Today, about half of renters are “cost-burdened,” which is a fancy way of saying the rent is too damned high (more than a quarter of them spend more than half their income on housing). And older Americans—your Baby Boomers—aren’t selling their big, comfortable houses like they used to, which is driving up housing prices and exacerbating a housing shortage that began during the pandemic.

There’s also a “loneliness epidemic” as our increasingly isolated and online lifestyles leave many of us (of all ages) feeling depressed and alone on a regular basis. Put together, the struggle for connection and an affordable place to live can pose a formidable challenge for people on both ends of the age spectrum.

There’s an unexpected solution to both problems, however: Boommates.

What is a "boommate"?

The traditional progression for people used to involve starting a family and buying a house large enough to accommodate those kids, then selling the big, empty house when the kids were grown up. But Baby Boomers, who are hitting “peak 65” as the youngest members of that generation hit retirement age, have a lot of reasons not to sell those big houses. Many are paid off, and those that still carry mortgages have interest rates so low they seem almost mythical in the modern age. And about three-fourths of people over 50 want to “age in place” in the houses they’ve built their lives in.

What that means is that a lot of older Americans are rattling around large houses with several bedrooms and bathrooms, all by themselves. And these older homeowners have figured out that they can rent those bedrooms: Close to a million people over the age of 65 now have intergenerational housemates. There are even platforms that help people find housemates with a focus on intergenerational living, like HomeShare Online and Nesterly, which specifically offers discounted rent to people willing to take on some of the household chores for aging homeowners.

Why you should consider a "boommate"

There are a lot of potential benefits of intergenerational living with a boommate:

• Economically, all those empty bedrooms represent income for the homeowner. The vast majority of people over the age of 65 don’t have enough money saved for retirement, and renting their empty bedrooms could net them as much as $14,000 annually to supplement their retirements.

  For younger folks, there’s an opportunity for a lower rent. Renting a single room is cheaper than renting an entire home or apartment (and can save renters as much as $24,000 on rent annually). And many older homeowners are willing to negotiate a lower rent in exchange for helping out with chores and maintenance. Additionally, the overall cost of living can be reduced for both the homeowner and the tenant due to expenses being shared between the two.

• Psychologically, bringing in roommates can help alleviate the loneliness and isolation experienced by many older people who have become “empty nesters,” with adult children living far away, while simultaneously experiencing the challenge of keeping and making friends after age 50; having younger adults around can fill that void. And loneliness isn’t just for the Olds: Nearly 80% of Generation Z and more than 70% of Millennials describe themselves as lonely, so they can benefit psychologically from a boommate situation as well.

A lower rent and less loneliness—if you’re struggling to find an affordable rent, a boommate might be the ideal solution, especially if you’re handling everything alone, without a support network.

Depending on where you live, the summer months might mean lazy afternoons and cookouts by the pool, or cowering in dark rooms with the air conditioning cranked up. Air conditioning is great, of course, but sun exposure plays a huge factor in your home’s overall temperature.

You can’t easily move your house to a shadier spot, but you can take some steps to sun-proof your home. Here are five options to consider.

Repaint in a color that reflects the sun's rays

The color of your house can have a big impact on the ambient temperature inside. White paint has been shown to be very effective in reflecting the sun’s rays—and just about any white paint will do it (it reflects about 80% of visible light, though it will still absorb the non-visible radiation that warms up surfaces). White paint so effective that science went to the effort of inventing the whitest paint possible in the hopes it could have a dramatic impact on cooling down our houses. And while white paint will be most effective, if your home currently has a darker exterior color, lightening it to any significant degree will have at least some impact on the amount of heat it absorbs.

Add a reflective roof coating

Just as you paint the walls of your home, you can paint your roof with a reflective coating to bounce all that heat away. Again, white is the coolest color—a white roof can reflect 80% of the sun’s rays, keeping the roof about 50°F cooler—which means a lot less heat being transferred down into the interior of your house. Coating your roof is a relatively easy DIY job, but you can also hire contractors to take care of it for you.

Choose the right window treatments

The main villains keeping your house hot? Your windows, which just indiscriminately allow all that heat-producing solar radiation to stream into your home. About 76% of the sunlight that hits your window will transform into palpable heat. Keeping that sun out of your house is a key way to cool things down, so invest in some window treatments.

Blackout shades or blackout curtains can be very effective because they stop all the sunlight from getting into your rooms and heating them up, but they can make the house dark and aren’t always the most attractive option. Heat-blocking films can block out the ultraviolet (UV) rays that heat up your house. They’re relatively easy to apply and remove, they're affordable, and they can be a better option than shades or curtains because they don’t obscure your view or make you feel like you’re living in a cave.

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Install skylight films or covers

Skylights are great if you lack exterior windows or just love a home awash in natural light, but they can also act as heat beams during the summer. Just like your windows, you can cut some heat-blocking film to fit your skylights—though it can be trickier than applying to windows. If you can't access the skylight easily, or you’re not sure how to cut and apply the film to a curved surface if you have a bubble skylight, you should seek out a professional to do it for you.

