The moment you have some stuff, you start worrying that someone is going to take it from you. Despite the fact that crime rates have fallen dramatically over the last few decades (including burglary, which is down 75% since 1993, and only accounts for about 16% of property crimes overall), it’s natural to worry that every time you leave your house, thieves will emerge from the bushes to pry open your windows and steal all your valuables.

Whether you lose sleep over the possibility of being burgled or not, there are a lot of common-sense things you can do to make a home robbery less likely. One of the first things people think of, of course, is a home security system—the idea of the police being automatically alerted to the presence of criminals in our homes is comforting.

Home security systems are kind of useful—a study once found that most professional criminals checked for alarm systems before attempting to break into a house, and 60 percent admitted they would seek a different target if they saw a home security system. So they can be an effective deterrent—but if you’re considering installing one, you should go with a free option with DIY monitoring, because that’s about all they’re good for.

The downsides

The reason home security systems typically aren’t worth paying for is that they struggle to perform their basic task:

• False alarms. Many police departments routinely downgrade the priority of home security calls because of the ludicrous false alarm rate—estimated to be well over 90%. Since most of those alarms are wastes of time, police will attend to just about everything else before they bother showing up at your house.

• Long response times. If a burglar ignores the fact that your home has a security system and breaks in anyway, the whole point is that your system will alert the police, who will arrive quickly to secure your property. Since many police departments consider home security calls a low priority, response times can be as long as 40 minutes in some areas. That’s plenty of time for thieves to ransack your house and wander off at their leisure.

• Easy circumvention. The Los Angeles Police Department recently issued a warning that thieves were using simple wifi-blocking technology to disable home security systems that relied on wireless network connections (a similar warning was issued in Minnesota). Plus, many of these systems rely on batteries; if you fail to replace or charge them regularly, the effectiveness of the system can be compromised.

Free options

Home security systems aren’t totally useless—they're just not worth paying a subscription fee. Simply having a system in place can be a deterrent, and being able to monitor your home when you’re not there offers peace of mind. The good news is that there are several perfectly fine DIY systems you can buy, install, and monitor yourself. While you do have to pay the initial cost of the hub, cameras, and sensors, these systems don’t require a monthly or annual monitoring fee:

• Abode. The free Abode system allows you to view video feeds and receive alerts on your phone. Although the hub has to be connected directly to your router via ethernet cable, which can be a pain, it’s one of the easiest systems to set up.

• SimpliSafe. Although SimpliSafe offers subscription monitoring, you don’t have to buy it, and their system allows you to arm or disarm the system, view video feeds, and receive alerts via their app. It’s pretty basic, but it will do what you need it to and act as a deterrent.

• Blue by ADT. Although ADT is best known for its fully monitored system, you can buy its basic Blue by ADT kit and self-monitor very effectively. This system can be a little wonky to set up, but once you get through the process it works as advertised. This isn’t the cheapest self-monitoring option out there, though, so unless you’re looking for the ADT brand you might be better off with one of the alternatives.

City living comes with a lot of challenges. Between safety concerns, the sheer expense, and the plethora of old housing stock, there can be a lot of frustrations in the urban lifestyle. That also translates into a lot of reasons an apartment in a high-rise building might be appealing: The security of a doorman, the spectacular city views from an upper floor, and the potential for modern amenities to name just a few.

But that luxurious image of high-rise living hides some serious downsides—downsides that most people don’t figure out until they’re actually living there. Having a home hundreds of feet in the air might seem like an exciting, glamorous way to live, but there are some potential downsides you should consider before you get in too deep.

A ton of neighbors means a lot of small talk

This one seems obvious—of course a giant building has more people in it—but it's worth thinking about. If you’ve never lived the high-rise lifestyle before, you might be in for a shock. A single-family home typically has only a few next-door neighbors—one on either side, perhaps one behind the lot (though likely buffered by an outdoor space) and then the folks across the street. Even on a busy street or in a condo situation, you probably have a small number of neighbors you have to deal with.

In a high-rise, the median number of neighbors is around 274. That’s a lot of people you will have to interact with on both a polite good-morning level and on a more substantive level when dealing with building issues.

You're reliant on elevators, which adds time and complications

When you live several dozen floors above the street, you’re totally reliant on elevators to get to and from your apartment. This certainly has a lot of advantages over living in a walk-up, but elevator living has its own lush subcategory of downsides:

• Breakdowns. As noted in this old Reddit thread, elevators can be delicate machines that break down regularly—even in nice high-rise buildings. That can leave you waiting a long time for the next elevator, or carrying your groceries up multiple flights of stairs as you wonder how long it would take anyone to notice you were missing if you had a sudden heart attack.

• Crowds. Remember all those neighbors I mentioned? Since the elevators are the one way up and down in your building, you should steel yourself for endless encounters and a lot of polite chit-chat as you wait for and ride in elevators with other people.

• Delays. Elevators aren’t all the same, and some can be infuriatingly slow, resulting in a lot of lost time. If it takes five minutes to get from your apartment to the lobby (and vice versa), you’ll need to build significant elevator time into every plan you make. This makes it especially challenging to take your dog out for a quick midday pee break—rather than open the door and walk down a flight of stairs, you may have to wait a few minutes for an elevator to arrive. And if your dog (or the dog on the elevator) isn't particularly friendly, you may have to let it pass you by and catch the next one.

If the water pressure goes down, you might be waiting a while

Typically, city water pressure is sufficient to push water up a few floors (in New York City, for example, standard city water can make it to the sixth floor without a problem). After that, it requires a pump and storage system to get water to storage tanks that then disperse it to the apartments.

That’s fine when everything is working, but when pumps fail or water pipes leak in the building, it can be disastrous, because so much of that infrastructure is outside your control. Floods from broken water pipes can impact multiple apartments, creating an insurance mess. Unlike a smaller building, where leaks can be quickly isolated and dealt with, fixing leaks in high-rises can be a major undertaking that can further impact your water pressure—and sanity.

The creepy, wind-fueled shakes

High-rise buildings are designed to sway slightly. If they were completely rigid, high winds and storms would affect them much more powerfully.

So a little bit of movement is normal—but it can also be kind of terrifying. In this video, you can clearly hear what can only be described as alarming creaking noises in a high-rise apartment while a storm batters the building. High-rises can be noisy on the best of days—with “creaking, banging, and clicking noises” being pretty common—but in a storm you’ll have to get used to that sense that the whole place is on the verge of collapse (it probably isn’t, it will just sound that way). If you’re not sure you could sleep peacefully through that, a high-rise might not be for you.

Home ownership is usually touted as a keystone of financial stability, which is one reason why it’s so worrying that it looks increasingly out of reach for younger people. Older generations, on the other hand, are generally sailing into retirement years as property owners—80% of people over the age of 60 own a home (though about 40% of them don’t own the house outright and are carrying a mortgage).

Having that equity can be a real advantage when you’re retired, but houses also come with downsides. Even if you own them outright, there are costs to deal with, they require a lot of maintenance, and they can make it more difficult to change up your lifestyle. Cashing out your equity and using it to augment your retirement means you’d have more money to live on, and renting offers a lot of freedom and flexibility. All that maintenance? Someone else’s problem. Circumstances change, or you get bored living in a certain area? Easy to move and rent somewhere else.

