Latest news with #Scribner
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The 5 Smartest Things To Do on Payday, According to Expert Ryan Scribner
For people who are still living paycheck to paycheck, payday is often an exciting and frustrating day — you have the brief pleasure of watching money roll in, only to have to part with most of it again thanks to bills and other expenses. Find Out: Read Next: Finance expert Ryan Scribner, author of the book 'From Side Hustle to Main Hustle to Millionaire,' offered the five 'smartest' things you should do with your money every payday to make sure you're getting ahead. Scribner is inspired by a book called 'The Richest Man in Babylon,' written by George Samuel Clason, originally published in 1926. In it, Scribner said, is a concept that many finance experts suggest, known as paying yourself first. This doesn't mean you take a wad of cash and blow it on nonessentials, however; it means that you take a small portion of each check and set it aside into your savings. For people who are still working their way up the income chain, Scribner said this could be a very small amount, as little as 1% of your paycheck. However, he pointed out that most experts recommend saving and/or investing between 5% and 20% of every paycheck. You want to put this money into a separate savings account, and ideally a high-yield one, to build an emergency fund. Your first goal with that fund will be $1,000. Learn More: The next smartest thing to do, if you've got a gas-powered vehicle, he said, is to go to the gas station and fill up your tank. He said it's not uncommon for people to pay bills and spend the extra between payday and Monday, only to put their next tank of gas on the credit card. Anything you can do to avoid putting basic expenses on a credit card is a good thing. Scribner stressed that you can really blow a lot of money on eating out — even on fast food, which might seem to be cheaper, but really isn't. While his video is several years old so the prices he used for comparison probably wouldn't translate directly today, it doesn't take much effort to realize you can save money by making most of the food you love to eat out at home. One of the easiest things to overspend on is entertainment, of the sort that involves going out. While Scribner did not touch upon streaming services or online entertainment, you could still work out a budget for those. His suggestion was to take actual cash out of the bank and utilize the old school 'envelope' method, whereby you put cash into an envelope and label it 'entertainment.' Then, you don't spend more than that. You could even save up this cash for a couple of weeks or longer for a 'bigger' entertainment purchase (like a concert or sporting event). While paying down debt might sound obvious, his point is that many people put it off and continue to use their credit cards. There are many approaches to paying down debt, and he didn't suggest one over the other, only that you pick what works best for you. One school of thought is to pay the highest interest debt off first because it makes the most financial sense. Or you could pay off the smallest amount first, say a Walmart credit card with a low balance, he said, and that gives you a feeling of accomplishment. These practical steps on payday will keep you on top of your finances. More From GOBankingRates The 5 Car Brands Named the Least Reliable of 2025 This article originally appeared on The 5 Smartest Things To Do on Payday, According to Expert Ryan Scribner Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Winnipeg Free Press
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Must-reads for Dad
This Father's Day, skip the grilling cookbooks, the corny bathroom joke books and cookie-cutter sports bios, and get dad a something new to read that he can really sink his teeth into. The Free Press arts and life team have pulled together a list of books practically any dad will find compelling. From life on the road in a rock band to a fraught father-son story of addiction to the shifting landscape of geopolitics, a fiction writer's first novel in decades and beyond, any father on your list will find something they'll enjoy. By Jeff Tweedy (Dutton, $28) Jeff Tweedy had a dad, is a dad and makes, with his band Wilco, the kind of music sometimes described as Dad Rock, so Let's Go (So We Can Get Back) — also a deeply dad sentiment— has many dad bonafides. It's also a laugh-out-loud funny and revealing memoir by a guy who has had to fight a lot of demons to become (in this writer's opinion) one of America's best living songwriters. Obviously, there are a lot of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco stories in here, but one doesn't need to be a Wilco fan to enjoy this book; Tweedy's storytelling abilities transcend format. He writes affectingly about his father who worked on the railroad — yes, 'all the live-long day' — and his sons, who also