• Taylor Swift wrapped her $2 billion Eras Tour last year and is taking a break between album releases.
• Critics and Swifties alike have questioned her hiatus, fueling work-life balance debates.
• President Donald Trump even recently said Taylor Swift is "no longer 'hot,'" meaning popular.

Last month, I was browsing a newsstand's magazine selection when the headline on an Us Weekly cover featuring Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce embracing made me laugh out loud: "Why Did They Disappear?"

I sent a photo of the cover to my friend, a fellow Swiftie, with a snarky caption: "No one can take time off anymore without getting pinged."

The explanations for the couple's low profile seemed so obvious: Kelce is a football player in the NFL's offseason, while last year, Swift released her 11th blockbuster album, "The Tortured Poets Department," and wrapped the cross-continental Eras Tour that grossed over $2 billion. One would think that would set her up nicely for a worry-free vacation, even in this economy.

Instead, Swifties are documenting each day that passes without a new Instagram post (163 as of writing) like Tom Hanks carving tally marks in "Cast Away." This week, Swift simply liking a post on TikTok was framed as a major development and "social media comeback." Meanwhile, WNBA star Caitlin Clark — who has publicly hung out with Swift exactly once — was asked to account for the singer's low profile. (Clark replied that Swift and Kelce are in "vacation mode.") Even President Donald Trump got in on the action, proudly suggesting on Truth Social on May 16 that his previous post about hating Swift was the reason she is "no longer HOT."

The point I'd first made as a joke was starting to feel more literal. Could the public's attitude toward Swift and Kelce's brief, deserved retreat from the spotlight be a canary in the coal mine? Is the era of protecting work-life balance already over?

Taylor Swift is famously hard-working — but fans are still demanding more

In the past few years, corporate workers have proudly extolled the benefits of "quiet quitting," "gentle Fridays," and leaving six-figure tech jobs due to burnout. Meanwhile, Gen Z has led the charge in asserting their right to use allocated vacation and sick days without fear of being perceived as lazy or undedicated.

Swift — a self-described proud millennial, for the record — aligns more closely with the baby-boomer ethos. In a song from her latest album, she sings, "I cry a lot but I am so productive / It's an art." Those are not the words of a woman taking spontaneous mental health days. In fact, Swift is renowned for rarely canceling her concerts as long as she can avoid it, often performing in extreme heat or pouring rain.

One might assume that in 2025, Swifties would celebrate their idol finally taking a break after spending hundreds of hours onstage over the past two years. Instead, speculation about when Swift's next album might arrive intensifies by the day. As many pop-culture update accounts have noted, this is Swift's longest online hiatus since 2017, when she withdrew from the public eye ahead of releasing "Reputation." On April 26, a fan wrote on X, "4 months without the eras tour and taylor is nowhere to be found," paired with a gif of a hospital patient collapsing.

Us Weekly isn't the only publication demanding answers about Swift and Kelce's not-so-mysterious "hiatus." Page Six published the headline, "Why Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have suddenly disappeared from the limelight." The tabloid is also running live updates about the singer's supposed movements, mostly fueled by anonymous sources and X posts from Taylor Nation, the social media arm of her PR team.

Sure, Swift is a billionaire who has little in common with most Americans. But the thrust of these demands — for output, for accountability, for toothless cooperation with the hand that feeds — feels familiar.

Elon Musk, who led the newly created Department of Government Efficiency for the first three months of Trump's second term, has dominated news cycles with surprise firings, 120-hour workweeks, and mandatory 9 p.m. all-hands meetings. (Musk has said he's still involved with DOGE on a reduced basis.) Tesla employees — and any federal workers who have been caught in Musk's crosshairs — are implicitly required to be logged on and locked in.

Musk isn't alone in this mindset. In recent months, many companies have implemented strict return-to-office mandates and other structural changes that, until recently, would have been criticized as too micro-manage-y.

Under these conditions, with men like Musk and Trump setting the national tone and anxieties about staying employed reaching new highs, it's no wonder why any time spent off the clock feels like a bubble under constant threat of popping — whether by a magazine cover questioning your disappearance or a Saturday email from HR asking for an itemized list of what you accomplished last week.

It's ironic, though, that just last year, Swift was chastised by critics for her hyper-productivity: Releasing a 31-track album in the midst of the Eras Tour led some to decry her business tactics as excessive, greedy, and overdone. Now, after a comparatively brief stretch of laying low and playing it cool, the script has flipped. But after two decades of extreme scrutiny, Swift is well acquainted with this tightrope walk. As she sings to open her 10th studio album, "I'm damned if I do, give a damn what people say."

Illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have plummeted, but the president is yet to do a victory tour.

Bobby's parents, Cheri and Bob, told Newsweek that the changes since he moved to the tiny house have been "monumental."

• For my 40th birthday, my family and I traveled New Zealand's South Island in an RV.
• We went for eight nights and had an absolute blast.
• Though the RV itself was expensive, we found other ways to save money along the way.

With its stunning mountains, picturesque lakes, and star-filled skies, New Zealand's South Island is truly spectacular. My family of five recently traveled there and hit the road in an RV for eight nights to celebrate my 40th birthday and make some epic memories together.

Renting an RV proved to be a popular way to see the island, but it was also a pretty expensive way to travel. However, we did enjoy the convenience of having our accommodation, transport, and cooking facilities all in one.

We spent money on the RV itself

The RV cost us 3572 New Zealand Dollars (with the insurance factored in) for eight nights, about $2115, which is just over NZ$446 a night.

In addition, we paid for powered sites at caravan parks at least every second night so that we could access electricity for the portable heater and refill our water supply. Powered sites ranged in price from NZD$50 to NZD$110.

So, all in all, we spent up to NZ$556 a day on the RV alone, plus what we spent on fuel, which was more expensive than back home in Australia, where we live. The RV company also charged a mileage fee at the end of the trip, which worked out to be about NZD$170.

We didn't mind spending money on certain experiences

You can't go to the South Island and not see those iconic sites it's famous for. We splurged on experiences like boating around the fjords of Milford Sound, venturing into the Te Anau Glowworm Caves, and stargazing in Lake Takapō.

These experiences weren't cheap, especially for a family of five. But I felt like spending the money was totally worth it, because they were experiences we couldn't have elsewhere.

We also shelled out for treats along the way

We have three kids under 10 who love treats, so we definitely indulged on the trip. Often, we'd cook our main meals in the RV to save money, then have a treat out and about.

On our way north, we discovered an award-winning artisan ice cream shop in Arrowtown called Patagonia Chocolates, and on the return leg to Queenstown, we went back for seconds. There was also a quaint store full of treats in Arrowtown, the Remarkable Sweet Shop, and we spent far too much money on sugary delights.

However, we made sure to save by keeping groceries in the RV

We couldn't get over the cost of groceries in the center of Queenstown. It was outlandish compared to Australian prices. When we picked up our RV, I asked our taxi driver where to shop, and he recommended a low-price store called Pak'nSave. The prices were much more in line with our budget, and we stocked up for the week.

