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Business

Most cost-effective airline tickets? How to save cash on flights and airfare

Cheapest airline tickets? How to save money on flights and airfare

There are many ways to save money on flights.

But booking airfares on a specific day of the week is not one of them, according to data from Google Flights.

Booking midweek – and especially around midnight on Tuesdays – is often cited as the best time to buy flights. But over the past five years, U.S. airfares bought on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays were, on average, just 1.9% cheaper than airfares bought over the weekend, according to Google Flights.

“If your trip is just a few weeks away, don’t wait until Tuesday – book your flight now in case the price goes up,” James Byers, Google Flights Group Product Manager, wrote in a published blog post yesterday.

Strategies that work

While the day of the week travelers book doesn’t matter much, the day they fly does, according to research from Google Flights examining five years of historical flight data from August 1, 2017 to August 1, 2022 Has.

“On average, flights departing on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday were 12% cheaper than departing on the weekend,” Byers wrote. “If you exclude international destinations, the savings potential increases to 20%.”

Travelers looking to save money should avoid flying on Sundays, according to Google Flights.

Westend61 | Getty Images

Another common strategy — early booking — also works, according to the data. For domestic flights to the US, airfares were lowest between three and eight weeks before departure, with prices bottoming out 44 days in advance, according to the study.

On average, non-stop flights cost about 20% more than connecting flights, according to Google Flights, but flights with stopovers also increase the risk of disruptions.

An Instagram poll by travel insurance company World Nomads found that more than 1 in 3 respondents spent up to $250 on flights, meals or hotels due to flight delays or cancellations this summer, while 12% said they spent between $500 and $1,000 having spent US dollars.

More savings opportunities

Travelers with flexible flight days can use Google Flights’ “date grid” feature to quickly find the cheapest departure and arrival dates in a given week.

If you want to travel for a certain period of time – let’s say two weeks – but are flexible in terms of time, you can also use the “Price Graph” function to see the cheapest flight times.

Price tracking also eliminates the need to keep searching to price-check a desired route. Find the route once, click the Track Fares button and Google Flights will email you notifications of fare changes.

‘Best times’ to book

Based on its historical data, Google Flights also suggests the “best times” to book flights for peak travel and popular routes.

Travelers looking to save money on flights to Europe are advised to plan as early as possible, while summer vacationers can plan weeks in advance instead of months.

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World News

1000’s in Britain Are Making an attempt to Save Geronimo the Alpaca From Execution

Thousands in Britain Are Trying to Save Geronimo the Alpaca From Execution

Four years ago, Geronimo was just another handsome alpaca from New Zealand on the cusp of a new low-key life in the British countryside.

Though he has barely strayed from the same corner of a farm in Gloucestershire since then, he is now arguably the most divisive alpaca in Europe. The question of whether he should be executed is now pitting British public figures, veterinarians and bovine experts against one another.

The British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, known as Defra, says that 8-year-old Geronimo has bovine tuberculosis — “one of the greatest animal health threats we face today,” as a spokesperson called it in a statement Tuesday — and therefore authorities need to “cull” him.

Geronimo’s owner, Helen Macdonald, and the dozens of “alpaca angels” — who have showed up at her farm over the past few days to take shifts and guard him from executioners — maintain that he is perfectly healthy. It is the bovine tuberculosis testing system that is flawed, Ms. Macdonald, who is a veterinary nurse, insists.

Though the British authorities have a warrant to show up to kill Geronimo any time in the next 24 days, Ms. Macdonald said, she and her new alpaca-loving friends are determined to thwart their plans.

“They are here to protect him and form a human chain,” she said of the “alpaca angels” in an interview on Tuesday.

More than 100,000 people have signed a petition offering Ms. Macdonald support and asking Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other politicians to save Geronimo and more broadly, protect “all camelids” — the term for slender-necked animals including alpacas, llamas and camels — from the TB tests, which supporters say produce false positives.

Mr. Johnson’s father, Stanley Johnson, made headlines on Monday for offering his support, writing in The Sun that he hoped Ms. Macdonald and her supporters would “block the men from Defra from carrying out their absurd murderous errand.” On Monday, about 30 people also marched to Downing Street to protest the killing of Geronimo.

Ms. Macdonald is convinced Geronimo is healthy in part because her “cheeky” alpaca has not exhibited any of the symptoms of contagious disease since he first tested positive for bovine TB four years ago. The disease typically causes severe weight loss.

