• My sister and I moved to Las Vegas with only what we could fit in our car.
• When we moved into our Las Vegas apartment, we had no furniture, pots, silverware, or even a bed.
• We furnished our entire apartment for under $200. Here's how we did it.

When my sister, an aspiring dancer, asked me to move from North Carolina to Las Vegas with her, I didn't hesitate. "Hell yeah!" I said excitedly.

Then, reality set in.

It took exactly one afternoon for us to realize that moving companies and shipping fees would cost thousands of dollars — thousands that we didn't have.

Our best option was to leave our materials behind, except for what we could fit in our shared 2012 Toyota Camry, and embrace what Las Vegas had to offer.

We couldn't wait to begin.

Fast-forward a few months, and I'm sitting in our new apartment, which we've fully furnished for under $200 — a fraction of what it would have cost to haul everything from North Carolina. We even designed it with a cottagecore theme that I love.

There's no big secret to how we did it. We thrifted basically everything. However, I went a step further and waited for specials, scoured different locations for the best deals, and wasn't above dumpster diving.

How we used thrift store deals to stock up for cheap

Call it coincidence or divine intervention, but the Airbnb we temporarily rented until we could find a full-time apartment happened to be conveniently located close to a Las Vegas thrifting icon: the Opportunity Village Thrift Store.

We saw it on the first day we arrived in Vegas, and it became our first official stop after securing our apartment. It happened to be on a Monday, when the store had specially tagged items for $0.99.

We bought bundles of hangers, bed sheets, comforters, and pillows, all $0.99 each. We filled our entire kitchen with glasses, forks, knives, plates, pots, and pans, also $0.99 each. In the span of a few hours, we had a fully stocked kitchen for under $25.

My favorite bargain is a set of beautiful pots, adorned with strawberries. We cook in them nearly every single day.

Beyond the Opportunity Village Thrift Store, Goodwill also has a network of stores throughout Las Vegas. They have deals like 50% off specially tagged items every day of the week.

We combed through each Goodwill location, scouring for cheap furniture that could fit in our car. One of our treks rewarded us with a $5 TV stand and two $8 bar-side chairs. (We brought the TV with us from North Carolina.)

We found more deals on Facebook Marketplace

Unlike thrifting, which depends heavily on luck, I searched for exactly what I wanted on Facebook Marketplace and filtered by price and day posted.

Early on, I realized that filtering for day-of postings was the go-to strategy. Facebook Marketplace is all about being first. Sometimes, I messaged people an hour after they had posted, only for the item to be claimed.

Aside from the deals, an extra perk I discovered about Facebook Marketplace is that it led me to pockets of Vegas off the beaten path.

I found a $5 swivel office chair (essential to remote work) in one of the upscale Summerlin neighborhoods, which needed a gate code, which I got from the seller. She was a kind, elderly woman looking to downsize, and I never would have met her or glimpsed this part of Vegas, otherwise.

I also traveled up north to pick up a $10 foldable desk and spotted several must-try restaurants, like the famous Korean-Mexican fusion restaurant, KoMex. My sister and I checked them out later after we got settled.

We found our mattresses on Facebook Marketplace, too. We each paid roughly $25 for our used queen-sized mattresses, plus $10 for delivery, since we couldn't fit them in our car. While it was the most expensive secondhand item we bought, it was still a steal.

Some of my favorite finds are curbside gems

While the strawberry pots and bar stools are great, many of my favorite items were free. While exploring my new neighborhood, I quickly discovered the delights of dumpster-diving.

On my daily walks, I transform into a curbside-pirate, visiting the dumpsters in the nearby neighborhoods whenever I can.

One gem I found was a beautiful suede chair in perfect condition for my sister's desk.

I also discovered two mirrors — one with ornate wire art and a standing mirror with only a little paint damage.

Furnishing my new life in Vegas wasn't only an exercise in savvy budgeting; it taught me that building a new life takes patience and an open mind.

Just like it took time to find the right pieces for the right price, it also took time to discover my go-to coffee shop, find my favorite restaurants, and make new friends. But I wouldn't trade any of my second-hand items, or the stories that came with them.

• When my kids were young, I wanted to stay home with them and be there for their firsts.
• Now that they're older, I want to return to a full-time position.
• The gap in my résumé is an obstacle, and I also want flexible hours.

Before having my first child in 2020, I worked every weekend and many holidays as an award-winning television reporter. The combination of motherhood and the pandemic inspired me to stay home with my children instead of sending them to day care as infants. Fortunately, my husband's career took off at the same time, allowing us to have that option.

Now I have two kids — a 4-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter — and like many mothers, I've always struggled to find the right balance between spending quality time with my kids and wanting to excel in my profession.

I stayed home with my kids when they were young

Initially, I thought I'd return to work when my son was 1, but finding childcare was difficult. It was hard for me to focus on the job search without it, and shortly after starting the job search, I learned I was pregnant again. My pregnancy and a lack of suitable day care with open spots led me to continue staying home, working on occasional freelance projects.

I enjoyed spending the first two years of my son's life at home with him, nursing him around the clock and being there for his first words and steps. I wanted to give my daughter the same undivided attention. So, a few months after she was born, our son started day care. We figured he could learn how to socialize and make friends while also learning from people who've devoted their lives to early childhood education.

The years flew by. We bonded through nursing on demand, and I enjoyed witnessing her learn to walk and talk. I took her to storytime at the library and saw such joy in her eyes as she interacted with other children. By the time my daughter was 2, we decided to send her to day care as well. I knew she was ready — and frankly, I was ready to re-enter the workforce and take my career to the next level.

But finding an affordable day care with an open spot was like finding a needle in a haystack. I lucked out, and she started going to day care for about six hours a day. I've had to increase my freelance projects to pay for it, which has left me with little time to apply for jobs.

I'm enjoying the flexibility freelancing offers, but now that my kids are older, I desire higher pay, benefits, and dependable income. It's an unstable field, and it's hard to make the same amount of money freelancing as I did in my reporting career without working excessive hours, so I've started to casually look for full-time remote roles.

However, this time around, I'm prioritizing a better work-life balance. I want the flexibility to tend to my children when needed, whether they're sick, have a half-day at school, or are out for spring or winter breaks.

It's a competitive job market, and the gap in my résumé is an obstacle

With the numerous layoffs in the news industry, finding remote positions is extremely competitive, even for a veteran journalist like myself, who is bilingual, college-educated, and a Fulbright alum. Often, I'll see that positions on LinkedIn receive hundreds of applications within a day of being posted. Before quitting my previous reporting role, I don't think I fully comprehended how difficult it'd be to re-enter the workforce.

The gap in my résumé also feels daunting. Should I put stay-at-home mom on my résumé, or should I just list the freelance projects I've worked on? During the application process, I've struggled to explain the varied transferable skills and experience I've acquired since leaving my full-time position.

I've done everything from writing for national publications to self-publishing my second book. I blog about my travels and create content for Instagram. I delved into marketing by pitching and promoting my book and blog for two daytime television shows. I've also acquired management skills as chairperson of our family reunion board of directors and fundraised to host two 100-person weekend-long events. But how do I succinctly capture that and previous working experience in a résumé or during a phone interview?

I've wondered if stating I'm self-employed sends my résumé into the rejection pile. Finding full-time employment after taking a break to care for my children has been harder than I envisioned. But, I'm confident the right position will come along, one that utilizes my talents, piques my interest, and pays me at least the same salary I made before, while also allowing me to spend nights, weekends, and holidays with my children.

• Daliana Liu was a data scientist at Amazon and a startup before leaving to start her own business.
• She now works as a coach for data scientists looking to accelerate their careers and brand.
• Liu said she still gets cold DMs from recruiters at Meta and OpenAI because of her online presence.

This as-told-to-essay is based on a conversation with Daliana Liu, a data scientist and career coach. Business Insider has verified Liu's employment with documents. It's been edited for length and clarity.

After finishing my undergraduate math degree at a college in China, I moved to California to get my Master's in Statistics at the University of California, Irvine.

In January 2014, I started working at a startup, before being recruited by Amazon a little over a year later as a business intelligence engineer.

I started at Amazon in Seattle, working on an A/B testing platform for their retail website. I created various statistical analyses and reports and supported product managers.

I trained employees on how to use A/B testing to make better product decisions, eventually starting my own newsletter for Amazon employees to share experiment insights from across teams.

An internal Amazon newsletter was my first content creation

The newsletter was my initial content creation. I learned to create engaging titles and make my writing concise and interesting.

During that time, I began writing on Medium about technical data science. Once, I wrote a viral post about saving money by picking the right month to start renting an apartment. It was exciting to help people make better decisions using data.

I started posting to LinkedIn in 2019. I wanted to share the unfiltered truth about being a data scientist and getting a job at Amazon, after seeing misleading posts about the industry. A couple of my posts blew up, but the majority of my following was organic from posting regularly. I now have nearly 300,000 followers on LinkedIn.

I then started a public newsletter. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur and thought having public channels would help me find investors in the future.

I moved up the ranks at Amazon and started a podcast

In December 2020, I moved to San Francisco to work for Amazon Web Services as a machine learning engineer. I got promoted to senior data scientist in 2021 and had to work with a lot of external customers.

I read books about communication and influencing stakeholders. I wanted learn good communication for my own leadership within the company, as well as our clients.

In 2021, I launched a podcast interviewing data scientists on their day-to-day work, how they tackle technical problems, and their career journeys.

One of the guests I interviewed invited me to a dinner with his CEO, who offered me a job to work as a data scientist for his startup, Predibase. I quit Amazon in June 2022 to work at the startup.

During the year I worked at Predibase, I continued to experiment with my podcast while also creating a career course for data scientists, teaching them essential communication and influencing skills.

Between 2021 and 2023, when I posted weekly episodes, my podcast had 50,000 subscribers across platforms. My startup job supported me in pursuing a side business, and I started making income from sponsorship and events through the podcast. I started getting sponsorship in March 2023.

I quit Big Tech to start my own business

As much as I loved working in tech, I always wanted to do something of my own. Once I got to the point I had business contracts in place for my podcast, a plan for my course, and some savings, I decided to quit my job and start my own business in September 2023.

Around the time I quit the startup, a VC firm tried to recruit me for a platform community growth role because they like my content and the podcast I built. I didn't take the job because I wanted to focus on my own business.

I now have a career accelerator course teaching data scientists communication skills, how to get promoted, and how to build their brands.

Being a thought leader opens job opportunties

While working for Amazon and the startup, I had recruiters from top companies like Apple and Netflix getting in touch. Even after leaving Big Tech, I still get messages from people at companies like OpenAI and Meta trying to recruit me.

