Some people send risky text messages or go sing karaoke after having a few drinks with friends. Entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban took it a few steps further, spending six figures to buy a lifetime flight pass.

It was 1990, and Cuban — age 32 at the time — had just become a millionaire by selling his software startup MicroSolutions to CompuServe for $6 million. “My buddies and I went out and just got destroyed,” he told the “Club Shay Shay” podcast last week. “They’re like, ‘What do you think you’re going to do with all this money?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t care about cars or houses, but boy, you know, I fly a lot for work.’”

Cuban didn’t know if lifetime flight passes even existed, he said, but he grabbed a phone and dialed up American Airlines anyway.

“I called them up and just slurred my words, ‘Do you guys sell lifetime passes?’” said Cuban, now 66. “I got all that information, hungover as hell, and I signed up. Initially, it was $125,000 and then I upgraded it. I forget how much I paid, but it gave me almost unlimited miles for me and somebody else for the rest of my life.”

The AAirpass, which debuted in the early 1980s, gave members unlimited first-class travel with the carrier for the rest of their lives — for a price that depended on their age at the time of purchase. In Cuban’s case, his $125,000 in 1990 would be worth roughly $300,000 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation.

In 1994, American Airlines replaced the AAirpass with a similar membership, Airpass, which offered fixed-rate flights for frequent business travelers. The airline halted new memberships and renewals in November 2022, and stopped honoring the Airpass’ unlimited travel perks in March 2024, according to its website.

In the years after buying his AAirpass, Cuban shared his flight privileges freely: “I’d be out in LA or Dallas like, ‘You want a road trip? Let’s call American Airlines.’” He eventually transferred it to his dad — and later, after his dad died, to a friend, he added.

After all, in 1999, Cuban made another impulse purchase. Newly minted as a billionaire after selling his audio streaming platform Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock, he bought a $40 million Gulfstream G5 jet. The transaction still holds a Guinness World Record for most expensive e-commerce transaction ever.

″[Buying a plane] was my all-time goal because the asset I value the most is time, and that bought me time,” Cuban told Money in 2017. “Other than that, I’ve lived in the same house for 18 years and still have the same cars.”

“Other than the plane, which is a big splurge, I’m still a slob. Not all that much has changed,” he added.

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank,” which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.

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When Kyle Stockford went a few months without selling a painting, he decided to pick up a side hustle.

It was 2021, and Stockford was a full-time abstract artist making colorful collages. Without sales, he needed another way to subsidize his living — so he turned to his brother, who’d been doing people’s yard work and helping assemble Ikea furniture through gig site Taskrabbit.

Stockford signed up to do similar gigs, making ”$16 to $18 an hour,” he says. But the real money was in helping people move: The 29-year-old now charges as much as $98 per hour on Taskrabbit to load up his Chevy Express van with other people’s belongings and transport them across the Boston area.

College move-in season is his busiest time of year: Stockford’s side hustle brought in $9,740 in August 2023 revenue alone, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. It brought in between $3,000 and $5,000 most other months, leading to a total of just over $36,600 in extra cash last year.

“I’ll be doing Taskrabbit for a while,” Stockford says. Here’s how he built his moving hustle.

Stockford bought his van in 2018, during his final year at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He wanted a vehicle that could help him transport paintings from Massachusetts to potential buyers.

After roughly a year on Taskrabbit, Stockford got “kind of antsy about the fact that I’m driving around this big van, and I’m not making any money with it,” he says. He bought straps, moving blankets, gloves and some bungee cords to prepare his vehicle, and himself, for a more intensive set of jobs.

“It wasn’t much,” he says. “Probably around $50 in supplies from [Harbor Freight Tools].”

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Stockford says he started out charging $65 per hour, and booked an early gig helping two Northeastern University students move from the school’s campus to their new apartment. The job took less than two hours, and he made about $130, he says.

“I was struggling, because it was just me,” says Stockford.

Focusing on smaller tasks — like one-bedrooms or Facebook Marketplace pickups — helped him book more jobs per day. He learned to put a lot of effort into customer service, too.

“I started to realize how stressful moving can be for people,” he says. He’d tell them, “Don’t worry, this will be over in about two hours.”

Stockford’s repertoire-building work in 2022 paid off last year. “2023 was insane,” he says. “I worked pretty much every day in August” and about halfway through September.

He felt himself improving at the gig, he adds. If he was working with college kids, for example, he’d know to ask for keys or codes to get in and out of dorm rooms. He’d bring door stoppers and a roof rack for mattresses, park as close as he could and, depending on the task, bring a second Tasker in to help.

“You know what to expect after a little while,” says Stockford. “It’s kind of the same group of furniture and the same couple trash bags of clothes.”

Stockford lives on the South Shore of Massachusetts, so traffic getting in and out of Boston can be tough — and the gigs themselves can be exhausting. “A lot of third floor walk-ups,” he says.

