Here’s every eye drop and gel being recalled from stores including Target, CVS, and Rite Aid after the FDA warned they could cause blindness
Kim Schewitz – October 30, 2023
The FDA has warned consumers to avoid 26 eye drops and gels that could potentially cause blindness.
Retailers including CVS, Rite Aid, and Target are pulling the products from shelves.
The FDA said to seek medical care if you experience symptoms after using the products.
The FDA has warned consumers to immediately stop using and not buy 26 over-the-counter eye drops and gels that could potentially cause partial vision loss or blindness. Below is a list of all the products the FDA has told their manufacturer to recall.
Agency investigators found unsanitary conditions and bacteria where the products were made, according to a safety alert from the FDA published on Friday, and said they had the potential to cause infections that could result in blindness.
The FDA said on Friday that no adverse reactions had been flagged, but the products could pose “a potential heightened risk of harm” because drugs applied to the eyes bypass some of the body’s natural defenses.
The products were marketed under the brands: Target Up&Up, CVS Health, Rite Aid, Leader (Cardinal Health), Rugby (Cardinal Health), and Velocity Pharma.
Those who have signs or symptoms of an eye infection after using these products should speak to a healthcare provider or seek medical care immediately, the alert said.
Eye drops and gels recalled by the FDA
CVS Health:
Lubricant Eye Drops 15 ml (single pack)
Lubricant Eye Drops 15 ml (twin pack)
Lubricant Gel Drops 15 ml (single pack)
Lubricant Gel Drops 15 ml (twin pack)
Multi-Action Relief Drops 15 ml
Lubricating Gel drops 10 ml
Lubricant Eye Drops 10 ml (single pack)
Lubricant Eye Drops 10 ml (twin pack)
Mild Moderate Lubricating Eye Drops 15 ml (single pack)
Rugby (Cardinal Health):
Lubricating Tears Eye Drops 15 ml
Polyvinyl Alcohol 1.4% Lubricating Eye Drops 15 ml
Leader (Cardinal Health):
Dry Eye Relief 10 ml
Lubricant Eye Drops 15 ml (single pack)
Lubricant Eye Drops 15 ml (twin pack)
Dry Eye Relief 15 ml
Eye Irritation Relief 15 ml
Rite Aid:
Lubricant Eye Drops 15 ml (twin pack)
Lubricant Eye Drops 10 ml (twin pack)
Gentle Lubricant Gel Eye Drops 15 ml
Lubricant Gel Drops 15 ml
Lubricating Gel Drops 10 ml
Multi-Action Relief Drops 15 ml
Target:
Up&Up Dry Eye Relief Lubricant Eye Drops 30 ml
Up&Up Extreme Relief Dry Eye 15 ml (single pack)
Up&Up Extreme Relief Dry Eye 30 ml (twin pack)
Velocity Pharma:
Lubricant Eye Drop 10 ml (triple pack)
CVS, Rite Aid, and Target are pulling the drugs from shelves
CVS, Rite Aid, and Target are removing the products from their shelves and websites after the FDA recommended all batches be recalled on October 25, the alert said.
Products branded as Leader, Rugby, and Velocity may still be available in stores and online, the alert said, but they should not be purchased.
A spokeswoman for Rite Aid said that “due to safety concerns identified by the FDA, we are removing the applicable Rite Aid branded products from our store shelves.”
ACVS spokeswoman told Insider in an email: “We’ve immediately stopped the sale in-store and online of all products supplied by Velocity Pharma within the CVS Health Brand Eye Products portfolio,” and customers can return those products for a full refund.
In a statement, Cardinal Health said: “Immediately upon being notified, we placed all identified impacted eye drop products in our inventory on hold and contacted Velocity Pharma, the supplier of the impacted eye drop products.
“We are in the process of working with Velocity Pharma and FDA to initiate a recall of all impacted Rugby Laboratories and Cardinal Health Leader branded eye drop products to further safeguard public health and safety.”
Target and Velocity Pharma did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FDA warned against two other eye drop products, EzriCare Artificial Tears eye drops and Delsam Pharma’s Artificial Tears. The drugs were recalled over bacteria contamination, which was linked to four deaths and 14 cases of vision loss or eye removal.
Idaho is the most ‘overvalued’ housing market in the U.S., says Moody’s Analytics. Here’s where Utah ranks
Katie McKellar – October 30, 2023
New homes in Eagle, Idaho, are pictured on Sept. 23, 2022. | Ben B. Braun, Deseret News
Even though the housing market is in the midst of a correction thanks to the rapid rise of mortgage rates that began in mid-2022, U.S. home prices are still overvalued — and some local markets are more overvalued than others.
