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.

In 2008, during what would come to be known as the Great Recession, stories like Nicole Brewer’s were all too common.

At 27, she’d recently bought a condo on the South Side of Chicago with little money down and a loan that would likely stretch her mid-$30,000′s salary thin. Then the market research firm she worked for did layoffs, and she lost her job.

Amid a financial crisis, finding another one proved difficult. After collecting unemployment benefits for five of the allotted six months, Brewer, like many of her peers, was growing desperate.

“I remember I got scared and I was like, ‘OK, what are you going to do if your unemployment runs out? You don’t have a job,’” she tells CNBC Make It. “That’s when I started looking at opportunities. I said, ‘I’ll think outside the box, look at some teaching jobs abroad.’”

Brewer found a gig teaching English at a primary school South Korea, a move that would satisfy some wanderlust while she waited for the U.S. economy to bounce back.

But that’s where her story gets a little less common. After three years in Korea, Brewer took a college-level ESL job, this time in Nizwa, an ancient city in Oman about a 90-minute drive from Muscat, the nation’s capital. She’s been there ever since, living happily and traveling — and currently earning a salary of just over $40,000 a year, plus some side-hustle income.

“I have had such an incredible experience living here. I never even imagined that I would be here for 10-plus years, because I just felt comfortable here,” Brewer, 43, says. “My mental health has definitely been great here.”

A move abroad can be daunting — especially for someone in a precarious financial situation. But for Brewer, who’d moved to a new country with just two suitcases, things were surprisingly seamless.

“Fortunately at that time, being recruited to work for the education department in Korea, they helped set you up,” she says. That meant covering the cost of her flight and assigning her a liaison from her school who helped her find an apartment and transition into working life in Busan, a city of just over 3 million people.

Back home, things were still rough. The renter she’d found to take over payments on her Chicago condo lost his job too and soon fell behind. The bank foreclosed on the property.

That may have made life difficult for Brewer had she chosen to return to the States on her original timeline. But it didn’t take long for her to realize that expat life suited her.

Her home base in Korea, along with a modest cost of living, allowed her to see parts of the world she would have likely otherwise missed, including trips to India and the Philippines. “I was able to live comfortably and still travel a bit,” she says.

After three years, Brewer was looking for a change of pace, and initially thought she might like Dubai. While researching the region, she came across a posting for a job at a university in Oman. “After seeing that posting, I ended up researching on my own and I was like, ‘Wow, this is a very beautiful country,’” Brewer says.

She gave it a chance, boarding a plane in 2012, once again with two suitcases and plans to figure things out when she got there. Other than brief stints in Germany and South Africa to complete an accelerated masters program in international humanitarian aid, she’s stuck around.

Brewer’s main gig is still teaching English, a job which pays her about $3,400 a month, even when school is not in session. Over the years, she’s picked up some side hustles, too, as a freelance travel writer and part-time travel advisor. Those brought her an extra $3,400 in 2024.

Brewer is still an American citizen and pays income taxes in the U.S. And even though she doesn’t necessarily blend in with the locals — she doesn’t speak Arabic or practice Islam — her Yankee status comes with a certain level of respect. “I like to call it ‘passport privilege,’” she says.

Overall, she says, being a Black American woman doesn’t come with many of the burdens while living abroad as it might have back home. “I wouldn’t say that I deal with much or any racism, because I think it’s more so, you’re American — we take pride in having an American who loves living in Oman.”

Even though it took a while for Brewer to adjust to the conservative Omani lifestyle — and casual dating is still a struggle — she says she consistently feels welcomed by the Omani people.

“They welcome me. They say, ‘Oh, hello, sister,’ when I get in taxis. They call me sister like I’m one of them because I respect the culture,” she says. “It’s been very great. I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I had if it wasn’t a good life here.”

Despite the region’s reputation for opulence, Brewer’s day-to-day life in Oman is unostentatious and, by U.S. standards, inexpensive. Here’s how she spent her money in January 2025.

