It’s easy to see why the start of the year is a slow time for restaurants. Diners tend to stay home and cook not only because the weather’s cold, but because they probably have yet to pay off the credit card debt accrued via holiday season splurges. To spur on business during the early year doldrums, restaurants resort to specially priced deals. These can be seen at the market’s low end, with cheap fast food promotions popping up every January, and at the high end as well—with cities all over North America hosting annual Restaurant Weeks.
A market for ultra-cheap homes has emerged in cities around the U.S., and the result is that in many cases it’s much less expensive to buy a house than it would be to purchase a new car.
One year after car-sharing service Zipcar was introduced in Baltimore, the company conducted a survey to find out what life on the road has been like since members joined the program. The results are probably what you’d expect—folks are in cars less, much less likely to buy cars, and more likely to walk, bike, and [...]
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Divorced couples are living under the same roof because it’s too expensive to really split up right now. There are either more people around the house (because they’re out of work) or fewer people around the house (because they’re working second and third jobs to pay bills and get health coverage). More people are doing their own chores and giving maid services and landscapers the boot. And other big and little ways the recession is affecting home life.