That’s according to a new analysis from Moody’s Analytics, which estimates national median home prices are about 15.7% over their fundamental value. The firm’s economist Matthew Walsh predicts they’ll decline another 4% to 4.5% in coming months, Insider recently reported.
Based on Moody’s model — which accounts for variables such as construction costs, household formation rates and where home prices currently stand compared to median incomes — Insider ranked all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., from least overvalued to most. One state in the West sank to the very bottom.
Idaho ranked 51st as the most “overvalued” local housing market as of the second quarter of 2023, with a median home price estimated by Redfin of $467,000, Insider reported.
Moody’s model estimates Idaho’s home prices exceed their fundamental value by 41.87%, according to Insider. Higher than 10% is considered overvalued and those more than 20% higher are considered extremely overvalued.
“If you look at Idaho over the past three years, you’ve had this extreme run up in home prices since the pandemic began,” Walsh recently told the Daily Mail. “So if you look at that relative to the demographic drivers — the household formation and the income growth there — that run up has been so much more extreme which is why we see the inflated valuation of houses there.”
It’s not the first time Idaho has made headlines for its home prices, which boiled over as low interest rates during the COVID-19 pandemic sent the West’s housing market into a frenzy. Housing markets in the West were also among the first to see the most dramatic price declines as interest rates skyrocketed amid the Federal Reserve’s battle with inflation.
Last year, when mortgage rates began rising from 3% to over 6%, Moody’s estimated Boise’s market was overvalued by an estimated 76.9%, Fortune reported. At the time, Moody’s estimated there were over 210 housing markets across the nation that were “significantly overvalued,” or overvalued by more than 25%.
That suggests home prices in Boise may have further to fall, especially with mortgage rates today that hover well over 7%, some days exceeding 8%, according to Bankrate.com.
In a May commentary, Walsh wrote most U.S. metro areas continued to be overvalued even as prices ticked down amid the housing market correction. However, the number of fairly valued metro areas also continued to climb as prices “fall back toward their equilibrium value in many markets.”
“Despite the improvement, overvaluation remains more widespread than during the height of the 2000s housing bubble. Today there are more than 300 metro areas that are overvalued or extremely overvalued compared with 260 during the final quarter of 2006,” Walsh wrote.
In that commentary, Walsh also pointed to Boise as topping the list as the most overvalued. At the time, prices exceeded their estimated fundamental value by more than 54%. Walsh noted that was a “sharp reduction” from the prior quarter when Boise was overvalued by more than 63%.
In February, Moody’s Analytics projected home prices would continue to fall 5% to 10% from their 2022 peaks by the beginning of 2025, and predicted the most “highly overvalued” metro areas — such as Boise, Phoenix, Austin and Nashville — would see the largest declines.
However, that same Moody’s analysis also noted these price corrections are “not a crash.”
“House prices will not crater like they did during the Great Recession,” the February analysis said, predicting home prices will fall back to late 2021 levels in early 2024. “Only this year’s gains will be wiped out by declines. For perspective: in 2025, when the next low is reached, we expect prices nearly 30% higher than they were at the beginning of 2020.”
Where does Utah rank?
In the Insider list based on Moody’s model, Utah ranked No. 40 — 11 spots below Idaho in terms of overvaluation. Moody’s estimated Utah’s home prices exceed their fundamental value by 26.31%, Insider reported.
Utah, like Idaho, was also hit hard by the pandemic housing rush and saw some of the biggest home price declines as interest rates rose.
In August, after six straight months of growth, home prices in most of Utah’s Wasatch Front counties tipped down. In Salt Lake County, the median price of all home types fell to $520,000 that month, a nearly 10% drop from a year ago and nearly 2% down from July, according to the Salt Lake Board of Realtors. With rates rising and demand set to fade even more heading into winter, Utah could see even more price declines in coming months.
To put those declines in perspective, however, Utah’s home prices surged by 72% over the past five years, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In the two-year period from 2020 to 2022 alone, the median sales price of a home in Utah rose almost 50%, up from $336,300 in February 2020 to $500,000 the same month in 2022, according to estimates from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
Utah’s housing experts have predicted Utah would be impacted somewhat by the national housing market correction — but they also expect Utah’s home prices to remain stubbornly high, largely thanks to the state’s years long housing shortage that they say is poised to worsen as home building contracts. In a recent report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, housing researchers predict Utah’s housing shortage will likely increase to over 37,000 units by 2024.
