Americans said it will be harder to meet their financial goals in 2024 because of the increased living costs, a latest survey said. 

Six in 10 respondents said they would end the year overspending beyond what they budgeted, and 47% expected to miss their financial goals primarily because of high inflation and increasing costs, according to Bread Financial's survey. Moreover, 57% said that meeting financial objectives in 2024 would be more challenging than the previous year, with 64% citing rising costs as the main reason. 

Although inflation has been moderating, prices for most things continue to trend high, putting a strain on consumers' pocketbooks. On an annual basis, the Consumer Price Index – a measure of inflation – rose 3.1% in November, and Core CPI, which excludes more volatile food and energy prices, held steady at 4%. Americans continue to pay high prices for essentials like food, shelter and insurance.

In addition to dealing with high costs, the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates since March last year, pushing the federal funds rate to a 22-year high of 5.25% to 5.5% to slow the economy and lower soaring inflation to a 2% target rate. The stricter monetary policy stance has impacted how much consumers pay to borrow, pushing rates on auto loans, credit cards and mortgages to unmanageable levels.

If high inflation is keeping you from meeting your financial goals, you could consider taking out a personal loan to pay down debt at a lower interest rate, reducing your monthly payments. You can visit Credible to find your personalized interest rate without affecting your credit score.

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Americans manage by doing these three things

Americans are counteracting the challenges of higher living costs by budgeting, cutting back on expenses and paying down debt, the survey said.

Forty-eight percent of Baby Boomers planned to trim spending, and 39% said they would reduce debt to meet their financial goals in 2024. Twenty-nine percent of Millennials and 30% of Gen Z planned to save for a significant purchase like a home or car, while 40% of Millennials and 35% of Gen Z are focused on improving their credit score. 

"The new year is a perfect time for consumers to take stock of their financial goals and plan for the next year," Bread Financial SVP and chief marketing officer Nick Antonelli said. "This research shows the importance of focusing on financial wellness and prioritizing a strong foundation in the coming year."

If you're struggling with making your monthly payments and managing your budget, you could consider paying off high-interest debt such as credit cards with a personal loan. Visit Credible to speak with a personal loan expert and get your questions answered.

HOMEOWNERS COULD SAVE TENS OF THOUSANDS IN DAMAGES BY USING SMART DEVICES

Homeownership dream unaffordable

High mortgage rates, high home prices and a limited housing supply have all contributed to a tough housing market that many homebuyers find unaffordable. Roughly 63% of Americans said they can't afford a home, with 87% of Gen Zers and 62% of Millennials unable to afford a home today, according to a recent survey by IPX1031.

Despite homebuyers' challenges, 13% of Americans plan to buy a new home in 2024, the survey said. Here are some steps you can take to make the dream of homeownership a reality:

Boost buying power by improving your credit

Buyers can save additional money on home financing by understanding and improving their credit profile. A Zillow analysis showed that borrowers with an "excellent" credit score — between 760 and 850 — could be saving up to $103,626 in mortgage interest payments over the life of a 30-year fixed-rate loan, based on a typical home priced at $354,165. 

Know what you can realistically afford

Having a realistic goal for the type of home you can afford can help set you up for success. That figure should include all-in monthly costs instead of looking at list prices.

Zillow recommended that buyers start with a mortgage calculator and affordability tools to understand what goes into a mortgage payment and what they can realistically afford on a monthly basis.  

If you're ready to shop around for a mortgage loan, you can use the Credible marketplace to help you easily compare interest rates from multiple mortgage lenders and get prequalified in minutes.

MORTGAGE LOAN LIMIT RISES ABOVE $1.1M AS HOME PRICES SURGE

Have a finance-related question, but don't know who to ask? Email The Credible Money Expert at moneyexpert@credible.com and your question might be answered by Credible in our Money Expert column.

It was the reality TV scandal to end all scandals. So earth-shaking that it got its own hashtag: #Scandoval. 