make music. But it's the stories from his childhood growing up in Belleville, Ill., that will stay with you; no spoilers, but an anecdote about Bruce Springsteen is worth the price of admission alone. Buy on — Jen Zoratti By Tim Marshall (Scribner, $26) Tomes on geopolitics aren't usually high on my reading list, but this page-turner by Tim Marshall deserves to be on everyone's bookshelf, not just your dad's. Marshall, previously a journalist at Sky News and the BBC, explains clearly and concisely how the 'land on which we live has always shaped us' — delving into the wars, the power, politics and social development determined by the rivers, mountains, deserts, lakes and seas of our landscape. Originally published in 2015, the completely revised edition has been updated to reflect the global changes of the last 10 years and includes new material exploring the growth of China's military and strategic power, Moscow's alliances with authoritarian states and the Russia-Ukraine war, and America's pivot to the Pacific. It's a riveting book that tackles traditionally complex subjects with aplomb. Witten in highly accessible language with nothing dumbed down, this is very much a must-read. Buy on — AV Kitching By Ron Carlson (Penguin Canada, $30) This grim and gorgeous novel by American short-story author Ron Carlson is probably the most overtly 'manly' book I've ever read, but it's also startlingly tender. It follows three men working on a summer construction project, building a stunt ramp to launch a motorcycle over a canyon in Idaho. All three are dealing with painful pasts, and Carlson carefully delineates the struggle of how each one defines manhood in the face of tough work, toxic masculinity and tragedy. Arthur Key, the sort-of protagonist, is a taciturn man with no children, but he becomes a father figure to his co-worker Ronnie, a juvenile delinquent looking to straighten out. Arthur doesn't talk about his feelings; his love is expressed by teaching, passing his knowledge of how things are made on to his protegé. Carlson delves into the mechanics of carpentry and building in a way that's incredibly detailed, and yet somehow sounds like a poem, not a user manual. The writer has an unparalleled sense of place, delivering the reader to a remote location of wild beauty, but the hint of impending doom that looms over the summer does not go unanswered, and even the most macho-dude dad may find he has a little something in his eye by the book's end. Buy on — Jill Wilson For the Love of a Son: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Hope MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Scott Oake's moving memoir, For the Love of a Son, describes the devastating loss of his son, Bruce, who struggled with addiction. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Scott Oake's moving memoir, For the Love of a Son, describes the devastating loss of his son, Bruce, who struggled with addiction. By Scott Oake (Simon & Schuster, $27) After decades covering the Olympics, and as part of the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast team, Winnipeg's Scott Oake could have penned a rollicking memoir about highlights both in front of and away from the cameras. Heck, he still could. Instead, in his memoir Oake (with Michael Hingston) takes readers through some of his darkest days as he reminisces about his son Bruce, whose struggles with drug use led to his death at age 25 in 2011. (Oake also recalls the loss of his wife Anne, who died in 2021.) For the Love of a Son is Oake's candid and moving recollection of Bruce's highs and lows that will tug on the heartstrings of even the chilliest of dads. Oake's trademark wit and sly humour so often on display while covering sports also permeate the book's heavy subject matter, providing some levity. The silver lining of everything Oake has endured is the creation of the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre in 2021 and the forthcoming Anne Oake Family Recovery Centre. Proceeds from sales of For the Love of a Son benefit the Bruce and Anne Oake Memorial Foundation. Buy on — Ben Sigurdson With the Boys: Field Notes on Being a Guy By Jake MacDonald (Greystone, $23) The late Winnipeg author Jake MacDonald spent a lifetime documenting and poeticizing a way of life that can feel as timeworn as the lodges and cottages he explores. An arguably conservative way of life — where free time's absorbed by hunting, fishing and gallivanting through secluded, if not exclusive, wilderness milieus, mostly with other men. While Manitoba's Hemingway found perhaps his most captive audience in the cottage crowd, his gentle humour, natural wonder and breezy but vivid prose made his work popular with Canadian literary reviewers and high school librarians alike. MacDonald wrote both fiction — his kid-friendly Juliana and the Medicine Fish is probably his best-known novel — and literary non-fiction, which is to say mythopoetic