Sure, there are some not-bad reasons to sell your house and rent when you retire, but it’s still not a great idea.

Financial downsides of selling and renting

Selling your house in order to rent comes with a long list of negative financial side effects:

• Capital gains. Depending on how much you clear from your house sale, you might wind up paying some hefty capital gains taxes. You can exclude up to $250,000 (if you’re single) or $500,000 (if you’re married), but anything over that will be taxed. If you bought your home decades ago and its value has gone up significantly, you might not make as much as you expect from the sale as a result.

• Loss of equity. Cashing out the equity in your house means you don’t have that equity anymore, right? Equity is pretty useful stuff, enabling you to borrow money easily when you need to. And paying rent means you’re no longer putting your money towards an appreciating asset: Home values generally increase over time (an average of 4.3% since 1991, and 7.7% since 2012), whereas your rent just buys you one more month with a roof over your head.

• Costs. As mentioned, even owning a home outright still costs money—but on average it costs significantly less than renting. Average homeowners insurance costs run about $2,230 per year, average property taxes run about $1,682, and home maintenance can cost about $6,000/year, for a total average cost close to $10,000 annually (your actual costs, of course, will vary). The average rent costs an average of $16,464 annually. While it might make financial sense in some areas of the country (average rent in North Dakota is just $10,560 annually), chances are you’ll wind up paying more for your housing if you sell.

Renting offers freedom—but also uncertainty

Despite the shaky math on cashing out your equity and renting, some folks still consider the option because of the freedom offered by renting. You can easily move to a different area, or just a different home if you don’t like the one you’re in. You can also easily downsize if your finances shift.

But that freedom can come at the cost of stability:

• You’ll have to deal with a landlord, who will have a certain amount of control over your life

• Your rent can rise—sometimes dramatically. In Columbia, South Carolina, for example, rents have risen more than 40% since before the pandemic, and have jumped almost 20% in New York City. You don’t have much control over the market rate for your rental, so you have to be prepared for rent increases—or to find a new place to live—on a regular basis.

• Having someone else worry about maintenance and repairs is great—if they actually do the work. If your landlord or management company at your rental isn’t responsive, you might be facing a protracted battle to get something done that would be easily handled if you owned the place.

Inheritance plans

Finally, a big aspect of cashing out your equity is your inheritance plans for your family. A house is an appreciating asset in most cases, so leaving it behind for your heirs means they’d have the choice of living there or selling the place and enjoying the windfall. Cashing out makes it more likely that you’ll spend the equity on housing and leave nothing behind for your children or other heirs.

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Retirement can be a very confusing concept. Money is the most obvious factor—a lot of us worry we won’t have enough to be able to retire at all—or have enough to be content. Until you actually live it, your retirement plans are just a guess. Is your budget realistic? Will you get bored? Will you miss working? There are a lot of things you should be doing before you retire, but one of the most crucial is a “pretirement” phase.

What is "pretirement"?

Pretirement is a “stress test” of your retirement plans while you still have time to change course and make adjustments. You can engage in a pretirement as soon as you have some solid plans, even if you’re in your 40s or 50s and have decades to go before official retirement. Pretirement involves replicating as many of the conditions you expect to live under when retired (e.g., budget constraints, lifestyle choices) to make sure they make sense.

For some, pretirement can be a transition period between full-time work and total retirement where a person slows down and gradually changes their lives. Of course, not everyone has the ability to just work a little less, and for most of us, a pretirement plan can be a periodic activity that will help remove anxiety and doubt about whether you’ll actually be able to pull it off. There are tools you can use to help shape your pretirement plan, but it’s pretty straightforward to think about on your own.

Step one: Plan

First, you need to have a plan to stress-test. Retirement plans have two main components:

• Budget. This is what most people focus on when they think about retiring: How much money will they have? Setting up a retirement budget involves calculating how much income you’ll have from retirement accounts (IRAs, 401ks, etc.), Social Security, and any other sources. You should think about whether you plan to stop working entirely, work part time, or have a side hustle of some sort and include an estimate of those earnings as well. Don’t forget to factor in taxes and other costs (like housing and healthcare) so you’ll have a solid idea of how much money you’ll have left over.

• Lifestyle. Is retirement traveling the world? Sleeping in every day? Lying on a beach? Visiting friends and family around the country constantly? Develop a good idea of how you want to spend your time in retirement. If you think you might want to relocate, identify places you might want to live. The clearer you can be concerning how you want to live the better, because it will allow you to test your expectations thoroughly.

Step two: Test

Once you have a good idea of how much money you’ll have in retirement and how you want to live, it’s time to test your assumptions. The closer you can get to the actual circumstances you expect to live under, the better, so the ideal way to stress-test your retirement plans is to use vacation time for “mini-retirements.”

If you plan to move, pick one of the places you’re considering and stay there for as long as is practical for you. Live the way you imagine your retirement to be, and assess your experience honestly. Is lying on the beach every day boring? Do you get tired of having unstructured days? Is the side hustle you thought would be a great way to augment your income harder to do than expected, or not as profitable? Even if you don’t plan to move to another city or country and want to age in place, taking a week or two (or longer) to live the way you think you will in retirement is crucial. You might imagine spending your days reading and enjoying hobbies will be fulfilling and exciting, but it might get old faster than you think.

It’s also important to live within the budget you’ve envisioned for yourself to see if it meets your actual needs. If you find yourself constrained trying to stay under a certain level of spending, you might need to redraw your plans or find ways to increase your expected income. If you chafe against budget constraints when you’re ten years out from retirement, you won’t be any happier a decade from now.

One aspect of retirement that is often overlooked is personal relationships. If you and your partner are used to being apart all day at work, is suddenly spending every hour of the day together problematic? Do you have a social group outside of work, or were you lonely? Were you able to maintain connections with friends and relatives as you assumed you would? A short period of time may not be sufficient to stress-test every relationship, but it can offer you clues.

Step three: Adjust

The final step of a pretirement plan should be obvious: If it was a complete success and you’re pleased with your retirement plans, great! Proceed as planned.

If you weren’t happy about aspects of your retirement, or things didn’t go as planned, it’s time to adjust. If your budget didn’t work, go back to the drawing board: Can you save more? Should you add a part-time job to your plan? Sell your house? If you were lonely or bored, maybe moving someplace far from your current friends and activities isn’t going to work for you, or maybe you need to move closer to family.

This picture will be different for everyone, of course. The key is getting some real data to work with instead of simply relying on your imagination. Retirement can bring dramatic changes to every aspect of your life, and having some sense of whether your expectations are realistic will go a long way toward mitigating any feelings of anxiety you might be experiencing, while giving you confidence that the plans you’re making today will work as expected tomorrow.

Despite the old cliché, money can, in fact, buy some amount of happiness—for most Americans, there isn’t a problem in their lives that couldn’t be solved with a little (or a lot) more money. But once you have a bit of scratch, a new problem arises: managing it. Whether you’re saving for retirement or trying to become passive-income rich, money needs to be managed to avoid huge losses and enormous tax bills and to ensure you’re heading toward your goals.

