A glass act

In the ’70s, collectible glasses from fast food joints were all the rage. The most coveted may have been from Mcdonald’s, but who wouldn’t want a deep dish pie from Pizza Hut and a cup featuring one of the coolest cats from Happy Days? 

Speaking of glasses, you probably recently raised a few to ring in the New Year. Maybe you even treated yourself to some bubbly. But did you do it with the right glass? You can learn about the ideal way to consume champagne right here! 

And don’t forget this other glass ;)

Roughly 48% of Americans reported not having any investable financial assets, according to a Janus Henderson survey conducted last year. The reason? Many simply think investment management is too complex.

“It’s a bias that we call ‘complexity aversion,’” says Amos Nadler, founder of Prof of Wall Street and a Ph.D. in behavioral finance and neuroeconomics. “And it’s the biggest barrier to building wealth for people who are not in markets or who have never invested before.”

This type of aversion is similar to the mentality of those who shy away from starting a new workout routine, particularly at a gym surrounded by others who appear to be expertly in control of their own routines.

Basically, not only do they not want to look foolish, they also don’t want to lose what they have. In the workout case it’s just pride, but in the case of wealth management, they don’t want to lose what they’re investing.

According to Nadler, though, there are bigger losses incurred from inaction—be it improved health or improved wealth.

Complexity aversion is essentially a self-imposed tax that millions of Americans pay regularly. Nadler says starting off with something simple is still better than not starting at all, and of course in the words of Wayne Gretzky, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Online real estate brokerage Redfin published a report detailing several trends consumers may want to look out for when it comes to real estate in 2025, including the expected pace of price growth.

Prices soared in the early days of the pandemic when the cost of borrowing money plummeted. Price growth stalled in more recent years as interest rates and inflation bit into demand. Economists expect a “normalization” this year with prices rising an average of 4% over the course of the year.

Though that’s a broad prediction, economists also say President-elect Donald Trump implementing general tariffs could cause construction material prices to skyrocket, resulting in slower home construction and supply to fall behind demand, thereby resulting in faster price growth.

Such tariffs—along with tax cuts that aren’t met with spending cuts—could also cause mortgage rates to fluctuate considerably.

“We’re sort of in uncharted territory. It’s really tough to say exactly what’s going to happen,” said Jacob Channel, senior economist at LendingTree.

Despite mortgage rate volatility, Channel expects an average rate of 6.8% over the course of 2025.

The U.S. News & World Report published its annual diet list, and for the 8th consecutive year, the Mediterranean diet was considered the healthiest.

Entitled “Best Diets Overall,” the report evaluated 38 different traditional diets or meal plans, based on the input of several different food and health experts.

"Our panelists evaluated each diet plan for nutritional completeness, health risks and benefits, long-term sustainability and evidence-based effectiveness," the website noted. 

Each was given a score out of five based on this criteria, and the Mediterranean diet scored 4.8. In second place was the DASH diet at 4.6 out of 5, followed by the “flexitarian” or semi-vegetarian diet at 4.5.

The Mediterranean diet consists mostly of fresh fruits and leafy greens, fish, legumes, nuts and whole grains, and is considered “one of the easiest diets [in the world] to follow,” providing "general guidelines that are versatile enough to be adaptable to any cuisine or lifestyle—making it a sustainable approach to eating."

The house that Walter White (Bryan Cranston) destroyed is finally up for sale after its owners decided they could no longer tolerate the rush of fans constantly driving by and stopping to take a peek.

Joanne Quintana told an Albuquerque news station that she and her siblings grew up in the home after her parents bought it in the 1970s. Breaking Bad’s popularity resulted in what would sometimes be over 100 cars driving by every day in the otherwise average old Albuquerque neighbourhood.

Among the most famous scenes from the show was when Walter threw a pizza on the roof of the house. Joanne told KOB-TV that she remembered hundreds of pizza boxes and prop pizzas lining the sidewalk in case Cranston had to redo the scene. Fortunately for the pizza, he nailed it on the first try, and the rest was history.

She said as her parents grew older, it became more difficult to protect them from crowding fans who first started appearing around 2006 when the show first aired. They even installed a metal fence and security cameras.

Her parents passed away recently, leaving Joanne and her siblings with the easy decision to sell. They’ve listed it for $4 million.

When you think about Happy Days, the Fonz probably comes to mind first but the show was loaded with great characters. Those collectible glasses from Pizza Hut did a good job highlighting them…and so does today’s trivia ;)

Have a great day ahead Staker!

Trivia courtesy of funtrivia.com. Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.