They mention they like my experience in data science which they can see from my LinkedIn. They can also see my Medium blog and my podcast. I was able to get jobs through my podcast and recruiters often reference my content creation when they've reached out.

It's very important in this job market to be a builder, and a great way to demonstrate that is to publish blog posts or create a demo for recruiters to stand out.

I think Big Tech companies value my technical skills and industry thought leadership, which I post about on blogs and LinkedIn. Having a large following makes it easier for these recruiters to find and trust me.

Startups and VC funds seem to value both my technical skills and content creation skills, also that I've built a community.

By publishing my thoughts, I've opened myself up to data science roles, as well as developed transferable skills. If my path as a thought leader doesn't work out, I think it would be easy for me to find a job in data science, marketing, or a community role.

I'm not tempted to return to tech or startups. There's uncertainty as an entrepreneur, but I get to choose my clients and projects. I can take time off and travel. I'm not married or a parent yet, but when that time comes, I want the freedom to be fully present.

• Why does Instagram want to show you stuff it thinks you'll like instead of letting you pick for yourself?
• And why is Instagram focused on getting people to share photos and videos privately?
• The two ideas are connected, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri explains: Normal people simply aren't sharing as much in public as they used to.

Adam Mosseri's official title is head of Instagram, Meta's massive photo and video app. He also runs Threads, the Twitter clone the company launched two years ago.

Unofficially, he's become one of Meta's chief explainers, frequently jumping on social media to defend and proselytize on behalf of his employer.

So when I got a chance to interview Mosseri, I had a long list of questions about… lots of things: I wanted to know how Mosseri felt about the company's recent pivot to Trump-friendly policies, and how he looked at TikTok, and a million other things. I didn't have enough time to get to everything, but I got to a lot of it, and you can hear our whole conversation on my Channels podcast.

In the edited excerpt below, Mosseri and I go over some big-picture stuff that tells you a lot about the current state of social media: Like why Instagram, Facebook and every other social media platform rely on algorithms to show you stuff they thinks you like, instead of relying on users to program their own experience. And why the company is gung-ho on getting users to privately send each other photos and videos, instead of its initial focus — getting them to post stuff on a public feed.

And I also wanted to know about the backstory behind Threads — the text-based social network it launched just as Elon Musk was taking over Twitter. Mosseri was happy to talk about all of it.

Peter Kafka: In the first few years of social media feeds, users would see a list of everything that everyone they were following had posted, in chronological order. Now, the standard at every app is a curated, algorithmic feed. Why does everyone who runs a social media product think that's better?

Adam Mosseri: It's because it's the only way to grow these experiences.

The amount of content people post publicly in feeds is going down across the entire industry, because people are moving more and more sharing to stories — which you could argue is a different kind of feed — but even more into messaging, group chats, one-on-one chats.

On Instagram, there are way more photos and videos shared into DMs than into stories, and way more photos and videos are shared into stories than into the feed. So if the amount of content you have to rank is decreasing — how engaging the feed is is also just decreasing. It's just getting worse.

We show recommendations because you might follow 200 accounts and one in 10 of them posted. So we've [only] got 20 things [to show you]. And we can reorder those 20 things 20 factorial ways, but that's only so much upside.

Whereas if we look at the billion things posted in a given day and we find something you're interested in, there's more upside.

Instagram has been encouraging messaging. It's something you've been talking about for a while. It's something users were doing on their own, and now you guys are responding to it?

Oh yeah. It's a paradigm shift.

The thing you hear is that people are going to chats because they feel like that's safer or they can have more candor. But are regular people literally thinking about how their posts are gonna be received? Is there some other reason people are sharing more privately versus publicly?

The foundational reason is that there are more things that you would feel comfortable saying to somebody one-on-one than things you would feel comfortable sharing publicly.

This is a weirdly sad example, but you could think of sharing in-feed as standing on top of your roof, yelling something at a hundred people, and hoping that 20 people hear it. There's some things I would do that for. But the average thing — the amount of things I would say to you on a phone call, my wife on a phone call, my best friend on a phone call — there's a lot more of those things. I think that's the most important reason.

How does that shift affect the business of Meta?

It moves more and more of that friend content into private experiences. And then the question is, can you either make those private sharing experiences symbiotic with the ones that we monetize — like feed and stories? Or can you monetize those experiences directly?

For Instagram, the thing that has been amazing is that we have leaned into video in a way that actually grows messaging. When I worked on the Facebook app, we leaned a lot into video in 2014, 15, 16. We were very focused on trying to catch up with YouTube, and growing video grew the amount of time spent in the Facebook app — but it decreased everything else. It decreased messages, comments, likes, and revenue — because there's less ads per minute.

[But] with Reels on Instagram, because they're short and because they're entertaining… I'll see a standup comic doing a bit that I love and I'll send it to my brother, because I know he's going to enjoy it.

Or I'll see a piece on politics and I'll send it to you. Because I think you might be interested in it. And then you and I talk, maybe you look at your feed, maybe you engage with something else. Maybe you send that to somebody else.

So there is a private messaging part of the experience, [but] we've managed to build it in a way that's very symbiotic with the public context — like feed and stories and reels, which we monetize directly with ads.

We're going to show you engaging stuff, you're going engage in it, and we'll be able to monetize your eyeballs like we always have — and then you'll share it with other people.

It's a positive feedback loop. And it's important particularly for Instagram because we are about connecting with your friends over creative things. I mean, for some people, we might be a pure entertainment-based or public content-based app. But we want friend content to continue to be a core part of the experience for most users.

And this allows Instagram to stay social, but still grow as a business.

I wanted to ask you about the Threads origin story. I didn't realize that it was originally supposed to be a feature within Instagram.

We were talking about different ways to compete more directly with Twitter…

Why? I know that back around 2010, the two services were fiercely competitive. And then basically that competition stopped, because you guys just lapped Twitter over and over and you won. There were many more people who wanted to engage in a Facebook and Instagram-like experience than they did on Twitter.

So why bother going back to Twitter?

I think Twitter's a great app in a lot of ways. I use Twitter a lot, still. I think it's better for public conversations.

Even though it's not the biggest app, there's a lot of cultural relevance. There's a lot of really vibrant, amazing communities there — NBA Twitter, black Twitter there. There's these insular networks like VC Twitter and crypto Twitter.

And part of what we care about at Instagram is being a place where creatives do their thing.

And the initial thought was to bolt it onto Instagram?

Around that time we really accelerated our work on broadcast channels on WhatsApp and on Instagram and on Messenger — which by the way, are a big deal in a lot of the rest of the world, particularly popularized by Telegram. We looked at and had a bunch of designs for building something like Threads as a tab into Instagram. And we did consider and ended up building a separate app, and there were a lot of contentious debates.

What did you want to do? Where did you want what's now called Threads to live?

I was excited about channels. But Mark [Zuckerberg] made the point — and I agreed with him — that channels are not going to be a place where you keep up with tons and tons of culturally relevant people. They're going to be a place where you subscribe to the five or 10 you care about most.

I was more bullish on building something within Instagram. Mark's point was that a separate app will be harder — but if it was successful, it would be a more valuable thing to create in the world.

A lot of what Mark does is anchor us really high. And no matter how strong a year we have, the question is always — how can we do better?

It was late. I was in Italy for my anniversary with my wife, and [Mark's] like, "Well, if you were gonna do something bigger, what would you do?"

So I was riffing and I kind of pitched a version of Threads: We'll lean on Instagram's strength with creators. We'll use Instagram identity. You can bootstrap it with [Instragram's social] graph, but we'll focus on basic replies and threads. I called it Textagram as a joke. Which unfortunately stuck as a name for months before I managed to kill it.

And Mark's like, "Yeah, that's a good idea. We should do that." And I was like, "I don't think we should do that." And in the classic Mark move, he said, "OK. But if you don't do it, I'll have somebody else do it, and it'll be built on Instagram."

And I said, "OK. Sounds like I'm signed up." So he gets the credit.

• Food hall startup Wonder eliminated all delivery fees this week, the company said.
• Wonder operates its own delivery network as well as a growing list of food halls.
• Fees have long been a contentious issue among food delivery customers.

Food delivery customers often find a list of fees on their receipt when they order dinner in.

Wonder, the food hall startup helmed by entrepreneur Marc Lore, has a solution: Eliminate delivery fees altogether.

On Monday, Wonder eliminated its $1.99 fee on delivery orders, Courtney Lawrie, Wonder's senior vice president and general manager in charge of Wonder's restaurants and delivery experience, told Business Insider.

The company also waived its 12% service fee for orders placed through Wonder+, its $7.99-a-month subscription service.

Delivery fees have become common for many delivery services such as DoorDash and Uber. DoorDash, for example, says that its delivery fee covers "costs associated with getting your order directly to you."

The fees can also provoke frustration from customers when they see their delivery order's price rise as they select the delivery option.

"People are tired of paying fees across all of these marketplaces," Lawrie told BI.

Wonder operates its own food halls as well as its own delivery service, making it more vertically integrated than most of its competitors, which deliver food from an array of restaurants. The startup also acquired delivery service Grubhub earlier this year.

All that means that Wonder doesn't have to deal with middlemen when it needs to get food to customers' doorsteps, Lawrie said.

"We're uniquely positioned to be able to provide that savings to customers," Lawrie said.

Wonder has just under 50 food halls at the moment. Customers can have their food delivered, or, for a 5% discount, they can stop by one of the food halls to pick up their order themselves. Wonder's food halls serve dishes created by chefs including Bobby Flay and Marcus Samuelsson.

At Wonder's New York City locations, menu items range from a fried chicken sandwich with a side and a drink for around $12 to a 16-ounce ribeye for $37.

Its locations span city centers as well as more sparsely populated suburbs.

Wonder sees an opportunity to grow its business among suburban diners by giving them the range of choices in Wonder's food halls, Lawrie said. "They might not have access to the variety that we can provide," she said.

Many consumers are cutting back their spending, including on eating at restaurants, due to worries about a potential recession.

Even so, demand for food delivery — both restaurant orders and grocery hauls — remains steady, companies like DoorDash and Instacart have said in recent earnings reports.

Do you have a story to share about gig work? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or 808-854-4501.

• Tesla is now accepting Cybertruck trade-ins, showing owners a glimpse of its depreciation rate.
• Two owners shared their Cybertruck trade-in estimates, revealing a roughly 37% to 38% depreciation after a year.
• EV depreciation rates tend to be higher than other cars, but the Cybertruck's appears to outpace rivals like the Rivian R1T.

Tesla's Cybertruck launched with some asterisks.

Owners technically weren't allowed to resell the vehicle for a year — if they did, Tesla said it could sue for damages and blacklist the owner from buying future Teslas. Tesla also didn't offer Cybertruck trade-ins.

