I’ve spent seven years studying achievement culture and interviewing hundreds of high-performing kids and their families. One issue that comes up again and again for parents and teens is how much the high-stakes world of college admissions affects their relationships.

Amid a competitive, expensive and uncertain process, it’s easy to understand a parent’s temptation to micromanage every detail. But this can often lead to fights and resentment.

Having observed the strain that the college admissions arms race can have on family life, I have a non-negotiable parenting rule: with my three teens, we don’t talk about post-high school plans until the spring of their junior year.

Once spring of junior year rolls around, we confine college conversations to an hour each weekend at a time our child chooses, usually Sunday afternoon. These boundaries keep the topic contained and our relationship from being consumed by it.

That one guardrail has been transformative. It stops the anxious parent drip — the constant stream of “Did you finish that supplement? Did you ask your teacher for a recommendation?” — from seeping into every car ride and family dinner.

Instead, my husband and I collect our questions and save them for Sunday, leaving the rest of the week open for all the other things my teenagers have on their minds.

We want to protect this time and provide space for their developing selves, for interests and curiosities that aren’t constantly filtered through the lens of what a college admissions officer might be looking for.

Of course, my kids know they can always talk to us. But by containing our anxious parenting questions, we’re doing what we can to reduce the already immense pressure they might be feeling. 

Growing research finds that students in “high-achieving schools” (those with strong test scores, diverse extracurriculars, and graduates bound for top colleges) are now experiencing higher rates of anxiety, depression, and substance use compared with national norms.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine classified youth in these high-achieving schools as an “at-risk group,” alongside children living in poverty, in foster care, or with incarcerated parents. 

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reached a similar conclusion, identifying “excessive pressure to excel” as one of the top environmental threats to adolescent wellness, right next to poverty and trauma.

It may sound counterintuitive to put kids who attend well-resourced, high pressure schools in the same category as our country’s most vulnerable youth. But the data show that both groups experience chronic, unrelenting stress that can undermine mental and physical health. 

“Mattering,” or the deep human need to feel valued and to add value, is a powerful protective factor for youth mental health.

Young people learn that they matter through the messages they receive at home. One of the most effective ways to do that is to make unconditional worth visible. 

One mother I interviewed told me about a metaphor she used to demonstrate this. She held up a $20 bill and asked her child how much it was worth. Then she wrinkled it, stepped on it, even dunked it in a glass of water. “Now how much is it worth?” she asked. The answer, of course, was the same. 

Like that $20 bill, our children’s value doesn’t diminish when they bomb a test, get cut from a team, or aren’t invited to a party. Our job is to remind them that their worth will never change, no matter what.

So much of parenting is spent getting through endless to-do lists that our kids don’t always see the delight we take in being their parents. Try greeting them once a day the way the family dog does, with total joy.

Small, consistent reminders that our love isn’t conditional can shift the entire atmosphere at home. They tell our kids that their value isn’t tied to their performance. 

In our family, this became the inspiration for the “one-hour-a-week” rule. It was one way to put mattering research into practice. It’s our reminder that home should be the one place where you never have to prove your worth.

When kids aren’t performing to earn our approval, they’re free to pursue goals that actually mean something to them.

So this year, as my daughter goes through the admissions process herself, I’m holding firm to our Sunday rule. Because the relationship I’m building with my children matters far more than any acceptance letter ever could.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace is an award-winning journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller ”Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It.” She lives in New York City with her husband and three teens. You can follow her on Instagram @jenniferbrehenywallace. 

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When your kid is in the middle of a tantrum, logic and lectures don’t work.

I’ve studied over 200 kids and worked with hundreds of families, and one thing is clear: Tantrums aren’t about defiance. Research shows that during emotional overwhelm, a child’s prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for reasoning and language) essentially goes offline. It’s why “use your words” falls flat when they’re screaming.

What they need in that moment is connection. These seven magic phrases work with your child’s nervous system by calming the storm, restoring safety, and teaching emotional regulation — the real skill behind resilience.

When your child is mid-meltdown, your instinct is to make it stop… fast. You want the screaming to end, the tears to dry, the chaos to pass. So you start talking: “Calm down,” “Use your words,” “Tell me what’s wrong.”

But often, the fastest way to end a tantrum is silence. When your child’s body is in full distress, every word you add is like oxygen to a fire. Their “thinking brain” has shut down. Words simply can’t land. But your nervous system can reach them instantly.

Sit close. Stay relaxed. Saying nothing essentially communicates an important phrase: “You’re safe, and I can handle this.” Once their breathing slows and the peak has passed, that’s when your spoken words can start to land.

This short phrase is a lifeline. You’re not walking away, threatening consequences, or trying to reason. You’re anchoring them back into connection.

