You know how they say: "Don't invest in something you don't understand."
Me neither. So I'm working on understanding what I'm already investing in. Cue me taking on the silly idea this afternoon on reading the 1408 page (!) report of what IWDA did last year with the money I'm investing in them. [1]
Underneath a summary of my findings, so you don't have to do the same.

1. Page 4. The fund is Irish, and most people working and subcontracting are, but there is a lot of London involved as well. The big names behind seem to be BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, State Street, Deloitte and Citibank. Funnily enough, I thought it was administered by BlackRock, but it's actually State Street doing the administration. The assets are also being held by State Street.
2. Page 5. There was a change of chairs. The chair is now William McKechnie. Man has a linkedin [2] saying he's a professor at College of Europe in Bruges. [2]
3. Page 9. They lowered the TER on a bunch of bond ETFS. Not IWDA unfortunately. They also launched some silly ETFs like equal weighted SP500 and Blockchain.
4. Page 12. IWDA aka "iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF" is index tracking, non-replicating. It's not an article 8, or 9 fund, so cannot be called ESG.
5. Page 14. An explanation of the relations between tracking difference, tracking error and TER (Total Expense Ratio). "The TER expresses the sum of all fees, operating costs and expenses, with the exception of direct trading costs, charged to each Fund’s assets as a percentage of the average Fund assets based on a twelve-month period ended 30 June 2023.", "Fund returns disclosed are the performance returns for the primary share class for each Fund, net of fees", "Realised tracking error is the annualised standard deviation of the difference in monthly returns between a fund and its benchmark index."
6. Page 16. The numbers are for July 2022 to June 2023. The fund IWDA returned 18.58%. The benchmark is 18.51%. The tracking difference before TER was 0.27%, the tracking error after was 0.05%. So the IWDA outperformed the index. The reason for that is threefold.
   1. There is a net income difference. Page 18. "Comprising of withholding tax rate differential, tax reclaims and income timing differences between the Fund and the benchmark index." I think this refers to the bilateral tax agreement between Ireland and the US which allows dividends to only be taxed at 15%, while the index accounts for a 30% tax.
   2. Securities lending. More later.
   3. Investment techniques. Page 18. "Comprising of cash management, trading costs, currency hedging, futures held and sampling techniques." I guess this is saying that when you are not perfectly replicating, you might accidentally make a profit.
7. They anticipate a tracking error up to 0.1% in the future. Notably, that is lower than the TER.
8. Page 31. The board is attending all their meetings. Except Jessica Irschick. I can already see I am a lot like Jessica.
9. Page 33. The board believes everybody in the board is paid fairly. "The maximum amount of remuneration payable to the Directors is determined by the Board and is set out in the prospectus of the Entity."
10. Page 56. Lots of bladibla later, IWDA grew 8.29B USD. It paid 128M in taxes. It has 1B operating income and 94M operating expenses.
11. Page 69 (nice), They started the year with 41B in assets. They added 8.2B in asset growth. 8.5B worth of shares were created, and 1.4B worth of shares were removed. The total number of assets in the fund is now 56.4B (I checked, that's 41B+8.2B+8.5B-1.4B).
12. Page 82. Of that 56.4B, 192M is held in cash. 99.5% of the fund is held in assets. Like any good WSB autist, they also report spending 694k on margin cash.
13. Page 96. IWDA had a VaR (Value at Risk) of 2.57% in 2023, down from 4.28% in 2022. Defined on page 95: "A 99% one day VaR means that the expectation is that 99% of the time over a one-day period each Fund will lose no more than this number in percentage terms." If you ever want to understand why we had a subprime financial crisis in 2009, this is why.
14. Page 101. The assets are held at State Street Corp. It get's an S&P rating of A. Cue the famous blind lady scene from the movie "The Big Short"
15. Page 103. On the 30th of June 2023, 5.3B worth of assets from IWDA were actually loaned out, for which they had received 5.9B worth of collateral. That's 9.4% of all IWDA assets, if my math is not off. It's a number which has almost doubled since 2022. The collateral is held in the following places: Bank of NY Europe, Euroclear or J.P. Morgan Chase Bank N.A.
16. Page 124. Nearly 100% of the assets are valued at level 1, which means they are assets of which they are pretty sure of the stock price. Sometimes that can be a problem due to limited liquidity, but that's no issue for IWDA.
17. Page 133. IWDA made 5M interest on its cash, received 1.05B worth of dividends. It notably also made 11M as income from lending securities. That's 0.02% on it's assets. That's quite low, in my opinion.
18. Page 147. Details on the losses made. Derivatives are mentioned, which I'm surprised by. It looks like 0.4% of assets are held as financial derivatives.
19. Page 160. 128M USD was donated to various governments around the world in the form of withholding taxes. This is after taking into account bilateral agreements.
20. Page 167 and page 176 have receivables and payables, but this is just accounting stuff afaik.
21. Page 180. "The authorised share capital of the Entity is 2 subscriber shares of a par value of EUR1.00 each and 500,000,000,000 participating shares of no par value." That's an odd way to structure the company? Maybe it's for shielding purposes?
22. Page 188. If the company would have gone bankrupt on June 2023, the holders of IWDA would be entitled to 54.6B in assets, or 84.28 USD per share. If I look up the stock price of IWDA on June 30th 2023, it closed at 84.26 USD, so that's pretty close! It traded between 83.34 and 84.41 USD that day.
23. Page 198. The subinvestment manager is "BlackRock Asset Management North Asia Limited and BlackRock Asset Management Deutschland AG"
24. Page 201. "The total income earned from securities lending transactions is split between the relevant Fund and the Securities Lending Agent. The Funds which undertake securities lending transactions receive at least 62.5%, while the Securities Lending Agent receives up to 37.5% of such income". So whoever is organising the securities lending, get's to keep 37.5% of the profit for 0% of the risk. That's rich. I wonder who it is.
25. Also page 201. The directors were paid 65 700 euro in fees. The auditors 313 000. That all seems cheap to me.
26. Moving along 500 pages. From page 789 to page 811 is a list of all assets held in IWDA on the 30th of June 2023. It's also clearer what the derivatives are. They are Forward currency contracts and Euro Stoxx / SP500 futures. Those are totalling 0.03% of assets. 99.47% of assets are stock exchange listed securities. Notably, 0.51% of assets are "Other assets", I'm curious what is meant here.
27. Page 1161. A list of companies which had the biggest change in number of assets.
28. Page 1181. IWDA paid 3.7M in transaction costs. That's much cheaper than what I get at my broker.
29. Page 1191-1195. If you want to know how the bankers get paid, this has the answer. For all the funds in iShares, the manager's staff got 220.4M. 118M fixed and 102.4M variable. 3940 people were paid here. The senior management got 21.6M. People with an impact on the risk profile got 30.8M.
30. Page 1196. The securities lending agent is "BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited"! Those are the guys making 37.5% on the securities lending. So via this loophole, BlackRock is making 37.5% / 62.5% x 11M = 6M per year on IWDA, its own fund. Bankers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
31. Page 1204. The people borrowing shares from IWDA. BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, etc. Natixis is the only one I don't know. BNP is holding 1.39B in loan, with 1.545B in collateral
32. Page 1231. 4.7B in collateral is in the form of equities, 1.1B in the form of fixed income assets, probably bonds.
33. Page 1242. of this collateral, most of it is in Japan (484M), followed by Apple (184M). So it's not concentrated anywhere in particular.

My learnings:
As always, another pointer that the TER doesn't really make a difference. It's the index itself first, and then the tracking error you should look at.
I'm surprised how much securities lending is being done, for how small a difference in income. I can see why it's profitable for BlackRock to do it, as they seem to siphon some money there. All in all, it looks like it is all done for quite paltry sums of money.
Anyway. Here's 2 hours of my life I'm not getting back. I hope there's something useful for you here. Feel free to ask follow-up questions if you have any. I'm not a banker nor working in finance, but someone might have an answer.
[1] https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/literature/annual-report/ishares-iii-plc-en-annual-report-2023.pdf
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-mckechnie-3420aa276

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How much money would it take for you to choose a horrible death?
Ever seen the movie Seven with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman? In short, two detectives are hunting a killer who is killing people in truly horrible and torturous ways, each death being modeled after the one of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth . Google the deaths to see how bad they are.
How much money would it take (payable immediately) for you to live your full life but instead of dying in whatever way you were meant to go, when it comes time to check out you are dying one of the deaths in the film? The death will be chosen randomly unless you elect the following:

1. For each 10% of your starting money you give up, you can eliminate one death of your choice from the list
   
2. For 50% of your starting money you can choose the exact one.
   

Following is a comprehensive list of tax benefits that can be availed by a Salaried Employee for lowering their Income taxes through allowances exemptions and various deductions available under the Income Tax laws.
Partially Taxable Allowances:

Description	Exemption
House Rent Allowance is paid by the employers to the employees to meet the cost of rented house taken by them. [Section 10(13A)] (See Note)	Minimum of the following three amounts: - HRA Actually Received - Actual house rent paid minus 10% of salary - 50% of salary (if the residence is in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, or Chennai); otherwise, 40% of salary.
Transport Allowance issued to an employee lower than 70% of such transport allowance or working in any transport system to meet his own expenses during the performance of his duties for going from one location to another, provided he does not receive the daily allowance.	Rs 10,000 per month.
Children's Education Allowance is granted to cover the tuition fees of up to two children.	Up to Rs 100 per month per child for a maximum of two children.
Hostel Allowance is granted to defray the hostel expenses of a maximum of two children.	Up to Rs. 300 per month per child for a maximum of two children.
Office Duty Allowances · Travel allowance. · Conveyance allowance · Daily Allowance · Helper's allowance · Research Allowance · Uniform Allowance	These allowances are exempt to the extent of a minimum of the actual allowance received or the actual amount spent for employment-related duties.
Special Compensation Allowance (Hilly Areas) (Subject to specified requirements and locations)	Varies from Rs 300 to Rs 7,000 per month.
Border Area Allowance, Remote Locality Allowance, Disturbed Area Allowance, or Difficult Area Allowance (subject to specified restrictions and places).	Varies from Rs 200 to Rs 1,300 per month.
Tribal Area, Special Compensatory Area, Scheduled Area, or Agency Area Allowance (subject to specific areas).	Up to Rs. 200 per month.
Compensatory Field Area Allowance (subject to specified circumstances and localities).	Up to Rs. 2,600 per month.
Compensatory Modified Field Area Allowance.	Up to Rs. 1000 per month.
A counter-insurgency allowance is awarded to members of the military forces working in areas outside of their permanent positions.	Up to Rs. 3,900 per month
Underground Allowance paid to employees laboring in uncongenial, unnatural conditions in subterranean mines.	Up to Rs. 800 per month.
High Altitude Allowance is given to armed services operating in high-altitude zones.	a) Up to Rs. 1,060 per month for altitudes between 9,000 and 15,000 feet. b) Up to Rs. 1,600 per month for altitudes over 15,000 feet.
Special compensatory Highly Active Field Area Allowance awarded to members of the armed forces.	Up to Rs. 4,200 per month.
Island Duty Allowance awarded to members of the military forces in Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep groups of islands.	Up to Rs. 3,250 per month.

Deductions from salary (Section 16)
Standard Deduction:
The Standard Deduction is absolute and unconditional, and the employee does not need to provide any supporting documentation to claim this deduction. The deduction is the same for all employees, with a maximum of Rs. 50,000, regardless of their pay.
Entertainment Allowance:
The entertainment allowance obtained by an employee is taxed. If a government employee receives such an entertainment allowance, he is eligible for a deduction when calculating his taxable income under the head pay. However, no deduction is permitted under this section for taxpayers who are not employees of any Central or State Government.
The amount of deduction allowed to the government employee for the Entertainment Allowance shall be the lower of the following:

• Actual amount of entertainment allowance received during the previous year
• 20% of salary exclusive of any allowance, benefit, or other perquisites
• Rs. 5,000

Professional Tax:
Employees can deduct professional tax from their taxable salary income. Even if paid in advance, professional taxes paid during the year are deducted from salary income.
If the employer pays the professional tax out of pocket rather than deducting it from the employee's wage, it must be included in the employee's income as a perquisite. Following that, a deduction for such professional taxes is allowed from gross compensation.
Deductions are allowed for paid employees [Chapter VI-A].

Section 80C: lists common investments or expenditures that can be deducted under Section 80C. 1. Payment of life insurance premiums. 2. Amount paid under a contract for a deferred annuity 3. Contributions to Employees' or Recognised Provident Fund 4. Contributions to the Public Provident Fund Account 5. Contribute to an approved superannuation fund 6. Subscribe to a notified security or deposit scheme (Sukanya Samriddhi Account Scheme). 7. Subscribe to the notified savings certificates. 8. Contribution to the notified unit-linked insurance plan. 9. Tuition expenses for full-time schooling of any two children. 10. Payments for the purchase/construction of residential housing property. 11. LIC or other insurers' notified annuity plans 12. Investment in Equity Linked Saving Scheme 13. Term deposits for a defined duration of at least five years with a scheduled bank 14. Make a deposit in the Senior Citizen Savings Scheme 15. Contribution to Tier-II NPS account by central government workers.	Up to Rs. 1,50,000 (Subject to the total limit of Rs. 1,50,000 under Sections 80C, 80CCC, and 80CCD(1)).
Section 80CCC: contributions to specific LIC/other insurer pension funds, subject to certain circumstances.	Up to 1,50,000 (subject to the overall limit of Rs. 1,50,000 under Sections 80C, 80CCC, and 80CCD)
Section 80CCD: Contribution to New Pension Scheme (NPS) notified by the Central Government (subject to restrictions).	- The amount contributed to a pension system or 10% of salary/gross total income*, whichever is smaller (subject to the Rs. 1,50,000 ceiling limit established by Section 80CCE), shall be permitted as a deduction under Section 80CCD(1). - Section 80CCD(1B) allows for an additional deduction of Rs. 50,000. The increased deduction is not subject to the Rs. 1,50,000 maximum limit under Section 80CCE. - The employer's contribution shall be allowed as a deduction under section 80CCD(2) when determining the employee's total income. However, the deduction could not exceed 14% of the wage for federal and state government employees and 10% for all other employees. * 10% of salary in case of employees otherwise 20% of gross total income.
Section 80CCH: Amount paid/deposited in the Agniveer Corpus Fund by the assessee and the Central Government's contribution to the fund.	The total amount paid or deposited
Section 80D: Amount paid (other than cash) to LIC or other insurers to get or maintain health insurance coverage for a specific person (self, spouse, dependent children, or parents). Individuals can also make payments to the Central Government's health system and/or for preventive health checks. NOTE: - The deduction for preventative health check-ups is limited to Rs. 5,000 in total.- Cash payment is accepted for preventive health check-ups.- A deduction of up to Rs. 50,000 is allowed for medical expenses incurred by a resident senior citizen who has not paid for health insurance.	- For self, spouse, and dependent children: Up to Rs. 25,000 (Rs. 50,000 if specified person is a senior citizen) - For parents: additional deduction of Rs. 25,000 shall be allowed (Rs. 50,000 if the parent is a senior citizen)
Section 80DD: (a) Any cost incurred for the medical treatment (including nursing), training, and rehabilitation of a dependent who is a person with a disability. (b) Any amount paid or deposited under an approved plan framed on this behalf by the LIC, any other insurer, the Administrator, or the specified corporation for the maintenance of a dependent person with a disability (subject to certain criteria).	Rs. 75,000 (Rs. 1,25,000 in case of serious disability). NOTE: Individual dependents include the individual's spouse, children, parents, siblings, and sisters, or any combination of them.
Section 80DDB: Expenses paid for medical treatment of specified diseases and ailments for the assessee, their dependant spouse, children, parents, siblings, and sisters (subject to specific restrictions).	Up to Rs. 40,000 (Rs. 100,000 in case of senior citizen).
**Section 80E:**Amount paid from taxable income to repay interest on a loan obtained from a financial institution/approved charity institution for the purpose of pursuing higher education (subject to specified requirements).	the amount of interest paid during the initial year and the 7 subsequent assessment years (or until the aforementioned interest is paid in full).
Section 80EE: Interest due on a loan of up to Rs. 35 lakhs acquired by the taxpayer from any financial institution during the fiscal year 2016-17 for the purpose of acquiring a residential dwelling property valued at not more than Rs. 50 lakh. Note: On the date of loan approval, the taxpayer should not own any other residential property.	Loan interest can be deducted up to Rs 50,000.
Section 80EEA: Interest payable on a loan taken from any financial institution by an individual who is not eligible to claim a deduction under section 80EE between 01-04-2019 and 31-03-2022 for the purpose of acquiring a residential house property whose stamp duty value does not exceed Rs. 45 lakhs.	Loan interest can be deducted up to Rs. 1,50,000
Section 80EEB: Interest payable on an individual's loan from any financial institution to purchase an electric vehicle between January 4, 2019, and March 31, 2023.	Deduction of up to Rs. 1,50,000 towards interest on loan
Section 80G: Donation to specific institutions or funds. Note: No deduction will be permitted for financial donations of more than Rs. 2,000.	50–100% of the donation made
Section 80GG: Rent paid for furnished and unfurnished residential accommodation (subject to specific criteria)	A minimum of the following shall be allowed as a deduction: (a) Rent paid over 10% of total income; (b) 25% of the Total Income; or (c) Rs. 5,000 per month. Total Income = Gross total income minus long-term capital gains, short-term capital gains under section 111A, deductions under sections 80C to 80U (other than 80GG) and income under Section 115A
Section 80GGA: Donate to scientific research or rural development. Note: No deduction will be permitted for cash contributions in excess of Rs. 2,000.	100% of the donation made.
**Section 80GGC:**Donations to political parties or electoral trusts Note: Cash contributions are not eligible for deduction.	100% of the donation made.
Section 80TTA: Interest on deposits in a savings account with a banking firm, a post office, a cooperative organization engaged in banking operations, etc. (subject to specific criteria).	100% of such income up to a maximum of Rs 10,000.
Section 80TTB: Interest on deposits with a banking firm, a post office, a cooperative society engaged in banking operations, etc. (Subject to specific requirements).	100% of such revenue, subject to a ceiling of Rs. 50,000.
Section 80U: A resident individual who, at any time during the previous year, is certified by the medical authorities as a person with a disability.	Rs. 75,000 (Rs. 1,25,000 in case of serious disability).

