News - Friday, December 11, 2020

As 22-year-old Inbal Lev celebrated the first night of Hanukkah in Chattanooga, she was half the world away from her family and home in Israel.

It could have been a sad occasion, but instead of dwelling on the loved ones she misses, Lev offered her iridescent smile to dozens of Jewish people who live in the Scenic City.

It’s that time of year again – the time for gathering with family and friends, for Hallmark Christmas movies and for eating until you’re about to burst.

It’s also time to announce Chattanooga’s 2020 Mid-South Super Lawyers and Rising Stars.

The end of 2020 can’t come soon enough for most people, but some aren’t quite ready to say goodbye.

For them, a federal eviction moratorium that expires Dec. 31 is all that’s keeping them in their apartments. The moratorium, which doesn’t cover all renters and doesn’t stop all evictions, doesn’t erase back rent and fees, but it means there are roofs over people’s heads, at least till Dec. 31.

Hope Brazzell was dutifully earning a regular paycheck when an unexpected phone call shook up her workaday existence.

One minute, she was serving in a support role for a general contractor in Nashville, and the next, Keller Williams Realtor and investor Bill Haggard was inviting her to take a sharp left turn.

The National Association of Realtors just released some interesting numbers. Nationally, the average number of pending home sales (homes in the process of being sold) fell slightly in October. However, one area of the country saw increased sales: The South.

Now, more than ever, getting fresh air and spending time outside the home is important for the health and well-being of Chattanooga-area families.

Even before the pandemic, the demand for outdoor living space was steadily growing. A majority of homebuyers (87%) ranked the patio among the top essential features in a home, according to a recent analysis from the National Association of Home Builders.

By almost any measure, it was not a good week for the Tennessee Titans.

On the field, they were dismantled in the first half by Baker Mayfield and the Cleveland Browns, who rolled up a 31-point intermission lead and coasted to a 41-35 victory.

First down: Don’t sleep on the Jaguars. They’re not winning games, but they have been giving their opponents fits in recent contests.

The Vikings needed overtime Sunday to win at home, and recently the Jaguars have played close games against both the Texans and Packers.

Longtime First Things First CEO Julie Baumgardner will step down in January after accepting a leadership position with the WinShape Foundation. The FTF board of trustees has tapped communications director Lauren Hall to serve as interim CEO while it conducts a national search. The search will include internal and external candidates. Before joining FTF in 2015, Hall worked for The Johnson Group.

Siskin Hospital has opened an outpatient therapy services clinic in Hixson. The new clinic, located at Northgate Mall, provides rehabilitation therapy services to patients north of the river.

“The renovated space provides for private treatment areas and exercise equipment,” says Ross Von Glahn, clinic manager. “With physical, occupational and speech therapy, we’ll address orthopedic and neurologic conditions, among others, with the same level of quality people have come to expect from Siskin.”

Have your retirement plans changed because of COVID-19? If so, you have plenty of company.

Nearly 40% of those planning to retire say the pandemic has disrupted their intentions, according to the Edward Jones/Age Wave Four Pillars of the New Retirement study. You might have been thinking about retiring early – can you still do so?

I’m a “be-prepared” kind of person. I like having money in the bank and a good stock of emergency supplies.

But I wasn’t prepared to see empty shelves at the supermarket, thousands of cars lined up at a Texas food bank or nurses dressed in garbage bags because there wasn’t enough protective equipment.

The importance of money has less to do with affording the newest iPhone or measuring career success and far more to do with the core of being human: Freedom, ego, stress and relationships.

How we use and think about money – not just accumulating lots of it – literally can determine our happiness during the roughly 30,000 days many of us are privileged to be alive.

The COVID-19 pandemic initially slowed car sales, but now many new-car buyers are making more expensive purchases than ever before, sales data from Edmunds reveals.

The average transaction price for a new car in the third quarter of 2020 was slightly more than $39,000, with payments averaging almost $570 per month. That’s a price increase of about $2,000 from 2019.

Hand sanitizer... check. Soap and water, yup. Some of that dry soap they sell for camping, yeah, you’ve got that, too.

In today’s world, you can never be too safe or clean, and so you take steps. But in the new book “Big Dirty Money” by Jennifer Taub, there are some corners of the world that need a whole lot more scrubbing.