I’ve been living in Finland, the world’s happiest country, for five years now. I think one of the secrets to the happiness of the Finnish people is the country’s work culture. 

Getting work here as a foreigner can be tough, but I’ve been fortunate to have two different corporate jobs in Finland. One job was at a start-up software company with under 50 employees, and the other was at a manufacturing company with over 500 employees. 

I quickly found that their approach to things like vacation time, parental leave and benefits differed from the US. There are a lot of aspects of work life here that I appreciate, but there was a lot that surprised me and took some time to adjust to. 

In the last year, I took what I learned, launched my own marketing firm and started working for myself. These are a few things that stand out to me about corporate life in Finland:

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Many workplaces are flexible and allow employees to choose a schedule that fits their lifestyle.

In Finland, typical office hours go from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. One small culture shock I experienced early on is that when workdays often start so early, some people start going to lunch around 11 a.m. Another surprise was how dark it is during the winter when you arrive and when you leave the office.

For many corporate jobs, the work week is 37.5 hours. Overtime hours are not paid in salary, but in corresponding time off. So, if you work a lot one week, it’s normal to do less the next week or take more vacation days. 

If you have an appointment or some obligations for your children during the work day, that can be considered paid time off. In Finland, you’ll often get paid double if you work on Sundays.

It feels like, in Finland, managers and bosses respect employees’ time off. If it’s after 4 p.m., people do not expect their colleagues to respond to an email or answer their work phone. The flexible hours are meant to allow people to have more time in the evenings for hobbies, activities and picking up kids from school.

The amount of paid vacation time you accumulate working in Finland feels like a treasure, coming from the U.S. 

Some people, depending on the industry and their tenure at their job, can have up to 38 paid vacation days a year. For every month you work, you accumulate two and half paid vacation days.

There’s a law in Finland that you have to take two consecutive weeks of vacation in the summer and then you can use the rest of your vacation as you please. I love how it feels like they essentially force you to take a vacation in Finland. During the summer, you actually receive a 50% bonus for the vacation days you do take off.

The whole month of July is basically a ghost town in Finnish corporate offices. You’ll receive many out of office automatic email responses. Generally, important matters are postponed until August at the earliest. 

I don’t have children yet, but seeing how the parental leave worked in practice for my colleagues in several different Finnish offices has made me look forward to being a working parent here.

For example, both parents are offered paid leave and they can decide when to use them in different amounts. Some companies pay full salaries for the first few months of parental leave, some pay half; it depends on the company. But it is typically clearly stated in the contract.

If your kid is sick and you need to leave work to care for them, that is not just accepted but encouraged. In many cases, this can be considered a sick day for the parent as well and can be paid leave.

At both of my previous corporate jobs, we had great health and leisure benefits. One of my favorite things was an app called Epassi where we had a yearly allowance to embrace different sports, culture, or wellness activities that were covered by work. 

With my benefits, I’ve bought a gym membership, passes to our local ski resort, movie tickets and massages. These types of benefits are really nice because you may not think of doing these things for yourself as often as you should.

With access to Finland’s healthcare system, I was able to visit a therapist, dentist and physical therapist for free when needed.

At one of my work places, we had a “recovery room” where an employee could book a session once a month as part of their working time to relax and unwind, with different wellness tools, like a therapeutic sonic bed or lymphatic boots.

This was one thing that was hard for me to get used to at first. Many people are happy with their positions and easily stay in the same role for years. 

I think this goes back to the Finnish philosophy of being satisfied with what you have, because it is enough. However, to be completely frank, I do crave growth and achievements. In Finnish corporate settings, there have been times when I felt like I had to reframe or tamp down my ambition. 

When I spoke with Finnish friends and family for advice about asking for a promotion, many of them were actually a bit shocked. They told me that people don’t typically ask for a promotion. Instead, they will wait until there’s a new opening at their company and apply then. 

One of the reasons why I work for myself now is because I wanted to explore what was possible for my ambition without any limitations or judgment. 

In Finland, the lack of hierarchy in corporate settings is an extension of the overall approach people take to it throughout the country. 

There’s a national joke that you could be casually sitting next to the President of Finland at a hockey game. The same is true in the workplace. No one is really all that special.

In some companies, you can have a coffee chat with the CEO of the company quite informally, just like you would with any team member. Whether you’re an intern or manager, everyone is respected and addressed by their first name. It’s rare to put much emphasis on job titles here.

Overall, I love the corporate culture in Finland. I feel like I’m not just defined by what I do at work, and like I have figured out a true sense of balance.

