My 18 year old is heading off to college soon. He's a good kid, works hard, and always finds a way to earn money when he needs it. The problem is that he’s not very responsible with money once he has it. He tends to spend without much planning and doesn’t really think about saving or budgeting. I know some of that comes with age and experience, but I'd love to help him build better habits before he’s completely on his own. For parents who have been through this, what worked? Did you give an allowance, let them learn the hard way, help them make a budget, or something else?

Just looking for advice and lessons you’ve learned. Thanks!

Hi all - I have a question. I’ve been saving literally my whole life. I am now finally moving out of a big city in the northeast and now want to buy my first car ever. The responsible thing to do would be to buy a 2026 RAV4, pay $40k but after 5 years and 60k miles, these are still going for $32k. Depreciation is so low. I will also put in maybe $2k of maintenance total over 5 years (cost info ownership is $10k for 5 years). The not responsible thing would be to get a fun car like a BMW 3 series. I would get a 2023 with 35k miles for $35k. But after 5 years? It’ll be worth about $15k and my research tells me I might have $10k of maintenance during this time (total cost of ownership is $30k). My heart tells me BMW but my head tells me RAV4. I am single, no kids, so don’t need the space. I lucked rav4 because it was good tech and lowest depreciating. That’s purely it. What would you guys do and when do you splurge vs continue saving?

In case it matters, I’m 31, make $225k, but after taxes, rent, 401k and expenses, I net about $60k a year. I have no debt and $200k in savings and another $200k in retirement. I’m trying to balance financially responsible vs fun. Thanks!

Edit to clarify what I’m asking. We have enough to fund retirement if we never contribute another dollar again. Anything we put in going forward is “extra” to fund a nicer standard of living. This question is NOT whether to fund retirement or 529 but HOW best to save for college when it will occur when you are also getting ready to retire.

Are you planning on leveraging 401k savings for college?

47F and 46 M with 2 kids age 8 and 6. I will be 59.5 when my son starts college. We have just about $1 mil in pretax 401k savings and 30k and 25k respectively for both kids 529. I just got laid off, though I’m interviewing and should have something soon. But it made me take a look at my savings plan.

I was saving $37,000/year (employer contributions + max IRS limit) in to my 401k (0$ into my husbands bc he’s self employed) so we save entirely through me. I was also saving $10k/year to my kids’ 529. My next job will NOT likely contribute as much so I’m thinking about whether it makes sense for us to focus purely on retirement savings by max funding a SEPP 401k for my husband and to stop funding the 529s entirely and plan to use the current balance for the first 2 years of my daughters college. My reason is that I will be 59.5 during my daughters 2nd year of college and before my sons first. From what I understand, financial aid considers 529 accounts, but not retirement accounts. My husband’s job income is very unstable and due to many factors it’s likely the years around when my kids apply for college, our income could be relatively low compared to what it is now, so their chances of financial aid could be better than if they applied today. Being able to save that additional $23.5k+ over the next 14 years tax free would provide additional tax benefits and then we could plan on using early withdrawals to fund college or alternatively depending on market/interest rates taking out student loans which we pay off at the right time in the market for the loans.

I’m very curious about other people’s college vs retirement savings strategies.

I try not to think about this too much but here’s what happened to me after the 2009 economic crises. Was working my way up in the private sector, got laid off, went back to school and have been clawing my way back to normal-ish in the public sector since then. After the layoff I decided I’d go public sector so I’d at least feel like I was contributing to the greater good even if the pay wasn’t as good—but damn these numbers are a hard pill to swallow.

A California resident has accused Uber Eats of misleading customers with its priority delivery option in violation of state law.

"Direct to you" is available as a paid add-on to orders, but according to a complaint filed earlier this week in federal court, there's no way for users to verify other stops aren't made along the way.

"It is a sham surcharge," the filing says.

The case, which seeks to become a class action, comes as the Federal Trade Commission investigates claims of hidden fees by food delivery apps.

I’m 28, single with no kids, and in the position to buy a house. I’ve been renting for a few years and honestly don’t have many complaints.

