Thanks to Beth for another great curated list for your reading pleasure: 

Career and Employment

• The minimum wage is going up in 18 states on January 1st. Find out by how much in this article from Money: 

18 U.S. states and 20 cities increased their minimum wage on January 1, with bumps ranging from $.04 for workers in Alaska [Are you kidding me?] to $1 for workers in Maine. Washington, which hiked its minimum wage from $11 to $11.50 an hour, now has the highest minimum wage in the country.

• NPR digs into the impact of these minimum wage increases and the age-old question of whether it helps (higher wages) or hurts workers (fewer jobs) in this audio segment (3:30 in duration):

Sylvia Wallingford and her husband own Ernie's Cycle Shop in Westbrook. Wallingford says she often hires young people who start out at minimum wage. But this year, because of Maine's looming minimum wage hike, she couldn't afford to.

Technology

• What's coming down the pike for technology in 2018? The Washington Post weighs in with their top 10 trends to watch out for: 

Is the outlook for technology in 2018 exciting — or slightly terrifying? Flip a coin. You’d be right either way. As I look into my crystal ball at what new technologies are most likely to shape our lives in the next 12 months, I see science-fiction dreams coming to life: glasses that mix reality and imagination, an electric car in my driveway and gadgets that charge without plugs.

• You better know about Spectre and Meltdown since 90% of computers are affected by this security issue. Find out what you should be doing from CNN Tech: 

Researchers recently discovered these issues and unveiled the two-decade old flaws on Wednesday. The flaws affect modern processors including Intel (INTC), AMD and ARM that use "speculative execution" to enhance performance. Fixing the problems may slow a computer's performance, experts say, especially on devices more than five years old..For now, there's only one thing you can do: Update your devices and browser software when the updates are made available.

Paying for College:

• It's Bowl season for college football and while some college programs rival their professional counterparts with their stadiums and facilities, they pale into comparison with the business of higher education. From the Federal Reserve Atlanta comes a report that compares the two:

College sports at the highest level are indeed big business, and perhaps nowhere more than in the Southeast.* Yet the universities themselves have a far larger economic imprint on their communities and states than their famous football and basketball teams. By one simple measure, the impact may be about 17 times as big. (See the infographic.)

• $1,700 to apply for college, say it ain't so...Money described the plight of a student who spent this much to apply to 20 schools, a few standardized tests and the CSS Profile:

In general, application fees range anywhere from $25 to $90, and high-demand colleges with national brands tend to have higher fees. The University of California-Los Angeles (along with five other UC colleges), New York University, and Boston College, for example—all of which received more than 50,000 applications last year—charge at least $70 to apply.

Online shopping

• The rise on online shopping is also wreaking havoc for the job prospects of retail employees too. Interview with a retail expert on Marketplace.org: 

Mark Cohen: The retail industry at large is just fine. Plenty of customers, they have plenty of disposable income. But inside the business, the legacy players, the department stores — they're the ones who are facing the retail apocalypse, if you will.

Brancaccio: And if you're a shareholder in those legacy retailers, this is of concern. But if you work at those companies, you've got trouble.

Cohen: You're an endangered species, if you will. The retail clerk may very well become something of an artifact in the years to come.

• On the subject of online shopping, this NY Times article identifies other collateral damage as more and more consumers shift their spending from "bricks to clicks." 

Why are online retailers intermittently collecting sales taxes on transactions? It’s because only online retailers that have a brick-and-mortar location (a so-called physical presence) in a state are legally required to collect the tax. South Dakota has asked the Supreme Court to re-examine that question in a dispute with online retailers including Wayfair and Overstock.

• Amazon continued to be in the news throughout 2017 with announcements about entering new categories usually precipitating stock price declines in those categories. The NY Times highlights 11 stocks impacted by Amazon in 2017 which provides a cautionary tale of the risk of picking individual stocks in industries. Can you guess which companies were in AMZN's crosshairs?  

Finally, a pill that replicates exercise...say it ain't so (from Quartz):

Researchers have made the breakthrough of couch potatoes’ dreams with a new drug that mimics some of the most important effects of exercise. Scientists from Deakin University in Melbourne published their findings in Cell Reports earlier this week, showing that overweight mice who were given the drug no longer showed signs of cardiovascular disease.

Enjoy your weekend and find a way to get some exercise (oops, east coasters may not want to venture out this weekend; stay warm!)

---------------

 Infographic of the week (courtesy of Visual Capitalist): 

About the Authors

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.

More posts by Tim