As with a regular window, a UV-blocking film will allow your skylight to still be, you know, a skylight. But you can also purchase waterproof skylight covers that will block the sun during the hotter months. These can then be removed when the temperatures fall so you can go back to enjoying all that light.

Add some shade

All the strategies you pursue to mitigate the impact of the sun on your home’s interior temperature will be even more effective if you stop the sun from reaching your house in the first place by increasing the amount of shade cover it enjoys. There are a variety of ways to do this:

• Landscaping can be really effective at adding shade while enhancing your home’s curb appeal. Leafy trees do a great job of blocking the sun, but a trellis with a robust climbing vine along the sunny side of your home is another way to create a living wall between you and those damaging, heating rays.

• Awnings installed on the exterior walls of the home will keep the sun off the walls of your house. A retractable awning offers flexibility because you can roll it up when it’s not so hot out, or when you’re willing to trade heat for light. You can also consider a side awning for the later hours when the sun’s heat is blasting from the side instead of overhead.

Keeping your house cooler in the summer isn’t just about your HVAC settings. Keeping the sun away from and out of your home will have a dramatic impact on your level of comfort—and your AC’s ability to work efficiently.

Water is the enemy of all homes—a little over one-fifth of insurance claims involve water damage, and not only from a broken pipe or a leaking toilet. Just about any aspect of your living space can be ruined by a rainstorm, which is why we have complex roof systems to keep all that water out.

But keeping water off your head with a solid roof is just half the battle—you also have to keep water running off the roof from pooling around your home’s foundation. Most people accomplish this with gutters—metal troughs that run along the edge of the roof, diverting the rainwater into a downspout that aims it away from your home. But traditional gutters have some downsides, and there are possibly superior alternatives you might want to consider.

The downsides of traditional rain gutters

Metal gutters are relatively cheap and easy to install, and they work well enough in most conditions. But if you have gutters, you already know that they can be a real pain in the butt.

• Significant cleaning and maintenance. Gutters tend to get filled with dirt and debris—it’s not uncommon to find neglected gutters with weeds thriving in them. Cleaning out your gutters is a relatively dangerous and arduous task, and filter systems can be expensive (the average price of a 200-foot LeafFilter system is about $4,500—although you have some DIY options). But a clogged gutter won’t do its job, leaving your home vulnerable to floods.

• Visual appeal. Gutters are, honestly, kind of ugly—especially after a few years, when they start to rust and collect grime and nothing you do (short of repainting them; see above, re: maintenance) will hide the fact that you have cheap metal tubes nailed onto your home.

The best alternatives to metal rain gutters

If you don’t like the look of your gutters, if you don’t want to deal with their maintenance, or you just want a different way to handle rainwater, rejoice: There are options.

Rain chains

Credit: takayan / Shutterstock.com

Rain chains go back a long way, and they work really well. Attached to spots where your roof system guides rainwater, they rely on the water’s surface tension to guide the water down the chain to a spot safely away from your home (or a collection spot like a barrel).

You can buy a rain chain pretty cheaply, or DIY your own out of just about any metal you have lying around. One of the chief advantages of a rain chain over gutters is visual appeal: Rain chains can be very decorative, and provide a calm, zen-like atmosphere around your home—especially since you know water is being carried away from your house.

Hidden gutters

Credit: Douglas Cliff / Shutterstock.com

Hidden gutters are gutters that are integrated into your roof system, so the water is channeled inside the roof to a downspout. They function very similarly to traditional gutters, but their hidden nature improves the aesthetics of your rain diversion system. These are sometimes called box gutters, but this can be confusing because this term also refers to an older style of gutter commonly found on historic homes and rarely used today.

Usually more expensive than traditional gutters, while box gutters offer sleek visuals they are lacking in other ways. Just like the aluminum gutters attached to your roof’s exterior, they can become clogged with dirt and junk—and they can be a lot harder to clean because they’re located inside the roof. They can also be harder to repair for the same reason.

Ground-level solutions

If you don’t want to clutter up your roofline with gutters or rain chains or anything else, you could opt to go with just a drip edge and some ground-level solutions to divert water away from your home. Almost all modern roofs already have a drip edge, which is a piece of metal that diverts water away from your roof’s fascia. This is really only a viable option if you don’t get a lot of rain in your area; most homes will need some sort of drainage solution at the roofline in addition to ground-level solutions like one of these:

• French Drains: These are essentially gutters in the ground. To install a French Drain, you dig a trench, install a perforated pipe, then cover the pipe with gravel. Water falling off your roof drains into the pipe, which carries it away from the house. French Drains are very effective, but can be very expensive to install, with the high end costing anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000—or more.

• Drip paths: Drip paths are a combination of a trench and other materials (paver stones are common, but you can make drip paths from metal or concrete, for example). The stone, metal, or concrete is installed at an angle, so water dripping off the roof is drained away from the house. Drip paths can be cheap to install (and can be DIYed by just about anyone), but getting the angle correct can be tricky, so it’s best to rely on experts if you don’t want to wake up to a flooded basement.

• Landscape grading: Labor-intensive and not exactly cheap (the typical cost is about $1,600), grading your outdoor space so that water dripping off the roof naturally flows away from the house is another alternative to an extensive gutter system. All this means is that a slight incline is created, sloping the ground away from your foundation so gravity can do its thing.