In early March, just a few episodes into the tenth season of Vanderpump Rules, it was sensationally revealed that Tom Sandoval — the worm-mustached cover-band lead and minority-stake West Hollywood bar owner — and Rachel (formerly Raquel) Leviss had been engaged in a secret months-long affair, all behind the back of Sandoval’s then-girlfriend, Ariana Madix, and their co-stars. Leviss — the retired pageant girl-turned-backstabber — had been recently linked to Sandoval’s best friend and business partner, the unlovable divorcé Tom Schwartz. She was also recently engaged to their co-star and friend, James Kennedy, a British DJ with serious anger issues. It was complicated and messy.

The scandal generated a stream of content: Podcasts, merch, interviews and deep-dives. All the while, fans dissected every detail of the “pre-Scandoval” episodes, open-mouthed at the giant secret no one else could see. By the end of the three extended reunion episodes, Sandoval and Leviss were confirmed as two of the year’s biggest reality TV villains.

2023 has been the year of the reality TV villain. But after a dramatic (and dark) few years, it feels like our perception of on-screen villainy is changing. In the right circumstances, is being a reality TV villain becoming a badge of honor?

Way back in January, The Traitors — a new reality TV franchise where contestants play a game of deceit in a Scottish castle, hosted by Alan Cumming — arrived on Peacock. The aim of this game is simple: Lie to as many people as possible in order to win $250,000. Kate Chastain, Below Deck’s antagonistic former chief stew, became the show’s antihero and main disrupter. She didn’t win, but by playing a villain caricature, she won over the audience.

More recently, E!’s House of Villains brought together ten of reality TV’s most infamous villains and made them live together and compete to be the “last villain standing,” all for a cash prize of $200,000 and the title of “America’s Ultimate Supervillain.” (What an accolade, right?) Contestants included Tiffany “New York” Pollard, Vanderpump Rules star Jax Taylor, and former Trump aide and Apprentice winner Omarosa. On Squid Game: The Challenge, the high-budget Netflix game show drew inspiration from its fictional forebear. But it included additional “tests” — conflict-provoking situations which saw the contestants stab each other in the back, often reveling in doing so.

Outside of game-show formats, 2023 has seen a return of good old-fashioned personal betrayal. On their eponymous Hulu show, the Kardashians showed us the fallout from Tristan Thompson’s various betrayals of Khloé Kardashian — including fathering a child with another woman at the same time as the former couple were expecting a son via surrogate. (Yeesh.) Elsewhere, Southern Charm had its own Scandoval-lite drama, when Austen Kroll kissed Taylor Ann Green. (She was good friends with his ex, Olivia Flowers, and the former girlfriend of his pal, Shep Rose.) Fans are currently watching the drama unfold as the show airs.

On Netflix’s bizarre influencer dating show Love is Blind, it was revealed that two of the contestants had previously dated and were hiding this from the rest of the group. (Crucially, their romantic matches on the show had no idea either.) In very messy scenes, Uche Okoroha implied that Lydia Velez was obsessed with him, and he was branded a “narcissist” and a “gaslighter” before dramatically no-showing to the reunion.

On Bravo’s much-anticipated Real Housewives of New York reboot, fans were introduced to six new women — ‘wives who better represent New York’s elite today. Real estate agent Erin Lichy and influencer Sai De Silva ended up coming across as mean girls in the first season as they repeatedly came for co-star Jessel Taank’s marriage after she had bravely shared her fertility and intimacy issues. But all was resolved (and forgiven) by the end of the reunion when the cast hugged it out. 

Perhaps this is what defines the 2023 reality TV villain: A shot at redemption. Compared to some of the scandals we’ve seen in latest years, these issues are relatively low-stakes. The last few years of the Real Housewives franchise have seen a whole other level of drama, where FBI swat teams showing up to arrest cast members suddenly became part of the canon. 

