• Amrisha Agarwal moved to Rishikesh, a town in the Himalayas, with her daughter in 2019.
• She opened a café, where she serves dishes to a diverse clientele.
• Agarwal said the peace and quality of life she found have been instrumental in her daughter's upbringing.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amrisha Agarwal, a 36-year-old café owner in Rishikesh, India. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born and raised in Kolkata, a populous city in India's far eastern state of West Bengal. I was married there, gave birth to my daughter there, and built a brand consultancy with my ex-husband.

But I've always dreamed of moving out of the city. When I visited Rishikesh, a quiet town in northern India, it was clear that this was the place I'd been searching for.

A peaceful mountain escape

In 2019, my marriage was not in a good place.

That same year, my father died. After his cremation, I came to Rishikesh with his ashes to immerse them in the Ganges River.

My first impression of Rishikesh was that it was peaceful and pristine. It had really clean, fresh air, which I wouldn't get in Kolkata or any other city in India. My health, my gut, my digestion — everything improved with better food and cleaner water.

As a woman, I felt a lot of freedom here. I didn't have to think about what time it was, I didn't feel unsafe, and I didn't have to be conscious of what I was wearing. That kind of ease is something I had never really experienced before.

I couldn't let go of my father immediately. It took me almost 15 days before I could finally say goodbye.

Something shifted during that time. I had a return ticket, everything was planned, but I couldn't leave. I remember the taxi was waiting to take me to the airport, and I said, "I'm not going back."

Building a café with no expertise

After I decided to stay in Rishikesh and moved my daughter and me here permanently, I had no game plan. I just needed a break and space in my relationship.

I had not planned to work in Rishikesh, since I already had a company back in Kolkata. For the first few months, I lived off my savings.

But in our rented apartment, I started cooking more because my daughter and I were missing the flavors we couldn't find in Rishikesh.

We made friends in community spaces, and people started coming over to eat my food. They asked me, "Why not make a space and sell your food?"

That's how Bistro de Lavenia started, named after my daughter.

When we started in December 2020, I had no expertise in running a food business. I don't know what kind of equipment was needed. We started with just four dishes: two kinds of pizza and two kinds of pasta.

Five years on, the menu has expanded vastly, with Asian and Indian dishes and some international varieties. We have eight staff members, and I've brought on a friend to help design the menu and handle the food operations.

I see Rishikesh's effect on my daughter

Rishikesh has been instrumental in my daughter's upbringing.

When she moved here, she was about 2.5 years old. She's nine now, so practically her entire development and early childhood have happened in Rishikesh.

When she got bored, instead of giving her a screen, I would take her out to the Ganges, to the sand, to waterfalls, for hikes, cycling, skating, and archery.

Her life has been built around doing things physically, being outdoors, rather than sitting in one place watching television or being on the phone.

Rishikesh gets visitors from everywhere because it's India's yoga capital, which is why she's grown up meeting people from all over the world.

There was this one time she met a family from Russia in the café, and they were talking about carrots. She only knew carrots to be orange.

Then their daughter told her that back home, they had yellow and purple carrots too. It's these kinds of things that make me appreciate that my daughter's education isn't just from books; it's from real interactions, and makes her realize that the world is much bigger than what we are taught.

Rishikesh is changing

Rishikesh has grown and changed from the peaceful haven it once was for me.

When I started my café, there were maybe five cafés in total on the main street, including mine. You would see a few lights from those buildings, and apart from that, there was pitch darkness at night.

Now it's completely different. It feels like Rishikesh has grown a hundred times.

The biggest shift happened after the pandemic. A lot of people moved here as remote work became popular, and the number of businesses here suddenly exploded. People saw an opportunity, and everyone started opening cafés.

It's started to feel like the city I left behind. I look out of my window instead of seeing the mountains, I see another building, and that's not what I signed up for.

I'm planning my next move. I don't know which part of India or the world, but I'd like to be someplace where the next building is at least 10 kilometers away, where we can really pursue slow living once again.

• After retiring from their jobs in the UK, Peter and Rita Millard spent years living in France and Malta.
• They outgrew both places and made a final move to a care facility in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2023.
• Peter says living in an aged care facility is an "insurance policy" for whoever gets left behind.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Peter Millard, a 78-year-old retiree living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with his wife, Rita. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My wife and I spent more than 20 years moving between countries, trying to find the right place to grow old.

We met while working in the health service in Birmingham, UK, before retiring on health grounds in the late '90s. Not ready to stop working, I retrained as a podiatrist and ran my own practice for five years, during which we built a small holiday home in southern France.

We visited as often as possible. Over time, we realized how much we loved life in France.

France, then Malta

When I finally retired again in 2003, we moved to Lodève, a small town about 31 miles from Montpellier, settling into the holiday home we had built.

Our house was a 10-minute drive from the town, with terraces on three sides and lovely views of the surrounding hills.

Even in a town of around 7,000 people, we built a close circle of friends, including our French neighbors, who had three children. We soon got involved with the school run, horse-riding lessons, and anything else when their mom was busy and transport was required.

But as we got older, we started to think more practically about what we could manage in the future.

You get to an age where there's no public transport, there's a lot of land to look after, and you start to wonder if you'll be able to cope in 10 years' time.

We didn't want to return to the UK, so in 2012, we moved to Malta instead. Life there was more convenient, and we quickly settled into our three-bedroom penthouse located centrally on the island.

After seven years, though, we felt we needed another change. We had outgrown Malta, as it is a very small island, and eventually decided to move back to the UK.

A brief stint back in the UK

Instead of returning to the Midlands where we previously lived, we moved to a retirement complex on the south coast. It was a big mistake. When we arrived, new management had just taken over, and the place became very inflexible, particularly around meal times and seating, and the food was poor.

We lasted under three months before moving out and renting an apartment, where we were much happier.

Although the town was comfortable, the UK no longer felt like home after so many years abroad.

I ended up having a triple heart bypass just as the pandemic was hitting the country. We were trapped in England for nearly three years.

Even so, the idea of living abroad again never quite left our minds.

One Sunday, while reading the papers, Rita came across an article about a retirement resort in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand.

We had never been to that part of the world. But we both read the piece and said, "How about that?" We have no kids, so it's just the two of us.

Chiang Mai, at last

We arranged a visit to the Care Resort Chiang Mai, located on the outskirts of the city, to see if it could work for us.

The surroundings were lovely, just like living in a park. We spent a few days at the resort and a few days in the city. By the end of the weeklong trip, we felt confident we had found the right place.

Several months later, in February 2023, we moved to Chiang Mai. This will be our final move.

We've done a lot of traveling since we've been together for 40-odd years, including on cruises. My wife says she never wants to see another airport.

We were encouraged to make our villa our home, so we have refurnished and even changed the curtains.

As we're fit and well, we want to carry on as normal, so we do most of the housework and prepare all our meals.

We do make use of some of the facility's support when needed. Staff help with practical matters, such as visa renewals, and can arrange medical appointments for us.

Once you experience the kindness of the Thai people, you'll realize that this is a lovely country to spend your remaining years.

In a way, choosing to live in a care community is about planning ahead. The idea was that whoever was left would be looked after by the people here.

It's a bit like an insurance policy. We don't need any support now, but in the future, we may.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gave the commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University on Sunday.
• Huang told the new grads that there has been no better time to start a career.
• As public anxiety around AI grows, Huang has struck a positive tone in recent appearances.

Even as companies like Cloudflare and Snap cite AI as they lay off thousands of employees, Jensen Huang told graduates on Sunday that there's no better time to "begin your life's work."

Speaking at Carnegie Mellon University's 2026 Commencement, the Nvidia CEO made his case that AI will be a net positive for humanity, including for those newly starting their careers.

"Now it's your time to realize your dreams, and the timing could not be more perfect," he said.

The 61-year-old tech mogul — who now has an estimated net worth of nearly $186 billion — graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in electrical engineering in 1984. He later earned a master's in electrical engineering from Stanford. He launched Nvidia in 1993, just as the internet revolution was taking off.

He told the new grads that AI was closing the "technology divide," allowing anyone to build something useful. This, he said, meant there would be many new opportunities for young people in the coming years.

Jensen's optimistic remarks contrast with public anxiety over the impact of artificial intelligence.

A Pew Research Center study found that about half of Americans felt the increased prevalence of AI in their daily lives made them feel "more concerned than excited." Many Americans across the country, meanwhile, are resisting new data centers in their communities, which are essential to powering AI products like chatbots.

At least a dozen major companies have cited increased efficiency from AI as a factor in their decision to lay off employees this year. AI has also made job-seeking more difficult by prolonging the interview process and making it tougher for new grads to land work. The unemployment rate for new grads reached a 4-year high at the start of 2026.

Worries about the impact of AI are fueled in part by the people behind the technology. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, for example, warned last year that AI could wipe out 50% of white-collar entry-level jobs. Elon Musk told Joe Rogan in February that humans faced a "20% chance of annihilation."

Negative public sentiment could play a role in the coming midterm elections, during which AI regulation will likely be a major topic of debate.

In recent weeks, Huang has sought to counter such dire predictions. On a podcast earlier this month, he said AI leaders should be more "mindful" of how they talk about the technology.

"These kinds of comments are not helpful," Huang said on the "Memos to the President" podcast. "They're made by people who are like me — CEOs. Somehow, because they became CEOs, you adopt a God complex and, before you know it, you know everything."

He added, "I think we have to be careful and really ground ourselves to talking about the facts."

To the new grads at Carnegie Mellon, he had a simple message: "AI is not likely to replace you," acknowledging anxieties about the job market. "But someone using AI better than you might."

To help keep your pup from overheating in hot temperatures, it's important to give them plenty of drinking water and time indoors in a cool place. Many dogs also gravitate toward cooler surfaces to get more relief from the heat, and one of the best dog cooling mats or pads can help keep them comfortable.

Cooling mats for dogs come in several designs, including ice or water-filled mats and pressure-activated gel pads. For this guide, we tested 21 popular options. I personally tested nine with my pitbull mix, Marty McFly, and my editor's senior hound, Homer, tried more than a dozen, including the top picks. Altogether, we've tested 21 cooling pads, crate mats, and blankets. Both of our dogs are ideal testers, since they naturally stretch out on cooler surfaces like tile and hardwood floors when temperatures spike.

Our best overall pick is the Cooler Dog Hydro Cooling Mat. It offers the longest-lasting and strongest cooling performance, both inside and outdoors, and features light cushioning for added comfort. With its extra-durable construction and materials, it's also the priciest mat in this guide. If you're looking for something more affordable, the Green Pet Shop Cool Pet Pad has strong cooling powers and is a longtime favorite of Homer.

Read more about how Insider Reviews tests and evaluates pet products.

Our top picks for the best dog cooling mats and pads

Best overall: Cooler Dog Hydro Cooling Mat - See at Amazon

Best budget: Green Pet Shop Cool Pet Pad - See at Chewy

Best for large dogs: Arf Pets Self-Cooling Gel Pad - See at Chewy

Best for crates: EveryYay Cool Orthopedic Dog Crate Mat - See at Amazon

Best water mat: K&H Pet Products Cool Bed III - See at Chewy

Best for travel: Bedsure Cooling Mat - See at Chewy

Best for the sofa: Lesure Premium Cooling Blanket - See at Amazon

Best overall

The Cooler Dog Hydro Cooling Mat can be used indoors or outside and cools longer than any other mat we tested. Lisa Sabatini, Business Insider Reviews senior pets editor, left the mat in a 95-degree sunroom where it stayed cold for seven hours, far surpassing other cooling mats. In more moderate temperatures, Sabatini's senior pup, Homer, sunbathed on the mat and took a long snooze.

The Hydro Cooling Mat consists of four parts: a machine-washable cover with three interior pockets. The top pocket holds a pre-filled water cushion, the middle pocket holds the included ice sheet, and the bottom pocket houses a heat-repelling, insulated layer. The cover and interior pockets are outfitted with durable velcro closures so you can easily remove the components before washing the mat.

This mat differs from other options in that it only comes in two sizes: mini (18 inches long, 10.5 inches wide, 1.25 inches thick) and regular (23.5 inches long, 18 inches wide, 2 inches thick). If you have a larger dog, you can purchase multiple regular-sized mats and attach them together with snaps along the edges. However, that means you'll pay significantly more. In fact, this is the priciest mat we recommend, at $50 for the regular size.

Two mats were just the right size for a 45-pound beagle. The half-inch-thick ice sheets were easy to fold up and place in a top freezer. Sabatini also liked that the covers were easy to clean in the washer before air-drying. Some condensation may form on the cover when it's particularly hot, so make sure it's completely dry before storing it.

This mat also replaces our top pick for the best outdoor mat: the K&H Pet Products Cool Bed III. Once filled with cold water, the Cool Bed III wicks heat away from your dog and maintains a surface temperature similar to the air temperature. It's still a great option, especially if you have a smaller budget.

Best budget

The Green Pet Shop Cool Pet Pad earned high points in all of our tests for excellent indoor cooling. Its cooling powers lie in the pressure-activated gel, which absorbs a dog's body heat for up to three hours.

This mat is a longtime favorite of Sabatini's pup Homer, and he stretches out on it year-round. As soon as I unpacked it, Marty didn't hesitate to flop down in his preferred resting position: a full-bodied splay. Dogs who prefer a bit of padding may also like the cushioning of the thin, solid gel-filled interior.

In my testing, I measured only 2.8 degrees of heat transfer, considerably less than I observed with most mats. The manufacturer says that after three hours of continuous use, you'll need to "recharge" it by setting it aside for 20 minutes so the gel can regain its cooling abilities.

The mat's nylon exterior is super durable, and my dog's nails never left any scratches behind. It's easy to wipe clean, but oily smudges like those from peanut butter may leave faint stains. If that's a concern, machine-washable covers in several pastel colors are sold separately. The manufacturer says they don't impact cooling performance, but we haven't tested one yet. We'll be doing so for a later update.

While the Cool Pet Pad comes in a wide range of sizes, there isn't an option for giant breed dogs.

Read our full review of the Green Pet Shop Cool Pet Pad.

Best for large dogs

If you have a giant breed dog or two pups who like to share, the Green Pet Shop Cool Pet Pad might not be big enough for them, or the Hydro Cooling mat might bust your budget. If that's the case, consider the 33-inch-by-55-inch Arf Pets Self-Cooling Gel Pad.

This pad cools just as well as the Green Pet Shop mat and is less expensive. However, it provides less cushioning and has a more slippery surface, which isn't ideal for dogs prone to instability. Still, it's an excellent choice for many extra-large pups and multi-dog households.

My 55-pound Marty had plenty of room to stretch out on this mat. In fact, two Martys could easily fit on it. I sat on it, too, and although it's a firmer surface than the Cool Pet Pad, I found it comfortable.

The mat stayed in place Marty ran across it, but his longer nails did slide a bit. So, if your dog is prone to sliding and instability, this isn't a good option for them.

That said, I liked how easy it was to wipe the smooth material clean, and its darker color hides stains well.

Best for crates

Most cooling mats are thin and not ideal for long snoozes in a crate. A thick cooling crate pad with added foam support, however, ups the comfort quotient for pups. The EveryYay mat has a 3-inch egg-crate foam core that molds to a dog's body for extra comfort. Its cover is a cool, silky, mesh-like fabric that provides refreshing relief on hot days. The mat comes in several sizes to match the dimensions of most of the best dog crates.

My dog tends to be picky about beds, but it took very little persuasion to get him to lie down on the mat and sink into the cushy egg-crate foam. After Marty lay on it for 30 minutes, the bed's surface temperature increased by 4 degrees. While there was some heat transfer, it remained well below his body temperature. Sabatini sat on the bed herself for 20 minutes and could feel the cooling sensation the entire time.

It's durable and waterproof, and the ability to toss the removable cover in the washer and dryer is a big bonus. If you have an older or arthritic dog who could use a little more support, the Bedsure Cooling Dog Bed comes in a few crate-compatible sizes and is made of the same egg-crate foam, but the channeled cover provides more cushion. "I was really impressed by the extra comfort provided by the polyester-filled quilted cover, and it cools just as well as the EveryYay mat," Sabatini says of the 35-inch-by-22-inch bed that fits perfectly inside her dog's crate.

Best water mat

If your dog loves the great outdoors, the K&H Pet Products Cool Bed III is perfect for chilling outside. The water-filled bed wicks heat away from your dog while maintaining a surface temperature close to the surrounding environment.

The directions say to place it in the shade, but Sabatini also set it out on a sunny deck where it worked surprisingly well. After Marty lay on it for half an hour indoors, its surface temperature rose by only 3.6 degrees. Outdoors on the deck, sans dog, its surface temperature rose by 3 degrees over the course of an hour.

With a thin foam insert and adjustable firmness (just add more water), the bed has a squishy, pillowy feel. Marty liked to burrow his nose into it. Dogs who like a firmer bed might hesitate, though. The sturdy cover is puncture-resistant, but you should still place it on a smooth surface free of sharp debris.

Filling the bed with water takes several minutes, and it's awkward to move after that. The good news is that you don't have to empty it between uses. If you need to recharge it, leave it inside an air-conditioned space until it cools down. Be sure to read the manufacturer's directions for preventing the foam insert from bunching up when moving it.

Best for travel

The best cooling mat for travel is actually a lightweight, heat-absorbing mat with a nonslip bottom. While it won't cool as effectively as an ice, gel, or water-filled pad, Sabatini says the Bedsure Dog Cooling Mat has a luxurious, silky cover that is very cool to the touch.

Over two weeks of testing, her dog often rotated between this mat and the Green Pet Shop Cool Pet Pad. She sat on the mat for 10 minutes and found the temperature increased from 75.8 degrees to 84.4 degrees during that time. That said, it returned to room temperature in just five minutes.

The mat is easy to fold, roll, and tuck into small spaces. Should you take your dog on a road trip and find yourself dealing with a jam-packed trunk, it won't take up any valuable vehicular real estate. You can also lay the smaller-sized mats across the back seat or inside a dog car seat. Even more, the mat comes in five sizes that are compatible with many dog crates.

Although the material feels quite delicate, Sabatini used a fork to simulate a dog's nails, and the fabric did not snag. It also came out of the washing machine in great shape and air-dried within a few hours.

Best for sofas

If your pup loves to lounge with you on the sofa or in bed, a regular cooling mat won't cut it. Gel mats perform best on hard floors, and our travel pick doesn't cover as much area as the heat-wicking Lesure Pet Cooling Blanket, which comes in a range of sizes up to a twin bed.

I was immediately impressed by the fabric's cool feel, its appealing silkiness, and its cute quilted cloud pattern. My dog always enjoys being rolled into a blanket burrito, so this blanket was an easy sell. He stayed in his blanket cocoon for a full 30 minutes.

The material's starting temperature was 77.9 degrees, and after, it measured 80.8 degrees. I then draped it over my lap. While some of Marty's residual body heat carried over and took away from the cooling sensation, I still enjoyed the blanket's breathability and the softness of the fabric.

I machine-washed the blanket and didn't notice any difference in its texture or durability. However, some reviewers say that repeated washes can take a toll on the blanket's quality over time. It is labeled air or line-dry only, and its light weight helps it dry within a few hours.

Our top picks compared

What to look for in the best dog cooling mats

I asked two veterinarians what's important to consider when shopping for a cooling mat. There are a few key things to consider, including your dog's size, where you plan to use it, and what materials are best. 

Size: Dr. Sam Meisler, veterinarian and founder of PetWell Clinic, says size is your first priority. You'll want to choose a mat that allows your dog to rest its entire body on it so it doesn't hang off the sides. In terms of length and width, leave a bit of extra space so that your dog can remain cool even if it shifts around on the mat. 

Use: My experts say that gel mats, water mats, and cooling blankets all achieve the same goal of wicking heat away from the body, but different types of mats can work better in different contexts. Gel mats are recommended for indoor use only, as extended time outdoors may compromise the gel's effectiveness. Water mats work well both indoors and outdoors. While they require some setup, they don't need to be recharged and can be used continuously. Blankets are lightweight, portable, and easier to introduce to dogs who don't gravitate toward mats. 

Materials: Meisler and Dr. Karen Shaw Becker, veterinarian and author of The Forever Dog Life, say that anyone considering a gel mat must make sure it's labeled as nontoxic. "Beds that contain gel pose a risk because they're made with a variety of different chemicals that aren't meant for consumption," Becker says. While no dog should ingest large quantities of nontoxic gel, that designation from a reputable, well-known brand indicates that the gel won't present major health concerns if a small amount is consumed. As for the cover materials, I found nylon, vinyl, and polyethylene durable, comfortable, and cool. 

Warranty: K&H Pet Products and Green Pet Shop offer limited warranties, while other brands provide none. Whether a warranty is worth narrowing your pool of potential mats depends on how much you value the peace of mind it offers.

How we tested the best dog cooling mats

I evaluated the best dog cooling mats with my trusty accomplice, Marty McFly, my 55-pound pitbull mix. I ran all tests indoors for maximum temperature control and set my thermostat to 78 degrees. I conducted the following tests to compare how each mat measured up to the competition.

Cooling abilities: I first placed my hands on each mat to gauge its coolness. I then measured its surface temperature with an infrared thermometer. Next, I had Marty lie on the mat for 30 minutes, and I sat beside him during that time. Afterward, I measured the temperature again to see whether the mat retained heat from our bodies. 

Safety of materials: Before testing, I checked each mat to ensure its materials were labeled nontoxic. Exterior materials like nylon, vinyl, and polyethylene are strong enough to withstand nail scraping and minor chewing. They're also nontoxic unless they're consumed in large quantities.

Comfort: After Marty settled down on each mat, I evaluated how comfortable he seemed. I observed whether he was happy to rest there for an extended time or immediately got back up. I also sat on each mat to evaluate its softness, its moldability to the body, how easy it was to get on and off, and its ability to accommodate bodies in different positions, such as seated and lying down.

Durability: After Marty spent time on each mat and moved around, I examined the materials for wear and tear. I also ran a fork over the surface of each mat 20 times to see if the materials tore or incurred any damage.

Skid resistance: I put Marty on a leash and ran him across each mat 10 times as it was laid on a laminate floor. I observed whether the mats slid on the ground and whether Marty's feet slipped on them.

Ease of cleaning: I smeared a tablespoon of peanut butter and a tablespoon of mud onto each mat, then let them sit for 24 hours. I cleaned each mat according to the manufacturer's instructions. I recorded how long the process took, whether I needed any special equipment or supplies, the overall ease of the experience, and how effectively it removed the mud and peanut butter, along with any organic materials left behind after testing, such as drool and hair.

Meet the expert behind this guide

Lisa Sabatini, pets editor: I first bought a cooling mat for one of my dogs in 2018. After adopting Homer and becoming keenly aware of his tendency to overheat, I knew I needed to get another mat and chose the well-reviewed Green Pet Shop Cool Pet Pad. It became one of Homer's go-to resting spots, including during winter months when the radiator gives off too much heat. I've since tested every pick in this guide with Homer, among many other mats.

Dog cooling mats FAQs

Do cooling mats actually work for dogs?

The short answer is yes, but even the best dog cooling mats have their limitations. "By using gel, water, and/or special fabrics, the mats absorb heat from a dog's body, which makes them feel cooler," Meisler says. There are, however, a few caveats that could reduce a cooling mat's effectiveness. Becker says a mat might be a waste of money if your dog doesn't typically use mats or beds. It's also important to remember that a cooling mat is intended to provide added comfort. Proper hydration and a cool environment are the most important things to provide your dog. "If the ambient temperature is excessive, a cooling mat alone is not enough to prevent heat stroke or overheating," says Becker.

Are cooling mats safe for dogs? 

Meisler and Becker agree that cooling mats are generally safe for dogs, but it's important to do your research before ordering a mat. Above all else, Becker says to pay attention to the quality of a mat's construction and the types of materials and coatings. Look for brands that use puncture-resistant materials like nylon, and always choose materials labeled as nontoxic. Most importantly, closely supervise your dog when introducing new items. "If you have a dog that tends to chew or eat their toys and/or bedding, all mats could be a choking or GI obstruction risk," Becker says. If you know your dog is inclined to chew on things, never leave them alone with a cooling mat.

Can dogs sleep on cooling mats overnight? 

Meisler says that while pets can sleep on a cooling mat, it doesn't mean they should. While nothing about the mats themselves makes them unsafe for sleeping, Meisler encourages people to pay attention to their dog's preferences, as they have keen instincts for what makes them feel comfortable and happy. "Just like humans, some dogs may prefer a cooler surface for shorter periods versus a prolonged amount of time," he says. "While prolonged use might be safe, it isn't always advisable or necessary. Dogs regulate their body temperature through various means. It is essential they have access to normal temperatures to prevent muscle stiffness or other issues." Becker says many cooling mats, especially gel-filled ones, have limits on how long they can sustain their cooling properties before needing to be recharged. "Don't assume that the mat will continue to cool your pup past about 4 hours, and never rely on any mat or bed to prevent overheating or heat stroke," she says. Providing your dog with alternative places to rest, like one of the best orthopedic dog beds, is a good idea.

How should cooling mats be stored for maximum longevity?

Always follow a manufacturer's instructions for storing a mat. In general, avoid storing cooling mats in direct sunlight, in high-temperature areas, or in places where they could get wet.

• I gave my kids independence early, even when it felt uncomfortable.
• Becoming a single parent made independence a necessity.
• It helped my daughters grow into confident, capable young adults.

It was Christmas morning, and my 9-year-old daughter was thrilled to open up our new backyard fire pit.

She asked me if we could roast marshmallows and make S'mores that same night. "Sure," I responded. "If you can put the firepit together."

I knew she could do it, and I was worn out after staying up late the night before wrapping gifts. Still in her pajamas and always up for a challenge, she opened the box, read the instructions, and got to work.

I gave her a wrench, turned on some Christmas music, and went to take a nap. When she woke me up an hour later, her face beaming with pride, I knew I'd done the right thing.

What I never learned growing up

Although it made sense to me to give myself a break and my daughter a chance to shine, it wasn't the kind of parent-child dynamics I experienced growing up. In my family, independence wasn't valued, and showing competency in anything, especially in typically male-dominated tasks or activities, was a good way to become a target.

At the time, I had no idea the American model of protected, responsibility-free childhoods was actually an outlier, and that most cultures throughout human history have expected children to be genuine contributors.

Years later, sitting in a college adolescent development class, I learned about David Lancy's cross-cultural research showing exactly what my instincts had always told me — kids who contribute in meaningful, age-appropriate ways do better than those always protected from challenges. That's when I decided, more than a decade before becoming a mom, that I would parent differently from the way my family did. I took numerous Early Childhood Education classes, worked as a nanny, and became a preschool teacher, all in hopes of eventually being the best parent I could be.

Eventually, I met someone, got married, and had two daughters. As soon as my daughters could walk, I made mini diaper bags out of toddler backpacks so they could carry their own snacks and supplies, and gave them as many age-appropriate opportunities to help as possible, like stirring pancake batter, putting their toys away, or feeding the cat.

As a single mom, independence was a necessity

What I didn't plan for was separating and becoming a single parent within six years, making the whole independence thing more than just a quirky parenting style and more of a necessity.

When their dad and I divorced, I became a single mom in one of the US's most expensive cities with little to no family support. It was tough, and I sometimes felt forced to give them more independence than even I felt comfortable with. Like when my 6-year-old had to start taking the school bus after my car was stolen, and I wasn't sure if either of us was ready for that much independence. I worried she was too young and might be exposed to situations with older kids that she wasn't ready for, but she seemed to enjoy it and even made new friends.

As they got older, my daughters helped with cooking, housework, and even stuffing envelopes for the family business. At 9, my oldest daughter started messaging the local librarian to request new books and was thrilled to see them on the shelves at our branch, while my youngest won a citywide poetry contest and was proud to read her poem at a popular festival.

In high school, when they wanted to skip class for a Black Lives Matter rally, I gave them permission to go as long as they told their teachers the truth about where they would be. I wanted them to know what it felt like to stand on principle and speak up for themselves rather than just take the day off.

I also tried not to get involved in personal issues without their permission, but it hasn't always been easy. Listening to them vent about a mean girl, an obnoxious boy, or a rude teacher, and minding my own business when they say they don't want my help or advice, can feel excruciating, and I sometimes fall short of my own expectations.

I'm so proud of them

Both my girls launched at 18 and are now college students working their way through school. I couldn't be more proud of them, but staying faithful to my philosophy of independence gets harder as they get older, not easier. The stakes are higher now, and I want them to avoid the costly mistakes I made as a young adult, like spending beyond my means and marrying too soon.

