Thank you Carlotta and Stephanie for all the hard work you have put into these. I will greatly miss the news roundups but I understand why this has to end for now. The TP community will come together as always and share the news as we can. Love you guys 💕

That was such a strange time to be house shopping then, during the Great Recession. There would be 100 homes available that met criteria, almost always vacant because they were foreclosed on. And almost all were in such bad shape that my husband and I would look at like 8-10 a day to see if it was even worth getting with our agent on.

This is a hard one to answer because every recession looks different, but I’ll tell you what I have been seeing.  Rates are being raised by the Feds to slow inflation, however all, including the feds know this can cause a recession. When rates are raised, so do mortgage rates. So with the chicken and the egg, here it’s higher mortgage rates..then recession. However when the inflation rates slow then the raising of rates will slow too. Because there are fears of a recession, companies are already enacting hiring freezes, so yes, recession generally means less jobs and less job security. However currently the job market is considered to be doing well. The housing market is a wild one to predict. However with the raised rates, and thus raised mortgage rates, less people are buying. This means demand goes down which usually means house prices go down. However the supply of houses is still low currently, thus it’s kinda wild right now. There is some talk of borrowers getting ARM mortgages because of these higher rates…this means they get a lower rate now but that can change, causing foreclosure. This would feed the supply and lower prices, but all that hypothetical scenario is years away. What I am seeing currently is people can’t afford the homes they are renting and are having to move into cheaper places, therefore a lot of flux going on there. But to put this in perspective, I remember in the late 90s people getting excited for mortgage rates being between 6-7% which is where we are now, it used to be much higher. Also we have been in a bull market for a very long time, recessions just naturally happen and we are long overdue. On the bright side, for those able to invest, a recession is a great time to put money in. But for most of us it is a time to prepare financially and there are a lot of articles on here for that. If you would like to chat it out you can join us on discord, we love talking about these things.

Excellent advice about insurance companies! Adding to that if you need to file a claim call ASAP so you got on the list sooner. Also if you need to take measures to prevent extra damage do so and don’t wait to hear back from the insurance company. Example if you have a roof leak, cover it. The insurance company will expect you to prevent further damage if you are capable.

As the Judge (like a dungeon master) I encourage anyone to join and you don’t need to know how to play, I will guide you through that. If you just want to watch please do! Also you can decide to be on or off camera.

I want to second this.

I also live in FL and grew up on the TX Gulf and have lived in hurricane areas all my life. I strongly recommend being careful of getting advice from people who have no experience with hurricanes, just as I would be the last person to get advice on living in snowy areas. The main reason I say this is the media will show the worst impacted areas so people assume if a hurricane is come if to FL then the whole state needs to evacuate causing panic. TO EVACUATE OR NOT Understand how hurricanes impact your area. If you are near a coastline be mentally prepared for a major impact, however once a hurricane hits land it diminishes quickly. No matter how far you live inland you can have an impact but that doesn’t mean you need to evacuate. If you are on any body of water within a few blocks you can have storm surge, therefore know if you are in a flood zone. The state has phenomenal evacuation zones set up, learn if you are in one and trust those. If a hurricane is approaching and there is a chance of it hitting you and it is major, go ahead and book a hotel room early. Be courteous and cancel if you don’t need it. EXPECT POWER LOSS Go through the articles on TP for that EXPECT WIND do you have trees that can fall on your house? Outbuildings secure? Have hurricane windows or need shutters? Don’t be one of those people that puts trash at the curb before a hurricane if there is no trash pickup before it arrives. FLOODING Again if on water there is danger, get flood insurance. If you own a home consider installing a sump pump if you get water logged areas. Utility pumps on hand are great for flooding too. If your street doesn’t drain well in a minor storm, report to the city so they can address it before it becomes an emergency. SHOP EARLY avoid the panicked masses and do your food shopping, gas and propane (if needed) fill-up early. People flood the stores about 2-3 days before a potential hit, don’t wait that long. Even if you find you don’t need it later that’s ok. On drinking water, I don’t have a hand held but I have the Water Saver Geri can, it’s expensive though. I’ve never lost water in my 46 years of hurricanes, but I hear it can happen. MAKE A LIST I recommend taking notes from the last hurricane (no matter if it impacted you or not) and turn those notes into a check list. Each hurricane you will learn something new and you can modify, but it will prevent you from having to start over each time and think about what to do. I personally broke up the list into how much time I have. For example if it’s over a week away I start getting the outside ready (pick up debris and loose items, take down awnings ect) and start eating all the refrigerated food as much as I can. 5 days away I will buy supplies as needed, too off the gas, get all the cloths washed. 2 days before I’m ready but decide if evacuating, check in neighbors and loved ones, wash the rest of the cloths and retop gas.

The Mississippi River drying up is very bad news for the US because it is arguably one of the major contributors to the US economy. The river gives us what many countries do not have, a cheap way of transporting goods in the interior of the country. If we loose this, we loose the huge advantage to our economy.

My company has a large campus with a lot of land and leases goats to keep the grass short and it works well from what I’ve heard (I work remote). I have a co-worker that secured that contract, she said that was her funnest to do.

SUCCESS UPDATE: After seeing the Air Tags on our dogs a<span style=”-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);”> </span>friend of ours thought it was a good idea to buy one for her Great Dane. Well today an incident happened that spooked the Great Dane and he ran off from the house. Her and neighbors immediately started looking for him but he ran off too fast. She then remembered to Air Tag and using the app she was able to find him right away. He ran off much further than expected in a short time and had even crossed a busy street. Without it she would not have been able to find him so fast. If anyone is curious on how it fits on a pet, this is my 14 pound dog. We have had this for about 6 months with no issues.

I had used an expired test from one box but found the liquid had dried up too much to use, another expired box was just fine. My guess is the liquid will dry up before it’s unusable then.

I had to read that 1M Homes lost about 5 times, very surreal

I love the story about Stuttgart and wish we could see this in more cities.  My city isn’t even close but they are designing a green belt for pedestrians and bicyclists by utilizing unused areas such as abandoned rail ways and a network of alleyways that have turned green. 

Great roundup, I had a lot of “wow!” moments.

Here in humid Florida we call the summer months “heat stroke season” for a reason!  My elderly parents in the summer they are “sheltering in place” and don’t go outside after 9:00 am lol

I’m very excited and proud for you and all the contributors, great job!!!

I choose the blue java banana because it was the tallest variety that did well here, which I wanted for privacy. It was very easy to establish and grows and multiplies prolifically. The Limequat tree was given to us by our realtor when we bought the house. At first I didn’t know what to do with it as I needed to clear my property of unwanted stuff first, so it sat in a pot for a few years and it didn’t do well. I finally planted it last year and its barely grown. I also grow sweet potato (free since I used scraps, and does well with the banana tree), Mexican Oregano (was a cutting given to me), Longevity Spinach (another free cutting growing like crazy), and Bell Pepper (also given to me).  I’m an opportunity grower lol