In 2022, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah pleaded guilty to leading a nationwide telemarketing scam, before being sentenced to six and a half years behind bars. Tom Girardi, the estranged husband of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne, was also accused of stealing money from vulnerable clients — including plane crash victims and orphans — to fund he and his wife’s lavish lifestyle. And on Housewives spin-off Vanderpump Rules, there was Randall Emmett: The film producer and former boyfriend of Lala Kent was accused of fraud, racial discrimination, and sexual misconduct. (He denies the claims, which were also chronicled in Hulu’s The Randall Scandal: Love, Loathing, and Vanderpump.)

Generally, we seem to have embraced more personal reality TV storylines this year, rather than seismic true crime-style legal scandals. Right now, RHOBH fans are watching the lead-up to Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky’s separation after 27 years of marriage, which makes for captivating (and heartbreaking) viewing. Summer House fans are eagerly anticipating the next season, where they will see the aftermath of Carl Radke and Lindsay Hubbard’s broken-off engagement, called off just weeks before they were due to wed. (The breakup was caught on camera, because of course it was.) It feels like the reality medium is pivoting back to familiar territory: Conflict and resolution in romantic relationships and friendships.

Many of 2023’s reality TV villains have been easier to watch — and even celebrate? — because whatever they’ve done is nowhere near as bad as the (literal) crime scandals we’d become accustomed to. Whether it’s shady Housewives going below the belt in their confessionals, or even something as shocking as Sandoval and Leviss’s affair, these people have made mistakes, sure, but they’ve not exactly defrauded the elderly or stolen from plane crash victims. Their personal failings — lying, cheating, backstabbing, bitching — have at least created good TV, if nothing else.

Besides, one of the eternal realities of reality TV is that the line between hero and villain is very thin. If they can lean into it, and if they’re entertaining enough, the biggest villains can still hold out hope for a moment of redemption. Even Tom Sandoval. 

Developers at the University of Maryland are using a holographic camera to capture people’s movements in three dimensions for what could be high-impact training, education and entertainment. It’s technology with the power to transform how we learn and entertain ourselves. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. VOA footage and video editing by Adam Greenbaum.

The virtual reality market is in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment. After a mild splash from the Meta Quest 3, everyone is holding their breath to see how Apple’s ambitious and wildly expensive Vision Pro headset will fare. But Microsoft isn’t waiting to throw in the towel on its VR and AR efforts. The Windows Mixed Reality platform is being officially depreciated — that is, no longer actively developed — as of December 2023.

Windows Mixed Reality debuted along with the ambitious Microsoft HoloLens headset in a technical demo in 2015 and with the augmented reality hardware releasing to developers the following year and full software integration coming in Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update in 2017. Despite high hopes and heavy investment from Microsoft, HoloLens never got a consumer release and saw limited interest from industrial customers aside from a notable contract with the US military. While several demos of the hardware and similar headsets using its design have been impressive, the practical applications have been lacking.

While the VR “metaverse” appears to be a bust, at least as imagined by Microsoft and Meta, Windows Mixed Reality’s combination of VR and AR may have been ahead of its time. Augmented reality is the main new feature for the Meta Quest 3, which has full-color pass-through cameras designed to integrate play sessions with the real world. Ditto for the Apple Vision Pro, which is so dedicated to the idea of users wearing the headset constantly that it simulates their eyes on an external screen.

According to Microsoft’s support page (spotted by Windows Central), the Mixed Reality Portal and Windows Mixed Reality for Steam VR will be removed in future Windows releases. Users who still wish to access Windows Mixed Reality can still do so, at least for the moment.

Imagine you’re on a date. It’s going well: there has been eye contact, witty repartee, and the kind of frisson Richard Curtis could only dream of recreating on screen. Except he wouldn’t – because this is not like other dates. In fact, it’s not even like other forms of regular human interaction. Because both of you are completely naked. Oh, and the nation is about to see it.

