Money Fix: The one financial book you should read
Setting financial goals at year-end is a smart move. But making a list is only the beginning. Knowing how to reach those goals is the challenge, and most of us could use some tips on getting from point A to Z.
There are so many books on personal finance on the market that it can be hard to know where to start, so we asked some of Long Island’s financial gurus to give us some of their top picks.
Debt
If you’re drowning in debt, you’re not alone. According to NerdWallet.com’s annual analysis of U.S. household debt, credit card balances carried from one month to the next hit $443 billion in September. Credit card debt has increased nearly 6% in the past year -- and more than 34% in the past five years, according to the analysis.
Determined to get your debt under control? Abby Eisenkraft, enrolled agent and CEO of Choice Tax Solutions in Melville, says to get your hands on a copy of "Own It!: Be the Boss of Your Life -- at Home and in the Workplace" by Tabatha Coffey. “Most people in debt never 'own it.' It's always the fault of someone or something else. You have to step up and take responsibility, and anyone who has seen Tabatha's show ["Tabatha Takes Over'' on Bravo] knows that she makes people take responsibility,” says Eisenkraft.
Joshua Zimmelman, president of Westwood Tax & Consulting in Rockville Centre, says a great book for getting out and staying out of debt is "The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness" by Dave Ramsey. “It will help you develop good financial habits, recognize dangerous money myths that can damage your finances, and save money for retirement and emergencies. It doesn’t rely on gimmicks but gives you a straightforward list of steps to follow.”
First home purchase
Buying a house is one of the biggest financial steps most people take. It requires much preparation to impress a lender. Annie Holdreith, an associate real estate broker and Manhasset sales manager for Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty suggests "Smart Money Smart Kids" by Dave Ramsey and his daughter Rachel Cruze. “The authors make it relatable to both parents and their young adults. Their use of anecdotes provides clear examples and strategies to avoid debt and save money. Understanding money and learning how to save and budget form the best foundation for being able to purchase a home. That makes this a great read for future first-time homebuyers.”
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Changing money mindset
There’s something to the Scripture that says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Money habits are shaped by thoughts and emotions. To move forward financially, come to grips with your attitudes and beliefs about money, and with how they can be a benefit or detriment. Matthew Rapoport, principal and senior wealth adviser with The Colony Group in Babylon, recommends "The Little Book of Main Street Money: 21 Simple Truths That Help Real People Make Real Money" by Jonathan Clements. “Jonathan Clements writes compellingly in plain English that anyone can understand. Many books about investing are simply too complicated. This book is short and engaging. If you give it to someone, they might actually read it. The author writes about our relationship with money. While money does not buy happiness, if we have a healthy relationship with money, it may help us to live happier and more meaningful lives.”
Make more money
Who doesn’t want to make more money? Leslie Tayne, a debt resolution attorney with the Tayne Law Group in Melville, says women in particular should read, "Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life" by Barbara Stanny. “She identifies the differences between high-earning women and those that are struggling. She provides tips on boosting not only your paycheck but your self-esteem. Read this if you want to increase your paycheck and feel better about yourself.”
By Sheryl Nance-Nash Special to Newsday
Life House Raises $30 Million for Next-Gen Hotel Management: Travel Startup Funding This Week
Each week we round up travel startups that have recently received or announced funding. Please email Travel Tech Editor Sean O'Neill at so@skift.com if you have funding news.
This week, travel startups announced more than $45 million in funding.
On Monday, Lufthansa Group said it had made a minority investment in TripActions, the corporate travel management service. The German airline group invested via its digital business unit, Lufthansa Innovation Hub.
The airline is TripActions’ first strategic investor. The round closes TripActions’ Series D funding, with more than $250 million raised at a valuation of $4 billion. See more on the TripActions-Lufthansa strategic partnership, here.
>>Life House, a hotel startup, has closed a $30 million round of Series B funding.
Thayer Ventures, a firm that invests in early-stage travel sector startups, led the round. The startup has raised $40 million in venture capital equity to date. Real estate owners have, through a few real estate capital funds, committed about $200 million to invest in building properties with an intention of hiring Life House as the branded management company to run the hotels.
Life House differs from players like Sonder and Lyric in that they don’t lease properties.
That said, in terms of customer segmentation, Life House joins other players, like Sonder (which runs licensed hotels as well as short-term rentals), and Lyric, an Airbnb-backed short-term rental manager, in offering places to stay with hotel-like amenities, design touches, and full regulatory licensing as hotels.