Having a small bathroom can be a frustrating experience. On the one hand, not having to walk down stairs in the middle of the night is a great luxury. On the other hand, if the space is difficult to maneuver and offers no storage it can feel like a disorganized mess on the best of days.

While there are some “standard” bathroom sizes, in older homes people will squeeze bathrooms in where they can, leading to some tiny, tiny spaces. If your bathroom is tiny, you might dream of expanding it and turning it into the primary bathroom of your dream—but if that’s not in your budget, there are some more modest approaches you can take that will make your tiny space a lot more comfortable—and a lot more usable.

Rethink the door

If you have a door that opens into the tiny bathroom, you’re losing a lot of space to the door swing. It’s not just that you can’t install anything there or use it for storage (or any purpose, really), you also have to wrestle with the door to get in and out, especially if there’s more than one person in the bathroom at a time.

Changing the door’s swing direction so that it swings out of the bathroom gives you back that space to some extent. You probably still can’t plop a storage cabinet in the middle of the floor, but the space will feel bigger, it will be easier to get in and out of, and you’ll have more space for a vanity or other furniture.

Another option is to remove your traditional swinging door and install a pocket door instead. This is a little more complicated (and expensive), but if you can do it, you get back the space inside the bathroom without sacrificing the space outside the bathroom for a win-win.

Creative storage

One of the most challenging problems with a small bathroom is where to put all the stuff a modern human requires to be considered acceptably groomed. This is especially difficult if you’re shopping in bulk for your family—24 rolls of toilet paper might be necessary for your household, but where in the world will you put it?

To avoid making your tiny bathroom feel like a storage closet with a toilet, you can get a little creative:

• In-floor storage. If you’re handy or can hire someone who is, creating some in-floor storage cubbies can hide away a ton of stuff and maximize what we’ll generously call the “space” in your closet-like lavatory.

• Window shelves. If you have a window in your bathroom, sacrifice some of that natural light and stick some shelves in there.

• Over door shelves. Over-the-door organizers can hold a lot of stuff, but they also require the door to be shut in order to access them, and can look a little janky. If you have some space over your bathroom door, installing a simple shelf can give you a place for extra storage that looks nice and is always accessible (assuming you can reach it, of course).

• Medicine cabinet. A medicine cabinet hides away a lot of stuff. You can either install an over-the-wall version with a bracket, or make use of the void between your studs with a recessed version that will look a bit sleeker.

• Corner shelves in the shower. Installing a few corner shelves in a small shower can give you plenty of places to store all your products, sponges, and implements. This is especially useful if your shower lacks a wall niche.

• Bath tray counter. Bath trays are useful in any bathroom with a tub, but if you’re short on counter space they can also be used as storage for anything you would normally keep on a larger vanity.

Folding shower doors

If your small bathroom is blessed with a small shower or shower-tub combo, traditional glass doors can offer the same problems as the bathroom door itself: The swing. You can switch that with a bifold shower door with the fold aimed into your shower to maximize the space a bit.

If that’s not your jam or is too much project for you, replacing shower doors with a traditional shower curtain or simple glass panels will also free up that space outside your shower.

Wall-mounted everything

Floating your sink and vanity, toilet, and other fixtures is a bit of a project, because you’ll often need to run plumbing in the wall. But if you’ve got the budget and patience to do it, the result is a cleaner look. Keeping the floor clear can make a small space feel a bit larger, and it also means you’ll have some extra storage options if you need them.

Go airplane size

Finally, if you’ve got a small bathroom, you can make it more workable by installing downsized fixtures. Choosing a compact toilet can give you back some crucial inches, and choosing a sink that takes up a tiny slice of space (and skipping the vanity altogether) can turn a crowded bathroom into a more open space. You can even choose a small freestanding tub for the space to avoid the feeling that your bathroom is really just a tub room with some shelves.

A small bathroom is usually better than no bathroom at all, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer claustrophobia every time you step into it. Some clever storage, some thoughtful fixtures, and you’ll have that tiny bathroom feeling larger in no time.

There are a million apps and services out there that will let you pay bills and move money around, but you still need a bank account. Yes, banks can be kind of crappy, but there’s a reason less than 5% of the population is unbanked: It makes everything more costly, and more difficult.

But despite the crucial importance of a bank account, you don’t actually have a right to one. Banks can refuse to let you open an account in the first place, refuse to accept a check for deposit at their discretion, and can close out your accounts and send you—and your money—packing any time they want, for a wide variety of reasons. And they do just that, all the time, usually without any explanation. Add in the prevalence of bank fraud and the real possibility that you won’t get your money back even if it was clearly stolen and you did nothing wrong, and it's clear that while not having an account isn't an option, having one can be a nightmare.

Instead of trying to live a cash-only life or moving to the wilderness to live off of berries, there’s one thing you can do to protect yourself: Have a backup bank.

How you bank can screw you over

It’s a nightmarish scenario: You have a checking account with Bank A, where your paychecks are directly deposited and from which you pay all of your bills. One morning you wake up to a long list of bounced checks, failed debits, and late fees—and a note from Bank A that your account has been closed due to “suspicious activity,” or some other vague reason.

