• I make the same Buffalo chicken dip for every party, game day, and Super Bowl.
• It takes only six ingredients, plus seasonings, and comes together in a slow cooker.
• It's a crowd-pleaser and unbelievably easy to make.

Football Sundays are officially back, and my recipe for easy slow-cooker Buffalo chicken dip is guaranteed to be the MVP at any party.

Practically every time I entertain friends — be it for game day, the Super Bowl, or any party — I'm always asked if I'll be making my famous Buffalo chicken dip.

Over the years, I've tweaked recipes I've seen online to come up with the easiest, most crowd-pleasing dip. It requires only six main ingredients, plus seasonings you'll probably already have in your pantry.

Here's how to make my easy slow-cooker Buffalo chicken dip.

My recipe for slow-cooker Buffalo chicken dip requires only six main ingredients.

To make the dip, which feeds about 10 people, you'll need:

• A 6-quart slow cooker or Crock-Pot
• A rotisserie chicken (or 1 lb of cooked chicken)
• 12 fluid ounces Frank's RedHot Buffalo sauce
• ½ cup ranch dressing
• 16-ounce cream cheese
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• Salt, pepper, garlic powder

I always start by separating the breasts from the rotisserie chicken and removing the skin.

I like to use rotisserie chicken for this recipe because it's often easier and cheaper than buying chicken breasts and boiling them myself. I find that the rotisserie chicken also packs much more flavor, and saves me from having to do any actual cooking.

When it comes to game-day recipes, easiest is usually best.

Then I shred the rotisserie chicken.

I usually do this step by hand, but you can also use two forks to shred your chicken. By the end, you should have about 3 cups of shredded rotisserie chicken.

I put the cream cheese in the slow cooker and cut it into cubes with a knife.

This helps ensure the cream cheese melts evenly and is well-distributed throughout the dip.

You can use full-fat or low-fat cream cheese for this dip, depending on your preference — I've had success using both.

I then add the rotisserie chicken to the slow cooker and season it.

I usually eyeball how much seasoning I use, but typically go for about a tablespoon of garlic powder, a tablespoon of salt, and a few dashes of pepper.

I add the two types of cheese.

I use 1 cup of shredded, low-moisture mozzarella cheese and 1 cup of shredded sharp-cheddar cheese.

Next, my wet ingredients go on top.

I use a whole 12-ounce bottle of Frank's RedHot Buffalo sauce, but you can use whichever brand of Buffalo sauce you prefer. I then add ½ cup of ranch dressing on top.

I mix the ingredients with a wooden spoon until everything is evenly distributed.

You don't need to overmix it — as the dip cooks, the ingredients will melt and combine.

Scoop along the sides to make sure nothing is sticking to the walls, put the lid on the slow cooker, and walk away. It's that easy.

I heat the dip on high for 1 to 2 hours, or on low for 3 hours.

I stir the dip with a wooden spoon a couple of times while it's cooking to prevent any spots from burning on the side and to help it cook evenly.

The dip should be smooth and slightly bubbling when it's done, with all the cream cheese and cheeses fully melted and combined.

I serve the finished Buffalo chicken dip with tortilla chips.

Whether you're making it for the Super Bowl, a last-minute party, or an easy weeknight snack, this six-ingredient slow-cooker Buffalo chicken dip shows that crowd-pleasing food doesn't have to be complicated.

Simply toss everything in, let it cook, and you'll end up with a creamy, spicy dip that disappears almost as fast as it comes together.

• US Army soldiers used about 2,000 attack drones in a recent exercise.
• Half of those systems were designed to be consumable and used like ammunition.
• Army officials and leaders have said small, low-cost drones are more useful in larger volumes.

The US Army brought thousands of drones to a recent combat exercise, and roughly half were designed to be expendable. Soldiers could use and lose the drones in the fight, treating them like ammunition.

The Army's shift toward using low-cost drones has relied on amassing enough systems to make them expendable. It's getting tens of thousands of drones to soldiers through the Drone Dominance Program, the goal being that soldiers use these systems without worrying about quickly coming up empty.

At the recent Saber Junction exercise in Germany, Army soldiers used approximately 1,900 autonomous systems.

"Those numbers continue to increase every rotation, and we will continue to increase them in future rotations," Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, acting commander of US Army Europe and Africa, told reporters at a roundtable on Thursday, which Business Insider received a transcript of.

Of those roughly 2,000 drones used during the exercise, "1,000 were consumable," Brig. Gen. Terry Tillis, head of the 7th Army Training Command, said, adding that soldiers were using them "like a munition."

"They're fired, and then it's employing them in a matter to achieve effects on the battlefield," he said.

At the Saber Junction exercise, US soldiers used drones in different combat scenarios, some informed by the war in Ukraine, against electronic warfare and counter-drone systems. Army officials said replicating more challenging environments was important for giving soldiers realistic experiences.

Using a bunch of drones was similarly important, as "those drones are now a part of our basics of being able to survive and integrate into protection plans, using them to sense further and strike faster," Norrie said.

Russia's war in Ukraine has shown that while drones do not always replace more exquisite strike capabilities, they can offer soldiers a low-cost and effective method for hitting enemy targets. Not worrying about losing the drones to jamming or enemy fire — and having a large enough stockpile to resupply quickly — gives troops a fairly consistent weapon to rely on.

Last year, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a memo directing an overhaul of how the Pentagon purchases small uncrewed aerial systems across the armed forces. The resulting program, Drone Dominance, is investing $1 billion to purchase at least 200,000 drones through 2027.

That memo also characterized how the military should be thinking small drones.

"Small UAS resemble munitions more than high-end airplanes. They should be cheap,rapidly replaceable, and categorized as consumable," the defense secretary wrote.

Tens of thousands of drones have been bought from different companies as part of the Drone Dominance effort. "We're in the process of receiving another 30,000 drones currently," Col. Gregory Merkl, the director of drone dominance for the Army, said. "That is enough absolutely to get them down to every squad level."

Soldiers have also been working on building and 3D printing parts for their own drones so that they can quickly craft systems when they need them or customize them for specific missions.

Earlier this year, a brigade from the 101st Airborne Division, for instance, assembled roughly 150 of the 228 attack drones they used in an exercise, with each system taking a couple of hours for a soldier to build.

Speaking about that exercise, Col. Ryan Bell, the commander of the 3rd Mobile Brigade, said, "If a company has only one or two drones, or a platoon has a single drone, it's a niche capability," Bell said, referring to one-way attack drones. "But a company that is provided 20 drones a day has an entirely new form of combat power."

• When I checked in at the Chicago Athletic Association, I felt transported to the Gilded Age.
• But that was just the beginning of my stay at the 19th-century private club turned hotel.
• Parts of the hotel appeared frozen in time, while others breathed new life into its history.

I've never been good at sports, and I've never been fond of exercise, so you might be wondering why I chose the Chicago Athletic Association when booking hotels for my first-ever trip to the city.

I wanted to step back in time. The Gilded Age hotel was a private club where professional athletes and high-profile individuals trained and socialized from 1893 to 2007.

Following its closure and a lengthy transformation project, the Chicago Athletic Association reopened as a hotel in 2015. I spent one night there in February for $250. It felt extremely luxurious for the price point, and some surprising details made me certain I'd book it again.

Parts of my stay felt like a time warp, but the hotel's history also came out in ways I didn't see coming.

Welcome to the Chicago Athletic Association, the 19th-century private club that's now a hotel.

The Venetian-Gothic-style building was designed by architect and club member Henry Ives Cobb, who took inspiration from the Doge's Palace in Venice, according to the hotel's website.

The hotel stood out to me among modern buildings on Michigan Avenue in Downtown Chicago. It's just across from Millennium Park and the Bean (formally known as Cloud Gate) and within walking distance of many tourist hot spots like the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Theater, and the Chicago Riverwalk.

Inside, the past lives on.

The Chicago Athletic Association began as a Gilded Age gentlemen's club joined by influential sports icons. Membership opened to women in 1972.

It was a stomping ground for industry moguls like William Wrigley and Marshall Field. It was a training base for five-time Olympic gold-medal swimmer Johnny Weissmuller and the first professional football player, William "Pudge" Heffelfinger.

The building's history is celebrated inside the hotel, with 19th-century relics and refurbished materials, from wood paneling to marble flooring, Elizabeth Story, the hotel's sales and marketing director, told Business Insider.

As I stepped into the lobby, I felt like I'd traveled back in time.

The lobby, also known as the drawing room, looked as if it had been designed 100 years ago, with restored 19th-century trim, moldings, and replicated historic details.

"Teams of craftsmen restored the 1893 grandeur of the Lobby Lounge by removing, refinishing, and reinstalling every piece of millwork, and recreating original light fixtures from old photographs," Story said.

I noticed other contemporary details that pay tribute to the city and club's history. The check-in desk, designed with long strips of wood in different colors, was inspired by vintage athletic equipment.

"A mural above the desk depicts the elevated train tracks that encircle Chicago's Loop," Story added.

Restored Gilded Age interiors made communal spaces look as lavish as they were historic.

I was mesmerized by the preserved luxury finishings as I walked through the hotel. Restored Italian columns, stained-glass windows, and golden doors made me feel as if I were inside a palace.

The ballrooms had an old-world, luxury feel.

The hotel had many event spaces, including the White City Ballroom. During the restoration process, Story said that the Italian Carrara marble floor was buried under an inch and a half of carpet, glue, and concrete.

I was surprised by another event space that used to be a swimming pool.

Known as "The Tank," this space still has the swimming lane flooring tiles from its pool days.

"Artists hand-made 167 individual stalactites as part of the atmospheric design," Story said.

Although the highlight of this room is the historic pool tiles, I thought repurposing the space for events was surprising and innovative.

The game room had a mix of historic and fresh details.

The game room was the billiards room back in the club days, Story said.

It didn't feel frozen in time like some of the other spaces. The walls blended antique woodwork with whimsical murals, such as chalkboard sketches of athletes and an aerial view of a basketball court. I thought it was a playful, creative way to showcase the building's history.

Some aspects of the hotel were completely new, like the rooftop bar and restaurant.

"The past was honored at every turn, but the transformation also called for thoughtful new additions," Story explained.

For example, Cindy's, the rooftop restaurant and bar, was built ahead of the hotel's 2015 opening.

I thought the space had a midcentury modern vibe with vintage influence. Cindy's brought the outdoors in with a steel-framed, windowed pavilion inspired by 19th-century train sheds.

The fitness center was sleek and modern.

Here, I found cardio machines with tablet attachments and fun cartoons of men stretching on the walls. The fitness center is open 24 hours a day.

My room had a vintage aesthetic without feeling dated.

I booked a standard room with a comfy king-sized bed and a downtown view for about $250 a night. I immediately noticed the custom metal bedframe with brass accents — a vintage design inspired by the 19th-century club.

The furniture creatively combined elements of old-fashioned gym equipment in a functional way.

The desk was unlike any I'd seen before. Wooden bars, inspired by stretching racks, climbed the wall to a netted shelf that appeared large enough to hold a typical checked suitcase.

The bars were cleverly used as vertical storage, with leather pouches of varying sizes hanging from them. I used these pockets to store my wallet, keys, and chargers during my stay.

The bathroom blended old-school locker room vibes with opulence.

"The bathrooms were conceived as a quiet luxury counterpoint," Story said. A black-and-white palette and a simple striped backsplash were paired with a Carrara marble vanity and a rainfall shower.

There was also a boxing-style robe in the bathroom, which almost made me feel like an athlete myself.

At the Chicago Athletic Association, I got my trip back in time, with some surprises.

While parts of the hotel felt 100 years old, fresh designs inspired by its private-club past gave other spaces a modern twist.

"The goal was never a museum-quality freeze in time, but something more alive," Story said. "A touch of disorder in the new space was introduced to draw in a younger generation, balanced bravely with references to the building's past."

From the palace-like common spaces to the creative nods to the past, the Chicago Athletic Association was more luxurious and distinctive than I expected for $250 a night. I would definitely stay there again, and maybe next time, I'll bring a jock with me.

• I always wanted to work at magazines, but when I did, it wasn't quite what I imagined.
• I wanted to write more, and went freelance. Then, my husband and I moved from New York to Boston.
• While building our family, I also built a career I love.

As a teenager, I'd sit on my bed flipping through glossy magazines, fascinated and completely absorbed by the empowering stories about women. The news felt dominated by men, but magazines seemed to offer a different world — one where women's lives, bodies, careers, and opinions were worthy of entire pages. I knew from an early age I wanted to help bring more of those stories to life.

In 2012, after studying journalism at Northeastern University, I moved to New York City as quickly as I could, interning at Ladies' Home Journal and Self, then gravitating toward parenting publications including What To Expect, American Baby, and Fit Pregnancy.

Motherhood fascinated me long before I became a mother. It was the same intrigue and interest that drew me to magazines — the power of women, what their bodies could do, and the enormity of the identity shift involved in raising a child. Writing about pregnancy and parenting somehow felt very natural to me, even when I understood both mostly in theory.

I loved editing, but I wanted to write

Working at magazines wasn't quite how I'd imagined it from my childhood bedroom. I loved editing: finding the heart of a story, moving pieces around, and helping a writer say what they were trying to say. My boss, Mindy, was one of the first people to make me believe that my creativity and instincts were worth trusting. She taught me nearly everything I knew about shaping a narrative.

But I also began to feel restless. I was putting so much of myself into stories that ultimately ran under somebody else's name. I longed for that authorship and craved the terrifying privilege of starting with a blank page, figuring out what I had to say, and hoping it might matter to even one reader.

Mindy warned me that freelancing would be hard. I believed her and quit anyway. I had just gotten engaged, was planning a wedding, and was already thinking about having children. I also knew that if I kept waiting to feel established enough to become a writer, I might spend my entire career editing other people's work.

I was scared to give up a steady paycheck, especially while planning a wedding and thinking about starting a family. Dan, my now-husband, understood the risk but supported me taking the chance. Neither of us knew whether I could make a sustainable living on my own; I only knew I would regret it if I didn't try.

The transition happened faster than I expected. Within the first few months, I had more assignments than I knew what to do with, partly because leaving my 9-to-5 meant I could attend daytime events, meet editors, and build relationships that led to more work. My income still varied from month to month, but it was far steadier than I had feared. By my second year of freelancing, I was writing at an almost ridiculous pace for around 20 magazines and websites and earning nearly four times the roughly $30,000 salary I'd once made as an editorial assistant.

My career became so much bigger after I left my staff job, but it looked so different from what I could have imagined.

Moving home changed the picture completely

Life started looking even more different in 2018, about a year after I began freelancing, when my husband lost his job. Because I didn't have employer-sponsored health insurance of my own, I had been covered through his job, so we lost coverage along with his paycheck. Our lease was also ending, and we wanted to start a family. Leaving New York suddenly felt less like giving something up and more like the only decision that made sense.

We moved to my hometown north of Boston, where my parents and oldest friends still lived. I became a mom the following spring, April 2019. Less than a year later, COVID turned the world upside down, and there wasn't a single person whose life looked the way they had imagined it.

My working life went from events, meetings, and crowded New York sidewalks to writing alone in the corner of a small, old house, albeit with an ocean view. There were no coworkers nearby, no glossy proofs circulating, and no one across the desk to bounce an idea off. There was just me, my laptop, my cat, and, during several stretches, a pregnant belly.

My hardest experiences became part of my work

Motherhood was so different from what I'd imagined, and so was my path through it. While trying to grow my family, I suffered two miscarriages, which drastically changed the way I understood pregnancy, loss, and the motherhood journey in its entirety. I was so fortunate to have two healthy pregnancies afterward, but I couldn't shake everything the process had shown me.

I was inspired more than ever to create — to bring to life the kinds of platforms and communities I'd needed myself. I co-founded Miscarriage Movement, to make pregnancy loss feel less isolating, as well as The Mother Chapter to talk honestly about motherhood, identity, mental health, and ambition. Neither platform was part of a careful business plan. Both grew from experiences and questions I couldn't leave alone.

My career today looks nothing like the one I imagined as a teenager. I miss parts of New York and the collective energy of a magazine office. Freelancing can still be unpredictable, and running my own platforms means the work is never exactly finished. But I get to write, edit, create, and build something that belongs to me. I'm also close to my parents and present for the small, ordinary parts of my children's lives.

The magazines on my childhood bed made me want to tell women's stories. All these years later, that's still very much what I'm doing. I just couldn't have imagined where I'd be doing it — or how much of my own life would eventually find its way onto the page.

• I'm living in my parents' converted single-car garage, a roughly 150-square-foot casita.
• While I'm separating from my husband, they've offered me more support than I ever expected.
• Living close to them is helping me through this transition.

In mid-August, I moved out of the home I shared with my husband. My new temporary home is my parents' converted single-car garage, a roughly 150-square-foot casita.

I have asked for a divorce, although we haven't filed anything yet, so I'm still getting used to saying that word. My marriage had reached a point where I knew I needed to leave.

Friends offered me places to stay, but my parents are both in their early 70s, and I wanted to spend time with them. However, the idea of living together still scared me. Our relationship was especially rocky around the time I left home as a teenager, when I vowed I would never live with them again.

We've all changed and grown in the 20 years since. I've matured and gained perspective with age, and they've softened and become more introspective. The casita also offers more privacy than living in my old bedroom would. Still, I worried moving back home would return us to those old dynamics, but it's only been a gift.

Living in such a small space has challenges

The casita is about 10 feet by 15 feet, and an adult life does not fit neatly into that square footage. But in reality, it's enough. It holds a bunk bed, a sofa, a kitchenette, a dresser, and a small bathroom. There's even a little portable island for me to sit at, though I use it to hold books and paperwork at the moment. Laundry and cleaning supplies are accessible in the main house, but my trips over are most often to spend time with my parents rather than for practical reasons.

I'm still moving belongings out of my house and deciding what deserves a spot here. I've downsized my clothes and cleared out makeup and skincare products I wasn't using. My book collection is harder to cull; I love my books, and haven't figured out what to do about that yet.

The room was already furnished when I moved in, and we swapped a wardrobe for a more practical clothing rack; my mom donated the former, along with some shelves, to make space. I didn't even have to ask. My parents haven't imposed a laundry schedule, and they've made room for me without making me feel like an inconvenience.

I was especially worried about my chronic migraines during the move. I had arranged my previous home around them, including installing blackout curtains for days when the light is painful. Thankfully, my mother's decor already included blackout curtains, too. Sound and food smells can also be difficult during an attack, but the casita has an outside entrance and is separate enough that neither has been an issue. I'm only steps from my parents, but I still have privacy.

They aren't charging for rent or utilities while I figure out my finances during these transitional months. Hearing how much they love having me here is a balm as I go through this season.

My parents have supported me in ways I didn't expect

Most nights, we eat dinner together. I also sit with my dad while he feeds the neighborhood kittens that appear each day. They seem a little feral, but they love him. As soon as they hear his high-pitched call of "Kitty, kitty, kitty," they come running because they know it means food. I wouldn't see these ordinary moments if I had accepted a friend's spare room.

My parents are softer and more easygoing than I remember. They listen when I need to talk about my marriage. Recently, I saw that my husband had taken off his wedding ring when I came to visit our dog. I was still wearing mine out of respect for the fact that we are legally married and are only beginning this process. I asked for the divorce, but seeing his bare hand still hurt.

When I came home and cried, my parents listened. Growing up, they took care of all of my physical needs. Somehow, I feel more supported by them now. Their willingness to sit with me in the sadness means more than anything they could buy or fix.

The casita is giving me time to figure out what I want next

I see this as a transitional space. I don't know where I will live next or exactly how the divorce process will unfold. Moving to my childhood home has become one of the kindest parts of an extremely painful time.

I had stopped expecting my relationship with my parents to feel this different. Living here has shown me that people can change, on both sides, even after you've given up imagining another version of the relationship. That means so much more to me than square footage.

• Kevin Schreck moved from a small town in North Carolina to Valencia, Spain, for a teaching program.
• Schreck expected a short stay, but fell for Valencia and does not plan to return to the US.
• He told Business Insider that he feels safer and happier in Spain, and his life is more affordable.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kevin Schreck, a 33-year-old from North Carolina who moved to Spain in 2018. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I was pursuing a master's in Spanish when I met my husband, who was also working on his master's. He's from Valencia, so when we finished our programs, I thought, "He's lived here for a couple of years, why don't I go ahead and try Spain?"

I applied to a Spanish program that places native English speakers in public schools as classroom language assistants. I got really lucky and was assigned to a school in Valencia.

At first, my plan was to live there for a couple of years, improve my Spanish, and then return to the US to become a language teacher. I imagined having the typical American dream, you know, a house with a big yard and all that. But I fell in love with Spain.

I have so many fond memories of my first year in Valencia. I was this guy from Wilmington, North Carolina, learning about a new culture, trying new foods, meeting a ton of people, and going out with my husband and his friends.

I know I'm lucky, and not everyone has that experience. It's easy to get disillusioned when you're in a new country and don't have a community. But having my husband with me allowed me to immerse myself. It gave me an advantage, an easier way in, and that's something I really appreciate now.

Now I'm getting my Spanish citizenship

Moving abroad was pretty easy. The teaching program provided me with a student visa, so I didn't have to figure everything out on my own or work with lawyers.

I was earning €1,000 ($1,146) a month through the program. It wasn't an amazing salary, but it was fairly typical and enough to live on. At the time, my partner and I rented an apartment in a decent area for €700 ($802) a month, which we split, so I could cover my rent and bills and still save a little.

It took me three months to receive my first payment. I was a recent college graduate relying on my savings, so that period was really stressful. But in the end, it all worked out.

I stayed in the program for a couple of years, which also made it easier to renew my visa. Afterward, I was able to apply for permanent residency, and now I'm working on my citizenship.

There's a lot to do in Valencia

There's a lot to love about Valencia. It's usually sunny, and it isn't a huge city. With just under a million people, it feels much less overwhelming than Barcelona or Madrid — especially for someone like me who comes from the rural South.

But I think the biggest thing for me is the culture itself. Spain isn't a monoculture; the North and South are totally different, and several languages are spoken across the country. I really connected with Valencian culture, and I've been able to make friends and feel like I fit in pretty well.

I live just outside the city center in a fairly small neighborhood, but I really like it. There are a couple of nice little squares, along with restaurants, bars, cafés, and green spaces.

Valencia is really accessible, and I think that's important for quality of life. It takes me less than 30 seconds to walk to the grocery store, and if I want to meet friends, I'm usually no more than a 10-or 15-minute walk away. I live really close to the metro, too, and can get to the airport in about 20 minutes.

My family back in North Carolina drives 45 minutes into town just to go to a restaurant. Now I think about that, and I'm like, "Oh my goodness." I really don't miss it.

Daily life is affordable in Spain

About four years ago, my husband and I bought a 592-square-foot flat for about €150,000 ($172,317). Our mortgage is €604 ($692) a month. We got really lucky because it happened right before the big housing boom. Housing here is definitely much more expensive now.

Life here is affordable. For groceries, we probably spend between €80 and €100 a week for two people. We usually go out about once a week, maybe on a Saturday, and it's not a super expensive place to eat. A decent dinner is usually around €25 per person, so I'd say I spend about €100 a month on going out — maybe a little more if drinks are involved.

Healthcare isn't expensive here either. Spain has a universal healthcare system, and that makes a huge difference in my life. Because I'm in the public system, I don't have to worry about getting a bill or whether it's worth going to the doctor because of a copay.

Of course, nowhere is perfect. The hardest part — and this probably isn't unique to Valencia — is learning a new language and culture and adjusting to a different way of life. You have to rethink the things you once considered normal in your hometown.

In Spain, there are a lot of unspoken rules. It's not something you learn in the first six months. You slowly catch on as you get better at the language and meet more people. It definitely took me time.

I don't plan on moving back to the US

For my friends and family, the idea of my moving from North Carolina to Spain probably seemed pretty crazy. Because I've always liked to travel, I think they assumed I'd be there for a year and then come back. I don't think anyone expected me to stay permanently.

But I'm really happy to be living in Valencia, and I definitely don't intend to move back to the US.

My life has really blossomed in Spain. I've become a travel advisor, and my husband and I are in the process of adopting a child.

While I don't think the education system here is the best in the world, I think raising a child here feels safer; we don't have to worry about things like school shootings. Also, this is a bilingual region, so our child would also have the opportunity to learn several languages. As a big language nerd, I find that a huge plus.

While I do miss things about the US, especially my friends and family, I think this is the right place for me.

It's funny to think back to 2018, when my plan was to just be in Spain for a while; now my life looks completely different.

• I convinced my reluctant husband to take our two young kids camping.
• Mosquito bites and the summer heat kept our toddler awake and miserable.
• We abandoned the trip after 36 hours but decided to try camping again.

The first sign that our family camping trip was a bad idea was that my husband and I were fighting.

Although he was a rugged outdoorsman who took frequent solo kayaking expeditions in the wilderness, he hated dragging our two kids into the woods in the peak of summer heat and mosquito season.

I disagreed. I'd only discovered a love for the outdoors as an adult, but I had a vision: our family playing in the water, me lounging by the lake in my sundress while the 13-month-old napped.

In truth, I had mid-summer anxiety and was desperate. Born in East Africa, I hated Minnesota winters. So I was frantic when I realized it was July and we hadn't moved beyond a 10-mile radius of our home. I wanted our family to make memories in the woods, and I wanted it now.

We went camping with our 2 kids

Finally, he consented. He booked two nights in a state forest at the edge of the Boundary Waters, a massive forest on the border of Minnesota and Canada.