• Travel: $2,630 on flights and hotels for a trip to Bali, Indonesia
• Rent: $650
• Food: $348 on groceries and dining
• Cab fare: $277
• Discretionary: $133 on clothing, donations and various fees
• Health and wellness: $65 on spa treatment and prescriptions
• Netflix subscription: $15
• Phone: $10

Brewer’s two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment came fully furnished, and she pays 250 Omani rials — or roughly $650 — a month in rent, utilities included. She spends about $70 or $80 a week on groceries. Insurance, a major line item in most American workers’ budgets, is covered by her employer.

Living relatively modestly for most of the year allows Brewer to devote significant funds toward her life’s passion: travel. More than half her January spending went toward a trip to Bali during her school’s winter break.

She generally takes two or three big trips a year, and her location in the Middle East makes it easier to travel to some parts of the world than if she had stayed in the U.S. Trips to Namibia and the Seychelles, she says, are much more affordable with Oman has a home base.

“I’m able to travel to Europe, of course, as well, because it’s right there,” she says.

Even given her relatively low cost of living, traveling the world on a teacher’s salary means Brewer has had to put some financial goals on the back burner. Although her credit cards are paid off, she still carries about $24,600 in student debt from her time as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan.

And while she has about $22,000 invested across stocks and cryptocurrency, it’s hardly enough for her to feel like she’s on track for major financial milestones, like retirement.

“I do feel like sometimes maybe I beat myself up because I feel like I should have more in savings, considering how long I’ve been abroad,” Brewer says. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘Maybe I could have not gone to this destination and have a little more money padded in my savings.’ But the reality is, I’m grateful for every trip that I have been on.”

In the coming years, Brewer hopes to ramp up her savings enough to fund a semi-retirement of sorts in Portugal.

“In the perfect scenario, I would have a hostel. It would be a place where I can live, as well as have additional rooms to be able to rent out and make an income from the property,” she says.

For now, though, she has no plans to leave what she says is a fulfilling and peaceful life in Oman.

“It’s not an easy life to be on the other side of the world from your family, especially when emergencies and family situations come up,” she says. “You have to take the good with the bad. But overall, I do have a peace of mind living here because it’s so safe and people are really kind-hearted.”

Conversions from OMR to USD were done using the Bank of Muscat’s conversion rate of 1 USD to 0.3877 OMR on Jan. 1, 2025. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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Marriage is one of the most rewarding yet challenging journeys in life. While we often enter it with high expectations, the reality is that marriage is a lifelong learning process.

As a psychologist who studies couples every day, I’ve worked with many people who only come to understand the toughest marriage lessons after they’ve experienced conflict, disappointment or a even divorce.

If you can accept these five hard truths about marriage now, you’re more likely to have a happy and successful relationship:

Many couples believe that as long as they love each other, everything else will fall into place. But love doesn’t automatically solve differences in communication styles, personal values or long-term goals.

What truly sustains a marriage is commitment, effort and the willingness to adapt. Love can help keep the spark going, but it’s the daily choices that really make a difference.

DON’T MISS: How to start a side hustle to earn extra money

How do you respond to conflict? How do you show up for each other? How are you continuing to grow together? These are the questions that determine how strong your marriage really is.

One of the biggest misconceptions about marriage is that truly compatible people don’t argue. But not only is conflict inevitable, it’s also essential. In fact, the absence of conflict likely means that important issues are being swept under the rug.

And it’s not the fighting that damages relationships — it’s how couples choose to handle their disagreements. Healthy conflict can bring partners closer by opening the door to deep, meaningful conversations about wants and needs, which can then lead to problem-solving.

My advice is to learn how to fight fairly. No blame games, no stonewalling and no personal attacks. Create a safe space where you can both be honest and open without judgment.

Many people enter a marriage thinking that their spouse will be their “everything” — their best friend, emotional support system, cheerleader and problem-solver. While it’s natural to lean on each other for support, expecting one person to fulfill your every need is unrealistic.

