When it comes time to replace your windows, its important to remember that new windows arent just for your living room or bedroom: were proud to offer replacement windows for any room in your home. We offer replacement basement windows to keep your basement comfortable and energy-efficient. When choosing your windows, dont forget about the window shutters and screens were proud to partner with FlexScreen, a top-of-the-line window screen designed for easy use. FlexScreens come standard on all replacement windows from Window Nation.

When you choose Window Nation, you can feel comfortable knowing your replacement windows are built to the highest quality standards. We pride ourselves on our attention to detail from measurement toinstallation, ensuring your windows will be the perfect fit for your home. After your windows are installed, they will be protected by a lifetime warranty and a dedicated customer service team.

We understand there are many window replacement companies eager for your business. At Window Nation, we let the facts speak for themselves:

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Window Replacement - Home Window Replacement & Installation - Window Nation

Double-Hung Windows

Double-hung windows are one of the most popular styles of window replacements. That means you have a lot of options in terms of materials and colors. With these, you have upper and lower sashes that will allow you to open the window at the top and bottom. These usually open inward, but can also slide open on a vertical track. Sometimes the sash can impede views, but theres a reason why this style is so popular.

Single-hung windows look similar to double-hung windows. The biggest difference is that there is only one sash that will open (thus single versus double.) Usually, the lower sash is the one that will open, and these can also slide vertically. If youre looking to cut costs and maintain quality, single-hung is the more affordable option between the two.

When looking to replace your windows, it may be time to consider reconfiguring your windows to start enjoying more of your view. Picture windows are one-glass panes that are great options for entryways, living rooms and bedrooms. They are energy-efficient, offer increased light and visibility, and require little maintenance. However, it is essential to note they are fixed windows, so they do increase ventilation and if they break, the entire window will need to be replaced.

Are you looking to add a decorative flair to your entryway or living room for more curb appeal? Usually offered in unusual shapes or with decorative glass accents, a fixed window may be just what you are looking for to replace your existing mundane windows. But note that you should place fixed windows where lighting and ventilation arent necessary.

Another of the most popular types of windows, casement windows have a hinge on one side and open outwardly. As a result, these bring in lots of ventilation and can be quite easy to open. You do have to think about the best places for windows like these because they open outwardly. If you have a tight space, or a high traffic area, this might not be the best choice.

Awning windows are designed to keep rain out when theyre open. Similar to casement windows, they open at the bottom, but instead of a side hinge, they are hinged at the top.

These windows are another of the most affordable options. Moving horizontally across a track, they usually have one moving panel and another that stays fixed. However, there are windows where more than one panel slides. Because of the shape, there can be obstructions from view, much like the hung windows. Sliding windows can also trap dirt and debris on the bottom track, which can impede closing if not properly maintained.

Also known as projection windows, these types of windows project outward from the house. Consisting of multiple fixed panels positioned at various angles, these allow lots of natural light to rooms. But they are more difficult to install and are often more expensive.

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Best Replacement Window Companies Of September 2022

Three Brothers LLC Boise is a top-rated contracting company. In a recent update, the firm announced that they offer peerless local window installation services.

Boise, ID In a website post, Three Brothers LLC Boise firm announced that they offer peerless local window installation services.

The experts noted that window installation service in Boise is a significant investment that requires professionals to handle. The team appreciates that windows can transform the homes appearance, especially when installed correctly. That is why they have technicians that have undergone comprehensive training giving them ultimate professionalism to handle any project right the first time, regardless of their size.

The agency said their technicians know the ins and outs of Boise window installation service, including installation, repairs, and replacements. They can help clients pick the right windows with high-performance thermal efficiency, low maintenance, and durability. They use their unmatched experience to ensure that clients get the service they deserve.

Again, the team said their expertise and decades of experience had earned them a robust reputation as the best window installation contractor in Boise. Their passion for supporting and protecting the local community drives their deep commitment to offer excellent work consistently. Also, valuing the clients convenience, the agency prioritizes arriving on time to complete the project on the same day.

