Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian are each millionaires — but that doesn’t mean they’re trying to raise entitled children.

Williams and Ohanian give their 7-year-old daughter Olympia a modest weekly allowance, Ohanian, 42, said in a video posted to social media platform X on April 24. “She gets $7 a week. Serena was her lawyer in the negotiation,” said Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit in 2005. “I drew up a real contract … Her mom was her counsel, which was really frustrating.”

Before receiving her payout, Olympia has to complete chores — five days per week — like feeding the dog, putting her clothes in a hamper and making her bed, Ohanian said. He and Williams want to teach their daughter the value of working for what she wants, he added.

At one point, Olympia saved up $100, and she wanted a $125 watch, said Ohanian. Closing that gap herself helped her “embrace that feeling” of work leading to reward, Ohanian said: “We’re trying to create that flywheel between doing the work and getting the money.”

Ohanian and Williams have also have a 1-year-old daughter named Adira. Both parents worked from young ages: Williams, the highest-earning woman athlete of all time, made her professional tennis debut at age 14, and Ohanian was only 23 when Conde Nast acquired Reddit for $10 million in 2006.

Williams now has an estimated net worth of $340 million, according to Forbes. The publication estimated Ohanian’s net worth as $70 million, as recently as 2019. Both are currently active as startup investors, with Williams launching Serena Ventures in 2014 and Ohanian founding VC firm Seven Seven Six in 2020.

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Balancing their family’s comfortable lifestyle with a bit of frugality could help instill the same drive and responsibility in their kids that they felt growing up, Ohanian said.

“I need [Olympia] to feel that little bit of pain of, like, ‘Ugh, I gotta wait two more weeks for that paycheck,’ and then start to remember, ‘Because I do this work, I get this money,’” he said.

“We’re trying to build the muscle: work = reward,” Ohanian added in his post on X. “Good things come when you work for it.”

Teaching your children about financial literacy at a young age is a great way to set them up for success, according to parenting expert Margot Machol Bisnow, who interviewed the parents of 70 highly successful adults for her 2022 book, “Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams.”

“Although the parents I spoke to never pushed their kids towards pursuing a high-paying job, all of them made an effort to teach their kids about money in one form or another,” Bisnow wrote for CNBC Make It in July 2022.

For example, try using physical cash to make purchases when your children are around, recommends Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of asset management firm Ariel Investments and author of the bestselling kids’ book “Priceless Facts About Money.”

Swiping a credit card or tapping a phone against a screen doesn’t quite convey the value of a dollar to kids as effectively as paper money or coins, Hobson said on a January 28 episode of “The Oprah Podcast.”

“For children, it’s on a credit card, a phone, or it spits out of a machine, so trying to explain that you work for it [is] super hard,” Hobson said, adding: “Use cash so they can see that it’s finite … and you don’t have an endless amount of it.”

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In 2020, right in the thick of the pandemic, I decided to put a tiny home in my backyard. 

At the time, I was operating several short-term rentals in Atlanta, including rooms within my three-bedroom primary home. But Covid-19 made renting safely a challenge. I figured the best way to keep passive income flowing — and myself safe — was to move into a smaller structure and list my main home on Airbnb.

So I started designing an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) — a self-contained structure on the same lot as a single-family or multifamily home. The 296-square-foot home was converted from a lofted shed and hooked up to my main home’s utilities. It cost about $35,000 to build, including the prefabricated structure, labor, and materials. 

As with many big ideas, things didn’t go as planned — and that turned out to be a blessing. Here are four ways I’ve used my ADU over the last five years: 

I finished building the tiny house in March 2021. After going over budget and falling behind schedule, I decided to list it as a short-term rental to recoup costs, charging between $89 and $129 per night. 

It quickly became one of the most popular units in my portfolio — thanks in part to my docuseries “Going Tiny,” which documented the entire build from sketch to rental.

Guests ranged from construction workers to couples and solo travelers looking for a more unique, personal experience than a hotel. It was rewarding to see people find joy in something I had envisioned and brought to life from scratch.