Healthy spouses recognize the importance of individuality. That means maintaining individual interests, friendships and goals. Nurturing a strong sense of self outside of the marriage helps prevent resentment and keeps the relationship from feeling suffocating.

Always remember that a thriving relationship is built on two whole, complementary individuals — not two halves trying to complete each other.

Many couples underestimate how much work it takes to have a healthy marriage.

The honeymoon phase may feel effortless, but over time, life’s responsibilities — work, kids, finances, health — often puts the relationship lower on the priority list.

You need to have regular check-ins and planned quality time together. Just as you wouldn’t expect a car to run forever without maintenance, you can’t expect a marriage to thrive without consistent care.

You can’t expect the person you marry at 25 to be the exact same person at 45. People evolve, priorities shift and life circumstances change.

By embracing change instead of resisting it, you’ll come to realize the beauty and privilege in being able to witness this evolution. 

The most successful couples are the ones who adapt and grow together. While partners drift apart, they find new reasons to keep loving each other every day. This means being open to new experiences and giving one another the space to evolve without feeling threatened by it.

Mark Travers, PhD, is a psychologist who specializes in relationships. He holds degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the lead psychologist at Awake Therapy, a telehealth company that provides online psychotherapy, counseling and coaching. He is also the curator of the popular mental health and wellness website, Therapytips.org.

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A lot of parents tell their children that can achieve anything if they work hard and apply themselves. But that doesn’t account for luck, which is a huge factor that many highly successful people have said they owe their careers to, points out Anthony Mackie, star of the 2025 movie “Captain America: Brave New World.”

“We are lying to our kids,” Mackie, 46, said in a recent interview with The Pivot Podcast. “We tell [them] … if they do right and they make the good grades and they go to the programs, they will become successful. ‘If you work hard enough, your work will [pay off].’ And that’s not true.”

In many cases, “success is given [and] not earned,” Mackie continued.

Mackie had been an actor for over 10 years before landing the role that many consider his big break, as Sam Wilson in 2014′s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” he said. After graduating from the prestigious Juilliard School in 2001, he performed in both on- and Off-Broadway productions and in Academy award-winning films, like 2008′s “The Hurt Locker.” However, the New Orleans native struggled to break out in Hollywood’s highly competitive landscape.

Mackie estimates he “put in 10,750 hours of training” before landing that life-changing job. He was proactive, too: He wrote letters to executives at Disney’s Marvel Studios over a decade ago in the hopes of landing a role in one of the studio’s popular superhero films, he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023.

While the letters didn’t result in any roles right away, Mackie eventually landed a meeting with directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. They offered him a part in an upcoming film, though they couldn’t share many details: ”[They said], ‘We can’t say what character you’re playing or who else is going to be in it. Would you do it?’” Mackie said.

The actor agreed because he liked the directors and believed joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up, he said. Fortunately for Mackie, the role of Sam Wilson proved popular enough to grow from a small character into a headliner.

Mackie is far from the only successful person to recognize the power of luck. You can be the smartest and most deserving person in the room, the billionaire and Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger told students at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business in 2018, but there are no guarantees: “There’s also a factor of luck that comes into this thing.”

He added: “I did not intend to get rich. I wanted to get independent. I just overshot.”

Similarly, in 2023, Mark Cuban told GQ that any billionaire who says they could definitely start over from scratch is “lying their a– off.” That’s because a person also needs “luck” and good “timing” to run a highly lucrative company, particularly in the fast-moving tech industry.

If he’d been born three years earlier, he likely wouldn’t have the status that he has today, Cuban added.

Put simply, being in the right place at the right time, and having connections, can be as important as having the skills and experience.

People who benefit from luck the most have a few traits in common, according to Richard Wiseman, author of “The Luck Factor” and a psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire.