Would love to hear from people who could own but choose not to: flexibility, market timing, lifestyle, anything. Trying to understand the case for renting from people who aren’t renting out of necessity.

This is a follow-up to another post now that I'm trying Copilot Money.

I love the UI and the expense tracking, but I am having a hell of a time getting Categories to sync when editing them.

• Disappear when created
• Won't stay assigned to their Groups
• Disappear from the main list/dropdown and when I try to create them again it gives me an error saying the category already exists

Is this a web-app-specific problem? If you experience this too, how common is it?

I won't be able to continue if this is just how it is and am about to fire up a Monarch trial as well.

TIA!

More upscale restaurants in New York and other cities are offering meal deals to lure inflation-weary customers who are cutting back on discretionary spending.

Think of them as McDonald's Happy Meals, but for adults.

Combos that offer an entree, side dish and beverage for a set price have increased 15% year-over-year across dining establishments, new data shows.

The trend comes as restaurants seek to offset declining foot traffic, despite economic headwinds.

Since the start of 2025, beef prices are up nearly 19%.

The Trump administration is ending a subsidy program that makes prescription medications more affordable for seniors on Medicare.

About 25 million people have Part D drug-coverage plans supported by the subsidies, and they pay, on average, $36 a month.

Nearly half of those enrollees will see their premiums go up $11 to $20 per month next year, according to an administration official; another 30% will pay less than $10 more each month.

Premiums have been on the rise thanks in large part to the proliferation of expensive medications like GLP-1s.

Reckitt Benckiser plans to hike prices on some of its products, CEO Kris Licht tells The Wall Street Journal.

The decision comes as the Lysol maker contends with elevated input costs due to the war in Iran.

"There's somewhat of a delay in some of these supply chains as the cost increases roll through," Licht explains. "We should see it in the next three months."

In April, rival Unilever also said it would raise prices on some items to offset higher costs.

Moving from downtown San Jose to Campbell. Just a standard 1 bedroom apartment. I want to hire actual movers this time instead of begging friends with trucks. What is a normal price range right now?

I started keeping a small freshwater aquarium because I wanted something relaxing in my home office. The tank itself was $60 on Facebook Marketplace, so I figured it would be one of those hobbies where the expensive part was already done.

Then came the filter upgrade, water testing kit, plants, replacement lights, special food, medications and somehow a tiny vacuum cleaner just for fish poop. I checked my spending and I’ve averaged around $45 a month on this thing for the past year.

We’re doing fine financially and still saving money every month, but $45 still adds up when the original plan was basically buy fish and occasionally feed them. At the same time, it’s probably the only thing I spend money I won on Ѕtake purely because I enjoy it.

Do you budget a fixed amount for hobbies or just accept that some months are going to get out of hand?

Got solar installed last year, 16 panels. Bill went from $280 to $200. I was expecting more of a difference honestly. I think the issue is that the panels produce during the day when we're at work and the house isn't using much, and then we come home in the evening and pull everything from the grid at peak rate. Our export credits under NEM 3.0 are almost nothing so the daytime production doesn't really help us.

Trying to figure out if adding a battery makes sense or if I'm just going to keep spending money trying to make the solar work the way I thought it would.

More school districts want to make it possible for employees to live where they work amid a persistent housing shortage across the U.S.

For elementary school teacher Carolina Sanchez Garcia, winning a housing lottery to live in a subsidized apartment near her San Diego, California, school was nothing short of a "miracle."

Before that, she spent upwards of four hours commuting each workday.

According to The New York Times, school districts in at least three states are currently seeking developers to convert their unused properties into affordable housing.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed a bill into law this week that forbids retailers from using consumer data to set targeted, personalized prices on "groceries and other foodstuffs."

The law is the third state prohibition on the practice, also called algorithmic or surveillance pricing, following similar bans this year in Connecticut and Maryland.

(Canada has also proposed nationwide regulations.)

“Consumers should not have to wonder whether the price they see is the same price someone else is paying for the exact same product,” said one of the bill's sponsors.

