Whether it’s a new car, a home renovation project, or a European vacation, many of us know the feeling of wanting something we can’t afford. After figuring out how much your dream purchase will cost you, this online calculator will translate that dollar amount into hours spent working.
As Business Insider reports, the calculator requires six numbers from its users: annual gross salary, top marginal federal tax rate, top marginal state and local tax rates, total hours worked per year, total hours spent commuting per year, and the cost of your expenditure.
You may not know all that information off-hand, but luckily there are plenty of resources online to help you figure it out. Annual gross salary should be easy enough to input—it’s your yearly salary before taxes are taken out. Your top marginal federal tax rate can be looked up at taxfoundation.org based on your income and marital status. Top marginal state and local tax rates vary based on your address, and these can also be found at taxfoundation.org. Add them together to get a single figure.
Next, enter the total number of hours you work per year (the standard for full-time employees is 2087 hours) and your total hours spent traveling to and from work annually (according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American spends 216.7 hours a year commuting).
Before you’re ready to submit, you need to calculate the cost of what it is you’re saving up for. With that bit of information, you can enter the data and see what the labor cost calculator comes up with.
Let’s say you’re single, live in Brooklyn, get paid $50,000 year, work full-time, and commute an average number of hours. According to the calculator, it would take you 78.79 hours to earn the money you need to take a $1000 vacation.
Long before Ronald Reagan became the 40th President of the United States, he was a popular actor appearing alongside Errol Flynn in Desperate Journey and co-starring with a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan’s first film, Love Is On the Air, was released in 1937, and by 1941, a poll of movie theater owners ranked him fifth among up-and-coming movie stars. And what’s a celebrity to do but give celebrity endorsements? Enjoy these 14 vintage advertisements featuring a pre-politics Ronald Reagan.
Reagan and his first wife, actress Jane Wyman appeared in a few ads together, such as a 1941 Chesterfield cigarettes ad and the above Royal Crown Cola ad in 1947. The two met on the set of the film Brother Rat in 1938 and kindled a romance during a nine-week “Stars of Tomorrow” performance tour the next year. They married in January 1940 and starred in four movies together that year, becoming fixtures in the gossip pages of movie magazines like Modern Screen and Photoplay. Reagan and Wyman separated in 1948, divorcing in 1949, and Reagan married Nancy Davis, the future First Lady, in 1952.
“‘Pipe this!’ cries Ronald.” Apparently, Marlboro shirts feature “Soft-as-smoke fabric,” but don’t get confused: the Marlboro Shirt Company was unrelated to the Marlboro cigarette brand, which has been produced by Philip Morris since 1924. Founded in Baltimore in 1907, the clothing company still exists and now goes by the name Marlboro Originals.
The above holiday ad appeared in the December 13, 1947 issue of the Saturday Evening Post and in the January 1948 issue of Esquire.
Despite appearing in multiple Chesterfield advertisements—like this one from 1948—Reagan did not smoke cigarettes. He did smoke a pipe, writing in his autobiography, An American Life, that he took up the habit in college because he thought it looked cool: “I’d never liked cigarettes, but I was impressed by a flurry of ads in those days in which women said, ‘I like a man who smokes a pipe.’ I’d always liked the look of someone smoking a pipe, so I saved up and bought one. But I never inhaled. I just sucked in the smoke, tasted it, and blew it out—and I only did that during the offseason, when I wasn’t playing football.”
After his brother, Neil, a two- or three-packs-a-day cigarette smoker, developed laryngeal cancer in the 1960s, Reagan quit smoking his pipe and picked up a Jelly Belly habit instead.
Campbell Soup Co. purchased V8 (then styled as V-8) in 1948 and began running a series of print advertisements for the vegetable-blend juice featuring celebrities, including both Reagan and Shirley Temple.
This advertisement appeared in the February 5, 1951 issue of Life magazine, among other places. Hair tonics—lightweight, alcohol-based hair products—were popular in the ’50s and still show up in barbershops today. Men used tonics to get a crisp part and to add shine to the hair without making it greasy. And Reagan wasn’t the only celebrity singing Jeris’s praises—Kirk Douglas also endorsed the brand.