1. They’re optimistic. Even when they find themselves in bleak circumstances, “lucky” people recognize that things “could have been far worse,” Wiseman wrote for CNBC Make It in 2022.
2. They always jump at new opportunities. Lucky people display an openness and adaptability that puts them in situations to network and make new connections, according to Wiseman.
3. They listen to their intuition. Too much time spent pondering can lead to “indecision,” he added, writing that lucky people tend to “make quick decisions …. By trusting their gut, they’re more likely to take action and expose themselves to new opportunities.”
4. They recover quickly from setbacks. This allows lucky people to remain positive when things don’t go how they’d hoped and “increases the likelihood of them continuing to live a lucky life,” according to Wiseman.

Embodying these four traits can help put you in a better position to make your goals a reality, he added.

The second and third traits in particular helped Mackie, who, in 2025, became a new face of the “Captain America” franchise, once led by former co-star Chris Evans.

“When you’re given a huge opportunity like that, you have to take into consideration that you might fail,” Mackie said. At first he was afraid, but he didn’t let that stop him. He had a network of mentors and supporters who could help, he realized: “I had to lean on those teachers and the people around me who got me to that point.”

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Ohio native Lauren Scott, 29, had lived in Los Angeles for 10 years working as a freelancer in the film industry, when she decided she was ready to buy a house. At the time, Scott lived in a studio apartment and paid $1,175 in rent.

Scott started her search in 2019 and wanted to stay under $400,000. But then the covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, and she found herself outbid every time she put in an offer on homes in the city.

“I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to buy in California, much less Los Angeles, which is somewhere I’ve kind of called home for such a long time and that really sucked,” Scott tells CNBC Make It.

Scott realized buying in California was close to impossible, so she started looking in other states like Florida, where her family lives. She quickly realized she wouldn’t be able to find a job that would match her current lifestyle.

Scott was also disappointed in the quality of life in the United States and set her sights on Mexico, Portugal and Italy because they all had weather similar to California.

The contention between locals and expats over rising housing costs, made Scott dismiss Mexico and Portugal pretty quickly. So she focused on properties in Italy. She set a budget of $50,000 and did her house hunting online.

“I didn’t fly over and bought sight unseen, which I don’t recommend,” Scott says. “I reached out to a lot of agents and just ended up paying somebody to do it all for me.”

After several weeks of searching, Scott found a two-bedroom, one-bath townhouse one hour outside of Florence. She could walk and use public transportation, which was a big priority for her.

“I didn’t want to deal with a car since I’m not there full time and just being in the mountains and having that view made me feel super at peace,” Scott says.

The townhouse had been on the market for 32,000 euros or $34,905 USD. The previous owner told her the price was set low because the hot water boiler would need repairs.

“She left it completely furnished and just wanted to get out and move to a different part of Italy but was having problems selling the home,” Scott says. “I really lucked out because there’s nothing wrong with it except for needing to replace that one part of the home.”

Scott paid the full asking price of $34,905 and an additional 4,200 euros, or $4,581 USD, in closing costs.

Not wanting to deplete her savings, Scott secured a $20,000 personal loan from a local bank to help purchase the house, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Scott closed on the townhouse in August 2022 and flew to see it in person for the first time that November and says when she first arrived, she was overcome with emotion.

“It was just a surreal feeling. I couldn’t believe I owned a home in my 20s because I didn’t think this would ever happen. I think I cried too,” Scott says.

Scott’s original plan for the house was to rent it out, but she realized she didn’t want to deal with the issues that could arise with tenants or short-term renters.

“The cost of just having it empty would probably outweigh the cost of renting it out and having somebody break something,” she says. “I’m kind of protective over my house.”

Scott visits Italy twice a year now and uses the townhouse as a vacation home, but she is currently trying to secure a digital nomad visa to stay in the country for a while. In 2024, Italy launched its “Visa for Remote Workers,” allowing a one-year residency with the option to renew for highly skilled professionals to work remotely as employees or as self-employed freelancers.

“I’m hoping at some point within the next year I can officially move but if I end up staying in the States, I plan to use it as more of a retirement plan because I know I’m not going to be able to retire in the U.S.,” she says.