The office of the campground where we were staying in Queenstown also had a free community shelf where other travelers had left staples like salt, pepper, coffee, and so forth. We took what we needed and donated our leftover supplies at the end. It was a great system.

Living in an RV with a small fridge meant we had to be smart about our food storage and cooking. I planned out our meals in advance and made sure ingredients could be used in multiple dishes, which also saved money.

We also entertained ourselves for free in the great outdoors

New Zealand is the perfect place to immerse yourself in nature. A lot of our itinerary was about hikes and wholesome outdoor fun.

Highlights included the walk up Queenstown Hill for panoramic views of the area, watching sunsets on Lake Wakatipu, rock collecting with the kids, and hiking around Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park.

My absolute favorite experience was climbing Roy's Peak, near Wānaka, with my 9-year-old son. It was a challenging hike of roughly 10 miles, but the sweeping views at the top were spectacular.

We spent some time 'freedom camping'

Because the powered campsites cost up to NZD$110, we also saved money by "freedom camping" whenever we could, which is a kind of camping where you're allowed to stay on public land without paying a fee. However, there are specific rules for camping this way — for example, you must be in a self-contained vehicle with a toilet, wastewater tank, and trash facilities.

My favorite spot we did this was Lake Pukaki. We arrived at night and had the most spectacular view of the Milky Way. Then, we woke up surrounded by snow-covered mountains and a lake glistening in the sunlight. It was absolutely magical.

Overall, I loved the experience of traveling in an RV and would highly recommend it if your budget allows for it. The kids had a ball, and we made lasting memories that we will cherish forever.

• Daniel Post Senning and Lizzie Post are etiquette experts with the Emily Post Institute.
• Their book shares eight simple steps you can take every day to build strong relationships at work.
• "Acknowledgement is probably one of the most impactful daily practices that we can engage with in so many ways," said Post.

Navigating your professional relationships with your coworkers can be complicated.

Did you accidentally say the wrong thing? Overstep a boundary?

The good news is that some of the easiest things you can do to build and sustain solid relationships at work are pretty intuitive, according to Daniel Post Senning and Lizzie Post, etiquette experts with the Emily Post Institute.

"It's remarkable how durable the advice is when you get down to what our expectations are of each other on a very human level," Post Senning told Business Insider.

Their book, "Emily Post's Business Etiquette," went on sale May 20. It includes a list of eight daily office courtesies you can do to build and maintain goodwill with your boss and peers.

Here's the list from the book:

1. Show up ready for the day or your shift.
2. Acknowledge others and greet them with a smile.
3. If you can, make eye contact when speaking with others (for video calls, turn on your camera and face the lens).
4. Use the magic words in all your interactions, both verbal and digital. (The book lists as magic words: Please, thank you, you're welcome, excuse me, I'm sorry)
5. Use shared spaces appropriately, never leaving a mess or taking more than your share.
6. Decline to participate in office gossip.
7. Offer help to others or check in to see how their work is coming along.
8. Say goodbye to colleagues on your way out the door for the day.

These are simple "'gimme' social interactions," as Post Senning calls them.

"They cost you nothing, and done well, and repeatedly, they really forge important social bonds," he previously told BI. "They build a sense of connection and trust that is going to carry you through tense meetings, critical feedback, miscommunications, things like that later on."

At the end of the day, these small-but-mighty actions are about acknowledging each other, Post said.

"Acknowledgement is probably one of the most impactful daily practices that we can engage with in so many ways," she told BI. "Whether it's looking up and acknowledging your colleagues with a greeting or a goodbye, or it's acknowledging the work that they do and the participation that you see happening around you that facilitates your own work getting done."

"Emily Post's Business Etiquette" Copyright © 2025 by The Emily Post Institute, Inc. Illustrations copyright © 2025 by Eight Hour Day. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

• A 3rd ex-personal assistant will testify on Tuesday, when Sean Combs' sex-trafficking trial resumes.
• Ex-PAs have described heartrending instances of violence and coercion involving Combs' girlfriends.
• They've also described cleaning up after "freak offs" — and what Combs kept in his cosmetics bag.

Sean "Diddy" Combs was not an easy boss, frightening away or burning out a small army of personal assistants over the decades.

At his sex-trafficking and racketeering trial in Manhattan, these ex-assistants are coming back to haunt him from the witness stand.

So far, two former personal assistants have been called to testify by prosecutors. (A third, Capricorn Clark, is scheduled for Tuesday)

They told the jury that working as Combs' PA meant turning a blind eye to harrowing violence while meticulously managing every detail of his life, including making sure his toiletries all faced the same way and keeping his hotel suite stocked with applesauce, jello, and Fiji water.

Even on good days, the pay was low, the days were long, and the workweek could stretch 100 hours long, the two former PAs told jurors. Complaining was frowned on — "What rhymes with tired?" went a joke among the staff. The answer? "Fired."

But on the worst days, they testified, they were drawn into a world of chaos and illegality. Both described purchasing drugs for Combs or his friends.

Good days and rap wars

Former PA David James recounted chauffeuring Combs to a narrowly averted gunfight with rival record executive Suge Knight.

James said he realized he may die that night, at the wheel of his boss's car, in the parking lot of an all-night Los Angeles diner.

Combs sat behind him in the black Escalade with three guns in his lap, James remembered on the stand. "Mother fucking drive," he said Combs ordered as they set out.

The two PAs also described heartrending scenes of violence.

Ex-PA George Kaplan remembered the time in 2015 when he heard Combs' longtime girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, screaming in the bedroom of Combs' private jet.

"Isn't anybody seeing this?" she cried, accompanied by the sound of crashing glassware.

Kaplan told jurors that he turned in his seat and saw the rap mogul standing over a cowering Ventura while holding aloft a whisky rocks glass.

No one on the jet — the Gulfstream was crowded with Combs' security guards and assistants — interceded or checked on Ventura afterward, he said.

Everyone turned away, Kaplan said, as the sound of more screams, more shattering glass, filled the cabin.

Many empty bottles

The two personal assistants also described Combs' many peccadillos — and the many, many physical messes he left behind.

Kaplan told jurors on Wednesday that he was tasked with cleaning up whatever Combs left behind at luxury hotel suites in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles.

The jury has heard two weeks of testimony alleging that these hotel suites were crime scenes.

Ventura, the star prosecution witness, told jurors during the first week of testimony that throughout their decadelong relationship, Combs used violence and threats to force her to perform sex acts with male escorts, most typically at hotels.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denied all accusations of sexual abuse. He has insisted since his arrest that he engaged only in consensual sex with his accusers, who he has alleged have a financial incentive to implicate him

"Lots of empty bottles, empty Gatorade bottles, empty liquor bottles, and often baby oil," Kaplan testified, describing the items he said he "tidied" at such hotels as the Trump International in Manhattan and the Hotel Bel-Air in LA.