Now, more than a year and a half since the first Cybertrucks were delivered, the company is allowing owners to trade in the electric pickup for credit toward a new Tesla, offering a glimpse into its depreciation rate.

Two Cybertruck owners shared the estimated trade-in values that Tesla offered them after they requested a quote: one who owns the all-wheel drive model and the other who has a top-of-the-line Cyberbeast variant. Despite a difference in mileage of more than 10,000 miles, both vehicles showed a similar depreciation rate of around 37% to 38%.

The all-wheel-drive owner told BI he spent around $100,000 on the Cybertruck about a year ago, including add-ons. After driving 19,623 miles with the vehicle, his trade-in estimate came in at $63,100, a roughly 37% depreciation.

The Cyberbeast owner said he purchased the vehicle in September for around $118,000 plus tax, which took the total cost to roughly $127,000.

The owner received a trade-in estimate of $78,200, also representing around a 38% decrease in value in 8 months of ownership.

Tesla's trade-in estimates are just that — estimates. Tesla notes in the fine print under the estimate that the value is "based on current market conditions and vehicle details," and that the estimate could differ from the final offer. In other words, the final amount Tesla is willing to credit to the owner could end up being less. EV news website Electrek reported earlier on Tesla beginning to accept Cybertruck trade-ins.

Vehicles famously begin to depreciate as soon as owners drive them off the lot, but Tesla's trade-in estimates give a glimpse into how the company values used Cybertrucks at a time when some car dealers have shared struggles to sell used models.

The trade-in estimates shared with BI suggest the Cybertruck has a higher depreciation rate than the average vehicle. Kelly Blue Book estimates that new cars depreciate about 30% on average over the first 2 years and lose an added 8% to 12% each year after that.

But it's important to note that EVs tend to depreciate at a higher rate as used models have increasingly hit the market amid the EV buying slowdown in recent years. An iSeeCars study that analyzed over 800,000 5-year-old used cars sold from March 2024 to February 2025 found that EVs lost the most value, depreciating 58.8% in five years.

The study found that trucks and hybrids retain the most value, with trucks losing 40.4% of their value in a five-year period. Still, the rates that Cybertruck owners shared appear steeper than similar models like Rivian's all-electric 2023 R1T, which depreciated about 29% in the last two years, according to Kelly Blue Book.

Not all Tesla models depreciate at the same rate. While the iSeeCars study revealed that the Tesla Model S ranks among the top depreciating vehicles, with an average five-year depreciation rate of 65.2%, the Model 3 holds the lowest five-year depreciation rate among EVs at 55.9%.

While depreciation rates can vary based on several factors, including market conditions and mileage, the Cybertruck's decline in value comes amid wider pressures on the brand.

Amid political backlash over Tesla CEO Elon Musk's involvement in DOGE, Cybertruck owners have faced harassment and vandalism. Some owners have expressed interest in selling their vehicles, with one telling BI earlier this year that he returned his Cybertruck soon after purchasing it due to concerns about his kids getting bullied.

Despite Musk saying Tesla had over 1 million reservations prior to its release, a March recall filing revealed Tesla delivered fewer than 50,000 Cybertrucks. BI also earlier reported that the automaker has scaled back Cybertruck production in recent months, dropping targets for several Cybertruck lines.

Are you a Tesla employee? Contact the reporter from a non-work device and email at [email protected], or via the encrypted message app Signal at aalt.19.

• Duolingo is the latest company to spark backlash over its CEO's excitement about AI.
• Investors and Wall Street love hearing about companies' ambitious AI plans, but many customers hate it.
• Ultimately, this may just be a messaging problem.

Imagine you're the CEO of a medium-to-large consumer tech company. You announce that you're going all in on AI — you are launching new AI features in your products, or maybe you're telling your employees they need to start using AI at their jobs more. Your investors love it. Your fellow CEOs applaud you. Thought leaders in Silicon Valley hail you. Wall Street loves it; your share price spikes.

But your customers? They haaaaaaaaate it.

You get absolutely destroyed on social media. People delete your app or vow to boycott your company.

You, imaginary CEO, would not be alone. Quite a few companies recently have dealt with this kind of blowback after announcing plans for AI use.

Duolingo is in the midst of this boondoggle. The language app's CEO, Luis von Ahn, posted a memo to LinkedIn last month describing plans to make the company "AI-first." He said the company would "gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle," and "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work."

On a recent podcast appearance, von Ahn doubled down on his ambitious vision for AI, saying that in the future, schools would exist mostly for childcare, while AI performed the actual instruction. (One guaranteed formula to get wrecked online is to disrespect teachers or nurses.)

The backlash was harsh. Tweets, TikToks, and Reddit posts exploded in outrage. Duolingo has cultivated a big social presence with its meme-loving owl mascot, and so the company was a prime target. One TikTok creator implored their fans not to allow Duolingo to return from being canceled.

As of Tuesday, the Duolingo social accounts had been wiped — no posts, no icon. Duolingo did not respond to a request for comment.

The idea that employees should learn to use AI is basically gospel now. Business leaders see that AI is the future and don't want to be left behind. But there are differences of degrees. Shopify, too, received some blowback after it announced a new policy of mandatory AI fluency, and that teams could only hire new humans if proves could prove AI couldn't do the job instead.

There are other ways that AI has drawn a backlash. Recently, Soundcloud added a new clause about AI training to its terms of service, to the ire of many artists and listeners.

Audible recently announced it will offer AI narration for audiobooks. When I posted on Threads that I thought this would be useful (there are plenty of times I've wanted to read an older book that is only available in print and wished it had an audio version), I got absolutely ratioed into the heavens by people who (rightfully!) were aghast at the idea of replacing human voice actors with subpar AI bots. Several people told me they were planning to cancel their Audible subscriptions over this.

The main issues people have with AI are simple. The models were generally trained on songs, books, and art that were used without the owners' consent. AI threatens to replace human jobs. There's an environmental impact from the energy used to power AI. These are all simply facts. Worst of all, it's often just not very good at what it's supposed to do. There's a reason it's called "AI slop" and not "AI amazing cool art."

It would be a mistake to wave off the anti-AI brigade as a bunch of Luddites or purists. Their concerns are legitimate. And for tech companies who are pushing this — the brigade includes customers. These are people who are happily using iPhones and apps like Duolingo to learn a second language, or pay for audiobooks, or listen to streaming music.

This is the tension: How do you, imaginary tech CEO, continue to impress your investors with how your company is at the bleeding edge of AI adoption, while avoiding getting shredded to bits by your customers on social media?

I asked Adam Brotman, CEO of Forum3, a consulting firm that advises brands on how to adopt AI, and author of "AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand."

"Unlike previous tech shifts, generative AI brings unique challenges," Brotman said. "While these leaked memos are coming from an authentic passion around what this tech can do to drive productivity and innovation, in my opinion, even the most passionate leaders need to communicate a balanced approach in these memos; emphasizing 'responsible' AI use and how it augments their teams rather than replaces them. Declaring an 'AI-first' strategy should be about leveraging AI's power thoughtfully while remaining a people-first company."

It's not an impossible balancing act. I suggest a reasonable solution, which is: Don't shout about it. There's a middle path, where your company can go forward with AI tools without publishing a memo about it that states some (unrealistic in practice) rules about hiring because of AI.

Duolingo made people mad not because some of its engineers are using AI for coding, but because the CEO made a grandiose statement about it — the kind that isn't going to go over well. This is a messaging problem. The kind that a friendly, human, comms person could solve.

• Walmart said last week that it planned to raise prices over tariffs, opening the door for other retailers to follow suit.
• On Tuesday, Home Depot said it didn't plan to increase prices and would instead rely on other "levers."
• Here's why the two companies are looking at the new import costs differently.

Retail giants Walmart and Home Depot are sending conflicting signals about post-tariff prices.

Walmart said during its earnings report last week that it would raise prices in the coming weeks and months — a move that also opened the door for other retailers to act.

But on Tuesday, Home Depot said it didn't plan to follow suit and would instead rely on other "levers" to manage expenses without broad-based price adjustments.

A closer look reveals four factors likely contributing to why the two companies are approaching pricing differently as they navigate new import costs.

Home Depot has more room to work with

Home Depot operates with wider profit margins than Walmart does, which means it has more flexibility to absorb any tariff-related costs.

Home Depot reported gross margins of 33.4% in the first quarter, compared to 27.5% in Walmart's US segment.

In other words, Walmart's markup is about six percentage points lower than Home Depot's, which makes sense given the different kinds of products each retailer specializes in. Higher-priced items like power tools and home appliances typically have higher profit margins than food and apparel.

Shoppers depend on Walmart for low-priced groceries

While Walmart is America's undisputed grocery king, Home Depot doesn't sell much food.

Sure, you can pick up a snack bar and a drink at the Home Depot checkout lane, but that's not the company's main category. By contrast, roughly 60% of Walmart's sales are from the food and beverage aisles.

This matters because many US shoppers have grown frustrated at inflation driving their grocery bills up, so Walmart has effectively ruled out, for now, using food price hikes to offset new costs for imported products.

"The first thing that goes through my mind is food inflation," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said. "We've been through a number of years here where prices have gone up on food, and our customers have felt that, and they don't want any more food inflation."

For Home Depot, there's a bit more flexibility about where the company can shift costs, make some strategic pricing decisions, or make outright product cuts.

"We'll continue to use the portfolio approach that we've talked a lot about in the past, but we don't see broad-based price increases for our customers at all going forward," Home Depot's head of merchandising, Billy Bastek, said during Tuesday's call.

Walmart depends more on China

Home Depot says half of its inventory was sourced from within the US, and the company says no single country will represent more than 10% of its supply base by this time next year.

Walmart sources two-thirds of the products it sells in the US from US suppliers. A 2023 Reuters report found, though, that the company depends on China for about 60% of its imports.

While Walmart may have made tweaks to its supply chain since then, taken together, those figures would indicate Walmart has a higher exposure than Home Depot does to the 30% additional tariffs on Chinese imports, which Walmart CFO John David Rainey described as "too high."

Home Depot has more exclusive brand partnerships

Home Depot also said during the earnings call Tuesday that it plans to enlist its partner brands in its efforts to hold the line on prices for shoppers.

As avid DIYers or pro remodelers know, there are certain brands that are only available at a given national chain, so if Milwaukee Tool wants its products' sales to outperform Bosch's, it would behoove the brand to help Home Depot keep prices lower than chief retail rival Lowe's.

"It's a great opportunity for us to take share, and it's a great opportunity for our suppliers to take share as well," Bastek said.

Walmart, by contrast, is a mass retailer, which means it sells many of the same national brands that Target, Costco, or any other large company carries — so there's less incentive for, say, Energizer or Duracell to offer a better deal on batteries.