“The ‘small hotels’ space is very interesting in our view, and in many ways open territory,” said Chris Hemmeter, managing director of Thayer Ventures. “Consolidation among the major brands and larger management companies coupled with rising labor costs have driven many legacy competitors away from the segment.”
The Marriotts and Choice Hotel groups of the world have tended to offer midscale or economy brands for second-tier and third-tier cities to accommodate the basic needs of business travelers while keeping operational costs low. But these hotels often don’t have a design-forward approach or experience-driven, local offerings, creating a gap in what some travelers want and what franchisee operators are offering.
“Life House has cracked the code here by combining a true lifestyle design experience for guests with a cutting edge and integrated end-to end tech stack that improves performance for owners,” Hemmeter said. “That combination of forces could be lighting in a bottle in what is a very large segment.”
To be clear, Life House is a management company and doesn’t have plans to franchise its brand. The technology it has built has been predominantly on the management side.
The opportunity comes with potential pitfalls.
“Whether in a primary or secondary market, new entrants like Sonder or Life House could offer higher, design-led experience travel, but they will have to prove they can also be a low-risk option for travelers and investors,” said Heather Richer, chief marketing officer of RedAwning, a branded collection of vacation rental properties. “Can they execute on things that matter like the digital experience, seamless check-in, or cleanliness?
“No matter how much a business traveler might be interested in staying with one of these new entrants, the lack of global loyalty rewards or ease of accessibility to their corporate-mandated travel programs could be tough barriers to overcome,” said Richer.
“The challenge for these new entrants will be to build a brand that stands for something different – similar to what Airbnb has done in the rentals space,” said Jared Alster, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Wildebeest, a marketing consultancy for the travel industry.
Life House offers 800 beds today, and expects to offer hotels in 11 cities by this summer.
“Millennial consumers are looking for an affordable, stylish, comfortable, amenity-rich experience from a brand that reflects their values and personality,” said Alster. “If new hospitality brands can nail their brand marketing strategy, and figure out how to succinctly communicate it, they’ll be fighting to steal share from each other via word-of-mouth and branding instead of worrying about Google’s next move in search advertising when it comes to acquiring customers.”
>>ByHours, a service for reserving hotel rooms by the hour, has raised a funding round of about $8.9 million (€8 million).
Angel Ventures and DILA Capital, both from Mexico, led the round. The Barcelona-based startup has raised about $20 million (€18 million) in funding to date. Early investor Howzat Partners also participated. For context, see “Former Momondo CEO Hugo Burge Serves as a Startup Guardian Angel.”
The hotel bookings company offers “microstays” of 3, 6 and 12 hours in more than 3,000 hotels in Europe, Mexico, and the Middle East. What do people get up to when they rent a room for three hours? Perhaps they’re holding meetings to raise funds for other startups.
ByHours has had more than 250,000 users and has sold more than one million hotel hours of bookings. This year, the company expects to increase its turnover by more than 150 percent with the addition of more than 2,000 hotels to its portfolio.
Christian RodrÃguez and Guillermo Gaspart co-founded the startup in 2012. They plan to start operations in the U.S. and to build a business-to-business offering.
Other funded competitors include DayUse and HotelsByDay.
>>Stasher, a service for travelers to find places to store their luggage, has raised $2.5 million in investment.
VentureFriends led the round. Stasher has raised $3.75 million in seed funding to date.
The startup’s mobile app points travelers to storage spots in 1,200 locations in more than 250 cities. To date, customers have stored more than 450,000 bags through the network.
The London-based luggage storage platform aims to use the fresh funding to continue partnering with international hotel chains, short-term rental providers, and online travel agencies. Last year, it partnered with tours and activities booking service Klook, short-term rental and hotel brand Sonder, hotel chain Marriott, and online travel agency Hotels.com to promote its service and offer storage locations.
Each item left at a so-called StashPoint is insured against damage, loss, and theft up to the value of about $1,300 (£1000). Guardhog, underwritten by Hiscox, a global insurer, provides the insurance.
Other players that have raised money include Bounce, which has raised a $1.2 million round of seed funding, LuggageHero, which has raised $1.45 million in funding, Lugless, and Vertoe.
>>QuickBus, an online booking site for buying inter-city bus tickets in Africa, has completed a seed round of an undisclosed amount.
Shorooq Partners, a venture fund based in the United Arab Emirates, led the round. Nigeria’s Echo VC and Oman Technology Fund also participated.
The Nairobi-based company offers listings for routes in Kenya, Uganda, and Angola so far, said Humphrey Wrey, founder and CEO of QuickBus.