A tantrum often triggers a primal fear: Am I still loved when I’m out of control? Your calm presence answers that question instantly. Connection regulates the stress response faster than correction ever can. Emotional safety quiets the body’s alarm system.

Instead of minimizing their emotions or rushing them through it, this phrase acknowledges the size of the feeling. It helps kids see what’s happening inside rather than being consumed by it.

Validation activates the brain’s calming pathways. When children feel seen, their bodies release tension. And that’s the first step toward emotional awareness.

Parents often swing between being too permissive or too harsh. This phrase strikes the balance. You’re separating the feeling from the behavior, and validating the emotion while holding the boundary.

Consistent limits paired with emotional acceptance build impulse control — the foundation of self-discipline.

Sometimes, a “time-in” works better than a “time-out.” This phrase teaches your child to regulate with you. Invite them to sit, breathe, or just be still until the storm passes. Proximity restores safety faster than isolation ever could.

When children are dysregulated, they need your nervous system to co-regulate theirs. Your calm is contagious.

This phrase helps acknowledge the emotion underneath your child’s behavior: disappointment, frustration, or longing. When kids feel seen, they don’t need to keep screaming to prove their feelings are real.

Validation lowers the brain’s threat response. Once a child feels understood, their nervous system begins to settle — and the tantrum ends naturally, without punishment or bribes.

Unconditional safety is what every child needs most. Tantrums often test an unspoken question: “Will you still love me when I’m not lovable?”

This phrase answers it clearly and teaches emotional security for life. It also rewires the shame response. Children learn that love isn’t withdrawn for imperfection, and that’s the beginning of self-worth.

Reem Raouda is a leading voice in conscious parenting and the creator of FOUNDATIONS, a step-by-step guide that helps parents heal and become emotionally safe. She is widely recognized for her expertise in children’s emotional safety and for redefining what it means to raise emotionally healthy kids. Connect with her on Instagram.

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If your home and work are on the opposite sides of town, you might have a long commute. If they’re on the opposite sides of the country, you have quite the supercommute.

That’s the case for Memwanesha Daniels.

Daniels, who describes her career as “bicoastal nursing,” lives with her boyfriend and three kids, ages 2 to 13, in Jacksonville, Florida, but works in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she says she’s able to make three times as much as when she worked locally in Jacksonville.

When she was in nursing school, hearing of registered nurses making good money in the Bay Area and saving more by living elsewhere was “like urban legend.”

“I heard about that and I told myself, ‘I’m going to work in the Bay Area,’” she says.

Fast forward and Daniels says she’s been supercommuting to work in California since 2017, with some breaks in between where she was working locally in Florida.

But, “I always end up back in California,” she says.

The length of her time in California varies, but Daniels says she’s done everything from working a few days at a time to staying 2-week long sprints to earn as much as possible.

Daniels is usually able to fly to work the day of. She’ll often hop on a flight between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. in Jacksonville and arrive in the Bay Area between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. local time. She was once stuck in Texas overnight after a flight got pushed, though she says “it doesn’t happen often.”

“I love to fly, and I love to travel,” she says, noting that she falls asleep quickly when she’s on the plane. “Flying is relaxing for me.”

When she lands in the Bay Area, she’ll head to her apartment in Oakland to shower and squeeze in a nap before heading to work.

Daniels estimates she’s typically flying 4 days a month. But if she’s in “grind mode,” she might only fly twice a month, as she might stay in the Bay Area for longer stretches to make more money.

She’s on staff at one hospital, typically working 12-hour shifts and prioritizing nights and weekends for the increased pay. She makes more than $100 per hour on those shifts, and even more for overtime.

She’s made $25,000 a month before by doing these shifts and picking up some overtime, generally totaling around 16 shifts in that time. Sometimes she makes less, when she’s spending more time at home with family for holidays or birthdays.

“I can make more,” she says. “But of course you still have to have a life, still have to get home.”

As for her supercommuting costs, Daniels typically makes two round trips a month, which she estimates costs under $500 total. She pays roughly $1,300 a month for her California apartment.

Daniels’ apartment is within walking distance to work, but she can also take a local BART train and hospital shuttle to get to work.

“I can save a lot and it gives me a different type of life than what I would have trying to make things work in Florida,” she says. “Paying an extra $2,000 a month to make three times the amount I would make in Florida is very much worth it.”

When she’s away, Daniels regularly has FaceTime calls to stay in touch with her boyfriend and kids. While she sometimes feels “sad and worried” about being away from her kids for stretches at a time, they don’t seem to mind as much, she says.

“I’m the one crying like, ‘Oh, I miss my family’ and they are just fine,” she says. “They don’t care because they’re used to it.”

When she’s home in Jacksonville, she’s “fully clocked out of work” and essentially “living the stay-at-home mom life” with her family.