Combs was a fastidious boss who liked things just so and threatened to fire him monthly during the year he worked for him, which was between 2014 and 2015, Kaplan said.

"Available, facing forward, and ready for use," he told jurors, describing how Combs expected to find the toothpaste, toiletries, and medications on his bathroom counter each morning.

Asked how often Combs would threaten to fire him from the $125,000-a-year job, Kaplan answered, "maybe monthly."

Mr. Combs' kingdom

The second ex-PA, David James, described his own harrowing tenure as Combs right-hand man between May 2007 and May 2008.

"This is Mr. Combs' kingdom," James said head of HR told him during his interview, gesturing toward a portrait of the rapper on the wall of his Manhattan headquarters.

"We're all here to serve it," James said she told him.

He said his starting salary was $70,000.

"There were times I worked three weeks straight," he said.

"Advancing a hotel room" was a frequent assignment, James said. That meant making sure it was stocked with Combs' favorite items, from clothing changes to "applesauce, jello, and Fiji water."

Combs' cosmetic bag went everywhere he went, and held some 40 different products, James said.

"Everything from ointments to a razor," he testified.

"He had Just For Men in there," he added, referring to the men's hair color brand. Since his arrest nine months ago, Combs' hair has turned mostly gray.

A separate "medicine bag" likewise went everywhere Combs traveled.

"There were probably 25 to 30 different pillboxes or pill bottles," James said. "Some were like Advil, Tylenol. He had water pills to help him lose weight. He had Viagra in there. He had some pills that helped increase his sperm count, for example."

Asked if there were any other sorts of pills, James said, "He did have ecstasy and Percocets in there, as well."

Combs took Percocets, a prescription opioid painkiller, "throughout the day," James said.

The rapper would switch at night to taking ecstasy, the PA told jurors, referring to the psychedelic stimulant also known as MDMA. One of Combs' preferred ecstasy pills was stamped with the image of Barack Obama's face, James testified.

"Diddy bopping" at the party

Once, at a New Year's Eve party thrown by Combs, James, who'd already been hitting the Ciroc vodka hard, went into Combs' med bag and popped an ecstasy pill, after which he was "feeling pretty good," he told the jury.

"Normally, I'm very straightedge, don't normally have too much emotion, but this night I was, like dancing — they said I was Diddy bopping all around the party."

"Diddy bopping" was left to the jurors' imagination.

A few days later, Combs called him into his office. He was "reviewing footage from the party," James said.

"Yo, playboy," James said Combs told him. "Is that you dancing around the party?"

"Yes, sir," James answered. "And he kind of nodded his head and he said, 'OK, I want to keep this footage in case I ever need it.'"

"It was so out of character for me that he thought it would be embarrassing if he released the footage of me to the public," James told the jury.

Prosecutors say Combs controlled Ventura by threatening to publicly release explicit sex videos.

First thing Tuesday, Capricorn Clark is set to be Combs' third former personal assistant to testify against him, kicking off week three of the government's case.

Federal prosecutors will ask her about a break-in at rapper Kid Cudi's Hollywood Hills home in 2011 — the one where his Christmas gifts were unwrapped and rifled through and his dog was left shut in the bathroom.

Clark was there and called to warn Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, that a jealousy-enraged Combs was inside the house, according to the rapper, who testified Thursday.

Clark may also describe Combs forcing her to take a lie detector test after she was robbed while carrying what another ex-assistant described to the jury as the rap tycoon's "jewelry suitcase or briefcase, if you will."

The heisted jewels were replaced by cubic zirconium replicas, that assistant dished from the stand last week.

She couldn't get out

Perhaps James' most significant testimony came he described something Ventura once said as they stood together smoking cigarettes one night on a dock outside Combs' Miami estate.

Ventura was then 21 or 22, and in the early months of her 11-year, on-and-off relationship with Combs. James was in his 20s as well.

As they commiserated about what they agreed was their crazy lifestyle of long hours and jetting city to city, James asked Ventura why she didn't simply leave.

"I can't get out," he testified that Ventura told him.

"Mr. Combs oversees so much of my life," she said, according to James' testimony last week. "He controls my music career, he pays for my apartment, he gives me an allowance."

James told the jury he believed her. "I just didn't think that she could easily leave," he said.

• Daniella Pierson is launching CHASM to help women secure venture capital funding.
• Pierson said she was laughed out of meetings with VCs when pitching her newsletter called The Newsette.
• She built a multimillion-dollar business anyway, and wants to help other women do the same.

Before building her multimillion-dollar business, Daniella Pierson said she was "the poster child" for "do not invest in."

Now, she aims to help other "uninvestable" women secure financing for their ideas with her new organization, CHASM, where she wants to help close the gender gap in VC funding.

"I had zero investment, not because I didn't want it. I wanted it very badly," Pierson told Business Insider. "I went to dozens of VCs, and I was rejected, rejected, rejected, laughed out of every room."

One "household name" told Pierson she spoke too much and too quickly, and didn't know what she was talking about: "I cried the whole Uber home."

Despite the setbacks, Pierson made a name for herself with her newsletter, The Newsette, which she founded in 2015 during her sophomore year at Boston University.

Until graduation, she would write the entire newsletter between 6 and 10 a.m., covering the latest news in beauty, fashion, and business, before rushing to classes. Then she'd work on it in the evenings and weekends too.

"Even after we made a million dollars, I still wrote it," Pierson said. "I didn't have fancy VC money to fall back on."

In 2021, The Newsette had a team of 14 and brought in revenues of $40 million in one year and made a profit in the tens of millions. The following year Pierson launched another newsletter, Wondermind, cofounded with Selena Gomez and the actor's mother, Mandy Teefey.

That year, Forbes named Pierson the world's youngest, wealthiest self-made woman of color.

Numerous barriers

It took Pierson more than five years of hard work to become successful beyond her "wildest dreams."

Pierson said she grew up as "the dumb twin — that's not a nickname I gave to myself. That's something my lovely teachers and peers called me in public to my face."

She faced numerous barriers and challenges as a female entrepreneur. She failed her business project at college and was almost kicked out a semester before graduation. She was diagnosed with OCD when she was 14, and also lives with ADHD, depression, and anxiety.

Pierson doesn't want it to be this hard for other women like her.

The amount of funding all-women teams receive is low. In 2022, they accounted for 2.1% ($5.1 billion), BI previously reported. In 2023, it dropped to 1.8% ($3.1 billion).

"That made me really mad," Pierson said. "So I was like, what am I going to do? I'm going to close the gender gap."

CHASM, which launched on May 20, has a "mentor-to-many" business model. Fifty high-profile entrepreneurs and investors, both men and women, pay a $25,000 membership fee to help aspiring female entrepreneurs from pitch to exit, offering insights, networking opportunities, and grants.

Pierson said she wanted to provide women the tools, knowledge, and connections they need to thrive as entrepreneurs without facing the same roadblocks that she did.

Wider gap

Pierson said women start out "50 feet below the playing field" when launching a business. She believes men are part of the solution.