In 2022, I stepped away from Airbnb completely. As I shared more in my TEDx talk, “Why We Need to Rethink Housing Insecurity,” I felt torn, offering beautiful spaces to travelers while many locals lacked access to stable, long-term housing.

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So I shifted to mid- and long-term rentals, offering the ADU to grad students, travel nurses, and other professionals for about $1,300 a month. These were people who needed a home base near the city, but were often priced out of the market. 

During this phase, the ADU still generated income, but now it aligned with my values.

By early 2023, I was in a transitional season. I’d just ended a long-term relationship and I was craving solitude and a reset. That’s when I moved into the ADU myself.

For six months, I fully embraced tiny living in my own backyard, while renting out rooms in my main home to college students for a total of about $2,725 a month. It lowered my expenses and gave me a new appreciation for the space I’d once seen purely as an investment. 

It became a sanctuary — supporting both my finances and my healing from the breakup.

When my younger sister moved to Atlanta with her fiancé later that year, they were expecting their first child. I invited them to stay in the ADU, giving them a peaceful space to transition into parenthood without the pressure of paying high rent. They stayed rent-free the first few months, and then started contributing $1,200 a month.

It was the first time in nearly a decade that I’d lived in the same city as any of my family. Since leaving for college and moving to Atlanta solo, I had made friends and built community, but having my sister nearby was grounding in a way that nothing else had been. 

Our setup isn’t traditional, but it’s deeply fulfilling. We share meals, look out and show up for each other, and truly live in community. When I’m working long startup hours, it’s my sister making sure I eat. And in the quiet moments — late nights by the fire pit, spontaneous movie nights, or just checking in on each other — it feels like the best version of growing up together, but now as women building stability, sisterhood, and a sense of home side by side.

In 2024, our youngest sister moved to the city to attend Spelman College. Though she doesn’t live on the property, that makes two sisters, a nephew, a brother in law — who’s now like a brother to me — and a whole lot of joy and support in town.

Today, the ADU still houses my sister and her family. But more than that, it’s a symbol of what’s possible when we reimagine how we use the space we already have.

At a time when loneliness is a common problem and housing costs keep climbing, ADUs offer a powerful solution. They create flexibility, support multigenerational living, and can generate income when needed. 

I’ve seen firsthand what one small structure can do. And now, through my company Gather ADU, I help others do the same. Most of our builds so far have been in California. But just this month, we broke ground on our first ADU in Georgia for a close friend of mine who lives just a few blocks away. 

Five years ago, when I built my backyard tiny home, I had no idea it would lead to a business helping others create the same kind of space and community. But more than anything, I’ve learned ADUs aren’t just about housing — they’re about possibility, connection, and room to grow.

Precious Price is a TEDx speaker, real estate entrepreneur, and co-founder of Gather ADU, a startup helping homeowners and investors build backyard tiny homes and accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to create more housing and maximize their property value. She holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. Follow her on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

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While going to college tends to mean better pay, not all degrees guarantee high salaries — especially if you study liberal arts.

That’s according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which shows that graduates who major in education, social work or the arts tend to earn the lowest median incomes within five years of finishing school. The analysis includes only full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree and excludes those still enrolled in school.

The salary figures are based on 2023 data, the most recent available, and show early-career pay in these fields falls below the U.S. median wage of $48,060 for that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While engineering majors can make upward of $80,000 early in their careers, many liberal arts and education majors earn closer to $40,000. The median salary of all majors examined was $50,000.

Here’s a look at the 10 majors linked to the lowest median salaries for full-time workers ages 22 to 27.

While learning a foreign language is a valuable skill, a degree in the subject doesn’t always lead to high-paying roles. That’s likely because language can be learned outside a formal education and many graduates tend to go into relatively low-paying fields, like education, translation or public service.

Liberal arts majors also tend to earn less than graduates in technical fields like engineering or math, largely because there’s less demand for their skills in higher-paying industries like technology and finance.