They went hunting for fossil fuels. What they found could help save the world
Laura Paddison, CNN – October 29, 2023
When tw o scientists went looking for fossil fuels beneath the ground of northeastern France, they did not expect to discover something which could supercharge the effort to tackle the climate crisis.
Jacques Pironon and Phillipe De Donato, both directors of research at France’s National Centre of Scientific Research, were assessing the amount of methane in the subsoils of the Lorraine mining basin using a “world first” specialized probe, able to analyze gases dissolved in the water of rock formations deep underground.
A couple of hundred meters down, the probe found low concentrations of hydrogen. “This was not a real surprise for us,” Pironon told CNN; it’s common to find small amounts near the surface of a borehole. But as the probe went deeper, the concentration ticked up. At 1,100 meters down it was 14%, at 1,250 meters it was 20%.
This was surprising, Pironon said. It indicated the presence of a large reservoir of hydrogen beneath. They ran calculations and estimated the deposit could contain between 6 million and 250 million metric tons of hydrogen.
That could make it one of the largest deposits of “white hydrogen” ever discovered, Pironon said. The find has helped fuel an already feverish interest in the gas.
White hydrogen – also referred to as “natural,” “gold” or “geologic” hydrogen – is naturally produced or present in the Earth’s crust and has become something of a climate holy grail.
Hydrogen produces only water when burned, making it very attractive as a potential clean energy source for industries like aviation, shipping and steel-making that need so much energy it’s almost impossible to meet through renewables such as solar and wind.
But while hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it generally exists combined with other molecules. Currently, commercial hydrogen is produced in an energy-intensive process almost entirely powered by fossil fuels.
A rainbow of colors is used as a shorthand for the different types of hydrogen. “Gray” is made from methane gas and “brown” from coal. “Blue” hydrogen is the same as gray, but the planet-heating pollution produced is captured before it goes into the atmosphere.
The most promising from a climate perspective is “green” hydrogen, made using renewable energy to split water. Yet production remains small scale and expensive.
That’s why interest in white hydrogen, a potentially abundant, untapped source of clean-burning energy, has ratcheted up over the last few years.
‘We haven’t been looking in the right places’
“If you had asked me four years ago what I thought about natural hydrogen, I would have told you ‘oh, it doesn’t exist,’” said Geoffrey Ellis, a geochemist with the US Geological Survey. “Hydrogen’s out there, we know it’s around,” he said, but scientists thought big accumulations weren’t possible.
Then he found out about Mali. Arguably, the catalyst for the current interest in white hydrogen can be traced to this West African country.
In 1987, in the village of Bourakébougou, a driller was left with burns after a water well unexpectedly exploded as he leaned over the edge of it while smoking a cigarette.
The well was swiftly plugged and abandoned until 2011, when it was unplugged by an oil and gas company and reportedly found to be producing a gas that was 98% hydrogen. The hydrogen was used to power the village, and more than a decade later, it is still producing.
When a study came out about the well in 2018, it caught the attention of the science community, including Ellis. His initial reaction was that there had to be something wrong with the research, “because we just know that this can’t happen.”
Then the pandemic hit and he had time on his hands to start digging. The more he read, the more he realized “we just haven’t been looking for it, we haven’t been looking in the right places.”
The recent discoveries are exciting for Ellis, who has been working as a petroleum geochemist since the 1980s. He witnessed the rapid growth of the shale gas industry in the US, which revolutionized the energy market. “Now,” he said, “here we are in what I think is probably a second revolution.”
White hydrogen is “very promising,” agreed Isabelle Moretti, a scientific researcher at the University of Pau et des Pays de l’Adour and the University of Sorbonne and a white hydrogen expert.
“Now the question is no longer about the resource… but where to find large economic reserves,” she told CNN.
A slew of startups
Dozens of processes generate white hydrogen but there is still some uncertainty about how large natural deposits form.
Geologists have tended to focus on “serpentinization,” where water reacts with iron-rich rocks to produce hydrogen, and “radiolysis,” a radiation-driven breakdown of water molecules.
White hydrogen deposits have been found throughout the world, including in the US, eastern Europe, Russia, Australia, Oman, as well as France and Mali.
