January is Financial Wellness Month, appropriately timed to the confluence of New Year’s resolutions and holiday bills. It’s a time to set new goals for financial freedom and moderation in spending; for people to understand the benefits of “paying yourself first.” A financial advisor can help shape money management goals, pointing out the power of compound interest to work for you in savings, and against you in debt. Americans have a per capita income average of nearly $27,000 or $81,000 for families. There are some 155,000 personal financial advisors in the U.S., helping Americans reach their goals, and turn that income into more net worth. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.
Sunday, January 13th. Couch potatoes can trace their roots to this date in 1928, when three experimental television sets were installed in private homes in Schenectady, New York. Not that there was much to see, the test broadcast by General Electric and RCA being of a woman smoking, followed by a man playing a ukulele. The first home receivers — screens were only 1½ inches square; a far cry from today’s theater-sized flat screens. And in another departure from 1928, the percentage of U.S. households with TV sets now has held steady for many years at over 98 percent. Even with heavy foreign competition, U.S. manufacturers ship close to $1.2 billion worth of TV sets annually. Profile America is in its 16th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Saturday, January 12th. Near this date in 49 B.C., Julius Caesar, leading the 13th Roman legion, crossed the Rubicon, a minor river in northeastern Italy, marking a boundary south of which a Roman general could not bring his troops. Crossing the Rubicon, which has since come to mean passing a point of no return, precipitated a civil war. Caesar triumphed, ending the Roman republic and launching imperial Rome. Many generations later, the descendants of the Romans crossed a more formidable water barrier: the Atlantic Ocean. In 1832, three Italians were recorded as immigrants to the U.S.; by 1914, that number peaked at over 283,000. Today there are nearly 17.5 million Americans of Italian ancestry, around 5½ percent of the population. Profile America is in its 16th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.