About Three Brothers LLC Boise

Three Brothers LLC Boise is a family-owned and operated business in Boise, ID. The company aims to provide the utmost customer satisfaction without cutting any corners. Besides, the team walks the extra mile by offering expert-friendly services to their clients. Their priority is to provide efficient services on time at competitive prices to suit their customers budgets. This way, they wont have to break the bank to have top-tier services.

Media ContactCompany Name: Three Brothers LLC BoiseContact Person: Devon RothEmail: Send EmailPhone: (208) 917-1616City: BoiseState: IDCountry: United StatesWebsite: https://threebrothersllc.com/

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Three Brothers LLC Boise Announces That They Are Offering Peerless Local Window Installation Services - Digital Journal

A South London council must fork out 100 after a woman was forced to wait more than two months for her windows to be fixed.

The housing watchdog found delays and failures in Kingston Councils handling of the unnamed womans complaint.

The woman claimed incompetence from the council had caused her a great deal of stress and inconvenience.

She also complained about the councils decision in December 2020 to keep a single point of contact to restrict communication with her.

The resident told the council on March 6, 2021 that there was water inside the double glazing in two window panes above the balcony and the seals and outer edge of the balcony window were broken.

The authoritys contractor later apologised for cancelling an appointment to repair the window on April 21 at very late notice due to a communication error.

It couldnt attend an appointment on April 29 that the resident requested, and rescheduled for May.

The Housing Ombudsman report found the delayed window repair was frustrating for the resident but said the old windows still functioned correctly.

It took around 49 working days, between March 6 and May 18, for the windows to be replaced after the initial complaint.

The report says: In this case, no evidence was seen to show theold windows stopped performing their required function before the replacements were installed.

"Nor was any information seen to show that theresident was adversely impacted by the water between the window panesinthe interim period.

But it adds: It is reasonable to conclude the resident was inconvenienced by thelate cancellationof the initial appointment on21 April 2021.

"The timelinesuggeststhe [single point of contact] could have notified the residentabout the cancellationprior to her allocated timeslot.

If they had, her overall level of inconvenience may have been reduced.It is also reasonable to conclude the resident had to make additional arrangements to facilitatea further (preventable) appointmenton5 May2021.

On that basis, the landlords apology was not sufficient to redressthe resident givenwhat went wrong.

"Generally speaking, an apology is ofteninadequateredressgivenmultiple issues.

"In this case, the evidence confirmsthe landlords failures includeddelay, a rescheduled appointment and incorrect information in the landlords stage one response.

"As a result, there was service failure in respect of the landlords responseto the residents report of window repairs, along with its subsequent complaint handling.

The council has been ordered topay 100 for the distress and inconvenience experienced by the woman due to the delays and failures.

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Kingston compensation for woman who waited more than two months for window repair - Surrey Comet

MANITOWOC -Proposed renovations to the Manitowoc County Courthouse are likely to cost $25 million to $30 million, which could increase property taxes by 5% or 6%.

According to County Executive Bob Ziegelbauer, the renovations would likely be funded through long-term borrowing, which would take the county 20 to 25 years to pay off.

We can do that in the current marketplace because we have low debt right now, he said. So, we can easily borrow the money.

He estimated county property owners would see a one-time increase of about $30 per $100,000, or 5%-6%, on their annual property taxes.

The courthouse has been a landmark of downtown Manitowoc since 1906 and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1981.

The courthouse itself is a focal point in Manitowoc County and we have to protect it and renovate it as necessary so that it lasts for another hundred years, Ziegelbauer said.

The restoration of the dome, along with replacement of all 120 exterior windows, is the third phase of a three-phase plan created in 2004 to address the restoration of the courthouse exterior.

The other two phases included replacing the roof and copper balustrade, along with replacing the exterior stairs and installing a ramp in 2010; and tuck-pointing the masonry on the entire building in 2012.