Most of us can’t really manage our own money—around half of the U.S. population could be described as financially illiterate. That means most of us rely on financial professionals to manage our retirement accounts, investments, and taxes. This is fine—you don’t necessarily need to know how to fix a car when you can just hire a mechanic. But with a car, you know your mechanic is doing a good job when the vehicle continues to run well. If you don’t understand money in the first place, how can you know if your financial advisor is actually doing a good job?

Returns

On the surface, having someone managing your money comes down to one simple thing: Is there more money at the end of the day? On the one hand, yes, sure, that is a big part of it: You need your money to grow, so you hire someone to grow it.

But simply seeing a lot of black on your statements doesn’t necessarily mean your financial advisor is doing a good job. You have to compare their results to something as a benchmark; you can ask your advisor what public index fund most closely matches the goals of your investments, or use the S&P 500 as a broad, general benchmark. Over the long term, your financial advisor should be achieving results that are more or less in the same ballpark as those benchmarks. Markets are volatile, so one "bad" year isn’t necessarily a sign of a bad advisor, but consistently missing that mark by a wide margin—even if there is some gain year on year—indicates that, at the very least, a conversation is warranted.

If you have no idea how to benchmark performance, you can ask your advisor to provide this information to you. If they refuse, that’s a huge red flag in and of itself.

Low churn

Something else to consider is how often your advisor makes big changes to your portfolio. If they frequently make a lot of transactions, resulting in a lot of “churn” in your accounts—especially in response to market downturns—that’s a sign that they don’t have a long-term vision for your money. A financial plan for a retirement that’s still decades away, for example, should have a horizon far enough out that panic moves in response to market fluctuations shouldn’t be necessary.

Holistic plan

A financial advisor needs to have a pretty clear idea of your total financial picture in order to manage your wealth effectively. They shouldn’t only be concerned with your investments—they should know your home financial situation to some degree, know your financial goals aside from retirement, and at least be reviewing your taxes every year. The tax review is crucial, as it gives your advisor insight into your finances that can help guide their decisions when managing your money, and helps them craft a strategy to minimize your tax hit. If your financial advisor isn’t interested in anything but your investments, they might not be doing the best job for you.

Not selling you

One thing that can’t be stressed enough: Your financial person should be a certified financial planner (CFP), sometimes referred to as a fiduciary. A CFP has had training and attained official status as a financial planner—but most importantly, they have a legal duty to act in your best financial interests, not their own. That means they won’t be constantly selling you on new investments or products, because they’re not getting fees or commissions from other sources.

If your advisor is always calling you up and trying to convince you to invest in stuff and buy financial products, especially with promises of big returns, it’s time to reconsider whether you’ve got the right person managing your money.

Fair fees

Nothing in this life is free, so the fact that your financial advisor is going to charge you for their services is no surprise. But you should know what they’re charging you—and how they’re charging you. Look for the words “fee-only” or “fee-based”—the former means you pay your advisor directly, and they are likely a fiduciary, while fee-based means your advisor gets paid by others, which could compromise the advice they give you.

Fees vary, but most financial advisors will charge you a percentage of the “assets under management” (AUM), which is typically about 1% up to a certain amount and less for larger amounts. But some advisors will charge a flat, annual fee instead (ranging between $2,000 and $7,500), or bill you hourly. If you’re being charged more than 1% or $7,500 per year, it’s time to ask some hard questions to make them justify the cost.

High communication

A financial advisor should, you know, advise you. If you never hear from your advisor and have difficulty getting them to respond to questions or requests, the chances that they are thinking about your financial goals with any urgency or coherency are low. You should be speaking with your advisor at least once a year, at minimum, and they should be sending you quarterly reports. They should also be responsive if you reach out with a question, and be happy to explain things to you or discuss any ideas you have about how to handle your money better. If they’re dismissive, impatient, or simply don’t return calls, that’s likely a good reflection of the quality of the work they’re doing for you.

Willing to research

Finally, your financial advisor doesn’t need to know everything—but they should be willing to find out what they don’t know. If you’re curious about something—cryptocurrency, or a hot new startup you heard about at a cocktail party—your financial advisor should a) know something about it and be willing to explain it to you; b) admit they know nothing about it and be willing to research it for you; or c) be willing to put you in touch with a resource that can give you the information you’re looking for. If they’re not interested in doing anything but what they’ve been doing, they may not be doing the best job for you.

There was a time when rich people were pretty easy to spot. Everything about them, from their clothing to their leisure activities, was more or less designed to exclude the rubes. If you couldn’t afford a valet to dress you, you couldn’t wear rich-people clothes. If your skills tended towards the practical and remunerative instead of the genteel and artful, you’d never fit in at a society ball or private club.

But things have changed in recent decades, and the signs of wealth have become harder to detect. This is due in part to the rise of the Influencer, the person on social media who curates their life in photos, reels, and emojis to convey an image of wealth and luxury—even though most of them are broke and just faking it, usually so they can sell you something.

Credit cards allow people to do “rich people things” even if they’re barely scraping by, after all, and the days when rich folks dressed and acted differently are long gone. In a world where everyone is wearing jeans and T-shirts, and where a generous credit limit will allow you to live the high life (for a while, at least), how can you tell fake rich from real rich?

No flash

Rich people don’t flash their wealth for one simple reason: They don’t think about it. An actually wealthy person rarely flashes their money. They don’t make a big deal about paying for things, or pose for photos holding stacks of cash or sitting in a private jet—in the same way you don’t post photos of you sitting in your Honda Civic or shopping for groceries. Money is just the air they breathe, and there’s no reason to think so hard about it. If they do think about money, it’s often in terms of a reluctance to let people know how much money they have, and the steps they can take to hide it.

Experience

We all know the old adage that “time is money” is actually the inverse—money is time. When you pay someone else to clean your house, you get back an hour of your day that you can then use in any way you choose. Truly wealthy people have more time, and this translates into knowledge in terms of skill sets and life experience. They know how to ski or ride a horse (or play polo); they know the protocols of private jets; they’re familiar with foreign cities in a way that goes beyond tourism. They might not be bragging about how rich they are, but their breadth of knowledge about the world tells you they haven’t had to devote 40-plus hours every week to paying the rent.

Absence of brands

One reason so-called influencers love to flash brands? Because they’re being paid to—or want to be paid to. Fashion and luxury brands exist to advertise to the world that you have the money to pay for them, and that’s the last thing really rich folks need or want to do. The real rich do dress in luxury brands—they’re just luxury brands that you don’t hear about often, and don’t scream "wealth" unless you look closely. Truly wealthy people also wear tailored, bespoke clothing that has no brand label at all. If someone is dressed in high-quality clothes that fit perfectly but have no logo, you’re likely looking at an actually rich person.

Price awareness

As a wise woman once said, “It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?” Even if you’re relatively well off, you still know, generally, how much stuff costs because you’re still interacting directly with money. You buy your own gas, shop for your own groceries, and pay your own bills. You might not think twice about buying a new car, but you know how much it cost.

But the truly wealthy are disconnected from money to the point where everything seems free, because they often don’t directly pay for anything—and if they do, they don’t worry about the price of things. Paying for specific things or experiences just doesn’t really impact their day-to-day existence, which is why they can be stymied by questions like “How much does a gallon of milk cost?”