Skift Cheat Sheet:We define a startup as a company formed to test and build a repeatable and scalable business model. Few companies meet that definition. The rare ones that do often attract venture capital. Their funding rounds come in waves.
Seed capital is money used to start a business, often led by angel investors and friends or family.
Series A financing is typically drawn from venture capitalists. The round aims to help a startup’s founders make sure that their product is something that customers truly want to buy.
Series B financing is mainly about venture capitalist firms helping a company grow faster. These fundraising rounds can assist in recruiting skilled workers and developing cost-effective marketing.
Series C financing is ordinarily about helping a company expand, such as through acquisitions. In addition to VCs, hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity firms often participate.
Series D, E and beyond These mainly mature businesses and the funding round may help a company prepare to go public or be acquired. A variety of types of private investors might participate.
Check out The Best-Funded Travel Startups Through the End of 2019, here.
See full article
Photo Credit: A view of a guest room at the Life House Hotel in the Lower Highlands district of Denver, Colorado. The company has received additional venture capital funding. Life House
The Court Report: Overlooked national title contender Dayton has surprisingly built an all-time elite offense
Just so we're all perfectly clear on this: The Dayton Flyers can win the 2020 national title. If we started the NCAA Tournament today, I'd probably pen UD into my Final Four, regardless of who else was in its quadrant of the bracket.
What a powerful, sleek, adroit, satisfying team this is. The 18-2 Flyers are undefeated in both the Atlantic 10 (7-0) and in regulation. UD's only losses have come on neutral courts in overtime against Kansas and Colorado, squads that are a combined 33-7. The seventh-ranked Flyers haven't been this high in the polls since 1967. They've been ranked nine straight weeks, which last happened in the mid-1950s.
Welcome to a fun new world of college hoops. The apple cart's been upset a bit, and a guy named Obi is tossing the fruit. Dayton's main attraction is redshirt sophomore Obi Toppin, whose mid-shot staredown of the Kansas bench at the Maui Invitational is still the best highlight of the season.
But Dayton's dangerous for many reasons beyond Toppin. This Flyers team has a chance to be the best 2-point shooting team in college basketball history. Its current 62.7% clip is the second-best ever (Princeton in the '90s was at 63.3%). Maintaining that for the rest of the season will be the challenge.
Dayton being this kind of team was not predictable, though. Anthony Grant was hired in 2017, two years removed from his firing at Alabama. Grant won 76 games in three seasons and took VCU to two NCAA Tournaments (2007, 2009) before being going to 'Bama and never finding a groove. The Crimson Tide made the Dance once in six seasons (a No. 9 seed) under Grant.
Now Grant's done the unprecedented in his career. His best 2-point shooting team prior to Dayton was his last season at Alabama. (Ranking 33rd nationally, the Tide made 52.3% of its 2-point attempts.) Then he shows up in Dayton and the Flyers proceed to make exactly 59.5% of their 2-pointers -- ranking second nationally -- in back-to-back seasons. This year's even better. With the new/longer 3-point line bringing long-distance shooting rates down across college basketball, Dayton is actually up four percentage points (33.2% last year, 37.3% now) and it's the best 3-point shooting team Grant's had since his first, at VCU, which was the trendy No. 11 seed that upset Duke in the NCAAs.
"We're seven games into conference season and are still a work in progress," Grant told me. "So to say we've got anything figured out would be completely wrong and completely out of place."
Here's how emphatically dominant Dayton is, though. That 62.7% clip is 4.8 percentage points ahead of the second-best team, Army. The gap between Dayton and Army is the same as the gap between No. 2 Army and No. 43 Murray State (53.1%). Savvy college hoops analyst Jordan Sperber notes in the highly informative video below, only 4% of Dayton's shot attempts come from the midrange. UD is excellent and excelling around the rim. Toppin is the biggest reason why. His 67 dunks are most in the sport.
"And under-discussed thing is with this 3-point movement and analytics, when you when you shoot the 3 at a high rate, you shoot better from 2," Sperber told me. "[Dayton] can play vanilla and still be a top-20 offense."
And Dayton thrives on shooting close to the rim -- after occupying your scrambling defense 18, 20, 22 feet out.
Toppin's as versatile as they come this season in college hoops. He can receive in the post or pass into it at an elite level. He shoots a respectable 34.5% from 3-point range. He runs the floor tremendously well.
"Obi plays with joy," Grant said. "He really enjoys playing the game and enjoys playing with his teammates. At 6-9 he's athletic, has speed and skill and is really, really unselfish."