During a joint meeting between the Public Works Committee and the Executive Committee in August, a representative from Strang Architects presented the findings of a Dome and Facility Improvements Study that was published June 30.

Five projects were considered in the study courthouse tower restoration and repair, atrium interior dome restoration, courthouse exterior window replacement, and two HVAC-related projects.

According to the study, conditions of the courthouse tower were worse than expected as a result of water leakage.

The project intent would be a refurbishment of the historic construction to best prepare the tower for the next 100 years, the study states.

The entire project has yet to be discussed by the full County Board of Supervisors, which will need to approve the project before funding can be secured.

Ziegelbauer called it a once-in-a-century project.

Its our responsibility to preserve the building the courthouse for the long term," he said."Its not a luxury, its a requirement, I think, a responsibility that we all have.

The County Board is expected to consider the project after the 2023 budget has been finalized in November.

More:Manitowoc school board bans teachers from sharing views on controversial topics in classrooms

More:As a lawsuit lingers, Manitowoc tourism director says building new city department has been 'very fun and exciting'

Board member Paul Hansen called for ideas to fund the renovations during the County Board meeting Sept. 20. He said the Finance Committee, of which he is chairman, has been briefed by Ziegelbauer about the plans to fund the courthouse renovations through borrowing, but said the committee would like to hear from supervisors who might have different ideas about how to acquire those funds.

A basic timeline included in the study estimated that construction on the tower and dome would be done through 2024-2025.

ContactAlisa Schafer ataschafer@gannett.com. Followher on Twitter at @AlisaMSchafer.

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What to know as Manitowoc County mulls property tax hike to help fund courthouse renovations expected to exceed $25M - Herald Times Reporter

FP StaffSep 29, 2022 13:00:11 IST

LG Display showcased a rather bizarre new piece of tech that they hope will get adopted all over the world pretty soon. They are showcasing the Transparent OLED for Subway Trains at InnoTrans 2022, the worlds largest trade fair for transport technology. LG hopes the new OLED panel replaces traditional windows in Metro trains and subways all over the world.

Evidently, as a part of LGs pilot programme, two cities in China have already replaced the windows in some routes of the subway.

The Beijing (Line 6) and Shenzhen (Line 10) subway trains have been upgraded to replace some of the windows with 55-inch transparent OLED displays.

The technology uses specialized tempered glass that gives its transparent OLED displays increased strength and durability to withstand vibrations and strong impacts, according to LG Display, allowing it to replace standard train windows. The company suggests some useful applications for the tech, such as displaying maps, news, and weather forecasts on screen while transparent, thereby retaining its use as an actual window.

The main draw, however, will be for advertising, as rail corporations will definitely try to recoup the cost of installing these panels, but also eke out a nice profit.

LG is using the train upgrades as a way of demonstrating how important the company believes transparent displays are set to be. The application of transparent displays will become more diverse, said Dr. Chang-ho Oh, Senior Vice President & Head of the TV Business Unit at LG Display. LG Display aims to supply products to a wide range of industries in line with its vision as the leading display solution provider.

The two lines in Beijing and Shenzhen are just the start, with LG planning to expand the use of its transparent displays to more subways and will work closely with train glass manufacturers to speed up deployment. LG also sees the technology being used in self-driving cars, airplanes, and smart homes/buildings in future.

Excerpt from:
LG wants to replace Metro and other subway train windows with transparent OLED displays - Firstpost

WCU Stories September 28, 2022

By Camryn Eaton

On Aug. 18, Western Carolina University welcomed a new sculpture to the Apodaca Science Building.

The art installation, a breathtaking piece titled Illuminated Sphere, was brought to life by artists John Littleton and Kate Vogel. Littleton and Vogel are from Bakersville and have collaborated for more than 40 years on cast and blown glass artworks.