This February 1951 ad for the Cigar Institute of America suggests that Reagan’s approach to cigars was the same as his approach to pipes: smoke, just don’t inhale.
Dating to sometime during the 1950s, this advertisement for Wildroot Cream Oil is equipped with a cardboard easel and seems to have been designed to sit in the window of a barbershop, using Reagan’s glossy hair and confident grin to draw in customers. Infused with lanolin, Wildroot is an oil-based grooming product meant to serve the same purpose as a hair tonic, with added moisturizing properties.
Reagan would become a famous General Electric spokesman, but before taking on that role, he endorsed Westinghouse appliances in this April 1953 advertisement. According to the ad (he’s third from the left along the front row), his favorite Westinghouse feature was “the Laundromat’s Weigh-to-Save Door and Water Saver.” Reagan would begin working with GE the next year.
Reagan appeared in this Van Heusen campaign in 1953, and in January 1981, the company re-ran the ad with a celebratory message in Time, Newsweek, and People magazines to congratulate Reagan on the eve of his first inauguration. Then, in 1985, Andy Warhol used this same ad as a basis for his screenprint “Van Heusen (Ronald Reagan)” in his “Ads” series.
In 1954, Reagan was hired by General Electric to host General Electric Theater, a popular CBS anthology TV show that mixed dramatic stories with advertising for GE products and the modern “electric home” more generally. It ran for two seasons without a host, then introduced Reagan in the third season to give the show a more consistent voice. At a low point in his acting career, Reagan was enticed by the offer of steady work—and a starting paycheck of $125,000.
Along with his salary, GE also turned the Reagan family’s home in the Pacific Palisades into “the most electric home in the country.” In a recurring segment, the show would “check in” with the Reagans, exploring their house as the family demonstrated and praised their “electric servants,” as they called their GE appliances. The tagline for these segments was “Live Better Electrically,” the name of a multi-million dollar campaign co-sponsored by GE and Westinghouse that aimed to sell not just specific products but the idea of a home populated with appliances and reliant on electricity. Launched in 1956, the “Live Better Electrically” campaign marketed a vision of the modern American home as an “all-electric” home—catchy jingle and all.
In this advertisement in National Geographic from 1959, Reagan touts the luxury of train travel in a Union Pacific Domeliner, a special passenger car topped with a glass dome that offered panoramic views. The Domeliner had snagged another A-list endorsement a couple of years earlier—it got the full-episode treatment on I Love Lucy when Lucy, Desi, and company took a long trip on the luxury liner (which Lucy ruined when she kept pulling the emergency brake).
This advertisement appeared in 1961 when Reagan was still presenting General Electric Theater, which he hosted the show until the following year. With Reagan at the helm, GE Theater had become a top-10 show in the Nielsen ratings between 1956-’58, and celebrities like Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, and the Marx Brothers all made guest-star appearances.
Sometimes baby sloths seem almost too adorable to be real. But the little muppet-faced treasures don’t just look cute—turns out they sound cute, too. We know what you’re thinking: How could you have gone your whole life without knowing what these precious creatures sound like? Well, fear not, because we have some footage of how the tiny mammals express themselves—and it’s a lot of squeaking. (Or maybe that’s you squealing?)
The sloths featured in this heart-obliterating video come from the Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica. The institution rescues orphaned sloths, rehabilitates them, and gets them ready to be released back into the wild.
The Legacy of Invasion of The Body Snatchers. The 1956 movie’s “creeping paranoia and isolation” still gives us chills today.
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5 Physical Problems Doctors Fix With Glue. It beats duct tape hands down.
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15 Things You Didn’t Know AboutSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The 1938 movie changed everything for Disney.
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Demand for tiger products is threatening the wild tiger population. Even farmed tigers contribute to the problem.
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17 People Who Had The Worst Valentine’s Day Ever. Even if yours is disappointing, it should be relatively nice.
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The World’s Smallest Porpoise Inches Closer To Extinction. There Are Now Just 30 Of Them Left.