The bank is required to return any funds still in the account to you, but this is often in the form of a check that can take some time to reach you. In the meantime, you don’t have access to your funds and you can’t pay your bills easily—and your job has nowhere to send your paychecks. Once you get that check you can open up a new account at Bank B, of course, then switch everything over there. But in the meantime, it’s chaos.

The benefits of a backup bank account

But if you already have an account at Bank B, you can jump straight to redirecting all of your debits and deposits (including your paycheck) to that account. Suddenly, the surprise closing of your account at Bank A is just an inconvenience instead of a financial crisis. If you’re someone who has almost all of their bills paid via a points-earning credit card, you might need to visit just two websites to get your finances back on track in the wake of an account closure—your credit card and your job’s HR department.

A backup bank account can also act as quasi-emergency fund. A checking account at Bank B likely won’t be earning much interest, but it will also likely sit undisturbed, and since it’s not directly connected to your daily spending, you won’t be regularly tempted to dip into it.

Additionally, money in bank accounts is federally insured up to $250,000—but that limit applies to banks, not your overall net worth, so if you have substantial savings, having money in separate accounts allows you to have more funds protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Finally, if you choose to have your backup account at a local bank as opposed to an online behemoth, you might enjoy better customer service and perks like the ability to easily cash checks or talk to an actual human being, in person, if you have problems or questions.

The downside of using a backup bank

On the other hand, having multiple bank accounts increases the amount of work you have to do to keep track of everything. If you’re not careful, your second account could end up costing you in terms of fees if you don’t maintain a required minimum balance, and for maximum efficiency you’ll need to make a note of all the account information so you can quickly switch payments and deposits to the backup bank should anything go wrong with your primary bank.

Retirement planning can be a scary subject, with good reason: More than a fourth of non-retired people have absolutely nothing saved for retirement, and even many folks who have some retirement savings don’t have nearly enough. For some folks that means tightening their belts and figuring out how to survive on Social Security. But for a lot of aging parents, having nothing saved for retirement means they’re relying on their adult children to be their retirement plan.

About one-third of middle-aged adults are already supporting their parents financially, and most expect that to continue indefinitely. While most people love their parents and probably don’t want them to slide into poverty and sadness, there’s one obvious problem with serving as your parents’ retirement plan: You might go broke doing it. If you know that your parents will be looking to you for support when they can’t work anymore, there are steps you can take to protect yourself.

Start with the numbers

First, you need to know what you’re dealing with, and that means digging into your parents’ financial situation and overall net worth. Consider all of these possible sources of income and potential financial needs.

• Do a Social Security audit. If your parents worked, they’re likely entitled to Social Security benefits. If they haven’t already, have them create Social Security accounts and check into their benefit situation. Keep in mind that the longer they can wait to take their Social Security benefit, the larger the payouts. Social Security won’t be an enormous amount of money, but depending on your parents’ work history, it can be a significant amount that will definitely help defray the costs of supporting them.

• Track down their retirement savings. Even if your parents have long assumed you’ll be their retirement plan, they may have accrued some retirement savings automatically through their jobs. They may have even forgotten about small 401(k) plans they left behind at old jobs. Do a deep dive to uncover every single retirement account they have or once had, and make sure you know how to access them and what the balances are.

• Plan what to do with their property. If your parents own a home, find out what the situation is there. Do they still owe on a mortgage? Are there any open home equity lines of credit or loans? What’s the home's value? Selling can unlock a lot of cash that could be used to support your parents (while eliminating the associated costs of home ownership), while a reverse mortgage might be a way to let your parents age in place with an enhanced income.

• Make a budget. Once you know how much money your parents actually have, you can make a budget for them that will stretch that money as far as possible. Getting them used to living on a budget now will pay dividends later if you have to take a more active role in the day-to-day management of their lives. It’s important that this budgeting process includes how much you can reasonably contribute without harming your own finances—or your own future retirement. Knowing what your “number” is in the context of supporting your parents will be essential in every decision made, so you'll have to plan out your own budget as well, with your parents as a factor.

Consolidate your resources

Now that you have an idea of how much your parents (and you) can contribute to their own upkeep when they retire, you can start to think about how to lower those costs. A few scenarios to consider:

• Move them in with you. If selling their home is part of funding their retirement, or they don’t own a property, one of the easiest ways to lower their retirement costs is to have your parents live with you. There are obviously a lot of emotional and psychological factors at play here, but from a financial standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. Instead of trying to pay their living expenses on top of your own, a lot of those expenses would be shared—and you’ll also have control over those expenditures.

  This can especially make sense if you have space in your own home and your parents don’t need the support of an assisted-living facility or other resources (such as a nurse). But it’s important to formalize how they’re going to contribute to the household budget, whether that means paying rent or covering specific bills.

• Give them tax-free "gifts." You can give a certain amount of money to your parents every year without any tax concerns. The current limit is $18,000, so you can give that amount to your parents to help support them without having to file any tax paperwork. That can help cover their bills without any extra penalties for your income or assets.