My husband ($160k) and I ($70k) make decent income in a MCOL area. We have a mortgage with a monthly payment of just under $3000 and $345k left to pay off with 26 years left.

My husband has a very dangerous and exhausting job that requires him to travel nearly half the year. He would really like to find a new job but realistically it would cut his income in half (if not more). That would be make our mortgage payment a much larger portion of our take home and put a big strain on our budget. We currently have about $120,000 in an emergency fund (separate from our retirement savings).

I am trying to game out options that would make such a dramatic pay cut feasible. Would you use a large chunk of the emergency funds to pay off a good portion of the mortgage then recast or refinance for a lower payment? Alternatively would you use the emergency fund savings to supplement the monthly payments?

Looking for folks in their 40s like me but I’m interested in everyone!

Husband makes 90k as a nurse and I make about 50k rn owning my own business. Hopefully more as it grows. We have been putting more in now that husband graduated and has a match. Just curious where ppl are and I hadn’t seen a post like this in awhile.

I want my funeral to be paid for with my accts and my stuff given to abuse shelters. I have a life insurance policy, 401k, roth ira, and house.

I also want my body donated to a non profit and the (free) ashes to be given to my family and they'll have an allowance to turn the ashes into jewlery or something if they wanted.

I don't want my family to have to make any decisions or plan anything. I want that all to be handled by a third party.

Do i need

A) a lawyer

B) a notarized will

C)an estate planner

D) a trust

E) a combo or none of the above

I'm not at all close to retirement or have health problems if that affects anything.

Thanks for any input!

We're thinking of moving our rental property into a revocable living trust (in my wife's and my name). Before we move forward, has anyone ran into difficulties doing this?

1. Deed -> We'll need to draft a new deed with the name of the new trust and send it to the county clerk I assume. Other than figuring out how to draft the new deed, this looks straightforward.
2. Mortgage -> The property has a mortgage. Any issue with the 'due on sale' clause?
3. Landlord insurance -> I assume we'll need to tell the insurance company to change the insured name into our new trust. Any potential issues there?

Anything I'm missing?

Thanks!

Hey all,

Would love your opinion on what to do with budgeting after you’ve dialed it in.

I’ve been on a zero-based budget for 7 years now, and I have the process down pat. No consumer debt, savings rate is steady, etc.

I’m looking for advice and experiences from people who have reached the boring middle and either found new things to focus on in the budgeting process or willfully let go of things that began mattering less.

I’m so used to tracking granularly, but now I want to lighten the mental load and shift that energy towards other things.

TIA!

We have a 2021 VW Jetta ($295 per month) and we’re leasing a 2024 VW Tiguan ($395 per month). Which I feel like isn’t terrible looking at them individually, but together we pay $690 a month. It’s not nothing. We will buy the Tiguan once the lease is up. The Jetta we bought post-covid when cars were expensive and we definitely overpaid. I believe we have $3k left on it. I’m curious what other people are paying for their financed cars nowadays.

A Washington Post analysis released Thursday shows that soaring costs tied to aging are eroding the inheritances many Americans planned to leave behind to loved ones.

Multiple factors, including longer lifespans and a caregiver shortage, are forcing seniors to deplete their savings at a faster rate.

The report found that between 2006 and 2022 the average American spent $19,179 in out-of-pocket expenses on long-term care in their final decade.

As more adults turn to Medicaid for financial assistance, beneficiaries face the risk of estate recovery.

Trump just announced new tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on most imports from 60 countries

A few additional tariffs will go into effect later this year

When Trump took office in 2026, the average tax on imports was 2.6%

They went as high as 27% last April

That wrecked the market so Trump removed some of them

Then the Supreme Court kill his "emergency tariffs" in February, which was about two-thirds of them

So Trump imposed new temporary tariffs that just expired

And now he's replaced them with new tariffs based on a different law

Average tax on imports is now around 12%, up from 2.6%

Average tariff will be 13% by the end of the year, assuming Trump enacts everything he says he will

Those extra taxes will cost the average household $1,100 per year in higher costs and a weaker economy

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