“He’s really quite fat,” she said, adding that his fleece is also extraordinarily soft. “If he was sick, he would not have nice fiber,” she said.

But more than how he looks, it’s other people’s stories about how the test seems to be misleading that has Ms. Macdonald convinced that someone should step in to save Geronimo.

Bob Broadbent, a veterinary surgeon in Gloucestershire who has worked with camelids since 1986, said that he has seen more cases of bovine tuberculosis “than I would care to remember” over the years. He has also been examining Geronimo regularly over the past three years and in his opinion, he said, the test is flawed and Geronimo does not have tuberculosis.

Defra’s bovine tuberculosis test involves more than just a blood test; it requires an injection of “tuberculin” as “a primer” 10 to 30 days before the test, Dr. Broadbent said. He believes that while this may not create problems in cattle, it sometimes creates false positives in alpacas. Essentially, the result is positive because the test detects the tuberculin — not because they actually have tuberculosis.

In a statement, the Environment secretary, George Eustice, countered that Geronimo has tested positive not once but twice, using a “highly specific and reliable test.”

“My own family have a pedigree herd of South Devon cattle and we have lost cows to TB,” he said, “so I know how distressing it can be and have huge sympathy for farmers who suffer loss.”

The chief veterinary officer of the United Kingdom, Christine Middlemiss, echoed Mr. Eustice. The chances of a false positive are significantly less than 1 percent, she said in a statement.

“While I sympathise with Ms. Macdonald’s situation, we need to follow the scientific evidence and cull animals that have tested positive for TB, to minimise spread of this insidious disease, and ultimately to eradicate the biggest threat to animal health in this country,” she wrote.

Over 27,000 cattle in England were slaughtered in the last year to tackle the disease according to Defra, which called the idea that priming could cause a false positive “misleading” in a blog post Monday.

This is the second time that Dr. Broadbent, the veterinary surgeon, has seen this with a local alpaca, he said. In 2018, another farmer was required to test her alpaca after some nearby cattle tested positive for bovine tuberculosis. Only one — Karly — was positive. The owners were highly skeptical because they did not think that Karly had come into contact with the cattle. After euthanizing Karly — which he was required to do by law — he tested her blood.

“She passed the test,” he said. “I am convinced that she did not have TB.”

Bridget Tibbs, Karly’s owner, said that it’s absurd that in order to retest alpacas for TB while they are alive — for example to prove that Geronimo is healthy after all, something that Ms. Macdonald wants to do — farmers need permission from the government.

“The system is killing undiseased animals all over the place,” said Ms. Tibbs, who runs Cotswold Alpacas. “It’s barbaric.”

She called Geronimo, whom she had just visited, a “beautiful, strong, healthy stud male with the girl alpacas on his mind.”

One of the worst aspects of it all, Ms. Macdonald said, is that she wasn’t required to test Geronimo when he first arrived from New Zealand. Rather, she volunteered to do so a few weeks after he arrived because she was trying to promote use of the test, she said.

Over the past several years, as she’s been fighting in court to save Geronimo, he’s been stuck in isolation; he can see some of her other 80 or so alpacas on her 25-acre farm, but she has to keep a fence between them, she said. She believes the government used the test incorrectly the second time around.

Peter Martin, one of the volunteers now spending his days at her farm, said that though Ms. Macdonald lost her court battle, he is determined to protect Geronimo from the authorities.

“We have a plan for when they arrive,” he said. Though the “alpaca angels” did not want to give away all their tactics, he said he’s convinced they are technically legal.

Categories
World News

Taiwan Drought: Residents Pray for Rain and Scramble to Save Water

Taiwan Drought: Residents Pray for Rain and Scramble to Save Water

TAICHUNG, Taiwan — Lin Wei-Yi once gave little thought to the water sluicing through her shower nozzle, kitchen faucet and garden hose.

But as Taiwan’s worst drought in more than half a century has deepened in recent weeks, Ms. Lin, 55, has begun keeping buckets by the taps. She adopted a neighbor’s tip to flush the toilet five times with a single bucket of water by opening the tank and directly pouring it in. She stopped washing her car, which became so filthy that her children contort themselves to avoid rubbing against it.

