If you made student loan payments last year, there’s a good chance you can get a break on your taxes.

Don’t forget about the student loan interest deduction, which allows taxpayers to deduct the amount they paid in student loan interest from their taxable income. Taxpayers can deduct up to $2,500 or the amount they paid in interest on qualifying loans in the given tax year, whichever is lower. 

Qualifying loans include both federal and private student loans used to pay for higher educational expenses. Plus, it can be loans you took out for yourself or a spouse or dependent. 

Higher earners may not be able to deduct the full amount of interest they paid, however. The maximum amount is reduced for single taxpayers with a modified adjusted gross income between $80,000 and $95,000 a year in 2024 and for married joint filers earning between $165,000 and $195,000. 

Your MAGI is equal to your adjusted gross income plus independent retirement account contributions, student loan interest, foreign earned income and other credits and deductions you may take.

The Internal Revenue Service has a worksheet to help you determine how much you’re able to deduct if your income falls in those thresholds. Taxpayers earning above those thresholds may not deduct their student loan interest payments. 

If you paid at least $600 in student loan interest in 2024, your loan servicer should send you a 1098-E form for you to report to the IRS. If you paid less than that, contact your servicer to obtain the exact amount of interest you paid during the tax year.

This deduction has been around since 1997, but there is a chance it could be eliminated under President Donald Trump’s administration. 

From the campaign trail through his first few weeks in office, President Trump has proposed extending and/or expanding tax cuts for corporations and households, but doing so would require a decrease in federal spending to offset the costs. Congress would need to identify areas to rein in government spending or bring in more revenue from taxes to keep the federal budget in balance. 

One target could wind up being the student loan interest deduction, according to a Republican Congressional memo first reported by Politico. The memo from the Ways and Means committee outlines a number of proposals, including Medicare and Affordable Care Act reforms, and estimates how much money each action could generate. The entry proposing elimination the student loan interest deduction estimates doing so could save the federal government $30 billion over 10 years. 

None of the proposals in the memo are finalized or officially included in active legislative bills yet, and for now, eligible borrowers can take advantage of the student loan interest deduction when they file their taxes.

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When we think of successful kids, many of us picture straight-A students, sports trophies, and college acceptance letters.

But after years of studying over 200 parent-child relationships, I’ve found that true success is more about raising kids who are confident, emotionally secure, and deeply connected to themselves and the world around them.

The parents who really understood this embraced sometimes unconventional strategies that prioritized curiosity, a love for learning, and emotional intelligence over societal expectations.

Here are nine things they did differently early on:

Instead of worrying so much about how their kids reacted to challenging situations, these parents understood that their behavior would influence their child’s level of resilience. They modeled mental and emotional strength by being mindful of how they managed their stress in front of their kids.

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Instead, they encouraged reflection with “you should be so proud of yourself” or “you worked very hard on this — how does it feel?”

While well-meaning, “good job” can create reliance on external approval. These parents focused on fostering intrinsic motivation, helping their child take pride in their own achievements.

Through quality time, active listening, and shared experiences, they made their kids feel valued, safe, and understood. This also fostered the child’s confidence to take risks and thrive.

They avoided punishment, knowing it builds resentment and disconnection, not skills. Instead, they let natural consequences teach lessons.

For instance, if a child forgot to do their homework, they faced explaining it to their teacher — a chance to learn responsibility and problem-solving. This approach built accountability and resilience.

Instead of offering rewards for good grades, they focused on cultivating a love for learning. Whether their child excelled or struggled, they kept the focus on growth and made it clear that grades didn’t define their worth.

They encouraged their kids to ask “why” and “how,” rather than simply accepting the “right” answer. This fostered curiosity and gave their child the confidence to challenge the status quo — key traits of future leaders.

Whether solving a math problem or explaining a favorite game, these moments gave kids a sense of importance. By stepping back and letting their child take the lead, these parents showed respect for their child’s abilities and nurtured their self-esteem.

Reading wasn’t a chore — it was woven into daily life. Whether picture books before bedtime or novels on lazy afternoons, reading became a natural and enjoyable part of their world, fostering creativity and a lifelong love for learning.

They treated emotions as valuable, not something to fix or avoid. When their child was upset after losing a game, for example, they might have said, “I can see how much this matters to you. It’s hard to lose something you care about.” This simple validation helped their child process emotions and build resilience.