"The gap has opened wider because we're isolating men," Pierson said."That could be a controversial statement, but I don't think it is, because guess what? If 99.999% of the money, power, wealth, all of that belongs to men, we need some of them on our side."

Pierson said she doesn't want to "just throw money at the problem."

"I'd rather teach a woman how to fish than just give her a fish," she said. "I want to put them in the best position for success by giving them the ultimate Bible of everything."

Some members already signed up for CHASM include Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx and Sneex; singer Lionel Richie; Fidji Simo, the CEO and chair of Instacart who is joining OpenAI later this year; and Tony Robbins, a motivational speaker and coach.

"This is putting my heart and soul, and my time, where my values are, and I hope people really use this to become the most successful versions of themselves, no matter what industry they're in," Pierson said. "If I can do it, anyone can."

• Philip Su, a former engineer at OpenAI and Meta, says early-career engineers should be generalists.
• Specializing means taking on the risk of future redundancy, he said on "The Developing Dev" podcast.
• It's worth it to "dabble" in different areas before you commit, Su added.

Early-career engineers should beware of specializing too soon, said Philip Su, a former engineer at Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI, and founder of podcast player Superphonic.

"That, I think, is a tricky decision depending on how well the person knows themselves," Su said on a recent episode of "The Developing Dev" podcast when asked if it was better to be a generalist or to pick a niche and stick to it.

"So there's the occasional exceptional person — like these prodigies in chess, for instance, right?" he added. "They will have been a prodigy by the time they're eight or nine years old, and so they're obviously fit to play chess. That person should specialize, because that's an unnaturally unique talent, right?"

For most, there are dangers to singular focus, Su said — especially in the "age of AI." There's always the possibility, he said, that your specialization is rendered obsolete.

"If you join some company and you're diehard committed to like, Technology A, right?" Su said. "What if in three years that thing becomes irrelevant, and that's all you know? You know, you're like the COBOL person hoping Y2K happens again, right? Because COBOL's not used anywhere, but that's your specialty."

Before you choose to completely dedicate yourself to any one area, Su suggested taking a few years to develop a range of skills and to determine what best suits you.

"If you are 22, 23, starting your career, I would, in general, encourage at least dabble in a few things before you like diehard commit," he said.

Figuring out what's right for you is easiest when you're sure of what you want, Su said, not just in work, but in life.

"Decisions, for me, a lot of times were hard because I didn't have clear values," he said. "If you know exactly where you're going, decisions toward getting there become a lot easier."

If Su could give advice to his younger self, he added, he'd tell him to take more time to really pinpoint his desires, rather than forging ahead toward an idealized goal.

"I think another thing is, I often feel like I was the dog that caught the car," he said of becoming a development manager at Microsoft, where he worked prior to OpenAI and Meta.

"The problem with peaking early, you know — because I hit that level when I was probably, I don't know, 30 years old or something like this — the problem is, you're like a child actor," Su added. "The question is, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?"

In addition to making sure you truly want what you're chasing, if you're particularly focused on your career to the exclusion of all else, Su said you should be prepared to make sacrifices.

"So A: be sure that's really what you want. And part B is, be sure you're comfortable with other things breaking, you know?" he said. "Because that is what it will take to get there, if that's truly what you want."

Some reeds "bend," Su said, while others "break" completely — so it's worth evaluating your priorities with great care. In the grand scheme of a career, he added, there's ultimately not that much of a difference between becoming a senior engineer at 30 versus 38.

"So it's like, how fast do I want to be at my terminal level? Like, what's the real plan there?" Su said. "Versus, can I keep a healthy relationship with my spouse, with my kids, right? That's important."

Su did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider prior to publication.

• Walter Green worked in IT for 30 years before retiring in 2024.
• His job's retirement fund match and a six-figure inheritance allowed him to retire early.
• Green said he doesn't mind working part-time or pulling from investments in the future.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Walter Green, 52, from Northwest Arkansas. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I officially retired from my 30-year career in technology at the end of 2024, at the age of 52.

When both my parents passed away, at 85 and 91 respectively, it recentered my priorities. I always thought I'd work until the typical retirement age, 65 or 70, but I realized I wanted to retire while I was still young and healthy enough to enjoy it.

I experienced euphoria after retiring, but it's not all easy.

I don't have enough money to go the rest of my life without working

My job gave me a generous retirement match, which I had contributed to for many decades. I also received a six-figure inheritance from my parents, which was the bump that made me really believe I could retire earlier than expected.

Still, it's not enough to stop working for the rest of my life. There's this widely accepted idea that retirement means you're done working for good, but I see it as a new phase for me to fill as I'd like.

It's a great season to take some time off and do jobs that perhaps pay less but can provide a lot of fulfillment.

Before retiring, I started tracking my costs very closely

Before retiring, I started using You Need A Budget or YNAB, an online service with a subscription fee. I wanted to truly understand how much money I needed to cover essential needs while feeling comfortable doing some extra fun things here and there.

There are some common retirement guideposts to follow, like the 4% rule or having 25x your income in savings, but for me, it felt most important to stick to my basics: food, healthcare, utilities, transportation, and veterinary care.

I've used websites such as Boldin, FI Calc, and Honest Math, which have free tools that allow me to view my savings aggregately, predict investment returns, and project future expenses.

Retiring was a scary decision, and it felt like a lot was at stake

I had some hesitation because what if I found myself in a tough financial position after I quit my job? I questioned whether I'd be able to go back to my old employer or even get a job as an older person with a career gap.

I also worried whether it was responsible to potentially impact my family — my wife, who does not work, and our three adult children, who depend on me — by making this decision.

The economy changes, personal things happen, and I have a general plan, but I am ready to tweak it as needed. An important aspect of my retirement plan is flexibility.

I'm loving my freedom, but it's been stressful spending money

I'm loving the slow mornings and freedom of retired life, but it's been stressful spending money without having a paycheck coming in. I have to keep reassuring myself that I have the financial resources to spend money and go do fun things.

I'm still fine-tuning my budget, but I find reassurance when I go back to my spreadsheet and see that I have at least enough money to be fully secure for the next year.

Despite not having a steady paycheck, I'm happy with my decision

I see retirement as a blank canvas of endless opportunity. I can choose to work again full-time, volunteer, or work part-time; it doesn't matter. It's a new chapter of life to find purpose, and I can't wait.

I probably think about budgeting and money more than I should, but I've redefined what retirement means to me.

If you are retired and would like to share tips on how you transitioned into retirement, please email the editor, Manseen Logan, at [email protected].

• Scott Payne was an undercover agent and coordinator for the FBI for nearly two decades.
• Payne went undercover in motorcycle gangs and extremist groups to facilitate arrests.
• He said working undercover meant developing relationships that he might have to betray.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Scott Payne, a former undercover FBI agent. Business Insider has verified his employment and certifications with documents. The following has been edited for length and quality.

I served in the FBI for 23 years, mostly as an undercover agent infiltrating bike gangs, cartels and America's neo-Nazi groups.