Hi! First of all, I’d like to thank this sub for helping me through tough times. I’ve been a lurker for a long time and this community made me feel that I’m not alone in my struggle.
TL;DR I’ve started resenting my sister because I had to cut my mental health break short due of her inability to step up for our mom.
—
My sister has been… home-ridden for about 6 years now. She hasn’t finished school and is not working. She’s 27 this year.
We supported her throughout, thinking she was only taking a mental health break due to her alleged social anxiety. She complained about a lot of things and we had her checked mentally (suspected mood disorder) and then she said muscle pains so we had her undergo PT. Then it became nerve pain. Heart, etc. All results came back negative and we thought it was somatic. She was seeing a psych every month.
During pandemic I thought she’d continue with her education given that classes are conducted online, hence, interactions are limited. I find her doing okay with online interactions. Every year she said she’d go back to school but to date she hasn’t. I was skeptical about her whole ordeal but I didn’t want her to feel invalidated.
She’s also verbally abusive… “tanga” “bobo” she’s tell my mom and we’d just take it as a joke. Every day she has bandages around her body (legs, feet, arm; sometimes even wearing neckbrace) and she’d even refuse to eat frozen food due to “high histamine levels” in her body. When you mention about something you feel, she’d always make it a point to say she’s had it worse.
We were never pressured to work in order to provide for the family as children — something I am grateful for. But recently our mom (widowed) has been undergoing health issues so she stopped working. She still paid the bills. Due to bad estate planning, our dad’s passing left a lot of business payables that should be shouldered by my mom. So, ongoing expenses for business and health + no active income source slowly depleted the savings. My mom had to work. Around this time I also took a break from corporate world. I’ve been working for nearly a decade. I made sure I have funds to sustain me for 6-10 months.
Our home life started collapsing. I was not forced to go back to work but felt a pressing need for it seeing how my mom is suffering. I wasn’t ready to go back to work (TW: I started to have flashbacks and nightmares and suicide ideation due to being raped 2 years ago). It had gotten so bad to the point of crying every night and having migraines in the morning. This is the reason I decided to take a break from work. It’s only been 3 months.
I’ll go back to work now because I cannot stand seeing my mom suffer. We also have a little sister who’s in high school. The 27yr sister (A) always says she cannot work so she can take care of the 14yo(B). A has always been a condescending self-righteous nagger who tells me I’m dumb (hey, i finished college and grad school with honors). She likes collecting stuff like vinyl records, funko pops, and watching concerts. She asks money from my mom.
I hate it that it’s always me who has to adjust — “pag pasensyahan mo na” & “ikaw naman mas nakakaintindi.” I am very close with my cousins but cannot bring myself to tell them to avoid family issues. Only told 2 of my closest and they feel the same way about my sister.
Recovering from rape (tw) isn’t a joke. I needed to go back to taking antidepressants and anxiolyic. I spend 10k monthly for therapy (psych + psycotherapy). But I guess I’ll have to put this little mental health issue of mine just so this sister can continue living her life of netflix, kdramas, and F1 :)
—
If you’ve read the entire thing, I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Sorry for my incoherent story telling. I’m still reeling from a breakdown.
it’s always us, noh?
If I lose this mental health battle I want you all to know this community helped me stay for a bit longer. Thank you 🤍 Love you all.

Finale
The Brooks Brother’s Hardware store stood alone on its main street block. Chipped layers of white-washed paint contrasted the darkness inside the tall narrow windows. Faded posters advertising Case knives and hand tools hung in the ground level windows, but the only thing in the second story windows, was a thick layer of cobwebs. Tonight, however the faint flicker of candle light betrayed the fact someone was upstairs.
The autumn breeze carried my breath away in white puffs as I lingered across the street, gripping my Maglite in shivering hands. I missed my coat, purposefully forgotten inside a few hours earlier. I took a deep breath of cold air and stepped into the street.

I started working for Mr. Brooks after getting passed over for an internship with the Henderson Falls Gazette. I was interested in investigative journalism and thought the internship would be a great segue into that career, and might lead to a job covering the police beat after I graduated. At any rate, it would look great on a resume. Unfortunately, the editor’s son got the position, and I found myself turning in an application to Henderson Falls’ oldest business.
I think part of the reason Mr. Brooks hired me was so he could have a captive audience. As a senior member of our county’s historical society and a frequent contributor to the local paper, his mind was a repository for obscure and trivial facts about local history, especially as it pertained to his family. He never missed an opportunity to bring up Captain Brooks, one of the earliest members of his family to settle in Henderson County, Civil War hero, and founder of the Brooks Brothers’ Hardware Store.
Mr. Brooks kept a family history scrapbook with a section detailing the life, military service, and entrepreneurial pursuits of this earliest known relative. Clippings from the historical society’s newsletter mingled with pages copied from Civil War history books and hand-written notes from Mr. Brooks himself. They painted a clear, albeit concise picture of the man’s life.
According to the Old Man, Captain Brooks settled near Henderson Falls with his family at the age of 12, just in time for the 1850 census. The 1860 census, listed him as head of a household with 2 children. In 1861, records of troops mustered from Henderson County show he enlisted in the 34^th Ohio Infantry in either in April or May. Somehow, though probably through breveting, he obtained the rank of Captain by the end of the war. Shortly after, he returned to his family and started the Brooks Brothers. Lumber company, later expanding into building materials and general hardware. By the time the 1880s arrived, Brooks Brothers’ Hardware Store was the largest building in town, boasting 2 storys, a scale for the grist mill, and even a spur off the B. & O. Railroad.
“And you know what else Tommy,” Mr. Brooks would say. “The Captain might’a gone to the house of representatives too if it weren’t for all that trouble with them damn Leylands.”
I nodded politely the first few times I heard about Captain Brooks. The stories were interesting, but you can only be so invested in the history of someone else’s relative. As Summer came to an end and I began my Junior year at Henderson Falls High, the Old Man moved on from talking about Captain Brooks, and started telling me about the history of Brooks Brothers’ Hardware itself. According to the Mr. Brooks, post-Civil War Ohio saw a veritable boom in industry, construction, and manufacturing; and his family’s hardware store was there just in time to take advantage of it. He claimed Brooks Brothers sold many of the furnishings to the courthouse when it was refurbished in 1867, served as the county’s largest retail store, even stocked some of the first cans of paint from some up-and coming paint store out of Cleveland. You could tell from the gleam in his eye and the excitement in his words, he still looked at Brooks Brothers as a major business concern in Henderson Falls. I humored him. In spite of the once great store’s run-down appearance, shrinking nightly bank deposits, and dwindling customer base, Mr. Brooks’ enthusiasm was infectious.
That long summer stocking shelves, cleaning and making minor repairs familiarized me with all the quirks of the place. I knew the third bank of lights took longer to turn on because the ballasts were going bad. I could walk over the sagging hardwood floors without looking down. I even knew about the long crack creeping up the masonry, hidden behind a banner advertising a defunct brand of lead paint. The only part of the store I hadn’t ventured into was the second floor.
One slow, rainy day in June while looking for something to do, I decided to sort through the pile of merchandise covering the stairs behind the counter. The clutter on the bottom steps was all overstock: 16 penny nails, drywall screws, spools of fence wire, things it made sense to keep in the store instead of the warehouse. But the higher up the stairs I looked the older and more out of place the items seemed. Old tangles of hemp rope, wooden pulley blocks, asbestos floor tiles, even a box of old cut nails, rendered the path upstairs all but impassable. I climbed the first few steps, curious to see what else was in the heap of inventory when Mr. Brooks shouted at me.
“You! Get down from there, boy!” His voice shook with anger. I had no idea what caused my mild-mannered boss to go ballistic like that. In the few seconds it took for me to clamber around the junk back downstairs, Mr. Brooks’ expression softened back into that of a friendly old man.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you like that Tommy, but it ain’t safe up there.”
“I’m sorry Mr. Brooks. I just noticed all this inventory laying around and thought it’d look better if these things were cleared away.”
He raised a wrinkled hand, dismissing my concern. “I know you were just trying to help, but you need to stay down here. I haven’t been up there since the 50s.”
“Why not? The upstairs seems like a great place for storing inventory.”
The old man scratched his stubble. “If it was safe up there, you bet I’d store some of our stock up there. I don’t trust that floor though. You’ve seen the ceiling over there next to the paint mixer?” He gestured to the front of the store, where a thin sheet of veneer plywood covered a swath of tiles on the high ceiling.
“I was up there one day, rough housing with my kid brother, Mike, you’ve never met him. Well anyway, we both ended up wraslin’ over a weak spot on the floor. The roof must’a had a leak and dry-rotted it. Long story short, my dad had to pull me and Mikey both out of the hole by our Buster Browns. Believe me, there’s no reason for you to go up there.”

My keys jangled as I turned the lock. I looked over my shoulder one last time, scanning the street for any witnesses before entering the inky darkness of the store. I tried to calm myself. I had done nothing wrong at this point. If anyone noticed me coming into the store at this hour, my cover story was plausible enough.
“I just stopped by to get my coat. I must have forgot it when I was locking up.”
It somehow seemed less believable as I advanced over the warped wooden floorboards. Each footfall creaked. My pulse quickened as I walked along once familiar aisles. Claw hammers, spirit levels, auger bits, were all reduced by darkness to indiscernible, globby shadows. I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but the old building made me nervous at night. As the days grew shorter, my pace walking to the front door after switching off the breakers for the store lights became faster and faster. I imagined the long aisles harboring some invisible presence, just behind me until I made it to the safety of the streetlights outside.
Finally, I reached the clerk’s desk in the back corner. My coat hung from the back of the tall chair, right where I left it. I slipped it on, glad for the warmth. The streetlamps outside provided just enough light for me to make out the shape of the stairs leading to the second story. As I gazed up the stairwell, trying to see the yellow glow I’d noticed from the street, I felt thin cold fingers gripped the back of my neck. I spun around ready to yell out of fear when I saw a single finger pressed against her lips.
“Are you trying to get us busted?” Jess hissed through clenched teeth.
“Maybe you shouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”
“What took you so long?” Jess rolled her head to one side as she leaned against the clerk’s desk. Her gum popped, punctuating her sentence.
“There wasn’t any parking outside the movie theater. I had to park down past the coffee shop and walk the rest of the way.”
“Riiight, then you had stare at the building for five minutes.” Jess scrunched up the bridge of her nose, teasing me.

Jess was Mr. Brooks’ granddaughter. I was busy stocking shelves one day in late July when she came into the store and wandered down the center aisle. Jess played varsity tennis and was one of Henderson Falls High’s cheerleaders. I had a huge crush on her at the time, but she was always surrounded by her group of jocks and preps, and I never had the guts to approach her. I heard Mr. Brooks climb off his stool in the back of the store and walk to meet her. They exchanged some words, too quiet for me to hear.
“Hey, Tommy. Come over here. I got someone for you to meet.”
I made my way to where they stood standing. Mr. Brooks wasted no time. “Tom, this is my granddaughter, Jess.”
We exchanged awkward smiles. In a school as small as Henderson Falls High, you know everyone, even if you don’t have classes together.
Mr. Brooks went on. “She just got back from vacation down in Florida and we decided she ought’a take part in the family business. She’ll start next week. I need you to show her the ropes for me.”