Lack of luggage

It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but often a surefire sign that someone is real rich is a lack of luggage. Regular people travel with multiple bags of stuff because we only have one of everything and need to bring it with us wherever we go. But the real rich can hop on a plane and just buy or rent whatever they need when they get to their destination, so they can head off on a lengthy trip with a carry-on and their phone.

Against all logic, Americans sure do love their lawns. Most of us recognize that lawns are wasteful: functionally useless ornaments that suck up water, encourage the use of dangerous pesticides and fertilizers, and require regular maintenance that eats into our free time, and yet we can’t seem to quit them. There are actually more lawns than cornfields in the United States, despite the fact that, as any lawn-proud homeowner will tell you, growing a lush field of grass isn’t easy, and requires a lot of investment.

Your best decision when it comes to your lawn is to kill it and replace it with something less ridiculous and environmentally harmful. But if you’re sticking with your lawn despite all the downsides (maybe you enjoy spending hundreds of hours mowing?) there’s one thing you can still do to make the situation a little better: Plant the right grass—meaning, usually, the least terrible grass for your needs and location.

The right grass can require less maintenance

If you want the least-worst lawn possible, your goal should be cutting down the resources that it consumes. The number one consideration should be water consumption: We use a collective 9 billion gallons of water on landscape irrigation every single day, even as major cities around the country are running out of water. That means your best/least-worst choice for grass has to be a low-water, drought-resistant variety.

We also use a lot of pesticides to keep those green lawns green, around 70 million pounds of the stuff annually. All those pesticides get into the ground and the groundwater, and many of the common pesticides used have been linked to serious health problems in humans. That means your least-worst grass choice will also have to thrive without the use of a lot of pesticides.

On the bright side, you have a few choices for low-water, low-maintenance grasses, depending on your local climate.

The best (least terrible) grasses to choose for your lawn

• Zoysia Grass. An overall good choice, Zoysia grass is drought- and bug-resistant, grows slowly so you don’t have to mow it constantly, and holds up well to foot traffic. It’s actually a very hard-to-kill grass, so it’s a great choice for the lazy as well as the environmentally conscious. It’s a warm-weather grass that will do best in USDA zones 6-11.

• Red Fescue. Red Fescue is a great choice for the lazy lawn master, as it doesn’t require much mowing or other landscaping work, and will grow into a dense carpet more or less on its own. A cool-weather grass, it thrives in Zones 1-7 and won’t need irrigation at all if you usually get at least 18-20 inches of rain every year.

• Buffalo Grass. Native to North America, Buffalo Grass is a hardy, easy-to-grow grass that sips very little water—most varieties need just an inch or so of water per month. You can let it grow to produce a soft, tall lawn or cut it short for a more traditional look. It thrives in Zones 3-9. For the ultimate least-worst grass lawn, the UC Verde variety developed at the University of California uses even less water. The one downside is that Buffalo Grass has a tendency to allow weeds to infiltrate, so it might take a bit more care.

• St. Augustine Grass. St. Augustine Grass is a low-water grass that thrives in the shade and heat (it will do best in Zones 8-10). so if you’ve made sure the hateful sun can’t burn you alive in your yard it will grow just fine. It’s also tolerant of sea salt, making it a good choice if you’re near the water. You can’t get seeds for this grass—you’ll have to propagate from pods or slugs. This grass does require a fair amount of watering when it’s first planted, but once it’s established it is a very low-water grass. While resistant to weeds, St. Augustine Grass does attract a fair amount of pests, so if cutting down your pesticide use is a priority this may not be the best choice.

• Centipedegrass. Centipedegrass isn’t the best when it comes to water usage, but it is one of the more pest-resistant grasses available, allowing you to use fewer pesticides in your lawn care regimen. Centipedegrass grows easily in Zones 7-9 and is so easy to maintain its nickname is “lazy man’s grass.”

If you love your lawn beyond all sense and sanity, at least plant a grass that will do as little harm to your sanity—and the environment—as possible. These five grasses are all good choices if you insist on your lawn.

Sometimes it seems like everything just keeps getting more expensive, from rent to groceries, which might serve to inspire creative money-making ideas. One money-making scheme that seems like a brilliant idea on paper is car flipping—buying a used or even a new car and then selling it at a higher price for a profit. After all, car prices have been soaring in recent years, with the average used car selling for $25,670 just a few months ago, so flipping a car seems like a straightforward path to profits. But when you dig into it, there’s way too much risk in this side hustle to make it worth your time.

What is car flipping?

Car flipping can involve either used cars or new cars:

• For used cars, it’s similar to house flipping: You buy an older car, you put some sweat equity into it doing repairs and some aesthetic upgrades, and then you sell it for a price that recoups your repair costs and gives you a profit.

• For new cars, the game works a little differently: You order an in-demand model that takes weeks or months to be delivered (for example, some versions of the Ford F-150 truck can take 6 months to be delivered). This locks in the price, so when prices invariably rise over the course of those months, you can sell it for a profit when you finally take delivery on the vehicle.

Either way, it’s the same basic concept: Buy low, sell high. Except it’s not that simple—and flipping cars can get you into a lot of trouble if you’re not careful.

Price volatility

Just like housing prices, car prices fluxuate constantly, and they’re not guaranteed to keep going up—in fact, after months of headlines about how expensive cars were getting, car prices are starting to trend downward slightly. If you ordered a new car six months ago, that means you might not be making the profit you assumed you would. The same thing is happening with used cars right now, so that beater you bought a few months ago and poured money and time into fixing up might sell for significantly less than you anticipated. There’s simply no way to predict how quickly the market will shift on you—and in what direction.

The unknowns

When flipping new cars, you’re relying entirely on market forces to give you an edge. But when you flip used cars, it’s closer to house flipping in that you usually have to improve the vehicle somewhat to make a profit. But as anyone who has ever bought a used car knows all too well, there can be a lot of hidden problems in even the most well-loved used cars. And every extra hour of work and extra part you have to order increases your investment—and decreases your profits. Even if you wind up making a profit, once you calculate your hourly wage for fixing that car up, you might discover it wasn't worth the time and effort.

Restrictions

Car flipping is generally legal, but it’s not legal everywhere. While the difference between flipping a car and simply selling a vehicle you don’t want anymore is often murky, most states have some kind of restriction on selling cars for profit. Often this comes in the form of having a maximum number of vehicles you can sell before you’re considered a car dealer and need to get a dealer’s license—in Vermont, for example, you can sell up to 11 cars before the state will come for you. But in New Jersey or Oklahoma? You’re not legally allowed to flip a single car without a license. You might get away with a few sales anyway, of course, but if you try to turn car flipping into a business, you could get on the authorities’ radar.

When it comes to the new car flip, there are manufacturer restrictions to worry about, too. While not overly common, sometimes car makers add restrictions to their sales agreements that prohibit you from selling the vehicle for a period of time—typically a year. Tesla added a clause like this to their Cybertruck sales, for example (then later removed the clause), and the F-150 Lightning had a similar clause for a while. If you plan to make bank flipping a new car, you should make sure your timeline to profit won’t be skewed by such a restriction, and that you’re not opening yourself up to a lawsuit if you go through with the sale anyway.