But Dayton's dotted with dudes who can do the damn thing. Jalen Crutcher -- he who hit the winner at Saint Louis three games ago -- is averaging a team-best 22.0 points in his last four games. It's Crutcher who plays more minutes (33.0 per game) and accounts for the most points on average (14.7 points and 5.2 assists) than anyone else.
Crutcher and Rodney Chatman combine for a two-man lead-guard offense. To be able to run that, plus have Toppin, plus have Ryan Whitesell, Ibi Watson and Trey Landers all capable of ball-handling and shooting 3-pointers? It gives Dayton an offensive makeup that is distinct from most other teams ranked in the top 20 by most predictive metrics. Grant said the team continues to add wrinkles almost by the week as the season goes on. Hey harped on personnel being necessary for this. Dayton has the benefit of smart players who are older. The top eight guys in the rotation have been with the program at least three years, and that includes Toppin who was ruled academically ineligible in his would-be freshman season of 2017-18.
This group excels at knowing scouting reports and not missing assignments often during the game.
"I like it to be a team defensively that plays aggressively, that's disciplined, that creates offense off defense," Grant said. "On offense, we try to be a team that plays fast, plays attacking, plays unselfishly and try to be efficient."
I asked Grant if being in the NBA for two years, working under Billy Donovan with the Oklahoma City Thunder played a tangible role in this transformation. He said the process was of course beneficial, but didn't openly state that tactics learned there were why Dayton's as good as it is now. He insisted on putting it back on the shoulders of his players and numerous assistants who've helped shape the path.
"This will never, ever be about me," Grant said. "It will be about our team and helping these kids reach their goals and aspirations."
Dayton announcing its presence in November was one thing. It's sustained its greatness and might have the highest floor of any team in college basketball. We're about a little over a month away from truly knowing if this is the best team in program history.
Flyin' Flyers from left: Ryan Mikesell, Trey Landers, Obi Toppin and Jalen Crutcher. USATSI Fun chance we get a first-time champ in 2020
Sure, this season's a bit wacky, but here's something we're moving toward that could ultimately be a commentary on just how different it is: there's a healthy chance we could have a team win the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. The number this season is higher in the top of the polls than most recent years. Here are teams currently seeded No. 1, 2, 3 or 4 in Jerry Palm's latest Bracketology that have no NCAA Tournaments to their name. (Best NCAA finish in parentheses.)
So, nine of the 16 projected best seeds have never cut a Final Four net. There's currently a better-than-50% chance that the 2020 NCAA Tournament champion will be a first-time winner in the 82-year history of the event. Way I see it, that's great. Bring in some title diversity; spice up this soupy season. And when you factor in the still-increasing probability that it could be the rare instance of a school from outside a power conference -- so, Gonzaga, Dayton or San Diego State -- that's even better.
Gonzaga is clearly and indisputably operating as the best offense in college hoops. USATSI From teams to players, the best right now in college hoops
If you're reading this, you either really like or flat-out love college basketball. And so I figure you'd appreciate an assortment of stats, being that you can't easily find all of the information I'm about to lay out in front of you in one place anywhere else on the Internet. Since we're more than 60% of the way through the regular season, how about a look at which teams and players lead in most of the major (and minor, or quirky) categories? Enjoy!
Source for statistics: CBSSports.com, KenPom.com, NCAA.com, BartTorvik.com.
Have a question, curiosity or complaint? Do @ me. Lob your questions my way on Twitter.
An annual reminder of the importance regarding one team's record and how no single team's success or failures exist on an island or in a vacuum. There is no magic number of losses Wisconsin can take and still remain safe. Bucky's 12-9 and sits at No. 31 in the NET. Generally speaking, I'd advise Wisconsin to stay below the 15-loss total. The record for most losses by an at-large team is 16, which Vanderbilt achieved in 2017. The record for the worst win percentage for an at-large team is .533, shared by 1990-91 Villanova and 2000-01 Georgia, both of which went 16-14.
This is an extremely unfair proposition. My fate is essentially already sealed if my chances of surviving rest on correctly picking only one team out of a rational pool of 20-25 schools. But if these are the terms, so be it. As I sit here typing this, the team I would most trust to win six games if the NCAA Tournament started RIGHT NOW ... Gonzaga.
Final shots
Maryland's Jalen Smith is morphing into a stud. He won Big Ten Player of the Week and got Maryland to 16-4 with clutch defense late at Indiana on Sunday. Smith scored a career-best 25 at Northwestern -- then had a career-best 29 against Indiana. He's up to 17.7 points and 9.4 boards in Big Ten games and ranks No. 1 in Big Ten 3-point percentage (56.7%).
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