ISAS is celebrating 20 years of service with a banquet May 10.
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Car, truck and motorcycle enthusiasts are invited to the fourth annual Watseka FFA Auto Show Saturday.
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The Watseka Warriors baseball team defeated the Iroquois West Raiders on Tuesday night. The final score was 5-3.
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Coaches Jeff Sobkoviak and Ryan Morefield are this months ‘Unsung Hero’. While the two are fairly new to Milford’s program, they are no stranger to the game of baseball. Sobkoviak, who was dra…
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The Watseka Warriors and Milford Bearcats baseball and softball teams each played double headers against each other on Saturday morning.
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Milford High School Lady Bearcats senior basketball player Emma Morts recently signed on to play college basketball at Kankakee Community College in Kankakee.
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The Watseka freshmen/sophomore boys track and field team finished in sixth place at the PBL Invite last night.
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Business Name: Art & Zen Boutique
A local business and local businessman will be honored at the Watseka Area Chamber of Commerce annual banquet May 1.
Business name: Blue Agave Tacos & Tequila
Federated Bank recently welcomed Michael Breisch as a senior vice president of lending. Breisch will be responsible for managing personal, consumer, and commercial loans, according to a news release.
The Board of Directors of Federated Bank has announced the appointment of Craig Gocken to serve on the Board of Directors, according to a news release. Gocken retired from Federated Bank, where he served as senior vice president and senior commercial lending officer since April of 2010.
Uptown Normal – Several streets in uptown Normal will be closed parts of Saturday for the Rock the Block street party from 4 to 9 p.m.
LITTLE VALLEY — State Supreme Court Justice Dennis Ward heard a third Election Law case in a Little Valley courtroom Thursday.
CHICAGO — Severe weather and flooding across the Midwest took its toll on Archer Daniels Midland Co.'s first-quarter results, the company reported Friday.
When the state Legislature passed the California Consumer Privacy Act last year, it touched a match to a tinderbox of concerns about how much of our personal information is outside the protection of federal laws. Now companies of all kinds are lining up to support federal data-privacy rules - so long as those would preempt the CCPA and any similar state privacy laws. That upsets some privacy ...
ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — St. Bonaventure University is hosting a free public presentation Wednesday, by Dr. Leonard Rodberg on the economic costs and benefits of setting up a single-payer healthcare system for New York state.
I have the good luck to spend part of the winter in Arizona, specifically Cave Creek, a small town located ten miles north of Phoenix. There’s only one major thoroughfare, the four-lane Cave Creek Highway, which is essentially Main Street. It runs into Carefree, a city of similar size, but i…
To the Editor,
Each year the Times-Republic has the honor of recognizing people in the community for the charitable work they do.
The value of journalism’s watchdog role for a community has been touted for decades.
Illinois House honors Marvin and Sharon Perzee
WATSEKA – The Illinois House of Representatives has adopted a resolution congratulating Jim and Nancy Reynolds of Iroquois County on their success with Freedom Hill Farms, one of the largest h…
Few things get people more fired up than rivalries between states. State lines become battlegrounds over sports, economics, culture ... and credit scores?
A credit score comparison may not have the same intensity as a college football game, but we're Americans. We make everything a competition.
So, who's number one in high credit scores? According to the latest Experian State of Credit report, Minnesota tops the list with a 709 average on the VantageScore scale (ranging from 300 to 850).
The report, released in 2018 using data from 2017, shows strong regional blocks of credit score trends.
Nine of the top ten credit score states are located in either the upper Midwest or the Northeast. Behind Minnesota, the top credit scores are Vermont (702...
10 Best States To Live In With A Bad Credit Score
What's your credit card balance right now? If it's zero, congratulations! You aren't contributing to America's record $870 billion in outstanding credit card balances.
According to Q4 2018 data from the Federal Reserve, we have just over $1.05 trillion in total revolving debt, with $870 billion of that as credit card debt. We've topped the previous credit card peak set in late 2008, thanks in part to a proliferation of new cards. Almost 480 million credit cards are in circulation as of the end of 2018 – over 100 million more than when total credit card accounts bottomed out in 2010.
Credit card balances increased by $26 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018, the highest quarterly increase of all the household debt categories including mortgages, student loans, and auto loans. Total credit card debt remains below the other three categories, but the increase merits attention – because we aren't handling our credit card debts as well as we could.