Some have been discovered by accident, others by hunting for clues like features in the landscapes sometimes referred to as “fairy circles” – shallow, elliptical depressions that can leak hydrogen.
Ellis estimates globally there could be tens of billions of tons of white hydrogen. This would be vastly more than the 100 million tons a year of hydrogen that is currently produced and the 500 million tons predicted to be produced annually by 2050, he said.
“Most of this is almost certainly going to be in very small accumulations or very far offshore, or just too deep to actually be economic to produce,” he said. But if just 1% can be found and produced, it would provide 500 million tons of hydrogen for 200 years, he added.
It’s a tantalizing prospect for a slew of startups.
Australia-based Gold Hydrogen is currently drilling in the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia. It targeted that spot after scouring the state’s archives and discovering that back in the 1920s, a number of boreholes had been drilled there which had very high concentrations of hydrogen. The prospectors, only interested in fossil fuels, abandoned them.
“We’re very excited by what we’re seeing,” said managing director Neil McDonald. There is more testing and drilling to do but the company could get into early production possibly in late 2024, he told CNN.
Some startups are seeing eye-popping investments. Koloma, a Denver-based white hydrogen start-up, has secured $91 million from investors, including the Bill Gates-founded investment firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures – although the company remains tight-lipped about exactly where in the US it is drilling and when it is aiming for commercialization.
Another Denver-based company, Natural Hydrogen Energy, founded by geochemist Viacheslav Zgonnik, has completed an exploratory hydrogen borehole in Nebraska in 2019 and has plans for new wells. The world is “very close to the first commercial projects,” Zgonnik told CNN.
“Natural hydrogen is a solution which will allow us to get get to speed” on climate action, he said.
Aerial view of drilling operations by Natural Hydrogen Energy in Kansas. – Natural Hydrogen Energy LLC
From hype to reality
The challenge for these businesses and for scientists will be translating hypothetical promise into a commercial reality.
“There could be a period of decades where there’s a lot of trial and error and false starts,” Ellis said. But speed is vital. “If it’s going to take us 200 years to develop the resource, that’s not really going to be of much use.”
But many of the startups are bullish. Some predict years, not decades, to commercialization. “We have all necessary technology we need, with some slight modifications,” Zgonnik said.
Challenges remain. In some countries, regulations are an obstacle. Costs also need to be worked out. According to calculations based on the Mali well, white hydrogen could cost around $1 a kilogram to produce – compared to around $6 a kilogram for green hydrogen. But white hydrogen could quickly become more expensive if large deposits require deeper drilling.
Back in the Lorraine basin, Pironon and De Donato’s next steps are to drill down to 3,000 meters to get a clearer idea of exactly how much white hydrogen there is.
There’s a long way to go, but it would be ironic if this region – once one of western Europe’s key coal producers – became an epicenter of a new white hydrogen industry.
Shopper left furious after purchase on dad’s recent grocery store trip: ‘Totally wipes out the benefit’
Kendall Burke – October 29, 2023
A Redditor who found a baffling instance of excessive plastic took to the r/anticonsumption subreddit to voice their frustrations.
The poster said their dad bought the offending cucumber — which was covered in not one, but two layers of single-use plastic — during a recent grocery run, seemingly at U.K. chain Morrison’s, given the branding The Greengrocer’s on Market Street.
“All this plastic for HALF A F******* CUCUMBER,” the frustrated Redditor wrote.
Photo Credit: u/DyeTheSheep / Reddit
The image reveals that the package actually contains just half a cucumber, which could be the reason for wrapping it in so much plastic, as cut vegetables and fruit spoil faster than uncut ones. However, that raises the question, why would anyone sell just half a cucumber.
Commenters agreed with the original poster’s sentiment.
One shared, “The other day I saw organic cilantro on a plastic tray, wrapped with plastic. Totally wipes out the benefit of organic.”
Another joked, “Nice I need a plastic bag to transport it too please.”
While plastic wrap can reduce how quickly food spoils, a main cause of consumer-level food waste, it can take anywhere between 20 and 500 years (or more by some estimates) to break down in our landfills and oceans.
Innovative solutions to this issue are being perfected every day. Multiple companies have debuted versions of plastic-free “plastic” wrap, with one particularly cool option that sprays on like a Spiderman web. There are also myriad groups at work on an international and local level to clean up our existing ocean plastic problem.