But I also know the confidence that comes with learning their own life lessons, and I don't want to deprive them of those important, character-building experiences. So when I start worrying more than usual, I make sure to talk to them by phone, because that always reassures me that I've raised two capable and competent young women, who probably don't even need my advice.

• I formed deep friendships through my children's lives.
• Distance and life changes made it harder to maintain those bonds.
• I still value those friendships, even as they've faded.

At 5 a.m. every Thursday morning, my phone pings with a text from my friend. This early morning communication is a yearslong tradition that began when we lived in the same time zone. My 5 a.m. is her 8 a.m., a much more reasonable hour for a check-in.

She and I met through our children. She has four — two girls and two boys. I have five — four boys and one girl. They are close in age, so she and I spent a lot of time together at school functions, sports competitions, and kid-themed social gatherings.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, I kept her company as she recovered from grueling treatments. She accompanied me to a few of my own medical procedures. She, overhearing me tell a nurse how much I weighed, cemented our friendship with a promise to never reveal the number. We're friends for life.

3,000 miles is not the only reason friendships fade

It's been a decade since she and I got together in person. She was my first visitor when I moved to San Francisco, and I stayed with her on a visit to Boston. Now she cares for her elderly mother and rarely leaves home. I don't travel back to New England anymore, so I'm never in her orbit. Although I'm confident our friendship will endure, we're far less connected.

Distance isn't the only reason mom friends lose touch. My friend and I became friends when her son and my daughter started dating in high school. Within a few months, the romance waned, but she and I remained close.

For years, we took long, meandering walks together and discussed a wide range of topics like our shaky marriages — mine failed, hers wobbled, but endured — and the tricky dynamics of life with teenagers. We promised to continue the friendship once I announced my cross-country move, but it didn't last. Our kids grew into adults, and the ties that bound us loosened.

We connected through our children

I met my mom friends through our kids. Even if they stopped playing together, we remained close. The day my husband announced he was leaving, a group of these women rallied around me at school drop-off and did not leave my side until we picked the kids up at the end of the day. One accompanied me to court to hold my hand when the divorce was finalized.

They supported me as a single mom, too. When my daughter's dorm burned in a California wildfire, another cared for my youngest son while I traveled to Santa Barbara to help my daughter cope with the loss. We schedule occasional phone calls to catch up, but it's not the same as the in-person visits we used to have.

It takes effort to stay in touch

I admit I could work harder to stay in touch.

I occasionally send an email or text to check in, but it's not the same as meeting for coffee. During the pandemic, as we sequestered in personal pods, I reached out to each mom friend by phone or Zoom. It had been years since we'd stood on the sidelines of a lacrosse game or helped backstage at a dance recital. We had a lot of catching up to do.

I had many fulfilling conversations with these women, but I'm having trouble sustaining the relationships. We're all over the country now.

I comment on Facebook posts and send thinking-of-you notes, but without the regular contact we enjoyed in the school parking lot every afternoon, it's tough to maintain these long-distance friendships.

I have a different friend group now

I have a new friend group now. We're all mature women with lifetimes of unshared experience.

We bond over new interests and socialize through travel, art, and activities I never shared with my mom friends. I miss the women I walked alongside during our children's growing-up years.

We should have a reunion.

• An energy executive listed his Florida estate for $115 million, which could break the area's sales record.
• The 87-acre compound directly on Lake Thonotosassa is 16 miles from downtown Tampa.
• It features amenities like a 22-car garage, an office complex, and a lakeside go-kart track.

A Chicago-based executive is trying to break a record in Florida with the sale of his home by listing it for $115 million — and it's nowhere near South Beach.

Steven Lempera, the president of an energy company in Illinois, bought the 87-acre lakefront compound in Tampa, Florida, in 2021 for $16.7 million and is trying to sell it at a nearly 600% price markup. Lempera and his wife, Jane, bought the property from Don Wallace, the cofounder of Lazydays RV, after surveying alternative options to Chicago during COVID.

"They were looking for an estate of this caliber with massive acreage," One Sotheby's International Realty agent Eddy Martinez told Business Insider. "In reality, they were looking in Colorado and in Wyoming, but they just couldn't find anything that they really liked."

The property, directly on Lake Thonotosassa, is 16 miles from downtown Tampa, but is its own oasis from the fast pace of the city. It's surrounded by oak trees and even has its own private interior roads.

Privacy, Martinez said, is one of the most important features for the ultrawealthy when considering property.

"Finishes and those kinds of things have become secondary," he said. "The most important thing for them to consider a property in a serious manner is, does it offer the privacy and does it have the capability of being secure?"

As for the reason for selling, Lempera hasn't fallen out of love with the property; he just spends a lot less time there. His daughter is a professional horseback rider, and he and his family want to follow her career.

"They follow the circuit, and so Tampa's not really in their scope as much anymore because of that," Martinez said.

See all of the bells and whistles included on this 87-acre Tampa property for sale.

Steven Lempera purchased the Tampa home in 2021 in an effort to escape the city during the pandemic.

Lempera paid $16.7 million for the 87-acre property — a fraction of what he thinks it's worth today.

The previous owner built the home in 2012.

If it sells anywhere near the listed $115 million price tag, it will smash the local record.

The current record in the Tampa area for most expensive sale is held by a Derek Jeter's former Davis Islands mansion, which sold for $22.5 million in 2022.

That home, according to Martinez, was a teardown, and doesn't compare to the property he's currently trying to sell.

"It was only one acre of land, not 87," Martinez said. "It was also lakefront, but it was also a teardown. It was not a move-in-ready home."

Lempera is leaving the property to follow his daughter's professional horseback riding career.

Lempera sold a different home in the Coral Gables neighborhood to the Weeknd in October 2025 for $55 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, and started using the Tampa property as a primary residence.

However, his plans changed once his daughter's career took off.

"His daughter is a professional jumper, and that's another reason why they bought this property, because it does have a dedicated 5-acre sector just for the equestrian component," Martinez said.

Martinez added that Lempera intends to spend more time in Wellington, Florida, a city known as the winter equestrian capital of the world, as well as in New York and Europe.

Both Lempera and the home's former owner are car enthusiasts, so there's plenty of space for parking.

The property has a car museum that has room for 22 cars, and Lempera, who also has an extensive collection, made sure to fill it.

Not only does Lempera have space for his collection of Rolls-Royces and other expensive cars, but he also has someone on the grounds to service them.

"He does have an on-site mechanic, so you don't have to take your cars somewhere; it's all done there," Martinez said. "There's also a professional car painting booth."

There's also a workshop to craft all types of finishes for the home.

"He also has a mill workshop and a metal workshop," Martinez said. "Those beautiful mahogany, humongous arch doors with the very elaborate hinges, those were created on site in the mill workshop and in the metal shop."

Some of that millwork can be seen in posh spaces, such as the two-story closet in the primary suite.

"The hers closet in the master suite is two-story, so it has a staircase in the closet," Martinez said. "When you go up, it's kind of like when you're in New Orleans in the French Quarter."

The finishes of the closet match the rest of the home, mainly because a lot of the craftwork was done on the property.

"It has that beautiful French ironwork that sort of does a perimeter at the mezzanine, which you can look down to the first level of the closet," Martinez said. "All of that ironwork was done on-site in the metal shop."

A majority of the home's features were already in place when Lempera bought it.

One bedroom in particular ditched the French Normandy Château style and was Lamborghini-themed.

"It was black and yellow, and you felt like you were in a sports car museum for that particular bedroom," Martinez said. "So they made it in line with the European French — very whimsical, romantic."

Lempera was able to keep the style consistent throughout the home in part because he purchased the furniture in a package deal.

"He had to pay $2 million, and that was a wise decision because it was really curated for every space, and it's very, very whimsical. The whole thing is just a fairytale," Martinez said.

There is also space for the next owner to work, so there's no need to go to an office downtown.

"There's an office complex with executive offices," Martinez said. "Then you have a floating glass boardroom that admires all the cars down below it."

And when you're done working, you can relax at the spa.

Wellness amenities have become must-have features for homes of the ultrawealthy, and this home doesn't skimp on them.

Along with a mile-long jogging path on the premises, there is also a state-of-the-art spa.

"It rivals hotel spas that I've been to in South Beach," Martinez said. "It has an indoor saltwater pool, it has the steam hamam, the drywood sauna, and, of course, the treatment rooms.

"It all just spills out over to a beautiful series of arched terraces," Martinez added. "You really feel like you're in a professional spa."

If that's not how you want to unwind, you can take a go-kart for a spin.

"The go-kart is definitely a wow factor," Martinez said. "It has a proper go-kart circuit, a little mini racing track, and it's right on the lake's edge with winding roads — it's very fun."

• Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince doesn't love his company's name.
• Cloudflare is often mispronounced and misspelled, but he said it's better than his original idea.
• Cloudflare laid off 20% of its staff this week, citing a 600% increase in AI use.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince doesn't like the name of his own company.

Responding to an X user who said the name Cloudflare is "not good" and "not aspirational," Prince agreed.

"I'd add: too long, hard for English speakers to say Cluh and Fluh next to each other so becomes Cloudfare, multiple ways to spell flare/flair," he wrote.

He said it's better than his original idea, however. Prince said he considered "Project Web Wall," which he joked would be a "nightmare" for the late broadcast journalist Barbara Walters, who had a distinctive speech impediment.

Cloudflare is one of the companies that helps keep the internet running behind the scenes. It helps websites and apps load faster, route traffic, and defend against cyberattacks, including DDoS attacks and bot traffic. The company says its tools protect websites, apps, APIs, and AI workloads while speeding up performance through its content delivery network.

When Cloudflare goes down, it often takes large parts of the internet down with it. A large Cloudflare outage last year disrupted ChatGPT, X, and other major sites.

For a company whose business is so essential, it's surprising how often it's mispelled or mispronounced. Typos appear in developer forums, support threads, and even public bug reports.

Prince's introspection about his company's name came after a turbulent week.

On Thursday, Cloudflare laid off more than 1,100 employees, or about 20% of its staff.

In a memo announcing the layoffs, Cloudflare executives said the company's AI use had surged "more than 600% in the last three months alone," and that it needed to rethink its structure to move faster and deliver more value to customers.

• My partner and I booked an international vacation together after dating for only four months.
• I was worried it was too soon to travel as a couple, and the trip could hurt our new relationship.
• By planning together and being mindful, it turned out to be a fun experience that made us closer.

I try to take at least one overseas trip every year, and I've always wanted a partner who loves travel as much as I do to share them with.

So when I met my partner Noriel — who loves adventures as much as I do — I knew I had found a kindred spirit. We had just become "official" in our relationship when we started toying with the idea of going on vacation together.

At first, we thought we'd keep our first trip as a couple simple and not too extravagant — maybe a weeklong trip to a place close to our home in New Zealand.

However, we soon tossed this plan aside and set our sights on Bali. Noriel had been there before, and he spoke so highly about it. It was further away, but we could make our money go much further there. Plus, Bali looked absolutely stunning.

I was sold, and we began booking our trip. I'd be lying, though, if I said I wasn't a little bit worried.

By the time we left, we would've been together for only four months, which is still so early in a relationship. Thoughts crept into my mind, "What if we break up before we go?" and "What if we don't travel well together?"

We'd be with each other day and night for eight days, longer than we'd ever spent together before. Plus, if we had to cancel, I would lose thousands of dollars.

It turns out I didn't need to be worried. Our trip to Bali was an incredibly positive experience that only brought us closer together, and I believe a few key things made it work.

From the start, we collaborated on the itinerary

Neither of us took the lead on this trip. It was a team collaboration from the start.

We made sure to plan an equal spread of activities — some I was more keen to do and some he was more excited to do. For example, I wanted to rent a gown and do a famous Bali swing photo shoot, while he wanted to see a traditional Balinese fire dance. So we did both.

When it came to accommodations, we both did research until we found places that we were equally excited about. Somehow, we found a fair balance in everything we did.

It was also important for us to stay mindful of each other's travel preferences and needs

Some couples struggle to find a balance when one loves to arrive at the airport several hours early, while the other prefers to get there with minutes to spare.

Thankfully, our travel preferences weren't that different or extreme, but we still took into account how we personally like to travel. Noriel will try to go to the gym every day, while I'm more relaxed about fitness on vacation. For me, sleeping in is more important.

So our itinerary always held space for the other to do their morning rituals before we came together for a shared breakfast. That way, neither of our preferences was more important than the other's.

We also made plans with our individual needs in mind. For example, we're both extroverts, but we still need time to recharge. So, we respected our needs for downtime by giving each other space after a packed day of activities.

He'd go for a swim while I read my book, or I'd have a quick nap while he watched TV. We packed a lot into our itinerary, so we had to make the most of the little time we had to rest.

Ultimately, I'm so glad we went on this trip

In the end, our eight-day adventure in Bali was a success.

Traveling together so early on in the relationship could've been a make-or-break situation — but with careful, mindful planning, it just became a perfect way to get to know each other better in a beautiful place.

It's been a year since the trip, and we're still going strong. This shared experience remains one of our favorite memories together, and we're looking forward to more overseas trips in the future.

As much as I love extra-large TVs, they're not always the right fit. If you're setting up a bedroom, apartment, or cozier living space, going smaller usually makes a lot more sense. That's where the best 50-inch TVs (and a few great 48-inch options) really shine. After years of testing home entertainment gear, I've found that you don't have to give up great picture quality just because you're getting a smaller screen.

My top pick right now is the LG C5, a 48-inch OLED that delivers the same deep black levels and infinite contrast ratio as its larger counterparts. On the more affordable end, the first-generation Amazon Omni QLED is a solid choice. It often drops below $400 and offers noticeably better contrast and color than most 50-inch TVs in its price range.

Of course, the best 50-inch and 48-inch TVs aren't limited to just those two. There are also excellent options from Samsung and Vizio. Whether you're a gamer, a movie lover, or just want a reliable screen for streaming, there's a great pick for you below.

Note: LCD-based TVs (including LED and QLED models) use a 50-inch screen, while OLED TVs use a slightly smaller 48-inch screen. For that reason, I've included a 48-inch OLED in this guide.

Our top picks for the best 50-inch TVs

Best overall: LG C5 - See at Amazon

Best on a budget: Amazon Omni QLED - See at Amazon

Best premium QLED: Samsung QN90F - See at Amazon

Best midrange for gaming: Vizio MQX - See at Amazon

The best 50-inch TVs, compared

Best overall

The LG C5 is the best 48-inch TV for anyone who wants a compact screen without sacrificing premium picture quality. It's one of the few TVs under 55 inches with an OLED panel, giving it a clear advantage over LED and QLED models that dominate this size range.

With its OLED display, the C5 delivers all the hallmark benefits of the technology: perfect black levels, pixel-level contrast, and wide viewing angles. While LED and QLED sets often appear washed out in dark rooms or lose color accuracy when viewed from an off-center position, the C5 maintains consistent image quality from nearly any angle. (See our QLED vs. OLED comparison for a deeper breakdown of the differences.)

Our reviewer tested the 65-inch C5, which reached a peak brightness of around 1,175 nits. However, the 48-inch version lacks LG's brightness booster, so its output is closer to 750 nits. Though dimmer, that's still excellent for its size. That level of brightness, combined with OLED contrast, makes high-dynamic-range (HDR) content look rich and dimensional. The C5 is easily one of the best-looking 48-inch TVs available.

The set utilizes LG's webOS smart TV platform, providing quick access to the best streaming services and built-in Alexa support. I don't love how the interface leans heavily on sponsored content, but overall navigation is smooth and reliable. Gamers get plenty to love here, too, as the C5 supports a 120Hz refresh rate for the latest consoles and up to 144Hz when connected to a PC.

At a typical price of around $1,000, the C5 sits on the high end for a 48-inch TV, but the jump in image quality over cheaper options is substantial. It's worth noting that a revised 2026 version of the C5, called the C6, is now available as well. However, its launch price is about $600 above the C5's typical price, and its improvements are minimal. For now, the 48-inch C5 remains the better value. You can learn more in my 2026 LG OLED TV roundup.

Read our LG C5 TV review.

Check out our guides to all the best smart TVs and best LG TVs.

Best on a budget

The Amazon Omni QLED is the best 50-inch TV on a budget. It uses a QLED panel to offer a wide color gamut and a decent peak brightness of about 500 nits. That's dimmer than I generally recommend for larger TVs, but solid for this size and class. The Omni QLED also features local dimming, which enhances contrast by allowing the panel to adjust brightness in specific areas of its screen.

But unlike high-end QLED TVs like the pricier Samsung QN90F, this model uses regular-sized LEDs rather than Mini LEDs in its backlight. This means it has fewer zones to work with, leading to less uniform black levels. Our reviewer also noticed delayed dimming, leading to occasional brightness fluctuations.

Still, few 50-inch TVs can achieve this level of image quality at this price. Most competing budget models lack local dimming entirely, and many have a narrower color range.

That said, the Omni QLED isn't immune to other common drawbacks of TVs in this class. Namely, it has limited viewing angles, so contrast and color are distorted at angles. It's also restricted to a 60Hz refresh rate, so you can't unlock 120Hz support on a gaming console or PC.

The Omni QLED utilizes Amazon's Fire TV operating system and includes an Alexa voice remote. It also supports hands-free digital assistant functions, similar to those on an Echo speaker, which is a nice perk for such a budget-friendly set.

While I recommend the Omni QLED in a 50-inch screen size, it's not the best budget option at larger sizes. If you're looking for a larger TV on a budget, I recommend the TCL QM6K, which is available in sizes 55 inches and up. The QM6K offers a higher refresh rate, brighter image, and better backlight control.

Amazon also offers a newer 2025 edition of the Omni QLED, but it costs more, and the 50-inch size actually features a downgrade in image quality as it no longer supports local dimming. With that in mind, I don't recommend the newer model.

Read our Amazon Omni QLED TV review.

Check out our guides to the best budget TVs, best TVs under $500, and best Amazon Fire TVs.

Best premium QLED

High-end TVs rarely come in smaller screen sizes, but Samsung's QN90F is a welcome exception. This 50-inch flagship QLED may be pricey for its size, but it delivers top-tier performance that rivals much larger sets.

As part of Samsung's Neo QLED lineup, the QN90F uses quantum dots for a wide color range and a Mini LED backlight for precise local dimming. Competing 50-inch QLEDs from brands like Amazon and Vizio also feature quantum dots and local dimming, but their standard LEDs can't match the contrast, black levels, or brightness that Samsung's Mini LEDs achieve.

I tested the 65-inch QN90F, and it reached an impressive 2,130 nits of peak brightness. However, the 50-inch model uses a less advanced HDR contrast system, limiting its ability to match the brightness of its larger counterparts. But even so, it's still brighter than nearly any other 50-inch TV available.

This helps enable vivid HDR performance with highlights that pop from the screen. Black levels are also strong, though not quite as precise as those of an OLED like the LG C5. You may notice subtle blooming (halos around bright objects) in certain scenes. Still, for viewers who prefer the punchy brightness of QLED, the QN90F is a perfect choice.

The QN90F also stands out thanks to its anti-glare matte finish, which sets it apart from the glossy screens found on most competitors. This type of screen significantly reduces reflections, but it also increases black levels in well-lit rooms. Although not ideal, this is a worthy trade-off if you struggle with glare.

Gamers also receive premium perks: the QN90F supports a refresh rate of up to 165Hz for ultra-smooth gameplay on compatible systems and includes built-in access to the Xbox app, allowing Game Pass subscribers to stream console-quality games without an actual console.

Check out our guide to all of the best Samsung TVs.

Best midrange for gaming

Vizio's MQX is designed for gaming. This midrange QLED is one of the most affordable 50-inch 4K TVs with a 120Hz refresh rate. It can even support up to 240Hz if you game in 1080p on a computer. 

This enables a smooth gaming experience at frame rates above 60 on a PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch 2, or PC. The TV also features a QLED panel with wide color support and local dimming, which helps control contrast and black levels.

However, the display only uses 16 dimming zones, which is low and can cause more noticeable blooming (halos around bright objects) than you'd see on QLEDs with more zones or on OLED TVs with pixel-level contrast. At a peak brightness of around 400 to 500 nits, the MQX's brightness is decent for a TV in this class, but slightly below the minimum 600 nits I recommend for entry-level high dynamic range performance.

If gaming isn't a priority, I give the 50-inch Amazon Omni QLED an edge since it's usually cheaper and offers better contrast. However, the Omni QLED only has a 60Hz refresh rate, so the MQX has the clear upper hand with consoles and PCs. Both TVs have subpar viewing angles, so neither has an advantage in this regard.

How we pick 50-inch TVs

To choose the best 50-inch TVs, my team and I combine hands-on testing with deep product research, drawing on more than a decade of experience covering home entertainment gear.

While we usually test 65-inch TVs (since brands often treat that size as their flagship), most TV models share the same core specs and features across sizes. For example, the 48-inch LG C5 OLED offers the same primary specifications as the 65-inch version, with the main differences coming down to screen size and peak brightness.

That said, size can matter with LED TVs that use local dimming. Smaller versions of models like the Amazon Omni QLED, Samsung QN90F, and Vizio QMX typically have fewer dimming zones than their larger counterparts, which can affect contrast performance. When features or design vary meaningfully by size, we call that out.

When evaluating TVs, we test picture clarity, contrast, HDR brightness, color performance, off-angle viewing, refresh rate, gaming features, smart TV performance, and overall value. We measure brightness using a colorimeter and rely on test patterns from the Spears & Munsil UHD HDR Benchmark 4K Blu-ray disc or pattern generators for objective image checks.

We also spend plenty of time watching real-world content on every TV, along with specific scenes chosen to test certain picture-quality elements. Our demo material includes movies, TV shows, live TV, and streaming content— from standard definition up to 4K — viewed in both bright and dark rooms to see how each TV performs in everyday conditions.

For more info on our testing process, visit our breakdown of how we review tech products.

Meet the expert behind this guide:

Steven Cohen, senior tech editor: I've been writing about home entertainment gear for more than a decade, and I get hands-on with new TVs year-round. I also studied film production, so I'm especially picky about picture accuracy and making sure movies and shows look the way they're supposed to. When I evaluate a TV, I use calibration tools and test patterns, but I don't stop there. I also live with TVs like I would any set I owned in my home, streaming movies, watching sports, and flipping through everyday content to see how it really holds up. My goal is to translate all my test results and real-world viewing into clear advice so you can find a great 50-inch TV without paying more than you need to.

Learn more about the Reviews team at Business Insider.

50-inch TV FAQs

What should you look for when buying a 50-inch TV?

When you're shopping for the best 50-inch TV, focus on a few key factors. First is picture quality. OLED models (sold in 48 inches) offer the best contrast, black levels, and viewing angles. However, they're pricey, and there are only a couple of models available at this size. Though their image quality isn't as good, there are a lot more QLED and LED TVs sold in 50 inches, and they typically cost a lot less than OLEDs.

If you play video games, pay attention to refresh rate (60Hz vs. 120Hz) and features like HDMI 2.1 for smoother performance. Smart TV platforms matter, too. Roku, Google TV, Fire TV, webOS, Tizen, and Vizio OS all have different interfaces, voice assistants, and unique features.

And finally, think about your budget: you can get a solid 50-inch TV for a few hundred dollars, but spending more usually gets you better brightness, color, and overall build quality.

Is 50 inches a good size for a TV?

The best 50-inch TVs are ideal for buyers who require a compact display that fits in a smaller room and accommodates a smaller TV stand. However, there are fewer midrange and high-end TVs in this size than you'd find when shopping for a larger display.

For instance, many of our picks for the best TVs for picture quality and best OLED TVs are only available in 55, 65, and 77 inches. Likewise, several of our favorite QLED TVs from brands like TCL, Hisense, and Roku, like the QM8K, U8QG, and Roku Pro Series, are not available in a 50-inch size.

That said, there are a few exceptions, such as our top pick in this guide, the LG C5, one of the few OLED TVs available in smaller sizes. But generally speaking, most 50-inch TVs are built with entry-level and lower midrange performance in mind.

If you want a larger selection of mid-tier and premium display models to choose from, check out our guides focusing on larger TVs:

• The best 55-inch TVs
• The best 65-inch TVs
• The best 75-inch TVs
• The best 85-inch TVs
• The best 100-inch TVs

And if you need an even more compact display, check out our guide to the best 43-inch TVs.

Why are some TVs sold in 48 inches rather than 50 inches?

This mostly comes down to how different TV panels are manufactured in factories. LCD-based TVs, including LED and QLED models, are typically offered in 50 inches, as that size works well with the screen cutting process on existing LCD production lines. But it's more efficient to produce OLED TVs in a slightly smaller 48-inch screen size, since this allows brands to manufacture more units with less waste.

How much should a 50-inch TV cost?

The best 50-inch TVs cost between $200 and $1,600, depending on the display type. 

Entry-level LED models from value-friendly brands like TCL, Hisense, and Vizio cost around $200-$250. These options are suitable for casual viewing but often lack advanced features such as quantum dots and local dimming. Lower-midrange QLED sets range from $300 to $550 and offer better color, higher contrast, and brighter panels. However, many of our favorite upper-midrange QLED models are not sold in 50 inches.    

Likewise, high-end 50-inch TVs are hard to come by, but you can find a couple of OLED models, like the LG C5, and top-tier QLED models, like Samsung's QN90F, in this size for around $800 to $1,500.

Many 50-inch TVs go on sale throughout the year, but the biggest savings are typically found during events like Prime Day and Black Friday, as well as around major sports championships like the Super Bowl and March Madness.

Should you buy a 2026 or 2025 50-inch TV?

New TV models were unveiled at the CES tech show in January, and many are now rolling out to stores. We'll be reviewing 2026 TV models for consideration in this guide over the coming months. You can learn more about 2026 TVs in our CES 2026 TV roundup, 2026 Samsung OLED TV roundup, and 2026 Sony True RGB TV announcement.

However, it's key to remember that 2025 TV models will still be available for much of the year, and they're often heavily discounted. As such, 2025 TVs remain the best value in many cases.

Is 4K worth it on a 50-inch TV?

Although the benefits of 4K resolution are best appreciated on larger TV sets, a 50-inch display is still substantial enough to make 4K worthwhile, especially if you plan to sit close to it. 

However, the debate about whether 4K is worth it on a TV this size has become a moot point since major brands no longer sell 50-inch HDTVs. Most HDTV models are now limited to 43 inches or less. If you're buying a 50-inch or larger TV in 2026, 4K is the standard.

For more 4K display recommendations in multiple sizes, check out our guide to the best 4K TVs.

Do 50-inch TVs have good sound quality?

Most TVs, especially smaller ones like 50-inch models, offer mediocre sound quality. To keep costs down and fit speakers inside compact displays, manufacturers use small audio drivers that limit the range, depth, and clarity of a TV's built-in sound system. To get the best sound quality, we recommend buying a separate soundbar or speaker setup to pair with a 50-inch TV.

Check out our soundbar and speaker guides to see our top recommendations:

• The best soundbars
• The best budget soundbars
• The best soundbars with subwoofers
• The best Dolby Atmos soundbars
• The best Bose soundbars
• The best Sonos soundbars
• The best surround sound systems

Learn more about immersive surround sound in our Dolby Atmos explainer.

Do you need HDMI 2.1 on a 50-inch TV?

Many of the best TVs include HDMI 2.1 ports, but this feature is less common on smaller screen sizes. However, several of our best 50-inch TV picks — the LG C5, Samsung QN90F, and Vizio MQX — do include HDMI 2.1 support, which is useful for gaming enthusiasts. 

HDMI 2.1 connections can transmit signals at 4K/120Hz, along with variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto low latency mode (ALLM), when paired with a compatible gaming device, such as a PS5 or PC. These features provide a smooth gaming experience with fast motion, minimal lag, and reduced screen tearing. You can learn more in our guide to the best gaming TVs.

To enable HDMI 2.1 features, all of your home entertainment components must have HDMI 2.1 ports. So if you're hooking up a PS5 to a soundbar connected to your TV, all three devices must support HDMI 2.1. You also need to use ultra-high-speed HDMI cables rated for 48Gbps to connect everything. Visit our guide to the best HDMI cables for recommendations and more details. 

You can feel the difference between a good rain jacket and the best rain jacket as you're caught in sudden downpour without an umbrella. For starters, let's establish that water-repellent, water-resistant, and waterproof are not equal terms. We made sure to recommend only the most effectively waterproof rain coats for women that effectively sealed out all moisture.

It goes beyond waterproofing. A high-quality raincoat will also have details like zippered heat vents or an adjustable hood to keep you comfortable while you're on the move.