Daniels is considering packing up with her family and moving to the Bay Area full-time. Wherever she lives, she plans to continue nursing in California.

“It’s very lucrative,” she says. “This is a retirement plan for me.”

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As Dr. Sidrah Nisar grew up in her Pakistani household, her parents encouraged her from a young age to become a doctor, lawyer or engineer.

“It was a very education-heavy focus growing up,” the 30-year-old tells CNBC Make It.

Nisar decided to go the doctor route, but instead of working with humans, she treats cats and dogs as a veterinarian in Corona, California.

“I was definitely always an animal lover growing up,” she says. “I am allergic to cats and dogs and any type of fur, so it was a little thing I had to overcome, but I definitely am very happy with my career choice.”

Nisar held full-time positions at a couple of different animal hospitals before her sister, a fellow vet, suggested she pick up shifts as a relief vet using an app called Roo to earn extra cash. “I was like, ‘Wow, I could be making $1,300 [or] $1,400 today,’” she says. 

At the time, Nisar was earning around $125,000 as a salaried doctor in private practice. She started picking up shifts on Roo in May 2023 and left her full-time position in September of that year.

Now, she works as a relief vet full time. Rather than holding a staff position at an animal hospital, she finds clinics in her vicinity and works up to 10-hour shifts four or five days a week. 

Nisar earned just over $366,000 from shifts she picked up on Roo in 2024. She became a brand ambassador for the app in March 2024, earning her an additional $18,000. Including a couple of other vet shifts Nisar worked outside of Roo, her total income for 2024 was $386,000.

Vets on Roo earn nearly twice as much per hour as the average full-time vet, and on average make $1,266 per day, the company says. Nationwide, vets earn a median of $125,510 per year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The increased pay working as a contractor versus a full-time employee has been nice, Nisar says. And though it has some downsides, relief work is “also significantly less stress,” she says.

“When you’re doing relief [shifts], you go in, you do your work and then you leave and you don’t have to worry about the follow-up care or the drama that you can get when you stay at a practice,” says Nisar.

Nisar says her parents paid for both her undergraduate degree and veterinarian school, allowing her to graduate debt-free. But the jump from living as a student and making no money for more than five years — two years of undergraduate and three and a half years of vet school — to working full-time and making six figures was an adjustment.

“I had more money than I could handle,” she says.

Nisar says she was a little frivolous at first, spending on “unnecessary things” like luxury bags and gifts for family members. She once spent $4,000 on jewelry in Tokyo, partly due to a misunderstanding about the exchange rate. But the moment made her realize, “I definitely can’t splurge like this, and I need to be careful with my money,” she says.

A financially savvy uncle helped answer Nisar’s money questions and set her up to manage her bills and start saving for the future. She opened a brokerage account and started putting money aside, she says. She now invests around $800 per month.

In June 2024, about a year into working as a higher-paid relief vet, Nisar purchased a 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom home in Southern California for $890,000 with a 20% down payment. She pays about $8,000 per month for her mortgage, homeowners association fees and utilities

“When I realized I’d be making significantly more money, I decided to invest that money instead of just having it sit in a bank account. And I decided to buy a house,” she says.

While Nisar appreciates the extra income she’s able to earn as a relief vet, “you kind of always have to be hustling and looking for work,” she says. Fortunately for her, she hasn’t yet had a month where she struggled to find enough shifts to make sure her financial obligations are met.

Another drawback: She had to get her own health insurance as a contractor, which costs her around $2,300 a month for health, vision and dental coverage.

Though she’s getting married in early November and will soon split costs with her fiancé, Nisar currently lives alone and covers all her bills on her own. Here’s how she spent her money in August 2025.

• Housing and utilities: $8,052 on her mortgage, homeowners association fees and utilities
• Wedding expenses: $2,515 for her photographer and wedding attire
• Insurance: $2,450 on health, vision, dental, pet and life coverage 
• Food: $1,700 on groceries and dining out
• Discretionary: $1,450 on weekly home cleaning services and pet supplies
• Car payment: $1,000 for her Tesla
• Savings and investments: $800 into her Roth individual retirement account 
• Phone: $550 for phone plans for herself and three of her family members
• Subscriptions and memberships: $107 for a gym membership, streaming services, AppleCare and ChatGPT Plus

Nisar’s parents “really drilled” the importance of financial security into her when she was growing up, she says, and she’s grateful for the life she’s able to live due to her income. She doesn’t track every dollar she spends, but she’s more conscious of where her money is going than when she was fresh out of school, she says.

“I do have a budget now, but if I want to splurge on something I won’t stop myself, because, thankfully, I make enough money that I’m able to,” says Nisar.

In addition to earning considerably more money, working as a relief vet has also given Nisar a better work-life balance than when she was a full-time employee, she says.