The next sign of trouble: we weren't prepared. With three days to go before we left, we dashed around the city for essentials in 90-degree weather: a clunky fan from Cabela's and a screen shelter from the RV store (that turned out to be gazebo-sized and had to be replaced). I balked at the $100 camping chair but added it to the cart anyway. Finding the right tent was a challenge. We had a two-person backpacking tent from life before kids. A no-go. Luckily, a friend lent us his tent. We packed enough for two weeks, and by the miracle of extra daylight, we were ready to go by Friday.

We arrived at the campsite. I slapped citronella spray on my toddler's legs before she excitedly ran through the winding path from our campsite to the water. I followed her, and my daughters and I sat by the water, watching three boys hunt tadpoles. I didn't notice the bug bites she was getting, preoccupied with blocking the sticks my newly mobile infant was trying to sneak into her mouth.

The kids woke up at 2 a.m.

We quickly learned that camping with young kids was just like parenting at home, only with fewer amenities, more dust, and no safe spot to park our infant. After dinner, while we were playing card games, my toddler started complaining that her legs were itchy. I rubbed a balm from a tin with a badger on her. I was ill-equipped for what followed.

At 2 a.m., we woke to the kids' meltdown. The bites were too itchy. The tent was too warm. The sheets irritating. I rubbed more balm. For an hour, she wailed as I hunted for stronger and stronger concoctions that weren't locked up in the car to prevent bears from wandering over.

Eventually, the baby woke up and needed to be nursed.

No amount of balm helped. We switched to distracting her and cooling her down. I stripped her down and cranked the fan on her legs while my husband told the world's longest story about the bear with no hair.

The next morning, our girl was keener to jump into the lake than to process how she felt. The cool water was both delightful and soothing. In good spirits, she made friends with the boulder by our campsite.

We left early

Success, I thought, as I lounged at base while the baby napped in her Pack 'n Play. The park had running water, so at dinnertime, I suggested a cool shower to help the kids get ready for bed. The heat clung to our bodies, and I thought a rinse-off would help with sleep. We were nearly scalded. The tap had two settings: off or lava.

Within minutes, the bites flared up again. As she wailed, I looked into her bloodshot and unhappy eyes. I thought of spending another night in the cramped tent with paper-mache zippers while the mosquitoes hovered outside. I thought of another 3 a.m. therapy session to soothe my child. I thought of the rock that had lodged itself against my thigh as I slid around our 1-inch sleeping pads while tending to both kids. We were miserable.

"Let's pack up and go home," I told my spouse.

While I fed the kids yogurt bowls, my husband quickly stuffed everything into our car. Driving home with the kids soundly asleep, I looked out at the forest and the setting sun. A black bear poked its head up as we drove through empty roads. It was my first sighting.

Back in cell service, we stopped at the pharmacy and then gave our child Zyrtec before tucking her in.

"I feel like we've been gone for a week," my husband remarked as we collapsed on the Adirondack chairs on our front porch.

It should have been our last time attempting this madness. By all accounts, it was a flop. But our daughters played with sticks and water. Our toddler made friends with a rock. Our 36 hours of suffering had to be for something.

So a few weeks later, we cautiously tried again. This time: one night, shorter drive, better tent, pre-cooked meals, and lots of bug spray and long sleeves. We ran our Thermacell most of the day at camp. I actually sat in my new chair while we played Go Fish.

The kids splashed in a clear lake, played with sand, and slept soundly under the stars. As we drove home, our toddler asked, "Mama, when can we go back?"

Of all the sweatsuits I've tried, Spanx's AirEssentials set is the gold standard. I'd heard it praised by both our own editors and Oprah before finally getting my own a couple years ago.

I considered investing in a second Spanx sweatsuit since I loved it so much, but the $246 price gave me pause. Then, I stumbled upon a nearly identical alternative for $40. Amazon calls it the number one best-seller in women's sweatsuits, so I figured it'd be worth comparing the two. I've spent plenty of time in both sweatsuits while working from home, lounging, and running errands. And truthfully, I was not expecting to enjoy the Amazon sweatsuit this much.

What it's like to wear the $246 Spanx AirEssentials sweatsuit

I remember the first time I put on Spanx's AirEssentials sweatsuit and quickly understanding the hype. The fabric felt luxurious, stretchy, and super soft. It remains one of the comfiest things I've ever had on my body.

Though the pants come in petite and long inseams, Spanx recommends the regular length for someone 5-foot-7. I selected the Wide-Leg Pants in a size Medium, with a Half-Zip sweatshirt in a size Small.

Both fit me impeccably. I wear the whole set with crisp, white sneakers and oversized sunglasses. It's not often I feel fancy in sweats, but all together this look makes me feel glamorous in a dressed-down kind of way.

I machine washed mine with cold water and tumbled dried low per the manufacturer's instructions, and was pleasantly surprised to find zero shrinkage the next time I wore it. Another little bonus with the fabric is that it offers UPF 50+ protection.

How the $40 Amazon sweatsuit compares

Meanwhile, the Amazon version is sold as a full set. I ordered the rich, dark brown color called Coffee. When I opened the zippered plastic bag it came in, it was exactly the hue I expected.

The stretchy, silky-soft, medium-weight fabric is also much more expensive-looking than I anticipated. And it feels just like the Spanx AirEssentials fabric.

I love how comfortable the top feels, and it looks equally stylish with leggings or jeans. However, I didn't love some of the details on the pants. The bulky, stretched-out elastic ties are noticeably cheap-looking.

Sizing and fit

Besides its famous shapewear, Spanx is known for bottoms that lift your butt (such as with our team's favorite black work pants). Their sweatpants are no different, thanks to a curved seam in the back. The Amazon counterpart notably lacks this kind of detail. They don't look bad — just not quite as good.

While the Anrabess sweatsuit fits just fine, there's no question that Spanx's version fits me better. Spanx also wins in terms of size inclusivity with sets up to a 3X, while the Anrabess version only goes up to 2X.

The fact that the Spanx AirEssentials set is sold as separates is great for people like me who size differently in tops and bottoms. In the Anrabess set, I had to size up to a medium in the top to accommodate my larger lower half. This wasn't ideal, especially since the top has an oversized fit to begin with.

Materials and color options

The Anrabess sweatsuit is comprised of 50% rayon, 45% polyester, and 5% Spandex, while Spanx's version is 47% Tencel Modal, 46% polyester, and 7% elastane. The fabrics feel indistinguishable, which impressed me considering the price disparity.

Still, the Anrabess suit has to be line-dried, which is less convenient than tumble-drying the Spanx set. The Anrabess set also wrinkles more easily.

The Spanx set comes in 13 colors, while the Anrabess sweatsuit comes in 22. I noticed several Amazon customers report they were less satisfied with the lighter colors, which didn't look quite like the photos and showed water stains.

The bottom line

Price aside, I prefer the Spanx AirEssentials set for its size options, mix-and-match ability, and impeccable tailoring. However, Anrabess' version is better than you'd expect for just a quarter of the price. The fabric is indistinguishable from its more expensive counterpart, and it's a great choice for people who size similarly in tops and bottoms. However, the lack of inseam options are not ideal for petite or tall people.

• Big Tech stock can be worth a fortune — if workers remain employed long enough to get it.
• Layoffs can suddenly wipe out stock workers were waiting to collect.
• The AI boom is creating another potential path to equity riches: joining a startup or building one.

The day after Rob Waters learned of his layoff from Google last year, he was encouraged to apply for a new role there as an AI sales specialist. Google soon offered him the position, with a six-figure salary.

Waters wasn't sure he wanted to return. He'd grown frustrated with the bureaucracy at Google and how the reorganization that eliminated his team had been handled.

But walking away meant giving up about a few hundred thousand dollars in unvested equity.

"I killed myself working and dedicating myself, and then all I got to show for it was getting let go," said the 42-year-old, who lives in San Francisco.

He'd also dreamed of starting his own company. The layoff, he said, "ripped the bandaid off." Waters decided to bet on himself and pursue Kanawai AI, a startup he cofounded.

"All the equity that was unvested was gone," he said. "I went from making very high six figures to zero."

Stock compensation has long given Big Tech workers a powerful incentive to stay put. Since the end of 2022, shares of Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have all at least doubled.

But years of Big Tech layoffs have reminded some workers that their stock compensation isn't guaranteed. Meanwhile, the AI boom has created another path to potential equity riches. And for some workers, years of gains on vested stock have given them the financial security to leave Big Tech on their own terms.

When Big Tech stock makes leaving easier

Julie Zhu, 29, had wanted to become a founder since she was 18 and said she'd developed a "love-hate relationship" with Apple, where she worked as a product designer. She was grateful for what she'd learned at the company but said it was a high-pressure, high-stress environment. She wanted more control over her work.

Still, Zhu wanted to make sure she could afford the risk of leaving. Her goal was to have three to five years of runway. Her Apple stock came in handy.

"I didn't sell anything during my time at Apple, and Apple has been doing really well," she said.

Last year, after nearly four years at Apple, Zhu resigned to focus on Odd One In, the artist collectible company she'd been building on the side. She said it felt like the right time, though leaving meant forfeiting the remaining quarter of her Apple stock grant that hadn't yet vested.

Yousuf Imran also built up a financial cushion during roughly six years at Google, where his compensation included company stock. He set aside $350,000 for business and personal expenses before leaving in April to start an AI sales tools company. Imran said the potentially "life-changing" equity packages at companies like OpenAI and Anthropic shaped his decision.

"If the only way to get real upside in this AI moment is equity, at some point, you ask yourself whether the equity should be in your own company," he said.

Dave Lewis also credited stock compensation for giving him the flexibility to consider career options outside Big Tech. Lewis, who spent more than a decade working at Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, said the wealth he'd accumulated from stock compensation gave him enough of a financial cushion to be selective after he was laid off by Microsoft last October.

With AI reshaping the tech industry, Lewis said he wanted his next role to position him for where he thought the industry was headed. In May, he joined Emberos, an AI startup, as head of partnerships.

With stock compensation, timing can be everything

For all its potential upside, stock compensation can leave workers' finances exposed to luck and timing: of when they join the company, vesting schedule, stock performance, and their decisions to sell or hold. One former Meta employee got lucky: Meta's shares had fallen sharply when he joined in 2022 and received a "boatload" of restricted stock units on the cheap. The stock then surged over the next few years.

Not everyone is as fortunate. A former Microsoft employee in her 60s said she still held a large amount of company stock when she lost her job last year after more than a decade there. She initially thought her savings and stock holdings might allow her to retire, but after Microsoft shares fell sharply, she began to question whether she could afford to.

The golden handcuffs only go so far

For all its complications, stock compensation remains one reason Big Tech is so appealing. A former Amazon employee said the company's salary-and-stock compensation was lucrative and also felt more predictable than the bonus-heavy pay structure she had at her previous employer.

But even a predictable compensation package depends on keeping the job. After a few years at Amazon, she was laid off last year.

Even for workers who do retain their jobs, the financial incentives to stay only go so far. As Bushra Amiwala weighed whether to leave her sales associate role to run for Congress, she said she felt the pull of Big Tech's so-called "golden handcuffs." Staying at Google offered the salary, stock, and stability that could help her continue supporting her immigrant parents financially.

For Amiwala, the deciding question wasn't whether she'd win the race — she ultimately left Google but lost the election — or what she'd give up financially by leaving Google. It was whether, five or 10 years later, she'd regret not taking the chance.

"For me, it was a no-brainer," she said. "I knew I'd regret not doing it."

Do you have a story to share? Reach out to the reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.

We have a lot of thoughts on the best sheets — mostly because we've spent years sleep testing, washing, and arguing over what actually belongs on your bed. Our linen closets are overflowing as we juggle options for hot sleepers who demand crisp, cool percale, cozy sateen loyalists who want a soft, lived-in feel, or anyone trying to recreate that five-star hotel experience. There's no single "perfect" set for everyone, but the best sheets should always be durable, easy to care for, and well-fitting.

Our team objectively tests every set for comfort, breathability, and durability, integrating them into our regular bedding rotations for long-term evaluation. Below, you'll find our top picks along with expert advice to help you choose the right set for your sleep needs.

Learn more about how Business Insider Reviews tests and researches home products.

Our top picks for the best sheet sets

Best overall sheets, percale: L.L.Bean Percale Sheet Set - See at L.L.Bean

Best overall, sateen: Brooklinen Luxe Sateen Sheet Set - See at Brooklinen

Best budget sheets: Threshold Solid Performance Sheet Set - See at Target

Best flannel sheets: L.L.Bean Ultrasoft Comfort Flannel Sheets - See at L.L.Bean

Best patterned sheets: The Company Store Patterned Sheets - See at The Company Store

Best hotel sheets: H by Frette Classic Sheet Set - See at Amazon

Best deep-pocket sheets: Cuddledown 400-Thread Count Sateen Sheet Set - See at Cuddledown

Best bamboo sheets: Quince Bamboo Sheet Set - See at Quince

Best linen sheets: Brooklinen Washed Linen Core Sheet Set - See at Brooklinen

Best cooling sheets: Sijo AiryWeight Eucalyptus Sheet Set - See at Amazon

Best overall, percale

If you want classic, cool-to-the-touch sheets that actually breathe, percale is hard to beat. L.L.Bean's Percale Cotton Set is our overall favorite because it boasts a bit of everything that most shoppers are looking for: They're lightweight, durable, and breathable. Percale sheets offer that fresh, crisp button-up shirt feel with just enough subtle softness built right in.

Don't let the modest 280-thread count fool you—fiber quality matters far more than inflated numbers. Karen Leonas, a professor of textile sciences at the Wilson College of Textiles at NC State University, told us extra-long-staple cotton is even stronger and more resistant to abrasion than long-staple cotton. That's likely why the L.L.Bean sheets are extra soft and durable, even though the 280-thread count is on the lower end of the spectrum. Even after many washes, they had a great feel and experienced no loose threads or shrinkage.

Thoughtful functional details take the annoyance out of bed-making on laundry day. The deep corners of the fitted sheet fit well and never slipped off, but there was a little excess (it fits up to 15-inch mattresses) on my Ikea Haugesund mattress. Clearly labeled "long" and "short" sides eliminate the trial-and-error struggle of bed-making. The sheets are available in a handful of light colors and have hemstitched detailing (decorative threading at the edges). If you prefer a simple, minimalist look that fits into pretty much any room style, the L.L.Bean sheets won't disappoint.

Read our full L.L.Bean Percale Sheets review.

Best overall, sateen

For those who prefer soft and cozy over crisp and cool, sateen is your move. Sateen is a type of cotton weave that produces a silky texture when compared to the matte, cool texture of percale. Think of it as the difference between a soft cotton t-shirt (sateen) and a crisp button-up shirt (percale). Hot sleepers usually gravitate towards percale, but if overheating isn't an issue for you, you'll probably appreciate the luxurious feel of sateen.

Brooklinen sets the bar for luxury sateen. Earlier this year, Brooklinen completely relaunched its Brooklinen Luxe Sateen Sheets, revamping it already incredibly comfortable signature with finer, long staple cotton yarns, a higher thread count, and a matte finish. The short- and long-side labels that Brooklinen helped popularize, of course, remain, so making the bed is a breeze. The resulting feel is soft and comforting, with a beautiful, breezy drape. Brooklinen stocks its sateen in core colorways, typically a neutral heavy palette of white, creams, blues, and stripes, but frequently introduces seasonal limited edition colors that tend to sell out.

They hold up over years of repeated washing. One of our editors has owned the same set of Brooklinen sateen sheets for almost a decade now, and they've held up remarkably well to years of use and washing. Our one complaint is that, like most sateen options we've tried, Brooklinen's sheets sleep a bit warmer than percale. We haven't noticed any loose threads or pilling during testing, either, and we trust that a set will last for years.

Read our full Brooklinen Luxe sateen sheet review and check out all of our favorite products we've tried from Brooklinen.

Best budget

Budget sheets usually feel like a compromise, but these actually punch above their weight. It's the price tag that'll catch your eye first, then the great fit and soft feel that'll sell you completely on the budget-friendly Threshold Performance Sheet Set. The surprisingly thick 100% cotton sateen weave has a smooth sheen that looks far more expensive than it is.

The fitted sheet actually stays snug all night. The extra stretch at the corners of the sheet made a big difference, helping it cling to my mattress without annoying bunching or corner pop-offs. It also has a top and bottom label to take the friction out of bed-making.

They aren't maintenance-free, but routine washing keeps them feeling great. While marketed as wrinkle-free "performance" fabric, they will crease and tend to trap body oils faster than higher-end sets. A regular wash cycle and prompt dryer removal easily solve both issues, keeping this an unbeatable pick for guest rooms, dorms, or budget upgrades thanks to its quality, durability, and feel. In addition to solid colors, Threshold Performance Sheets are available in prints. We tested the tulip toss pattern and loved the cute, simple addition of pink flowers to traditional white sheets.

Read our full Threshold Performance Sheet Set review.

Best flannel

L.L.Bean built its reputation on flannel, so it's no surprise their bedding takes top honors. From cold-weather outerwear to lined sleeping bags, the brand knows how to handle brushed cotton. The Ultrasoft Comfort Flannel Sheets are a fantastic buy (and the best flannel sheets) if you sleep cool, live in a cold climate, or just want to stay warm on cold nights.

They give you velvet-level softness without making you overheat. The sheets have a balanced thickness and weigh only 5 ounces per square yard, meaning they offer more substance than percale or sateen without feeling suffocating. Testing them through hot summer nights proved they actually breathe well enough for year-round comfort without trapping excessive body heat.

Unlike cheap flannel that quickly degrades into a pilled mess, these stay velvety smooth. You'll notice a wave of lint in the dryer during the first few washes — standard for fresh flannel — but it drops off quickly without thinning the fabric. The sheets stayed velvety smooth and didn't pill, with no color loss after several washes. They're available in an array of patterns and colors, including striped and checkered options.

Best hotel

If five-star hotel sheets are your benchmark, this is the ultimate bedroom flex. Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, and Kimpton hotels worldwide turn to the iconic bedding brand Frette for their bedding needs. The Italian luxury brand was also once the official linens maker for the Italian royal family. So, needless to say, you'll feel like royalty when sleeping in H by Frette's Classic Sheet Set.

Built to survive constant hotel laundering, these sheets only get better with time. Frette uses 100% extra-long-staple cotton designed to endure heavy housekeeping cycles without losing its silky-soft drape. Available strictly in classic white—in either a cozy sateen or crisp percale — the weave keeps its subtle gloss and fresh structure wash after wash. The sateen is soft and cozy — but not overly warm — while the percale has that classic, crisp hotel sheets feel. The resulting bed looks simple, clean, and fresh.

Consider this the ultimate treat-yourself investment for your bedding rotation. It's an undeniable splurge, but if you want the exact sheets approved by elite hotel housekeepers, Frette is unmatched. It's the one set that instantly turns routine bedtime into a resort-level ritual.

Best patterned

Playing it safe with plain white sheets is a missed opportunity for your bedroom if you love prints. The Company Store earns the top spot in our best patterned sheets guide with its diverse high-quality cotton collection, which spans everything from vibrant, statement florals to subtle, tailored plaids, making it effortless to add personality to your bed.

Sheets that are as durable as they are stylish. The percale sheets are crisp and cool, while the sateen sheets are silky soft. They've held up to wear and tear, too — they've survived weeks of sleeping, shrugged off pet claws, and multiple washes.

Check out the collaborations for artist-driven prints. The Company Store teams up with lifestyle brands like Rifle Paper Co. and Stoffer Home to extend their style onto its cotton. Percale or sateen weaves can come down to personal preference, but the percale Strawberry Fields print brought a signature Rifle Paper Co. design right into the bedroom, while the sateen Peacock Floral print incorporates elegant peacocks and green leaves. Just note, the Rifle Paper Co. collaboration is usually excluded from sitewide promotions and sales, and some patterns have limited twin XL availability. The Company Store's 30-day return policy isn't completely hassle-free, as a return fee of $4.50 per item is deducted should an ite't work out.

Best deep-pocket

If your mattress is over 16 inches tall, standard fitted sheets are a lost cause. Nothing ruins a night of sleep quite like a sheet corner popping off at 2 a.m., especially if you've added a plush mattress topper or sleep on a thick pillowtop. Out of more than 10 deep-pocket options tested, the Cuddledown Sateen Sheet Set fit best — sliding on effortlessly without requiring a wrestling match to stretch over the corners.

They maintain their soft texture and rich color through endless wash cycles. The sheets are made of long-staple cotton and have a sateen weave, so they're durable and noticeably soft. After several washings, the sheets were still exceptionally soft and hadn't started to pill. The color hadn't faded, and the fitted sheet hadn't shrunk much. I used the sheets during the winter and a cool spring. They felt warm yet light, but they weren't as crisp as percale or linen for summer. —Jenny McGrath, former Reviews contributor

Best bamboo

The true draw of bamboo isn't marketing hype — it's how the fabric breathes while hugging your body, combined with silky softness. Bamboo bedding has become a team favorite sleeping material for its soft, breathable, and eco-friendly properties. After a lengthy testing process to find the best bamboo sheets, the Quince Bamboo Sheet Set emerged as a favorite for its luxurious softness, drapiness, silky-smooth sateen weave, breathability, affordability, and extensive color offerings.

A 365-day risk-free trial is a massive flex, but you do have to accept a few material trade-offs. The fitted sheet actually stays anchored to the mattress—complete with practical orientation tags—but bamboo's ultra-soft fibers are prone to surface pilling and oil stains over time, and the fabric does get wrinkly. Fortunately, those are purely cosmetic drawbacks; long-term testing showed zero structural tearing, ripping, or shrinkage.

Read our Quince Bamboo Sheets review for more details.

Best linen

Linen is one of the most polarizing but luxurious bedding fabrics. Many love linen for its casual, lived-in look and the fact that it gets softer with time and use. On the other hand, linen also wrinkles easily, can feel initially scratchy or rough, and is notoriously expensive. If you aren't familiar with linen, it's a popular choice for warmer months because it's made from hollow flax fibers that absorb moisture and let air pass through, making it breathable and helping it stay dry even on the warmest, stuffiest nights. When treated according to their care instructions, they should last you years.

Brooklinen's linen sheets are a treat for linen lovers. Taking the top spot in our best linen sheet sets, the Brooklinen Washed European Linen Sheet Set impressed us with its immediate softness, perhaps contrary to what you may expect from a new set of linen sheets. They're light and breathable but don't feel flimsy.

Forget thread count; pay attention to GSM. Unlike percale or sateen bedding, linen sheets are not identified by thread count, but by grams per square meter (GSM), which is a measure of a textile's weight. Brooklinen's 155 GSM falls on the light-to-medium end of typical linen sheeting, so it balances longevity and durability without sacrificing its soft, airy feel.

If you want a broader color palette for half the price, Quince is a formidable competitor. The linen sheets from Quince offer a slightly denser weave that holds a bit more warmth while maintaining effortless breathability. It's an unbeatable budget-friendly alternative if you prefer a slightly heavier drape and more styling options.

Read our full Brooklinen Washed Linen Sheets review.

Best cooling

Stop treating night sweats like an inevitable life sentence. Most "cooling" bedding relies on slippery synthetic gimmickry, but our top pick for the best cooling sheets is the Sijo AiryWeight Eucalyptus Sheet Set. manages real temperature regulation without feeling like a cheap raincoat. It actively wicks away heat and moisture before you wake up drenched, hitting the right balance of comfort, coolness, durability, and price.

Cooling tech shouldn't mean settling for clinical, paper-thin fabric. Sijo sheets are made from eucalyptus, a soft, unique fiber with a feel similar to bamboo. They actually wick away heat and moisture while allowing air to flow through, which helps prevent night sweats. You can opt out of the flat sheet to trim the price tag, and while the lack of directional "top/bottom" tags is a minor annoyance, it's easily forgiven for uninterrupted sleep.

If you prefer a substantial feel, linen is the ultimate plot twist. The AiryWeight edged out our previous cooling pick, also from Sijo, the LuxeWeave Linen Sheet Set. Both sleep exceptionally cool — it really comes down to your desired feel: silky eucalyptus or weightier linen that gets softer with each wash.

What to look for when choosing the best sheets

Material

Cotton rules the bedding world, but it's not the only fabric worth your bed space. The staple length of your cotton dictates whether your sheets stay hotel-soft or degrade into a scratchy mess, while materials like linen and lyocell bring entirely different cooling properties to the mattress. Here's how to navigate the real differences:

• Long-staple cotton: We've found that the best sheets typically use long-staple cotton, and this is the baseline for durable, high-quality bedding. Long-staple cotton has longer fibers, resulting in smoother, stronger yarn that reduces pilling and scratchiness. Brands will generally call out when they use long-staple cotton; otherwise, you can probably assume it's short-staple. Leonas says the industry definition of long-staple cotton is a fiber length of 1.15-1.22 inches. 
• Pima/Supima cotton: Also known by its trademark name, Supima cotton, this is an extra-long-staple cotton that is grown only in the US and has a fiber length of at least 1.5 inches. Extra-long-staple cotton is even smoother, more flexible, and more resistant to pilling than long-staple cotton.
• Egyptian cotton: It's often assumed that Egyptian cotton, which is grown in Egypt, is long-staple, but it could also be lower-quality, short-staple cotton that just happens to be from Egypt, so be careful of this labeling and look specifically for "long-staple cotton." 
• Linen: Linen is a type of fiber made from flax plants. It's slightly rigid, with a rougher texture, and it feels cool and breathable. It wrinkles easily. 
• Bamboo and Lyocell: These are semi-synthetic fibers made by dissolving plant wood pulp — usually bamboo or eucalyptus — and spinning it into yarn. They offer an instantly cool-to-the-touch feel and a slinky, liquid drape that releases body heat better than heavy cotton. The fabric is more prone to pilling, abrasion, and shrinkage. Plus, the production and care of these alternative fibers can be murky and bad for the environment. Viscose and rayon are the most common forms of bamboo bedding. Exceptionally soft and silky, but it uses a chemically intense manufacturing process. Lyocell (Tencel) is considered the premium, eco-friendly upgrade, made with a closed-loop process that recycles 99% of the non-toxic solvents, resulting in a stronger, highly breathable fiber.