Companies have choices to make

Although President Donald Trump has said he would prefer that retailers simply "eat the tariffs," there aren't any set rules about how companies have to handle the new costs on imports.

Still, it would appear that Home Depot has a bit more flexibility than Walmart has to keep prices stable and still turn a profit.

As more companies report their earnings in the coming days and weeks, analysts will be sure to probe which path other retailers say they'll follow.

Do you work at Target or Walmart? Contact the reporter from a non-work device and email at [email protected]

• Nvidia dominates Computex Taipei thanks to CEO Jensen Huang's massive popularity.
• "Jensanity" includes shirts with Huang's face and hordes of selfie-seeking crowds.
• The Nvidia spotlight reinforces the ties among the company, the local tech industry, and the economy.

Asia's biggest tech trade show has always attracted IT insiders to Taiwan. Now, Computex Taipei is Nvidia central, with fans flocking to spot the chipmaker's leather jacket-wearing, selfie-taking CEO, Jensen Huang.

I flew to Taipei for this year's event and found that Nvidia's dominance was on clear display even outside the venue, where a striking green Nvidia banner outshone Computex's event wrap.

The theme continued inside the conference halls, where nearly 1,500 companies compete to show their most advanced gear. Over three days at the tech show, I spotted the "Nvidia partner" sign prominently displayed alongside countless exhibitors' names.

"Everyone wants to ride on Nvidia's wave," an exhibitor associated with Nvidia told me.

Taiwan's "Jensanity" isn't new. Last year, Huang signed a woman's chest at Nvidia's booth. But the 2025 Computex spotlight on Nvidia reinforces that the Taiwanese tech industry and the broader economy are ever more intertwined with one company, even as Nvidia navigates changing political winds and a rapidly evolving tech landscape.

Andrew Hou, the president of pan-Asia Pacific operations at Taiwanese PC maker Acer, said on Wednesday that interest in Computex was flagging before 2024.

Thanks to the burgeoning interest in AI tech, it has become "so crowded" at Computex since last year, Hou said at a briefing on Wednesday. He also namedropped Huang — without mentioning Nvidia — during the press event. Acer is a Nvidia partner.

The Santa Clara, California-based AI giant has so much street cred in Taiwan that even a half-name drop will do.

On Tuesday, Foxconn chairman Young Liu referred to "Jensen" in his keynote speech at Computex when he was describing a meeting about AI-powered manufacturing.

'Jensanity'

Huang arrived in Taipei on Friday afternoon.

The Taiwanese cannot get enough of the Tainan-born native who migrated to the US as a child. They camp at his hotel, outside his regular hair salon, and around restaurants. The devotees are seeking sound bites, selfies, and autographs.

Much of Huang's story resonates with the Taiwanese public, including his rise from humble immigrant beginnings to building a three-trillion-dollar business from scratch. His consistent dad-biker style also helps.

On Tuesday, much of the chatter at Computex centered on business, not Nvidia — but that didn't stop attendees from mobbing Huang when he showed up on the exhibition floor.

"I want to take a photo with him," a woman squealed as other excited fans thrust pen, paper, and their mobile phones into Huang's path.

Chenbro Micom, a storage and server chassis maker, seized the moment by blasting a man saying "Chenbro, Chenbro, I love you!" on repeat as Huang walked past its booth. The Taiwanese firm is an Nvidia partner.

Folk AI hero

Huang also made a guest appearance at Taiwanese chip firm MediaTek's CEO keynote on Tuesday.

On stage, MediaTek boss Rick Tsai gifted Huang a bag of fruits from his favorite night market fruit stall and spelled out "Jensen's" appeal to the Taiwanese: He's authentic and approachable.

On Monday, I found people patiently queued up to buy Nvidia merch from a van parked in front of Taipei Music Center, where Huang gave his keynote speech. By lunch, after Huang's speech ended, there were about 80 people in line, even though the mercury was hovering around 88 degrees.

KJ Hsieh, a Taiwanese who works in business development, endured the blistering sun in his suit to snag a bag of merch. He told me he plans to wear the T-shirts on his coming vacation to Dubai.

"I was interested in what Jensen Huang had to say because I used to be an engineer," Hsieh told me.

The merch sold well, a salesperson told me. Some products — including a backpack and play cards — were already sold out for the day.

Some buyers, like 26-year-old engineer Jim Wu, did not even attend the keynote.

A self-professed Huang and Nvidia fan, Wu took time off work on Monday morning to snap up the merch — shirts and a thermal cup — in case they sold out.

It took real effort. Wu works in Hsinchu, a 30-minute high-speed rail ride away. He declined to be photographed as his manager did not know what he was up to with his last-minute time-off request.

"Nvidia is a really successful company that I hope to work with one day," Wu told me.

Boosting Taiwan's tech stardom

Huang has leaned into his roots in the US, showcasing Taiwanese night markets at March's GTC in San Jose, California, and paying tributes to his heritage.

On Monday, he greeted the keynote audience in Mandarin Chinese and gave a shout-out to his parents sitting in the back of the concert hall. On Tuesday, he cracked jokes onstage with Foxconn and MediaTek's decidedly more staid executives.

It's good PR, and it works both ways.

The Nvidia boss consistently champions and highlights Taiwan tech, from chips to hardware. It's a far more upbeat narrative for the island compared to the international headlines highlighting a potential invasion by China, which claims Taiwan as its territory.

On Monday, Huang announced a joint initiative to build an AI supercomputer with the Taiwanese government, TSMC, and Foxconn. He also announced a big new headquarters in Taipei.

For the many under-the-radar Taiwanese companies that are the backbones for household names from Apple to Microsoft, Huang's showmanship and Nvidia's dominance in AI are helping them shine, too.

During Huang's keynote speech, he paid a video tribute to Nvidia's many Taiwanese partners of Nvidia. The reel showcased the journey of a basic TSMC chip to an Nvidia Blackwell GPU, and beyond.

"That was pretty incredible, right? But that was you, that was you. Thank you," Huang said to a rapt audience, who broke out in appreciative applause.

• Keith Anderson secured a role at Meta in 2018 after beating 2,000 other candidates.
• He applied after feeling drained in his previous Big Tech roles at YouTube and Google.
• Anderson used a five-part strategy, including a 'value project,' to stand out and get the offer.

When Keith Anderson, 36, came across a job posting at Meta (then Facebook) while scrolling LinkedIn in 2018, he was feeling completely drained.

He was in his third Big Tech role — working as a program manager at YouTube — after spending two years at Google and two years at Uber since breaking into the industry with no tech experience in 2015.

"I'd hit a wall," Anderson, who now runs Career Alchemy, told Business Insider. "I was physically exhausted and emotionally depleted."

A few months later, he beat out 2,000 candidates for the Meta role.

He wanted a dramatic career shift

Anderson wanted something new and resonated with Meta's mission, so he applied for the role on the global education team.

After three months of silence, he was invited to an in-person finalist event at the company's headquarters. The hiring manager at Meta told him he'd been selected as one of 300 top candidates from 2,000 applicants.

He said that email alone felt like a win, but it was short-lived when he realized the stiff competition he'd need to one-up to actually land the job. He decided he'd try something different to stand out from the crowd.

Here's the five-part strategy that Anderson used to ultimately win the job offer from Meta.

1. Using curiosity and connection points to overcome imposter syndrome

When Anderson first arrived at the event, his excitement turned to anxiety. As an employee who came from a background in teaching, imposter syndrome started to grip him.

"I reminded myself that curiosity is more powerful than self-doubt," Anderson said. "Instead of trying to impress anyone, I approached team leaders and engaged them in meaningful, peer-level conversations."

Anderson said the event started with 30 to 45 minutes of networking. Next, five team leaders presented on the state of the team, explaining their goals. The team leaders then spread out around the room to talk to candidates.

"There were like 15 to 20 folks swarming around each of them, awkwardly trying to get their chance to ask a question," Anderson said.

Anderson worked the room, saying things like, "I just learned about the project your team's been working on, and I'm impressed by what you've achieved! My team's facing a similar challenge, and I'm curious: how has your team approached that balance?"

He said the goal wasn't to deliver a pitch but instead create a conversation rooted in genuine interest and shared experience.

2. Following up with a warm, non-pushy message

Anderson initially didn't get a callback, so he sent a warm, friendly voice note to the recruiter.

"I thanked her for inviting me and reflected on how humbling it was to be in a room with such incredible talent," he said. "I mentioned my conversation with one of the team members and even included a helpful tool we used on my current team at the time, asking her to pass it along." Anderson believes that the most important part of his message wasn't what he offered — it was how he framed it.

"I told the recruiter, 'I know your plate is full juggling candidates for multiple roles and navigating the needs of different hiring managers. If this role doesn't work out, no worries. I just wanted to say thank you,'" Anderson said.

Within 48 hours, the recruiter called Anderson back to schedule a formal screening for the role.

3. Turning the screening into a strategy session

Anderson viewed the phone screening as an opportunity to gather intelligence about both the company and role.

"I wanted to understand the team's internal goals and pain points before I ever stepped into a formal interview loop," Anderson said. He asked questions like "What are the top priorities for this team over the next quarter?" and "How does this role contribute to those broader goals?"

The recruiter provided valuable insight into the team's dynamics and signaled that he understood how to contribute at a high level.

4. Building a 'value project' to show understanding of team pain points

After the phone screening, Anderson sent a warm follow-up email that led to an invitation to speak with the hiring manager. To prepare, he created a four-slide 'value project,' — a mini case study based on a challenge faced by the team he was trying to join.

"I gathered intel on the main pain points the team was facing," Anderson said. "From those, I took the one that seemed the most pressing and created a simple project from that."

Anderson's value project included:

• A short overview of what he understood about the team's current structure
• A breakdown of one key challenge, informed by conversations with the recruiter and event contacts
• Examples of how other companies were solving similar problems
• His personal experience addressing this kind of challenge
• A few practical, creative solutions tailored to Meta's ecosystem

Anderson invited the hiring manager and others who interviewed him into a conversation to discuss it.

"I framed it with, 'I'd love to get your thoughts on this,'" he said. "Suddenly, I wasn't just a candidate answering questions. I was a collaborator helping solve problems."

5. Making yourself easy to remember

The recruiter sent Anderson an email with the names of the people he was going to meet with. Anderson sent brief, friendly email introductions to each of his future interviewers, expressing his excitement about speaking with them.

During the actual interviews, Anderson made a personal connection with the hiring team. "At the start of each call, I asked, 'What's been the highlight of your day so far?' he said. "It's warm, it's disarming, and it instantly transforms the tone of the conversation."

