Dear Dave,
My wife and I are following your plan, and recently we found some old savings bonds that had been given to her by her grandfather when she was a kid. Do you think we should go ahead and cash these in before they reach their final maturity date in a few months?
John
Dear John,
Absolutely! Every one of those savings bonds is accruing interest at the appropriate rate for the type of bond it is. The problem is every one of those rates stinks. I hate savings bonds. We’re talking about some very low interest rates.
Another reason I don’t like savings bonds is they’re not financial instruments which cause you to be responsible with them. People lose them, they forget about them, and then maybe they turn up in an old lock box somewhere down the road after making a whopping two or three percent.
Back in the day, they used to be positioned as patriotic and all that. But who wants to finance the stuff this government does? We’re not supporting World War II anymore, you know? Cash them in, and depending on what Baby Step you’re on, put it toward your emergency fund, your debt snowball, retirement, your mortgage—just be proactive, and do something better with the money!
—Dave
(Decisions and sacrifices)
Word count: 291
Dear Dave,
We have two preschool kids, and I’m a stay-at-home mom. My husband brings home about $2,500 a month, and our mortgage payment is $1,000 a month. Recently, we’ve had to tap into our savings in order to pay the bills. Should I go back to work? There are a couple of reputable daycare centers near us, but I’m just not sure if this is the right thing to do.
Tammy
Dear Tammy,
Being a full-time mom is a wonderful thing. And honestly, I can’t blame you for wanting to stay home with your children when they’re so young.
The biggest problem I see is that 40 percent of your husband’s paycheck is going toward your mortgage. That’s way too much! A house payment should never be more than 25 percent of your take-home pay.
I know trying to live on the $1,500 that’s left is hard, especially with two babies in the house. But it doesn’t sound like a lot of fat can be trimmed right now. One of you might consider taking on a part-time job nights or weekends for a while, or he could look into enhancing his education. Either one of these would help get your income up. Selling the house is an option, too. But I’m not a fan of that one except in the most extreme circumstances.
Right now, I’m viewing this as a math problem with three components. The components are income, house payment, and lifestyle. You and your husband need to sit down, and have a serious heart-to-heart talk about things. There will have to be some sacrifices in order to make things better, but only the two of you together can determine exactly what’s best for your family.
God bless you all.
—Dave
* Dave Ramsey is CEO of Ramsey Solutions. He has authored seven best-selling books, including The Total Money Makeover. The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than 16 million listeners each week on 600 radio stations and multiple digital platforms. Follow Dave on the web at daveramsey.com and on Twitter at @DaveRamsey.
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e 2019 Ogden Holiday Events That Cannot Be Missed
Looking for some holiday spirit? Check out the endless activities that Ogden City has to offer this jolly season.
It’s not Christmas without the annual Ogden Electric Light Parade and a visit to the Christmas Village, a brilliant display of unique miniature cottages on Washington Boulevard. But what about the events that are less well-known? There’s so much to love about Ogden year-round, but the holiday season brings added magic to Utah’s hidden gem. Don’t miss these events while you spend your holidays in Utah.
Holidays at The Monarch
Opening in fall of 2019 in the old Ben Lomond Garage building and considered the heart of the Nine Rails Creative District, The Monarch is the pace to check out this holiday season. The First Friday Art Stroll on December 6 kicks off a calendar packed with holiday events; there’s an event almost weekly leading up to Christmas at the Monarch. A few of our recommendations that you cannot miss: The First Annual Holiday Market in Ogden by Craft Lake City on December 7, the Monarch Holiday Open House on December 14, a Holiday Letterpress Workshop on December 14 (this will surely win Christmas for you if you’re still hunting for the perfect gift!), and a Fused Glass Winter Scene workshop with local artist Cathy Cartwright on December 21 and December 28.
Onstage Ogden Presents “Utah Symphony: Here Comes Santa Claus”
On the evening of December 23, join the acclaimed Utah Symphony as they perform some favorite holiday songs at Peery’s Egyptian Theater. While the Utah Symphony usually calls Abravanel Hall home, you won’t want to miss your chance to hear beautiful Christmas classics under the starry sky of our very own Egyptian Theater. Adult tickets are $10 and children under 12 can attend for just $5!
Explore the Ogden Nature Center
You may not think to visit the Ogden Nature Center in the winter, but you’d be missing out on some gorgeous winter scenes. Spend an afternoon admiring this 152-acre nature preserve and see what winter wildlife you can spot. This could also be the ultimate destination for winter and Christmas photos! There are over 1.5 miles of walking trails that look even more beautiful in the snow. You can also support the Ogden Nature Center all season by taking part in their holiday Cup Hop. Through the month of December, you can meet ONC staff, volunteers, and live birds of prey at various local coffee shops! If you donate $12, you will receive a collectible mug AND a free coffee, tea, or cocoa! A few of these events will take place on December 12 at Grounds for Coffee on 25th Street and on December 20 at Coffee Links at 287 Park Avenue.
