October’s Money Challenge: Prepare for Your Holiday Spending

This year, most of our money challenges have focused on saving, from your cellphone bill to your restaurant spending to your debt interest. This month, we’re throwing out a different challenge: come up with a holiday spending plan.

Holiday spending can wreck your budget, or worse, your finances. Consumer counseling organizations see 25% more clients after the holidays and, on average, Americans with holiday debt add almost $1,000 extra to their load.

In October, we challenge you to come up with a holiday spending plan so you can avoid any and all debt. It’s not a challenge that produces instant results, but it’s still an important one. Here’s how you can participate.

  • Calculate your discretionary spending amount: Figure out how much money you’ll have over the next couple of months to spend on non-essentials.
  • Make a list of your holiday expenses: This calculator can help you plug in numbers for common expenses, like travel, gifts, parties, and so on.
  • Come up with some numbers: Based on your discretionary spending amount, come up with a realistic spending plan for each holiday-related expense.
  • Find ways to cut back or earn more: If you’re stretched thin and your expenses exceed your cash flow, decide what expenses you’ll cut over the next couple of months to make room for your extra spending. Or, if your holiday budget just isn’t doable, you may have to adjust some of your expenses. Otherwise, you can vow to find ways to earn extra cash between now and the holidays.

If you’re in, let us know and tell us what your biggest holiday expenses are. At the end of the month, we’ll check back in to make sure everyone’s on track with their plan.

Photo by Sunny Studio

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Drone flies as both biplane and helicopter using one propeller

There are helicopter drones and fixed-wing drones, but creating a hybrid of both is tricky. Even Parrot’s Swing, as clever as it is, needs four propellers and elaborate wings to pull off its stunt. However, TU Delft (with backing from Parrot) has a far more elegant solution. Its DelftAcopter drone doubles as both a fixed-wing aircraft and a helicopter using only one propeller — its tailless biplane design lets it take off and hover vertically, but gracefully turn into a fast-moving airplane (up to 62MPH) at a moment’s notice. It’s an incredibly simple design that makes you wonder why someone hadn’t considered it for drones before.

The machine is completely autonomous thanks to GPS, motion sensors and computer vision — it can pick a safe place to land all on its own. The prototype has a relatively long 37-mile range, too, and it can run for an hour on its electric motor. Contrast that with a typical quadcopter drone like DJI’s Phantom 4, which lasts for 28 minutes and tops out at 45MPH.

And unlike some drone experiments, TU Delft already has a clear idea of what its vehicle will do. The DelftAcopter would carry medical supplies to and from hard-to-reach places — you could deliver much-needed medicine to a flood zone. It’s not hard to imagine uses in search-and-rescue and recon missions, too. While it’ll likely take a while before you see the robotic biplane enter service (it only just got its first major trial run this week), it’s easy to see this invention saving lives.

Source: TU Delft, DelftAcopter

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Gary Johnson Is Probably The Healthiest Candidate For President


Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson talks to a crowd of supporters at an August rally in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson talks to a crowd of supporters at an August rally in Salt Lake City, Utah.

George Frey/Getty Images

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump released their medical records earlier this month, and now it’s Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson’s turn to boast that he is “extremely physically fit.”

The letter from the former New Mexico governor’s physician, Dr. Lyle B. Amer of Santa Fe, explains that the 63-year-old Johnson’s “decades of dedication to physical fitness, diet, no drinking, and no smoking have paid dividends as far as his current extraordinarily good health at this time of his life.” (We’ll come back to that smoking line).

And while Trump’s doctor once boasted that the GOP nominee would “be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” it might be Johnson who could claim that mantle if his long-shot bid were to succeed.

Johnson has run 17 marathons, four Ironman Triathlons, is an active rock climber, and climbed the seven highest summits on every continent, including Mt. Everest (just after breaking a leg!). His doctor writes that Johnson, who weighs 172 pounds and has a normal blood pressure and pulse, exercises about an hour a day. Before campaigning for president though, he would exercise approximately two hours a day.

Trump, in contrast, weighs 236 pounds and admitted when he discussed his medical records on The Dr. Oz Show that he doesn’t exercise much (though he said he believed “moving his hands around” as he was campaigning counted) and has an affinity for fast food.

Johnson has Celiac Disease, an autoimmune disorder where he can’t ingest gluten, so he adheres to a gluten-free diet. He doesn’t take any medications (Trump takes cholesterol medication while Clinton takes medicines for her thyroid and to prevent blood clots). Johnson’s doctor does recommend he begin taking a Vitamin D supplement along with aspirin to prevent heart disease.

Amer also writes that Johnson’s “prostate is smooth, nontender, normal for his age,” he has no arthritis, his liver is normal and that his “left big toe has scarring from a frostbite incident years ago.”

While Johnson’s doctor says he doesn’t smoke cigarettes and hasn’t drunk alcohol since 1987, the pro-marijuana legalization candidate is famous for partaking in the drug, he said earlier this summer he has abstained from smoking while he’s running for the White House. The letter from his physician doesn’t address that drug use, and a call to his doctor’s office wasn’t answered.

Johnson’s path to the White House is an uphill one, even with voters frustrated with their choices of Trump or Clinton. But he’s made several foreign policy flubs recently that may have made that climb even more difficult, blanking this week on a foreign leader he admires. Earlier this month, he also wasn’t aware what Aleppo was — the Syrian city at the center of the country’s civil war.

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Samsung’s Latest Headache: Reports That Washing Machines May Explode

Samsung is facing another big problem with one of its products — reports of exploding top-loading washing machines.

The timing likely couldn’t be less serendipitous. Earlier this month, Samsung recalled its new Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after dozens of users reported that the batteries exploded or caught fire.

Both the consumer electronics company and the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued warnings to consumers this week about potential safety issues with some washers. This comes after a class-action lawsuit in New Jersey by U.S. consumers who say their machines exploded during normal use.

Samsung says the issue affects top-loaders manufactured between March 2011 and April 2016 “may experience abnormal vibrations” when washing certain items. It’s not clear exactly how many washers are affected or whether the problem is limited to machines sold in the U.S.

Both Samsung and the CPSC say they are working together on a remedy for affected consumers, but did not provide details.

They recommend that consumers with top-loading machines use the delicate cycle and avoid washing very heavy items, such as comforters or blankets. “Lower spin speed in the delicate cycle, lessens the risk of impact injuries or property damage due to the washing machine becoming dislodged.”

In an email to NPR, Consumers Union, which is the policy and action division of Consumer Reports magazine, says it has suspended its recommendation of Samsung’s top-loading washers, “in the face of mounting consumer complaints of what they called ‘exploding machines.”

It adds, “We are not aware of data on any other Samsung products that would cause us to re-evaluate our current recommendations.”

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