I lived in New York for five years and have lived in the Colorado mountains for ten, so I know firsthand what makes a rain jacket worthwhile according to different needs. After putting 33 leading rain jackets for women to the test, I can say my top picks offer A+ waterproofing, great breathability, and some extra nice-to-have features.

Waterproof ratings, explained

Waterproof ratings (usually measured in millimeters) tell you how much water pressure a material can withstand before it starts to leak. Three layer jackets, or 3L, usually have a rating over 20,000 (20K) millimeters.

The breathability rating (also measured in millimeters) tells you how much water vapor can seep through a square meter of material in 24 hours. The best rain jackets for women balance a waterproof and breathability rating, like the 2.5L Helium UL and its 20K/20K rating.

Our top pick overall is the Outdoor Research Aspire 3L. Ultralight rain gear usually means thinner fabric and less of a reliable water barrier. With the Aspire's three layers and high waterproof to breathability ratings, you have a better chance of holding back heavy downpours and staying dry.

Our top picks compared:

How we tested the best rain jackets for women

Water resistance

We tested 33 jackets in wet and windy weather and wore them for as long as possible each time it rained. When it wasn't raining, we did a "drench test" where we wore each jacket under a shower head, powered at light and heavy flows to simulate different rain storms. During the shower test, we checked whether our clothes underneath got wet.

Comfort

Our testers wore each rain jacket out in the world on multiple occasions to assess each one's comfort. We looked for overall fit of the jacket, range of motion in the arms and hips (particularly when fully zipped up), and how comfortable the jacket felt on the body after 30 minutes to a few hours. 

For rain jackets that could be worn running, walking, or hiking, we wore them on moderately-intense activities to assess how breathable each was and, therefore, how comfortable on the move.

Weight and durability

These two factors are a bit personal: Some people prefer a barely-there, lightweight raincoat while others prefer one that's heftier and more protective against the elements. Additionally, some people are way harder on their gear and need a higher level of durability than others. 

All of our recommended jackets are a comfortable weight and durable enough for the average wearer — that is, they'll hold up for normal amounts of wear and tear for the activity they're intended for (e.g., walking around cities, rainy runs). That being said, we have specific categories for those who need a highly technical jacket, and those who need a super lightweight travel jacket.

Usability

Considering a rain jacket is intended to protect you in less-than-ideal weather, it ought to be frustration-free to put on, zip up, and walk around in.

For each jacket I tested, I took it on some kind of walk outdoors in order to assess the functionality of each jacket and it's features. Specifically, I looked at things like pocket placement, convenience of zipper and buttons, how easy it was to slide the hood on and cinch it at the face in case of wind, and the like. I also considered how loud, crinkly, or swooshy the material of each jacket was when out walking, since this seemingly-small detail can lead to big annoyances over time.

Meet the expert behind this guide

Rachael Schultz, style contributor and outdoor gear expert: Formerly the Health Editor at Insider Reviews, Rachael is now based in Colorado where she tests activewear and other technical apparel. She has over a decade of experience conducting experiments to verify that her subjects live up to brands' claims.

For this guide, Rachael tracked forecasts in order to give rain jackets the fullest outdoor analysis possible. During dry spells, she'd pivot to simulating rainfall in her own shower and inspecting jackets' seams for leaks. Whether out for a neighborhood walk with her dog or traveling cross-country during peak rainy season, her assessments give you a range of stylish rain jackets so you can enjoy the outdoors in any weather.

Learn more about how the Reviews team tests clothing at BI.

Best overall: Outdoor Research Women's Aspire 3L Jacket

The first time I tested rain jackets, Outdoor Research's Aspire II jacket was my top pick. Its latest iteration — the Aspire 3L — builds on everything that made its predecessor so great, now with one huge improvement: A new proprietary 3L fabric that's waterproof and breathable.

I had found that the Aspire II jacket's main drawback was it wasn't technically savvy enough for heavy-rain outings. But with the new upgrades to the Aspire 3L, Outdoor Research has bumped it up to be a highly technical rain jacket. It works great whether you're caught in a quick passing thunderstorm at a sports game, or on a multi-hour hike in the Pacific Northwest.

It's more technical (and well-ventilated) than ever before. This jacket is made with three layers of a proprietary material that's treated with Nikwax DWR, which I witnessed cause each water droplet to bead up and roll off the surface. The extra layer makes it slightly thicker than the Aspire II, but I found the 3L to be equally breathable on hikes in Colorado and during humid rainstorms in South Carolina (plus, absolutely no water seeped in during our 60-second drench test).

Fabric aside, it has fully taped seams, vents to dump heat and keep you dry, and a well-designed hood with drawstrings to cinch it down when the wind kicks up. My field of vision was clear even with the hood on, which was not the case for each jacket I tested.

It moves with your body. New to the redesign, the Aspire 3L is constructed with what the brand calls "movement-mirroring stretch." This refers to the strategically-placed stretch panels that are integrated within the 100% recycled nylon shell. These flex in every direction, so you aren't fighting against your jacket while it's, say, pinned down by a backpack. It's a nuanced feature, but one I appreciated the more I wore the jacket.

It comes with helpful features. The Aspire 3L jacket has three roomy, external pockets (all zippered and waterproof), including a chest pocket that's big enough for your phone. It also comes with adjustable Velcro wrist cuffs.

One feature that sets this jacket above the competition: the OR TorsoFlo vents, which unzip nearly the whole side length of the jacket from armpit to hip via two-way zippers. This way, you can release heat from the top as needed, or add more mobility at the bottom if you're on a bike or wearing a waist dog leash.

It's more sustainable than most rain jackets. The forever chemicals, PFAFs, are pervasive in high-quality waterproof apparel. But the Aspire 3L is treated with Dry DWR, a PFAS-free waterproofing method. The coat is made from 100% recycled nylon fabric, and is the first technical apparel in the outdoor industry to be third-party certified carbon-neutral by Climate Impact Partners.

Best budget: Columbia Hikebound II Jacket

It kept me totally dry in a 30-second drench test. I tried four rain coats that cost under $100, and the Columbia Women's Hikebound II outperformed them all. Not only is this rain jacket completely waterproof, but it's also fully seam-sealed. As I stood under a shower head, I stayed completely dry inside the jacket.

The hood doesn't crumple in the wind. It has a wide, roomy fit and, combined with the high chin cuff, will guide any falling water away from your face. This hood cinches down, which you can secure any time a breeze kicks up.

It has thoughtful bonus features that go beyond its price point. The Hikebound II has similar details to the more expensive raincoats I tested. There's waterproof seam sealing, three roomy pockets (including a vertical chest pouch for your phone), two front closure methods (zipper and velcro), a cinchable hem to seal out moisture, and even adjustable wrist cuffs. Plus, it's PFAS-free.

It's not insulating, but has room for layers underneath. I didn't feel constricted with a sweatshirt underneath, making this jacket more versatile for different seasons.

It's not the best for hot, humid climates or long hikes. The material feels a little stiff compared to other women's raincoats I tested. It packs down to about the size of a small bread loaf, while the OR Helium UL is closer to a grapefruit. It's breathable on its own, but there aren't any underarm or back vents to help dump heat if you're sweating.

The velcro can be annoying to unfasten. It caught my hair a few times, and takes some effort to peel apart once the jacket is closed.

Best long: Fjällräven Vardag Rain Parka

If you're looking for a long raincoat that will keep the majority of your body dry and look sleek on wet city walks, Fjällräven's Vardag Rain Parka delivers—and then some. 

It's made from a totally waterproof eco-conscious material. This waterproof shell jacket is crafted from a 2.5-layer recycled polyester that has a PU membrane and proved completely waterproof during our drench test. The material is the perfect thickness and weight to keep you feeling protected but not weighed down when wearing this jacket around the city for hours. It fits on the roomier side, which is ideal for wearing layers underneath (we did find the material cold on bare shoulders when wet). It has a roomy hood and long silhouette to keep 75% of you dry in even the nastiest of rain storms.

It has a sleek design. The vertical, button-flapped pockets are convenient, roomy, and protective to stash items you want easy access to. The high collar and adjustable hood are effective at keeping rain out without impeding your visibility. It has a two-way main zipper to offer more range of motion when riding a bike around the city, say. Most of all, this coat has snap buttons from top to bottom for a quick closure, which we found particularly nice during testing since zipping a long rain jacket can be cumbersome to do up if it's just lightly raining for a few minutes.

At $350, it's not cheap—but the material, durability, and features all make this jacket feel quite luxurious and, truthfully, like it would cost more.

Best lightweight: Outdoor Research Helium UL Jacket

It weighs next to nothing. At 5.6 ounces, this rain jacket packs down quite small (roughly the size of a grapefruit).

A thin jacket like this doesn't offer much warmth. The lighter weight means little insulation. No water seeped through, but the cold certainly did. If you want to layer underneath, size up.

Despite its thinness, it's shockingly waterproof and wind-resistant. The Helium UL is crafted with 2.75 layers with a 20K/20K waterproof rating (remember: the best rain jackets are 3L, so it's nearly there). It's also made with fully seam-taped seams.

It performs well in brief downpours. In a drench test, this jacket kept me completely dry for 30 seconds under a constant stream. It will save you if you're caught in a storm and are seeking shelter, but I wouldn't trust it in extended downpours. That said, I found it to be pretty wind resistant and breathable as I wore it on a hike through the mountains.

The hood stays put in the wind. It has a tiny brim to shield your face and a cinch in the rear to keep it secure. The adjustable wrist cuffs keep your sleeves locked in place to prevent water from getting in. This jacket also has two YKK-zippered pockets and a cinchable hem.

Best for travel: Halfdays Mary Rain Jacket

It's stylish and highly versatile. I wore the Mary Rain Jacket on a rainy, spring 10-day trip to Maine and it was technical enough to protect me through many rain showers. It was loose enough to fit a midlayer puffy under on the cold coast, and stylish enough to not ruin any of my outfits.

It's not as waterproof as a 3L jacket. If you need something more heavy-duty, I recommend the Stio Ender or Outdoor Research Aspire 3L.

It doesn't pack down as small as the Outdoor Research Helium UL, but it's still an ideal travel jacket. It folds down to about the size of a loaf pan, and still feels pretty lightweight at 24 ounces. I found it convenient to wear during long airport travel and easy to stash in the overhead bin on top of my suitcase.

It's fully waterproof, wind-repellent, and breathable. The Mary Rain Jacket is made from 100% recycled Nylon with a PFC-free DWR coating.
The fabric has a 10K/10K waterproof to breathability rating, so it balances water protection without trapping body heat inside (the wide bottom helps with that, too).

The adjustable hood, hems, and cuffs keep the elements out. The hood is large with a cinch that holds fast in a gust of wind (though I'd prefer if there was a second cinch on the back). This jacket has fully taped seams, YKK waterproof zippers, snap-adjustable sleeve cuffs, and a cinchable bottom hem.

Best for hiking: Stio Ender Jacket

If you live in a wet climate or are looking for the best rain jacket to take on outdoor adventures, the Stio Ender rain jacket is near-perfect.

It's designed for serious rainstorms. Created out of Jackson, Wyoming by people who live and adventure in the mountains, the brand's PeakProof 3L shell is made from 100% recycled nylon, finished with PFC-free DWR (two wins for the environment) and offers 20,000mm of waterproofness with 10,000g breathability. Not only is it the perfect balance between waterproof and breathable, but it's also extremely durable, made with Tricot backer. On top of all that, it's very lightweight (12.8 ounces).

During testing, this jacket proved reliably waterproof under heavy and continuous water flow. In fact, it performed better than a technical rain jackets double its price. It felt seamless to wear while on fast-moving hikes through the Colorado mountains. 

It has a flattering silhouette, despite all its bonus features. The Stio Ender has three zippered pockets; zippered, armpit vents to dump heat; and one of the best-fitting adjustable hoods we tested (it cinches like a baseball cap, rather than tight around the face). I particularly liked the brushed fleece chin guard when the jacket was zipped all the way up. I also appreciated the that the fit hits the sweet spot of not too baggy and not too tight. 

The hem is slightly dropped in the back, but it doesn't cover the top of the thighs or much of the butt. Also, it only comes in three colorways (though I do love all three) and has a limited size range, which are the main reasons it didn't earn the top spot. But if you're looking for a highly technical rain jacket you can trust, and this size and color range works for you, we couldn't recommend the Stio Ender more.

Most stylish: Woolrich Waxed Trench Coat

It's nearly waterproof. This long trench coat is made from a waxed cotton-nylon blend that's both water-repellent and wind-resistant. While technically not 100% waterproof, it kept me perfectly dry under my umbrella during a spring downpour in New York.

Considering most city dwellers brave the rain with an umbrella overhead, this jacket is water-resistant enough to keep you dry on a typical rainy day while you're between shops, cabs, or the subway. Its rear slit has a snap closure for when you need to keep extra slush out, and the two generous front pockets have a hidden side opening. There is no hood on this rain coat, but that's part of what keeps the silhouette so clean.

It's classically elegant. Woolrich is a heritage brand known for making incredibly high-quality outerwear in classic silhouettes that'll last decades — and this trench holds true to the brand's name. Available in two colors, the waxed outer has a sleek and clean aesthetic to it. The more technical material is contrasted by rib-knit velvet wrist cuffs and collar for a refined touch. The jacket is designed with two ways of closing: a two-way zipper for full coverage and hidden snap buttons for quick security. The outside of the full-length flap has faux buttons for an added touch of smart aesthetic.

It runs very large. Not only is this rain jacket quite long, but it also runs rather big. For reference, I am 5'5" and typically a Large in jackets. The Waxed Trench I'm pictured in above is a Small and hits just below mid-shin. Sizes do run down to an XXS, but it would likely be floor-length on anyone under 5'2".

Best insulated: Patagonia Women's Tres 3-in-1 Parka

We know: $700 is a lot for a rain jacket. But for three different coats —all of which are sustainably made, durably constructed, and backed by a lifetime guarantee — it's a pretty good deal, especially if you live in a true four-season location where your needs change frequently and fast.

It's three jackets in one. Patagonia's Tres 3-in-1 Parka consists of two main jackets: A performance outer shell, made from 100% recycled polyester with an eco-conscious, DWR finish that is completely waterproof, and an inner 100% recycled, 700-fill-power, down insulation liner jacket. Separately, you have a long, down winter coat for those frigid, humid days where the damp air chills you to your bone.

It's easy to transition from one to the other. The rain jacket has a two-way full zip — very convenient if you like to ride a bike around the city, say — and a storm flap for a sleeker look and convenient, hidden snaps to close the jacket when you're dashing out and don't want to fuss with the zipper.

It keeps your entire upper-half warm and dry. This jacket not only looks expensive, but feels expensive. Both the outer shell and inner insulated liner have zippered pockets with a brushed fleece lining to keep your hands warm. The outer shell has an adjustable hood that also snaps off for a sleeker, city look, and a tall collar to protect your face from wind and rain. 

As a rain jacket alone, this outer lining certainly gives the Fjällräven Vardag Rain Parka a run for its money. And while this jacket is, as we said, expensive, Patagonia's reputation and apparel longevity speaks for itself — plus, the brand offers a money-back satisfaction guarantee.

Read more about our favorite gear from the B Corp brand in our full Patagonia outdoor clothing review.

Best for running: Janji Rainrunner Pack Jacket 2.0

Janji's Rainrunner Pack Jacket 2.0 is incredibly lightweight at just 7.2 ounces. I tested it out on runs and hikes and loved its permanent flap vents at the waist in the front and back. It's strategically designed to keep water out while preventing heat build-up. It also has a drop hem in the back for better splatter guard on muddy trails.

It's great for outdoor exercise. Despite its incredibly-lightweight construction, this rain jacket is shockingly durable. It's crafted with a 2.5-layer laminated shell of ripstop fabric (tough and windproof) treated with a PFC-free C0-DWR (eco-friendly and waterproof) coating.

It's especially handy for active lifestyles. As an avid runner, Janji makes some of the my favorite workout clothes. This fully seam-taped jacket has two zippered hip pockets (including an inner mesh pouch to minimize bounce), and semi-elastic wrist cuffs that stay in place when you run. The hood is an elasticized, scuba-like type with bungie toggles. It has a small visor in the middle to keep rain off your face and still allows for 180º of visibility. The jacket is very lightweight and comfortable to wear tied around your waist when the sun comes out, or it can be stuffed inside its self-stowing pocket and tossed in a backpack.

It can handle steady rain. During the drench test, the Rainrunner sufficiently kept water out during 60 seconds of significant water pressure, even around the flapped vents. It's not going to keep you dry in an hour-long, heavy rainstorm in Vancouver, but if you get caught in a sudden downpour, it will surprise you by how well it keeps water out during the stretch of time it'll take you to reach shelter. If you want a light jacket to bring on a run or a hike just in case, the Rainrunner is incredibly well equipped. 

Other rain jackets we tested

What we liked

Quince Weather Proof Oversized Rain Jacket ($80): For under $100, this rain coat gets the job done protecting you from moisture. The Columbia Hikebound II is a similar price while also more waterproof with a more universally-appealing cut, but if you prefer a longer, oversized rain jacket, it's a great budget pick.

Helly Hansen Seven J Rain Jacket ($120): Helly Hansen is a well-respected technical brand, and the Seven J is completely waterproof with thoughtful details. It didn't outperform the Columbia Hikebound II enough to warrant the price difference, but it's definitely a solid rain jacket.

Vuori Nomadic Packable Rain Shell ($248): A 3L, water-resistant shell with fully-taped seams, this rain jacket is comfortable to wear and has a cute, boxy cropped fit. It didn't make the cut as it's not fully waterproof and the shorter cut isn't as ideal for protection against the rain, but if you're looking for a sporty-looking rain jacket to wear over athleisure on misty spring days, it's a great choice.

Canada Goose Tofino Rain Jacket ($795): In true CG fashion, this jacket feels and looks incredibly luxe and is offered in a stylish cut with a ton of great features like copious pockets. It's also fully waterproof and wind-resistant. That said, the cut is going to be too short for solid rain protection to anyone over 5'7" and it's not the lightest jacket.

Janji Zephyrunner Wind Shell ($156): This ultralight rain jacket feels like nothing on your body and scored ⅘ on waterproofing, making it a really great choice as a running rain jacket. The brand's Rainrunner Pack Jacket's built-in vents and slightly superior waterproofing edged out this pick from making it into a top spot.

Cotopaxi Cielo Rain Trench ($210): This jacket is fully waterproof and has nice features like adjustable wrist cuffs and a back vent. However, the fabric feels cold inside and the jacket only has a zip closure, no snaps or velcro, which is less practical in a longer trench coat. If you're looking for a more affordable trench rain coat than the Fjällräven's Vardag Rain Parka or Woolrich Waxed Trench Coat, it's a solid pick.

What we didn't like

Rains Long Jacket ($140): This gorpcore rain jacket looked promising in photos, but the loosely structured hood restricted our peripheral vision and the cheap snap buttons were prone to flaking off. Overall, it was way overpriced for the quality.

Carhartt Storm Defender ($150): This jacket looks steezy and has a baggy, unisex workwear fit. That said, it only has 10K/10K waterproof breathability and, while it'll keep you dry for light-to-moderate rain storms, the thin fabric gets very cold inside, making it not very comfortable.

Fjallraven Bergtagen Lite Eco-Shell W ($425): This jacket has Fjallraven's trademark high-quality construction, with full waterproofing and fabric that water beads right off. But the fit is off: The sleeves are long and the hood is oversized, impeding visibility. Also, there's only one pocket on the whole jacket and it's small and at the chest.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here.

I spent a recent Friday afternoon doing something incredibly important for humanity: making an AI-generated rap about data centers. I'd logged into Google's Gemini for actual work, but got sidetracked by a shiny new music feature and, well, priorities shifted.

The workflow was peak 2026: I needed to check who rapped "Baby Got Back" for a story. ChatGPT told me (Sir Mix-a-Lot), and I was gripped by a creative urge.

"Recreate this famous rap, but make it about big data centers (and AI bubble concerns), rather than big butts," I wrote.

Chat delivered lyrics in a few seconds. Then, remembering the Gemini music feature, I jumped across to that chatbot and piped in the lines. I asked for a nasty '80s rap vibe. What I got was Broadway-adjacent hip-hop with strong theater kid energy. Not quite Run-DMC. More Rent meets rack density.

Lows: The AI rapper stubbornly sang "jigawatt" instead of "gigawatt," and refused to pronounce "SaaS-y" correctly, no matter how many times I had Gemini redo the tune.

Highs: It delivered choice lines about PUE and capex with unsettling enthusiasm. (PUE = power usage effectiveness, or how efficiently data centers use electricity).

Of course, I shared the rap. One colleague called it "an abomination." Another said, "you burned so many trees doing this but I love it," which feels directionally correct.

We're not at AGI yet. But we are, apparently, at AI-generated infra rap. If you want a listen, lmk and I'll send the song over.

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• My partner and I lived in a van full-time before leaving for an off-grid property.
• Both experiences came with benefits and downsides, and we eventually moved to a walkable city.
• Van life was affordable but sometimes stressful; our off-grid home was gorgeous but very remote.

Exhausted from the 9-to-5 hustle, my partner and I sold most of our belongings and built an old 1996 Chevy Express conversion van into a tiny home.

We'd previously been living in the suburbs of St. Louis, and we were ready for a little more adventure and excitement. We wanted something different than anything we were used to.

When we found out we were pregnant around two years later, we knew it was time for some roots, and we found an off-grid home on 40 acres in northern New Mexico. Both experiences were amazing and exciting, yet stressful and exhausting in their own ways.

Van life gave us freedom and flexibility

Traveling around and living in a van full-time was as epic as it sounds.

Our monthly bills were significantly lower than we were used to: We mainly paid for gas, insurance, and the occasional campground.

We could go anywhere we wanted to, whenever we wanted to. We were able to work from our computer next to a babbling river or while watching the sunrise over Grand Teton.

We went on epic hikes with our dogs, and explored parts of the country we never would have visited otherwise — the pockets of this country that are hours from the nearest airport.

We worked when we decided it was work time, played when we wanted to play, visited friends and family when we were in their general area, and met other quirky travelers who were soaking up this type of freedom.

Van life wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, though

We learned early on that this lifestyle came with some high costs (and I'm not talking financial ones). We thrived on routine, but it was hard to establish much of one when we were picking up our lives and relocating to another city or state every week or so.

It felt like as soon as we'd get into a rhythm, we'd end up packing the van to head to relocate and start over again. Most of the time, we had only a general idea of where we'd park the van next.

We usually opted not to stay at established campgrounds. This helped us save money, but it did add a layer of stress. We rarely knew exactly where we would sleep, or what a spot would be like once we got there. We also needed a sliver of cell service to work, which wasn't always guaranteed.

Another issue we discovered about van life? You're the same person in the van as you are in the house, only the walls are smaller. This amplifies any more challenging traits.

If you're messy, your van will start to feel very overwhelming, very quickly. If you have big emotions, they will be amplified by that fiberglass shell.

We decided to trade the road for an off-grid home

An unexpected pregnancy made us realize we were ready for a more permanent home base and wanted to start our journey to parenthood.

We weren't specifically looking for off-grid property, but knew we wanted space in a remote area. We hit the jackpot when we found a fully off-grid home in New Mexico on 40 acres with a detached workshop.

We were mostly ecstatic, but there was a part of me grieving the nomadic identity I'd wrapped myself in the previous years.

Our off-grid home gave us space and independence

We quickly fell in love with our new home. We enjoyed the view of the mountains and the ability to do or build whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted to.

We also adored the unexpected perks of off-grid living, like how a wood-fired stove "warms you three different times" — when you stack the wood, when you chop the wood, and finally, when you burn the wood.

There was also the time we made food and watched TV, completely clueless about the fact that all our neighbors were in the midst of a power outage.

Just like living in a van, though, off-grid life came with trade-offs. Our well pump was electric. During one snowstorm, our solar panels weren't getting enough power.

We had to run a generator, but it wasn't enough, so we scooped up buckets of snow, melted them over the stove, and used the melted liquid to dump into our toilets so we could flush them. Little joys of off-grid living!

After 2 years, we pivoted again

It wasn't until our son was born that we had another epiphany. We were so far from a hospital and our family. It was time for something new.

We're grateful for both our adventures in the van and our solitude on the off-grid property. They challenged us and nourished us in their own ways, delivering lessons we needed for both those chapters in our lives. Plus, they gave us some epic stories to share around the campfire.

We now live in a beautiful part of St. Louis near an enormous park with friendly neighbors, loads of kids, and endless nearby shops and restaurants we can reach on foot.

This isn't what we expected for ourselves, but just like the van and the off-grid property, this perfectly serves us for where we are right now.

• Parental leave policy, and specifically maternity leave policy, varies heavily across US companies.
• UCLA researcher Hillary Cookler tracks the parental leave policies of the 500 largest US companies.
• Eighteen companies stand above the rest in terms of transparency and length of leave.

A host of factors go into deciding whether to have a child, from finances and medical expenses to one's lifestyle and living situation.

But in the US, another sometimes crucial detail is the companies where parents work.

The US is the only developed, high-income nation that doesn't guarantee national paid parental leave, according to the BBC, although 14 states and Washington, DC, have enacted their own mandatory paid leave programs.

Employers' policies can therefore make all the difference in how family planning and postpartum care look. For eligible workers, the Family and Medical Leave Act provides unpaid leave and job-protection guarantees, but it's up to employers to set their own paid policies.

Amid economic uncertainty, some companies, such as Deloitte and Zoom, are scaling back leave benefits for some employees. Still, parental leave policies as a whole are trending in the other direction, according to Hillary Cookler, a researcher and doctoral candidate at UCLA Anderson who annually tracks the parental leave policies of the 500 largest US public companies by revenue.

"The trend that I've broadly observed is that [paid parental leave] is expanding over time," Cookler told Business Insider. "More firms are offering it, and they're also offering longer leave."

In her most recent data from October 2025, she scored each company based on the transparency of its policy and the length of the primary parent's paid leave.

Using this data, she compiled a list of companies that publicly disclose their paid parental leave policy and offer paid parental leave for birthing and non-birthing parents. This data was then sorted by the length of paid leave for mothers and birthing parents.

The specifics of companies' policies vary, with some stipulations depending on the caregiver, the parent's role, or the method of birth. The policies apply to full-time, eligible US employees. All listed companies offer 20 weeks or more of paid leave in total for birthing parents.

See 18 of the best large companies for maternity leave, based on Cookler's data, listed in alphabetical order.

Adobe

Adobe offers up to 182 days (26 weeks) of paid leave for birthing mothers and will pay 100% of the employee's salary during that time, according to its publicly shared policy. The company also lets mothers begin their leave up to 30 days before their child is born.

Mothers who adopt a child are eligible for 182 days of paid leave if the child is under 6 years old.

For new fathers, Adobe offers up to 112 days (16 weeks) of paid leave.

Amazon

For full-time employees at Amazon, birthing parents are offered up to 20 weeks of fully paid leave, while "supporting and adoptive parents" are offered up to six weeks, according to the company's policy. Mothers can begin their leave four weeks before the baby is born.

Amazon also offers a leave share program, in which employees can give six weeks of paid parental leave to a spouse or partner who doesn't have paid leave through their employer.

Capital One Financial Corporation

Capital One offers "20 weeks of paid leave for birthing parents and 12 weeks for all other new parents," per its publicly shared policy.

Citigroup

Citigroup offers a standard 16 weeks of "paid parental bonding leave" to all new parents at 100% base pay, according to its policy.

Birthing mothers receive an additional six or eight weeks of fully paid leave — depending on whether they have a traditional birth or C-section — giving birthing mothers 22 to 24 weeks of paid leave in total.

eBay

eBay offers 20 weeks of fully paid leave to birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents.

The company also offers other benefits to parents for family building, including adoption reimbursement of up to $10,000 and surrogacy reimbursement of up to $25,000.

Eli Lilly and Company

At Eli Lilly, all new parents receive 12 weeks of paid leave in addition to 8 weeks of unpaid leave, according to its publicly shared policy. Birthing mothers are provided an additional eight weeks of paid maternity leave, for a total of 20 weeks.

Like other companies on this list, it also offers family-building support, including $25,000 for adoption or surrogacy.

GlobalFoundries Inc.

The technology manufacturer offers a baseline of 12 weeks of paid parental leave, while birthing mothers and surrogate/adoptive parents are eligible for a total of 20 weeks of paid leave, according to the company's careers page.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company

HP Enterprise Company offers six months of paid parental leave to all new parents. Fortune reported in 2025 that the company allows new parents flexibility with their leave, with some parents staggering it or returning on a part-time schedule.