* The dead-bird detective. Pepper Trail is a criminal forensic ornithologist.
* Periodic Tableware. This was my first post at mental_floss, published ten years ago today.
This winter, consider building a snölykta in the front yard instead of a snowman. The traditional Swedish lanterns are made from dozens of individual snowballs, piled into a hollow pyramid. Stick some LED lights inside before sealing the top, and enjoy the cozy glow from the comfort of your warm home (preferably while sipping a mug of hot chocolate).
Learn how to make your own snölykta by watching the timelapse video above, created by Daniel Troger.
In Istanbul, the cat is king. The city is famous for its legions of feral felines. Even though no one technically owns them, these hundreds of thousands of street cats are as well cared for as any pet—people feed them, welcome them into their shops and homes, and even bring them to the vet. The kitty culture in Istanbul is notable enough that the Turkish city’s magical relationship with its feline residents is the subject of a new documentary, Kedi. And yes, it puts all other cat videos on Earth to shame.
Kedifollows seven street cats on their daily jaunts through the city, exploring their social lives and encounters with their favorite human friends. The documentary takes a cat’s-eye view of the city: The camera tracks low along the ground, eye-to-eye with the film’s feline stars as they roam the streets, following them into cafes, up onto rooftops, and down to the waterfront. Most have several human allies who care for them and whom they visit every day.
In interviews, these caretakers often meditate on the fiercely independent nature of the cats living around them. One compares being friends with a cat to communicating with aliens. Most of the interviewees call the cats that pop into their lives “friends,” rather than “pets.” The cats come and go as they please, each one with its own agenda and distinct personality. They might stop by for a bite to eat or for a round of petting, then move on to their next destination. Some stalk boldly into cafes, while others wait patiently outside for someone to bring them a snack.
Many cities have stray cats, but the people of Istanbul have an unusually friendly coexistence with their feline residents. Director Ceyda Torun, who was born and grew up in Istanbul before her family relocated to New York, attributes the city’s unique relationship to its feral cat population to its culture. “Without the cat, Istanbul would lose part of its soul,” says one resident in the film’s opening.
Cats have a special place in Islamic folklore as well, Torun tells mental_floss. In one folktale, the prophet Muhammad cuts the sleeve off his robe to avoid disturbing his sleeping cat.
More importantly, cats have been wandering the city for millennia. Founded as Byzantium in 660 BCE, Istanbul has been a major trading port for centuries. And with the ships came the cats. The oldest known remains of a domestic cat were found in nearby Cyprus, where humans have likely had feline pets for some 9500 years, and Torun says there’s evidence of Turkish cat culture dating back more than three millennia. One zoologist she spoke to—who had been collecting animal remains under the Bosporus strait—found the 3500-year-old skeleton of a cat whose broken leg had been mended by human hands.
To get a sense of just how revered Istanbul’s street cats are, consider this: In 2016, the city erected a statue by a local artist honoring a recently departed street cat, Tombili. He was so beloved (locally and on social media) that the petition for a statue of him gathered 17,000 signatures in less than two months. Street cats are welcome at mosques, in cafes, and in people’s apartments.
Torun and her crew spent three months in Istanbul finding both human and feline subjects before any filming even began. They took a two-pronged approach to their search, both roaming the streets themselves to look for cats and asking locals if there was a special cat in their neighborhood, including cats that hung out in a particularly unusual place, like a mosque or a Turkish bath. Some of the subjects, like the mother cat who stars in the first vignette—cheekily nicknamed “YellowS**t” by one shopkeeper who feeds her—were only discovered after production began.
As you might expect, cats don’t make entirely dependable film subjects. For one thing, they could get a little too excited about the cameras. At times, Torun says, “we had a hard time shooting because we had multiple cats on us rubbing their face on the camera rig.” They ended up with a lot of shots of cats “just rubbing themselves on the camera or rig or spraying things [with urine].” Luckily, once the cats had made a thorough inspection of the cameras, they tended to go back to whatever they were doing before. “We have hours and hours of footage of cats grooming themselves or sleeping. They weren’t going to perform,” Torun says.