Undercover work is defined by forming relationships that you may betray in the future and coming to terms with how to do that without it having an adverse effect on your psyche.

I was always fascinated by undercover movies, and I'm a people person. I think that's what drew me to undercover work. I started working as a cop in 1993 and spent three years as a uniform patrol officer, then two years in vice and narcotics.

In 1998, I applied to work for the FBI and was accepted. New York City was my first office in the FBI after the academy.

FBI agents are investigators first

The only thing you're required to be in the FBI is a case agent. You can be a firearms instructor, undercover coordinator, or source handler, but you're an investigator first.

Being an undercover officer is voluntary. Every FBI field office has an undercover coordinator who coaches agents who want to get into the undercover program. They'll ask you questions about your life and family. You have to have the mentality that you can protect yourself — if you're waiting for the SWAT team to come in, it's not for you.

During the selection process, we had psychological tests with a clinical psychologist. They might run you through scenarios and analyze your reactions. Then, the agents considering who gets into the program will select 40 candidates to get certified. It's a 20-slot school, but they have 20 backups if people drop out.

The course is two weeks of nonstop training. The undercover trainers try to expose your weaknesses. Are you going to drink while you're undercover? Do you lose it and start wanting to fight everyone? They're looking for red flags.

I received my undercover certification in 2002. Since I've been on the team, I've never seen a 100% graduation rate.

There are rules for undercover agents

We can't be involved in acts of violence unless it's self-defense. We can't come up with a criminal idea because that would be an entrapment issue. You should never have anything on you that has personal ties to you in the field.

Undercover agents should never use drugs. If you're in a situation where you've taken drugs, you have to tell the case team and the United States Attorney's Office and get to an emergency room to make sure you don't overdose, especially with fentanyl on the market.

As an undercover agent, you have to have your 'legend,' as we call it

Your legend is your backstory. When I was going deep undercover, I needed my backstory to be solid and believable.

I usually used names I had associations with and stuck closely to who I was while undercover. I ride motorcycles and lift weights, and my jokes were going to be the same. Some people think it's dangerous to stick close to the truth, but I generally felt more comfortable using that tactic.

I always liked to have more than one recorder on my person in case something went wrong. The undercover technique is extremely effective at securing evidence. If you're on trial and the evidence you recorded cuts out, not having the full picture could create doubt in a jury's mind. I've never had to testify in an FBI undercover case because the evidence was always overwhelming.

I worked undercover in biker gangs and far-right groups

My personal life and work overlapped. I shared a lot with my wife. Working undercover isn't like being in the military. I wouldn't disappear for months at a time. I would usually be gone for two-week stints. One thing I would do is take my cross off my necklace and put a skull on it. When I got home, I'd switch them back.

To get staffed on an undercover case, FBI headquarters will email every undercover coordinator with a synopsis of what they need, which is circulated to the certified undercovers. Then, you can volunteer for the case.

While working in New York, I saw an opportunity for some undercover work in San Antonio and applied. I got approved for 30 days, then became the primary. They ended up transferring me to the case, and I moved to the Mexican border. I was there as a case agent, working on cartel stuff. This was the only classified case I worked on.

I infiltrated the Outlaws motorcycle gang in Massachusetts, going undercover for three years in 2005. I earned their trust and eventually got enough evidence to arrest them for drug trafficking.

When I was working for the Outlaws, I got very close to one of the guys in the gang. I remember rocking his newborn daughter at his house and working out together. When the case was over, he called me to tell me some of the Outlaws had been arrested. His last words to me were "I love you," and I said it back. I hung up probably as the SWAT team was hitting his house.

In 2019, I worked on a case undercover in a white supremacy group called The Base. It was a group of young guys who wanted to accelerate the collapse of society. We found out about them through a tip on Telegram.

I went in cold and went to the group's firearms training and group meetings and became close with the leader. Eventually, we were able to arrest the head of the group.

I retired in June 2021

After the Base case, I trained undercover employees for domestic terrorism cases. I remember thinking, I'm completely satisfied with my career.

Now, I'm a speaker at conferences and have written a book.

This story was adapted from Scott's interview for Business Insider's series, "Authorized Account." Learn more about his life as an undercover FBI agent in the video below:

• Investment banker Michael Grimes has been put in charge of Trump's investment accelerator.
• Grimes, known for helping Elon Musk buy Twitter, left Morgan Stanley in February.
• Inside his 30-year career as a go-to banker for tech giants like Uber and Google.

He conquered Wall Street by winning over Silicon Valley. Now, he's got a big job in Washington, D.C., wooing foreign investors to the United States.

After 30 years helping Morgan Stanley snag some of the biggest tech mergers and IPOs, Michael Grimes has traded in the investment banker lifestyle for a top position with the Commerce Department, headed by Wall Street veteran Howard Lutnick of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Grimes is not a household name, but he is well known in investment-banking circles as a go-to banker for some of Silicon Valley's biggest names, from Google to Uber. He helped the billionaire Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, buy Twitter and is famous for wooing clients by becoming a student of their technology and other services.

Since joining the Commerce Department in February, Grimes has been named the executive director of the US Investment Accelerator, a program to encourage foreign investments in the US that Trump established via an executive order at the end of March.

The program seeks to assist investors with more than $1 billion to spend with regulatory and legal hurdles that can hamper construction and other investment projects.

"It is in the interest of the American people that the Federal Government dramatically expand its assistance to companies seeking to invest and build in the United States," the executive order says.

He's everything we know about Morgan Stanley's star former tech banker, Michael Grimes.

• Physical therapy company Hinge Health finally went public Thursday.
• Its CEO says Hinge Health is banking on AI to automate care as it expands beyond physical therapy.
• The company says it's automated away about 95% of human clinician hours.

Physical therapy company Hinge Health went public this week in a blockbuster move for the digital health market. Now, as a public company, Hinge Health is planning to keep investing heavily in AI to automate care delivery further.

It's the first healthcare delivery startup to IPO in years — and for the first mover, it's setting a strong example. In the first quarter of the year, Hinge Health recorded an 81% gross margin and brought in $123.8 million in revenue with a $17.1 million profit, giving investors the high margins and the profitability they've long sought in healthcare IPOs.

CEO Daniel Perez told Business Insider that the startup has been able to hit those financials, in part, by using AI to help slash 95% of clinician hours spent on PT.

"The long-term vision is to continue to peel away aspects of in-person care and deliver the care itself via technology," Perez said in an interview Thursday morning, before Hinge Health's stock began trading.

Perez cofounded Hinge Health with Gabriel Mecklenburg in 2014 to provide virtual care for musculoskeletal conditions, such as joint and back pain. The startup provides personalized care plans, exercise therapy, messaging with clinicians, and wearable pain-relief devices.

It's already leveraging AI for care coordination and motion tracking, using AI-powered computer vision to track patient movements during exercises and adjust their treatment plans based on the feedback.

