Things To Do In SW Florida

Lark Ellen Gould | (TNS) TravelPulse

The Travel Goods Show 2024 returned to Las Vegas with a post-COVID bang in March, as industry titans, visionaries and creators gathered to talk travel gear and showcase the latest goods for creating and maintaining efficiencies to make travel more enterprising.

Fueled by the presence of such industry giants as Briggs & Riley, Eagle Creek, Herschel, Osprey, Naftali, Nomatic, and Db Journey, as well as DYI startups solving problems they have had in their own wanderings, the show this year maintained a larger focus on sustainability overall, where in previous years highlights centered on technology.

“People are being more conscious about sustainability, and that’s been a really big shift in the industry over the past five years,” says Travel Goods Association board chair Josh Cross, who started Elios, a portable “smartpower” company he once promoted through the show for power on the go.

“The types of materials, the fabrics, the plastics, the sourcing the manufacturing … it is all becoming centered around sustainability. That’s because, if you look at the industry as a whole, the travel industry is one of the largest in the world and touches about one in 10 occupations worldwide. So sustainability has to be a critical component of what we do with travel goods now.” read more

Matthew Goldberg | (TNS) Bankrate.com

There’s some comfort in knowing that your money is in the bank down the street. But in the era of Federal Reserve rate increases and brick-and-mortar banks offering yields that are much lower than yields at many online banks, this comfort may be costing you money. Generally, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) online banks offer savings accounts with much higher annual percentage yields (APYs) than brick-and-mortar banks.

What does APY mean?

APY stands for “annual percentage yield” and refers to the rate of return a bank of account earns in a year. APY includes the effects of compound interest, which means interest is earned on both your principal and the accumulated interest.

APYs on checking and savings accounts are variable, meaning the bank can raise or lower them, at will. Typically, banks with high-yielding accounts will increase APYs when the Federal Reserve raises rates, and lower APYs when the Fed decreases rates.

How a low APY can affect your savings

Let’s say you have saved $10,000. That’s a great accomplishment, but if it’s earning the national average of 0.58% APY, you’re not getting the best return on your savings. Some of the most popular big banks pay even less, at 0.01%. read more

By Eliza Haverstock | NerdWallet

The Education Department has forgiven more than $45 billion of student loans for 930,500 longtime borrowers through the one-time income-driven repayment (IDR) account adjustment. If you’ve been repaying your student loans for at least a decade, you could be next in line — but you may need to consolidate before the April 30 deadline.

These types of loans require immediate consolidation to qualify for the maximum benefits of the IDR account adjustment:

• Commercially held FFELP loans.
• Commercially held Perkins loans.
• HEAL loans.
• Parent PLUS loans in repayment for less than 25 years (or less than 10 years, if eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness).
• Direct loans with different past payment counts.

If your loans aren’t on this list, you likely don’t need to take action to benefit from the IDR account adjustment.

“For those folks who are really focused on achieving forgiveness of some type, try to be as proactive as you can,” says Stacey MacPhetres, senior director of education finance for EdAssist by Bright Horizons, a workplace education benefits provider.

Here’s how to stay ahead of the curve.

Complete the consolidation application

“Consolidating your student loans means basically you take a bunch of individual loans and you turn them into a brand new single loan,” explains Jill Desjean, senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. This new loan is called a “Direct Consolidation Loan.” There’s no application fee to consolidate. read more