QCA.news - Quad Cities news and view from both sides of the river

Monday, April 13th, 2026
	SUVs and EVs Take Center Stage at the 2026 New York International Auto Show SUVs and EVs Take Center Stage at the 2026 New York International Auto Show (Feature Impact) The 2026 New York International Auto Show is shining a spotlight on the latest in automotive innovation, from advanced technology to the growing shift toward electric vehicles. One automaker, Kia, is using the show to highlight two versatile SUVs designed to offer more space, capability and flexibility for modern drivers. Watch this video to learn more The all-new 2027 Kia Seltos has grown in size, offering a roomier interior with additional legroom, headroom and cargo space. It also adds a hybrid powertrain, making it the only vehicle in its class with three powertrain options. The SUV comes packed with advanced safety features, a more capable all-wheel-drive system and premium interior touches, including dual 12.3-inch display screens and an available panoramic sunroof. The automaker is also showcasing the all-electric EV3, a compact SUV designed to make electric vehicle ownership more practical. With an estimated range of up to 320 miles, fast-charging capability and optional all-wheel drive, it balances performance, technology and everyday usability. Its intuitive features and flexible design make transitioning to electric simpler for a wider range of drivers. Both models represent Kia’s commitment to providing options that blend capability, innovation and style. To learn more, visit Kia.com.
	Carroll County Sheriff: 2 dead after train strikes truck at railroad crossing The names of the people involved are not being released at this time pending proper notification of family deputies said.
	3 hurt in crash north of Muscatine, 1 airlifted to hospital An official told KWQC the crash was between two vehicles at Highway 38 and 155th Street.
	2 people killed after train strikes pickup in Savanna Investigators believe a pickup was pulling a boat and trailer was crossing a private rail crossing off Illinois 84 when it was struck by a train traveling south.
	Rock Island approves audio gunshot detection pilot program Raven gunshot detection devices are made by Flock, which also manufactures cameras and license plate readers.
	At least 3 people injured, 1 airlifted after crash in Muscatine County Iowa State Patrol believes the driver of a 2020 Nissan failed to obey a stop sign approaching Iowa Highway 38 and struck a 2018 Hyundai.
	Rock Island City Council approves gunshot audio-detection system Rock Island police will utilize a new way to track crime after the city council Monday night approved a one-year pilot program for a gunshot audio-detection system. The Raven Acoustic Gunshot Detection System is a series of audio sensors that Rock Island police want to use to reach critical scenes faster. The system uses those [...]
	Illinois bill to regulate electronic materials for libraries Illinois lawmakers say they're trying to prevent publishers from putting unfair restrictions on libraries as the costs of ebooks rise across the state. The Digital Library Protection Act (House Bill 5236) would stop publishers of ebooks and audio books from limiting the libraries' ability to determine loan periods. The move prevents retailers from charging libraries [...]
	Moline-Coal Valley hires new principal at Hamilton Elementary Hamilton Elementary will have a new principal starting next year after the Moline-Coal Valley School Board meeting on Monday.
	Two dead after QCA train crash Two people are dead after a train/truck crash Monday in Carroll County, according to a news release. The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office responded to a reported train versus pickup truck accident shortly before 3 p.m. Monday. The crash occurred at a private railroad crossing just off Illinois Route 84, across from the Savanna Tri-Township Airport. [...]
	Officials: 2 dead after train strikes truck at railroad crossing in Carroll County The names of those involved are not being released at this time, pending proper notification of family members.
	Trial date set for Mercer County School District superintendent Timothy Farquer waived his right to a jury trial. His bench trial will begin in late July.
	2 people killed after train strikes pickup in Savanna Investigators believe a pickup was pulling a boat and trailer was crossing a private rail crossing off Illinois 84 when it was struck by a train traveling south.
	Several injured in crash north of Muscatine, 1 airlifted to hospital An official told KWQC the crash was between two vehicles at Highway 38 and 155th Street.
	Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's class of 2026 includes Phil Collins, Oasis and Sade The Rock Hall's inductees will include eight acts who have all been eligible for at least a decade. In its "musical influence" category, the hall nods to Latin and African pop for the first time.
	Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's class of 2026 includes Phil Collins, Oasis and Wu-Tang Clan The Rock Hall's inductees will include eight acts who have all been eligible for at least a decade. In its "musical influence" category, the hall nods to Latin and African pop for the first time.
	Board names Doug Bodeen as next Hamilton Elementary principal The Moline-Coal Valley School District has announced the appointment of Douglas Bodeen as principal of Hamilton Elementary School, effective for the 2026-2027 school year, a news release says. The board of education approved the administrative recommendation at its April 13 meeting. Bodeen will succeed Principal Lynsy Oswald, who was recently promoted to coordinator for K-12 [...]
	Gunshot sound detector pilot program coming to Rock Island The platform can also differentiate between the sound of gunfire and other similar sounds.
	Illinois politics latest: Board of Education asking for $10.9B, banning hidden 'junk fees' and more Every Monday on The Current during the legislative session, we look at the biggest topics out of Des Moines, Iowa, and Springfield, Illinois.
	SouthPark Mall owners owe $400K in taxes: What happens next could determine its future A year after purchasing SouthPark Mall, records show Kohan Retail Investment has missed all property tax payments.
	Iowa politics latest: Property tax reform, childcare assistance, eminent domain conversations Every Monday on The Current during the legislative session, we look at the biggest topics out of Des Moines, Iowa, and Springfield, Illinois.
	Community Health Care opens new all-in-one clinic in Muscatine For many parents, it's hard to keep track of all of their family's appointments. Even just the annual checkups and getting medical paperwork that schools require. Community Health Care's new clinic in Muscatine can ease the stress of keeping everything straight. They make it easy by being an all-in-one clinic. "Parents bringing their kiddos in [...]
	No room left: Why Scott County is forced to send inmates to Jackson County Iowa sheriffs are warning of a breaking point as prison overcrowding forces counties to shuffle inmates at high costs. Will the state's proposed three-strikes bill make the crisis worse?
	Free Davenport charter high school to offer second chance at diplomas A new tuition-free charter high school is set to open in Davenport this fall, offering students a second chance at earning their diploma while preparing for careers in high-demand fields.
	Prophetstown-Lyndon-Tampico students and staff show support for those battling cancer through annual 'Hope Week' On Monday, students and staff wore pink to recognize school photographer Nicole Olinger, who is fighting breast cancer.
	Burlington seeking input on Cascade Bridge replacement project A survey collecting public feedback on intersection configurations, overall project aesthetics and more will be open through April 23.
	1 airlifted, 2 injured following crash on Highway 67 north of LeClaire Great River Road was closed from Territorial Road to 235th Street for approximately two-and-a-half hours during the crash investigation.
	Construction season is in full effect around the Quad Cities Projects are underway on Avenue of the Cities and 12th Avenue in East Moline, the I-74 pedestrian bridge and more.
	Iowa bill to ban local IDs moves forward A bill in Iowa to prohibit counties from issuing community identification cards is advancing. House File 2296 would ban local forms of identification, also known as community IDs. The cards can be used to open a bank account or confirm someone's identity with schools, local government agencies or law enforcement. The issue brought intense debate [...]
	Iowa funding to focus on the opioid crisis The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services will allocate millions of dollars to projects focused on the opioid crisis. The $10 million funding comes from House File 1038, which directs 75% of Iowa’s opioid settlement money toward efforts to reduce opioid addiction. The $10 million will be available for each round of applications, and [...]
	New Sterling sidewalk program could cut costs for homeowners Sterling will soon see a big change in how sidewalks are replaced after a recent council meeting.
	Construction underway at Davenport North High School The project, which carries a price tag of approximately $62 million, is expected to wrap up by mid-2027.
	Davenport holding naming contest for new fire rescue boat The public can submit name ideas through Friday, April 17.
	The Davenport Fire Department purchased a new fire rescue boat A naming contest for the new boat is taking place on the Davenport Fire Department Facebook page.
	Drivers hospitalized after two-vehicle crash north of LeClaire on Monday One of the drivers was flown to Iowa City for further treatment.
	5 hurt in crash north of Muscatine An official told KWQC the crash was between two vehicles at Highway 38 and 155th Street.
	New Community Healthcare clinic opening in Muscatine The outpatient facility will provide medical, dental and behavioral healthcare services.
	MercyOne Genesis Aledo, Dewitt offering program tailored to senior mental health Senior Life Solutions is a program for older adults experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety or other mental challenges often associated with aging.
	Eric Swalwell will resign from Congress as he faces backlash over assault allegations Swalwell's resignation follows allegations of sexual assault and misconduct made by multiple women against the California Democrat.
	Louisa County Sheriff’s Office: 11 cows found after going for ‘long walk’ Officials said 11 cows decided to take a long walk and their location was unknown as of 6:10 p.m. on Sunday, according to a Facebook post.
	Man charged with attempted murder after dispute, shots fired, Lee County Sheriff’s deputies say A man has been arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder after deputies with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of shots fired.
	Visit Quad Cities celebrates 2026 QC Restaurant Week Service Stars As part of QC Restaurant Week, Visit Quad Cities surprised the honorees at their workplaces.
	Support seconds chances with Safer Foundation's Safer Sacks Safer Foundation has been creating second chances in the QCA by helping people rebuild through education, employment and supportive services for 50 years, and you can help further the mission in a delicious way! Erica Lee joined Our Quad Cities News with all the details on Safer Sacks. For more information, click here.
	Mock-Doc Shock Talk: “Faces of Death,” “You, Me & Tuscany,” and “Mr Nobody Against Putin” It's the absolute right time for director/co-writer Daniel Goldhaber's new Faces of Death, a tight, scary, unexpectedly crafty meta-commentary built on the notion that we can no longer instinctively believe anything we're shown on-screen. On any screen.
	Hear about Rock Island West End revitalization at monthly meetings Learn about the latest efforts in the west end of Rock Island at a series of meetings at an area popular shop. West End Revitalization, an initiative of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, in partnership with local coffee shop Wholly Grinds, invites residents to a new monthly community engagement opportunity, “Office Hours with [...]
	New Dress for Success QC director to host open house April 16 Mikael Gibson’s nonprofit career over a quarter-century in the Quad Cities led to her latest post, as new executive director for Dress for Success Quad Cities, which will host an open house April 16.
	Scott County Sheriff's Office swears in two new deputies The Scott County Sheriff's Office held a swearing-in ceremony at the Office Patrol Headquarters in Eldridge on Friday, April 10 for Darienne Scott and Dakotah Clements. Scott has five years of law enforcement experience in Omaha, serving as a patrol officer, a field training officer and a certified emergency vehicle operations instructor, as well as [...]
	Bench trial set for former Mercer County superintendent A judge will decide whether Timothy Farquer, 53, is guilty or not. The bench trial is set for July 29-31. A final pretrial is set for July 6.
	Politicians say left-wing professors push their views. New poll shows students don’t see it that way Politicians say left-wing professors push their views. New poll shows students don’t see it that wayConservative politicians warn of “woke” college campuses, where liberal professors teach their opinions and stifle any dissent. Their concerns have led them to get involved in the day-to-day operations of public colleges and universities as never before, including through the creation of taxpayer-funded, right-leaning civic centers.But most college students don’t share those concerns, recent reporting from the Hechinger Report has found. And a new poll by Gallup echoes what students said.The poll, which included responses from nearly 4,000 college students, found that about two-thirds of all students — including two-thirds of Republican students — said that their professors encouraged students to share their views “even if it makes others uncomfortable.” Just 3% of Republican students said they felt they didn’t belong at their college because of their political leanings. (The survey was conducted in partnership with the Lumina Foundation, one of The Hechinger Report’s many funders.)That’s in line with Ohio State University students interviewed at the university’s Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society. Ohio is at the center of the civic center movement, with five now up and running.Eight other states have similar centers or schools at public universities that are generally able to circumvent typical university hiring processes. They are designed to teach about civics and American history by emphasizing what makes the nation great.As in the Gallup poll, OSU students agree that professors welcome different opinionsSeveral students taking Chase Center classes agreed to speak about this topic. They said they didn’t feel that any of their professors, in any classes, tried to push their personal beliefs.“I would challenge anyone to find left-wing indoctrination,” at Ohio State, one student said. “Professors want you to challenge them, they want you to disagree.”Civic centers get conservative professors and ideas in front of studentsMost of the students interviewed in Chase Center classes said those professors and course materials were right-leaning. As another student put it: “It is very Republican and very patriotic. If you come in with a blank slate, you’ll probably come out a Republican.”Chase Center leaders said that there was no political litmus test to join the staff there and that the goal was not to establish a conservative faculty, but one that respects intellectual diversity. Based on conversations with faculty members, it was clear that the center was hiring almost exclusively conservatives. And the academic council that has oversight of Chase has several prominent conservatives and no notable liberal scholars.Ohio’s centers are part of a larger national movement to focus on civics educationThese civic centers represent a convergence of two top priorities for Republicans: to counteract what they see as a “woke,” left-wing bent at universities and to improve and promote civics education. The Trump administration backs both goals and has talked about the importance of promoting patriotic versions of American history, allocating more than $150 million to this effort.Four of Ohio’s centers have received federal grants totaling more than $8 million to train the state’s K-12 teachers in civics education. Chase was one of several centers chosen to receive additional funding through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities — $5 million for more faculty hiring, scholarships and curriculum development.State lawmakers are taking action as well. Last year, Ohio lawmakers passed a bill that will require all bachelor’s degree candidates to take an American civics class. The course must teach some of the nation’s foundational texts as well as lessons about capitalism. Chase and the state’s other civic centers will play a key role in teaching these classes.This story was produced by The Hechinger Report and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Iowa Department of Corrections seeks man who failed to report to work release; convicted of felony charges in Scott County The Iowa Department of Corrections (DOC) is looking for a man who failed to report back to work release over the weekend. A news release from the DOC said Johnathan Allen Durham failed to report to Fort Des Moines – Bldg. 70 as required on Saturday, April 11. Durham was previously convicted in Polk County [...]
	Traffic Alert: Highway 67 in LeClaire reopens after crash, officials say Crews responded to a serious crash with injuries in LeClaire.
	Public invited to submit name ideas for new Davenport Fire Department rescue boat Community members can submit name suggestions. The form closes Friday.
	Generation Z marketing strategies for small businesses Generation Z marketing strategies for small businessesLearn how to market to Gen Z and connect with this generation of young adults in authentic, lasting ways.For small business owners, reaching the next wave of customers is essential to long-term success. But attracting younger consumers often requires recalibrating your marketing approach—specifically, social media marketing. What resonates with baby boomers, Gen Xers or even millennials can look very different from what Generation Z expects.Generation Z (ages 15-30) already wields an estimated $9.8 trillion in global spending power and is projected to drive nearly 20% of global consumer spending by 2030. To earn their loyalty, businesses must understand Gen Z’s values and buying behaviors. Not only are they the first true digital natives—raised entirely in the age of smartphones and constant connectivity—but they’re also passionate about social causes, diversity and personalization. All this plays a role in how they discover, evaluate and shop.Fifth Third shares what small businesses need to know to stand out in a crowded market and to meet Gen Z where they are.Key takeawaysGen Zers want the brands they buy to prioritize sustainability, transparency and social responsibility.Personalization and inclusivity drive loyalty, with Gen Zers responding best to brands that reflect their diverse needs and speak to them as individuals.AI can help small businesses succeed by enabling smarter targeting and creative content at scale.Social media is Gen Z’s primary discovery channel, making it an essential marketing tool for small businesses.Microinfluencers resonate with Gen Z more than celebrities, giving small business owners a more affordable entry point into influencer marketing.Focus on brand values and social responsibilityGen Z is often called the "sustainability generation," and with good reason. According to the World Economic Forum, 75% of those in this age group say sustainability is an important factor in their purchasing decision, ranking it even above brand name. They look closely at supply chains, track corporate ethics and want businesses to stand for more than profit."Gen Z conducts research and nurtures relationships with brands that are purposeful," says Mark Beal, assistant professor of professional practice at Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, whose research focuses on Gen Z. "They want to support and advocate on behalf of brands that are contributing to a better community, society and world."That’s where small businesses have an opportunity. By combining sustainable practices with accessibility—such as offering affordable options, reducing waste in everyday operations or making it easier for customers to understand the impact of their purchase—you can help Gen Zers align their ideals with their actions.Here are a few marketing ideas for small businesses:Show tangible impact—not just slogans. Avoid vague claims like "eco-friendly." Instead, share specifics: "Our bags are made from 80% recycled plastic," or "We reduced packaging by 30%." Gen Z values receipts of impact more than promises.Prioritize sustainable packaging. From refill stations to compostable labels, sustainable packaging is a visible signal of your values.Highlight your efforts. Use social media to spotlight sustainability moments, no matter how small—whether it’s a recycling initiative, a local partnership, behind-the-scenes sourcing or even just reducing waste in your store.Make it accessible. Help Gen Zers live their values by lowering the barriers. That could mean offering a resale rack in your boutique, providing a discount for customers who bring reusable containers or starting a simple recycling program. Small, affordable steps can make sustainable choices easier for everyone.Personalize marketing—and be authenticGen Z is incredibly diverse—the most racially and ethnically diverse generation, in fact—which means generic marketing won’t cut it. Gen Zers want to see themselves in the brands they buy from, whether that’s through representation in ads, inclusive product offerings or the people leading the company."They are engaged by messaging that speaks to them as individuals, not as a cohort comprising millions of consumers," says Beal.This also means authenticity matters more than polish. Gen Zers can quickly spot tokenism or staged perfection, and they reward brands that feel real. That includes diversity across race, gender, orientation, body type and more—plus a willingness to show the human side of your business.Here are a few simple steps you can take:Use candid storytelling. Share real stories of your team, your craft or your inspiration. This makes your brand feel more human and relatable.Reflect your community. Feature diverse people in your visuals or carry products that resonate with underrepresented groups.Deploy targeting email campaigns. Use data responsibly to personalize outreach, like sending birthday discounts, recommending products based on past purchases or curating content for customer interests.Offer custom digital experiences. Simple touches like custom filters on social media, quizzes that guide shoppers to products or personalized recommendations on your website can strengthen engagement without requiring a massive budget.Use location-based marketing. Geo-targeted ads or promotions tied to local events let you reach Gen Z customers where they are—literally. For example, a café could send push notifications for a discount to students passing nearby during finals week.Don’t be afraid of AI-powered marketingArtificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic add-on. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, AI tools can help small businesses become more efficient and competitive in an increasingly fast-paced market.A 2025 national survey by Connected Commerce Council found that 64% of small business leaders believe AI helps level the playing field, while 52% say it’s critical to their current success. These numbers show that AI isn’t just a buzzword—it’s quickly becoming part of how small businesses operate and grow.But the applications aren’t limited to back-end efficiency. AI is also fueling new creative breakthroughs. A family-run tamale shop in Los Angeles, for example, went viral by using ChatGPT to script an impromptu ad in just 10 minutes—and gained more than 22 million views and tons of new customers. And Amarra, a wholesale dress company, uses AI to write unique, whimsical product descriptions, cutting content creation time by 60%.Beyond marketing, AI is also helping small businesses strengthen their financial operations. Financial partners integrate AI into payment optimization and fraud protection tools, giving owners greater control, smarter risk detection and peace of mind as they scale.Here are a few ways small businesses can apply AI wisely to their marketing efforts:Personalize and target your ads. AI can analyze behavioral and demographic data to pinpoint high-intent customers and optimize ad spend for better return on investment. "It basically allows businesses of all sizes to evolve from mass marketing to personalized messaging," Beal adds.Automate follow-up. Platforms like HubSpot now offer AI "agents" that handle customer follow-ups, content creation and prospecting—freeing business owners to focus on meaningful human responses.Amplify creative reach. You can create video scripts, social posts or promotional campaigns faster and more efficiently. As demonstrated by the tamale shop, even a small brand can create powerful marketing content with AI storytelling tools.Lean into short-form video. Quick, interesting clips—like product demos, tutorials or "day in the life" snippets—perform especially well on TikTok, Instagram reels and YouTube shorts.Encourage user-generated content. Invite customers to share how they use your product or service and repost their content. Pair this with a branded or campaign-specific hashtag to make it easy to find and amplify posts. This not only builds trust but also helps your brand surface in feeds.Show behind-the-scenes. Remember that transparency and authenticity resonate with Gen Z. Share how products are made, the people who make them, what your team is working on or even a "fail to fix" moment.Engage actively. Reply to comments, jump into trending sounds or participate in lighthearted meme formats. According to Sprout Social’s 2025 Content Benchmarks Report, 73% of social users agree that if a brand doesn’t respond on social, they’ll buy from a competitor.Keep it platform native. Content designed for TikTok will feel different than what belongs on Instagram or YouTube. Don’t just cross-post—adapt for each platform’s culture.Get familiar with influencer marketingInfluencer marketing, where businesses hire people with lots of followers on social media to showcase their products and create trends, may also help you connect with Gen Z.There are major influencers—celebrities and movie stars, for example—but there are also so-called microinfluencers, who have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. These influencers can target niche and sometimes localized audiences. They can also cost less to work with.Lucky for you and your brand, Gen Z actually prefers the authenticity and credibility of these microinfluencers to traditional celebrity endorsements, according to a recent study in the Journal of Brand Strategy.Here’s how to get started:Look beyond follower count. Choose influencers who share your values, engage frequently with their followers and talk authentically about products.Build real relationships. Microinfluencers tend to produce more impactful content when they’re treated like collaborators, not billboards. Keep communication open and investments fair.Tap into niche communities. Find microinfluencers who speak directly to your target audiences and their values—like sustainability, diversity, local craftsmanship or wellness. Their followers are already aligned with what you offer.Track meaningful results. Use custom discount codes or trackable links so you can measure engagement, not just eyeballs. This helps ensure that partnerships are delivering real ROI.Pro tip: "No one can produce and distribute content that will engage Gen Z more effectively than Gen Zers themselves," Beal says. So finding a microinfluencer who is in that cohort is a good place to begin.Build relationships, even in a digital-first worldFor Gen Z, a digital-first experience is the baseline. They expect businesses to have an online presence, e-commerce capabilities and quick, secure ways to pay—from accepting debit cards and credit cards to offering Point of Sale systems that simplify checkout and mobile banking tools that make transactions easy to manage.Some financial institutions deliver those seamless experiences through flexible merchant services, real-time payment solutions, mobile checkout options and diverse lines of credit that support growth."Gen Z is seeking transformational relationships. They will not respond to traditional push marketing like previous generations," says Beal. "They want to build long-term relationships with brands well beyond making a purchase."That’s the opportunity for small businesses: to pair modern digital convenience with human connection. Whether it’s a smooth checkout, personalized communication or values that align with their worldview, Gen Zers want more than a transaction—they want to feel like they’re part of something.Brands that deliver on both fronts will win their attention, loyalty and business.What to do nextGen Z expects seamless digital experiences and authentic connections. From expert insights on engaging Gen Z to flexible financial solutions that support growth and efficiency, these resources are designed to help you move forward with confidence.This story was produced by Fifth Third and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Deere calls back 49 employees to Davenport Works, other facilities There’s good news for almost 50 employees who will return to work this month at three John Deere facilities in the Midwest, according to a news release on the company’s website. Deere announced today that 49 additional employees will return to work in April across its Dubuque Works and Davenport Works facilities in Iowa and Coffeyville Works in [...]
	Traffic Alert: Portion of Highway 67 in LeClaire shut down after crash, officials say Crews are on the scene of a serious crash with injuries in LeClaire.
	Crash shuts down part of Highway 67 north of LeClaire This is a developing story. News 8 will provide updates as they are made available.
	City of Aledo moves spring trash clean-up event to June amid transition to new trash vendor The city previously announced it would be moving from LRS to Quick's Dumpster and Disposal starting May 1.