Lam Research Corporation

At Lam Research Corporation, all new parents get 16 weeks of fully paid leave, while mothers receive an average of 26 weeks, with the ability to get more if certified by a doctor, per its policy.

The company also offers $10,000 towards adoption expenses and subsidized backup daycare.

Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley offers 16 weeks of paid parental leave for all new parents and six to eight additional weeks for birthing mothers, per its publicly shared policy.

The company also offers other benefits, including subsidized backup care and perks like "a silver baby spoon engraved with your child's name."

NVIDIA Corporation

NVIDIA provides birthing mothers with 22 weeks of fully paid leave, as well as benefits like "unlimited reimbursement for surrogacy and adoption expenses," according to its website.

Fortune reported in 2025 that non-birthing parents at the company receive 12 weeks of paid leave.

Oracle Corporation

At Oracle, new parents are eligible for up to 14 weeks of paid leave, while birthing mothers can receive further leave for childbirth.

S&P Global Inc.

S&P Global offers 26 weeks of paid parental leave for all new parents.

Salesforce

Salesforce provides 26 weeks of fully paid parental leave to parents who are the child's primary caregiver. Secondary caregivers, which the company describes as "the parent who takes on a supporting role," are offered 12 weeks of fully paid leave.

Synchrony Financial

Synchrony Financial offers 22 weeks of paid maternity leave for birthing mothers, while non-birthing parents are offered 12 weeks of paid leave, according to its policy.

The company also offers benefits in family planning and up to 60 days of backup childcare.

The Hershey Company

The Hershey Company offers 20 weeks of salaried parental leave to all new parents.

Truist Financial Corporation

Truist provides all new parents with 10 weeks of paid leave, and mothers can combine this with maternity leave for a total of 20 weeks of paid leave.

Workday, Inc.

At Workday, new mothers can combine their 12-week paid pregnancy leave with the 12 weeks of paid bonding time given to all new parents, for a total of 24 weeks, per its policy.

• My early Mother's Days were joyful, then became a rare break from parenting.
• After my son died, I had to learn how to mother both a living child and a dead one.
• Now I spend Mother's Day at the cemetery, the only place I feel like my whole family is together.

I don't specifically remember my first Mother's Day as a mother, over 16 years ago. But I know it must have been so sweet. My husband probably served me breakfast in bed. My five-month-old son William likely had his breakfast there with me too, nursing himself back to sleep. We probably took a walk in the neighborhood, or maybe we drove over the Bay Bridge from Oakland into San Francisco and walked the Embarcadero, enjoying the spring sunshine of the Bay Area.

Being a new mom had so much promise and hope, and I'm sure I relished the fact that my husband Nick and I had finally become a family, not just a couple.

As my family grew, Mother's Day became a chance for 'me time'

My son Kai was born in 2012, expanding our family and making us parents for the second time. With that came more responsibility, more mothering. Mother's Day soon became a day to escape. A day to leave my husband in charge of all the parenting, all the decisions, all the care our tiny children needed.

As the default stay-at-home parent, all I wanted on Mother's Day in that season was time alone, away from my beautiful but always needy kids. It was a day where I could get my nails done, exercise without kids at my feet. A day to pretend, just for a few hours, like I didn't have any kids at all.

After my son died, everything I understood about motherhood changed

And then William died in a tragic ski accident in 2019, and everything I understood about motherhood changed. All the care, all the love, all the time I had poured into my child wasn't enough to keep him alive. I spent so much time feeling ashamed and embarrassed that my child had died on my watch. I felt like I had failed as a mother.

So that first year, the first Mother's Day after William died, I pretended it didn't exist. I was not capable of celebrating, of acknowledging this hallmark day that felt like a slap in the face to a newly bereaved mother.

I found a way to keep parenting my son after he died

And then about six months into my grief, we decided to try again. To have another child, to parent again. Once that happened, I started to learn how to parent William again, too. That I had to, and wanted to, still actively parent him, just in a different way.

He was no longer there to tuck in at night or help with his homework. But I could talk about him to others, share his story, create a legacy for him by doing service in his name. And teach his new little brother all about him.

I found a pathway through the darkness to bring William's light back into our world by choosing to become a mother again, and to continue to mother him.

Now I spend Mother's Day at the cemetery

These days, I choose to spend Mother's Day at the cemetery. It's the place where I feel most complete as a family. My husband and I bring our living children there, and we sit and visit with our dead son.

This was never part of the plan, that dream of having a beautiful family all wrapped up in a perfect bow. But it's my life, and I've developed ways to cope with the realities of being a bereaved mom, especially on Mother's Day. It's important to me to be at the cemetery on that day, to hold all the joy and the pain together at once. To show my living kids that we can show up, even when it's hard and not what most people do.

We've turned the cemetery into a place of joy and connection

I don't want our pilgrimage to the cemetery to feel like a burden for my living children. So we make an event out of it. We pack a picnic brunch — coffee, croissants, fruit. We bring a blanket. We bring frisbees, balls, anything to keep the kids active and moving. My teenager climbs the old maple tree directly in front of William's gravesite and swings down from its thick branches. The little one, Bodhi, watches from below. He'll do that someday, too.

We have two dogs now, too, so they also come along for the outing. We always walk around the whole cemetery, commenting on all the new graves, all the old graves, wondering who they are and what stories lay beneath. The young ones, babies not even a year old. The graves simply marked 'Father,' or 'Mother.' There are so many stories just like ours.

And we connect with the dead, our dead son, William, the one who made me a mother. And we love the living family that we are today. I have learned that we can, and must, do both.

• After college, I was unemployed for two years, working in the food industry and freelancing.
• As a first-generation American, I felt survivor's guilt when I landed my first full-time job.
• I also feel guilty for landing in my dream career when other Gen Zers struggle to find jobs.

Before I graduated from college, I feared I'd have no breathing room and would have to jump right into the workforce. Instead, I had to face something even worse: the prospects of no entry-level jobs on the market.

After graduating in 2024 and having no set work prospects, I resorted to cold emailing and freelancing for multiple publications. I also worked in restaurants as my side gig until something more permanent came through. Though at times my part-time job in the food industry felt like my only job, and my desired career in journalism felt like a silly little hobby.

Two years later, after graduating from college, I've taken the first steps in my career and successfully landed a job. I'm finally receiving a livable salary in a healthy workplace.

The new job is bringing relief to my life, but it also brings a cloud of survivor's guilt.

I don't understand why I get this opportunity when my family still struggles

Though I've finally broken into my industry, shouldn't I feel relief rather than unease?

My body isn't a stranger to imposter syndrome or the feelings of survivor's guilt. I experienced a smaller version of this once before at my first real internship. It was my first time in an office and a newsroom.

Things were fine until I saw a delivery driver drop off lunch to my boss.

The "why me?" of it all started to set in: "Why do I get to do this, and that delivery driver doesn't?"

As a first-generation American, I was taught early on to hustle for the American dream. The majority of my family still belongs to a blue-collar life. At times, it feels as if I'm put on a pedestal meant to be the only one to make it out. And if I don't, I would be a disappointment.

Now in my new role, my family and community are ecstatic, yet I wish I could take them along with me. I wish that they could've been awarded these opportunities as well, after years of them working hard and sacrificing for me and others.

I also feel guilty for landing a job when other Gen Zers are struggling

During a time of massive layoffs, I feel beyond grateful, though confused at the ongoing hardship my generation is up against.

Though my fellow Gen Zers and I are being invited to join the workforce like any other generation, due to economic instability, there are few entry-level jobs. Some of us are forced into internships.

I know many people I graduated with who are still chasing invoice after invoice, waiting to see if their internship or freelance gig will turn into a full-time job with benefits — before the looming AI bubble attacks jobs.

Though my friends and I celebrated my debut into the workforce, most of my cohort is still without jobs. If not, like me, they are just starting to get their foot in the door as well.

I attribute my success to the values that were instilled in my family and the motivation I continue to get from my peers. I help where I can by lifting others up and helping them find job opportunities.

But a real main source of my stuck survivor's guilt comes in the fact that the current job landscape is in desperate need of repair, and there's nothing a beginner like me can do to fix it.

• A study shows that the amount of money needed to own a home is increasing.
• A handful of cities require more than a quarter-million in salary to afford a home comfortably.
• In other cities, you can afford a home with less than the US median salary.

Americans searching for homes today are facing some of the harshest conditions yet. Some people are opting for extreme measures, like living in tiny homes in expensive neighborhoods, moving in with family members, or, sometimes, a combination of both.

A number of prospective homeowners have uprooted their lives and moved to different parts of the country — or even the world — in search of a more affordable lifestyle.

The South, in particular, saw a large influx of Northerners seeking lower home prices and a lower overall cost of living. The Midwest, too, has become a hot destination due to its growing affordability.

How much money you make plays a major role in where you can afford to live. A report from Consumer Affairs shows that the amount you need to make in order to buy a home doesn't generally align with how much people are making.

The median household income in the US was $83,730 in 2024, according to the US Census Bureau. The Consumer Affairs report found that an annual income of $120,796 is needed for homeownership, assuming a 10% down payment. That number varies depending on where you live.

The report found that California is home to the most cities that require a handsome salary, with nine out of the 10 cities in the top 10 being in the Golden State. Meanwhile, the cities that support salaries on the lower end are scattered throughout the South and Midwest.

See what cities require the highest and lowest salaries to afford a home.

The 10 cities that require the least income to afford a home

10. Macon, Georgia

Income: $67,832

Median home-sale price: $197,500

Population: 157,056 (Macon-Bibb County)

9. Fort Smith, Arkansas

Income: $67,064

Median home-sale price: $196,000

Population: 90,507

8. Columbus, Georgia

Income: $66,245

Median home-sale price: $210,000

Population: 201,830

7. Mobile, Alabama

Income: $66,241

Median home-sale price: $232,250

Population: 201,367

6. Binghamton, New York

Income: $65,989

Median home-sale price: $175,000

Population: 46,773

5. Peoria, Illinois

Income: $65,486

Median home-sale price: $145,900

Population: 111,696

4. Flint, Michigan

Income: $63,535

Median home-sale price: $50,000

Population: 79,735

3. Shreveport, Louisiana

Income: $63,030

Median home-sale price: $185,000

Population: 176,578

2. Youngstown, Ohio

Income: $59,433

Median home-sale price: $90,000

Population: 59,123

1. Huntington, West Virginia

Income: $53,650

Median home-sale price: $144,450

Population: $44,942

The 10 cities that require the most income to afford a home

10. Honolulu, HI

Income needed: $255,280

Median sales price: $605,000

Population: 344,967

9. Salinas, CA

Income needed: $262,403

Median sales price: $699,000

Population: 160,783

8. Oxnard, CA

Income needed: $276,805

Median sales price: $797,500

Population: 200,616

7. San Luis Obispo, CA

Income needed: $280,591

Median sales price: $1,102,500

Population: 49,729

6. San Diego, CA

Income needed: $293,618

Median sales price: $950,000

Population: 1,404,452

5. Los Angeles, CA

Income needed: $301,221

Median sales price: $1,025,000

Population: 3,878,704

4. Santa Maria, CA

Income needed: $305,535

Median sales price: $617,500

Population: 111,346

3. Santa Cruz, CA

Income needed: $354,973

Median sales price: $1,352,000

Population: 62,581

2. San Francisco, CA

Income needed: $358,090

Median sales price: $1,687,500

Population: 827,526

1. San Jose, CA

Income needed: $501,012

Median sales price: $1,489,000

Population: 997,368

• A group of college friends from Villanova has met on Zoom every Thursday night for over 300 weeks.
• The tradition began during the pandemic in March 2020, but the friends never plan to stop.
• The weekly catch-ups have led to more in-person hangs and much deeper adult friendships.

It's a Thursday night catch-up like any other for the group of old college friends from Villanova. Their conversation, peppered with inside jokes and nostalgic references, easily floats through elder millennial topics — job transitions, sleep regression, "Gen Z coworkers, what do I do with them?" — before it's briefly interrupted.

"Guys, I'm so sorry, I have to jump," Kate Reynolds says from Bourbon Street, her wired headphones swinging on the screen like Mardi Gras beads. "We just got to the karaoke bar, but I love you all."

These 10 friends are on Zoom, where they've met every Thursday at 9:30 p.m. since March 19, 2020. Like so many of us, they started their weekly virtual catch-up as a pandemic reprieve. Unlike the rest of us, they never stopped.

Across 321 Zoom calls, they've logged on from five countries and 13 states, helped each other through six major career changes, celebrated two weddings and three babies between them, and turned 35 — then 40 — together.

Thursday nights have become sacred to the "NovaZoom" crew. It's taught them how to foster long-lasting adult friendships, and they plan to keep the tradition going forever — or at least until they move into a retirement home together.

Back to the beginning

College life was still somewhat analog when the NovaZoom group met as freshmen in 2003. If you wanted to catch up with a long-distance friend, you'd call them. The only way to share your location was an AIM away message. Texts were rare — each cost 50 cents to send, and 10 to receive. TV was a communal activity, especially when there was a new episode of "Friends" or "Sex and the City."

"It was probably the last era where our lives weren't fully dependent on technology," said Nick Sampogna, one of the NovaZoom members.

The group formed through typical college experiences — orientation, dorm life, clubs. They bonded over a shared love of the performing arts, joining Villanova's theater and singing groups. The circle expanded as various members fell in love (one at grad school, another in the middle of a game of Flip Cup).

In the years after graduation, the friends spread out across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. They still found ways to see each other, usually for weddings or holidays. Yet as time passed, their catch-ups became more about logistics or nostalgia.

"The group chat was less frequent," Sampogna said. "It usually centered on planning the next gathering, or an old memory."

That changed on March 19, 2020, as COVID-19 lockdowns took effect across the country. Amy Gallo had just finished a virtual happy hour with coworkers when she decided to text her college friends to see if they wanted to log on and chat.

"I was feeling pretty giddy and thought, 'Oh, I miss my Nova friends, why don't we try this?'" she recalled. "People hopped on, and we played Kings Cup."

In the weeks that followed, someone would broach the group chat on Thursday afternoon to tentatively see who wanted to keep meeting on Zoom. "How are we feeling about Thirsty Thursday again tonight?" one text said. "It's Thursday again. Anyone want to keep this going?" another read.

Eventually, people stopped asking. The answer was always yes.

Participation numbers changed weekly in those first months of lockdown. The NovaZoom could get upward of 20 people when it was someone's birthday, often celebrated with a virtual party and some trivia.

"Ten of us is the usual number now, but when we started, it always kind of varied," Sampogna added. "There were weeks when we had a full Brady Brunch going on."

The virtual happy hours fell away for most as a collective screen fatigue set in during the summer of 2020, but NovaZoom never wavered. The weekly Zooms felt like a return to the rhythm the group had established as undergraduates, when their catch-ups were as easy as walking across the hall. In the midst of unprecedented times, it had become an "anchor of normalcy."

Parenting, pranks, and the past

The group often gets asked the same two questions when people find out about their weekly Zoom: "You guys are still doing that?" and "How do you still have stuff to talk about?"

Their conversation topics have varied widely. During the early COVID days, they'd stay up late and reminisce about college or look for the funniest things you could buy on Temu.

"There were a couple of 4 a.m. nights," Sampogna said.

The parents of the group have swapped tips and shared milestones as they've transitioned from teething to day care. There's been frequent discussion about one member's ongoing quest to find love. Countless Thursdays have been dedicated to Villanova basketball games, especially during March Madness, although there's been plenty of serious conversations as well.

"We've discussed politics, racism, feminism, whatever is happening in the world," Adriane Reilly said. "And I think that's a reflection of the kind of friends we have found, that we're able to do that and still transition into funny jokes."

"Yeah, it certainly hasn't been all serious," her husband, Brendan Reilly, added. "The last several weeks we've been trying to determine which Nicolas Cage movie Amy should watch first."

The weekly chats have given them new inside jokes and memories that spill into their group texts and in-person hangs — like when they concocted a yearlong prank to send mayonnaise-related gifts to a friend who can't stand the condiment.

"Without this Zoom, we wouldn't have half of the jokes we have now," Brendan Reilly said.

Friendship beyond the algorithm

Much has been written about our loneliness epidemic. Teens are talking to AI chatbots, doctors are prescribing book clubs, and there's a host of friendship apps promising to swap swipes for connection.

"Instagram offers this incredible idea that we're following our friends," Mike Denny said. "But it's a very filtered view of their world."

NovaZoom not only lets the group hear the stories behind their photos, but also gives friends a place to be their unfiltered selves. Sometimes, that's laughing about mayonnaise; other times, it's helping each other grapple with dating or balancing care for their kids and aging parents.

"Everyone hears about how my dating life sucks, and it's been really helpful, because otherwise you're in your head," said Jenny Sweeny. "Thursday night gets me out of it. I always know there's this home base to come back to."

"We have these personas we have to put out into the world, but I always feel like my truest self is in this space," added Gallo.

The group is seeing each other more often in the real world, too, and thanks to the weekly Zooms, there's no need to rehash months of stories in the span of a dinner or crowded party.

"We don't have to do that 'How are you? What's been going on?' catch-up," Denny said. "We can just be present in that space."

By spending more time together, the group's children have also gotten to know each other — and their parents' friends — better, even seeing them as extended family members.

"Because of our Zoom and these in-person moments, I'm 'Uncle Nick' instead of 'mom's friend Nick,'" Sampogna said.

A sacred ritual

There's no obligation to join the Zoom every week, and no punishment if you miss a few in a row. Some Thursdays, all 10 friends are logged on; other nights, there could be just two or three.

As the years have gone on, though, the group has learned that showing up consistently only leads to deeper connection.

"You have to be a good friend to have good friends, and that's putting in the work," Gallo said. "Some of our conversations started pretty awkwardly in the beginning. We had nights where it was small talk, but we showed up."

"You have to show up or be the one to put the invitation out there, not knowing what's going to be received," she added. "Nothing's going to happen if you don't take initiative."

The NovaZoom has no plans of stopping their weekly Thursday date. Their dream is to live in a retirement home together someday, or hit the Powerball jackpot so they can buy Nova Scotia — which they'd promptly rename Villanova Scotia — and move in.

Even in this fantasy, their Thursday nights would remain unchanged.

"Thursdays are still virtual," Reynolds said. "That's the town motto."

• When my son went on a school trip to England last year, he couldn't use his phone most of the time.
• It was a huge change for both of us — we text most of the day, usually.
• The silence felt loud to me, but he found he mostly didn't miss texting.

When my son told me the details of his nine-day school trip to England last June, one rule stood out above the rest: they wouldn't be able to use their phones for the majority of the trip.

He'd be an ocean away, staying in dorms at a school in England, attending a structured conference during the day, and I wouldn't be able to reach him directly whenever I wanted. Instead, communication would come through the chaperones on WhatsApp. They promised updates, photos, and a way to get messages to the kids if needed.

This is a kid who texts me to ask what's for dinner and tells me about a good test grade, a bad day, and weekend plans, all before he walks in the door from school. Like most parents of teenagers, the bulk of our conversations these days is through text messages. And, suddenly, I needed to recalibrate my expectations.

It was an adjustment from our usual communication

At first, that silence felt loud. I found myself reaching for my phone out of habit, expecting something that wasn't coming. Proof that he was OK in the form of a photo or even a thumbs-up.

Instead, I had to rely on the chaperones' updates. I found myself scanning group photos of smiling teenagers from all over the world, searching for my own kid. Was he smiling? Did he look happy? Was he making new friends? The photos and the cheerful chaperone updates that went along with them told me he was not only fine, but fully engaged in his adventure.

Without the constant back-and-forth, I wasn't tracking his day in real time. I didn't know what he had for lunch or what made him laugh in the middle of the afternoon. I wasn't part of the small, ordinary moments — and that was the point. He was having an experience that was entirely his.

He missed taking photos most of all

My son's biggest complaint when the trip was over wasn't the lack of communication with me, it was the lack of a camera. He hated not being able to take photos whenever he wanted. It's such a modern frustration, the instinct to document everything, to hold onto moments by storing them somewhere external. But maybe because of that, he remembered more.

One of the chaperones told me that at one point, he asked if he could use his phone to text me. That alone would have been enough to undo me. But then she added that it was because he wanted to send me real estate listings. Apparently, after a few days there, my kid had decided he was ready to move to England.

I laughed when I heard that, but it stayed with me. Even in the middle of this independent, phone-free experience, he was still thinking about home — and, in his own way, trying to pull me into what he was discovering.

He came home with fewer pictures, but more memories

When he came home, the stories came in pieces over a span of a few weeks rather than all at once. We'd be having dinner, and he'd tell me about the jacket potato he had or a funny moment with his friends. We'd be watching a movie set in England, and he'd share a history lesson or point out a landmark and say, "I've been there."

I asked him if not having his phone readily available changed anything for him. He shrugged, the way teenagers do. "It was kind of nice not having to think about it," he admitted. That might be the simplest and most revealing answer of all.

We spend so much time worrying about how connected our kids are — how much they're on their phones, what they're missing in real life while they scroll. For my son, not having a phone in his hand meant observing and participating without the constant pull to capture or share. For me, it meant letting go of the illusion that I needed to be part of every moment to know he was OK.

We both learned something from that trip

I can't say it was easy. There were moments, especially in those first couple of days, when I missed that feeling of being tethered electronically 24/7 and the connection it allows. But by the end of the trip, I understood what he'd gained from the experience — and what it had given me.

Because as much as I love hearing from him, I also love knowing that, for a little while, he was exactly where he was supposed to be, living fully in the moment. And that feels like something worth holding onto, even if I didn't get a text about it when it happened.

• I live in Egypt, and I always remind tourists that there are other gems to see beyond the pyramids.
• For example, I love hiking Mount Sinai and snorkeling in the Red Sea.
• I think hot-air ballooning over the temples in Luxor is also a must for first-time visitors.

Whenever I travel, telling people I'm Egyptian typically prompts a conversation about the Great Pyramids of Giza.

As someone who's stood in front of the pyramids multiple times, I understand the fascination — they're truly a breathtaking sight.

However, as a local who's lived here for 30 years, I know that Egypt is home to many equally impressive gems.

Here are six things I always tell travelers to do when they visit my homeland.

Hiking Mount Sinai at sunrise is a must.

Mount Sinai, known as Jabal Mūsā in Arabic, is one of Egypt's highest mountains, sitting at 7,497 feet above sea level.

The mountain is considered a holy site for all Abrahamic religions — there's even an old church and a mosque tucked at the summit. In my opinion, this isn't just a typical hike — it feels like a beautiful spiritual journey.

After a hike along the mountain's Camel Trail, 750 steps take you to the summit. If you plan accordingly and reach the top by sunrise, the horizon will turn into warm shades of amber and soft yellows. It's a moment that's absolutely worth hiking for.

I love floating in the salt lakes at Siwa Oasis.

I've seen the Siwa Oasis all over my Instagram feed, and in my opinion, no trip to Egypt would be complete without a visit to the area's turquoise-blue salt lakes.

The first time I visited, I didn't know how to swim, but because of the water's high salinity, I was able to float.

In addition to the unmatched beauty, the lakes are also believed to have healing properties, making this a perfect spot for visitors interested in natural wellness.

Hot-air ballooning in Luxor is a magical way to see ancient Egyptian temples.

Like the pyramids in Giza, I think seeing the Ancient Egyptian temples in Luxor is a must for first-time visitors to Egypt.

One of my favorite ways to view them, however, is from a hot-air balloon ride. I took one at sunrise to celebrate my 29th birthday, and it was absolutely worth it.

Once we were launched into the pink sky, we floated for 45 minutes over lush-green fields and various archaeological sites, including the iconic Temple of Hatshepsut.

While surrounded by dozens of other colorful hot-air balloons, it's safe to say I felt like I was on cloud nine.

One of my favorite memories is camping in the Black and White Deserts.

For the perfect weekend trip in Egypt, I recommend visiting the Black and White Deserts, which are within driving distance of each other.

These deserts, known for their otherworldly landscapes and bizarre rock formations, are two of my favorite places to sleep under the stars. For my 27th birthday, I took a group of close friends camping here, and together, we fully embraced the outdoors.

In the White Desert, we visited Crystal Mountain, went off-roading in the dunes of the Valley of Agabat, and went for a dip in a natural spring. My favorite activity in the Black Desert, however, was making sand angels.

The Djara Cave is a destination worth the drive.

Although its location in the Western Desert is a bit remote, the Djara Cave is a hidden gem you won't regret going the extra mile to see.

This prehistoric dripstone cave features gorgeous rock formations and ancient Neolithic engravings. Plus, warm candlelight flickers across the rugged dripstone walls of the cave, creating a dim, more intimate atmosphere.

Snorkeling and diving in the Red Sea is a great excursion year-round.

People come from all over the world to dive into the Red Sea, thanks to its marvelous coral reefs, diverse marine life, and year-round great temperatures.

Even if diving isn't your cup of tea, snorkeling is also a wonderful experience.

Some of the most popular beach towns for diving or snorkeling are Marsa Alam, Dahab, Sharm El Sheikh, and Hurghada. In my opinion, they're home to the best beaches and diving spots in the country.

If you're a pro diver and have to choose just one town, I highly recommend Marsa Alam. It's a less-crowded destination, with incredible marine diversity, including dolphins, sea turtles, dugongs, and even sharks.

For beginners, I recommend snorkeling in Dahab, as there are plenty of shallow sections, and it's a great place to get your certification from professional instructors.

• Victoria Yorio hustled since high school and identified as a perfectionist.
• She quit jobs at McKinsey and JPMorgan to move to Spain after realizing she felt unfulfilled.
• Yorio doesn't recommend simply following your passion, since financial leverage was key for her.

This as-told-to is based on a conversation with Victoria Yorio, 26, a teaching assistant with NALCAP in Madrid, Spain. Business Insider has confirmed her previous employment at McKinsey and JPMorgan. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Growing up in a very blue-collar community — my dad is a police officer, my mom worked in admin, my grandpa did construction, my grandma was at Walmart — I never expected my journey to pan out the way it did. The corporate world I entered was uncharted territory.

I've always been a perfectionist

I've been a go-getter perfectionist since high school, when I'd get 100 on tests and still do extra credit. I graduated from George Washington University in three years, with a degree in international affairs and minor in Arabic, which I'd heard was one of the hardest languages to learn.

I landed my first full-time job at USAID, working remotely and living at home in New Jersey because of the pandemic. The work was interesting, but the salary was low, and I had student loans. I wanted the autonomy to move out of my parents' house and to build more generalist skills, and I didn't want to choose whether to go out to dinner or pay my phone bill.

Making it work at McKinsey and JPMorgan

Some kids spent all of college preparing for consulting recruiting, but I didn't even know what a consultant was when I was an undergrad. It felt like a pragmatic career path, though, so I applied to McKinsey and landed a role as an analyst in Dallas.

The job came with a good salary, but also a lot of travel and personal sacrifice. I realized in two years that it wasn't the lifestyle for me, though I really appreciated the experience, and I would do it all over again.

I knew I wanted to do something similar, and learned through networking that internal consulting at a big company could be a good fit. A recruiter at JPMorgan responded to a LinkedIn message, and I joined as a strategy associate in New York City.

The hours were better than McKinsey, since I usually worked 9:00 am to 6:00 pm and made six figures. For the first time, I had a chance to think about what I wanted from my life. I had hustled since high school, and I won the prize: a good job, a studio in Manhattan, nights at restaurants and cool DJs, and travel. But I felt empty and unfulfilled.

At first, I thought I was struggling to adjust to New York. I went to meet-up events, tried volleyball and yoga and stand-up comedy, but something wasn't clicking. My definition of success crumbled — I had reached it by 25 and didn't feel any joy. I realized I didn't know who I was outside of a job title or aiming for a goal. The problem wasn't JPMorgan; I think I could have worked anywhere and reached the same conclusion.

One mentor asked me, "What would be the most rebellious thing you could do in your life right now?" I immediately said I'd quit my job to move to Spain and teach English. She asked why I wouldn't do it, and I said because it was stupid, crazy — not me.

But I found a program and applied to scratch an itch, not because I thought I'd go. The time crept up to decide about the program, so I talked to my boss, who asked if I'd regret not going. She was very supportive, and so was her boss when I handed in my two weeks' notice. People don't talk about how hard it is to leave a job that's good to you.

Yet by the middle of September last year, I was on my way to Madrid.

