I didn’t think about leaving the U.S. to live somewhere else until very recently. 

My father is from Jamaica, so I have always felt a connection to the island, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I finally visited for the first time. 

I was struck by the joy I felt surrounded by the culture, the food, and so many family members and new friends. This spring, I made the leap and moved with my two youngest kids to Negril, Jamaica.

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Back in the States, I was often ill and had very high blood pressure. Over the last several months, to my surprise and delight, following the example of the vibrant older folks in my community, my stress has lifted and I am so much healthier. 

Overall, I feel like I have a better chance of longevity here. 

Here are the biggest lessons I have learned from the senior citizens in my community:

One of my neighbors, in his mid-to-late 60s, can do a backflip and often climbs trees to pick fruit. He is just one example of the vibrant senior citizens in my area. 

Many people wash their clothes by hand, as I have started to, and hang them on the line. People devote a lot of time to tending their gardens.  

I spend almost all day outside working. I’ve tried doing that in the States, but as soon as the season changes, I go back in and may or may not come out again.

But thanks to the temperate year-round weather here, my veranda “office” is always open.

In hindsight, I feel like the dependence on cars in the U.S. made it harder for me to enjoy nature and the company of other people. 

In North Carolina, so many things are drive-thru, from pharmacies to fast food. By virtue of how my town was designed, everyone was reliant on a vehicle. In the U.S., I drove everywhere, including to take my daughter to daycare, even though it was just up the street.

In my community in Negril, most people walk and use public transportation, especially seniors, to get around and do their errands.

I walk much more since I got here, and I’ll stroll to the store most days. Jamaica is also very hilly and mountainous, so you regularly have to go up inclines. It’s been so positive for my health.

The food here is fantastic, especially the produce. Fruit trees are everywhere, and there is such a variety of fresh vegetables. 

To me, the food in Jamaica tastes different from the food in the U.S. It is not super processed, or overly salty or sweet. I don’t eat traditional fast food here, although there are restaurants that serve it. I prefer to go to a skilled local vendor and try some of their wares. 

You don’t have to go far to find someone selling delicious, healthy and inexpensive food, whether it is freshly caught fish, porridge, lovely cold coconuts, or some of my favorite dishes like jerk chicken, brown stew, bully beef and beef patties.

You will frequently see people, especially older folks, talking, playing dominoes or Ludi, and laughing together. When people aren’t feeling well, neighbors will share their favorite herbal remedies. 

We are often invited to neighborhood gatherings, even as newcomers. On a Sunday, for example, people might go to church, relax, go to the river, do some “bush cooking” — preparing and serving delicious meals outside. It’s a very laid-back atmosphere, and I felt welcome right away. 

I rarely saw anyone in my neighborhood in the States. I knew only about four of my neighbors on the street and I lived in that house for seven years. I would see people in passing and wave, but then we would just go back to our lives. 

It’s odd not to know or talk to your neighbors here. Every time I see a neighbor in Jamaica, we sit and chat. 

I didn’t realize how high-stress and individualistic the culture could be in the United States until we left. I was on autopilot all day, every day.

The pace of island life forced me to slow down, start paying attention to how I felt, and challenged my beliefs of what life should be. Moving shook up my routine, removed me from daily stressors, and allowed me to create a new reality. 

Small changes definitely add up, and getting out of my comfort zone helped me make these new habits stick, for the better.

Tiffany Grant is a financial educator, writer, podcaster and coach. Before she was an entrepreneur, Tiffany was an HR professional. She is the founder and host of ″Money Talk with Tiff,” an Accredited Financial Counselor and holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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Higher-paying jobs often mean more pressure — think about surgeons working to save someone’s life, or corporate lawyers responsible for multimillion-dollar business deals. 

But you don’t need to take a pay cut to be less stressed at work. There are plenty of low-stress jobs that come with six-figure salaries. 

