Things To Do In SW Florida

By Sara Rathner, NerdWallet

If you’re using your credit card issuer’s app or website just to pay your bills and check in on some recent transactions, you’re only tapping into a fraction of the features available to you.

We’ve been able to pay bills online for more than 25 years, but that’s table stakes now. Banks are competing with each other to roll out tools that can help customers see spending trends, set their budget, manage recurring charges and improve account security.

“We started looking at the online experience as the new battleground,” says Adam Winchester, head of experience for consumer and small business payments at U.S. Bank. “If we can win there, we can win market share.”

Get data on spending and tips to save more

Your banking app and website can translate your individual purchases into a longer-term look at your spending trends. Some provide virtual assistants, like Capital One’s Eno, the U.S. Bank Smart Assistant, and Bank of America®’s Erica, that can make suggestions on ways you can save money, including reviewing recurring charges to make sure you’re not spending without realizing it. Your spending can be displayed in helpful graphs that make data on your expenses clearer, so you can make adjustments to your budget if needed. read more

Digital thieves are nothing if not persistent and innovative.

They keep finding new ways to try to part you from your money.

Phishing — where thieves pose as trusted entities or send legitimate looking emails or messages to trick you into giving them access to your accounts — is a widespread method. And it is constantly evolving.

“We’ve seen phishing go through the roof,” said Eva Velasquez, the CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego-based national nonprofit.

But knowledge is power. So here are three emerging phishing threats to look out for, according to internet safety experts. All three threats target key parts of people’s digital lives: email attachments that lead to fake login pages, multi-factor authentication trickery and deceptive calendar invites.

Spending a few minutes reading these pointers could help you avoid getting your ID or money stolen and save you countless hours of dealing with the fallout.

HTML attachments that open fake login pages

Imagine a busy professional who is in email action mode. In the past 30 minutes on a Saturday morning, he has filled out emailed liability waivers for his seven children’s summer camps, filed an expense report for work, answered a secure portal message from the veterinarian about his sick puppy’s prescription, skimmed 182 email subject lines and paid five bills from his email inbox, including a car insurance premium and his beloved cheese-of-the-month club. read more

By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Inside a Walmart store in New Jersey, a worker puts the finishing touches on a cake with an edible ink Sponge Bob on top. A colleague creates a buttercream rosette border for a different cake, while another co-worker frosts a tier of what will be a triple-deck dessert.

It’s graduation season, the busiest time of year for the 6,200 employees the nation’s largest retailer trained to hand-decorate cakes per customers’ orders. The cakes themselves come, pre-made, frozen and in a variety of shapes and sizes, from suppliers, not Walmart’s in-store bakeries.

But there’s no sugar-coating the importance the company places on its custom cake business. Its army of icing artisans are the highest paid hourly workers in a typical U.S. Walmart, excluding managers. Cake decorators earn an average of $19.25 per hour, compared with $18.25 for all non-managerial store workers, a company spokesperson said.

Melissa Fernandez, 36, started working in the electronics area and then the wireless services department of the Walmart in North Bergen, New Jersey, before she transferred to the deli area in search of better pay. But Fernandez had her eye on a cake decorating job and after spending two months getting trained by a store colleague, she picked up a piping bag full-time in 2021. read more

By JEFFREY COLLINS

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A Japanese company has halted construction on a $1.6 billion factory in South Carolina to help make batteries for electric BMWs, citing “policy and market uncertainty.”

While Automotive Energy Supply Corp. didn’t specify what those problems are, South Carolina’s Republican governor said the company is dealing with the potential loss of federal tax breaks for electric vehicle buyers and incentives for EV businesses as well as tariff uncertainties from President Donald Trump’s administration.

“What we’re doing is urging caution — let things play out because all of the these changes are taking place,” Gov. Henry McMaster said.

AESC announced the suspension in construction of its plant in Florence on Thursday.

“Due to policy and market uncertainty, we are pausing construction at our South Carolina facility at this time,” the company’s statement said.

AESC promised to restart construction, although it didn’t say when, and vowed to meet its commitment to hire 1,600 workers and invest $1.6 billion. The company said it has already invested $1 billion in the Florence plant. read more

By DAMIAN J. TROISE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks rose on Wall Street following a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market. The S&P 500 climbed 1% Friday, marking its second weekly gain in a row. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 1.2%. U.S. employers slowed their hiring last month, but still added a solid 139,000 jobs amid uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s trade wars. Lululemon Athletica sank after lowering its profit forecast for the full year. Treasury yields rose in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 4.51%.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks rose on Wall Street Friday following a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market.

The S&P 500 index rose 1.2% in afternoon trading. The benchmark index remains on track to notch a second consecutive winning week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 448 points, or 1.1% as of 3:03 p.m. Eastern. The Nasdaq composite rose 1.4% read more