About five months after applying, Anderson received a job offer from Meta for an instructional designer role — his entry position that he later parlayed into a management role as head of learning, global agencies, over his three years at Meta.

Anderson's manager told him something he'll never forget

"After I started, my manager told me, 'If you hadn't accepted, we would've restarted the entire hiring process — no one else came close,'" Anderson said. "That kind of validation reminded me that thoughtful risk-taking really does pay off."

Anderson said that this hiring experience taught him you don't have to follow the traditional script to be taken seriously in Big Tech.

"Throughout every step of the process, I anchored my message: I'm someone who notices problems early and works toward clear, communicative, creative solutions," he said. "My goal was always to show, not tell, who I was through every interaction."

• Elon Musk says he's pulling back from political spending.
• That's a big reversal from what he said he'd do months ago.
• Now, the GOP is going to have to make up the gap somehow.

Elon Musk once seemed primed to be an unlimited piggy bank for President Donald Trump and the GOP, keeping the party afloat while quashing internal dissent with the threat of an avalanche of money.

Now, that's all been thrown into doubt.

The world's richest man — by far the biggest political donor in America in 2024 — said on Tuesday that he'll be spending "a lot less" on elections in the future. "I think I've done enough," he told an interviewer. "If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason."

It's something of a reversal for the DOGE leader, who once said that his super PAC, America PAC, would "play a significant role in primaries." He'd even pledged to go after Democrats and get involved in local district attorney races.

Both his supporters and critics within the GOP expected him to throw around his weight. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that any senator who voted against Trump's nominees would "have to deal with Elon Musk and his great new PAC," while Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska mused about Musk spending "the next billion dollars that he makes off of Starlink" against her.

It's unclear now exactly how much his political spending will decrease, and a spokesman for America PAC declined to comment. Musk could also change his mind or choose to route his fortune through "dark money" non-profit groups that don't have to disclose their donors.

"He's just trying to hide in the shadows," said Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, saying that Republicans "realize he's a liability, and they just want to put him in the back closet."

Musk spent nearly $300 million in 2024, and it wasn't just on Trump. He also spent more than $19 million on House races and gave more than $12 million to GOP super PACs that spent in Senate elections.

A diminished Musk is by no means the death knell for the GOP. The tech titan only started spending big on elections last year, and there are other sources of money for Republican campaigns. Republicans who spoke with BI generally dismissed concerns that Musk's step-back would have an impact.

"I don't think it's a major factor," Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told BI. "I mean, to be honest, large-donor donations aren't really the recipe for success anyway these days. It's more small ones."

"I gotta be candid with you, I really don't care," said Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who benefitted from more than $864,000 in spending by Musk's PAC last year.

But it's still a massive financial gap that the party would have to make up somehow.

For now, Republicans' House and Senate campaign arms are remaining mum on what it all means: A spokesperson for the National Republican Campaign Committee declined to comment, while the National Republican Senatorial Committee did not respond to a request for comment.

On both sides of the aisle, lawmakers said that Musk's move is likely a response to the intense blowback that he and his businesses have endured over DOGE, with Democrats managing to turn the tech titan into a boogeyman.

"I get it," Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said of Musk's pull-back. "He suffered the consequences. The left came at him pretty hard."

Democrats have felt especially vindicated after a Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, where Musk spent millions of dollars backing a Republican candidate who ultimately lost by ten points.

"This proves that that an anti-billionaire, pro-worker strategy works," Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas told BI. "Republicans have thought that people having infinite money to spend for them is an asset. Democrats can make Musk's, and other oligarchs' money, toxic in elections if we're willing to make the case to the American people."

• The Trump administration plans to receive a gifted Boeing 747-8 from Qatar.
• The jumbo jet previously served as a luxurious private business jet.
• The plane currently sports multiple bedrooms, a salon, a private living room, and a kids' playroom.

The luxurious Qatari jumbo jet that may soon get a promotion to Air Force One is chock-full of the glitz and grandeur President Donald Trump has shown a penchant for over the years.

First delivered to the Gulf state in 2012, the Boeing 747-8 is one of the most opulent private jets in the world and is much newer than the current fleet of jets that serve as Air Force One. Flight records show the plane flew to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private club in Florida, in February.

The exact cost of the jumbo jet isn't clear, but a new 747-8 can fetch a cool $400 million.

Trump has said he would be "stupid" to turn down the gifted Boeing 747, especially as he has been vocal about his disappointment in the delays for a replacement that Boeing might not be able to deliver until 2028.

Its cockpit may look like any 747, but behind it is where the opulence is revealed.

The gift has raised ethical concerns among both Democrats and Republicans, which the White House has dismissed.

An iteration of the luxurious aircraft — designed by French interior design firm Cabinet Alberto Pinto for its previous life serving a Middle Eastern businessman — gives us a peek inside the opulent plane as it may look upon delivery to the Department of Defense as the potential future Air Force One.

The interior is sectioned into several rooms, akin to a traditional home.

Think a foyer, couches, touchscreen light switches, and bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms.

The primary bedroom takes the most advantageous and private location.

The spacious bedroom is perched in the nose of the aircraft, under the cockpit. It's a relatively quiet space, located furthers from the engine. And in lieu of two first-class seats, as the nose is often reserved for, the bedroom has a cozy loveseat.

The bedroom operates like that of a conventional residence.

Bedside tables and reading lights flank the mattress, perched across from the TV and loveseats. However, the walled cupholders still remind you that you're in an aircraft.

Otherwise, the en-suite bathroom looks quite orthodox, finished with a walk-in shower and a bright vanity.

Showers, which aren't a staple fixture in commercial aircrafts, are a key selling point for Boeing and Airbus' private jets.

Guest bedrooms accommodate additional guests.

Don't worry, they get their own bathrooms, too.

No need to stay tied down to a small passenger seat.

The aircraft has private offices and dining areas. Or, use the salon as both.

Its couches are great for lounging, while the circular table can be used for work, dinners, or a round of poker.

It's an aircraft — of course, the plush leather seats can recline via switches in the armrest.

Additional passengers and crew can be seated in a separate, smaller section with tables and in-flight entertainment systems.

The crew also has their own quarters, located up the foyer's staircase.

If the salon is the Oval Office, the upper deck is the executive residence.

In addition to the crew quarters, the second floor has a living room and a separate children's play area.

Yves Pickardt, the designer of this particular 747-8i and all of its homey amenities, previously told Altitudes Magazine that the aircraft took four years to design and complete — an indication of what the Secret Service may in for when it sets out to upgrade security, communications, and other systems if the President it to use the plane while in office.

An earlier version of this story was written by Taylor Rains and Tom Pallini.

Chelsea Atkinson understood, at least in theory, that her father's house might one day be hers. She just didn't expect that day to arrive so soon.

The death of her father in 2019 came as a shock: He was just 58, but complications from an earlier bout with lung cancer led to a quick decline. "It was like, 'Boom,'" Atkinson says. She was 28, an only child, and had already purchased a house in Austin, where she'd grown up. Grief aside, the inheritance of her childhood home, with the mortgage fully paid off, might seem like a winning lottery ticket. But the property came with an endless stream of dilemmas that Atkinson was entirely unprepared to resolve.

She and her father hadn't been on speaking terms in his final years, and she had no desire to move back into a home weighted with memories. She briefly considered turning it into a rental, only to conclude that she had zero interest in becoming a landlord. That left Atkinson to sell, but the 40-year-old house was showing its age. She would have to choose between pouring thousands of dollars into upgrades or offloading the house for well below what it might be worth. There was also the conundrum of what to do with all the stuff inside: sentimental artifacts, antique furniture, and worthless clutter. She would have to pay someone to haul literal truckloads away.

"All those questions start popping up," Atkinson tells me. "Like, 'What are you going to do with this thing that you really didn't know you were going to be getting so soon?'"

Millions of millennials will soon have to wrestle with similar choices. The US is on the precipice of a colossal wealth transfer, with the oldest baby boomers set to turn 80 next year. As they find spots in nursing homes, move in with younger relatives, or die, members of the once-largest generation will leave behind a staggering heap of real estate. This Great Boomer Bequeathment will pose unique questions and challenges for their millennial offspring. Aside from the ever-present family drama and arcane tax considerations, baby boomers are staying in their homes far longer than previous generations, which means many of their homes will likely demand extensive renovations. Their inheritors, if they choose to sell, may find themselves thrust into a weaker market as housing demand slows due to sluggish population growth. It also remains to be seen how much of those real estate riches will actually make it to millennials' bank accounts after years of retirement spending and eldercare.

That's not to say that these inheritances will be all burden and no bounty. Far from it. Handing down real estate can extend a financial lifeline to the next generation, offering an immediate windfall, a potentially lucrative investment, or a homeownership cheat code. But to pull off that smooth transfer, boomers will need to have some frank conversations about their futures.

"I think most people just don't like to think about dying," says Scott Westfall, a 33-year-old real estate broker in Virginia Beach, a popular landing spot for the retirement crowd. "You've got to face that you will die someday, or your parents will die someday, and so it's better to have a conversation now than be surprised by it."

Baby boomers dominate America's housing market. They own roughly $19.7 trillion worth of US real estate, or 41% of the country's total value, despite accounting for only a fifth of the population. Millennials, by comparison, make up a slightly larger share of the population but own just $9.8 trillion of real estate, or 20%. The disparity is a product of both their relative youth and the stark advantages enjoyed by their elders. Flush with cash from prior home sales and burgeoning stock portfolios, boomers can afford to win bidding wars and upgrade, downsize, or collect rental properties like Monopoly pieces. Even last year, with millennials solidly in their peak homebuying years, baby boomers gobbled up the lion's share of the market. They accounted for 42% of buyers between July 2023 and June 2024, data from the National Association of Realtors found, well outpacing millennials' measly 29% share.

Boomers are a big reason Americans are stuck in place: People are staying in their homes almost twice as long as they used to, a Redfin analysis found, with nearly 40% of boomers having lived in their homes for at least 20 years and another 16% staying put for 10 to 19 years. A survey of 1,000 boomers by Leaf Home and Morning Consult found that 68% lived in homes that were at least three decades old, "with many never having done renovations or replacing major appliances, and most having no plans to move or make any type of home improvements." Their motivations for staying put range from lifestyle preferences to financial savvy. A number of surveys indicate that many boomers want to age in place rather than retreat to a nursing home or move in with family. They're also more likely to own their homes free and clear, with no pesky mortgage payments each month. Even if they do pull up stakes, they might hold onto their old place as a rental property rather than sell.