odes to his world and friends. With the Boys is the second type: a collection of vignettes about old drinking buddies, tossing barbs back and forth like rusty lures while they commune over the crap of life, amid (as the book jacket puts it romantically) 'crack-of-dawn motel breakfasts (and) starlit stakeouts in the bulrushes.' MacDonald died right before the pandemic, and as this writer's father also ages out of this outdoorsy boomer culture, one wonders wistfully whether its best aspects are disappearing too. Buy on — Conrad Sweatman Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer Ben Sigurdson edits the Free Press books section, and also writes about wine, beer and spirits. Read full biography Jill WilsonArts & Life editor Jill Wilson started working at the Free Press in 2003 as a copy editor for the entertainment section. Read full biography AV KitchingReporter AV Kitching is an arts and life writer at the Free Press. Read full biography Jen ZorattiColumnist Jen Zoratti is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist and feature writer, working in the Arts & Life department. Read full biography Conrad SweatmanReporter Conrad Sweatman is an arts reporter and feature writer. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Newsweek
11-06-2025
- Climate
- Newsweek
Inside the Life of a Woman Hotshot Battling Blazes in the American West
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. With wildfires getting more severe and unpredictable, the work of firefighters is increasingly significant—and dangerous. January's Los Angeles County fires caused up to $53.8 billion in property losses and billions more in economic and tax hits to the economy, according to a February report from the Southern California Leadership Council and the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. Often referred to as the "special forces" of wildland firefighting, hotshot crews tackle the most difficult and remote wildfires. Most people who come to a hotshot crew have a few fire seasons under their belt; but when Kelly Ramsey joined her hotshot crew, she was the only rookie to both the crew and to fire—and the sole woman, as well as the first in nearly a decade. To many of the men, she was the only woman they'd ever worked with. In this exclusive excerpt from her book, Wildfire Days: A Woman, A Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West (Scribner), Ramsey talks about fighting the 2020 North Complex Fire in California. BACKBURN. Intentionally burning the forest in advance of an oncoming wildfire, as Ramsey is doing with a drip torch near Quincy, CA, can help create a barrier of burned vegetation to stop a wildfire's progress. BACKBURN. Intentionally burning the forest in advance of an oncoming wildfire, as Ramsey is doing with a drip torch near Quincy, CA, can help create a barrier of burned vegetation to stop a wildfire's progress. Parker Kleive The day after Labor Day, we woke to the wind. It threw dirt on our tarps and whipped hair into my mouth as I zipped my bag. The morning was sunny, which should have been a warning. Sun means the inversion has lifted—a temperature inversion happens when warm air "caps" cooler air, trapping smoke in the valley overnight, dampening fire activity. Once the temperature rises, the fire awakens. We stood in a circle to brief. "The East Wind Event they've been talking about arrives today," Van said. He had gone to morning briefing with all the other superintendents, where they'd learned about the weather situation. "As you can see, it's already here." Red flag warnings stretched from California to Washington State. The wind was historic, a once-in-a-hundred-year phenomenon. Incident management teams along the West Coast were on edge. They would have increased staffing, but there was nobody to add; everyone was already committed, and short-staffed at that. "You really need to be heads-up today," Van said. "Lotta trees could come down," Salmon added. We broke the circle, trudging through deep dirt. I could feel the wind inside my yellow, and I shuddered. "Come on, load up," Fisher called, and fired the engine. I collected my hairbrush and stuck a boot on the bumper and pulled myself up, and the back door of the buggy clanged shut, a lid closing. "All in!" Trevan yelled, and we were wheels rolling toward the black. We hiked in on the same dirt-powder line. Cloud of dust, choke, cough. We reached the black and spread out along the line. Everything here was holding, and we were set up with a hose lay and engines pumping water from either end. We moved as a group, finding hot spots and digging as the wind picked up. 