Reem Raouda is a parenting coach, mother, and creator of BOUND, a parent-child connection journal designed to nurture emotional intelligence and self-worth. She is also the founder of Connected Discipline Method. Through her coaching and courses — including Power Struggles No More — she has helped hundreds of families foster connection and harmony. Follow her on Instagram.

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.

Some bosses can make you excited about doing your best work. Others can make the workplace an absolute nightmare.

Those bad bosses tend to share three common traits, according to Adam Galinsky, a social psychologist and leadership professor at Columbia Business School: They’re selfish, cowardly or lacking in big-picture vision, he said on a recent episode of “The Anxious Achiever” podcast.

Galinsky, who has studied leadership for more than 20 years, wrote a book called “Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others” that published last month. “One of the core themes of my research … is that inspiring people and infuriating people exist on this sort of enduring continuum,” he said.

Infuriating bosses aren’t that hard to find, studies show. Seventy-one percent of workers say they’ve had a toxic boss at some point, according to an October 2023 survey of more than 1,200 Americans from The Harris Poll and global marketing firm Stagwell. Thirty-one percent said they’re currently working with one, saying the most prevalent behaviors are bosses who “set unreasonable expectations” and don’t “give credit to team members when appropriate.”

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But difficult managers aren’t destined to remain that way forever, Galinsky said.

“We are not born as inspiring or infuriating people. It’s our current behavior that inspires and infuriates,” said Galinsky. “Now, that is [an] incredibly hopeful and optimistic message, because that means that if we can change our behavior, right? We can move from the infuriating end of the continuum to the inspiring end of the continuum.”

Changing these behaviors starts with gaining some self-awareness: Take a moment to think about the emotions and character traits you showcase the most, Galinsky said. Maybe you’re often stressed about your heavy workload, leading you to be curt and too hyper-focused at work. Jot down how these feelings impact your performance in life and at work.

You could also try asking the people around you — colleagues, advisors, direct reports — for feedback, neuroscientist Juliette Han told CNBC Make It in 2023. Ask about a time you made the workplace feel uninviting, or about a scenario they wished you’d handled differently.

Their answers will “help you glean something about yourself, the impact you have on those you work with and how others view you,” Han said.

You may learn that your anxiety around missing deadlines causes you to be an overbearing boss, constantly asking for updates or breathing down your employees’ necks. Or that your ego makes it hard for you to admit wrongdoing. By gaining that self-awareness, you can then flip those behaviors, maybe deciding to hold bi-weekly team meetings to gauge progress or consciously focusing on collaboration instead of being a know-it-all.

When you can “harness” your negative behaviors, you can “be more courageous” about how you deal with them and turn them into constructive ones, Galinsky said.

That can “really determine whether we’re more inspiring or infuriating,” he added.

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.

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I’ve been a therapist for over 30 years, and so many of the couples I meet with simply don’t see how their words and body language — even if they are not yelling — are disrespectful.

I’ve seen couples who have a hard time repairing trust that was broken during embroiled and ugly fights. Others lose a sense of trust by the sarcastic digs, eye rolls, interrupting, or belittling.

It’s vital to examine the kinds of communication that go under the radar as disrespectful. Awareness is the first step in taking accountability for your words. While the types of phrases below can seem innocent on their own, over time they can leave a partner feeling diminished and unloved — and the whole relationship in troubled waters:

1. Phrases that humiliate your partner, name-calling, or speaking disparagingly — directly or to others in public

Examples:

• “Really, second helpings?”
• “Oh, he always does that.”
• “Don’t pay attention to him.”

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2. Sarcasm and mocking tones intended as insults

Examples:

• “Great job on yelling at the kids.”
• “Is that what you’re wearing?”
• “Yeah, like that’s worth bragging about.”

3. Manipulative language that twists reality

Examples:

• “It didn’t happen that way.”
• “I never said that. You understood it wrong.”
• “You’re crazy if you really think that.”

4. Moralistic statements that insult, correct, criticize, demean, diagnose or label

Examples:

• “You spoil him way too much, because your mother spoiled you.”
• “You’re so selfish.”
• “That’s a narcissistic thing to say.”

5. Blame shifting

Examples:

• “I hate yelling, but you frustrate me so much.”
• “You’re making me feel guilty.”
• “Maybe if you tried harder, I wouldn’t have to step in.”

6. Blocking compassion by advice, interrogation, one-upping or correcting

Examples:

• “How come you didn’t talk to me about this sooner?”
• “Why don’t you just ignore her?”
• “I’ve done this a dozen times. It’s not that complicated.”

