The bottom line

The cost of unspent gift cards

Since 2008 Americans have left an estimated $44 billion unspent on gift cards from retailers, which can’t consider the value stored on the cards to be revenue until it is spent on merchandise.

New York Post

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Using personal phones for work

Employees who use their own phones for work risk getting a nasty surprise when their jobs end. Some 21 percent of companies now remotely wipe all information from phones that had access to internal networks, often destroying employees’ personal photos and emails in the process.

The Wall Street Journal

The true cost of baggage fees

According to an analysis based on airline data, carriers expend about $2 worth of jet fuel to transport a piece of luggage that they typically charge $25 to check. U.S. airlines have made nearly $18 billion in baggage fees alone since 2008.

Detroit Free Press

U.S. companies to raise prices

About 43 percent of U.S. companies say they plan to raise prices in the course of the first quarter, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Business Economics, even though 85 percent of them say that labor and material costs are flat or falling.

CNBC.com

Cautious Millennial investors

Rich Millennials appear to be extremely risk-averse investors. A UBS survey of high-net-worth individuals found that 21- to 36-year-olds were holding an average of 52 percent of their portfolios in cash and just 28 percent in stocks. Older investors in the same survey held 23 percent in cash and 46 percent in stocks.

Barrons.com