'Head on a Swivel' The wind howled and roared, bending the trees. Big old conifers creaked and popped. Some were burned out at the bottom, some were cat-faced (with a burned hole or hollow, like a cave), some crispy carbon sticks all the way up. It didn't feel safe. Boom! A massive tree fell, somewhere out of sight. The big ones sounded like bombs. The ground shuddered, meaning it hadn't landed far away. Boom! Another tree. Everyone's head was on a swivel. "Head on a swivel" was a shorthand phrase of Van's, but that's also what it looked like: a tree fell, and our heads snapped around, our expressions asking where and how close. Boom! "That was too close. Too f****** close." Luke looked unnerved. A crew got on the radio and said they were pulling out. Too many snags comin' down, the crew boss said. "The wind's too high, and we don't feel safe to continue." They said they were hiking out. Division said he copied. "You think we'll leave too?" I asked. "Oh, hell no." "No way. Hotshots gotta be the last ones to leave." "Don't worry, Rowdy River'll do it!" "Perfect time to get after it." "Find the boys an outlet. We're gettin' plugged in." Bitter sarcasm was our only resort. The eerie wind stirred the stump holes and swirled embers into the air. Where we were, the wind threatened to coerce a dead fire back to life. But elsewhere, where we couldn't see, the risk was much worse. Salmon, who was posted on the ridge as lookout, came on the radio. "Hey, uh, this thing is making a decent run. It's starting to put up a pretty good column." Van confirmed that he was seeing the same thing from wherever he was hiding out. We kept digging. Then Air Attack came on the radio. "This is making a big push," Air Attack said. "The fire has jumped the Feather River drainage and is making a big run to the south. It's moving fast. I'm seeing—I'm seeing a campground and some structures here, in front of the fire, and you need to send people out there to evacuate anyone in this thing's path. Tell everyone to get out of the way. It's—it's not stopping." My skin prickled. We couldn't see any of it—the column, the fire pushed by these winds, jumping the river and racing toward a campground—but even I had been doing this long enough that I could picture the flames, and the urgency in Air Attack's voice made my blood run cold. Author Kelly Ramsey portrait Author Kelly Ramsey portrait Lindsey Shea/Courtesy of Scribner 'Intergalactic Columns' He came on again to say that this wasn't the only fire seeing explosive growth. "I've flown everything from here to Redding," he said. "And I hate to tell ya, but it's just columns everywhere. All of California is columns, far as you can see. Intergalactic columns." "Intergalactic?" "Did he really say that?" We'd never forget it—it was a joke for the ages. We'd later get to a fire that was putting up a column and someone would intone, Intergalactic, with a wink, and people would laugh, and I would feel a chill. Because that is how a single column looks, like a rope from earth to space, and to imagine them spread over the breadth of this nation-sized state was to apocalypse. Alien invasion. Armageddon. With one word, Air Attack had conjured a vision of the end times. And he wasn't wrong. We kept working our way down the line, mopping up. Opening my pack to grab a snack, I saw I'd missed a call from Jossie, the friend in Happy Camp who was watching our animals. I called back. "Everything OK?" "I'm at your house," she said in a rushed voice. "I have the dogs. Is there anything you want me to grab?" Huh? I was so confused, the best response I could summon was, "What?" "There's a fire in Happy Camp. I thought you knew." "What? No, I didn't know." Ice. As if someone had poured a bucket of it over my head. Cold water flowing over my body and entering my veins. "Yeah, it's right outside town, they're evacuating everyone. I have to leave, and I've got my dogs. Do you want me to take yours?" "Yes," I said. "Please." "I tried to get the cat, but he ran away." "That's OK. Cats are smart. Tommy will hide." My voice caught in my throat. Poor Tommy, the scrappy stray I'd bribed into our home. "What about Sam?" F****** Sam. There was no loading a large goat into Jossie's small SUV. "Um. Why don't you let him free in the yard, so he can escape? I guess." Poor old Sam. "OK, I'll do that. Is there anything else you want from the house? Any important papers or anything?" My throat was closing. The trees around us, columns of carbon, creaked in the howling wind. "No, just the dogs." It was almost a whisper. "Please take the dogs." June 7, 2021 on the Telegraph Fire outside Globe, AZ. June 7, 2021 on the Telegraph Fire outside Globe, AZ. Parker Kleive Smothering Smoke The sky had gone orange. The atmosphere hung low, bloody and dark, as if someone had steeped the sky in an amber tea, the smoke like cloudy billows of just-poured cream. We were all taking videos, because it was insane that morning could look like the middle of the night. We'd left the North Complex, headed home. Miles upon miles spooled out under the buggies' tires, wildfires in every direction. Everywhere we turned, roads were closed. We had to reroute because I-5 was shut down: a fire near Ashland, where my friends lived. Cold