Things To Do In SW Florida

By Kimberly Palmer, NerdWallet

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When I shared personal finance lessons with a kindergarten class recently, the students had one question I wasn’t prepared to answer: How should they fit donating money to others into their financial plans?

I had been so focused on explaining the basics of budgeting that I overlooked this central question about how we can help others, especially as the holidays approach.

It turns out deciding how much of our budget to allocate to giving isn’t always straightforward. Charity varies widely by person and income levels.

“Some clients are very charitably-inclined and others not so much,” says John Jones, a certified financial planner and investment advisor representative at Heritage Financial in Newberry, Florida. The decision to give can be influenced by many aspects, from religious beliefs to the potential tax deductions. read more

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE AND MICHELLE CHAPMAN, Associated Press

Electronic Arts, the maker of video games like “Madden NFL,” “Battlefield,” and “The Sims,” is being acquired by an investor group including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund in the largest private equity-funded buyout in history.

The investors, who also include a firm managed by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, valued the deal $55 billion.

EA stockholders will receive $210 per share. The deal far exceeds the $32 billion price tag to take Texas utility TXU private in 2007, which had shattered records for leveraged buyouts.

PIF, which was currently the largest insider stakeholder in Electronic Arts, will be rolling over its existing 9.9% investment in the company.

The commitment to the massive deal is in line with recent activity in the gaming sector by the Saudi fund, wrote Andrew Marok of Raymond James.

“The Saudi PIF has been a very active player in the video gaming market since 2022, taking minority stakes in most scaled public video gaming publishers, and also outright purchases of companies like ESL, FACEIT, and Scopely,” he wrote. “The PIF has made its intentions to scale its gaming arm, Savvy Gaming Group, clear, and the EA deal would represent the biggest such move to date by some distance.” read more

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street ticked higher on Monday as technology stocks recovered some of their losses from late last week.

The S&P 500 added 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 68 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.5%. All three are near their all-time highs set a week ago.

Big Tech stocks ticked higher to lead the way. Amazon added 1.1% following its 5.1% drop last week, and Microsoft rose 0.6% to recover some of its 1.2% decline. While their moves were modest, they were still two of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500 Monday because they’re two of Wall Street’s most valuable stocks.

On the losing end of the market were companies in the oil business, which were hurt by slumping crude prices. Drops of 2.6% for Exxon Mobil and 2.5% for Chevron were two of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500.

This week’s highlight is scheduled to arrive on Friday, when a report will be due about how many jobs U.S. employers created and destroyed last month. The hope is that it will be balanced enough to keep the Federal Reserve on track to continue cutting interest rates. read more

Every year, elected officials in cities, towns and villages throughout Florida proclaim they’re holding the line on taxes. Sometimes they even brag that they’re cutting the tax rate.

People often wonder why their tax bills keep going up. The question has particular resonance this year, as Gov. Ron DeSantis pushes a proposal to slash property taxes or eliminate them altogether.

How it works

The ultra-simplified version of the answer starts with this: Your bill is determined by the taxable value of your piece of property multiplied by the tax rate.

The taxable value is based on the market value of the property, determined each year by the county property appraiser’s office. This value is lowered for owner-occupied homes by homestead exemptions — which reduced a home’s taxable value by up to $50,000 — and limits on increases imposed by Florida’s Save Our Homes program.

The basic system works like this: A home or business with a taxable value of $300,000 that is charged a tax rate of $5 for every $1,000 of value would pay $1,500. That represents the taxable value multiplied by the tax rate. read more

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — London real estate developer Dar Global said Monday that it plans to launch a Trump Plaza in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, its second collaboration with the Trump Organization, the collection of companies controlled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s children.

The $1 billion project will be the second Trump-branded development in Saudi Arabia, following the launch of Trump Tower Jeddah in December last year, Dar Global said. It will include residences, serviced apartments, office space and townhouses.

Trump’s company struck many real estate licensing deals overseas before he first entered the White House in 2017, including for hotels and residential towers in Canada, Dubai, Mexico, India and Turkey.

Trump’s close ties to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and day-to-day ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, drew heavy criticism after the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist for the Washington Post who had written critically about the monarchy.

The first major foreign trip of Trump’s second term was to Saudi Arabia. read more