Jade Ventoniemi is an American who has called Finland home for the last five years. She is a former NCAA basketball player, a content creator and the founder of a marketing firm called Bright Soul Oy. Jade lives in Lahti, Finland, with her husband and their mini poodle. In her free time, she loves to be outdoors, and jumps at the chance to swim in a frozen lake or explore a local forest. You can follow her journey and life in Finland on Instagram or TikTok.

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Twice a week, Elizabeth Morosani gets up before 7 a.m., puts on her sun sleeves and spends the next three hours atop a John Deere lawn mower.

Her side hustle requires it: She’s converted 11 acres of her land, split between three properties around Asheville, North Carolina, into private dog parks. She rents out the spaces to local pet owners on an Airbnb-style platform called Sniffspot.

Many Sniffspot hosts rent out their backyards. Morosani rents out parts of her 108-acre farm, where she lives and makes a majority of her personal income boarding horses. She has four dogs, and initially launched her side hustle just to connect with other nearby pet owners in November 2020, she says.

Then, the side hustle started bringing in money: a monthly average of $7,100 in revenue for the first half of 2024, including $8,400 in May alone. Roughly half of those earnings are profit, Morosani says. Sniffspot takes nearly a quarter in commissions and fees, and the remainder goes toward maintaining her dog parks.

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Morosani, who dedicates six to eight hours per week to the platform, has used her profits to hire an assistant, buy her $6,500 lawn mower and pay for supplies for additional dogs she fosters — up to 14 at a time, she says.

“I didn’t think it’d be this popular, this successful,” Morosani, 50, tells CNBC Make It. “It’s allowed me to bank some money, [and to] be more aggressive with helping my local humane societies … If you have space and the ability to give a private experience to individual dog owners, there’s definitely room for everyone to do this.”

Here’s how she built and maintains her side hustle, and how she wants to grow it next.

Morosani’s professional life largely revolves around her farm, where she boards horses and occasionally sells goats. She’s also a dressage technical delegate — essentially a horse show referee, she says — for the United States Equestrian Federation.

She and her husband, a dentist, bought 40 acres of the farm in 2014, and the remaining 68 in 2019. They didn’t use most of their land, and Morosani wanted to change that. An Asheville native, she knew the city’s growing number of apartment complexes was outpacing its dog parks.

She learned about Sniffspot from a segment on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” in 2020, she says. Today, her most popular rental location is a four-acre plot in Fletcher, North Carolina, that her father leased to her in late 2022. It’s an old airstrip that Morosani and her husband built a fence around, and it had its first reservation within 30 minutes of opening, she says.

The plot is near a highway, which makes it accessible to people visiting Asheville from out of town, says Morosani. It’s private, flat and has a small creek running through it.

The asphalt, formerly a landing pad for farming and model planes, is now almost entirely covered with grass. You won’t find any umbrellas or mini pools there, but you’ll probably see a doggy teeter-totter and some weave poles, Morosani says.

Morosani has two rules for anyone looking to rent out their own backyards as private dog parks.

First: Skip the expensive dog toys and amenities. “I put [out] Adirondack chairs from Lowe’s, thinking people could use them to sit in the shade,” she says. Many of them ended up in ditches and a nearby creek, she says.

Second: Don’t greet the guests. “Most clients are grateful their dogs can be dogs without pressure from people or other dogs … This allows them to get out and be in nature,” she says.

Instead, Morosani checks in with her guests by messaging them on Sniffspot. She inspects her dog parks with Ring cameras after every visit, making sure guests don’t leave behind too much debris.

More dog parks mean more revenue, so Morosani is leasing three more acres of land from her father in nearby Hendersonville for a fourth space, she says. It’s funded largely by her past Sniffspot earnings, costing $18,000 and taking nearly three months to level the ground, build a fence hydroseed it, she says.

The costs and extra labor are part of her goal to help local dogs and their owners, she adds.

“When I read [positive] reviews, I almost cry,” says Morosani. “Not long ago, someone told me that [their visit would be on] their dog’s last day on Earth. [Owners] have held birthday parties and invited all their friends. Things like that just make you go, ‘Oh my god, I’m helping. I’m doing it.’”

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When Jay Chaudhry sold his first company for $70 million, he focused less on his own riches, he says — and more on how the deal could turn dozens of his employees into millionaires.

Chaudhry, 65, is known today as the billionaire founder and CEO of Zscaler, a cloud cybersecurity firm valued at roughly $28 billion, as of Wednesday afternoon. Back in 1998, he was a first-time entrepreneur selling the startup he launched with his wife Jyoti, SecureIT, to VeriSign in an all-stock deal for a huge windfall.