	How to invest your tax refund in 2026 How to invest your tax refund in 2026The average American is getting a $3,521 tax refund as of March 27, 2026, according to the IRS — that’s over 11% more than the average 2025 refund. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave Americans new tax breaks, including eliminating most income tax on tips and overtime, allowing a deduction for certain auto loan interest, and creating a new deduction specifically for seniors. As a result, tax refunds are higher than ever.If you’re set to receive a big tax refund, one of the smartest moves you can make is to use the money to set yourself up for a financially stronger future by investing some or all of the money you get back, The Motley Fool reports.This article dives into some of the best ways to put your tax refund to work, including suggestions from The Motley Fool’s financial planning and investing experts.Key PointsAverage American tax refund rises to $3,521 as of March 27, 2026, an 11% increase from 2025.Best uses of tax refunds include clearing high-interest debt and building emergency funds.Investing in the stock market, especially index funds, is generally advised for long-term wealth growth.4 of the best ways to invest your tax refundWhen it comes to investing your tax refund, there are literally hundreds or even thousands of ways you can choose to do it. But the best options can be divided into four main categories.1. Pay off high-interest debtThis one might not seem like an "investment," but consider: Over the long term, the stock market produces returns of 9%-10% per year, on average. While not guaranteed in any given year, some of the best investors can consistently manage returns in the 12%-14% ballpark. So, if you invest in stocks, mutual funds, or ETFs while you have credit card debt at 21% interest, you’re setting yourself up to lose money over time.If you have high-interest debt, which can be loosely defined as anything with a double-digit interest rate, it can be a wise idea to pay it off before you think about investing money elsewhere. The average American has about $6,500 in credit card debt, so many people can benefit from this. The good news is that the average tax refund would cover more than half of this amount.2. Build your emergency fundHere’s another one that might not seem like an “investment” at first. But let’s say you invest your tax refund in stocks, then your car gets a flat tire, and you have no savings. You’d be forced to sell the investments you just bought — or worse, put the expense on a high-interest credit card.Most financial planners recommend that you aim to have six months’ worth of expenses in an easily accessible place, like a savings account. This might sound like an intimidating amount of money, but you don’t need to get there right away. Even a $1,000 emergency fund will put you in a position to handle most unexpected expenses, and you’ll be in a better position than many Americans.3. Invest in the stock marketNow for the fun part. Investing in the stock market over the long term is the most surefire way to build wealth. But that doesn’t mean that you need to invest in individual stocks (although if you have the desire, it can be a great way to go).One way to get exposure to the stock market is through index funds, which are low-cost investment vehicles that give you exposure to an entire group of stocks — such as the S&P 500 — in a single investment.In an interview with USA Today, Robert Brokamp, CFP, senior advisor and financial planning expert at The Motley Fool, said, “I think everyone’s retirement should be built on a foundation of index funds. And then you can gradually move into individual stocks.”Of course, if you have the time, knowledge, and desire to invest in individual stocks, it can be a great way to go. Here are some suggestions from a few of The Motley Fool’s stock analysts:Get exposure to high-growth industriesAerospace and defenseIt’s no secret that aerospace and defense have been in the headlines quite a bit recently, both because of the Iran conflict and the recent Artemis 2 launch. Lou Whiteman, a contributing Motley Fool aerospace and defense analyst, says he would split up his refund check between a couple of different investments to broaden his exposure to the aerospace and defense industry:“I’d split my investment between a slow-and-steady winner like TransDigm Group and a higher-risk, higher-reward newcomer like Kratos Defense & Security Solutions. Those two combine to cover some of the hottest themes in aerospace in 2026: The need to restock, and the push by the Pentagon towards more uncrewed and electronics-focused platforms in the years to come."EnergyAmid volatility in oil and gas markets, Motley Fool energy market analyst David Meier highlights an alternative energy company with long-term potential and a strong market position.“Bloom Energy has a clear path forward for lots of growth. The fuel cell designer and manufacturer continues to see demand rise within the data center markets as traditional power generation from gas turbines remains supply-constrained.”The best way to invest in electric vehicles?There’s more to the electric vehicle industry than companies like Tesla. John Rosevear, a senior contributing Motley Fool auto analyst and former CNBC reporter covering the future of autos, says:“Like most auto analysts, I believe most vehicles will be electric — eventually. But ‘eventually’ could be a while. Given that, rather than an electric-vehicle start-up, I like General Motors stock right now. This isn’t your dad’s GM: CEO Mary Barra has GM ready to surge production of EVs on short notice, while making good profits on gas-powered trucks and SUVs in the meantime. GM stock surged in 2025, but I think it still has more room to run — and you’ll collect a decent dividend along the way.”Set up an income streamFinally, if you’re looking to build a passive income stream — for retirement or otherwise — Senior Motley Fool investment analyst Matt Argersinger suggests investing in dividend stocks.“With that refund, I’d strongly consider a small basket of dividend-paying stocks, or a low-cost dividend-focused fund with a great track record like the Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF,” he said.“It’s not just about income,” Argersinger adds. “According to several long-term studies of the stock market, including those by Hartford Funds, Ned Davis Research, and O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, stocks that pay above-average dividend yields or grow their dividends by above-average rates have been the best-performing stocks in the long run with less volatility.”Also consider adding some high-quality real estate investment trusts (REITs) to your portfolio. Thanks to persistently elevated interest rates, there are some excellent valuations and dividend yields available in the real estate sector. Rock-solid REIT Realty Income has a 5.3% dividend yield and a 30-year track record of consistent dividend increases, and data center REIT Digital Realty Trust has a 2.7% yield and could be a great income play on the boom in AI infrastructure.These are just a few different examples of how to invest in the stock market, but hopefully these can be a nice starting point.4. Max out tax-advantaged accountsWhen you invest in the stock market with any of the funds or stocks discussed in the previous section, there are two main ways to do it. You can contribute money to a taxable (standard) brokerage account, or you can contribute to a tax-advantaged account, which can help optimize your long-term wealth-building potential.Of course, there are some great reasons to use taxable brokerage accounts — for example, you can sell stocks and withdraw money whenever you want. But tax-advantaged accounts allow your investments to grow and compound, with no taxes on dividends or capital gains each year. The Motley Fool Why investing tax refunds makes senseAs mentioned earlier, the average American’s tax refund is $3,521 as of March 27, 2026. But if you invest this money, instead of spending it, it could be worth far more to you over the long run. Consider that this amount of money invested at the S&P 500’s average long-term rate of return would be worth roughly $61,500 after 30 years. That’s why investing your tax refund could be one of the smartest financial decisions you can make in 2026.Investing Your Tax Refund FAQShould I save or invest my tax refund?Investing and saving your tax refund are both smart financial options, but the best choice for you depends on your personal situation. If you don’t have an emergency fund, for example, putting your tax refund in a high-yield savings account for this purpose could be the best move. But if you already have some emergency savings, investing allows you to put your tax refund to work for your future.Is it better to pay off debt or invest?It’s almost always better to pay off high-interest debt than invest. For example, if you have credit card debt at a 21% APR, it doesn’t make sense to invest in the stock market, which has historically returned about 10% annually. But if you only have low-interest debt, like mortgage debt, it can be a smarter idea to invest the money for your future.How much of my tax refund should I invest?Investing your tax refund can be a smart financial move, but the question of how much of your refund you should invest depends on your specific situation. For example, if you get a $3,000 tax refund but owe $1,000 on a credit card, it could be smart to pay off the credit card and invest the other $2,000.What is the smartest thing to do with a tax refund?The smartest thing to do with your tax refund is to use it in the way that best improves your financial well-being. Depending on your situation, this could mean using it to pay down credit card debt, build an emergency fund, or invest for your future.Can I put my tax refund in a Roth IRA?Yes, if you qualify to contribute to a Roth IRA, it can be an excellent way to use your tax refund. In 2026, the Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,500 ($8,500 if you’re over 50), but the ability to contribute directly depends on your income, so be sure to check the Roth IRA income limits to make sure you qualify.This story was produced by The Motley Fool and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Part of Route 67 closed for crash investigation It's an Our Quad Cities News traffic alert. According to a release from the Scott County Sheriff’s Office, U.S. Route 67/Great River Rd. between LeClaire at Territorial Rd. and 235th St. just south of Princeton will be closed for a few hours due to a serious crash investigation. The Scott County Sheriff's Office Accident Investigation [...]
	Augustana hosting planetarium, geology museum open house Learn about space and the wonders of geology at a free open house at Augustana College. The John Deere Planetarium and Fryxell Geology Museum will open to the public on Saturday, April 25 for an evening of stargazing and space shows. The planetarium and geology museum are located at 820 38th Street in Rock Island [...]
	Turn AI into results with this marketing AI ROI checklist Turn AI into results with this marketing AI ROI checklistIndustry analyses drawing on Gartner and other research suggest that a large majority of AI initiatives never deliver meaningful business results — some estimates put the failure rate at around 80%.In this article, WebFX provides a scannable marketing AI ROI checklist designed to help your company become part of the minority that succeeds in their marketing AI initiatives.When most AI programs stall before production or fail to move the needle on earnings, “let’s add AI” stops being a strategy. You need a problem-first rollout plan that connects every initiative to measurable ROI.Are you a marketing manager who needs a practical, problem-first rollout plan? Or a director or CMO who wants to pressure-test AI investments, defend budgets, and prove impact? Read on for effective framework you can use to launch, measure, and scale your next AI initiative.Why is it important to succeed at AI marketing?It’s important to succeed at AI marketing because the upside is real, but only if you can prove it. Strong AI adoption can help teams:Increase conversion efficiencyReduce manual workloadMake smarter decisions fasterROI tracking is what turns those wins into something leaders can confidently scale. When you approach AI with a measurement plan from day one, it becomes easier to prioritize the right projects, defend spend, and build momentum across the department.Recent research based on Gartner’s data shows that many AI projects never make it into production or fail to create a measurable earnings impact — meaning only a minority of companies are seeing real value from their AI investments so far.For marketing leaders, this creates a simple requirement: You need ROI visibility early. Not at the end of the year. Not after you’ve bought five tools. Early enough that you can cut out weak experiments and double down on winners.McKinsey’s research backs up the same theme. They stated that value tends to emerge when companies clearly define their AI vision and strategy, invest 20% of their digital budgets in AI-related technologies, and employ data scientists to run algorithms that optimize marketing and sales. This works because they consider business problems that need solving before choosing to adopt AI.Here’s a quick look at the difference between a company that simply wants to innovate and a company that wants to solve a problem. WebFX AI doesn’t fail because it’s “not powerful enough.” It fails because teams can’t connect it to measurable business outcomes. And when budgets tighten, anything unprovable gets labeled a bad investment.7 Marketing AI automation strategies to maximize ROIIf you’re building a marketing AI plan right now, you’ll want to start with high-effort, repeatable tasks that affect performance or efficiency across campaigns. Here are a few practical strategies that you can apply across the marketing funnel:AI-assisted content creation: AI-assisted content creation enables you to generate first drafts, refresh existing content, and personalize messaging across channels with human oversight to protect quality and brand voice.Predictive analytics: Predictive analytics is how marketing teams forecast customer behavior and conversion likelihood so they can allocate budget and effort before performance drops.Email marketing optimization: Email marketing optimization is the use of automation to improve timing, sequencing, and message relevance, so campaigns earn higher opens, clicks, and downstream conversions.Ad management: In ad management, AI supports automated bidding, real-time optimizations, and tighter targeting so you reduce budget waste and react faster to performance shifts.Automated lead scoring and nurturing: Automated lead scoring and nurturing is a system that prioritizes high-intent leads and triggers personalized follow-ups, so sales can focus on the right conversations.Hyper-personalization at scale: Here, AI serves content, recommendations, and offers based on individual behavior rather than broad segments, which typically improves engagement and conversion rates.Conversational chatbots: Conversational chatbots are an always-on layer for support, qualification, and routing that reduces response time and improves customer experience without adding headcount.A 3-point checklist for marketing AI ROIIf you’re looking for a checklist for marketing AI ROI that you can actually use (and defend internally), here it is.This 3-point marketing AI implementation checklist is designed to reduce risk by forcing clarity early. You’ll start with measurable problems, build with ROI metrics, and scale only after you’ve proven impact. WebFX 1. Lay the foundation for your AI marketing strategyThis phase helps you connect AI to a real business outcome before you invest time, budget, and team attention. It also serves as an AI-readiness checklist for marketing, allowing you to confirm that your data, tools, and team are prepared.1. Identify key issuesThis is a crucial step that allows you to get specific about what needs to improve before you bring AI into the picture.Start by pulling baseline numbers for the area you want to optimize, such as how long key tasks take, what they cost, and what results they produce in conversions, lead volume, and lead quality. Then compare that baseline to your historical performance and relevant industry benchmarks to spot where you’re underperforming or leaving revenue on the table.Once you see the gaps, choose one high-impact problem to solve first. This might be tightening your channel mix, so you invest more effort into the channels that reliably drive revenue. It might also be prioritizing conversion rate optimization so you can turn existing traffic into more leads by identifying what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change.2. Define goals and objectivesSet goals that are specific, time-bound, and tied to a business outcome, such as increasing lead volume, improving lead quality, raising conversion rates, or reducing campaign production time. The clearer your target is, the easier it is to choose the right AI workflow and prove whether it worked.To make the goal actionable, define what success looks like in plain terms and document it before you start. This is also where you decide how you’ll report results, so your stakeholders aren’t debating what “better” means later.Here are a few examples of specific and time-bound goals you can set:Revenue and pipeline goal example: Increase marketing-qualified leads by 15% in the next 90 days compared to the previous 90 days, measured in your CRM.Efficiency goal example: Reduce average campaign production time by 20% this quarter, measured by days from brief approval to launch in your project management system.Performance goal example: Increase landing page conversion rate from 2.5% to 3.0% within 60 days, verified through A/B testing and analytics goal tracking.Quality goal example: Reduce content QA revisions by 25% over the next 90 days, as measured by the average number of revision rounds per asset, while maintaining brand and compliance standards.3. Assess readinessThis is where you confirm your environment can support AI without creating friction for your team. A readiness check keeps implementation smooth, protects data quality, and helps you choose tools that fit your current systems instead of forcing a rebuild. It also sets expectations for what needs to happen before a pilot goes live, which saves you time later.Focus on these areas to assess how ready your company is to implement AI:Data readiness: This involves confirming whether your data is accurate, consistent, accessible, and secure enough to support the AI use case you want to implement.Tech stack fit: Check whether your current tools can integrate with AI workflows, including your CRM and marketing automation systems.Process readiness: Identify where AI will fit into the workflow, who is responsible for quality control, and what “done” looks like.Team readiness: Confirm whether your team understands the purpose of the initiative, has received baseline training, and has the time and ownership necessary to adopt the workflow.2. Set and implement your AI marketing strategyNow that you know what you want to improve and how you’ll measure success, you can start building your program in a way that’s easy to adopt and easy to evaluate.This phase is about choosing the right workflows, setting clear guardrails, preparing your team and data, and launching pilots that produce clean results you can actually scale.1. Identify opportunitiesSelect the specific marketing workflows that AI should initially support. Prioritize repetitive tasks that require significant time, create bottlenecks, or impact performance across multiple campaigns. When you pick opportunities that are frequent and measurable, you get faster learning and clearer ROI signals.Start by mapping where your team spends time today and where delays or inefficiencies show up most often. Then narrow your first use cases to the ones that are easiest to measure and most likely to impact core goals.If you’re evaluating several options, use a simple shortlist:Workflow volume: Select tasks that happen often enough to create measurable time savings and performance impact.Business impact: Prioritize tasks that influence conversions, lead quality, revenue, or customer experience.Measurement clarity: Choose workflows where you can track before-and-after performance with minimal noise.Implementation effort: Start with use cases that don’t require major system changes to test.2. Establish clear protocolsMake sure that you protect quality, trust, and brand consistency while your team adopts AI. Protocols give people a clear standard for what’s allowed, what needs review, and how to handle sensitive data. They also reduce the back-and-forth that can slow adoption, because everyone knows what “good” looks like.At a minimum, document how your team will handle review, compliance, and voice. Keep it simple enough to follow daily, but clear enough that leadership feels confident the program is controlled.If you need a quick protocol framework, include:Brand and voice guidance: Define what AI can draft, what needs editing, and what must be written or approved by a human.Data privacy rules: Clarify what data can be used in prompts and tools, and what data is off-limits.Quality checks: Set standards for accuracy, sourcing, claims, and required review steps.Ownership: Assign the person responsible for output quality, approvals, and workflow compliance.3. Investment in high-impact toolsSelect tools that match your highest-priority workflow instead of buying broad platforms that don’t get used. Choose tools based on your goal, your readiness assessment, and your integration needs. A well-chosen tool makes adoption easier because it aligns with your current process and eliminates unnecessary steps.This is also where you set yourself up to calculate ROI cleanly. Track every cost from day one, including licensing, subscription fees, integration work, and any new support needed.Centralized tracking during this phase makes reporting easier because cost inputs and performance baselines are already documented.4. Prepare your personnel and data infrastructureTraining and data preparation help your team build confidence quickly, and they reduce the “friction costs” that can quietly eat ROI. When you invest here up front, pilots run faster, results are cleaner, and scale is less disruptive.Treat prep as part of the ROI plan, not a separate task. Track the time spent on training, documentation, data cleanup, and implementation, because those are real inputs to the ROI calculation.To make this step actionable, focus on:Role-based training: Train each team on the workflows they will own, so adoption is practical, not theoretical.Workflow documentation: Write simple process steps, so people can repeat the workflow consistently.Data cleanup and access: Organize, secure, and standardize the data the AI tool will rely on.Measurement setup: Confirm whether you can track the right KPIs through your CRM and reporting systems from the start.5. Launch pilot projectsTest AI in small parts to learn quickly and build proof before you scale. A strong pilot gives you clean insight into what improved, what didn’t, and what needs adjustment. It also gives leadership confidence because the rollout is controlled and measurable.Set a tight pilot scope, define success criteria up front, and run it long enough to see a real signal. Then document what changed and why, so you can repeat it in the next workflow.Here is a simple pilot structure to consider:Scope: Choose one workflow and one team to start with, so results are easier to isolate.Success criteria: Set the exact targets you expect to hit, such as time saved, conversion lift, or improved lead quality.Workflow integration: Connect AI outputs to your existing systems, such as CRMs and marketing automation systems, so the pilot fits daily work.Feedback and iteration: Collect feedback during the pilot and update prompts, processes, and review steps as needed.3. Measure results and scale successful projectsNow, you can scale your AI initiative into reliable growth. When you track the right metrics, calculate ROI correctly, and scale only what’s proven, you build momentum and protect budget at the same time.1. Track key metricsMonitor performance using a defined time frame so you can see whether the AI initiative is creating real change. Choose a tracking window that fits your workflow, such as 30, 60, or 90 days, and use rolling averages so you’re not making decisions based on short-term spikes. Keep your report consistent, so stakeholders can quickly understand the impact.To keep this actionable, align metrics to the goal you set in Point 1 and track a mix of outcomes and efficiency. A centralized reporting approach makes it easier to connect AI-driven activity to leads, pipeline, and revenue across channels.If you’re tracking multiple metrics, keep them grouped:Financial metrics: This can include conversion rate, cost per lead (CPL), cost per acquisition (CPA), return on ad spend (ROAS), customer lifetime value (CLV), and other cost-to-outcome signals.Revenue metrics: This includes metrics like leads, conversions, sales, and pipeline outcomes tied to marketing activity.Engagement metrics: This involves click-through rate (CTR), lead quality indicators, retention rate, and signals that support downstream conversion.Efficiency metrics: These metrics might include time saved, output volume, speed-to-launch, and faster lead response times.Strategic metrics: This can include brand perception, competitive benchmarking, and speed-to-market improvements.2. Calculate ROITurn performance changes into a number that leadership can use to make budget decisions. Use one consistent formula, define your time frame, and document what you included in costs and gains. This makes ROI easier to defend because your math is clear and repeatable.Use this formula to calculate ROI and apply it to a defined period:(Revenue Gains + Cost Savings − Total AI Costs) / Total AI Costs × 100%To keep ROI clean, use attribution models and A/B testing where possible so you’re estimating AI’s contribution, not just reporting overall marketing performance. This is also where it helps to separate “time saved” from “value created” by tying saved time to increased output, improved speed, or cost reduction.3. Scale the proven winnersNow, you can expand what worked and turn it into a repeatable program. Scaling involves expanding the same proven workflow into similar campaigns, teams, or channels while maintaining the same measurement standards. This approach protects ROI because you’re not guessing what will work next.Document what made the pilot successful, including the workflow steps, review process, and reporting method. Then scale in stages so you can maintain quality as volume increases.4. Conduct regular auditsQuarterly audits help you spot what needs refinement, what deserves more investment, and what should be discontinued. They also help you maintain compliance, data standards, and quality controls as tools and policies evolve.Ensure your audit includes both performance-focused and governance-focused objectives. Consider reviewing the results, reallocating the budget based on what has proven effective, and confirming that data use and outputs still meet your standards for accuracy, privacy, and brand consistency.This story was produced by WebFX and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Truck bed camping 101 Truck bed camping 101As camping season approaches, millions of Americans are choosing to sleep outdoors for a much-needed vacation. Instead of jetting off to a distant location, more people are spending time in nature, taking road trips and going camping than ever before. Since 2014, there has been a 72% increase in the number of campers who camp three or more times a year.Clearly, camping is catching on with Americans in more ways than one. This is one of the best ways to have a low-cost vacation without putting yourself in harm’s way.No tent? No problem. You can always sleep out of your truck or even in the bed of your pickup truck, but it’s best to make a few modifications first. If you’re looking to get out of the house and enjoy a fabulous vacation, this in-depth Husky Liners guide explains the ins and outs of truck bed camping.Building Your New Home Away From HomeStart with the sleeping area. If you don’t have a tent or you’re planning on buying one, there are several options to choose from for the best setup for your next trip.One of the first decisions you’ll have to make is whether you’ll need shelter. Sleeping under the stars has its benefits, but an unexpected rainstorm could easily foil your plans, especially if you don’t have enough room to sleep inside your truck.Canopy or ShellIf you’re feeling ambitious, you can always build or install a little shell or canopy around your truck bed to stay dry. They’re usually made of aluminum, fiberglass or composite plastic. Aluminum is usually the cheapest option. They tend to go for $900 or less, but they might start to show some wear and tear over time. The sides are usually thin, which can be helpful in the summer but is a problem in the winter.Fiberglass canopies usually go for a little more—around $1,200 to $1,500. They are built to last and are generally much thicker than those made with aluminum. This is a great choice if you plan on camping on a regular basis or in the off-season.Lightweight and easy to handle, plastic canopies usually lie somewhere in between those made with fiberglass and aluminum—at least in terms of price. They’re not as fragile as other canopies, but they aren’t as durable as glass enclosures.When looking for a canopy, make sure you have enough space to sleep in the back. Some are built for storage, so think about the headroom and whether you plan on sitting up in bed. Having shelter is one thing, but cutting yourself off from the outdoors is usually a step too far. It’s best to keep the windows open and get some air flowing so you can still hear the pitter-patter of rain.Truck TentIf you don’t feel like buying a canopy, you can always install a tent over the back of your truck bed.There are two ways of going about