Soon, though, Father Time will force the generation to either pass along those homes to lucky inheritors or dump them on the market. While demographers emphasize that this will be more of a glacial shift rather than the well-publicized, instantaneous "silver tsunami," this changing of the guard will happen. Between 2025 and 2035, boomers' numbers are projected to decline by 23%, or about 15.6 million people, according to an analysis of Census data by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Between 2035 and 2045, their numbers are expected to drop by another 47%, or 23.4 million people.

While a horizon of a decade or two may seem a long way off, financial planners and real estate agents warn against kicking the can down the road. By the time millennials actually inherit a house from their parents, Westfall tells me, it'll be "too late" to figure out the best way to set up that transfer. In many instances, questions around the fate of a house will crop up long before its owner dies. An aging baby boomer may be forced out of their home and into a nursing home, leaving their progeny to figure out how to balance paying for upkeep on the house, a mortgage if there is one, property taxes, and the necessary healthcare. Without money set aside for these things, along with clear instructions for what to do with the house in those final years and beyond, the situation can easily devolve into chaos. Unprepared millennials may end up with their hands tied. Ari Rubin, the founder and CEO of Flock Homes, a company that bills itself as a "retirement solution" for landlords and regular homeowners, warns that they could wind up inheriting responsibility for the home years before they actually assume the title.

"I think the biggest problem is in the year or 10 years before inheritance," Rubin says.

Millennial inheritors are often eager to climb the housing ladder, but they may not be prepared for all the monthly costs that go into paying off and maintaining a home that's a few rungs above their current costs. That's not to mention the big-ticket upgrades or repairs that are often required after someone has lived in a home for several decades. And even if your boomer parents move into a nursing home or the granny flat in your backyard, there may be good reasons, tax-wise, for waiting to sell or transfer the old home until they die, especially if the house's value has appreciated a lot (more on that later).

Flock Homes offers one answer to this common predicament. The company, which recently raised a $20 million Series B, gives aging homeowners (or their inheritors) the chance to exchange their burdensome homes for a stake in a diversified real estate fund — while deferring taxes — through a little-known maneuver known as a 721 exchange. That's far from the only option, though. There's a whole cottage industry devoted to greasing the handoff of homes from one generation to the next, offering products designed to minimize Uncle Sam's ability to put his hand in your coffers.

There's no "correct" way to pass down a home. For some families, a simple beneficiary deed, which transfers the title upon death, will do the trick. Others will need to make more complex arrangements. Setting up the house in a trust — a set of legal documents that define exactly who gets it and when, what they can (and can't) do with it, and maybe even set aside money to fund its upkeep — can provide a road map for inheritors and nip intrafamilial squabbling in the bud.

"It helps provide a structure with specific direction on how those assets are treated after they're gone," says Jeremy Taylor, who manages real estate advisory services at Commerce Trust.

On the other hand, overly restrictive trusts could leave millennial inheritors in a bind. Taylor cites examples in which the parents dictated that their house be held in the family for a set number of years, but underestimated the amount of money they'd need to leave behind in order to keep up the place during that time. "There's a trust with no cash and property to be maintained," Taylor tells me, "and not a lot of flexibility for the trustee to sell." The inheritors may end up stumbling through the court system for months to get permission to offload the property. And, of course, trusts can't completely solve the family tension that often arises when valuable assets need to be divvied up.

Then there's the tax question. One of the preoccupations among the investment management crowd is helping clients dodge what's known as the capital gains tax, which applies to the profits made from selling assets, like homes or stocks, that have grown more valuable over time. If your boomer parents sell a house while they're alive, they'll have to pay taxes — as much as nearly 40% — on the amount the home has appreciated since they bought it. Sure, the first $250,000 to $500,000 of those gains are tax-exempt, depending on your filing status, but given that many boomers have held onto their homes for decades, their profits may well exceed those thresholds. The IRS offers a nifty hack, though, called the "stepped-up cost basis," that allows inheritors to sell the property with a minimal tax bill. When a homeowner dies and passes along their property, the starting point used in those capital gains calculations gets bumped up to the house's current value, instead of the value at which it was purchased.

Let's take a theoretical example: Say your father bought a home back in 2010 for $400,000. He's a smart guy, picked a good neighborhood in an up-and-coming city, and did a little touching up of the home, so 15 years later the house is worth $1.1 million, which comes out to a hefty $700,000 gain. If he sold it before dying, he'd have to pay taxes on $450,000 of those gains after subtracting the aforementioned exemptions. But if he hands it down to you in his will, the starting point value of the house gets adjusted to $1.1 million — in other words, if you sell for that price, or even a little more, the government doesn't consider you to have "gained" any value since the inheritance, so your tax bill is nothing.

Joe Metz, a Bay Area real estate agent and the founder of Senior Homeowner Solutions, has built an entire second career out of helping people pull maneuvers to avoid the capital gains tax. But for people who decide to keep their deceased parents' home, he says, there's another bill that people often don't consider: property taxes. People just don't think about the ongoing costs of homeownership as much as they should. Data from the real estate analytics firm Cotality found that the median annual property tax bill has jumped 42% since 2019, to more than $3,000. The tax hits can be especially jarring in Metz's home base of California, where they typically spike once a house is passed down. In San Francisco, for instance, property taxes on a $3 million home could stretch past $30,000 a year. And again, that doesn't include insurance, a mortgage, and the random repairs that often crop up.

"So many parents want their kids to have the house, and so many kids want to inherit the parents' house — until they hear about the property tax," Metz tells me.

Laura de Vera, a 35-year-old chef in Washington, DC, found that handling an inheritance can be tough even when all the specifics have already been accounted for. When her mother died from cancer in 2020, she left behind a trust with stipulations that detailed how long de Vera's stepfather could live in her old house and how the proceeds from a sale would be divided among him, de Vera, and her sister. She also accounted for every belonging, down to the jewelry inside the place. "She was very candid and just very practical," de Vera says of her mother. De Vera's stepfather opted to sell the home quickly for a handsome gain, which was fortunate — de Vera says she was lost in a fog of grief for months, and had to devote time to all the other logistics that come with death. Years later, she's still grateful for the steps her mother took ahead of time.

"We were as prepared as you possibly can be in that situation," de Vera tells me. "There's nothing my mom could have done better, and it was still just devastatingly difficult to slog through, because of how emotional the situation is."

For some millennials, stressing over what to do with their parents' assets may turn out to be a moot point. My colleagues at BI have thoroughly reported on all the outlays that eat into inheritances: living expenses during retirement, senior care for aging parents, home repairs, and the hundreds of other day-to-day costs that put a dent in our wallets. Given the rising expenses of growing old and the locations that boomers have chosen to spend their golden years, Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, says she's skeptical of the idea that all this wealth will trickle down to the next generation.

"I think some of it is going to kind of evaporate, because the homes are not the kind of homes that younger people want," Fairweather tells me. "Maybe the insurance costs are too high because they're in climate-risky areas, or they had to take out reverse mortgages to pay for all their eldercare" — which, in the most extreme cases, could mean little or no equity left in boomers' homes.

That won't be the case for all those millions of homes scattered around the country, though. Westfall, the broker in Virginia Beach, says homeowners in his area are keen to learn how they can protect their wealth for the next generation — so much so that he's begun hosting informational sessions in which he and a lawyer field questions from the silver-haired set. As for the young'uns, Westfall tells me the best way for millennials to prepare for the future is to simply have a conversation with their parents. You don't have to frame it as "I expect something," Westfall says, but it's the cleanest way to make sure that what should be a blessing doesn't turn into a nightmare.

Atkinson, the homeowner in Austin who inherited her father's house, eventually decided to sell to a neighbor who had helped care for her father late in his life. The price totaled $200,000 — well below the going rate in the area, Atkinson admits. But she was happy to leave the house in the hands of someone who felt like family, rather than a developer intent on tearing it down and erecting a McMansion. By the time she sold, in 2020, she'd spent about a year combing through the clutter and assessing her next move. She says she was glad to have the time to contemplate her decision instead of making a harried choice in the weeks after her father's death. She's even more grateful for the conversations she's had with her mother in the aftermath.

Atkinson's mother lives in a small Texas town, in a house she owns. Ever since her ex-husband died, she's been "very open about talking about death, which I think is really nice coming from a parent," Atkinson says. Her mother has gone through her possessions in detail, explaining the sentimental value of certain objects, the worthlessness of others, and her hopes for what will become of them after she dies. And, of course, she has a will.

"My dad had never really talked about dying and what happens after the fact," Atkinson tells me. "I think having that open communication with my parent will at least make the burden of what happens afterward easier."

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

• Gen Z and millennials are delaying homebuying, and more older adults are renting.
• High home prices and maintenance costs are making renting more appealing than buying for many.
• Wealthy people are also choosing the flexibility and amenities that come with renting.

Gen Zers and millennials are postponing buying their first home, a growing number of older people are renting, and tenants are staying in their rentals for longer. This adds up to a record-high number of renters and an increasing share of those renters in older generations.

"Renting today isn't just for young adults starting out," said Nadia Evangelou, a senior economist for the National Association of Realtors. "It's actually a much more mixed picture. Over the past decade, we have seen more older millennials and Gen Xers staying in rentals longer, and even some boomers, for example, opting to rent later in life."

The overall number of renters has grown over the last several years. There were 45.6 million renter-occupied housing units in the US in 2023, up from 39.7 million in 2010, based on the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

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 these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected].

The US is also seeing an uptick in older tenants. An Urban Institute projection found that the share of people 65 and older who rent their homes will grow from 22% in 2020 to 27% in 2040 — an additional 5.5 million renting households. Older Black renters will see the biggest jump, doubling in number between 2020 and 2040.

A smaller share of US renter-occupied housing units were headed by people under 35 years old in 2023 than in 2010. Meanwhile, the share of rental households headed by someone 65 or older grew over that period.

Renters are staying in their homes longer as well, per a Redfin analysis of Census Bureau data.

"Renting is becoming less of a short-term stop and more of a long-term reality for many households," Evangelou said.

Renting could be a smart financial move

The main reason people are renting for longer: the surging cost of homeownership. Home prices have soared across the country amid a housing shortage. At the same time, property taxes, home insurance, and home repair and maintenance costs are on the rise.

All of that has made renting a better deal than buying in many places — a reversal of the historic norm. Indeed, homebuyers purchasing starter homes in 50 major cities in 2024 spent over $1,000 more on housing costs each month than tenants do.

To be sure, many renters are struggling, too. Tenants' incomes aren't keeping up with rising housing costs, and a rising share of renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

Some Americans are renting for longer by choice. Rich renters are on the rise. Many millionaire millennials and boomers with healthy savings, who could afford to buy a home, are opting instead to rent. They like the flexibility of a lease, the convenience of having a landlord handle home maintenance, and the amenities luxury rentals offer, like in-building doggy day care, dry cleaning, and yoga classes.