After work, I was more than a bit excited to tell my friend Kyle about my new coworker.
“Duuude! You’re working with Jessica Brooks? The cheerleader?”
“Yeah man, I’m pretty stoked.”
“That’s legit, son! If her friends come into the store, you gotta tell me.”
“Why?”
“Well… she’s friends with Robin Gardner. Maybe she could probably put in a good word for me, and if I just happen to stop by at the same time…”
“Kyle, why the hell would a bunch of cheerleaders want to hang out in a run-down hardware store?”
“Hey man, a guy can dream.”
It didn’t take long to realize working with Jess was not as Kyle put it “legit”. A typical shift with her started with Mr. Brooks leaving the store around 3:30, giving us a sly look over his shoulder and saying something like, “Now don’t you kids have too much fun.” Once he was out of sight, Jess would plop down in the desk chair behind the Case knife display. The week she started I tried showing her how to stock shelves, to fill out hand receipts for customers, basic stuff you’d expect from a hardware clerk. The most engagement I got from her was a nod or a few unconvincing words like “Wow, thanks for showing me” or “I’ll make sure to remember that.” Despite the simplicity of the job, she rarely helped restock shelves or clean up around the place. Instead, she spent most of her shift behind the desk, scrolling on her phone, doing homework, or passing customers off to me under the guise of ignorance. The closest thing to work she did was re-pricing items. Most of the store’s stock actually came from large box stores and was repriced for the local market. I discovered this when I noticed the remnants of a Home Depot sticker Jess either gave up on or forgot to remove entirely from a box of machine screws.
For the first few days she worked with me, I tried making conversation, but we didn’t seem to have a lot in common. If it didn’t have to do with school gossip, sports, or the music she listened to, she didn’t seem interested in talking about it. Strangely, when she lost interest in social media and had nothing else to do, I caught her flipping through the Brooks Family History Scrapbook and an old leatherbound book I’d never seen before. It seemed to start out of boredom, just another way to pass the time, but she seemed to become progressively more interested in her grandfather’s scrapbook and the leather book. She never struck me as a history person, but I wrote it off as more of an interest in her own family than anything. Despite the various diversions she had, Jess still found time to bother me.
Sometimes she would interrupt me from whatever book I was reading. By now, any excitement about working with her was gone. I would have rather worked alone instead of doing everything while she sat around. I stopped trying to make small talk with her and focused on doing my job.
“I don’t see how you can sit there, reading like that, Tom Boy”, she said smirking. I hated when she called me that.
“Why not?” I asked, not lifting my eyes from the pages.
“It just seems like such a boring way to spend your time.” She reclined in her chair, popping bubblegum between her teeth.
Another time, maybe while we were eating lunch behind the counter, she sighed loudly.
“It’s so unfair I have to work tomorrow. Stacey and Molly are going shopping without me.”
I knew she wanted me to cover her shift. Old Man Brooks had me scheduled from open to noon. I planned on meeting my friends on a camping trip, maybe do some hiking, kayaking, or just hanging out by the lake. I said nothing.
She rolled her eyes. “What are you doing with your day off,” she asked.
“It’s not a day off,” I said. “I have to come in from open to noon. After that, I’ll probably meet up with Kyle and John at the lake.”
“That’s just the way you people are,” she smirked.
“What do you mean ‘you people’?”
“You know,” Jess blushed. “Country people living out of town. All you care about is being in the woods, hunting, and fishing, that stuff .”
I’d never been hunting in my life and thought fishing was boring. I decided to spare her the irony. She never showed up that afternoon and I had to close the store. I still went to the lake, but by then it was nearly dark and there wasn’t much to do but sit by the fire after a long day’s work.
The Saturday before fall break Mr. Brooks scheduled both of us to work on what turned out to be the busiest weekend we had in months. From the time we opened until late afternoon, a steady stream of customers came in for various items. When the chronically late Jess finally showed up, she wasn’t much help. Instead of helping customers herself, she referred them to me if there was something they couldn’t find or if they needed advice. I heard her say things like:
“I don’t know anything about plumbing Mr. Stevens, but Tom is basically a plumbing expert.”
“I totally forget how the paint mixer works Mrs. Anders, but Tom would be happy to mix those colors for you.”
“That truckload of mulch you ordered is right out back Mr. Lawson. Why don’t you pull around and Tom Boy can help you load everything before the rain picks up. I’m sure you can both get everything onto your trailer before the downpour really starts.”
I cringed. I hated it when she called me Tom Boy.
Sweat and rain soaked my clothes when I finally got back in the store. Jessica sat, scrolling through her phone with one hand, talking to yet another customer. Seeing me, her face lit up.
“Oh, here he comes! Tom, Mrs. Sandborn is looking for…”
“How about you do something for once and help her,” I snapped. “I’m going to lunch.”
The elderly woman’s mouth hung open, shocked by my rudeness. I grabbed my coat and walked out the front door. On the drive to the McDonalds, I cursed the bad weather and Jess’s laziness. In the short drive across town, my anger welled up inside me. I was pissed off I didn’t get the Gazette internship. I was pissed off Jess got paid to sit on her ass while I did all the work around the store. I was pissed off the line in the drive though was moving so slow.
When I finally got my food, I sped off from the drive through window, cursing under my breath, anticipating a screwed-up order and half-empty carton of fries. I parked a block away from the hardware store, not wanting Jess or Mrs. Sandborn to see me. I was still angry at Jess and realized what vocalizing my frustrations might lead to. I didn’t want to lose my job for yelling at the boss’s granddaughter. I also felt guilty about the way I treated poor Mrs. Sandborn. She was just a poor old woman looking for… something, just to get yelled at. She didn’t deserve that. She also looked familiar and I was sure my grandfather knew her just like he knew everyone else over 50 in Henderson Falls. It was only a matter of time until she ran into Grandpa, or worse, Mr. Brooks and complained about the rude young man working at the hardware store.
I finished my meal and sat in my car for the rest of my lunch break. My rage abated, leaving me anxious about returning to work. I decided to go into the store bearing an olive branch. I’d apologize to my Jess, maybe offer to cover her shift some weekend and hopefully get through the rest of the day without incident.
I noticed the lack of customers as soon as I stepped into the store. The murmur of questions from customers was replaced by the sound of the overhead heater. I found Jess, hunched over in her usual spot behind the Case knife display. It took a moment to realize Jess wasn’t scroll on her phone or doing homework. She was crying.
“Jess?”
She looked up at me through teary eyes. For the first time, I felt genuinely bad for how I snapped at her.
“I just wanted to say sorry for… earlier.” I stood awkwardly, waiting for her response.
“Why do you hate me Tom?”
“I don’t hate you. I… You’re just a lazy co-worker I have to deal with.” I regretted the words as I said them. I felt my anger coming back and tried to keep a cool head.
She sniffled and wiped her eyes with an oversized sweater sleeve. “You never want to talk to me,” she sniffed. “You ignore me all day. You never even say ‘Hi’ to me when I clock in.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Look Jess I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s been a long day. I don’t want to-“
“Don’t want to what? Lose your Job?” She gazed up at me through puffy red eyes. “Of course not!”
“We’re both going to lose our jobs, Tom.” Jess buried her head in her arms and burst into fresh sobs. I frowned, confused by the turn the conversation took.
“Why would your grandfather fire you?”
“Because the store is going out of business.” She raised her head up. “Every night, the deposits are getting smaller and smaller. I found these stuffed into grandpa’s ledger.”
She rummaged through the stack of mail beside her and pulled out a stack of envelopes.
“Last Notice, Late Fee, Past Due, Overdrawn.” She slid them from her hand to the desk like she was dealing cards. The sender’s names coupled with the red stamped messages worried me. Henderson County Tax Office, Nibco Plumbing Supply, Third Street Bank, Henderson County Rural Electric, a few miscellaneous suppliers for merchandise not purchased and resold from other stores.
For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why Jess cared so much about the rundown hardware store. She didn’t seem interested in the actual management of the place.I doubted she had hopes of one day running it herself. I remembered her perusing Old Man Brooks’ scrapbook. Maybe it was a matter of familial pride. I dragged my stool closer to Jess and tried to comfort her.
“I know this looks bad, but what’s the worst that can happen? I’ll find a new job somewhere else, and so will you. Mr. Brooks is old enough to retire anyway, don’t you think he’d like to get out of this place and-”
“That’s the thing, Tom. He can’t retire. He puts everything into keeping this place open. Any profit he turns goes right back into paying for more products and paying the bills.” Jess tapped the old-fashioned ledger on her desk. “You know how much money the store has in it’s checking account? It’s less than $100.”
“Just because the store is broke doesn’t mean the Old Man is.”
“Look at your paychecks, Tom Boy”, she said, without her usual mockery. “They don’t say ‘Brooks Bros. Hardware’. They say Simon J. Brooks, because he shares an account with the store.”
I furrowed my brow as I thought. Surely there was a way out of this mess.
“Maybe he can sell the place and walk away with a nice profit. An investor could renovate this building, just like the other ones downtown.”
“Do you really think anyone would want to buy this place?” Jess raised a challenging eyebrow.
I shrugged. I knew there were some people buying up the old historic properties and ‘gentrifying’ them. Somehow our dusty hardware store didn’t seem a likely place for coffee, vinyl LPs or whatever else the hipsters downtown liked.
“And even if he could find a buyer, it’d break his heart selling this place. It would absolutely devastate him.”
There was no denying that. Maybe the old man was a bit detached from reality and given to romanticizing the importance of the family business, but I think that made this sudden revelation of the place’s impending demise that much more tragic. I dropped my head as I racked my brain for some words to comfort Jess. Suddenly I felt a warm hand close over my wrist.
“I’ve been reading through some of grandpa’s notes. There might be a way out of this mess, but grandpa would never go through with it.”
I raised my head to see Jess looking at me with pleading eyes. “Will you help me Tom?”

My watch read 11:48.
“Do you have everything we need?”
Jess slapped her backpack. “It’s all in here. We just need to get set up before midnight.” She pulled a pink wad of gum from her mouth and smashed it under the desk before rising.
“Let’s go,” she said, wrapping her cold fingers around my hand and dragging me to the foot of the stairs. I felt like a kid reaching into a cookie jar, wondering if they were about to get caught. The wooden stair treads represented the point of no return. If Mr. Brooks or anyone else saw us reason, I’d be caught doing what he explicitly told me to never do.
I clicked my flashlight on, shielding most of the light with my hand. Faint marks left behind by Jess’s Chuck Taylors showed the path through decades of accumulated junk and old merchandise, all but blocking the stairway. I watched Jessica’s long legs retrace steps she had apparently taken earlier. I followed her with my logging boots, trying not to disturb anything. The higher we climbed and the less cluttered the stairs, the more noticeable our footprints became in contrast to the decades of dust. Without all the junk to distract the eye, Mr. Brooks would surely notice this evidence of disturbance.
The door at landing creaked on rusty hinges. Loose panes of glass rattled as it bumped the lath and plaster wall behind it. The room was exactly as Mr. Brooks described it: an overflow for outdated hardware. Scythes hung from rafters, motheaten burlap bags covered tables, and tendrils of leather straps from horse and carriage days spilled into the narrow walkway. There was even the odd sickle hanging from a nail on the pillars, swaying as our footsteps caused the old floor to creak and at times, noticeably bow under our weight.
Jess picked up her stubby plumber’s candle from floor, leaving behind a small ring of coagulating white wax. We ventured deeper into the musty room. Any doubt surrounding Mr. Brooks’ story of nearly falling through a weak spot in the floor vanished as my flashlight played over the section of splintered wood and exposed floor joists near the front of the store. I realized we might be in real danger of falling through a weak spot in the floor ourselves. Jess led me deeper into the maze of cast-off wares. At one point while, scanning the room I accidentally slammed my knee into the exposed springs of an old mattress sitting on a wrought iron bedframe. I cringed at the rusty squeaks. Jess giggled at my muffled curses. Our narrow walkway gave way to a large clearing. The expanse was mostly unused space. I might have paid more attention to the wall of wooden shelves or the partitioned off room near the front corner of the building but my attention was captured by a hulking rectangular form sitting behind a stained rug.
Gold pinstripes outlining the safe door glittered as we approached. A large, five spoke wheel was mounted beneath to the dial. Decades of use had worn through the nickel plating, exposing the brass beneath. The safe’s most striking feature was a portrait of a man’s face painted above a scroll of gilded letters reading: “C. W. Brooks & Bros. HDWE Co. Est. 1868.” Like tintype photographs of the era, his expression was stern, no trace of a grin, and if there was any mirth in his eyes, the artist failed to capture it. I felt a strange uncanniness as I looked at the bearded man’s face, ultimately chalking it up to a family resemblance to my employer. I wondered if the old man had ever seen the portrait of Captain Brooks.
“We don’t have much time,” Jess said. She kicked the red and gold rug away from the safe, revealing a circular, black stain on the floor.
I followed Jess’s lead and knelt on the opposite side of the stain, watching her produce a sheet of onionskin paper and a thin board from her backpack. She set her candle to the side illuminating the typewritten paper before unfolding the board in the center of the stain. It featured a row of numbers from zero to ten, the alphabet in capital letters, and the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in opposite corners. The caption at the top read ‘Ouija’.
“This is what you dragged me up here for? All this over a damn Ouija Board?”
“Look, If you go into this with the wrong mindset, you will have a bad time.”
I looked over the thing, half-expecting to find the Hasbro logo on one of the corners, but looking closer, it seemed genuinely old. It wasn’t modern cardboard; it looked more like the antique boxes I found in the warehouse. It had a dull appearance and some of the letters were partially worn away, either due to age or frequent use. I looked at the paper and read the lines closest to me.

1. DO NOT use in a graveyard.
   
2. Wait until the planchet stops on good-bye to put board away.
   
3. If the board starts counting down from-
   

“Or it might not work at all,” Jess interrupted, tilting her head to one side. “And we’ll have wasted all this time for nothing.”
“Alright, fine. Where’d you get this thing anyway?”
“Kathy Connors. She gave me these instructions, board and planchet for the ritual,” she continued, holding up a wooden pointer and setting it down on the board. I frowned. It hadn’t occurred to me before agreeing to do this, honestly, I wasn’t sure what I had agreed to at all. The only thing Jess told me was the key to saving our jobs and her grandfather’s business was upstairs and that she needed help. I can’t explain it, but I felt sudden apprehension looking at the board, sitting on the blackened circle in the candle light. It rekindled a distant memory, maybe one of those humid summer mornings in the itchy pews of Henderson Falls’ First Baptist Church and a vague recollection of my pastor going on about divination not only being a sin, but the very act putting your soul at risk of demonic possession. It was unsettling to say the least.
There was also the time Kyle told me spirit boards were ‘complete bullshit’ after we saw one being used in a horror movie.
“There’s a reason they always say to never play alone,” he said as the B-Movie we pirated flickered on the projector in his basement. “If you did, there’d be nobody to move that wooden thing.”
All that said, I felt reluctance at the thought of taking part in what basically amounted to a séance. I pushed these thoughts from my mind. If Jess really wanted to go to all this trouble just to sit cross-legged on the floor and wait for a message from beyond the ethers that wasn’t coming, that was on her.
With everything in order, Jess closed her eyes and took a deep breath before looking up at me.
“Are you ready?”
“I guess? What are we doing exactly?”
“Using a Ouija board.”
“I got that part, but why?”
She groaned as she looked at her Apple watch. “Look, we have five minutes, so I’ll make this quick. Has grandpa told you about the feud between Captain Brooks and the banker G. W. Leyland?”
“Maybe once or twice.”
Jess just stared at me, expecting more. By this time, I doubted there was anything about Captain Brooks the Old Man hadn’t told me about.
“He said something about Leyland and the Captain having a feud, or something?”
Jess nodded. “He probably didn’t mention Leyland’s attempt to take over Brooks Brothers?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“I read Captain Brooks’ Journal.” Jess gestured to the leather book poking out of her backpack, the same one I’d seen her reading many times before.
“During the Panic of 1873, the store fell on hard times and needed loans to stay open. Leyland was a money lender and the two agreed to a loan in exchange for a promissory note, payable once the Captain Brooks’ railroad investments recovered. It’s complicated, but after several months, Layland attempted to claim Brooks Brothers for the loan being in default. The Captain claimed Leyland forged a promissory note with different terms and even caught Leyland trying to force his way into the offices up here. There was also money missing after this visit from Leyland. The whole thing went to court and the Judge ruled in favor of a compromise between the two versions of the promissory note, since he himself couldn’t verify which one was real. Brooks Brothers was ordered to repay half the loan immediately and the remaining half upon the later note’s expiration. The store struggled after paying the first half of the loan. Rumors circulated about the Brooks family losing the store when Leyland called on the rest of the loan, and that’s when something strange happened: He never came. He went missing, days before the rest of the loan was due. People were initially suspicious of Captain Brooks, but he had an air-tight alibi. Other businesses in town came forward after his disappearance, claiming Leyland was guilty of unfair and misleading business practices, hidden balloon payments on loans, forced early repayment, interfering with businesses he’d loaned money to and trying to assume control of them. People started to think Leyland had made too many enemies in town and fled. After this, Captain Brooks’ journal entries seem to get… paranoid. He mentioned his fear of Leyland’s return. He changed the combination to the safe and wouldn’t tell anyone, not even his family what it was. He carried a revolver with him and insisted on locking the store himself each night. This went on a few months before he was found dead on this very spot.”
Jess pointed to the black stain. My skin crawled under my coat.
“What happened?”
“No one knew for sure. The coroner said it was heart failure. After witnessing his paranoia, the family probably believed it.”
“And you want to try asking his spirit for the combination to open this safe?”
“You’re really not as dumb as you look, Tommy Boy.”
“Why go to all this trouble? If there was anything in that safe, someone would have hired a locksmith a long time ago.”
“It’s a Chubbs Safe, whey were world famous their security. They used to say they were impossible to crack. I called around, but none of the locksmiths around here will touch it because it’s an antique. I found a man online who works on old safes, but he was expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“More than we make in a month.”
“Did you call and talk to the guy? Maybe he’s cheaper than you think. Or mayb-”
Jess looked at her watch. “Look, we don’t have much time, just give me your hand.”
I sighed and placed my hand on top of the planchet.
“One last thing.” Jess looked me in the eye. Her perpetual smirk vanished and her laughing eyes grew calm and focused.
“You have to promise, once we start, we keep going until the end? You got me?”
I nodded.
“And it doesn’t end until the planchet says ‘Goodbye’.”
“Alright.”
“Promise me.”
“Alright, I promise.”
“Good.” Jess rested her soft hand on top of mine. A cold handcuff bit my wrist as it ratcheted shut. I looked at the other end of the handcuff dangling from Jess’s wrist. Before I could speak she raised her free hand, dismissively.
“Just some cheap insurance,” she said.
“Insurance against what?”
Jess’s watch alarm chimed. Midnight. She straightened up and whispered, “Let me do the talking.” She slid the planchet to the center of the board.
“Is there a benevolent spirit who wishes to speak with the living?”
Jess scanned the darkness beyond our candle’s flickering light. A long silence passed before she spoke again.
“I am one of Captain Brooks’ granddaughters; is there a benevolent spirit who wishes to speak with the living?”
Wind whistled outside. The building’s roof creaked under the strain. The planchet remained a dead piece of wood in our hands. I looked around the room and saw nothing. Jess looked over my shoulder once more. Biting her lip, Jess spoke up.
“I am a descendant of Captain Brooks; is there a spirit who wishes to speak with the living?”
My heart thudded inside my chest. It wasn’t the wind picking up outside, or the sudden chill in the air, or Jess trembling across from me. It was the planchet moving. Not under the guidance of Jess’s hand, or mine, but some invisible force. It slid slowly to the word “Yes”, before returning to the center of the board.
Jess went pale, but smiled uneasily. “Who are we speaking with?”
The pointer skated across the board, spelling out a message.
“Captain Brooks.”
Jess’s face lit up with triumph. “We came to ask you-”
But the planchet kept moving “You shouldn’t be here Jess. He got me, now he’s coming for you. Leave now.”
The pointer moved towards ‘Goodbye’. It was nearly there when it shot back to the center of the board. Heavy footfalls echoed through the room.
Jess shook her head in stunned silence.
I scanned the room but saw nothing. “Who’s there?”
The board spelled out “Leyland.”
“We’re here on behalf of Mr. Brooks.” Jess shuddered as she spoke.
“Another Brooks in financial trouble. How predicable.”
Jess wiped tears from her eyes before speaking. “Mr. Leyland, I know you and the captain had- difficulties. But we need help opening the safe.”
A cold breeze burst through the room, carrying a madman’s laugh. Our weak light source trembled, sputtering and threatening to go out until the gust exhausted itself and the flame steadied.
“I help no one. Especially a Brooks.”
“Mr. Leyland, please it’s a matter of saving my grandfather’s business.”
The wind rose up again. A raspy voice vocalized the board’s words slowly as the planchet spelled them out.
“This is my business.”
Jess sat speechless. Before she could speak the cursor and the voice went on.
“When I came to call on Captain Brooks’s loan, murdered me on this very spot.”
A chill ran down my spine. I looked at the stain beneath us, suspecting for the first time it wasn’t from a water leak or spilled ink. Images of a banker dying, a safe slamming shut, and the smell of black powder smoke flashed through my mind.
“What does any of this have to do with me?” Jess cried.
“You’re family owed me a debt in life. I’m here to collect after death.”
“He can’t hurt us? Can he,” I asked. Trying not to panic.
Wicked laughter echoed through the room.
Jess looked faint when her eyes fell on Kathy Connors’ sheet of paper.
“What’s wrong,” the voice taunted. “Didn’t anyone tell you not to play in a graveyard?”
A faint metallic whir alerted us to the safe towering above us. The dial raced from one digit of it’s combination to another before stopping with a click. The five spoke wheel twisted, stopping with a metallic ‘thunk’ as the locking bars retracted. The massive door swung open on lazy hinges. Jess saw it before I did and screamed.
Inside was the dried-up husk of a man, still in a gilded age suit. Yellow wrinkled lips curled away from ivory white teeth as it stared at us with sunken, hollow eye sockets.
“Don’t you think there was a reason the captain never gave anyone the combination to this safe?” Jess sobbed, her pale face reddened from crying. “You don’t have to do this. I never borrowed anything from you.”
“Captain Brooks’ debt will be repaid.”
Disembodied laughter echoed through the room. The open safe swayed with each reverberation. The planchet jerked to nine and started counting down. Eight. Seven.
“It can’t get to zero, Tom! Help me!” Each time the planchet moved, we forced it back to the previous number. The resistance was startlingly strong as we shoved it back to nine. I don’t know what scared me more, not knowing what would happen if it reached zero or the fact its movements were getting harder to fight. Even with both of our hands on the thing, shoving with all our might we were losing ground. Six, five, four. The safe rocked noticeably. The floor creaked under its weight.
Jess looked to the sheet of paper, searching frantically for some way out of this. The pointer stopped on four. I braced myself and pulled with all my might. It needled closer to three but I wasn’t about to let it get there. I wasn’t just fighting the planchet, I was fighting panic, a tired grip, sweaty hands. The safe shook violently next to us. I cried out in pain as the planchet ripped free from my fingers.
Three. Two. One.
Before it could get to zero, Jess flipped the board upside down.
“Tom, look out!”
The handcuff bit into my wrist as Jess lunged from our circle of light, dragging me with her. The candle got knocked over, plunging us into darkness. A deafening crash rattled the bones of the building as the safe fell face first to the floor where Jess and I were sitting just moments before. Before we could share this moment of relief, a blackened figure rose from behind ruins of the safe.

