TheStreet

Homeownership is often cited as a right of passage in the proverbial American dream. Owning, rather than renting, is thought of by many as an important stepping stone on the path to financial independence and success. For many Americans, purchasing a home outright is out of reach, so making a nominal downpayment and taking out a loan from a bank in the form of a mortgage is the norm. But just how much mortgage debt is out there, and what’s the delinquency rate?

In our rapidly changing climate, destructive weather events like fires, tornados, hurricanes, and floods are becoming both more frequent and more severe according to sources like NASA and the Associated Press. When these catastrophes strike residential areas, the resulting damage to homes and other structures can be devastating to those affected, both emotionally and financially. Between the risk of injury or death, the need to evacuate and find temporary housing, and the expensive and time-consuming process of repairing damaged dwellings, extreme weather events can take a major financial and logistical toll on the communities they touch. Home insurance can, to some degree, ease the financial burden that comes with a weather catastrophe, but policies with comprehensive coverage don’t come cheap, especially in areas prone to increasingly destructive weather.

U.S. household debt has been rapidly increasing over the past five years, increasing by $2.9 trillion between 2019 and 2023 alone due to a number of overlapping challenges and crises. Post-pandemic inflation, interest rate hikes, rising housing costs, and the mounting student loan crisis have created an unstable financial pressure cooker, and Americans are increasingly using credit cards to help keep them afloat. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently published the 2024 first quarter update of its Quarterly Report on Household Debt, and here's what it told us.

With the price of goods going up nowadays, minding your dollars and cents is a good idea. The average purchase price of a new vehicle in the U.S. is around $45,000, which translates into high monthly payments stretched out over several years if you don't pay the full amount outright at the dealership. But there are still some good deals in the new car market, particularly cars and sport utility vehicles costing less than $30,000, making monthly payments easier to handle. The following is a list of cars and vehicles below that price.

So, you’ve decided to stop renting an apartment and taken a large dip into your life savings for the 20% down payment on a new home. You’ll be stuck with a mortgage that’s taking up a third of your take-home pay, but your real estate agent has assured you that your new home is an investment that will grow in value over time, citing the adage, “location, location, location.” One thing your agent may have failed to mention, however, is that your monthly mortgage payment is just one of the ongoing expenses you’ll need to contend with as a homeowner. Here are five other ongoing costs associated with owning a home that you should be aware of and budget for so that your plans don’t get upended by unexpected expenses.

John Deere is the latest company to follow a growing trend in corporate America. The farm supply giant has given in to pressure from a group of its consumers who criticized the company for being too “woke.” The backlash began when Robby Starbuck, a former Republican candidate for Tennessee's 5th Congressional District in 2022, took to social media platform X on July 9 to reveal that John Deere supports a number of “woke policies” under the watch of its CEO John May. Now, Deere is backtracking.

In what is shaping out to be the biggest IT breakdown of the year, airlines like Delta, United Airlines and American Airlines all issued a ground stop on all their flights as the Microsoft Windows systems that they use for everything from check-in to communication display error messages colloquially called "the blue screen of death." The breakdown is not a cyberattack, but linked to a failed upgrade by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity program that many airlines and banking companies use to protect their PC systems. While CrowdStrike said that it is "actively working" to identify and repair the situation, the outage is causing widespread chaos as flights remain grounded throughout Friday. Here's what you need to know.

Unless you've been blissfully off the grid for the past several days, you've probably heard that Amazon's Prime Day event just took place. The annual summer savings event, which sees millions of products put on sale for 24 hours, has been an ongoing promotion for the retail giant for about a decade. In 2023, Amazon announced it had the best Prime Day event yet. The event, which took place from July 11-12, 2023, brought in a record $12.7 billion in sales. That's up 6.1% compared to 2022, when the event brought in $11.9 billion. And Amazon's continued success with its annual promotion just keeps rolling.

Bud Light can’t seem to shake last year’s controversy. The iconic beer brand has just suffered another blow after consumers ignited a new boycott of its products, this one stemming from a social media campaign that was attacked for being “woke.” More:

As of Wednesday morning, markets were pricing in a 100% chance of a 25-bps Federal funds rate cut in September. This year has, in fact, been a Yo-Yo in terms of how many rate cuts are priced in by the market. We moved from three down to zero back to at least one to two this year. Most following the Fed guidance have been mistaken, as all the Fed has done is just track what the bond and Fed fund futures tell them as they move dynamically in line with the U.S. economic data. The Fed really does not know — they stay their course of a dual mandate, follow the broader markets and then react if need be. Why fix things if nothing is broken? Or, at least, not yet.