But despite the side hustle’s seasonality, it’s successful enough for Stockford to eschew full-time work. He balances 10 to 20 hours of moving per week with a part-time job as an art handler and preparator at the McMullen Museum of Art in Boston College.

The combination of gigs gives him time to keep working on his own art, too. “I can work three weeks out of the year, make a bunch of money and then just shut it off,” says Stockford.

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With homes becoming increasingly unaffordable, more buyers are using an increasingly popular strategy to lower their mortgage rate.

Buying points — also referred to as “discount points” or “buying down the rate” — involves paying extra to your lender at closing to reduce the interest rate on a mortgage. That reduced rate results in smaller monthly payments and long-term interest savings over the life of the loan.

Typically, paying a fee worth 1% of your loan amount, known as a point, reduces your interest rate by around 0.25%.

The practice has become more common as rates have climbed, with 49% of buyers choosing to pay down the rate in 2023, according to online broker Zillow’s most recent data. That’s nearly double the 27% of people who reported using the strategy in 2019.

“Buying points is extremely popular today, as borrowers try to get rates closer to the historic lows of the pandemic,” says Aaron Gordon, branch manager at Guild Mortgage. However, he says that the decision is a “personal one” since “what makes sense for one borrower doesn’t necessarily make sense for another.”

Buying points is typically better suited for long-term homeowners because it can take several years — usually five to seven — to break even on the upfront cost savings on monthly mortgage payments. 

One immediate benefit: the cost of the points is tax deductible as prepaid mortgage interest (as long as you itemize deductions and the home is your primary residence).

However, for some buyers, putting extra money toward the down payment can be a smarter option than buying points. A larger down payment reduces the total loan amount, which also has the effect of lowering monthly payments. Plus, putting down at least 20% helps you avoid private mortgage insurance (PMI), which can be more than $100 month on a $300,000 loan, although it varies by credit score and the size of the down payment.

Ultimately, whether a larger down payment or buying points will actually lower your monthly payments depends on your specific loan terms.

While buying points lowers your interest rate, the upfront cost might not be worth it if you plan to refinance before you reach the break-even point. That’s because refinancing is expensive, typically ranging from 2% to 6% of the loan amount, per LendingTree estimates.

With mortgage rates expected to drop from around 6.1% to roughly 5.5% in 2025, refinancing or waiting out the market could provide a more cost-effective way to secure a lower rate without paying upfront for points. That way, you’d avoid paying extra out of pocket for twice.

Another option to consider is a temporary buydown, which reduces the mortgage rate by about 1 to 3 percentage points, but only in the first few years of the loan. Temporary buydowns are typically cheaper compared to buying points for a permanent rate reduction, making it easier to break even within two or three years.

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The most common version is the 2-1 buydown, which usually costs 1% to 2% of the loan amount. In this arrangement, the interest rate drops by 2 percentage points in the first year, 1 point in the second, and then returns to the full rate in the third year for the remainder of the loan.

“I’ve had quite a few clients buying down their near-term rates using products like 3-2-1 buydown programs,” says Robert Washington, a broker at Savvy Buyers Realty. “They’ve done this with the assumption that they will refinance once rates are back down in the 5% to 6% range.”

Whatever you choose — whether it’s buying points, a temporary buydown or putting more money toward a down payment — it’s worth consulting with a mortgage broker to evaluate the best options for your financial situation. Rate buydown programs and loan terms vary, so professional advice will ensure you’re making the most cost-effective decision.

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Love can be measured in many ways. For Mark Cuban, it was all about a simple 100% USDA beef patty slider.

When Cuban married his wife, Tiffany Stewart, he’d been a billionaire for roughly three years. He had one question for her before they tied the knot, he told the “Club Shay Shay” podcast last week: Would she go to White Castle with him?

“We’re going to White Castle, and if you really love me, you’ll eat a White Castle burger,” said Cuban, 66. “And she did.”

The couple met in 1997, seven years after Cuban sold his software startup MicroSolutions to CompuServe for $6 million. He became a billionaire in 1999, selling his second company Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in an all-stock deal.

But Cuban wasn’t always rich: He grew up in Pittsburgh in a working-class family, where his dad made a maximum of $40,000 a year upholstering cars. His mom worked “odd jobs” to make ends meet, he said. He attended Indiana University, where White Castles were “everywhere,” he added.

Sharing that piece of his early life with Stewart probably built trust between the couple, says Robert Wickham, a relationships expert and associate professor of psychological sciences at Northern Arizona University.

Asking your partner if they’ll go to White Castle with you isn’t a one-way ticket to true love — anyone could agree to eat a burger — but their relationship likely benefited from Stewart’s reaction, Wickham says.

