The people we choose to spend time with, both professionally and personally, have a massive impact on our mental health, productivity, and even career trajectory.

During my 12 years of working as a special agent with the U.S. Secret Service, I saw firsthand how the wrong people can derail even the best of intentions. That’s why I’ve learned to stay far away from three toxic personality types.

Here’s what to look out for, and what to do if you encounter them:

Drama Magnets are always caught in the middle of a crisis: financial troubles, relationship blow-ups, work drama, even legal issues. Chaos follows them like a shadow.

The problem is, they’re usually the ones creating the drama. They pull others into their issues because they crave attention, validation, and emotional stimulation. Drama is part of their identity.

Watch for the signs:

• They are constantly complaining.
• The have crisis-seeking behavior.
• They have emotional overreactions to little things.
• They need your time and energy at all hours.

When you’re around this energy, it’s easy to get swept up. You start reacting instead of leading. Your time, mental clarity, and emotional bandwidth get drained fast.

What to do: Set firm boundaries. Don’t become their emotional caretaker. And if needed, distance yourself entirely. 

This person always needs a target: a manager who overlooked them, a teammate who disagreed, or a system that they think is rigged against them.

They feel morally superior to others, quick to justify their anger, and driven by a need to “win” every exchange.

Watch for the signs:

• They mask insecurity with arrogance or passive-aggression.
• You find yourself walking on eggshells, choosing words carefully just to avoid confrontation.
• Every conversations with them feels like a battle.
• They are highly reactive, and even neutral feedback can set them off.

I’ve seen how dangerous this can be in high-stakes environments like the Secret Service. Collaboration breaks down. People stop speaking up. Progress stalls.

What to do: Don’t match their energy. Stay calm, be clear, and avoid emotional escalation. Focus on outcomes, not egos. Why waste your time and energy fighting battles that don’t move you forward?

A Blame Shifter never takes responsibility. In their view, failure is never a result of their own actions.

If they flunk a course, it’s because the teacher was terrible (not because they didn’t prepare). If they’re passed over for a raise, it’s because their boss is biased (not because of subpar performance). If their business is struggling, the economy is to blame (not their poor business model).

Watch for the signs:

• It’s always someone else who did something wrong, not them.
• They rarely stop to ask what they could have done differently.
• They are terrible communicators, partly because they can’t look at things from an objective standpoint.

In my line of work, accountability wasn’t optional — it was the standard. Mistakes were inevitable, but what mattered was how we responded. Strong professionals own their actions and learn from them.

What to do: Don’t partner with or heavily rely on people who won’t take responsibility. You’ll always end up holding the bag.

My advice is simple: Be strategic about which battles are worth engaging in. Surround yourself with people who take ownership of their lives. The company you keep shapes who you become, and that choice is one of your most powerful tools.

Evy Poumpouras is NBC’s Law Enforcement Contributor, a Former Special Agent and Polygraph Examiner with the U.S. Secret Service, and author of the bestseller Becoming Bulletproof. She is an Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York for Psychology and Criminal Justice with an MA in Forensic Psychology and an MS in Investigative Journalism from Columbia University. Evy is also the host of The AgentX Show. Her online appearances have drawn over 50 million views. Follow her on Instagram @evypoumpouras.

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Austin Willingham, 30, grew up in Decatur, Alabama, and knew from a very early age that he wanted to leave home as soon as he turned 18.

In 2013, Willingham went off to attend college three hours away at Troy University, where he spent every summer working odd jobs as a camp counselor, orientation leader and in the study abroad department at school.

“It felt like I was at some superhero college where people from all over the world are here in this one place doing the same thing. I got to meet some of my lifelong friends that I’m still in contact with,” Willingham tells CNBC Make It.

“We would share meals, we would learn each other’s cultures, we would travel together. It was truly a life-changing experience and it just really opened my mind.”

Willingham spent his junior year studying abroad in Sweden. While abroad, Willingham traveled all over Europe, visiting Germany, Denmark, and then the Netherlands for the first time.

“I got to see a lot of different places and it just showed me that I love all of it,” he says.

When his semester in Sweden was over, Willingham returned to Troy, Alabama to finish his degree but was already plotting his return to Europe.

“Once I came back from Sweden, I was just determined to move back to Europe and had reverse culture shock. I was asking my parents if I could transfer to a different university and complete my degree abroad,” he says.

“Me being the first-generation college student in my immediate family, my parents were really adamant about me just going ahead and finishing my degree.”

Willingham spent his senior year researching his options. He decided to apply for a working holiday visa to Ireland, which allows U.S. citizens to work and travel in the country for up to 12 months.