this. You can either buy a tent that’s specifically designed for truck beds, or you can engineer a way to use your existing tent on the back of your truck, MacGyver-style.The former is certainly easier to install. Truck bed tents fit onto the back of your truck, creating a warm, dry space for you and your guests to rest your heads. These tents usually go for just $100 or more, depending on your preference. They usually come with straps that wrap around the bottom of the vehicle. Metal rods and stands support the roof of the tent, giving you more headroom.If you’re really looking to save money and you already have a tent, you can try attaching it to the back of your truck for some temporary shelter. Test out this method before hitting the road to make sure you know how to set up your tent over the bed.Open-Air Truck Bed CampingIf you really feel like becoming one with the natural world, throw caution to the wind and leave your tent at home. Truck bed camping makes it easy to sleep under the stars. If it starts to pour down rain, you can always sit in your truck until the storm passes.However, if you don’t have any shelter, you need to protect your sleeping area from moisture and debris—or you will have to wipe down the truck bed every night before bed. Husky Liners It’s best to use a truck bed liner when sleeping out of the back of your vehicle. The cover is easy to remove, so you can easily wipe it down before you go to bed. Just pull out the cover, shake it out and hit the hay. If it rains during your trip, you can always lay down a second liner to get rid of moisture.Installing a truck bed liner will also help you shield your vehicle from spills, leaks and other common accidents, especially if you plan on eating or drinking in bed.Sleeping on the GroundOf course, you can always sleep on the ground like a traditional camper. This means you’ll need a regular tent and all the fixings you would normally need to sleep outside. This might not technically count as truck bed camping, but it’s still a valid option.Choosing the Right BedRegardless of what type of setup you choose, don’t forget about the bed. It’s best to put something between you and the bed of the truck so you don’t spend the entire trip complaining that your back hurts.For those on a budget, you can always put down an old mattress or some pieces of foam to give yourself some extra support. This makes it easy to customize your setup. You can reposition pillows and pads as you see fit; however, this isn’t usually the most comfortable option.If you’re using a spring mattress, measure the bed beforehand to make sure it fits. Truck beds tend to vary in size based on the make and model. Measure the length of the inside front to the inside rear with the tailgate up.Air mattresses are also a great choice. You can easily deflate them and pack them away when they are not in use to make extra room in the truck bed. It’s still important to measure the dimensions of the bed, but an air mattress can also contour to the shape of your vehicle.Experiment with different setups until you find the best choice for you and your guests. If it’s not comfortable, it’s probably not worth it.Making the Most of Your SpaceOnce you have a place to rest your head, it’s time to focus on other aspects of your truck. You can get by with just a mattress, but if you want to stay outside for days or weeks at a time, bring along some additional equipment. Husky Liners Cooking on the GoFor starters, what are you going to do about food? You can always bring along a portable grill or stove and some cooking supplies if you want to make your own meals. Many people find that the tailgate doubles as a kitchen shelf or cooking station. You can use this area to lay out and organize your supplies until it’s time to eat.If the truck bed becomes your permanent sleeping area, you may not like the idea of preparing your food on top of the bed. Bring along a foldable shelf or table instead so you can make some food without staining the sheets.Cooking all depends on what you want to eat and how long you plan on sleeping under the stars. It’s usually best to bring more than enough food, as you’re bound to burn plenty of calories on your trip.StorageIt’s best to stay organized when taking off on a long camping trip. You can easily run out of storage space when the truck bed is reserved for sleeping. To make extra room, many people will build a set of drawers under the sleeping area. However, this is usually for people who go camping on a regular basis. This creates more room for storage under the mattress, but you will have less headroom as a result.You can also store equipment on top of your vehicle using ratchet straps or a rooftop storage unit. This will help you get some gear out of the way so you have more room to relax and hang out.If you fill up the back of your truck with food, water and supplies, make sure you have a safe place to store it when unloading your vehicle. For example, where are you going to store all these items when you’re sleeping in the back of your truck?Use waterproof storage bags and containers whenever possible so your food and equipment don’t turn into a soggy mess. Wrap your food in a smell-proof container to avoid coming in contact with bears and other pesky critters.When it comes to storing meat and other perishable items, use two coolers instead of one. Keep beverages in one container and food in the other to keep these items the perfect temperature as long as possible.Safety and HygieneStaying clean isn’t always easy when you’re on the road. Bring along plenty of water for hygiene purposes as well as staying hydrated. Use sanitary wipes and portable dispensers to wash your hands if you don’t have access to running water.Mud, dirt and debris can easily get the better of you when camping, especially if you plan on taking your truck off-road. No one wants to go to bed in a dirty, wet vehicle.Use mud flaps to keep the dirt on the ground where it belongs. If you drive on a dirt road or through a muddy bog, you won’t have to worry as much about soiling your sleeping area.The same is true of food and beverages. A spill or leak can easily ruin your trip if you’re not careful. One mistake and the entire bed of your truck could end up smelling like lemonade or BBQ sauce.Keep strong odors and stains at bay with truck seat covers. If you’re lathering up a piece of meat before tossing it on the grill or guzzling a pitcher of lemonade, these covers will protect the inside of your truck from everyday stains and spills so you can celebrate with more peace of mind.If you drop a glass of lemonade on the floor, just pull out the plastic cover, rinse it off with water, let it dry in the sun and you’ll be good to go. It’s like the stain never happened. Husky Liners AmenitiesThere are so many ways to customize your pickup truck before taking off on an adventure. Some people like to go the extra mile and install a wireless router so they can connect to the internet during their trip. Others will strap a portable solar panel generator to the back of their truck for an extra dose of electricity.Truck bed camping can easily get expensive if you add on all these extra amenities, but they’re not essential. You can always throw a mattress in the back of your truck and call it a day. Keep these ideas in mind to make the most of your camping season. Having the right piece of gear can make all the difference in the world, especially if you’re hundreds of miles from home.This story was produced by Husky Liners and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	How long does it take to sell a house in 2026 How long does it take to sell a house in 2026In the summer of 2023, a well-priced single-family home in Columbus, Ohio spent about 27 days on the market before a buyer closed the deal. Fast-forward to early 2026, and that same type of home now takes 53 days. In San Antonio, the wait has stretched past 100.Something shifted in the American housing market, and sellers who have not been paying close attention may be caught off guard by how much slower things have gotten.Offerpad analyzed multiple listing service data across 15 major metropolitan areas, covering more than 350,000 single-family home transactions over 39 months. The conclusion: Selling a home in 2026 takes meaningfully longer than it did even one year ago, and that is true in every city examined.How Long It Takes to Sell a House in Every Major MarketThese are the average days on market for single-family homes that closed in the first three months of 2026, ranked from fastest to slowest.Average Days on Market: Q1 2026 Offerpad Source: Offerpad analysis of MLS data for single-family homes, Q1 2026 vs. Q1 2025.Every city on this list is slower than it was a year ago. The gap between the fastest market (Columbus at 53 days) and the slowest (San Antonio at 101 days) is nearly seven weeks.Where Homes Sell Fastest in 2026Three markets stand out for relatively brisk transaction timelines.Columbus, Ohio (52.8 days) holds the top spot. Columbus benefits from a relatively affordable price point ($370,000 median in March 2026) and a diversified economy anchored by Ohio State University, healthcare, and a growing tech sector. More than 27% of homes there still sold above asking price in March 2026, suggesting healthy buyer competition on well-priced listings.Las Vegas, Nevada (54.8 days) remains among the fastest markets despite a 14.6% year-over-year increase in selling times. Sellers in Las Vegas paid zero in average concessions in March 2026, and 17.2% of homes sold above asking, indicating that buyers who do enter the market are competing aggressively.Saint Louis, Missouri (54.7 days) is the sleeper market in this dataset. At a $300,000 median price, it posted the highest above-list rate of any city by a wide margin: 35.7% of homes sold above asking in March 2026, nearly double the next-closest market. For sellers in Saint Louis, the market may feel less like a slowdown and more like a return to balance from the frenzy of 2022–2023.Where Homes Take the Longest to SellAt the bottom of the ranking, four cities stand well apart from the rest.San Antonio, Texas (100.6 days) is the only market to cross 100 days. San Antonio added 14.3 days year-over-year, with an average price drop of $19,195 before closing. A post-pandemic building boom has added inventory faster than in most cities, giving buyers more choices and less urgency. The result is a market where sellers face both extended timelines and meaningful price concessions.Austin, Texas (89.7 days) continues adjusting from its pandemic peak, when the metro was among the fastest-appreciating in the country. The average price drop of $23,833 is the second-highest in the dataset, and only 9.4% of homes sold above asking. Austin’s correction has been gradual but persistent.Orlando, Florida (80.1 days) saw the largest absolute slowdown between 2024 and 2025, adding 13.4 days to the average, and is still decelerating in 2026. Rising insurance costs and elevated mortgage rates have cooled what was one of the hottest pandemic-era markets.Tampa, Florida (78.6 days) recorded the largest percentage increase in days on market between 2024 and 2025 (27.2%). Insurance costs that have more than doubled in many Florida markets since 2022 have added a hidden drag on buyer enthusiasm that does not show up in headline price figures.A Slowdown That Came in StagesThis did not happen overnight. The deceleration started in 2024, gained momentum through 2025, and is still accelerating in early 2026.Consider Tampa. In 2024, the average home there sold in about 56 days. By 2025, that had climbed to 71 days, a 27% increase and the fastest rate of change among all 15 markets. In the first three months of 2026, Tampa homes averaged 79 days before closing.Tampa is an extreme case, but it is not an outlier. Every market in the dataset followed the same arc. No market got faster.Year-Over-Year DOM Change: 2024 vs. 2025 Offerpad Columbus held up best with only 1.6 days added. Tampa added the most at 15.2.The early 2026 data shows the trend continuing. Comparing Q1 2026 to Q1 2025, Saint Louis jumped 26.6% (adding nearly 12 days), Indianapolis added 11.7 days (a 23.3% increase), and San Antonio crossed the 100-day mark for the first time.What is driving this? The common thread across markets is affordability pressure. Mortgage rates that have stayed elevated above 6.5% for most of the past 18 months have thinned the pool of qualified buyers. Sellers, meanwhile, have been reluctant to cut prices, creating a standoff where homes sit longer as both sides wait for the other to blink.Best Time of Year to Sell a HouseSeasonality has a measurable impact on how fast homes sell. Across all 15 markets and all years in the dataset: Offerpad Homes that closed in summer (May through August) spent an average of 45.2 days on market. Homes closing in winter (December through February) spent 59.9 days. That is a 33% penalty for winter sellers.But the seasonal swing varies widely by city.Markets with the biggest seasonal swings (summer 2025 vs. winter 2025–26): Offerpad Indianapolis shows the most extreme pattern: Homes there sell nearly twice as fast during summer as they do in winter. Midwest and Southeast markets generally show larger seasonal swings.Markets where seasonality matters less:Phoenix (eight-day swing) and Tampa (10-day swing) show the smallest seasonal differences. Phoenix’s winter is actually its busiest season for buyer activity, as relocating buyers and snowbirds shop during cooler months. Tampa benefits from steady year-round migration from the Northeast.For sellers who have flexibility on timing, listing in spring for a summer closing can shave anywhere from eight to 26 days off the expected timeline. In Indianapolis, that timing advantage alone is worth nearly a month.The Financial Cost of WaitingTime on market is not just an inconvenience. The data shows a clear relationship between how long homes sit and the financial terms of the sale.In the fastest markets, sellers face modest price adjustments and have a strong chance of selling above asking price. In the slowest markets, price drops exceed $20,000 and seller concessions add thousands more to the cost of closing.March 2026: The Financial Picture by Market Offerpad *Columbus concessions data shows as $0 or negative, which may reflect a reporting methodology difference in that market’s MLS.The spread is stark. In Saint Louis, the typical seller drops their price by about $5,900 and has a 36% chance of selling above asking. In Austin, the typical price drop is nearly $24,000 and only 9% of homes beat their list price.Prices Up, Selling Times Up: An Unexpected PatternA seller might assume that longer selling times mean a declining market. In more than half of these cities, that assumption is wrong.Eight of 15 markets saw median prices increase between 2024 and 2025, even as homes took longer to sell: Offerpad This defies the typical assumption that a slowing market means a declining market. What it suggests instead is a housing environment where inventory is still tight enough to support prices, but where buyer hesitation — driven by mortgage rates and affordability ceilings — is stretching the transaction timeline. The result for sellers in these eight cities: you will likely still get your price, but you will wait longer for it.Markets where both selling times and prices are moving in the wrong direction tell a different story. Tampa saw prices drop 3.1%, Dallas fell 1.4%, and Houston dipped 0.9%, all while homes sat longer. These markets may be in the early stages of a more traditional correction, where slower sales eventually pull prices down.What This Data Means for Home Sellers in 2026The 39 months of data in this analysis point to several practical takeaways for anyone considering selling a home this year.Build more time into your plan. The average across all 15 markets is 67 days in Q1 2026, but markets like San Antonio, Austin, and Orlando are running well above that. If you are planning a move tied to a specific date for a job relocation or other life event, exploring your selling options early gives you the most flexibility. Some sellers are turning to cash offers as a way to lock in a closing date and avoid the uncertainty of an extended listing period.List in the spring if you can. Homes that close in summer sell about 15 days faster on average than homes closing in winter. In markets like Indianapolis and Austin, the seasonal advantage is 25 or more days. For a seller in Indianapolis, listing in March for a June close versus listing in October for a January close could mean the difference between 31 days on market and 57.Price accurately from the start. The data shows a strong relationship between extended time on market and price reductions. In a market where the average price drop already exceeds $20,000 in some cities, overpricing compounds the financial cost of waiting. Understanding your home’s current market value before setting a list price helps set realistic expectations.Know your local market. The difference between Columbus (53 days, 27% selling above list) and San Antonio (101 days, 11% above list) is enormous. National housing headlines often miss these city-level differences. The costs of selling a home vary just as much as the timelines, and understanding both is part of making an informed decision.Methodology: This analysis is based on aggregated multiple listing service data for single-family home transactions from January 2023 through March 2026 across 15 metropolitan markets where Offerpad operates. All statistics represent market-wide transaction data, not Offerpad-specific transactions. Jacksonville, FL was excluded from this analysis due to MLS data licensing restrictions. Data from one additional market file was unavailable at the time of analysis. Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.Markets analyzed: Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Charlotte, NC; Columbia, SC; Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; Houston, TX; Indianapolis, IN; Las Vegas, NV; Orlando, FL; Phoenix, AZ; Raleigh, NC; Saint Louis, MO; San Antonio, TX; Tampa, FL.About the source data: Offerpad analyzed MLS data covering single-family home transactions in 15 metropolitan markets where the company operates. The dataset includes monthly aggregated metrics: closed property count, median close price, median price per square foot, average price drop from initial listing, average days on market, average seller concessions, and percentage of homes selling above list price. Data spans January 2023 through March 2026 (39 months per market, covering more than 350,000 total transactions).This story was produced by Offerpad and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	50+ QR Code usage statistics 2026: Consumer and marketing data 50+ QR Code usage statistics 2026: Consumer and marketing dataQR Codes are no longer something people “try.” They’re something people use every day, whether it’s scanning a restaurant menu, checking product details, getting a discount, or making a quick payment.In fact, according to Uniqode’s State of QR Codes 2026 report, most consumers now interact with QR Codes regularly, with a majority describing them as useful in their daily lives. At the same time, usage continues to scale, with over 100 million people in the U.S. expected to scan a QR Code in 2026.Here’s a breakdown of the latest statistics on adoption, behavior, and performance, and what they mean for your strategy.QR Code market overview and growth statisticsThe QR Code industry is now a 13 billion-dollar market, with adoption continuing to rise each year. As global and state standards move toward 2D barcodes, QR Codes are becoming an increasingly important way for businesses to engage customers and capture intent.102.6 million people are expected to scan QR Codes in 2026 — roughly 1 in 3 Americans.QR Code payment market size is expected to grow to $22.12 billion by 2034.By the end of 2027, GS1 QR Codes are targeted to replace traditional UPC barcodes across global retail. The new standard is already being tested in 48 countries representing 88% of world GDP.More than half (50.5%) of global internet users scan at least one QR Code every month.Seventy percent of respondents to a customer survey said they scan a QR Code at least once a month.The message is clear: QR Codes are moving beyond a trend to test and becoming a core part of daily life.How are marketers using QR Codes?Using QR Codes in digital marketing campaigns delivers information at a single scan and helps measure the ROI of otherwise immeasurable campaigns.Fifty-six percent of marketers expect higher revenue from QR Codes this year.The marketing and advertising segment is projected to be the fastest-growing QR Code application, expanding at a CAGR of 18.6% through 2031.Primary marketing goals cluster around: growth/acquisition (54%), engagement (52%), and operational efficiency (39%). Uniqode QR Codes are becoming a valuable goldmine of first-party information. A survey of 1,000 customers across various regions in the U.S. revealed:Eighty-three percent are willing to share information after a scan, provided there is data transparency. However, only 34% marketers clearly disclose how scanned data will be used by consumers, creating both a risk and an untapped trust opportunity.Although customer trust is increasing, a single bad experience can seriously harm a brand. Ensuring zero broken links, providing relevant information, disclosing privacy policies, and placing your QR Code all contribute to a positive scanning experience and improve brand trust.The way to ensure no printed QR Code leads a customer to a broken link is to use dynamic QR Codes. Apart from editability, dynamic QR Codes have also led to a reduction in the need for reprinting, especially for the CPG industry, where QR Codes are used on product packaging.Dynamic QR Codes account for 65% of all global QR Code revenue share, having overtaken static formats.Seventy-three percent of organizations have reduced printed materials or reprints using QR Codes.How you use QR Codes on your product directly impacts revenue.Seventy-nine percent of consumers are more likely to purchase products that have a scannable QR Code providing additional product information.Apart from QR Code placement, providing contextual QR Code journeys and alleviating safety concerns positively impact customer scanning behavior.What are the QR Code analytics marketers measure?There is a measurement gap when it comes to QR Code analytics: Most teams track activity, but not outcomes. The growing use of dynamic QR Codes presents significant opportunities for marketers to quantify revenue impact.Forty-seven percent of U.S. brand and agency marketers named attribution and measurement their top investment priority for 2025.The State of QR Code 2026 marketer survey revealed what marketers are measuring:Click-through rate (30%), customer engagement (30%), conversion rate (22%), and sales or revenue (12%), while 6% do not measure QR Code performance at all.Only 1 in 8 marketers connects scans to revenue impact.Analytics (49%) was the top improvement marketers wished for in QR Code technology, followed by faster loading (45%), dynamic QR Codes (41%), greater compatibility (38%), and improved security/encryption (33%).The most valued and most improvement-requiring feature is analytics. This shows that the teams that close this gap in 2026 won't just generate more scans. They'll be the ones who can prove what those scans are worth.How consumers engage with QR CodesQR Codes are now part of everyday customer behavior, showing up across physical and digital touchpoints.Seventy-one percent say QR Codes are at least somewhat helpful, while 11% consider them essential. Only 12% find them not useful.Where and how people scan gives a clear view of what they expect from the experience.Where consumers scan QR CodesAccording to Uniqode’s State of QR Codes 2026, the top places consumers scan are:Restaurants (58%)Websites (42%)Product packaging (40%)These scans typically happen in high-intent moments, when customers are actively looking for information or next steps.How often consumers scanQR Code usage is not occasional anymore. For most users, it’s a regular habit. Uniqode Forty-four percent of consumers scan weekly or daily. Only 8% have never scanned a QR Code.Seventy-seven percent say product information is important when making a purchase decision.Half of Gen Z (49%) and Millennial (51%) consumers use QR Codes at least once a week.Why consumers scan QR CodesThe biggest driver behind QR Code usage is simple: access to information. This is especially relevant in categories such as product packaging and restaurants, where customers expect quick, contextually relevant information at the point of scan. According to TEAM LEWIS, consumers most often scan QR Codes to access:Restaurant menus (48%)Mobile apps (47%)Product information (43%)Wi-Fi networks (32%)Event tickets (31%)What safety concerns do consumers have with QR Codes?Consumer confidence in QR Codes has grown steadily, but it isn’t unconditional. Trust is earned at the moment of scan, not before. Every placement decision, landing page, or broken redirect becomes a trust signal, whether brands intend it or not.While adoption is rising, hesitation still exists.Consumer trust and experience:Fifty-eight percent of consumers feel somewhat or very confident that QR Codes are safe to scan.Twenty-six percent trust and scan QR Codes more than they did a year ago.Nine percent report declining trust.Only 14% have ever encountered a QR Code scam or phishing attempt.Thirty-eight percent say they have never had a negative QR Code experience. Uniqode However, perception does not always reflect the full risk landscape.Rising security threats and phishing trends:QR Code phishing incidents grew fivefold between August and November 2025.Twelve percent of all phishing attacks contained a QR Code in 2025.Twenty-two percent of phishing emails use QR Codes to bypass security filters.This creates a clear gap: Most consumers have not personally experienced fraud, but growing awareness of these threats makes them more cautious at the point of scan.For marketers, this means trust cannot be assumed. It must be signaled clearly before and after the scan.A branded short domain helps establish legitimacy before the scan even happens, reducing hesitation among the 29% of consumers who remain unsure about safety. Clear, specific CTAs set expectations upfront, while fast, mobile-optimized landing pages ensure the experience delivers on that promise without friction.Trust is not built by the QR Code itself, but by everything around it. Brands that treat these elements as operational defaults, not optional enhancements, will consistently outperform those that don’t.Industry benchmark statisticsThe following benchmarks are drawn from Uniqode's analysis of over 188 million scans processed across the platform in 2025. Total scans grew 7% year over year to over 796,000 in 2025.Platform overviewPeak scan month: December (17 million total scans, average 70 scans per code)Peak scan window: 4 p.m. - 9 p.m. UTC (57 million scans in this window)Highest-scanning U.S. state: California (11 million total scans)Industry benchmarksTop five industries by total scan volume in 2025: Uniqode Peak scan windows by industryScan timing varies meaningfully by industry. Key windows:Consumer packaged goods: 6 p.m. - 9 p.m. UTCTransportation: 6 p.m. - 9 p.m. UTCHospitality: 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. UTC (secondary spike 10 p.m. - 1 a.m.)Finance: 6 p.m. - 9 p.m. UTCEducation: 1 p.m. - 4 p.m. UTCMedia and internet: 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. UTCNonprofit: 3 p.m. - 6 p.m. UTCScanning trendsMost industries peak in the late afternoon to evening, except for education and media and internet, which peak earlier in the day.Virtually all scans originate from mobile devices across every industry.California leads overall scan volume, but top-scanning states vary by industry: Georgia leads hospitality (4.7 million scans), Texas leads finance (2.4 million), Tennessee leads transportation (4.5 million), and Washington D.C. leads nonprofits (1.2 million).Key takeaways for marketers in 2026The data points to the same conclusion: The QR Code conversation has moved on. The question is no longer whether they work. It's whether your program is built to prove it, scale it, and make it last. Here's what the data says matters most in 2026.Takeaway 1: The adoption question is settled. Performance is the new debate. 98% of marketers report a positive impact with QR Codes, and the global QR Code market is on track to reach $33.14 billion by 2031. The brands that are able to adopt QR Codes and attribute revenue to their scans will set themselves apart from their competitors in 2026.Takeaway 2: Match content to context, not codes to campaigns. Seventy-five percent of consumers scan for information. Only 36% of marketers use QR Codes to deliver it. The biggest advantage is providing contextual content to users after each scan.Takeaway 3: First-party data is one trust signal away. Eighty-three percent of consumers will share data, but 66% of marketers don't clearly disclose how it's used. The brands that close this gap can use QR Codes to build a reliable first-party data channel at a time when cookie-based tracking is becoming less dependable.Takeaway 4: The scan is the start, not the finish. Thirty-one percent of consumers want to save and revisit QR Code content later. Wallet passes, email capture, and save-for-later prompts turn one-time scans into ongoing relationships.Takeaway 5: Scaling is a solvable operations problem. Twenty percent of marketers already report zero roadblocks to scaling. They've built better systems for creating, managing, and tracking QR Codes. The tools exist; the differentiator is how you use the tools.In short, success with QR Codes in 2026 comes down to how well you execute, not whether you participate.This story was produced by Uniqode and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	5 things to know about Péter Magyar, Hungary's new prime minister Magyar ended Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's 16-year grip on power in a landslide victory on Sunday. The former Orbán loyalist burst onto the scene as an opposition leader in 2024.
