Earth Day is a good reminder of what to do every day and throughout the year for the health of the planet. I spend a lot of time on it. I know many people do, too. The theme for this year’s Earth Day is Invest in Our Planet. Three-quarters of Americans say that they’re particularly concerned with helping the environment as they go about their daily lives.
My best wishes to you and your loved ones for 2023. On New Years eve, I wrote about the top consumer and personal finance stories of 2022. Inflation and higher interest rates topped the list, and I predict that those two issues will continue to confront consumers throughout the new year. My recommendations include:
Michelle Singletary, financial writer for The Washington Post, has been recommending buying Series I Bonds for months now. Singletary says for investors with money to spare and who are looking for safety, inflation has been good for Series I Bonds, which the Treasury Department announced will be paying 9.62 percent until the end of October.
Always be careful when you buy something based on the advice of a celebrity or influencer, especially investments. On social media, Kim Kardashian illegally touted cryptocurrency sold by EthereumMax without disclosing the payment she received for promoting it, the SEC said Monday.
Charles Schwab Corp. will pay a record $187 million to settle charges that it didn’t tell clients about the hidden costs of its robo-advising product, which was allocating client funds in a way that would be less profitable for them. The cash in the portfolios would cause clients to make less money even while taking on the same amount of risk.
The Warrior Trading day trading investment scheme is being ordered by the FTC to stop making unrealistic claims of big gains to consumers. It alleges that the company and its CEO used those claims to convince consumers to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a system that failed for most customers.
Consumers need to accurately declare and pay taxes on their virtual investments. Failure to properly declare and pay taxes on cryptocurrency transactions may be a civil or criminal violation of federal tax law, as well as a violation of state tax law, which could result in steep financial liabilities
Parents probably know this, but if they don’t, they should. Kids are learning and mimicking machines. It starts at birth. Once they arrive, they look and listen – to just about everything. They begin absorbing and recording what they see and hear.
The Super Bowl ads for 2022 were mostly disappointing. Although a few had a good message, the overall feel of the game show was dystopian. A QR code drifting across the screen, ads for apps and betting websites I’d never heard of, and supposedly clever ads featuring stars from TV series I’ve never seen.