• Synthetics (Polyester/Microfiber): Soft, cheap, and prone to trapping heat like a sweater. Only worth considering if budget is your sole priority.

Weave

Contrary to popular belief, percale, sateen, and flannel are not different materials. All are made from cotton, just woven differently to produce different textures and appearances. Here are the main differences:

• Percale: A type of cotton weave where one thread is woven with another thread into a tight, grid pattern. It has a matte, structured feel like a crisp dress shirt. Choose if you sleep hot or want an airy, fresh feel.
• Sateen: A type of cotton weave where three or four threads are woven over one thread into a looser grid pattern. It has a smooth, silky feel and a slight sheen. Compared to percale, it's less breathable and may not be suitable for hot sleepers. According to Leonas, sateen tends to snag more easily and show dirt more readily due to its unique "float" weave. Choose if you want a cozy, lived-in t-shirt softness and don't overheat at night.
• Flannel: Thickly woven cotton that's been brushed to give it a slightly soft and fuzzy texture, and it feels warm. Choose if you live in a cold climate or want dedicated winter bedding.

Fit and Pocket Depth

Always measure your total mattress height, including toppers, before buying. Most standard fitted sheets will fit mattresses up to 15 inches thick. Too much material and the fabric can bunch up under you; too little, and you'll suffer from the sheets snapping off the corners at night. Deep-pocket sheets suit mattresses that are 16 to 23 inches thick without slipping off. You'll also want to ensure the flat sheet is long enough to tuck under your mattress.

Certifications

• Oeko-Tex: Some of our best sheet picks have a Standard 100 by Oeko-Tex certification. This label means the final sheet product has been independently tested for more than 100 harmful chemical substances and is safe for human use. While it's not the only certification available, it's widely used and well-known in the textiles industry.
• Oeko-Tex STeP: Our experts say you should look for the Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certification for basic safety, but if you also care about manufacturing, look for Oeko-Tex STeP. It checks for environmentally friendly, socially responsible, and safe practices all along the production process.
• GOTS: The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) is another certification used specifically for organic textiles. GOTS-certified sheets contain at least 95% certified organic fibers and meet environmental and social standards at every stage of processing and manufacturing.

Our top picks, compared

How we test the best sheet sets

Our testing methodology

We test the best bed sheets on five main criteria. Our tests include:

• Comfort: We sleep on each set for at least one week and note texture, breathability, coolness, and feel. We also integrate our favorite sets into our bedding rotation for long-term testing.
• Durability: We investigate the sheets for signs of tearing, pilling, or loose threads after use. We wash and dry each set according to the care label at least five times, checking for durability issues after each wash.
• Ease of use: We note how easy the bed-making process is, with priority given to sheet sets with bed-making tags.
• Fit: We put a fitted sheet on our mattress, noting slipping, bunching fabric, post-wash shrinkage, and overall stretchiness. We note whether the fitted sheet slips off the corner throughout the testing period.
• Trial and warranty: We thoroughly read the trial and warranty policies for each sheet set.

Meet our experts behind this guide

Kinsley Searles, former associate home editor: I have a deep passion for in-depth research and testing. My linen closet is filled to the brim with sheet sets I've tested in consideration for this guide, from silky, luxe bamboo to budget-friendly cotton. I'm on a personal quest to find the coziest set of sheets on the market.

Connie Chen, former senior reporter: I was the home textiles expert at Business Insider Reviews, specializing in sheets, duvet covers, and comforters. I'm devoted to helping readers get the most bang for their buck on products they use every day. I tested dozens of sheet sets for this guide, carefully evaluating durability, comfort, and fit.

How to care for your sheets

According to various bedding brands, you should wash your sheets every 1 to 2 weeks and keep an alternate set to preserve their quality. We recommend following the care instructions that come with your sheet set.

Based on our experience, brands generally advise washing the sheets in a cold or warm cycle with gentle detergent, then drying in a low tumble cycle. Hot water can make colors bleed, cause shrinkage, and weaken fibers. Drying at high heat can also weaken fibers and cause pilling.

Always read the label for care instructions for your sheets, and find out more tips for washing sheets here.

The best sheets FAQ

What thread count should I look for?

Thread count technically matters, but there's more to consider when buying a sheet set. Sheet sets with vastly different thread counts can have a near-identical feel and level of durability. Also, the definition of "high thread count" can be manipulated by brands for marketing. Be sure to consider material and weave, along with thread count, when buying a set of sheets.

Generally, the best thread count for sheets is around 300-400, but you'll find many excellent sets outside of that range. For example, our best overall pick, has a thread count of 280 but performed wonderfully in comfort and durability tests

Learn more about thread count here.

What's the difference between percale and sateen?

Percale and sateen are two different weaves of cotton. Sateen is silky and warm, with a feel that's best suited for cool months or for those who sleep cold. Percale is crisp and cool, so it's ideal for warm months or hot sleepers. Read more in our percale vs sateen cotton comparison. 

What sheets do hotels use?

Most hotels use 100% long-staple cotton sheets, since they're soft and durable. Ave Bradley, senior vice president of design and creative director at Kimpton Hotels, says the hotel uses 200-300-thread-count cotton sheets from Frette.

How do you prevent sheets from wrinkling or pilling?

Preventing wrinkles and pilling comes down to controlling heat, friction, and chemical buildup during washing. To keep your sheets from wrinkling, avoid overcrowding, lower the dryer heat, and remove them from the dryer immediately after the cycle is finished, or even while they're still slightly damp. If they're still wrinkly, iron them or use wool dryer balls.

To prevent pilling, try to choose long-staple materials that are inherently more durable and resistant to fraying. For what you can control, wash separately from abrasive fabrics (like zippers, towels, and denim); skip high heat and harsh detergents like bleach, and use gentle cycles and cool water.

Should you wash new sheets before using them?

While it can be tempting to immediately put the freshly pressed, pristine bedding out of the packaging, it's a good practice to wash sheets before use, as it removes any manufacturing starches or chemical residues from processing and helps soften the initial stiffness.

How many sets of sheets do you actually need?

A good rule of thumb is the "Rule of threes: one on the bed, one in the closet, one in the wash to prevent premature wear and tear. You may also want to keep sets according to the season, like linen, bamboo, and percale for warmer months, and sateen and flannel bedding for colder months.

Nansi Lynch never went to college. But she's approaching retirement with a $156,000 student-loan balance.

"I don't get rid of it until I turn 75 years old," Lynch said. "I've never heard of something so disastrous in my life."

The 60-year-old took out federal parent PLUS loans, which carry the highest federal interest rate of 9.07%, for both of her children. Previously, parents could borrow the full cost of attendance. In July, the Trump administration imposed a lifetime borrowing cap of $65,000 per dependent for new parent PLUS loans, in an attempt to address spiraling debt.

Under her pre-existing income-driven repayment plan, Lynch's monthly student-loan payments were $238. Lynch worries her payments will increase when her forbearance ends early next year. Business Insider has heard from many borrowers who saw their payments jump over the past year, pushing them to take on extra work, postpone retirement, or face the consequences of defaulting.

Lynch doesn't regret taking out the loans, but she wishes she had considered the consequences of being six figures in debt.

"We thought it was a good idea to take out the parent PLUS because we wanted our kids to get a better education and a better job," Lynch said — her son is a personal trainer at the gym they own together, and her daughter works full time in security operations for a federal contractor. "But in the long run, I'm stuck with all of the student-loan debt."

Managing student loans and delaying retirement

Lynch is a high school graduate who has worked as a school bus driver for nearly 30 years. Between the morning and evening bus shifts, she also runs classes at her gym.

When Lynch's daughter took out loans to attend Salve Regina University, a private Rhode Island college, Lynch helped to cover the cost by taking out parent PLUS loans herself. Her balance grew a year later, in 2012, when she borrowed more for her son's education at Rhode Island College and a local community college a year later.

Repayment hasn't been easy. Since Lynch works only her primary job during the school year, she has put her student loans on deferment during periods when she wasn't working. During that time, interest was still accumulating on her balance.

Lynch wants to retire in the next five years, but she said that doing so isn't possible while managing her student-loan payments. Trump's repayment overhaul risks pushing her retirement goals further out of reach.

"I'm still going to have to stay working because how am I going to afford to pay $238 a month if I don't have any steady stream of income coming in?" Lynch said.

The consequences of debt

Outstanding debt from parent PLUS loans increased from $62 billion in 2014 to nearly $110 billion in 2024, according to the Institute of Education Sciences. Parents have previously told Business Insider that the high interest rate is a key reason they have struggled to pay off their loans, as accumulating interest can leave them with balances far larger than the amount they originally borrowed.

Lynch said that the uncapped borrowing was "problematic" for her, enabling her to take on debt she couldn't afford while bringing in around $45,000 annually from bus driving.

"You can just keep on applying for more student loan money," Lynch said. "What happens with that kid after four years? What happens if they can't get a job and the degree in their field of study?"

Still, the new borrowing caps might not benefit lower-income borrowers, according to a Brookings Institution analysis. It said that "while lower-income families borrow smaller absolute amounts, they face significantly higher debt-to-income ratios." Thus, borrowing limits might not prevent lower-income families from taking on more debt than they can manage.

Lynch said she sought a loan from the Small Business Administration to move her gym to a better location. The SBA denied her application because she has too much debt in her own name, including both her student loans and a mortgage.

Her kids are concerned about her debt, Lynch said, but she doesn't want them to help with her payments because they can't afford it on top of their own bills. She'd rather push off her retirement than have her kids take on the burden.

She wishes that young Americans had better guidance on worthwhile alternatives to a college education.

"I heard from the college kids at the gym all summer long that they couldn't find a job," Lynch said. "So you've got all these kids that have all this student-loan debt, and they can't get jobs to pay the bills. The whole thing is broken."

• Justin Johnsen started at KPMG in 2020 as a federal Salesforce developer, writing code by hand.
• Over the past year, he switched into a new role as a forward-deployed engineer at KPMG.
• His work involves giving AI applications the right context and coaching clients on how to use them.

This is a conversation with Justin Johnsen, the lead technical architect at KPMG. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I joined KPMG six years ago, and I've been a forward-deployed engineer for about a year, working across different clients.

When I started with KPMG as a software engineer, all the code was written by hand.

I studied computer science. I built my career in architecture and later got into consulting and client work.

A forward-deployed engineer works directly with a client and stays with the problem from understanding the business need through delivering a working solution. We work directly with client teams, often on-site.

A lot of what I do now is AI. AI is incredibly capable, but it's really only as good as its context. Much of my work is gathering the information needed for AI to generate valuable assets and artifacts, then spreading those outputs across client deliverables and software applications.

I also coach client teams on how to use AI effectively — helping them combine technical depth, business understanding, and clear communication to improve and amplify their work.

For one client, I was initially hired to integrate several applications into a complex software system. After months of gathering requirements and refining the context, we used AI to deliver the application in about a month.

The client wanted to understand how we had moved so quickly — and why the process had been so transparent. The client then asked me to help its teams adopt the AI and prompting practices that had made the work possible.

AI has made it easier for me to multiply my output and, in a sense, act as my own enterprise. I can maintain context across multiple clients and projects simultaneously. The bottleneck used to be software development and writing code; now it is gathering context and refining intent before development begins.

One recent application I delivered involved risk scoring: using AI to assess how risky a customer or partner might be for a client to do business with. We brought together the signals used to measure that risk, then used AI to reason across them and generate a score. Independent reviewers could then use that AI-generated score in their assessments.

A pattern I've noticed is that more software-development work is moving toward the data and integration layers. Many enterprise challenges come down to helping AI make sense of data, bringing information together for monitoring and visibility, and deriving value from data spread across legacy and cloud applications. Much of my work involves aggregating large volumes of data, using AI to reason over it, and connecting systems that do not naturally communicate with one another.

Being on-site has real advantages. Conversations happen organically, and it is easier to read body language and emotions in person than over Teams. Some clients are remote, but when teams are in the office, I am usually there too.

A forward-deployed engineer offers more than a traditional software handoff. In a conventional implementation, a systems integrator may gather requirements, build the software, and hand it back to the client. That can create a "throw it over the wall" dynamic. I have seen plenty of mangled Salesforce implementations.

By working directly with client teams while developing, training, and coaching, I can transfer knowledge in real time. The client receives the application, along with the best practices, documentation, and artifacts needed to adopt it.

AI gives me more space to define problems and make critical decisions instead of spending that time on repeatable, monotonous tasks. I can focus more on the things that require human judgment.

• Three months ago, Whitney Stefko Dover told BI about her Claude-built family chief of staff.
• The agent is on a PIP. An OpenAI agent has assumed the responsibilities.
• "The power of being a user is this constant iteration," she said.

Claudette is on a performance improvement plan.

Three months ago, Whitney Stefko Dover, a director and senior counsel of policy and legal operations at Ford, told Business Insider that she had vibe coded her family a chief of staff using a bespoke Claude assistant named Claudette. The agent turned her family's emails and calendars into a 4 a.m. briefing called the "Daily Dover." It was an early morning email that organized school schedules, childcare coverage, travel, birthdays, and household chores. It also drafted a useful morning text for her husband, Chris Dover.

Claudette "probably saved our marriage," she previously said.

Now, there's fresh competition for the chief of staff role — but Claudette hasn't been fully fired. Yet.

"I'm not convinced that, like, next month, Claudette won't be the superior chief of staff," Stefko Dover told Business Insider. "She's on a PIP."

Now, Gigi, a chief of staff she built in ChatGPT Work, is the fresh-faced agent parsing through the Dover family calendar. Stefko Dover says her husband, a longtime OpenAI user, encouraged her to try ChatGPT. An August Substack post from Silicon Valley venture capital firm A16z gave her another push to try new agents.

"Turns out I have a lot of tool bias, which was unexpected," she said about her reluctance to abandon Claudette after months of refining.

For her family, Gigi offered a better interface, maintained more continuity across projects, and produced stronger first drafts of emails and PowerPoint presentations, Stefko Dover said. It also made more proactive suggestions without waiting to be prompted.

And the switch to ChatGPT was surprisingly painless. Stefko Dover had previously created a guide explaining how the assistant worked and connected with her family's apps. She uploaded that material into ChatGPT, bringing much of the old assistant's context with it.

"I think kind of the key here is owning your context, right?" she said. "I think it is our job as the users to sort of own the context layer."

Since the switch, Gigi has taken on even more responsibilities, Stefko Dover said. Every Friday, it reads a grocery list shared with the family's nanny and fills online shopping carts.

Stefko Dover still reviews and pays for the order herself, because it still needs some supervision.

"If I were to do that, I'd probably get, like, a $500 credit card limit so that there wasn't, like, Gigi purchasing diamonds on Rodeo Drive," she said when asked if she'd give her agent purchasing power.

At one point, it suggested that her husband send flowers to his best friend's wife after mistaking her for a relative. A grocery haul recommendation included 12 boxes of bow-tie pasta.

Still, Stefko Dover said it makes fewer contextual errors than Claudette and remembers more about the different parts of her identity.

She told Business Insider that Gigi shouldn't expect to have the job forever.

"There's not a final destination here," she said. "The power of being a user is this constant iteration."

She wasn't kidding. Since the interview, Stefko Dover said she has added a third assistant to the family's AI org chart: Ingrid, built with the buzzy, invite-only Instinct AI, which can carry out tasks through text messages and phone calls.

"I'm layering Ingrid on top of Gigi," she said. "Example: Instead of me sending Chris a text message with to-dos, it can just talk to his agent (since we've both activated this capability), and his agent can then go perform tasks on his behalf!"

• We're living through a new Pokémon craze.
• The collectible cards have emerged as an alternative investment.
• Scarcity, but also nostalgia, are a big driver of the high price some cards command.

Remember the binder of Pokémon cards your mother gave away after you left for college? They might be worth more money than you want to think about.

The collectible card game has seen a major comeback, driving a new collecting frenzy that's boosted the price of coveted cards to dizzying levels. Rare Pokémon cards have emerged as their own asset class for some investors, even outperforming traditional investments like stocks over the last few years.

"It's the usual combo behind most alternative asset booms. Scarcity, nostalgia, and a generation that grew up with these cards now actually having money to spend on them," stated Jenna Lofton, a professional stock trader and founder of Stockhitter.com.

While Lofton doesn't collect Pokémon cards, her 10 year old son is a fan. She told Business Insider that his love of game has made her an "unwilling expert" in areas such as pull rates and grading scales, key factors in determining the value of a card.

Brian Dwyer, President of collectibles auction house REA evoked an analogy that may resonate with the of collectors of other tradeables, like sports cards.

"While new installments added each year to the Pokémon universe become fan favorites and can command high prices, iconic characters like Pikachu, Charizard, Gengar, and Umbreon can be compared to Hall of Fame staples like Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Jackie Robinson," he said.

One collector who spoke with Business Insider is using his background in finance to perform due diligence on cards. Kian Golshan, who works as a valuations analyst, grew up collecting them, and has found selling Pokémon a lucrative side hustle in adulthood. He credits an analytical approach he's developed working in finance with helping him evaluate the risk-reward profile of cards he's interested in.

"It helps me kind of think through the risks and when to take profits, when to sell, what to hold, what's my like risk profile, what's tracking the market," he told Business Insider.

In February 2024, he bought a Japanese edition Charmander for $59.26, and sold the same card in April this year for $750, a gain of 1,165%. Other recent sales from Golshan's collection have seen similar gains, and some cards he owns have appreciated by thousands of dollars, according to screenshots of his eBay account viewed by Business Insider.

When it comes to assessing a card's potential value, Golshan highlighted the importance of certain eras, citing the period between 2003 and 2007, a time that saw supply of new cards dwindle due to cooler demand.

Years later, the relative rarity of cards from that era, and a preference among some collectors for the art direction and style, have made for a particular valuable vintage of Pokémon.

"When you compound that with the fact that they've physically printed less of these cards, and they're also from 20 plus years ago, that creates a potential good opportunity for value appreciation," Golshan said.

Other collectors also talk about Pokémon like they're investing in stocks. Jake Doll, a collector who writes online about collecting Pokémon cards, says he'll let the market data inform whether it's a good time to sell a particular card.

"There are some card trading sites like TCGPlayer.com that will show the market flux and the line graph of what it was six months ago, what the average price is now," he told Business Insider.

Doll added that while the industry has slowed recently and some previously valuable cards have seen their values drop, he thinks the recent release of a 30th anniversary edition will be a major bullish catalyst. Indeed, boxes of booster packs of the anniversary set are already running well into the hundreds of dollars on retailers' websites.

When Angela Davis discovered that her mother with dementia had changed the locks, she knew she had to intervene.

After a standard care facility didn't cut it, Davis, 65, moved her mother into her own home. Davis now manages her medications, assists with her hygiene, and monitors her at night. She sleeps on a love seat near her mom's room in case anything happens.

Her mom's care, plus home maintenance, has cost about $7,000 a month. Her mom receives $3,200 monthly in retirement income, and Davis covers the rest. The stress has weighed her down; last week, she took what she thought would be a short evening nap. Next thing she knew, it was 7 a.m. the next morning and time to go to work.

"It's death by 1,000 cuts, and in this case, you could say death by 1,000 memories every day," Davis said.

Seven million Americans have Alzheimer's, leaving families to navigate rising costs for memory care facilities or home care. One estimate shows that lifetime costs for dementia can exceed $400,000.

Two dozen families navigating dementia care told Business Insider that costs add up for frequent hospitalizations and physician visits, expensive medications, transportation costs, and round-the-clock home care. Those who can afford it spend five figures on monthly memory care facility costs. Other costs included home modifications, power-of-attorney legal fees, and technologies for aging in place.

A report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving found that in 2025, one in four family caregivers cared for someone 50 and over with memory issues or dementia. While an estimated 7 million Americans aged 65 and over have Alzheimer's, that is expected to surge.

Wendy Rowland, 53, has cared for her husband with early onset Lewy body dementia for years. To manage his treatment, they spent through his 401(k) and sold their house of 20 years, then put him into a memory care facility two years ago that now costs $6,750 a month.

"I hope nothing like that happens with me, and if it does, I don't know if I would want anybody else to go through the same thing of having to figure out what to do," Rowland said.

The cost of memory care can be steep

It pained Keith Pavlick, 53, to witness his father slowly forget his family members' names and lose track of his surroundings. He hadn't fully anticipated the financial hit that came with it.

Pavlick, a real estate agent in Orlando, has helped his mother, 79, and his father, 80, since his dementia diagnosis in March 2025. His parents moved into an assisted living facility for $9,000 a month.

The $9,000 is just the start, Pavlick told Business Insider earlier this year. He knows his dad will need a heightened level of care, and memory care facilities in his area cost $14,000 monthly.

"Unless you're starting out investing or bought SpaceX at the IPO, then you're probably not going to be able to take care of your parents when they're that age by yourself," Pavlick said. "I'm probably going to be selling real estate until I'm dead."

Memory care costs a median of about $8,000 monthly, according to data from SeniorLiving.org. They're more expensive than standard assisted living centers because dementia patients require 24/7 supervision by specialized caregivers. They also have high security and maintenance costs.

Medicare generally doesn't fund long-term memory care. Medicaid chips in for eligible families, though many said they have paid out of pocket or used long-term care insurance.

Sharon Winterton, 53, has juggled working a tech sales job, raising a 14-year-old daughter, and caring for her 90-year-old mother with vascular dementia. Winterton moved her mom into an independent living facility as her memory declined.

Her mom had invested in long-term care insurance, which she's used to cover her $7,000 monthly assisted living costs. Winterton said they're fortunate to avoid the high out-of-pocket cost, though she's splurged on technologies that allow her to change TV channels and monitor her mom remotely.

"Thankfully, I don't have to worry a lot about her long-term care," Winterton said.

There are many costs beyond direct care itself

Jenn Verser, 45, hadn't anticipated moving into her childhood home in New Jersey to help care for her dad with Alzheimer's.

Verser is selling her home and planning to build a two-story, roughly 1,000-square-foot addition to her parents' house. She expects it will cost at least $600,000, which they're planning to cover with a home equity line of credit, her parents' investment accounts, and the sale of her home.

She said it's important to get started as quickly as possible, so that her dad can get familiar and comfortable with the addition as his Alzheimer's progresses and confusion increases. Her parents will be moving into the addition, which is "elder-friendly," with the goal of aging in place. Verser, her husband, and her child will move into the main area.

Though some families told Business Insider they avoided memory care in favor of at-home care, the costs are often comparable. Tatyana Zlotsky, CEO of A Place for Mom, a platform connecting senior care providers and families, said that with home care costing about $30 an hour, based on the platform's internal data, this can end up being over $250,000 a year for 24/7 care.

An early retirement or remote job can help caregivers minimize costs. Families have invested thousands of dollars in age-tech designed for dementia care, such as motion-sensor cameras, medication monitoring, and smart home devices like stove shut-off devices. Others have spent five figures on home renovations for their loved ones.

Ann Gynn, 55, had cared for her mom until September, when she moved into memory care. In 2024, the content marketer in Cleveland started using JubileeTV, a remote caregiving platform allowing for remote monitoring through the TV, after many frustrating back-and-forth phone calls with her mom. Gynn created a schedule of her mom's favorite shows, and she sometimes uses the drop-in feature to see which nursing aides are in the room.

"It gives me peace of mind that I have ways to get in touch with her and ways to help her that I don't physically have to be there for," Gynn said.

Emotional costs can be a heavy burden too

For many families, the greatest cost of dementia care isn't financial.

For Michelle Keller, 59, caring for her dad has meant sacrificing going out for her 35th wedding anniversary, and, at times, forcing herself to feel optimistic. She said caregiving can be tiring and involve a lot of acting.

"To be able to put on that happy face, it helps to get things done," Keller said. "If they're happier, they'll listen and follow instructions a little better. There's a lot of work involved that honestly doesn't allow you to take time to think about the mess you're in."

Dementia caregivers said they've quit their jobs, gone part-time, or taken on less time-consuming roles to be more present as caregivers. The stress of worrying about falls, wandering, or medication takes a toll on caregivers' physical health, too. They don't always have the time or energy to prepare for their own long-term care.

"Asking individual people to find the Goldilocks solution of how much to save for a future even that may or may not occur is unfortunately the wrong question," said Alan Weil, senior vice president of public policy at AARP.

Laura Ehrlich, 54, knew her aunt's health was declining when, a few years back, she caught her giving her Social Security number to a scammer.

With help from an aide, she handled her day-to-day needs, but after her aunt fell at the mall, her family decided to place her in an assisted living facility nearby. Ehrlich, who also cares part-time for her mother-in-law, stays afloat by living on a stipend from her aunt's trust.

"I still haven't dealt with the loss of my parents, my husband, or my father-in-law," said Ehrlich, who has worked on and off in between caregiving. "It's just been putting up a wall and going on to the next person who needs help."

• Twilio CEO Khozema Shipchandler writes notes to his company's 80+ leaders before their annual retreat.
• He said the analog ritual is rooted in part in his own memories of being a junior employee at GE.
• The notes also help him build relationships with those who could one day sit in Twilio's C-suite, he said.

At least once a year, Twilio CEO Khozema Shipchandler's right hand cramps up from a few hours of writing. He's not signing copies of a book.

The pain, instead, comes from penning personalized notes to every member of the technology company's 80-plus-person leadership team ahead of their annual retreat.

