Author: Money Mechanics

The 85-inch TV used to be the king of big-screen home theaters. While it’s been outclassed by 98-inch and even 115-inch cousins, it’s still one of the best choices for most living rooms. With enough screen real estate to give you fine details, bold colors, and crisp contrast, an 85-inch TV can be a great upgrade if you’re looking to create a more cinema-like experience at home.Also: Samsung Micro RGB vs. QLED vs. OLEDFor our May update, we’ve replaced the LG G4 OLED with the LG G6, as it’s the latest flagship release from the brand and offers a refreshed…

(Oil & Gas 360) By Greg Barnett, MBA – The modern American oil and gas system was not engineered in calm conditions. It was forged amid gasoline lines, collapsing banks, and geopolitical revolutions that redirected the flow of oil and power simultaneously. The 1973 oil embargo and the 1980s oil crash are usually treated as bookends of a turbulent era. They were not. They were joined at the center by the Iranian Revolution — a political rupture made possible by oil wealth and one that permanently altered U.S. foreign policy, global oil markets, and the architecture of energy security. What policymakers…

In an age when faith in most institutions has cratered, Americans still love Social Security. But they’re anxious about the future of the 90-year-old retirement income program and how changes to it might affect their own personal finances and those of their parents and children.With good reason. Around 2033 the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund (essentially a credit balance at the Treasury) will run dry. At that point, the Social Security tax dollars flowing in will not be enough to pay all the benefits. If Congress doesn’t act, retirement checks would have to be sliced 23% across…

Miami-Dade County is one of the most desirable places to live in the country, but its median listing price of $595,868 is pushing many everyday people out of the market.That’s why an affordable alternative is drawing attention.Cottage Grove, a manufactured housing community under construction in South Miami-Dade, will feature 349 single-family homes with prices starting at just $129,900. It will be the first new manufactured housing development in Miami-Dade in decades.”The interest has been tremendous,” Ross Partrich, the CEO of RHP Properties, which owns Cottage Grove, tells Realtor.com®. “The market is showing there’s a real need—we’ve had over 1,000 inquiries.”RHP…

(Image credit: Getty Images)Question: I am a 63-year-old, retired dad of three adult children. I spend most of my time with my wife at our brownstone in New York City, but we are also lucky enough to have a $3.2 million beach house in Hampton Bays, New York. We spend the summer there, hosting friends and family.With prices rising on everything from gas to groceries, I’m not sure if we can afford to entertain all summer.We don’t want to say no to anyone; we look forward to it all year. But either we are going to have to cut back…

To help you understand the trends surrounding business and technology and what we expect to happen in the future, our highly experienced Kiplinger Letter team will keep you abreast of the latest developments and forecasts. (Get a free issue of The Kiplinger Letter or subscribe.) You’ll get all the latest news first by subscribing, but we will publish many (but not all) of the forecasts a few days afterward online. Here’s the latest…If cutting-edge artificial intelligence could truly tame the daily onslaught of emails, it would make a huge difference for tens of millions of workers. Microsoft, which dominates workplace…

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.1 What I want to talk about is central bank independence but applied to Reserve Bank operations. The decentralized and regional design of the Federal Reserve helps reinforce our independence by ensuring that the full range of interests and views are represented in policy discussions, and that is something that should be preserved. But much of the day-to-day operations of the Reserve Banks are not connected to monetary policymaking, and I recently gave a speech at the Brookings Institution where I suggested some improvements to the efficiency of Reserve Bank operations.…

If the Federal Reserve still has any reasons to cut interest rates in the near future, they’re getting harder and harder to find.Friday’s jobs report for April provided the latest evidence that the central bank’s larger concern isn’t a flagging labor market but rather a cost of living that is getting increasingly harder for ordinary Americans to bear.The nonfarm payrolls increase of 115,000 last month is hardly gangbusters, but is another sign that the jobs picture has stabilized at least enough to reduce the pressure for rate cuts. By comparison, there is scant evidence to say the same for inflation,…

As was widely reported, Oracle axed an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people via email on March 31. One of the employees cut that day told TechCrunch about the experience: “I had, like, this weird feeling in my stomach. I went to go sign into the VPN, and the VPN was like, ‘this user doesn’t exist anymore.’ Then I called my friend, and I was like, ‘Hey, can you see me in Slack?’ And she said, ‘No, your account’s been deactivated.’” The person soon received an email stating their role was terminated immediately. The severance offer arrived a few days later. But…

Welcome to Kiplinger’s My First $1 Million series, in which we hear from people who have made $1 million. They’re sharing how they did it and what they’re doing with it. This time, we hear from a married 55-year-old attorney in Rhode Island who’s retired but working part-time. It took him a while to find his footing, but he credits his mom for providing the foundation that helped him get there. (Happy Mother’s Day weekend to all the great moms out there!)To learn what the millionaires featured in this series have taught us, check out the article 5 Key Insights…