There are very few true loopholes in this world when it comes to money. Just about any scheme promising you money for nothing (or almost nothing) is a scam or a myth, but sometimes the lure of easy money is so strong we can’t resist (hence the $10 billion we collectively lost to fraud last year).

So it’s understandable if your first reaction to the concept of “matched betting”—a supposedly 100% foolproof way to make a profit placing bets with online gambling sites—is skepticism. Anyone who tells you that you can guarantee a profit from gambling has to be scamming you in some way, right?

Believe it or not, matched betting isn’t a scam. The math checks out—it actually works. You can in fact get free money by making repeated matched bets by leveraging the bonus money gambling sites use to lure you in. But just because it works doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

How matched betting works

Here’s how matched betting works: You find a betting site that’s offering a free signup bet—say $100 (you usually have to deposit an equivalent amount and make at least one bet using your own money before you get this bonus, but we’ll get to that later). You bet that free $100 on something win/loss like a baseball game (an event with no tie or other possible outcome), and note the odds—let’s say the odds are +100 that Team A beats Team B, so make a backing bet that Team A will win.

Now you go to a second, entirely different gambling site and you lay off that bet—you bet the opposite way, that Team B will beat Team A. You look for a site offering similar odds, so the odds of Team B winning are about -100. If the odds are different, you can use an odds calculator to figure out how much you need to lay off in order to get the same payout.

Now the magic happens: If Team A wins, you lose the hedge bet, so you’re out $100 there. But you win the original bet with the free $100, so your account there is now $200. If Team B wins, you lose the free $100, but you win $100 from the second gambling site, so you’re still up $100. You might not always get exactly the same amount back, but if you crunch some numbers each time, you can always guarantee a profit.

Why matched betting is a bad idea

So, matched betting works, and is totally legal. What’s not to love?

While you can indeed make a profit by doing matched betting, there are a lot of potential downsides associated with the practice, especially if you try to turn it into a side hustle or even a primary way to make a living:

• Slight risk. Matched betting is often described as a zero-risk scheme, but that’s not entirely true—you usually have to deposit actual money into both betting platforms to make your bets, and many sites require you to make at least one bet using your own money before you get your bonus. That means you actually carry the risk of losing money your first time out. You can mitigate this to a large extent by being very careful with the odds—in this example, a matched bettor limited his “acceptable loss” to 38 pence (about 48 U.S. cents)—but it’s still a risk.

• The grind. Trying to actually make money using matched betting is a grind. There’s a lot of research, comparing odds, math, and seeking out new betting sites (to get more free bets). And every new site may require you to deposit money and make that first bet, so you may accumulate small losses along the way—and you’ll find yourself tracking a lot of deposits, as well as needing to put up a lot of money in order to keep the system going.

• Mistakes. Without a doubt, the biggest drawback with matched betting is how easy it is to make a mistake. If you mis-read the odds or click the wrong button and place the wrong kind of bet, your winnings can melt away, erasing weeks or months of steady, careful profit.

• Slow withdrawals. Many online betting apps and sites take their sweet time giving up your money—sometimes weeks. That means you will have to keep track of those delayed transfers and come up with more money to open new accounts while you wait.

• Varying bonus policies. All of these betting sites have their own policies when it comes to how to earn your free bet, how you can use it, and how to collect winnings from it. You’ll need to read and understand all of those policies to ensure that your bet strategy will work.

Doing a matched bet when you get a free signup bonus can work, if you’re careful, and it could be a fun way to turn that free bet—which the gambling site obviously assumes you will lose eventually if you keep betting, because the house always wins—into actual cash. But trying to make real money using matched betting is difficult, tedious, and easy to screw up. It’s just not worth it.

The dream of home ownership has never been more challenging in this country—home prices are soaring and interest rates are at the highest point in more than a decade. And even if you manage to find a strategy that lets you consider buying a house within your budget, the reality of home ownership is that it’s really expensive. Buying the house is step one—paying for that house is steps two through 360 (monthly mortgage payments).

Getting those mortgage payments down to a more manageable level has sparked the rise of “non-qualifying” (NQ) mortgages with longer terms (they’re “non-qualifying” because they don’t fit within the guidelines set out by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and thus don’t qualify to be sold to Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae). Most “conforming” mortgages have 7-, 15-, or 30-year terms, but NQ mortgages offer 40-year terms—or even longer, in some cases. Just like with a car loan, a longer term translates into lower monthly payments, so these NQ mortgages might seem like a way to work a home purchase into your tight budget.

Most 40- or 50-year mortgages are the result of modifications of existing loans, but it’s possible to find one for the purchase of a home. This isn’t a great idea, though, because of math.

Why a 40-year mortgage is a bad financial choice

At first glance a 40- or 50-year mortgage might seem like a good option. Lower monthly payments? Yes, please. But when you crunch the numbers, the benefits are actually kind of small compared to the downside.

Say you’re looking to get a loan to buy a home that costs $400,000. You have $80,000 to put down as a deposit (yay for you!), so you need to borrow $320,000 to buy the place (we’ll ignore closing costs, insurance, and other expenses in this example). If you go with a traditional 30-year fixed-rate loan at an interest rate of 7%, your monthly payment would be $2,128.97 and the total cost of the mortgage will be $766,428.47, so you wind up paying $446,428.47 in interest (assuming you never refinance or sell the place).

If you opt for a 40-year mortgage at the same 7% rate, your monthly payment drops to $1,988.58—but the total cost of the loan balloons to $954,518.45—and you wind up paying a whopping $634,518.45 in interest, or $188,089.75 more. If you somehow finagle a 50-year mortgage from someone, your monthly payment becomes $1,925.40, and your total cost will be $1,155,241.83, $835,241.83 of which would be interest. That’s nearly $400,000 more than the 30-year mortgage.

When you look at the numbers like that, it’s pretty clear that the monthly payment is only marginally smaller, but your overall cost skyrockets.

Other problems with the 40-year mortgage

The extra cost is the main downside of a 40- or 50-year mortgage, but even if you’re okay with that tradeoff there are some other negatives to consider:

• Lack of choice: Another reason to avoid 40- or 50-year mortgages is the limited selection of lenders. Because these are non-conforming loans, a lot of banks and other lenders don’t offer them—there’s higher risk for them. They’re out there, but instead of shopping around for the best deal, you might find yourself stuck with the one lender willing to work with you on the mortgage terms.

• Higher rates: Another downside is that these loans often carry higher interest rates, because they’re riskier and it takes a lot longer for the lender to get their money.

• Slow equity: Paying off your mortgage increases the amount of the house you actually own—your equity. If you put down 20% when you bought the place, you’re starting off with 20% equity and building from there. While most mortgages are structured to pay more money to interest at first, you’re usually building equity relatively quickly as you pay down the principle of the loan—typically you’ll have significant equity after 5-10 years of steady payments. But with a 40- or 50-year mortgage, this process is a lot slower—lower monthly payments mean less equity being built every month.

If you can’t seem to make your budget work for a traditional 30-year mortgage, the reduction in monthly payments might make a longer mortgage seem attractive. It’s only an option if you’re okay with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more for the home and working with a very limited number of lenders, or if you have a solid plan to refinance very quickly and just want the lower payments for a short while.