Illuminated Sphere

The installation was funded by WCUs allocation of $250,000 to commission works of art that contribute to the visual interest of the Apodaca Science Building. The WCU Fine Art Museum spearheaded the initiative for bringing public art to the campus. WCUs Public Art Program aims to beautify shared spaces on campus for the enjoyment of the greater WCU community.

In Littleton and Vogels most recent pieces of art, they look to incorporate motion and enable the viewer to interact with the piece of art. With its steel base, Illuminated Sphere elevates a set of five concentric glass spheres suspended in gimbaled steel rings. Upon first glance, the sculpture may appear static, however, a handle is affixed to the glass to put the golden sphere in motion.

Watching the reactions and response to the piece was very satisfying, Vogel said. We hope the sculpture will spark conversations among the staff, students and visitors to the Apodaca Science Building for decades to come.

Illuminated Sphere joins the Apodaca Science Buildings collection of works from artists including Joel Queen and Digalil Native American Student Organization, Martha Neaves, Janis Miltenberger and Amber Rousseau. Forthcoming installations planned through 2023 will feature the talents of Hoss Haley, Mark Nystrom and Joshua Adams, among others.

For more information about the artists and to view other works, visit http://www.littletonvogel.com.

Original post:
New Apodaca art installation showcases the talents of renowned glass artists - Western Carolina University News

A stained glass window once dedicated to Bristol slave trader Edward Colston is to be replaced by a depiction of the Bristol Bus Boycott, with Jesus among the campaigners.

The new stained glass window will be installed at St Mary Redcliffe Church next year, after church leaders invited people to submit designs in a competition.

The winning design is from Bristol based junior doctor and artist, Ealish Swift, whose design depicting the bus boycott is one of four panels designed to replace the four individual windows of the North Transept window.

Read more: Roy Hackett funeral: Tears, laughter and tributes as the legend of Bristol is laid to rest

For centuries, the church in Redcliffe had a four-panel window depicting the story of the Good Samaritan, which was dedicated to Edward Colston.

The parish church held annual services celebrating and commemorating Colston, including one in 2017 which saw schoolchildren given a 'Colston bun' on the same day as the church also was illuminated in purple to mark International Modern Slavery Day.

It was only after the statue of Edward Colston was toppled in June 2020 in the centre of Bristol, that churches in Bristol - including Bristol Cathedral and St Mary Redcliffe - re-examined how their buildings commemorated slavers like Colston, and the church leaders at St Mary Redcliffe made the decision to remove the four stained glass panels later in 2020. They were replaced temporarily with plain panels and then the church invited the public to submit new designs in a competition.

A spokesperson from the church said they launched the competition as 'part of an ongoing process of reflection and action to ensure that todays church building echoes St Mary Redcliffes stated values and is welcoming to all'.

The theme of the entries - And who is my neighbour?, was to explore a contemporary understanding of what it means to be a good Samaritan today.

Ealish Swift explained her design draws upon the "the deep and complex history of Bristol, from atrocities of the past to modern day concerns, to remind us of the journeys of our neighbours and how we have come to be together at this moment, looking forwards towards a shared future."

The four panels are captioned 'Love Your Neighbour - Leviticus 19:18' and the first panel depicts a boat in stormy seas full of people. The second depicts the Bristol Bus Boycott, and the third shows refugees making a perilous journey on an inflatable dinghy. The final panel depicts a multi-cultural Bristol with the Suspension Bridge in the background.

Each panel contains Jesus among the group, and in the bus boycott panel he's holding up a placard behind the organisers.

The Bristol Bus Boycott happened in 1963, and is widely-regarded as Britain's own civil rights movement. While Martin Luther King was leading bus boycotts, marches and rallies in the Deep South of the US, a group of black Bristolians were organising a boycott of the Bristol Bus Company, because they were operating a 'colour bar' which effectively stopped black and Asian people from getting a job working on the buses in Bristol.