Sorry in advance for the wall of text, but I felt like I had to write a lot to get across what I do.
Little background: I work in banking and have been in treasury operations for the past few years. I work on treasury projects and tailor products/serivces to each commercial client that makes requests. I don't have PM title. Sometimes, I can work on projects concurrently, but I don't ever have float time between projects--they are ongoing. Please let me know if the below is too much, too little, and if it will pass the PMP app process. Thank you!
Project Objective: Provide treasury products and services to help business owners manage their liquidity. Each business will start with a formal request which begins with intakes and end when the product/service is delivered.
Initiating: Identify the stakeholders, which could be people in our ACH Department, Digital Servicing, IT, client controllers, treasurers, and so on. I also need to figure out what, in general, they may need. Are they sending payments domestically, or maybe they are collecting membership dues in their country club. This will also tell me what paperwork will be needed.
Planning: Think about and develop the scope, whether it be various products spanning across numerous customer legal entities. Figure out what the client needs. Are they trying to send payments to Germany to order supplies for their recycle manufacturing organization? I need to break down any specific tasks needed to be done, such as delivering a scanner to Florida arriving at their office two weeks from today. How much time do I have for each phase? Depending on client requirements, I’ll need to figure out how much it will cost to develop or provide certain deliverables (at specific dates if necessary). How do we maintain quality? Do we need to add more redundancy to the process to solidify correctness? Should we have certain resources spent to verify a deliverable? For example, if two companies are merging, I can have another associate check if the requirements were created accurately to what the client is asking for to reduce potential inaccuracies upon client usage. This could be anything from users having the right access to the right accounts to the accounts themselves opened in the right portfolios. We also need to choose how we are going to communicate with certain stakeholders. We use Microsoft Teams for chatting and video calls, and some people like email or even in person. Risk management is a big deal in banking, so depending on what kind of business we are working with and their requests, we would need to consider different risks and work with fraud department. For example, if they want to send ACH payments to partners around the US, all these payments have the chance to be intercepted, perhaps the payee information was provided by a fraudster, or perhaps the client's online profile was hacked. We need to identify what risks are likely to occur, and we need to see what we need to do for this particular client. So if this client’s business is expanding and they need a higher payment limit, but they have a history of having their accounts compromised, we may monitor their activity more closely for several months to ensure they are using the products/service correctly and safely. I need to work with procurement and logistics to have products delivered and tracked to ensure the client receives the product without any issues, and, for example, if the client needs a custom scanner, we need our internal digital check team to monitor their deposits to tell us if the client has been depositing checks made payable to themselves.
Executing: Have to manage the documents, ensure all deliverables are of high quality, and manage resources. There is a lot of paperwork involved, such as the Articles for a corporation, and the Statement of Information needed from the California Secretary approving this business to set up certain treasury products and services. This paperwork will also let us know who from the business side is authorized to make these decisions. Team members need to be utilized to potentially make calls to the client to obtain pieces of information we are unsure of or missing, or maybe do a risk management call to confirm if the client received a deliverable. We would ask verification questions, such as very specific bank relationship questions only the real client would know. All stakeholders need to do their part, whether I need to assign them certain tasks or if they need to be given heads up on something for future action. For example, we may contact our banking systems team if the client wants to set up higher security data transfer systems prior to a go-live date a month from today. Information needs to be communicated ahead of time, and ongoing communication needs to be made to ensure everyone understands at what part of the process we are at and if there are any problems that need to be addressed to avoid delays.
Monitoring and Controlling: Sometimes, stakeholders can throw curveballs at us that will throw off the scope. For example, after starting a project, the client can tell us their CEO has changed, so our documents now need to be revised, which is something we handled back during the initiating process. This could change certain user permissions, like if the CEO was the only approver of payments, now we need someone else so client contact will be needed to change strategies. Risk could be vastly changed. For instance, instead of just making payments, a stakeholder now wants to collect payments. This requires more documents, more approvals, and different risk considerations needing to be made. This could cause delays, higher cost of resources, and various other things that complicate the project. Reason this is a big deal is because collecting payments involves allowing our client to take money directly from their members' accounts. We need to work with legal to ensure that the proper national agencies / government guidelines and regulations are followed by us and the client to stay within compliance. Additional contracts may need to be prepared for signatures by their board, for example.
Closing: This requires working with various stakeholders, such as communicating with procurement that a project is done, so they will need to do their part managing product and service usage ensuring no misuse occurs. We also need to monitor the client even after project closure to see if it continues to satisfy the client. The client can stay happy and not change anything, but sometimes they want to add something, or maybe the product or service isn’t working to how they thought it would, we may need to train them on certain systems, they may become a victim of fraud, or even a product needs replacement due do an unfixable defect. I have associates that do these maintenance contacts with the client, and they will come to me for any questions or actions that need to be done with consideration to the project. For example, clients receive their token and can now send money to Australia. They try to send a $200,000 wire, but they are denied by the system. The associate doesn’t know why this is happening, so they come to me. I speak with the client and review docs to find out that their CFO worked with one of our stakeholders to put a $150,000.00 limit on wires. However, this wasn’t communicated to the team, and this user is now frustrated. We now need to consider if there was miscommunication, or maybe there was a misunderstanding with who they are paying and why, or perhaps there was a specific payee missing in the client’s books that was not communicated to the decision maker. Once a project is over, another one begins with another client with different needs, stakeholders, and so on requiring different docs, product development, etc. There may be some overlap; otherwise, these are ongoing projects that require detailed customizations depending on the client, with large projects spanning across multiple portfolios that take months to prepare, execute, and complete.
Outcome: Tailored, digital solutions for a commercial client.

Did this elsewhere awhile back, but adjusted it to fit here. For the more experienced members, at least some of these works will be ones you have seen before, but maybe some you haven't. For those less experienced with western academic work on the era, hopefully this and how to find other works legally for free will help start you on your journey.
I think this one was many's first three kingdoms history work back in the day: Robert Joe Cutter and William Crowell's Empress and Consorts. Part of a dropped project to translate the Sanguozhi/Records of the Three Kingdoms (you can find their other translations in places like academia edu). It acts as a useful primer to the Chen Shou and to the primary source itself. For those who haven't studied the history, it will also give you an idea of what the records are like via their translation of the Empresses biographies (and how bad the Shu-Han records can be).
If looking for the records, no professional translation but the most comprhensive can be found here). 2) The Sanguozhi isn't a great starting point if new to the era. Details about a person can sometimes be placed in another's biography and being focused on one person, it misses wider context by itself. However, Sima Guang's ZZTJ which provides a year by year chronology provides that overview. It is covered by De Crespigny from Emperor Huan to Cao Cao's death (beyond that, would need to find Achilles Fang's work) under Huan and Ling then the two Establish Peace's.
Rafe De Crespigny has put much of his work free online. Rafe De Crespigny specializes in the Later Han and the early civil war, his freely available papers are about things like Han Administration, use of Portents, founding of Wu, treatment of Women, the (mishandling of the Northern Frontiers) and the death of Xun Yu. Warning the sight is known to go down from time to time, just wait a few days.
Xiaofei Tian, author of The Halberd at Red Cliff Jian’an and the Three Kingdoms, whose focus is more on literary and culture, also has some works about the era, free online. Xiaofei Tian's Remaking History which has a good focus on the cultural war and historiography of Wu against the north while Material and Symbolic Economies: Letters and Gifts in Early Medieval China uses some interesting and fun tales (including letters between famed figures of the era) about the era to explore the use of gifts and letters in diplomatic, cultural and political world.
Meow Hui Goh has written and posted up freely two works she has written about the era. Chen Lin's propaganda work, including that famed attack that has stung Cao Cao's reputation and Lu Xun's descendants reaction to Wu falling. Not on her site, but also open access is Genuine Words: Deception as a War Tactic and a Mode of Writing in Third-Century China, a fascinating look at the use of forgeries as military tactic.
From the same site as De Crespigny's (so prone to going down), Kenneth Gardiner's work on the Gongsun clan (though before Pinyin so Kung-sun) of Liaodong. Usually only covered in fiction with the fall of Gongsun Yuan to Sima Yi, they were a powerful regime that lasted for a long time in the civil war and had an impact in Korea before their brutal fall.
For writings of the time, Robert Cutter has translated (with introductory biography) the works of the tragic Cao Zhi who is the most famed poet of the time. A collection of Chinese works Chinese Autobiographical Writing: An Anthology of Personal Accounts has writings from Cai Yan the famed female poet of the era, the warlord Cao Cao and by his son the literary Emperor Cao Pi.
If your interest is medicine and mysticism, the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine may be the ticket for you. While not the three kingdoms themselves, it does talk about medicine in the Han days and after including efforts of diagonises, drug theroy and information on the medical side of mystic thought.
For other works, there are a few methods of finding works (legally) for free. The internet archive library can sometimes contain older works though they don't always show up in google search so sometimes worth checking there. academia.edu contains papers uploaded by various academics, and the free version of jstor.org has a considerable library. If there is a historian whose work you are interested in, or you find an interesting sounding article in a bibliography or a book/article, it is worth checking there.
If a regular Wikipedia editor (and if not, consider if access to this resource might be worth your time), the wikilibrary will provide wide access to a range of academic books and journals. For 500 edits and being a member for six months, (and then ten edits per month to keep up access), it offers access to 81 collections and 23 you can apply for. For three kingdom related ones, Brill (publisher of works like De Crespigny's), Cambridge (the Cambridge histories for example), Oxford (some of Andrew Chittick's work for example), Taylor and Francis (Early Medieval China journal), payable Jstor access (allows you to download and keep plus pick up some books there), De Gryuter (history of Chinese art with part 2 covering the era and Jin). All books and articles (I listed just examples) that you can download and keep.
Hope some of these will help