Approxima...
Is Your City Suffering From High Credit Card Debt?
Choosing a Debt Payoff Strategy
Nearly 1 In 4 Feel They'll Never Escape From Significant Debt
You're happy with your favorite credit card. You've used it for years and years. Why would you consider changing to a different one?
Card loyalty is a popular attitude in America, according to a new poll from CreditCards.com. Approximately 3 in 10 Americans – nearly 53 million consumers – have never changed their primary credit card. Another 16 million consumers haven't switched cards in the last ten years. Only one-third of cardholders have changed their most-used credit card in the last three years, and only 15% swapped out their most-used card within the past year.
Credit card loyalty is getting stronger. The previous year's poll found that nearly 49 million consumers (29% of Americans) never change their primary card
Millions Of Americans Using Outdated Credit Cards
If you're dealing with credit card debt, you know high interest rates make it difficult to get ahead. Even when you're staying on top of your minimum payments, it can take a long time to make a dent in your principal.
Financial gurus usually promote one of two approaches to paying off debt: the Debt Snowball and the Debt Avalanche methods.
The Debt Avalanche method prioritizes paying down the debt with the highest interest first, while the Snowball method focuses on paying the smallest balance first. The Debt Avalanche method results in greater savings, but the Debt Snowball method brings a psychological "win" that can be quite motivating.
A lesser-known approach, the Debt Spiral method, combines the benefits of each.
The Debt Spiral Method: How it Works
Rather than ...
It's another lean financial month. You'll be lucky just to make the minimum payment on your credit card bill. Should you wait until you can pay a larger portion of your bill, or pay what you can on time?
In a recent WalletHub survey, almost 16% of respondents said they expected to miss at least one credit card payment in 2019, equating to over forty million people nationwide. That's the wrong answer to the above question.
It's far better to make a partial credit card payment on time than it is to delay payment. Not only will you incur late fees (typically in the $20-$40 range) per missed payment, you'll also temporarily lose your grace period. Grace periods keep interest charges from the beginning until the end of the monthly payment cycle. Without a grace period, interest accrues from the time of purchase.
You may also incur a penalty annual percentage rate (APR) that's h...
Not Paying Credit Cards – A Timeline to Avoid
Fourth-year Homer-Center track and cross country coach Brandon Payne can’t seem to stand still for very long.
Jody Rainey, principal of Homer-Center High School, admits his viewpoint on academics might sound to some a little radical for an educator.
Understand your child's actions and reinforce positive behavior
Organ donation is probably the furthest thing from your mind … unless you’re on a wait list for an organ replacement. Then it becomes literally a matter of life and death.
Speech — even in this age of social media — is still humanity's most important means of communication. The spoken word is the way the vast majority of people on our planet express their wants and needs.
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Highlights of this day in history: The Chernobyl nuclear accident; John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln's assassin, killed; Guernica bombed in the Spanish Civil War; Vermont enacts same-sex civil unions; TV star Lucille Ball dies. (April 26)
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Sri Lankan police said Thursday that the alleged leader of the Easter attacks died in the blast at the Shangri-La hotel, one of six hotels and churches targeted in the bombings that left more than 250 people dead. It was the first official confirmation of the death of Mohammed Zahran, a radical Quran teacher who was pictured in a video of the purported bombers released ...
Few companies singularly affect the U.S. economy more than Boeing. The largest aerospace company in the world, Boeing boasts more than 150,000 employees and has annual sales of more than $100 billion. It's the largest segment of the Dow Jones industrial average, and on Wednesday, it reported a drop in earnings that is costing the company at least $1 billion. In the first quarter of 2019, ...
Thursday, the Washington Post reported North Korea's temerity to bill the United States $2 million for American student Otto Warmbier's "medical care" he supposedly received while in Pyongyang's custody. Only after a U.S. envoy signed the invoice - apparently at the direction of President Trump - did Pyongyang actually release the deteriorating Warmbier. Recall that, for the supposedly ...
This is unnerving: The New York Times and CNN report President Donald Trump's top staff wouldn't relay officials' fears about Russia using social media disinformation campaigns to interfere in the 2020 election because Trump sees such warnings as a comment on the legitimacy of his 2016 election. Yes, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has denied the accounts. But the president's ...
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