 |
| |
| |
| Subscribe to The Daily Money newsletter. Come for our roundup of each day's top stories from USA TODAY Money. Stay for the pop-culture references and financial news-inspired playlist. |
| Good morning, Daily Money readers, and happy Pi Day – or "paaih" day, as Eric Cartman might call it.Jayme Deerwester, here with you again, half-expecting that at some point today, I'll have to tell a begging critter, "Nah, kitty/puppy, this is mah pot paaih!" |
🗞 News you should know 🗞 |
| It's not irrational to find deals including pizza for $3.14 this Monday. March 14 is Pi Day, the annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi), which is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. The trillion-digit ratio is rounded to 3.14. But you don't have to be a math scholar to be acutely aware that Pi Day equals deals on circular food, including pies and pastries. Check out the specials on offer. |
🚨 More stories you shouldn't miss 🚨 |
| PUTIN WILL TAKE YOUR BALL IF YOU GO HOME: Russia threatens to seize assets of departing Western companies. |
| AMERICA'S MOST AFFORDABLE CITIES: Reno, Nevada, and Sioux Falls, North Dakota are the most most wallet-friendly. The least? L.A. and NYC. |
| DO THIS: How to turn on lifesaving features on your smartwatch and phone. |
| DON'T DO THAT: 5 ways you're ruining your expensive phone, laptop, tablet and TV. |
| HACKERS DON'T TAKE A SPRING BREAK: Here's how to protect your devices and identity on vacation. |
💡 Daily insight 💡 |
| Does the double whammy of inflation and high gas prices have us on the road to a recession? Granted, the economy just grew at a blistering 6.9% annual rate in the fourth quarter, but many things have changed since then, including two more months so far in 2022 of continuing high inflation. And with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and surging gasoline prices, that outlook doesn't look so reliably sunny as before. |
| A widely accepted gauge for identifying economic turning points comes from the Leading Economic Index, a grouping of 10 indicators. The index includes a range of statistics tracking manufacturing orders, consumer sentiment, housing building permits, employment, credit/interest rates and more. |
| The LEI rose a solid 0.7% in December after an 0.8% increase in November, but that was followed by a 0.3% decline in January, the first drop since February 2021. |
| Here are some key indicators to keep an eye on: |
| • | Foreign energy chaos. Unfavorable international developments — wars, currency crises, debt problems and the like — can take a toll on the U.S. economy and send stock prices into a tizzy. | | • | Interest rate comparisons. You don't want to see short-maturity bonds yielding more than longer ones. | | • | Stock prices. This one is less crucial than you might think. Historically, the stock market isn't a reliable gauge to predict pending recessions. | |
⛽️ Pressure at the pump ⛽️ |
| Uber customers can expect to pay a surcharge on their rides and delivery orders in the coming weeks to help ease the pain at the pump for drivers. The surcharge costs are based on the average trip distance and increase in gas price in each state. |
| "Beginning Wednesday, March 16, consumers will pay a surcharge of either $0.45 or $0.55 on each Uber trip and either $0.35 or $0.45 on each Uber Eats order, depending on their location – with 100% of that money going directly to workers' pockets," according to a Friday statement from Liza Winship, Uber's head of driver operations in the U.S. and Canada. |
| Uber will reassess the surcharge after 60 days. |
💵 All taxes, all the time 💵 |
| If you do a side hustle where you're paid on a freelance basis, you won't have taxes withheld from your earnings. Some side hustles are easier than others to account for from a tax perspective. That's because in some cases, you may be put on a company's payroll and have taxes deducted from your paychecks regularly. |
| But some side hustles might pay you on a freelance basis. And that's where taxes get more complicated. Even if you don't end up getting any actual tax forms, you still must report those earnings to the IRS. |
| It's really important to keep good records of your earnings when you have a side hustle, no matter how much you make. That said, once you earn $600 or more from the same company, certain reporting rules kick in that may make filing your taxes easier. |
🎧 Mood music 🎧 |
| Today being March 14, I gotta go with "The Pi Song": 3.14159, this is π, followed by 2-6-5-3-5-8-9. Circumference over diameter. 7-9, then 3-2-3. OMG! Can't you see? 8-4-6-2-6-4-3. And now we're on a spree." |
| LISTEN WHILE YOU WORK: Remember, you can listen to this song and every track I've quoted in the newsletter in the Daily Money Mood Music playlist on Spotify. |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment