April 17th, 2018 Meeting

The Toastmaster of the day was Diane, whose theme was tax day. She gave us interesting facts about taxes, such as how Disney made a movie about income taxes to help explain what they were to Americans called the New Spirit which was made in 1942. Laurie was the general evaluator of the day, who reminded our speech evaluators to balance their feedback with both positive and constructive comments.
The first speaker of the day was Jalene, who gave her ice breaker. She first talked about how she went on a trip to Mexico with her brother. During her time of the beach, she felt she had reached a turning point where she had to acknowledge the fact that she was unhappy with her life. Her second turning point was when she moved to Oregon with her new husband, and began her masters degree. The last turning point that she came across is when she took a two year trip from Oregon to Argentina and back on her motorcycle. This last turning point gave her the courage to go after her dream of owning a business, and she has now started Jalene Case Coaching. She was evaluated by Brian H, who first told her what an amazing job she did at giving her presentation. Brian said she had great organization and was able to explain what she was talking about easily. One of his suggestions was to make sure she is projecting for the whole room to hear.
The second speaker of the day was Julia, who gave her research speech on social security. She said there are many different things that can contribute to our decision about when to take social security, such as spousal benefits, medical and monetary concerns, and life expectancy. As an example, she said that Jalene has a social security benefit of 1,000. If she waited until 70, her social security will increase to around 1,300. One of her facts was that a man who is 65 years old today is expected to live until 84.3 years old, and a woman lives until 86.6 years old. With all of this taken in consideration, making the decision on when to take your social security and a financial advisor can help. Svetlana was Julia's evaluator, who said that she did a good job making eye contact with the audience. She also liked how Julia used so many facts in her speech. One suggestion Svetlana had for Julia is to look back at her speech before and compare it to today's speech.
https://www.ssa.gov/ 
Lee was the table topics master of the day, whose theme was also taxes. He asked Svetlana how taxes work in London. She said that she is self employed so taxes work a little differently for her than for others, but their department that handles taxes is called Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Brian H was asked if he would like to be able to choose where his taxes went. He said that if people could choose where their taxes went, it would be a mess. He would put some of his taxes towards defense, and a lot more towards social programs such as medicare and public schools. Brian H was the winner of the table topics trophy.
Lauralee was the grammarian of the day, whose word was prognosis. Dave was the timer of the day.