The monthslong drought has nearly drained Taiwan’s major reservoirs, contributed to two severe electricity blackouts and forced officials to restrict the water supply. It has brought dramatic changes to the island’s landscape: The bottoms of several reservoirs and lakes have been warped into cracked, dusty expanses that resemble desert floors. And it has transformed how many of Taiwan’s 23.5 million residents use and think about water.

“We used too much water before,” Ms. Lin said this week in the central city of Taichung. “Now we have to adapt to a new normal.”

No typhoons made landfall in Taiwan last year, the first time since 1964. Tropical cyclones are a prime source of precipitation for the island’s reservoirs. Some scientists say the recent lack of typhoons is part of a decades-long pattern linked to global warming, in which the intensity of storms hitting Taiwan has increased but their annual frequency has decreased.

Ordinary rainfall has also been drastically lower than normal this year, particularly in the central region that includes Taichung, a city of 2.8 million people and the second-largest on the island. The water shortage could begin to ease this weekend if heavy rains arrive on Saturday, as some forecasters predict. But as of Friday, the water levels at two main reservoirs that supply Taichung and other central cities were hovering between 1 percent and 2 percent of normal capacity.

In a few cases, the usual residents of the island’s lakes and reservoirs — fish — were replaced by other species: tourists and social media influencers taking pictures of the visually startling terrain for Instagram posts. In one of the most photogenic locations, Sun Moon Lake, a reservoir in central Taiwan, the receding waterline has revealed tombstones that historians say may date to the Qing dynasty.

“It’s been meltingly hot in Taichung for a while now,” said Huang Ting-Hsiang, 27, a chef who works out of his home and stopped cooking last month for lack of water. “The images of the dangerously low levels at those reservoirs are scary, but there’s nothing we can do.”

To fight the drought, the government has been drawing water from wells and seawater desalination plants, flying planes and burning chemicals to seed clouds above reservoirs, and halting irrigation over an area of farmland nearly the size of New York City.

It has also severely restricted residential water deliveries. In Taichung and other hard-hit cities, the taps have been cut off for two days a week since early April. Some residents have low water pressure even on the other days. Officials have said the curbs will become more severe, starting on Tuesday, if the heavy rainfall that is expected over the weekend does not materialize.

Lo Shang-Lien, a professor at the Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering at National Taiwan University, said that the current restrictions were necessary in part because people on the island tend to use a lot of water.

In Taichung, the daily rate of domestic consumption per person is 283 liters, or nearly 75 gallons, according to government data from 2019. In Taipei, the capital, it is 332 liters per day. By contrast, average residential water consumption in Europe is about 144 liters per person per day and 310 liters in the United States, according to official estimates.

Professor Lo said that Taiwan’s water usage was relatively high in part because its water prices — some of the lowest in Asia, according to Fitch Ratings — incentivize excess consumption. “Given all the extreme climatic events of recent years, water policies have become something that we need to reconsider and replan,” he said.

Raising those prices would be politically sensitive, though, and a spokesperson for the Water Resources Agency said that the government had no immediate plans to do so.

For now, many people in Taiwan are watching the skies and praying for rain.

In one sign of the public mood, more than 8,000 social media users tuned in to a recent government livestream of an hourlong afternoon thunderstorm at a reservoir in northern Taiwan. A bubble tea shop in the northern city of Taoyuan said that it would stop serving ice with drinks until the water restrictions were lifted. And in Taichung, irrigation officials held a rain-worshiping ceremony at a temple — the first such event there since 1963 and only the fourth since the temple was built, in 1730.

Ms. Lin, who stopped washing her car, cleans dishes in an assembly line of metal pots with dishwater that she arranges from dirtiest to cleanest.

“I still need to wash whatever I need to wash,” she said, “but now every drop needs to be used twice.”

For the first few weeks of the rationing, some people looked for ways to escape life without running water. Ms. Lin went sightseeing in the eastern city of Hualien and visited one of her daughters in Taipei. Others went bathing in hot springs.

Lin Ching-tan, who owns the Kylin Peak Hotspring resort in Taichung, said that he had lowered the admission price by half, to about $5, as a humanitarian gesture. He also started bathing at work before going home in the evenings.

“If you don’t have water to take a shower, it can be torture,” he said.

But as the government restricts movement in an effort to fight Taiwan’s most severe coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic, more of the island’s residents are stuck at home, looking for creative ways to make scarce water supplies last longer. On Facebook and other social media platforms, people have been sharing water-saving tips, including how to flush toilets more efficiently or install a second rooftop water tank.

