Author: News Room
Marriage inevitably involves financial compromises both small and large. Joint or individual checking accounts? How much is too much to spend on a car? Name-brand or store-brand groceries?When a couple remarries late in life, the stakes get higher. How should the expenses for those bucket-list retirement trips be divided? Whose name goes on the deed to the new condo? Who inherits the house or stock portfolio: the surviving spouse or that person’s children from a prior marriage?Many newlywed retirees find that the answers to these questions evolve. For a retired director of a nonprofit and a retired I.T. professional in…
The first 100 days of the second Trump administration have been a whirlwind. And Stephen Miran, the chair of President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, has been at the center of what he calls “the volatility.” Mr. Trump has raised import taxes to levels not seen since the 1930s. And trade talks to roll them back — or not — are in flux, leaving the trajectory of the U.S. economy, consumer prices and global trade in limbo.Miran, a Ph.D. economist trained at Harvard — who is renown for floating the idea of a Mar-a-Lago Accord to “restructure the global trading…
Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is on a pace to collect at least $330 million in worldwide ticket sales for Warner Bros. by the end of its run, several box office analysts said, a haul that would put it in Hollywood’s horror hall of fame.Ticket sales on that level, for instance, would be on a par with those for Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning “Get Out,” which took in $256 million globally in 2017, or $337 million when adjusted for inflation. Among original horror movies, “Sinners” would be the biggest since 2018, when “A Quiet Place,” directed by John Krasinski, took in $440 million…
Despite the surprise, Ms. Hermann-Johnson didn’t consider culling her list. As she read through her paid newsletters — among them from Nora McInerny, a grief writer; Laura McKowen, a sobriety writer; and Catherine Newman, a memoirist and novelist — there were no surprises. All were writers she read, loved and felt good about giving money to.“I just want to support them and their work, and that’s how I feel like I can do it,” she said.A Relatively New Spending CategoryHamish McKenzie, one of Substack’s founders, wrote in a Substack post last year that Ben Thompson, a tech analyst who writes…
How much should I save in an emergency fund?Vanguard, the big mutual fund company, suggests setting aside $2,000, or half of one month’s expenses, whichever is greater, as a buffer to cover unexpected but common “shocks,” like a car or home repair or medical bill. Then, to protect against a possible job loss, it suggests continuing to save to build a buffer of three to six months of living expenses so you can pay your bills while looking for another job. (The average span of unemployment was just under six months, according to the latest jobs report.)With roughly $2,000 on…
In the scrum to keep the wheels of trade turning, Chinese companies are pivoting to neighboring countries to escape President Trump’s crippling tariffs.The hustle is on show in Vietnam. Factories that make everything from jeans to Christmas wreaths are trying to get there fast. The ones that have already moved are ramping up. The Chinese e-commerce platforms Alibaba and Shein are helping companies find manufacturing alternatives in Vietnam.The race to get out of China has gathered so much pace in recent weeks that a social media genre of fixers has surfaced to offer tips on how to reroute goods through…
The call from a supervisor came to the steel shop floor in Sheffield, England, on Thursday afternoon: The tariffs were off. “Everything had changed for us,” said Richard Bott, as he stood near stacks of steel slabs still radiating waves of heat from the mill.In a trade deal with Britain announced with much fanfare on Thursday, President Trump agreed to lift the 25 percent tariffs on steel that had posed a dire threat to Britain’s struggling industry and to Mr. Bott’s employer, Marcegaglia Stainless Sheffield.The cavernous plant is one of the last remaining large steel-making facilities in a city that…
Top economic officials from the United States and China are poised to meet in Geneva on Saturday for high-stakes negotiations that could determine the fate of a global economy that has been jolted by President Trump’s trade war.The meetings, scheduled to continue on Sunday, will be the first since Mr. Trump ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese imports to 145 percent and China retaliated with its own levies of 125 percent on U.S. goods. The tit-for-tat effectively cut off trade between the world’s largest economies while raising the possibility of a global economic downturn.While the stakes for the meetings are high,…
The Trump administration has started an investigation into the import of commercial aircraft, jet engines and related parts that could lead to new tariffs on top of the many it has already put in place.According to a federal notice posted online on Friday, the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, started the investigation on May 1 under a provision of the Trade Expansion Act, which allows the president to impose tariffs on foreign products in the interest of national security.President Trump has already used that authority to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel, and to start similar investigations, including one last month…
Corporate America is stumbling in the dark, and so are investors.Ford and General Motors executives say they can’t estimate what lies ahead. There’s too much fog even to hazard a guess, so both companies have suspended earnings guidance — signals about future sales and profits — leaving investors to navigate on their own. And the automakers are not the only ones. A broad range of companies, including Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, the footwear company Skechers, UPS and the engine manufacturer Cummins, say they can’t talk confidently about the future.It’s earnings season again on Wall Street, and it’s a strange…