Valentine’s Day: By the Numbers

Valentine’s Day is so much more than the chance to let someone know how much you love them. It’s also an entire industry that supports businesses with hundreds of thousands of employees. Billions are spent annually on flowers, candy, jewelry, balloons and cards for Valentine’s Day, making it one of the sweetest days of the year for many retailers. Take a graphic look at Valentine’s Day…by the Numbers.

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The Christmas Season: By the Numbers

‘Tis the season for Christmas trees, lights and gifts, and in the past that has also meant the season of outrageous spending. While the holidays may not be cheap, hard times sometimes call for desperate measures and drastic budget changes. Here’s a look at the hard facts and numbers of this most wonderful time of the year.
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Extreme Makeover: Home Edition – Dream Homes or Foreclosure Risk?

For those of you that haven’t watch the show yet, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” finds worthy families that have faced some sort of recent or ongoing hardship and gives them a helping hand by remodeling their home (or replacing it entirely if its beyond repair).   The show is now in its 7th season, but a recent disturbing trend has been creeping up as strings of makeover homes faces foreclosures.

The Wofford family of Encinitas, California, whom got their house over 5 years ago (episode 15, season 2) are now facing foreclosure, after struggling to pay for their bills for two years, according to San Diego 10 News.

Though many times the audience may be lead to believe that each episode ends with happily-ever-after scenarios, realistically, many of the families may continue to face financial hardship with higher property tax and utility cost.

Beyond the Woffords are also the Harper family of Atlanta (episode 29, season 2), who famously faced foreclosure last year after taking out an unwise $450,000 loan using the makeover house as equity.

Critics have often contend that the makeover homes are too lavish to be supported by some of these financially strapped families (such as the 6-bedroom, 7-bath, and 7-television home to a family of 4).

Faced with foreclosure pressure, some families have also opted to sell their homes in order to avoid foreclosure or the excessively high property tax.  The Hassall Family (given a 3,298 sq. ft. home in episode 62, season 3)  did just that after they’re left with more than $100,000 to pay off on their mortgage.  After three years, the family decided to sell the home rather than faced the stress of increasingly high property tax and utility bills.

As homes across the country face foreclosure risk from the fallout of the recession, we may unfortunately soon hear more stories of yet-another makeover home being on the verge of foreclosure.  Perhaps with this in mind, the producers of the popular ABC show will adjust future makeover homes to account for any potential future ramification to the families’ finances.

Best and Worst Gas Prices

Planning on traveling for the holidays? In the U.S., where you go will affect how expensive a trip by car may be. Here’s a look at where you’ll pay the most for a gallon of gas in the U.S. and the places where it’s cheap in comparison.

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10 Signs the Economy ‘Might’ Be Recovering

With the unrelenting day in, day out barrage of negative economic forecasts, it’s easy for signs of possible recovery to go unnoticed. However, several such signs may actually be lurking right under our noses. While there aren’t many signs of sharp, dramatic improvement, things appear to be improving at the margins of the American and world economies. And as the old saying goes, “you have to crawl before you can walk.” We thought it would be helpful (and hopefully inspiring) to assemble these possible recovery indicators in one place, and here are ten of the most compelling.

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