"After every 10, I have to take a 30-minute break," Shipchandler told Business Insider of the deliberately analog ritual, which is rooted partly in his own memories of being a more junior employee at GE and how special it felt to have a senior leader take notice of him.

"I have no idea what the words were, I can't remember, but I definitely remember how I felt when that happened," said Shipchandler.

"If I can do that just for one person and it increases their confidence or their capacity or their desire to go do a hard thing, I think that's pretty awesome," he said.

Shipchandler, 52, added that the notes serve another purpose: helping him build relationships with people who could one day sit in Twilio's C-suite. He said they typically include a mention of a project or initiative the leader is driving; something complimentary about their leadership style; and encouragement for what's next.

"At some point I'm going to retire, and there's a new generation of people that I want to know intimately and that I want to know to know me intimately," Shipchandler said. "They are our bench."

'They're owed information'

Founded in 2008, Twilio provides technology that businesses use to interact with customers over phone calls, texts, and emails. Shipchandler rose to the top job at the company in 2024 — his first stint as CEO — after serving as president of communications and, before that, as operating chief and as finance chief. He spent 22 years at GE prior to joining Twilio in 2018.

Shipchandler's handwritten notes offer a window into his broader approach to leadership. He said he's committed to responding to employees' emails, texts, and Slack messages within 24 to 48 hours and that he makes a habit of reading meeting materials in advance to respect participants' time. He also said he aims to be a "straight shooter" rather than a CEO who papers over hard news with "corporate speak."

"My style is to be as transparent as I possibly can be," he said. "I do that because I think everyone — whether it's an employee or an investor or the board — they're owed information that they can make decisions about."

The next generation of leaders

Shipchandler oversees a roughly 5,500-person workforce with optional in-office attendance, a stance increasingly at odds with policies at other large employers, many of which have brought back white-collar workers at least part-time.

He said Twilio's remote-friendly model has held up on the metrics that matter to him: Productivity remained steady after the company went remote during the pandemic, while recruiting, engagement, and retention improved.

The arrangement has made it harder, though, to foster culture.

"We recognize there are downsides," said Shipchandler, which is why he added that Twilio creates deliberate opportunities for employees to build relationships in person. These include periodic paid trips for team get-togethers and free lunch on Thursdays at the company's San Francisco headquarters.

Shipchandler has also taken a contrarian view of middle managers compared with some of Twilio's tech peers. Rather than trim their ranks and have those who remain rely more on AI, as companies including Block and Meta have done, he said that Twilio is continuing to invest in the midlevel cohort through training programs. Twilio's next generation of senior leaders could come from this group, he said, and managers bring something AI lacks.

"The thing that's hard to replace is judgment," said Shipchandler. "That's what the managers do."

• A Lyft driver in North Carolina was involved in an accident while en route to pick up a passenger.
• Sixteen months later, he's still fighting for an insurance payout.
• He said that accident has also made it harder to support his family.

Osahon Aburime opened his Lyft app on Mother's Day last year to make some money.

That day, the North Carolina driver had made about $80 to put toward taking his wife out to dinner and getting a gift for his mom. As he was on his way to pick up a passenger, though, he got into a car accident.

"All of a sudden, I just saw this car in front of me, so I stepped on my brakes," he said. "We just ran into each other."

Sixteen months later, he uses a cane to walk, he said. He tried unsuccessfully to return to work as a ride-hailing driver.

"I said, 'Let me see if I can continue to drive to make money for my family,'" he said. "But it just got to a point now I can't even bend down."

Aburime's experience shows one occupational hazard of working as a driver for a gig-work platform like Lyft or Uber. While the apps say they provide insurance coverage, the independent contractors doing the work often have fewer protections than traditional full-time employees.

"Safety is fundamental to Lyft and it is our goal to make every ride safe, comfortable and reliable," a Lyft spokesperson said. "We maintain auto liability insurance that meets local and state regulations."

'Nobody deserves this'

After the accident, Aburime had pain in one of his feet, according to a report from the hospital viewed by Business Insider. He also lost the Chevy Malibu that he was driving when he got into the accident.

His income has also been affected. Before the accident, it was typical for him to make around $1,700 a month on Lyft. The money helped support his family, along with his wife's income working at an eye clinic.

Since the accident, though, he hasn't been able to earn money, he said. That led him to fall behind on payments toward his minivan, which his lender repossessed earlier this year, according to a notice seen by Business Insider.

Aburime has also been fighting to get a payout from Mobilitas, which provides ride-hailing insurance to Lyft. Aburime said that he's reached out to the North Carolina Department of Insurance for help. The department has told him to look for a lawyer — something he says he can't afford.

A day after the accident, Mobilitas denied Aburime's claim, according to the insurance documents he provided.

The denial contained incorrect information about the accident, though, including the wrong time, according to a letter sent from North Carolina's insurance department . It also suggested that Aburime wasn't on his way to pick up a passenger when the accident happened — something he denies.

The company has since corrected some of the details, but has continued to deny his claim. Mobilitas did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Fighting for an insurance payout has taken time away from trying to find other work and recovering from his injuries, he said. "These rideshare companies tell you that you are covered if something like this happens," he said.

Other gig workers have faced their own challenges after suddenly not being able to work on apps like Uber and Instacart.

In some cases, the companies have deactivated workers' accounts, Business Insider previously reported. The company's policies say that workers can lose access to the apps by abusing them.

Some drivers have told Business Insider that they were kicked off the apps — and lost income — after an overcharge at a store checkout. One Instacart worker won $28,000 in back pay after a months-long arbitration process over such a deactivation.

Others, like Aburime, have tried to get insurance settlements after getting injured on a gig.

"I don't think any company should treat the people who work with them like this," Aburime said.

Do you have a story idea about Uber or Lyft? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Appliance technician Matthew Rankin quit his full-time job and went all in with his side hustle.
• He now works nine to 10 hours a day answering questions online for JustAnswer.
• The job can be hectic, but it is flexible and has allowed him to make up to $15,000 a month.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Matthew Rankin, a 52-year-old appliance technician based in Greenville, South Carolina. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I wasn't happy with my work and was getting burned out. I've been an appliance expert for easily 25 years, specializing in dishwashers, refrigerators, and other appliances.

Maintenance in general is hard, but when you get into commercial properties and apartment maintenance, it's a whole other league. I worked in commercial property management for about six years, managing facilities and fixing whatever was broken. It wasn't the most glamorous job; you're always on call.

After doing that, I decided I would never be on call again.

I was looking for an opportunity to make more money on the side

I was living in Charleston, South Carolina; it's an expensive region, and I didn't have much in savings. I think I saw a reel on Instagram about JustAnswer, and it looked too good to be true. I was hesitant at first, but I applied and figured I'd give it a couple of hours a day.

I'd log on to my computer and close out five or 10 calls or questions. I started seeing these part-time paychecks come in and saw the potential after doing the math, so I decided to go for it.

I was in a position that had a lot of flexibility. After about six months, I gave my two-week notice and haven't looked back. Now I make between $10,000 and $15,000 a month answering questions online.

How I make money answering questions online

When a question comes in, I can accept it or pass it, so it's important to filter them properly.

Sometimes the question is about a brand I've never heard of, or a product or situation I'm not familiar with. Questions from other countries pop up every once in a while, too. On JustAnswer, I may get a lot of refrigerator-not-cooling inquiries, and if it's a brand I know — LG, Kenmore, etc. — that's a question I'll take.

A lot of the people reaching out are DIYers, newer technicians in the field, or people who simply want access to someone with expertise. They're looking for guidance and help working through the troubleshooting process.

I gather as much information as I can quickly: the model number, whether I'll need to look up a part, and anything else I can quickly check on a second screen.

25 to 30 calls in a day is pretty good

I can stay on text or be available for a phone call. I've made 50 calls in one day. It's not very common, but it's hectic. I've had phone calls up to an hour, although rare. As for text questions, they can take days, which isn't the goal and is also uncommon.

Sometimes the questions come in really fast, and I multitask with 10 windows open, five browsers, and the phone going at the same time. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to balance all of that.

The hours are flexible. I tend to stick to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern, but if I do something in the middle of the day, I might work a little later. Nine or 10 hours is probably average, but I'm not sitting in front of the computer working the entire time. If questions aren't coming in, I might play video games or play my guitar in the same room while I wait.

Some cons of working online and answering questions all day are that you need to be disciplined and treat it like a 9-to-5, or you won't make the call load and will keep dropping pay rates. Some days, calls can be sparse; you never know. You hope for the best, make yourself available, and be ready.

I have no regrets about leaving my full-time job early — not a single one

Something I wish I'd known sooner is to plan for your end-of-year taxes and set aside about 25% of each paycheck. Otherwise, I have no regrets.

My last job had no opportunity for advancement and would wear me down both physically and mentally. Advice I'd give someone looking to make a side hustle a full-time job: find something you are really good at and enjoy; the two will connect into something of value.

I fell into this incredible opportunity, and it's been life-changing. I've taken full advantage of it, and I do very well. It's not for everyone, but for people who value flexibility and want more balance, it can be a great fit.

Do you have an interesting side hustle to share with Business Insider? Email editor Manseen Logan at mlogan@businessinsider.com.

• Several airlines ditched the Airbus A380 during the pandemic.
• But it's still flying high, led by Emirates' fleet of 117 superjumbos.
• Business Insider compiled a list of every airline operating the A380 and their winter routes for 2026.

Do you fancy flying on the world's largest passenger jet?

The Airbus A380 has awed passengers for nearly 20 years. With a 262-foot wingspan, the superjumbo jet wouldn't fit on an NFL field.

Business Insider has compiled all the routes that it will fly this winter, based on Cirium data for November's schedule.

You can search for different cities in this table, then scroll down for more details about the airlines operating the A380.

Airbus spent decades developing the double-decker airplane as an answer to the Boeing 747. It announced the project in 1990, but the A380 didn't enter service until 2007.

It has had a turbulent life ever since, falling in and out of popularity.

The European planemaker expected high demand for enormous aircraft due to the rise of airport megahubs like Dubai. It was ideal for Emirates, which operates the overwhelming majority of A380s.

However, many airlines preferred to fly point-to-point. Twin-jet aircraft like the Boeing 777 and Airbus A350 offer plenty of seats, greater flexibility, and lower operating costs.

The COVID-19 pandemic also prompted many airlines to rethink their strategies amid cost pressures. Air France and Malaysia Airlines were among those to retire all their A380s.

Airbus built the last new A380 in 2021.

While COVID was a major blow, many airlines fell back in love with the superjumbo when lockdowns lifted.

Lufthansa retired all 14 of its A380s during the pandemic but has brought back eight of them since 2022. Etihad Airways reactivated six jets, too.

Meanwhile, Qantas restarted A380 flights between Sydney and Dallas/Fort Worth last August, for the first time since the pandemic. A year later, though, the Australian flag carrier said it was bringing forward its retirement of the planes to 2028.

Back in 2017, there were more than 10,000 flights a month operated by the A380. While that has since fallen to 7,500 for November, it seems there is still some life left in the superjumbo.

1. Emirates

Dubai's airline is by far the world's largest operator of the A380, with over nine times as many as any other operator.

Emirates has a total of 117, of which 85 are actively flying as of September, according to fleet data from ch-aviation. 13 are in storage, and 19 are undergoing maintenance.

Like its rival Middle Eastern airlines, Emirates' A380 is highly luxurious — with business-class passengers able to visit the bar or even book a shower.

The airline's president, Tim Clark, told Business Insider last year that he'd like Airbus to build a new version of the A380 with more fuel-efficient engines.

Emirates' plethora of planes comes with a similarly broad route map. Brace yourself for an extensive list.

Emirates flies the A380 between Dubai and Amman, Jordan; Amsterdam; Auckland, New Zealand; Bangkok; Barcelona; Bengaluru, India; Birmingham, England; Brisbane, Australia; Cairo; Casablanca, Morocco; Copenhagen, Denmark; Denpasar, Indonesia; Düsseldorf, Germany; Frankfurt, Germany; Glasgow, Scotland; Guangzhou, China; Hong Kong; Houston; Istanbul; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Johannesburg; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; London; Los Angeles; Madrid; Manchester, England; Mauritius; Melbourne, Australia; Milan; Moscow; Mumbai, India; Munich; New Delhi; New York; Nice, France; Osaka, Japan; Paris; Perth, Australia; Prague; Rome; San Francisco; São Paulo; Seoul; Shanghai; Singapore; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo; Toronto; Vienna; Washington, DC; and Zurich.

Emirates also operates three fifth-freedom flights with the A380, between Christchurch, New Zealand, and Sydney; Bangkok and Hong Kong; and Milan and New York.

2. British Airways

British Airways has 12 Airbus A380s. According to ch-aviation, two of those are undergoing maintenance, and another is in storage, as of September.

As part of a $9 billion "transformation program," BA is retrofitting its A380s with an upgraded first class.

"The A380 is an important part of our fleet and rightfully, incredibly popular with our customers," Neil Chernoff, BA's chief planning and strategy officer, previously told Business Insider.

BA flies the A380 between London Heathrow and Johannesburg, Miami, San Francisco, and Singapore

3. Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines also has a fleet of 12 double-decker jets, having retired seven due to the pandemic.

The carrier is one of just 10 to receive a five-star rating from Skytrax. It named Singapore Airlines' business class the second-best, behind Qatar Airways, but the best for first class.

The airline offers enormous suites on its A380s, each with an armchair and a bed. Two of these can also be uniquely combined to create a double bed.

Singapore flies the A380 between Singapore Changi Airport and Auckland, London, Melbourne, Mumbai, New Delhi, Shanghai, and Sydney.

4. Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways cleaned up at last year's Skytrax awards, winning both best airline and best business class.

Like Emirates, the airline's A380 includes a bar for business-class passengers. It also has huge bathrooms, but lacks showers.

Qatar's A380s, perhaps surprisingly, don't feature its flagship business-class product, the QSuite, which you'll find on the A350, Boeing 777, and 787.

Following delays to the Boeing 777X, Qatar reversed plans to retire the A380.

Its former CEO, Akbar Al-Bakar, said in 2021 that buying the planes was a "big mistake," given their high operating costs.

However, on the sidelines of 2024's Farnborough Airshow, his successor Badr Mohammed Al-Meer — who has since left the CEO position — said the quad-engine was getting a new lease of life.

Qatar has eight A380s, which it operates between Doha and Bangkok, London, and Paris.

5. Qantas

Australian flag carrier Qantas has 10 A380s.

It flies them from Sydney to Dallas/Fort Worth, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, and Singapore — from which it also continues to London.

Plus, the A380 is sometimes used on flights from Melbourne to Los Angeles.

A severe storm warning and "incredibly high" demand during Taylor Swift's Australian tour last year saw Qantas use a spare A380 to fly Swifties from Melbourne to Sydney.

6. Etihad

Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways is the third-most prominent operator in the Middle East, often overshadowed by Emirates and Qatar.

However, its A380s are unique in offering the most extravagant ticket in commercial aviation: The Residence.

For $24,000, you can book the only three-room suite on an airliner, complete with a bedroom and shower.

Etihad has 9 A380s, but one is in storage, according to ch-aviation.

It flies them from Abu Dhabi to Bangkok, London, Singapore, and Toronto.

7. Lufthansa

The German flag carrier has a fleet of eight A380s.

It appears to prefer the only other double-decker jet, as Lufthansa operates the most Boeing 747 jets of any passenger airline.

Lufthansa initially retired all 14 of its A380s during the pandemic before changing its mind as travel demand bounced back. The other six were sold back to Airbus, Airways Magazine reported in 2023.

Lufthansa's A380s go between Munich and Bangkok, Los Angeles, New Delhi, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.

8. Korean Air

Korean Air is one of four airlines on this list, and 11 around the world, to be rated five stars by Skytrax.

It has five A380s, according to ch-aviation. It flies them on only one route: between Seoul's Incheon Airport and New York's JFK.

Back in 2021, CEO Walter Cho told FlightGlobal that its A380s would be retired by 2026, but delivery delays and high travel demand have seen their lifespan extended.

9. Asiana Airlines

Asiana Airlines has six A380s, one of which is in storage and another undergoing maintenance as of September, per ch-aviation's fleet data.

During the pandemic, Asiana flew empty superjumbos to keep its pilots certified.

The second Seoul-based carrier on this list, Asiana, has merged with Korean Air. For now, it's operated as a subsidiary but will use the same name from 2027.

Until then, Asiana regularly flies these jets from Seoul to Bangkok, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Sydney.

10. ANA

ANA is the newest Airbus A380 customer, as its first was delivered in 2019.

The Japanese airline has three in total, which it flies between Tokyo's Narita Airport and Honolulu.

ANA is another five-star airline, with an impressive business-class product. But you'll need to fly on a Boeing 777 to experience "The Room" — or in first class, "The Suite," which includes a 43-inch TV.

• My daughter and I both run nonprofits: mine rescues dogs; hers supports women's education.
• We are both passionate about our philanthropic work, but it comes at a price.
• I sometimes wonder if I should have encouraged her to choose a paycheck over passion and purpose.

Two years ago, my daughter, Jordan, was in the outskirts of Marrakech in Morocco with a group of 15 Amazigh girls from the High Atlas Mountains. Displaced after a recent earthquake, they were in a temporary dorm, just a small house, but it was all they had available to them. My daughter was leading a yoga teacher training program through her nonprofit — one that she built herself from the ground up when she was 26.

"How hot is it?" I ask while sitting at my desk in Los Angeles, frantically putting together a fundraising plea for the charity I founded for a matted poodle mix with a broken leg. He was hit by a car, and one of our rescue volunteers just saved him and rushed him to our vets.

"44 Celsius, Mom, and no fans. Cell phone cutting out," she shares.

I quickly Google the Fahrenheit conversion and learn that it's about 111 degrees.

"Oh no!" I gasp.

"Texting you Hamza's number. Nice guy. He'll help," she says.

"On it!" I yell, but she's gone.

This is the path my daughter and I have chosen. We are both founders of our own nonprofits. Our roller coaster lives are filled with daily problem-solving and never-ending stress. I'm proud of the person my daughter has become, but now I sometimes wonder if I should have pushed her in a different direction.

I'm always ready to help

It was a cool 69 degrees where I was in Santa Monica, yet my whole body suddenly felt blazing hot. As mothers, we are always split in two, immersed in our own lives, but also wherever our children are, even if it's on the other side of the world.

Within an hour of connecting with my daughter, I reached Hamza in Marrakesh, arranged for six large fans to be delivered C.O.D. by morning, and am laser-focused on raising $4,200 needed for the emergency pup who's already in surgery.

That night, as I feed my current pack of rescue dogs, I ask myself the push-pull, ever-pervasive question: Should I have encouraged my daughter to choose something more stable and secure, but less noble?

I was raised in apartheid South Africa. My parents left with their three daughters, without trying to change a system they hated. As a young adult in America, I suffered from terrible guilt. Why did we just walk away?

I wanted to model something different for my daughter

"Make a difference. Leave a footprint on the planet. Care about others," was the mantra I later instilled in my only child as a single mother.

At the age of 9, Jordan, already passionate about causes, went off to protest to save spider monkeys, picketing with a sign.

When she was a teenager, I started rescuing dogs. Having always been a huge animal lover, all it took was saving one little Chihuahua to open my eyes to the plight of animals in need. My daughter saw how dramatically my life changed. Heels were replaced by flip-flops, hair appointments were sacrificed for vet visits, and gradually, mutts took the place of men. By the time she left for college, I had started my own dog rescue foundation.

My daughter often puts others first

My examples seemed to stick with her. During her sophomore year, Jordan studied abroad in Cambodia and volunteered at a school teaching English. It lit a fire that was already smoldering in her.

At 26, she founded Souljourn Yoga Foundation, raising funds for young women's education globally through ethical yoga retreats and partnering with NGOs on the ground.

Now, over a decade later, I've witnessed the joys but also the struggles she's experienced, many of which mirror my own.

How do we get more donors? Will that grant proposal be approved? Can we make it through the fiscal year? I lie awake at night and angst for us both.

I have mixed feelings now

People often say to us, "Thank goodness for angels like you!" But they don't see the personal sacrifices behind those words. There's the three major back surgeries I've had from lifting large dogs and heavy bags of food, and the five hours of sleep Jordan and I both average a night, consumed by our missions that neither of us can switch off, holding up our own heavens like Atlas, as it were.

But there are also nights when I lie in bed and cherish the magic moments. The 23 hours of air travel I took to hear the infectious, gleeful laughter of schoolchildren in Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka, as they stretched their arms high in a yoga posture they had never done before. The glow I felt watching my daughter lead them, encouraging them to reach for the sky.

And recently, I received a text from the adopter of that injured poodle-mix we named Romeo. He's now a healthy, fluffy, racing-around pup who is loved and adored.

These are the riches that cannot be counted in dollars or measured by a bank balance.

Yet, with rising costs, declining funding, and the future of many small nonprofits uncertain, I grapple daily with the question as her mother: Should I have encouraged my daughter to choose a paycheck over passion and purpose? These days, I'm not so sure I know the answer.

• The US housing market has turned further into buyers' favor.
• More sellers are offering concessions and cutting prices on homes listed for sale.
• The trend is most prevalent in the Sun Belt, where sellers heavily outnumber buyers.

Good news, homebuyers: buying a house looks like it's getting just a little bit easier.

Mortgage rates are still high and home prices are still hovering near records, but more sellers are looking to sweeten the deal for buyers by slashing prices or throwing in concessions, such as paying for repairs, extra amenities, or offering to buy down a buyer's mortgage rate to close the deal.

The percentage of sellers who offered a concession to buyers rose to around 45% in August, up from 43% the prior year. It marks the highest proportion of sellers offering concessions in August in at least the last six years, according to Redfin data.

The percentage of sellers who offered a concession and a price cut rose to nearly 16%, the real estate listings site said on Friday. Around 20% of active listings have had a price drop, up 0.6 percentage points from the prior year, Redfin data shows.

The trend has largely been driven by an imbalance of sellers and buyers in the housing market, with many prospective buyers sitting on the sidelines due to high mortgage rates and elevated home prices.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate ticked up to 6.95% in the last week, according to Freddie Mac data, and other national surveys show the rate well above 7%.

Across the US, home sellers outnumbered buyers by 58%, Redfin said in a previous report. America's supply of homes for sale also rose to a 10-year high in August, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Concessions have been particularly common in the Sun Belt, a region in the US where sellers heavily outnumber buyers. The deluge of inventory is giving buyers more options and the ability to be picky when shopping for a home.

Last month, concessions appeared most frequently in Atlanta, where they were included in 73% of deals. It was followed by Charlotte and Phoenix, where around 67% of sales involved concessions.

The housing market has been stuck in a yearslong deep freeze as high rates continue to keep buyers on the sidelines. Most forecasters are expecting mortgage rates to remain above the 6% threshold in the near future. 2026, meanwhile, looks on track to be the weakest year for home sales since 2011, according to an estimate from Capital Economics.

• Would you trust an AI agent with the keys to your digital kingdom?
• Tech firms like Meta are betting you will, just as agents have shown they aren't always aligned with our interests.
• Cybersecurity professionals warn that the convenience agents offer comes with a tradeoff.

AI assistants are finally ready to help you run your life. All you need to do is trust them with your email login, your contacts, and your credit card — and hope they don't go rogue.

Meta, Google, and the buzzy startup Instinct have rolled out personal AI agents in recent months that promise to handle tasks such as booking travel, buying concert tickets, and scouring Facebook Marketplace for deals.

At a basic level, these agents behave largely the same way. You send the agent a request via an app or WhatsApp — or, in the case of the newly launched Rene agent, via iMessage — and leave it to complete the task.

The catch is that AI agents are only as useful as the level of access that you give them. Want AI to book your flight? It'll need access to your credit card and airline account. Want it to tidy up your inbox? It will need the keys to your email.

These shiny new tools come after a summer of multiple high-profile incidents in which AI agents went rogue and hacked companies, as well as user reports of their own agents taking unintended actions.

In one case earlier this year, a man in Australia said his AI agent running on OpenClaw secured him a spot in a Pilates class by breaking into the gym's online booking system.

The result is a sense of whiplash between wonder and anxiety. Early adopters of personal AI agents have shared examples of how the technology has made their lives much easier, but also ways in which it hasn't gone to plan.

"It has access to your email, files, accounts, and even passwords — a mistake or manipulation could have real-world consequences, and that is terrifying," Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at internet security firm ESET, told Business Insider.

Agents in a time of misalignment

This summer, before fears of an AI apocalypse reached fever pitch, a flurry of tech companies reported incidents in which their AI agents went rogue.

In July, an internal OpenAI model escaped its development sandbox and broke into Hugging Face's internal systems, the companies said. Meta and Anthropic later disclosed that their own agents also conducted hacks without their knowledge.

While these incidents involved cybersecurity-focused agents in testing, the same underlying problem applies to consumer-focused agents: misalignment, where AI pursues a goal that conflicts with what its human creators or users intended.

"AI agents need safeguards built in. Without these guardrails, they are designed to go 'rogue' because they are specifically designed to get a task done — however it decides to achieve it," Moore said.

During testing of Meta's Muse agent, which soared to the top of Apple's App Store a week after launch, it displayed several undesirable behaviors, The Information reported. Those included sending unapproved emails and, in one case flagged by an employee, trying to undermine a rival app the user was building, the report said.

Conducting tests like these is one way tech companies can mitigate against misalignment. A Meta spokesperson said the internal testing process is designed to "get feedback, and implement safety and privacy protections" to improve the products.

Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic all have broadly similar safeguards for their agents: they limit the apps, accounts, or data an agent can access; require user approval for higher-stakes actions such as purchases or sending emails; and scan for hidden instructions on webpages, emails, and files.

However, some of the executives building the technology warn that the risk of AI taking unintended actions isn't going away yet.