• Create a money pool with your siblings. If you have siblings, you may each have a different capacity to help out. Instead of richer siblings paying for everything and lower-income siblings paying nothing, create a “pool” of money that everyone pays into according to their situation, and pay our parents’ bills out of that. It’s important to consider not just a siblings’ income, but also their direct costs—if your parents are living with you, for example, you might be paying more to cover higher utility bills and other costs, and thus you might contribute less to the pool to reflect that.

Find support

One of the most crucial things you can do to protect your own retirement once it becomes clear that your parents will need your assistance in theirs is to identify public programs that your parents can use to supplement their retirement. There’s often a stigma surrounding utilizing these sorts of government- and community-run programs, but this is why they exist in the first place—so take advantage.

There are the obvious programs like Medicaid and Medicare, or food assistance through the SNAP program, but there are more other options than you might think, so do your research. A good place to start is this site, maintained by the National Council on Aging, which lets you search in your area for specific support programs, including health care, transportation needs, or simple senior discounts that might be available. There are often a lot of valuable benefits out there that can save your parents—and thus, you—a lot of money.

Outside your local area, there are several programs run by the federal government that can help too:

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). If you can’t afford to have your parents move in with you, and they can’t afford where they’re currently living, HUD offers programs to help senior citizens find affordable housing.

• Utility assistance. Heating and cooling can be a significant expense, and attempting to keep costs down by not heating or cooling the home can be dangerous. Many local utilities have low-cost programs in place for seniors in need, so it’s worth a call to investigate this. There’s also the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which can provide assistance.

• Tax credits. If your parents have a very small income (currently between $12,500 and $25,000, depending on their filing status), they may be eligible for a federal tax credit, which can be as much as $7,500.

• Supplemental Security Income (SSI). If your parents are 65 or older and earn less than $1,971 per month, they may be eligible for SSI benefits. This won’t be a huge amount of money (it depends on actual income and other factors, but tops out at about $914 per month for individuals and $1,371 for couples), but it can help defray costs.

Additionally, many areas offer free transportation for seniors (sometimes specifically to and from medical appointments, but some municipalities also run free bus services around town) which might allow you to cut the expense of a vehicle from your parents’ budget.

Being your parents’ retirement plan is a lot of responsibility—and a lot of stress. But if you plan ahead and look into all the resources available, you can at least avoid going broke yourself in the process.

There are a lot of reasons someone might choose to be child free, either for a short time or permanently. Some folks just don’t have any desire to be parents, some can’t afford to be parents, and some parents just need a break from their kids from time to time (which is totally normal and okay). Whether it’s a lifestyle choice or just a weekend, going places where you’re guaranteed to see no children can be a godsend.

Of course, just because you’re not bringing any kids doesn’t mean other people won’t. Some folks seem to believe that children should be welcome everywhere, in every situation, no matter what. And some people can’t afford childcare and have no choice but to bring their kids places they might rather not. Whatever the reason, you can’t always guarantee you’ll have a child-free experience—unless you plan ahead and choose your destinations wisely. Here are some of the best places to go when you don’t want to be around any kids.

55+ communities

If your desire to see no kids is an active lifestyle choice, you might consider living in a 55+ community following the 80/20 rule. These communities require that 80% of the homes be occupied by at least one person aged 55 or younger, which leads to two important scenarios: One, you can still live there even if you’re not yet 55 years old as long as there’s an opening and the ratio works out; and two, the chances of having kids in the community is very low. Not impossible, of course, but people with young children are unlikely to view a 55+ community as an ideal place for their kiddos to make friends and live their best lives. If you’re hoping to avoid kids pretty much all the time, this might be your solution.

Child-free resorts and cruises

If you’re planning a vacation or other kind of trip and want to deal with as few children as possible, you have a lot more options than you think:

• Hotels and resorts. It’s actually pretty easy to identify adults-only hotels and resorts. Expedia has a whole category you can select to view adults-only hotels, for example, and the site Adulty Hotels maintains a listing of several hundred hotels that exclude children that you can search. And if you’re looking for a really adult resort, you can seek out “sex-positive” vacation spots where you can let it all hang out.

• Cruises. There are more adults-only cruise options than you might think. Although often promoted as the ideal family vacation with ships littered with kiddie activities, there are a lot of adults-only options to choose from—heck, even Disney offers them. All of the cruises offered by Virgin Voyages are adults-only, for example, as are all Viking river cruises. And most cruise companies offer at least some adults-only cruises, you just need to look for them.

Restaurants

If you’re just looking for a night out without dealing with screaming kids or misbehaving pre-teens, finding an adults-only restaurant is just the ticket. While many restaurants aren’t specifically no-kids-allowed, there’s a growing trend of restaurants advertising themselves as “adults-only,” promising a dining experience free of chicken fingers and the buzz of multiple screens designed to (hopefully) keep youngsters occupied while the adults attempt to have a conversation.

There’s no easy directory of adults-only eateries, but a quick Google search in your area will reveal them—or use the age-old tactic of making a few phone calls to ask what their age policies might be.

Spas

Few spas will be explicitly adults-only (and there’s actually a trend of more family-centric spa offerings), but if you find a kid getting a facial or having a schvitz in the steam room, rest assured it’s still rare. If you’re looking to have a child-free experience for a few hours, book yourself a couple of treatments at a nice spa and enjoy the silence.