And yet, in other ways, the cats were easier to film than you might expect. “They stick to routines,” Torun explains. “They do the same things over and over. They don’t really stray out of their territory.” All the documentary crew had to do was show up in the right places. They would come back every other day or so during the two months of shooting to see what the cats were up to. Some of them even seemed to know they were being filmed.
The cats would perform “as if they were getting instructions from me,” Torun says. The film ends on a rooftop, focused on a cat perched on a ledge as the sun sets over the city in the background. “He almost knew that we were making a movie and that was the best place,” says the director.
Torun ended up with 180 hours of footage of cats lounging around, stealing food, begging for attention, and more. The finished film, debuting in the U.S. on February 10 courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories, clocks in at an hour and 20 minutes. But if Torun decided to release those other 178-plus hours of cat videos, we wouldn’t be opposed.
Between classes, extracurriculars, and social activities, most college students have no trouble staying busy. Building credit may be low on their list of priorities, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early to start thinking about it. Being mindful of credit as a young adult can make it easier to land a car and a place to live, and secure lower interest rates on loans. Here are some steps that will set you on the path to stellar credit for the times when you need it most.
1. KNOW YOUR CREDIT SCORE.
The first step to building excellent credit is learning your credit score. Even without car payments or credit cards to pay off, anyone with student loans will have a credit history. A federal law makes it easy to check credit reports from the three main reporting agencies online. Annual reports are free, but according to a recent survey only half of college students take advantage of them. Having an idea of your credit score isn’t the only reason to check it: The report may contain mistakes or traces of fraud you weren’t aware of. Staying on top of your credit status means you can take care of any complications before they become an issue.
If you haven’t been checking your report because you’re afraid doing so will lower your score, fear not: When you check your score yourself, you’re initiating what’s called a “soft” credit inquiry. These kinds of inquiries do not have an adverse effect on your credit score—only the hard inquiries conducted by financial institutions do. (Generally speaking, a hard inquiry can only happen with your consent.)
2. FIND THE RIGHT CARD.
Contrary to popular belief, using a debit card exclusively isn’t a savvy financial move. Responsible credit card use shows credit agencies that you can be trusted to make payments on time. But deciding that you want an extra card in your wallet is half the battle—next you’ll need to narrow down your choices. First and foremost, compare the interest rates on different cards—the lower, the better. Next, consider the extras. Some companies offer cards designed for students with perks like rewards for good grades. Not every student will qualify, however—especially those without any income or bad to nonexistent credit history. If this sounds like your situation, a secured credit card may be your best bet. Cardholders are required to put down a refundable deposit to back up their line of credit; that way they can work on building credit while giving the card company some peace of mind.
3. BECOME AN AUTHORIZED USER ON SOMEONE ELSE’S ACCOUNT.
For some students, signing up for a secured card is still a big leap into adulthood. Becoming an authorized user on your parents’ account is one way to make the transition a little smoother. Authorized users aren’t the primary holders of their account, but they do receive a card of their own they can use as they like. If your parents practice responsible credit habits then your score will receive a boost as a result. But keep in mind that the reverse is also true, so this option may not be a smart fit for every family.
4. SETTLE FOR ONE CARD.
Having a credit card and actually using it are important steps towards building credit, but you don’t want to go overboard. Apply for multiple cards at once and you risk jeopardizing your credit score before it has a chance to grow. Instead, focus on dealing with one card for now with the possibility of applying for another later in life.
5. DON’T LET IT GO UNUSED.
So you successfully applied for a credit card—now comes the time to actually use it. If your card stays untouched in your wallet for months on end you’re no better off credit-wise than you were without it. But using your card wisely is a careful balancing act: You don’t want to use it for too much too often or you’ll end up in debt. Rather than breaking out your card randomly and accidentally spending beyond your means, pick one monthly expense to charge to it. This could mean gas, groceries, utilities—anything you know you’ll be able to pay off once your credit card bill arrives.