The Ice Sheet
All season long, you’ll want to be sure to gather your family and friends for a day of skating at The Ice Sheet, the Olympic rink that was used during the 2002 Winter Games. Open skating is offered each day or you can rent a party room for up to 40 guests. New to ice skating but want to feel the thrill of gliding on the ice? Ice skating lessons are also offered year-round!
There’s always more to discover in Ogden and the holidays are the perfect time to start exploring! What are your favorite holiday events in Ogden? We’re always looking for more holiday spirit and ways to get out and enjoy our community. While you are out enjoying the festivities, be sure to tag your photos with #OgdenCitySights so we can celebrate with you!
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Press Release
USDA Invests $62.3 Million in Rural Broadband Infrastructure for Alabama Families
HAMILTON, Ala., Dec. 5, 2019 – Today, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development Donald “DJ” LaVoy announced USDA has invested $62.3 million in high-speed broadband infrastructure that will create or improve e-Connectivity for more than 8,000 rural households, 57 farms, 44 businesses, 17 educational facilities, 14 critical community facilities and three health care facilities in rural Alabama. This is one of many funding announcements in the first round of USDA’s ReConnect Pilot Program investments.
“Beyond connecting us to our friends and family, high-speed broadband internet connectivity, or e-Connectivity, is a necessity, not an amenity, to do business, access opportunities in education and receive specialized health care in rural America today,” LaVoy said. “Under the leadership of President Trump and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, USDA is committed to being a strong partner to rural communities in deploying this critical infrastructure, because we know when rural America thrives, all of America thrives.”
Congressman Robert Aderholt added, “When the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee created the Re-Connect program back in 2018 under my leadership, our goal was to help expand broadband to rural areas and help close the ‘digital divide’ that isolates so many parts of rural America. I believed then, and continue to believe now, that the expansion, maintenance and upgrading of broadband service should be of highest priority. This program is beginning to pay dividends in rural Alabama and America. I want to thank the men and women of the United States Department of Agriculture and, of course, Secretary Perdue, for sharing this goal of expanding access.”
Tombigbee Electric Cooperative, Inc. will use a $29.5 million 50 percent loan-grant combination to develop an All-Dielectric Self-Supporting (ADSS) fiber network in unserved areas of Marion, Lamar, Fayette, Franklin, Winston and Walker counties. This investment is expected to reach 2,152 households, 20 farms, 15 businesses, 10 critical community facilities, five educational facilities and one health care facility.
Millry Telephone Company, Inc. will use a $28.2 million 50 percent loan-grant combination to develop a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network in Choctaw and Washington counties. This investment is expected to reach 3,797 households, 20 farms, 15 businesses, 11 educational facilities, four critical community facilities and two health care centers.
Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative, Inc. will use a $2 million loan to develop a FTTH network in Jackson and DeKalb counties. This investment is expected to reach 1,676 homes and one educational facility.
National Telephone of Alabama, Inc. will use a $2.7 million 50 percent loan-grant combination to develop a fiber-to-the premises (FTTP) network in Colbert County. This investment is expected to reach 378 rural households, 17 farms and 14 businesses.
Background:
In March 2018, Congress provided $600 million to USDA to expand broadband infrastructure and services in rural America. On Dec. 13, 2018, Secretary Perdue announced the rules of the program, called “ReConnect,” including how the loans and grants will be awarded to help build broadband infrastructure in rural America. USDA received 146 applications between May 31, 2019, and July 12, 2019, requesting $1.4 billion in funding across all three ReConnect Program funding products: 100 percent loan, 100 percent grant, and loan-grant combinations. USDA is reviewing applications and announcing approved projects on a rolling basis. Additional investments in all three categories will be made in the coming weeks.
These grants, loans and combination funds enable the federal government to partner with the private sector and rural communities to build modern broadband infrastructure in areas with insufficient internet service. Insufficient service is defined as connection speeds of less than 10 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 1 Mbps upload.
In April 2017, President Donald J. Trump established the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity to identify legislative, regulatory and policy changes that could promote agriculture and prosperity in rural communities. In January 2018, Secretary Perdue presented the Task Force’s findings to President Trump. These findings included 31 recommendations to align the federal government with state, local and tribal governments to take advantage of opportunities that exist in rural America. Increasing investments in rural infrastructure is a key recommendation of the task force. To view the report in its entirety, please view the Report to the President of the United States from the Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity (PDF, 5.4 MB). In addition, to view the categories of the recommendations, please view the Rural Prosperity infographic (PDF, 190 KB).
USDA Rural Development provides loans and grants to help expand economic opportunities and create jobs in rural areas. This assistance supports infrastructure improvements; business development; housing; community facilities such as schools, public safety and health care; and high-speed internet access in rural areas. For more information, visit www.rd.usda.gov.