"We have not solved alignment," Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, recently told Fortune. "We are not done with our research there. I believe no lab has solved alignment."

The era of personal agents

For years, AI company leaders have been expounding the potential for personal AI assistants to make our lives better. Google chief scientist Demis Hassabis has often spoken of his vision to build a "universal AI assistant." Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long shared his vision of "personal superintelligence" for everyone.

While OpenClaw became popular among techies earlier this year, agents like Muse and Instinct are showing early signs of becoming the mass appeal personal digital assistants we've long been promised.

Business Insider's Katie Notopoulos found Muse to be a powerful admin tool, though it struggled with tasks like booking her annual physical and keeping on top of her kid's school notifications. Meanwhile, Business Insider's Pranav Dixit has used Instinct to buy whey protein, book a cabin getaway, and cancel subscriptions.

"It feels like magic. And contrary to what some people have said, I don't think the appeal is limited to Silicon Valley types," wrote investor Sheel Mohnot on X in a review of Instinct.

That broader consumer appeal could also prove problematic.

"The magic of these products is the access that they have, and that's also the risk," Joe Sullivan, a former chief security officer at Facebook who is now a board member of Manifold Security, told Business Insider. "Consumers don't have the benefit of a whole security team running next to them like enterprises do."

Keeping your agent aligned

So, how do users get the most out of their AI assistants while minimizing the risk of things going wrong?

Moore said agents should have limited access to your services and "be designed to require human approval for sensitive actions."

Similarly, Sullivan warned that early adopters of these agents should "start narrow" in terms of how much access they give the tools.

"I used one of the agents this morning to book a rental car for me. I wouldn't give it permanent access to my Avis account," he said.

Users experimenting with personal agents should turn off access when they're done, especially when testing and comparing different agents, Sullivan added.

"Don't just leave the other one hanging out there with your data, with permission to do things," he said. "Disconnect doesn't mean the same as delete."

• Debbie Welsch moved from Los Angeles to Bali for a simpler, more affordable retirement life.
• Welsh's Bali home costs $8,000 annually, drastically reducing her living expenses.
• In Bali, Welsch lives on $1,300 monthly, funded by savings and a $550,000 retirement investment.

This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation for our Cost of Living video series with Debbie Welsch, 57, an American who retired to Bali with her 82-year-old mother. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My 10-year lease for my 1,100-square-foot house in Bali is $4,500 a year — that is $375 a month in rent.

The one caveat: I had to pay my landlord the $45,000 upfront.

I also had to budget around $3,500 a year for renovation costs, totaling $35,000 over 10 years. In total, my housing costs for a year average $8,000. The move was 100% worth it.

I moved from Los Angeles to Bali with my 82-year-old mom over seven years ago. Before I moved and retired, I worked as an interior designer, earning $120,000 a year. Back then, I couldn't afford to live in my house because my mortgage and property taxes were too high. For a time, I rented out my house and stayed in a room at one of my friends' homes. This was when I decided to change my lifestyle.

I met with a financial consultant who told me that, based on what I could cash out from my house and grow through investments, I could live on a budget of $2,000 a month. So I decided to travel to five different places in the world to see if I could live there full-time.

Bali's always been my happy place, and a lot of it has to do with the people. I sold everything I owned — My house, my car. After moving here, I felt like a big weight had been released. Life is just simple here.

What the cost of living in Bali looks like.

I live on $1,300 a month. The money comes from savings, especially from the sale of my house back in LA. In total, my retirement savings are around $550,000, which are now in investments. I also earn around $4,000 a year from my hobbies, including my work as a contemporary romance writer and my own YouTube channel.

My monthly house maintenance costs are around $60, and that includes pool maintenance, air conditioning, water delivery, and waste management. I also have a maid who cleans once a week, for $11 per cleaning, which totals about $45 a month. My monthly utility costs are about $75, including water, gas, electricity, my phone bill, and internet service.

My mom also has her own house in Bali. We had to pay $16,800 up front for the four-year lease, which averages about $350 a month. Before my mom moved from Los Angeles, her rent was going to be raised to $1,500 a month — with her $2,000 a month income, that wasn't sustainable.

I have a two-year visa, which costs $732. My mother's visa costs about $1,000 for one year.

Here, we are within walking distance of the beach, as well as many cafés, boutiques, and art galleries. Walking is our main exercise. I also do yoga and meditation at home using an app.

My international health insurance plan costs $124 a month, covers Bali and other parts of Southeast Asia, and has a $10,000 deductible. The cost to go to a local clinic here is about $15 on average for the visit.

Aging in Bali's pretty easy — as long as we have each other. I'm seeing my mom have more energy because she's getting her exercise in and eating healthy. My mother has Medicare, at $200 a month, but it only works in the US. I feel blessed to live here because if my mom were to get sick, I could hire a full-time person to care for her, and the cost would be nominal, maybe $500 a month.

To get around, I use a $500 scooter; gas and maintenance usually cost $6 a month. I also take taxis and rideshares, which aren't very pricey; an hourlong trip costs about $7. Overall, I spend around $22 a month on transportation.

We do cook at home a lot, and I typically spend $310 a month on groceries. Local items are a lot less expensive than the imported Western items. We go out to eat two to three times a week, and an average meal is around $7.

I also have a dog and two cats, and I spend more on the cats than I do on my own food. My dog's food costs about $1 a day, while cat food is $0.55 a can. A vet visit to the house costs $10, or $50 with vaccinations.

Feeling an abundance of life

In LA, my job was my purpose and my identity. When I moved to Bali, I was able to shed that. It took a while, but now I'm just me.

I would not recommend that other people do what I did, and sell everything and move to Bali. First, dive into the culture here, live in a local village, and connect with the local people. If we don't adapt to their culture, we don't belong here.

I adore the Balinese and the way they live: their rituals, their ceremonies, everything is just brilliant. I feel so safe here, especially being a single woman. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

I feel extremely financially secure for the first time in my life. Even when I had property, I always felt like the taxes, my insurance, and food kept going higher. There is no way I could afford this lifestyle in the US.

I have abundance now — and it's not abundance of money, and it's not abundance of food. It's abundance of life.

If you ask most economists, market experts, and even the Federal Reserve, the story of the US economy for the rest of 2026 will be one of strong and steady growth. But there are serious reasons to doubt this forecast of calm waters.

There's no better example of the sanguine consensus view than the Fed's latest Summary of Economic Projections, released as part of the central bank's meeting on Wednesday. According to the FOMC's rundown, no participants saw the risks to GDP growth as tilted to the downside. Meanwhile, after this week's interest rate hike — the first in three years — investors and analysts don't really see the Fed taking much more action. In the face of buoyant growth predictions and strong financial conditions, the market is priced for another two rate hikes between now and March, not much else. Again, this feels optimistic given the near-term risks that inflation could reheat in the coming months.

Despite the rhetoric, the US economy is facing a squeeze from two ends. The first is a slowdown in consumer spending, as Americans pull back amid higher inflation, sluggish income growth, and geopolitical uncertainty. The second is the Federal Reserve's renewed interest rate hikes, which will ultimately need to slow the economy down to tame price hikes. Hoping for inflation to cool on its own seems more difficult to justify every month that inflation remains above the Fed's target.

There are reasons to expect consumer spending to slow and reasons to expect the Fed not to act as a shock absorber. The net effect of this is clear: somewhat higher unemployment and somewhat tighter financial market conditions (aka lower stock prices), in order to ultimately achieve slower inflation.

Consumer likely cools

In recent years, American consumers have been the crucial drivers of the economy. While AI has attracted considerable attention, consumer resilience has been an important driver of US GDP. In the first half of 2026, Americans did their part and used their wallets to fuel the economy. Indeed, in the second quarter of the year, real consumption added nearly 2.5 percentage points to growth. Growth in the current quarter continues to run at a breakneck pace, but looking at the rest of the year, there are several reasons to worry that spending may not hold up.

The most obvious reason for the slowdown is that the boost from larger tax refunds is fading away. In the first half of the year, Americans saw about an 11% increase in their average refund compared with last year, thanks to changes made by last year's Big Beautiful Bill tax reform law. The boost in income from lower taxes has contributed 0.4 percentage points to US GDP so far in 2026, according to Brookings' Fiscal Impact Measure. Despite this tailwind, inflation-adjusted consumer spending grew at only a 2.0% annual pace over the first half of the year, similar to its 2025 rate. In the second half of this year, the contribution of taxes and benefits to US GDP is projected to slow to zero, then become a drag on the economy in 2027 — in other words, fiscal policy is transitioning from tailwind to headwind.

In addition to losing the tax-refund boost, American households will soon be forced to deal with a larger geopolitical uncertainty tax in the form of higher gas and food prices. As the war in Iran drags on, higher commodity prices will bleed into the prices you pay at the pump and at the grocery store. One way to gauge the shock is to compare movements in headline and core inflation — the former includes all goods, while the latter strips out food and energy prices. In the last three months, the gap between the two measures has narrowed, suggesting that the price pressure from gas, eggs, and their ilk is declining.

However, signs suggest that the rest of the year will be a bit more challenging. On energy, prices for refined energy products have been rising. Nationwide retail gasoline prices are up $1.25 per gallon on average compared to the same time of year. This is particularly alarming since energy prices typically fall at this point of the season, thanks to the end of the summer driving surge.

Next, the rise in diesel prices and agricultural commodity prices, two important cost drivers for farmers and other parts of the agricultural supply chain, means grocery store prices will almost certainly accelerate into year-end. In short, the "shock tax" that Americans feel at the pump and the grocery aisle will only increase over the rest of the year.

The final headwind to consumer spending is set to come from the housing market, as mortgage rates climb and the number of Americans moving stalls. Home sales were already slowing before the latest run-up in mortgage rates, which have recently topped 7% for the first time in over a year. And as home sales slow, so too do purchases of major household goods like furniture, appliances, and carpeting. It usually takes six months for the slowdown in home sales to filter down into decreased spending on big-ticket items, which is important, since the contribution from furnishings and durable household equipment punched above its weight in the second quarter. The slowing in home sales over the past few months implies this good news will turn sour by year-end.

Fading fiscal relief, a rising geopolitical tax, and a decline in people moving homes, all in the context of relatively sluggish growth in wages and salaries, imply that household consumption growth will probably moderate into next year. Consumption is an important part of US growth, and, importantly, many more jobs are tied to consumer spending than to business investment. If people don't buy as much stuff, firms don't need to produce as much stuff either.

The Fed keeps squeezing

At the same time that American consumers are tightening their purse strings, the Fed is tightening as well. The central bank raised interest rates on Wednesday, and despite the ho-hum market expectations, additional hikes are likely on the horizon. Continued hikes are likely to slow the economy. That is ultimately the point of tightening monetary policy — to slow demand and bring consumer prices to the inflation target.

The main reason for the anticipated hikes to come is that inflation progress has stalled. Core inflation remains above 3% and is only projected to approach that target years down the road. And while current inflation numbers aren't great, I think the bigger story is the balance of risks in the inflation outlook. It's difficult to find a reason inflation will meaningfully cool off anytime soon, which increases the risk of it becoming entrenched. When people start to believe more price hikes are on the horizon, they are more likely to swallow that inflation, and it becomes harder to squash. So the recent rise in short-run inflation expectations, which are climbing alongside energy costs, presents a challenge for the Fed. Beyond expectations and the rise in staple prices, other important drivers of the recent increase in inflation also look set to heat up. For instance, the price of semiconductor chips — the critical tech fueling the AI boom — has boosted core PCE inflation by 0.6 percentage points over the past six months, and there is no sign of the bottleneck improving anytime soon.

In the face of consensus about the economy, it's always important to be cognizant of what could upend the apple cart. Based on my reading of the consumer winds and the Fed's renewed dedication to tackling inflation, it's clear that there are two serious reasons to think the US is on shakier ground than it appears.

Neil Dutta is head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research.

• Oleksandr Matsiuk found that CEOs can struggle to get honest feedback.
• Matsiuk hired outspoken employees and a board member who would challenge him.
• Matsiuk found that measuring outputs can be more helpful than measuring outcomes.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Oleksandr "Alex" Matsiuk, cofounder and CEO of RiseGuide, an expert-powered microlearning app. The company has grown to 110 employees across 12 countries since its founding in 2024. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

Becoming the CEO of a fast-growing company created a problem I hadn't anticipated: Nobody was responsible for telling me how to improve.

I decided that if honest feedback wasn't reaching me naturally, I needed to build a system that would deliver it. That included hiring outspoken employees and bringing someone onto my board specifically to argue with me.

I felt stuck in my progress as a CEO

As CEO, I don't have a formal manager, performance reviews, or a personal development plan. My performance is largely judged by the company's performance, but that isn't always the right approach.

A CEO can be doing something wrong or have plenty of room for improvement. If the business is growing, few people will say, "This could have been better."

At board meetings, I would present an idea and hear, "Everything is clear. Keep doing a great job." That frustrated me. I might have been outperforming the competition, but was I living up to my potential? Was the company living up to its potential?

Feedback is essential for any professional's growth, and CEOs have flaws, perhaps even more than other people. I began designing feedback systems around myself, including direct reminders to employees that I wanted their honest opinions.

I sought out people who weren't afraid to challenge me

When hiring, I look for opinionated, independent thinkers. There isn't one interview question that identifies them. I watch how they behave.

We often approach people who aren't actively looking for jobs. The best candidates know their value, so they interview me as much as I interview them.

One creative producer, for example, questioned me for 45 minutes. When I mentioned our beautiful office and its view, she said, "Show me." I picked up my laptop and gave her a tour.

I thought: If she made me do that during an interview, imagine what she'll do when we work together.

Another candidate came in deeply prepared and challenged our brand strategy rather than simply complimenting us. That was exactly what I wanted.

I applied similar criteria when selecting a board member. I wanted someone who understood our business model, knew me personally, and could spend time with our team. I can be passionate when I strongly believe in something, and people sometimes stop arguing with me. I needed someone who wouldn't give up until one of us proved our point.

The person I selected challenged me before he even joined the board. He asked why I needed him, why he needed the role, and what would happen when we disagreed. That was how I knew he was the right match.

My board member pushed me to aim higher

About a year ago, I was setting targets for our next six-month season. I proposed what I considered ambitious goals: tripling the company's growth and doubling the team.

My board member asked, "Why do you think that's ambitious? Why can't you go higher?"

He proposed a target roughly twice as high as my original one. Then he kept pressing: What were the obstacles? Where were the bottlenecks? Why couldn't we solve them?

His questions pushed me far outside my comfort zone. When I commit to a target, I intend to achieve it, so reaching for the stars isn't easy for me.

He had experience with a similar company and business model. He knew the bigger goal was possible and made arguments strong enough to change my mind. We raised our targets and eventually hit them.

The experience taught me that you solve different problems when you aim to grow fourfold instead of twofold. You may never consider the steps needed for fourfold growth unless you first set it as the goal.

My advice to other CEOs is to create systems that challenge your outputs, not just measure your company's eventual outcomes. Someone should be able to tell you that a Slack message was poorly written, your goals weren't ambitious enough, or a person you hired wasn't competent enough.

If you encourage tough feedback, embrace it, and don't treat it as a threat to your authority. Better outputs eventually lead to better outcomes.

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 picks for the best orthopedic dog beds

Best overall: Petfusion Ultimate Dog Lounge - $73-$230 at Amazon

Best budget with bolsters: Bedsure Pet Orthopedic Dog Sofa - $47-$80 at Chewy

Best budget mat: Bedsure Pet Orthopedic Mat - $35-$55 at Chewy

Best stylish: Lay Lo Dog Bed - $139-$229 at Etsy

Best for small dogs: Big Barker Barker Junior - $150-$180 at Big Barker

Best for crates: Big Barker Ortho Lift Crate Bed - $110-$230 at Big Barker

Best overall

Why this is our top pick: The Petfusion Ultimate Dog Lounge offered the best orthopedic support of all the beds we tested. Plus, it has an ideal bolster-style design and a super durable twill cover.

What our testers said: We 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 by 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.

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 of protecting the mattress from liquids and moisture.

Drawbacks to consider: 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.

Best budget with bolsters

Why this is our top pick: For an affordable bed with plenty of sizes and colors to choose from, it's hard to beat the Bedsure Orthopedic Dog Bed. It's rare for an egg crate mattress to offer sufficient support, but we found the 4-inch egg-crate foam mattress provided medium-firm support. In fact, it 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.

What our testers said: 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.

Drawbacks to consider: We tested the bed in two different colors, and the cream top on 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

Why this is our top pick: If your dog tends to sprawl out rather than cuddle up against bolsters, the affordable Bedsure Orthopedic Mat will keep them comfortable. This bed offers more density and support than other mattress-style beds under $100. It's also available in several colors, textures, and sizes.

What our tester said: The eggcrate foam is only 3 inches high, except for the largest size bed, which is 4 inches high. 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.

Drawbacks to consider: 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

Why it's our top pick: While the Lay Lo Dog Bed is one of the priciest orthopedic options, 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 bottom layer. You can choose from more than 20 attractive cover colors and prints, which are also sold separately.

What our tester said: 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.

Drawbacks to consider: 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

Why it's our top pick: 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 that's just the right height for a smaller dog to rest their head.

What our testers said: 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 can climb 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. Big Barker even offers a 10-year guarantee because it's confident that the foam will retain 90% of its original shape and thickness for that long.

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.

Drawbacks to consider: This bed is expensive and not waterproof. At the time we tested it, a waterproof liner was available but that's no longer the case.

Best for crates

Why it's our top pick: 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.

What our testers said: 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 less than a minute after we removed dumbbell weights that had been laid on it for four hours. Like the brand's Barker Junior bed, which we recommend for small dogs, this crate pad carries an unbeatable 10-year guarantee.

Drawbacks to consider: The cover acquired a "dusty" look after washing, drying, and regular use, which is common with microfiber. We discovered the cover had 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. The waterproof liner that was sold separately has also been discontinued. 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.

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 completed testing on 22 orthopedic beds for dogs of various breeds and weights, ranging from 6 to 15 years old and 12 to 180 pounds. Our tests follow the same strict standards we apply to all pet product testing at Insider Reviews and 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.

Two SEC titans will face off in this weekend's most anticipated college football game. Below, we've rounded up everything you need to know about how to watch LSU vs. Ole Miss, including global streaming options.

If you don't want to read any further, you can live stream the game on ESPN Unlimited in the US, and on DAZN in the UK and other regions. You can access your usual streaming options from anywhere with a VPN, such as NordVPN.

What channel is LSU vs. Ole Miss on?

LSU vs. Ole Miss will air on ABC in the US. The game is scheduled to kick off on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET, but college football coverage will be available on the network all day, starting at noon.

How to watch LSU vs. Ole Miss in the US

Cord-cutters can catch ABC through a live TV service, like YouTube TV or Fubo, or the network's direct sports streaming counterpart, ESPN Unlimited.

ESPN Unlimited costs $32 a month and unlocks full live streams for all ESPN networks, along with ESPN on ABC games and streaming-exclusive programming. You can learn more in our ESPN streaming service guide.

ABC is also available in several live TV streaming services, including YouTube TV and Fubo, two of our top recommendations. YouTube TV carries ABC and 100+ other channels in its Main plan, which typically costs $83 a month. However, a limited-time deal will discount the first five months of service down to $68 a month for new customers. ABC and 30+ other channels are also available in the cheaper Sports plan, which typically costs $65 a month. A limited-time deal will knock the Sports plan down to $45 a month for six months for new users. Both plans unlock ESPN Unlimited live streaming and offer a free trial for first-time customers.

Fubo is another popular live TV service. ABC and around 30 other channels are available in the Sports + News plan, which costs $65 a month when available. ABC is also available in the pricier Pro and Elite tiers, which unlock 200+ channels. All of these plans come with a free trial and introductory month offers for new customers. Subscriptions also unlock access to ESPN Unlimited at no extra cost.

How to watch LSU vs. Ole Miss in the UK and other regions

In the UK and other international markets, DAZN live streams loads of college football games every week. Not every game is guaranteed coverage, so it's always a good idea to double-check that the game you want to watch is available. LSU vs. Ole Miss will definitely be shown in the UK this weekend, so fans are in luck. DAZN NCAA College Sports subscription prices vary from region to region.

How to watch LSU vs. Ole Miss from anywhere

If you're a football fan traveling abroad right now, you can still access your usual streaming options by utilizing a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are handy cybersecurity apps that let people temporarily change their virtual location. This way, their favorite websites and apps work overseas the same way they would back home. Since the platforms we've recommended today require country-specific payment methods, this option will work best for those who are just traveling away from home right now.

NordVPN is one of the best VPNs around. It's fast, easy to use (even for beginners), and has a hassle-free 30-day money-back guarantee. You can learn more in our NordVPN review.

How are the teams doing?

LSU and Ole Miss are ranked pretty evenly right now. The No. 7 LSU Tigers won their first two games, walloping LA Tech and Clemson. The No. 8 Ole Miss Rebels also won their first two games, resulting in a massive victory over Charlotte and a close call against Louisville.

Where does the game take place?

Ole Miss will host tonight's game. The match-up will take place at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Mississippi.

Who won the last LSU vs. Ole Miss game?

LSU and Ole Miss are both in the Southeastern Conference, so the teams have met multiple times. Their last game against each other was in September 2025, when Ole Miss beat LSU 24-19.

Who is favored to win LSU vs. Ole Miss?

LSU is the favorite to win tonight's game. According to DraftKings (at the time of writing), LSU is -148 on the moneyline, while Ole Miss is +124.

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.

• I always felt special when my friends told me about big news before they posted it on social media.
• When it came time for me to share some milestones, I chose to do it in person or over the phone.
• For me, getting a hug is way better than getting likes on a post.

Years ago, I got a call from a friend. "The most amazing thing happened," she gushed, "we got engaged!" She proceeded to tell me about how her boyfriend proposed. They're such a loving and compatible couple, I couldn't have been happier for them. Days later, I saw the picture online, her finger encrusted with an antique diamond ring, an heirloom from her fiancé's grandmother, just like she had told me about over the phone.

Over the years, I would get a message, sometimes out of the blue, from a friend saying something along the lines of, "Let's catch up." Then we'd set up a time to meet, or, if we lived too far apart, have a phone call. At times, the news was joyful, like a pregnancy or a major step in a relationship. Other times, it was somber, a divorce, a job loss, a tragic health condition.

Sometimes I would see my friends post on social media later, after they had already told me. Each time, I felt honored that they had reached out to me directly. I felt special that they wanted to make sure I knew what was going on in their life, and not just that I was within the blast radius of a social media post.

When it was my turn, I prioritized personal connections

The year 2023 was big for me. At the beginning of the year, my boyfriend and I bought a weekend house in the mountains. That spring, he proposed to me at that weekend house, under a starry sky. We were both in our mid-30s and eager to start a family. That summer, we eloped with an intimate ceremony at the same place we had our first date three years earlier. In the fall, we shared the good news with family and friends that we were expecting our first child.

I felt the temptation to share all my good fortunes with pictures broadcasted across the World Wide Web. But instead of a picture, I sent my friends a message. "Let's get together," or "let's have a call," it said.

Instead of posting the quintessential picture of us holding up a set of keys in front of a house, we told our friends about buying a vacation house over drinks. "We can't wait to see it!" they exclaimed, and we clinked our glasses together in celebration.

When I met up with a friend I hadn't seen in a while, she grabbed my hand mid-hug when the sparkle of the diamond caught her eye. Another friend brought over a housewarming gift. She caught a glimpse of the grainy sonogram picture on the fridge. "I'm so happy for you guys," she said, holding back tears of joy.

Hugs beat out "likes" or heart emojis any day

So much happened in such a short period of time that year. When we caught up with friends we hadn't seen in a couple of months, the answer to "so, what's new with you?" sometimes ended up being "we bought a house, and we got engaged, and now we're married, and we're having a baby!"

Each time I shared the special things going on in my life, I got to experience the joy again, through the other person. Those moments created memories that I would never have had from just posting online. Waiting to share news in person with the people I love, and seeing their reaction, released more endorphins than any number of "likes" to a post.

Technology has helped me stay in touch with my family and friends around the country and the world. I've come to find that sharing life's ups and downs with the people I love, in person when possible, or by call if not, is the best way to stay connected.

• President Donald Trump said he will not "in any way hinder or stifle" AI development.
• Trump also said he was making a new "AI force" and appointing an AI "Czar."
• Leaders of US frontier AI labs last week called for the US government to regulate the industry.

President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he was creating a new "AI force" to "watch over" AI development, one week after a chorus of AI leaders called for government regulation of the ever-advancing tech.

At the same time, he said he would not heed those leaders' call to slow down AI development.

"We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry," the president said on Truth Social, his social media platform. "Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!"

Trump said he would also soon be announcing a new AI "Czar."

Trump's comments on Saturday amount to his most concrete response yet toward calls from leaders of frontier AI labs to slow down and regulate AI development to ensure its safety for humanity.

Trump did not offer further details about the new AI Force in his social media post.

Trump likened calls to slowing AI development to "Hoaxes, all generated by the Radical Left Dumocrats, for purposes of destroying our Country."

He said existing criminal statutes were sufficient to protect against incidents of misalignment — a techie term for when agents do things their human minders didn't intend. Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI have all said in recent weeks that some of their AI agents have gone rogue and escaped testing environments, in some cases hacking into other companies.

Last week, a chorus of leading AI CEOs said AI development should be slowed down until adequate risk-prevention measures could be put in place.

In an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed a three-pronged plan that would, in his view, strengthen safeguards to ensure AI remains under the control of human engineers.

One of those prongs included calls for the US government, "for antitrust reasons," to regulate frontier AI labs. Amodei's essay was signal-boosted by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Not all AI CEOs and influential people are so gung-ho about regulation, however.