Willingham graduated in May 2017 and two months later boarded a plane to cross the Atlantic Ocean to start his new life in Dublin.

“It was filled with lots of Guinness, multicultural friends, community and traveling on the weekends. It was just a great time in general,” he says.

While in Ireland, Willingham interned at a publishing company and then worked in human resources.

Willingham fell in love in Ireland and he and his then partner decided to leave the country and spend some time traveling.

“It was a time of either I could continue focusing on building my career or I could do like many other people that I learned from in Europe and take a gap year and go traveling and see the world, so I decided to go do that,” he says.

After leaving Ireland, Willingham went backpacking through Southeast Asia with his partner at the time. He taught English as a second language classes while the two traveled through countries like Vietnam and Myanmar.

In 2019, Willingham moved to Australia and lived in the Land Down Under on and off for five years. The same year, the couple broke up and in 2020, Willingham returned to the U.S. to visit his parents. Just a few days before his flight back to Australia, the country closed its borders due to the covid-19 pandemic.

“I was in the U.S. for a year and after a month of being [back] in Alabama, I realized covid was really going to happen, so I decided to look for work in cities that were close by but a bit bigger,” he says.

“Growing up where I’m from, a lot of people never leave. They never really experience much, and I knew that I was different from a young age. I just knew there had to be more to life outside of that, and once I learned that there was, it just made me want to be exposed and to explore that as well.”

Willingham returned to Australia in 2021, and met his current partner. When the couple’s visas were up, they decided they wanted to move to Europe. The two wanted a country that offers a more straightforward path to permanent residency or EU citizenship. That’s how they landed on the Netherlands, specifically Rotterdam.

“We thought that it would be a good break. It would be a good change and transition from life in Australia. We also thought it would not be as difficult a change because Rotterdam is still the second-largest city in the country. We’re definitely city people, so we thought that this would just be the best space for us,” he says. “As soon as we got here, the people were so warm and they immediately welcomed us in.”

Willingham made the official move to Rotterdam in June, on a DAFT (Dutch-American Friendship Treaty) visa. That visa stipulates that he be self-employed or work as a freelancer only.

To satisfy the visa requirements, Willingham works as an event planner and does commercial modeling, but his ultimate goal is to grow his relocation services business, Willing World.

Willingham and his partner live in a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate. The couple splits 430 euros or USD $498 a month for rent — paying 215 euros or USD $249 each — according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Including rent, Willingham’s monthly expenses in Rotterdam total approximately $680, covering utilities, transportation, health insurance, groceries, and his mobile phone bill.

“I like the freedom. This is coming from a privileged place, but I truly feel like anywhere outside the United States, it’s about being able to breathe and have a work-life balance. That’s what I love most about living abroad, even though I’m working for myself, there is still this balance and there’s not this societal pressure of needing to prove myself all the time.”

Willingham started sharing his journey abroad on TikTok and says that since moving to Rotterdam, he’s enjoyed building a community both online and in real life. He’s excited to see what the future holds, he says, but moving back to the United States is just not in the cards for him right now.

“I would love to live. I would love to own. I would love to say yes at some point, but not in the current situation that we have. It would be way down the line when the United States finally gets some change,” he says.

“I want to be able to be there for my parents, so maybe I wouldn’t move back permanently, but I would spend an extended amount of time.”

Willingham says that leaving the U.S. has taught him that he is capable of anything.

“I’ve learned that I can do it even when I’m scared because it still has to get done,” he says. “When living abroad, especially on your own, you don’t have anybody to depend on, so you learn to depend on yourself and trust yourself with it.”

Conversions from euros to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 euro to $1.16 USD on October 14, 2025. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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According to a new report from online rental marketplace Zumper, the United States is seeing a rise in the share of adults living single. And their research shows that this demographic is looking for a place to settle down that affords them a lifestyle they can truly enjoy.

In the report released this October, Zumper uses its findings to determine the site’s annual ranking of the best U.S. cities for singles in 2025.

The top 10 cities on the list “represent a balance of affordability, job opportunity, and social options, and I think that really appeals to singles, whether they are looking to date or not,” Crystal Chen, co-author of the report, tells CNBC Make It.

To rank them, Zumper analyzed 100 of the most populous U.S. cities across eight metrics, which were weighted to give a total of 100%:

1. Population – percentage of singles (20%)
2. Median one-bedroom rent (20%)
3. Restaurants per capita (10%)
4. Nightlife per capita (10%)
5. Entertainment per capita (10%)
6. Cost of Living index (10%)
7. Median nonfamily income (10%)
8. Unemployment rate (10%)

The report used data sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau: American Community Survey, The Council for Community and Economic Research: Cost of Living Index and more.