"I think of renting as paying for a service, and liken it to a hotel," start-up founder Tori Dunlap, a 30-year-old multimillionaire, told BI last year. "Renting is flexible, and I don't have to worry about things that homeowners worry about, like committing to a particular place or neighborhood or dealing with a burst pipe."

Some of these affluent renters opt instead to keep their money in the market or other more flexible, higher-return investments.

"People are reevaluating whether or not they want their homes to be their asset wealth-builder," Doug Ressler, an analyst at Yardi Matrix, part of the property-management software firm Yardi, said. He added that higher-income tenants "want to have the freedom and mobility of time, and they don't want to be saddled with the things that a house brings with it."

Some financial advisors are also challenging the conventional wisdom that buying a home is a smarter financial decision than renting.

"You've been lied to about buying property," Ramit Sethi, a popular financial advisor and star of the Netflix show "How to get rich," said in a 2023 video titled "Why I Don't Own a House as a Multi-Millionaire."

Sethi recommends that those who buy a home take into account the "phantom" costs of maintenance, repairs, insurance, and buying and selling fees, and urges them to maintain diverse investments.

• When Preeti Ladwa was job-hunting, she woke up at 5 a.m. to apply for roles.
• She also focused on roles that had been posted within the last 24 hours.
• She believes those strategies helped her land interviews and a job offer.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Preeti Ladwa, a 30-year-old platform manager who lives in New Jersey. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I graduated with a master's in information systems in May 2023, and spent the rest of the year applying to dozens of jobs. After about 30 interviews, I still hadn't received an offer.

In January 2024, I decided to try something different: I began waking up at 5 a.m. every weekday, and after getting some coffee and taking my dog for a walk, I applied to jobs from about 6 a.m. to 10 or 11 a.m., focusing on roles that had been posted in the last 24 hours. I spent the rest of my days networking, attending events, and researching companies to see how my skills might align with their work.

This strategy worked wonders for me. From January to May, after I became more selective in my job search, I submitted seven applications and landed three interviews. On one occasion, I applied for a job at around 7 a.m. and got an interview request two hours later. The role I ultimately landed — a technical projects manager position at the American Association for Cancer Research — was one I applied for during my usual morning window. I believe my strategy didn't just improve my visibility — it helped me get hired.

I accepted the offer in May, and about four months later, I was promoted to platform manager, with my salary increasing into the six-figure range.

Applying early helped me get noticed by recruiters

My job search strategy was partly an experiment, but it was also shaped by conversations I had with recruiters.

I learned that timing can play a big role in whether your application gets seen. When a job posting attracts a lot of applicants, hiring teams may review the first batch of submissions and pause to evaluate those before looking at newer ones. If they find strong candidates early, they might not go back. That's why I decided to start applying to jobs soon after they were posted.

But I decided to take it a step further. I figured that if recruiters start reviewing applications around 8 or 9 a.m. when they log on for the day, then applying early in the morning could help me land at the top of the applicant list — right where they might be looking first. I didn't want my résumé to get buried under hundreds of others, so I started waking up early to apply to the newest job postings.

I focused on roles that had been posted within the past 24 hours, whether they went up that morning or the night before, but always applied during my 6 to 11 a.m. window. The only exception was if I had a strong referral, in which case I'd sometimes apply even if the posting was older.

Visa needs shaped the employers I chased

I first started exploring job opportunities in January 2023 while I was finishing up my master's degree at Pace University. However, most companies I interviewed with said they needed someone who could start immediately.

This was a problem for me because I had moved to the US from India in 2021, and like many international students, couldn't begin working full time until I received my employment authorization. Once I received my authorization in July, I began applying more seriously.

As my search continued, I realized I needed to be highly strategic. The large tech companies and startups I applied to were subject to the H-1B visa lottery, and many had limited sponsorship opportunities for candidates who required a visa. However, I learned that some nonprofit organizations — including some universities and research institutions — are H-1B cap exempt, which means they can sponsor international applicants at any time of year without going through the lottery.

That was a game changer. I had overlooked nonprofits at first, but I soon realized they had real IT needs and could have far less competition than other tech roles. I noticed some nonprofit job postings had fewer than 30 applicants on LinkedIn — compared to hundreds for similar roles in the private sector — which made me feel like I had a better shot. So I decided to focus on nonprofit opportunities.

Cover letters could be more helpful than referrals

In addition to waking up early to apply, I only applied for roles where I met at least 80% of the qualifications listed in the posting. I used the same résumé for every application, which was about a page and a half long.

While I pursued employee referrals early in my search, they didn't lead to interviews unless my experience was a strong match. What I think made a bigger difference was submitting a cover letter. I was also volunteering at a nonprofit during my search, and I made sure to leverage that experience in my applications. It helped me show that I understood the space and was already contributing in a meaningful way.

I didn't have any income during my job search. I had saved money from my on-campus job, and my fiancé — who had started working — supported me and our dog. I'm so grateful for that support.

After months of experimenting, refining my approach, and waking up early, I finally found a strategy that worked.

• Legora cleans up $80 million in new funding round led by General Catalyst and Iconiq.
• The legal-tech platform, valued at $675 million, aids lawyers with legal research and drafting.
• Legora's funding highlights a trend in legal-tech investments, challenging rivals like Harvey.

General Catalyst and Iconiq Growth are co-leading an $80 million funding round into Legora, a startup that makes software to help bogged-down lawyers speed up legal research and drafting.

The new funding for the New York, London, and Stockholm-based Legora will value the company at $675 million, following last year's $35 million Series A. Existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Benchmark, and Y Combinator increased their stakes in this Series B round.

In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, Legora CEO Max Junestrand said the company wasn't actively seeking funding, but still, the offers flooded in. "I don't think it's a secret that things have been really working," Junestrand said.

When Seth Pierrepont heard whispers of Legora's fundraise, he boarded a flight to Stockholm. The Iconiq investor had done dozens of calls with law firms about the tools changing the way their attorneys work. The Legora name kept coming up.

"What they're looking for now is a partner," Pierrepont said, "someone that they know will build the features they ask for and will respond quickly to the questions they have. And I think that is the gap that Legora has stepped into."

Junestrand declined to provide revenue or growth figures, but said the company's revenue growth is "extremely positive." It has 250 clients in 20 markets, including big-league law firms like Cleary Gottlieb, Goodwin, Bird & Bird, and Mannheimer Swartling, Sweden's largest law firm.

Legora builds chatbots and agents — software that can perform basic tasks on their own — for things like redlining a contract, drafting, or filling in a checklist for a transaction. In recent months, it's added a Microsoft Word add-in and other features that large law firms demand.

Legora's closest analog is legal-tech heavyweight Harvey. The company works closely with major law firms to craft custom software, offering the agility of a startup with the tailored approach of a high-end consulting firm. Its annual recurring revenue surpassed $70 million in April, according to a spokesperson.

Legora's funding is the latest in a string of high-profile legal-tech investments, following companies like Harvey and Supio. General Catalyst, in particular, has been building a strong portfolio of startups reshaping the delivery of legal services. In February, it led a $105 million initial round for Eudia, a platform designed for Fortune 500 legal teams.

Mary O'Carroll, Goodwin's chief operating officer, said the firm piloted many tools before signing up with Legora. On the surface, some of the products seem quite similar, she said. But Legora edged out its competition with a clean, easy-to-use interface and a feature called tabular review, which lets users search thousands of files for exactly the information they need all at once.

Legora also stood out for its approach to empowering lawyers. The company meets regularly with firm leaders to tightly tailor the product to their needs.

"We feel like we're not just adopting the technology," O'Carroll told BI, "we're co-creating with them."

The new funding gives Legora fresh firepower to grow its team and chip away at Harvey's dominance. In addition, the company announced that General Catalyst's Jeannette zu Fürstenberg and Iconiq's Pierrepont have joined its board.

Investors are betting on the team just as much as the tech to drive growth. Jack Altman, an investor through his venture firm Alt Capital, described Junestrand as an "ambitious, gritty" European founder with a Silicon Valley ethos. Gradient's Darian Shirazi, who wrote an angel check into Legora, praised Junestrand's customer obsession, which he says is matched only by his focus on results.

With a team of around 100 employees, Legora is proving that smaller doesn't mean slower, and that being second to market doesn't mean it's out of the race.

Have a tip? Contact the reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at @MeliaRussell.01. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Mortgage rates and home prices have been prohibitively high for prospective buyers recently.
• It's unlikely that rates will come down in the near future, experts say.
• Here's why some homebuyers are sick of waiting and jumping into the market anyway.

Homebuyers in today's market are facing a tough question: buy a house now, or wait until mortgage rates and prices maybe come down?

If you buy now, you can start putting money into owning what, for most people, is their biggest asset, but you could be stuck paying a high monthly mortgage rate. On the other hand, staying on the sidelines means you could get a potentially lower rate later on at the risk of missing out on home price appreciation.

To make matters even more complicated, the threat of a recession is making it harder to make a financial decision as drastic as buying a house.

However, some homebuyers are sick of waiting for rates to come down or for the economic picture to clear up. Here's why they're ready to jump in headfirst.

Building up wealth

Aspiring homebuyers have watched prices skyrocket in recent years, and many aren't keen on missing out on future gains. These homebuyers are of the mindset that the most important thing is to simply buy in early and build up home equity, similar to the stock market mantra of "time in the market is better than timing the market."

To Bria Scott-Fleming, buying a house was one of her top priorities.

"I've been renting since I was 23, and I'm 32 now. I thought about how much money I've given away to landlords or apartment complexes. It's so much money that I spent without building any type of equity," Scott-Fleming told BI.

Scott-Fleming, a real-estate agent in the DC metro area, closed on a house earlier this month. She's also seeing similar sentiment from her clients, especially with rent prices climbing.

"People are still buying, people are still contacting me and saying they're interested," Scott-Fleming said. "Some people are intimidated by process, but the rents in DC are high, too."

Mortgage rates aren't coming down

Many homeowners aren't holding on to the hope of lower mortgage rates, especially not the sub-3% levels during the pandemic. It's unlikely the Federal Reserve will cut rates anytime soon, and mortgage rates are actually creeping up in response to Moody's downgrade of the US credit rating last week. On Monday, the average 30-year fixed rate crossed above 7% for the first time since early April.

"People have been saying mortgage rates are going to drop for the last three years, but they haven't yet," Oscar Martinez, who works at a plastic refinery in Texas, told BI. "I don't think they're going to drop anytime soon."

After living at home and saving up enough money, the 23-year-old Martinez recently took the plunge and bought a house in Texas last month, securing a 6.5% interest rate. From his perspective, it would be nice if interest rates came down — in which case he would refinance — but Martinez isn't counting on that happening. He's happy with his decision to buy and has plans to renovate the house to increase its property value.