Some, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and David Sacks, a presidential advisor on science and tech, said government regulation would put the US at a disadvantage with China and choke the growth of smaller AI companies.

Sacks also said AI labs don't need the government and can coordinate a slowdown among themselves.

Business Insider reported earlier this month that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg opposed plans for a national AI regulator on a phone call with the president in August.

Trump, for his part, appears to agree.

"AI is the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet, but will be even larger and more impactful, possibly as much as 25% of our Country's GDP," he said. "We are leading China, and the rest of the World, and I intend to keep it that way!"

• Director Aaron Sorkin's coming film about Mark Zuckerberg hits theaters on October 9.
• Sorkin said Sony hired an outside law firm to fact-check the film ahead of its release.
• He called Meta a "phenomenally powerful company" that can sue "at the drop of a hat."

Sony left no legal stone unturned for its new film about Mark Zuckerberg, lest it face the wrath of Meta's legal team.

During an appearance on The New York Times podcast, "The Interview," director Aaron Sorkin said getting the green light to pursue "The Social Reckoning" wasn't a "no-brainer."

"You also have this phenomenally powerful company with limitless resources who can sue you at the drop of a hat," Sorkin said. "It's my understanding that Sony did get letters from Meta, and I do not think those letters said, 'We're wishing you all the luck in the world.'"

Sorkin said that Sony's legal department typically vets non-fiction films thoroughly, but for "The Social Reckoning," the studio hired an "outside law firm" to ensure "every single thing that is presented as a fact is a fact."

"The things that I wasn't able to say or do are agonizing," Sorkin said. "I will say, the irony wasn't lost on anybody that we were doing a thorough fact-check of a movie about a company unwilling to do the same thing."

During the interview, Sorkin said he makes a distinction between the real Zuckerberg and the character in his films.

"I'll do my research. I'll learn everything that I can about the reality. I'll talk to as many people as I can, read as much as I can, but in the process of thinking about it and then in the process of writing it, it becomes the same as a fictional character for me," Sorkin said. "It becomes a character that I'm creating."

"The Social Reckoning" is a legal drama based on the real-life fallout from the 2021 Facebook leak.

Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen copied a trove of internal documents before leaving the company that spring. The documents showed that Facebook, now Meta, was aware that aspects of its platforms had adverse effects on its users. Haugen shared the documents with The Wall Street Journal, which published a series of high-profile articles. She later testified before a Senate subcommittee and said the company prioritized profits over user safety.

Actor Mikey Madison plays Haugen, while Jeremy Allen White plays former Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz. Jeremy Strong will portray Zuckerberg on the big screen.

"The Social Reckoning" is Sorkin's second film about Facebook, following the 2010 box-office hit "The Social Network." The film won many awards, including three Academy Awards.

• I spent 22 years raising my children to become confident, independent adults.
• My son moved to New York City, while my daughter built a life in Chicago.
• I'm proud they're thriving, but I still grieve the years when they needed me.

When my son moved to New York City after college graduation, I couldn't have been prouder. He had landed a great job, found an apartment, made friends, and embraced everything the city had to offer. Two years after my daughter finished college, we packed up a U-Haul and drove her more than 700 miles to Chicago to start her new chapter.

Watching both of my children confidently step into adulthood was everything I'd hoped for when they were little. Watching them leave was also one of the hardest things I've ever done.

I raised my kids to be independent

As parents, we spend years preparing our children to become independent. We celebrate every milestone that gets them closer to adulthood. The first day of school. Learning to ride a bike. Driving a car. Going away to college. Landing that first job. Every accomplishment feels like proof we're doing something right.

No one tells you that one day those same accomplishments will leave your house quiet.

These days, my son has favorite restaurants in New York I've never been to. He has his own routines, friends, and a new life with his fiancé. My daughter has created a life in Chicago that fits her perfectly. She knows the neighborhoods, has favorite places to shop and eat, and has built her own community. They don't call to ask how to do laundry anymore or need me to remind them about doctor's appointments. They're living exactly the lives I raised them to have.

And somehow, that's where the grief begins.

It hurts every time I say goodbye to them

It's a strange kind of grief because nothing bad has happened. They're healthy. They're happy. They're successful. They call, they visit, and we have wonderful relationships. In many ways, this is the dream every parent hopes for. Yet every time I hug them goodbye after visiting with them, I ache to the core and cry the entire way home.

I realized what I was mourning wasn't my children. It was that version of motherhood that had come to an end.

For twenty-two years, my life revolved around school schedules, sports, family dinners, and helping them become capable adults. Then, almost without noticing, my role changed. They still wanted me in their lives, but they no longer needed me every day. That's exactly what I had worked so hard to accomplish.

The irony wasn't lost on me. My greatest success as a parent also felt like one of my greatest losses.

I wondered if something was wrong with me. Shouldn't I simply be happy? Why did I feel so emotional when this was exactly what I'd wanted for them? It wasn't until I shared my feelings in TikTok videos that I realized I wasn't alone.

In one video, I wrote, "One day your daughter has her own city, her own routines, her own life... and you realize she's become the woman you hoped she'd be."

More than 65,000 people watched it, and more than 2,200 shared it. The comments said everything.

Again and again, parents described the same impossible contradiction: How can I be so incredibly proud and miss them this much at the same time?

It's pride and loss existing side by side.

When I visit my son in New York City or my daughter in Chicago, I love seeing them in their own worlds. I love that they have careers they're passionate about, apartments they've made their own, and lives full of people they love. Seeing them so confident and living fully fills me with pride.

Then I go home.

I miss the ordinary moments

That's when I miss the little things. Shoes in the mudroom. Messy bedrooms. Knowing everyone would be home for dinner. The ordinary moments you never realize you're living for the last time.

I don't think we talk enough about this stage of parenthood. We prepare parents for diapers, teenage years, and college drop-offs. We don't prepare them for the emotional whiplash of watching your children become exactly who you hoped they'd be while quietly grieving the life you shared before they flew.

The goal was never to keep them forever. It was to give them the confidence to build lives they loved, even if those lives took them hundreds of miles away. I spent 22 years raising my children to leave me.

Seeing them thrive tells me I succeeded. Missing them every day reminds me how much I loved the years when they needed me.

• Celebrities have had their fair share of fashion mishaps on red carpets this year.
• Some have worn confusing designs at events like the Met Gala, while others were underdressed.
• Heidi Klum, for example, should have picked a different dress for the Vanity Fair Oscars party.

Not every red-carpet look can be a winner.

Throughout 2026, we've seen celebrities wear showstopping ensembles at the Met Gala, Oscars, Grammy Awards, and more. Fashion is part of the job.

Unfortunately, some A-listers opted for ill-fitting suits, confusing sets, and overwhelming gowns at such red-carpet events.

Here's what's missed the mark so far this year.

Kate Hudson wore a two-piece set that needed tailoring in January.

She wore the Nina Ricci ensemble for a BAFTA Tea Party hosted in Beverly Hills. It comprised extra-long black trousers, a sheer, long-sleeve turtleneck tucked in, and a tan bralette underneath.

The outfit's color palette suited Hudson, and her see-through shirt was a fun choice. Still, her pants were so oversized that they distracted from the overall look.

Jenna Ortega attended the Golden Globes in a dress that overwhelmed her.

Dilara Findikoglu designed her black Golden Globes gown, which had a high neckline, a floor-length skirt, torso cutouts, and fringe at the shoulders.

While the lower half of the outfit looked chic on Ortega, the top half was too overpowering for her petite frame. A different neckline could have improved the look.

Sombr's outfit at the Grammys had potential, but it ultimately fell flat.

The musician hit the Grammys red carpet in a custom Valentino set. It included skinny, silver trousers covered in sequins and a matching blazer, which he wore open over a lace top.

The latter piece was unique and stood out on the red carpet. Unfortunately, his suit did the same, but for the wrong reasons. It looked more like a costume than a high-fashion ensemble.

Miley Cyrus wore one too many layers at the same event.

The musician, who is known for her daring style, wore Celine in the form of black barrel trousers and a white button-up blouse.

The classic outfit could have worked for Cyrus if she'd gone without her puffy leather jacket. It restricted the neckline of her top and was decorated with too many large gold brooches.

Lauren Sánchez Bezos probably should have picked a different dress for a pre-Oscar dinner.

As Chanel hosted the dinner, Sánchez Bezos wore a Karl Lagerfeld design from the fashion house's spring 1986 collection.

The gown's ruched bodice with a single sleeve and leather belt looked fine, but its matching skirt was too long. Some simple tailoring to make it shorter and give it shape would have improved the look.

It made for one of Sánchez Bezos' worst looks this year.

Kevin O'Leary attended the Oscars in March, and his outfit was odd.

The businessman wore a dramatic Dolce & Gabbana set that featured skinny trousers, a satin shirt, and a robe-style jacket printed with scenes in silver.

The top of his Oscars outfit looked too much like sleepwear, and his main accessory — a graded NBA trading card worn as a necklace — didn't make sense.

Heidi Klum's yellow gown at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party missed the mark.

Chrome Hearts designed the supermodel's gown, which had a halter neckline, a form-fitted bodice, and sheer panels across the chest, hips, and legs.

The latter detailing made the dress look incomplete, and its pale-yellow color washed out Klum.

Chrissy Teigen should have worn a different top when she attended the Fashion Trust US event in April.

She posed on the pink carpet wearing a yellow feathered skirt, neon-orange pumps, and a white structural tank top that sat above her torso rather than against it.

The white piece and her black clutch didn't match the outfit's vibrancy. The same top in a brighter color, maybe the same orange as her shoes, would have made it more cohesive.

Ben Stiller's Met Gala ensemble was lackluster.

For the "Costume Art" gala, where the dress code was "Fashion is Art," Stiller wore a standard suit with a white shirt and an orange tie, a nod to the New York Knicks.

The outfit might have worked at a standard red-carpet event, but it wasn't the right choice for the Met Gala. He missed the theme entirely.

Cardi B might be a Met Gala icon, but her 2026 look didn't work.

She wore a Marc Jacobs gown that was crafted from black lace over tan, pink, purple, and orange fabric.

It hugged most of her body except at the feet and shoulders, where the fabric was gathered into puffy bunches. The outfit had no clear meaning, and it looked strange on the red carpet.

Hudson Williams made his Met Gala debut, but it disappointed.

The "Heated Rivalry" star wore Balenciaga in the form of a baby-blue suit with black velvet detailing and a train attached at the waist.

It seemed like Williams was going for a daring look, especially since he chose to forgo a shirt. Unfortunately, the outfit looked unfinished, and his makeup was too strong.

Drew Barrymore's outfit at the Tony Awards in June didn't suit her.

Balenciaga designed her three-piece ensemble for the Tonys. It featured a baggy white top with a train, high-waisted trousers, and elbow-length white gloves.

Each piece looked a little too big on Barrymore, and the pants made her outfit look too casual. Swapping the latter for a skirt might have made it better.

Shaun Ross should have worn a different coat for the BET Awards.

The model and musician aimed to honor Missy Elliot with his pleather, full-length coat from the Chinese fashion brand Annakiki.

The coat, however, didn't look much like the one she wore in "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" music video, so the meaning was lost on the red carpet.

Its uniquely shaped hood also distracted from the rest of the piece.

Dwight Howard should have made one simple swap for his ESPYS outfit.

The basketball player chose a black satin suit for the awards ceremony, which looked sleek on the red carpet and paired well with his gold jewelry.

Still, the pleated pants he chose, which flared at the ankles, looked a bit too short for his tall frame. Looser-fitting trousers would have suited the outfit better.

Shailene Woodley's outfit for the Emmys was the wrong choice.

She wore a Balenciaga set that comprised embellished gold trousers and a loose-fitting blue halter top with a plunging neckline. The actor also wore a colorful gemstone necklace, an updo hairstyle, and burgundy leather gloves.

While Woodley became an Emmy winner, taking home the outstanding guest actress in a drama series award, her outfit wasn't as successful.

She should have ditched the accessories and worn a more form-fitting top.

• CNN and MS NOW said their reporters were denied entry to White House grounds Saturday morning.
• Donald Trump said on Friday that he was banning the networks and Politico from the White House.
• The ban follows earlier restrictions on reporters covering the Pentagon.

Reporters for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were denied entry to White House grounds on Saturday morning, the outlets said, one day after President Donald Trump said he was banning them for their coverage of him.

"Early today, CNN journalists were denied access to the White House grounds," a CNN spokesperson said in a statement. "We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do our reporting without hindrance or interference from the government."

"This ban is an illegal assault on this fundamental right," the spokesperson added.

A spokesperson for MS NOW said its journalists were also denied access.

In a note to Politico's newsroom shared with Business Insider, Politico's Global editor in chief, Jonathan Greenberger, said a Politico reporter had her press pass taken by the Secret Service.

"We stand by her and all reporters here covering the White House," Greenberger said. "As we said yesterday, we will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights."

President Donald Trump said on Friday that he was banning MS NOW, CNN, and Politico from the White House for what he described as their "fiction and lies."

"Media Outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they're covering the President of the United States," Trump said on Truth Social, his social media platform.

In its statement on Saturday, MS NOW said it "intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalism in our democracy."

CNN said it "will continue to report on the actions and processes of this administration without fear or favor."

Akayla Gardner, a White House correspondent for MS NOW, said on air that an officer took her press badge after it didn't scan.

"There was a red beeping light, and so the officer asked me to hand over my badge," she said. "He said that it was disabled."

Trump arrived at Camp David late Friday night, according to a White House pool report.

Politico and Business Insider are both owned by Axel Springer SE.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

• A slow cooker or Crock-Pot can come in handy when prepping food for game day.
• They can help whip up game-day appetizers from dips to ribs and spicy wings.
• Chili is another easy, hearty slow-cooker recipe to make before watching the game.

Football season is finally here — which means Sundays are once again all about touchdowns, trash talk, and a very serious spread of game-day snacks.

Whether you're locked in on the game or mainly showing up for Buffalo Chicken dip, ribs, and hot wings, you don't have to spend the entire day hovering over a hot stove to feed a crowd.

Business Insider spoke with cookbook authors Sarah Olson, who wrote "The Magical Slow Cooker," and Kim Laidlaw, author of "Everyday Slow Cooking: Modern Recipes for Delicious Meals," for ideas for easy game-day recipes.

These recipes can all be made in a slow cooker, allowing you to throw everything into your Crock-Pot and get back to the game.

Meatballs are a filling game-day appetizer you can make in a slow cooker.

Olson recommends her slow-cooker meatballs recipe for game day.

"I love grape-jelly meatballs, which only have three ingredients," she said. "They're so good, everyone will ask you for the recipe."

Another recipe from Spend With Pennies suggests placing your seasoned, raw meatballs in the slow cooker, topping them with sauce, and letting it finish them off.

Beer brats can also be made in a slow cooker.

Brats with onions, peppers, and garlic, simmered in the slow cooker with beer, are another of Olson's favorite game-day recipes.

"When the guests arrive, they get to choose when they want to eat since the slow cooker keeps these brats nice and warm during the game," she wrote on her website, The Magical Slow Cooker.

Plus, you can even choose peppers to reflect the colors of your favorite team.

Brisket is perfect for feeding a larger family.

"Brisket is a natural partner for the slow cooker, as a gentle braise renders it meltingly tender," Kim Laidlaw wrote in "Everyday Slow Cooking: Modern Recipes for Delicious Meals."

Laidlaw's recipe for slow-cooked braised brisket features garlic, onion, dry red wine, carrots, and either chicken or beef stock, accompanied by a chimichurri sauce.

Pork shoulder is a slow-cooker staple you can use to make game-day sliders.

"One dish I think is so versatile is pork shoulder in a slow cooker with broth and a little salt and pepper," Laidlaw said. "I just braise that, and then you can turn it into so many different things."

One of the best ways to use slow-cooked pork shoulder is to make pulled-pork sliders with all that tender meat. Then, top with barbecue sauce and slaw.

You can even make Buffalo chicken wings using a slow cooker.

Olson's recipe for slow-cooked Buffalo chicken wings calls for thawed chicken wings, hot sauce, and unsalted butter. To get the wings super crispy, remove them from the sauce after 2.5 hours of cooking, then broil them in the oven before adding them back to the slow cooker.

Pulled chicken with barbecue or Buffalo sauce is another great way to use your Crock-Pot.

One of the benefits of using a slow cooker is that you can start with a basic protein and jazz it up.

From Mexican-food-inspired spices to Indian simmer sauces, there are many ways to transform shredded chicken into something show-stopping by adding it to tacos, sandwiches, or salads.

Mac and cheese can also easily be made in a slow cooker.

If you want to add some carbs to your game-day menu, look no further than a piping hot pot of mac and cheese. Olson's recipe uses cream cheese, milk, sharp cheddar, and white sharp cheddar.

Martha Stewart's recipe for slow-cooker mac and cheese is also easy to make.

"It is important to use pungent cheeses, such as sharp cheddar, mixed with a little Gruyere or pecorino Romano for extra bite, since the white sauce and pasta will absorb a lot of flavor," Stewart writes.

Buffalo-chicken dip is another quick and easy favorite.

One of the benefits of making a slow-cooker Buffalo chicken dip — or any other slow-cooker side dish — is that the recipe can be prepared well in advance and reheated when you're ready to eat.

"There are so many different dips that can be made in the slow cooker, you can make Buffalo-chicken dip, bacon-cheeseburger dip, cheesy bean dip, Rotel and Velveeta Dip, and even artichoke dip," Olson said. "I like to serve all these dips with tortilla chips. Can't choose one dip? Make two or more for a variety for your guests."

Spinach-and-artichoke dip is another game-day favorite you can make in a slow cooker.

Spinach-artichoke dip is a game-day classic, and making it in a slow cooker keeps it extra warm, creamy, and scoopable from kickoff to the final whistle.

This recipe from Delish is made with full-fat cream cheese, shredded cheese, and mayonnaise,

Queso is a go-to game-day food that can be easily prepared in a Crock-Pot.

"I often make a queso verde dip in my slow cooker for game days," Olson told Business Insider.

Her recipe for queso verde uses white Velveeta cheese, salsa verde, milk, and sour cream.

Chili is another popular recipe to make on game days.

Spicy chili and chipotle turkey chili are ideal game-day recipes because they can simmer in a slow cooker for hours, letting the flavors deepen while you watch the game.

Serve with warm cornbread for a cozy, filling meal.

Slow cookers work perfectly to create an impressive — and tasty – nacho bar.

A DIY nacho bar is an easy way to feed a crowd while letting everyone build their perfect plate. It also puts those smaller slow cookers to work, keeping every topping warm and ready to scoop.

"I use three slow cookers for a nacho bar, which is a great way to use those smaller slow cookers," Olson said. "I use one slow cooker for nacho cheese (store-bought), one for seasoned ground beef, and one for refried beans. I also make a toppings bar that has salsa, sour cream, guac, olives, onions, and tomatoes."

• After years of growing my career in New York City, I moved to a small mountain town in Colorado.
• I loved being surrounded by nature, but I struggled to put down roots and missed parts of city life.
• Spending time away from this town helped me realize I needed to leave. A few years later, I did.

At 34, after years of climbing the ranks of a Wall Street law firm, I was burned out and deeply disconnected from the natural world.

Unsure of where I wanted to live, after leaving my job, I spent a year camping in the American West. During that trip, I visited Telluride, Colorado, and was immediately awed by the rose-emerald hues, toothy ridgelines, and elk herds roaming the valley.

It was the sort of place I often fantasized about escaping to, and it was easy to see why it's routinely voted one of the best mountain towns in the US.

In early 2017, ready to settle in one spot, I moved to a valley just south of Telluride, certain I'd find a simpler, more connected way of life.

I enjoyed reconnecting to nature, but felt like something was missing

At first, I was awash in the alpine paradise. Outside my front door, there were countless trails and 13,000-foot peaks to explore.

During winter, I admired magpies swooping in the snow, and savored the effort of chopping kindling and tending a fire. In spring, I was mesmerized by the aspen blooming green across the mountains and thrilled by the return of hibernating marmots.

The long days of summer burst with wildflowers and adventures along lichen-splotched ridgelines. And by fall, the aspens enthralled again, goldening against the sun's low-hanging light. Living there, I couldn't help but feel connected to the Earth's natural cycles.

But by the end of my first year, I also found myself longing for New York City. For me, this area's tight-knit community felt insular and hard to break into. Instead of being welcomed, I was often questioned about why I was there or how I'd found the place.

I also craved other aspects of my city life, like interacting with a broad range of people from different backgrounds on a regular basis — in a town with fewer than 200 residents with an economy driven by real estate and tourism, it felt like there was little diversity in the area's population.

For years, I tried to put down roots without much luck

On the cusp of looking elsewhere for a new home, I began dating my now-husband, who'd lived there for almost 20 years. The relationship was a Band-Aid.

It not only gave me companionship, but once I was partnered with a "local," I was more often welcomed by others. For the next five years, I tried hard to put down roots and cultivate connections.

Because most of my work was remote, I looked for other ways to engage through volunteering with the nearby Nordic ski team and a local mentorship program. I also worked part-time at a backcountry ski lodge. Although I met people with similar interests like trail running and mountain climbing, I didn't find the lasting personal connections I'd hoped for.

An experience that encapsulated my struggle was my yearlong tenure in local government, where I was able to use my legal background.

Residents brought issues to my attention that I researched and worked to address — but what initially felt like appreciated work soon became frustrating.

I felt I was running into resistance to change and gendered dismissals, some unlike anything I'd ever experienced during my legal career in the male-dominated world of Wall Street. I ultimately resigned.

That effort, like every other effort to root myself, left me feeling more isolated.

But any time I considered leaving, I looked out the window or ventured to one of my favorite trails. Where else is this awe-inspiring? Where else can I run a loop through canyons this stunning? The answer was always, nowhere.

And during the pandemic, there was an influx of people fleeing more densely populated areas for small mountain towns like this one, making it even harder to consider leaving a place that was now so sought after.

Eventually, time away enabled me to let go

By 2023, I found myself regularly escaping town under the guise of work travel. After finding conferences in various cities, I'd extend the trip to explore, visit museums, and engage with new people.

During this travel, I found the sort of fulfillment I'd been missing, enabling me to recognize how much I'd swung from one extreme to another.

In New York City, the part of me who loved the solace of birdsong and long days in the mountains felt stifled, and in the Telluride area, the more culturally curious part of me felt stifled. I needed to find a place where all aspects of myself were nourished.

Once again, I wasn't sure where to go, but finding fulfillment in other towns empowered me to let go of a mountain paradise that wasn't actually paradise for me and trust I'd find a better fit elsewhere.

My husband and I have since sold our house in the mountains. We're still trying to find balance and our perfect home — for now, that looks like splitting our time between Northern Italy and Northern New Mexico.

• I first bonded with my daughters-in-law over Facebook Marketplace.
• They helped me feel comfortable wanting beautiful things without spending much money.
• Our secondhand shopping trips have become a treasured family tradition.

I did not go to thrift stores when I was raising four sons on my own.

I like to pretend I simply wasn't aware of the local thrift stores but this is a lie. The truth was, I was too ashamed of my poverty to shop at thrift stores. Too desperate to keep up pretenses, to show the rest of the world and especially my sons that we were doing fine.

We went without a lot of the time. We were careful with hand-me-downs and Christmas gift cards from family members. We shopped in January in the discount bin. Every once in a while I'd splurge on new shoes or winter coats we couldn't afford and we suffered for it. The rent money gone, my tiny savings account depleted. Wasted on my need, my longing for stuff.

Not just for my sons. For me. Good boots. Nice jeans. A statement coat. Costume jewelry. I would feel that low pull of craving and wish I had more of everything. For them, for me, for whatever rental home we could afford at the time. I wanted tablecloths. Candles. Big throw pillows that always seemed to cost a fortune. A sturdy cookie jar. Things that felt so silly and so far out of reach that I pushed the want for them down as far as I could.

And then my sons grew up. And then they met my daughters-in-law. And then these four women opened my eyes to what thrifting could really look like. For me and for us as women learning our own love language together.

They taught me about Facebook Marketplace

It started with Facebook Marketplace during Covid lockdown, when we sheltered in place for weeks at a time my house and itched for something, anything to distract us.

I mentioned that I'd always wanted a cheval mirror for my room. My daughter-in-law scrolled through her phone for about one minute and said, "Here's one for $40, they can deliver tomorrow. Want it? I'll get it for you!" I couldn't believe something I'd considered for so many years, a mirror standing in my room, could be found so close and for so little. And found by someone who loved me so much that she wanted me to have things. Who understood me as a woman, not just as a mom.

And so our adventures in thrifting began. These women brought me into their world of scrolling through Marketplace for steals. We began sending each other listings for plants and coffee tables and midcentury modern barware. I filled my empty rental home with pottery dishes and dressers, tablecloths and artwork and best of all, a squishy white sofa I'd always dreamed about thanks to Nancy Meyers. All secondhand, all coming to a total of around $200.

We started shopping together

When the world opened back up, we took our love language to stores whenever we got together. Piling into a car, coffees in hand, filling our carts with tea pots and straw bags, shiny platform penny loafers and maxi dresses.

These trips taught me patience. Taught me to be methodical about flipping through every single aisle for a hidden gem. Taught me to listen to my daughters-in-law, to pay attention to them as women. As friends. As my young guiding lights who finally, after so many years of guilt, have given me permission and space to fill a craving I never thought I could afford.

Thrifting has become the way we all move through the world as a family now. We give each other secondhand Christmas gifts. We resell thrifted items, passing along polka dot skirts and delicate china tea cups to the next thrifter looking for something special. We send each other coupons and reminders to keep an eye out for special items. A gorgeous thrifted cake topper was my birthday present last year. I look at it every single day and think of the women in my life now.

