Have you ever wondered how often the average person interacts with his or her mobile device?  As it turns out, the mobile research firm Dscout, Inc. has the answer.  According to its statistics, the average person taps, pokes, pinches or swipes his/her personal phone an astonishing 2,617 times a day.  It adds up to about 2 hours and 25 minutes of interaction a day.

Many were alarmed when, on June 5, the good people who run Medicare and Social Security released a report that said that the Medicare program will become insolvent in 2026 and Social Security will face a similar fate in 2034.  The Medicare projection is three years earlier than the previous report, while the Social Security projection is unchanged from previous estimates.

Two companies—Amazon and Apple—are in a tight race to become the first company to have a total market value greater than $1 trillion—that is, the value of all their outstanding stock would exceed that enormous figure.  Apple is the higher-profile candidate, but the smart money seems to be on Amazon.

You may remember that when the new tax law was debated, there was a lot of chatter around the possibility that Congress would totally eliminate the deduction for charitable contributions.  That Republican-backed proposal never made it into the final Tax Cuts + Jobs Act, but in other ways the tax changes may wind up having a similar effect on many taxpayers. 

One of the most beneficial consumer rescue programs from the Great Recession era is about to expire.  The Home Affordability Refinance Program—known as HARP—was passed by a bipartisan Congress in 2009, to enable borrowers who were under water on their homes, or close to under water, to refinance into more affordable mortgages.  The guidelines said that you had to have betw

There has been a lot of hype about self-driving cars, but when, realistically, can we expect to be driven to our destination by a vehicle that has no steering wheel, gas pedal or seat specifically designated for a driver?  The answer depends on which of many competitors you’re talking about, but it looks like people in test cities will be able to hail a self-driving cab sometime next

The U.S.

We recently celebrated Mother’s Day in the U.S., but demographics tell us that mothers make up a smaller percentage of the population than at any time in at least the last quarter century.  Today, only about 26% of Americans are women who currently have or have had children, and only 15% of Americans are mothers living with their own children.  (See graph). 

Professional investors are constantly trying to figure out whether the U.S. economy is healthy or sliding toward a recession.  The most important tea leaves they read are actual corporate earnings vs.

Sometimes our social interactions seem to happen by default, and we don’t get much out of them.  Consider the stock greeting: “How are you?” 

What information are you likely to get when you ask this tired question?  Tired answers, like: “Busy,” “fine,” “okay,” or “good.”