Finance's personal finance focus show, helping you think about your money holistically and comprehensively.
So if nothing happens in terms of new legislation with taxes, we are going to go back to what the tax laws were, were for individuals that is of what it was in 2016.Now, the big picture here is is that Trump is talking about more tax cuts specifically that he wants to make the individual tax cuts permanent from back in 2017.He said that he does not want to tax tips from those who work in service industries.
If you will, what is, what is the signal and, and what are some of the larger items that could roll off that reframe that household, uh, financial balance if you will? There's a real reluctance to commit to big discretionary purchases as more Americans are piling on credit card debt. There's around 50,000 products and growing that we have in our catalog and that accounts to around $280 billion worth of goods in us households.
We, we want to get something out there and we believe we did get something out there that customers love and that customers love to use. And while the A I fueled rally has pushed broader markets to new heights this year, let's not forget about some of the other that could enhance your portfolio here with more is Jeremiah Buckley, who is the Janice Henderson Investors, portfolio manager.I mean, there's been so much crowding into the tech trade, especially within the theme of generative A I.So uh one example would be health care.
Yeah, so the market has certainly been more aggressive and so the two sectors that you name are are certainly more defensive sectors. You, you also mentioned travel a moment ago, one of my favorite sectors to talk about here and continue to track when you look across what the difficulties are for maintaining margins right now.
Um We think those are better business models than the airlines, but obviously the airlines are an important aspect of making sure that we have enough supply.Um As far as the airlines, I think we're seeing differentiated results between the domestic focused airlines as well as the global airlines.Uh I think we're back to a normal trend line in the US.
Um So there are some steps you can take first is to review your bill, do your due diligence, make sure everything is making sense, contact that hospital, see if you can come up with some type of payment plan or good faith payment so that it does not hit your credit report. The drop in sales activity also leading to an uptick in available inventory, which means more homes are sitting on the market.We wanna just get your broad read here on what we're seeing in the housing market, considering some of the moves that we're now tracking both week over week on the mortgage rate side and then month, over month on the sales side as well.This higher for longer interest rate environment is weighing on potential buyers.
So this kind of longer uh time frame of high interest rates is really starting to take a toll on the housing market.It, it's, it's a great question because uh we were expecting interest rates to be lower by the second half of this year.So we do expect one rate cut in December, which will help bring overall mortgage rates to perhaps around 6.5 by the end of the year.But unfortunately, those days are behind us barring any sort of crisis or anything that would require rates to go back down.
But they've been really benefiting from the tight supply in the resale market by being able to build homes, offer mortgage rate buy down instead of the 7% in the market, they might offer something like six or 5.5. But of course, as mortgage rates come down, more sellers will start to, you know, re-enter the market.So if mortgage rates come down, people feel less, uh, constricted by that lock in effect, uh, we will have more of that balance where newly built homes could be more of that share of the market, let's say 20% rather than the 35 or so we've seen lately, the World Trade Organization, the WTO as you know, them in your hood kicked off its 40th Geneva Week on Tuesday.
Actually, now we are serving more than 200,000 of suppliers all over the world and we are serving more than let's say 50 million of the SME S as buyers all over the world. So we are heavily investing on the other technology side and we want to using the technology to empower the SME.One is A I to using A I, we can improve the efficiency for both buyers and sellers and also transform our platform from a kind of sourcing engine to a creative engine.The meaning that when the buyer buy a product or source a product from alibaba.com, we will take care of all the logistics of the extra payment financing services as well as after sales services.
But we are back to the fundamentals is the demand of supplies, how to provide all the buyers with a variety of supplies, high quality with a competitive price and delivering time. So always find the better supplies with better kind of price and adding together is a kind of uh competitive uh strength for the supplier side.
You're seeing rates of travel and rates cost rates way higher than 2019, which was already a record year and we're not really seeing any slowdown. And remember when you check a bag, use your phone, take a photograph of it before it leaves your hands because you'd be surprised how bad we are at describing things.59% of people who are not saving for retirement think they are according to Principal Financial Group and often times changes in the process could mean that you're losing out on some cash or benefits.Uh excuse me, the author of the new book, the Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks Ladder.
So imagine if you starting a job or in a job and you, you have years, you know, young people have time on their side. What generation would you say is the best equipped or prepared for retirement because of some of the, the strategies that can be employed right now.Actually, I was gonna say Gen X and the millennials, I guess that's gen Y or whatever it is because they have time on them on their hands.
And so with that date in mind, I mean, what kind of forgiveness could we potentially see if everyone who qualifies does apply? So as part of this payment count adjustment, they're going to count the exact number of payments in an economic hardship deferment since 2013, plus the number of deferments of the monthly deferments that bar was in prior to 2013 for any deferment other than an in school or grace period after graduation.So, i it's borrowers who have the old uh ffel loans, the Federal Family Education loan program, also known as the Guaranteed student loan program, those loans.
And he made those programs more efficient through government data matches such as or the disability discharge comparing us Department of Education's loan database against the veteran administration or dod database to identify service members who had a uh were discharged with a 100% disabling service related condition which qualifies to have their student loans forgiven.
Now with his plan B, he is trying to use the waiver authority in the Higher Education Act in 1965 to provide a collection of targeted loan forgiveness programs. An Emergency Room Visit In Spain While On Vacation Highlighted Some Shocking Differences Between Healthcare In The US And ElsewherePresident Joe Biden on Friday addressed his poor performance in Thursday's presidential debate, just hours after he faltered on stage in his matchup against former President Donald Trump.