Mr. Huang, the chef, said that he and his family have a system for storing water in buckets, pots and tanks before their taps run dry every Tuesday and Wednesday. They also try to order takeout so that they won’t have to use water for cooking, he added, although their favorite restaurants and food stalls sometimes close for the same reason.

Ms. Lin’s system includes placing a plastic container under her feet while showering, then flushing the toilet with it.

This week, on her balcony, she poured used kitchen water over some flowers but left others to wilt. “There’s no turning back from extreme weather,” she said. “Developing good habits for saving water is probably just a rehearsal for frequent droughts of the future.”

Amy Chang Chien reported from Taichung, Taiwan, and Mike Ives from Hong Kong.

Categories
Business

Man Fieri is on a mission to assist save eating places hit by pandemic

Guy Fieri is on a mission to help save restaurants hit by pandemic

Food Network star and restaurateur Guy Fieri has more on his mind these days than navigating his own restaurant business out of the Covid pandemic.

He’s trying to help revitalize the industry itself.

Next month, he’ll give out $300,000 in grants to aspiring restaurant entrepreneurs and existing owners.

“I’ve been very blessed,” said Fieri, who recently signed a three-year deal with the Food Network that Forbes said is worth $80 million.

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“That’s why I try to turn my time and attention to helping others and raising that money and raising some awareness,” he added.

About 90,000 eating and drinking establishments are still closed, either completely or long term, according to the National Restaurant Association’s Covid-19 Operator Survey for April.

Those that are open are dealing with higher costs and lower profits.

The grants, to be made in partnership with the National Restaurant Association Education Foundation and the California Restaurant Association, will take place during Fieri’s event, Guy’s Restaurant Reboot, on June 12 at 7 p.m. ET. It will be livestreamed on his Facebook page and GuysRestaurantReboot.com, as well as simulcast across other social media platforms.

NBC | NBCUniversal | Getty Images

The recipients, who will get $25,000 each, will be chosen by the two food groups, Fieri said. The grants are largely funded by the event’s sponsors, including LendingTree. In fact, there will be no fundraising during the event. Instead, celebrities and culinary icons will join in with food creations and conversation.

“It’s not a telethon,” Fieri said. “It’s a celebration, an inspiration.

“We want to remind everybody: Go eat out more often,” he added. “Go get more delivery. Buy more gift certificates.”

This isn’t Fieri’s first foray into philanthropy. He’s been honored by Make-A-Wish for his work with the charity and he fed firefighters battling California wildfires last year, among other activities.

Also last year, he raised $21.5 million to help restaurant workers through the National Restaurant Association’s Employee Relief Fund. The result: $500 grants to more than 43,000 workers.

Now, as restaurants reopen and try to move forward, workers are hard to find. In fact, 84% of operators say their staffing level is lower than it was in the absence of Covid-19, the National Restaurant Association’s April survey found.

Owners have blamed unemployment benefits, lack of child care for working parents and people leaving the business during the pandemic.

“I hope folks are recognizing that the industry needs you,” Fieri said. “The industry has been great to you.”

Even Fieri is feeling the pain. He recently tried to get a friend into Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen and Bar for lunch on a weekday — only to find out the location wasn’t open for those hours yet.

“It’s a variety of topics, staffing being one of them,” he said.

“But we’re making it, you know, we’re coming back.”

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Business

529 Plans for Faculty: Store Round and Save Charges

529 Plans for College: Shop Around and Save Fees

However, the outcome could have been different if the bug had occurred during a downturn, said Madeline Hume, a Morningstar analyst. She has recommended that you be familiar with the performance of your plan so that you can assess whether returns seem unusual and be careful when your plan notifies you of any changes. “It’s important to know what communication is coming out,” she said.

The company rates 529 plans on factors such as fees, investment options, and plan monitoring. Most plans are rated gold, silver, or bronze, which indicates that they offer a net benefit to investors. However, eight plans received “negative” ratings, mainly due to excessive fees.

Here are some questions and answers about 529 savings plans:

What college expenses can 529 funds be used for?

Savings in a 529 can be used to pay college expenses including tuition, room and board, mandatory fees, books, supplies, and required equipment.

Can I use 529 funds to pay for student loans?

