A new report from WalletHub ranks the U.S. cities with the most affordable rent.

The report, released in April, looked at more than 180 cities and analyzed the median annual gross rent compared to the median household income using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Each city was then given a score out of 100.

“In the most affordable cities for renters, the median cost of rent is as low as 15% of the median income, compared to more than 33% in the most expensive cities,” Chip Lupo, a writer and analyst at WalletHub, states in the report.

“This gives people in the least expensive cities a clear financial advantage; the money they save on rent could go toward their emergency fund or savings for future home ownership.”

The top 10 cities are all west of the Mississippi River, with the top five all in the Midwest.

“There’s something in the water west of the Mississippi,” Lupo tells CNBC Make It. “We’re talking about states with very few, if any, major cities, and with few of the problems that would drive up rents. It seems that if you’re looking for an affordable place to rent, heading west seems to be the way to go.”

Total score: 100.00

Bismarck, North Dakota, ranked as the U.S. city with the most affordable rent. The median annual gross rent in the city is about 15.3% of the median annual income.

The city also has the 20th-lowest median annual rent and the 73rd-highest median income. The average rent in Bismarck, ND is $1,023 per month as of April 2025.

This, Lupo says, makes Bismarck an attractive place.

Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota and the second-most populous in the state, after Fargo.

The city has a lower unemployment rate, 3.2%, than the national average of 4.2%, according to a March 2025 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The median household income in Bismarck is $89,020, according to U.S. News and World Report.

1. Bismarck, N.D.
2. Sioux Falls, S.D.
3. Cheyenne, Wyo.
4. Cedar Rapids, Iowa
5. Fargo, N.D.
6. Charleston, W. Va
7. Casper, Wyo.
8. Overland Park, Kan.
9. Juneau, Ala.
10. Anchorage, Ala.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota, ranked as the second-most affordable city for rent, with a score of 96.64 out of 100.

The median annual rent in Sioux Falls is only slightly more expensive than in Bismarck. The average rent for an apartment in Sioux Falls is $1,107.

“Sioux Falls and Bismarck are pretty much in the same boat. Their mean annual rents are reasonable and the median household incomes are about on par with the U.S. averages,” Lupo says.

The city is is one of the cheapest in the country and has the 88th-highest median annual income.

The median income in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is a bit lower than Bismarck’s at $74,714, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The unemployment rate in the city is 2.1%.

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Some people would jump at the opportunity to sell their startup for eight figures. Not Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings.

During Netflix’s early days, its two co-founders got a call that Jeff Bezos wanted to meet them, Hastings said on a December episode of the “First Time Founders with Ed Elson” podcast. After arriving at the company’s headquarters in Seattle, it was clear that Bezos wanted to buy Netflix to jump-start Amazon’s entry into the video market, Hastings said.

“It never got to, like, a formal offer. It was sort of exploratory,” he added. 

The year was 1998, and Bezos’ team offered Netflix “somewhere in the low eight figures” to acquire the company, Randolph told CNBC Make It in 2019. Back then, Amazon was also relatively young — it was four years old, and had debuted on the stock market a year earlier, raising $54 million — but it made a series of acquisitions that year, ranging from other online book retailers to non-book related properties like IMDb.com.

“When someone uses ‘low eight figures,’ that means barely eight-figures. That means probably something between $14 million and $16 million,” Randolph wrote in his 2019 memoir, “That Will Never Work.”

The Netflix founders discussed the pros and cons of selling on the flight back home, Randolph told CNBC Make It. The company wasn’t yet making any money; it didn’t have a repeatable, scalable or profitable business model; and while they were doing plenty of business — mostly through DVD sales — their costs were high.

But both men knew they were “on the brink of something,” said Randolph. Netflix had figured out how to source virtually every DVD on the market, making it “unquestionably the best source on the internet for DVDs,” he said.

They decided on the plane ride that it didn’t seem like the right moment to give up and turned down the deal “politely” as soon as they landed, Randolph said. The decision taught him that when an opportunity comes, you don’t necessarily have to open your door, but you owe it to yourself to at least look through the keyhole.

“We said no and [then] worked our a– off for 20 years,” Hastings said.

In 2000, the duo found themselves in a similar situation with Blockbuster, but this time they were the ones hoping to strike a deal. Randolph and Hastings wanted to sell for $50 million, and CEO John Antioco didn’t take them seriously, even struggling not to laugh at them, Randolph wrote for Vanity Fair in 2019.