Building leverage made the leap to Spain possible

I went into full consultant mode when I arrived in Spain, finding an apartment in four days and negotiating the rent. I've been teaching English to sixth graders preparing for their Cambridge Certificates, a language test, and I can see the progress right before my eyes.

After the six figures I made at JPMorgan, I'm now paid a €1,000 monthly stipend. It's a pretty tight budget compared to what I'm used to in America, and I've had to dip into my savings to create a lifestyle I enjoy.

Having a financial safety net has given me the comfort to take this leap, since I built financial leverage when I was younger. It's easy to say, "just follow your passion," but I don't recommend doing that without building leverage first. It would be irresponsible to ignore how important financial stability and a professional network are to charting your own course.

I used to be obsessed with doing the hardest thing and being the best, but at this point, I just want to do something purpose-driven. I've started posting about my journey online, and I've gotten an overwhelming response, so maybe I'll pivot to coaching.

Before coming to Spain, I drafted five- and ten-year plans. Now, it's a one-year plan. Where do I want to be next year? What do I think will make me happy next year? For the first time in my life, I'm okay not having all the answers mapped out.

This 'as-told-to' essay is based on a conversation with June Boyd, the great-grandmother of 14. She's also a nonprofit professional, temporarily working as a day care provider in Toledo, Ohio. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a bit of a night owl and sometimes stay up until 1 a.m. I've created a ritual of unfolding the sofa bed mattress where I sleep every night.

Some people think it's a strange thing for a 90-year-old to do, especially when they hear I have a six-bedroom home. However, I'm quite comfortable.

It's not as if I need to sleep there. It's my choice.

I'm more than happy to let the family I live with have their own space. After all, there are 13 of us — four generations. The youngest is a 1-year-old boy. I'm the oldest, of course.

I've lived in the heart of Toledo for over a decade

Toledo — long considered our city's African American neighborhood — has been home for 12 years. Before that, I had a place on the opposite side of the street.

One day, I saw some construction and asked the contractors what was going on. They were converting a single-family home into a duplex with two bedrooms downstairs and three upstairs.

Since it was only $700 to rent, the house seemed like a good option for me at 76 because I could live downstairs without having to take the stairs.

After I settled there in 2014, I spent a long time sprucing it up the way I wanted with paintings, furniture, and my other belongings. I always figured home is where you make it.

My family started moving in over the years

In the upstairs unit, the bedrooms are divided. My younger brother and sister decided to move in upstairs because I had the space. It was good to keep it in the family.

Six years ago, my grandson, a contractor, and his significant other, a stay-at-home mom, took over the other upstairs space with his family, partly to save money.

My grandson's five kids are also living in the upstairs unit, including his 1-year-old son, his three girls (who share a room with a bunk bed and a twin bed), and his 10-year-old boy.

There's a separate outside entrance with steps to their upstairs apartment, as well as a staircase from my dining room. I'm always respectful of the family's privacy, so I don't go up that often.

In 2021, things became even more of a family affair when my 69-year-old daughter moved into the downstairs apartment to be with me to pool our finances. Two years later, her 42-year-old daughter had a massive heart attack and joined us with her three children, including her baby, who was then only 6 months old.

My daughter, granddaughter, and the toddler, now 3, share the queen-size bed in one of the two downstairs bedrooms. My great-grandsons have twin beds in the other. As I said, I'm fine sleeping on the sofa bed.

The cost of living is so high

Illness has played a large part in our living situation, and we truly support each other. It shows how strong we all are.

My daughter, who typically lives downstairs with me, and my granddaughter are staying 120 miles away in Cleveland, where my granddaughter works for Amazon, and my daughter is being treated for cancer in the hospital. She is due to come home permanently in April after surgery.

In our case, there are no downsides to multigenerational living. The main thing is that it reduces the cost of living, given how high prices are. We split the $700 rent two ways.

We don't fight. We have some disagreements from time to time, but nothing out of the ordinary. It's not in our DNA.

Still, I'm a very strict taskmaster who demands respect. I put a lot of emphasis on this; family is probably the most important network that you can have.

Most Sundays, I make what we call a 'Big Momma Dinner'

When we all come together, we use the occasion to discuss what's happening in the world. My main objective is to set an example for these little children because the future is theirs.

I love to cook. My specialty is turkey — which my son, who also lives in Toledo, carves — and dressing, with collard greens and potato salad. Or I'll make candied yams with mac and cheese. Then, for dessert, we'll have pineapple upside-down cake. It's a soul food dinner.

We have a table with a leaf that expands to seat six people. I'll usually be at the head of the table. The children sit at their own little table in the dining room or, sometimes, at a TV tray in the living room. They're in and out all the time, playing together and constantly talking.

Our situation isn't traditional — generally, your children move out when they become adults — but it's wonderful to have everyone under the same roof, interacting with each other. I always put a lot of stress on love, and we have a lot to go around.

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

There's a certain irony to being a middle manager right now.

We've been chronicling how vulnerable managers have become in the AI era. Companies are flattening org charts to boost efficiency. Coinbase is eliminating "pure managers" as part of its AI-driven job cuts. Block has rebranded them as "player-coaches." Meta and Snap have made similar proclamations.

And yet, many of these same managers are tasked with pushing their colleagues to embrace the very technology that poses such a threat to them. As my colleague Emily Stewart writes, people are becoming inadvertent job executioners.

Disney, JPMorgan, and KPMG are among the companies tracking and incentivizing employees' use of AI tools, according to Business Insider's reporting. Managers have become the front lines of AI adoption — monitoring usage, building dashboards, flagging laggards, and nudging employees who aren't engaging enough. (Tell us where you stand on AI leaderboards and whether they are a healthy form of office camaraderie).

The dynamic raises a bigger question: What, exactly, is the optimal role of a manager now?

Business-school case studies have long framed managers as the bridge between executives who devise strategy and employees who execute it. These are the people responsible for motivating teams and getting the best out of their workers.

But AI is reshaping that equation. Some managerial functions are being automated. Many are overseeing AI agents in addition to their growing number of direct reports.

The real issue is whether this flattening of managers (and increased responsibilities for those who remain) will ultimately make organizations better, or if the proverbial transformation pendulum has swung too far.

What should the role of a middle manager be in the AI era? Send me your thoughts at srussolillo@businessinsider.com.

As dogs age, they tend to sleep more and lose muscle mass, leaving less natural cushioning around their pressure points. As a result, they're more likely to experience joint pain. Many senior dogs also develop arthritis or sustain injuries that cause discomfort. The best orthopedic dog beds help relieve the pain associated with these issues. These beds are made of resilient memory foam that offers even, medium-firm support to reduce stress on pressure points and joints. But it's not just senior dogs that can benefit from a supportive bed. Veterinarians say orthopedic beds are a smart choice for dogs of all ages.

To select the best orthopedic beds, we tested 22 popular options with a group of mostly senior pups who napped and lounged on each one for several weeks. We also asked veterinarians what features to look for in an orthopedic dog bed. Our top pick is the Petfusion Ultimate Dog Lounge, which earned high marks for support, comfort, and durability. For a more affordable option, the Bedsure Pet Orthopedic Dog Sofa provides great support and comfort, though it's not as durable or easy to clean.

Read more about how Business Insider Reviews tests and researches pet products.

Our top picks for the best orthopedic dog beds

Best overall: Petfusion Ultimate Dog Lounge - See at Chewy

Best budget with bolsters: Bedsure Pet Orthopedic Dog Sofa - See at Chewy

Best budget mat: Bedsure Pet Orthopedic Mat - See at Chewy

Best stylish: Lay Lo Dog Bed - See at Etsy

Best for small dogs: Big Barker Barker Junior - See at Chewy

Best for crates: Big Barker Ortho Lift Crate Bed - See at Big Barker

Best overall

The overall best orthopedic dog bed is the Petfusion Ultimate Dog Lounge, a bolster-style bed with a durable twill cover and supportive memory foam mattress. We've tested the large size with a 45-pound Labradoodle and a 45-pound beagle. Both dogs rested comfortably on this bed and were evenly supported by the dense memory foam.

Our experts say many dogs, like our Labradoodle and hound testers, prefer to have something solid to rest their backs against while they sleep. This bed's soft yet sturdy bolsters wrap around the sides and back of the bed and extend partially across the front, giving dogs plenty of spots to snuggle up or prop their heads.

The memory foam thickness varies depending on the bed size. The jumbo bed features 6 inches of foam for added support, while the extra-large and large beds are 4 inches thick, and the small bed is 2 inches. The brand does not offer a bed in a size medium.

Be warned that if your dog is a heavy shedder, loose fur can be stubborn to remove from the cover. A sticky roller left behind lots of fur, but the best pet hair remover, the Chom Chom Roller, got the job done.

You can easily run the cover and liner through the washer and dryer, but it's somewhat difficult to weave the bolsters back into the cover. Aside from a small amount of pilling after washing and drying, the cover is extremely durable. It's also easy to spot clean, and the waterproof liner does a good job protecting the mattress from liquids and moisture.

Best budget with bolsters

For an affordable bed with plenty of sizes and colors to choose from, it's hard to beat the Bedsure Orthopedic Dog Bed, which costs between $50 and $100 depending on the size and color combination you choose. The bed impressed us so much that we named it the top budget pick in our guides to the best dog beds and best large dog beds.

The bed has a 4-inch egg-crate foam mattress that provides medium-firm support. Even the extra-large size held up without sinking or sagging under the weight of a 70-pound English cream retriever. Her guardian moved it wherever she went, even outdoors, and she comfortably slept on it for hours at a time. While the bed is somewhat heavy, it's still fairly easy to carry because its dimensions aren't overly wide or awkward.

The cover held up well, and the waterproof liner protected the foam during our soaking test. Spot-cleaning the cover after we smeared it with dirt and peanut butter had mixed results. We tested the bed in two different colors, and the cream top of the caramel version held onto some dirt. While the stain came out in the washer, machine washing wasn't as convenient as washing other beds. Because the bolsters can't be removed, you're left with a wet, bulky bed that takes longer to dry.

The liner's zipper also proved unreliable. On one cover, it got stuck after repeated use, and on the other, it fell off after two rounds in the washing machine. Still, given the bed's overall durability and affordability, we recommend it with the caveat to handwash the liner and handle the zipper gently.

Best budget mat

If your dog tends to sprawl out rather than cuddle up against bolsters, the affordable Bedsure Orthopedic Mat will keep them comfortable. The mattress-style bed is available in several colors, textures, and sizes. However, the eggcrate foam is only 3 inches high, except for the largest size bed, which is 4 inches high. Still, it offers more density and support than similar beds under $80.

While the thinner foam is less supportive than the other beds recommended in this guide, our dogs still took long snoozes on the mat, including two Leonbergers and a beagle. Typically, the Leonbergers took turns, but even when both lay on the bed together, they were quite cozy and evenly supported.

This mat outperforms the competition with a wide range of sizes and durable cover options. The top of the cover also has a waterproof backing to protect the foam from accidents. You can choose from a sherpa-like material or a quilted cooling cover. The cooling cover features polyfill between the top material and the waterproof backing, adding a bit more loft and comfort. Some options also come with a nonslip bottom, but not all, so read the description carefully before purchasing.

The sherpa material is difficult to spot clean since debris can become embedded in the fibers. However, both the sherpa and cooling covers came completely clean in the washing machine. The zipper runs along two sides of the bed, so it's easy to remove the cover for washing.

Best stylish

While the Lay Lo Dog Bed is one of the priciest orthopedic options we recommend, we think it's worth it if both quality and aesthetics are important to you. It features a two-layer foam mattress: an inch of cushiony memory foam and a denser foam on the bottom. You can choose from more than 20 attractive cover colors and prints, which are also sold separately.

It was easy for a short-legged 45-pound hound mix to step onto the 4-inch-thick size medium bed and circle around before settling in. While he gravitates toward bolster beds, we were surprised to see him choose this bed over other options on several occasions. It also has a nonslip bottom for stability on hardwood and tile floors.

The cover comes in neutral gray and ecru colors, bolder greens and reds, and prints like classic checker and houndstooth. The green grid cover we tested is made of a thick but flexible woven polyester that fits the mattress like a glove. Some of the other covers are made of recycled polyester and are textured rather than smooth. All covers have a fabric handle with a removable vegan leather wrap for easy carrying.

The cover readily absorbed the warm water we poured over it, and some moisture made it through the removable water-resistant liner. If additional protection is a high priority, you can purchase a waterproof liner from Lay Lo.

The bed passed our other tests with flying colors, from durability to ease of cleaning. However, when we reassembled it after washing, we had to take extra care not to catch the mattress liner in the cover's zipper. Be sure to compress the surrounding foam as you close the zipper.

Best for small dogs

Among the best orthopedic dog beds, the Big Barker Junior has the most versatile design. The bed resembles a chaise lounge, with a curved bolster at one end. We tested the size medium bed with a 10-pound chihuahua mix and a 12-pound terrier mix, and its firm core uniformly supported their bodies.

The foam was resilient, too, bouncing back immediately after our tester removed heavy weights to test for flattening. So long as your small dog does not have a problem climbing onto a surface 4 inches off the floor, it's a great choice.

The microsuede cover was unscathed in our scratching, digging, and seam-strength tests. "This thing is durable with a capital D,'' freelance reporter Alex Rennie says. Peanut butter, dirt, and black tea were easy to remove with spot-cleaning with dish soap and water. However, with only machine washing, peanut butter left oil stains on the cover.

Although this bed is expensive (the waterproof liner itself starts at $50 for the size small), it should last a lifetime. Big Barker even offers a 10-year guarantee because it is confident that the foam will retain 90% of its original shape and thickness for that long.

Best for crates

The Big Barker Ortho Lift Crate Bed is far more durable and supportive than a typical crate pad, making it a great choice for any dog who rests a long while in their crate. A 45-pound beagle was well supported, and their guardian also lay on the pad and couldn't feel the floor underneath.

The bed has a tough microsuede cover with well-constructed seams and zippers that aced all durability tests. In testing, the two-layer foam core never flattened and filled back out in less than a minute after we removed dumbbell weights that had been laid on it for four hours. The cover acquired a "dusty" look after washing, drying, and regular use, which is common with microfiber. We discovered the cover shrunk slightly after washing and drying, but we were able to reassemble it with a little extra effort.

The bed's price and height may be deal-breakers for some. You'll also need to purchase the waterproof liner separately. The 4-inch-thick foam could take away too much headroom from taller dogs unless their crate is very tall, while shorter dogs with limited mobility may find it difficult to step in and out of their crate. Like the brand's Barker Junior bed, which we recommend for small dogs, this crate pad carries an unbeatable 10-year guarantee.

The best orthopedic dog beds compared

What to look for in an orthopedic dog bed

The veterinarians we spoke with say there are several key features to consider. Here's what to look for when choosing a supportive orthopedic dog bed.

Materials and support: The reality is that brands can market their beds any way they want, and not all orthopedic foam is equal. However, what works for humans has been shown anecdotally to work for dogs, too. "The memory foam approach, which is used in a lot of human beds, has made it to the dog arena, whereby they show that the pressure is more evenly distributed over a larger area, so there's less risk of sores and it's more comfortable for the dog in general," says Dr. Joseph J. Wakshlag, a veterinarian and professor of clinical nutrition and sports medicine and rehabilitation at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine.

The best orthopedic dog beds we recommend contain either polyurethane memory foam or what a brand may describe as orthopedic foam. If a bed contains lower-quality foam, it will break down faster and may feel flimsy or springy. You'll also want to look for a bed made with foam that's at least 2 inches thick. We've found that anything thinner lacks orthopedic support, no matter how small a dog may be.

Comfort: Both bolstered or flat beds are suitable options, but it's important to choose the design that complements your dog's sleeping style. Meredith O'Connor, a dog behaviorist and trainer, says dogs sort out to be side sleepers or flat-out stretchers on a dog-by-dog basis. If your dog is a side sleeper who likes to lean against something while they sleep or prop their head up while lying down, a bolster bed is your best bet. Flat beds are excellent options for dogs who sleep sprawled out with their head even with the rest of their body.

Ease of entry: Conditions such as arthritis and mobility challenges can make it difficult for dogs to get in and out of bed, but certain features can help ease your dog down to rest safely. Look for nonskid bottoms, reasonably thick pads that aren't too high to step onto, and wide spaces between bolsters so your dog won't encounter any obstacles climbing in and out of bed.

Durability: The best orthopedic dog beds can set you back some change, so a bed that flattens, gets worn looking from rounds in the washing machine, or is easily ripped or scratched open will not pass muster. Consider beds with a dense memory foam core protected by either a waterproof cover or liner. Covers made of polyester and cotton both held up well in our testing.

Water resistance and ease of cleaning: Since some senior dogs and those recovering from surgery are more likely to have accidents and other hygiene issues, we recommend purchasing a waterproof bed with a cover that is easy to spot clean and comes completely clean after a stint in the washer and dryer.

Sizing: To ensure your dog has room to stretch out, choose a sleeping surface slightly larger than their length measured from the nose to the base of the tail. Dogs with longer legs will also need a deep enough bed to accommodate them.

Return policies and warranties: We recommend beds with at least a 30-day return policy, but keep in mind that some refunds only apply to unused beds. The pricier the bed, the more likely you'll see a manufacturer warranty for defects. Before you buy, make sure to read the company's return, exchange, and warranty policies closely.

Certifications: Materials safety certifications ensure that some or all of the materials in a product are free of materials known to be harmful to people. Products with the CertiPUR-US certification contain polyurethane foam that is made without formaldehyde, ozone depleters, prohibited phthalates, mercury, lead, and other heavy metals. In addition, the foam has low volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emissions and is not treated with flame retardants, which contain carcinogens and other toxins. A polyurethane foam producer needs to meet the criteria set by the Alliance for Flexible Polyurethane Foam to receive certification. The certification process includes submitting test results and samples along with a fee of several thousand dollars. The OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 certification is given after a manufacturer submits to an application process that includes a fee. OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 signifies that every part of a product is free of various substances that may harm human health. To receive a Greenguard Gold certification, a manufacturer submits samples for laboratory testing to verify that they meet low chemical emissions standards set by UL Solutions, an international materials safety organization.

How we tested orthopedic dog beds

We've tested 22 different orthopedic beds with dogs of various breeds and weights, ranging from 6 to 15 years old and 12 to 180 pounds. Our tests cover comfort, support, durability, and ease of care.

Comfort and support: Looking for the best options in each design, we looked for signs that our tester dogs were resting comfortably over the course of several weeks. We observed how much time they spent on the beds and whether they appeared fully relaxed while resting or sleeping. We got on the beds ourselves to assess how much support and stability the foam gave us, especially for our lower backs. Lastly, we used barbells and loaded duffel bags to see if any beds failed to support or spring back into their original shape after taking on the load.

Regardless of the foam type, we evaluated each bed to ensure it conformed to our tester dogs' bodies to distribute pressure evenly.

Ease of entry: We assessed how easily dogs could enter and settle into the beds. While extra-high beds can work for taller dogs and may provide better support, the best orthopedic dog beds tended to be somewhat lower-profile beds that were still firm and supportive. If a bed had a bolster, we made sure the entry points were wide enough for dogs to get in and out with ease. We also gave higher ratings to beds with nonskid bottoms and cover materials that weren't slippery to help pets avoid any sliding or scooting.

Durability and ease of cleaning: By yanking on zippers, digging on covers with metal dinner forks, puncturing seams with scissors, and scraping bottoms with sandpaper, we looked for hard-nosed durability in these beds. We smeared the covers with dirt and peanut butter and poured black tea on them, to see which beds were easy to spot clean. Then, after machine-washing and drying the covers and liners, we reassembled everything and looked for any lingering spots, stains, or fabric changes. We gave the highest marks to beds that stayed both firm and plush over the course of many weeks.

Waterproofing: The beds we selected claimed to have waterproof or water-resistant liners, and we made sure to test this ourselves. After pouring a cup of warm water onto the sleep surface of each bed, we waited 30 minutes before checking to see if any moisture made it through the liners to the foam mattress.

Meet the expert behind this guide

Lisa Sabatini, pets editor: I kicked off Reviews' dog beds coverage in 2022, beginning with our guide to the best dog beds. Along with my senior hound, Homer, I tested three of the picks in this guide, including the Petfusion and Lay Lo beds and the Big Barker Ortho Lift Crate Bed. Cumulatively, Reviews reporters and I have tested 22 orthopedic dog beds. Over the past four years, I've also pored over the specs of dozens more options in search of memory foam beds worth considering.

Orthopedic dog beds FAQs

Are orthopedic beds worth it for dogs?

Yes. Orthopedic dog beds can benefit pups at any age — not just older dogs or those with joint problems. These beds are made with memory foam, which helps distribute a dog's weight more evenly when they're lying down, minimizing pressure on joints and sensitive areas. "It is a rather simple concept regarding pressure points,'' Wakshlag says. "Depending on how the dog is lying, it creates pressure over areas like hips and elbows."

In addition to providing comfort, a supportive bed can also promote mobility, which is likely to extend longevity and can also help with behavior issues, says Dr. Katherine Houpt, a veterinary behaviorist and professor at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine who specializes in domestic animal welfare and has studied the sleeping patterns of shelter dogs. "Resilience is very important,'' she says. "Dogs do not need or want to sleep on the linoleum. They need a cushioned but supportive surface."

What is the best type of bed for a dog to sleep on?

The ideal dog bed is made with memory foam or orthopedic foam that provides uniform, even support. Wakshlag says stuffed beds made with polyfill lack uniform support, which can lead to soreness at pressure points.

Houpt also recommends beds with bolsters. "If you look carefully, you will see they prefer to sleep with their backs against their owner, or against the back of the sofa, or even against the wall,'' she says. "Thermoregulation is another big factor, and the dog does want to be in a warm place. That may be another reason they sleep with the back against something, to protect against drafts."

What's the best type of bed for a dog with arthritis?

Orthopedic veterinarians at Colorado State University say that managing canine osteoarthritis involves a combination of strategies, including therapeutic exercises, pain medications, and weight management. Wakshlag says a supportive orthopedic bed made with memory foam can enhance recovery from therapeutic exercises.

What is the best bed for a dog recovering from ACL surgery?

A well-designed bed can support ACL surgery recovery, says Dr. Brian Collins, a senior lecturer in community practice service at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. He recommends beds made with memory foam or similar materials to provide stability, comfort, and support. These materials help a dog rest comfortably and provide stability when they climb in and out or turn around. Beds with bolsters can provide extra physical support, a feeling of security, and a comfortable spot for a dog to rest their head.

For added stability, choose a bed with a nonslip bottom, or at least place it on a nonslip surface. "It should be easy to get in and out of with a low border or an open side that the dog won't struggle to step over," Collins says. "The bed should be big enough for the dog to comfortably turn around, change position, and stretch out on." In addition, he says an easy-to-clean, water-resistant bed is especially important for providing a clean environment while the incision heals.

• William Savitt is representing Sam Altman and OpenAI in Elon Musk's trial against them.
• He told Business Insider his experience as a cab driver and rock guitarist informs his career.
• A co-chair of Wachtell's executive committee, he has advice for young lawyers.

He used to drive a New York City cab. Now, he's in court going head-to-head with the world's richest man.

William Savitt has been spending the last couple of weeks in an Oakland, California courtroom representing Sam Altman and OpenAI in a blockbuster trial brought by Elon Musk.

As the co-chair of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz's executive committee and its litigation practice, he's the elite Wall Street firm's top enforcer.

Before his 25-year career at Wachtell, Savitt had an unusual career path. A Philadelphia native, he drove cabs and played in a series of rock bands before going to Columbia Law School. Savitt clerked for Judge Pierre Leval on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and then Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before landing at Wachtell. Over the years, he's represented numerous major companies — and Brad Pitt.

Savitt, like many lawyers, prefers to resolve a dispute and avoid the spotlight of a public lawsuit. But if the battle reaches a courtroom, Savitt relishes the litigation process. The "light of cross-examination," he told Business Insider, is "one of the greatest devices for the exposure of reality."

We spoke to Savitt before the trial about his career and for advice for young lawyers looking to pave their own path in the field — and what he looks for in a job candidate.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Looking back, what is the most lasting advice you received, or a specific habit that you observed, that you picked up from her?

RBG was a lawyer's lawyer before she became a judge's judge. She had many legal superpowers, but one habit of mind that distinguished her: She would always — always — begin reasoning from first principles.

She knew, and taught her clerks, that every point she'd argued and every issue she'd resolve was only the small tip of a very large pyramid with a very large base. To understand the point at the top, you had to understand every point all the way up.

This was part of RBG's genius, and an approach to legal thinking that I try to put to work every day. I should add that Justice Ginsburg had a remarkable capacity to reserve judgment, to keep an open mind. And that's another skill that I try to mimic — because it allows the lawyer, no less than the judge, to spot weaknesses and opportunities.

At Wachtell, you're the one interviewing young lawyers and jumpstarting their professional careers. What is the one interview question you always ask a candidate, and what does their answer reveal to you about their potential?

I don't have a magic question or a magic answer. But what I'm always most interested in evaluating is curiosity and skepticism.

Curiosity is key because it signals interest and enthusiasm. A curious lawyer will keep learning about being an advocate, and keep learning how to best apply that learning.

Skepticism because it signals rigor and restlessness. We are daily bombarded, as people and lawyers, with information, points of view, briefs, term sheets. Much of all that is just wrong; all of it can be improved and attacked. The best lawyers won't accept a legal theory or position until they've tested it to the point of exhaustion

You've represented clients who are both obscure and famous. How do you approach taking on the more visible clients? Do they require a special touch inside or outside the courtroom?

Every client requires a special touch! The art of the lawyer is to understand your client — to listen to your client — no matter who he or she might be. And that's also part of the joy of the job. It's hugely gratifying to figure out how to make a client comfortable while doing the hard and sometimes difficult work necessary to best solve their problem.

You spent your 20s playing in a rock band, driving a cab, and getting by on odd jobs before you went to law school. Can you share one skill you mastered during that period of your life that you find yourself using in the courtroom or other high-stakes situations?

Embrace surprises, enjoy the ride. The great adventure of driving a yellow cab in New York City is that you have no idea who you are going to meet next and no idea where you are going next. Or what on earth might happen in the backseat.

Most fares were uneventful but some aren't. And along the way, you meet some interesting people and go places you never otherwise would go.

Working with a band is humbling and exhilarating all at once. Our band never quite landed the record deal we wanted but we had great fun playing around New York and the East Coast.

For a young person today who feels they don't fit the "traditional" mold of a career lawyer, what is the one piece of advice you'd give them for breaking into this field and setting their own path?

A great computer scientist — one of the fathers of artificial intelligence — said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. There's a ton of wisdom in that.

There's no door not open to a young lawyer. Figure out what you want to spend your time doing — reading cases, arguing in court, fighting on deal terms, defending the indigent, or something entirely different — and look for a throughline to make it happen. It nearly certainly won't work as planned, and you nearly certainly won't end up where you expect, because no one does. But you'll own your career. It'll be yours, and therein lies the satisfaction.

• Princess Jahnavi Kumari Mewar is a member of India's Mewar royal family.
• She structured a family office and has been managing it for decades.
• Here's how she is preserving and growing her family's multigenerational wealth.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Princess Jahnavi Kumari Mewar, a member of India's Mewar royal family who runs her family's multi-family office and the private equity firm she founded, Auctus Fora. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I had this most tremendous privilege of birth. The last official, government-recognized king in India was my grandfather's elder brother, and then after that, the monarchy didn't really exist. It turned into a democracy.

I grew up as most kids would. The difference was that I ended up going to school within the palace with my cousins.

When we had VIPs come down for formal visits to the palace, part of the evening was about us holding our own. We'd learn about their culture, show them around our family properties, and have conversations beyond, "Hi, do you want to see my toy?" That foundation taught us how to be comfortable in any situation with anybody.

My parents had zero expectations that I would follow in the family business — my family was invested in various areas, including real estate, hospitality, consumer products, logistics, and education — but I was always very motivated to see what my father did and how much he loved it.

As a kid, I would run to his office and insist on sitting on his chair and signing things; they would just throw random files in front of me, which, I'm guessing, were headed to the shredder.

As I got older, I became more involved in the business, was allowed to observe, and occasionally found myself useful. That meant sitting through meetings I did not fully understand at the time, reviewing documents, asking inconvenient questions, and being corrected often enough to develop a certain respect for precision.

Still, money was never unlimited or guaranteed. When I went to university, I got a car, my rent was paid for, and I got pocket money, but it was never unlimited. I worked three jobs while still doing my assignments and going to classes. I worked for a catering company, as a club promoter, and as a telemarketer. It was a nightmare — that's when the privilege comes in.