Having a bank (or two) is one of those dull, boring, and usually necessary adult things we all just kind of do. At some point in your life you got your first paycheck and you needed someplace to put it, so you opened a bank account. When we think about banking we usually focus on getting the best interest rates and the lowest fees we can find, which usually leads us to a big, national bank.

Big banks offer a lot of convenience—you can usually contact them at any time, they offer a broad range of services, and you can manage most of your financial life on your phone. That’s great, but smaller, local banks (defined by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation [FDIC] as a bank with less than $1 billion in assets) aren’t just smaller—they also offer a lot of benefits that larger, national or online banks can’t.

Lower rates & fees

It can be expensive just to have a bank account. Between ATM fees and overdraft fees, it can feel like you’re paying rent to park your money someplace.

Local banks usually offer much lower fees, and fewer of them, than national banks. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that overdraft fees at smaller banks are as much as 19% lower than at large banks. And this is true for the other side of that coin—interest rates. If you need a credit card, you’re probably better off working with a local bank, where interest rates are typically 8-10 points lower than at larger banks. And local banks charge annual fees a lot less often as well. That can translate to a lot of saved money over the course of a year.

Better service

Your big bank doesn’t really care about you—or even know who you are. That’s why banks sometimes close your account without explanation and force you to navigate confusing phone menus when you call their supposedly 24-hour customer service line. A local bank will offer you much more personalized service, including face-to-face customer service when you need it. That’s one big reason why local banks generally score a net 74% customer satisfaction rating, compared to just 56% for larger banks—and an abysmal 40% for online banks.

That more-personal service can impact more than just your satisfaction as a customer. When you need a loan, local banks often prioritize “relationship banking.” This means they take more than just your credit score and net worth into consideration when you need to borrow money—they’ll consider your relationship with the bank, your spending history, and the potential impact of the loan on the community itself. That can make it easier to borrow money—and you’ll probably get a lower rate as well.

Benefits to community

Finally, local banks aren’t just banks—they are members of your local business community. As such, they have a vested interest in investing in that community. Larger banks are usually focused more on making profits from their investments—investments that typically have little to no impact on your community—but small, local banks are usually more focused on “productive investments.” Local banks make more than half the loans to small businesses, so your money is being used to directly benefit your local area. This also benefits you because a local bank will know the community intimately, which can be a compelling factor when you’re seeking a loan or investment for a business or service that will benefit the local area.

Insurance is often a necessity—an expensive necessity. Car insurance averages $1,718 annually for full coverage, health insurance can cost more than $1,000 a month depending on your age and circumstances, and home insurance averages about $2,000 a year. Protecting what you have, from your possessions to your health, just keeps getting more and more expensive—and not all insurance is worth having.

That doesn’t mean insurance is a scam—no matter how high those premiums might seem, when a claim gets paid it can save you from financial disaster. The flood insurance on my house is pretty expensive, but when the floods came a few years ago the insurance settlement saved our butts and enabled us to rebuild and replace, for example. But sometimes it makes more sense to self-insure than pay for a policy.

Self-insurance

Self-insurance is a simple concept: Instead of buying a policy from an insurer, you safeguard against future problems by setting aside money on your own to cover the associated costs. For example, if you’ve paid off your mortgage and don’t want to pay homeowners insurance premiums anymore, you could put sufficient funds aside to cover the potential costs of repairing or replacing your home after future disaster.

You’re already self-insuring stuff without realizing it—everything you own that isn’t covered by an insurance policy is essentially self-insured. If you bought an expensive television yesterday and it’s not covered by an explicit insurance policy, if it gets stolen tomorrow you’ll have to pay for its replacement from your own pocket. That’s self-insurance. You can self-insure anything to a lesser or greater extent. If you don’t have health insurance, you’re self-insuring yourself. If you’re required to carry liability insurance on your vehicle but opt not to pay for collision or theft insurance, you’re self-insuring those aspects of your car.

The main benefit of self-insurance is that you can keep the money you would normally spend on premiums and let it accumulate, preferably in an interest-earning account somewhere. If a problem arises, you have the money to deal with it. If you never experience a problem, that money is still yours, as opposed to insurance premiums for a policy that never paid out.

When to self-insure

Self-insurance is tempting because in theory you keep your money but also have a plan in place to handle unexpected problems. But unless you have significant liquid funds to draw on, it’s only a good idea in some specific scenarios. For example, let’s say your flood insurance premiums cost $1,000 a year. You drop your policy and put the money into investments instead, where you get a 10% average return, and after 10 years you have about $16,000. That’s great! The bad news is that the average claim paid by the National Flood Insurance Program is more than $66,000, meaning you might be $50,000 short if your house floods. Paying the annual premium is a much better deal in this scenario unless you never need to make a claim—which is a bit of a gamble.

That means there are two basic scenarios where self-insuring makes sense: when the cost of replacement or paying for services is within your means (e.g., you have $66,000 sitting around earning interest somewhere you can set aside for flood damage), or when the item you’re insuring isn’t worth much, making the cost of insurance a bad bet.

There are some specific scenarios where you should definitely consider self-insuring:

• Car insurance. Most states require you to carry liability insurance, but more comprehensive coverage is usually up to you. If your car is old and isn’t worth much, and/or you have the ability to do repairs yourself, opting to self-insure the vehicle can make sense.

• Jewelry. Like a car, most jewelry plummets in value the moment you buy it, which makes insuring the stuff a bad deal in most cases. Most homeowners insurance covers jewelry to a very limited amount—about $1,500 to $2,000—so if your jewelry isn’t worth much more than that, it makes sense to just self-insure it.

• Life insurance. The sole purpose of life insurance is to ensure your family isn’t left penniless if you die unexpectedly. If you have accumulated significant assets that provide an income without a salary, or your family simply won’t need your income (because your children are grown and your spouse has access to shared retirement savings, for example), then life insurance is probably an unnecessary expense and self-insuring is a better idea.

One thing to consider in these scenarios is that the “significant assets” part where you can cover unexpected losses without insurance need to be liquid assets. If your net worth is tied up in property or businesses, for example, self-insuring might require you to sell off those assets, which might not be a pleasant experience. But if you have those liquid assets and you know you can cover the expenses that come with negative events, self-insurance can be a viable option that can save you a lot of money over time.

Retirement is one of those milestones that seem far away until they're suddenly right on top of you. After decades of working and saving for retirement (you did save for retirement, right?) you’re suddenly faced with actually retiring. And your final year before retirement could be really fun and exciting—work problems don’t matter so much, and you get to make lots of fun plans for your upcoming free time—or really scary. Either way, now is the time to take the essential steps to ensure you’re ready for what’s coming.

This isn’t just about prepping your retirement accounts and investments (though you should definitely meet with your financial advisor and ensure you’re in good financial shape). You should also consider taking the following five steps when you're about a year out from retirement—because it will be harder to do them later.

Make the most of your benefits (including your PTO)

Your job offers benefits that are part of your overall compensation. It’s always important to make sure you use all of them that you can, both because they’re owed to you, and because you shouldn't leave anything on the table.

