In some states where one spouse has a term-life insurance policy and becomes uninsurable, the existing policy may be considered a marital asset.

Like any issue that comes up during divorce, determining how to handle changes in insurance policies and coverage may not always be as straightforward as they seem. It's important to be aware of all existing policies going into the divorce, as well as any new policies you may need as a result of the settlement. Since insurance can be a complicated topic with a variety of options, it may be helpful to seek the help of a licensed insurance professional or financial advisor to determine the best solutions.
To learn more, please contact my colleague Beth Mayfield, and stay tuned for our upcoming white paper on this topic.

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Insurance Issues To Consider In A Divorce

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Like any issue that comes up during divorce, determining how to handle changes in insurance may not always be as straightforward as they seem. It's important to be aware of all existing policies going into the divorce, as well as any new policies you may need as a result of the settlement.

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Don't Gamble Your Future On Your Company's Stock

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Don't Gamble Your Future On Your Company's Stock

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The article explained that people make a mistake by tying up a lot of their money in the stock that they work for.
Would I lose all my money if I invested into a stock and it wasn't successful?

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I meet with a lot of executives, managers and other highly compensated employees of publicly-traded companies, and I often spot a big red flag in their portfolios: They have lots of money tied up in the stock of the companies they work for.

The buildup may have occurred in their personal investing accounts, their retirement plans or through an employee stock ownership plan. No matter how it happens, though, concentrating too much money in one stock is always a risk-and one that's often overlooked when the concentration is in company's shares.

Before I explain why this is so dangerous, how it happens and how to fix it, let's first review what we mean by a concentrated stock position. Ideally, you'd have no more than 5% of your savings held in the stock of one company. Even approaching 5% in any single company can be a warning sign, because of the inherent risk of any individual stock.
The Problem With Concentration
Individual stock investments are riskier than most people believe, because most companies underperform the market as a whole. In fact, a study by J.P. Morgan found that two-thirds of all individual stocks underperformed the Russell 3000 Index between 1980 and 2014-and 405 of these laggards delivered negative absolute returns.

Just how bad can these returns be? The study found that about 40% of all stocks suffered a permanent decline from their peak value of 70% or more. If that were to happen a stock that represented more than 5% of your total investments, the loss of wealth could be major setback to reaching your goals.

Yet many people see these statistics and think there's no way it will happen to their company's shares. "Sure," they say, "but I work for this company and I know what's going on."

That's a common, and dangerous, perception.
Don't Fall For The Illusion Of Control
Investors often allow themselves to develop a concentrated position because they're emotionally invested in their company-they know the plan, believe in what they're doing and feel confident about the future. But familiarity does not mean you have superior information. In fact, familiarity with the company can cause you to overweight the positives and downplay the risks.

Another challenge is something behavioral finance researchers call the illusion of control bias: Investors often feel they have direct influence over their company's stock performance. A textbook example is the mid-level manager who believes they can personally boost their employer's stock price through their hard work.

The reality is, unless you're the CEO you have little control over what happens with the company. And even CEOs can't see the future: There are any number of unpredictable events that can bring down a company's stock price.

The classic example of this is Enron. Executives covered up billions of dollars of debt from deals gone bad, which led the company's share price to fall from more than $90 to less than $1 and bankrupted the company. Sadly, many employees who held the majority of the 401(k) money in Enron stock lost everything in their retirement accounts.

Enron is an extreme example, of course. But it's just one of many possibilities-broader economic downturns, new competition, product misfires-that can drive a company's stock price down.

Worse, if you're concentrated in your employer's stock and that company goes under, you'd lose your income on top of a big chunk of your retirement savings. Your present income already depends on the company's success-don't let your future income rely on it, too.
Diversification Is The Answer
If you're concentrated in company stock, you should diversify that position as quickly as possible. Diversification, after all, is the only free lunch in investing. Keep in mind that diversifying doesn't mean taking that 5% stake and swapping it for another stock. To actually diversify, you need to allocate that money among multiple companies-or invest in broadly diversified mutual funds or ETFs. The goal is to avoid having a major portion of your portfolio tied to the fortunes of any single investment.

You can either sell the bulk of your company shares immediately to get that position down well below 5%. If you're holding those stocks in taxable accounts, you might need to space out those sales over time to help manage capital gains taxes. For investors who also have a donor-advised fund, another strategy is to donate your company shares to the fund and enjoy an immediate income tax deduction.

A financial advisor can help you work through your options and find the best solution. Whatever your strategy, it's critical to recognize when you've allowed yourself to develop a concentrated stock position and to remember that all individual stocks are inherently risky. Familiarity with the company doesn't change that risk. It's easy to believe in the company you work for, but don't let your feelings cloud your financial judgment.

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Don't Gamble Your Future On Your Company's Stock

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I meet with a lot of executives, managers and other highly compensated employees of publicly-traded companies, and I often spot a big red flag in their portfolios: They have lots of money tied up in the stock of the companies they work for.