5 Vital Facts About Signing Up for Coverage at HealthCare.gov
Sign up by December 15. Open Enrollment starts on November 1, but you must take action by December 15, no matter if this is your first time getting covered or if you are returning to shop and save.
Coverage could be cheaper than you think. Last year, 9 in 10 people qualified for financial help to make their monthly premiums more affordable. In fact, 2 out of 3 HealthCare.gov customers can find a plan for $10 or less this year.
Shop and save. If you had coverage through HealthCare.gov for 2019, you should come back to update your information and compare your options for 2020. Every year, plans and prices change, you could save money by switching to a new plan that still meets your needs.
Accidents happen: Health insurance protects you from the unexpected. Accidents happen and people get sick.
Free help is available. If you have questions about signing up or want to talk through your options with a trained professional, free help is just a call or quick away. Call 1-800-318-2596, visit localhelp.healthcare.gov or make a one-on-one appointment now.
-------------------------------------At a time when global education reformers are looking at the best ways to improve school climate, school safety, and student well-being, Vishmal Sharma the Founder of SMILES, asks that we turn our attention to the role of schools in promoting the mental health of educators.
How do we support teachers and school staff who often experience high levels of stress and also improve learning in classrooms? In a new interview with C.M. Rubin, the Founder of CMRubinWorld, Sharma explains that the mission of his program SMILES - a “Stress-free, Motivating, Inquisitive Learning Ecosystem” - is to create a wellness ecosystem by combining mindfulness with pedagogy, integrating well-being with classroom management, and igniting the inquisitiveness for learning.”
Vishal Sharma believes classrooms are losing their ability to be joyful, experiential and holistic learning spaces, especially with growing distractions such as social media and mobile phones. SMILES uses short, easy wellbeing techniques called “SMILES Anchors” that can be done anywhere at anytime.
Read the full article here
Vishal Sharma is the founder of “SMILES in Education,” a holistic teacher training program created in 2017. Sharma’s SMILES in Education program has helped 4500 students and 160 teachers in low-income schools in India, and schools in New Zealand, the United States, Finland, and Spain are integrating the model into their curriculums as well.
CMRubinWorld’s award-winning series, The Global Search for Education, brings together distinguished thought leaders in education and innovation from around the world to explore the key learning issues faced by most nations. The series has become a highly visible platform for global discourse on 21st century learning, offering a diverse range of innovative ideas which are presented by the series founder, C. M. Rubin, together with the world’s leading thinkers.
For more information on CMRubinWorld
Follow @CMRubinWorld on Twitter
Contact Information:
David Wine
David(at)cmrubinworld(dot)com
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This week, Secretary Perdue sits down with three different guests who all believe in the transformational power of work – but all have experienced it from different vantage points. First he hears from Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who was Speaker when the 1996 Welfare Reform was passed with bipartisan support from the House, Senate and President Clinton. He then hears from Jo Ann Mattson, who is Executive Director of The Light House, an organization whose mission is to help people rebuild their lives by providing shelter and services to empower them as they transition from homelessness to employment, housing, and self-sufficiency. Finally, he hears from Jeremy Cox, who is a student of Jo Ann's program, training in the Light House Bistro. Formerly incarcerated, then homeless, Jeremy has made a choice to change his life.
Dear Editor:
Please consider this thinkpiece by veteran journalist Robert Koehler as he asks us to envision a world less divided. For PeaceVoice, thank you,
Tom Hastings
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Envisioning a united world
by Robert C. Koehler
956 words
Let’s bomb Iowa! Or maybe Texas or Michigan or Nebraska . . .
Oh wait, I got confused for a second. Those places are part of America and we love them. We would never bomb them. These are places we would bomb: Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, etc.
Think how our bombs have kept the country safe over the last half century or so. Indeed, think about “national safety” as a concept: protecting only what’s within our borders, because that’s all that matters. Indeed, think about the sanctity of those borders. People born on one side of them are citizens; people born on the other side — like Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma — are illegals, plain and simple.
Ramirez Palma, a construction worker, had lived in the U.S. for twenty years. In October, he was nearly killed (and three of his co-workers were killed) when an 18-story hotel under construction in New Orleans started to collapse. He later became a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the developers, who were accused of using substandard building materials and inadequately shoring up the concrete flooring.
But guess what? He wasn’t a citizen! He was here without bureaucratic bona fides; and while the investigation was in progress, he was arrested by ICE and quickly deported to Honduras. No matter he’s married and has a 10-year-old son in the U.S. The rights of building developers not to have to endure the negative testimony of illegals remains intact.
