By Madison Czopek, KFF Health News

For parents of school-aged children, the fall to-do list can seem ever-growing. Buy school supplies. Fill out endless school forms. Block off parent-teacher nights. Do the kids’ tennis shoes still fit?

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Somewhere, at some point, you might remember flu shots. Get your flu shot. Get their flu shots. Or should you? Can you? Is that still a thing?

Amid political chatter about vaccines and the government entities that oversee them, it’s understandable to wonder where all this leaves the 2025-26 flu vaccine.

In short: Yes, the flu shot is still a thing. And doctors we spoke to said they recommend you get your flu shot this year.

Here are some answers to common questions:

Q: I heard the Trump administration could be changing vaccine recommendations. Does that apply to the flu vaccine?

There have been no substantial changes to the federal government’s flu vaccine recommendation: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still says that people 6 months old and up should get an annual flu vaccine.

That means most insurers will cover it, and it should soon be widely available.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has opposed vaccines, agreed that most people should get the flu vaccine. He followed a recommendation from the board that advises the federal government on vaccine policy; Kennedy replaced the members with his own.

The panel voted against recommending multidose flu shots that contained the preservative thimerosal, but the preservative had already been removed from most vaccines, including most flu shots.

Q: Who should not get the flu shot?

Doctors acknowledged there are always exceptions to broad guidance. For example, people with severe allergies to flu vaccine components should not get vaccines that contain those components.

You should discuss your health situation with your physician for personalized guidance.

Q: Is this season’s flu shot different from last season’s?

Yes. The flu shot was updated for the upcoming flu season, but the changes weren’t drastic. Like last year’s flu shot, this year’s vaccine is known as a three-component or trivalent vaccine that protects against three influenza viruses — two influenza A viruses and one influenza B virus.

This season’s vaccine was altered to target a specific strain of the influenza A/H3N2 virus expected to circulate this season, said Ryan Maves, a professor of medicine at Wake Forest University and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Those changes align with what the World Health Organization has recommended.

Q: When is the best time to get vaccinated?

September, October, or early November. This allows your body time to build up its protective antibodies as flu season begins and ensures your protection doesn’t wane before it ends.

In the U.S., influenza infection typically peaks in February, so you want to make sure you’re vaccinated and your protection is still strong through February and into March, said William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Q: Is this season’s flu vaccine guaranteed to protect against the influenza strain that’s circulating?

Guarantee all protection? No.

Reduce risk of death? Yes.

Similar to the COVID-19 vaccine, flu vaccines are best at “protecting us from the most severe consequences of influenza,” Schaffner said. That means the flu vaccine is most effective at keeping people out of the hospital or the intensive care unit and keeping people from dying.

“A flu vaccine may not guarantee perfect protection against the flu, but skipping your flu shot simply guarantees you’ll have no protection at all,” said Benjamin Lee, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at the University of Vermont Children’s Hospital and an associate professor at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine.

Q: Will the flu shot be readily available this year?

All signs point to yes.

The FDA passed its formula recommendations to vaccine manufacturers March 13 — early enough that the agency expected there would be “ an adequate and diverse supply.” The people and places that administer flu shots should have them soon, typically beginning in September, said Flor Muñoz, a Baylor College of Medicine associate professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases.

Q: I heard Kennedy canceled $500 million in funding for vaccine development. Could this affect future flu vaccines?

Kennedy announced the cancellation of funding for mRNA vaccine development. Some companies have been researching combined mRNA flu and COVID shots, but there are currently no approved mRNA flu vaccines.

Still, experts said the federal government’s changes — funding cuts, vaccine committee purges, deviations from existing procedures — are increasing uncertainty.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Lane Gillespie, Bankrate.com

Try as we might to avoid it, sudden, expensive emergencies can happen to anyone. A pet might need an unexpected vet visit, your car might need a replacement part or you may experience a layoff. That’s where emergency savings come in: By keeping a savings fund that you only use for emergencies, you can have peace of mind knowing you can tackle any big expense that comes your way.

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While keeping an emergency savings fund is important, if you’re working with a tight budget, it may not be easy for you to put aside a few thousand dollars. In fact, nearly a quarter (24%) of Americans say they have no emergency savings, according to Bankrate’s Emergency Savings Report.

Americans have struggled to save for years — since 2011, the percentage of people without emergency savings has bounced between 21% and 29%, according to Bankrate’s Emergency Savings Report, which has tracked people’s emergency savings habits for 14 years. But rising prices since 2022 have made it even harder to save money. While the inflation rate has fallen since its 2022 high, Americans are still struggling with the price of their everyday purchases. Several years of rising prices have led to Americans paying 24.3% more for consumer goods since February 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began in the U.S., according to a Bankrate analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

Inflation wouldn’t sting as much if Americans received yearly pay raises to match, but wages over the last year haven’t grown fast enough to beat inflation, according to Bankrate’s Wage to Inflation Index. If your income has been stagnant and your everyday expenses are growing more expensive, you’ll have limited funds left over to stash away for savings.

Without emergency savings, you may need to turn to credit cards or borrow money in a pinch, and that’s what many Americans are doing when in financial need. A quarter (25%) of Americans would use a credit card to pay for an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense and pay it off over time, according to December 2024 data from Bankrate’s Emergency Savings Report. With credit card interest rates being over 20%, paying off an emergency expense with a credit card over time will cost you significantly more due to interest charges.

Snowballing economic factors are making it harder to save, especially for younger generations

In a perfect world, you would save at least 20% of your income across retirement accounts, emergency savings and other savings accounts. That’s part of the “50/30/20” rule, which advises you to spend 50% of your income on necessities, 30% on wants and 20% on savings. However, many people are likely to be spending a lot more than 50% of their income on necessities — squeezing the amount they can save.

Consumer prices rose 2.7% year-over-year in June, according to the BLS — the highest annual inflation rate since February. Americans are also squeezed on housing: Nearly half of renters spend more than 30% of their income alone on housing costs, according to the BLS. Similarly, 27% of homeowners pay more than 30% of their income on housing costs, according to product research company Chamber of Commerce.

Add in transportation costs and the rising cost of groceries, and you may easily find yourself cutting into your savings to afford necessities.

While many Americans, regardless of age, are struggling to save money, younger generations today are facing additional stressors that are making saving even more difficult. The labor market is showing signs of weakening, and recent college graduates are particularly struggling to find work as companies slow down on hiring and as AI swallows up entry-level white-collar jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal. What’s more, their spending on non-essentials hasn’t slowed down. Gen Zers (ages 18-28) are the most likely generation to spend more on travel, dining out and live entertainment year-over-year, according to Bankrate’s Discretionary Spending Survey.

Now, Gen Zers and millennials (ages 29-44) are more likely than older generations to have no emergency savings, according to Bankrate’s Emergency Savings Report:

Americans who have no emergency savings in 2025

Gen Zers (ages 18-28): 34%
Millennials (ages 29-44): 28%
Gen Xers (ages 45-60): 24%
Baby boomers (ages 61-79): 16%

The youngest American adults will likely always have less savings than older generations, since they’re relatively newer to saving. But younger Americans are starting their savings journeys today with added financial barriers that previous generations didn’t face to the same extent. Today’s young adults are kicking off their careers with fewer job prospects and high prices. This can take a toll — 46% of Gen Zers say money negatively impacts their mental health, at least occasionally, according to Bankrate’s Money and Mental Health Survey. This stress has also led to many Gen Zers feeling that planning for their future is pointless, according to CNBC. Without the motivation — or the funds — to save money, more Gen Zers year-over-year have no emergency savings, according to Bankrate:

Americans with no emergency savings, 2024

Gen Zers: 29%
Millennials: 34%
Gen Xers: 31%
Baby boomers: 16%

How to start — and maintain — an emergency fund when high prices make it harder to save

No matter your age, if you haven’t already started saving, it’s vital to start now, even if it’s only $10 or $20 a month. Building savings is a muscle you need to train — it may be difficult at first, but you’ll be glad to see your progress later.

1. Identify your ‘survival number’

An emergency savings fund should have at least three to six months of expenses stashed away, which is enough to cover most emergencies, like a job loss, car repair or emergency room bill. Saving this amount can be intimidating, but it’s more attainable than it seems.

If you spend $4,000 a month on recurring expenses, such as your rent, utilities, phone bill, groceries and transportation, that doesn’t actually mean you need to save $12,000 to $24,000 in your emergency savings fund. Your emergency fund can be based on your “survival number,” or the minimum amount of expenses you need to survive.

“Every few months or so, I like to go through my budget and identify my six-month survival number,” says Bankrate U.S. Economy Reporter Sarah Foster, who has tracked U.S. wages and inflation for the past several years. “That means including things like rent, utilities and groceries — not nice-to-have extras like streaming subscriptions or monthly facials and manicures. This number usually looks different from my regular budget, and that’s the point. It makes the goal feel more realistic.”

To know your survival number, check your budget and split your expenses into two categories: necessities and non-necessities. Necessities will include your:

Rent or mortgage
Utilities, phone and internet
Insurance and health care co-pays
Loan payments, such as a car loan, minimum credit card payments and student loans
Basic groceries, household supplies and pet food
Transportation costs

Non-necessities will include everything else, including subscriptions, eating and drinking out, personal grooming expenses, hobbies and more — everything you’re able to cut if you lose your job or otherwise need to fall back on your savings.

If you spend $4,000 a month on recurring expenses, you might realize you only spend $3,000 a month on necessities. That means you only need to save $9,000 to $18,000 in your emergency savings fund, which is much more attainable.

2. Start with a savings sprint

If you want to start saving for emergencies, you may need to cut down on spending to make room in your budget. But it can be challenging to suddenly cut down on everyday luxuries like ordering coffee out or getting your nails done.

The good news is, you don’t need to cut out luxuries permanently. To give yourself a head start on your savings, consider a savings sprint. Try cutting out non-essential expenses for a set period of time, such as four or six weeks. Set a savings goal, such as $500, that you can reasonably meet in that time by cutting out non-essentials. Set that money aside in a separate savings account — and don’t touch it.

When the savings sprint timeframe is up, you can go back to spending money on non-essentials — but use that time to figure out what is important for you to spend money on. For example, if after the sprint is up, you realize you actually don’t miss spending money on coffee shops, you can continue funneling that money toward your savings.

It can be hard to find the motivation to keep saving if you are only putting aside a small amount each month. However, a savings sprint gives you a jump start on your emergency savings, providing a motivational boost to watch your savings grow.

3. Make your bank account work for you

You can open a basic savings account at most banks where you keep your main checking account. But keeping your checking and savings accounts close together can make it all too easy to dip into your savings for non-emergencies.

Instead, try opening a savings account with a separate bank from the one where you keep your checking account. It takes several days to transfer funds between most banks, which will discourage you from dipping into your emergency savings too easily.

Any savings account will work to stash your savings, but you might want to consider a high-yield savings account (HYSA), which will offer a higher interest rate than a traditional savings account, which will help your savings grow even faster.

Also, try auto-depositing your savings directly into the account (also known as paying yourself first). By remaining hands-off, it’ll be easier to maintain your new savings habit.

You can keep your savings in one lump sum in a savings account, but some banks today allow you to go one step further. You can split up your funds into savings buckets, meaning you can assign roles to your funds:

Savings buckets let you know where your savings are going by separating them according to your goals, such as an emergency fund, travel fund or house down payment. Not only does this allow you to avoid touching your emergency funds when withdrawing money for a vacation, it serves as a constant reminder of the reasons why you’re saving in the first place.

The bottom line

Saving money isn’t always easy, but it’s vital for your financial health. If you don’t feel like you have enough room in your budget to save, consider cutting expenses where you can by examining your subscriptions, setting spending limits and cutting down on unnecessary spending. Or, you can try selling unwanted possessions or even picking up a side hustle.

Key takeaways:

Nearly a quarter of Americans don’t have an emergency savings fund. If you’re one of them, that puts you at risk of taking on significant debt.
It can be challenging to start and maintain an emergency savings fund. Determining the minimum you need to save and starting with a savings sprint can help.
Opening a high-yield savings account will help you grow your savings without the temptation to use the funds for day-to-day spending.

©2025 Bankrate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Spend enough time fishing, and chances are that you — or someone you know — will have an unpleasant encounter with a fishing lure at some point.

A fish hook in the hand, perhaps, or any number of other places on one’s body.

As the old saying goes, “You’re not a real fisherman until you’ve been caught yourself.”

Been there, done that.

I was reminded of the inevitability of fishing lure unpleasantness last weekend, when a friend and I spent a couple of days trolling crankbaits for pike and walleyes on a certain undisclosed body of water. I’d hoped to entice the fish by jigging, a more relaxing approach to time in a boat, but the fish weren’t having it. Only by covering water using shallow-running lures with multiple treble hooks could we entice the fish into striking.

You can probably guess where this is going by now.

The first time Griffin Blegen used his underwater photo equipment, he captured this image of northern pike and white suckers in the Mississippi River near Bemidji, Minn. in April 2024. Because the water was so cold and he had no wet suit, Blegen improvised by using a PVC pole to submerge the equipment. (Courtesy of Griffin Blegen)

We’d been on the water a couple of hours last Friday afternoon and had already landed a respectable number of pike, along with a couple of bonus walleyes, when my friend and fishing partner reeled in a particularly boisterous pike.

As he tried to free the lure — a No. 12 “Black Wonderbread”-colored Rapala Husky Jerk — the thrashing pike made one of those nasty jerks they’re notorious for making.

Just like that, my friend found himself with a barbed treble hook impaled in the bottom of his left thumb — not the fleshy part on the palm side, fortunately — and the other part of the lure still hooked in the fish.

His options for rectifying the situation were limited.

I know there’s a way to remove an embedded fish hook using a piece of string, but I wasn’t familiar with the technique, and calling up a YouTube video to watch a demonstration didn’t seem like a prudent use of my time at that particular moment.

“I think I’m going to have to go to the ER,” my friend said as the spots of blood dripping from his hand and onto the bottom of the boat grew larger and more prevalent.

The first order of business, I knew, was to free the fish, and fortunately, a set of needlenose pliers was in easy reach. I then unhooked and released the pike as I pondered the options for unhooking my friend.

Another option for removing a fish hook, I’d heard, was to cut the hook and thread the barb through the skin and out a second opening. Using the needlenose, I snipped the hook to remove it from the lure, and sure enough, my friend was able to thread the barb out of his thumb.

The crankbait that hooked both man and fish during a recent fishing excursion. (Brad Dokken / Grand Forks Herald)

Fortunately, this was just a smallish-size crankbait with lightweight hooks. Had it been a big muskie lure with thick treble hooks, a trip to the emergency room may have been the only option.

With the offending hook now removed, the bleeding quickly subsided, and aside from a couple of small puncture wounds (and a crankbait in need of new hooks), the damage was minimal. Instead of a trip to the ER, my friend was back to fishing minutes later. He was ultra careful the rest of the weekend to avoid repeating the mishap and pinched the barbs on the crankbaits he used just to be safe.

Anyone who’s ever handled a thrashing northern pike — even a small one — knows how easily it can happen.

I know I sure can.

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Just off the top of my head, I can think of at least four encounters with fishing lures, all involving crankbaits and all but one involving thrashing northern pike. On at least two occasions, I’ve had fish hooks embedded in the meaty area at the base of my thumb — if that sounds painful, it is — once in my right leg and, many years ago, a crankbait in my scalp that resulted from a fishing partner’s overenthusiastic cast while I was helping him prefish for a walleye tournament on Devils Lake.

The cap I was wearing saved me from the brunt of that one, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. As for the others, I used the “yank and pray” technique while closing my eyes and gritting my teeth to pull the hooks free.

Amazingly, none of my encounters have required trips to the emergency room, either.

My goal is to keep it that way.

This week in Skywatch, I want to go back to basics when it comes to the moon. So why does the moon change shape? Why is it a crescent on one night, a half-moon another night, and a full moon on yet another? Why is it that on some evenings we don’t see the moon at all? It all comes down to two things – the moon’s orbit around the Earth, and the sun’s light reflecting off the moon.

The moon generates no light of its own. It’s all sunlight being reflected as the moon revolves around the Earth. The changing angle between the moon, the Earth, and the background sun is responsible for the shape or phase that we see. The best way to explain the moon’s phases is to look at the different positions in its orbit.

As the moon orbits the Earth, the angles between the Earth, the moon and the sun continually change. (Mike Lynch)

New moon

This is when the moon lies roughly in a line between the Earth and the sun, and the sunlit side of the moon faces completely away from Earth. The moon is invisible to us, and its position in the sky is close to the position of the sun, rising at sunrise and setting at sunset. Every once in a while, the moon will lie exactly in a line between Earth and the sun, and we have a solar eclipse. That doesn’t happen every new moon because the moon’s orbit around the Earth is inclined by 5 degrees with respect to Earth’s orbit around the sun. The new moon has to be at the right place at the right time.

Waxing crescent moon

A few days after the new moon, the angle between the moon, Earth, and sun opens up a bit, and we Earthlings begin to see a little sliver, or crescent, of the sunlit part of the moon. It rises shortly after sunrise and sets shortly after sunset, and we can see it for a few hours after twilight in the western sky. This is a great time to see a phenomenon called “Earthshine.” That’s when you not only see the crescent shape of the moon but you can also see the rest of the moon’s disk faintly bathed in secondhand sunlight bouncing off our Earth and onto the lunar surface. It’s a lovely spectacle!