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET) maintains a database of nearly 900 professions, ranking them by stress tolerance on a scale from 0 to 100, which considers the ability to handle criticism and manage high-stress situations. 

Many of these low-stress, high-paying jobs are found in the sustainability sector. That could be, in part, because of the opportunities and stability such jobs in this field offer, Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, tells CNBC Make It. 

“Looking long-term, areas like sustainability and green technology are poised to experience significant structural growth driven by shifting consumer priorities toward eco-friendly options, policy incentives for clean energy and rapid technological advances,” Pollak says. 

Several green jobs — including solar photovoltaic installers and wind turbine technicians – have been among the fastest-growing jobs in recent years, and are projected to continue to grow quickly in the coming years, she adds. 

Here are 5 in-demand green jobs that pay a median annual salary of more than $100,000 and feature a comparatively low level of stress tolerance (all have a level of less than 70 out of 100):

These scientists collect and analyze data from aircrafts or satellites, for example, to solve problems in fields such as urban planning, homeland security and natural resource management. Most positions require graduate school including a relevant master’s degree, Ph.D, or M.D. and some experience to be considered.

Median annual salary: $112,280 

These economists research topics such as alternative fuel use, soil conservation and pollution, write corresponding academic papers and evaluate the costs and benefits of policies and regulations affecting the environment. This job often requires a master’s degree, Ph.D or law degree.

Median annual salary: $115,730

Water resource specialists (also known as water resource planners) design and help implement programs to improve water conservation efforts, and provide safe, clean water to different communities. Most positions require a bachelor’s degree and technical skills including data analytics and experience with different software systems.

Median annual salary: $157,740

These engineers design, develop and manage the equipment and systems that harness the sun’s power to create clean energy. They’re the brains behind solar panels, figuring out how to place them for maximum efficiency and connecting them to the grid or battery systems. This job typically requires a bachelor’s degree, knowledge of photovoltaic systems and experience with design and simulation software.

Median annual salary: $111,970 

Environmental engineers use math and science to develop solutions that protect the environment and public health. They work on projects like improving water quality, managing waste, and controlling pollution. This job typically requires a bachelor’s degree, knowledge of environmental regulations and proficiency with modeling and design software.

Median annual salary: $100,090

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The rising cost of rent is pushing people across the country to seek out cheaper areas, according to an October report from the Bank of America Institute.

The institute’s report identified the top eight cities where people are moving for lower rent based on a group of Bank of America customers who had open consumer checking, savings, credit, and/or other investment accounts for every quarter between Q4 2020 and Q3 2024.

The moving pattern was established based on the customers’ home addresses. The fixed sample size is roughly 45 million customers, according to the report.

Renters are moving from more expensive cities and towns in the West and Northeast to cheaper locations in the South and the Midwest. This trend started at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic and continues to this day.

Major metropolises like New York, Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles have seen some of the biggest net outflows of residents.

“Consumers would rather pack their bags than pay a higher rent, and that can play out in two ways,” Joe Wadford, an economist at the Bank of America Institute, tells CNBC Make It. “The first is moving to a less expensive city, and then there’s a rising share of people who are saving money and playing it safe by downgrading within the same city.”

The report found that to be especially true among higher-income households, Wadford says.

“We’ve seen a decrease in new rents for higher income households moving within the same city as opposed to a small growth,” he adds. “They could have splurged during the pandemic and rented out a unit that was much bigger than they needed, so they’re downgrading right now within the same city,”

The Bank of America Institute deposit data shows that the average consumer’s rent payment increased 3.7% year-over-year in September 2024.

• Cleveland, Ohio
• Indianapolis, Ind.
• Las Vegas, Nev.
• Columbus, Ohio
• Jacksonville, Fla.
• Austin, Texas
• Phoenix, Ariz.
• Nashville, Tenn.

The state of Ohio had two cities land in the top 8 on the Bank of America Institute list. The median rent price in Ohio is $1,300, according to Zillow — $750 less than the national median of $2,050.