6. PAY OFF THE REST OF YOUR BILLS.
Your card payment record isn’t the only factor that can damage your credit score. Late payments made for other bills, like cable, doctors visits, and utilities, can all come back to haunt you when credit agencies are evaluating your history. Everything down to the smallest debts can have an impact, including that late fee you never paid your hometown library. Get in the habit of quickly paying what you owe early in life so it doesn’t become an issue down the road.
7. GET A CREDIT-BUILDER LOAN.
Before you’re ready to take out a loan on a house or a car, a credit-builder loan can serve as a good practice run. Like the name suggests, credit-builder loans exist to give people with little experience dealing with credit the chance to gain some. They’re usually lent out by credit unions, nonprofits, and small banks. When the customer receives the small loan (typically around $500 to $1500) it’s locked in an account until it’s repaid. A successfully paid-off account can be shown as proof to credit bureaus that you’re able to make punctual payments.
8. MAKE YOUR RENT PAYMENTS COUNT.
If you rent your place and pay your rent on time every month, consider signing up for a service that will report these payments. While this won’t impact all of your scores—different credit agencies may access different information in their calculations—this could be the boost you need in the eyes of certain lenders.
For more ideas on how to handle your debt and build financial wellness, visit Prudential.com.
Admit it. You get it wrong sometimes. I don’t care how many degrees you have, how steeped you are in the highest register of formal discourse, how vicious you are with the red pen, how many children’s wrists you have slapped with a ruler. You sometimes write there when you mean their or they’re.
Yes, you. You may catch it every time, correct it before pressing “send,” but you do it. The language just makes it so easy to do. Not only are these three words pronounced exactly the same, they are all constantly in use in everyday discourse. Wait and weight or flour and flower just aren’t as frequent. Most people aren’t going to mix those up. So there’s no reason to be especially proud of not mixing them up, or to make smug memes about them. But there/their/they’re is a cleverly laid, dastardly trap. To tout your mastery of this trio is an act of pride in your ability to skip over the trap.
So who set this trap? We did, of course, which is to say all the English speakers who came before us. First, in the earliest stages of Old English, we had the word for “there,” which was then spelled þǽr (thǽr). The word for “their” was hiera, so there was no problem telling them apart. But when Scandinavian settlers starting coming over around the year 1000, we started borrowing a few things from them, including their word for “their”: þaire (thaire).
Now we had two words with somewhat similar, but still different pronunciations and spellings. The following centuries brought a huge upheaval in English pronunciation through the Great Vowel Shift and the development of Middle and Modern English, while at the same time the spread of the printing press and literacy brought stable spelling conventions into being. Through all this, there at one point or another got the spellings thar, thaire, ther, yar, theer, thiar, and thore. Their went through its own changes with thayir, thayre, yaire, and theer. Sometimes they overlapped and had the same spellings, sometimes they didn’t, but when the dust settled and the final habits had been established, we were left with one pronunciation and two spellings.
The latest entry into the trio was they’re. People didn’t write contractions of this kind until the late 16th century, though they did say them before then. Writers began to use the apostrophe to stand for missing letters, as it does in ’tis or o’er. It couldn’t be helped that “they are” shortened into a word that sounded just like their and there. The same thing happened to I’ll/aisle and we’ve/weave, but aisle and weave didn’t show up often enough to turn the similarity into a trap.
It didn’t have to be this way. If things had gone differently, we might have ended up with one spelling for all of them, or at least for the first two. This is what happened to rose (the flower) and rose (the past tense of rise), or rock (stone) and rock (to sway). Those came from totally different words that began to be pronounced the same, and then came to be spelled the same. (Chaucer wrote of “the son that roose as rede as rose.”) Those words don’t cause any confusion, and neither would a word like ther, if that’s what we had somehow ended up with for all members of the trio.
But that’s not what we ended up with, and so we add there/their/they’re to the long list of things that make writing harder than speaking, things to keep track of, double check, and correct, lest you fall into ther traps. Ther everywhere.
Norwegian Forest cats are known for their fluffy coats, large builds, and social dispositions. Here are a few other furry facts about the Scandinavian feline.