First quarter moon

A week into the phase cycle, we have a first-quarter moon. It’s called “first quarter” because the moon is a quarter of the way through its cycle of phases. It doesn’t mean that you only see a quarter of the moon. You actually see a half moon because half of the sunlit part of the moon faces Earth. The Earth, moon, and sun are at a right angle to each other. The moon rises around midday and sets around midnight. This is a wonderful time to start viewing our lunar neighbor with a telescope. Especially take a look at what’s known as “the terminator.” That’s the line between the darkened part of the Moon and the sunlit part. Along the terminator the shadows are long, revealing features that are otherwise harder to see. You can even see the mountain peaks poking above the shadows on the dark side of the terminator.

Waxing gibbous moon

Ten days after the new moon, the angle between the moon, sun, and Earth opens up to more than a right angle, and we see more of the sunlit half of the moon. That’s when the growing moon takes on an oval football shape and begins to “kick” out a lot of light. The waxing gibbous moon rises in the middle of the afternoon and sets around 2 or 3 in the morning.

The full moon

Fourteen days after a new moon is a full moon. We’re now halfway through the moon’s 29-day cycle of phases. The moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun, and from Earth we can see the complete sunlit half of the moon. The full moon rises at sunset and sets at sunrise, and while moongazing is wonderful for love and romance, stargazing is toast! Not only that, this isn’t really a good time to explore the moon either. Everything on the surface is in direct sunshine and there are no revealing shadows. Around the time of the full moon is when you see the classic “Man on the Moon” and other images like the poodle on the moon.

A poodle on the moon? (Mike Lynch)

Sometimes the full moon gets into the reddish shadow of the Earth and we get to see a lunar eclipse. That happens once or twice a year on average.

Waning gibbous moon

Around 17 days after the new moon we see an oval-shaped moon again, but this one is the mirror image of the waxing gibbous. The angle between the moon, sun and Earth begins to close up. The waning gibbous moon rises after sunset and sets after sunrise. That’s when you see the moon in the western sky in the morning after the sun is already up.

Last-quarter moon

Twenty-one days after the new moon we have a last-quarter moon. Once again the moon, sun and Earth are at a right angle. We see the opposite side of the moon than we saw at first quarter. The last quarter moon rises about midnight and sets around noon. Just like the waning gibbous moon, we see the last-quarter moon in the western sky after sunrise.

Waning crescent moon

About 24 days after its new phase, the moon is down to a crescent again as the angle between the sun, moon and Earth gets smaller and smaller. The waning crescent moon rises two to three hours before sunrise and sets in the early afternoon. It’s so close to the sun that it becomes invisible shortly after sunrise. Before sunrise though, you have another chance to see “Earthshine” or “secondhand sunshine”.

Back to new moon

29.5 days later, the moon is once again new, and the whole cycle of phases, called the synodic month, starts all over again.  As the moon orbits the Earth, not only does it change shapes, it also migrates eastward among the stars about 13 degrees every 24 hours. Because of that, the moon rises later and later each day.

Enjoy our lunar neighbor. It sports a new face every night…and day!

Starwatch programs

Monday, Aug. 25, 8:30-10:30 p.m, Shakopee, at Eagle Creek School. For more information and reservations and location, call Shakopee Community Education at 952-496-5029 or visit www.shakopee.k12.mn.us/Domain/1835.

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 9-11 p.m, Square Park in Minneapolis. For information, check out Minneapolis Parks and Recreation at www.minneapolisparks.org.

Thursday, Aug. 28, 8:30-10:30 p.m, Plymouth, at Northwest Greenway Park. For more information, call 763-509-5000 or visit www.plymouthmn.gov/departments/parks-recreation.

Friday, Aug. 29, 8:30-10:30 p.m, Lake Elmo Park Reserve, Lake Elmo. For information and reservations, call 651-430-8370 or visit www.co.washington.mn.us/index.aspx?NID=532.

Saturday, Aug. 30, 8:30-11:30 p.m, Forest History Center, Grand Rapids, Minn. For more information, call 218-327-4482 or visit www.mnhs.org/foresthistory?utm_source=extnet&utm_medium=yext.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

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