Yes. According to a law passed in 2019, up to $ 10,000 from a 529 account can be used to repay a beneficiary’s student loan. An additional $ 10,000 each can be used to repay student loans borrowed from the beneficiary’s siblings.

Can grandparents save on a 529 account for a grandchild?

Yes – and an upcoming change to an important grant form, the Free State Student Aid Application (FAFSA), should help make this more attractive. Currently, contributions from 529 grandparent-owned plans are reported by the FAFSA as untaxed cash assistance for the student, which may decrease eligibility for financial assistance, financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz said. However, an updated FAFSA will remove the issue of cash assistance, so distributions from 529 grandparent-owned distributions are no longer on the form. The change is expected to take place at FAFSA in late 2022 for the 2023-24 academic year.

However, the change doesn’t affect another form of tuition grant, the CSS profile, which is required by many more expensive private colleges, Kantrowitz said.

Categories
Health

Can a Smartwatch Save Your Life?

Can a Smartwatch Save Your Life?

Most watches wait to send an alarm until about five abnormal beats occur in an hour, rather than after each rhythm change. However, this does not mean that the anomaly is dangerous.

“As a cardiologist, I love home equipment,” said Dr. Gary Rogal, Medical Director of Cardiovascular Services at RWJBarnabas Health in West Orange, New Jersey, whose team looked after my mother. But he made it clear that he only likes them for patients who he thinks there is some clue to look for, such as those with an existing heart condition or a family history of heart disease. “I would never subscribe to the concept that everyone should be monitored. You will see things and it will drive you crazy, but you will probably be fine. “

The American Heart Association agrees that smartwatch monitors can be beneficial, even lifesaving, for some, but Dr. Mariell Jessup, the group’s chief science and medical officer, said, “We don’t have enough data yet to recommend it to everyone.”

Even electrocardiograms done in a doctor’s office are not routinely recommended for everyone. The US Preventive Services Task Force, a group of experts advising on screening tests, says there isn’t enough evidence to show routine EKGs are effective and is concerned about the cost and potential dangers of further testing .

And doctors fear that more and more people are wearing these devices that could detect meaningless arrhythmias, leading to a deluge of unnecessary check-ups and too many treatments.

“That’s what keeps me up at night,” said Dr. Joseph Ross, professor of medicine and public health at Yale who is on a team of researchers conducting a randomized clinical trial comparing a group who wears the Apple Watch to a control group who wears a smartwatch without an EKG App. “When someone with an occasional abnormal rhythm that would never have caused a stroke undergoes a major work-up or is given a blood thinning, the risk of dangerous bleeding or other harm outweighs the benefits of possible stroke prevention.”

Dr. Steven Lubitz, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, worries that customers believe the watches offer protection for general heart health and, for example, assume that they are not looking for signs of heart attacks .

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Entertainment

Hollywood Would possibly Not Wish to Save the Golden Globes

Hollywood Might Not Want to Save the Golden Globes

For now, at least, the Golden Globes party is over.

Long marketed as the Academy Awards’ less stiff cousin, the Globes are now scrambling to clean up their plot after NBC announced it would shut down the show in 2022 due to a series of controversies that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the constituency behind it, would not attend to broadcast the ceremony.

Citing all of these controversies may prove to be as tedious as the awards show, but here are a notable selection: The Los Angeles Times and this paper both published recently published exposés of the group’s double-dealing, a follow-up story to the Los Angeles Times revealed that the group had no black members, and a late, reluctant series of reforms proposed by the group failed to satisfy Time’s Up, causing studios like Netflix, Amazon, and Warner Bros. to issue statements that one amounted to an effective boycott.

As this test intensified, the members of the 86-strong island association continued to commit new, headline-making gaffes. One member confused Daniel Kaluuya for another black actor, Leslie Odom Jr., minutes after Kaluuya’s Oscar win, while a former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press was expelled from the group in April after he wrote a right-wing article to members with the Title Black Lives Matter had relayed a “hate movement”.

This kind of insensitive behavior has been tolerated by Hollywood for decades because the Golden Globes feature the most iconic pit stop on the way to the Oscars: when you’re ready to cuddle and snuggle (and turn) blind eyes with eccentric voters their more questionable behavior) then the group could give you the momentum you need to make it all the way through the awards season.