	St. Ambrose hosting dance marathon fundraiser April 18 Over 100 St. Ambrose University students and other supporters will dance to fight pediatric illness during SAU Dance Marathon’s 14th Annual Big Event on Saturday, April 18, starting at 11 a.m. The dance marathon will be in the Rogalski Center Ballroom at St. Ambrose, 518 W. Locust Street in Davenport. Click here to donate. The [...]
	They endured child separation and received legal status. Now ICE is trying to deport them. They endured child separation and received legal status. Now ICE is trying to deport them.The 23-year-old Honduran man was legally living and working in the U.S. and had the documents to prove it. The U.S. government had allowed him to enter the country as part of a legal settlement for families that suffered under the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy that separated children from their parents at the border. Yet he’s spent the past five months locked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana, facing deportation.As this article from The Marshall Project examines, he’s one of at least 25 people ICE has detained or deported in recent months, despite their having legal status and protections granted by the child separation settlement, court records show.Beginning in 2017, thousands of immigrant children were traumatically separated from their parents at the border without cause. It was one of the first Trump administration’s most controversial actions, a policy that a federal judge later said caused “lasting, excruciating harm.” The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of the families, which the government settled in 2023, offering them legal status in the U.S., with pathways for residency, asylum and authorization to work.Now, in President Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. government has betrayed key terms of the deal. People who were supposed to be protected by the federal court settlement have been detained and deported, records show. The Department of Homeland Security informed families they suddenly had to pay a $1,000 fee per person to enter or to remain in the country. And the government stopped paying contractors it had hired to reunite families, and assist with job placement and legal paperwork.“Perhaps naively, we had hoped the Trump administration would finally acknowledge the harm it did during its first term, but instead it has repeatedly violated the settlement and subjected already-traumatized families to even more harm,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project, told The Marshall Project.Homeland Security officials didn’t respond to requests for comment. In their court filings, lawyers for the government have argued that the settlement agreement “does not restrict the government’s statutory authority to execute orders of removal.” They have also contended that courts lack the authority to order the government to return at taxpayer expense the people whom it wrongfully deported.A federal judge in California rebuked the U.S. government in February, ordering it to return several families it had deported in violation of the settlement in the lawsuit known as Ms. L v. ICE. The judge said the government’s actions “rendered the benefits of the Settlement Agreement illusory for these families, and the manner in which each of these removals was affected, in addition to being unlawful, involved lies, deception, and coercion.”Now families that the government promised not to separate are once again figuring out how to get their loved ones home.It was Y.M.M.’s 23rd birthday last October, and like many young men in Louisiana, he wanted to go fishing and shooting with his buddies. (The Marshall Project is identifying him by his initials because of his family’s concerns that using his full name would lead to retribution or threaten his safety.) He and two friends went to the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area, about 30 minutes northwest of New Orleans.Target shooting there is common, but prohibited. Unfortunately for these friends, a pair of Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries officers heard the gunshots. The officers found three young adult men who spoke “a little English,” and showed various forms of state and international ID along with their guns, which the officers later verified were legally obtained, according to the incident report.Shooting targets in a protected wildlife area is an offense for which a person typically receives a ticket. But the agency that supervises hunting and fishing rules in Louisiana is one of more than 1,400 local law enforcement entities in the U.S. that have an immigration enforcement agreement with ICE. So “due to the unknown immigration status and them possessing firearms,” the Wildlife and Fisheries officers immediately contacted Homeland Security and ICE, according to the incident report.Federal agents arrested the three men, including Y.M.M. Despite his valid immigration documents, he has remained in a detention facility in Louisiana for more than five months.Y.M.M. came to the U.S. as a qualified family member of one of the lawsuit plaintiffs. In 2018, his 7-year-old brother had traveled from Honduras with his father, who was searching for work to support his family, including his wife, Idalia, his daughter and Y.M.M.Idalia remembers her youngest son’s face as she sent him off to the U.S., full cheeks and a mop of blonde curls. Her husband was immediately taken into custody when he crossed the border into New Mexico in 2018, and couldn’t call her for nearly two weeks, she said in Spanish in an interview with The Marshall Project. She remembers the dread of her husband calling and saying, “My love, they took our child.”“My love, how do you not know where our child is?” Idalia recalled saying.Immigration officers had immediately seized their son and sent him to New York, though it took the family months to figure out where the government had taken him. He remained in a group home in Brooklyn for several months, and at one point was nearly offered for adoption, according to his mother.As soon as they located their youngest, she said, the family did everything they could to get him home to Honduras. A cousin who lived in Florida went to pick the boy up in New York and kept him until they could arrange to get him home safely. Idalia and her family lost nearly a year with their youngest son.“Physically, he was well,” she said. “Psychologically, it damaged him.”The first Trump administration enacted the zero tolerance policy without a plan for how to reunite the separated children with their families. They also lacked legal basis for taking children in the first place, according to attorneys and advocates, which became the basis for the Ms. L v. ICE lawsuit.Though the parents were arrested by Homeland Security, the children were immediately handed over to a different agency — the Office of Refugee Resettlement. In all, the U.S. government separated about 5,000 children from their parents, according to the ACLU.Stories of what was happening to the families began to flood the media in 2018, and outrage grew. Even one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, the Rev. Franklin Graham, called the child separation policy “disgraceful.” The ACLU’s class action lawsuit in 2018 sought to stop the practice and to hold the government accountable.Bowing to public pressure and court orders, Trump issued an executive order rescinding the policy in June 2018. But immigration advocates insisted the practice continued in various formats for several years.The settlement of the lawsuit was announced years later under President Joe Biden and approved by a federal judge: It promised eligible families special asylum consideration, legal presence (known as parole in the immigration system) in the U.S. while the asylum claims were considered, work authorization, psychological counseling and legal services to aid with immigration.In 2022, a contractor hired to locate the families eligible as part of the then-ongoing class action lawsuit contacted Idalia and her family in Honduras. By then, Y.M.M., their eldest child, was 19. In the years since the family reunited, their home country had been infiltrated by MS-13 gang members and plagued with violence. Soon, he faced a choice many young Honduran men must confront: Join or die.The U.S. Department of State’s website currently advises against travel to Honduras, warning that violent crime — including homicide, kidnapping, rape and human trafficking — remains common, and “violent gang activity is widespread.”Coming to the U.S. with permission from the government, financial assistance and valid documents under the settlement agreement seemed like the family’s best option to save their eldest son from being forced into a life of violence.“God is giving us this chance, we need to go,” Idalia told her family.In summer 2022, the family traveled to the U.S. and ended up together in Florida. Idalia still has their plane ticket stubs among the immigration documents she keeps in a folder for the family. Her eldest son’s Honduran passport shows a stamp on June 2 of that year, when he landed at the Atlanta airport and went through customs. The family eventually moved to central Louisiana, and her eldest son worked for months as a welder, ironworker and electrician.After ICE arrested Y.M.M., the family didn’t think it would be hard to get him released, his mother said. They had the proper paperwork, including his parole documents and employment authorization card. When he’d been locked up for several weeks, the family paid $6,500 to a local immigration law firm for help. But despite the firm’s filings in Louisiana’s immigration court, a deportation order was issued on Jan. 6 for Y.M.M. — even though he had not committed a criminal offense (shooting guns in the wildlife area was a civil citation).The removal order is under appeal in immigration court, records show. Lawyers for the ACLU maintain that his arrest and detention are clear violations of the settlement agreement and filed a motion on April 1 for the release of Y.M.M. and several other members of the settlement class.Y.M.M. calls his family only twice a week from the detention facility, because the calls are so expensive, his mother said. The family sends him money so he can buy packets of ramen and cans of sardines, to supplement the bread, beans and hot dogs fed to people locked up there.The presents his family bought for his 23rd birthday are still waiting for him at home.Court records show that ICE deported at least six people, all subject to the settlement protections, before the ACLU could file petitions on their behalf. Several were instructed to self-deport and told by immigration officers their legal status under the settlement didn’t matter, according to court records.A 20-year-old from Guatemala, who was granted legal status in 2022 through the settlement, was arrested by ICE agents at a gas station in December. He spent at least a week in the Florida lockup known as “Alligator Alcatraz” before he was transferred to detention in Louisiana and deported. On Dec. 18, court records show, lawyers for the ACLU emailed officials at the Department of Justice about another detained man from Guatemala who, due to an existing court order, they contended should not be deported. Court records show that on the same day, Homeland Security put him on a flight to Guatemala.One of the other deported plaintiffs is a single mother of three who was returned to Honduras with her children in July. She has since received death threats from local men seeking to extort money, according to court records. Lawyers for the ACLU said the government has not notified them that any of the deported class members have been returned to the U.S.Meanwhile, dozens of families that are part of the settlement had their paroles denied because they could not pay a $1,000-per-person fee that the government increased and started trying to collect last year. The federal judge overseeing the settlement said the fee increase violated the original agreement terms.The Department of Justice last year abruptly notified the firm hired to provide legal services for the eligible families that its contract was being canceled, at the behest of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.The judge overseeing the settlement ordered the government to resume providing legal services, because this was a mess of its own making when it enacted the zero tolerance policy that “gratuitously tore the sacred bond that existed between these parents and their children.”Meanwhile, the ICE detentions and deportations, even if they’re eventually overturned, have had another effect. Very few families have had the chance to apply for asylum, a key feature of the settlement, because the legal firms assisting them have been busy renewing other documents and fighting to ensure that their clients aren’t detained or deported.The deadline to apply is December.Additional reporting contributed by Manuel TorresThis story was produced by The Marshall Project and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	First-time homebuyers are holding their ground against investors First-time homebuyers are holding their ground against investorsFor years, headlines have painted investors as the unbeatable force in America’s housing market, but that might not tell the full story. Data from Neighbors Bank suggests that first-time homebuyers continue to play a major role in the nation’s starter-home market, capturing an average of 69% of starter-home purchases across 30 U.S. metros.The analysis found that investor dominance is concentrated in markets with fewer limits on short-term rentals or investor ownership. In contrast, metros with stronger affordability protections and owner-occupant policies show a clear advantage for first-time homebuyers.Study HighlightsFirst-time homebuyers purchase the majority of starter homes. Across the 30 metros analyzed, first-time homebuyers accounted for an average of 69% of purchases, while investors represented 31%.Investor dominance is localized. Of the cities evaluated, only a handful showed investor dominance in the market. Miami had the highest number of investor starter home purchases at 57%.Local laws play a large role. State and municipal-level protections, such as California’s SB 1079, give owner-occupants a window to compete before investors. Meanwhile, short-term rental regulations in cities such as Seattle, Denver, and Los Angeles continue to reinforce first-time homebuyer presence in entry-level markets by limiting investor profit potential.FTHB vs. Investor Starter Home Share Across 30 U.S. CitiesTo understand how investor and first-time homebuyer competition shifts across geographies, Neighbors Bank analyzed market share in 10 cities with notable investor presence and compared it to mid-sized and small-sized cities within the same states.Here’s a look at the percentage of starter homes bought by investors vs. first-time homebuyers in 30 varying-sized metros across the U.S: Neighbors Bank What Is a Starter Home?Traditionally, a “starter home” refers to a modest, affordable property purchased by a first-time homebuyer, typically smaller in size and lacking luxury features. Starter homes emerged in post-World War II America when government programs like the GI Bill and FHA loans made homeownership accessible to middle-class families, leading to the development of affordable, modest single-family houses.These smaller, simpler homes were designed to serve as entry points into homeownership, with the expectation that owners would eventually “trade up” to larger properties as their incomes and families grew.In this study, the researchers defined a "starter home" as a home that a first-time homebuyer could reasonably afford. To determine this, they only included home purchases that were bought as primary dwellings and did not exceed 30% of the area's median household income. Housing costs included the mortgage principal, homeowners insurance, property taxes, and private mortgage insurance based on a down payment of 10%—a common amount for first-time homebuyers. Spending more than 30% of one's income on housing costs is a common benchmark used by the Census Bureau to indicate a “housing burden.”What Counts as an “Investor”?The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) doesn’t explicitly define “investor” as a standalone purchase category. Instead, the data tracks the occupancy type that the property is classified as, along with other loan and property details.For this study, the researchers identified investor activity by filtering for non-owner-occupied properties marked as “investor property” or "secondary purchase.” They also limited property values to align with what first-time homebuyers could realistically afford, to help filter out cases where small loan amounts were paired with large cash payments to purchase high-value properties.It's important to note that the HMDA's “secondary purchase” category does not differentiate between buyers of vacation homes and those purchasing properties for rental income. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, the researchers defined an investor as anyone who purchased a home they did not intend to occupy as their primary residence.5 Markets Favoring First-Time HomebuyersAcross the 30 metros analyzed, first-time homebuyers purchased an average of 69% of starter homes, compared to 31% purchased by investors. Notably, three of the five cities are high-cost markets, demonstrating that even in expensive areas, ownership-friendly policies can tilt the scales toward first-time homebuyers.Here are five metros where first-time homebuyers outperform investors the most:1. Denver, COFirst-time homebuyers accounted for an impressive 84.31% of starter-home purchases in the Denver, Colorado metro area, leaving investors with just 15.69%, a significant gap compared to the sample average.This advantage stems partly from Denver’s strict short-term rental (STR) regulations, which prohibit non-owner-occupied properties as STRs, meaning only owner-occupied residents can list their homes. These rules limit investor profitability in popular neighborhoods, subtly favoring long-term residents and owner-occupants over speculative buyers.2. Seattle, WAIn Seattle, first-time homebuyers claimed 81.16% of purchases, while investors represented 18.84%. The city’s STR limits make it difficult for investors to build large rental portfolios. Seattle allows each host a maximum of two STR units, and one must be their primary residence. When combined with Washington’s strong tenant protections and high acquisition costs, these measures reduce investor appeal and create more room for first-time homebuyers in an otherwise competitive market.3. Los Angeles, CAApproximately 80.75% of starter homes in Los Angeles went to first-time homebuyers, compared with 19.25% to investors—an impressive share, given the city’s high annual tourism.State-level legislation and city ordinances work in tandem to support this balance. Under California Senate Bill 1079, tenants, nonprofits, and owner-occupants are given a 45-day window to match investor bids on foreclosed homes, thereby slowing the pace of bulk investor acquisitions. At the city level, Los Angeles’ Home-Sharing Ordinance restricts STRs to an owner’s primary residence, limits unhosted rental nights, and requires registration, reducing investor conversions of affordable housing into vacation rentals.4. Indianapolis, INIn Indianapolis, 78.22% of starter-home purchases were made by first-time homebuyers, compared with 21.78% by investors. While affordability across the Midwest plays a major role, local housing initiatives have also made a difference. Programs such as Vacant to Vibrant and the Renew Land Bank prioritize the sale and redevelopment of properties to owner-occupants, steering vacant and abandoned homes away from speculative investors. These measures help preserve affordable inventory and support neighborhood stability—conditions that favor first-time homebuyers.5. Dayton, OHFirst-time homebuyers accounted for 75.19% of starter-home purchases in Dayton, while investors represented 24.81%. The city’s balance is bolstered by programs through the Montgomery County Land Bank, including Welcome Home Ohio, which transfers properties with five-year deed restrictions requiring owner-occupancy. By keeping investor landlords out of these transactions, Dayton maintains a healthier supply of affordable homes available to entry-level buyers.5 Markets Where Investors Hold an EdgeWhile most metros leaned toward first-time homebuyers, a handful stood out for their strong investor presence. Among the 30 cities Neighbors Bank analyzed, investors represented an average of 31% of starter-home purchases; however, in the metros listed below, investor activity far exceeded this average, ranging from roughly 42% to nearly 57% of all starter-home sales.1. Miami, FLMiami was the only market where investors outpaced first-time buyers, with investors purchasing 56.89% of starter homes compared to 43.11% by first-time homebuyers.Florida’s state preemption law prohibits cities from banning STRs, allowing investors to freely convert properties without many restrictions. At the same time, the state’s ban on local rent control ordinances keeps rental profits fully market-driven. This flexibility, paired with Miami’s year-round tourism demand, has made the city a hotspot for both institutional and individual investors. Without local first-look programs or owner-occupant protections, Miami’s housing market remains tilted toward investor ownership.2. Cleveland, OHInvestors captured 45.08% of starter-home purchases in Cleveland, leaving 54.92% to first-time homebuyers. While the city’s high investor share reflects the conditions at the time, according to 2024 HMDA data, new policies could shift that balance moving forward.In February 2024, Cleveland passed the Residents First legislation, a comprehensive housing package that requires non-owner-occupied properties to register with the city, obtain certificates of rental occupancy, and meet lead-safe standards. The initiative was implemented with the hope of forcing stricter accountability for out-of-town landlords and vacant property owners.These measures weren’t yet in effect during the data period, but will likely help temper investor dominance in future years by making profit-driven home purchases more costly and favoring responsible, owner-occupancy.3. Atlanta, GAIn Atlanta, investors accounted for 44.90% of all starter-home purchases, unsurprising given that Georgia’s housing environment leaves few barriers for investors. While STR hosts must register properties with the city, there are no limits on the number of homes one can own or convert to rentals. Rapid job and population growth, paired with high rental demand, make Atlanta particularly attractive to investors seeking long-term appreciation and steady cash flow, factors that contribute to its elevated investor share.4. Nashville, TNInvestors made up 44.33% of starter-home purchases in Nashville. A broader laissez-faire approach to STR regulation allows investors to continue purchasing properties across much of the metro. The Tennessee Short-Term Rental Unit Act limits how much local governments can restrict STRs and even grandfathers previously approved non-owner-occupied rentals, preserving investor access in many neighborhoods. The city’s booming tourism industry and steady population inflow add to investor demand, driving competition higher for first-time homebuyers.5. Oklahoma City, OKOklahoma City’s housing market remains relatively open to investors, who represented 41.89% of starter-home purchases. Oklahoma’s housing laws are among the most permissive in the country: The state prohibits local rent control and allows STRs to operate under a straightforward home-sharing license system17 rather than restrictive zoning or occupancy caps. These investor-friendly frameworks, coupled with the city’s low housing costs and strong rental yields, make Oklahoma City a consistent magnet for both institutional and small-scale investors.What the Divide Reveals About the Future of HomeownershipAcross the 30 cities analyzed, a consistent pattern emerged: First-time homebuyers continue to represent the majority of starter-home purchasers, though the balance between investors and owner-occupants varies widely by location.The findings suggest that policy—not just price—plays a significant role in shaping access to affordable housing. Cities like Denver, Seattle, and Los Angeles show how measures such as primary-residence requirements and owner-occupant preference laws can help maintain a more balanced housing market.In contrast, markets like Miami, Atlanta, and Oklahoma City illustrate how permissive investment environments can fuel investor demand. State-level rent-control preemptions and short-term rental protections keep these markets highly profitable for landlords and vacation-rental operators, often at the expense of first-time homebuyers.Looking ahead, cities that have recently implemented new regulations (such as Cleveland’s Residents First legislation) may begin to see investor shares shrink as compliance costs rise and enforcement strengthens. Meanwhile, in states with little or no owner-occupant protections, investors will likely maintain a competitive edge.Overall, the data points to a nuanced housing landscape: First-time homebuyers remain key participants in the starter-home market, but local rules and affordability policies continue to determine how accessible that market truly is.Data Methodology & DefinitionsThis Neighbors Bank case study used the following assumptions and definitions:Assumptions: Every piece of data pulled for this study was from 2024 (which was the most recently available data in many cases), except for the property tax amounts, which were from 2023. The researchers assumed a 30-year mortgage at 6.72% interest rate (this was the average of the national weekly average interest rates in 2024) and a 10% down payment when calculating monthly mortgage payments. At this down payment amount, there is an assumption of PMI, which was included as 0.75% of the loan amount at the time of purchase.Starter Home Qualification: To determine how much a buyer can afford, Neighbors Bank calculated 30% of the average gross monthly income to set the affordability threshold. Then, with the aforementioned assumptions, the researchers summed the possible monthly costs of the mortgage, including average HOI costs by state, tax rate by county, and 0.75% annual PMI payment. By utilizing these variables, they could determine how much house a buyer can afford without exceeding the 30% affordability threshold when accounting for these recurring homeownership costs. They did not include monthly utility costs as a factor in determining home affordability.Investor Assumption: A purchase was deemed an investor purchase if the occupancy type was marked as “secondary residence” or “investment property”. Additionally, Neighbors Bank used the starter home qualification amount as a cap for property value to limit cases where investors combined loans with large cash amounts.First-Time Homebuyer Assumption: A purchase was deemed a “first-time homebuyer” purchase if the HMDA occupancy type was marked as “primary residence” and the sum of the 10% down payment and loan amount was determined as affordable using the 30% affordability threshold.HMDA Data: Since many HMDA variable thresholds are every $10,000, rounding was executed to the nearest $10,000 based on the specific value. For example, if the median income of an MSA was $64,320, the researchers would include all filters up to $50,000-$60,000; if the median income was $66,320, the research team would include all filters up to $60,000-$70,000. This is concurrent with the property value, loan amount, and down payment amount variables. For all pulls, three filters were included by default. All data is based on originations from 2024 where the loan purpose equaled “purchase.”This Neighbors Bank analysis draws on data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s HMDA 2023-2024 lending dataset, the Tax Foundation, homeowners insurance cost estimates from NerdWallet, and household income and affordability benchmarks from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED).This story was produced by Neighbors Bank and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Quad-Cities gas prices jump nearly 30 cents in the last week Prices in the Quad-Cities are 47.2 cents per gallon higher than a month ago and 73.8 cents per gallon higher than a year ago.
	Help name Davenport's new fire rescue boat The Davenport Fire Department (DFD) announced it is receiving a new fire rescue boat. According to a release, to celebrate the new addition to the firefighting fleet, the public is invited to help name the vessel. Submissions will be accepted through Friday, April 17. Three finalists will be selected, and voting will be opened for [...]