Review your employer’s policy on paid time off (PTO). Do they let you bank those days? If so, how many do you have sitting unused because you’re as American as apple pie and never go on vacation? Will your company pay those out to you in cash when you retire, or will you lose them? If it's the latter, start planning how you can use them now. Having some extra time off before you officially retire isn’t the worst thing, and certainly better than letting all that time or money go to waste.

In fact, you should review all the benefits you get through your employer to see what you should be taking advantage of before you leave and lose access to them. Everything from health and lifestyle programs, to tuition reimbursements, to employee discount programs should be milked for everything they’re worth, because once you turn in your paperwork they’ll be gone.

Consider a HELOC/Refinance

If you have a big expense coming up in the near future, you should consider how you’ll pay for it now, before you actually retire. That’s because refinancing your mortgage, opening up a home equity line of credit (HELOC), or getting a home equity loan can be more difficult when you’re retired, as you don’t have the steady income of a paycheck, and banks sometimes struggle to make their standard models work. HELOCs can be dormant for many years, so having one on hand can mean you have the funds you need for major repairs or other projects in the future.

Proceed with caution here, however: If you haven't identified a use for a HELOC, the potential risks of having one—including spending the money just because it’s there—may not be worth it. But if you think you might need to tap into your home’s equity, setting it up before you retire will be easier.

Get a complete medical checkup

If you’re a year out from retirement, you’ve probably already looked into how you’ll get health insurance coverage after you leave your job, whether using private insurance or Medicare and some kind of “gap” insurance plan. But whatever your plan is, you should get a thorough physical checkup now, when you’re still around a year away from retirement. The coverage you have through your employer may be superior to Medicare, so finding out you have a serious condition or need expensive surgery now might save you a bundle over dealing with it when it’s all on your own dime. Even if that’s not the case, or you decide to put off treatment for reasons other than finances, knowing that you might have to deal with something will allow you to plan ahead instead of having to react later.

Give your retirement budget a test run

You made a budget for your retirement years, didn’t you? Well, the time to test it out is while you’re still working. You’ve come up with numbers—income versus expenses—but you won’t know whether they actually work until you've lived with them. While you still have a year of work left, try living on the income you expect from your retirement assets (including Social Security, if you qualify). It won’t be a perfect model because you’ll still be in work mode and possible spending money you won't have to once you retire, but it will give you some idea of how realistic your estimates are. If you find yourself miserable and struggling, you’ll need to reshape your plan—and having the option of working a little longer might be a life-saver. Even if you stay committed to your retirement date, you’ll have time to figure out side hustles or expense reduction options in a calm and efficient manner.

Research your Medicare options

Finally, take the year and do some research on your health insurance options. Medicare is complicated, folks, and messing up your coverage or not having the right supplemental plan can not only hurt your health and wellbeing, it can make a deep dent in your pocketbook. The time to ensure you really, actually understand it is now, while you’re still covered by your employer’s insurance and you still have the flexibility to change your retirement plans or financial strategy.

If you do these five things, you’ll (hopefully) face ignificantly fewer regrets in retirement—and that peace of mind will be priceless.

The conversation around retirement is usually centered around money—whether you’ll have enough, what “enough” even means, and how to plan ahead for unexpected financial needs like home repairs or health issues. Side hustles in retirement are usually discussed the same way: How much can you earn?

But when you're retired, side hustles aren't necessarily 100% about the money. For one thing, if Social Security is a big part of your retirement plan, there’s an upper limit on how much you can earn without those benefits being penalized. For another, retirement itself isn’t all about money. If you’re not careful, you can find retirement to be a boring, lonely period of your life where your physical and mental health declines—but the right side hustle can help defend against those problems.

Side hustle benefits

Aside from bringing in a little cash, side hustles can offer a range of benefits for anyone navigating their retirement:

• Hobbies and passions. Pursuing hobbies and passion projects can be a strong defense against depression, especially in older people. While diving into hobbies just for pleasure is just as effective, finding side hustles that monetize your hobbies and interests can offer an even greater sense of purpose.

• Physical fitness. Staying physically active has a long list of benefits for older people (including vastly reduced healthcare costs over the course of their retirement). Side hustles that require physical activity can help keep you moving.

• Social contact. We have a tendency to become lonelier after age 60, for a variety of reasons—including the loss of social circles we had at our jobs. A side hustle can bring back that “work family,” or just put us in contact with people on a regular basis.

Sure, side-hustle cash is also great—and often necessary. But choosing the right retirement side hustle can offer these other benefits as well. Here are some of the best choices.

Part-time retail

Retirees doing retail work is something of a cliché, but retail work can offer consistent social contact with people. Seeing people every day strengthens your connection to your local community while also giving you a sense of purpose as you help your neighbors solve problems or navigate their own lives. And finding a retail job that capitalizes on the skills you developed during your working life (retired tradespeople working at hardware stores, for example) can allow you to continue to do the work you enjoy and benefit from your skills and experience.

Pet sitting or walking

If you find yourself sitting around your house, bored and lonely, both your mental and physical health will suffer. Studies have shown that owning a pet offers powerful emotional and mental benefits, but pets can also be expensive to support.

Working as a pet sitter or dog walker can bring you the emotional benefits of interacting with adorable animals without the cost, with the added benefit of introducing more physical activity (one survey found that dog owners walk their dogs an average of 30 miles a week). Sites like Rover or Wag make it easy to jump into this side hustle, and thus easy to bring some companionship and physical activity into your life.

Local tour guide

You know your community better than anyone, so why not boost your social interaction and get some exercise while you’re at it? Sites like ToursByLocals need local folks who can lead guided tours of their area, so you can meet new people, share your knowledge and experience, and stay in shape with a lot of walking and other activities.

Career coaching

You spent decades cultivating skills and experience in your profession, and there are plenty of people who could benefit from that. If you’re having trouble making connections, if your skill set was your hobby and passion, becoming a career coach could be a way of having more personal connection and keeping your passions burning. Sites like Hire Club are looking for experienced, accomplished people to help their clients reach the next level in their careers, so it could be a great way to feel valued and feel like you’re making an impact by mentoring others.

Tutoring

If career coaching isn’t your bag, or your skills aren’t aligned with corporate ladder-climbers, another way to boost your social circles while applying your hard-won knowledge and skills to a side hustle is tutoring. Sites like Tutors.com let you sign up to find tutoring options in your area, and people are always looking for tutors to help them or their kids master different subjects, so your local Craigslist or a simple Google search can lead you to tutoring gigs. And sites like italki have options for folks without teaching certificates to be a language tutor. Either way, tutoring connects you with a variety of different people and lets you pursue your passions for a little extra money.

Gardening

If you have a green thumb and find yourself lacking in the physical activity department, taking on seasonal work as a gardener or landscaper can keep you fit while letting you indulge your passions. Whether you were a gardening or landscaping professional during your working life or just an inspired amateur with a backyard filled with gorgeous plants, this is a side hustle that will keep you moving.

Renting out a room

If physical activity isn’t the problem, but feeling isolated is, renting out a room or an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) can bring in rent money as well as the comfort of a roommate. Sites like Nesterly specifically connect older homeowners with younger renters, with the former offering a break on the rent in exchange for some chores. That can be a comfort if you’re finding keeping up with your housekeeping more of a challenge, but it can also lead to true friendships and unexpected social connections.