Living in a consumer paradise has its downsides, like the sheer amount of packaging that you wind up throwing away—mostly plastic. Plastic is an amazing material, and it gets used to package everything from shampoo to produce for one simple reason: It works really well at keeping food fresh and protected from damage. Plus, it’s really convenient.

But that convenience has a price, because we’re throwing away a lot of plastic packaging. Almost all plastic packaging is thrown away after a single use (hence the term “single-use plastic”), and a huge amount of that plastic winds up in the environment. That’s a big reason why so many Americans are looking for ways to reduce their dependence on single-use plastic.

Which often leads them to zero-waste stores, also known as refill stores (or, more charmingly, “refilleries”). These stores let you bring your own reusable containers to buy groceries, health and beauty products, and cleaning products, eliminating (in theory) plastic waste. This might seem like an obvious way to live a more sustainable life—but there are downsides.

How it works

Zero-waste or refill stores all operate similarly: You bring your own containers, whether that’s Tupperware or other sealable plastic bowls, glass jars, or literally any container that can be filled, sealed, and then cleaned for re-use. Most products are offered raw, in bulk, in large dispensers or pump stations without individual packaging; some products (like dissolvable cleaning tablets that you mix with water) are sold individually. Most stores offer containers for sale (or for free, via donations) if you don’t have your own, or if you miscalculate and need a few extra.

You weigh your containers when you enter the store, then fill them up with whatever you want. Aside from eliminating single-use packaging, this also has the advantage of enabling you to buy only as much as you need. If your cereal regularly goes stale at home because you don’t eat through a standard box fast enough, you can purchase just a small amount that’s ideal for your consumption rate.

When you’re done, you weigh the containers again and pay for the weight of each product. You bring the stuff home, use it, and when you’re done you clean out your containers, bring them back, and repeat the process. If you commit to the lifestyle, you eliminate all that packaging you would otherwise throw into the trash.

Downsides

A refill store can definitely help you reduce the amount of stuff you’re throwing into the trash or the recycling bin. And less plastic in our landfills and oceans is definitely a good thing. But that doesn’t mean zero-waste stores don’t have their downsides:

• Sanitation. You have to clean your reusable containers very thoroughly if you’re going to prevent bacteria or mold from creeping in—but the act of washing them can actually make them less safe to use, as rough scrubbing or dishwasher cycles can create grooves where bacteria can grow, as well as break the plastic down, allowing its components to leach into food.

• Reusable math. The plastic, glass, or metal container you bring to a refill store most likely required a lot more resources to create than the flimsy single-use plastic in a standard grocery store—which means you have to use them a lot to actually have a net-positive impact. If this is a permanent shift in how you shop, you’ll eventually get there—but the number of uses resets every time you have to introduce a new container, further eroding the impact.

• Price. Zero-waste shops usually have some pretty tough margins, and can be as much as three times more expensive for certain products than a traditional grocery store.

• Spoilage and spillage. Single-use plastics are pretty good at keeping food fresh and free from blemishes—one study demonstrated that plastic-wrapped cucumbers lasted more than a week longer than “naked” ones. Unwrapped produce may spoil faster, leading to increased food waste.

  There’s also the issue of spillage in the store—mistakes with dispensers or knocking loose produce onto the floor leads to waste and bruising, further increasing the potential for food waste.

• Choice. Most zero-waste stores are fervently local and focused on environmentally friendly products, which makes sense. But that means that you might not find a lot of familiar brands in those dispensers, so you might need to adjust your expectations and preferences.

Best practices

That said, zero-waste stores offer an opportunity to lead a less wasteful lifestyle. If you have a refillery nearby and want to give it a go, there are some basic best-practices to follow:

• Choose containers wisely. You want to bring containers that are appropriately sized so you can buy the amount of products that you need. You can use just about anything—old cereal boxes can be filled with fresh cereal, for example—but filling a square plastic storage container with shampoo might be a little awkward.

• Pre-plan. Because you have to fill up your own containers, shopping at a refill store can take a little longer than shopping at a regular grocery store. Know what you need (and how much of it you need) before you go to cut down on the amount of time it takes to get through your list.

• Contain containers. Don’t forget you’ll need to transport your collection of jars, bowls, and boxes from the store to your home, so you’ll need to bring some shopping bags to put everything into. You might already bring your own bags when you shop, but keep in mind that your glass and metal containers may be heavier than the single-use plastics at a traditional store, so make sure your shopping bags are strong enough—and that you can carry them all.

• Go slow. Many dispensers in zero-waste stores work using gravity, so it’s easy to have a torrent of beans or whatever just go shooting everywhere. Your container will fill up quickly, so be careful to avoid spillage.

• Ask. Zero-waste stores are usually run by people who have a lot of knowledge and passion about the environment and consumption. If you need advice on replacing your usual products or storing something, asking the owners or employees is almost always your best bet.

Buying a home is one of the biggest financial decisions you’ll make in life—home equity accounts for nearly a third of people’s net worth, making it the largest piece of their financial puzzle by far. People who own homes are also richer than those who continue to rent, so it’s not surprising that home ownership remains a key goal for many people.