	7 commonly overlooked steps when starting a small business 7 commonly overlooked steps when starting a small businessThere’s a moment every new business owner knows well, the mix of excitement and uncertainty that hits once you decide to go for it. You have the idea, the energy and maybe even your first few customers. Then come the practical questions: Should I register as an LLC or S Corp? How do I pay myself? What happens when I hire someone?Starting a business often feels like wearing many hats at once: sales, HR, customer service, manager, owner and more. ADP explains how the difference between a company that hits the ground running and one that struggles usually comes down to understanding where the early risks are and how to manage them to avoid issues down the road.1. Don’t skip the setup.You don’t need to be a lawyer to start a business, but you do need structure. The first step is choosing your legal setup. The decision between an LLC, S corporation or sole proprietorship affects your taxes, liability and how potential investors may view your business later.Once you register, apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS and open a dedicated business bank account. Keeping personal and business finances separate helps protect you legally and simplifies recordkeeping.New entrepreneurs sometimes skip these steps to get started faster. However, establishing clear systems early can help prevent costly cleanups later and keep you better organized as you grow.2. Hire with intention.When the workload becomes too heavy to handle alone, it might be time to bring in your first hires. Proceed with caution and intention. These people coming in on the ground floor will shape your company’s culture and future growth, so take time to define what you need.Write detailed job descriptions that include responsibilities, skills, qualifications and compensation. Use multiple channels like online boards, referrals and local networks to find candidates. When bringing your first employees on, make sure all tax and employment forms are completed correctly, and set clear expectations for performance and communication.While it might be difficult to compete with more established employers on salary, candidates also value transparency, flexibility and genuine opportunity for growth. Know your strengths as a business and let candidates know them during the interviewing process.3. Think about a process for pay.Setting up payroll early is smart. It keeps taxes accurate, allows you to pay your first hires and yourself when the time is right, simplifies and speeds up future hiring and helps ensure compliance from the start.Payroll also connects to a growing compliance consideration: pay transparency laws. In many states and cities, employers must include pay ranges in job postings or disclose them during hiring. These laws are meant to promote fairness and consistency, but they vary widely.As you think about pay:Anticipate the first few roles you’ll need to fill.Research competitive pay rates for those roles.Review pay transparency rules in your state and municipality.Document how you determine pay for each role.Communicate salary information consistently during hiring.Having a roadmap prepared for when you’ll likely need to bring people on, what those first roles might be and the cost they’ll incur can help you plan for growth over that first year. Establishing clear pay practices from the very start not only reduces compliance risk but also helps build trust with employees.4. Watch for compliance changes.From tax deadlines to payroll filings and labor regulations, the rules around compliance evolve constantly. Missing even one can create unnecessary risk.Schedule regular reviews of your payroll, tax and HR processes. Mark filing dates in advance and stay updated on new laws, especially if you operate in multiple states. If you’re unsure, consulting with an accountant or HR professional can save you time and penalties down the road.Think of compliance as regular maintenance. It helps keep the business running smoothly and protects what you’re building.5. Document your policies.Transparency and communication matter in every size of business. Be clear on your expectations. Don’t assume employees “should just know,” especially if you’re still establishing processes as the company grows. People come to you with varied work experience and expertise. Explain what you want, what the company’s goals are and how they can contribute to growth.Beyond transparent communication, it’s important to formalize your policies. Establishing an employee handbook from the outset can help you set clear expectations with your employees. From a compliance perspective, some states require an employee handbook when you reach a certain number of employees. Regardless, it’s a best practice for all businesses to have when onboarding employees.6. Think like an employee.You don’t need a large HR department to think like an employee; establishing yourself as an attractive employer is about clear communication and follow-through. People tend to stay with companies where they feel respected, listened to, and informed. For a small business, that can make all the difference.While you might not be able to offer a comprehensive slate of benefits to start, think about the unique offerings you can extend, whether that’s flexible scheduling and remote work options or discounts and employee perks. Think about your onboarding process too, and the type of culture you offer, as they can make a big impact on how your employees feel about their work.7. Plan for the unexpected.Even the most well-prepared entrepreneur can’t predict every challenge. Build a financial cushion, maintain insurance coverage and seek out mentors or advisors who can offer perspective when you hit a roadblock.Success is the result of deliberate choices that reduce risk, strengthen compliance and create stability. The more you prepare now, the better positioned you’ll be when opportunities appear.This story was produced by ADP and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	12 cheapest places to golf this spring 12 cheapest places to golf this springAs temperatures start to warm around the U.S., golfers pull out their clubs and start taking practice swings. It’s time for a spring golf trip, and the options continue to get better.While golf has a long history in the U.S. and U.K., it’s becoming more and more popular around the world. New courses in Thailand and elsewhere are opening up options for affordable, exciting golf trips. A U.S. golf trip is still appealing as well, especially in places like Florida, where you can almost guarantee good weather in the spring. More and more public courses open each year, bringing more people into the sport and providing options for all skill levels.Sometimes, a golf trip is a time to get in as many rounds as possible. Sometimes, it’s a way to see a new place while also finding time for an activity you love. Where you choose to golf will depend on how central golf is to the trip. You could combine golf with a family city escape in Chicago, or with a beach trip in Portugal. Or, go all in with a golf and spa weekend in Arizona.Don’t assume that an international trip will cost more. Some international golf rounds are shockingly affordable, and if you time it right, you can find great flight deals, too. Weigh how important the hotel, additional activities, and flight time are to your trip to help determine where is most affordable for you for a spring golf vacation. Point.me broke the costs down by round of golf, hotel prices, and flights to help you get started.Cheapest by golf round costGolf isn’t known as the cheapest sport, but there are still courses out there for budget-conscious players. From public courses across the U.S. to worldwide destinations, there are plenty of affordable options that offer great value, challenging courses, and beautiful grounds. Of course, in some places, a lower cost of living makes golfing seem cheap for people traveling from higher-income countries.In Europe, destinations like Portugal offer rounds of golf at a fraction of the cost of U.S. courses. Meanwhile, places like Thailand deliver a more luxurious experience for less than you’d likely pay stateside. Even in the U.S, though, you can find bargains in states like Alabama and Michigan, which, while they have very expensive courses, also have many public, more affordable greens.Below is the average golf round cost, translated to USD and rounded to the nearest dollar.12. Los Cabos: $20011. Argentina: $15010. Thailand: $809. Ontario: $808. South Africa: $807. Portugal: $706. Arizona: $705. Florida: $644. New Jersey: $623. Michigan: $492. Alabama: $471. Illinois: $41Cheapest by average hotel costThis list was compiled by first looking at cities with affordable golf courses and entering those destinations into Booking.com. From there, Point.me looked at the average three-star hotel prices for a three-night stay in April.In most cities, prices range from high — including hotels with their own golf courses — to budget chains or, in some cases, hostels. Three-star hotels were chosen, but the best hotel for you could depend on how close you want to be to the golf course, dining options after a long day in the sun, and whether there are other nearby activities or the hotel is within walking distance of city sights outside of golfing.Below is the average cost of a three-night stay in April, translated to USD and rounded to the nearest dollar.12. Florida: $65011. Arizona: $60910. Cabo: $5429. New Jersey: $5258. Michigan: $4557. Portugal: $4506. Illinois: $4175. Ontario: $3814. Alabama: $3693. South Africa: $3512. Thailand: $3001. Argentina: $184Cheapest by lowest flight pricesTo determine the cheapest golf vacations by flight price, major airports in each golf destination for travel in April were examined. Prices will vary depending on how far ahead you book and your departure airport, but these are the average prices and should give you a good ballpark.Flights are probably going to be the most expensive part of your golf vacation, so think about whether you want to fly somewhere only to golf, or also see sights and do other activities on your trip. If playing multiple rounds of golf at low prices is your trip goal, then you should go to the cheapest place to golf. But if you want to turn it into a bigger trip and only play a couple of rounds, it might be worth going somewhere with cheaper flights and hotels, but more expensive golf courses.Here are the cheapest places to fly by average round-trip economy flight price.12. Thailand: $1,14711. South Africa: $1,01010. Portugal: $7889. Argentina: $4388. New Jersey: $1737. Ontario: $3056. Michigan: $2625. Cabo: $1694. Alabama: $1343. Illinois: $1242. Florida: $731. Arizona: $70Overall cheapestLet’s put it all together. Based on the average flight cost, the average price of a round of golf, and the average three-night hotel stay, these are the cheapest places to golf this spring:12. Thailand: $1,52711. South Africa: $1,44110. Portugal: $1,3089. Cabo: $9118. Florida: $7877. Argentina: $7726. Ontario: $7665. Michigan: $7664. New Jersey: $7603. Arizona: $7492. Illinois: $5821. Alabama: $55012. ThailandThailand is known for offering luxury golf experiences at a fraction of the cost of other parts of the world. Many courses are located at resorts, but even if you’re not staying on location, you can golf for the day. Near Bangkok, you’ll find lush greens designed by famous architects, while in Phuket, you can golf amid the mountains and jungle.While some of the most famous championship courses can be pricey, many clubs offer greens fees between $30-$100, especially near Bangkok and Chiang Mai. (Phuket tends to be a bit more expensive.)Caddie culture is another reason people love golfing in Thailand. Most courses require golfers to play with a caddie. Before you protest, understand that this is generally an affordable service, and it’s nice to have some assistance.Getting there: Most flights from the U.S. will land in Bangkok. While prices depend on when exactly you book, one-way economy flights are generally around $1,100, or 40,000 points.11. South AfricaThere are more than 400 golf courses across South Africa, meaning there’s a course for every type of player. Go high-end at Leopard Creek Country Club, on the edge of Kruger National Park (don't be surprised if you see a hippo, crocodile, or exotic birds while playing), or classic at the more affordable links course at the Durban Country Club. Some of the most affordable courses are just outside of Cape Town, where you’ll be joined by mostly locals. There are many more high-end or middle-range options. And you’ll have your pick of scenery, from ocean views to mountain backdrops and wildlife sightings.Whether you’re chasing a bucket-list round at a world-class venue or exploring more budget-friendly clubs, South Africa’s golf scene offers a mix of quality, diversity, and value.Getting there: Flights from the U.S. will stop in Johannesburg or Cape Town. An economy ticket in the spring is about $1,010 for economy, or 67,500 points. Business flights are typically around 130,000 points, or $2,824.10. PortugalAmong the many reasons to golf in Portugal is the fact that you can do it almost all year long. The mild climate makes it possible to golf even in the winter. Many resorts are in the coastal resort areas of the Algarve. But you don’t have to stay in a resort, and Portugal is one of the more affordable countries in Europe when it comes to hotels.Another reason to love golfing in Portugal is the scenery: cliffs jutting out from the water, golden sand beaches, and beautiful flowers. Another is that there’s a dense concentration of courses, so you can try a few over a long weekend.Some courses are iconic, like the Arnold Palmer-designed Dom Pedro Victoria Golf Course. Others have distinctive features, like the cliff-top par-3 hole overlooking the Atlantic Ocean at the Vale do Lobo Royal Golf Course.If you don’t want to golf on the Algarve, there are also courses right outside Lisbon. Many clubs throughout the country are semi-public, meaning you get high-end services with more affordable access. The food is top-notch (seafood and Portuguese wine), and people linger post-round for long, late lunches or sunset drinks.Getting there: You’ll likely fly into Lisbon, where flight prices are around $780 for a one-way trip, or about 67,500 points. Business class flights are typically around $11,100, or 377,500 points.9. CaboCabo is one of the most popular golf destinations in North America, for good reasons. Views range from desert landscapes to ocean vistas (where you can sometimes even spot whales while on the range), and it’s almost always sunny.There are world-class courses, including El Cardonal, the first course designed by Tiger Woods, as well as several championship courses. But there are more budget-friendly options as well. The Cabo San Lucas Country Club and Club Campestre San José offer lower green fees, especially later in the day. Prices vary depending on the season, but can be anywhere from $130 to $230.Cabo has gorgeous luxury resorts, some of them with golf clubs. But it also has plenty of affordable accommodation. Similarly, there are both high-end restaurants and amazing taco stands. Whether you’re hoping for a bucket list golf experience or want to golf a couple of times while on a beach vacation, you can find a course that works well with your trip.Getting there: If you’re flying from within the U.S., flights to Cabo can be as low as around $170, or 14,000 points. That makes the destination in some ways even more affordable than staying in the U.S.8. FloridaFlorida is one of the most popular golf destinations in the U.S., and for good reason. There are more than 1,000 courses across the state, and it’s home to the PGA Tour, earning Florida the title of “golf capital” of the U.S. Consistently warm and sunny weather means you can golf all year, and millions of visitors come to do just that.Orlando, Palm Beach, and Jacksonville are the most popular golf destinations. The sport is so popular here that there are entire communities built around golf courses. But the system is also very much geared toward tourists. You can play a huge variety of public courses, or pay a fee for daily entry to some more exclusive clubs. Perhaps the best part of golfing in Florida is that after a hot day on the green, you can jump into the ocean or have sunset drinks by the pool.Getting there: There are numerous airports you could fly into in Florida, so if you’re trying to save money, look at flights before choosing where to golf. Spring flights to Orlando are typically around $266 for a one-way flight, or 19,700 points, while flights to Tampa are generally cheaper, at 7,500 points or $73.7. ArgentinaGolf has a long tradition in Argentina, meaning you can find everything from historic clubs to brand new courses. Most are located around Buenos Aires. The country has produced numerous famous golfers, and golf clubs are part of many communities.People love golfing in Argentina because of the quality of the courses and the generally good, mild weather. And then there’s the food. Families gather at golf clubs on weekends, along with tourists, to feast on grilled meats while watching amateur competitions. While these clubs dominate Argentina’s golf scene, there are also semi-public clubs like the Hurlingham Club Golf Course and Pilar Golf Club.Outside of Buenos Aires, you can golf with the Patagonian mountains in the background, or amid the vineyards of Mendoza.While green fees aren’t the cheapest, you can make up for paying entry to golf clubs by finding cheap flights and hotels. Food, drinks, and other tourist activities are also generally affordable.Getting there: You’ll fly from the U.S. to Buenos Aires. We’ve seen economy flights for as low as $438 one way, or 39,500 points. Business fares can be as low as $7,230 one way, or 563,000 points.6. OntarioOntario has the most established golf scene in Canada, with more than 700 courses across pastures, forests, lakes, and cities. It can get busy from April to October, because the season is short and people are excited. But the fact that everyone is so excited to get out and play also makes it a vibrant scene.The landscape is not only beautiful, but can make a round of golf more fun…or more challenging. Think granite outcrops, dense pine forests, and lots of lakes, especially in the Muskoka and Niagara regions. It’s especially beautiful — though more expensive — in September and October, when fall colors peak.You can golf a Canadian Open course, like the St. George’s Golf and Country Club, or take advantage of more accessible public golf. There are numerous municipal and regional courses that offer day passes.Getting there: You can fly into either Ottawa or Toronto, depending on where exactly you’re golfing. While prices vary depending on when in the golf season you’re visiting, we’ve seen flights to Ottawa for around $300 in the spring, or 13,200 points, and flights to Toronto at $524, or 23,000 points.5. MichiganGolf in Michigan is regarded as some of the best in the United States, thanks to an abundance of courses, beautiful landscapes, and a strong golfing tradition. With nearly 1,000 courses across the state, Michigan consistently ranks among the top U.S. states for golf participation and course availability.That’s partly because so many courses are public, including Arcadia Bluffs Golf Club and Forest Hills Dunes Golf Club in the Lower Peninsula, and numerous courses around Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Lansing.Golf season runs from spring through fall, and the cooler summer temperatures make it a popular destination for traveling golfers from across the Midwest.You can golf in almost every part of Michigan, but the most famous areas are in the northern half of the state, particularly in Traverse City and Petoskey. Here, you can golf amid sweeping lake views, sand dunes, and dramatic bluffs.Golf is extremely popular in Michigan, which is great for budget travelers, as many courses are open to daily play. But even some higher-end courses are more affordable than comparable courses in other states.Getting there: Most flights will probably stop in Detroit or Grand Rapids. While flights vary depending on the month and time of week, we’ve found that the average flight to Detroit in April is about $262, or 16,000 points.4. New JerseyNew Jersey has both prestigious private clubs and a strong network of public courses. Many classic courses were built in the 19th century (thanks to its proximity to New York), and those courses are still central to New Jersey’s golf identity today.Pine Valley Golf Club, for example, is often cited as the best golf course in the world. Then there’s Liberty National Golf Club, with views of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan skyline. Many visitors opt to golf on the coast, combining a golf trip with some beach and boardwalk time in Atlantic City. Here, you’ll find Atlantic City Country Club, known for popularizing the term “birdie.”New Jersey offers many courses in small areas, so whether you pick the beach, inland, or close to NYC, you can likely golf a couple of courses over a long weekend. That means you could also test out a coastal marshland course and a classic parkland green on one trip.Getting there: We’ve seen one-way economy flights to Newark in the spring for as low as $173, or 13,500 points. Depending on where you plan to golf, you could also fly into New York’s LaGuardia Airport (sometimes as low as $110 for a one-way flight, or 7,500 points) and rent a car.3. ArizonaWhen you think of Arizona, golf is probably one of the first things that comes to mind. It’s a defining element of the state’s tourism and a reason many retirees choose to relocate to Arizona. Year-round play, beautiful courses with varied terrain and levels, and a culture that caters to tourism make it a joy to visit for a golf trip.There are, of course, many exclusive clubs home to championship tours. But many of the best-known courses are open to the public. Golf with desert backdrops or amid towering cacti, then end your day with sunset drinks or at one of Arizona’s numerous spas.It’s not uncommon to visit solely for golf, getting in as many rounds as you can within a few days. But you could also combine a round or two of golf with hiking, wellness, and world-class dining for a different type of trip.Getting there: Flights to Tucson from within the U.S. are generally affordable in the spring. We’ve seen fares as low as $70 or 7,500 points for a one-way flight.2. IllinoisChicago has long been a hub of golf. The city played a large role in developing golf architecture and club culture in the U.S. But even outside of Chicago, there are hundreds of courses for all levels.While there are many famous courses, like the Medinah Country Club, which has hosted the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship, and the Ryder Cup, there are great public courses, too.Right on Lake Michigan in the heart of Chicago, you’ll find the Sydney Marovitz Golf Course, an affordable year-round (weather permitting) course for all skill levels. This is a great option for families, as kids 17-years-old and under play for free during certain hours. Combine a couple of golf rounds with museums and time on the lake for a family Chicago getaway. Ravisloe Country Club in Homewood is another excellent public option, as is Canal Shores in Evanston.Getting there: You can golf all over Illinois, but you will likely fly into Chicago. Depending on when exactly you book and fly, you can find deals as cheap as $124 for a one-way flight in April, or 8,800 points.1. AlabamaAlabama has one of the best golf experiences in the United States: the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. The collection of 11 championship-quality courses, designed by Jones, is spread across the state. The project was started as an investment to diversify Alabama’s pension fund. But for visitors, what you’ll want to know is that green fees are very affordable. Most courses can be played for around $65 (a couple connected to hotels are around $120).Like most U.S. cities, hotel options range from budget to luxury. And while Birmingham and other cities have incredible fine-dining restaurants, there are also budget-friendly options as well. And golf clubs lean heavily into hearty Southern food, which you’ll be ready for after a day on the course.Whatever type of trip you choose, Alabama’s courses offer a unique American golf experience.Getting there: Because the courses are spread throughout Alabama, you can look at flight and hotel prices and choose the most affordable option for your trip. Or, you could make a road trip out of it and fly into one city, play courses across the state, and fly home from another airport. When looking at flights to Birmingham, the average price for April was $134, or 4,500 points.This story was produced by Point.me and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Taylor Ridge crash injures three, one airlifted Three people were injured in a Taylor Ridge crash, including one who was airlifted. The crash remains under investigation.
	Review: Cabaret at the Quad City Music Guild in Moline What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play…at Quad City Music Guild’s production of the groundbreaking, multi-award winning musical, Cabaret, with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, book by Joe Masterhoff and brilliantly directed by Luke Vermeire.
	We The People: “It’s more about just the building and the school” - Effort underway to restore one of Iowa’s oldest classrooms A small stone building in Johnson County is telling a much bigger story about how education began in Eastern Iowa and now, there’s a push to preserve it before that history is lost.
	Baby emus offer ‘living dinosaur’ experience at Cambridge museum You're invited to a free, all-ages event with baby emus at the Cambridge Natural History Museum from 1 to 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 19.
	MercyOne Genesis Aledo, DeWitt to offer mental health services for seniors Senior Life Solutions offers outpatient services designed for individuals, usually 65 and older, who can benefit from skills to boost their mental health.
	1 airlifted after 2-vehicle crash in Taylor Ridge A pickup truck and a car crashed Saturday morning.