Introducing Dating Naked, the new reality TV dating show that is as simple as it sounds. Hosted by Rylan Clark, the 10-part Paramount+ series is set to start filming in early 2024 and will follow a group of single people living together in South Africa in the pursuit of romance… all while they are entirely starkers. Essentially, it’s Love Island with wobbly bits. 

Of course, any reality TV show aficionado will know that this is not the first programme aimed at helping people find love in the nude. Channel 4’s iconic Naked Attraction – where single people choose dates based on people’s naked bodies – is now in its 11th series. But unlike that show, where nudity was the meaty main meal (so to speak), in Dating Naked nudity will be more of a sparkly side dish. In other words, it’s just an added layer of drama and intrigue to an otherwise conventional dating show.

But do we really need it? I can see why it has been commissioned. It’s been eight years since ITV launched Love Island, and we’ve grown tired of seeing the same show play out on our screens every summer. Likewise with its rival shows – think Too Hot To Handle, Love is Blind, and Married at First Sight. By this point, we’ve all been there, done that and got the T-shirt 1,000 times over – and it’s becoming increasingly nauseating seeing each of the shows turn into influencer farm factories.

With this in mind, then, it makes sense that telly people decided to up the ante. You can practically feel their excitement in the meeting room: “I know!” one suited and booted exec cries, fist-pumping the air. “It’s just like a normal show except… drumroll please… you can see their bums!” I can see why people would apply, too. Who wouldn’t want to escape the UK’s dreary weather for three weeks and possibly become a Z-list celebrity who gets paid to sell charcoal toothpaste and occasionally pretend to DJ at nightclubs?

In all seriousness, I worry about the direction reality TV dating shows are taking. Whichever way you spin it, the genre is tired and requires extremity in order to sustain any level of intrigue. But at what cost? Talk of psychological wellbeing among reality TV contestants has been percolating for a few years now – and for good reason. Being sequestered from the real world for several weeks to later emerge a bona fide TV star with hundreds and thousands (sometimes millions) of social media followers is no mean feat. But imagine doing that while also exposing your naked body to the world?

The contestants of Dating Naked won’t just be judged on their flirting prowess, or how they treat people they’re attracted to. They’ll have the most intimate parts of themselves scrutinised. And what happens once the show is over? Do they just return to their previous lives, knowing that every friend, co-worker and family member now knows their body as well as they do? 

Putting the contestants aside, though, what’s in it for the viewer? What is the added benefit of seeing people dating in the nude aside from the sheer shock factor of it all (which will inevitably wear off after an episode or two)? Won’t it just start to feel a little uncomfortable and awkward to watch?

I for one won’t be tuning in, mainly because I don’t want to encourage other commissioners to start applying this format to other reality TV shows. Bake Off in the nude? No thanks.

Michael Bublé is opening up about a difficult time in his life.

On the "Diary of a CEO" podcast, Michael was asked by host Steven Bartlett about a time when he felt that his priorities shifted. This prompted Bublé to speak out about his oldest child Noah's cancer diagnosis.

"My son's cancer diagnosis rocked my world," Bublé said. "It pulled the curtain from over my eyes."

MICHAEL BUBLÉ TALKS SON’S CANCER BATTLE, SAYS HE AND HIS WIFE ‘WISHED THEY DIDN’T WAKE UP’ SOME DAYS

The musician continued, "And that was a sledgehammer to my reality. And I will never be carefree, and that's okay. It is a privilege for me to exist and that pain, the fear, the suffering that comes with those sort of things is, I guess it's part of that beautiful, this life."

Michael's son, Noah, was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2016. He was three years old at the time.

Bublé shared that he was focused on himself and his career goals prior to his son's diagnosis.

"I don't think I had my priorities straight. I mean, my family was always my love, but I don't think I was a terrible guy, but dude, it was blinders. Career. Ambition. How do I become the baddest, biggest, best. You know, more ego, more power, more money," he clarified.

Bublé continued, "And on Halloween, however many years ago that was, dude, it's like life was lived with a curtain in front of me. Like a filter. And the moment that they said this is what's happening, that reality hit me."