‘A remarkable role model’: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates call this fellow billionaire their hero — here are 3 big lessons to learn from Charles Feeney
Serah Louis – October 29, 2023
‘A remarkable role model’: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates call this fellow billionaire their hero — here are 3 big lessons to learn from Charles Feeney
He was known as the billionaire who gave it all away.
Charles “Chuck” Feeney made his much of his riches selling booze, cigarettes and perfume. The co-founder of the Duty Free Shoppers Group died on Oct. 9 at the age of 92, but fulfilled his pledge to donate the bulk of his $8 billion fortune long before his death.
“Chuck Feeney is a remarkable role model, and the ultimate example of giving while living,” Bill Gates told Forbes back in 2012.
Here’s what you can learn from how Feeney managed his money.
Diversification
While building his massive fortune, Feeney didn’t just focus on his global network of duty-free airport stores — he was a prolific investor as well.
By the early 1980s, he was profiting from hotels, property and retail, and he later invested in some tech start-ups. It wasn’t until 1996 that he sold his stake in Duty Free Shoppers for a tidy $1.63 billion that went to his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, a deal that multiplied in value by investment returns later, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Feeney followed the golden rule — don’t put all your eggs in one basket — and grew his wealth by diversifying his investments.
Similarly, while you’re buying stocks, make sure you’re not sticking to one company or sector. This will provide some shelter from any unexpected dips in the market. Do your research and build a balanced portfolio of companies or ETFs.
Frugality
Feeney went from purchasing luxurious multimillion-dollar homes — including in London and the French Riviera — to renting a two-bedroom San Francisco apartment with his wife.
Like many folk of his ilk, he once spent his time cruising on yachts and private jets — but decided in his later years to cut back and focus on his philanthropic efforts.
For Feeney, value was more important than showing off his wealth. He flew coach because he wasn’t getting anywhere any faster by opting for a first-class ticket. He wore a $15 watch and used plastic bags in place of a briefcase.
“I just reached the conclusion with myself that money, buying boats and all the trimmings didn’t appeal to me,” he was quoted saying in a 2007 biography about his life, “The Billionaire Who Wasn’t.”
Most importantly, Feeney was intentional with his spending, leaving enough funds behind for his investments and donations.
This is a crucial tenet for managing your money (even if you don’t have billions in your bank account). Consider creating a budget and monitoring your monthly expenses so that you’re leaving some of your income behind for your financial goals, too, such as your emergency savings or nest egg.
Charitable giving
Once dubbed “the James Bond of philanthropy” by Forbes, Feeney is perhaps best known for his charitable giving — despite his attempts to hide it for many years.
Feeney donated to a range of causes, including AIDS relief in South Africa, Operation Smile’s free surgeries for children with cleft lips and palates and earthquake relief in Haiti.
“People used to ask me how I got my jollies, and I guess I’m happy when what I’m doing is helping people and unhappy when what I’m doing isn’t helping people,” Feeney told Forbes.
There are potential financial benefits to charitable giving as well come tax time, as you may qualify for a tidy deduction on your next return.
Warehouse worker sparks outrage with alarming photo of employer’s shipping practice: ‘We get two to five shipments a week like this’
Laurelle Stelle – October 28, 2023
A frustrated warehouse employee showed the world the wasteful and polluting practice of a company they said they do business with regularly in the r/Anticonsumption subreddit.
Plastic shipping packages are a significant fraction of the world’s plastic problem. Some companies, like Amazon, have said they’ll try to switch to more affordable and eco-friendly alternatives. Other businesses seem utterly unaware of the money they’re losing and the impact they’re having on the environment.
Photo Credit: u/MDGR28 / Reddit
“This clothing company always ships their freight in two inches thick of plastic wrap,” said this fed-up Redditor.
The attached photo showed a shipping pallet in a warehouse in the process of being unwrapped. A pile of wadded plastic beside the pallet was clearly enough to cover it dozens of times over — and there was still more around the merchandise. None of the other pallets in the background had nearly as much packing material wrapped around them.
“It’s so much!” the Redditor complained. “We get two to five shipments a week like this.”
Wrapping pallets this way just doesn’t make financial sense. It takes longer to both wrap and unwrap, wasting employee time that both companies have to pay for — not to mention the cost of the material itself.
Also, as Greenpeace recently pointed out, plastic recycling is difficult, and most plastic never gets recycled. Instead, plastic trash either ends up in landfills or as litter in the environment, including in the ocean, where it is dangerous to wildlife. The best way to prevent that outcome is to minimize the use of disposable plastic to start with.