what are financial literacy terms

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Amortization = The process by which loan payments are applied to the principal, or amount borrowed, as well as the interest on a loan according to a set schedule.
Annual Fee = The amount that credit card companies charge for the use of a credit card.
Annual Percentage Rate (APR) = The finance charge or total amount it costs per year to use credit, calculated as a percentage of the amount borrowed (percentage rate), including interest, transaction fees, and service charges.
Annual Percentage Yield (APY) = The actual interest rate an account pays per year with compounding included; calculated the same way by all banks/credit unions.
Appreciation = A rise in value or price.
Assets = What a person owns, such as cash, stocks, bonds, real estate, and personal possessions.
Automated Teller Machine (ATM) = An electronic machine that bank customers and credit union members can use to withdraw cash and make financial transactions.
Back-end load = A sales charge paid when investments are sold.
Bait and switch = An illegal sales technique in which sells advertise a product with the intention of persuading customers to buy a more expensive product.
Bank = A for-profit company that is owned by its stockholders and provides saving and checking accounts and other financial services to its customers.
Bankruptcy = Legal process for selling most of the debtor’s property to help satisfy debts that can’t be repaid, in exchange for (a) relieving debtors of the responsibility of paying their financial obligations or (b) protecting them while a plan is created and they try to repay debts.
Bond = A formal agreement where you lend money to a borrower who can then use that money for a set period of time. In exchange, you as the lender will get paid a specific amount of interest.
Borrower = an individual, business or government that has received and used something belonging to somebody else, with the intention of returning or repaying it - often with interest in the case of borrowed money
Budget = A plan for managing money, dividing up expected income and expenses among spending and saving options based on personal goals during a given time period.
Capacity = Ability to repay a loan from present income; one of three factors in credit scoring.
Capital = The value of personal items that one owns, including savings, investments, and property, one of three factors used in credit scoring.
Capital Gain = The difference between the purchase price and the selling price when an investor buys a sock and later sells it at a higher price.
Capital Loss = The difference when an investor ends up selling a stock at a lower price than the purchase price.
Cash Flow = Movement of the money you receive and the money you spend.
Certificate of deposit (CD) = a certificate issued by a bank to a person depositing money in an account for a specified period of time. A penalty is charged for early withdrawal from most CD accounts.
Character = Refers to trustworthiness; one of three factors in credit scoring (e.g., paying bills on time shows financial responsibility). Creditworthiness indicating a responsible attitude towards living up to agreements.
Check = Written order directing a bank or credit union to pay a person or business a specific sum of money.
Checking Account = A bank or credit union account that allows withdrawals by writing a check.
Compound interest = a situation in which interest is earned on previously earned interest in such a way that earnings accumulate more rapidly over time
Compounding, or compound interest, Rule of 72 = Earning interest on interest. Rule of 72-how long it takes money to double in value. Divide 72 by the interest to determine the number of years it will take money to double.
Consumer advocates = Individuals or groups that actively promote consumer interest in areas such as health and safety, education, redress, truthful advertising, fairness in the marketplace, and environmental protection.
Cost/benefit analysis, risk/reward relationship = Tool used to choose among alternatives involves weighing the cost of a product or service against the benefit it will provide.
Coverage Limit = The maximum amount an insurance company will pay if you file a claim.
Credit = Amount of money a creditor is willing to loan another to purchase goods and services, based on trust and the expectation that the money will be repaid as promised with interest.
Credit Card = Card that enables holder to charge expenses for purchases or to get money, often with interest; synonymous with “buy now, pay later.”
Credit Limit = The maximum amount of credit a lender will extend to a customer.
Creditworthiness = A measure of one’s ability and willingness to repay a loan.
Credit rating/score = A measure of creditworthiness based on an analysis of the consumer’s financial history, often computed as a numerical score, using the FICO or other scoring systems to analyze the consumer’s credit. A creditor’s evaluation of a person’s willingness and ability to pay debts as judged by character, capacity, and capital; a mathematical model used by lenders to predict the likelihood that bills will be paid as promised.
Credit report = a written record collected by a credit agency that tracks a borrower's credit payments, whether or not these payments are made on a timely basis, and how long the borrower has had various credit accounts
Credit Union = A financial institution owned by its members that provides savings and checking accounts and other services to its membership at low fees.
Debit Card = A card used to pay for goods and services directly from a checking account by transferring funds electronically from one’s checking account to the store’s account to pay for a purchase; also called check cards.
Debt = The entire amount of money owed to lenders.
Deductible = The amount of a loss you must pay out of your own pocket before the insurance company will step in and pay the rest.
Delayed Gratification = The willingness to give up something you want now in order to get something better in the future.
Depreciation = Decline in a product’s value that starts the moment a product is purchased (car).
Diversification = Distributing funds among different types of investments to minimize overall risk.
Dividend = The portion of the profits paid to the shareholders of a company.
Dollar Cost Averaging = The practice of investing a fixed amount into the same investment at regular intervals, regardless of what the stock market is doing.
Earned Interest = The payment you receive for allowing a financial institution or corporation to use your money.
Employee benefits = Additional benefits, beyond a paycheck, offered by employers (e.g., health insurance or pension plan).
Endorse = To sign the back of a check to make it payable to the specified payee.
Expense = An amount of money spent to buy something or do something.
Financial plan, financial planning = Personal financial planning is the process of (a) setting goals, (b) developing a plan to achieve them, and (c) putting the plan into action. Ongoing thinking process to develop an orderly program or blueprint for handling all aspects of one’s money, including spending, credit, saving and investing.
FICO score = a mathematical model that assesses a person's reliability in repaying borrowed funds
Finance charges = the interest paid on unpaid credit balances
Financial institutions = intermediaries that help channel funds from savers to borrowers
Financial literacy = basic financial knowledge, including an understanding of banks and the banking system, financial markets, credit and credit cards, and tax laws, as well as the ability to apply this knowledge in making decisions on how to spend, earn, or save money today to build wealth for tomorrow
Fixed Expenses = Expenses that cost the same amount every time.
Fraud = Intentional misrepresentation of information with the intent to deceive or mislead.
Front-end load = A sales charge paid when investments are purchased and sometimes when dividends are reinvested.
Grace Period = On a credit card, the length of time you have before you start accumulating interest on an unpaid balance.
Gross Income = The total amount of income from wages before any payroll deductions.
High balling = An excessively high offer for a trade-in vehicle.
Identity Theft = When someone uses your name, Social Security number, credit card number, and other personal information without your permission.
Implied warranty = Unwritten guarantee that a product is of sufficient quality to fulfill the purpose for which it was designed.
Impulse purchase = A purchase made on a whim, without using a decision making process.
Income = Any money an individual receives.
Information processing = Analyzing and organizing information for decision making.
Insurance = Risk management tool that limits financial loss due to illness, injury, or damage in exchange for its promise of protection and help.
Insurance premium = The payment a person makes to an insurance company in exchange for its promise of protection and help.
Installment plan = a closed-end loan for a specific product such as furniture or appliances
Interest = Payment for use of someone else’s money; usually expressed as an annual rate in terms of a percent of the principal (the amount owed).
Investment = Setting aside money for future income, benefit, or profit to meet long-term goal; using savings to earn a financial return.
Late Fee = A penalty on all types of credit for making a payment after its due date.
Lender = one who lends; may be an individual, a business or a government
Liabilities = Amount a person owes, such as unpaid bills, credit card charges, personal loans, and taxes.
Liquidity = The ease with which an asset can be converted to cash without serious loss.
Loan sharks = Unlicensed lenders who charge illegally high interest rates.
Loan Term = The length of time you have to pay off a loan.
Minimum payment = the smallest amount a per- son is required to pay in a given month on an open- ended credit account
Money market account = an interest-bearing ac- count that offers limited check-writing privileges. Deposits may be added at any time; some money market accounts limit the withdrawals depositors may make without paying a penalty. Money market accounts are low-risk investments that serve as a cross between saving and checking accounts. Money market accounts offered within the banking system are known as money market deposit accounts. Money market accounts offered by mutual funds are known as money market mutual funds.
Money order = a form of payment that a person can buy for a specific amount and sign over to the person or firm named on the money order. People must pay a fee to obtain a money order. A money order cannot bounce because full payment is needed before the money order is issued.
Mortgage = Loan to buy real estate, such as land or a home.
Mutual Fund = An investment security that is actually a diversified portfolio of equities, bonds, or other securities. Investors purchase shares and can sell them at any time.
Net Income = Also called “take-home pay”; it’s the amount of income left after payroll deductions.
Net worth = The difference between a person’s assets and liabilities.
Open-ended credit = a form of credit that allows a person to borrow funds to make purchases for which there is no predetermined repayment period
Opportunity Cost = Whenever choices are made, the cost of something expressed in terms of what had to be given up to obtain it. The resources used to satisfy one goal that cannot be used for another, i.e., weighing of one alternative against another rather than merely considering the cash price or value of a specific good or service.
Origination Fee = A charge for setting up a loan that is typically associated with home loans.
Payroll deductions = Amounts subtracted from gross income that are withheld by an employer for items such as taxes and employee benefits.
Pay Yourself First (PYF) = Disciplined saving or setting aside money as a regular part of the budget for later spending or investing.
Personal Identification Number (PIN) = The unique pass code number you use to get access to your savings and/or checking account.
Philanthropy = A personal or corporate interest in helping others, especially through gifts to charities or endowments to institutions.
Phishing = An identity theft tool that appears in the form of an E-mail or pop-up message; usually looks like it’s from a legitimate financial institution and prompts you to provide your personal information in order to fix a “problem” with your account.
Points-mortgage = A one-time service charge by mortgage lenders at closing to increase the return on the loan; each point is one percent to the amount of the principal.
Predatory lending = Lending practices which promise loans that are “too good to be true” and pressure borrowers to take loans on the spot. Lending practices include a variety of financial abuses such as excessive fees, penalties for early pay-off of the loan, balloon payments, loan flipping, high interest rates, monthly payments the borrower can’t afford, the unauthorized refinancing of loans. Examples of the practice include predatory mortgages, payday loans, overdraft loans, excessive credit card debt, and instant tax refund loans.
Profit = The difference between the costs required to create a product or supply a service that can be bought with it.
Principal = The amount of money someone is willing to loan you. Also, the amount that is still owed on a loan.
Resources = Human resources are those resources people have within themselves, such as working knowledge, skill, mental effort, motivation, energy. Non-human or external resources include money, time, and equipment.
Rate of return = How fast money in savings account or investment grows.
Return = earnings from an investment, usually expressed as an annual percentage rate
Reverse mortgage = An arrangement in which a homeowner borrows against the equity in his/her home and receives regular monthly tax-free payments from the lender. Also called reverse-annuity mortgage or home equity conversion mortgage.
Revolving credit = an open-ended account with a limit to how much can be borrowed but no time limit for repayment
Risk management = Deliberately and systematically using various strategies for controlling against potential personal or financial loss from pure risks.
Risk tolerance = The amount of uncertainty or possibility of loss the individual can bear.
Savings = Money set aside for short-term goals.
Savings Account = An account you have at a financial institution that helps you accumulate and save money and earn interest at the same time.
Share Account = The credit union term for a savings account.
Share Draft Account = The credit union term for a checking account.
Social security = The federal government’s basic program for providing income when earnings are reduced or stopped because of retirement, or disability. Income is also provided to families when the working parent(s) dies and underage children are a part of the family.
Spending = using income for current consumption
Stock = An investment that makes the investor a part owner of a company.
Stock Market = The place where stocks are bought and sold.
Taxes = A compulsory payment by individual/organizations to the government; fees placed on income, property, or goods to support government programs.
Time value of money = The relationship between time, money, and rate of return (interest), and their effect on earnings growth. The more time, money, and rate of interest, the more money yielded at the end of a period of time.
Traveler's check = a form of check that can be used to obtain cash; the buyer of the traveler's check pays a specific dollar amount to acquire these checks, which are issued in standardized packets by a traveler's check issuer. The checks are written to a person or firm and signed by the person writing the check. Often these come with protection against loss or theft. Traveler's check issuers usually charge a fee when they sell these instruments.
Variable Expenses = Expenses that are not fixed.
Wants = Items that a person would like to have but are not essential for life. Items, activities, or services that may increase the quality of life, but one can live without them.
Wealth-building = Increasing the total value of what one owns; one’s tangible assets using strategies to increase savings and personal asset accumulation, thereby promoting individual/family economic well-being and financial security.
Withholding = Employer deductions from employees’ earnings to pay employees’ taxes.
Yield = The profit from an investment.

Apologies in advance for a lengthy read but it’s just so strange, I’m not sure how else to explain this!
So months ago I purchased several cosmetics, including a limited edition and at the time very hard to find lipstick shade at Chanel’s NY flagship while on a trip. When I was back at my hotel, I noticed the associate had carelessly packed up the wrong colors for multiple items. I normally would have just been annoyed and reordered the correct items from the website once back in Canada, but since one of the shades was almost always out of stock at the time, I called the boutique the next morning before flying back, and told them the mistake, and asked the associate if she could please at least mail me just that limited edition lipstick or send it to a Chanel Canada boutique (I would buy it again). I was very polite and understanding of her mistake, but instead she was very rude and dismissive. I’ve never been treated like this by an associate and I think part of it was she was the cosmetics associate so she didn’t consider it worth her while to resolve her mistakes.
This was in contrast to how I was treated in-store. I was wearing designer, albeit not Chanel, & was treated nicely although this shouldn’t affect service (the RTW associate was really nice even though we were on our way out the door & hadn’t even been browsing that area, just cosmetics. He had nothing to gain from complimenting my coat- he was just a kind associate!)
I can now see that the specific associate assigned to me was likely careless with my purchases because I only there to buy cosmetics.
Anyways, at this point I was really shocked by how she spoke and my friend who heard the conversation encouraged me to send a message to customer service because she was out of line. I sent a short message and was told I would hear back from them asap and they would also resolve the issue. I received no reply. Weeks later I get a response basically dismissing the whole incident but of course encouraging me to “continue shopping at Chanel”.
Ok so now I have a bone to pick. I reply back saying this was incredibly unprofessional to 1st package up the wrong items, then take no responsibility to even help resolve the issue, be rude to the customer who is being polite, and then take almost a month for customer service to even respond to my complaint with a stale response. Finally after THIS email, I’m immediately contacted by Chanel Canada and told that I’ll receive a refund check in the mail (so archaic) from from them instead and that they apologize for the delays and lack of proper service.
Now I don’t need a refund, but I’m happy least they finally acknowledged their mistakes and rude associate so I thank them. I was even planning on doing some more shopping on Chanel website. But then…
TDLR: I receive the refund check last week and just deposited yesterday and had the refund in my account immediately. Well TODAY I get an email from Chanel Canada that “because of a technical issue; we have to send me a new check and cancel the old one.” What!? This sounds super fishy and very strange. I’ve only worked on the corporate side of luxury, but even then, this type of customer service seems very odd? I got an email directly from their accounts payable person.
I’m so irritated. I don’t care about the silly refund, but I do care about the principal of things and it’s now been several months of mistake on mistake. I’m thinking of applying for a chargeback via Amex (I’m within the cut off), just to be petty and avoid dealing with customer service (or accounts payable!) again but not sure if that’s jumping the gun. Any advice?

Right now, what I am is an accounting assistant so I assist with everything accounts payable and accounts receivable. I’ve been doing bank reconciliation and journal entries and 1099’s. (Assisting) I’m a sophomore in college. I don’t have my degree..yet. I have experience with the software we use which is RFMS and Microsoft. I have data entry experience and entering invoices. I do AIA billings which is for construction since we are a construction company. My end goal is to be a cpa.
I applied to a job just to see if maybe they’d call me. The owner did and he’s seemed great. He said he wants someone who knows debits and credits well. Can do PAYROLL (completely out of my comfort zone) and to be trained to use Sage software. I said I’ve used Quickbooks but I haven’t. The pay is 50-55k and 15 min away from me. The job I have now is 40k a year and they still will take pay out of my checks if I miss a day bc of a sick child and it’s about 45-50 min away.
Anyways, this guy knows my experience is only 7 months. He knows what I do. I’m willing to learn. I want this job so bad but I’m so afraid I won’t because especially Payroll and not knowing a ton.
What can I do to go in there and get this job. Is it possible? It’s a small company, he’s the owner, he’s really nice and he even called me at 6pm yesterday telling me the pay and what I’m looking for and he’s really looking forward to meeting me. He said I don’t see any issue with you learning a new software.
I’m trying to be hopeful because I’m a single mom in a HCOL area and we currently live with my parents and I really want to get out. The job description for the new job is below
Bookkeeper - Accountant-Administrative Assistant compensation: Salary with Benefits Package employment type: full-time job title: Staff Accountant telecommuting ok Real Estate Investment and Property Management Company is seeking an energetic, well-organized BookkeepeAccountant-Administrative Assistant to assist accounting department in financial statement preparation. Qualified applicants need to have full computer skill set (Microsoft Office), checkbook reconciliation, skilled level of data entry, familiar with Sage accounting software and a complete accounting knowledge level. Experience in the real estate industry is preferable. Full or Part positions available with flexible hours and work schedule. Compensation is commensurate with experience.

Hello fellow queer peoples -
We are looking for 15 (1) AMAB (2) non-binary/gender queer-identifying (3) non-minors (4) who can complete an interview and structured journaling in English. We are looking for a wide range across demographics and the group will be chosen to maximize that range. Not all people who express interest in the study will be chosen to participate in the study.
For the purposes of this study, we are using the following definition of sexual objectification: Sexual objectification is “the experience of being treated as a body (or collection of body parts) valued predominantly for its use to (or consumption by) others” (Flores et al., 2018; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997, p. 174)
This is a three-part project, where you will:

• Document some sexual objectification experiences in real time – total time commitment is about one hour over the course of 3 – 6 weeks;
• Discuss with me your sexual objectification experiences, specifically how they impact your gender identity and relationship with your body – time commitment is about one hour for an online interview.
• Have the option of participating in a follow up focus group to review the findings and help the research team flesh out the results – time commitment is about 1 -2 hours to review the draft of the results and participate in the focus group.

This is a lot of work! To honor your time, you’ll receive up to $120, divided between the three tasks. Study participation is confidential, you will have the option to choose a pseudonym and we won’t connect any identifying information with your responses.
Who are we? Lee Pradell ([Lee.Pradell@usu.edu](mailto:Lee.Pradell@usu.edu)) and Dr. Renee Galliher ([Renee.Galliher@usu.edu](mailto:Renee.Galliher@usu.edu)) from Utah State University’s Psychology Department are the researchers for this study. This study has been reviewed and approved by our IRB (protocol #14042). If you’re interested, click this link to fill out a demographics questionnaire.

TRICON for Ethical Trans Research

We are actively involved in supporting the trans non-binary community and hope our research can be used to support this work. In accordance with the Transgender Research Informed Consent (TRICON) Disclosure Policy, we would like to provide additional information to interested AMAB non-binary people about our research. “TRICON consists of ten disclosure questions, to be repeated an answered by investigators of research on TGD populations in all announcements, communication, and social media posts that solicit study participants.” TRICON was created to “empower Transgender and Gender-Diverse (TGD) community members to make informed decisions on participation in research studies, within a historical context of decades of research that is all too often biased, defamatory, misgendering, exploitive, or non-consensual.” This and more information can be found at the Trans Policy Reform Blog (https://transpolicyreform.wordpress.com/2022/10/08/transgender-research-informed-consent-tricon-disclosure-policy-2022-update/)
Below are the required TRICON Disclosure Questions with our answers about this study:

1. What is the specific objective of the study and its intended impact on future trans lives?
2. The study aims to document the sexual objectification experiences of AMAB non-binary people through interviews and a real-time flow-chart task. This work is an extension of previous research:
3. The Sexual Objectification Experiences of Non-Binary People: Embodied Impacts and Acts of Resistance (2024)
4. Body maps depict how sexual objectification shapes non-binary people relating to their bodies (2023)
5. These studies used a sample of non-binary people and unintentionally recruited non-binary people that were read as feminine or AFAB and described sexual objectification from this position. We are therefore interested in understanding how AMAB non-binary people experience sexual objectification. This research is intended to create community with participants and researchers through individual and group interviews. The research practice, particularly the process chart component, was described by previous participants as “healing” (Pradell et al., under review). We also intend to expand and contribute to a growing body of research by trans people for other trans people. We see the potential impact in policy, clinical work, pedagogy, and research practice.
6. What is the target study population? Describe geographic scope, languages, and intersectional inclusion?
   1. We are recruiting AMAB non-binary adults who have experienced sexual objectification. We aim to recruit a heterogeneous sample across identity factors to speak to the intersectional nature of sexual objectification. This means we aim for a breadth of racial, ethnic, religious, ability, class and educational identities within our sample. As a monolingual person, we are recruiting English speaking participants. To geographically ground the findings, we are recruiting participants across the United States of America.
7. Who is/are the principal investigatos, and what is/are the sponsoring institution/s organization/s?
   1. I, Lee Pradell (they/them), am the principal investigator. I am a fourth year Ph.D. Clinical/Counseling Psychology student studying at Utah State University (USU). Renee V. Galliher, Ph.D. (she/her) is my research mentor and oversees this study. I am conducting this research as my dissertation project, which is funded equally by the USU Psychology Department and USU College of Education.
8. How are trans scholars/researchers included in leadership of this research work?
   1. I, Lee Pradell, am a trans/non-binary scholar. Josh Parmenter (they/he) is another trans scholar working on this research project. The three other members of our coding team are Elizabeth Grace Wong (she/her), Kevin Chi (he/him), and Renee V. Galliher (she/her). They are queer, cisgender people.
9. Who is funding the study? Describe any conflicts of interest.
   1. I am conducting this research as my dissertation project, which is funded equally by the USU Psychology Department and USU College of Education. The study I proposed is approved by a committee of five researchers with Ph.D.’s who are invested in contributing to a field of rigorous, communal research. We have no other conflicts of interest to disclose.
10. Describe approval of this study by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent authority and how TGD scholars are represented in the IRB or the oversight process.
11. This study was approved by the USU IRB (Protocol #14042) in March 2024. It went through two rounds of edits between Lee Pradell, Renee V. Galliher, and the USU IRB to follow ethical research practice guidelines. To my knowledge, the USU IRB does not currently include any TGD members. We have however shared with them the Trans Policy Reform Blog and the TRICON information outlining ethical research practice with TGD people.
12. Describe ethical practices in this research that are specific to needs of TGD subjects.
13. Our TGD participants will communicate directly with myself, a TGD person. During the process, I will check on them weekly over email about their wellbeing throughout the research process. We are including a focus group component to both increase the rigor of our research findings and connect our participants with community, which is particularly important for the TGD community.
14. Is there a cost or travel requirement, or is there compensation for participants?
15. There is no cost/travel requirement, all activities are done independently or over Zoom. For participation in this research study, participants receive $40 for completing three charting experiences and $40 for the online individual interview. If they choose to participate in the follow up focus group, they will receive $40 for the online group discussion. Thus, they can earn a total of $120 USD for completing the charting, interview, and follow up group discussion, payable either via a prepaid debit card sent by mail or an online gift card to a retailer of their choice sent by email. They will only be compensated for the portions of the study that they complete. They will be compensated at the end of their participation in the study, after completing all the components of the study they choose to.
16. Is participation in this research required for access to non-experimental affirming medical care?
17. No, participation in this study does not implicate/impact access to affirming care.
18. How will the results of this research be accessible to TGD communities through open access journals or channels?
19. Through the USU digital commons, the accepted dissertation will be posted in May 2025. Published findings will be available through journals after their acceptance. Given the peer-review process necessary to publish in academic journals, we cannot give a precise date of publication. We estimate these findings will be published by May 2026. The journals we publish in often require the author to fund open access, which is not something the USU Psychology Department has historically funded. We do however distribute our manuscripts to open access channels, such as Research Gate and the USU Digital Commons.
20. You will be contacted by myself, from [lee.pradell@usu.edu](mailto:lee.pradell@usu.edu), after you complete the online screening form to let you know if you are eligible for this project. I’ll notify you via email if I’ve selected you to be on this research team - if not, I’ll ask if you’d like to be contacted for future non-binary/queer research projects. If you’re interested, start by filling out the screening questionnaire: https://usu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3Uk9xU9A030I44e Thank you for your time, Lee

Carers UK has called for the wholescale reform of carer's allowance and other benefits for carers
Responding to reports in the media of claimants being pursued for large overpayments, charity highlights that people should not be punished for misinterpreting 'complicated and harsh' earnings rules.
Following reports in the Guardian last week of claimants who had earned above the earnings limit - currently £151 per week - while claiming carer's allowance resulting in large overpayments and, in some cases, prosecution for fraud, Carers UK highlights that these are indicative of a much wider issue about how unpaid carers are valued and treated both by government and by society.
Calling for changes to the system to ensure that it does not punish carers for misinterpreting 'complicated and harsh' earnings rules, Chief Executive of Carers UK Helen Walker said -

'It’s shocking that there has been so little investment in the way that carer’s allowance is operated and the tight rules mean that many carers who need it, aren’t getting it. It’s even worse when you consider how much unpaid carers’ support is worth, which is billions every year. We need the systems within the DWP to understand and tackle some of the challenges carers face in claiming benefits much better. We want to see the Department’s research, which they commissioned several years ago and, despite repeated requests, has not been published. Thousands of carers have told us that reforming carers’ finances is their top priority. Unpaid carers deserve better from our politicians and they must be a priority for investment.'

Note - in August 2019, the Work and Pensions Committee published a report into overpayments of carer's allowance highlighting that carers were being punished for the DWP's own administrative failures, and calling on the government to 'completely reassess' its approach to carer's allowance overpayment recovery.
Note - Iain Duncan Smith (former Conservative work and pensions secretary) has urged ministers to pause carers’ fines and says government should investigate responsibility for overpayments.
For more information, see:

• Carers UK responds to news reports of Carer's Allowance overpayments case from carersuk.org
• the Guardian's selection of carer related news articles on theguardian.com

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Five defendants plead guilty to charges relating to creation of fabricated universal credit claims worth almost £54 million
Work and Pensions Secretary, Mel Stride, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have welcomed convictions in the 'largest ever benefit fraud case' to be brought to the courts in England and Wales.
Setting out details of the convictions, the DWP says that five defendants have pleaded guilty to numerous charges involving creating false universal credit claims worth £53,901,959.82.
The DWP adds that investigators working on the case gathered extensive evidence of false tenancy agreements and shell companies created to show false employment claims, including counterfeit payslips and GP notes, as well as 'claim packs' created for others to make false benefit claims, including false documents such as bank statements, fake photographic identification, and forged information on dependants.
The Work and Pensions Secretary said on 10 April -

'I am immensely proud of DWP investigators’ work, in collaboration with the CPS, to take down this organised crime group. Building on our success in preventing £18 billion going into the wrong hands in 2022/2023, these convictions underline our commitment to protecting taxpayers’ money. It is only right and fair that we bring those stealing from the public purse to justice.'

Specialist Prosecutor for the CPS Ben Reid added -

'This case is the largest benefit fraud prosecution ever brought to the courts in England and Wales. This was a complex and challenging case which required close and effective working between CPS prosecutors, the Department for Work and Pensions and our international partners in both Bulgaria and through the UK desk at Eurojust, to dismantle and successfully prosecute the organised crime group. The guilty pleas entered by all five defendants, reflects the strength of the evidence against them.'

Mr Reid also confirmed that the CPS Proceeds of Crime Division will now pursue confiscation proceedings against the defendants to recover the stolen money.
For more information, see Fraudsters behind £53.9 million benefits scam brought to justice in country’s largest benefit fraud case from gov.uk
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DWP has issued new guidance in relation to additional funding for local authorities to support them with the costs of implementing welfare reform changes in 2024/2025
In Housing Benefit Subsidy Circular S4/2024, the DWP advises that additional funding of £23.96 million will be allocated to councils to meet 'New Burdens' incurred as a result of the ongoing implementation of -

• discretionary housing payment administration (£15.7 million, equal to the amount allocated for 2023/2024);
• the benefit cap (£0.18 million, down from the £0.27 million allocated last year);
• the Single Fraud Investigation Service (£0.28 million, down from £0.42 million last year; and
• universal credit New Burdens, including housing benefit maintenance on universal credit cases (£1.92 million, increasing from £1.57 million in 2023/2024) and migration from legacy benefits to universal credit (£0.37 million, down from £0.88 million in 2023/2024).

In addition, the DWP advises that funding has been allocated to support councils meet the extra costs of dealing with managed migration cases (£5.51 million), saying that -

'This New Burdens funding reflects the additional costs incurred by local authorities for terminating a housing benefit claim when a claimant is required to Move to UC through Managed Migration. This includes the additional administrative cost of transferring details of claimant housing benefit debt to DWP for recovery.'

The new circular adds that -

‘Each element of the funding has been distributed amongst local authorities on a basis that reflects the likely distribution of costs …’

For more information, including a council-by-council breakdown of the allocation of the new funding, see Housing Benefit Subsidy Circular S4/2024 from gov.uk
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Move to Universal Credit update
More than 130,000 people have already switched from Tax Credits to the Universal Credit system which allows claimants to access their benefits more easily and amend their claim should their circumstances change.
DWP has confirmed that the expansion this year will continue for people claiming:

• Income Support and Tax Credits with Housing Benefit from April
• Housing Benefit only from June
• Employment and Support Allowance (Income Based) with Child Tax Credit from July
• Tax Credits (Pension Aged including mixed aged couples) from August
• Jobseeker's Allowance (Income Based) from September

Letters will be sent to people notifying them of the action they need to take.
In addition, the latest Move to UC advertising campaign has now been launched. The campaign aims to raise awareness that many legacy benefits are ending, helping customers to prepare for their move to UC, ahead of receiving their migration notice from DWP.
The campaign is being delivered through radio, social media and digital advertising, outdoor advertising (bus stops etc.), as well as print and paid search (Google, Bing etc.).
All advertising signposts to the new dedicated Move to Universal Credit website which replaces the existing Understanding Universal Credit site.
For more information, see Half a million more benefit claimants set to benefit from back to work support as Universal Credit expands from gov.uk
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DWP has confirmed plans for its 'enhanced support customer journey' for claimants who require additional help with managed migration to universal credit
Households in the current Move to UC cohort in receipt of ESA will have additional contact, while system checks will be carried out to identify additional support needs for households receiving income support.
Further to the testing of enhanced support as part of small-scale discovery activity running since September 2023 - with initial findings included in the February 2024 Move to Universal Credit – Insight on Tax Credit migrations and initial Discovery activity for wider benefit cohorts - the DWP's universal credit engagement team has shared with stakeholders a letter from Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) Neil Couling to local authority housing benefit departments which confirms that -

'From April, additional contact will be made for all households who are in receipt of employment and support allowance. For households receiving income support, system checks will be undertaken to identify additional support needs (and of course many of these households will also be in receipt of housing benefit and so benefit from this additional support in making a claim for universal credit). Households deemed to require additional support will receive a text at week 12, to advise that DWP will be contacting them by phone. Three attempts will be made to contact the household to offer support. Where no contact is made, DWP will refer households for a home visit. Should the visit be unsuccessful, further escalations will be considered on a case-by-case basis.'

The letter references a comprehensive FAQ developed by the Department's Local Authority Partnership Engagement Delivery team and also new Move to Universal Credit (Managed Migration) Guidance for local authorities.
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Government needs to place greater emphasis on dismantling the barriers to work faced by disabled people, says Disability Rights UK (DRUK)
Responding to Select Committee consultation, Disability Rights UK calls on government to focus on dismantling barriers rather than forcing disabled people into unsafe, unsustainable and exploitative work.
Further to the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry examining the government's progress in supporting disability employment, DRUK has responded saying a holistic approach to tackling inequalities is needed, one that recognises that barriers to employment are systemic and intersecting. DRUK's inquiry response notes that -

• inequalities in other sectors such as health and education put disabled people at a disadvantage in the labour market;
• employers are not held accountable for refusing to make reasonable adjustments; and
• the social security system 'sanctions and demonises' disabled people rather than supporting them into work.

DRUK also challenges the Committee's own inquiry question about incentivising employers to take on disabled workers, which they say 'suggests that to hire us is a favour' and 'demonstrates a key barrier employers face when hiring disabled people: ignorance and bias'.
Bethany Bale, Employment Policy and Campaigns Officer at DRUK, said -

'It's clear from government policy that the problem being tackled is disabled people, rather than the barriers we face. This is based on the assumption that we don't work when we could - and the way to increase employment levels is to force us into unsafe, unsustainable, and exploitative work. It's clear from the fact that the disability employment gap has barely reduced since 2019 that these punitive policies don't work, and the only way to close the disability employment gap is to remove the many systemic barriers that we face. Disabled people are not a scapegoat for a failing economy, we are a community who deserve improved opportunities and access to employment.'

DRUK's full response to the disability employment gap inquiry is available from disabilityrightsuk.org.
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New research exposes ‘devastating impact’ of funding gaps for third sector organisations that provide employment support to those furthest from the labour market
With both Conservative and Labour having expressed their desire to support disabled people into work, academics highlight that politicians need to work out what role they envisage the sector having in contributing to the policy
New research carried out by De Montfort University has exposed the 'devastating impact' of funding gaps for third sector organisations (TSOs) that support those furthest from the labour market into work, education or training.
Introducing the research, The impact of changes in funding on third-sector organisations providing employment and skills support, the authors highlight that many TSOs were involved in programmes funded wholly, or in part, by the European Social Fund which provided around £2 billion a year between 2014 and 2020. However, since Britain's exit from the European Union, that funding has been replaced by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) which runs from April 2022 to March 2025 and provides a total of just £2.6 billion.
Carrying out a survey of 64 TSOs - who were providing tailored, one-to-one support for individuals with multiple barriers to progress towards positive outcomes and improve their self-confidence and well-being - about the impact of these cuts, the researchers found that -

• 74 per cent of survey respondents had experienced a reduction in funding, while more than half (59 per cent) had experienced 'very significant' reductions;
• 4 in 10 respondent organisations had laid off staff in the last year; and
• almost 15 per cent considered their organisation to be under threat of closure in the next 12 months.

Other findings from the research - which also included in-depth interviews with ten providers - highlights that the funding environment has become more fragmented, with TSOs required to make multiple funding bids to different local authorities for relatively small pots of short-term funding, typically of 12 months or less, making long-term planning extremely difficult and recruitment and retention of knowledgeable workers much harder. In addition, this negatively impacts on the needs of vulnerable users who require long-term support.
Author Professor Payne commented -

'The third-sector plays a vital role in supporting some of the most vulnerable in society to take the steps needed to progress towards jobs or training that they want to do and which fits with their life circumstances. It is vital that government acts quickly to provide clarity on the future of UKSPF to avoid another cliff edge occurring next March and puts in place long-term funding that can stabilise the sector and prevent the further loss of experienced support workers.'

In addition, pointing out that both the Conservatives and Labour have expressed their desire to support more people who are currently claiming personal independence payment to return to the workforce, Professor Payne added -

'Both have to work out how much they value third-sector intervention in this area, which studies show is 'what works', and what they envisage the contribution of the sector will be in the future.'

For more information, see Funding crisis threatens vulnerable jobseekers, say DMU academics from dmu.ac.uk
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Uprating of non-dependant deductions and care home residents’ personal expenses allowance in the calculation of income support, JSA, ESA and state pension credit
New DWP guidance also confirms increase in national insurance lower and upper earnings limits.
In DMG Memo 02/24, the DWP advises that uprating of income support, JSA, ESA and pension credit was effective from the first day of the first benefit week commencing on or after 8 April 2024 as set out in the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2024 (SI.No.242/2024) and the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Regulations 2024 (SI.No.386/2024).
In addition, the guidance confirms that non-dependant deductions from awards that include allowable housing costs are increased to -

• £19.30 where the gross weekly income of the non-dependant is less than £176;
• £44.40 where income is between £176 and £255.99;
• £60.95 where income is between £256 and £333.99;
• £99.65 where income is between £334 and £444.99;
• £113.50 where income is between £445 and £553.99; and
• £124.55 where income is £554 or more.

The DWP also advises that when a third-party deduction is made for miscellaneous accommodation costs - such as those incurred when resident in a care home - the amount allowed for personal expenses is increased to £31.75.
In addition, the guidance highlights that the Social Security (Contributions) (Limits and Thresholds, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veterans Relief) Regulations 2024 (SI.No.249/2024) provide that, with effect from 8 April 2024, the national insurance lower and upper earnings limits remain at £123 per week and £967 per week respectively.
DMG Memo 2/24 is available from gov.uk
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New DWP guidance also confirms increase in the additional amount of transitional SDP element introduced in response to High Court's January 2022 judgment TP and AR No.3
New guidance has been issued in relation to the uprating of housing cost contributions, work allowances and the transitional severe disability premium (SDP) element in universal credit.
In ADM Memo 03/24, the DWP provides details of the uprating of universal credit with effect from 8 April 2024 as set out in the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2024 (SI.No.242/2024) and the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Regulations 2024 (SI.No.386/2024), including that -

• the housing cost non-dependant contribution is increased to £91.47;
• the higher work allowance is increased to £673 and the lower work allowance is increased to £404;
• the transitional SDP element is increased -
  • for single claimants, to £140.97 if the limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA) element is included and £334.81 if the LCWRA element is not included; and
  • for joint claimants, to £475.79 if the higher SDP rate was payable or, where that does not apply, £140.97 if the LCWRA element is included for either of the claimants and £334.81 if the LCWRA element is not included for either of the claimants.

The DWP also confirms that the additional amount of transitional SDP element, introduced from 14 February 2024 in response to the High Court's January 2022 judgment TP and AR No.3 to compensate claimants who were entitled to other disability premiums in their legacy benefits before migrating to universal credit, is increased to -

• in the case of a single claimant -
  • £89.63 for those whose legacy benefit included an enhanced disability premium;
  • £183.52 for those whose legacy benefit included a disability premium; and
  • £188.86 per disabled child or qualifying young person where the legacy benefit or tax credit included a disabled child premium or disabled child element;
• in the case of joint claimants -
  • £128.04 for those whose legacy benefit included an enhanced disability premium;
  • £262.48 for those whose legacy benefit included a disability premium; and
  • £188.86 per disabled child or qualifying young person where the legacy benefit or tax credit included a disabled child premium or disabled child element.

