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☆ 36% of Americans plan to take on debt for summer travel. Here's why that worries financial experts
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-29 | by ( Charlotte Morabito | In Charlottemorabito | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Some people could find themselves wrangling with summer travel bills well after Labor Day. To that point, 36% of Americans said they plan to take on debt in order to travel this summer, according to a March survey from Bankrate. The payment methods for summer travel expenses ranged from personal loans (5%) and buy now, pay later services (8%) to borrowing from family and friends (6%). Additionally, 26% of summer travelers said they intend to use a credit card and pay over for the vacation over multiple billing cycles. "The reason that's worrisome is because the average credit card charges more than 20%, which is close to a record high," said Ted Rossman, a senior credit card industry analyst at Bankrate.

Persons: Ted Rossman, Gen Zs, Sabrina Romanoff Organizations: Labor, Finance, Disney

☆ Why a $100,000 income no longer buys the American Dream in most places
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-16 | by ( Charlotte Morabito | In Charlottemorabito | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

"The benchmark of a six-figure salary used to be the gold standard income," Sabrina Romanoff, a clinical psychologist, told CNBC. "It represented the tipping point of finally earning a disposable income and building savings and spending based on your wants, not just your needs." "It becomes increasingly hard for many families to be able to attain that sort of middle-class lifestyle, that American Dream," Gould said. Consumers using the popular 50-30-20 budget guideline aim to spend 50% of their income on essential expenses, with another 30% for discretionary spending and the remaining 20% for savings. Using that framework, GoBankingRates found that all 50 states require more than a $100,000 annual income, according to the report, with 38 states needing more than $140,000.

Persons: Sabrina Romanoff, haven't, Elise Gould, Gould, GoBankingRates, Jason Reginato Organizations: CNBC, SurveyMonkey, Economic Policy Institute, Consumers

☆ Amazon rallies on cloud optimism as it chases Microsoft for AI business
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Aditya Soni | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Smaller cloud rival Microsoft (MSFT.O) rose 1.5%, while Alphabet (GOOGL.O) was down about 1.3%. Amazon shares have rallied about 40% this year, but they have lost nearly 8% in the past two days after Alphabet (GOOGL.O) warned that cloud customers were curbing spending. In the July-September period, Amazon posted its first quarter-on-quarter increase in cloud growth in nearly two years. The 12.3% growth in AWS was slower than the 29% rise seen at Microsoft's (MSFT.O) Azure cloud business, which had topped market estimates. To be sure, Amazon's cloud business is larger than that of Microsoft and Google.

Persons: Pascal, Andy Jassy, Bernstein, brokerages, Morningstar, Dan Romanoff, Aditya Soni, Arun Koyyur Organizations: REUTERS, Microsoft, Amazon, Amazon Web Services, Reuters Graphics, Tech, Google, Tejas Dessai, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru

Today's "niche" companies and those seen as AI leaders are unlikely to be the biggest winners for long-term investors, said Barry Glassman, a certified financial planner and member of CNBC's Advisor Council. "I've been through this enough to see that the niche players early on may not, in fact, be the long-term plays," Glassman said. Dan Romanoff, senior equity analyst with Morningstar Research Services, echoed that sentiment, saying investors would be hard-pressed to find a good "pure play" AI company in which to invest today. I would ask the question: What company isn't an AI company nowadays? However, it's unclear if such companies will remain among the AI leaders as the technology develops, experts said.

Persons: Jaap Arriens, Barry Glassman, I've, " Glassman, OpenAI, chatbot, Glassman, DocuSign, Dan Romanoff, Romanoff Organizations: Getty, San, Wealth, AOL, Cisco, Morningstar Research Services, Microsoft, Nvidia Locations: San Francisco, Vienna , Virginia, North Bethesda , Maryland

☆ Gwyneth Paltrow leaves door open for further involvement in the MCU: ‘I mean, I didn’t die’
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Dan Heching | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Gwyneth Paltrow is never saying never to the prospect of her future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The “Iron Man” and “Avengers” costars speculated about their potential future involvement in the comic book films during their chat. When Johansson mused that Paltrow could indeed come back “at some point,” Paltrow exclaimed “Really?”“As 64-year-old Pepper Potts! (From left): Gwyneth Paltrow, Brie Larson, Pom Klementieff and Letitia Wright in 2019's "Avengers: Endgame." In 2020, Johansson married “Saturday Night Live” star Colin Jost, and the pair are now parents to son Cosmo, who turns 2 in August.

☆ Microsoft to cut thousands of jobs across divisions - reports
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Lucy NicholsonJan 17 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) plans to cut thousands of jobs with some roles expected to be eliminated in human resources and engineering divisions, according to media reports on Tuesday. U.K broadcaster Sky News reported, citing sources, that Microsoft plans to cut about 5% of its workforce, or about 11,000 roles. The company plans to cut jobs in a number of engineering divisions on Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported, according to a person familiar with the matter, while Insider reported that Microsoft could cut recruiting staff by as much as one-third. In October, news site Axios reported that Microsoft had laid off under 1,000 employees across several divisions. Shares of Microsoft, which is set to report quarterly results on Jan. 24, were marginally higher in late afternoon trading.

☆ Privacy and crypto will likely lead tech policy under split Congress as hope for passing ambitious antitrust reforms dwindles
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Lauren Feiner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

After what started as a hopeful year for tech policy, the 117th Congress is about to close out its term with many key efforts tabled. That's the case with privacy legislation, where a bill proposed this year gained bipartisan support, passing out of a House committee with a near-unanimous vote. The pair blamed the bills' failure to advance on intense lobbying efforts by the tech industry against them. One prominent bipartisan bill in the Senate would put the CFTC in charge. "But the importance of tech policy issues will still be strong."

☆ Microsoft revenue forecast under threat from PC market slump, mighty dollar
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Yuvraj Malik | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Adding to the squeeze, the dollar has climbed more than 17%, weighing on the earnings of companies with big global operations. Microsoft earns more than 50% of its revenue outside the United States. Reuters GraphicsWindows licenses form about 12% to 13% of Microsoft's revenue and the PC market downturn is expected to dent its sales by 100 basis points, Morningstar senior analyst Dan Romanoff said. The blow is expected to be slightly offset by Microsoft's cloud services unit Azure, which is set to grow 20% in the first quarter, according to Refinitiv data. Software firms are the biggest customers of cloud platforms and their business growth is taken as proxy for the cloud services sector.

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