"My opinion is that if you have the money, do it now," Martinez said of buying a house.

Lemount Griffin, a 36-year-old logistics manager, is in the market for a house in the greater Seattle area. He's not waiting for rates to drop before buying, either.

"I'm looking to buy pretty much whenever I can," Griffin said. "I'm not going to hold out for a certain rate and wait on the Fed to cut because they're probably not going to do it until September or something."

Griffin's strategy is to buy mortgage points — meaning that he pays an upfront fee to the lender in exchange for a lower interest rate on the loan. And similar to Martinez, Griffin will also take advantage of an opportunity to refinance down the road, should one arise.

Lower rates aren't necessarily a good thing

Economic uncertainty can turn away potential buyers, but for Griffin, it's actually another reason to buy a house sooner rather than later.

"I do want to buy as soon as possible because I think it's possible that Trump is going to replace Powell with somebody crazy, and his replacement will drive up inflation and housing prices," Griffin said, referring to Powell's term as Fed chair ending in May 2026.

According to Chen Zhao, Redfin's economics research lead, if the president successfully pushes the Fed to cut rates, higher inflation and mortgage rates are likely outcomes. If bond investors perceive a threat to the Fed's independence, they'll anticipate a higher risk of inflation in the future and sell off bonds, sending long-end rates higher.

For that reason, Griffin thinks the housing market could get even more expensive, which is why he wants to buy now. "I feel like it should be done before 2026," Griffin said of buying a house.

Fed independence aside, there's also a concern that lower rates will disrupt supply and demand dynamics in a housing market with low inventory. Martinez is concerned that lower rates will send demand spiking as eager homebuyers snatch up homes, bidding up prices.

"If the interest rates drop, then I feel like the price of houses will go up," he said.

• Elon Musk told investors he plans to spend more time on Tesla than DOGE.
• But Musk is not saying goodbye to Washington just yet.
• Musk said he will be at the White House "every few weeks."

Elon Musk is scaling back his involvement with the White House DOGE office, but he's not saying goodbye to Washington yet.

Musk was speaking to CNBC's David Faber in an interview on Tuesday when he was asked if he would miss being in the White House.

"My rough plan on the White House is to be there for a couple days every few weeks. And to be helpful where I can be helpful," Musk told Faber.

Musk told investors in an earnings call for Tesla last month that "the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency" was done, and he would focus more on the car company.

Investors have repeatedly asked Musk to spend more time on Tesla instead of DOGE, after Musk's work at the cost-cutting outfit sparked protests and boycotts against the company.

Tesla has seen declining sales in European markets while facing increased competition from Chinese automakers like BYD. Tesla's stock is down nearly 15% this year.

Last month, President Donald Trump said he expects Musk to leave his administration "in a few months." Trump later told reporters in a Cabinet meeting at the White House that he doesn't really need Musk in his administration.

"Elon has done a fantastic job. Look, he's sitting here, and I don't care. I don't need Elon for anything other than I happen to like him," Trump said on April 10.

In a separate interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, Musk said he will reduce his political spending. In last year's elections, Musk spent at least $277 million supporting Trump and other GOP candidates.

"In terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future," Musk told Bloomberg. "I think I've done enough."

Representatives for Musk at Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• A key rule at Spotify's weekly executive meeting: Do not say "We'll take that offline."
• "You're not allowed to say the word 'offline' or 'later' — because that person is in the room," said the co-president.
• Executives aren't allowed to bring direct reports, either.

Every Tuesday afternoon, Spotify's top brass — all of its vice presidents — pile into a room for a standing three-hour meeting with a key rule.

"You're not allowed to say the word 'offline' or 'later' — because that person is in the room," said Gustav Söderström, Spotify's co-president, on an episode of the "Invest Like The Best" podcast published Tuesday.

At other companies, when conversations get uncomfortable or someone hasn't delivered, people tend to punt the issue. But that's not Spotify's ethos, Söderström, who also leads tech and product, said.

Instead of circling back, people are expected to hash things out.

"It's real-time resolution — very simple in theory but incredibly powerful in practice. Most companies don't do it," he said.

Another rule: No bringing direct reports. Everyone in the room is expected to know the discussion's details.

"I'm trying to literally force the VPs to solve it themselves because I want them to be in the details. So, you're not allowed to bring anyone else in to explain your thing," Söderström said.

"You have to be on top of it enough to explain it to yourself," he added.

Without direct reports coming and going, the same group shows up each week. Over time, it becomes a tight-knit, high-trust team, Söderström said.

Spotify and Söderström did not respond to a request for comment.

Spotify's 'bets' process

The marathon Tuesday sessions are part of what Spotify calls its "bets" process — a structured way of deciding what the company builds next.

Every six months, each VP pitches a bet.

"It's very much like a startup process," Söderström said. "You don't get to use the fact that Gustav or Alex or Daniel may like you. This is like a VC meeting, you have to convince us."

After the pitches, the leaders "stack rank" the 30 to 50 pitches. Teams then allocate resources based on that list and execute what makes the cut over the next six months.

"It's a good mix of bottom-up innovation," Söderström said. Instead of relying on the company's top executives, Spotify brings in ideas from across its leadership and "all the layers below."

"You're going to be much better at delivering something if you were the one who said, 'I can do this,' than if your boss said you can do this," Söderström said.

The company's stock is up nearly 116% in the last year.

• Elon Musk gave media interviews to Bloomberg and CNBC on Tuesday.
• Musk has faced calls from investors to spend less time on DOGE and focus on Tesla.
• Musk reaffirmed his commitment to Tesla during his media blitz.

In a media blitz on Tuesday, Elon Musk spoke about his commitment to Tesla, his political spending, and the coming launch of Tesla's robotaxi service in Austin.

For months, the Tesla CEO has been deeply involved with the White House's DOGE office. During that time, the company has faced protests and seen its stock slide. In March, he said his companies are suffering because of his government work.

In a Tesla earnings call last month, Musk said he'll scale down his involvement with DOGE to spend more time on Tesla.

That message was on full display on Tuesday, after Musk hammered home his commitment to Tesla in his interviews with Bloomberg and CNBC.

Here are five major takeaways from Musk's media appearances on Tuesday. Representatives for Musk at Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

1. Musk said he will stay on as Tesla's CEO for the next five years

Musk's media day began with a video interview with Bloomberg's Mishal Husain at the Qatar Economic Forum. Husain asked if Musk will still be Tesla's CEO in five years.

"Yes," Musk replied.

"No doubt about that at all?" Husain continued.

"Well, no, I'd die," Musk said. "Let me see if I'm dead."

Musk has faced calls from investors to pay more attention to Tesla after his work at DOGE sparked protests and boycotts. The company has struggled with heightened competition from Chinese automakers like BYD and falling sales numbers in Europe.

"Lets call it like it is: Tesla is going through a crisis and there is one person who can fix it....Musk," Wedbush Securities analyst and Tesla bull Dan Ives wrote in a memo in March.

"If you agree or disagree with DOGE it misses the point that by Musk spending 110% of his time with DOGE (and not as Tesla CEO) since President Trump got back into the White House this has essentially turned Tesla into a political symbol....and this is a bad thing," Ives added in his note.

2. Musk said he's 'done enough' political spending

In the interview with Husain, Musk said he will cut down on his political spending. He did not say if the decision was due to the backlash he's faced for it.

"In terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future," Musk told Husain. "I think I've done enough."

He added that he'll start contributing to political spending again if he sees a reason to do so.

Musk spent at least $277 million backing President Donald Trump and other GOP candidates in last year's elections, making him one of Trump's biggest supporters.

Last month, Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House that he doesn't really need Musk in his administration.

"Elon has done a fantastic job. Look, he's sitting here, and I don't care. I don't need Elon for anything other than I happen to like him," Trump said on April 10.

3. Musk said Tesla robotaxis will be geo-fenced and avoid intersections

Musk's media blitz continued with a two-part interview with CNBC's David Faber during which the topic of Tesla's robotaxis came up.

Earlier this month, BI conducted a test drive of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised software. During the test, Tesla's FSD ran a red light at an intersection in San Francisco.

During Tuesday's interview, Faber asked Musk about BI's reporting on the incident.

In response, Musk said Tesla's robotaxis will be geo-fenced to certain parts of Austin and avoid intersections the company deems unsafe when the service launches next month.

"When we deploy the cars in Austin, we are actually going to deploy it not to the entire Austin region but only to the parts of Austin we consider to be the safest. So we will geo-fence it," Musk told Faber.

"It's not going to take intersections unless we are highly confident it's going to do well with that intersection. Or it will just take a route around that intersection," Musk added.

Musk announced Tesla's robotaxi during a launch event in October. On Tuesday, he told CNBC he expects to expand Tesla's robotaxi fleet in Austin to 1,000 vehicles "within a few months" before rolling out the service to other cities like San Francisco and San Antonio.

4. Musk said there's no need for Tesla to buy Uber

Musk told CNBC he didn't see a need for Tesla to buy Uber when Tesla can rely on its own fleet of autonomous vehicles.

"There's no need because we have a large number of cars. We have millions of cars that will be able to operate autonomously," Musk told Faber.

"And I should say that it's a combination of a Tesla-owned fleet and also enabling Tesla owners to be able to add or subtract their car to the fleet, so that existing Tesla owners will be able to earn money by adding their car to the fleet for autonomous use," Musk added.

In February, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he would prefer not to compete with Musk and Tesla.

"Yeah, listen, no one wants to compete against Tesla or Elon, if you can help it," Khosrowshahi said in an interview with technology and media analyst Ben Thompson for his newsletter, Stratechery.

Khosrowshahi told Thompson it would be beneficial for Tesla to offer rides on Uber.

"Then, that Tesla that is both on Uber, and by the way, they could be both on Uber and the network, that is going to create much, much more revenue," Khosrowshahi said.

"Ultimately, we're hoping that my charm and the economic argument gets Tesla to work with us as well. If they want a direct channel, no problem," Khosrowshahi said.

5. Musk said he's not ruling out a merger between Tesla and xAI

When asked if a merger between Tesla and xAI was on the cards, Musk said "anything is possible," though there are "no plans to do so."

"It's not out of the question, but obviously it would require Tesla shareholder support," Musk told Faber.

Musk started xAI, his AI company, in 2023. Musk cofounded OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015 but left OpenAI's board in 2018.

In March, xAI acquired X, formerly Twitter, in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion. Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022.

Musk said in a livestream in January that xAI's chatbot, Grok, will be included in Tesla's vehicles but did not give a specific launch date.

"Grok in Tesla's is coming soon. So you will just be able to talk to your Tesla and ask for anything," Musk said in the livestream.