A formal family office

At 18, I had been observing my father for years, and the expectation shifted to contribution. If something was assigned, it was expected to be delivered, and delivered well.

Less than four months before the global financial crisis, I got this weird gut feeling. I was at university in Melbourne studying business and international trade, and I called my father and said, "Whatever I'm seeing and reading, nothing is making sense. There's a lot of abstract information floating around, and it sounds like it's not going to be very good for real estate or hospitality."

It wasn't really coming from some miraculous wisdom. I just didn't know what to make of it, and I was scared of the future and what it might mean. It was bum-up, head-down, focused for a few months. We managed to exit several hospitality investments with a positive return before the global financial crisis.

In my early 20s, I really took over and started restructuring our investment company into a formalized family office.

My father and his friends and family, whose money the office managed, were about solidarity and unity in their investments more than value, and they didn't want to bring in outside financing.

The first step was to start getting paid. My father had co-invested heavily with longtime friends and family, but the brunt of the portfolio management costs was borne by us.

I remember asking my father if we could send out an email or a letter asking them to cover their own costs, and he poo-pooed the idea. So, without my father's consent, I made an announcement at a family party: you're going to have to pay your way to co-invest with us.

Other changes had to be made.

We became globally opportunistic, so I recalibrated our portfolio, allocating more to emerging markets and less to developing ones. Previously, emerging geographic markets were treated as side bets, but now they are structural priorities, provided there is clarity on governance, local alignment, and exit pathways.

We also became far more direct. Intermediation is expensive, not just in fees but in diluted accountability. We got rid of accountants, investment bankers, and pseudo-advisors.

When you walk into a room full of, let's say, portfolio asset stakeholders, you're going to get the same looks and the same questions: "Do you really know what you're doing or what you're talking about? " It certainly wasn't easy, but I decided I'm just going to make myself really, really unapologetic about being in the room, but also really, really listening and learning.

It's a very precarious balance. I also learned a lot from what I call the "dinosaur squad." They're protective toward my parents. They want to protect the portfolio assets. They are very risk-averse. They made me understand the absolute need for preservation before shooting the lights out.

• Tejal Rives had a side hustle while working at Amazon.
• When she was laid off from Amazon, she turned her attention to the business.
• Rives shared the time management tips that enabled her to juggle a side hustle and a day job.

When Tejal Rives was laid off from Amazon in October 2025, she and her husband had a plan.

They had bought a career-coaching and résumé-writing business, Do My Resume LLC, in 2024. Rives used some smart time management hacks to turn it into a side hustle alongside her job at Amazon, hoping she could one day quit and make it a full-time venture.

After witnessing other layoffs at Amazon, the couple agreed that if her product marketing role were to be eliminated, she'd become the primary parent to their child while running the business.

When the time came, Rives turned her attention to the business as planned, and has used her background in recruitment to share tips for job seekers online to boost the brand.

Rives told Business Insider she doesn't think everyone needs a side hustle, but it could be a helpful income stream and a safety net from an unexpected job loss if you're single or your family's breadwinner.

In her case, her husband is the breadwinner, but the business has given her some "fun money" to spend after being laid off, she said.

Here's how she juggled a full-time job with a side hustle, without burning out.

She worked set times and kept her side hustle and day job separate

If you're planning to start a side hustle alongside your day job, time management is an important skill to master, Rives said.

To avoid feeling overstretched at Amazon, Rives would block out dedicated hour-long slots in the evenings and on weekends to work on her business. When that timer went off, she'd walk away from whatever she was doing and take a break.

"That helped me not get burnt out," she said, adding, "I didn't want to lose myself and take too much time away from things that brought me joy."

She also kept her side hustle separate from her full-time job by taking client calls only in the evenings and on weekends. When she bought the business, she inherited some team members who could also handle calls and emails, which made things easier for her, she said.

Rives recommended that those building a side hustle commit small chunks of time each week, and increase that commitment based on their own desire and availability.

"People should consider their own lifestyle and responsibilities. Kids, family obligations, etc., all come into play," she said.

Do you have a story to share about starting a side hustle? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tom Pickett, the 57-year-old CEO of Headspace, a mental healthcare platform. He started his career as a pilot and graduated from TOPGUN, the US Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program. He is based in Menlo Park, California. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I became the CEO of Headspace in August 2024.

This is my first time in healthcare. I was the chief revenue officer at DoorDash for the last four years before coming to Headspace. Before that, I spent 10 years at Google and also ran a startup.

I spent the first part of my career as an F/A-18 pilot. I deployed on aircraft carriers and ended up going through TOPGUN. It was a great time in my life. I loved the operational nature of it, and it was exhilarating. People talk about jumping out of airplanes and feeling high for the day. I had that on a regular basis.

Sleep was easy back then. Now, it's the thing I focus on the most. I have more stress as a CEO. As you get older, it's harder to get the same sleep. I think about it as a practice, because you never quite nail it.

I'm not super-regimented, but there's comfort in structure and patterns. I try to stick to regular sleep times, and I like structuring the weeks and grouping things in certain ways. I find it more efficient.

Mental health continues to rise as one of the biggest challenges of our time — and it's not like much has changed in the last 20 years. In the midst of this AI transformation, there's an opportunity to rethink how we approach mental health. I thought it was a great opportunity to do something good for society and try to make a dent in a problem that matters.

I wake up around 6:45 a.m.

I try to keep my wake-up time as regular as possible. Part of good sleep is maintaining a consistent schedule.

I have a pretty quick morning routine. I get up, shower, get ready, grab a cup of black coffee for the road, and start heading my way into the office.

Some days, it's a good opportunity to catch up on the news. Some days, I'm thinking about other things. I use ChatGPT's voice mode to test out different ideas, and Headspace's empathetic AI companion Ebb to unpack what I'm feeling emotionally.

I work Monday through Thursday in person

I like to get to the office between 8:15 and 8:30 a.m. Usually, my schedule starts at 9 a.m.

Generally, I try to stack the more thought-intensive meetings in the morning because my best thinking happens then.

I typically have a mix of external meetings and calls with partners, investors, and potential customers. I also meet with my direct reports for one-on-ones once a week. Tuesdays are staff meetings, Wednesdays are business reviews, and Thursdays are more like strategy sessions.

I like the flexibility of working from home sometimes. If my daughter has a track meet in the afternoon, I can spend time on that.

I have lunch around noon

I usually have two to three cups of coffee in the morning, and then I cut myself off. I spend the rest of the day hydrating with a lot of water, and sometimes electrolytes.

I typically fast until lunch. Usually, around noon, I'll have something like a chicken salad. I try to keep it fairly healthy, with some mix of greens and a protein.

Running helps me process my thoughts

Flying used to be my high for the day. Now running is my outlet.

I try to leave work around 4:30 or 5 p.m. Three times a week, I try to squeeze in a run before dinner. I really struggle to get up early enough to do a workout, but I really enjoy decompressing after work and getting some physical activity before dinner.

Running is like a brainstorming session. Sometimes, halfway through a run, I'll stop and take notes.

I usually listen to music or podcasts while running. I don't have one podcast that I regularly listen to. We have an internal stream of industry news that comes in through our Slack channels, including podcasts. I listen to ones that are typically about a company, a leader, or an industry that I'm trying to learn about.

I've been cold plunging recently

It's a mental battle to get in the cold plunge, but afterward, your mind is clear, your blood is flowing, and it's a really good feeling. Even my kids have started doing it with me.

A lot of my friends have invested in cold plunges — it's become a little bit of the thing to do in Silicon Valley. My wife wouldn't let me buy one at first because she thinks men impulsively make purchases that they stop using after two weeks.

She convinced me to use our pool as a cold plunge during winter. We're at the point where our pool is warming up and no longer serves its purpose as a cold plunge. So we've decided to get one.

Dinner with my kids at 6 p.m. is a key priority

Work consumes a lot of my life, but the rest of it is being there for my family. Dinner is the one time that everybody is together each day. So I try to leave work to be home for that. We catch up on the day. It's usually quite boisterous. There's a lot of energy.

Three out of my four kids are at home. One of them is in grad school at UC Berkeley. Two of them are twins in their sophomore year of high school, and one is in seventh grade. They're in the thick of it, between school and all the activities and sports.

We all work after dinner

The kids are pretty busy because they're pretty stacked with homework after their sports and dinner. I usually put in another couple of hours of work while they're doing homework, which is great, because it's shared time together.

I help them with math and science when they let me, but they turn to Grok and ChatGPT now, too. I've used those moments to have conversations about responsible AI use.

My wind-down routine begins at 10:30 p.m.

I don't always get off my computer an hour before bed, so I try to minimize the effects of screen time by wearing blue-light glasses. I try every tool in the toolkit.

Sometimes my heart is still elevated before bed, so I try to do some basic box breathing to get it down. Sometimes I do a wind-down, focusing systematically on my breathing and going through each part of my body to release tension. I try to do anything to get outside my head because that usually cascades through sleep.

I find that reading for 10 minutes, or a chapter of a book, can get me out of my head and help me change my mindset. That usually helps me fall asleep.

The issue is that I wake up many times during the night, sometimes for 30 or 40 minutes. When I wake up in the middle of the night, it's not that I'm necessarily stressed about something at work. Sometimes I'm thinking about benign things.

When I look at my Oura stats, my sleep efficiency is not great. The time I spend in bed relative to the sleep I get is very frustrating. I'm putting in the time, but not getting the full impact.

I fly a couple of times a month

I try to fly a couple of times a month in a Cessna 172. It's not the same as an F/A-18, but I enjoy getting back up in the air a lot. I joined a flying club, and they have a bunch of airplanes that you can rent by the hour.

I don't have my own plane right now — but when I think about retirement, it's having a plane and flying. I'm not there yet.

• Morgan Stanley's Andrew Slimmon predicts rate cuts are coming if the Iran war ends soon.
• The ceasefire has been shaky, but has held so far as peace negotiations continue.
• He says there's a possibility that cuts surprise markets, creating opportunity for investors.

Rate cut odds are in flux amid war and economic uncertainty, but Morgan Stanley's Andrew Slimmon predicts that an end to the conflict could usher in easier monetary policy by yearend.

Andrew Slimmon, Morgan Stanley Investment Management portfolio manager and head of Applied Equity Advisors, told Business Insider that he sees rate cuts coming before the end of the year but only if the Iran war's resolution holds and geopolitical tensions don't resurface.

"I think it's roughly kind of six months after this war ends," he said. "If that's in the next couple weeks, then it could be by the end of this year."

While the most recent ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran appears to be holding, the road to a lasting piece still appears shaky. Since early April, Donald Trump has often said that the US is making progress toward a peace deal, only to have further attacks undermine those claims.

This constant state of uncertainty has made it difficult for markets to stabilize, as oil prices continue to whipsaw. Stocks have been able to push to fresh record highs, but ivestors have been forced to deal with persistent war-driven volatility and uncertainty around rate cuts.

Slimmon added, though, that if his forecast is correct and the Fed doesn't move to cut rates for six months, it could lead to a profitable opportunity for patient investors.

"In order for it to be a boost to markets, it has to not be priced in," he noted. "I think that's the nice thing about the Fed Funds Futures market, is it's still pricing in basically the next move to be nothing."

The odds that the Fed will leave its benchmark rate unchanged by yearend edged up slightly on Friday after the April jobs report, which showed the US added way more jobs than expected. Odds of no cuts by the December meeting rose to about 74%, from around 70% the day before the report.

When it comes to the impact of monetary policy shifts on financial markets, weighing surprises versus expectations is critical. Slimmon repeatedly highlighted this, noting that this opportunity in the equities markets will only persist if markets continue not to price in multiple rate cuts in the near future.

He noted that as it stands, the odds favor a quarter-point hike one year from now rather than a cut.

"That's what creates opportunity, though," he added. "If it was pricing in three cuts, then there'd [be] no boost to markets. But when it's a diversion from what the market is pricing in, that you get that tailwind in risk assets."

The stock market has displayed considerable strength in the last month, with the S&P 500 touching new all-time highs on Friday. Some might argue, in that case, that the market doesn't need rate cuts to keep rising. Slimmon maintains, though, rate cuts are still likely coming, just not in the immediate term.

• Average gas prices above $4.50 a gallon are prompting more drivers to fill up at warehouse clubs like Costco.
• The company saw a 3% boost in comparable fuel sales last month.
• Increased traffic at the pump can also draw customers into the store, where sales are up.

A rising tide may lift all boats, but rising gas prices only lift a few.

Costco is increasingly looking like a winner during this round of high fuel costs as US consumers look for ways to balance their weekly budgets.

The US average price of a gallon of regular gas has remained above $4 for a month — topping $4.50 this week — leading more drivers to fill up at warehouse clubs like Costco.

Those numbers are translating into a top-line boost for Costco, which saw 11.7% US comparable sales growth last month, of which 3 percentage points were from fuel sales.

US shoppers are increasingly changing up their habits: A survey from Numerator, shared this week with Business Insider, found that more than nine out of 10 drivers took one or more steps to save money on gas in the past month.

The share of drivers who filled up at club stores increased by three points to 36% compared with the April release of the data, and the share of drivers using fuel rewards credit cards ticked up four points to 27%.

In addition, roughly half of those surveyed said they were using a loyalty program or app, and about a third were choosing where to fill up based on price rather than location. Those rates were within two points of last month's numbers.

Three-quarters of respondents also said fuel costs were leading them to cut spending in other areas, like restaurants, travel, and entertainment.

One area they don't appear to be cutting back: Costco.

Increased traffic at the pump is also drawing customers into the store, where sales are up. Costco reported a 3.8% increase in US visits in the four weeks ending May 3, with 8% higher non-gas transactions compared to the same four-week period last year.

And recent foot traffic data from Placer.ai for the final week of April showed club stores outpacing every other retailer category in year-over-year visits.

An employee at a newer Costco location in Texas told Business Insider that roughly 80% of customers at their 32-pump gas station also shop the warehouse on the same day.

Costco also tends to have a more affluent customer base than other major retailers, which could be giving it a further boost as fuel prices drive a wider split in the K-shaped economy.

A report released this week by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that higher-income households were still buying gas at a steady rate, while lower-earning ones were curbing the number of gallons they bought.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at dreuter@businessinsider.com or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Business Insider has spoken with dozens of early retirees.
• Rather than focus on cutting back on small things, like coffee, they focus on 'the big three.'
• Trimming housing, transportation, and food costs could transform your finances.

If you're trying to retire early, reach financial independence, or simply improve your finances, start by taking a close look at three expenses: housing, transportation, and food.

Often called "the big three," these categories are typically among the largest expenses most households face. Many early retirees say they focused on reducing those costs rather than obsessing over smaller purchases, like coffee or streaming subscriptions.

"If you learn how to master those big expenses, it will free up a ton of money so you don't have to stress about the small stuff," Josh Lupo, who retired in his 30s with his wife, Ali, told Business Insider.

How to save in each category

One strategy that's popular among early retirees, including the Lupos, is "house hacking," which involves renting out part of your home and using the income to offset some, or all, of your housing costs.

It requires buying a property, which means having enough savings for a down payment and closing costs, but for those who can make the numbers work, it can significantly reduce — or even eliminate — a monthly housing payment.

The Lupos said they went from paying $1,300 a month in rent to living for free in upstate New York after buying a duplex, living in one unit, and renting out the other.

If buying property doesn't make sense right now, there are other ways to lower your housing costs, such as living with roommates, moving into a smaller space, or staying put even when you can afford an upgrade. That last approach worked for early retirees Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung, who felt priced out of the Toronto housing market.

Rather than buying, they stayed in a modest apartment for a decade.

"We didn't upgrade our housing," Shen said. "A lot of our friends were either buying houses or moving up to a two- or three-bedroom. We stayed in a one-bedroom on top of a townhouse, and our rent basically stayed the same for the 10 years that we lived there."

Saving on food often starts with eating at home more frequently. If you're trying to break a takeout habit, try deleting food delivery apps from your phone. You don't have to eliminate restaurants altogether, especially if dining out is something you value. The goal is to make eating at home the default more often.

Transportation is another major category where small lifestyle changes can add up. If public transit is available where you live, using it more often can lower your costs. If not, consider replacing some car trips with biking or walking when possible. Driving less — or, in some cases, selling a car altogether — can reduce spending on gas, insurance, maintenance, and repairs.

One couple, Steven and Lauren Keys, shared a used car and cooked 90% of their meals at home while working toward early retirement.

They said that over the last decade, their annual spending never surpassed $26,000. That allowed them to save most of their income, even early in their careers, when they were each earning around $40,000.

Leaving room for what matters to you

Cutting back on the big three can create more room to spend on what matters most to you.

Personal finance expert Ramit Sethi calls this idea "money dials." Money dials are spending categories — such as travel, health, food, or experiences — that you can turn up or down depending on what you value. Sethi encourages people to identify the categories that matter most to them and spend generously there, while cutting back on the ones that don't.

In other words, don't spend money on things that aren't important to you.

A common misconception about the FIRE movement is that it requires deprivation, Shen said: "It's about optimization, not minimization."

Tracking their spending helped Shen and Leung optimize. Once they started looking closely at where their money was going, it became easier to identify what added value to their lives and what didn't.

"Despite getting multiple promotions, we did not increase our lifestyle whatsoever," Shen said. "The only thing we actually did spend on, and we were happily spending on, was travel."

That was a "non-negotiable," she said.

• Kristina Martinelli was laid off at 55 and immediately launched her own AI consultancy.
• She avoided returning to corporate, feeling her expertise was being replaced by AI.
• Martinelli shared which tool helped her build her sidekick and launch quickly.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with small-business-owner Kristina Martinelli, a 56-year-old AI consultant who formerly worked a corporate job. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Getting displaced at 55 years old caught me completely off guard.

I had just spent two years at a Midwest bank as a portfolio manager executive and had decades of experience in corporate technology when I was let go from my job. I grappled with whether I should return to corporate America, asking myself, "Do I stay in an industry that refuses to value my worth as an older worker with institutional knowledge?"

Twenty-four hours after I lost that job, I started my own company, coaigence (spelled with all lowercase letters), an AI consultancy.

When I moved on, I felt nervous, but I leaned into my Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 industry background and used AI from day one.

Starting a business is really about establishing the need

By the end of coaigence's first day, I had created a name for my new company, a framework, and a direction.

Obviously, the paperwork that goes along with establishing an LLC, an EIN, getting legal and tax representation, bank accounts for clients, and operating costs all take time. To start a business, it's not about mulling it over; it's about following a dream and taking the first step.

I knew my AI services would attract corporate executives because I have decades of experience consulting and strategizing for them.

I learned quickly how to build custom GPTs and created a sidekick

I had also been using AI before I was displaced, but I had only scratched the surface.

Once I decided to launch my company, I became a prompt engineer before anything else. I learned how to talk to AI in a way that got me back something actually useful and immediately started building custom GPTs.

I poured everything into a PDF — my thoughts, my vision, and my goals. Then I uploaded it to ChatGPT and named my GPT sidekick Raivyn. I wanted Raivyn to speak and think like me. I don't want emails and communications that sound robotic.

I created an 80/20 rule for AI adoption: 80% should be a human-driven approach complemented by 20% of AI augmentation. The human intellect must never fall by the wayside.

Tools that are helping me build my AI company

The base AI tools are ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot for when I use Microsoft, Gemini for when I'm using Google, and Grok if I want to completely go out there with no guardrails and create silly images.

After I built Raivyn, I started uploading the ideas I had scribbled in a notebook into it. I also use colored pens. If I color-code my notes and tell Raivyn what each color means, I can take a photo, upload it, and she will organize it for me. Anything urgent is written in red.

I'm a big fan of Claude. It's really good for putting things into a very organized, succinct, and formatted manner. I also use Perplexity, which is an amazing tool for research because it cites its examples.

The best thing someone can do is try a little bit of all of them and see which one best meets their needs.

I made a costly mistake subscribing to AI tools at first

In order to get the best memory out of any of these tools, you have to subscribe, but I don't recommend subscribing to any AI tool for a year.

It's very easy to get pulled into subscriptions. I've gotten burned so many times thinking I'd get some dollars off. In a month, that tool could be third on the list.

Also, you can run out of tokens pretty quickly when creating audio or visual-intensive items. If you're not careful, you can spend a lot on buying more instead of waiting for the next day. I'm looking at my spending and putting it back into AI to see where I can save.

AI isn't going anywhere, so learn to use it

I use this mantra all the time: "feel the fear and do it anyway." We're living in that, and people are fearful of AI, but it's just another tool.

AI is like anything else. You have to learn how to use it effectively.

Most people quit right before they would have turned that corner. They never get to see what's next. Don't be that person.

Do you have a similar story to share? Contact this editor, Manseen Logan, at mlogan@businessinsider.com.

Tamer Hassan is ready to get out of the street food game.

He manages four food carts — smoothies, hot dogs, chicken and rice — on 49th Street, just off Times Square. At 45, he's been doing it for a decade.

He loves the work, but is determined to leave the industry in the next five years, which means selling his business or convincing his son (an 18-year-old engineering student) to take over. The hours on his feet in all kinds of weather feel impossible to keep up with as he ages. Not to mention the meager returns.

"Two years ago, we could sell $3 hot dogs at an 80-cent profit," Hassan told me. "Now, if we sell them at $5, we still make 80 cents. That price is not about us, it's not about me, it's about the supply." If his business earns $3,000 a day, he said he pockets about $200 after paying for food, drinks, utensils, propane, cart maintenance, insurance, staff wages, and other expenses.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office with a vow to make the city more affordable, including proposals to lower the price of housing, childcare, and groceries. One of his earliest campaign slogans to gain social media traction was "make halal $8 again." The promise to reduce operating costs and increase permit availability aims to lower the roughly $10 price of a beloved New York street food: a platter of meat or falafel, rice, and signature sauces.

On an April Thursday, I asked more than a dozen street vendors about the biggest challenges they face — and how the city can meaningfully address what the mayor dubbed as "halalflation." Many of their troubles are largely outside the government's reach. Overhead costs have become crushing. Declining tourism and work-from-home culture are eating into vendors' earnings, making monthly income more unpredictable. New "congestion pricing" tolls to enter central Manhattan also sting, as most of the vendors live and store their carts in outer boroughs. With eyewatering rents and families to support, vendors said the squeeze isn't just making carts less profitable, but harder to build a life around.

It's not just about lowering the cost of hot dogs, it's about getting more people to buy them.

Abdelhafeez Aly, 60, woke to his usual 1:45 a.m. alarm and picked up his cart near Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. By dawn, he had arranged frosting-covered doughnuts in the window and poured a fresh bag of ice into his orange juice cooler. Stocking the pastries and supplies costs at least $400 a day.

"The price of everything is coming up: American cheese, meat, everything," said Aly, who has run his Financial District cart since 1991. "If a restaurant around here has a sandwich, I have to make it for less. I want to raise prices, but there's too much competition." On a good day, he said he nets $10 an hour.

Food costs in US cities have jumped by about 22% in the last five years, and the Iran war is sending gas prices over $4 a gallon. General inflation is also a stressor — vendors mentioned the creeping cost of coffee, dairy, ice, even paper coffee cups. While congestion pricing is working to reduce traffic and raise revenue for transit improvements, many vendors said the $9 daily toll is an additional hit to their stretched-thin budgets.

Mamdani's "Street Vendor Reform Package" takes a swing at alleviating some food cart-specific expenses by creating a Division of Street Vendor Assistance within city government, and is supporting a bill that would allow vendors to place their carts two feet from the curb, limiting the number of tickets carts receive for being out of compliance. These could eventually alleviate vendors' financial burden and boost their support within City Hall. Still, progress is slow.

"It's very hard," Aly sighed. "But thank God I have a job."

Ahemed Hassan, 30, was sprinkling rock salt on a batch of soft pretzels in front of the Museum of Natural History. He won't sell them all — his once-reliable tourist crowd has been underwhelming lately.

"It's just a hard week, and usually there will be more people over the summer holiday," he said. "Maybe someday I'll make more money."

Vendors said business really started to slide in the early 2020s, when the pandemic sent most white-collar office workers home. Even as return-to-office policies bring employees back a few days a week, demand in previously reliable corporate hotspots isn't what it once was.

Meanwhile, the city saw a 3% tourism decline from international travelers between spring 2024 and 2026, and the exorbitant cost of living means many residents are pinching pennies. A handful of regular customers isn't enough to make up the difference.

"I cannot raise the price for the regulars, because they come every day and expect the food to be $9 or $10," one vendor told me. "If I raise it, they won't want to come back."

Asked about Mamdani's $8 promise, most vendors responded with skepticism. Chiefly because solving their demand drought — bringing tourists and office workers back to halal hubs with money to spend — is outside the mayor's purview. So are corporate RTO policies.

Mohamad Mohamad said that getting started as a vendor can easily cost six figures. He had a Mamdani portrait pinned to his Columbus Circle cart during election season, but he's doubtful the mayor can actually solve this problem.

"This city is very expensive," the 40-something said. When business is booming, he might earn $200 daily, rarely enough to cover his overhead. It's a tenuous investment — Mohamed said his custom cart cost $16,000, and others can be as high as $50,000.

Many vendors I spoke with said they pay a third party for their permits, while others rent them directly from the city. NYC typically charges $200 for a two-year sales permit, $50 for a two-year mobile food vending license, and an additional $50 for a mandatory food safety course.

The city's permit supply hasn't kept up with demand. There are roughly 20,000 food vendors in the city, according to one estimate from the advocacy group Street Vendor Project, most of them immigrants. Due to a cap set in 1979, there have long been just 6,880 licenses available for food vendors. It means sellers either have to strike gold on a newly available permit, team up with someone who already has one, or pay for a marked-up permit secondhand — which can cost tens of thousands. One vendor told me his two-year permit rental is $15,000. Another pays $20,000 a year.

Permit costs are a challenge that the government can directly address. A landmark City Council bill passed in December lifted the '70s-era permit cap. By 2031, NYC is required to make nearly 17,000 permits available for food vendors, as well as offer nearly 1,300 specifically for veterans and disabled vendors. This comes alongside a new law that repealed criminal penalties for vendors operating without a license. The Mamdani administration appointed former Street Vendor Project Co-director Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez to lead the effort in March.

Times Square vendor Hassan is watching City Hall closely. But, at least for now, he feels $12 is a fair price for a meal. He's counting down the days until he can clock out of his cart forever.

As I turned to leave, Hassan handed me a fresh cup of his favorite strawberry-mango smoothie.

"It's hot out here," he said, wiping sweat off his brow. "You should try this."

He refused my offer to pay.

• Residents in Utah are resisting a data center backed by "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary.
• Gov. Spencer J. Cox said this week that locals can now expect "clear standards and accountability."
• Data centers have become a divisive topic during the AI boom.

Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox said he's heard the complaints from residents about a data center development backed by "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary, so he's making some new demands.

Cox said he's faced questions this week about the data center's impact on a range of issues — including energy and air quality — which he called "real concerns."

"All Utahns should expect clear standards and accountability," Cox said in a lengthy X post on Friday.

He said that based on conversations with residents, local leaders, and others, he would undertake a series of "actions" regarding the project. He then addressed various concerns, such as the project's size and its impact on air, water, and the electric grid.

He said he'd require the project to obtain new approvals for each phase, with the first "not to exceed" 1.5 gigawatts. That means the developers would need all new approvals to proceed with their expansion plans.

He also directed the state's environmental agency to review all permits related to air quality and its Department of Natural Resources to ensure that the state's water is protected and the project uses the most "environmentally sensitive" cooling systems.

Cox's effort to assuage residents came after Box Elder County commissioners approved the data center, which will sit on a 40,000-acre campus and is known as the Stratos Project.

Residents staged protests and fought with local politicians over the data center, which they worry could raise utility costs, increase noise levels, strain the water supply, and degrade their overall quality of life. Although data centers are adopting more sustainable methods, they can still use millions of gallons of water a day.

Data centers have become a divisive topic in America amid the AI boom. Tech companies are desperate for new data centers to power their ever-advancing systems. Many Americans, however, aren't keen on those developments coming to their backyards.

O'Leary responded to the pushback earlier this week, saying — without providing evidence — that opposition to the data center may have come from "professional protesters" and suggesting AI-generated posts were "ironically" driving the conversation. On Friday, O'Leary said members of the public may have misconceptions about what data centers are and how they function.

"At some point, understanding the value of sustainability, water and air rights, indigenous rights, and making sure the constituencies understand what you're doing is going to be more valuable than the equity you raise," he said on X.