“There are alternatives that exist. You can have safety without plastic,” said one commenter, sharing a link to a how-to page listing eco-friendly options. “Also, it took me like two seconds to find these alternatives.”
Even a small improvement would be better than nothing, as another user pointed out. “My dad made an arrangement with his local post office for their plastic wrap,” they said. “This stuff is excellent for packing material. Sure beats having to buy packing materials. Does it get tossed by the buyer? Sure, but it’s being reused once, at least, and not immediately discarded by the post office.”
The city landed that title through multiple metrics including its inflation rate and the cost of gas. The report also considered living costs from annual housing costs, median gross rent and high fees associated with homeownership.
The report said home prices exceed the national median sale price and added that many in San Diego’s downtown area must pay homeowners association fees to maintain living in housing complexes.
“Living in San Diego is not particularly affordable,” the report reads. “San Diegans are willing to pay these elevated prices, though, often referring to the cost-of-living differences as the ‘sunshine tax,’ or the price of enjoying a year-round temperate climate.”
Los Angeles was ranked the second most expensive city, followed by Honolulu and Miami. California actually made up seven of the top ten spots in the report and around half of the top 25. New York City, the most populated U.S. town, earned the 11th spot.
According to the report, the cities at the top of the list require the most amount of wealth in order to live comfortably.
What are the most expensive cities in the US?
These are the 25 most expensive American cities according to the U.S. News & World Report. For information on each city’s various qualities like value and quality of life, click here.
‘We were living our best lives’: This 32-year-old says he had more financial freedom working at Chili’s in 2012 than he does now with a much higher income — here’s why
Sabina Wex – October 28, 2023
‘We were living our best lives’: This 32-year-old says he had more financial freedom working at Chili’s in 2012 than he does now with a much higher income — here’s why
While it’s not hard to get a millennial to indulge in some nostalgia for the 2010s — the decade many of their cohort entered adulthood and the workforce — what’s got them reminiscing about their younger years lately may come as a surprise.
Although many were fresh out of college, still figuring things out and living on minimum wage, they’d likely hesitate to characterize their past selves as “young, dumb and broke.” But not necessarily because they remember themselves as wise and mature.
As Mordecai Nuccio explains in a recent TikTok, he feels like he had more disposable income back in 2012 compared to now — an assertion that’s been making the rounds on TikTok.
“We were making minimum wage, but we were living our best lives,” Nuccio, a 32-year-old photographer, says about his time living on minimum wage working as a food runner at Chili’s.
He adds that a big part of his current financial stress is thanks to his increased credit card and student loan debts. Even though he makes more money and lives in a double-income household with his fiancé, he feels more squeezed.
Here’s how do you get back to living your best life now that you should have more cash flow.
Tackle debt
Back in 2012, Nuccio says he had “minimal” credit card debt. But that’s changed as his expenses have increased — and he’s got his student loans to think of too.
While expenses tend to increase as you age and take on more responsibilities, making more often translates into spending more. Millennials love splurging on experiences, but that can quickly wander into risky spending habit territory.
Living on borrowed money can get expensive once you start to factor in interest but it can be overwhelming to get out of that vicious cycle. If you’ve racked up a couple of balances, one way to start picking away at your debt in a manageable way is to use the “debt avalanche method,”. Here’s how it works: you pay off your highest interest loan debt first, and only make minimum payments on all your other debts.
Once you’ve paid off the highest interest loan, you move on to the next highest interest debt, and so on — until, voila, all your debt has disappeared.
Up until fairly recently, student loan payments were suspended. But their return means that borrowers like Nuccio need to figure out how to fit these payments back into their monthly expenses.
Unfortunately, 28% of student loan borrowers say they’ll need to take on additional debt to maintain their household payments and repay their student debt, according to a recent Achieve survey.
When you’re robbing Paul to pay Peter, things can get messy. But consolidating your debts can make this a little easier. If you have private student loans and credit card debt, you might consider refinancing your loan.
Even though it means taking on another loan, if you’re able to find an offer at a lower rate than your current accounts, you’ll save yourself plenty in interest over the life of the loan. Plus, by pooling your debts, you’ll only have to worry about making a single monthly payment, which will hopefully make your life a little easier.
Lower your cost of living
Nuccio mentions that he lived in Tampa, Florida in 2012 when he worked at Chili’s, but has since moved to New York City to pursue photography. Though this may have been a good move for his career, it’s bad news for his debt.