There are some basic, inescapable facts about adult life. You need to clean your house. You need to pay attention to what you eat. And you absolutely need to have a budget. Whether you use some fancy app or just work out the math on a piece of paper, you need to take control of your finances to both avoid penury and the psychological stress that debt and financial chaos can cause.

In other words, you need a budgeting system (and a backup budget in case of financial disaster). But people don’t handle money the same way, so there’s no “one size fits all” system for managing your personal income and budget. While using any kind of system will be better than just YOLOing your way through your financial life, choosing a budgeting system that matches both your life goals and your personality will not only increase your odds of success, it will increase the odds that you stick to the system long enough to see results. Here’s a rundown of seven popular budgeting systems and who they’re best suited for.

The 50/30/20 budget

How it works: This is one of the simplest and most ubiquitous budgeting systems, especially for folks new to the concept. It divides your entire expense sheet into three categories: Needs, wants, and savings. You put 50% of your monthly income into stuff you must have (rent, groceries), 30% into stuff you want (travel, cocktails with friends), and 20% into savings (or debt reduction). You can adjust these ratios up or down if you must (or use a variation on the theme like the 60/40 Budget)—if you live in a high-cost-of-living (HCOL) area, for example, you might need to put more in the “needs” category to afford rent, for example.

Who it’s for: If you’ve never lived with a budget before, this is a great starter option. Its simplicity makes it easy to see at a glance what you can afford. For example, if you bring in $5,000 every month in income, your “needs” category has a $2,500 budget. Once you subtract food, commuting, utilities, insurance, minimum payments on stuff like credit cards, and any other expenses you can’t eliminate, what’s left is what you can afford for housing. Once you’re in the habit of thinking about how you spend your money (and you’ve got a steady stream of money heading into your savings) you can start getting fancier with your budgets.

The envelope system

How it works: Sometimes called “cash-stuffing,” the Envelope System is a way of physically tracking your money. It’s easy to say you’re only going to spend a certain amount of money on take-out, for example, but it’s very hard to track every single swipe of your credit or debit card. Using the Envelope System, you first work out your monthly budget as usual. Then you mark a bunch of envelopes with each line item: Groceries, shipping, eating out, clothes, rent—everything. Then you literally stuff cash into those envelopes. If you decided that you’re going to spend $200 on groceries this month, then you put $200 cash into the grocery envelope. When a particular envelope is empty, you can’t spend any more in that category.

Who it’s for: If you’re the type who spends kind of mindlessly, entering a kind of trance when you’re in a store or scrolling Amazon online, the Envelope System can help you maintain conscious control. Handling cash makes us more aware of our spending, for one thing, as there’s a physical change we experience by handing over physical money. And the empty envelope is a stark visual that reminds us that we’ve hit our budget, instead of having some vague and inaccurate sense of how much we’ve spent.

Pay yourself

How it works: Also called an 80/20 Budget, this is a simplified budget that focuses on just two categories: Your savings (20% of your income) and literally everything else (80%). In other words, every payday you put 20% into your savings and then you use what’s left for every single other expense, from rent to bubble teas.

Who it’s for: Folks who suffer from lifestyle inflation. If you tend to spend every dime you get your hands on, this method makes one-fifth of your money vanish into savings immediately, so no matter how many vacations you take this year you’ll still have an emergency fund to fall back on when your boss notices how many vacations you took this year.

It’s also a good choice for folks who find detail work mind-numbing, because you don’t have to track much. If you can’t handle two big, vague buckets in your budget you probably need someone else to manage your money.

Zero-based

How it works: A zero-based budget focuses on income and outlay exclusively. The goal here is to have every single dollar coming in allocated to a specific purpose, with the end result being that you have zero uncategorized dollars at the end of the month.

First, calculate your monthly post-tax income. Then list every expense you’ll have this month (including savings and retirement contributions if they’re not already taken from your paycheck), add them up, and compare the two. If they aren’t exactly equal, it’s time to adjust the budget. If you have a surplus, find someplace where the money could be used (e.g., paying down debt, extra savings). If you have a shortfall, adjust an expense down until you have zero dollars left over.

Who it’s for: Folks who lose track of their spending easily or who can’t make a percentage-based budget like the 50/30/20 or 60/40 Budget work. This could be because you live in an HCOL area and your “need” bucket is way above 50% of your budget, or because you just don’t have any money left over for savings at the end of each month. By earmarking every dollar deliberately you’ll be in full control of your money—and there won’t be any surprises.

PERK method

How it works: Developed by financial advisor Robert Pagliarini, the PERK method can be a budgeting system in itself or it can be used to periodically review your budget to make sure it’s still on track. The way it works is simple: List all of your current expenses. Then place each expense into one of four categories:

• Postpone: If the expense can be put off for a period of time, do it. For example, if you want a new phone but your current phone works just fine, postpone that expense.

• Eliminate: Sometimes our expenses just become background noise, but the PERK method forces us to think about each one. Stuff placed in this category could be dropped entirely—whether it’s an extra streaming service, or an indulgent treat you’ve gotten into the habit of paying for every single day.

• Reduce: Where can you trim the fat? If you see certain expenses rising steadily over the course of a few months, this is the category where they go so you can think about how they can be trimmed down.

• Keep: These are the expenses that you either can’t change, or simply don’t want to change because they’re important to you for any reason.

Who it’s for: If you’re the type who launches new budgeting systems with great gusto and then slowly allows them to degenerate into chaos, the PERK method will force you to reconsider your finances regularly, letting you see destructive patterns and do something about them. It’s also a useful exercise even if you’ve got a different system that works for you.

Kakeibo method

How it works: Kakeibo is a very old, Japanese budgeting system. The method encourages a more thoughtful approach to money that starts with asking yourself how much money you have, how much you’d like to have, and identifying the obstacles you’re putting in your own way. It then uses a simple system of just four categories: Survival (essential bills), Extra (one-time costs), Optional (nice-to-haves), and Culture (stuff that feeds your soul).

The point of Kakeibo is to be mindful about your money, and thus bring order to your financial house without feeling deprived. By categorizing things as “optional” you’re giving yourself permission to skip them, and having a whole category for the stuff that makes you happy helps reduce the sense of being in “money prison” that many budget systems have.

Who it’s for: If you chafe at the harsh, businesslike approach of other budgets and hate having to track dozens of line items, this more philosophical approach might make you feel empowered instead of limited.

Values-based

How it works: A values-based budget is more flexible than other budgets. You first decide on your priorities—the things that matter to you. Then you allocate money towards those priorities proportionally—and you adjust those proportions as your priorities shift over time.

For example, maybe you’re carrying a lot of debt right now, but your main priority is traveling and seeing the world while you’re young and have few responsibilities tying you down. In a values-based system, you would put more money into your travel fund for the time being. Then, when you’ve piled so much debt onto your credit cards that you’re losing sleep at night, your values shift and you re-allocate your budget accordingly.

Who it’s for: Anyone who finds other budgeting systems too rigid. A values-based budget doesn’t ignore your other debts and bills, but it allows you the flexibility to put money towards something other than the fundamentals when you need to. If you’ve tried budgeting before and keep ending the experiment to finance things they don’t cover, a values-based approach might be the solution.

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.”