While this won’t solve all your problems, one tool I like to give couples after their first session is the almighty pause.

Whether it’s stepping away, going outside to breathe and relax, or developing a silly code word together when things get tense. The idea is to do whatever it takes to shut the reactive system down which typically requires elongating the space between your angry reactive feelings and the urge to spew these feelings out with your words. 

The pause could mean a minute, five minutes, or five days. This slowing down mechanism benefits us greatly in relationships because it makes us less prone to the judgmental words.

Essentially, the work before you open your mouth is the most important and influential part of having conversations that heal versus destroy your relationship. Pausing and preparing is about connecting within for energy before you reach for energy from your partner. We are all in training here!

Rachel Glik is a licensed professional counselor with over 30 years as a couples and individual therapist. She has taught and created workshops for organizations such as: YPO, The Kabbalah Centre, Onevillage, University of Missouri and Psychotherapy Saint Louis. Rachel is also the author of “A Soulful Marriage: Healing Your Relationship With Responsibility, Growth, Priority, and Purpose.”

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.

Excerpt reprinted with permission A Soulful Marriage ©2025 Morehouse Publishing, New York, NY 10016

We’ve all dealt with emotionally immature people: They get defensive at the slightest criticism, they constantly deflect blame, and then they try to guilt you into feeling sorry for them.

Emotional immaturity is a growing problem, and whether it’s in your personal or professional life, communicating with them can be a real struggle.

As experts on the psychology of communication, we know that if you’re not careful, you can also easily run the risk of seeming emotionally immature to others. Why? A lot of us automatically use certain emotionally immature phrases without even thinking about it.

Here’s a list of the most common ones to avoid:

People who are emotionally immature often won’t take responsibility for their own actions when something goes wrong. So what do they do? They extricate themselves from situations by immediately stating that they are not to blame. 

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An emotionally immature person will do everything in their power to not take responsibility for their actions, and a common tactic is to make it seem like you, or literally anyone else, is in the wrong — not them.

You can almost imagine a little kid saying this one. This phrase is a way for them to avoid any true accountability or genuine communication with the person they are engaging with.

This is a combo of gaslighting — trying to make others believe a false reality — and shifting the blame again. The message they’re sending: You’re the problem, not me. Another toxic phrase in this vein is “you’re being too sensitive.”

People use that simple “whatever,” often with a shrug, to say, “I’m done discussing this.” It’s an emotionally immature method to shut down the paths of communication and figuratively walk away from any further discussion.

Here we go again with the gaslighting. People who are emotionally immature rewrite reality, both for themselves and, possibly more importantly, for others. When someone says something like this, they’re typically trying to evade responsibility and make you think something else happened.

In this case, emotionally immature people walk away from any complicated issue by throwing it onto someone else and dismissing any and all responsibility. It’s the perfect example of transference.

Another example of invalidating other people, and one that is used in both personal and professional relationships. By saying phrases like this, an emotionally immature person is dismissing the other person’s concerns and opinions, and belittling their reaction.

Yes, it’s usually best to focus on the future. But emotionally immature people will often accuse people who bring up their mistakes of harping on the past. They don’t want to learn from their mistakes and they don’t want an honest discussion about whatever is happening. They want to move on without addressing the issue.

Here’s an example of how emotionally immature people passive-aggressively avoid taking responsibility for what they say. It might sound like they’re trying to smooth things over, but it’s actually more of a way of critiquing someone, then distancing themselves from their statement. 

Emotionally immature people often use broad generalizations. Instead of engaging in constructive honest conversation or using specific examples, they will issue an accusatory blanket statement and use that to avoid any further discussion. 

If there’s one phrase that really sounds like a kid said it, it’s this one. How many of us used “but all the kids are doing it” argument trying — usually in vain — to get our parents to allow us to do something? But emotionally immature adults use it, too.

They’ll pull out the time-honored “everyone’s doing it” argument as a justification for something they want to do or already have done. Of course, they’re blameless if they’ve done something wrong, they were just going along with the crowd, after all.

Kathy and Ross Petras are the brother-and-sister co-authors of the New York Times bestseller You’re Saying It Wrong, along with other popular language books, and co-hosts of the award-winning NPR syndicated radio show and podcast ”You’re Saying It Wrong.” They’ve also been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and Harvard Business Review. Follow them on Bluesky.

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.