Cleveland has had one of the fastest rent price hikes in the U.S., increasing 7.2% since last summer.

The city is home to major sports teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Cleveland Guardians, and the Cleveland Browns. It is also home to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Museum of Art, which is free to the public.

Of Ohio’s largest cities, Columbus had the highest average rent at $1,559. It’s a 4.7% increase over last year and 7.7% higher than Cleveland, according to Zillow.

A July report from RentCafe found that apartments in the city grew in square footage between 2014 and 2023, about the size of a bedroom closet.

Columbus is the state’s capital and home to The Ohio State University and the iconic Ohio Stadium. It is also known as the birthplace of the Wendy’s restaurant chain.

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This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

What does a 12-year-old do with $10,000 he earned from a videogame “basically by accident”?

In Steven Guo’s case, he blew through it pretty quickly — but it kickstarted his path to becoming an entrepreneur and founding brands that have brought in millions in revenue.

It all started with a summer project when he was 12 and “super into the game Minecraft,” Guo tells CNBC Make It. “I wanted to host servers so that me and my friends could play on it. Turns out, other people decided to start playing on it as well, and because of that, someone offered me $50.”

That transaction changed everything. “I was super happy and through the moon,” Guo recalls. “I didn’t realize you could make money off the internet.”

Guo kept building his server and selling in-game perks to players. By the end of the summer, he pocketed $10,000.

The high didn’t last long. With his $10,000, Guo tried to start a game development company, “and unfortunately I failed miserably and blew basically all of my money,” he says. “But I learned a really valuable lesson, which was: marketing is extremely important for any business.”

From there, Guo says he became “obsessed” with learning about running a business and making it his career. “Ever since I made my first bit of money when I was 12 years old, I knew that I didn’t want a traditional job,” he says.

Guo, now 24, is the founder of multiple e-commerce businesses on track to bring in a combined $1.7 million this year.

He recently moved from Southern California to Bali, Indonesia, where he splits a villa with friends and spends his free time surfing. As his own boss, Guo is on track to earn roughly $254,000 this year.

Here’s how he spends his time and money.

While Guo fixated over starting businesses as a teen, he didn’t take college as seriously.

Guo studied business economics at the University of California, Irvine, where he “was more focused on my entrepreneurial endeavors, and because of that, I had a 2.7 GPA.”

In some ways, his poor grades motivated him to become a successful entrepreneur. “Because my GPA was so bad, I knew that getting a high-paying job was probably unlikely, and that pushed me to work even harder on my own businesses,” he says.

Guo graduated in 2022 and today runs several e-commerce businesses: an online retailer that sells dates (the fruit) to customers, a K-pop inspired merch store and a company that sells premium car covers with for people with luxury cars.

In 2022, he sold one of his first companies, a jewelry brand called Impulse Modern that brought in over $2 million in revenue within a year.

The brands all ladder up to his main venture, Manifest Five, a venture-capital studio where he helps grow, operate and invest in 8- to 9-figure direct-to-consumer brands across heath, beauty, automotive vehicles and more.

It’s a lot to keep track of, but Guo has learned how to maximize his time and efforts.

Early on, “I spent a lot of time running every single operation in the business, and I definitely got burnt out quite a bit,” he says.

Now, he works with a team, managing 19 employees across the U.S., Philippines, UK and India. “With online businesses, one of the greatest perks is being able to hire remotely and have the best of the best out of anywhere in the world,” he says.

Guo typically works from Monday to Friday six hours a day, or 30 hours a week, and spends roughly 40% of his time doing market research on his clients and the products and services they sell.

A change in scenery also helped him find better balance.

After graduating from college, Guo called Southern California home, but traveled to roughly 15 countries. He enjoyed being able to afford a nice lifestyle at a lower cost in many of them and, in early 2024, made the decision to move to to Bali, where he first visited after high school and has always felt “a magnetic pull.”

