The average credit card APR is sitting around 21% right now, according to the Fed, which is kind of wild when you stop and actually think about it.

At that rate a balance barely moves on minimum payments. A $10,000 balance at 21%, paying $250 a month, is about 6 years and roughly $7,400 in interest. The math punishes carrying a balance far more than any single purchase ever does.

Most people just treat the rate as background noise instead of the real problem. A balance transfer, a lower-rate loan, or borrowing against something you already own can all bring that rate down.

Curious how everyone else is handling it. If you are carrying a balance, are you attacking the rate or just the balance?

Jones Walker, a national law firm, documented this scenario in detail and it's not theoretical. A hire looked legitimate at every stage. Polished resume, credible interview, passed screening. Then on day one they had system access and used it.

What makes this particularly hard to defend against is that the background check wasn't wrong. The identity documents were real, just stolen. The fraud happened upstream of the check itself, at the identity and credential layer.

It's one of the cleaner illustrations of why hiring verification has to go deeper than it used to.

Saw this statistic the other day that one in three Americans have criminal records, according to The Sentencing Project.

Of course many of these criminal records are not as severe as people assume. A significant portion are misdemeanors, old offenses, or arrests that never led to a conviction. But they can still show up on a background check and affect someone's ability to get hired.

For employers, this is worth thinking about. Automatically disqualifying anyone with a record means ruling out a huge portion of the workforce, often for something that has no bearing on the role they're applying for. The better approach is looking at the nature of the offense, how long ago it happened, and whether it's actually relevant to the job.

About 40% of therapists in a 2026 report earn income from at least one source outside their practice. Supervision (16.1%) and consulting (12.6%) lead the list, followed by teaching (10.7%), speaking (10.5%), coaching (7.8%), and writing (4.1%).

Session income is capped by the number of hours you're willing to sit in the chair, with the median caseload being 18 clients a week.

What's less clear from survey data is which of these streams pay comparably once you account for prep and admin.

Therapists, does this data look similar to what you’re seeing in your practice?

The average homeowner with a mortgage has roughly $302,000 in equity.

A ton of net worth is locked in the walls of the house, even while a lot of the same households carry high-interest debt on the other side of the ledger.

It seems worth at least knowing the number and understanding the options, from HELOCs to home equity loans to the newer card-style lines, before sticking to a 20%+ credit card.

Homeowners, how much home equity do you have?

This made me laugh harder than I wanted to, and now I’m going to try it … 😉😎🍀🍀