Nearly two years after the deal closed, as VeriSign’s stock price soared, more than 70 of SecureIT’s 80 employees “on paper, were millionaires,” Chaudhry tells CNBC Make It.

“People were going crazy in the company, because they had never thought of so much money,” he says. “A lot of them were buying new houses. They were buying new cars. I know one guy, he took six months off, rented a [mobile home] and went around the country. They could do what they wanted to do.”

Between the time of the acquisition and February 2000, VeriSign’s stock increased by more than 2,300%, closing at a high of $253 per share, helped by two stock splits and a temporary bubble for tech stocks. The bubble burst later that year, and VeriSign’s stock lost roughly 75% off that high point at the end of 2000, sinking to a low of nearly $4 in 2002.

Chaudhry recalls advice from Jim Bidzos, VeriSign’s then-chairman, on what to do with his shares: Sell some of the stock little by little “on a regular basis.” The strategy helped Chaudhry reap some benefits of VeriSign’s soaring stock before the market cratered, he says.

SecureIT employees who held onto their VeriSign stock were likely rewarded by their patience: It closed at $254 per share as recently as January 2021. The price currently sits at roughly $175 per share.

Chaudhry says he doesn’t know if or when his former employees cashed in their own shares. When he left VeriSign at the end of 1999, his former employees threw him a party — but it wasn’t until later that he fully understood the impact the decision to sell SecureIT had on those employees, he says.

“I went home that night and looked at the spreadsheet of all the [stock] options they had, and I multiplied by the stock price of VeriSign. That’s when I realized that the math was about 70 or 80 millionaires, with stock options,” Chaudhry says. “It was impressive.”

Chaudhry himself already had enough money to be happy: He and his wife had a “nice, typical middle-class house at that time, and we didn’t have any fancy cars or fancy payments,” he told Make It last week.

He credits his ability to give employees so much stock to his bootstrapping approach. Chaudhry and his wife funded SecureIT themselves, emptying their life savings of roughly $500,000, instead of taking on outside investors.

That freed up more equity in the company to distribute, which was “good, because those employees make the difference — they [were] working day and night,” he says.

The story is reminiscent of fellow billionaire Mark Cuban, who recently noted that he handed out employee bonuses after selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999. The act turned hundreds of his employees into instant millionaires, Cuban said.

Cuban has paid out bonuses to employees at every company he’s sold, starting with CompuServe’s acquisition of software firm MicroSolutions in 1990, he told Make It last month. That includes sales of his majority stakes in HDNet, now known as AXS TV, in 2019 and the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks last year, he wrote on social media platform X.

“And only HDNet had any layoffs right after the sale,” Cuban added.

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Married couple Geena and James don’t always see eye-to-eye when it comes to money. Their main issue: how to navigate a vast income disparity.

Geena, 44, brings home a little over $555,000 a year as a corporate attorney in New York. Her husband, James, 39, is a freelance musician who earns around $60,000 a year. The couple enjoys Geena’s high salary, taking numerous luxury trips throughout the year while still investing around 14% of her gross income.

“I’ve always planned to take care of everything myself if I have to, and I’m happy — I’m so grateful that I can treat us and take care of us. But I hope that one day there will be less of a discrepancy between us,” Geena told self-made millionaire and money expert Ramit Sethi on a recent episode of his “I Will Teach You to be Rich” podcast. The couple’s last names were not used. 

James said he wants to contribute more toward their lifestyle and retirement goals, but he knows he can’t match-up financially.

“Because I’m not able to contribute in the same way or in similar ways, therefore I just feel like I’m not enough,” James said on the podcast. “Doesn’t feel great.”

Sethi listened to the couple talk about their finances, lifestyle and how they both think about money. Here are three ways he said they can address their income disparity to improve their relationships with money and each other.

James is unlikely to get his income up to the same level as Geena’s. But Geena’s frustration isn’t really about the dollar figure.

While Geena gladly contributes more dollar-wise to their household needs and savings, she looks to James for tasks like shopping for home essentials, which he often neglects, they told Sethi.

“Geena is not saying she expects James to make exactly $50,000 a month,” Sethi said. “Geena wants James to be engaged with money. I can understand her paying more for things like luxury hotels, but why is she the one ordering the [laundry] detergent?”

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Steve, 42, and Taylor, 39, faced a similar dilemma when they spoke with Sethi on a different episode. Taylor earns around $144,000 a year, while Steve makes around $36,000.

Steve had been under-employed for about eight years when he and Taylor spoke with Sethi. But from Taylor’s perspective, he wasn’t taking enough proactive steps, like networking and applying to jobs.