Each city was assigned a weighted overall single-friendliness score based on the sum of the eight weighted scores, which was then changed into a letter grade, with A being the best and F being the worst.

“The goal of ranking the best cities for singles was to really balance out affordability, opportunity and social life,” Chen says.

The majority of the cities on the list are mid-sized places like Knoxville, Tennessee and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and not coastal hubs like New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles. Regionally, the South and Midwest really come out on top with seven of the top 10 in those regions, Chen says.

“They combine more moderate incomes with affordable cost of living but they also have robust social opportunities and that just creates a higher quality of life for singles,” she adds.

St. Louis took the No. 1 spot on the list. Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city is $1,000 and about half of the population is single.

“It [St. Louis] has a rare combination of affordability, nightlife and entertainment options per capita. All of that combined really offers an appealing and social opportunity for singles,” Chen says.

The city ranked in the top five nationwide for nightlife and entertainment options.

Data from the 2022 Census Bureau American Community Survey data shows that the salary needed to be considered middle class in the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan area is between $50,000 to $149,000.

1. St. Louis, Mo.
2. Knoxville, Tenn.
3. Salt Lake City, Utah
4. Atlanta, Ga.
5. Pittsburgh, Pa.
6. Tallahassee, Fla.
7. Minneapolis, Minn.
8. Asheville, N.C.
9. Richmond, Va.
10. Austin, Texas

Knoxville is the No. 2 U.S. city for single people — nearly 46% of Knoxville’s residents are single. The city ranked among the top 10 for restaurant options on Zumper’s list.

“It came in second but is still affordable and just a little bit more expensive than St. Louis. It has one of the best cost-of-living scores in the country,” Chen says.

“It really shows that smaller markets can be great places for singles to thrive, especially if they’re affordable and still have local character and community.”

In Zumper’s report, Knoxville also ranked in the top 10 for restaurants, so residents have plenty of dining options. The city is also home to the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee.

Knoxville is an appealing option for singles but it’s also important to note that the state of Tennessee ranked as the worst in the nation for quality of life in 2025, according to CNBC’s annual America’s Top States for Business. Tennessee has America’s third-highest violent crime rate, according to FBI statistics.

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Daniel Rodriguez typically takes three modes of transportation to get from his home in Philadelphia to his work in Atlanta 800 miles away.

The 34-year-old project manager at an urban design firm splits his time between the two cities each week, usually taking a bus, a train and a plane to get to work.

Rodriguez began supercommuting in May. He’d been living in Philadelphia full-time with his wife, but after having a hard time finding work there, he took a hybrid role where he does some work locally but also works several days a week in Atlanta, where his primary team is based. The couple considered moving to Atlanta but decided against it because of cost-of-living expenses.

Now, Rodriguez typically makes his supercommute once a week, usually staying 2 to 3 days a week in Atlanta at a time.

He alternates between flying out in the early morning the day he has to be in the office and catching an evening flight the day before. Rodriguez travels light, taking only a personal item holding his laptop, food and a change of clothes.

Each way typically takes him anywhere from 4 to 6 hours, door-to-door. Rodriguez passes the time brainstorming or editing content, catching up on work, reading, or studying for licensure exams he plans to take soon.

“I’m working from the airport, I’m working from the plane,” he says. “I try to fit as much life into this as possible.”

While his co-workers think his commute is “curious,” Rodriguez hasn’t run into any travel mishaps yet.

“My boss says, ‘For some reason, it works,’” he adds.

Heading from Philadelphia to Atlanta, Rodriguez wakes up around 3:30 a.m. and walks under 10 minutes from his apartment to the train station. For $8.75, he takes a regional train line to the airport. He often takes a 5:30 a.m. flight, which costs around $90 one-way and takes 1.5 or 2 hours. After landing in Atlanta, a $2.50 train and a 10-minute walk usually bring him to the office around 8 or 8:30 a.m.

On his return trip, he’s basically retracing his steps, with a few tweaks. He wakes a little later, around 4 a.m., in Atlanta, and usually books a ride-share to the airport, which costs around $20 and takes 15 to 20 minutes. After his flight and a half-hour regional train ride, a short walk gets him to work, whether it’s his Philadelphia office or a cafe, around 9 a.m.

Rodriguez usually spends up to $240 a week on transportation costs for his back-and-forth.