“Bali really is a place where my work-life balance finally makes sense,” Guo says. “Mornings are mostly for running my business, [and] afternoons are for surfing, exploring the landscapes or enjoying the vibrant culture here.”

“I’m definitely much happier in Bali because of how great the lifestyle is,” Guo says of his move, adding that he’s blown away by the quality of life he can have at a “fraction of the cost” of what it would be back in California.

“I get to spend tons of time with my friends. I also get to spend a lot of time doing the activities that I like, such as surfing,” he says.

Guo lives with two of his best friends and former college classmates, who are also entrepreneurs and share similar lifestyles.

Tourists and digital nomads have flocked to Bali in recent years, which has created overcrowding and overdevelopment concerns.

Guo acknowledges that many tourists get a bad rap for being “a little bit disrespectful to the local culture.” As longer-term digital nomads, Guo and his peers try to be aware of this and contribute to the local community and economy.

Here’s how Guo spent his money in September 2024.

• Savings and investments: $5,583 toward a Robinhood brokerage account and a Roth IRA
• Discretionary: $1,942 for shopping, gifts, travel and health expenses
• Housing and utilities: $1,691 for his share of a monthly Airbnb rental, Wi-Fi and utilities
• Food: $539 on takeout and restaurants
• Subscriptions and memberships: $430 toward his annual Amex fees, Amazon Prime, YouTube Premium, a personal assistant and a storage unit
• Insurance: $223 on health and travel insurance coverage
• Transportation: $97 on a scooter rental and taxis
• Phone: $30

Guo pays for the majority of his expenses on his credit cards using U.S. dollars, though he covers utilities and transportation in Indonesian Rupiah.

Guo’s biggest monthly expenses go toward his investment accounts. He aims to invest $60,000 per year, or $5,000 per month, in index funds, and he currently has roughly $340,000 shored up. He also contributed the maximum $7,000 to his Roth IRA this year and has over $17,000 stashed in it in total.

Guo splits a four-bedroom, four-bathroom Airbnb with friends in the heart of Canggu, a resort village on the south coast of Bali known for its ideal surfing conditions.

He spent just over $500 on food for the month of September. He rarely cooks and instead prefers to dine out with friends at nice restaurants or local “warungs,” which are small family-run shops.

The expense is well worth it for high-quality food, Guo says: “One of the best parts about Bali is how clean and healthy the food is. When you eat it, you feel healthier, and it just makes you feel better overall.”

The rest of his monthly expenses typically go toward travel. In September, he went on a trip to Portugal and booked future travel to Australia in December. He also paid for a few subscriptions, a personal assistant, health insurance and a scooter that acts as his main mode of transportation.

Guo says being an entrepreneur has made him aware of just how unstable business can be, so he lives frugally to make sure he can weather any ups or downs.

“I typically don’t like to spend too much money on myself,” he says. “Most of my expenses go towards food, but if I do spend money, it’s typically towards gifts for family or my girlfriend.”

As far as what he doesn’t spend on, “I absolutely refuse to spend money on things that depreciate in value,” like luxury goods, Guo says.

In his decade-plus of building businesses, Guo says one of his proudest accomplishments was treating his mom and her boyfriend to a fully paid vacation in Hawaii.

It was a full-circle moment to show appreciation to his mom, who raised him and taught him the value of hard work.

“When I was 7, I immigrated from China to Canada with my mom,” Guo says, “and I really got to see what it was like to grow up as an immigrant. I saw her working multiple jobs and working hard to just put food on the table.”

Seeing his mom’s efforts taught him the value of hard work and money, he says. “Because of that, I wanted to make sure that going forward, my family doesn’t have to go through hardship again. And my mom is definitely one of my biggest inspirations.” 

In recent years, Guo has gotten closer with his father, a former architect living in China who’s also getting into business. “We’re just starting to rekindle [our relationship], partly because we both are entrepreneurs now,” Guo says.