″[Cuban is] thinking, ‘OK, this person is in it for me. She wants to know me more,’” Wickham tells CNBC Make It. “She’s in it for the right reasons.”

Twenty-two years and three children later, Cuban and Stewart are still married.

In the early stages of a romantic relationship, partners look for signs of authenticity to gauge each other’s trustworthiness says Wickham. It’s a precursor to a more satisfying, intimate relationship, his research shows.

“Openness in a relationship, right from the get-go, tends to facilitate the authentic development of intimacy, trust and all the good things that are a part of fulfilling relationships,” Wickham says.

If you frame a question like Cuban’s as a test, you might not get very far: “Testing” your partner isn’t exactly the epitome of openness or vulnerability.

But if you share an unexpected or important part of your life with someone you care about, and they reciprocate, you might be on the right track. The more open and vulnerable you are with your partner, the more you can foster a positive cycle of trust and intimacy, says Wickham.

“It feeds into this virtuous cycle where there’s nothing hidden, there’s nothing covert about your motives or about what’s going on, everything’s on the table,” he says.

The advice extends beyond romantic relationships: Building trust by being yourself can lead to more successful friendships and business relationships, says Wickham. If your manager trusts you, they might give you important tasks more freely, for example.

“Much of what goes on is built on trust and relationships,” Wickham says. “Authenticity is generally a good thing.”

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank,” which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.

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Growing up in Nara, Japan, one food that was a constant in my home was tofu. It’s truly been a lifelong staple. 

When I was a baby, once I could eat solids, my mom commonly prepared two dishes for me — one was a mix of tofu, rice porridge, sweet potato, kabocha (squash), and nori (seaweed) paste, and the other was miso soup with rice porridge.

I carried on that culinary tradition with my two kids when they were small. I never bought any ultra-processed baby food; instead I opted for tofu. It saved me time, money and stress, and it was a way for us to connect with our roots while living in the U.S.

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When we arrived here in 1994, tofu was harder to come by. If I could only find shelf-stabilized packaged versions, I kept about two dozen of them in the house at any given time. Even today, I always have several packs of tofu in my refrigerator.

In Japan, tofu is enjoyed by folks of all ages. My in-laws are 95 and 88 years old. They still live in Nara, and have tofu, natto (fermented soybeans) and miso soup every day. They attribute their longevity and immunity, in part, to that daily routine.

Here is why tofu is my No. 1 kitchen must-have.

Tofu is traditionally made from soybeans and nigari, the liquid that remains after removing the salt from seawater. In the U.S., calcium sulfate is often used as the main coagulant. 

Either way, tofu contains all the essential amino acids that meat, poultry, eggs, fish and dairy do — but without cholesterol, since it is plant based.

It also is rich in calcium, iron, vitamins, fiber and isoflavones, a type of plant estrogen. 

Studies have shown that the consumption of tofu can help reduce the risk of heart disease, fight cancer and reduce the risk of bone loss. 

It takes 70.6 kilograms of greenhouse emissions to produce just one kilogram of beef, but only 3.2 kilograms of emissions to produce the same amount of tofu.

I typically purchase 14 ounces of organic tofu for $2 or $3, which is often much less than the same amount of poultry or beef would cost me at the grocery store. 

To me, it is simple math. In the course of the week, if you were to swap out one or two beef burgers for a tofu burgers, you would feel better, pay less for groceries and do something small to help the environment. 

Tofu has a very natural, subtle flavor, so it can be matched with just about any cuisine or dish. Since it’s soft, you can also prepare it without a knife and cutting board.

As a nutritionist and cooking instructor, I am always developing new recipes, and tofu makes it very easy to experiment.

I serve tofu in a variety of ways: pan-fried or in soups and salads, in nimono (slow cooked roots and veggies), dumplings, veggie pancakes, vegan curry, burgers, cabbage rolls, mochi and ice cream, to name a few. 

My go-to lunch is a tofu miso soup with seasonal roots and leafy vegetables, seaweed, ginger and goji berries. Generally, I make a large pot and return to it throughout the week, serving it with multigrain rice, natto and nukazuke (pickles). 

My other perfect, simple meal is hiyayakko. It is cold tofu — usually the silken or soft variety — topped with nori, sesame seeds, ginger, shiso, scallions, natto and a little bit of soy sauce. If you prefer it warm, you can always pop it into the microwave for one to two minutes and then add your toppings. 

I often call tofu my best friend for happy living. I hope you are inspired to incorporate it into your kitchen, too. 

Michiko Tomioka, MBA, RDN, is a certified nutritionist and longevity expert. Born and raised in Nara, Japan, her approach focuses on a plant-based diet. She has worked in nutritional roles at substance recovery centers, charter schools and food banks. Follow her on Instagram @michian_rd. 

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful. Use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off, now extended through September 30, 2024, for the back-to-school season.