	10 off-the-beaten-track Australian destinations worth seeing 10 off-the-beaten-track Australian destinations worth seeingSome of Australia’s most iconic landmarks, including the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney Opera House and Uluru, draw millions of visitors every single year. But ask an Aussie where they actually go on a long weekend, and their answer probably won’t show up in any guidebook. The country’s most rewarding experiences are found far from the tour-bus circuit, down unmarked coastal roads and through ancient mountain ranges.In this guide, SIXT Australia shares 10 destinations that will reward travelers who are willing to get behind the wheel and take the scenic route.1. Kangaroo Valley, New South WalesTucked between sandstone escarpments about two hours south of Sydney, Kangaroo Valley feels like a patchwork of rural England dropped into the Australian bush. Dairy farms and other homely stop-offs are dotted around the region, and the Kangaroo River winds through towering eucalypts. Keep an eye out for the 19th-century Hampden Bridge — one of the last surviving wooden suspension bridges in the country — which marks the entrance into town.Locals and holidaymakers flock here for weekend kayaking, lazy pub lunches with valley views and the kind of quiet that the city simply can’t deliver. Most international visitors bypass it entirely on the motorway to Melbourne, never realizing that the slight detour through Macquarie Pass is one of the most scenic short drives in New South Wales. Make sure you stop at the Valley Fudge & Teahouse before crossing the bridge for a sweet pick-me-up after a long drive.2. Yamba, New South WalesAt the mouth of the Clarence River on the northern New South Wales coast, Yamba is a laid-back beach town that locals have been selfishly keeping to themselves. Where northerly Byron Bay buzzes with influencers and staggering resort prices, Yamba sticks to its unhurried charm as an old-world surf village. Residents stick around for uncrowded point breaks at Angourie, fresh prawns straight off the trawler and sunsets from the Pacific Hotel beer garden that rival anything on the coast.The drive from the nearest regional airport in Ballina takes about an hour along the Pacific Highway, but the slower inland route through sugarcane country will give you a much more authentic display of the surroundings. Get in on a Tuesday night, and you’ll be all set to mosey around the Yamba Farmers’ & Producers Market the next morning (7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Wednesdays).3. Flinders Ranges, South AustraliaRising from sunburnt plains approximately five hours north of Adelaide, the Flinders Ranges are an ancient geological formation, but also one of the least visited in the country. Wilpena Pound, a natural amphitheater of sprawling peaks, is the centerpiece and is ringed by walking trails that pass through landscapes virtually unchanged for millions of years. South Australians treat the Ranges as their outback playground, camping under some of the clearest night skies on the continent.For American visitors used to Arizona and Utah, the scale feels familiar, but the solitude is on another level entirely. The lazy drive from Adelaide through the Clare Valley wine region makes it a rewarding journey in its own right. You might even want to book a scenic afternoon helicopter flight over Wilpena Pound for the perspective that your smartphone simply won’t be able to capture.4. Bay of Fires, TasmaniaTasmania’s northeast coast is resplendent with vivid orange lichen-covered granite boulders that are lapped by water so clear it could pass for the Caribbean. The Bay of Fires stretches for around 31 miles and is remarkably undeveloped, with no major resorts and only a handful of campgrounds and glamping retreats.Tassie locals guard this coastline fiercely, and it’s never a surprise to hear it spoken about as one of the best coastal destinations. However, it barely registers on international itineraries that instead favor Hobart and Cradle Mountain. A rental car is the only real way to get to the bay. The good news is that the drive from Hobart tracks up the east coast through the seaside villages of Swansea and Bicheno, both of which are worth a stop. Don’t forget to pack a snorkel and head to Swimcart Beach at dawn when the first crack of sunlight turns the boulders a deep amber.5. Esperance, Western AustraliaIf a beach could leave you speechless, it would likely be in Esperance. Lucky Bay, where kangaroos lounge on powder-white sand beside impossibly turquoise water, is an iconic Australian image, yet the town itself sits so far from anywhere that most visitors to Western Australia never make the trip. It makes sense when you consider the scale. Esperance is a nearly eight-hour drive southeast of Perth or a four-hour drive from the Goldfields town of Kalgoorlie, which means having a car is essential. West Australians treat the Great Ocean Drive, a 25-mile loop past a bounty of coastal sights, as a rite of passage.There are no direct commercial flights unless you’re traveling straight from Perth, which keeps the interstate crowds thin even during the peak summer period. Drive the loop at dawn when the light hits Twilight Beach before stopping at the Esperance Stonehenge — a full-scale granite replica of the original.6. Bright, VictoriaAbout three and a half hours northeast of Melbourne in the Victorian alpine region, Bright is a buzzing small town that changes with the seasons. Autumn brings a canopy of gold and crimson that rivals New England, while winter attracts skiers heading for nearby Mount Hotham and Falls Creek. In the warmer months, the Ovens River transforms into a popular swimming hole for families and the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail becomes dotted with eager cyclists from around the state.Bright flies mostly under the radar for international visitors because it sits inland, far away from the Great Ocean Road routes that dominate Victorian tourism. If you get off the beaten track and take the more scenic drive from Melbourne through the Yarra Valley, you can stop in at wineries and be amazed by rolling farmland that seems to stretch on forever. Make sure you grab the pie of the day from Bright Brewery after a morning on the trail.7. Agnes Water and Seventeen Seventy, QueenslandNamed for the year Captain James Cook made landfall here, the tiny coastal settlement of Seventeen Seventy and its neighbor, Agnes Water, sit at the southern gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. While Cairns and the Whitsundays absorb the bulk of reef-bound tourists, this stretch of the Queensland coast serves up snorkeling, island day trips, sea-turtle encounters, and plenty of nightlife to go around — all with a fraction of the crowds.Queenslanders know this as one of the last genuinely relaxed coastal communities in the state. It’s around a seven-hour drive north of Brisbane and a bit of a hike even once you leave the Bruce Highway, meaning visitors without a car rarely find their way here. The drive along the Queensland coast passes through Bundaberg and its famous rum distillery. Plenty of visitors book a 1770 LARC! tour where you’ll jump into an amphibious vehicle and cross tidal creeks to reach a secluded beach, with sandboarding and sightseeing on offer.8. Robe, South AustraliaOn South Australia’s Limestone Coast, just under four hours’ drive southeast of Adelaide, the small fishing town of Robe has been a summer pilgrimage for Melbourne residents and Adelaide families for generations. The pick of where most of them spend their entire holiday? Long Beach, which stretches for almost 7.5 miles uninterrupted.Robe’s history runs deep — it was once a major port for Chinese gold-rush migrants in the 1850s and ’60s, with more than 16,000 prospectors landing in Robe — but it’s never quite made it onto the international tourist circuit. The most scenic approach is via Coorong National Park, a large coastal lagoon system teeming with birdlife, which turns the drive into its own adventure.9. Exmouth and Ningaloo Reef, Western AustraliaFor those in the know, Ningaloo is Australia’s other great reef and, in many ways, it outshines its famous Queensland counterpart. This 160-mile-long fringing reef is immediately off the shore (so there’s no boat trip required), and from March through August, whale sharks and hordes of manta rays cruise through its warm waters.The gateway town of Exmouth lies on the remote North West Cape of Western Australia, a massive 13-hour drive north of Perth or a couple of hoursâ€™ flight to Learmonth before a short journey northwards. West Australians see this region as the crown jewel of their coastline, yet its distance from the east coast tourism hubs keeps international visitor numbers low. And that can only be a good thing for you.10. Stanley, TasmaniaDominated by The Nut — a towering volcanic plug that rises abruptly from the ocean — Stanley is a tiny fishing village on Tasmania’s northwest coast that feels suspended in time. Heritage cottages, a working wharf, and a population of fewer than 600 give it an atmosphere closer to a Scottish coastal hamlet than an Aussie township.Hike or take the chairlift to the summit of The Nut for panoramic views across Bass Strait, then reward yourself with fresh seafood from one of the waterfront eateries. Stanley is around a 90-minute drive from Devonport, where the Spirit of Tasmania ferry docks, or about five hours from Hobart through the island’s scenic interior.The best of Australia has never been confined to postcards and airport gift shops. Instead, you’ll find it down the road less traveled, in the towns where locals know the barista by name and the landscapes have stayed unchanged for millennia. What connects every destination on this list is that reaching them demands a willingness to get behind the wheel and follow the road a little further. With distances that dwarf most countries and public transport that thins out as soon as you leave the capital cities, a car is less a convenience in Australia than an essential to reach its most memorable locations.This story was produced by SIXT Australia and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Patent growth by state: What R&D credits don’t tell you Patent growth by state: What R&D credits don’t tell youWhen economists talk about American innovation, the conversation usually centers on California, New York, and Texas, the undisputed heavyweights of U.S. patent output. The last three years told a different story. CSSI Services Across the country, the total number of patents issued fell by 8.1% between 2021 and 2024, consistent with national data showing patent applications at their lowest point in years. Only 10 states finished those three years with patent growth. The other 40 lost ground.A new analysis of USPTO-backed state data, compiled by CSSI Services, ranked all 50 states by three-year patent growth and layered on current state research and development (R&D) credit availability. The result is an innovation scoreboard that challenges conventional wisdom about where momentum lives and what tax incentives may or may not have to do with it.The three-year window also coincided with one of the more turbulent periods for corporate finance in recent history. Rising interest rates, post-COVID-19 pandemic budget resets, and growing pressure on R&D spending across industries created an uncertain environment. That backdrop makes the states that grew patents despite those headwinds worth examining more closely.Key FindingsOnly 10 of 50 states posted higher patent issuances in FY2024 than in FY2021, using USPTO-backed state data.Montana led all states with 26.2% growth (187 to 236 patents), followed by Nevada at 22.2%.Six of the top 10 growth states came from the Mountain/Interior West region.Three of the top five fastest-growing states, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming, had no current state R&D credit in the public source set used for this analysis.Seven of the top 10 growth states had both positive patent momentum and a current R&D credit, representing the clearest “innovation + incentive” alignment in the country.Washington state posted the largest raw patent loss of any state, shedding 1,995 patents over the period; New York lost 1,869.Five of the bottom 10 states still appeared on the R&D credit side of the public map, demonstrating that a credit alone doesn’t protect patent momentum.Michigan and Texas represent two major policy-watch states, each introducing new R&D credit structures that postdate the FY2021-FY2024 ranking window.Top 10 statesTable 1. Top 10 states by FY2021 to FY2024 patent growth CSSI Services Table 2. Bottom 10 states by FY2021 to FY2024 patent growth CSSI Services The West’s Quiet Innovation SurgeInnovation was found in unlikely places. Six of the 10 growth states came from the broader western band, including Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, and New Mexico. None of them are traditional patent powerhouses, yet all of them grew during a period when most of the country was moving in the opposite direction. CSSI Services Nevada, the strongest large-base performer among them, grew from 1,025 patents to 1,253, adding 228 in raw terms, the biggest raw gain among all growth states. Colorado, starting from a larger base of 3,494, still managed 4.3% growth to reach 3,645. These states don’t have Silicon Valley’s tech campuses or New York’s financial infrastructure. What they appear to have is something harder to quantify: momentum.That shift is already showing up in where companies are choosing to locate their operations. Colorado added more than 24,000 tech businesses over the past decade, Idaho posted the fastest state GDP growth in the country in 2022, and Nevada has become a destination for energy technology companies drawn by both its cost structure and its natural resources. The patent data may simply be the lagging confirmation of a migration that began years earlier.For CFOs and site-selection teams, this cluster matters. Patent momentum isn’t simply following population or existing tech concentration. Something else is shaping the map, and the Mountain West appears to be one of the clearest answers.The Surprise Twist in the Credit MapThe intuitive assumption is straightforward: States that offer R&D tax credits should produce more patents, because they’re financially rewarding companies for doing research. The data doesn’t support that clean connection. CSSI Services Three of the top five fastest-growing states, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming, had no current state R&D credit listed in the public source set used for this analysis. Meanwhile, five of the bottom 10 states did appear on the credit side of the map.Credit structure compounds the problem. Colorado’s R&D credit is tied to specific geographic enterprise zones, making it far narrower than a broad operating credit. Virginia runs two parallel R&D credit programs with separate application deadlines and eligibility thresholds. These distinctions are invisible on a simple yes/no credit map, and navigating them requires the kind of state-by-state literacy that most finance teams don’t have time to build from scratch.None of this means credits are unimportant. It means a credit that exists on paper is not the same thing as a credit that drives measurable innovation outcomes. That gap is where the real story lives.The Policy Lag Problem Nobody Is Talking AboutThere’s a more fundamental reason the credit map and the patent map don’t align neatly: time.Any CFO who spent 2022 and 2023 waiting for Congress to restore the federal R&D deduction already understands the policy lag problem intuitively. The decisions companies made while waiting directly affected research budgets that won’t show up in patent counts for years. A patent issued in 2024 could reflect a research decision made in 2020 or 2021, long before many of the credits in this dataset existed in their current form. Patent applications stay pending for an average of 23 months, which means the research behind a 2024 patent likely began years before filing.The implication is significant. A tax credit enacted in 2023 may not fund a patent until 2027 or later. Comparing today’s credit map against a three-year patent window isn’t measuring the same moment in time. It’s measuring two different points in the same long cycle.Michigan’s 2025 credit and Texas’s 2026 credit cannot explain anything in this dataset. Those policies didn’t exist during the ranking period. That’s not a criticism of those states. It’s a reminder that policy takes years to produce measurable outcomes, and any analysis that ignores the timing gap risks drawing the wrong conclusions.The Giants Stumbled, and the Numbers Are BigThe percentage declines among the country’s largest patent states look manageable on paper. The raw numbers tell a different story. CSSI Services Washington’s 23% decline translated to nearly 2,000 lost patents. New York’s 20% drop meant 1,869 fewer innovations entering the public record. Michigan’s 18.5% fall cost the state 1,289 patents. Texas shed 919. California dropped 860. Those aren’t rounding errors. They represent years of R&D investment that didn’t make it to the finish line during this window.The same period that produced Washington’s nearly 2,000 patent decline also saw Microsoft and Amazon collectively cut tens of thousands of workers, many of them in the R&D and engineering functions that produce patents. The data and the headlines were telling the same story from different angles.These states remain enormous in absolute patent volume. California’s 46,454 patents in FY2024 still dwarfs every other state. But volume tells you about the past. Trajectory tells you about the future. A state can be a dominant force in raw patent counts and still be losing competitive ground at the same time. For large-company tax and innovation strategy teams, that distinction matters more than the leaderboard position.Two States That Could Look Very Different Next TimeMichigan saw its patent count fall 18.5% over the three-year window, one of the steeper declines in the dataset. At the same time, the state launched a new R&D credit for tax years beginning Jan. 1, 2025, paired with a $60 million Michigan Innovation Fund, applying to qualifying research expenses above a three-year base amount. The credit earned bipartisan support and broad backing from the state’s life sciences and manufacturing sectors. That policy change postdates the entire ranking window.Texas followed a similar path. Its patent count fell 7.4% over the period, but the state passed Senate Bill 2206, signed into law in June 2025, permanently extending and enhancing its R&D franchise tax credit effective Jan. 1, 2026. The new Subchapter T credit raises the base rate from 5% to 8.722%, introduces refundability for qualifying entities, and carries no sunset provision. Previous Texas R&D incentives were set to expire. This one isn’t.Neither of those changes could have influenced the ranking they appear in. Future patent rankings will be measured against a meaningfully different incentive backdrop in both states.Businesses making location and R&D investment decisions today shouldn’t judge Michigan or Texas by where they rank right now. The more useful question is whether the policy foundation being built in 2025 and 2026 makes them worth a serious second look over the next decade. On that question, both states have made their intentions clear.What the Innovation Scoreboard Actually Tells UsPull back far enough, and this analysis makes one central argument: The innovation map is more dynamic than most people assume.The states gaining patent momentum aren’t always the ones with the largest economies, the most established tech sectors, or even the most visible incentive programs. Growth came from unexpected corners of the map during a period when 40 states were moving in the wrong direction. The states that dominated patent counts for decades are losing ground in raw numbers, and percentage rankings tend to soften. And the two states that look most like laggards right now are both making deliberate policy moves that could change that story entirely.The credit picture doesn’t simplify things. It complicates them. Some growth states had strong incentives. Some didn’t. Some declining states had credits on the books. Others didn’t. The timing mismatch between when a credit is enacted and when it shows up in patent counts means any single-period snapshot will always be incomplete.What this scoreboard actually measures is the accumulated result of thousands of individual research investment decisions made years earlier, by companies, universities, and entrepreneurs responding to conditions that may look nothing like today. The states that will lead the next edition of this ranking are probably already making those decisions right now. The businesses and tax strategists paying attention to where innovation momentum is building, and what incentive environments surround it, will be better positioned to meet them there.MethodologyPatent data was sourced from the public state table “Patents Issued and Trademarks Registered to U.S. Residents by State, Fiscal Years 2021-2024,” compiled from USPTO Performance and Accountability Reports. Only patent columns were used; trademark data and Washington D.C., were excluded. Three-year growth was calculated as FY2024 patents divided by FY2021 patents, minus 1, ranked highest to lowest. Raw patent counts and compound annual growth rates (CAGR) are included to prevent small-base distortion. R&D credit availability was assessed using public state credit guides and official state tax pages, with recent policy changes verified against the NCSL State Tax Actions Database and individual state treasury sources. This analysis compares patent trends with the current incentive environment; it does not establish causation between credit availability and patent outcomes.Primary sources: USPTO-backed Kansas Statistical Abstract state patent table; CSSI Services state R&D credit guide; KBKG state benefits list; Tax Point Advisors state credit map; Michigan Treasury (new 2025 credit); Texas Comptroller (2026 Subchapter T credit); Virginia Tax; Colorado DOR Enterprise Zone Tax Guide; NCSL State Tax Actions Database.This story was produced by CSSI Services and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	20 employees to be brought back to John Deere in Davenport 41 employees will be brought back amongst the Dubuque and Davenport locations.
	20 employees to be brought back to John Deere's Davenport Works The company announced nearly 50 workers are being called back at facilities in Iowa and Kansas.
	Meet baby emus at Cambridge Natural History Museum Meet baby emus this weekend at the Cambridge Natural History Museum! The public is invited to meet baby emus at the museum on Sunday, April 19 from 1 – 3 p.m. Visitors will have a rare opportunity to see and interact with these fascinating animals. Emus are often called “living dinosaurs” and provide a unique [...]
	Nearly 50 John Deere employees to return to work Nearly 50 John Deere employees are returning to work across three facilities.
	MercyOne Genesis expands mental health services for older adults in Aledo, DeWitt MercyOne Genesis is launching Senior Life Solutions in Aledo and DeWitt, offering therapy and psychiatric care to help older adults manage depression and anxiety.
	Deere to bring back 49 workers across three plants, including 20 in Davenport The callbacks announced Monday bring the total since January to 324.
	Davenport Fire Department purchases fire boat to boost river, emergency rescues The Davenport Fire Department will add a new $800,000 rescue boat to improve response on the Mississippi River, replacing an aging vessel not built for river use.
	7-item checklist to help keep your finances on track 7-item checklist to help keep your finances on trackFinancial planning can prepare you for life events, such as buying a house or getting married, as well as everyday expenses and budgeting. To stay on track, it’s a good financial practice to have regular check-ins. Ally Financial’s guide can help you become more comfortable managing your money and keeping yourself on track.Tip: To avoid getting overwhelmed, don’t plan to take on all of these at once. Consider spreading them across separate check-ins, maybe two or even four times a year.1. Assess your current financial statusFirst, the big picture. Review your income, expenses and investments to identify any changes you want to make. The first time you do this, it might feel daunting — but over time and with consistent check-ins, it won’t be such a big task. The goal here is to get an aggregate view of the funds coming in and the funds going out, including investments.2. Prioritize your financial goalsWith your updated financial status in mind, set new goals or determine whether your current goals are still valid. For instance, maybe last year you decided to pay off your car loan. If you’ve since paid it off, those funds can be redirected to a new goal. Or maybe you have made significant progress toward building your emergency fund, and you don’t need to direct quite as much toward that goal.This is your chance to check progress toward each goal and decide whether your financial strategy is still aligned. Again, the first time you do this, you might feel like it’s a long exercise, but as you check in regularly, you likely won’t need to spend as much time on each item.3. Realign your budgetSimilar to goal-setting, when you make a budget, you’ll want to account for upcoming life changes, like growing your family (say hello to monthly daycare costs), and your long-term goals (like saving for retirement). Play around with how you’re allocating funds until you find the right coverage for both your monthly expenses and your most important savings or debt repayment goals.4. Check on your emergency fundHaving an emergency fund can help you avoid the stress of any unexpected financial events. If you’ve already built one, check that it’s still on track. If you’re nearing your goal, consider where you’ll redirect that money next.If a rainy-day fund is on your list of goals, calculate how much to save for emergencies by determining your timeframe. The general guidance is to save three to six months of living expenses.5. Manage your debt repayment strategyThis is a good time to check how you’re doing on debt management. Make a list of your debts, their interest rates and your progress toward repayment for each one.If you haven’t set up a repayment plan yet, there are many methods you can employ, depending on how you want to prioritize payments.6. Check your credit reportYou can access your credit score for free or request free credit reports from the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion). Review all your lines of credit, so you can quickly address errors, discrepancies or other issues that may negatively impact your score. Maintaining a good credit score can help you reap financial benefits in the long run, like more affordable insurance premiums and lower credit card interest rates.7. Review your investmentsIf you’re investing toward retirement, check in on how you're progressing toward that goal. Consider setting up a retirement account and, if available to you, consider contributing to your 401(k), so you can take advantage of any matching contributions your employer may offer.As you pay back debts or if you receive a raise at work, consider putting excess funds toward your retirement. Depending on your timeline, retirement can feel like a long way off — making it easy to put off — but if it’s an important goal for you, it’s vital to keep a consistent eye on its progress.Monitor and adjust your financial plan regularlyLife circumstances change all the time, and conducting regular financial check-ins can help you stay agile. You might be surprised by how much more confident you feel when you’re in tune with where your money is going and how you’re working toward each of your goals.This story was produced by Ally Financial and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	CRI Cyber Profile: A complete guide for financial institutions CRI Cyber Profile: A complete guide for financial institutionsFinancial institutions operate within intense restrictions. They can face extensive regulatory scrutiny around the world. For global or multinational institutions, compliance becomes a pressing and ongoing challenge as they must align with numerous regional cybersecurity regulations, each with its own reporting and governance expectations.The Cyber Risk Institute (CRI) Cyber Profile was developed to ease this compliance overhead for security teams in the finance industry. It helps reduce the regulatory burden by harmonizing expectations into a unified framework, minimizing the burden of duplicated assessments and fragmented reporting cycles.This guide from Vanta will discuss:What the CRI Cyber Profile is.Who should comply with it.Six steps to CRI Cyber Profile compliance.What is the CRI Cyber Profile?The CRI Cyber Profile is a security standard created in 2020 with input from major financial institutions, regulators, and trade associations. It was designed to consolidate overlapping requirements from multiple cybersecurity regulations and standards in the financial sector.The Cyber Profile serves as an alternative to the FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool (CAT), which retired as of 2025. It’s also a more comprehensive, regulator-aligned framework that helps financial institutions demonstrate regulatory alignment and a strong security posture across jurisdictions.“With the recent sunsetting of the FFIEC CAT, the CRI Cyber Profile is poised to become the leading cybersecurity framework for the financial services industry,” said Ethan Heller, governance, risk management and compliance subject matter expert at Vanta. “Its ability to harmonize global regulatory requirements, combined with its dynamic and scalable design, enables organizations to meet evolving regulatory expectations without overhauling their programs. This makes its adoption across the sector likely to grow rapidly in the coming years.”The framework also stands out as it uses impact levels to evaluate and scale cybersecurity requirements conceptually, which means organizations only implement controls proportional to their risk exposure and system importance.The CRI Cyber Profile maturity levelsThe CRI Cyber Profile defines four impact tiers that help organizations determine the number and depth of diagnostic statements they need to complete. Each tier represents the organization’s systemic impact on the financial sector, and the corresponding rigor expected in security practices.Tier 1: National or Super-National ImpactFor institutions designated as most critical by one or more global regulatory agencies or bodies.A security breach for organizations at this tier could negatively impact a country’s economy or even the global market.Tier 2: Subnational ImpactFor institutions that provide services for millions of customers.A data breach could negatively affect the financial sector and regional economy, but not to the degree of Tier 1.Tier 3: Sector ImpactFor highly connected institutions that act as key nodes for the sector—it’s defined by sector-specific connectivity rather than geography.A breach could impact other institutions and services within the sector, and the criticality depends on the nature of the underlying data.Tier 4: Localized ImpactFor institutions with a local presence and less than 1 million customers, and organizations that provide low criticality services.A breach would have limited effects on the national economy or sector.To determine your tier, complete the CRI Cyber Profile’s questionnaire. Here are some sample questions to expect:Does your institution consistently participate in (e.g., clear or settle) at least 5% of the value of transactions in a critical market?Does the number of individuals whose data your institution processes exceed 5 million?Do you provide products or services to financial institutions that involve customer data processing or storage?Consider your organization’s regulatory and risk environment when answering questions to accurately determine your tier and scope security requirements.Who should comply with the CRI Cyber Profile?The CRI Cyber Profile is primarily intended for financial institutions, such as banks, credit unions, fintech, and payment processors. However, because the framework emphasizes third-party risks, any organization that provides services for financial institutions should also align with its requirements. This includes:Cloud service providers (CSPs)Managed service providers (MSPs)IT providersCompliance with the CRI Cyber Profile isn’t mandatory. However, with regulators increasingly emphasizing harmonization and supervisory ease, it’s becoming a baseline expectation in the financial sector and a preferred reference point in competitive cross-border assessments.Benefits of compliance with the CRI Cyber ProfileCompliance with the CRI Cyber Profile introduces the following benefits to financial institutions.Reduced regulatory burden: The Cyber Profile is designed to harmonize overlapping regulatory expectations into a centralized framework, streamlining compliance efforts and reducing the need for duplicative audits.Strengthened third-party risk management: The framework boosts third-party oversight practices through security questionnaires, business impact analyses, and other regular assessments.Streamlined scaling: The framework’s impact tiers ensure that organizations implement only the controls appropriate for their risk environment. This can be cost-effective compared to one-size-fits-all frameworks, and structured scaling is always an option as compliance needs evolve.Increased board oversight: Leadership involvement is a core requirement of the CRI Cyber Profile, as it requires demonstrable proof of their oversight through management reviews, approvals, and reports. Such visible governance strengthens regulatory confidence.Cross-framework alignment: Alignment with the CRI Cyber Profile allows you to map diagnostic statements to controls in other relevant frameworks and regulations, such as ISO 27001, NIST CSF, SOC 2, and DORA, speeding up compliance timelines.“The CRI Profile is incredibly valuable today because of its scalable, risk-based framework that can evolve with technological shifts while maintaining regulatory alignment across a wide range of jurisdictions,” Heller said. “Due to its dynamic nature, companies adopting the CRI profile can ensure that their security programs remain resilient to the ever-changing threat landscape.”How to achieve CRI Cyber Profile complianceRegardless of your organization’s impact level, the CRI Cyber Profile compliance involves six broad steps:Establish scope and determine tier.Set up policies and risk framework.Map controls.Collect evidence.Conduct a self-assessment.Remediate gaps.Step 1: Establish scope and determine tierThe first step is to establish an inventory of in-scope assets. What you establish now determines the timelines, requirements, and investments for the rest of the compliance process.Conduct an internal assessment and account for all systems, functions, physical assets, and external dependencies that create, store, process, or transmit sensitive information.Then, complete the CRI Questionnaire to determine your organization’s impact level. If you’re uncertain about a response, you should select the one that will lead to a higher impact tier to reduce the risk of insufficient security. You can also consult with your security team or external consultants for niche guidance.Step 2: Set up policies and risk frameworkEstablish the relevant diagnostic statements for your impact tier. These help define the criteria for internal assessments and identify gaps in coverage.You can conduct risk assessments to identify the various risk scenarios your organization may be exposed to in the financial sector, covering both internal and external threats. Use the findings to build a risk framework tailored to your impact tier, which will determine the level of rigor expected for your policies and controls.Step 3: Map controlsCRI Cyber profile overlaps with many industry-relevant frameworks, such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, and the NIST CSF. This means that organizations already compliant with any of these frameworks can map existing controls to CRI diagnostic statements and accelerate compliance.To make the process more efficient, CRI provides official mappings of its diagnostic statements to these frameworks, as well as to finance-sector regulations like DORA. Industry leading compliance automation solutions can further streamline this step by managing control crosswalking, evidence collection, and unified reporting.Step 4: Collect evidenceAs a self-attestation framework, CRI compliance relies heavily on thorough documentation. The best practice is to collect all compliance-related documentation, technical guides, and ownership details across departments and maintain them in a central repository. This helps compliance evidence be readily available during internal reviews or external and cross-border audits, while also making continuous monitoring more streamlined.Step 5: Conduct a self-assessmentOnce your controls and documentation are ready, conduct an internal audit using the CRI Cyber Profile’s diagnostic statements. Each statement can earn one of eight possible responses.Yes: The control outcomes are regularly tested and demonstrate that controls are designed and operating as intended.No: The control outcomes haven’t meaningfully improved.Partial: A meaningful subset of outcomes is tested and shown to operate as intended.Not applicable: The diagnostic statement doesn’t apply to your organization.Yes-risk based: The control outcomes are regularly tested and operate as intended for the highest-risk assets or functions.Yes-compensating control: The intent of the diagnostic statement is met through an approved compensating control.Not tested: Controls related to the diagnostic statement haven’t been tested yet.I don’t know: Used as a placeholder until a more accurate response is determined.Document your findings for each diagnostic statement and rank identified gaps by priority, using criteria such as impact, likelihood, and required investment. Include your prioritization methodology in the same record for consistency and visibility.Step 6: Remediate gapsUse the findings from your internal assessments as a roadmap to address identified gaps. Create a prioritized remediation list, starting with zero-day threats and high-risk areas, then moving down by impact and likelihood.Review your controls regularly and update policies, processes, and technical measures to stay ahead of emerging threats and ensure safeguards stay relevant to your risk environment.Challenges of CRI Cyber Profile complianceAlthough the CRI Cyber Profile is designed to reduce compliance complexity in the financial sector, alignment can still be challenging for several key reasons:High resource requirements: Identifying, validating, and collecting the necessary evidence for each of the 318 control objectives and 200-plus diagnostic statements requires significant team time, resources, and cross-functional expertise.Gathering and maintaining up-to-date documentation: Because CRI is a self-attestation framework, maintaining current documentation is a core part of demonstrating compliance. Coordinating this evidence across decentralized functions and systems can be complex, time-consuming, and prone to errors.Limited prescriptive guidance: While the CRI Guidebook does provide detailed guidance and examples of appropriate controls, its principle- and outcome-based approach still needs organizations to interpret and operationalize requirements on their own.Ongoing monitoring and updates: Reviewing and updating compliance evidence, controls, and policies manually requires a substantial amount of time and can divert stakeholders from regular tasks.FAQsIs the CRI Cyber Profile mandatory for all financial institutions?No, CRI Cyber Profile compliance isn’t mandatory. However, financial institutions choose to align voluntarily as it provides standardized cybersecurity self-assessments, maps to multiple standards and regulations, and supports supervisory conversations.How long does CRI Profile implementation take?Timelines vary based on organization size, existing security posture, and impact tier. The full implementation process can take several months, after which you must continuously review and improve your system.How does CRI Cyber Profile differ from FFIEC CAT or NIST CSF?The main difference is scope. NIST CSF is designed to apply to organizations across all industries, while the now-retired FFIEC CAT was intended specifically for U.S. financial institutions. CRI Cyber Profile caters to the global financial sector and consolidates regulatory requirements across jurisdictions.Can existing SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST controls be reused for the CRI Cyber Profile?Yes. Many controls map cleanly as the framework was designed using ISO 27001 and NIST as foundations. The intent was to allow financial institutions to reuse their implementations instead of starting from scratch.How often should organizations update their CRI compliance evidence?Organizations should update their CRI compliance evidence at least annually or following any material changes in their risk landscape, technology, processes, or business operations. This ensures that the Cyber Profile accurately reflects their current environment.How much does CRI Profile implementation cost?There aren’t any official estimates for CRI Cyber Profile implementation costs. Depending on your system maturity, existing infrastructure, and impact tier, the investments vary significantly, ranging anywhere from around $5,000 to $50,000 or more.This story was produced by Vanta and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Judge dismisses Trump's $10B lawsuit over the Wall Street Journal's Epstein reporting In the order issued Monday, the judge wrote that President Trump had failed to make the argument that the article, which described a letter to Epstein that the newspaper said bore Trump's signature, was published with the intent to be malicious.
