Tausi Insider

Photo : Ground Picture ( Shutterstock ) Last month the IRS reported that millions of eligible people have yet to properly claim their COVID relief payments. The IRS uses tax returns to determine eligibility for both pandemic stimulus checks and child tax credits , and u nfortunately, those who need the relief most—such as people with lower incomes, limited internet access, or who are experiencing homelessness—are often the least likely to have filed their taxes . Here’s what you can do to take action before this week’s deadline for claiming your stimulus and/or child tax credit payments. 02:15 How to Steam an Egg November 9, 2022 02:50 Chopping Basics November 9, 2022 If you didn’t file taxes in 2022 You may not have filed a federal income tax return this part April if your income was below a certain amount. However, you need to file in order to claim any sort of refundable tax credit. You have until Thursday, Nov. 17 to complete a simplified tax return to claim your missin...

Photo : Kicking Studio ( Shutterstock ) Spotlight, once an essential tool in your iPhone productivity arsenal, has become nearly unusable on iOS 16. It sometimes displays search results almost instantly, but more often than not it takes a few seconds (or more) to find things. The latency is particularly noticeable on older iPhones, and the inconsistency of a once-reliable tool is pretty sad to see. The same feature has been facing similar issues on Mac, but at least there are alternatives—such as Alfred and Raycast — that make up for it. On your iPhone, you can’t replace Spotlight with an alternative, but you can try a couple of workarounds. Use your iPhone’s App Library If you keep swiping left on your iPhone’s home screen, you will find the App Library at the very end . Once there, swipe down to open the search bar and type the name of the app you want to find. You’ll see that this search box instantly loads the results you’re looking for. We’ve tried this on a three-year-o...

Photo : Viktoriia Hnatiuk ( Shutterstock ) When you’re a player in the gig economy, budgeting can be tough. However, a budget is most important for anyone working with an irregular income. Even if you don’t consider yourself living paycheck to paycheck, it’s a challenge to craft and stick to a budget when you don’t have a predictable salary to base your calculations around. So how do you get started on your perfect budget when the amount you earn keeps fluctuating? Here are our tips for creating a budget when your income varies month to month. Start tracking your income and expenses The first step to creating a budget is to get estimates for the numbers you’re going to be working with. Go through your bank statements and figure out six months’ worth of income and expenses. From there, you can simply divide the total by six to determine your average income and expenses per month. However, that average number is most useful for people with steady income streams. Read on to keep ad...

Photo : NDAB Creativity ( Shutterstock ) Whether you love the single life or can’t wait to be coupled up, one thing is sure: It’s expensive to be single. We’ve previously covered   personal finance tips to take advantage of while you’re single , but the costs of being alone are rarely a result of personal failure. Instead, our economy privileges partnership—specifically marriage, but also in the simple fact that it pays to have a second income. Here are all the ways that being single ends up costing more than being married, and what you can do to save money as a single person. Our economy is not designed to help single people From first- date drinks and takeout for one to no one to help split streaming subscription costs , there are plenty of small-scale expenses that come with being single. But the real penalties of living single are much larger. Writing for The Atlantic in 2013, Lisa Arnold and Christina Campbell found that over a lifetime, it can cost upwards of $1 million ...

Photo : Gorodenkoff ( Shutterstock ) Whether you shop primarily online or in person, you’ve likely been asked to make a donation to some kind of charitable organization as you’re checking out. Sometimes it’s rounding up the total of your order to the nearest dollar, and donating the change. Other times, you have the option of donating $1, $2, or another amount—or declining. B ut if you’re looking for your dollars to have more of an impact, you should consider giving your money directly to a charity . Here’s what to know. Are checkout donations a scam? As a TausiInsider post from March 2021 points out, donations made at the cash register aren’t part of some sort of scheme where they are use to reimburse the retailers for previously donated funds. But thanks to a lawsuit filed in New York in May 2022—alleging that CVS was using checkout donations to fulfill a pledge the pharmacy chain made to the American Diabetes Association to contribute $10 million over the course of three ...

Photo : Stockbym ( Shutterstock ) You don’t need me to tell you that the Ancient Aliens series, which somehow airs on a network called History , is utter bullshit. Its whole gimmick is that it’s silly and “just entertainment,” and yes, probably most viewers watch it that way. But I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about what’s layered just underneath the silliness: a lot of racist bullshit. Ancient Aliens is careful to emphasize that “ some people: are saying what if aliens built the pyramids , not that the show itself is claiming it’s true. It’s just playing devil’s advocate, you know. In doing so, it interviews experts, uses lots of stock footage, and recycles old theories. And there are plenty of discredited theories to choose from—many of them created explicitly to prove a racist point. Ancient alien theories only work if you think indigenous people couldn’t have built impressive things Even before people started ascribing ancient wonders to aliens, there...

Photo : Niferure ( Shutterstock ) This week’s out-of-touch guide features three prominent young influencers: One may have abandoned a pig, one is accused of being a pig, and the third is MrBeast. Plus, TikTok’s death row meals trend is dissected, as is the anger of our nations’s nerds. Pugilist Paul’s problematic pet pig Pearl   Let’s talk about Logan Paul’s pig, wanna? Paul, an online superstar and “boxer,” adopted a baby pig nearly two years ago. This week, animal sanctuary Gentle Barn posted a video on TikTok reporting that they’d rescued that same pig. It was apparently abandoned, nearly dead, in a field. The sanctuary nursed Pearl back to health and pointed out that many people adopt what they think are “teacup pigs” that turn out to just be pigs— huge animals that demand a ton of care. Of course, some people leapt to the conclusion that Paul callously abandoned his former pet when it grew too large, but the truth seems to be more complicated. According to Paul, he re-hom...