The company is also planning to expand outside physical therapy into new care areas, Perez said. While he didn't name what specialties Hinge Health will target next, he said the company anticipates making announcements this summer about its efforts to dig deeper into musculoskeletal care, as well as releases in 2026 that enable Hinge Health to deliver care in specialties adjacent to physical therapy, elevated by AI.

"At some point, whether 10, 50, or 200 years in the future, care delivery will be automated with technology. And that's a good thing," he said.

Automation in volatile markets

Hinge Health began trading on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday with the ticker "HNGE" at an initial share price of $32, at the top end of its expected range, at a $2.6 billion valuation. Its shares popped at its public market debut, jumping to $39.25 a share, 23% up from its initial pricing.

The company was forced to consider delaying its IPO in April after President Donald Trump's wide-reaching tariff plans sent markets reeling. Hinge Health publicly resumed its plans in May after the markets stabilized.

Hinge Health sells to employers and health plans to help lower their healthcare costs, including by automating traditional physical therapy. Perez said that puts the company in a good position to weather market volatility.

"We've had several customers who are facing financial challenges reach out and accelerate their implementation of Hinge Health because they need our help to lower their cost structure overall," he said. "So we're actually seeing tailwinds to our business with some of the volatility."

Stocks tumbled on Friday after Trump published multiple social media posts about issuing additional tariffs. The S&P 500 index fell about 1%. In the same period, Hinge Health's stock rose about 4%.

Perez added that Hinge Health was able to go public largely because of improvements in its positive cash flow, which would allow it to weather market turbulence. That's why his biggest piece of advice for the next iteration of digital health companies hoping to go public is to "become a sustainable business."

"When you become a sustainable business, the questions you have with prospective investors are very, very different. It's, 'how fast could you grow?' Not, 'will you still be around?'" Perez said. "There are a lot of digital health companies that came before us that have struggled simply to become sustainable."

For many digital health companies, achieving profitability is a difficult and long-fought battle. While Hinge Health posted a profit in the first quarter of 2025, the company recorded $45 million of free cash flow in 2024 but a net loss of $11.9 million for the full year. Diabetes company Omada Health, the only other digital health company to have publicly filed for an IPO this year, reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024 despite continuing to grow its revenue.

Many founders like Perez are banking on AI to streamline their businesses and lower the costs of growth. Omada Health released new AI-powered nutrition tools on Tuesday to bolster its food-as-medicine push as it manages more patients on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic. Hinge Health competitor Sword Health has been ramping up its AI tech to help clinicians manage hundreds of patients at a time, BI reported in November.

Floyd's death kicked off a national reckoning over the United States' complicated racial history.

Social media users can't get enough of the main character energy, as one TikTok user joked: "he couldn't let you get all the attention."

California's next governor will inherit the largest rail project in the country.

• Business travel to more affordable cities is rising, according to two firms that book work travel.
• Data from Engine suggests business travel demand is booming in cities like Tampa and Charlotte.
• Business travel boomed in 2024, but corporations are also looking for cost-efficient options.

Traditional business travel hot spots like New York City, Las Vegas, and Chicago are facing some new competition.

Employers are increasingly looking toward destinations with more affordable prices and other perks for business travelers, said Ariel Katen, director of product with a focus on group bookings at Engine, a work-travel management platform.

"We're seeing a lot of up-and-coming cities, like in Florida, which is really interesting," Katen told Business Insider, adding that a new crop of cities is becoming more popular for businesses to host events for their teams.

"If you had to get the entire team down somewhere, where are you going to find more affordable hotel rooms? Is that New York City or is that Tampa?" she said.

A 2024 study from Deloitte found that while businesses were largely planning to increase their spending on corporate travel, some were concerned about high prices and looking for ways to cut back on costs, like by requiring lower-cost flights or hotels.

Data from Engine and other travel platforms suggest that more affordable cities, including in the South, are becoming increasingly popular for business travel.

Here are five trending business-travel destinations.

Charlotte

Charlotte, North Carolina, was among the cities Engine identified as growing in demand for business travelers, citing a 5% year-over-year increase in room pricing as of January.

FCM Travel, another corporate travel management platform, also identified Charlotte as a top city for business travel in its 2024 report, released in December. The company found that business travel to Charlotte increased by 9% year over year in 2024.

Orlando

Katen said Orlando was one of the Florida destinations trending for business travel, with infrastructure for conventions and entertainment options contributing to its appeal, especially in the age of blended travel, or "bleisure."

FCM Travel also found that business travel to Orlando increased by nearly 11% year over year in the second half of 2024, more than any other city.

Nashville

FCM Travel found that business travel to Nashville increased by more than 8% year over year in the second half of 2024.

Nashville has transformed into a booming business hub in recent years, driven in part by industries like healthcare and tech.

Denver

Engine said Denver has shown sustained room price increases for corporate bookings, as the city's mix of convenient amenities and access to the outdoors appeals to leisure travelers. Hotel room pricing was up nearly 6% year over year in January, according to data Engine shared with BI.

FCM Travel also found business travel to Denver increased by 5% year-over-year in 2024.

Tampa

Data from Engine showed Tampa as another trending Florida destination, with hotel room pricing up a whopping 16% year over year in January.

Tampa has been identified as an emerging tech hub and has experienced an increase in startups post-pandemic.

• 26-year-old Michael Gormley founded the Nantucket pedicab service "NanTukTuk" to avoid a corporate job.
• He was only allowed to accept tips the first summer, and he slept in the bed of his truck for weeks.
• Over time, NanTukTuk gained traction, and Gormley has signed contracts worth as much as $10,000.

This story is based on a conversation with Michael Gormley, the 26-year-old founder and CTO (chief tricycle officer) of NanTukTuk. Business Insider has verified his identity. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I had an entry-level corporate sales job lined up postgrad in 2021.

I wasn't ready for that. I couldn't grasp living the 9-to-5 lifestyle.

I had a cousin who lived on Nantucket, and he told me to check it out. I did, and it was the best summer of my life. I worked at a restaurant with a bunch of people from Croatia and became super good friends with them. I visited them in Croatia for what was supposed to be 10 days, and ended up traveling through different parts of the world for the next two years.

10 months of that time, I owned a little market in Sri Lanka, and my market relied on the tuk-tuks to bring customers to us. I'd already thought pedicabs would be a fun idea after going to school in Charleston, where they're popular.

I knew that they would work in Nantucket — and I figured that'd be a good way to keep the Peter Pan plan going a little longer and push off growing up.

The summer I started NanTukTuk was the worst of my life

Nantucket is a traditional New England town, and people were not open to a new business. It took about 10 months and a dozen advisory committee hearings to get approval for the business.

After I got approval in July, I started the business, and it was the worst summer of my life. Everything was barely working out. I was so close to just collapsing, and I perpetually felt like I was on the brink of disaster.

I bought two pedicabs at about $3,500 each, which was a devastating blow for me at the time. I had a great first few days of business, but then the novelty wore off and people stopped giving me money. The town prohibited me from charging rides the first season, so people could only give me gratuity, and I had a handful of people who just weren't paying me.