The boycott lasted for much of the summer of 1963 and ultimately was successful - and also led directly to the Race Relations Acts that outlawed such overt discrimination in the 1960s and 1970s.

The boycott lost one of its leaders only last month, when Roy Hackett passed away - and his funeral last week was attended by hundreds.

Ealish was unable to be at the unveiling of her design as she was performing surgery, but was delighted to find out she was the winner. She said: "I am deeply honoured that my design has been chosen for this wonderful space that means so much to me. I can't wait to work with the amazing Steve Clare to bring my ideas to life.

"I'm thrilled that my design seemed to resonate so much with the local community and I hope everyone will come to visit to see the final piece and experience everything this wonderful church, and community, has to offer!"

The winning design is on display in a small temporary exhibition at St Mary Redcliffe until October 9, and next year will be recreated in stained glass.

Parish Priest, Dan Tyndall, said, The winning design is powerful and imaginative, managing to resonate with contemporary issues and yet will also stand the test of time. Ealish's concept was very popular with visitors to the church and will sit well within the current Victorian window".

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Jesus joins the Bristol Bus Boycott to replace Colston stained glass window - Bristol Live

In 2019, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted that within a decade, robotic systems will be advanced enough to grasp items with the dexterity of a human hand. Three years later, Amazon looks to be making progress toward that goal.

A recent video published on the companys science blog features a new pinch-grasping robot system that could one day do a lot of the work that humans in Amazon warehouses do today. Or, potentially, help workers do their jobs more easily.

The topic of warehouse automation is more relevant than ever in the retail and e-commerce industries, especially for Amazon, which is the largest online retailer and the second-largest private sector employer in the US. Recode reported in June that research conducted inside Amazon predicted that the company could run out of workers to hire in the US by 2024 if it did not execute a series of sweeping changes, including increasing automation in its warehouses.

At the same time, the company is facing the prospect of US workers starting to unionize after the victory by the Amazon Labor Union in the historic Staten Island vote, and another upcoming union election in October in Upstate New York. Labor activists have long speculated that Amazon might ramp up automation efforts in response to unionization activity.

In a statement provided by an Amazon spokesman, the companys director of Robotics AI, Siddhartha Srinivasa, said: [W]e have an incredible opportunity to help advance the science of robotic manipulation in ways that meaningfully benefit our employees and our customers. Our investments in robotics and technology are helping make jobs in our facilities better, easier, and safer, as well as creating new career opportunities for our people.

The robotic arm in question does not look as futuristic as you might imagine. The proof-of-concept machine uses an off-the-shelf metal pincher rather than some novel grasping device. But it can pick up a new item and deposit it on a metal chute every three seconds. At the rate its going in the video, Amazon says the robot could handle more than 1,000 items an hour, meaning it could pick and stow items at rates several times faster than a human worker could. From a box of crayons to a container of what looks like garlic powder to a whisk broom, each item is grasped and moved with no human direction. The robot utilizes multiple cameras to help it see the assortment of items in front of it, as well as machine learning to help it decide the best way to pick up a given item, and motion-planning algorithms to help the robot navigate the crowded scene without bumping or damaging any of the goods. Preliminary tests also found that the robot damages certain products at a much lower rate than other manipulation robots Amazon has tested.

The video and the robotic system in it were created late last year in a controlled lab test by Amazon technologists. This robot prototype can only move items weighing less than two pounds. In testing, the robot was asked to handle hundreds of different items in this weight group and successfully grasped and moved around 95 percent of them, according to Amazon spokesman Xavier Van Chau. On a larger scale, the two-pound weight restriction would still allow the robot to grasp a selection of items making up about half of Amazons total product assortment. But the company is working on grasping solutions that would be able to handle any and every type of item that could fit inside an Amazon box, perhaps by combining a pincher attachment with a popular suction method, and having the system trained to know which hand should be used for which item.