	2 MercyOne Genesis locations add mental health resources for seniors MercyOne Genesis Aledo Medical Center and MercyOne Genesis DeWitt Medical Center are now offering mental health resources to seniors.
	QCA seniors can get mental health help at MercyOne Genesis MercyOne Genesis is committed to helping seniors manage their mental health. Both MercyOne Genesis Aledo Medical Center and MercyOne Genesis DeWitt Medical Center are now offering Senior Life Solutions to help older adults who are experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety or other mental challenges often associated with aging. MercyOne Genesis Aledo is located at 409 [...]
	Join the Monster Jam thrill on May 9 at Vibrant Arena and win free tickets! Experience the thrill of Monster Jam® on May 9th at Vibrant Arena, featuring spectacular stunts and fierce races. Enter to win tickets to the 6 p.m. show by May 3rd.
	Your tax return is filed. Now here's what's quietly draining your cash Your tax return is filed. Now here's what's quietly draining your cashFor small business owners, the weeks after tax season make cash flow problems harder to ignore — and the latest data points to a few clear causes.Tax season ends with a moment of relief: The return is filed and the paperwork is done. But expenses don’t stop.For small business owners, the period right after tax season is one of the most financially exposed windows of the year. According to a 2025 QuickBooks survey, 43% of small businesses consider cash flow a problem. Additionally, 74% say their cash flow challenges have stayed the same or gotten worse over the past 12 months.This isn’t just a post-tax issue. As this article from QuickBooks reveals, the data shows a recurring pattern with a few consistent drivers.Businesses are increasingly borrowing to fill cash gapsRecent QuickBooks research shows a consistent pattern: Small business owners are increasingly turning to borrowed money to cover gaps that cash reserves should be handling.The QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey, which tracks roughly 5,000 businesses across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia each quarter, found that nearly 1 in 3 small business owners (31%) increased their reliance on outside financing over the past 12 months to keep up with operating expenses.This trend has been building since at least 2023, according to QuickBooks data. Since April 2023, a majority of small businesses have been routinely covering a significant share of monthly expenses through financing, according to the 2025 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index Annual Report.Meanwhile, the QuickBooks financial literacy report found that nearly 6 in 10 small business owners (59%) rely on some form of short-term financing as an emergency or stopgap measure — a sign that cash reserves aren’t keeping pace with operating demands.Pressure often peaks right after tax season, when multiple expenses hit at once. Estimated tax payments are due in April. Payroll doesn’t pause. And if Q1 revenue comes in lighter than expected, businesses often scramble to cover the gap — drawing down reserves or taking on short-term debt to keep operating.Unpaid invoices compound the problemFor many small businesses, cash flow issues are driven by timing gaps — not just spending levels.The 2025 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Late Payments Report found that 56% of small businesses are currently owed money from unpaid invoices, averaging $17,500 per business. Nearly half (47%) said some of those invoices were already more than 30 days overdue.Businesses carrying significant overdue invoices were 1.4 times more likely to report cash flow problems than those with fewer late payments. Many end up covering day-to-day costs with credit while they wait for clients to pay.This issue is often more visible in the spring, especially for project-based businesses like construction, consulting, and creative services. Many completed their busiest Q1 work weeks ago, with invoices out and payment still pending.Hidden recurring expenses quietly drain cashLate payments and credit card debt are easy to spot. Smaller recurring costs are harder to track and easier to overlook.The QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey found that economic uncertainty and delayed revenue were the top challenges to making bill payments on time (18%), followed by higher costs (15%). Together, this points to a broader issue: Many businesses are managing cash flow reactively, responding to problems as they emerge rather than anticipating them.Subscriptions that auto-renew and unused software seats after employees leave can quietly add up. According to the QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey, more than 1 in 10 small business owners (11%) cited manual processes as a significant cash flow challenge, which includes the overhead of tracking recurring costs across vendors, subscriptions, and contracts. So can vendor agreements that roll over without a review. They don’t trigger a crisis, but they steadily shrink margins — and they’re among the easiest costs to miss until a full expense audit surfaces them.Who's managing cash flow wellNot every small business is stuck in this cycle. The QuickBooks data consistently shows a gap between businesses that actively manage their cash flow and those that don't.Businesses using cash flow reporting and management tools experienced up to 3 percentage points faster growth than those that didn't, according to the 2025 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index Annual Report. Better visibility helps businesses make faster decisions about spending, invoicing, and cash reserves.The QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey also found that only 26% of small business owners said their cash flow problems had improved over the past year. For the other 74%, the pattern holds: Challenges stay the same, or they get worse.Businesses that improve cash flow share a few consistent habits: They review expenses regularly instead of waiting for problems to surface. They track outstanding invoices closely, not just the ones that are overdue. And they set aside cash for tax obligations before it's needed, not after.What to do with a tax refundFor small business owners who receive a refund this spring, the temptation is to treat it as a windfall. The data points to a clear takeaway: Prioritize stability over one-time spending.Cash flow problems don't just come from spending too much. They come from having too little buffer when timing doesn't line up. A refund redirected toward a cash reserve or toward paying down high-interest credit card debt does more structural good than one-time spending.The 32% of small business owners who said they would look for ways to cut nonpayroll costs if facing a cash crunch, according to the QuickBooks financial literacy report, are already thinking in the right direction. Post-tax season is a natural moment to do that review — before the next squeeze arrives, not during it.What small businesses are seeing right nowThe QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey found that 45% of small businesses reported growth, but 78% said they wanted more. That gap often comes down to cash flow timing and how money is managed.More revenue doesn’t always translate to more cash on hand. It depends on when that revenue arrives, what it costs to generate it, and how much of the business's credit capacity has already been used to bridge earlier gaps.For small businesses, instead of asking, "Did we file on time?" ask, "Where is the money actually going?"MethodologyData in this article is drawn from the 2025 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Late Payments Report, the QuickBooks Small Business Financial Literacy report, the QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey (January 2026 wave, n=~5,000 businesses), and the 2025 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index Annual Report. Supporting context from 7 cash flow problems for small businesses. All cited findings reflect statistically significant results.This story was produced by QuickBooks and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Electric RVs in 2026: What's real and what's not Electric RVs in 2026: What's real and what's notThe electric RV market is worth roughly $500 million right now. By 2030, analysts project it'll hit $2 billion. But here's the thing nobody in the press releases mentions: As of early 2026, you still can't walk into a dealership and buy one.The biggest names in the industry (Winnebago, Thor, Mercedes) have spent years showing off prototypes, running pilot programs, and teasing "coming soon" timelines. Meanwhile, a startup in Colorado is quietly doing what the legacy brands haven't: shipping electric RVs to paying customers.So where are the actual electric RVs? And how close are we really? RV rental platform outwander.com looked into it.Are electric RVs available in 2026? Sort of. One company, Lightship, is delivering its self-propelled electric travel trailer to customers now. Legacy brands like Winnebago and Thor are still in the prototype and pilot stages, with the first units heading to rental fleets rather than dealerships. GM's decision to kill the BrightDrop electric van platform in late 2025 took out two promising models at once: the Coachmen RVEX and the Grounded G3 as originally specced. For most buyers, a production-ready electric RV you can purchase off a dealer lot is still at least a year or two away.What Exists TodayEntegra Coach Embark (Thor Industries)The closest thing to a production electric motorhome from a legacy brand. Built on an electric chassis developed by Harbinger Motors, the Embark is a Class A motorhome with a 140-kWh battery pack and a gasoline range extender. It runs 105 miles on battery alone, or up to 450 miles with the gas engine recharging the pack. Its 800-volt architecture supports DC fast charging to 80% in about an hour.Thor calls it the world's first range-extended electric Class A, and the industry seems to agree: RVBusiness named it the 2026 RV of the Year, and TIME put it on the Best Inventions of 2025 list.But here's the catch. The first Embark units aren't going to dealers. They're going to THL's rental fleet for real-world testing throughout 2026. Consumer sales follow after that. Expected retail pricing sits between $300,000 and $400,000. Full production is slated for mid-2026.Winnebago eRV2Winnebago's all-electric camper van is built on the Ford E-Transit platform. A 68-kWh battery delivers around 108 miles of driving range. A separate 15-kWh lithium house battery powers the living systems for up to seven days off-grid, charged by 900 watts of rooftop and portable solar.The eRV2 has been in field testing since 2023, racking up over 18,000 miles. Reviews have been positive on the interior and off-grid capability, less so on the range. Winnebago says it's exploring range-extension options and waiting on Ford's next-generation E-Transit with improved battery capacity. As of early 2026, no confirmed production date or pricing.Mercedes Van.EA PlatformMercedes is building a ground-up electric van platform called Van.EA, with prototypes in cold-weather testing as recently as March 2025. The plan includes electric camper vans for the U.S. market, targeting over 310 miles of range.Mercedes originally planned to go all-electric with its van lineup, then walked that back, announcing that combustion-engine vans will continue alongside electric models. No confirmed RV conversion partners for the U.S. yet. The platform starts rolling out in 2026, but a Mercedes electric camper van you can buy in the States is likely a 2027 story at the earliest.Grounded G3The Detroit startup founded by former SpaceX engineers launched the G3 in mid-2025, built on the Chevrolet BrightDrop Zevo platform. At 286 miles of range with dual-motor all-wheel drive, it had the longest driving range of any electric RV on the market. Pricing ran from $165,000 to $200,000 across two configurations, with up to 20 kWh of house batteries, 1 kW of rooftop solar, and a four-season HVAC system rated to 0 degrees F.Then GM killed BrightDrop. CEO Mary Barra announced in October 2025 that GM would cease production of the BrightDrop electric van, citing slow demand and a shifting regulatory environment. Grounded is fulfilling limited orders from its remaining BrightDrop inventory, but the chassis is gone. CEO Sam Shapiro says the company is "platform-agnostic" and already builds on Ford e-Transit and Harbinger chassis alongside BrightDrop. The G3, as originally specced, is winding down, and the next Grounded product will ride on a different platform.Coachmen RVEX (Shelved)The RVEX was supposed to be the one that proved legacy brands could ship an affordable electric motorhome. Built on the same BrightDrop Zevo platform as the Grounded G3, the RVEX was a Class B with a 172-kWh battery, dual-motor AWD, 270 miles of range, and DC fast charging that added about 160 miles in an hour. Coachmen (a Thor subsidiary) used lightweight materials throughout, including PET foam core walls and corrugated-core cabinetry that cut panel weight by 47% compared to traditional plywood. At a target MSRP of $150,000, it undercut the Grounded G3 by at least $15,000 on the same chassis.Then GM pulled the rug out. When BrightDrop production ended, Coachmen had dealers with orders placed and was gearing up for 2026 production. General Manager Zach Eppers told RV News that the company found out about BrightDrop's cancellation "when the rest of the world did." The RVEX is now shelved indefinitely. Coachmen says it's exploring alternative chassis options, but there are no production plans for 2026.VW ID. BuzzThe most recognizable electric van in the world, and the one everyone asks about for camper conversions. But it's complicated. VW pulled the ID. Buzz from the U.S. market for 2026; the 2027 model year arrives in fall 2026. In the meantime, Seattle-based Peace Vans offers aftermarket camper conversions ranging from an $8,000 kitchen box to a $25,000 full camper build with a pop-top. VW's own factory camper version, the ID. California is in development but unlikely to reach U.S. buyers before 2028.The Self-Propelled Trailer ApproachSome companies have decided the electric motorhome problem (limited range, massive battery requirements) is the wrong problem to solve. Instead, they're building trailers that push themselves.Lightship AE.1This is arguably the most important product in the electric RV space right now, because it's the only one shipping to customers in volume.Built at Lightship's facility in Broomfield, Colorado, the AE.1 is a 27-foot travel trailer with its own electric drivetrain. Instead of dragging on your tow vehicle, its TrekDrive system senses acceleration, braking, and cornering forces and pushes in real time. Lightship claims this can double the range or fuel economy of whatever's pulling it, and that the trailer is three times more aerodynamic than a standard travel trailer thanks to a telescoping design.Four trims range from the sold-out Cosmos at $250,000 (limited to 50 units, now delivering) down to the entry-level Terros at $125,000 before tax credits. The mid-range Atmos ($184,000, 77-kWh battery, ~300-mile estimated range) starts delivering in spring 2026, and the Panos ($151,000, single 44-kWh battery, ~140-mile range) follows in late 2026.Even at $125,000, the AE.1 is a luxury product. It's not replacing your $30,000 Jayco anytime soon. But Lightship, founded by Tesla alumni with $61 million in venture funding, is collecting real-world performance data from paying owners while the legacy brands are still running pilot programs. That head start matters.Evotrex PG5A California startup that debuted at CES 2026 with a different twist. The PG5 is an overlanding trailer with a 43-kWh battery, 1.5 kW of solar, and a gasoline generator that can produce up to 225 kWh on a full tank. Its RangeBoost system transfers energy back to your electric tow vehicle while driving, offsetting the range loss that typically comes with towing.Priced at $119,990 to $159,990, with production targeted for Q4 2026. Founded by former Anker employees with $16 million in backing. Evotrex is betting that most buyers don't want a fully electric trailer. They want a trailer that solves the range problem when towing with an EV.The Range and Charging ProblemHere's where the optimistic press releases collide with physics.Towing destroys EV range. Real-world tests consistently show 40%-60% losses depending on trailer weight, speed, and terrain. A widely cited test showed that a Rivian R1T pulling a roughly 7,000-pound trailer saw its range cut by more than half. That's a vehicle with a 135-kWh battery pack. An electric motorhome with a smaller pack carrying its own weight faces the same math.The average RV trip covers about 250 miles. A motorhome like the Winnebago eRV2, with 108 miles of range, would need at least two charging stops. The Embark's range extender solves this with gasoline, which is practical but defeats the purpose for anyone looking to go fully electric.Self-propelled trailers like the Lightship help by pushing instead of dragging, but they still need to charge somewhere. And that "somewhere" is the real bottleneck.As of January 2026, the U.S. has roughly 68,000 public DC fast-charging ports, up 33% from a year earlier. But the vast majority are pull-in configurations designed for sedans and SUVs. Pull-through stations that can accommodate RV-length vehicles barely exist. The RV Industry Association has been lobbying for them, but deployment is just getting started. Reliability is improving: Paren's Q2 2025 report puts non-Tesla fast charger uptime at 85.5, the fourth consecutive quarter of gains, but still well below Tesla's Supercharger network.KOA has been adding Level 2 chargers at select campgrounds, and its research shows 1 in 5 campers already have an EV in their household. But Level 2 is overnight charging: useful at a campsite, not for getting you there. The infrastructure gap matters more than battery technology right now.The Money Behind the ShiftThe investment signals are serious even if most products aren't ready.The federal government allocated $7.5 billion through the NEVI program to build out EV charging infrastructure. The program stalled when the incoming administration froze disbursements in early 2025, but a federal court ruled in January 2026 that DOT and FHWA acted "outside the law," restoring states' access to funds. Only 384 NEVI-funded ports were operational as of late 2025.On the private side, Thor's partnership with Harbinger to build a purpose-built electric RV chassis is a real capex bet, visible in their investor filings. Lightship has raised $61 million in venture capital and is the first electric RV company to reach production. Analysts at Mordor Intelligence and Market Report Analytics project the electric RV market will roughly quadruple by 2030. Whether that holds depends more on products and infrastructure than on consumer demand.What This Means for RV RentersThor's decision to put the Embark into a rental fleet before selling to consumers is telling. Rental fleets absorb the risk of new technology: they generate real-world data on reliability, range, and charging logistics without requiring individual buyers to take a $300,000 bet on unproven hardware.For RV rental platforms, electric RVs could eventually mean lower fuel costs for renters and a differentiator for owners listing their vehicles. An electric camper van with free "fuel" from solar and campsite charging is a compelling listing.But the timeline is important. The Embark rental fleet is a 2026 experiment. Data from that experiment will shape the first consumer sales, likely in 2027. Widespread electric options in rental fleets? That's a 2028-2029 conversation at the earliest, and only if charging infrastructure catches up.The Bottom LineElectric RVs are coming, but slowly. The prototypes are real. The investment is serious. The charging infrastructure isn't ready, and neither are most of the products.As of early 2026, exactly one company (Lightship) is delivering electric RVs to paying customers, and those start at $125,000. The first legacy-brand electric motorhome (Thor's Embark) is heading to rental fleets, not dealer lots. Winnebago and Mercedes are still in development. The two most promising all-electric motorhomes, the Coachmen RVEX and the Grounded G3, both lost their chassis when GM killed BrightDrop.For now, the smartest move is to watch the rental fleets. That's where the first honest data on electric RV performance, range in real conditions, charging logistics on the road, and what breaks after 10,000 miles will come from. The press releases will keep promising the future. The rental odometers will tell you when it's actually here.This story was produced by outwander.com and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Enjoy free music at Levitt AMP Galva Music Series Free, world-class live music will fill Wiley Park this summer as the Levitt AMP Galva Music Series returns for its eighth season with 10 weeks of music at the park, 311 NW Fourth Avenue in Galva. The concerts run from 6 p.m. to about 8:30 p.m. Attendees can bring lawn chairs, blankets, friends and family [...]