But with the show now on the ropes, stars have begun publicly questioning the integrity of the members: Scarlett Johansson said in a statement that she stopped attending the group’s press conferences after becoming “sexist “Asked questions and remarks from certain HFPA members that went to the limit about sexual harassment,” while Globe favorite Tom Cruise returned his three trophies in a notable rebuke.

Can the show make a comeback when its golden sheen is so tarnished? Or will Hollywood conclude that rescuing the Golden Globes may cause more problems than it’s worth?

Hours after NBC shut down the show for 2022, the group released a detailed schedule of the proposed changes, including adding many new members over the coming months. Even if the group doubles its membership and adds more colored journalists, the question remains of what to do with the longtime members who have indulged in the most criticized practices of the globes for years.

Unlike the Oscars, which are voted on by several thousand of Hollywood’s most successful artists and technicians, the Golden Globes are selected by a small group of foreign journalists with little to no profile outside the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, many of whom pull significant paychecks from the Group.

A selection of people is unlikely to add prestige, and the Golden Globes may have to completely reinvent their electoral board if they hope to win back already-troubled stars and studios. Why should actors like Johansson or Kaluuya continue to participate in the organization’s activities when the journalists who insulted them retain their influence within the group?

In the meantime, it is possible that another award ceremony could be postponed to the beginning of January in order to effectively take the place of the globes in the award calendar next year. The Screen Actors Guild Awards and Critics Choice Awards are already televised and attract big stars, although none have matched the traditional Golden Globes ratings.

If either show were scaled up appropriately and postponed to the first week of January, it could at least take advantage of an ecosystem of parties, events, and advertisements centered around a grand awards show that airs the first week of the year. And if the relaunched show has hit audience numbers better than the pandemic-ridden low of the Globes this year, Hollywood could be in no real rush to bring the Globes back to the fore.

That’s the thing about awards: these trophies are only as important as the recipients believe, and now that the illusion of the Golden Globes has been pierced, the stars may find it hard to put their disbelief back on. Could the biggest Golden Globe nudge come if Hollywood leaves the show entirely?

Categories
Entertainment

The Weeknd and Ariana Grande “Save Your Tears” Remix Video

The Weeknd and Ariana Grande "Save Your Tears" Remix Video

The new music from Weeknd and Ariana Grande is here! On Thursday the singers revealed their latest collaboration, a remix of The Weeknd’s song “Save Your Tears,” and it does. Damn it. Well. Let’s just say their voices together are just * Chef’s Kiss *. The duo frenzied fans earlier this week when they casually dropped a clip from nowhere on Monday.

Of course, this isn’t the first time The Weeknd and Grande have teamed up. In addition to her 2014 hit “Love Me Harder” from Grande’s my everything Album, they also teamed up for “Off the Table” from Grande’s 2020 album Positions. Listen to the newest song above in its entirety.

Categories
Business

Save Cash on the Retailer

Save Money at the Store

How do you spend the right amount on groceries?

According to an online survey of more than 1,000 people published in October by LendingTree and Qualtrics, weekly grocery bills in the US rose an average of 17 percent last year from before the pandemic. Thirty-one percent of respondents said they “almost always overpay” in the grocery store.

No matter how big or small your grocery budget is, you can rest assured and keep your overall spending on track. Whether it’s your first time to come up with a grocery budget or looking to return to one, here are strategies that can help you save money in your kitchen and grocery store.

Cooking doesn’t have to mean hovering over a stove for hours or creating complex meal plans. Cooking involves frying some garlic in oil and then adding canned tomatoes instead of opening a jar of pasta sauce. Not only do you save money, but you also have more control over your health. Meat and dairy products are expensive. So plan more meals using them for flavor rather than bulk, enjoy more vegetables and fruits in their many affordable forms, and keep meals simple so you don’t burn yourself out while cooking.

Consider inexpensive staples like rice, pasta, oats, bread, canned and dried beans, canned tomatoes, and eggs: how do they already play a part in your routine? Then think about what you can easily get hold of. You should discover a solid Venn diagram showing the meals that you can make more frequently. Start by digging into the basics that make up your fundamentals. (You can find branded or cheaper versions of these staples down or up on store shelves. See what savings you get.) As you get more comfortable, go further. If you usually enjoy a lamb and sausage rice dish, can you try chickpeas and half of the sausage this week? Cheap staples are a starting point, not a cage.