Our frugal frivolity. Our easy love.

• Craig Celek left a retail position to become a flight attendant this year, in his mid-50s.
• He said he brought life experience and a strong work ethic to the role because of his age.
• The Gen-Xer described the job change as the "third act" in his career.

This story is based on an interview with Craig Celek, 56, a flight attendant from Brooklyn. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In February 2026, I embarked on what I call "act three" of my career.

Right out of college, I worked for a publishing company in Hong Kong for 15 years before becoming a store manager at New Balance, and then taking a leadership role at Saks Off 5th.

My 15 years in retail were amazing, but I started to get itchy feet. I started looking for my next opportunity, and a job on an airline was attractive to me.

Friends my age are flight attendants

I have a lot of friends my in their late 40s and 50s who have turned their second or third act into becoming flight attendants. They encouraged me to apply in November 2025.

I knew that the main US airlines — American, United, and Delta — were open to hiring older people, especially those with a background in customer service.

Each offered me a job, but I was most impressed with Delta's interview process. It felt reassuring that half of my tryout group was over 45. One was 62.

So I took the training in early February. I'm sure my time in retail was the most important factor. Still, I think one of the reasons Delta hires Gen Xers is because we know how to work.

Age often comes with patience and wisdom

We have life experience, which translates into the ability to understand people's needs and respond in emergency situations.

I came into the business seasoned, and I leaned into listening first rather than reacting. Age comes with patience and wisdom.

The skills I developed during some of the most difficult days in retail have helped me every day in my new job. If the customer finds something not up to standard, your first thought is, "How do I get them to where they are happy?"

I was once on a flight that was supposed to be only from Atlanta to LaGuardia, which should have taken no more than two hours. Some terrible weather came in, and the journey was 11 hours altogether.

My team and I managed to keep 250 passengers happy throughout. Not many people can claim to do that.

One of the secrets is, to quote the late, great Dolly Parton, "A little sugar is better."

At Delta, we work all classes, and they're all fun. What I love about the two upper classes is that you can provide different levels of service. The customers are open to talking and having a really good time.

I'm getting to know new places

Then there are the destinations, both domestic and international. I've traveled a lot in the past, but going somewhere as crew is different.

My favorite layover is Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which has a cool, creative vibe. I feel the same way about Colorado Springs and Bozeman, Montana.

I'm getting to know the American West. The towns and cities all seem familiar now. I'm big into learning about the food and art scene.

It's the same with world capitals such as Lisbon, Rome, London, and Athens.

Schedules are flexible, but we generally get blocks of three days off. My father is 92, still extremely vital and healthy, and can fly with me free of charge.

We recently went to Dublin and Paris. Nothing makes an employee feel more valued than seeing their dad in first class eating an ice cream sundae.

The base salary is only part of your earnings package. It's increased by boarding and reroute pay. During the hiring process, they said, depending on your shifts and hours, you could earn up to $80,000 in your first year of service.

Since April, I've flown 209 flights, 29 of which were long-haul. I can honestly say that I'm having the time of my life.

I might be in my mid-50s, but I relish change and the adventure of it all.

• My youngest kid just enrolled at the same college my older twins attend.
• The fact that three of them are together brings me joy, but I'm struggling with my empty nest.
• I've booked a trip and plan to hang out with other empty nesters to ease my transition.

When I tell people that my youngest daughter is attending the same college as her older twin siblings, I always hear some variation of these questions:

Did they always want to go to the same college? Are you happy you only need to do one drop-off? Are you getting a buy 2 get 1 free discount?

The answer is no, yes, and I wish!

The reaction people have had to them all attending the same school reminds me of when my twins were babies. People were fascinated and had lots of questions.

Even though I am happy that they will have each other at Fordham University in New York, the transition has been hard for me.

They have only been there a few weeks, and I have FOMO every time I talk to them. But this is all part of my transition into an empty nester.

Preparation didn't help

For the past year, I've been trying to mentally prepare for the time when all three kids will be in college. Anytime my youngest was at one of her many after-school activities, I would think, "This is what it's going to be like."

I even went on my first solo trip to start to get used to the idea of being without my kids.

But as the name empty nest implies, there's an indescribable emptiness that is different from when she was living at home. Even though she was busy, she was always at home at night. She acts in musical theater, so she was always belting out songs at home.

During the first week she was gone, my husband noticed the silence. He said, "There's no singing anymore."

I initially coped by cleaning

After we moved them into their dorms, I returned home and began cleaning and decluttering. For the next week, I deep-cleaned all their bedding and every surface in their rooms, and donated extra items like sheets, blankets, and towels.

When I told my youngest daughter how I spent my time, she replied, "That sounds like a very empty nest thing to do."

Cleaning didn't change the stillness, but having some control over an aspect of my life made me feel a little better. And their rooms never looked so clean, which was (as my daughter would say) very satisfying.

Listening to music helped

Besides singing, my daughter also loves listening to music. One day, I heard an Ariana Grande song in her room. When I went to investigate the source, I found my husband, who said, "I thought I would play some music to help it feel like she's still here."

After laughing at my husband's creative attempt to fill the void, I realized that hearing the music actually helped.

Talking to other empty nesters helped too

This week, one of my fellow empty-nest friends called and asked, "How are you doing?"

We discussed our mutual new normal and how hard and strange it's been. We agreed to meet for a meal in a few weeks, and having something to look forward to has helped.

I then realized a few other friends were in the same situation. In our group chat, I asked, "When are we having an empty nest gathering?" They all agreed that sounded like a great way to cope. So yet another planned gathering; my calendar is filling up.

Planning a trip

Ever since I was in my 20s, I've always loved traveling. Since my twins were babies, we have been traveling as a family. We've gone on many family-friendly cruises like Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line.

To help me look forward to something, I planned a trip for just my husband and me.

Since it's just the two of us, we are going to try a Celebrity Cruise, which tends to be mostly adults and more upscale — in other words, a line we wouldn't take our kids on. And we're going to a bucket-list destination that I've wanted to go to since my 20s — Greece!

Anytime I've felt sad, I started planning or researching, and that's definitely helped, too.

Let them fly

My youngest daughter was already familiar with the college campus from visiting her siblings, so she hasn't had the typical homesickness most students experience (at least not yet). She's been so busy with classes, clubs, and activities that I've barely spoken to her.

When I was feeling sad this week, my husband said, "We need to let them fly."

He's right, and I love that he's sticking with the bird metaphor.

To help me focus on the positives, I asked them to send a first-day-of-classes picture, and they actually did it. Seeing them all together made me smile, and knowing I still had clout helped too.

The best part? They've kept up the weekly dinner meetups my twins started their freshman year. Every week, all three of them share a meal, catching up and probably complaining about us. They even have a nickname for it — sibs dinner (short for siblings).

While I wait for Fordham to respond to my application, I might show up unannounced to their next sibs dinner. Just like a homing pigeon, I'll land directly on their table.

• The US Army is buying lots of drones to meet its goals of spreading the systems across the service.
• The next step is training enough pilots to operate them.
• Army courses and programs, as well as shared soldier feedback, help prepare troops for drone operations.

US Army officials say the service has amassed enough small drones to spread them across its formations. Now the challenge is training soldiers to use them.

"We fielded 10,000 drones" after the first phase of the Drone Dominance program, Col. Gregory Merkl, the director of drone dominance for the Army, said on Thursday during a media roundtable.

"We're in the process of receiving another 30,000 drones currently," he shared. "That is enough absolutely to get them down to every squad level."

"Where we still have some work to do, candidly, is getting everybody trained at the appropriate level," he said. "Right now, if you look across the force, you have that capability in every platoon. We still have a little bit of work to do in terms of getting qualified pilots down to the squad level."

The Army plans to field thousands of low-cost, one-way attack drones by next fiscal year and has held a series of events to select drone companies for advancement in evaluations called Gauntlets.

Last year, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a memo directing the overhaul of how the Pentagon buys and integrates small uncrewed aerial systems across the armed forces. That line of effort led to Drone Dominance, an iterative development program investing $1 billion to purchase at least 200,000 drones through 2027.

As drones become more common in soldier arsenals, the Army is learning how best to train troops on using the systems.

The Army's efforts to train drone operators include specialized courses like the Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course and other programs focused on flying specific models of drones. The service is also exposing soldiers to drones starting in basic training. This approach gets troops familiar with the technology and then transitions them to tactics in different scenarios.

One approach launched last year was a three-week crash course at Fort Rucker, Alabama. The pilot class was described as a "catch-up" to close the US gap on drones, bringing students from different assignments in to learn the basics of piloting the systems while also exploring how to build and 3D print parts for them.

Observations from Army drone courses and schools have highlighted skills some soldiers already bring to drone warfare, from flying drones as a hobby and playing video games to the engineering know-how needed to build and modify them.

One important aspect of the Army's efforts to catch soldiers up on using drones is in how it approaches integrating drone warfare lessons across the service. Army officials have said soldier feedback on these systems is prioritized, as are takeaways from the war in Ukraine and US soldiers who have trained with Ukrainians.

Last month, news broke that the Army was phasing out the 173rd Airborne Brigade's specialized drone unit, raising questions about how the Army intends to not only learn drone lessons, but also disseminate them across the force.

Army officials say the unit's experimental drone role was always temporary. They said the plan was for formation across the Army to cultivate drone skills rather than depending heavily on a specialized unit.

"There was always a plan for us to provide lessons, to put them into really realistic, tough, difficult training scenarios, and then provide feedback so that the institutional Army could make decisions about doctrine and organization and acquisitions — which we're doing right now," said Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, acting commander of US Army Europe and Africa.

"We got a tremendous amount of data and feedback from the rotation that we're providing to the Army," he said.

• Ukraine's soldiers want drones that require less hands-on control.
• More autonomy lets one operator supervise multiple drones from safer positions.
• AI is handling more flying while humans still decide when to strike.

Ukraine's soldiers want drones and robots that can handle more of the flying and driving themselves, letting one operator oversee multiple systems instead of manually controlling each one.

Ukraine's rapidly expanding arsenal of aerial drones and ground robots has become central to its fight against Russia's larger military. Defense technology companies say they're increasingly automating certain tasks while keeping humans responsible for decisions about using force.

In practice, that means shifting more routine work from the operator to the drone. Newer systems can increasingly navigate, return to base, and help identify targets independently, allowing operators to focus on other tasks, from target confirmation to swarm control.

Mykyta Rozhkov, the chief business development officer at Ukrainian defense technology company Frontline Robotics, told Business Insider that his company's innovation has come from soldier' requests.

"Our soldiers are coming to us with a request of: 'How can you provide us with the capability to have different robots controlled by one person?' or 'Can we make a shift of our UAV pilots easier?'"

The company responded to these requests by developing software that lets drones handle more of the flight themselves, including traveling to and from an area of interest with minimal input.

"In the new version of a drone that we produce right now and supply, there is an autonomy layer installed in the drone itself," Rozhkov explained. "So it can go autonomously to the area of interest, then come back with basically one button."

A "pilot can bring the system home with a push of a button," and the drone can figure out the shortest way back, he said.

Autonomy is also being built into the company's product updates. The latest version of its Linza drone — the 3.0 released this year — has more onboard autonomy, so it can operate when GPS is unavailable because of Russian electronic warfare.

It puts less "mental demand on a soldier so they can do more stuff." It took eight months to develop, but it offers "a huge upper hand," Rozhkov said.

Frontline's Zoom reconnaissance drone also has AI navigation, so it can work when it loses satellite navigational signals.

These changes, likewise, were driven by soldier feedback, the executive said. Unlike many Western defense firms, Ukrainian companies often work directly with soldiers, even talking to them from the front lines over FaceTime and listening to their insights.

The broader shift toward artificial intelligence and autonomy is also a priority for Ukraine's government. Ukraine's defense ministry said in August that units were using "more than 70 different systems powered by AI and computer vision technologies to strike enemy targets."

And it said that the aim is to eventually have 100% of drones on the front line equipped with computer vision and AI capabilities.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, battlefield technology has moved from one pilot fully manually controlling one drone, to AI helping pilots find targets and providing autopilot capabilities, to now enabling one operator to oversee multiple drones while AI assists with basic tasks, like flying and driving, and helps take over when Russian electronic warfare cuts the connection.

Former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov predicted last month that "we will reach a stage where autonomous drones will fight autonomous drones."

A host of Ukrainian companies are pursuing that vision, and some are working toward larger swarms of autonomous weapons that can communicate with one another.

Achi, the CEO of Ukrainian defense firm Ark Robotics, told Business Insider that the evolution toward a single pilot controlling many drones is "kind of a prerequisite to be successful in the total drone warfare that is coming to all of us."

The defense technology company is developing a system that allows thousands of aerial drones and ground robots, including those not made by Ark Robotics, to work together with minimal human intervention, and enables an operator to be thousands of kilometers away.

Achi said that to have the advantage on the battlefield, "you need these asymmetrical systems that allow you to work with multiple drones at the same time."

Ukraine's combat systems need to be able to work amid Russia's heavy electronic warfare. Ukraine's Twist Robotics makes hardware and software that allow drones to navigate and track designated targets when Russia disrupts GPS. It does that "by default" because the problem is so common, co-founder Rostyslav Olenchyn told Business Insider.

Most of the company's products have AI assistance, allowing the drone to "accomplish the mission" even if an operator makes a mistake or loses control.

How much autonomy is in use remains somewhat limited by both technical and ethical constraints. Many companies and experts describe what is often portrayed as autonomy as exaggerated in practice, resembling advanced automation rather than independently acting AI.

Ukraine says it has not removed human oversight.

Its defense ministry said last month that "algorithms are now being entrusted with critical combat tasks, ranging from navigation and object identification to autonomous target engagement. However, the final decision on target selection and engagement is made by a human operator."

It said it will keep humans in the loop on principle, and while technology helps to identify a target, "the final decision to engage remains with a human, while the system's level of autonomy is limited based on the potential cost of an error."

Ukraine is rapidly advancing to match Russia's volume and allow its human soldiers to stay farther from the fight. Rozhkov described the general trend as "trying to get people outside of the danger zone."

• Airlines are cutting flights over the holidays due to high fuel costs.
• Executives said there could be further cuts and higher prices if fuel prices remain high.
• The price of oil surged past $100 a barrel this month.

If you haven't booked your holiday flights yet, you may want to brace your wallet: Airlines are cutting options and potentially raising fares as oil prices reach new highs.

After surging in the spring following the start of the war in Iran, oil prices surged yet again this summer and surpassed $100 a barrel this month; jet fuel is $4.53 a gallon as of Thursday. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest consumer price index show airfares rose more than 23% year-over-year in August.

Speaking at Morgan Stanley's Laguna Conference on Wednesday, major airline executives said they are cutting flights planned this holiday season and are likely to raise fares to offset oil spikes.

Mike Leskinen, CFO of United Airlines, said the company is seeing strong demand and that its customers are "incredibly, incredibly resilient," but United has already cut some routes that are on the low end of profitability and "don't make sense in a higher fuel environment."

"As you look into the fourth quarter, there'll be some flights in December that we won't fly that we thought we were going to fly," Leskinen said. "If fuel remains high, we'll make some adjustments into the first quarter and beyond into 2027."

Southwest Airlines CFO Tom Doxey and American Airlines CFO Devon May similarly said demand is strong and that if high fuel prices persist, they would trim capacity and raise fares in response.

However, the airline CFOs said it takes time for those increases to show up: "Jet fuel price gets passed through with a lag," Leskinen said. "Period."

Doxey said that "both from the booking curve and just kind of a natural lag, it takes a while for that to come," but Southwest has the "ability to recover a good portion" of those added costs.

Sally French, a travel analyst at NerdWallet, said that, beyond high airfares, airlines have also increased checked-bag and seat-selection fees. "The true cost of flying is higher than ever," she said.

What flight cuts could mean for travelers

It's unclear which specific flights and routes will be axed and how the airlines will rebook those affected. When trimming schedules, airlines have historically looked for markets that are already oversaturated, flights on less-busy travel days like Saturday, and flights that depart at less desirable times and may have lower demand.

Considering the record demand for premium travel, it's also possible airlines will focus resources on more business-heavy markets with strong corporate demand, especially long-haul international routes.

Several airlines are banking on their affluent customers continuing to book as they have grown desensitized to the volatility.

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said in an April earnings call that "as difficult as it is to see what's going on with the conflict in the Middle East, I'm not sure that our premium customers are feeling affected by that."

Another wrinkle for travelers looking for affordable flights is that this year marks the first holiday season without Spirit Airlines, which shut down in May, taking its famously low fares off the table.

"Generally speaking, booking now to lock in a good price is best practice, particularly if we're talking winter travel," French said. "That sweet spot window for booking domestic travel is 1-3 months in advance, or 2-8 months for international travel."

She added that booking refundable fares that you can cancel and rebook if prices drop is also a smart move.

• My husband, 45, is a doctor and encourages his patients to get routine colonoscopies on time.
• When he went in for his own, he was surprised to be diagnosed with colon cancer. He had no symptoms.
• Now, we're changing our diets, and what our kids eat, as well.

When my husband, a doctor, went in for his first routine colonoscopy at 45 years old, he said nonchalantly, "I'll be done by noon. Then we can grab lunch." He recommends that his patients be screened on time, so he was simply following his own advice.

He had no symptoms suggesting anything was wrong, so when they found a few polyps — the largest one measuring 55 millimeters — we were caught off guard. A second procedure was necessary to remove the larger polyp, and when the biopsy came back showing cancer, our lives crumbled in an instant.

The right portion of his colon was removed, and three weeks later, our whirlwind nightmare began to settle. Luckily, having his screening on time saved his life. Now, we're focused on preventive care.

We're changing our diets, and what our kids eat, too

An average person has about a 4% to 5% lifetime chance of developing colorectal cancer — but having one affected parent raises that risk to roughly 5% to 15%. Someone with a first-degree relative who had colon cancer should have their first screening at 40 or 10 years younger than their family member was diagnosed, whichever comes sooner — for our kids, that means being screened at 35.

With double to triple the risk, I want to be as proactive as I can for my children — now ages 15 and 11 — and that means altering their diet (and ours!) to limit foods that may increase risk. We've read through current research and determined which changes are worth making.

We don't plan to restrict them completely from all foods associated with higher risk because we realize that's unrealistic (and we want them to enjoy eating), but we'll teach them to savor these foods in moderation.

We're limiting how often we eat some foods

First, processed meats will largely be eliminated from their diet. Our bacon-loving sons have only enjoyed this delicacy as a treat during vacations, and that plan will continue. They'll only indulge in other processed meats like hot dogs or ham when served at a barbecue or other social gathering. And cold cuts have been eliminated from our home, except for sliced turkey from our local market, which they prepare in-house without additives like sodium nitrites or nitrates.

Secondly, our kids love a medium-rare steak, and we don't plan to take that from them. But we will limit red meat to once a week or less, filling our other dinner menus with healthier protein like salmon, chicken, or turkey.

In our home, sugary drinks have never been a staple. We don't keep soda in the house, and that's not going to change. Aside from Gatorade during workouts or sporting events, we'll continue focusing on increasing water intake for hydration.

Fast food and other ultra-processed foods have no place in our home. Will my children have McDonald's once or twice a year? Perhaps they will, because my husband is easily persuaded by their happiness! But luckily, I have the time and ability to prepare home-cooked dinners most nights, and I don't plan to stop.

Finally, we've talked with our kids about the dangers of alcohol since they were little, but that conversation will now include the fact that alcohol intake is a risk factor for several types of cancer, colorectal cancer included.

We're also increasing how much we eat other things

We're limiting consumption of some things but increasing how often we eat others. There are certain foods that promote colon health, and we'll make sure they know which ones do. We'll aim for a diet including calcium-rich dairy products, whole grains, fish, and fruits and vegetables.

While our kids may not be receptive to every healthy option now (we struggle with vegetable intake just like many parents!), my hope is that the more we offer these foods and talk about a healthy diet with them, the likelier they are to adopt these eating habits as they grow.

Our kids aren't thrilled that some of the foods they love are being limited — and they likely won't follow every suggestion when they're older — but it's our job to guide them down a healthy path and provide them with the necessary information, especially given their increased risk. Thankfully, my husband's story had a happy ending, and we were given the chance to change the trajectory for our kids.

• AI is raising clients' expectations for faster delivery times on consulting projects.
• Jeanelle Johnson, PwC's DC managing partner, said clients now expect some work to be delivered in half the time.
• Faster delivery should not be confused with less work, said Johnson.

AI is resetting assumptions about how quickly professional services firms should move, and consulting clients are getting impatient.

"I am seeing clients ask for our help in delivering outcomes at a more rapid pace" compared to this time last year, Jeanelle Johnson, PwC's managing partner for the Washington DC area, told Business Insider.

"Something that we might have said takes eight to 10 weeks; the expectation is probably half of that. The shelf life is half," Johnson said.

Clients are not necessarily expecting an entire transformation to be completed in a fraction of the time; the expectation is more for pilots and proofs of concepts, she said.

"There's an expectation now that tools should accelerate the work," she added.

Johnson leads more than 2,200 consulting and accounting employees in her role as PwC's DC managing partner. Asked whether those compressed timelines were putting pressure on her consulting teams, she said: "We're working on it."

The Big Four professional services firms — PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY — alongside firms like McKinsey, BCG, and Accenture, are at the center of the AI shift sweeping through workplaces. They have raced to build internal chatbots, train staff, and test AI in client work.

The technology can now assist with, and increasingly perform, early-stage consulting tasks such as market research, due diligence, and brainstorming.

At McKinsey, AI has accelerated the early problem-solving cycle, turning what used to be a team's "week one answer" — the first hypothesis after a week of research and analysis — into an "hour one answer," Kate Smaje, McKinsey's Global Leader for technology and AI, told Business Insider in June.

That frees up consultants to spend more time testing deeper parts of the issue tree rather than waiting days to get oriented, Smaje said.

Amid the rank and file, employees at top firms have told Business Insider they're seeing a difference in delivery times due to AI.

A software engineer at Deloitte US told Business Insider that some coding tasks had fallen from a dayslong process to around five minutes with AI, and an EY-Parthenon consultant in the UK said that due diligence that previously took two weeks of manual work and spreadsheet handling can now be completed in a day with AI.

As well as pressure to deliver faster results, the shift is also raising questions about how the pricing model that has rested on human labor will adapt as more work gets done by AI.

The work is more complex

For Johnson, faster delivery should not be confused with less work.

AI will change how consultants spend their time, freeing capacity for more meaningful or higher-value work rather than simply reducing the number of hours needed on a project, she told Business Insider.

The work itself is also becoming more complex, she added. Clients are navigating geopolitical tensions, wars, tariffs, and macroeconomic uncertainty simultaneously — a broader set of pressures than consultants would often have helped them tackle in the past.

"The confluence of all those things at the same time is something that we used to deal with one or two things at a time," Johnson said.

"Now we're in a world order where we have to deal with 10 plus, plus, plus at a time."

Warning: Some of the images you may see are graphic. For questions or if you suspect a poisoning, contact Poison Help at PoisonHelp.org or call 1-800-222-1222.

Katie Zerbst was doing laundry on a Sunday morning in June when she heard a "guttural" moan. "It was the sound that makes you just drop everything and run," the 45-year-old mother told Business Insider.

Rushing into the kitchen, Zerbst found her 10-year-old daughter, Violet, covered in steaming hot, sparkly goo. Burns seared across her face, and skin from her top lip was flapping down into her mouth. Moments earlier, Violet had popped a squishy toy into the microwave for 30 seconds. She wanted to make the glittery cube more malleable so she could squish it more easily. When she pulled it out, it erupted like a volcano.

Violet ended up in the emergency room, and she isn't the only child to visit the hospital after playing with a squishy.

Business Insider reviewed dozens of incident reports, spoke to parents, and consulted doctors and regulators about the risks behind this year's biggest toy craze. Despite a spike in reports of burns and concerns about toxic exposure, oversight of squishies — slime-filled toys shaped like dumplings, fruit, ice cubes, and other cute characters — falls into a regulatory gray area, and the market is teeming with counterfeits and knockoffs.

What's in a squishy?

Squishies, with their gooey, foamy, or gel-like textures, fall into the category of "sensory toys," like fidget spinners, kinetic sand, and magnetic balls.

In recent years, the toys have gone "from zero to hero," Five Below CEO Winnie Park told investors in June. They're helping the retailer to become "America's greatest little toy store" by driving brick-and-mortar traffic, Park said on September's earnings call. Kohl's also credited the toy with a sales bump, and workers from several retailers have taken to social media with tales of over-eager customers demanding their favorite squishies. Instagram and TikTok are full of satisfying videos of hands squishing toys shaped like a strawberry or a tube of toothpaste.

However, reports from homes and hospitals across the country describe exploding and leaking toys, along with chemical smells. America's Poison Centers told Business Insider that more than half of the 11,500 reports about squishies received by its member organizations since 2024 happened in the first six months of 2026, though only a small portion of the ruptures caused severe injury.

Schylling, which manufactures the most popular squishy brand, NeeDoh, was hit with two lawsuits in July over squishy explosions that plaintiffs say resulted in severe burns. One complaint said that a NeeDoh Nice Cube, left lying on a TV stand near a window, remained cool to the touch but, when squeezed, erupted with a scalding gel that left blisters on the person's leg. Lawyers for the company declined to comment on the allegations.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has also seen a spike in squishy-related incident reports from shoppers and hospitals this year. A Business Insider review found about two dozen consumers describing how ruptures — due to microwaves, hot cars, and squeezing — have burned kids this year. Roughly 20 more reported strong smells emanating from the squishy toys. Hospital reports collected by CPSC showed about a dozen explosion cases in 2025, the latest year available.