Unfortunately, many liberal arts majors don’t fare much better as they get older, especially those in education. Here’s a look at the 10 lowest-paying majors for full-time workers between ages 35 and 45.

Early childhood education majors earn the least of all mid-career graduates, with a median income of $49,000 — just $8,000 more than what they earned five years after graduation.

By contrast, engineering majors typically break into six figures by mid-career.

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As someone who chats with startup founders for a living, I’ve always admired the “builders.” I have a lot of respect for their technical ability to dream up an idea and code it into existence, but it’s not something I could ever do.

Even the thought of coding gives me painful flashbacks to my college statistics course, in which we learned the programming language “R,” and let’s just say I did not find it enjoyable.

So when I came across the term “vibe coding,” my immediate thought was, “great, more tech bro lingo.” But after going down a rabbit hole, I discovered something that really resonated with me.

The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and former head of artificial intelligence at Tesla, who posted on X in February, “There’s a new kind of coding I call ‘vibe coding’, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.”

“I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works,” he wrote.

Simply put, vibe coding is coding with the help of artificial intelligence. Today, AI-powered code generation tools like Replit and Cursor are making it possible even for non-technical people and those without experience with software engineering to create functional apps or websites.

Startup founders aren’t the only ones using it — Big Tech is also outsourcing some of its coding to AI. Last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that as much as 30% of the company’s code is now written by artificial intelligence.

One fine morning in April, I discovered a two-day “vibe coding” boot camp in my area which advertised that class takers could “go from zero to one, creating functional apps in just 48 hours.” That was my chance to get on the other side and see what the hype is all about.

The class, called “Code with AI,” took place in person in an office-turned-classroom over a single weekend. We were simply asked to bring our laptops and a project idea.

I showed up about half an hour early on Saturday morning to get myself set up, which involved three simple steps:

1. Download and sign up for the free version of Cursor
2. Download NodeJS
3. Sign up for the free version of Vercel’s v0

The boot camp, which costs $300 Singapore dollars (about $233), is run by Sherry Jiang, co-founder and CEO of fintech company Peek, and Agrim Singh, co-founder and CTO of AI-powered hardware design assistant Niyam AI. Both Jiang and Singh say that their own startups were largely built using the same AI tools and methods that they taught through the class.

Here’s an abridged version of how the weekend went.

The classes on both days began with a quick slideshow on what we’d be working on that day. On Saturday, we focused on narrowing down a project idea into a clearly defined product, then prototyping it. On Sunday, I worked on actually building out our product and integrating AI into them.

I used Gemini 2.5 Pro, a large language model, to help clarify and narrow down my project idea into a clean product requirements document. I decided to create a negotiation training tool. From there, I used v0 to prototype and develop the user interface of the tool. Then, I used Cursor to build out my product and integrate AI into it.

All that may sound complicated or overwhelming to the unfamiliar, but the process was quite feasible in practice. Surprisingly, the most difficult part for me was picking an idea.

I bounced between different options, ranging from an instant paperwork translator to a Tinder-for-dogs (to help match dogs for playdates). Ultimately, I settled on a web-based AI-powered negotiation trainer that helps teach users how to negotiate in different settings and situations, and with different personalities through written and spoken drills — which I successfully built out by the end of the weekend.

In hindsight, I realize I should have gone with the second option: Tinder-for-dogs.

I was amazed to find that the process did not involve coding at all. I learned that vibe coding is more about patience and prompt engineering — or knowing how to prompt or instruct the AI tools — than it is about coding.

Much of the class was about learning how to write out our prompts for the AI tools. “AI is the dumbest smart thing out there … you have to be super specific,” Singh said to a class of about 30. As long as you can read, write and follow instructions, you can probably vibe code, I learned.

“Just being able to write code is, I think, no longer going to be a huge differentiation in this current day and age. But if you are a really good software engineer, your productivity is just going to 10x,” said Jiang. As a result, startups may not need to raise as much money as hiring costs may also decrease, she added.