• What if AI doesn't just change the future of work but eliminates it entirely?
• Elon Musk has referred to this possible future as "universal high income."
• Musk isn't the only name in tech to ponder just how different work could be in a post-AI world.

Is this heaven? No, this is the AI future — well, at least the one where we're not all dead.

Wall Street spent most of 2025 worrying about the AI bubble, but increasingly, those in and around Big Tech and AI are discussing a scenario where their wildest dreams have become reality.

In this future, work itself is a luxury. A universal basic income, the concept popularized by then-Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang in 2020, would be flipped on its head. Governmental support for the jobless wouldn't be needed because everyone would be wealthy.

Here's the future Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jensen Huang are imagining.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk is on track to be the world's first trillionaire. But the Tesla and xAI CEO sees the possibility that AI and robotics will make everyone rich, an outcome he calls "universal high income."

"There will be no poverty in the future, and so no need to save money," Musk wrote on X in December while discussing the idea of Trump accounts.

In this scenario, Musk has said that work will be like a hobby or playing a video game. The billionaire said this idyllic world, "kind of sounds like heaven."

"Everyone has abundance," Musk told comedian Joe Rogan on his podcast in October. "Everyone has excellent medical care. Everyone has whatever goods and services they want."

Bill Gates

Bill Gates said humans will reserve some tasks for themselves, but AI will make it possible to consider once-unthinkable changes, such as a two- or three-day workweek.

"In terms of making things, and moving things, and growing food over time, those will be basically solved problems," Gates told late-night host Jimmy Fallon in February.

Sam Altman

In July, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he wants a world "with universal extreme wealth," but also one in which UBI exists because the world shares the profits of AI's advancements.

"I think if you just like say, 'OK, AI is going to do everything, and then everybody gets like a, you know, dividend from that, it's not going to feel good," Altman told comedian Theo Von during an appearance on Von's podcast.

In his conversation with Von, Altman theorized a system where society has "an ownership share in whatever AI creates." In this "universal basic wealth system," people can barter their share of the world's AI capacity.

But by April, he had changed his tune somewhat.

"I no longer believe in universal basic income as much as I once did," Altman told The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson during an interview for his "The Most Interesting Thing in AI" series.

He added, "I think just like a fixed cash payment, although useful and maybe a good idea in some ways, does not get at what we're really going to need for this next phase and the kind of collective alignment of shared upside as the balance between labor and capital shifts."

Jensen Huang

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sees more of a middle ground. He said it's unlikely that both UBI and Musk's "universal high income" will exist at the same time.

Huang said the concept of AI-created abundance should not focus solely on monetary wealth.

"Like for example, today we are wealthy of information," Huang told Rogan in December, when asked about Musk's theory. "This is a concept, several thousand years ago, only a few people have."

Overall, Huang said there are too many variables to make a definitive prediction.

"It's hard to answer, partly because it's hard to talk about infinity, and it's hard to talk about a long time from now," he said. "And the reason for that is because there's just too many scenarios to consider."

Dario Amodei

Everyone will need "to figure out how to operate in a post-AGI age," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said.

"Can we have a world where work doesn't for many people, doesn't need to have the centrality that it does, that people find their locus of meaning elsewhere?" he said onstage in December at The New York Times' Dealbook Summit. "Or work is about different things? It's more about fulfillment than it is about economic survival."

Amodei said this future could very well resemble the technological unemployment that renowned John Maynard Keynes once thought might be possible.

"He suggested that maybe his grandchildren would only have to work 15 or 20 hours a week," Amodei said. "That's a different way of structuring the society."

Demis Hassabis

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis sees a future of "radical abundance."

"We've got to make sure it gets distributed fairly, but that's more of a political question," Hassabis told The Guardian in August. "And if it is, we should be in an amazing world of abundance for maybe the first time in human history, where things don't have to be zero sum. And if that works, we should be travelling to the stars, really."

Asked if that meant humanity would become too reliant on the owners of AI companies, the Nobel laureate said it remained to be seen how the wealth side of abundance was sorted out.

"That's going to be one of the biggest things we're gonna have to figure out," he said. "Let's say we get radical abundance, and we distribute that in a good way, what happens next?"

• Patrick De Haan spends his days "monitoring the situation" for global oil prices.
• He told Business Insider he's parsing through data points, prices, and headlines to spot trends.
• GasBuddy's downloads have skyrocketed as gas prices keep climbing. They just saw a 384% increase.

The internet's trending "monitoring the situation" meme usually features someone sternly squinting at a phone or a computer screen.

In the real world, Americans are squinting at a more unsettling trend: rapidly rising gas prices.

For Patrick De Haan, those two trends overlap in his career. The GasBuddy petroleum analyst spends his days parsing hundreds of data points flashing across screens that ultimately influence what drivers are paying at the pump.

From his desk in Chicago, he regularly cycles between internal GasBuddy tools, spreadsheets tracking fuel prices, Energy Information Administration data, commodities markets, and market-shifting news stories to understand how pricing trends are moving through the fuel supply chain.

Before casting a wide net for information, he starts his day with one simple data point.

"The first thing I do in the morning is look at the price of oil," De Haan told Business Insider.

De Haan says much of his work involves triangulating information across multiple reports and industry sources to understand why markets are suddenly moving.

"Whenever oil prices see a significant move, I'll start trying to locate needle-moving headlines that may influence what we're all seeing," he said. "I'll just keep digging until there's something that makes some level of sense on why markets are moving."

He said he used internal AI to synthesize large documents, but declined to elaborate on how he uses it.

During periods of major fuel-price volatility, De Haan often becomes part analyst and part explainer, fielding television interviews and podcast questions about why prices are suddenly moving higher. The analyst regularly appears on national and local television broadcasts, contributes analysis to digital publications, and writes his own Substack focused on fuel markets and energy prices.

As De Haan tracks the signals affecting the prices flashing on the tall, lit signs hanging above gas stations, millions of drivers are increasingly turning to GasBuddy to try to save money.

The app allows users to compare nearby gas prices using a mix of crowdsourced reports, gas station data, and third-party partnerships.

PDI Technologies, GasBuddy's parent company, told Business Insider the app has more than 6 million monthly active users.

According to data shared with Business Insider by app analysis firm Appfigures Intelligence, GasBuddy downloads surged 384% month over month in March to roughly 575,000 US downloads. Downloads in April dipped to 473,000 — still more than double the app's monthly average.

Just one week into May, more drivers have downloaded the app this month than they did in all of January, Appfigures Intelligence says.

Appfigures also found that GasBuddy has recently received a noticeably higher share of negative user ratings than usual, potentially reflecting growing consumer frustration around fuel prices.

Like the "monitoring the situation" meme itself, much of De Haan's job involves watching events unfold elsewhere in the world and waiting to see how markets react.

Right now, De Haan said much of his attention remains focused on tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz.

He told Business Insider he sees a wide range of possible gas-price outcomes — from $3.50 to $5.50 a gallon nationally this summer — depending on how negotiations between Washington and Tehran unfold.

"It becomes a game trying to determine the state of mind behind the US and Iran," he said. "That's impossible."

Among the more unexpected effects of the AI race is the rise of a breakup line: It's not you, it's my startup.

Lee Beckman, the 30-year-old founder of an ed-tech startup, had been dating his girlfriend long-distance for about five months when he realized he was so drained from building his company that he had little energy left to build his relationship. When he called her each night, he says, "my mind was so jam-packed with information and trying to do so much at once," that "I didn't feel like there was any room left in my brain."

"I found myself relying on her for my mental health and I didn't find it to be fair," Beckman says.

Archish Arun, 21, had been dating his girlfriend for about six months when he decided to drop out of Stanford and work on his Y Combinator-backed video production-tech startup full-time. He became so enmeshed in the breakneck pace of an early-stage company that he grew impatient when she needed time to process a disagreement — he wanted a resolution as quick as a bug fix. Living on startup time, he says, "brought out a lot of the issues" between them "in a much quicker way."

This also happened to me. Like many young founders, my ex-boyfriend believes that in the next few years, the spoils of the AI boom will go to the people who capitalize on it now, while the rest of us will be trapped in a permanent underclass. We'd been dating for nine months when he told me he was moving to San Francisco to become a new media fellow at Andreessen Horowitz and to scale his media startup, and that he needed to leave our relationship in New York.

"I feel like I owe it to myself to chase this dream that I've had since I was a kid," he told me. "And if we stay together, I'll just spend every free minute trying to get back to New York to see you."

Woof. I was blindsided by the complete lack of control I felt. I developed a parasocial one-sided beef with Marc Andreessen, who I felt stole my boyfriend without even trying. I also realized I was far from alone.

Dating, always chaotic for career-minded 20-somethings, is in disarray. Diagnoses abound: swipe culture, ghosting culture, the loneliness crisis, the growing gulf between men and women's political views, economic uncertainty pushing people to prolong marriage. And, for a certain class of aspirant today, add one more particularly fraught factor: the pressure to build.

Lured by the promises of artificial intelligence, a generation of young founders is locking in at all costs to their social lives. Last year, a general partner at Y Combinator told The New York Times that the median age of its participants was 24, down from 30 in 2022. The young founders I spoke to for this story expressed desire to be good partners. But between the evergreen demands of getting an early-stage startup off the ground and the now-or-never strain they feel the AI boom has put on them, many of them have shed their established relationships in pursuit of the grind. Their exes declined to be interviewed.

If a young founder "wants a relationship, they need to treat it exactly with the same intentionality as their business, and chances are that they're unable to do that, right?" says Amy Andersen, a Silicon Valley-based matchmaker and dating coach. She says that among her founder clients, those who are ready for a serious relationship are in their mid- to late 30s. "Mid-20s, not so much," she says.

I ask Andersen what she would say to a 26-year-old founder who was thinking of leaving a healthy relationship to focus on building. I don't tell her the hypothetical was my reality.

"That's a great idea because I think he's listening to himself and being incredibly honest about his capacity for what he can handle," Andersen tells me. "If he were to go down that relationship route, he would ultimately have regrets and at some point, those frustrations and the reality of being able to make something work is going to start to kind of bubble to the surface." Brutal.

Part of what makes dating a young founder so difficult is how closely their startups are tied to their identities, says Yariv Ganor, a startup psychologist who often works with founders in relationships. "There needs to be some acceptance from the partner's side that the startup will be prioritized. The startup is often an extension of the founder, and founders often see their startup as a kind of an incarnation of themselves," Ganor says.

For many young founders, dating takes a backseat to building because it feels irresponsible to invest — financially and emotionally — in anything other than their startup.

"I'm investing so much, burning so much every month in my business. It's like it's not economically sensible to go invest in dating," Beckman tells me. He says he's been on two dates since breaking up with his girlfriend in 2024. My ex told me something similar: that he intended to live a life of monklike celibacy in San Francisco for quite some time.

Some young founders who are dating can hold implausibly high standards about how easy it will be to find their perfect match. Max Marchione, the 25-year-old founder of longevity startup and peptide purveyor Superpower, told me he'd give a woman a weeklong trial period and assess whether he could envision forever with her.

"There was a time when I was like, hardcore, 'I'm not getting in any relationship,' and now I'm kind of like, if I think I might marry someone, I'll explore for a week, and after that week I'll make a decision," Marchione says.

Andersen says she's seen this hackathon-style approach to dating in several founders. "They're used to going all-in, full throttle on it to really see if something sticks," she says. "It's that exact same kind of mentality that has allowed them to most likely be really successful in their careers." She thinks that seven days is too short a time period to get to know someone, but she has worked with founders who have found love in two or four weeks.

Founders often lack the emotional intelligence that women who are open to dating them are looking for, Andersen says. "They're really looking for somebody who strikes that balance of the IQ and the EQ. And that EQ in Silicon Valley is something that's a little bit harder to find," she says. For many founders, he says, "Communication is probably the most undervalued skill."

It takes a specific type of person to be successful in a relationship with an early-stage founder. Dmitri Mirakyan, 31, says his ex was incompatible with him because she needed "like two to three hours of attention per day," he says. That "was extremely hard to pull that off," since he was working a 9 to 5 and also building his startup, Creed, which touts itself as "the first AI rooted in Christian values."

Ganor says the people who work best with founders are "givers, those who give what they can in relationships almost without expecting anything in return."

Mirakyan's current girlfriend sounds like a giver. She can intuit his needs. He tells me that, several months ago, he was panicking during her friend's wedding ceremony in India because something had gone wrong with his app.

"I think a very valid reaction to that was like, 'You're at my friend's wedding, you're embarrassing me, what are you doing?' This is the second wedding this year that I've needed to have my laptop out," Mirakyan says. "I was visibly stressed out and on my phone, and instead of being annoyed at me, she found the WiFi, found a place for me to sit, and gave me some snacks."

"It wasn't that big of a deal for me that he had a work emergency," his girlfriend says. "For me, it's kind of like, it's stressful for him, and it's stressful to see him like that. Obviously, like, I just wanted to help."

I'm not sure I would've had the same patience. I used to get annoyed when my ex would forget to make a dinner reservation and we had to wait in line somewhere, or when he'd cancel plans to come to my friends' parties and spend the night coding instead.

I've branched out from dating early-stage startup founders. My new boyfriend is reliable, relaxed, and leaves work at 6 p.m. He's a Big Tech engineer. Maybe AI will automate him out of a job one day and he'll be stuck in the permanent underclass, but at least we'll have time to spend together.

Amanda Yen is on Business Insider's Newsletters team and writes about Gen Z trends and culture.

The first of the three Grand Tour races has arrived, and it brings cyclists on a three-week journey through Italy (plus a bit of Bulgaria and Switzerland). We've rounded up all the details on how to watch Giro d'Italia, including free and global streaming options.

If you don't want to scroll any further, you can live stream the race on HBO Max in the US, TNT Sports on HBO Max in the UK, RAI Play in Italy, and SBS On Demand in Australia. Below, we'll break down additional worldwide broadcast options and show you how to tune in to the event from anywhere.

How to watch Giro d'Italia for free

The Giro d'Italia is available for free in select regions. In Australia, coverage is available for free via SBS On Demand. In Italy, the host country, the race will be shown for free on RAI Play.

How to watch Giro d'Italia from anywhere

If you happen to be away from the location where your streaming service works, you can still access your favorite watch options with the help of a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are handy tech tools that let people temporarily alter the location on their devices. They're especially popular among those hoping to boost their cybersecurity or access their usual services while traveling abroad.

NordVPN is one of the best VPNs on the market. It has a fantastic reputation thanks to its fast speeds, massive global server selection, and 30-day money-back guarantee. You can learn more in our NordVPN review.

How to watch Giro d'Italia in the US

The Giro d'Italia will live stream on HBO Max in the US. Sports streaming is available through B/R Sports, which is included in the ad-free tiers of HBO Max. These plan start at $18.49 a month.

How to watch Giro d'Italia in the UK

TNT Sports on HBO Max will carry coverage of the Giro d'Italia in the UK. TNT Sports-only plans on HBO Max start at £31 a month for flexible options, but you can save a bit each month by opting for a contract.

How to watch Giro d'Italia in Canada

Giro d'Italia coverage will be available through FloBikes in Canada. Subscriptions cost $50 a month, but you can find some major savings in an annual plan.

How to watch Giro d'Italia in Italy

The host country offers free coverage of the Giro d'Italia for Italian fans. In Italy, coverage is available through RAI and live streams on Rai Play.

How to watch Giro d'Italia in Australia

In Australia, coverage of the Giro d'Italia is also available for free. The race will show on SBS Viceland and be available to live stream through SBS On Demand.

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• Crescent pillows are designed to fill the shoulder gap that makes side sleeping uncomfortable.
• I tested pillows from Coop and Eli & Elm for 2 months. One is plush, the other structured.
• If you're tired of stacking pillows every night, this shape is the upgrade that actually works.

I spent years sleeping on a pillow setup that only worked for about an hour at a time. I'd pile two or three pillows into a loose V-shaped stack, so my shoulder had somewhere to go and my head felt supported. I'd drift off, then wake up half-asleep, arm tingling, shoulder jammed, neck aching, and totally annoyed that I'd have to rebuild my pillow structure.

If you sleep on your side (or know what T. rex arms are), you probably know the cycle.

I didn't realize how much of my nightly struggle was caused by the shape of my pillow until I tested two crescent-shaped pillows designed especially for side sleepers. One of them completely changed my sleep. The other came close, but wasn't quite right for me.

The Coop Original Crescent pillow delivers plush, adjustable comfort  

I expected to like the shape. I didn't expect the Coop Crescent pillow to replace my entire pillow setup.

After letting it expand and giving it a quick spin in the dryer, I was ready to see how it stacked up against the variety of pillows I had been using. The gentle curved shape was everything I needed. My head felt supported, my shoulder had plenty of space, and I wasn't constantly shifting around to get comfortable.

It's soft, a little plush, and has just enough give that you won't have to fight it into place. That part clicked in right away for me.

A few weeks in, though, I started to notice that my head was sinking a little more than I wanted. It wasn't uncomfortable, but I did wake up a few times to adjust it throughout the night. It's filled with a mix of cross-cut memory foam and microfiber, giving it a soft, plush feel. But that also means it can compress a little if you don't have the right loft dialed in. Adding some of the extra fill to the center of the pillow and gently molding it into place was the fix.

The adjustability is the real value of the Coop pillow. You're not stuck with whatever loft it comes with. You can make it perfect for your particular sleep needs. Because it leans softer, I sometimes used an extra pillow to give me a little extra height when I was sitting up in bed to read or watch TV.

Side sleepers will immediately appreciate how the Coop pillow replaces the whole "pillow setup" routine. You get the shape you need, plus the ability to fine-tune it.

The Eli & Elm Ergonomic Side Sleeper pillow provides support and structure

The Eli & Elm Side Sleeper pillow is the one I kept coming back to.

It's firmer than the Coop, but nowhere near as stiff or dense as solid memory foam. There's still plenty of give, but the cut-out is more defined than the Coop pillow, almost pointed through the center and at the ends. I soon learned how much that matters to me.

At night, I moved less. I wasn't waking up to adjust my pillow. My head, neck, and upper back felt consistently supported, even when I rolled onto my opposite side or back. It's easy to find the sweet spot no matter what your position, which is a plus for combination side and back sleepers.

The fill is a mix of latex noodles and memory foam, which gives it a little bounce and a more structured feel overall. Less sink, more support. If the Coop feels plush and adjustable, the Eli & Elm pillow feels built and ready.

There are a couple of trade-offs. You can adjust the fill level, but the zipper opening is short, so getting the fill in and positioning it where you need it takes a little extra effort. When I filled mine, I noticed that the pile of fill left white, grainy debris behind on my comforter.

Still, I didn't really need to adjust the Eli & Elm pillow. For me, it felt right out of the box, and that's ultimately why I'm still using it every night. If you want a pillow that feels dialed in from night one, this is the right pick.

Cons of a crescent-shaped pillow to consider

Crescent pillows solve a real problem for side sleepers, but they're not for everyone.

The biggest adjustment is the shape itself. If you're used to a standard rectangular pillow, it can feel a little different at first. You're not flipping it around, stacking, or bunching it up, which is kind of the point, but it does take a few nights to get used to.

They're also less versatile. If you switch sleeping positions a lot or prefer to sprawl across your pillow, the curved shape can feel limiting. And while some options are adjustable, not all of them are easy to tweak. If you care about getting the perfect loft, that's something to pay attention to.

Still, for side and combination sleepers, those tradeoffs tend to be worth it. The shape solves a problem most standard pillows cause.

The final verdict: should you buy a crescent pillow?

Personally, I preferred the Eli & Elm crescent pillow over the Coop, since I preferred the bouncy, firmer feel. But this isn't a case of one pillow being better than the other. It's more about how you like your pillow to feel. If you want a plush pillow that you can fine-tune, go with the Coop Original Crescent pillow. If you need something more structured and supportive, go with the Eli & Elm Ergonomic Side Sleeper pillow.

Both pillows solve the same problem in different ways.

The Coop is softer and more forgiving. If you like a plush pillow or aren't sure what loft is right for you, it's the best place to start. You can tweak the fill level until it feels just right, and once you do, the difference is noticeable.

The Eli & Elm is more structured. The shape is more defined, the support is more consistent, and it feels dialed in right out of the box. I moved around much less when I slept on it, and didn't feel the need to adjust the fill level or the shape at all.

That's ultimately why the Eli & Elm edged out the Coop Original for me.

Either way, the biggest upgrade is the shape.

Why you can trust Business Insider's pillow reviews

Not everyone has the time, budget, or patience to test dozens of pillows to find the one that works for them. That's exactly why hands-on testing matters.

At BI Reviews, we don't recommend pillows based solely on product pages or specs. We sleep on them. We test how they feel on the first night, how they hold up over time, and whether they actually solve the problems they claim to fix, like shoulder pressure, neck support, or constant readjustments.

Our team has tested hundreds of pillows across sleep styles, materials, and price points, including top picks in our guides to the best pillows, the best pillows for side sleepers, and the best body pillows.

For this story, I spent eight weeks sleeping on two popular crescent-shaped pillows, paying attention to whether each made a difference in my sleep quality. I recorded how they felt out of the box, how easy they were to adjust with the included extra fill, and whether I slept through the night without waking up to "fix" my pillow position.

That combination matters because pillows are one of those things that look simple online but are surprisingly personal in real life. Specs can tell you the fill type and loft. They can't tell you whether you'll still be comfortable at 2 a.m.

That's the question our testing is designed to answer.

• Uber gives riders and drivers ratings to incentivize good behavior on the platform.
• The CEO of Uber shows that getting five out of five stars can be tough.
• Not to worry, though; Uber says the average rider has a rating of 4.89.

If you've ever chased that elusive five-star rating on the Uber app, you're not alone. The company's CEO doesn't have a perfect score.

Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview on Molly O'Shea's Sourcery, published Friday, that his Uber rating is 4.83.

"My Uber rating is like 4.83," the CEO said. "I gotta get to 4.9."

That's a little under the average Uber rider rating of 4.89, according to a company blog.

Uber has said that it gives ratings to drivers and riders to ensure safety and accountability on the platform. Users who receive a rating below a certain threshold risk being booted from the app, though the company doesn't specify the exact minimum rating.

Khosrowshahi said he's taking a few steps to keep his ratings up, including meeting his car on time and asking his driver for permission to use the phone.

The CEO said he's also a big tipper: "For a $30 ride, I'll tip 10, 15 bucks."

Another pro-tip he gave was not to slam the car door. Uber, on its company blog, also says to keep the car clean and ask the driver for permission if you need to eat or drink in the car.

Being the Uber boss apparently doesn't give Khosrowshahi a leg up —some drivers don't know it's the CEO in the car.

"Half of them know who I am, and then we chat on how things are going and how we can improve the product. And then half of them kind of are doing their own thing, and then I do my own thing," he said. "It's all good."

The last time Khosrowshahi shared his Uber score with CBS Sunday Morning in 2025, he said it was 4.81.

So we're seeing some improvement there.

The next major UFC event has arrived, and it features two can't-miss title fights. We'll show you where to watch UFC 328, along with live streaming options, odds, and a look at the main event fight card. If you don't want to read any further, UFC 328 live streams on Paramount Plus in the US. We'll break down everything you need to know about the service below, and show you how to tune in from anywhere.

The undefeated Khamzat Chimaev (15-0-0) will make his first championship defense since snapping up the UFC middleweight title last year. He'll face former middleweight champion Sean Strickland (30-7-0). The fight sits at the top of an absolutely stacked fight card, which includes a flyweight title bout between Joshua Van and Tatsuro Taira.

Where to watch UFC 328 in the US

Full UFC 328 coverage is available on Paramount Plus in the US. The streaming service snapped up the rights to UFC from ESPN beginning this year. UFC coverage is available in all tiers of Paramount Plus, including Essential, which costs $9 a month. If you're interested in getting ad-free on-demand programming, Showtime content, and 24/7 live stream of your local CBS station, you can upgrade to Paramount Plus Premium for $14 a month.

How to watch UFC 328 from anywhere

UFC events are available to live stream around the world, so you should check your local listings for broadcast information. If you happen to be traveling through a region where you're unable to access your usual streaming methods, you can still keep up with them by using a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are easy-to-use cybersecurity tools that allow people to alter their virtual locations. Since the services we've recommended require US methods of payment, this option will work best for Americans who are simply traveling abroad at the moment.

If you're not sure where to start when it comes to VPNs, NordVPN is our top recommendation. It's user-friendly and has a 30-day money-back guarantee if you find that it's not what you're looking for. You can learn more in our guide to the best VPNs.

UFC 328 main event fight card

• Khamzat Chimaev vs. Sean Strickland (middleweight title bout)
• Joshua Van vs. Tatsuro Taira (flyweight title bout)
• Alexander Volkov vs. Waldo Cortes Acosta (heavyweight bout)
• Sean Brady vs. Joaquin Buckley (welterweight bout)
• King Green vs. Jeremy Stephens (lightweight bout)

UFC 328 odds

Khamzat Chimaev is favored to win against Sean Strickland. Chimaev is favored -550, while Strickland is the +400 underdog, according to the official UFC website at the time of writing.

UFC 328 venue

UFC 328 will be held at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. The arena is the home to the New Jersey Devils, New York Sirens, and the Seton Hall men's basketball team. It's also a frequent concert venue.

Note: VPN use is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content may constitute a breach of the terms of use for some services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• Keeping the kitchen stocked with highly nutritious foods can make meeting nutrition goals easier.
• A nutritionist uses 12 ingredients to add protein, fiber, and vitamins to meals effortlessly.
• Rob Hobson is stocked up on nut butter, seeds, tofu, and tinned fish.

Whether you're a working parent struggling to find time to cook or have a low appetite because you take GLP-1s, a nutritionist's "nourishing dozen" could help you meet your nutrition goals more consistently.

Rob Hobson, the author of "Every Bite Counts," aims to eat around 100 grams of protein a day and plenty of different types of fiber. He always keeps 12 foods in his kitchen so it's easy to throw together a nutritious meal.

"These are foods that are going to give you the maximum nutrition in a serving," Hobson, who is based in the UK, told Business Insider. Anyone could benefit from more of these "nutrient boosters," he said.

Eggs

Eggs are extremely versatile, high in protein and key nutrients, including Vitamin A, choline, and B vitamins, and easy to prepare, Hobson said. "They're just little nutrition powerhouses," he said.

To boost the nutrients, he suggested adding frozen vegetables like peas or spinach to scrambled eggs or tomatoes to an omelet.

Tinned fish

Tinned fish, such as salmon, tuna, or sardines, is shelf-stable and pre-cooked, making it a convenient source of protein and healthy fats, Hobson said.

Adding it to other "nourishing dozen foods" will turn a few ingredients into a balanced meal, he said. You could add it to an omelet, a salad, or eat it as a snack.

Tofu

Tofu is a good source of protein and contains calcium, iron, and magnesium, Hobson said.

He particularly recommends that anyone who is plant-based and experiencing bloating or digestive symptoms include it in their diet, as it is easier on the gut than most of other plant-based protein sources like beans or lentils.

Oats

Oats are high in beta glucans, a type of soluble fiber, that helps reduce cholesterol levels, Hobson said.

They're versatile and make a great breakfast. Hobson likes to soak his overnight and eat them with Greek yogurt, berries, and nut butter.

Beans and lentils

Beans and lentils are rich sources of magnesium, zinc, and calcium, Hobson said. They're also both high in fiber and good sources of protein.

You can use them as the core ingredient of a meal, like in a lentil dahl or bean stew, or simply add a tablespoon of them into another dish like a pasta or salad, to bulk out the fiber content.

Hobson is a fan of pre-cooked pouches of beans and pulses because they save him time in the kitchen. "It just doesn't get any easier if you've got a pouch. And what you can also do with the pouch is reseal it," he said.

Nut butter

Nut butters such as peanut and almond butter are energy-dense, meaning they are high in calories, but contain lots of nutrients, making them a great option for people taking GLP-1s, Hobson said.

They contain healthy fats, magnesium, iron, vitamin E, and some protein, and can be easily added to a snack or meal. Hobson recommended trying some in a smoothie or salad dressing.

Avocado

Avocado, the original "superfood," contains lots of healthy fats, fiber, and potassium, Hobson said, and helps support a healthy heart and gut.

"You only need a small amount to make a big difference to the overall nutrition of your dish," he said.

Yogurt

Yogurt requires no prep, lasts for ages in the fridge, and contains protein and healthy fats, Hobson said. It's also a good source of calcium, which supports bone health.

You can add it to smoothies or dressings, stir it into a dish, or eat it as a snack with some fruit and seeds.