I thought I could figure out housing, but it's like $6,000 to rent a comfortable spot here. So I spent the first few weeks living out of the bed of my truck in a remote beach parking lot because it's illegal to camp here.

I was miserable. I would be up until 2:00 a.m. working and then the sun would rise early in the morning, and I would be in the bed of my truck with the black tarp that rolls over the bed. It was so hot.

I was making enough, but not that much, and I was like, all right, maybe a 9-to-5 isn't such a bad idea after all.

The business started to turn around

The next season, we ended up getting two more tuk-tuks and hired three people.

I ended up meeting people who helped me out and gave me close to free and discounted housing for periods of time over the last couple of years.

Blue Flag Capital, a private equity firm, helped me store the tuk tuks and fed me business through their hotel and restaurant guests. If it weren't for them, I don't know if I would have made it.

I created a spreadsheet of every wedding planner and venue on Nantucket and contacted all of them. I also gave a flyer and pamphlet to every hotel concierge and put door hangers on every house in the wealthiest neighborhood of Nantucket.

It took time and credibility to prove to everyone that we weren't scamming them — and a handful of influential people in the community to start posting and talking about it.

In New York City, it gets confusing for customers because there are different rates per person or per block. I always confirm the final price with the rider before they get on. I tell my employees to charge in the $10 to $50 range and be very upfront with the cost so that no one is offended.

This year, I'm signing more contracts. Some are worth $100 and others are worth thousands. I made $10,000 off an advertising contract last year.

I usually make about $1,000 for events, but I have a good amount of events priced between $2,500 and $4,000. It depends on how many tuk-tuks are booked and for how many hours. Ideally, people book out all four. We can only fit two to three people in the tuk-tuk, and we have a specific zone that we can operate in.

At weddings or other events, tuk-tuks ride the couple around the town and deliver people to the main venue. It's useful for people with mobility impairments or women wearing heels. We also work with hotels and restaurants to provide transportation to guests. Kids love riding in the tuk-tuks, and sometimes, parents will pay us to take them on loops.

I don't plan on doing it forever

I love collaborating with other small businesses. I also don't need to get approval for anything from a boss, and I never get tired of it. It's just intoxicating. There's always the thought of how else I can get revenue streaming. Or, what can we change about this to make it better?

In the long term, there's only so much money that can be made from it. I also work seven days a week, and it consumes me. I joke that I don't have a boss, but I have no freedom. I don't mind that, but in the long term, I want to do it for something with higher potential.

I think after one or two more seasons, it will have served its purpose, where I've learned a ton, worked a ton, and it could help inform me on my next steps.

At the end of the day, NanTukTuk allowed me to network tremendously and avoid the corporate world, and I'm forever in debt to it for that.

• AI, electrification, and more onshore manufacturing in the US will further drive energy demand.
• The Department of Energy estimates that the nuclear sector will create 375,000 new jobs by 2050.
• About 60% of the current nuclear workforce is between the ages of 30 and 54, per DOE.

The nuclear sector is approaching an inflection point where the need for a more reliable energy solution in the next few decades is about to confront an aging workforce that's prime for retirement.

A big driver of nuclear demand — that is, artificial intelligence — may also be part of the solution.

"I think there's sort of this two-way street on AI and nuclear," Craig Piercy, CEO of American Nuclear Society, told Business Insider. "AI needs nuclear because AI needs energy to run the data centers that run AI. And then AI is going to help nuclear be more efficient."

The US has seen a cyclical demand for nuclear power from the 1960s to the present.

A 1987 paper published by the International Atomic Energy Agency said that by 1970, about 90 nuclear units across 15 countries went online. However, by the next decade, growth slowed due to increased public resistance to nuclear energy, tighter government regulations, and the high-profile disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.

Since then, nuclear power entered a period of inertia, which created a gap between experts with institutional knowledge and the industry's future.

The Department of Energy found that 60% of the nuclear energy workforce was between the ages of 30 to 54. The agency said that a significant portion of the workforce is likely to retire over the next decade, which will lead to increased job opportunities in the sector.

"The nuclear industry has been stagnant for some time now," Massimiliano Fratoni, chair of the nuclear engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley, told BI. "So a lot of the know-how got lost because people retire, so there is a need to catch up."

The energy demand curve

Artificial intelligence — and the power-hungry data centers behind the technology — have put nuclear energy back on the map in just the past three years.

Big Tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon, which are fueling the AI demand, are investing in newer reactor designs such as small modular reactors (SMRs), driving what BI has called "a nuclear renaissance."

Just four SMR companies, for example, have received nearly $3 billion in equity funding, BI previously reported.

It's not only AI that's driving the need for a reliable and constant source of energy.

Piercy, the American Nuclear Society CEO, said the US's push toward electrification and domestic manufacturing, which has been a top priority for the second Trump administration, will also significantly increase energy demand.

"For the last 20 years or so, US electricity demand has essentially been flat. You could draw a straight line from 2007 to 2022," he said, adding that the "demand curve" was at 1% or less. "In the last two years, we're looking now at 2 or 3% energy demand growth over the next 10 years. Everyone's assumptions about how much electricity we're going to need have gone way up."

As nuclear is increasingly considered an alternative energy solution, the Department of Energy estimated in 2023 that 375,000 additional workers with technical and non-technical backgrounds, such as construction and manufacturing, would be added to the sector over the next two decades.

"I think essentially what we're looking at here is a tripling or more of the workforce by 2050," Piercy said.

A digital assistant for nuclear workers

At Argonne National Laboratory, a federally funded R&D center located in the suburbs of Lemont, Illinois, the lab's senior nuclear engineer, Richard Vilim, is finding ways to automate some jobs at nuclear plants, which may help with some of the lifting for the incoming workforce demand.

"Humans will always be there in the loop," Vilim told BI in an interview. But there are what he called more "prosaic" tasks that could be assigned to a computer and help nuclear plants run more efficiently.

"For example, just monitoring if there's anything going wrong. People, humans do that," Vilim said. "Now you can assign that to an algorithm."

One automation tool Vilim works with is PRO-AID, or Parameter-Free Reasoning Operator for Automated Identification and Diagnosis. It can be thought of as a digital assistant for monitoring and diagnosing reactors.

Vilim said the earliest iterations of PRO-AID were developed around the late 1990s. But over the next few decades, and with the arrival of ChatGPT in 2022, PRO-AID has been updated with a few new tricks, including reasoning abilities.

Vilim said that before 2022, PRO-AID would be able to tell an operator or system engineer whether there was a leak or if a particular component went offline.

What operators can do now is ask PRO-AID: Why?

"So we're now using ChatGPT-type algorithms to go into the inner workings of the model, examine the logic that led to the diagnosis, and compose an answer into human-understandable form," Vilim said. "So not only does the operator learn, 'Oh, there's a leak outside containment,' he or she can query the system and say, 'Well, why do you say that?'"

