The Wall Street Journal recently shared the story of a couple who is struggling because the pandemic has upended their income and job situation. To make matters worse, they’re dealing with a massive amount of consumer debt:

The Denton, Texas, couple pay $4,400 a month on their mortgage, four car loans and leases, and student debt, Ms. Scott-White said. Minimum required monthly credit-card payments total about $700. The debt was manageable pre-pandemic, she said.

She deferred lease payments on her Infiniti QX60 for three months and started paying again with unemployment benefits. Her husband traded in his Ford F-150 in August for a lower-cost car and reduced his original monthly payment of $820 by about $100, and his income covers the $2,100 mortgage.

The Ford F-150 payment stuck out to me for a couple of reasons. Maybe it’s because I live in Michigan but I see Ford trucks all over the roads. And a monthly outlay of $820 is quite high for a car payment, especially when you consider this family has credit card debt and three other car loans or leases.

After doing some digging, it’s no surprise I see so many Ford F-Series trucks on the road. It’s been the best selling vehicle in the United States for 39 straight years (and it looks like 2020 will make it 40 in a row).

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This year has been hard. Wildfire smoke has engulfed the West Coast, hundreds of thousands are dead from an ongoing pandemic, and the US government is deadlocked to the point of illegitimacy, incapable of taking action against the economic, political, ecological, and medical devastation that threatens to engulf us. Even for those not directly affected, the perception of the ongoing crises has turned into a kind of psychic assault, challenging the limits of what we can express.

Fortunately, a new crop of emoji has just been approved by the Unicode Consortium to help out. They probably won’t reach your phone until 2021, but they’re clearly influenced by the chaos of the year, whether it’s “face exhaling” (clearly exhausted), “face in clouds” (smoke?), or “heart on fire” (self-explanatory).

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Like a spurned lover, Microsoft quickly pivoted from its failed TikTok bid and dropped a cool $7.5B to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of game publisher Bethesda Softworks (Doom, Fallout, Elder Scrolls).

It’s Microsoft’s largest game acquisition ever and the tech giant’s 11th acquisition of $1B+ since 1987.

Here are the others, with our takes on the deals:

• The priciest (and spammiest) acquisition: LinkedIn for $26.2B in 2016.
• The “I’ve never heard of this company, but its early employees are def way richer than me” acquisition: Fast Search & Transfer for $1.2B in 2008.
• The “Are these tech companies or the place we get our eyewear prescriptions done?” acquisitions: Tied — Visio Corp ($1.4B in 1999) and Navision ($1.2B in 2002).
• The Ron Burgundy “I immediately regret this decision” acquisition: Tied — Skype for $8.5B in 2011 and Nokia for $7.2B in 2014.
• The “Let’s piss off software engineers” acquisition: GitHub for $7.5B in 2018.
• The “Parents love this because it’s a nanny substitute” acquisition: Mojang (Minecraft) for $2.5B in 2014.

The “Who needs Zuckerberg when you can have David Sacks?” acquisition: Yammer for $1.2B in 2012.

Real Estate cycles exist and matter. Eitel Insights identifies those cycles, and correctly identified the Greater Vancouver market peak during 2017. Eitel Insights’ technical forecasts have been so precise that in 11 Great Vancouver markets the actual data has matched forecasted data with over 95% accuracy. An additional 7 markets have realized over 80% of forecasted losses with likely more to come. Dane Eitel will join Michael this Saturday, September 19th to talk Real Estate cycles in both the detached and condo markets.
Saturday Sept 19th  8:30am – 10:00am Pacific
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Well – Wait No More!

Travellers snap up Asian airlines’ scenic ‘flights to nowhere’

SYDNEY/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Qantas Airways Ltd QAN.AX said a seven-hour scenic flight over Australia’s Outback and Great Barrier Reef had sold out in 10 minutes, as it joined a growing trend in Asia offering “flights to nowhere” that take off and land at the same airport.

The concept of scenic flights is not new. Antarctica Flights has chartered Qantas jets for scenic flights over Antarctica for 26 years. An Air New Zealand Ltd AIR.NZ sightseeing flight over Antarctica in 1979 crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.  Full Story