prickled my neck. We took a back road, a two-lane highway between orchards, their gnarled limbs menacing under the heavy sky. Happy Camp wasn't the only tragedy in California. A headline about the North Complex read: "Tiny California Town Leveled By 'Massive Wall of Fire'; 10 Dead, 16 Missing, Trapped Fire Crew Barely Escapes Blaze." The North had grown explosively, barreling southwest and consuming the town of Berry Creek, leaving only three houses out of 1,200 standing. Meanwhile, in the western Sierra Nevada, almost 400 campers were trapped when the Creek Fire blew up; the Army National Guard rescued them in Black Hawk helicopters. By October, Governor Gavin Newsom would request a federal disaster declaration for six major wildfires in the state. The windstorm had also fueled five simultaneous megafires in Oregon, damaging 4,000 homes, schools and stores, killing several people, placing 10 percent of Oregon residents under an evacuation order and incinerating more of the Oregon Cascades than had burned in the previous 36 years combined. The Almeda fire leveled, among many other structures, my friend's mother's Polish restaurant in Talent. In Washington, the towns of Malden and Pine City were mostly destroyed. The Cold Springs Canyon fire grew from 10,000 to 175,000 acres overnight, an insane rate of spread. The Pearl Hill fire jumped an almost unheard-of 900 feet to cross the Columbia River. Smoke blanketed British Columbia and the Western U.S. and, funneling into the atmosphere, drifted and spread to cover the continent. Air quality advisories were issued as far east as New York. College students hid in their dorms in Berkeley; older people sheltered from the dangerous particulates outside. We were a nation huddled, terrified. The smothering smoke implicated each one of us for our part in making a hotter world, enabling such a catastrophe. This was a disaster. There was no other word. The Slater fire had blitzed north through Happy Camp and crossed over Grayback. It had jumped Indian Creek east to west, then the wind had shifted and it had jumped back again. The fire had gone everywhere at once and made a 100,000-acre run up Indian Creek and over the ridge into Oregon. That ridge, where an undivided stand of Brewer spruce grew. Had grown? The canyon where so many been. Wildfire Days book cover Wildfire Days book cover Courtesy of Scribner ▸ Adapted from Wildfire Days by Kelly Ramsey. Copyright © 2025 by Kelly Ramsey. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
University High principal: Class of 2025 reached 99% graduation rate
University High School's 620 members of the Class of 2025 earned their diplomas at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach May 31. Principal Amanda Wiles said University's Class of 2025 reached a graduation rate of greater than 99%. University students completed more than 36,000 community service hours. "This proves your generosity, compassion and willingness to make a positive impact on the world around you," Wiles said. More than 2 in 3 Titans earned scholar designations, while 172 received industry scholar designations. University students earned nearly $4.7 million in college scholarships, while 16 earned associate's degrees while in high school. Seven will enter the armed forces. Salutatorian Skye Scribner, who spoke to the class, completed her high school diploma in three years, while also earning an associate of arts degree from Daytona State College. So she spent the past year not in the halls of University, but at the campus of the University of Central Florida, completing her junior year of college. "I didn't get the chance to spend this final year of high school with you," Scribner said, admitting she felt scared standing before the large graduating class. "That's the message I want to leave you with today: Do it scared," she said. "Chances are you walked into high school and you were scared. You started your first job scared. You drove off alone for the first time scared. And yet you did it. "That courage, however small it felt at the time, is what carried you forward," Scribner said. "It is what got you to this moment and it's what will carry you into the next." Valedictorian Katie Blix admitted she's not good at many sports, but she kept trying and landed on running, which she said gave her confidence. She compared completing high school to crossing a finishing line. "Even though the race might have felt like 100 marathons, you still made it here," she said, "and you are stronger for it." This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: University High seniors graduate at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach
CTV News
11-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
Trinity Church in Saint John, N.B., launches campaign to restore ‘irreplaceable' stained-glass window
Reverend Steven Scribner stands in front of the stained-glass window his church is raising money to restore.