Of course, houses are also expensive, which leads many people to seek out bargains. While buying a fixer-upper doesn’t guarantee you’ll actually save money—and houses come with a ton of hidden costs you can’t always predict or account for—if you’re a handy person who can do a lot of work yourself, buying a cheap house that needs work can be a workable financial decision.

Unless you buy a money pit. The difference between a fixer-upper and a money pit is generally of scale: A fixer-upper has some defined issues that you can remedy. A money pit is a black hole that sucks all the money from your wallet and sanity from your soul.

The signs you're about to buy a money pit

Identifying a money pit is sometimes obvious—listing the house “as-is,” visible cracks in the foundation, mold everywhere—but sometimes the signs you’re about to ruin your life with a home purchase are far more subtle. Here’s what to look for:

• Bad air. All houses develop a distinct “like home” smell that might be alien when you first walk in, but there’s a huge difference between a homey smell and, you know, a stink. Fishy or smoky smells can indicate electrical problems; rotten eggs could mean a gas leak; and a damp, musty smell might mean mold is hiding behind a fresh paint job.

• Rust. You can hide a lot of things behind paint and some quick cosmetic work, but rust is harder to hide or eliminate. If you spot rusted appliances and/or pipes in the kitchen and bathrooms or rusty nails or screws, you might be looking at a house with moisture problems that are going to be expensive to deal with.

• Stuck windows and doors. If you can’t easily open the windows or the doors are all stuck, at the very least you need to have the foundation carefully inspected—this could be a sign that the house needs foundation repair, which can be costly. Another sign that the house might have foundation problems is a simple lack of right angles or even surfaces—if every floor slopes, every wall bulges, and every corner is greater or less than 90 degrees, it’s time to hesitate.

• Low water pressure. Does the water trickle out of the taps? There are a lot of expensive reasons for low water pressure you should be concerned about. More importantly, low water pressure is a quality of life issue, and if the previous owners didn’t fix it, that by itself implies it’s an expensive, difficult problem.

• Dropped ceilings. Sure, there are some totally legitimate reasons someone would install a dropped ceiling in their home. But they’re also often used as affordable ways to hide problems—like a water-damaged ceiling, crumbling old plaster, or bad wiring and plumbing jobs.

• Outdated wiring. If the house has two-prong outlets instead of more modern grounded outlets, you might be staring down the need to rewire the whole house—which can cost as much as $30,000. It’s time to get an electrician to give you an idea of what you’re getting yourself into.

• Insect traps everywhere. Everyone has the occasional bug invasion, and it’s not uncommon to see ant traps in the spring even in houses that are spotlessly clean and well-maintained. But if you see a lot of traps and new traps dropped on top of older ones, it might indicate an infestation—or current owners who have confused termites for ants.

• Lack of maintenance. It’s one thing if a fixer-upper needs work. It’s another if critical aspects of the home’s infrastructure have clearly and obviously been ignored, like an older roof with missing shingles, dirty HVAC vents, or a rusting water heater well past its expiration date. Those are signs that the house is bursting with problems that just haven’t exploded into crises yet. Just because there are no obvious leaks or other problems when you walk through it today doesn’t mean there won’t be tomorrow, especially if the current owner hasn’t bothered to do basic home maintenance. You don’t want all those deferred problems to be yours.

Electric vehicles are becoming more common—1.6 million of them were sold in the U.S. in 2023, representing a 60% increase over 2022. And the federal government is currently working hard to encourage that shift away from gasoline-powered cars and trucks, which means that EVs are likely going to become even more common.

Meanwhile, however, our charging infrastructure isn’t keeping up, despite the priorities of the current administration. That translates to difficulty finding a place to charge your EV or long lines waiting for one to open up—and then possibly waiting hours to get a usable charge if you’re stuck with an older Level-1 charger. If you live in an area where there are relatively few charging stations, you might have opted to install an EV charger in your house. And the good news is that you can turn that EV charger into a small business if you want to make a little extra money.

DIY charger rental

Installing an EV charger in your home is a bit of an investment in terms of both time (you have to make sure your house is ready to handle it, although plug-in chargers that don’t need wiring are available) and money (which can run you more than $1,000, though there are state and federal incentives in place that can lower those costs significantly). While the immediate benefit—being able to charge your personal EV overnight in your own garage or driveway—is pretty obvious, you can milk a little more benefit out of it by renting out your EV charger when you’re not using it.

This could be an informal arrangement: If you have a neighbor or neighbors who own EVs but can’t install their own charger for some reason, you could offer to let them charge at your house for a fixed cost per charge or a monthly payment. This works especially well if you have a wide driveway or a two- or three-car garage and your neighbor can just pull their car in and charge. By placing a power clamp meter upstream from your charger, you can keep track of the power usage and set your rates accordingly.

Sharing apps

If you don’t have any conveniently powerless EV-driving neighbors, you can still make a little passive income from your home EV charger by signing up for a car-charge sharing platform. Apps like EvMatch, Plugshare, or Plugburb let you list the specifics of your charger on a map and set rates (often including additional fees on top of the electricity cost) and other rules (like times when it’s unavailable) for its use. When people need a charge, they search the app, find your house listed, drive over and use your charger. All the billing and payment is handled by the platform.