Guo has big plans for his businesses. He hopes to have a $50 million e-commerce portfolio by the time he’s 30.

“My plan to do that is by incubating a variety of businesses through working with students and mentoring them and investing in them,” he says.

As for his personal life, Guo plans to split his time between Bali and Australia, where his girlfriend lives, until she’s able to permanently relocate to Indonesia.

“Bali isn’t just a home,” Guo says. “It’s the freedom to live, work and thrive on my own terms.”  

Conversions from Indonesian Rupiah to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 IDR to .00007 USD on Sept. 30, 2024. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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Ashley Sankar works 10 to 12 hours per day at her day job, comes home and spends another six to eight hours trying to build her side business.

On Friday’s episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” some of her extra work seemingly paid off.

The founder of Phoenix-based clothing startup NineteenTwenty pitched her company’s attire on the show, alongside her husband and part-time COO Zach Sankar. NineteenTwenty sells garments like puffer jackets, windbreakers and skirts that can convert into functional items like tote bags, pillows or blankets.

The pair started selling clothes in December 2022, and brought in $269,000 in annual revenue last year, Zach Sankar said. They’ve sold out each quarterly batch of apparel they’ve ordered from their manufacturer, and would’ve earned more if they could afford larger inventory purchases, added Ashley Sankar, an ex-U.S. Army logistics officer who now works as a senior program manager at Amazon, according to her LinkedIn profile.

“That’s all we can afford,” Ashley Sankar said. “One drop per quarter.”

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Ashley Sankar started the company to help her and her husband, who’ve been together since high school, supplement their income while he pursued his dream of becoming a pilot, he said. But when the business grew larger than they’d expected, they put those aspirations on hold — and decided to reinvest NineteenTwenty’s profits back into the business instead of keeping the extra cash for themselves.

The duo asked the show’s investor judges for $250,000 in exchange for 10% equity stake in NineteenTwenty. They quickly ran into three obstacles: a messy financial presentation, the competitive apparel industry and Ashley Sankar’s status as a part-time CEO.

As the Sankars discussed their startup’s finances, panelist Mark Cuban seized on a small detail: The Sankars said NineteenTwenty had made $97,000 in lifetime profit, and that they’d spent some of that money on expenses like research, development and shipping.

“The shipping comes before your profit is calculated,” Cuban told the Sankars. “One of the biggest challenges is fully understanding accounting and managing your cash flow. Because you want to say here that you’ve made $97,000 because it sounds good, but in reality, you didn’t make more than 82 [thousand], and it’s probably a lot less than that.”

Ashley Sankar disputed Cuban’s assessment, saying that NineteenTwenty works with financial consultants to arrive at its calculations — but the snafu was enough to keep Cuban from making an investment offer. Fellow panelist Daniel Lubetzky also declined to make an offer, citing the clothing industry’s “competitive environment.”

Kevin O’Leary, meanwhile, offered the Sankars $250,000 for 30% of their company — but only if Ashley Sankar quit her day job and worked on the business full time. “You’re not 100% committed because you’ve got other jobs,” O’Leary said.

Robert Herjavec, another investor, bristled at the suggestion. “That’s crap and it’s unfair,” he said. “I started my first business — I didn’t know if it was going to work. I had to work a full-time job for six months.”

The rest of the investors said they agreed with Herjavec. And when O’Leary said “none of my CEOs” worked other jobs, Ashley Sankar retorted: “They work 100% of the time, but they don’t work as much as I do.”

Herjavec offered the Sankars $250,000 for 25% of NineteenTwenty. “You strike me as the kind of people [who are] going to figure it out,” he said. Ashley Sankar countered with 20%, which Herjavec declined.

Ultimately, the Sankars decided against haggling over 5%, agreeing to Herjavec’s terms.

“I’d rather have 70, 72% of something than have 100% of nothing,” Ashley Sankar said. “We came to make a deal.”

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