1. THEY’RE WARRIOR CATS.
The breed’s origins are a source of mystery. Norwegian Forest cats could be related to black-and-white short-haired cats from Great Britain, which the Vikings used as mousers on their ships. But they might also be descendants of long-haired cats brought to Scandinavia by the Crusaders.
These early relatives roamed Norway’s forests, breeding with feral felines and barn cats. Over the years, they evolved into the large, dense-coated animal we know and love today.
2. THEY’RE MYTHICAL CREATURES.
Norwegian Forest cats aren’t just any pedestrian pet—they’re the stuff of legend. Norwegian myths tell of the skogkatt, a large, long-haired “mountain-dwelling fairy cat with an ability to climb sheer rock faces that other cats could not manage.” Thanks to their size, coats, and tree-climbing prowess, the Norwegian Forest cat may have served as the real-life inspiration for the skogkatt (which translates to “forest cat”).
The skogkatt was beloved by Freya, the Norse goddess of love and beauty, who some say traveled in a feline-drawn chariot. And in one Norwegian tale, Thor loses a contest of strength to the tricky god Jormungand, who’s disguised as a skogkatt. Thanks to these legends, some breeders today refer to the Norwegian Forest cat as the “Norse skogkatt.”
3. THEY’RE NORWAY’S NATIONAL CAT.
King Olaf V of Norway designated the Norwegian Forest cat the country’s national cat. No word on whether America will ever gain its own national feline, although it’s likely that Grumpy Cat will vie for the title.
4. THEY NEARLY BECAME EXTINCT.
Farmers and sailors prized the Norwegian Forest cat for its mousing skills. However, fanciers didn’t start noticing and showing the breed until the 1930s.
During World War II, attention paid toward the Norwegian Forest cat waned, and the breed came dangerously close to becoming extinct thanks to crossbreeding. However, an official breeding program helped preserve the furry cat’s lineage for future generations.
In 1977, the Norwegian Forest cat breed was officially accepted as a recognized breed by the Fédération Internationale Féline. Two years later, the first breeding pair of Norwegian Forest cats arrived in America. And in 1987, the breed was officially accepted by the Cat Fanciers’ Association.
5. THEY’RE BIG IN EUROPE.
While Norwegian Forest cats don’t crack the top 10 most popular cat breeds in America, they do have a legion of loyal fans in Europe. It’s not surprising that the breed is well-loved in—you guessed it—Scandinavia. (In fact, Norwegian Forest cats are nicknamed “Wegies,” which is short for “Norwegians.”) They’re also popular in France.
6. THEY’RE HUGE.
Norwegian Forest cats are way larger than most cats—and some small dogs, for that matter. Typical male Norwegian Forest cats can range anywhere from 13 to 22 pounds.
7. THEY HAVE BUILT-IN WINTER CLOTHES.
Although Norwegian Forest cats can be any color or pattern, they do have one thing in common: a long, double-layered coat that repels water. (They also have tufted ears and toes, which work like built-in earmuffs and boots.) These handy physical traits helped the breed survive snowy Scandinavian winters.
8. THEY’RE PRONE TO HEALTH PROBLEMS.
Sadly, Norwegian Forest cats aren’t as hardy as their ancient Viking owners. They’re prone to hereditary heart problems, hip dysplasia, and a condition called glycogen storage disease type IV, which causes a harmful build-up of a complex sugar called glycogen in the body’s cells.
9. THEY’RE RELATED TO MAINE COONS.
With their big bodies and bushy tails, the Maine Coon and the Norwegian Forest cat look like cousins. Appearances aren’t deceiving. Genetic testing indicates that the Maine Coon is descendent of both the Norwegian Forest Cat and an unknown—and now-extinct—domestic breed.
Can’t tell the two apart? Look at their features. Norwegian Forest cats have a triangle-shaped face, whereas Maine Coons have a wedge-shaped head with high cheekbones.
10. THEY’RE GREAT TREE-CLIMBERS.
Ever seen a cat run down a tree headfirst? If you have, it was most likely a Norwegian Forest cat. The cats have sturdier claws than most breeds, allowing them to achieve impressive climbing feats.