One parent told the CPSC the toy didn't "just pop"; it "exploded" in February 2024 after their daughter squeezed it on her 10th birthday. This August, another reported that their 8-year-old son was squeezing his squishy normally when it ruptured. "The outer layer of the toy failed without warning, spraying the internal filling directly across my son's face and into his eyes," causing immediate "burning and distress," the report said. A February report to CPSC echoed a common complaint about a squishy that "emitted an extremely powerful and persistent chemical odor, resembling acetone or nail polish remover," which gave its owner a headache.

In response to growing public concern, the CPSC issued guidance in August, warning shoppers of serious burn hazards from intentionally or unintentionally exposing toys to heat. A spokesperson told Business Insider that these toys hit on several longstanding concerns for the agency, including the dangers of water beads and potential exposure to unsafe chemicals. As for the dangers of microwaving them? That's considered improper use, and the agency doesn't typically punish companies when consumers don't follow safety warnings, the spokesperson said.

Underlying these reports is the common frustration that squishy ingredients vary widely and often aren't listed on the packaging. NeeDoh discloses that its products, including the Nice Cube, Dream Drop, and Groovy Glob, use fairly common ingredients such as maltose sugar, cornstarch, and polyvinyl alcohol, the latter of which the brand says is non-toxic and also found in white glue.

While these ingredients are considered chemically safe, the lawsuit in California cites academic research to argue that some of these substances have thermal properties that, along with a soft polymer casing, can make scalding hot gel feel deceptively cool to the touch — until the toy pops.

The market is also rife with knock-offs, and federal safety rules are patchy. US regulations don't require independent testing and certification of toys, unless they're marketed to children under 13.

Manufacturers initially decide how to market and age-grade their products, subject to CPSC oversight. While products clearly intended for young children, such as baby pacifiers or toddler teethers, must meet stricter testing requirements, squishies can plausibly be sold as children's toys, adult stress balls, desk accessories, or collectibles. Many are marketed as products for all ages, and verifying a toy's age classification can involve a lengthy review.

That ambiguity raises a broader question: When an all-ages product becomes wildly popular with children, should it be treated as a children's toy? The CPSC says it considers not just a product's label, but also how it's designed, marketed, and reasonably understood and used by consumers when determining whether it's a children's product. That last part can change over time, and sometimes it shifts faster than regulators can keep up with.

The agency said that reputable brands typically go beyond legal requirements by seeking voluntary safety certification from independent organizations, such as ASTM International or United Laboratories, and include their logos on their packaging. An ASTM spokesperson told Business Insider the organization's standards are periodically reviewed and revised in consultation with a committee of more than 1,000 members to address new products and hazards.

The squishy market is ballooning

The Zerbst family bought their Glitter Super Squeeze at a local toy store in Queensland, Australia. After Violet's injury, they looked into the product and found that it was manufactured in China under the name Smooshos for distribution in Australia by MDI, a toy supplier. The package didn't list ingredients. It included a warning that "microwaving may cause injury to yourself and others," but that doesn't stop young children from encountering social media trends that promote microwaving them.

Our reporting found that some serious injuries happened even when the toys were used as intended, without being heated or frozen — a concern that cropped up in the CPSC complaints, the lawsuits, and in our interviews with parents of injured children.

Jodanna Bevan, a 39-year-old mom of four who lives in Wales, bought discounted dumpling-shaped squishies from Shein. In late July, her son Hudson was squeezing one of them in his playroom when it suddenly popped, spraying a thick, white, sandy substance into the 4-year-old's face. Bevan and her husband quickly washed out his eyes. When Hudson woke up at 6 a.m. the next day, they were so swollen he couldn't open them.

"He was screaming and so scared," Bevan told Business Insider.

At the hospital, Hudson had to be sedated as staff repeatedly rinsed his eyes. "It's like a torture treatment for a child," she added. While his vision doesn't seem to be affected, the experience was emotionally fraught for the family.

"You feel so guilty then as a parent, seeing them go through that," Bevan said.

Bevan threw the toy away before checking for ingredients. She doesn't think it would have helped. "Where you buy the toys in these different corner shops and whatnot, it doesn't say anything on there about what could be in them," she said.

Shein, which has since pulled the product, would not disclose the ingredients. A Shein spokesperson told Business Insider the company requires all third-party sellers to comply with local laws and its product safety standards. The spokesperson also said Shein works with multiple international testing and inspection agencies "to identify and address non-compliant products."

After the BBC covered Bevan's story, Shein emailed Bevan an apology and offered her a full refund for the squishy toys — £10.12 (a little under $14) for four, two-piece sets — plus £20 ($27) in Shein store credit.

The CPSC told Business Insider that the commission and US Customs have intercepted 96 shipments of squishy toys so far this year, preventing more than 640,000 items from entering the country because they violated various safety regulations.

"That's probably just the tip of the iceberg," said Courtney Griffin, director of consumer product safety at the Consumer Federation of America, a research and advocacy nonprofit.

The rise of online marketplaces, where international third parties sell directly to customers in the US and elsewhere, has further complicated regulators' and consumers' ability to know exactly what is in the products.

Trying to catch risky products is like playing whack-a-mole, but the feds have gotten some off the market. In early September, CPSC recalled a brand of squishy dumplings that contained water beads and posed a choking hazard if the toy ruptured. The dumplings, made in China, were distributed via Amazon. In May, the agency recalled a squishy monkey called Orb Funkee — made in China, distributed by a Canadian wholesaler — after tests revealed it may contain asbestos.

"If you are pushing for kids to just buy more, more, more of these, that certainly lends itself to the rise of dupes and counterfeits, fakes, and other unsafe things," Griffin said.

It's back-to-squishy season

Parents are braced for more squishies to enter their homes with the start of the school year. It's become a meme on TikTok — parents picking up random toys, wondering where they came from. Friends? Grandparents? Birthday party gift bags?

But for a small number of families, the fun ends in the emergency room.

"Everything's fine one instant to everything is 100% not fine the next," Kelly McElligott, a burn outreach coordinator at Loyola Medical Center in Illinois, said. "That it is all very overwhelming on top of your kid being hurt and you not knowing what the long-term prognosis is."

McElligott, who's seen around six cases this year, monitors patients for up to two years to make sure they're healing properly, physically and emotionally. Even if the surface skin looks OK, scar tissue can form beneath or cause functional issues if the scarring tightens over joints, she said.

Most squishies don't cause injuries, even when they pop. America's Poison Centers said 85% of exposure cases had no documented signs or symptoms, and 94% of those cases were managed at home or outside a healthcare facility.

The stories of children who have been injured have created a dilemma for parents whose kids are obsessed with them.

Summiah Hafeez's 8-year-old daughter has about 10 to 15 squishies. Two dumplings and a stick of butter are her prized possessions. Initially, Hafeez bought a couple as a reward for reading more books, but soon squishies were turning up everywhere.

"Whenever any other kid comes over, that's what she wants to show them," Hafeez, 31, who lives in Dallas, told Business Insider. "It's definitely a big thing among all kids right now."

Hafeez keeps them out of the car; the Texas heat can easily top 100 degrees in the warmer months. She's taught her daughter to store the toys on a shelf in her room, away from her 2-year-old sister, who Hafeez worries might eat them. She also doesn't allow her daughter to use the microwave for any reason.

Those who've experienced burns are taking a harder line. Bevan has purged all the squishies in the house and is trying to spread the word about their potential dangers. "All our friends have had them for their children," she said. "You've got to be aware that there could actually be some dangerous chemicals in there."

As for Violet, her mom shudders at the memory of rushing her into the shower, letting a stream of cold water run over her face and body. Zerbst said her daughter sat in the shower for 40 minutes, waiting for an ambulance to arrive. The paramedics congratulated Zerbst for her quick thinking in administering first aid.

"It was terrifying to hear Violet whimpering, but she was pretty calm and collected on the whole," the mom said. "I was just scared of any lasting damage from a cult squishy that seemed so harmless and fun."

• This week, the Oracle of Omaha gave up his job of chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.
• After decades at the top, Warren Buffett leaves a legacy of leadership advice.
• He has emphasized the importance of self-improvement, honesty, and choosing the right leaders.

If you want to be a high-mileage leader like Warren Buffett, it pays to be humble.

The Oracle of Omaha this week gave up the job as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, after more than half a century spent building and then running the conglomerate. Buffett said his son Howard would succeed him as chairman.

In that role, his son will guard Berkshire's culture and values, which the elder Buffett said are "worth more than anything on our balance sheet."

That belief in the importance of organizational culture is nothing new for Buffett who has, over the years, offered a steady stream of advice on investing and leadership.

Last year, in his final Thanksgiving letter to shareholders as CEO, he shared insights on the virtues of stewardship, honesty, and what he described as "good intentions" gone awry in attempts to rein in CEO pay.

One broad takeaway was his call to continue learning and growing.

"Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better," Buffett wrote.

Here are five other lessons Buffett shared:

Stay humble

The 96-year-old famously ran Berkshire with an unfussy, meat-and-potatoes sensibility. Buffett wrote about the role luck played in his life and work, and how that experience continually honed his sense of humility.

"Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman," Buffett said.

He also grounded some of his humble inclinations in the luck he had, being a man — compared with his sisters, whom he described as having "equal intelligence and better personalities," though they faced a much different outlook.

"I was born in 1930 healthy, reasonably intelligent, white, male and in America. Wow! Thank you, Lady Luck," he said.

Learn from your errors

Buffett said that while he's made many mistakes, he's tried to use them as springboards for growth. "Learn at least a little from them and move on," Buffett wrote.

One misstep, he said, was not intervening more forcefully when he saw indications that a "wonderful and loyal CEO" of a parent or subsidiary company would "succumb to dementia, Alzheimer's or another debilitating and long-term disease."

"Charlie and I encountered this problem several times and failed to act. This failure can be a huge mistake," Buffett wrote, referring to Charlie Munger, his longtime friend and colleague, who died in 2023.

Buffett said that while it's often not easy, boards need to keep watch for signs of such conditions in chiefs, and that CEOs themselves need to do the same at the units they oversee.

"Directors should be alert and speak up is all that I can advise," Buffett said in the letter, which ran about seven pages.

Choose the right leaders

Part of Buffett's call for humility extended to how future Berkshire leaders should expect to conduct themselves — and what they should aspire to.

He said that the company should only require five or six CEOs over the next century. In the shareholder letter released Friday, Buffett reiterated his confidence in Greg Abel, who succeeded him as CEO.

"He has been making the decisions that matter for some time now, and I have not had to think twice about any of them," Buffett wrote.

Buffett wrote last fall that he wanted Berkshire Hathaway, which was a New England textile producer when he began buying up its stock in the early 1960s, to avoid hiring top leaders who are there for the wrong reasons: "It should particularly avoid those whose goal is to retire at 65, to become look-at-me rich or to initiate a dynasty," Buffett said of the company.

Think about your obit

One recurring theme in his letter centered on Buffett's assertion that it's "never too late to improve."

Another bit of advice: Work backward from what you want your obituary to say and then "live the life to deserve it."

The release of Buffett's third annual Thanksgiving letter to Berkshire shareholders had become something of an event because of his status as one of the world's most famous investors. He said at the time that he planned to continue to address shareholders in an annual letter, though not as CEO. "As the British would say, I'm 'going quiet.' Sort of."

Don't rule from the grave

Buffett's decision to become chairman emeritus appeared in line with his advice against of trying to retain influence for too long.

In his Thanksgiving letter, Buffett applauded the abilities of Abel, who is some three decades younger and took over as CEO at the start of 2026.

"He is a great manager, a tireless worker and an honest communicator," Buffett said.

He also wrote about his three children, whom he said possess the "maturity, brains, energy and instincts" to disburse the family's large fortune. Earlier this year, Buffett's net worth was nearing $150 billion.

After he dies, Buffett wrote last year, his children will be free to adapt to changes in tax policy and other factors as needed to continue the family's philanthropic work.

"Ruling from the grave does not have a great record, and I have never had an urge to do so," he said.

An earlier version of this story appeared on November 10, 2025.

• Bank of America predicts two more Fed rate hikes in 2026.
• Hikes "increasingly seem like an opportunity for Chair Warsh to burnish his legacy," BofA said.
• Market consensus is for one more rate hike in 2026.

Bank of America thinks the Federal Reserve has just kicked off a hiking spree heading that will continue for the rest of its meetings through yearend.

In a note on Friday, the bank said it expects the Fed to hike interest rates two more times in 2026, following September's 25 basis-point hike.

Markets are pricing in one more rate hike in 2026 as the most likely outcome, eyeing an increase at the December meeting.

BofA unpacked a couple of reasons the market may get more hikes than it's expecting. One is simply that the economy remains strong, supporting the view that inflation could be stubborn. Inflation has remained sticky, with CPI at 3.4% year-over-year the last two months.

But the second is that hikes have actually appeared to become "politically expedient" for Fed chair Kevin Warsh, the bank said, despite President Donald Trump's insistence that the Fed slash rates.

Hikes allow the Fed to cap long-term bond yields after rising oil prices and the Treasury's buyback program spooked investors about the prospect of further inflation. Surging yields on assets like 10-year and 30-year Treasurys had started to weigh on equity prices. So a hawkish Fed at the moment appears to be a boon for markets and lends credibility to Warsh, the bank said.

"Fed hikes looked politically challenging a few months ago, but they increasingly seem like an opportunity for Chair Warsh to burnish his legacy," Aditya Bhave, US economist at the bank, wrote in the note.

On the September hike, Bhave added: "For one, the rate hike alleviates concerns that Warsh is not politically independent. Additional increases would end that conversation for good. For another, by hiking at just his third meeting as Fed Chair, Warsh can absolve himself of the inflation problem, while also taking credit for any disinflation in coming months."

After three consecutive rate hikes to end 2026, Bhave said that policy adjustments would see an extended pause.

Neil Dutta, the head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research, also said Warsh may be even more serious than some investors are anticipating.

Dutta said on Friday that, despite Warsh's disdain for forward guidance, he gave clues about his hawkish views on monetary policy at Wednesday's meeting.

For example, Warsh warned that high commodity prices signal inflationary pressure. He also mentioned a "timelier" return to 2% inflation and described the hike as removing just a "dose of accommodation."

This leads Dutta to conclude that "we're closer to the beginning than the end" of the Fed's hiking cycle.

He added that "there is a reasonable chance that Warsh keeps going until something in the economy goes awry," and that in his first stint at the Fed, Warsh "has been willing to let the labor market slide to achieve the inflation side of the mandate. His actions to date tell me he is willing to do it again."

• Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said AI labs need to ensure they can control what they're creating.
• "We should not create something that we can't control," Suleyman said.
• Suleyman questioned why some in tech are so opposed to new regulations.

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says it's "surreal" that he has to say AI needs to align with humanity.

"We should not create something that we can't control," Suleyman said Friday on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "And if it looks like we're on a path to producing something that is not just more powerful than all of us combined, but is, as a result, something that we can't control, then it's going to fail in its fundamental purpose."

Success will not come easily, Suleyman said.

"Controlling these things are going to be a really, really big challenge for us," he said.

Suleyman said he was "glad to see a lot more people" supporting the idea that tech companies and frontier model makers need to maintain control over their AI systems. In the industry, ensuring AI acts in accordance with human intentions is called alignment.

"But there's a growing group of people that think that we are doing it for its own sake, and we just want to turn over the next card, see what's around the corner, and create something that is just going to slip our own leash," he said.

Suleyman's comments come at a time of increased attention to AI safety, after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned that AI workers are privately fearful that AI could wipe out humanity.

In recent days, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have all expressed broad agreement that frontier AI labs should better pace their advancements to ensure that safety measures can keep up.

Before Coxon's viral post, many in the industry were already concerned about safety after OpenAI revealed that its agents had breached Hugging Face, illustrating the potential consequences of losing control over AI systems. Suleyman called the breadth of the Hugging Face breach and OpenAI's initial unawareness of what its AI agents were doing "remarkable."

"It has moved everybody from Elon and Zuck to me, Sam, Dario, and everybody else in between to say it's time that we take a look at this," Suleyman said. "I don't think it's overly alarmist. I don't think it's self-interested. I actually think it's responsible."

Meta CEO Zuckerberg has taken a different stance than Amodei and other AI leaders. Earlier this week, Zuckerberg questioned why AI companies need to band together to manage the rate of development, suggesting that each company should handle its own business.

"Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely," Zuckerberg wrote on X.

Some in tech, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, have questioned whether broad new regulations are needed. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have also pushed back on AI companies that are urging governments to act.

Amodei and others have requested Congress and international bodies to get involved as well. Suleyman questioned those who scoff at the very idea of regulation.

"Regulation is not a nasty, dangerous word," he said. "Everything that you trust and is of value at the moment has been carefully thought through by standards bodies that involve the industry, the public, consumer protection, Congress. And we're just going through that process."

• Goldman Sachs warns AI spending won't sustain stock-market momentum into 2027.
• The bank's Ben Snider sees S&P 500 earnings slowing as capex wanes.
• AI-driven inflation and weaker chipmaker margins could challenge market momentum beyond this year.

Wall Street has cheered upbeat earnings this year, fueled by strong growth in tech, but the investors shouldn't count on the strong momentum lasting much longer, Goldman Sachs says.

Ben Snider, the bank's chief US equity strategist, recently laid out his team's thesis on how AI growth is likely to impact the market in the coming year. Even if capex spending stays strong, he's not convinced it will be enough to sustain this year's positive momentum.

"The AI investment boom has accounted for nearly half of S&P 500 earnings growth this year, and this tailwind should begin to fade next year even as capex spending continues to grow," Snider wrote in a note to investors on Thursday.

Snider told Business Insider in July that investors should double down on popular AI infrastructure stocks, citing a bullish stance on the data center boom. Yet, as he looks beyond 2026, his latest view indicates that AI spending may be masking a more difficult reality for markets.

Snider's focus is not on the notion that the AI bubble is likely to burst in the near future. Rather, his base case centers on the likelihood of S&P 500 earnings growth slowing down significantly over the next two years, partially because of problems ahead for chipmakers, which have been major beneficiaries of the AI spending by Big Tech firms.

"The recent surge in semiconductor profit margins leaves S&P 500 earnings vulnerable to a decline in chip prices," Snider stated. "Our industry analysts expect supply to remain tight through 2027 but for the rate of margin expansion to slow next year."

Chip stocks have been a significant growth driver for the S&P 500 since the AI boom began in late 2022, surging on the combination of extremely high demand and limited supply. Others have said recently that surging chip costs could be problematic for the AI trade.

Goldman previously predicted that the US would shoulder the brunt of a global AI-driven inflation surge, noting that AI chip prices were already troublingly high.

Now, the possibility of cooling chip margins threatens to compromise the momentum that powered the AI trade in 2026.

"In a scenario where slowing AI infrastructure investment, increasing supply, and/or technological shift lowers semiconductor prices and profit margins, S&P 500 EPS growth would also disappoint," Snider noted.

Snider also highlighted another factor that's helped fuel Big Tech's earnings growth, one that is likely to contribute to the deceleration that his team sees coming: income companies have earned from private investments.

While these paper gains can be considered income, that doesn't mean that the company has actually generated any cash from them.

"We expect a much smaller contribution in 2027. The complete removal of this 'other income' next year would create a drag of 8 pp on S&P 500 earnings growth in 2027 relative to 2026, all else equal," Snider added.

• After a surge of pandemic-era aid, older Americans have faced rising poverty.
• Healthcare costs drive older Americans into poverty, straining their savings and finances.
• Social Security often isn't enough to cover costs, leading older Americans to take on low-paying jobs.

After a slew of pandemic-induced aid ran its course, older Americans are falling back into poverty — and even younger would-be retirees are struggling.

After the Great Recession, the trendline for older Americans had been improving, and 2020 pandemic relief measures helped buttress the aging population from falling into poverty in the wake of Covid.

New census data shows that now, the poverty rate has increased the most for Americans 65 and older, after adjusting for things like tax credits and government programs. The share of all Americans living below that adjusted poverty measure grew from 9.1% in 2020 to 13.1% in 2025. For Americans 65 and older, that rate grew from 9.4% to 15.4%.

Millions of older Americans live solely off Social Security benefits, which often don't cover all daily costs, let alone Medicare premiums or caregiving expenses. Social Security kept 28.8 million Americans out of poverty in 2025, the new Census report found, including nearly 21 million Americans 65 and older. As the boomer generation ages into retirement, those benefits look shaky, a worrying sign as lifespans stretch longer.

Historically, poverty among older Americans rises with age, although younger retirement-aged Americans started falling into harder times as of 2024. Last year, Business Insider spoke with dozens of Americans 80 and older who were below or slightly above the poverty line, most of whom worked at least part time to make ends meet. Many said the only jobs they could find were minimum wage, menial jobs, paying them enough to put food on the table and heat their homes. Some said they had much more saved earlier in life, but were hit hard by medical treatments.

"We should get tax breaks after a certain age because prices are so high for food," said Rebecca Reed, 88, who works two lower-paying jobs in New Orleans. "And maybe some discounts at the grocery store."

While the oldest Americans are still the most impoverished group, their younger counterparts have been seeing poverty rates tick up. The official poverty rate for Americans ages 70 to 74 saw the largest percentage-point increase from 2020 to 2024, according to a Business Insider analysis of Census microdata, followed by the younger cohort of 65- to 69-year-olds, indicating a more widely felt poverty landscape.

Older Americans are often more prone to sudden and costly medical disruptions, which contribute to malnutrition or poor living conditions. Indeed, 7.7 million Americans fell into poverty due to medical expenses, per the Census report, and around 2.5 million of them were 65 and older. That's up from around 2.36 million in 2024.

In interviews, dozens of families said they have spent six figures on care for their loved ones, as the median cost of a private nursing home room rose from $111,000 to $130,000 annually between 2022 and 2025, according to data from the care navigation platform CareScout. Some families said their older loved ones had exhausted all of their savings on home health aides or assisted living facilities, leaving them in the hands of their financially pressed children.

Housing costs have also hurt many older Americans who don't own homes, or who have substantial home repairs. More than one in three older American households puts 30% or more of their income toward housing, per a 2025 study from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Older Americans are also the fastest-growing demographic experiencing homelessness, with about 20% of all people experiencing homelessness 55 and older as of 2024.

Some are doing what they can to make the most of it. Sharon Albrecht, 85, works for a home healthcare agency and as a part-time Uber driver in Virginia to make ends meet. Though above the poverty line, Albrecht said her income goes a long way toward supplementing Social Security and her retirement savings, adding that she's "very wealthy in time and freedom to create my own schedule."

"If an 80+ person has the attitude that 'Now, I have time to create,' the sky is the limit," Albrecht said. "It totally depends on the person and whether or not they have a victim mentality."

• I hoped a bilingual upbringing would give my daughter an edge in life.
• I didn't realize that a non-native language to me would end up becoming our primary language.
• I've had my share of criticism over this decision, but it's working well for us so far.

My daughter was born three months before the COVID-19 restrictions began where we live. Stuck at home with a new baby, I needed something to keep me busy, and I'm too mishap-prone for sourdough. For a linguist like me, a language-related project seemed like just the thing.

I decided to dust off my French — which I spoke quite well in high school but hadn't used in decades — so I could speak it at home with my daughter. What parent hasn't heard about the benefits of bilingualism for little brains?

Six years later, my project has outstripped all my expectations. We're lucky to have bilingual schools in our neighborhood. Because my daughter hears French from her peers as well as from me, she speaks it just as fluently as the English she uses with my husband and the rest of our family.

My own ability to express myself in French grew little by little alongside hers. Today, we rarely speak English when it's just the two of us.

Some people think I'm making a mistake

My French is far from perfect: I'm never going to get rid of my American accent, and my speech is peppered with small mistakes — like le vidéo when it should be la vidéo.

Sharing my family's language journey online, I've gotten criticism that my grammatical slips could harm my daughter's linguistic development. "If I wasn't fluent enough to not make errors, I would not be speaking that language to my child 100% of the time," one poster told me.

Others have raised concerns about my emotional connection with my child. "The optimal language of interaction is the caregiver's heart language (most dominant language)," a commenter on a bilingual-parenting blog warned.

What the research shows

Since I'm a linguist by profession, I did a deep dive into the literature on bilingual development at the start of my project, and what I learned reinforced my decision to focus on French.

Many people believe that children are little sponges for language, but that's only half true. Children automatically soak up the language they hear in the surrounding community, especially from peers. But a language children hear mostly at home needs more encouragement to take root.

And even if they don't absorb the whole language overnight, children do have an advantage in certain aspects of language learning. My daughter doesn't imitate my accent and my grammatical errors. Instead, she corrects them. "Le vidéo doesn't make any sense, maman," she once told me in French.

The shared learning experience is invaluable

I once asked my husband if he thought speaking French was damaging my emotional connection with our daughter, who is now 6 years old. He snorted. "If anything, you have the opposite problem. You two are weirdly close," he told me.

It's true we have a very strong bond, what the French call une relation fusionnelle. And I suspect that our shared language journey has fostered that close connection rather than harming it.

Learning French is a project my daughter and I have shared for six years. Our current dynamic is unique: I still have a larger vocabulary and can teach her new words, but she is the one teaching me when it comes to pronunciation and certain aspects of grammar.

I do sometimes worry about the years to come. Will my French be strong enough to navigate the complexities of adolescence, for example. But it reassures me to watch my daughter slip effortlessly between English with her father and French with me. If her feelings become too complex to express in French, we can always pivot to the native language we share.

This summer, our family moved to France for a one-year sabbatical, so we will be discovering a new culture in addition to our language learning. Whatever languages we use in the future, this opportunity to broaden our horizons together will always remain precious.