“I’m thinking of it more as a long-term investment to get out of the U.S. As a freelancer, it’s actually concerning because I don’t always have health care, I don’t have a 401K and I can’t afford to invest, so I think just being able to know that I have something secure and a place to call my own for when I am older is really comforting.”

Scott says though she was excited to be able to buy a house, the feeling was bittersweet because she was only able to do so outside of the U.S. — the country where she was born and raised.

“It makes me sad because what’s keeping me here is my parents. I don’t want to move all across the world and then not be able to see my family a lot,” she says. “It’s sad to know that my parents could buy a home and my grandparents could, too, but with inflation, it’s not as accessible for my generation anymore. I don’t think that’s fair to our generation and the ones coming after us.”

Scott still lives in Los Angeles, now in a one-bedroom apartment where she pays $1,695 a month in rent, including a parking space. She is also still freelancing but has shifted to content creation and social media work.

And though she’s trying to figure out just how much time she will spend in her Italy house, the one thing Scott knows for sure is that she has no plans on buying a home in America.

“It’s a hard no because I think having one property is a blessing, but anything can happen,” she says. “I don’t want to completely demolish my savings or go into debt to buy a home here, especially with the state of the country right now.”

Conversions to USD were done on March 20, 2025, using OANDA conversion rates of 1 euro to 1.09 USD. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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People who start a new business often make one “fatal mistake” that″ll likely doom their venture before it even starts, says Steve Blank.

The mistake: not researching your prospective customers or clients before deciding what kind of company you want to build, and the products or services you’ll offer. ”[I’ve] seen this a million times,” says Blank, an adjunct professor at Stanford University who has written four books on the subject of entrepreneurship and helped build eight different tech startups, of which he co-founded four.

Coming up with an idea for a business first, and then determining how to sell that product or service — before you’ve confirmed it’s something your prospective customers actually desire, is a recipe for failure, Blank says.

“The most important [question] is: ‘Well, who are my customers?’ And the second one is: ‘What do they want?’” adds Blank, who sold his final startup, business software company Epiphany, sold to SSA Global Technologies for $329 million in 2005. “It’s not: ‘Here’s what I’m building. Can I sell it to someone?’”

For years, Blank has told his students to “get the heck outside” of the office or classroom and hear from actual potential customers, he says. He’s not alone: Talking to customers as early as possible is necessary to ascertain the best product-market fit, putting founders on the path to building a successful business, according to the Small Business Administration.

Alberto Perlman, co-founder and CEO of Zumba Fitness, says the “biggest mistake” entrepreneurs make is thinking they “know more than their customer.”

“You have to always be listening, and listening between the lines, to your customer,” Perlman told CNBC Make It in 2020.

Not listening to your customers “can make the difference between a business that thrives and one that fades,” investor and co-star of ABC’s “Shark Tank” Robert Herjavec wrote in a recent LinkedIn post. “It’s natural to get attached to your product or service, but success hinges on seeing its value through the customer’s eyes.”

Blank points toward his own entrepreneurial track record — specifically, one of his biggest failures — as an example. He co-founded a video game company called Rocket Science Games in 1993 and raised $35 million for it. The company made a cover of Wired magazine that dubbed them Silicon Valley’s next hot startup.

Rocket Science Games had talented engineers and its initial line of games created buzz with polished trailers, but Blank found out too late that customers thought the games “sucked,” and sales never materialized, he told Fast Company in 2014.

The company shuttered in 1997, becoming a high-profile tech industry flop. Blank probably would never have started it, or “definitely changed its trajectory,” if he’d followed his current advice and sought out customer feedback before it was too late, he says.

“The biggest killer for me, and the biggest failure, was hubris,” says Blank, bluntly adding: “Don’t believe your own bulls—. It’s really easy to get convinced about your passion and your vision.”

Want to earn some extra money on the side? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Start a Side Hustle to learn tips to get started and strategies for success from top side hustle experts. Sign up today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $97 (+taxes and fees) through April 1, 2025.

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