Though Nuccio doesn’t explicitly say which borough he lives in, New York’s Manhattan is the most expensive city in the U.S., according to the Council for Community and Economic Research’s (CCER) most recent data. Though several Florida media outlets report Tampa is the Sunshine State’s most expensive city, it still doesn’t rank on the CCER’s list of priciest cities across the country.
So part of your plan to pay back your debt may need to include your locale. If you live in an expensive city like New York, it’ll likely take you longer to pay off your debt than a cheaper city like Tampa.
The ‘great wealth transfer’ isn’t $72 trillion but $129 trillion, BofA says—and the government gave most of it to baby boomers
Hillary Hoffower, ChloeBerger – October 28, 2023
Ippei Naoi/Getty Images
You’ve probably heard about the “great wealth transfer.” It’s the $72 trillion stack of assets that baby boomers are sitting on and going to pass onto millennials someday, thereby solving many of the economically beleaguered younger generation’s problems. But there was another, even more “massive” wealth transfer from the government to the baby boomers over the last 40 years, according to Bank of America Research.
The investment bank isn’t alone in coming to this conclusion. No less a figure than Ray Dalio, the billionaire and former leader of what was for many years the world’s biggest hedge fund, wrote on his LinkedIn page in August about a “coordinated government maneuver” that left household balance sheets rich and the state effectively broke. Dalio did not mention the boomers, or any generation, by name, but BofA has now done him one better.
Boomers have quite simply been the biggest beneficiary of a “massive wealth transfer,” wrote the BofA team led by Ohsung Kwon, echoing Dalio’s observation that trillions of wealth flowed from the public to the private sector thanks to government policy since the 1980s, when boomers were in their prime working years. BofA pointed to the ballooning government debt—from 31% of GDP to 120% during that period—and the 10-year Treasury yield shrinking from 12% to 4.6% today (it’s actually 4.9% as of press time).
So how many trillions? Over this period, BofA calculates, U.S. household net worth has skyrocketed from $17 trillion to $150 trillion. Boomers, alongside “traditionalists,” hold two-thirds ($146 trillion) of that total net worth. This means that government policy has resulted in a $129 trillion wealth transfer into the pockets of those boomers and older Americans, BofA said (it didn’t clarify the exact apportionment of wealth between these two groups).
At the top of the ladder
Just over a quarter of this wealth is held in financial assets such as real estate. No surprise there, considering that nearly all boomers locked in a low 3% mortgage rate, unlike those poor millennials—the only group that took on meaningful mortgage debt since 2021, now in the 8% range. Fortune has reported extensively on how millennials have not enjoyed a boomer level of success as they struggled to afford to buy a home for years before facing off with an overpriced, ultra-competitive pandemic housing market.
BofA’s findings are more evidence that boomers have had it pretty good, economically speaking. In addition to low interest rates and inflated housing prices boosting asset value, a 2020 Deutsche Bank report found that boomers shelled out less for education than millennials did and won’t have to pay for the environmental damage caused by the carbon emission-releasing companies they invested in.
While boomers have still had their fair share of economic challenges, like the Great Inflation of the 1970s, BofA found they ultimately benefited in the long run from an economy that’s set them up pretty nicely for wealth accumulation. In a 2021 memo to clients, billionaire (and boomer) Howard Marks wrote that the generation is so big that they’re still wielding enough political and financial power to advocate for a system that works for them, “Boomers have been and still are consuming more than their fair share of the pie. This will leave future generations saddled with substantial debt stemming from expenditures they didn’t benefit from proportionally,” he wrote.
Of course, four of the last five presidents are part of the baby boomer generation, and Congress is largely made up of boomers, if not traditionalists like the recently deceased Dianne Feinstein, with millennial figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jon Ossoff the major exception. President Joe Biden, of course, is what BofA would call a traditionalist, But George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama were all technically boomers.
As Jill Filipovic, author of “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk,” told Salon in an interview, boomers climbed the ladder and then “pulled it up behind them.” Standing at the lowest rung, three-fourths of millennials (and 82% of Gen Zers) feel they’re navigating economic struggles shaped by their parents, per a survey by OnePoll on behalf of National Debt Relief.
At the bottom of the ladder
Dealing with a hefty price tag for a college education and ensuing student debt, many young adults graduated into a post-recession thorny job market, bouncing around to find a well-paying role. Forced to tack on other gigs to make ends meet, many still aren’t seeing the fruits of their labor; a separate BofA report finds that the extra income isn’t giving them much more spending power.