“Taylor wants Steve to want more for himself, to become a financial partner in their relationship,” Sethi said.

Though both women approached their conversations with Sethi by saying they wanted their husbands to earn more money, further reflection revealed that for both women, it’s not really about the numbers. They both want their partners to step up, whether that’s in their own careers or with household tasks.

Part of the reason James isn’t earning more money is because he’s hesitant to raise his rates as a freelancer. This frustrates Geena, who is a go-getter who truly believes in James’s talents and abilities.

Sethi identified these mismatched views on money as another disparity causing tension in their relationship. Geena doesn’t understand why James doesn’t simply charge his customers more. James fears hiking his prices will scare off business.

“The solution is to fix your worldview of money and master your own money psychology,” Sethi said.

Geena said she was raised with a scarcity mindset that inspired her to push her career and salary as far as they could go so she would never worry about bills or buying things she wanted.

James, on the other hand, grew up as the “peacemaker” in his home. As a result, he falls into a similar mindset with his business, trying to “keep the peace” with his clients by keeping his prices low — even if that means his personal finances suffer.

Sethi said James is “playing small” by thinking he’s stuck in this financial position. Identifying the reasons behind his money mindset, then taking steps like enrolling in a course or reading a book to understand how to overcome it may help him tackle the problem.

Beyond being the breadwinners in their relationships, Geena and Taylor both also admitted to taking on mother-like roles with their husbands. They consistently remind their spouses to do tasks like shop for the home, apply to jobs or look for ways to increase their incomes, and do it themselves when when their husbands drop the ball.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m Mom. I’m planning things. I’m taking care of all the things,” Geena said. ”[James] is not in his 20s, and I want us to be more equals in this way.”

Taylor agreed. “I felt like a mom disciplining her child,” she said of trying to motivate Steve to work harder.

In both scenarios, Sethi called out the women for allowing that dynamic to continue.

Both their husbands are capable and said they’re willing to do what’s asked of them. But by letting them off the hook when they make mistakes, their wives have fostered the sense that it’s OK for things to continue in this manner, Sethi said.

Sethi recommended both Geena and Taylor set boundaries and introduce actual consequences to give their husbands a chance to prove they can and are willing to make these changes.

For example, he suggests James and Geena set a dollar amount that James should reasonably be able to contribute to their joint account each month. And if he doesn’t hit that number, he may have to skip a vacation in order to stay home and work.

Sure, Geena could afford to bail him out if he’s had a bad month and still pay for both of them to go on vacation. But neither spouse would feel good about that.

“You sticking to your guns and following through on your commitment would engender more respect than anything else,” Sethi told them.

Check out Steve and Taylor’s episode here and Geena and James’s episode here.

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Finding a new job is getting harder.  

Last month, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.1%, the first time it has crossed above 4% since 2021.

Fewer people are quitting their jobs, and recent college graduates are having a hard time breaking into the market.

Hiring might have fallen beneath its pre-pandemic levels, but there are still dozens of jobs companies are desperate to fill, according to new research from Indeed.

The job search site analyzed hundreds of thousands of listings from March 2023 to March 2024 to see which roles saw the highest increase in openings, but the lowest job seeker engagement.

“These roles are in high demand but seeing fewer clicks and applications from job seekers,” Gabrielle Davis, a career trends expert at Indeed, tells CNBC Make It. “With that said, I’d say these jobs are the most ‘slept’ on or overlooked.”

Here are 7 in-demand jobs that are “waiting for you to apply,” according to Indeed:

1. Document reviewer

Average salary: $51,883

2. Mortgage consultant

Average salary: $64,049

3. Insurance broker

Average salary: $90,293

4. Board-certified behavior analyst

Average salary: $75,158

5. Licensed realtor

Average salary: $205,609

6. Banking consultant

Average salary: $110,318

7. Tax manager

Average salary: $115,928

“In a tough real estate market with high interest rates and housing prices, we still see jobs such as mortgage broker, insurance broker and licensed realtor on the rise,” says Davis, but it’s harder to pinpoint what, exactly, is driving demand for non-real estate roles.

Several roles on the list including insurance broker, document reviewer and mortgage consultant do not require a bachelor’s degree, Indeed reports. 

For job seekers looking for flexibility, all of the roles offer hybrid or remote opportunities. 

“While the labor market can seem daunting right now, there are still numerous opportunities for job seekers and the outlook is still positive,” Davis adds. “Unemployment is still very low … this, coupled with the demand for these roles, signals a robust and relatively stable labor market.”

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