On housing, he and his wife spend $2,000 combined on monthly rent in Philadelphia. Rodriguez is currently staying with a friend when he’s in Atlanta, for which he pays $400 a month, though he plans to get his own place there soon.

He also spends $200 a year for a CLEAR+ membership to get through security checks at the airport quicker.

Rodriguez says adjusting to his supercommute was “easier than a lot of people think,” partly because he’s used to relying on public transit after selling his car several years ago.

He thinks his commute is “less stressful overall than committing to driving to work every day, stuck in traffic, angry.”

A lot of modern life in America feels like “you’re on autopilot,” he says. “You wake up, you go to work, you clock in and you clock out, and you repeat.” Rodriguez finds that his commute “forces you to be intentional,” whether that’s in how he spends his time in transit, or how he and his wife make time together despite being physically apart some days of the week.

“Everything needs to be thought out in advance,” he says. “Everything you value and prioritize in your relationship, and how you live your life, it can’t be by accident.”

Rodriguez views a commute as “a form of a third place,” referring to the concept of a place that’s neither work nor home.

“They’re not just these pain points to get you to the next place,” he says. “They’re places” too.

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A majority, 60%, of U.S. workers don’t have a “quality job” that provides basic financial well-being, safety and other factors, according to new Gallup research that covers more than 18,000 workers across industries, occupations and types of employment.

“The top line results are definitely sobering,” says Maria Flynn, president and CEO of Jobs for the Future, which helped lead the research. “While the labor market is creating jobs, not enough of those jobs are really allowing workers to thrive.”

Researchers defined a quality job as one that meets the minimum thresholds across three out of five dimensions:

1. Financial well-being, such as fair pay that meets their basic needs to reduce financial stress.
2. Workplace culture and safety, as in a safe and respectful environment free of harassment.
3. Growth and development opportunities, where workers have a clear path to build skills and gain experience to advance in their career.
4. Agency and voice, where workers have decision-making power in their working conditions, like pay and use of technology.
5. Work structure and autonomy, where workers have a stable, predictable schedule and control over when and how their work gets done.

Industries with the highest share of quality jobs are in professional services, financial activities and wholesale trade. Workers are less likely to have quality jobs if they’re in leisure and hospitality, retail trade and warehousing.

Just 40% of workers have a job that the study defines as a quality job. That’s concerning given people with quality jobs are more likely to report feeling satisfied with their lives, health and happiness, in addition to feeling better about their jobs.

Businesses tend to focus on how pay can attract and engage workers, Flynn tells CNBC Make It. But focusing just on salary structures doesn’t account for all the other ways a job can impact an employee’s well-being. Poor performance in one dimension could impact specific demographics of workers, she says.

For example, one of the biggest problem areas for workers seems to be around having control of their work schedules. “We often hear of scheduling challenges in the retail or service industries,” Flynn says, which are often low-wage jobs where women are over-represented.

Women, at 34%, are less likely than men, at 45%, to hold quality jobs, according to the Gallup data.

Interestingly, non-W-2 workers were more likely to hold a quality job than those with W-2 jobs, whether they’re part-time or full-time, according to the data. That’s a little counterintuitive given many independent contractors don’t have as much financial stability, access to benefits or regular work hours as salaried employees.

However, these workers may feel more autonomy over their work environment, schedules and other conditions that allow them to meet the thresholds for a quality job, Flynn says.

As far as other areas of improvement, roughly half of workers say they’re left out of decisions that shape their working conditions. Around a quarter say their employer doesn’t offer promotions or advancement opportunities, and a similar share report feeling treated unfairly at work because of their identity.

Meanwhile, 29% of workers say they are “just getting by” or “finding it difficult to get by.”

Young workers from 18 to 24 are least likely to be in a quality job than other age groups. Just 29% of young professionals are in a job that meets the study’s quality threshold, with many saying they have less decision-making power, more schedule inconsistency and experience greater levels of discrimination or disrespect at work.

The low share of quality jobs for young workers “really raises the challenge of: how can we ensure that these entry-level roles include these elements of quality, and we aren’t only thinking of quality jobs as being important the higher up you are in your career?,” Flynn says.

Employers can do a better job of ensuring quality work conditions to the most junior employees, she says, adding that it’s “a call to action for other groups, like community-based organizations and institutes of higher education and others, to really be helping young people make good, informed decisions around their paths.”

Beyond paying fair wages, Flynn says the research shows there are low- to no-cost ways businesses can improve the quality of the jobs they offer, such as by providing more mentorship and career development opportunities, or enhancing the ways workers weigh in on decisions that impact how they do their jobs.

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