These apps make it pretty easy to turn your EV charger into a passive income stream because they manage everything. But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean there aren’t downsides.

Downsides

Charging people to use your EV charger might generate some money for you, but there are things to consider before you sign up or start advertising your DIY car charging service:

• Income. You’re not going to get rich doing this. The average cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity in the U.S. is roughly 17.5 cents. According to EvMatch, the average cost to charge a car on the platform is 21 cents per kWh, so your profit margin is not exactly enormous. The average electric vehicle requires 30kWh to go 100 miles, so if your customer soaks up 30kWh per session you’ll make a whopping $1.05 each time.

  Of course, you can make more. The plug sharing platforms usually allow you to set your own rates, so you could charge 25 cents or 50 cents or whatever you want per kWh—though that might drive customers away. You can also charge a flat access fee to supplement each session, bringing your profits up. But no matter what you do, this isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. Instead, it’s best to think of it as an easy way to make some extra pocket money.

• Security. Renting out your EV charger means strangers will be coming to your home, parking their car in your driveway or garage, and then hanging around for (potentially) hours as they wait for their cars to charge sufficiently. Platforms like EvMatch require people to leave the area while their car is charging (it’s part of their terms of service), but how you’d enforce that if they ignore it is something you’ll have to think about.

• Neighbors. Your neighbors may not love the fact that you have a parade of strange cars sitting in your driveway, or that strangers are wandering the area killing time while they wait for their cars to charge up.

While you might not get rich renting out your EV charger, there are some other benefits: You’ll be helping to encourage EV adoption, boosting their environmental impact. And if you’ve ever been stuck in an area without a lot of charging infrastructure you know how grateful people will be to find a charger they can use for a reasonable cost, so you’ll be doing your part to make the world a better and friendlier place. And it’s not a heavy lift: If you already have the infrastructure installed, any money you get from it is a bonus.

Any car accident you walk away from is a positive outcome, relatively speaking, but even minor fender benders can cause you a lot of hassle: damage to your vehicle and potential injuries, waiting around for the police to come and make a report, and spending time dealing with insurance. So when someone hits your car and then just offers you some cash if you agree to skip all that trouble, you might be tempted.

It seems like they’re making it easy for you, after all—admitting fault and offering compensation without paperwork, delays, or conflict. And their motivation is obvious and understandable—they don’t want their insurance rates to go up, or they’re doing something shady like driving without insurance and want to avoid trouble.

But for all the seeming upsides, there is only a very narrow set of circumstances when taking cash after an accident might be good idea—and even if you decide to do it, you should still document the accident.

The downsides of taking cash after a car accident

There are a lot of possible downsides to accepting cash to just drive away from an accident that wasn’t your fault:

• Hidden damage. The accident might seem minor, and your car might show no obvious signs of a big problem—at first. If your car starts making a weird noise or handling strangely a day or two later, it’ll be too late.

• Hidden injuries. Shock and adrenaline can compensate for a lot, and you might not notice pain or other signs of an injury until much later. If you can’t make an insurance claim, those medical costs will be on you.

• Extra costs. If your car is damaged enough to keep it at a repair shop for a while, you might need a rental or you might not be able to get to work—and it’s unlikely the wad of cash you took at the scene will cover those extra costs.

• Scams. Sometimes drivers pay out cash to keep you from filing a claim stemming from an accident—and then turn around and file a claim with their own insurance to get a payout.

For these reasons, you should always wait for the police to arrive at the scene and make a report, and at the very least get the other driver’s name and insurance info, even if you agree not to file a claim. You might need that information later if the damage to your car is worse than you thought, or you discover you did, in fact, suffer an injury as a result of the accident. If the other driver refuses to provide their insurance information, get their license plate number—your own insurance company may be able to use it to track down their insurer and reach out on your behalf.

When it's OK to take offered cash after a car accident

Of course, sometimes an accident really is very minor, and taking some money might be the easiest and quickest way to resolve it. But you should be certain of the following before you make that decision:

• The car was unoccupied, so injuries aren't a risk. You have to be absolutely certain you were not injured, which means the only time it’s a good idea to accept the cash is if you weren’t in the car at all when it was hit. If you were in the car, even a minor accident could result in injuries you’ll only become aware of later.

• It was a very minor accident. Only accept cash if you’re 100% certain that the damage to your car is cosmetic and/or very minor—and you know the cost of the repair with some certainty, or it’s something you know you can fix yourself, or that you won't bother getting fixed at all.

• You got a police report. If you have an official record of what happened, you’re protected from future claims—and even if you decide to take cash, you’re probably required by law to report the accident and get a police report.

• You have the other driver's information. If you at least have their identity and insurance info, you can avoid future attempts at fraud.

Keep in mind that insurance companies won’t enforce or honor any agreements you might make with the other driver—by accepting cash and not filing a claim, you’re giving up your leverage over the situation. If you’re certain there won’t be any future problems, taking the cash might make sense—but the key word there is “certain.”