Vilim said that PRO-AID continues to be improved so that the tool churns out answers that are much easier for the human worker to understand.

With the tool, Argonne is also figuring out how to develop remote monitoring systems so that a human worker cannot only monitor away from the site, adding to the safety factor, but also monitor multiple systems at once. Vilim roughly estimates that the number of systems one operator could remotely monitor could increase by a factor of 10.

Fratoni, the UC Berkeley professor, said the current workforce at power plants is quite large. One of the equations to solve is how to reduce the on-site manpower at a single plant.

Could AI meet the gap?

"Potentially," he said. "Potentially."

• We moved from Los Angeles to Colorado in 2020 and thought our move would be temporary.
• When we found out I was pregnant, we started to wonder whether staying would be better for us.
• In the end, we stayed in Colorado. We love living near our parents, and we're less stressed here.

In 2020, my husband and I packed up our apartment in Los Angeles and drove to Colorado, where we'd both grown up. I'm a screenwriter, and my husband works at an augmented reality startup — both unpredictable, high-pressure jobs. LA had always made sense professionally, even when it stressed us out personally and financially.

Since moving to the West Coast in our early 20s, we had never been out of LA for more than a few weeks at a time, but with the rise of remote work, it felt like the right moment. We thought we'd be there for a year at most — long enough to do some hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter. It would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be close to family and the splendor of the Rocky Mountains for more than just a quick weekend or holiday trip.

But when I got pregnant, we started asking ourselves some big questions.

We started to wonder if we'd ever move back to LA

What would it be like to raise a child in LA? Could we keep up with the cost of housing, childcare, and healthcare? Given the tumult in the entertainment industry and the uncertainty of a tech startup, could we rely on steady work?

We crunched the numbers. We could do it, but we'd have to make some sacrifices. A small apartment. No margin for overspending. Our baby's college fund or our retirement funds, but not both. And paying for daycare was out of the question, which meant one of us would have to quit our job to be a stay-at-home parent. Was the proximity worth it, and was the stress?

And the biggest question of all: When we thought about raising our family, what image came to mind?

Then, when we broke the news about my pregnancy to our respective parents, their unbridled joy confirmed what we had already been feeling. We wanted to raise our baby surrounded by that joy.

Staying in Denver was the right move for us

So we signed an 18-month lease for an apartment in Denver. The cost of living was still high, and both of our careers remained unpredictable. But we had something invaluable: support. Two sets of grandparents, both within driving distance.

When our son was born, they showed up with enchiladas and apple pie, with confident arms willing to rock the baby to sleep at four in the morning, with the tender blessings of someone we wholly trusted, saying, "Go lie down, I've got it."

There were days I worried we'd taken a step back by not returning to LA. That we were pressing pause on our careers, especially for me as a screenwriter, with the industry so concentrated in California. But as the newborn haze began to lift, I started to see it differently.

In many creative fields, especially as a freelancer, there's no HR department, no paid parental leave, no road map. A startup doesn't offer much certainty, either. What we needed — more than a city, more than a scene — was a support system.

This isn't a story of everything magically working out. Daycare in Denver can be prohibitively expensive, but we've figured out a childcare schedule that works for us and the grandparents so we can do our jobs. Work opportunities ebb and flow, and the hustle is much harder all these miles away. And truthfully, I miss the momentum of LA — the energy, the industry, the hunger.

But then I step outside and gaze in wonder at the mountains on the horizon. I see my baby's tiny hand wrapped around my dad's finger, and I feel it in my chest: this is the life we couldn't afford in LA — not just financially but emotionally.

We get to raise our child knowing he will have a close relationship with his grandparents. We're not stretched to the point of breaking. We haven't had to choose between our work and our child. We get to be present. That kind of presence — that kind of joy — is worth everything.

• Justin Ghio and his fiancé rent a house in San Diego to save on housing costs.
• Renting has given them the financial flexibility to take vacations and consider having a third kid.
• The couple is far from alone in putting off homeownership.

Justin Ghio and his fiancé wanted to make the plunge into homeownership when interest rates plummeted at the height of the pandemic in 2020. They made offers on four houses in San Diego, but they were outbid on all of them.

Soon enough, home prices and mortgage rates were soaring amid a buying frenzy, and they felt they'd missed their opportunity to buy.

"I'd always hoped to own a home," Ghio said. "With the rising interest rates, it just fiscally wasn't seemingly responsible to make that decision to try to buy."

But now, Ghio, a 35-year-old talent director, says he's relieved they didn't stretch their budget to buy. Renting is significantly cheaper than owning a home in San Diego, like in many hot housing markets, and Ghio is among a growing number of Americans choosing to keep renting rather than take on a hefty mortgage.

Three years ago, the couple and their eight-year-old twin daughters moved into their current rental home in a quiet San Diego neighborhood near their kids' school. They pay $3,795 a month in rent for their four-bedroom, two-bath house with a pool. Ghio appreciates not having to worry about paying for home maintenance and repairs — their landlord provides regular gardening and pool service.

And the rent is affordable. Between Ghio's salary and his fiancé's work as an esthetician, the couple brings in about $225,000 a year. They're enjoying the extra money they're saving by renting.

"Renting feels like we make over $200,000. I think buying would feel like we're broke," Ghio said. "And you don't work 12, 15 years after school to feel broke again — at least, it's a hard pill to swallow."

The decision not to buy felt especially strategic when Ghio was laid off from his previous job in talent acquisition last year. He applied for new jobs in multiple states, knowing that, because they rent, they had more flexibility to move. He's since found a new role at a translation services company in the city, but he's had to take a hefty pay cut.

Are you renting a home longer than you thought you would, or have you become a renter again later in life? Share your experience with this reporter at [email protected].

Zillow estimates that their rental house would sell for about $1 million. A mortgage on a comparable house in their neighborhood would likely far exceed their rent, not to mention the costs of home maintenance, insurance, and purchasing fees. If they were to buy their rental house with a 20% down payment and about a 7% interest rate, it would cost the couple about $5,300 a month, before taxes and insurance, according to Zillow's mortgage calculator.

This isn't unusual. A study from the National Association of Realtors found that in 2024, homebuyers purchasing starter homes in 50 major cities spent over $1,000 more on housing costs each month than renters did.

The couple has avoided becoming "house-poor," and instead, they budget more for vacations and their kids' extracurriculars. Ghio doesn't want to sacrifice the family's quality of life and "the ability to enrich our girls' childhood in a way that is unique and fun through experiences" just to own a home.

The couple is also saving for their wedding and considering having a third child.

"We're trying to be really pragmatic and just be like, we cannot afford a child if we buy a house," Ghio said. "The expenses would probably push us to the brink."

Renting a home seems like the smartest choice for now. But if circumstances change down the road, Ghio said he's open to buying.

"We're looking at things in two-year, three-year, four-year chunks," he said. "I'm not going to draw a line in the sand and say, 'No, never.'"