“For people who are not technical today … I think that AI is just the biggest unlock. So we’re going to have many more people who are going to be able to build apps,” she said. Aspiring entrepreneurs who have felt held back by their lack of technical knowledge can now at least get a boost from AI.

AI will be a great “equalizer” that will allow many more people to create companies, especially if they have an expertise in a specific area, Jiang added. For example, teachers can create an app for students, and diving instructors can create a global diving community app.

“I see a ton of these people making like, $10,000 to $20,000 a month off of an app they vibe coded, when they didn’t know how to code months ago,” said Jiang.

While competition may also increase as more people can create startups today, Jiang predicts that it’ll also be an opportunity to create niche apps that are hyper-focused on specific users.

But a question remains: do you need to know how to code in order to launch a solid product to the market today? Jiang says “it depends what you build.”

It’s important to acknowledge the limitations of vibe coding, which is best suited to very simple, lightweight, straightforward consumer apps — not anything very technical that will require “heavy enterprise security” or anything of the like, Jiang noted.

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When a child throws a full-blown tantrum over a minor setback, you might be tempted to respond with tough love.

But the key to raising kids who grow up to be mentally strong, resilient adults is to treat them with compassion, rather than chastising them for over-reacting, according to child psychologist Becky Kennedy. 

“It’s almost like we view compassion as dangerous,” Kennedy, who has a PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University, said on an April 22 episode of her parenting podcast “Good Inside.” “When [kids] are having a big reaction to something we deem to be a small, childish thing, we think that compassion is going to lead to kids being soft, being snowflakes.”

Kennedy “thought these things myself” about her own three children when they were toddlers, she said. But when a young child’s disappointment leads to a tantrum, a parent’s criticism can actually make the overreaction worse, she said: “If I add my criticism, my invalidation, the feeling just gets bigger. It’s so counterproductive.”

Instead, Kennedy recommended acknowledging your child’s disappointment with calm, supportive statements like, ”‘It makes sense. You’re upset … That is real. And I know you’re going to get through it.’”

Validating language can help kids feel understood, especially when they’re struggling or upset. You can even use it to discourage future emotional meltdowns: “Parents can use phrases like: ”‘It’s OK to feel upset, but not OK to act this way,’” psychotherapist Amy Morin wrote for CNBC Make It in December.

“It shows them that feelings like anger or sadness are normal, but it’s not OK to disrupt or hurt others,” Morin added, noting that parents can teach kids alternative ways of coping with big feelings, like taking deep breaths or naming their emotions. “Controlling how emotions are expressed is a key skill they’ll need for life’s inevitable ups and downs.”

Mentally resilient adults tend to have self-compassion. Parents can help establish that skill from an early age, said Kennedy.

“A parent’s voice becomes a child’s self-talk,” Kennedy said. If parents invalidate or criticize their child’s distress, that kid is more likely to react to a setback as an adult with self-criticism, rather than reflecting on what went wrong and trying to figure out the best way forward. 

″[That] is only going to make it more difficult for them to find their feet, find their confidence, find their self-trust, find their resilience, and actually move on and figure out what they want to do next,” said Kennedy.

Teaching your children how to show themselves compassion can help ensure that, as they age, they’ll be better equipped to handle setbacks without spiraling into negativity.

“Compassion is a huge part of self-regulation,” said Kennedy, adding: “When we berate ourselves, ironically, that makes us so much softer, because we’re not able to deal with the feeling [and] it lasts longer and gets even bigger.”

Self-compassion makes both children and adults more motivated to learn new things, and to change their behavior to avoid repeating past mistakes, according to research from psychologist and University of Texas at Austin associate professor Kristin Neff.

“Compassion after failure makes people more likely to persevere and try again as compared to those who self-criticize,” Kennedy said, referencing Neff’s research. “Also, self-compassion helps people take responsibility for mistakes without spiraling into shame. That’s huge.”

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