NB - the guidance highlights that the new rates come into effect from the first day of the first assessment period which commences on or after 8 April 2024.
In addition, the DWP provides information on other figures affecting benefit entitlement for 2024/2025 including -

• the carer’s allowance weekly earnings limit is increased to £151;
• the amount of a claimant's personal expenses allowance, used in calculations when a third-party deduction is made for miscellaneous accommodation costs such as those incurred when resident in a care home, is increased to £31.75; and
• the national insurance lower and upper earnings limits remain at £123 per week and £967 per week respectively.

ADM Memo 03/24 is available from gov.uk
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DWP refuses to engage with it about mental health crisis in the Department, says PCS
The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union reports that it has 'hit a brick wall' in its repeated attempts to engage with DWP leadership concerning the mental health of the Department's employees.
Union's request for meeting with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the DWP Permanent Secretary was rejected despite publication of 'damning' evidence of the problem.
Citing evidence obtained through a Freedom of Information request by Disability News Service, the PCS highlights that between 2019 and 2023 -

• the proportion of universal credit caseload managers who took time off with a mental health condition rose from seven to 26 per cent;
• the proportion of caseload managers who spent more than four weeks off sick during the year nearly doubled, from 14 to 27 per cent;
• the average number of universal credit cases each caseload manager was expected to deal with had more than doubled, from 550 to 1,230;
• the proportion of work coaches taking at least four weeks off sick during the year went from 14 to 22 per cent; and
• the proportion of work coaches taking time off due to mental health concerns increased by more than three times from 4 to 15 per cent.

On publication of the Disability News Service article, the PCS wrote again to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Mel Stride, and the DWP Permanent Secretary, Peter Schofield, to make an urgent request for a meeting to discuss the 'mental health crisis' in the DWP. However, the PCS says it was rebuffed by the Permanent Secretary, who directed it to raise the matter through the 'appropriate engagement forums'.
The PCS says it remains extremely disappointed that this issue is not being treated with the seriousness it deserves and adds the Department’s response is unsurprising given recent comments by the Secretary of State who said in the Daily Telegraph -

'There is a real risk that we are labelling the normal ups and downs of human life as medical conditions which hold people back and increase benefits bills there is a 'danger that this has gone too far'. As a culture, we seem to have forgotten that work is good for mental health'.

PCS DWP group and acting national president, Martin Cavanagh responded -

'What 'has gone too far' is the government’s disdain for its own employees and the underplaying of the seriousness of mental health conditions affecting both its staff and the claimants they provide services for'.

For more information, see DWP mental health crisis – Secretary of State and Permanent Secretary refuse to engage with PCS from pcs.org.uk
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Can you help shape DWPhelp ?
The moderation team are working to update the DWPhelp Wiki by merging all our existing support tools e.g. target posts, some automod comments into one comprehensive user-friendly DWPhelp Wiki.
With this in mind we would like to know:

• what does the community want to be included in the Wiki?
• do you have particular benefit knowledge and could contribute to the content?

Comment below to share you thoughts :)

My roommate and I have gone through hell dealing with our landlord who would bang on our doors constantly, come into our apartment without our consent, ect, for years. ~2 years ago, he told us that his daughter would take over his position. We were thrilled as she was a normal human being. This was great until a few months ago when he would show up and YELL at us saying his daughter is stealing from him. The daughter showed us papers saying that he had dementia and it's clear that he does.
A week ago we got a "legal" letter saying we owe 11k, saying that the money is only payable to the family trust, and not the daughter. We've been addressing the checks to the same family trust the entire time, but giving the checks to the daughter who they claim is removed from the family trust.
Today we got a "rent demand" taped on our door that says if we don't pay in a certian amount of time they'll begin the prosses of eviction.
I talked to my downstairs neighbors who are going through the same thing (I live in a 2 apt house) and they are happy to ignore it. I would be eternally grateful for any advice on how to handle this situation.

Did you know thousands of employers don’t advertise vacancies on the major job sites, like Indeed or ZipRecruiter? But they post the jobs on their own career pages, or source them through recruiters.
Learn how to find these jobs with a reverse job search: https://www.e-junkie.com/i/134ip?&card
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Apply for this job here: https://careers.unitedhealthgroup.com/job/20228560/customer-service-representative-remote-in-est-tampa-fl/
If you are located within Eastern Time Zone, you will have the flexibility to telecommute* (work from home) as you take on some tough challenges.
Healthcare isn’t just changing. It’s growing more complex every day. ICD – 10 Coding replaces ICD – 9. Affordable Care adds new challenges and financial constraints. Where does it all lead? Hospitals and Healthcare organizations continue to adapt, and we are vital part of their evolution. And that’s what fueled these exciting new opportunities.
Who are we? Optum360. We’re a dynamic new partnership formed by Quest and Optum to combine our unique expertise. As part of the growing family of UnitedHealth Group, we’ll leverage our compassion, our talent, our resources and experience to bring financial clarity and a full suite of Revenue Management services to Healthcare Providers, nationwide.
If you’re looking for a better place to use your passion, your ideas and your desire to drive change, this is the place to be. It’s an opportunity to do your life’s best work.SM
This position is full-time. Employees are required to work our normal business hours of 8:00am – 4:30pm EST. It may be necessary, given the business need, to work occasional overtime or weekends.
We offer 4 weeks of paid training. The hours during training will be 8:00am – 4:30pm EST.
\All Telecommuters will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Group’s Telecommuter Policy.*
Primary Responsibilities:
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• Answer high volume calls on an ACD line from clients, regarding disputes, credit card payments, pricing and other general concerns on a daily basis
• Make out-bound calls to clients, Sales, Account Managers, Quest labs, and other internal customers with information to help escalate billing issues for a timely resolution
• Develop and maintain productive relationships with customers (e.g., provide a good first impression, command attention and respect, maintain professional tone, demonstrate confidence, de-escalate/defuse customers as needed)
• Manage internal customer service mailbox requests within 5 business days
• Research and resolve correspondence from paper, fax, email or phone call
• Work all correspondence batches in date order following the timeline for completion
• Use effective communication within the team to ensure consistent coverage of duties such as, staffing for phones, adhering to set lunch schedule for phone coverage, and managing of internal and external mailboxes
• Work directly with the Collection Coordinators to process adjustments, manual sales and refunds for accurate invoicing
• Perform all aspects of research needed to take place for accurate billing resolution which includes but is not limited to, working mail returns, pulling chain of custody forms, requesting check pulls from Cash, reviewing account activity and previous notes in billing system.
• Be the liaison for having direct contact with clients, Quest labs, Accounts Payable, Sales reps, Account Managers, local Quest standard business units and Quest non-standard business units on behalf of clients with billing issues
• Work directly with the ES Business Unit to educate them on billing practices and protocols for accurate communication to clients
• Thorough navigation of both Quest Billing System and the Billing Web is needed to handle requests
• Ensure accurate follow-up is being made on the status of disputes being handled outside the team
• Follow Quest and Optum guidelines and SOP’s
• Meet production standards and department quality control guidelines

You’ll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear direction on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in.
Required Qualifications:
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• High School Diploma / GED
• Must be 18 years of age OR older
• 1+ years of medical billing experience
• 1+ years of call center environment experience in healthcare
• Intermediate proficiency with Microsoft Outlook (email and calendar management), Microsoft Excel (create/edit spreadsheets) and Microsoft Word (create, edit, format, save documents)
• Ability to work our normal business hours of 8:00am – 4:30pm EST. It may be necessary, given the business need, to work occasional overtime or weekends.

Preferred Qualifications:
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• 1+ years of medical client billing experience

Telecommuting Requirements:
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• Reside within Eastern Time Zone
• Ability to keep all company sensitive documents secure (if applicable)
• Required to have a dedicated work area established that is separated from other living areas and provides information privacy.
• Must live in a location that can receive a UnitedHealth Group approved high-speed internet connection or leverage an existing high-speed internet service.

Soft Skills:
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• Ability to multi-task and meet deadlines
• Ability to meet production and quality standards set forth by the department
• Maintain average speed of answer and backlog days for correspondence

Connecticut, New Jersey, New York or Rhode Island Residents Only: The hourly range for Connecticut, New Jersey, New York or Rhode Island residents is $16.54 – $32.55 per hour. Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to education, work experience, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, UnitedHealth Group offers benefits such as, a comprehensive benefits package, incentive and recognition programs, equity stock purchase and 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). No matter where or when you begin a career with UnitedHealth Group, you’ll find a far-reaching choice of benefits and incentives.
At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone. We believe everyone–of every race, gender, sexuality, age, location, and income–deserves the opportunity to live their healthiest life. Today, however, there are still far too many barriers to good health which are disproportionately experienced by people of color, historically marginalized groups, and those with lower incomes. We are committed to mitigating our impact on the environment and enabling and delivering equitable care that addresses health disparities and improves health outcomes — an enterprise priority reflected in our mission.

Hello fellow queer peoples -
We are looking for 15 (1) AMAB (2) non-binary/gender queer-identifying (3) non-minors (4) who can complete an interview and structured journaling in English. We are looking for a wide range across demographics and the group will be chosen to maximize that range. Not all people who express interest in the study will be chosen to participate in the study.
For the purposes of this study, we are using the following definition of sexual objectification: Sexual objectification is “the experience of being treated as a body (or collection of body parts) valued predominantly for its use to (or consumption by) others” (Flores et al., 2018; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997, p. 174)
This is a three-part project, where you will: - Document some sexual objectification experiences in real time – total time commitment is about one hour over the course of 3 – 6 weeks; - Discuss with me your sexual objectification experiences, specifically how they impact your gender identity and relationship with your body – time commitment is about one hour for an online interview. - Have the option of participating in a follow up focus group to review the findings and help the research team flesh out the results – time commitment is about 1 -2 hours to review the draft of the results and participate in the focus group.
This is a lot of work! To honor your time, you’ll receive up to $120, divided between the three tasks. Study participation is confidential, you will have the option to choose a pseudonym and we won’t connect any identifying information with your responses.
Who are we? Lee Pradell ([Lee.Pradell@usu.edu](mailto:Lee.Pradell@usu.edu)) and Dr. Renee Galliher ([Renee.Galliher@usu.edu](mailto:Renee.Galliher@usu.edu)) from Utah State University’s Psychology Department are the researchers for this study. This study has been reviewed and approved by our IRB (protocol #14042). If you’re interested, click this link to fill out a demographics questionnaire.

TRICON for Ethical Trans Research

We are actively involved in supporting the trans non-binary community and hope our research can be used to support this work. In accordance with the Transgender Research Informed Consent (TRICON) Disclosure Policy, we would like to provide additional information to interested AMAB non-binary people about our research. “TRICON consists of ten disclosure questions, to be repeated an answered by investigators of research on TGD populations in all announcements, communication, and social media posts that solicit study participants.” TRICON was created to “empower Transgender and Gender-Diverse (TGD) community members to make informed decisions on participation in research studies, within a historical context of decades of research that is all too often biased, defamatory, misgendering, exploitive, or non-consensual.” This and more information can be found at the Trans Policy Reform Blog (https://transpolicyreform.wordpress.com/2022/10/08/transgender-research-informed-consent-tricon-disclosure-policy-2022-update/)
Below are the required TRICON Disclosure Questions with our answers about this study:

1. What is the specific objective of the study and its intended impact on future trans lives?
   1. The study aims to document the sexual objectification experiences of AMAB non-binary people through interviews and a real-time flow-chart task. This work is an extension of previous research:
   2. The Sexual Objectification Experiences of Non-Binary People: Embodied Impacts and Acts of Resistance (2024)
   3. Body maps depict how sexual objectification shapes non-binary people relating to their bodies (2023)
   4. These studies used a sample of non-binary people and unintentionally recruited non-binary people that were read as feminine or AFAB and described sexual objectification from this position. We are therefore interested in understanding how AMAB non-binary people experience sexual objectification. This research is intended to create community with participants and researchers through individual and group interviews. The research practice, particularly the process chart component, was described by previous participants as “healing” (Pradell et al., under review). We also intend to expand and contribute to a growing body of research by trans people for other trans people. We see the potential impact in policy, clinical work, pedagogy, and research practice.
2. What is the target study population? Describe geographic scope, languages, and intersectional inclusion?
   1. We are recruiting AMAB non-binary adults who have experienced sexual objectification. We aim to recruit a heterogeneous sample across identity factors to speak to the intersectional nature of sexual objectification. This means we aim for a breadth of racial, ethnic, religious, ability, class and educational identities within our sample. As a monolingual person, we are recruiting English speaking participants. To geographically ground the findings, we are recruiting participants across the United States of America.
3. Who is/are the principal investigatos, and what is/are the sponsoring institution/s organization/s?
   1. I, Lee Pradell (they/them), am the principal investigator. I am a fourth year Ph.D. Clinical/Counseling Psychology student studying at Utah State University (USU). Renee V. Galliher, Ph.D. (she/her) is my research mentor and oversees this study. I am conducting this research as my dissertation project, which is funded equally by the USU Psychology Department and USU College of Education.
4. How are trans scholars/researchers included in leadership of this research work?
   1. I, Lee Pradell, am a trans/non-binary scholar. Josh Parmenter (they/he) is another trans scholar working on this research project. The three other members of our coding team are Elizabeth Grace Wong (she/her), Kevin Chi (he/him), and Renee V. Galliher (she/her). They are queer, cisgender people.
5. Who is funding the study? Describe any conflicts of interest.
   1. I am conducting this research as my dissertation project, which is funded equally by the USU Psychology Department and USU College of Education. The study I proposed is approved by a committee of five researchers with Ph.D.’s who are invested in contributing to a field of rigorous, communal research. We have no other conflicts of interest to disclose.
6. Describe approval of this study by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent authority and how TGD scholars are represented in the IRB or the oversight process.
   1. This study was approved by the USU IRB (Protocol #14042) in March 2024. It went through two rounds of edits between Lee Pradell, Renee V. Galliher, and the USU IRB to follow ethical research practice guidelines. To my knowledge, the USU IRB does not currently include any TGD members. We have however shared with them the Trans Policy Reform Blog and the TRICON information outlining ethical research practice with TGD people.
7. Describe ethical practices in this research that are specific to needs of TGD subjects.
   1. Our TGD participants will communicate directly with myself, a TGD person. During the process, I will check on them weekly over email about their wellbeing throughout the research process. We are including a focus group component to both increase the rigor of our research findings and connect our participants with community, which is particularly important for the TGD community.
8. Is there a cost or travel requirement, or is there compensation for participants?
   1. There is no cost/travel requirement, all activities are done independently or over Zoom. For participation in this research study, participants receive $40 for completing three charting experiences and $40 for the online individual interview. If they choose to participate in the follow up focus group, they will receive $40 for the online group discussion. Thus, they can earn a total of $120 USD for completing the charting, interview, and follow up group discussion, payable either via a prepaid debit card sent by mail or an online gift card to a retailer of their choice sent by email. They will only be compensated for the portions of the study that they complete. They will be compensated at the end of their participation in the study, after completing all the components of the study they choose to.
9. Is participation in this research required for access to non-experimental affirming medical care?
   1. No, participation in this study does not implicate/impact access to affirming care.
10. How will the results of this research be accessible to TGD communities through open access journals or channels?
    1. Through the USU digital commons, the accepted dissertation will be posted in May 2025. Published findings will be available through journals after their acceptance. Given the peer-review process necessary to publish in academic journals, we cannot give a precise date of publication. We estimate these findings will be published by May 2026. The journals we publish in often require the author to fund open access, which is not something the USU Psychology Department has historically funded. We do however distribute our manuscripts to open access channels, such as Research Gate and the USU Digital Commons.
11. You will be contacted by myself, from [lee.pradell@usu.edu](mailto:lee.pradell@usu.edu), after you complete the online screening form to let you know if you are eligible for this project. I’ll notify you via email if I’ve selected you to be on this research team - if not, I’ll ask if you’d like to be contacted for future non-binary/queer research projects. If you’re interested, start by filling out the screening questionnaire: https://usu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3Uk9xU9A030I44e Thank you for your time, Lee