The housing market is no rosier of a scene; while some millennials have made up some ground and started to househunt, many were pushed back to the last rung of the ladder when they were outbid by boomer cash offers. It’s led many young adults to depend on their more financially stable parents to afford a house. No wonder most millennials (and Gen Z) feel the economy is hurting their ability to be financially independent and like they’re falling behind.
“Millennials, and now Gen Z, have grown up amidst global and financial turmoil,” Suzanne Schmitt, Head of Financial Wellness at New York Life, told Fortune. “These two cohorts have witnessed economic changes in their formative years and may be more risk-averse when it comes to financial habits than their predecessors.”
There’s a silver lining, though, in the other great wealth transfer that is still pending. This could make millennials five times wealthier in 2030 than they were at the start of this decade, according to a Coldwell Banker estimate. Others are less optimistic. A survey from Alliant Credit Union finds that half of millennials think they’re inheriting at least $350,000 from their parents, while half of boomers report say they’ll give away less than $250,000. As Americans live longer and struggle to afford retirement during inflationary times, it’s likely the nest egg chips away a bit more. Even if there’s a large lump sum, many millennials don’t feel equipped to handle it.
Perhaps, then, that wealth transfer won’t be as “great” as the ones boomers already received, the one Bank of America called downright “massive.” It may not be repeated anytime soon.
U.S. consumers are ‘walking towards a cliff’ and the jobs market is beginning to ‘fray at the edges,’ warns market strategist
Eleanor Pringle – October 27, 2023
Justin Sullivan—Getty Images
Forget about the blistering pace of economic growth in the United States this past quarter: Americans are hurting, and one market strategist believes life might be about to get a whole lot worse.
Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe, Longview Economics founder Chris Watling argues U.S. households are “walking towards a cliff, basically” and warned the excitement around strong retail sales is not justified. That poses a problem for U.S. growth as spending by consumers accounts for over two-thirds of the economy.
“They’re running out of cash. If you look at excess savings they’ve been run down quite hard,” said Watling, who serves as Longview’s CEO and chief market strategist. “If you look across the income quartiles, the bottom…quartiles are under pressure, [and] probably [have] spent all that excess savings.”
Indeed, backward-looking data suggests U.S. households appear to be in robust condition. According to predictions from the U.S. Census Bureau, retail and food services sales for September 2023 will hit $704.9 billion, up 0.7% from the preceding month and 3.8% higher than a year ago.
Wall Street also enjoyed a slew of positive third-quarter updates from major retailers. Just this week Amazon enjoyed a 13% bump in revenue, while Unilever reported underlying sales growth was up 5.2%.
Watling is unconvinced by such sales success, saying it has been buoyed by a household savings ratio that is now dwindling.
“So it’s not quite all good news,” Watling continued. “Quite the reverse, I think there are some real challenges coming for the U.S. consumer.”
Labor market ‘fraying at the edges’
While the nation’s economy expanded at a 4.9% annual rate from July through September, its fastest in nearly two years, Watling added that some economic indicators are hinting at troubles beneath the surface.
Among them are car repayment delinquency rates for risky borrowers, which have pushed to the highest figure in three decades. Also worrying is a slowdown in the Kansas City Fed’s Labor Market Conditions Indicators (LMCI), which saw momentum drop into negative numbers earlier this year.
“The labor market’s under a lot of pressure,” said Watling. “We had a good payrolls month, but if you look at a lot of the indicators of where the labor market’s likely to go, a lot of them are fraying at the edges—they’re quite soft.”
Continued pressure on both consumers and the labor market could be what “kick-starts” a recession in the U.S. economy, Watling added.
“Bond King” Bill Gross is similarly unconvinced by the seemingly positive picture some datasets are painting.
Earlier this week Gross, former chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., or Pimco, tweeted that he was predicting a recession in the fourth quarter and urged his followers to return to the bond market.
Watling added that a further headache for the U.S. economy will be its stock market in the coming months, which he believes is massively overpriced.
When asked about the impact of this shaky consumer on Wall Street, he replied: “From our point of view, though, I can see a bounce for a month or two. It’s been quite beaten up; markets have been coming down since July, but I think net-net, you want to be underweight equities if you are looking beyond the next few months.
“Particularly, the U.S. equity market is too expensive; it’s overvalued…The U.S. in aggregate is overvalued—tech’s overvalued.”
He finished: “I think the U.S. is in for tough times.”