How long it will take for Amazon to create a single robot that can handle the vast majority of products is up for debate, but its a question of when, not if. And when the when becomes now, well have an answer to one of the great unknowns of this era of automation: Will a new generation of warehouse robots that can grasp goods almost as well as human hands make work better or easier for the people doing these jobs? Or will the technological evolution eliminate the need for these workers and their jobs?

An Amazon spokesperson said the company is betting on the latter, based on the way it has utilized other types of robots in its warehouses up to now. In June, Amazon announced a prototype of a robotic system called Cardinal that lifts and sorts already-packaged orders and, the company claims, reduces the risk of employee injuries by handling tasks that require lifting and turning of large or heavy packages or complicated packing in a confined space. The company says it expects to introduce the system into an unspecified number of fulfillment centers in 2023. And last year, the company unveiled another robot arm that it calls Robin, which handles a similar task with lighter packages. Van Chau, the company spokesperson, declined to provide details on the deployment of either the Cardinal or Robin robots.

Amazons history in robotics dates back to when it bought a company called Kiva for $775 million. In the decade since, it has rolled out more than 500,000 roaming warehouse robots. During the same period, the company says it has hired more than a million workers and points to this fact to try to dispel the notion that warehouse advancements are leading to worker elimination.

From the early days of the Kiva acquisition, our vision was never tied to a binary decision of people or technology, the company said in a recent blog post. Instead, it was about people and technology working safely and harmoniously together to deliver for our customers. That vision remains today.

The Kiva robots did make some Amazon warehouse jobs easier. For those workers in picker or stower roles, robots now transport shelves to them at a stationary workstation, where they stand for 10 hours a day with padding beneath their feet. In Amazons pre-Kiva days, these workers would walk 10 to 20 miles a day, plucking merchandise from, or adding goods to, aisle after aisle of inventory shelves.

Kiva robots also brought downsides. Before the robots arrived, a picker might have had a goal to handle 100 items an hour; Amazon tripled those expectations when the robots, not the workers, did the traveling. And with the addition of robots, injury rates increased as workers were forced to move faster to keep up with higher quotas.

The tasks being completed by Amazon test robots like the pinch-grasping one in the new video potentially have more direct overlap with existing worker tasks. The robot, like an Amazon picker or stower, is retrieving a piece of merchandise from one location and moving it to another, as quickly as possible without damaging it. That said, while the robot prototype is picking items at a rate of more than 1,000 an hour around triple the typical rate of human pickers in Amazon warehouses its not an apples-to-apples comparison. Amazon pickers in warehouses with robots have to pull each item out of a cluttered shelving unit, and sometimes have to use a step stool to reach merchandise at the top. Similarly, Amazon stowers have to fit each piece of merchandise into an open space on the mobile shelving unit, versus the robot that is simply moving it from one open space to another. Van Chau, the Amazon spokesperson, said the prototype in the video was neither tested nor designed to pick items from shelves as workers do in the companys current robotic warehouses.

Still, robotics experts are paying attention. Martin Ford, the author of multiple books about robotics including Rule of the Robots, said while its unclear how Amazons most recent robot prototype would perform in a high-volume warehouse, it still seems to show remarkable progress. With advancements like Amazons, as well as those of many well-funded startups building robotic systems to try to solve for challenge of grasping with the dexterity of humans, its inevitable that the problem will be solved perhaps sooner than many of us expect, Ford told Recode.

And once that happens, Ford added, theres little doubt that Amazon warehouses, as well as many other environments, are going to become a lot less labor intensive.

Amazon maintains that robots and people will continue to work together inside its warehouses. But robotics experts say that one day, the company may have a real option to depend on robots to do a lot of the work it currently depends on human employees to do.

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Amazon warehouse robots are getting closer to replacing human hands - Vox.com

The supply chain is still on the struggle bus. The markets v unpredictable. And inflation is getting scary (we see you, gas prices and insurance premiums). Your wallet is probably feeling the pain at every turn, and we have a feeling your car is too. So we teamed up with the experts at Safelite to compile a few things you oughta know about owning a car in this economy.