Updated 04/10/2024
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This guide is designed to help someone get a NYC Carry permit. If you don't wish to do the legwork to get this permit, we offer a personalized service where we help you with the entire application process. We also offer a private 18 hour training course with qualification. You can private message 0x90sleds or check out [Foundation For A Safer NY] (https://Foundationforasaferny.com).
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Required Paperwork to fill out can be found [here] (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11xyQvv0ANu2La_TsP7dCicv7DFn42Vl4?usp=sharing)
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This information, and more of it, are available on the [discord] (https://discord.gg/qE3UyXnAWw)
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As it currently stands, the permit process is purposefully convoluted and made so that people get discouraged and do not apply. We put this together, so THAT APPLICATION PROCESS IS EASIER. We’ll list out things that you should gather first, then it will go into specifics.
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You can start the application NOW and add to it little by little, if you choose. However, once it is paid for, you cannot make any changes to the application, but you can upload documents to it.
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First things first. Go the the NYPD licensing division website and create an account.
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https://licensing.nypdonline.org/
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As per the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (NYSRPA) v. Bruen (2022) court decision, somethings have changed legally, but the NYPD website has not been updated. This decision recognizes that we have the right to Bear Arms OUTSIDE of the home.
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We highly recommend you file for your “Concealed Carry” as opposed to Premise Residence. If you obtain a Premise residence permit, you will only be able to transport the firearm to and from the range, as well as any gun stores or other locations where you can legally possess it, unloaded in a locked container.
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TYPES of Pistol Permits as of 02.25.23:
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Carry Business
Concealed Carry
Carry Guard
Gun Custodian
Limited Carry
Premise
Business Premise
Residence Retiree (for retired police officers)
Special Carry (More info below)
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As of now 02.04.24, The City of New York has limited the number of pistols you can have on your Concealed Carry permit to TWO handguns. To circumvent this, people would have to pay for an additional permit, usually a Premise Residence permit. **We have filed a lawsuit to remove this requirement**
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A note on Special Carry. This is for non-NYC residents who want to carry in NYC, usually other New York State residents from other counties. NYC DOES NOT recognize other NYS county permits, which is currently being fought in court; see Frey v NYC.
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At the time you submit your application, you must furnish the items listed below that are applicable to you. You submit original copies of certificates, licenses, etc. online. In addition, a legible photocopy of each item submitted must accompany the original or certified copy. (A copy certified by the issuing agency as true and complete is also acceptable in lieu of the original.) Your application will not be accepted without producing the required documents. We recommend you start your application NOW and slowly gather the following documents:
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Many of these forms are available on the NYPD license portal website:
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Affidavit of Cohabitation (notarized) (this is a disclosure of applicant’s spouse or domestic partner, any other adults residing in the applicant’s home, including any adult children of the applicant. If you live alone, write you live alone on the form and notarize it.)
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Any Dispositions / summons - Write an explanation of each arrest, including moving violations or other traffic violations. Keep it short and to the facts. Don't admit to anything. Parking tickets do not count.
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NYC CONFIDENTIALITY REQUEST (to not have your permit info publicly available, see below)
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1 DIGITAL Passport photo (details below)
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Social Security card (needed for in person)
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Lifetime driver abstract (make sure it is lifetime)
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Proof of residence
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Safeguard form (witness needed)
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Safeguard ID (person who signs the form above)
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Your own scanned ID
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Scanned passport or birth certificate (Proof of Citizenship)
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5 years of work history
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Addresses lived at for the past 5 years
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4 character references (Notarized and stating that you are of good moral character) (currently being fought in court) The template can be downloaded in the link at the top of the page.
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Two of which can be family, and two have to be non-related to you, and not cops. They can reside anywhere in the US, as long as they're lawful residents, AKA. Greencards or visas or citizens are good to go.
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18 hour NYS approved training (currently being fought in court)
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~~List of former & current social media accounts for the last 3 years~~ (Enjoined in court)
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Fees. Two (2) separate fees are required. These are payable by certified check, bank check, money order or credit card. All fees are non-refundable. – $340.00 - Made payable to New York City Police Department – $ 89.75 - Made payable to New York City Police Department ** If you have your Rifle/Shotgun permit you don’t need new prints.
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Photographs - One (1) recent DIGITAL color photograph of yourself. They should measure 1½ x 1½ inches and show you from the chest up. Do not wear any article of clothing or adornment that obscures your facial features. Photos should be taken without glasses. Upload them to the document portal.
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These fees are being fought by us in court, and you should absolutely still apply now, as this process will take a while.
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Birth Certificate/U.S. Passport. In lieu of your birth certificate, some other proof of your birth date, e.g., a military record, U.S. passport or baptismal certificate, must be submitted.
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Proof of Citizenship/Alien Registration. If you were born outside the United States, you must submit your naturalization papers or evidence of citizenship if derived from your parents. All other applicants born outside the United States must submit their Alien Registration Card. If you have lived in this country less than 7 years you must submit a good conduct certificate from your country of origin.
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Military Discharge. If you served in the armed forces of the United States, you must submit your separation papers (DD 214) and your discharge.
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Proof of Residence. You must submit proof of your present address. Proof may consist of, but is not limited to, a real estate tax bill, ownership shares in a cooperative or condominium, or a lease. You may also be requested to supply further documentation, i.e., a New York State Driver’s License, a New York State Income Tax Return, a Utility Bill, etc.
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If you do not have a utility bill (say you live with family), you’d have to get a letter noting that you live with them and that they pay said bills. THIS SHOULD BE NOTORIZED.
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Arrest / Summons / Order of Protection Information: A.) Arrest If you were ever arrested, indicted or summonsed (other than parking violations) for any reason you must answer “Yes” to question-23 and submit a certificate of disposition showing the offense and the disposition.
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Also, you must submit a detailed statement describing the circumstances surrounding each arrest.
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YOU MUST DO THIS EVEN IF: the case was dismissed, the record sealed, or the case nullified by operation of law. The New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services will report to us every instance involving the arrest of an applicant. DO NOT rely on anyone’s representation that you need not list a previous arrest because it was sealed. If you were ever convicted or pleaded guilty to a felony, or a serious offense as defined in Penal Law Section 265.00(17), an original Certificate of Relief from Disabilities must be submitted.
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B.) Summons Information: If you have received a summons for other than a parking violation you must answer Yes to question-23. You must list the violation and disposition for each summons received. Dispositions for criminal summons can be obtained at your local country clerk where you were arrested or summonsed. C.) Order of Protection: If you have ever had an Order of Protection or Restraining Order issued against you, or issued on your behalf against anyone, you must list the following information: Court of Issuance; Complainant’s or Respondent/Defendant’s name, including address and phone number; Complainant’s or Respondent/ Defendant’s relationship to you; Reason for issuance of Order of Protection or Restraining Order.
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This following requirements is what used to be required, prior to the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (NYSRPA) v. Bruen (2022) decision: If you are making application for a License in connection with a business, you must submit proof of ownership for that business. Such proof must clearly state the names of the owner(s), or, if a corporation, the names of the corporate officers. A corporation must submit its corporate book including fi ling receipt, certificate of incorporation and minutes of the corporate meeting reflecting current corporate officers; others must provide their business certificate or partnership agreement, whichever is applicable. If the business requires a license or permit from any government agency, e.g. alcohol or firearms sales, gunsmith, private investigation and guard agencies, you must submit the license or permit or a certified copy thereof. You must submit proof of address for the business. Proof may consist of a utility bill, not more than 60 days old, in the name of the business or a lease in the name of the business.
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Letter of Necessity. No longer needed. Section can be found under “Need/Employment Details,” you can write the following: As per the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (NYSRPA) v. Bruen (2022) decision it is no longer required to show proper cause.
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You will answer N/A for the rest of the questions.
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For part 12
Write why you were fired, if you don't have info about it, include that you don't know the information since its been a while.
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Write you're familiar with those sections of the penal law.
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Write that you don't need to include social media due to the injunction against social media requirements in the 2nd circuit
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You can write not applicable for the question about carry guard
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For handgun safeguard, you write unloaded, in a locked safe with the ammo separate
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For the last question you write you will get trained, or you have gotten trained.
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For storage you can say unloaded with a trigger lock with the ammo stored separately. Regarding laws, say you read the laws.
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When asked what you want a gun for at the interview, or on the questionnaire, the best answer is "All lawful purposes, including but not limited to self-defense, target shooting and hunting"
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When asked when may you use your handgun: "In those situations that warrant such use of force or deadly force as authorized by Article 35 of the NY Penal law." Be prepared to explain what that entails at your interview.
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For storage you can say unloaded with a trigger lock with the ammo stored separately. Regarding laws, say you read the laws.
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When asked what you want a gun for at the interview, or on the questionnaire, the best answer is "All lawful purposes, including but not limited to self-defense, target shooting and hunting"
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When asked when may you use your handgun: "In those situations that warrant such use of force or deadly force as authorized by Article 35 of the NY Penal law."
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You must bring your original social security card when you apply. NYC CONFIDENTIALITY REQUEST – Choose option 4. “I have reason to believe that I may be subject to unwarranted harassment upon disclosure.” Let them know you’re concerned about workplace harassment or personal harassment due to having a gun permit.
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Current firearm possession If you own firearms in NYC, NYC requires you to list out what you own and their serial numbers and models. This is if you have a NYS or NYC permit for firearms, or if you are applying for a special carry and you reside outside of NYC/NYS.
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If you have any questions AFTER reading this, please let us know how we can help! NYC sucks, this list should not be this long.
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Once you receive approval, you'll be able to go and purchase a handgun with the form they will MAIL you. You will be unable to buy a gun until you receive that form.
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After which you submit photos and proof of a safe storage box, as an example a safe or pelican case. About 10-30 days after which you will receive your permit to carry and be able to go and pick up your handgun.

An employee of a roofing company that was doing work for my neighbor came to our house and gave us an estimate for his company to do some work to repair a small leak. He gave us his business card and a signed contract on his company’s official contract paperwork. When the job was done, we made a check payable to the company. The check cleared our account.
During the next rainstorm, we found out the job was not done properly and our small leak is now a large leak. I called the company and spoke to the owner who told me he knows nothing about the job. He acknowledges the gentleman who signed the contract is an employee of his, but he said the employee never handed in the paperwork. When I told him our check cleared he asked for a copy of it, and we saw that the back of the check was endorsed by the employee using his own name. So if the check was made payable to ABC roofing, he simply wrote John Smith on the back and went to a check cashing place that cashed the $5000 check for him.
My position is that an employee of the company entered into a contract with me for that company to do the work. I think the fact that the employee never gave his boss the paperwork and stole the companies check is the company’s internal issue. My position is that an employee of the company entered into a contract with me for that company to do the work. I think the fact that the employee never gave his boss the paperwork and stole the company’s check is the company’s problem, not mine.
I have asked the owner to send a crew up here to fix the leak and he is not returning my calls. I have tried to reach out to the employee on his cell phone and he has also ignoring me.
In this situation, would I have to sue the company for failure to complete their part of the contract? Or is the owner correct that I’ve been scammed and stolen from and I have to go after the individual who signed the contract and stole the check?
I don’t know if I should reach out to a lawyer or call the police. I’d appreciate any input you have.

I kept hearing the same name today but in completely different contexts and it was just too weird to be a coincidence.

1. I needed my boss to write a check and he asked me who he needs to write it to. So I read the invoice I was sent (we had never used this vendor before). It said to make the check payable to "Metropolitan High School" Thought to myself that I had never heard of it but nothing weird there.
   
2. Shortly after, I receive a call to my office phone (main line for our department). I answer and the man introduces himself as a social worker (didn't make sense for a social worker to be calling my line of work btw) and said "I need to collect some information but wanted to make sure I am calling the right place. Is this Metropolitan Hospital?" I let him know he had the wrong number. Thought to myself that I hadn't heard of this hospital either.
   
3. Not long after that, a co worker let me know she would not be coming in to work on Thursday because she needed to see an additional wedding venue before making her decision, and that she was originally only seeing two places on Thursday but stumbled upon a third she thinks she may like. I asked where (I am at the age where I have attended more weddings than I can count so I am rather familiar with venues in the area) to which she responds "It's called The Metropolitan".....never heard of this place either.
   

It was after the third time that I was like WTF WHAT DOES THIS MEAN AND WHAT IS THE UNIVERSE TRYING TO TELL ME 😂 needed to share.

In the contemporary world of data-driven decision-making, proficiency in financial modelling has emerged as an indispensable skill, particularly in sectors like investment banking, equity research, and project management, and across various domains in the financial services industry. This article explores the significance of financial modelling and sheds light on AIMA's Financial & Valuation Modeling Program, providing a detailed overview of its curriculum and key learning objectives.

Financial Modelling

Financial modelling is the art of constructing a model using tools like Excel to represent financial statements and conduct investment analysis. It establishes a structure that integrates various statements and schedules, facilitating effective decision-making. A financial model essentially mirrors the performance of a business, a project, or any other investment, making it an invaluable tool in the arsenal of finance professionals.

AIMA's Financial & Valuation Modelling Program

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of AIMA's Financial & Valuation Modeling Program, participants will:

• Build a financial model from scratch, mirroring practices at financial institutions
• Master Excel, employing formatting best practices, efficient formula construction, and appropriate driver selections
• Utilise Advanced Excel functions to present sensitivities to projected financial metrics
• Address common modelling troubleshooting issues like circularity problems and iteration
• Cross-check the Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement
• Understand and perform valuation, including techniques, elements, and approaches to forecasting
• Provide an overview of Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) and the Dividend Discount Model
• Calculate Free Cash Flow to Firm (FCFF) & Free Cash Flow to Equity (FCFE)
• Determine the Discount Rate (Cost of Debt, Cost of Equity & Cost of Capital)
• Identify Revenue and Cost Drivers
• Prepare a Full DCF Model
• Calculate Equity Value Multiples: P/E, P/CF, P/BV, P/S, PEG, Dividend Yield
• Provide insights into Trading and Transaction Comparables

Who Should Attend?

This program is ideal for individuals at various levels in their organisations, including:

• Students in the final year of a degree course
• Finance managers
• Corporate Finance, Private Equity, and M&A professionals
• CA, FRM, MBA Finance, CFA Program candidates
• Self-employed finance professionals
• Graduates with basic to intermediate Excel skills

Key Highlights

• Online 30+ hours of assessments
• Step-by-step guidance in financial modeling projection
• Live interaction with industry faculty
• Industry-based live case studies
• Practice sheets, assignments, and study materials
• Industry-oriented certificates of completion/excellence

Our Faculty

AIMA's faculty comprises highly skilled individuals with extensive industry experience in Investment Banking, Equity Research, Private Equity, and Credit Research, offering global exposure in their respective fields.

Why Choose AIMA?

- Free Backup Classes:
Understanding emergencies can happen anytime; AIMA offers free backup classes to ensure uninterrupted learning.
- Assignments/Practice Sheets:
Weekly assignments and practice sheets enhance subject understanding, maximizing learning outside class hours.
- Physical Materials for Learning:
Quality physical study materials are provided to augment concept understanding and aid comprehensive learning.
- Limited Batch Size:
With a maximum batch size of 15 students, AIMA believes in providing a small and comfortable environment for optimal learning.
- Live Case Studies Based Training:
The practical curriculum, designed by industry professionals, includes case studies and live examples for a comprehensive learning experience.
Career Opportunities:
Upon completion of the Financial & Valuation Modeling Program, individuals can pursue diverse roles such as Financial Analyst, Financial Manager, Market Research Analyst, Venture Analyst, Equity Research Analyst, Market Data Quantitative Analyst, Private Equity Finance Manager, and Business Valuation Consultant.

• Duration and Certification:
• Duration: 3 Months
• Session: 30 hours
• Session Commences: January - July
• Upon successful completion, candidates receive a Certificate in Financial & Valuation Modeling from AIMA.

Registration Requirements for Students

• Fill in the registration form (Download form).
• Attach 2 passport-size photographs (Soft copies in the online registration process).
• Pay fees through a Cheque in favour of AIMA payable at New Delhi or online payment of Rs. 20,000/- + GST as applicable.

I moved into the apartment around 2 months ago and want to leave. #1 wanna be closer to work, #2 the two roommates do not like/speak to me. I also don’t like the neighborhood, it’s very creepy. I was never shown an original lease, and only have a short sublease agreement signed with the old tenant. Numerical values on the lease also do not add up. What are my options?
Sublease:
This Sublease Agreement (the “Sublease”) is made effective as of January 20, 2024 by and between X (“Lease Holder”) and X (“Subtenant”). Lease Holder has previously entered into a lease agreement with X Realty (“Landlord”) dated December 30, 2023 (the “Prime lease”). The Lease Holder now desires to sublet the leased property to the Subtenant. Therefore, the parties agree as follows: PREMISES. Lease Holder, in consideration of the sublease payments provided in this Agreement, sublets to Subtenant, one bedroom, located at X (the “Premises”). TERM AND POSSESSION. The term of this lease will begin on January 20, 2024 and it will continue for the remainder of the term provided in the Prime Lease, which terminates July 31, 2024.
SUBLEASE PAYMENTS. Subtenant shall pay to Landlord sublease payments of $1200.00 per month, payable in advance on the first day of each month, for a total sublease payment of $3,300.00. Sublease payments shall be made to current tenants of lease (“Roommate”) who will then write a check for the entirety of the apartment’s rent payment to the landlord for each month’s rent.
SECURITY DEPOSIT. At the time of executing this Sublease, Subtenant shall pay to Lease Holder, a security deposit in the amount of $1200.00, in lieu of the original security deposit Lease Holder paid to Landlord. This security deposit paid to Lease Holder is non-refundable. Upon completion of the Prime Lease, Subtenant may be entitled to the return of a security deposit at Landlord’s discretion.
Lease Holder, X X signature and date X
Subtenant, X X signature and date X