	The spring cleaning checklist for small rental businesses The spring cleaning checklist for small rental businessesWhen it comes to spring cleaning, even rental properties can benefit from a little polish and shine. But for small rental business owners, a seasonal refresh means more than just sweeping out the dust; it’s a strategic opportunity to protect property value, strengthen tenant relationships, and set the tone for a profitable year ahead.With peak moving season typically kicking off in May, now is the time to get ahead of the curve. Below, RentRedi shares a comprehensive spring cleaning checklist built for small rental businesses. RentRedi Start With a Full Property WalkthroughWinter weather can stress a property, from frozen pipes and roof leaks to overworked heating systems and foundation cracks. Each spring, it’s critical to perform a thorough walkthrough of rental properties, checking for water stains, hairline foundation cracks, loose exterior fixtures, and aging appliances. Document everything with photos or video to create a useful record for insurance, maintenance planning, and future repairs.While you’re walking through, don’t overlook the details that tenants notice most:Carpets: Do they need to be cleaned or replaced due to wear and tear? Carpets absorb dirt and grime over time, so check their condition carefully.Hardwood and other flooring: Look for scratches and worn finishes. Even attractive floors need polishing or replacement from time to time.Walls: Inspect in bright lighting for dirt, dust, scuffs, and stains. If walls look dingy, a fresh coat of paint goes a long way toward making a unit feel move-in ready.Baseboards: Easily overlooked by both landlords and tenants, baseboards collect dust and grime. A quick wipe-down immediately improves how a room looks.Windows: Snow and ice leave residue behind during the winter months. Clean windows let the spring sunshine in and make a strong impression on prospective tenants.First Impressions Start OutsideCurb appeal matters because first impressions last, and a well-maintained exterior signals to tenants and prospects alike that a rental property is well cared for.Start with the siding and roofing. Wind, ice, and snowstorms can cause damage during the winter months, and catching these issues early is critical, especially in regions with heavy spring rainfall, where unaddressed damage can quickly lead to ceiling problems and mold.Turn your attention next to the yard. Rake out rocks, tend to damaged bushes, touch up toolshed paint, and do any necessary landscaping to keep the property’s exterior inviting and enhance curb appeal.Test, Inspect, and Tune Up Your Key SystemsFreeze-thaw cycles can loosen pipe fittings or create small cracks, leading to slow leaks that often go unnoticed until they become bigger ones. Check under sinks, around water heaters, behind washing machines, and near outdoor spigots. Catching minor leaks early saves thousands in water damage, prevents mold, and protects structural integrity.Spring is also the ideal time to ensure that safety systems will work when needed. Test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers, sump pumps, and water shut-off valves. Depending on your region, also review readiness for wildfire, hurricane, or severe storm season. Treat emergency systems like preventative insurance, testing them regularly to prevent failures during a crisis.Routine maintenance items like HVAC filters, dryer vents, caulking, weatherstripping, and exterior drainage are easy to overlook but critical to protecting the home from moisture damage, reducing energy costs, and extending appliance lifespans.Clean the Details That Tenants Notice MostBeyond inspections, a thorough spring cleaning of each unit (especially vacant ones) makes a meaningful difference in attracting quality tenants:Kitchens: Clear and scrub shelves and cupboards, clean ovens, stoves, and appliances inside and out, and don’t forget to check behind appliances where dust and cobwebs collect.Bathrooms: Scrub floors, showers, sinks, toilets, and bathtubs thoroughly. Check that drains and plug holes are clear and that water flows freely.Air vents: Because they’re overhead and out of reach, vents are easy to overlook — but they accumulate significant dust and dirt. A quick wipe-down keeps the air in your rentals feeling fresh.Communal handles and railings: High-contact surfaces build up oils from frequent touching, which can cause discoloration over time. Clean them regularly for both sanitary and aesthetic reasons.Communal garbage cans: Not glamorous, but important. If your property has shared garbage areas, scrub them out to prevent grimy buildup.Communal hallways: Hallways tend to accumulate clutter over time. Walk through shared spaces and make sure tenants are keeping their belongings inside their units rather than in common areas.Refresh Your Maintenance and Repairs Vendor ListSpring is the perfect time to review vendor relationships for plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and appliance repairs. Having trusted vendors lined up before the peak summer season prevents delays that frustrate tenants when something breaks.Review your vendor network based on responsiveness, reliability, and cost, and adjust your list based on past experience or trusted review sites. A dependable list now means fewer headaches later.Review Tenant Communication and the Renewal ProcessOperational efficiency matters just as much as physical maintenance. Evaluate how tenant communication and maintenance workflows are functioning: Are requests being addressed promptly? Are rent payments and reporting processes smooth?Spring is also when tenants begin thinking about their next move, even if lease expirations are still months away. Peak moving season runs May through August, and landlords who reach out early (ideally 90 to 120 days before lease expiration) meet tenants at the moment decisions are being formed, rather than after they’ve already begun exploring other options.Consider simplifying the rent payment process with multiple payment options, autopay, and automated reminders. When the payment process is easy and predictable, on-time payments become the norm. Improving response times and communication consistency builds trust, reduces friction, and ultimately reduces tenant turnover.Prepare for the Summer Leasing SeasonThe best strategy heading into peak moving season is keeping the tenants you already have. But even with strong retention efforts, turnover happens, and landlords who have done the work of refreshing their listings, updating marketing photos, and sharpening their screening process will be ready when it does.Spring sets the tone for the rest of the year. The landlords who use this season to tend to their properties, strengthen tenant relationships, and get their finances in order are the ones who will move through summer smoothly and with confidence.This story was produced by RentRedi and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	The challenges of transitioning from spreadsheets to CRM for sales and marketing teams The challenges of transitioning from spreadsheets to CRM for sales and marketing teamsMaking the jump from spreadsheets to a CRM system is a turning point for growing sales and marketing teams. And the benefits are pretty clear: Better organization, the ability to automate tasks, and improved collaboration across your organization.But here’s what catches many teams off guard: The transition itself can be far more involved than they might initially anticipate.The reality is that teams that prepare for these challenges dramatically increase their odds of a smooth implementation. Those who don’t often find themselves struggling months into the process, wondering why adoption is lagging. Or why their data looks messier in the new system than it did in Excel or Google Sheets.Having witnessed hundreds of migrations to Google Sheets and Excel CRM alternatives, the team at Nutshell has compiled this guide to help you understand the real challenges teams encounter when moving from spreadsheets to a CRM, and how to navigate them successfully.Key takeawaysData quality issues hidden in spreadsheets surface during migration and require up-front cleaning up.Implementation timelines typically run 30%-50% longer than initial estimates due to testing and training needs.Team adoption requires intentional change management—not just software training—to succeed.Spreadsheet to CRM migration challenges for sales and marketing teamsHere’s a closer look at some of the most common challenges sales and marketing teams face when switching to a CRM from spreadsheets.Challenge 1: Discovering data quality issues you didn’t know existedSpreadsheets are remarkably forgiving. Multiple people can enter data however they want—”John Smith” in one cell, “Smith, John” in another, “J. Smith” in a third. There’s also the risk of different date formats, inconsistent industry labels, and duplicates scattered across multiple files.Everything looks fine until you try to migrate it to a CRM. That’s when teams noticed problems everywhere.Why spreadsheets hide data problemsThe flexibility that makes spreadsheets useful for early-stage businesses becomes a liability when those businesses begin to scale. Without enforced data standards, inconsistencies multiply invisibly.According to 2024 research from Validity, 24% of CRM administrators report that less than half their data is accurate and complete. Many of these issues originate from pre-migration spreadsheet practices.The problem is that spreadsheets don’t validate data as it’s entered. There’s no warning when someone types “Michigan” instead of “MI.” You won’t receive an alert when duplicate records exist across different tabs or files. These problems compound over time, quietly creating a data foundation that’s shakier than it appears.As a result, teams often don’t see the cracks until they attempt to move the whole thing over to a different system.The duplicate records revelationOne of the biggest surprises for teams is often the sheer volume of duplicate records that exist across their spreadsheet ecosystem.Sales might maintain one customer list, while marketing has another, and customer service keeps a third. When you consolidate everything into a single CRM, suddenly you’re looking at the same customer appearing five or six times, with slightly different information in each record.The question then becomes, “Which one is correct?”Many organizations discover during migration that their records were already outdated or duplicated before the transition even began.Inconsistent formatting across multiple filesSpreadsheets allow complete formatting freedom. Phone numbers might appear as (555) 123-4567 in one file, 555-123-4567 in another, and 5551234567 in a third. States could be abbreviated or spelled out. Job titles might be capitalized differently across files.Who cares, right? It’s all readable by humans.But CRM systems need consistency to function properly—for reporting, automation, segmentation, and search. What worked fine when humans were visually scanning spreadsheet rows becomes problematic when you need the system to automatically route leads or trigger workflows.How to overcome the data quality challengeConduct a data audit before migrating your data from your spreadsheets to the CRM system. Export all your spreadsheet data and analyze it systematically, taking note of the following: Nutshell The cleanup work happens before migration, not after. Teams that try to “fix it once it’s in the CRM” typically never get around to it. They’re often too busy learning the new system, managing day-to-day work, and putting out fires—so the data stays messy. Nutshell Challenge 2: Underestimating migration timeline requirementsAsk most teams how long they think CRM implementation will take, and they’ll estimate two to four weeks. But the reality is that it can take two to four months to properly migrate data from spreadsheets and implement a CRM solution.This isn’t because CRM systems are inherently difficult to set up—it’s because teams underestimate the nontechnical work involved in successful transitions. This includes planning, discussions, and getting everyone on the same page, none of which should be rushed.The planning phase can take longer than expectedBefore any data moves, teams need to answer fundamental questions, such as:What fields do we actually need?How should our sales stages be structured?What workflows need to be automated?Who needs access to what?These may be simple questions, but the answers aren’t always as simple.These discussions take time, especially when sales and marketing haven’t previously aligned on definitions and processes. One team’s “qualified lead” might be another team’s “prospect.” Getting everyone on the same page about these fundamentals can’t be rushed—though many teams try anyway, leading to confusion and rework later.The CRM migration testing that teams often skipIt’s not uncommon for data migration projects to exceed their budget and timeline due to unforeseen complications. In most instances, these challenges could have been caught during proper testing phases.Testing may feel like wasted time when you’re eager to go live—but it’s not.Smart teams run test migrations with small data samples first. They verify that the data maps correctly to the new system and that integrations with email and other tools work properly. Testing also helps them verify that reports pull accurate information and ensure automation triggers fire as expected.Skipping this testing phase to save time invariably costs more time later when issues surface after the full migration. By that stage, thousands of records have already been imported incorrectly, workflows are already broken, and frustrated team members are already losing confidence in the new system.CRM training and adoption periodsSoftware training is just one piece of the puzzle. Teams also need time to adjust to new workflows, break old habits, and internalize new processes.Research highlighted by Harvard Business Review shows that when CRM projects fail to meet their objectives, it is often because organizations underinvest in change management and team adoption.How to overcome the migration timeline challengeBuild realistic project timelines that account for the actual work involved, including:2 to 3 weeks for planning and requirements gathering.1 to 2 weeks for data clean-up and preparation.1 week for test migration and validation.2 to 3 weeks for team training and gradual rollout.4 to 6 weeks for full adoption and workflow optimization.These timelines vary based on team size and data complexity, but they provide a more realistic foundation than the “two-week quick setup” many teams initially envision. Some platforms designed with user-friendliness in mind can shorten these timelines—but adequate planning and adoption time remains essential regardless of platform choice.Challenge 3: Getting team buy-in and driving adoptionYou can have the perfect CRM implementation from a technical standpoint, but if your team doesn’t actually use it, the project fails.This is where many well-planned transitions hit unexpected roadblocks. The technical stuff worked, the data migrated cleanly, and the integrations function properly—but nobody’s logging into the system.Why sales and marketing teams might resist changeYour sales and marketing teams may already have systems that work for them—even if those systems are just elaborate spreadsheets and personal notes. Asking them to change these established workflows could feel like you’re asking them to slow down and relearn their jobs.When you’re measured on quota attainment or campaign performance, adopting a new system represents a temporary productivity hit during the learning curve. That hit comes directly out of your results for that quarter—your commission, bonus, and performance review.According to VisualSP, complexity and usability concerns are often among the top reasons for low user adoption, with many users finding CRM systems difficult to navigate—especially when transitioning from the simplicity of spreadsheets.The CRM learning curve adjustment periodEven user-friendly CRMs require some adjustment time. Team members need to learn where information lives, how to update records properly, and which workflows to follow.During this period, it’s common for people to feel slower and less confident than they did with their old spreadsheet system. That feeling can be frustrating and may lead to team members questioning whether this new system is actually better.This adjustment period is real and should be acknowledged rather than dismissed. Teams that pretend there won’t be a learning curve set unrealistic expectations that could affect adoption negatively when reality hits.Breaking old spreadsheet habitsFor weeks or even months after CRM implementation, some team members will maintain “backup” spreadsheets “just in case.” These parallel systems undermine the entire purpose of CRM, which is to establish a single source of truth for customer data.When different team members maintain different systems, data fragments—again. Your CRM data becomes outdated, reinforcing the team’s belief that they need their spreadsheets, and creating a vicious cycle that’s hard to break.How to overcome the CRM adoption challengeImplement change management strategies that address the human side of transitions, such as:Involve team members early: Include sales and marketing team members in planning decisions. When people help design the new system, they’re more invested in its success. They feel ownership rather than resentment.Make the “why” clear: Don’t just explain how to use the CRM. Explain why the change matters and how it makes their jobs easier in the long run. Share concrete examples relevant to their daily work.Provide adequate training: Go beyond one-time training sessions. Offer ongoing support, quick-reference guides, and accessible help resources. Make it easy for your team to get unstuck without feeling embarrassed for asking.Celebrate early wins: Publicly recognize team members who adopt the new system successfully and share specific examples of how it’s helping them. These stories are contagious—in a good way.Set clear expectations: Establish a sunset date for spreadsheet use and communicate it clearly. Make it known that the CRM is now the official system of record. Then stick to it.Platforms specifically designed for ease of use can significantly reduce adoption friction. But even the most intuitive systems require intentional change management to ensure team buy-in.Challenge 4: Navigating the spreadsheets vs. CRM workflow adjustment periodBeyond the learning curve, teams face a period where established workflows need to be translated into the new CRM environment. This transition period can bring temporary disruption that many organizations don’t adequately prepare for.Temporary productivity dips during transitionEven after training, teams typically experience a slight productivity dip during the first four to eight weeks of CRM use. Tasks that took two minutes in a familiar spreadsheet might take five minutes in an unfamiliar CRM.Multiply that across dozens of daily tasks and hundreds of records, and the time adds up quickly.Research from Salesforce in 2022 indicates that sales reps spend only about 30% of their week actually selling, with the rest spent on administrative and research-related tasks. During CRM transitions, this rate could decrease temporarily as team members navigate new processes.This productivity dip is temporary, but it’s real. Organizations should budget for it rather than being surprised when weekly metrics dip during the transition month. Surprised managers start panicking and pressuring teams, who might then be inclined to abandon the new system.Managing parallel systems when migrating to CRMSometimes phased transitions make sense, moving one team or one process at a time rather than everything simultaneously. While this approach can reduce risk, it creates its own challenge: maintaining data consistency across two systems during the transition.When some team members use the CRM while others still use spreadsheets, someone needs to manage data synchronization manually. This interim state should be as brief as possible to minimize confusion and redundant work.Adapting established processes to new toolsSpreadsheet-based processes often include workarounds and informal steps that team members barely think about anymore. Moving to an Excel or Google Sheet CRM alternative requires documenting these processes explicitly and deciding which steps to formalize, which to eliminate, and which to automate.This process translation work is valuable, as it often reveals inefficiencies in existing workflows. But it takes time and focused attention that many teams don’t allocate up front.How to overcome the adjustment period challengeImplement phased rollout strategies that minimize disruption. For example:Start with core functionality: Don’t try to replicate every spreadsheet feature immediately. Begin with essential workflows and add complexity gradually. Walk before you run.Designate system champions: Identify enthusiastic early adopters who can help their peers navigate challenges and answer questions. These champions become your frontline support team—often more effective than official help desk tickets.Schedule a dedicated transition time: Give team members protected time to learn the system without feeling pressured by their regular workload. An hour a day for two weeks beats an all-day training session followed by immediate return to full capacity.Measure and communicate progress: Track adoption metrics and share improvements as they emerge, reinforcing that the temporary discomfort is yielding results. People need to see the light at the end of the tunnel—and know they’re moving toward it.Iterate based on feedback: Stay flexible during the early weeks. If a workflow isn’t working as planned, adjust it rather than forcing team members to work around it. Your initial setup won’t be perfect, and that’s okay.Challenge 5: Technical CRM migration hurdlesWhile data quality issues are the most common challenge, the technical aspects of migration also present obstacles—particularly for teams without dedicated IT resources. And most small to mid-sized businesses don’t have dedicated IT teams.Data mapping between different systemsEvery CRM structures data slightly differently. A field called “Company” in your spreadsheet might map to “Account Name” in the CRM. Contact information might be split across multiple fields instead of living in a single cell. Deal stages need to be translated into the new system’s pipeline structure.This mapping work is detailed and consequential. Map a field incorrectly, and you could end up with contact names in the company field or phone numbers in the email field. Mismatches from one system to another can quickly trip up your migration project.Field matching and customization needsDefault CRM fields don’t always match what your business tracks. If you’ve been tracking custom information specific to your industry or sales process, you’ll need to create custom fields in your new CRM and ensure your spreadsheet data maps to them correctly.This customization is necessary—one size doesn’t fit all businesses—but it can add complexity to the migration process and requires careful planning.Integration with existing toolsYour CRM doesn’t exist in isolation. It needs to connect with your email system, marketing automation platform, calendar, support system, and potentially dozens of other tools.Each integration represents a potential technical challenge that needs testing and validation. And platform choice matters.While data migrations typically involve challenges, the difficulty level varies significantly based on your platform choice. Modern, well-designed CRMs with robust integration ecosystems can dramatically simplify this technical work compared to legacy systems that require custom development for each connection.How to overcome CRM migration mapping and integration challengesFollow a structured migration preparation framework. You can also break this process down into manageable phases.Phase 1: Pre-migration preparationDocument all data fields from existing spreadsheets.Identify which fields are critical vs. nice-to-have.Create a field mapping spreadsheet showing old to new structure.Test migration with a small sample dataset (50-100 records).Phase 2: Test migration executionImport sample data and validate field mapping.Check for data integrity issues.Test integrations with key tools.Verify that workflows and automation trigger correctly.Phase 3: Full migrationSchedule migration during low-activity periods.Maintain spreadsheet backup until migration is validated.Run data validation checks immediately after import.Test critical workflows before announcing the system is live.Phase 4: Post-migration validationVerify record counts match between old and new systems.Spot-check individual records for accuracy.Test reporting to ensure data is accessible.Confirm integrations are functioning properly.Teams without technical expertise should consider CRM platforms known for easier implementations or invest in implementation support to navigate these technical aspects successfully. Trying to DIY complex migrations without proper expertise could result in extended timelines, data issues, and frustrated teams.Challenge 6: Understanding the true investment requiredThe sticker price on CRM software is just the beginning. Teams consistently underestimate the full investment required for successful implementation.Costs beyond the CRM software subscriptionMonthly or annual CRM licensing fees are the visible costs. Here are some of the less visible ones.Implementation and setup: Whether you use internal resources or external consultants, someone needs to configure the system, migrate data, and set up integrations. This can range from a few thousand dollars for straightforward implementations to tens of thousands for complex ones.Training investment: Beyond initial training sessions, there’s ongoing education as team members forget features, new employees join, or the system adds capabilities.Data clean-up: If your data requires significant cleaning before migration, expect to invest time (internal resources) or money (external data services) to get it migration-ready.Integration costs: While many integrations are included with CRM subscriptions, some require additional fees or development work to connect properly.An industry analysis by McKinsey in 2021 suggested that inefficiencies in migration execution would likely waste approximately $100 billion over the next three years alone. That number underscores how significantly organizations underestimate the full cost of transitions.Time investment for implementation and trainingTime is money, particularly when it comes to sales and marketing team bandwidth.Consider these time-related factors:The hours spent planning and preparing for migration.The time team members spend in training sessions.Productivity loss during the adoption period.Ongoing time for system administration and maintenance.For a 10-person sales team, the time investment across all team members during a two-month implementation might total 400-600 hours—equivalent to three to four months of one full-time employee. That’s assuming things go smoothly.Resource allocation during migrationSomeone on your team needs to manage the implementation project. This often falls to a sales manager, marketing director, or operations person who may already have a full plate.Without dedicated project management, implementations drag on as they compete for attention with daily priorities. The “urgent” always beats the “important” when nobody owns the “important” exclusively.How to overcome the investment underestimation challengeCreate comprehensive budget planning that accounts for the complete investment: Nutshell The investment level varies considerably based on the CRM choice. Platforms designed for easier implementation and user adoption can significantly reduce these costs compared to complex enterprise systems requiring extensive customization and professional services.When calculating ROI, remember that CRM delivers an average ROI of $3.10 for every dollar spent, according to Nucleus research, with businesses seeing an average 29% increase in sales after implementation. The short-term investment yields long-term returns when executed properly.Setting up your spreadsheet to CRM migration for successUnderstanding these challenges is half the battle. Here’s how to position your team for a successful transition from spreadsheets to CRM.Choosing a CRM designed for easier transitionsNot all CRMs are created equal when it comes to implementation difficulty. Some are genuinely easier to set up and use than others. That difference matters.When evaluating platforms, consider:Setup complexity: Can your team configure it independently, or does it require extensive professional services? If the answer is “professional services required,” factor that into your budget and timeline.Data import tools: Does the platform offer guided import processes with field mapping assistance? Or are you on your own with CSV files and cryptic error messages?User interface design: Is the system intuitive enough that team members can find what they need without constant training? Test this yourself—if you can’t figure it out in 10 minutes, your team won’t either.Integration ecosystem: Are pre-built integrations available for the tools you already use? Native integrations almost always work better than third-party connections or custom builds.Support resources: What level of implementation support and ongoing help is included? “Email support within 24 hours” sounds great until you’re stuck on day two of your migration.Platform choice significantly impacts every challenge discussed in this guide. A well-designed, user-friendly CRM won’t eliminate these challenges entirely—but it can reduce their severity substantially.Pre-migration preparation checklistBefore beginning your migration, ensure you’ve completed these essential pre-migration steps:Data audit completed: You’ve identified quality issues, duplicates, and outdated records.Stakeholder buy-in secured: Key team members understand the “why” and support the change.Requirements documented: You’ve defined needed fields, workflows, and integrations.Timeline established: You’ve set realistic expectations for each phase of implementation.Training plan created: You’ve scheduled initial training and planned for ongoing support.Project manager assigned: Someone owns the implementation project and can dedicate adequate time.Test migration scheduled: You’ve planned a trial run with sample data before the full migration.Success metrics defined: You know how you’ll measure whether the implementation succeeds.Building your CRM implementation planYour implementation plan should outline the what and when for each CRM migration phase.Here’s a realistic framework you could work with. This timeline represents a moderate-complexity implementation. Adjust it based on your organization’s size, data complexity, and technical resources. But don’t adjust it too aggressively—cutting corners here costs more later.Week 1 to 2: Planning phaseFinalize CRM selection and contract.Assemble the implementation team.Document current workflows and pain points. Define desired future state.Week 3 to 4: Preparation phaseClean and prepare data for migration. Configure basic CRM settings. Set up user accounts and permissions. Create initial field mapping.Week 5: Testing phaseExecute test migration with sample data. Validate data accuracy and field mapping. Test critical integrations. Identify and resolve issues.This week saves you months of pain later. Don’t skip it.Week 6 to 7: Training phaseConduct team training sessions. Create quick-reference materials. Designate system champions. Practice with a live system using test data.Week 8: Migration phaseExecute full data migration. Validate migration success. Final testing of workflows. Announce system go-live.Week 9 to 12: Adoption phaseMonitor usage and address issues quickly. Provide ongoing support and coaching. Gather feedback and make adjustments. Celebrate wins and recognize early adopters.Frequently asked questions1. What’s the biggest challenge teams face when moving from spreadsheets to CRM?Data quality issues are typically the biggest surprise. Information that looked fine in spreadsheets—duplicates, inconsistent formatting, outdated records—becomes glaringly obvious during CRM migration. The challenge isn’t just technical; it’s that cleaning this data takes significant time that teams don’t anticipate. Often extending implementation timelines by weeks or months.2. How long does a typical CRM implementation take?Most implementations take two to four months when accounting for planning, data preparation, testing, training, and adoption. While basic technical setup might be completed in a few weeks, successful implementations require adequate time for team adaptation and workflow optimization. Rushing this process is a primary reason why many CRM implementations fail to achieve their planned objectives.3. Why do some CRM implementations fail while others succeed?Success comes down to three factors: Adequate planning, realistic expectations, and strong change management. Failed implementations typically skip proper data preparation, underestimate training needs, or fail to secure team buy-in. The choice of CRM platform also matters significantly—Systems designed for user adoption and ease of use have substantially higher success rates than complex platforms requiring extensive customization.4. Can we avoid workflow disruption during the transition?Some disruption is inevitable. But you can minimize it through phased rollouts, adequate training, and choosing user-friendly platforms. Expect a temporary 10% to 20% productivity dip during the first four to eight weeks as teams adjust. Rather than trying to eliminate this adjustment period—which you can’t—plan for it by scheduling implementation during slower business periods and providing dedicated time for learning.5. How do we know if our data is ready for CRM migration?Run a data audit checking for duplicate records across spreadsheets, inconsistent formatting (phone numbers, dates, states), incomplete records missing critical fields, and outdated information. If more than 20% of your records have these issues, invest in a data clean-up effort before migration. Attempting to “fix it after” rarely happens, and teams get too busy with day-to-day work once the system is live.The transition is worth the effort—if you plan for itThe transition from spreadsheets to CRM comes with real challenges: Data quality surprises, longer timelines than expected, adoption hurdles, workflow adjustments, technical complexities, and hidden costs.These challenges catch teams off guard, not because they’re insurmountable, but because organizations tend to underestimate them during planning.Here’s the good news: Teams who understand these challenges up front can prepare effectively and navigate them successfully. The key lies in realistic planning, adequate data preparation, intentional change management, and choosing a CRM platform designed with implementation ease in mind.Once through the transition period, teams benefit from centralized data, automated workflows, better collaboration, and insights that were impossible with spreadsheets. The increase in sales that businesses often see after successful CRM implementation demonstrates that the long-term value far outweighs the short-term challenges.Your spreadsheet system got you this far. But a properly implemented CRM will take you further if you approach the transition with preparation, patience, and realistic expectations about the work involved.This story was produced by Nutshell and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
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Monday, April 13th, 2026