Things To Do In SW Florida

By Christine Benz of Morningstar

If unanticipated expenses exceed your emergency fund, here’s a look at where to go next.

1. Your own emergency fund/short-term securities

Emergency funds should be held outside of tax-sheltered wrappers and include highly liquid investments like bank savings accounts, money market accounts, and so on.

2. Low-risk assets in taxable account

Next, look at other taxable holdings: investments in brokerage accounts, outside the confines of tax-sheltered vehicles.

When identifying possible securities that you could sell to raise funds, focus on liquidity, tax consequences, and any commissions you’ll owe.

3. Roth IRA contributions

It’s never great to tap your retirement assets unless you absolutely need to, but the Roth IRA offers more flexibility and has fewer strings attached than other tax-sheltered retirement vehicles.

Specifically, you can withdraw any Roth IRA contributions at any time, without incurring penalties or tax—but you’ll have fewer retirement funds working for you.

4. Life insurance cash values

Cash values that have built up in your whole life insurance or variable universal life insurance policy can be another decent source of emergency cash. You can withdraw money outright and have it deducted from your policy’s face value. read more

President Trump plans to withdraw his nomination of Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and close associate of Elon Musk’s, who was on track to be the next NASA administrator.

Trump told associates he intended to yank Isaacman’s nomination after learning that he had donated to prominent Democrats, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations who were not authorized to discuss them publicly. It was the latest example of loyalty as a key criterion for administration roles.

In a statement on Saturday, a White House spokeswoman confirmed the nomination shake-up, saying a replacement would be announced by Trump soon.

The U-turn comes at a fraught moment for the space agency. NASA has so far been spared the deep cuts that have hit the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and other federal research agencies. But the Trump administration’s budget proposal for 2026 seeks to slice the space agency’s budget by one-quarter, lay off thousands of employees and end financing for a slew of current and future missions. read more

A man has been arrested and confessed to a string of thefts of merchandise from the Lowe’s home improvement story in Kissimmee, the the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.

In a Saturday news release, the agency said that on Thursday deputies arrested Edwin Ibanez, 55, and booked him into jail for grand theft (felony, two charges), petit theft (misdemeanor, four charges), dealing in stolen property (felony, six charges) and driving while license suspended.

As of Saturday evening he remained in the Osceola County Jail with a total bond of $37,250.

On Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Office received a delayed report regarding a series of retail thefts that occurred at the Lowe’s at 4420 Pleasant Hill Road, according to the news release. Loss Prevention personnel reported six separate theft incidents taking place between March 27 and April 2

Store surveillance footage captured the suspect vehicle, including the license plate, which aided detectives in identifying the him as as Ibanez, the Sheriff’s Office said. Investigators later determined Ibanez was driving with a suspended license and had an active warrant for violation of probation out of Pinellas County. read more

MERRITT ISLAND — Four-time spaceflight veteran Peggy Whitson had a good excuse for not showing up Saturday for her own induction ceremony to the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.

She’s in quarantine to go to space again.

Whitson is slated to command the private Axiom Space Ax-4 mission flying in a new SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft set to launch as early as June 8. So her presence at the ceremony held under the suspended Space Shuttle Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex was purely virtual.

“Please know that my heart is with you. It is a privilege to be a part of such an esteemed group of individuals who have dedicated their lives to exploring the unknown,” she said in a message recorded at an undisclosed location nearby.

Fellow inductee and two-time space shuttle astronaut Bernard Harris, who became the first Black person to perform a spacewalk, was on hand, though.

He was joined by dozens of former astronauts and NASA officials as both his and Whitson’s plaques were revealed — becoming the 110th and 111th members of the hall of fame created in 1990 by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and represented at the visitor complex with its own building honoring inductees. read more

ATLANTA — Before the oppressive summer heat descends on Atlanta, therapist Brittanee Sims usually gets her thick, curly hair braided at a salon to preserve her healthy mane.

But it’s more expensive this year. So she’ll only pay for her teenage daughter and son to get their summer hairdos. Not having braided hair “creates more of a hassle for everything,” said Sims, who counts herself among the tens of millions of women that regularly spend on the Black hair care industry.

Now, she said, she has to “go home and figure out what I’m gonna do to my hair in the morning, after I went to the gym and it’s messed up with sweating and frizz.”

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are driving up prices for products many Black women consider essential, squeezing shoppers and stylists even more as they grapple with inflation and higher rents. Much of the synthetic braiding hair, human hair for extensions, wigs and weaves, styling tools, braiding gel and other products is imported from or has packaging from China, which was subject to a combined 145% tariff in April. India also is a major global source of human hair. read more