“We realized that if we’re going to grow really big, we’re going to have a big fight with them,” said Hastings. “How about we just give them 50% and then help them profit … But they’re a big, serious corporation. We were a bunch of scrappy Silicon Valley kids … They didn’t see any need or interest in buying us.”

Randolph left Netflix in 2003, and Hastings now serves as its executive chairman. Today, Netflix is a video streaming and production company with a market cap of $411.34 billion and, according to the company, more than 300 million subscribers worldwide.

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Billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates likes to stockpile advice for when she feels uncertain.

Whenever someone tells her something helpful, French Gates writes down their quotes so she can “replay them in my head,” she told the Wall Street Journal Magazine in a story published on Monday. One piece of wisdom from her longtime friend Warren Buffett — once given to her and ex-husband Bill Gates — has been particularly useful for her work at her philanthropic investment company Pivotal Ventures, she said.

“If I get tough on myself about philanthropy, I remember what Warren Buffett said to us originally, which is, ‘You’re working on the problems society left behind, and they left them behind for a reason. They are hard, right? So don’t be so tough on yourself,’” French Gates, 60, recalled.

Some experts endorse Buffett’s advice. While you have to persistent and realistic about your goals, dwelling on your mistakes or lack of progress is often counterproductive, Ethan Kross, an organizational psychologist at the University of Michigan, told CNBC Make It in October 2022.

An athlete in a slump is more likely to recover if they focus on how they’ll improve next time, rather than picturing their missed goal over and over again, Kross said. His recommendation: Talk to yourself like a tough coach.

“It’s not like [saying] ‘Everything’s going to be fine, you’re great, you’re unique,’” said Kross. “It can be, ‘Get your act together, Ethan. You’re not going to fail.’”

DON’T MISS: How to change careers and be happier at work

French Gates and Gates first met Buffett in 1991. Their families regularly combined philanthropic efforts in the ensuing decades: Buffett was a Gates Foundation trustee from 2006 to 2021, and has contributed $36 billion to the foundation’s causes as of 2022, according to its website. The trio co-founded The Giving Pledge in 2010, a campaign where billionaires commit to giving away a majority of their wealth during their lifetimes.

Buffett gave French Gates and Gates another piece of advice shortly after the couple launched the Gates Foundation in 2000. “Warren Buffett once said to us … ‘Find your bullseye of what you’re working on and let the other things fall away. You’ll feel better if you keep your talents in that bullseye and keep working on those issues, and you’ll feel less bad about letting other things go,’” French Gates told LinkedIn News in an interview that published on March 4.

Both pieces of advice share a common theme: If your self-criticism prevents you from reaching your goal, try to have patience with yourself.

French Gates may need that patience to reach her longer-term goals. Pivotal Ventures is committed to spending $1 billion on global women’s rights issues by the end of 2026, according to its website. Seeing results from those projects may take years or even decades, French Gates told the Wall Street Journal Magazine.

“We can track things like maternal mortality. Does that get better over the next five years?” she said. “Then, there are long-term issues. Are we getting closer to gender equality? … A true gender societal norm is a 20-year play, so check back with me when I’m 80.”

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If your goal is to make money right after college, majoring in engineering is one of the safest bets.

That’s because many of the highest-paying degrees are in that field, new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows. The rankings line up with previous years’ data, which consistently place engineering fields at the top for median salaries within five years of graduation.

Top-paying majors include computer engineering, chemical engineering and computer science, with graduates earning a median early-career salary of $80,000. All engineering majors in the study have median early-career pay above $70,000.

Here’s a look at the highest-paying majors for workers ages 22 to 27.

Engineering grads are in high demand for their mix of mathematical skills and technical expertise, qualities that are valuable across a wide range of industries. With the growth of tech-driven fields like artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, it’s not surprising that computer engineering majors are among the highest-paid graduates.

Many of the top-paying majors continue to deliver strong returns over time. Among full-time workers ages 35 to 45, engineering majors typically earn six-figure salaries. Here’s a look at the rankings for mid-career graduates.

In contrast, the lowest-paying majors tend to be in liberal arts or education. Among graduates ages 22 to 27, foreign language majors report the lowest median salary at $40,000. For workers between ages 35 and 45, early childhood education majors earn the least with a median salary of $49,000.

The New York Fed’s annual study is based on 2023 U.S. Census data, the most recent available. It excludes currently enrolled students. Median wage data reflects full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree only.

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