"Filter gone. And I mean, in a moment. In one moment. Gone. And I went, 'Ok. This is it. This is life. This is it, this is what's important,'" Michael concluded.

Bublé and his wife, Luisana Lopilato, share four children: Noah, Elias, 7, Vida, 5, and Cielo, 1.

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This is not the first time the singer has opened up about his son's cancer. 

In 2021, Bublé told People magazine that since his son's diagnosis, he lives "a much deeper life now."

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"I don't wish that kind of pain upon any human being, but I do feel that when you've truly suffered, when you've truly felt fear and loss, it allows you to live a deeper life," Bublé told the outlet. "Once you've felt those things, you are able, in context, to truly feel joy, gratitude and happiness."

He continued, "My grandpa used to say, 'Today's curse is tomorrow's blessing.' Even though for some of us who have lost so much these last few years, whether it's our jobs or our loved ones, it doesn't all come with negative connotations. There's always a silver lining to that cloud."

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In October 2022, Michael was on Australia's Today Show when he said the diagnosis was "the worst possible thing that you could hear as a parent, and as maybe a human being."

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"I much rather would have it have been me. Many times I wish that it had been," he added at the time.

The popularity of the MTV series The Osbournes inspired a boom in reality TV — and Ozzy Osbourne has a lot of thoughts about where the genre is today.

The rock legend, 75, opened up in an interview with SPIN about his thoughts on how much reality television has evolved since his candid series with his wife Sharon and two of their children, daughter Kelly and son Jack, went off the air after four seasons in 2005. According to the Black Sabbath frontman, the big difference is how “scripted” it is today, compared to how their show wasn’t at all. 

“I mean, what they call reality TV now is really not reality,” Osbourne told the outlet.

“What they do now is kind of scripted reality. It’s not raw. It’s not the real, real reality,” the musician explained. “With our show, what you saw was what really went on. It wasn’t contrived. It wasn’t scripted.”

The Grammy winner even referred to the success of E!’s Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which premiered in 2007, but pointed out what makes the Kardashian family’s series (now on Hulu as The Kardashians) different. “It’s really interesting because people love the Kardashians,” he noted.

“They took it one stage further. They saw what we did and said, ‘That’s a good idea,’ but they organized themselves,” Osbourne said of some of the series’ seemingly scripted elements. 

In contrast, the rocker described the unfiltered elements of his family life that were captured in The Osbournes as what made it so unique and entertaining. “The reality show wasn’t anything different than our regular life, because that’s the way we are anyway,” he said. “We didn’t become the Osbournes that you see just for the show. That’s the way we are, and all they did was take funny bits out of it.” 

He added that, once MTV and the producers “started to ask [them] to do things that [they] wouldn’t normally do,” he was ready to end the show. “At that point, I lost interest in it,” he said.

The Osbournes remains one of the most iconic, popular MTV series of all time. During its run, the fly-on-the-wall show won one Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding reality program in 2002 — the second year the category was featured in the award show. 

This year, the famous foursome teamed back up on The Osbournes Podcast. (The oldest Osbourne daughter, Aimee, famously declined to appear in the original series and does not appear on the podcast either.) 

The rock royalty family first launched their podcast — which sees them reflecting on personal stories and discussing current events — in 2018, and after a five-year hiatus, they officially brought it back in fall 2023.

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Although the podcast has been a success, they all agreed on a November episode that there will never be another season of The Osbournes. 

“It won’t happen again. Never in a million years,” the heavy metal star said.

Throughout their conversation, Ozzy, as well as Jack, 38, and Kelly, 39, explained that over the years they have realized how heavily it weighed “on everyone’s mental health.” 

Despite a reboot not being in their future, a 10-part BBC reality series about Sharon, 71, and Ozzy’s move to the U.K. , Home to Roost, was announced in 2022.

A release date still has yet to be announced, as the rock star has recently undergone a series of operations, most recently in September, after having a fall in 2019.