Sometimes in life, the unexpected happens. And sometimes it happens to your car. Ease the subsequent rush of panic by setting up an emergency fund.

AAA pegs the average car repair bill between $500 and $600. Thatsnot cheap. Case in point: 64 million American car owners said they would have to borrow money to pay for car repair. But dont worry. You dont need to put hundreds of dollars away at once. Setting aside smaller chunks each month can get you financially prepped. And weve got tips for that:

Create a dedicated account. Rather than mentally earmarking monthly contributions, set up an actual emergency fund through your bank. Bonus points if you make one just for car expenses.

Set up auto-transfers. Schedule an automatic transfer from your paycheck or checking account to your dedicated account so you dont have to lift a finger.

Not-so-fun-fact: One-third of American car owners delay or skip maintenance completely. And that can lead to mechanical problems or a roadside breakdown. Plus heftier repair bills.

Example: Youre driving and a rock hits your windshield, leaving a small chip. It might seem like no biggie. But chances are a chip will grow into a crack, making your car unsafe to drive. And repairing a small chip before it spreads costs a lot less than replacing the whole windshield. Luckily our friends at Safelite make windshield repairs and replacements suuuuper easy. You can book an appointment in minutes online for one of their many locations. In most cases, theyll even come to you.

Insurance is like a safety net that catches you when you fall. It might feel like youre spending a lot on nothing but a) car owner life could get a lotttt more expensive without it and b) most states require you to have coverage. The silver lining? There are ways you can save major $$$. Here are a few:

Practice safe driving. Easier said than done. But a lot of insurance companies offer discounts to anyone with a clean driving record.

Shop around. Youre not married to your current insurance provider, so feel free to explore what else is out there. Get quotes from other companies to see if you could get the same coverage for less.

Work on your credit score. That three-digit number is one of the many ways insurance companies decide how much you should pay. If youve got a high score, youll likely have a lower premium.

Buying a new car involves a combo of excitement and stress. Especially these days (hiiii, inventory issues and inflation). But understanding when its time for a new one vs. sinking $$$ into your old one can help you save in the long run. Here are a few things to consider:

Maintenance cost: Does your car spend more time at the shop than in your garage? It might be time to start shopping around.

Hot features: The latest models are bound to have the latest and greatest (think: backup cameras and blind spot monitoring).

Fuel efficiency: Newer cars are probably more fuel efficient than the one youre driving. Depending on your cars current MPG (hint: miles per gallon), upgrading could save you up to $1,000 per year at the pump. Oh, and the Inflation Reduction Act means you can cash in on tax credits if you buy an electric vehicle. Not paying for gas ever again and lowering your taxes? Talk about a win-win.

One more heads-up: If you end up needing a windshield replacement on that spiffy newer vehicle, youll likely need your advanced safety system recalibrated too. Because when you have your windshield replaced, the forward-facing camera attached to your rear-view mirror needs to be recalibrated to manufacturer standards so features like emergency braking and collision warning continue to work properly. It sounds complicated, but the TLDR is Safelite takes care of it all in the same appointment.

Supply chain constraints and economic conditions are rattling the auto industry. But what does that mean for anyone on the hunt for a new ride?

Limited inventory. If you walk onto a dealership lot, dont expect to see as many options as you have in the past. Since manufacturers are limiting production, flexibility is key when it comes to colors and models. Especially if you want your car sooner rather than later.

Loans could be more expensive. ICYMI: The Fed has raised interest rates (which influences what youll pay to borrow money) five times already this year. Experts expect theyll keep at it. And higher rates can mean higher payments, which could impact your budget month after month.

Buying and owning a car in todays economy is no walk in the park. But being financially prepped and understanding the current state of the auto market will make the experience wayyyyy less stressful.

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5 Things to Know About Owning a Car in This Economy - theSkimm