Dark leafy greens

Dark leafy greens are one of the more nutrient-dense vegetables, Hobson said. They are loaded with calcium, iron, vitamin D, magnesium, and vitamin K.

"I'd be including plenty of those in my dishes because you're going to get more nutrition per spoonful," he said.

Edamame beans

Edamame beans are "super nutritious" and easy to snack on or sprinkle over a salad. They are a good source of protein and contain calcium, iron, and magnesium.

Hobson likes to eat his with lime juice and sea salt as a snack.

Seeds

Seeds are nutritional powerhouses, Hobson said, and you can sprinkle them over a range of different dishes as a "nutritional booster."

They contain fiber, omega-3, magnesium, iron, calcium, and protein, and add a nice crunchy texture to a dish, he said.

Poultry

Chicken and turkey are great sources of protein, but don't have the high saturated fat content that red meats do. "That's my meat of choice," Hobson said.

One hundred grams of cooked chicken contains around 30 grams of protein.

For those with qualifying medical conditions like chronic pain, sleep apnea, or mental illness, one of the best mattresses could be eligible for purchase with pre-tax dollars from your Flexible Spending Account (FSA) or Health Savings Account (HSA) funds. This process saves you money while also letting you use your FSA funds before they expire at the end of each year.

While you can't buy mattresses directly on FSA/HSA stores, many mattress brands — like Sleep Number, Nectar, and Purple — partner with companies like TrueMed and Sika to help people with qualifying medical conditions use their pre-tax dollars to buy a mattress. Not everyone qualifies to use their HSA/FSA funds for a mattress, but it's easier to qualify than you may think.

We've gathered everything you need to know about using HSA/FSA funds to buy a mattress, including why you should do it, who qualifies, and which mattresses are eligible.

The top 3 mattresses to buy with HSA/FSA funds

Who qualifies to use HSA/FSA funds to buy a mattress?

Not everyone can use their HSA/FSA funds to buy a mattress. A mattress is only available for reimbursement if it "treats, reverses, or prevents a diagnosed medical condition," and requires a Letter of Medical Necessity (LMN) from a doctor. Services like TrueMed and Sika make it easy and free to find out if you qualify and link you to a provider that can provide the LMN.

Since sleep is integral to health, there are a wide range of conditions that could qualify you to use your HSA/FSA on a new mattress. These include mental health conditions like anxiety and depression; sleep disorders like sleep apnea, insomnia, and chronic fatigue; chronic pain, including arthritis and fibromyalgia; and diseases like autoimmune disease, heart disease, and diabetes. If you've been deemed "overweight" or "obese" by a doctor, you might be eligible, too. Regardless of your condition, your new mattress must actively improve or impact your health.

Why use HSA/FSA funds to buy a mattress?

The short answer is: It'll save you money. Since money in your HSA or FSA is pre-tax, you have more spending power using these funds. Your HSA/FSA can cover sales tax, too.

Also, FSA funds are "use it or lose it" and expire at the end of the year. If you have leftover funds, using them to buy a new mattress prevents it from going to waste.

How to use HSA/FSA funds to buy a mattress

Using your HSA/FSA funds to buy a mattress is simple. At each retailer's website, you'll add products to your cart as usual. When you get to the payment screen, select the option that says "pay with HSA/FSA." This will lead you to a health survey. Once complete, you'll be prompted to check out. Most companies recommend checking out with your personal credit card and submitting a reimbursement request, but there's also the option to pay directly from your HSA/FSA card, too. If you want to use part of your savings to pay for the mattress but don't have enough to cover the entire purchase in your account, then put it on your normal credit or debit card. This way, you'll easily be reimbursed for the funds you do use without making the cost splitting complicated.

If you qualify, you'll receive an electronic LMN in your inbox within about 24 to 48 hours. You can then send it to your savings account provider to start your reimbursement.

Importantly, your funds won't fully cover the cost of a mattress since HSA/FSA funds can only be used for mattress features that actively improve your health, like cooling properties or extra support. When we completed the survey and ran queen-size Purple and DreamCloud mattresses through TrueMed, the cost of the mattress was covered except for $223 — an average price for a basic mattress. It even covered the in-home setup on the Purple. Essentially, your funds can pay up to 90% of the mattress's price.

What mattresses are HSA/FSA eligible?

While you can't use HSA and FSA funds to buy any mattress on the market, there's a sizable list of comfortable mattresses that are eligible. Notably, the Nectar Classic Mattress, one of the best mattresses for back pain, is available for purchase with HSA/FSA funds.

Purple

Purple's qualification system is run through TrueMed. At checkout, click the "Pay with HSA/FSA" button in payment options. This will take you to the health survey. If you qualify, you can pay and submit a reimbursement request. Read our Purple mattress review to learn about all of Purple's beds in one place.

Nectar

Like Purple, you can either use an HSA/FSA at checkout on eligible mattresses or submit a reimbursement request after you're confirmed. After checkout, you'll receive a survey from TrueMed. If you don't have enough funds to cover the entire mattress, Nectar recommends paying with your personal credit card and then using the reimbursement request.

Sleep Number

At Sleep Number, you don't pay directly through your savings account. Instead, you complete the purchase as normal, indicate during checkout that you'd like to use HSA/FSA funds, then take the health survey. If you qualify, you'll receive a Letter of Medical Necessity, which you'll then send your documentation to your HSA or FSA provider for reimbursement.

Saatva

Saatva does things a little differently, even though it's also partnered with TrueMed. First, you'll make a qualifying mattress purchase using your debit or credit card as usual. Then, you'll complete a health survey on the same day as your purchase. If you're eligible, you'll receive a LMN within one to two days, and you'll be able to submit a reimbursement request. Read our review of Saatva's entire mattress lineup.

Leesa

When shopping at Leesa, you can choose to pay directly from an HSA/FSA account or file a reimbursement after receiving your LMN. Our favorite mattress of all time, the Leesa Sapira, is eligible for purchase with HSA/FSA funds. Read our review of Leesa's mattress lineup.

Avocado

To qualify with Avocado, you take the health survey from Sika prior to checking out. Then, with your LMN in hand, you'll make your purchase using your HSA/FSA, which Sika will confirm before sending you an email with reimbursement instructions.

Other mattresses

GhostBeds, PlushBeds, Zinus, Dreamcloud, Helix, Birch, Bear, Big Fig and Essentia all partner with TrueMed, and the process is similar to Purple and Nectar. After choosing to pay with HSA/FSA at checkout, you'll take a survey. If you qualify, you'll receive your LMN and check out using either your HSA/FSA funds or your credit or debit card for later reimbursement.

What other sleep products can you buy with an HSA/FSA?

In addition to mattresses, you can also buy pillows, adjustable bases, alarm clocks, and even weighted blankets using your HSA/FSA funds. And while HSA/FSA-eligible mattresses are rare on third-party retailers, you can find a slew of eligible sleep goods and accessories at Amazon's HSA/FSA Storefront and the dedicated FSA and HSA Stores. Just like with a mattress, you'll have to qualify for an LMN. We've included a few of our favorite eligible products below.

Adjustable bases

Bedding

Mattress toppers

Alarm clocks

The bottom line

If you have a qualifying medical condition like a sleep disorder, mental illness, or chronic pain, using your HSA/FSA funds could save you money when buying a new mattress. It's a great way to spend FSA funds before they expire at the end of the year. Not all mattresses are eligible, but brands simplify the process by partnering with companies like TrueMed, which help determine eligibility and provide letters of medical necessity for reimbursement.

The next WWE premium live event is just a few clicks away, and we have everything you need for tuning in from anywhere in the world, live from the Benchmark International Arena in Tampa, Florida. Check out the quick guide below for your up-to-date options on how to watch the WWE Backlash live stream from anywhere in the world.

Netflix has extensive international rights to these major WWE events outside the USA, as well as all the weekly action from Raw and SmackDown. The good news, though, is that if you already have a US Netflix subscription, you can get around geo-restrictions and use that existing account to watch by setting a VPN to a country like Canada or the UK to spoof your viewing location.

Or you can stick with the US local option via the ESPN Unlimited app, which costs $29.99 a month. You might be tempted to spend an extra $5 to bolt on access to Hulu and Disney+ as well.

• See also: Where to watch UFC | Where to watch NBA playoffs | New TV shows and movies

How to watch WWE Backlash from anywhere

WWE fans outside the location of their desired streaming service can still tune in with a VPN (virtual private network). VPNs are cybersecurity tools that enable people to alter their virtual locations. So if you're away from the UK or Canada at the moment, you can still watch via Netflix with a VPN. They're popular apps among those hoping to access their usual websites and apps while traveling abroad or boost their online privacy and security.

As far as VPNs go, our top recommendation of the best VPN services is consistently NordVPN. We've found that it unlocks international streaming better than anyone else and includes top-notch security features that can help boost your day-to-day privacy on the internet. Plus, it's a beginner-friendly option with a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can read more about it in our NordVPN review, and see below to learn how to use a VPN.

How to watch WWE Backlash in the UK, Canada, and more

Netflix is the streaming home of WWE Backlash in many countries outside the USA. Prices vary by region and depend on your subscription tier.

Backlash 2026 is available on Netflix in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and the UK.

If you're not currently in one of those countries, you can still watch Backlash on any Netflix account by changing your VPN settings to one of those countries before signing into Netflix and enjoying the action as detailed above.

How to watch WWE Backlash in the US

If you're in the US and don't want the VPN/Netflix route mentioned above, you can find Backlash on ESPN Unlimited. ESPN Unlimited subscriptions cost $29.99 a month and can be canceled at any time.

Can I watch WWE Backlash 2026 on demand after?

Yes. We expect an on-demand replay of WWE Backlash to be available no later than the day after on both ESPN Unlimited in the US and Netflix elsewhere. There's usually also an option to start a live broadcast from the beginning if you're joining a little after it's already started.

So whichever streaming service you're planning to use, you're all set, whether you're watching live or later at your leisure.

• Kayla Mazza rents a room in Honey Donegan's home after working with a nonprofit arranging matches.
• She pays a reduced rent of $650 to help with Donegan's finances and occasionally does chores.
• The 31-year-old analyst and the 77-year-old nanny get along well and enjoy sharing the space.

This interview is based on a conversation with data analyst and systems manager Kayla Mazza, 31, of Windsor County, Vermont. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Every night, at 7 p.m., my housemate, Honey Donegan, 77, and I sit down to watch Jeopardy in her den. Friday night is often movie night. It's a lovely bonding experience, despite the 46-year age gap.

Honey and I first met in March 2023, but our friendship has gotten stronger by the day since I moved into her home.

A few months before, I'd landed a job at a nonprofit near Honey's town, an hour's commute from my parents' home in Waterbury, Vermont. I'd stayed there temporarily until I found my own accommodation nearer my office.

However, as soon as I started looking, I felt discouraged. There was a lack of affordable housing in the area. Renting a room in a house with four other people can easily cost over $1,000 a month.

Guests like me are not considered carers

My new job was at a nonprofit, and I'd taken a pay cut from my previous position. In most cases, I didn't even qualify as a tenant because I didn't earn the required amount under the lease.

A relative told me about HomeShare Vermont, a nonprofit that matches older people with empty space in their homes with people like me.

It's an arrangement that works financially for both the guest and the host. As well as companionship, the host's incentives include the guest often assisting with chores.

Guests are not considered carers, but they may help with tasks such as cooking meals, grocery shopping, and rides to the doctor's office.

Each party is vetted by the organization, and I was excited to be matched with Honey, a part-time nanny, who lives in a four-bedroom house in a homeowners' association.

We settled on a reasonable rent of $650 a month — the maximum HomeShare allows for a shared-housing arrangement — plus a percentage of utilities.

My rent was higher than the average $380 monthly amount that HomeShare guests pay, mainly because Honey's needs were few. Some living situations are more intensive and may require a nightly presence and a set number of hours of assistance.

The expectations were set in advance

It worked out really well because I have a full-time job and am very busy. I also like visiting family and traveling a lot.

Meanwhile, Honey is the most active senior I know, especially since she has to keep up with little children.

The expectations were discussed in advance of what I should help with, such as watching her pets — two cats, two dogs, and some fish — when she's away or stacking wood in the winter.

We really clicked and have never needed HomeShare's mediation if problems ever arise between housemates.

We're both avid readers

In addition to liking Jeopardy and funny movies, we have other things in common. We hike together, walk the dogs, and swim at a nearby lake.

We have similar political beliefs and are both avid readers. Honey, who is extremely empathetic, would never judge me for curling up with a book for an entire weekend.

Meanwhile, we have open conversations about coming from different generations. The arrangement makes good financial sense, and it's stimulating and rewarding.

• GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen said he will continue doing whatever it takes to buy eBay.
• CNBC's skeptical interviewers "misunderstood" his deal math in his now-viral "Squawk Box" appearance, he said.
• The activist investor accused eBay's leadership of poor management. "There's a ton of fat that can be cut."

Ryan Cohen says he never wanted to be CEO of GameStop.

Instead, he says he dreams of helming eBay and thinks he has a real shot at achieving that goal, despite critics' claims that the e-commerce giant is beyond his reach.

"I'm going to continue doing whatever I need to do in order to buy the business," the GameStop CEO told Business Insider in a phone interview on Friday. "I'm going to make myself CEO of both."

Cohen surprised Wall Street earlier this week when he disclosed that GameStop had made an unsolicited bid of about $56 billion for eBay, which has a market value more than three times its size. He raised eyebrows again on Monday when he appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box," during which the hosts openly doubted whether the company could afford eBay and responded to his remarks with exhalations and chuckles.

"I'm not sure whether their questions were sincere or not," said Cohen, adding that he laid out a clear explanation of how he would finance a deal for eBay. "I don't know what is so complicated for them to figure it out."

A CNBC spokesperson said the "Squawk Box" interview "speaks for itself."

Cohen, whose "half cash, half stock" mantra describing the financing quickly became a meme, said GameStop has about $9 billion in cash and that TD Bank had expressed confidence in placing roughly $20 billion in debt. Together, he said, would cover the cash portion of the bid. In the wake of his viral CNBC appearance, Cohen offered a more detailed explanation of his math, including on TBPN.

"What we're proposing is for existing shareholders to take half of their investment off the table, and that would be us providing them with $28 billion, which is like a 40% premium from when we started buying the stock," he told TBPN. "And then they would be getting roughly — I mean it depends on ultimately when the transaction closes — but they would be rolling the rest into the combined company of GameStop and eBay."

When speaking with Business Insider, Cohen suggested the stock component would be "earnings per share accretive" for GameStop shareholders because he said he could significantly increase eBay's profitability through cost-cutting, making the combined entities more valuable overall.

A familiar playbook

In publicly criticizing eBay's leadership and arguing he could do a better job, Cohen borrowed from the playbook he used when he took over GameStop in 2021. A key difference, though, is that eBay's business is much healthier today than GameStop's was back then.

Cohen, who built his fortune as the cofounder of online pet-products retailer Chewy, told Business Insider that eBay could be in an even better financial position if it were managed more efficiently.

"There's a ton of fat that can be cut," he said, pointing to what he described as excessive operating expenses at a company that carries no inventory and whose operating income has remained roughly flat for a decade despite broader e-commerce growth.

EBay's operating income was $2.28 billion for 2025 compared to $2.2 billion for 2015. The company completed its PayPal spinoff in 2015 and has offloaded other assets in the last decade, including selling StubHub. The company's EBITDA margin, a profitability ratio measuring operational efficiency, was 24% for 2025.

Cohen also took aim at eBay's executives and directors. He alleged they had sold "hundreds of millions of dollars of stock" without buying shares themselves.

"They're not owners in the business. They're just milking it," he said. "It's simply a paycheck for them."

Like other executives of publicly traded companies, Ebay's leadership receives shares and stock options as part of their compensation packages. A source familiar with the matter said company insiders currently own over $150 million in shares.

Further, Cohen criticized eBay's corporate culture, alleging that the company had become too comfortable and undisciplined under its current leadership.

EBay has publicly said it is reviewing Cohen's bid.

A frugal 'meme king'

Cohen, who has also pushed for change at Nordstrom and Bed Bath & Beyond, said he wouldn't take a salary if he became CEO of eBay. He doesn't earn one at GameStop, though he has a $35 billion compensation package tied to hitting market cap and profit milestones, which an eBay deal could help unlock. He said he pays his personal assistant out of his own pocket and that whoever GameStop hires for a recently posted private project manager job would be compensated the same way.

"I have not pulled a penny out of GameStop," he said.

Since unveiling his bid for eBay, Cohen has leaned into his message about frugality — and his "meme king" reputation for publicity stunts — by listing personal items for sale on the platform. Those included one for a used pair of socks that drew bids of over $14,000. He said the effort is a sincere part of a broader push to help finance the acquisition.

"I have a lot of spare stuff," he said.

In a brief follow-up call on Friday, Cohen expanded on his aspirations for leading the merged companies.

"I did not want to be the CEO of GameStop. I want to be the CEO of eBay," he said. "I'm passionate about eBay. I believe in eBay's business. I wasn't passionate about GameStop. That's the difference."

Correction, May 9, 2026: An earlier version of this article misstated the year Cohen took over GameStop. This story has also been updated with information about eBay leadership stock holdings and the company's financials.

• The WHO's director-general said the current hantavirus outbreak "is not another COVID-19."
• An outbreak on a cruise ship has led to three deaths so far.
• The ship will arrive in the Canary Islands off Spain's coast on Sunday to evacuate passengers.

The World Health Organization's director-general said the current hantavirus outbreak, which is so far linked to the deaths of three people, isn't "another COVID-19."

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus shared the message in an X post directed toward the residents of Tenerife, where a cruise ship that faced an outbreak of hantavirus will evacuate early Sunday morning. Some Tenerife residents have protested the ship's scheduled arrival, concerned that it could cause another pandemic.

"I know you are worried. I know that when you hear the word 'outbreak' and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest," Ghebreyesus said on Saturday. "The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment. But I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another COVID-19."

Ghebreyesus said the current public health risk from hantavirus remains low, and there are no symptomatic passengers aboard the ship — called the MV Honduis — at this time.

"Spain's authorities have prepared a careful, step-by-step plan: passengers will be ferried ashore at the industrial port of Granadilla, far from residential areas, in sealed, guarded vehicles, through a completely cordoned-off corridor, and repatriated directly to their home countries," Ghebreyesus said. "You will not encounter them. Your families will not encounter them."

The World Health Organization first received reports of passengers with severe respiratory illness aboard the cruise ship on May 2. As of May 8, a total of eight cases, including three deaths, have been reported. Health officials said the virus is the Andes strain, known to have limited human-to-human transmission.

The United States, which officially withdrew from the World Health Organization earlier this year, shared an update for Americans through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on May 8. At the moment, the risk to the American public and travelers "remains extremely low," the agency said.

In his X post, Ghebreyesus thanked Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain for agreeing to receive the cruise ship.

"I intend to travel to Tenerife to observe this operation firsthand, to stand alongside the health workers, port staff, and officials who are making it happen, and to personally pay my respects to an island that has responded to a difficult situation with grace, solidarity, and compassion. Your humanity deserves to be witnessed, not just acknowledged from a distance," he said.

Ghebreyesus added, "As I have said many times: viruses do not care about politics, and they do not respect borders. The best immunity any of us has is solidarity."

• When I visited the Galápagos Islands, I assumed I'd be able to use credit cards and easily get cash.
• Unfortunately, ATM fees and credit-card charges were quite high on the islands.
• Next time, I'll bring more cash and spend more time in the Galápagos to help my money go further.

Last year, I took a dream vacation to a place I had heard about my whole life, but never thought I would have the chance to visit: the Galápagos Islands.

I swam with sea turtles and sharks, hung out with sea lions, and walked with the legendary giant tortoises.

I traveled solo, skipped the touristy cruises, flew coach, and negotiated for some great deals, but my trip was nearly overshadowed by one major mistake: I didn't bring nearly enough cold, hard cash in the form of US dollars.

Ecuador is a fully dollarized economy, which means American travelers don't even need to exchange currency. However, getting dollars once I was on the islands proved to be more difficult — and expensive — than I expected.

Although I brought some cash, I spent most of it before my vacation even began

Before my trip, I thought a few hundred dollars would be all I needed for the week. Instead, my cash was gone before I even saw a blue-footed booby.

For one, there's a long list of fees visitors have to pay just to enter the islands. There are also costs to get from the mostly uninhabited island where the main airport is located to other islands, where it's actually possible to book a stay for the night.

First, I spent $20 on a Galápagos Transit Control Card at the mainland airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador. This is a mandatory document for all visitors, used to monitor tourism and manage immigration.

Then, I flew to the Seymour Airport, located on the mostly uninhabited island of Baltra in the Galápagos. I paid a $200 mandatory national-park entry fee so I could exit the airport.

From there, I spent about $15 to take a bus and ferry from Baltra to Santa Cruz, where my accommodations and tours were located.

Once I arrived in Santa Cruz, I paid $25 for a taxi from the ferry terminal to the main town. I would've just taken the bus for about $5, but none were available when I arrived.

Using credit cards and getting cash on the islands wasn't as great or as easy as I'd anticipated

Although I didn't have much cash by the time I arrived at my accommodations, I still had my credit cards and knew I'd be able to withdraw US dollars from any ATM in the country if needed.

Unfortunately, I found out too late that many locally owned accommodations won't accept credit cards, and almost all of the local tour operators charge hefty fees for using them.

Operators tack on credit-card or "convenience" fees that can rise to as high as 10% or 20% of the total bill. When I started really running low on money, I learned that convenience comes at a steep price for cash, too.

Between the local ATM fees and my bank's international and out-of-network charges, I got hit with more than $25 in fees on a single withdrawal.

Looking back, there are a few ways I wish I'd saved money on my trip

If you're planning your first trip, don't follow in my footsteps.

First of all, a shorter stay offers the least bang for your buck, and my trip was just three days.

Since the upfront fees to enter the islands are the same regardless of how long you're staying, my cost-per-day breakdown felt astronomical.

If you're going to pay the price of admission to the islands, I suggest you stay at least a week to make the initial investment worth it.

For a weeklong stay, I'd also advise packing at least $600 in a mix of bills ranging from $5 to $100 so you can tip easily without worrying about getting change.

Even if bringing more cash from home isn't feasible, it's at least worth withdrawing some before flying to the Galápagos. Major cities like Guayaquil and Quito, where most visitors catch their flights to the islands, tend to have lower ATM fees.

All in all, I had a great time seeing the Galápagos Islands, but my vacation could've gone smoother — and been a better value — if I'd been a bit more prepared.

• A Frontier Airlines flight hit and killed a pedestrian at Denver International on Friday, the airport said.
• Denver International said the person jumped a perimeter fence and was hit while crossing the runway.
• Frontier said it was investigating the incident and was "deeply saddened by this event."

A Frontier Airlines flight struck and killed a pedestrian at Denver International on Friday evening, the airport said.

In a social media post early on Saturday, Denver International said that Frontier Flight 4345 reported hitting a person during takeoff at approximately 11:19 p.m., adding that firefighters tackled a "brief engine fire" at the scene.

The airport authority later confirmed that a pedestrian had jumped a perimeter fence and was hit while crossing the runway.

"The pedestrian is deceased, and is not believed to be an employee of the airport nor have they been identified," it said. The airport authority later added that while the runway was briefly closed for an investigation, it is now open.

In a statement, Frontier said there were reports of smoke in the cabin and that the pilots decided to abort takeoff, with passengers "safely evacuated via slides as a matter of precaution."

Twelve people reported minor injuries, with five of these people transported to hospital, Denver International said.

The Airbus A321, which was destined for Los Angeles, was carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members when the incident occurred, per Frontier.

"We are investigating this incident and gathering more information in coordination with the airport and other safety authorities," the airline's statement continued. "We are deeply saddened by this event."

In an audio recording of the moment shared by ATC.com, one of the Frontier pilots can be heard saying: "Frontier 4345, we're stopping on the runway. We just hit somebody, we have an engine fire."

The National Transportation Safety Board said on Saturday that it was coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration, Denver airport operations, and local law enforcement to gather further information.

• In 2024, Keara Callahan, 28, quit her corporate job to pursue a career in social media.
• To ease costs and save money, she left Miami and moved back in with her parents in Virginia.
• Callahan said moving home helped her make quicker strides towards living on her own.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Keara Callahan, 28, who quit her corporate job to pursue social media full-time. Callahan is living with her parents to save up money and move to Miami. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I graduated during COVID and was working remotely in Miami as a government tech consultant. As great as the job was, I realized it wasn't fully aligned with what I wanted in life. I was sitting at my desk all day, watching people on social media do really cool things, and I wanted something similar for myself.

When I wasn't working, I was posting on social media, hosting a podcast, and working on a few brand deals. The money didn't compare to my salary, but it gave me hope. I thought, "Okay, worst-case scenario, if I leave my job, I'm already making some money outside my salary."

I worked as a consultant for 4 years and was promoted very quickly. But there were a few things I didn't like about my job, like having barely any PTO. The final straw came when I was offered a higher-level position without a raise or an official promotion. At that point, I started to wonder whether the company actually cared about my growth.

I'm very risk-averse, but I put in my notice and decided to pursue social media full-time. It was probably the riskiest move I've ever made. My family thought I was crazy. Half of my family is from Mexico, including my grandparents, and they were like, "What are you doing? You have this great life in the US. You can't give it up for this crazy idea."

Still, I had to listen to myself and trust my intuition. Even though I didn't have a backup job, I knew that to get more, I had to do more and take bigger steps.

Moving in with my parents made financial sense while I switched careers

I've moved back in with my parents, who live in Northern Virginia, twice in my life. The first time was in 2023, after I left Miami following the end of a relationship. I lived with them until August 2024, when I eventually quit my tech consultant job.

In Mexican culture, it's very normal for kids to stay home until they're married, so my parents welcomed me back with open arms. Moving back home also made a lot of sense financially for me.

I studied economics in college, so I knew it was the best thing for my budget. I wouldn't have to pay rent, I could save money, and I could build up my nest egg — though I still contributed around the house by helping with groceries, chores, and whatever else was needed. I also wanted to be home because we have two older dogs. They were my childhood pets, and I wanted to be with them during their last few weeks or months.

The part I was most nervous about was sharing my move on social media. At that time, I was 25, and I thought moving back home would be embarrassing. I had built and shared this picture-perfect life online — moving to big-city Miami, living in a nice apartment — when, in reality, things hadn't worked out that way.

Having to explain, "Oops, I'm back home," felt scary. But funny enough, it didn't turn out to be as scary as I thought. A lot of people actually felt the same way. Some said, "I'm thinking about doing this," or "I just moved back in too." In a way, it created a safe space for people to talk about moving back home and ask questions.

By the time I quit my job, I was already living at home with my parents. I decided to start traveling and spent eight months in Bali, and traveled throughout Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America, visiting places like Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, Qatar, France, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, and Uruguay.

I documented my travels on Instagram and TikTok. The basis of my social media content comes from sharing my own experiences. And since I had never traveled alone before, I wanted to show my audience what it was like to step out of my comfort zone and try new, unfamiliar things.

Living at home helped me save money to move out

After traveling, I moved back in with my parents this past March. Within a few months, I'll be moving back to Miami and getting my own apartment. I wouldn't have been able to save up as quickly without having my parents' home as a place to land.

Not much has surprised me the second time around, except my parents' willingness to adapt to my lifestyle. We go on walks together now, and it feels like they genuinely want to do things like that with me.

The hardest part has been adjusting to being back in someone else's home. You get used to living life your own way — eating what you want, keeping your own routine, and doing things on your own schedule.

Another downside is that I don't have many friends in the town where they live. Most people have moved away or gotten jobs elsewhere, so if I'm not spending time with my parents, I don't really have anyone else to hang out with. It has made our relationship much stronger, though.

Moving back in with my parents was humbling, but also empowering

I used to feel a lot of pressure to show people that things were going well in my life. But moving back in with my parents and traveling helped me realize that the timeline we put on ourselves doesn't really matter.

I've met 40-year-olds going back to school and 20-year-olds doing their own thing. I realized I don't have to have everything figured out, and I know there's always somewhere I can go if things fall apart again.

Quitting my corporate job and moving back in also increased my confidence tenfold. When I first quit, I was scared about where money would come from. I had to figure it out quickly, and that made me more willing to take risks, try new things, and put myself out there.

Ideally, I want to stay out of the corporate world for as long as I can. I've been able to fully fund my life through social media, mentorships, contracting roles, and my podcast, which has started monetizing.

I feel like I'm finally on a good path. Sometimes you have to take a risk to reap the rewards of the life you're envisioning.