When you use meat and dairy products more sparingly, relying on vegetables and fruits to improve the taste. Eating more products can sound expensive or labor intensive, but that’s not a certainty. Canned fruits and vegetables and frozen vegetables don’t have to be of inferior quality. Canned pumpkin is mashed and ready to make a silky soup for half the cost and effort of a fresh pumpkin. Frozen fruits and vegetables are often chopped without the markup you see on pre-cut fresh versions.

And no matter how careful you are as a meal planner, you will have times when something you bought with the best of intentions has passed its prime. Find a recipe that requires you to throw almost anything in, such as: B. a soup, a stew or a pan. Think of leftovers and products from the past as an asset rather than a liability.

You can save money by eating a smaller selection of foods in a given week, but if you stick to the eclectic things it won’t get boring. Cut out single-use items unless they are important to you (save the hot sauce). A cake mix is ​​limited and costs more, while flour, sugar, and baking soda offer limitless options. Yoghurt with one serving costs more and can only be eaten as it is, while plain yoghurt can be eaten with a strudel of honey for breakfast, made into a sauce, baked into a tea cake or added to smoothies.

When planning your grocery shopping, stay open to the changing seasons to create natural diversity and vibrancy at no additional cost. Fruits and vegetables are usually cheaper in season – think of the midsummer four-for-a-dollar deals on corn on the cob. If you have the space and time, freeze or you can get the bounty. But don’t think that you have to plan hundreds of new menus every time the wind changes. Let the seasons be an inspiration, not a burden.

If you have a snack in between or instead of meals, keep in mind that packaged snacks get expensive. This also applies to drinks. Limiting the snacks and drinks you prepare can be one of the fastest ways to get a grocery bill that is easy to breathe. If you need help reducing this, think about your pleasure to versatility ratio. Kombucha isn’t all that versatile, but it may be your only way to get through the long afternoons. Plan for that if you can.

For some, the pleasure of saving money on your own is enough; The lack of worry creates the motivation to move on. For most of us, eating is a pleasure and a connection. So don’t budget pleasure from the picture. If you had dessert and a glass of wine with a friend on Friday night, consider an inexpensive substitute, such as: B. a piece of chocolate and a cup of chamomile tea.

Leanne Brown is the author of Good and Cheap and Good Enough (January 2022).

Categories
Politics

Biden Might Be the Most Professional-Labor President Ever; That Might Not Save Unions

Biden May Be the Most Pro-Labor President Ever; That May Not Save Unions

Two months into the new administration, union leaders are proclaiming Joseph R. Biden Jr. the most union-friendly president of their lives – and “maybe ever,” as Steve Rosenthal, former AFL-CIO political director, said in an interview.

Mr Biden has moved quickly to oust government officials who the unions viewed as anti-labor and to reverse the Trump-era rules that undermined worker protection. He has enforced laws that send hundreds of billions of dollars to cities and states, aid that public sector unions consider essential, and tens of billions to prop up unions’ pension plans.

Perhaps most notably, the president appeared on a video hinting at a union vote in an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, warning that “there should be no intimidation, coercion, threats, anti-union propaganda” – an unusually outspoken one Step from a president in a standard union election.

Still, Mr Rosenthal and other supporters of the work admit a nagging concern: Despite Mr Biden’s remarkable support for their movement, unions may not be much better off leaving his post than entering it.

This is because labor law gives employers considerable powers to defend themselves against trade union organizations. This is one reason union membership has plummeted to record lows in recent decades. And Senate Republicans will seek to thwart any legislative attempts – like the PRO bill the House passed this month – to reverse that trend.

“The PRO law is vital,” said Rosenthal. “But what is happening now regarding Republicans in Congress, the Senate filibuster, is everyone’s guess.”

Until recently, it was far from clear that Mr Biden would govern in such a union-friendly manner. Although he has long advocated the union’s advantage and has maintained close relationships with union leaders, the president also has ties to big names like Steve Ricchetti, an adviser to the president who was a lobbyist for companies like AT&T and Eli Lilly. Mr Biden voted for a free trade agreement over the years, which the unions voted against.

Add to this the fact that he served as a vice president in a government that sometimes angered the unions when President Barack Obama stepped in on behalf of a Rhode Island school district that fired faculty from an underperforming school. Mr Biden was also the captain of an Obama administration team that negotiated with Republicans to reduce the deficit.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Mr Biden’s allies and advisers argued that he had merely acted as the loyal deputy of his boss and that as president he would prove more in tune with work.