This is one tiny example of a global absurdity — indeed, a global insanity: the alleged sovereignty of nation states to decide who matters and who doesn’t, what matters and what doesn’t. And what doesn’t matter is that the whole planet is in danger. If its infrastructure, both political and ecological, collapses, every country loses.
As Danny Sjursen wrote recently at Truthdig: “As the U.S. government, as well as far too many Americans, remain fixated on the decidedly minor threat of Islamist ‘terrorism,’ two actual global existential perils persist and are hardly addressed. I’m speaking, of course, of nuclear war and man-made, climate-based catastrophe.”
Can we not look at matters from a planetary, as opposed to an us-vs.-them, perspective? Sjursen’s point is that humanity is trembling on the brink of extinction and the global political structure we’ve built is incapable of addressing or even acknowledging this. Borders are obsolete. Nationalism is obsolete; it’s been obsolete, Sjursen maintains, since World War I, which, following the deaths of millions of soldiers, begot the even bloodier World War II, which begot the Cold War, the nuclear arms race and ultimately the endless wars of the 21st Century. Yet “world government,” whatever that might mean, and one-world political consciousness seem beyond our collective imagination. But such an evolution is necessary.
Can we envision a world in which bombing Libya or Iraq is as unimaginable as bombing Iowa? Can we envision a world that is organized around the requirements of planetary survival and values the transcultural connectedness of every human occupant?
Rana Dasgupta, writing last year in The Guardian, put it this way: “The most momentous development of our era, precisely, is the waning of the nation state: its inability to withstand countervailing 21st-century forces, and its calamitous loss of influence over human circumstance. National political authority is in decline, and, since we do not know any other sort, it feels like the end of the world.”
The xenophobia and global obsession with secure borders — protection from the millions of war and climate refugees at loose on this troubled planet — are “symptoms,” he writes, “of what is slowly revealing itself to all: nation states everywhere are in an advanced state of political and moral decay from which they cannot individually extricate themselves.”
So what happens next? The time has come, Dasgupta says, to envision what seems impossible: a global order that doesn’t currently exist. He takes it upon himself to begin the process and defines three elements as crucial. These are:
1. Global financial regulation: “We must build systems to track transnational money flows, and to transfer a portion of them into public channels. Without this, our political infrastructure will continue to become more and more superfluous to actual material life. In the process we must also think more seriously about global redistribution: . . . the systematic transfer of wealth from rich to poor for the improved security of all.”
2. Transnational democracy: “National governments themselves need to be subjected to a superior tier of authority: they have proved to be the most dangerous forces in the nation-state era, waging endless wars against other nations while oppressing, killing and otherwise failing their own populations.” He cites the European Union as an imperfect example, which at least has democratized movement and economic opportunity within its confines.
3. New conceptions of citizenship: Citizenship should be de-linked from territory and global movement should be deregulated. Also, people profoundly affected by decisions made on the other side of the planet ought to have a say in those decisions. For instance: “Should a U.S. election not involve most people on earth? What would American political discourse look like, if it had to satisfy voters in Iraq or Afghanistan?”
We’re all imperiled by climate change and the possibility of nuclear (or any) war. The time has come to face these real dangers by becoming global citizens. Embracing transnational connectedness does not mean surrendering to homogenization or devaluing diversity but, rather, just the opposite. It means deciding not to fear differences of language, culture or ethnicity. It means realizing that all of us are equal at a global level and what we have to learn from one another is endless.
–end–
Robert Koehler, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is an award-winning Chicago journalist and editor.
NEWS: Sanders Releases High-Speed Internet for All Plan
December 6, 2019
Contact: press@berniesanders.com
WASHINGTON – Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday unveiled a groundbreaking plan, “High-Speed Internet for All,” to invest $150 billion to provide high-speed internet access to every household in America, dramatically lower the costs of high-speed internet services, and break up and regulate internet monopolies. The plan would require providers to offer a basic, quality internet plan at an affordable price.
“It is outrageous that across the country millions of Americans and so many of our communities do not have access to affordable high-speed internet,” said Sanders. “Access to the internet is a necessity in today's economy, and it should be available for all. We are going to take on the greedy internet, telecom, and cable monopolies and put an end to their absurd prices gauging. Just as President Roosevelt fundamentally made America more equal by bringing electricity to every farm and rural community over 80 years ago, as president, I will do the same with high-speed internet.”
Having high-speed internet is central to the basic functions of families, students, and businesses, yet across the country huge swaths of the population lack access to an internet connection or cannot afford the options available.
As President, Sanders will stop the practice of treating high-speed internet access like a luxury item, and instead treat it like a public utility that everyone deserves as a basic human right. Sanders will also take on the greed of the telecom and cable monopolies who exploit their dominant market power to rip off consumers and lobby government at all levels to keep out competition. Ending this type of greed and corruption will be a major priority under a Sanders administration.
Bernie’s plan would:
The full plan can be read here.
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Paid for by Bernie 2020
