?? What the bleep’s happening to air travel?

Bad news travels fast and it seems that worldwide jet setters have taken off on a bumpy ride in 2022. From global airport chaos, soaring airfares due to surging fuel prices, thousands of flight cancellations, to snaking security queues and luggage loaded onto the wrong plane; it’s getting in-tents! ??? Oh, and airline worker and pilot shortages while they retrain. ?? ?? And that’s before anyone wrestles to jam their bag into the overhead locker and tucks into their in-flight, shall we say, meal??

But that’s not the only thing hitting turbulence for pent-up pandemic passengers. With flight costs staying, well, unpredictable, airfare prediction apps are going ‘haywire’. Big data travel tools, like Skyscanner, owned by Trip.com (TCOM), Google Flights (GOOG, GOOGL), and Kayak, owned by Booking Holdings (BKNG), which help people predict the cheapest time to buy tickets, are dealing with a conveyor belt of woes in the never-ending pandemic.?

This is a problem because these machine learning apps might be flying blind. They rely on airline analysts to set airfares by anticipating ‘who will want to go where when’ using historical data and, erm, their shiny crystal ball? ?? But because airlines also look to other airlines to keep their prices competitive, and airfare prediction algorithms juggle all the data, apps getting price predictions right for passengers is looking to be a flight of fancy in the short term. ?? Even Kiwis planning summer travel might need to buckle in and book now so they don’t end up missing their yuletide joy.

But the airline industry is far from grounded. Commentator Lou Whiteman reckons while US airlines didn’t get off to a flying start this spring, and some airlines have more baggage than others - carrying sky high debt - the industry will ‘continue to fly through the economic turbulence’, even if it’s taking a little longer to get off the ground. ?? So, for those ready to brace it, mask up and have a nice flight! ??

Teens clueless about money ??

Might be time to have that chat with your teens. ?? A new Fidelity study on teens showed that they’re pretty clueless when it comes to money. Almost half of teenagers felt investing was ‘out of reach’ and only one third said they regularly discussed the topic with their parents. True, most teenagers hate talking to their parents… ugh, as if! but since most teens look up to family members as financial role models, teens that do talk with their parents about investing say they are twice as confident with investing as those that don’t. So time for a teen money makeover? ??

With investing, history shows us that the earlier we can start putting money to work in the share markets the better to allow compounding returns to work their magic. Investing GOAT, Warren Buffett started investing as a tween, aged just 11. This kid started when he was 8, building a US$250,000 portfolio by age 19.?

It’s way harsh being a teenager today, dealing with Covid, relationships, rollin’ with the homies and getting stuck in swings without adding totally buggin’ about money into the mix. That’s a big problem in New Zealand too, where half of Kiwi teens feel like such boneheads when it comes to money, saying they learn little or nothing about money at school. How’s that for a ‘not-achieved’? So word to parents, guardians and mentors, it might pay to go couch commando and have that chat. Especially to females. The study found that teen girls were less likely than teen boys to have talked to their folks about investing, and more likely to say they have no knowledge of researching investments. ??

Investing platforms (oh, hey there! ??) make it more accessible than ever to start, or at least start the conversation. If you’ve seen teens queue for tech gadgets, gaming consoles or fresh kicks, with ear plugs in while fueling up on energy drinks and fast food, then you know teens get brands. These can make for #relatable convo starters about companies listed on the share markets. Kids know their Nike from their Adidas, PPS4 from Xbox One, choose Spotify or Apple, know Marvel vs DC, and Burger King from their Maccas, and they can search on Google from their tablet, smartphone, PC or Mac. So kick off the convo! ??

Worker robots have zero chill ??

Matariki celebrations are just around the corner with the new and very much needed national holiday on June 24 and another 4-day work week to add to the calendar. But what about a 4-day work week every week? Kiwi non-profit Autonomy thinks it’s the way to go. The group has started the world’s biggest 4-day work experiment in the UK with more than 70 companies trialling 32-hour work weeks for six months, without cutting pay. Where do we sign up! ??

The idea sounds great, in theory. In practice, a 4-day work week can come with gnarly challenges. For service companies like Starbucks (SBUX) or Burger King (QSR) that need to stay open throughout the week, a 4-day work week means hiring extra staff or paying more in overtime. At a time when companies are already suffering severe worker shortages, and inflation hitting 40-year highs, that seems especially… tricky? Let’s just hope we can work it out before the robots take over. Sales of industrial robots in North America rocketed 28% in the first quarter of 2022 and as Google’s AI becomes creepily human, could they soon be filling the gap?

Meanwhile, a lot of corporate managers have been demanding their human employees march back to the office like lemmings, something the managers themselves don’t appear to want to do. #zerochill. Perhaps that’s why Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has threatened to sack Tesla executives who don’t show up for 40 hours a week in the office. Musk can’t have seen the memo from Airbnb (ABNB) CEO Brian Chesky whose ‘work from anywhere’ policy has seen the company flooded with more than 1 million visits to their job website. At least Apple’s trying to find a balance between the two. CEO Tim Cook says Apple (AAPL) is running ‘the mother of all experiments’ and trying to find a happy middle ground between WFH and WF-UFO. ??

We’re not financial advisors and Hatch news is for your information only. However dazzling our writing, none of it is a recommendation to invest in any of the companies or funds mentioned. If you want support before making any investment decisions, consider seeking financial advice from a licensed provider. We’ve done our best to ensure all information is current when we pushed ‘publish’ on this article. And of course, with investing, your money isn’t guaranteed to grow and there’s always a risk you might lose money.