But for many workers who had doubts, Mr. Biden exceeded expectations. Shortly after he was sworn in as President, the White House called for the resignation of the National Labor Relations Board’s General Counsel, Peter B. Robb, whose office enforces the labor rights of private sector workers.

Mr Robb was deeply unpopular about organized work, which he viewed as overly management-friendly. His term was due to expire in November, and the Presidents of both parties have allowed the Advocates General to extend their term.

However, since no letter of resignation was received from Mr. Robb on the day of his inauguration, the White House fired him.

“What was really promising and exciting for those of us who took care of it was the dismissal of Peter Robb and the dramatic way it came about,” said Lisa Canada, the political and legislative director of the state joiners’ union in Michigan.

However, it is the Alabama video that most clearly highlights the differences between Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama when it comes to work. When state officials flocked to Madison, Wisconsin, in 2011 to protest Governor Scott Walker’s plan to withdraw their bargaining rights, union leaders asked the White House to send a senior government official out of solidarity. The White House refused, despite Mr Obama saying the plan was like an “attack on the unions”.

“We have made every effort to get someone there,” said Larry Cohen, who was then president of Communications Workers of America and is now chairman of the progressive advocacy group Our Revolution. “You wouldn’t allow anyone to leave.”

In contrast, Mr Biden appeared anxious to make his statement on the Amazon elections that a number of union leaders had asked him to make.

“We haven’t seen so much support for the organization since Franklin Roosevelt,” said Cohen, who expected Amazon’s statement to discourage anti-union behavior by employers.

Still, Mr Cohen and other labor officials said that without a change in labor law, union membership would likely take a path under Mr Biden that was similar to Mr Obama when the proportion of workers in unions fell about 1.5 percentage points. Overall, union membership has fallen from around a third of workers in the 1950s to just over a tenth today, and in the private sector to just 6 percent.

“Because of growing inequality, our economy is on a path of implosion,” said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, in an interview. The PRO Act “will raise wages and slow down this path,” he added.

Under current law, employers can inundate workers with anti-union messages – through mandatory meetings, emails and signs in the workplace – while unions often have difficulty gaining access to workers. And while it is technically illegal to threaten or fire workers who take part in an organizing campaign, employers receive minimal penalties for doing so.

Cases from employment offices can drag on for years, after which an employer often only has to publish a notice in which he promises to comply with labor law in the future, said Wilma B. Liebman, a former CEO. There are no fines for such violations, although workers can be paid in full through rebate.

The PRO Act would prohibit mandatory anti-union meetings, impose fines for threatening or dismissing workers, and help unjustly dismissed workers get quick reinstatement. This would also give unions leverage by allowing them to participate in secondary boycotts – for example, asking customers to boycott restaurants that buy food from a bakery they want to unionise.

Glenn Spencer, senior vice president at the US Chamber of Commerce, criticized the bill as “radically recasting labor law” and said the provision on secondary boycotts could be extremely disruptive to its goals.

“These companies have nothing to do with the nature of the labor dispute, but they suddenly got caught up in it,” said Spencer.

However, despite the legal protection provided in the PRO Act, it will be difficult for unions to improve coverage on a large scale, say many experts. Labor law often effectively requires workers to win union elections one job at a time, which at Amazon alone can mean hundreds of separate elections.

The system is “optimized to build weak labor movements,” said David Rolf, former vice president of the Service Employees International Union, who favors industry-wide unions and negotiations.

And the PRO Act’s chances of going into effect are slim as long as opponents fall back on the Senate filibuster, which effectively needs 60 votes to pass laws.

Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, appeared before the AFL-CIO’s Executive Board this month to advocate exempting certain types of laws from filibusters. In a post-meeting statement, councilors called for “quick and necessary changes” to Senate rules to remove the filibuster as an obstacle to progressive legislation.

Mr Biden has since indicated that he is ready to weaken the filibuster, although it is not clear whether the PRO Act would benefit from it.

Mr Trumka said he was confident that Mr Biden would seize the opportunity that Mr Obama missed when the Democrats had a large Senate majority but still did not change labor law. “This president understands the power to resolve inequalities through collective bargaining,” said Trumka.

Others, however, are skeptical that despite all of his openness, Mr Biden will be able to deliver on behalf of the unions.

“The proof is in the pudding,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. “We know where his heart is. That doesn’t mean anything will change. “