“I definitely am able to leave work at work and I don’t bring it home with me versus being a full-time vet,” she says. “I feel like I was consistently just thinking about my job when I wasn’t at work.”

She also has more flexibility to enjoy traveling and spending time with her own pets: two cats and her fiancé’s dog.

Though Nisar has enjoyed her experience as a relief vet so far, it’s not for everyone, she says.

“You are going into a brand new clinic most of the time and you’re meeting new people,” she says. “You have to be patient. You have to be flexible because you’re doing what they want you to do. You’re there to help them.”

Some days on the job are hard, and some cases can be emotional given the nature of working with sick animals, but Nisar enjoys the work and is happy to see all the cats and dogs she cares for, she says. 

“There’s a lot behind the scenes that you don’t see,” says Nisar. “We definitely don’t play with kittens and puppies all day. That’s a part of our job, but it is not our entire job.”

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Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Dr. Sidrah Nisar grew up in a Pakistani household.

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Sebastian Marquez was in high school when he took his now wife out on their first date to a local junior league hockey game.

After the date, he asked if she wanted to stop by his house. She said sure, expecting a family home — not a small, rundown house, gutted and “in absolute shambles,” Sebastian, now 28, tells CNBC Make It.

“I thought I was going to get murdered in the basement,” his wife Julia, 26, says.

The house — the second smallest in his town of Hanover, Ontario — was an investment property he had purchased with help from his mom. At 16, Sebastian was balancing school with stocking shelves at Walmart, working on a chicken farm and remodeling the home with the goal of selling it for a profit, he says.

Today, the couple has built a net worth of just over $1 million — largely from real estate and cryptocurrency investments, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. All figures have been converted from CAD to USD.

Neither Sebastian nor Julia have ever held jobs that have individually paid over six figures, Sebastian says. 

This year, Sebastian expects to earn about $57,500 from his day job as a business advisor at a local bank, and Julia, a nurse, will bring home around $64,500. The couple also expects to make $14,500 off of a rental property they own, bringing their total projected household income for 2025 to approximately $136,500.

Originally, Sebastian didn’t really want to buy a house at 16. He had around $8,000 saved from working various minimum wage jobs, and his heart was set on buying himself his first car, he says.

When his mom suggested he would be better off spending that money on flipping a rundown house, he was initially confused. Then he did some research and realized flipping a home was probably going to be a better investment, he says.

In 2013, Sebastian says his mom used all his savings and covered the remainder to make a $9,800 down payment on a $48,800 home. His mom also contributed another $14,000 toward the remodel, he says.

Other than hiring specialists for plumbing and electrical work, Sebastian says he remodeled the house entirely on his own, using YouTube to teach himself tasks like putting in flooring and installing a toilet.

Six months later, the pair sold the home for $82,200, and from there, Sebastian says he caught the house flipping bug.

After paying his mom back for her expenses, he used the profit from his first home to purchase and flip another. From 2013 to 2022, Sebastian says he flipped a total of nine properties, totaling an estimated $343,700 in profit, all while working at Walmart and attending college.

Today, the couple still owns two properties: his current home — the eleventh home he’s bought — and a rental property with two units.

In 2022, Sebastian stopped flipping houses after accepting an offer from Walmart to manage a larger store in London, Ontario, which required him to move about two hours south of his hometown to Strathroy, Ontario, he says.

He left his role as an assistant store manager in March, after nearly 13 years at Walmart, for a more stable 9-to-5 job advising small businesses. When he started at Walmart, he says he was earning $7.62 an hour. By last year, his salary had grown to $43,000.

“Walmart has seen every side of me from when I was a young teen,” Sebastian says, so much so that he even jokes with his wife that “Walmart always came first.”

Despite his modest income, Sebastian, who has always had a “geekish, nerdish passion” for spreadsheets, says he was able grow his savings through frugal, diligent budgeting and the houses he flipped in his early 20s.

He has kept a budget spreadsheet since 2018. He has a spreadsheet to track his net worth, one for how much he spends on fuel and one that tracks his health. He even remembers creating a spreadsheet to track how much the couple spent on dates before they were married — just to make sure everything was equitable, he says.

“It’s just fun for me,” Sebastian says. “Most of the time, my wife will find me on the couch, on my laptop, fidgeting around with spreadsheets.”

Just under half of Sebastian and Julia’s total net worth comes from their crypto investments, worth about $400,000 as of Sept. 30. The rest comes from investment accounts, their properties and two cars the couple own.

In 2019, Sebastian was looking to diversify his assets, so he invested around $25,000 in bitcoin and ethereum — about 10% of his net worth at the time — on yet another one of his mom’s suggestions. Because cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, that was the amount he was comfortable risking and willing to hold onto for the long term, he says.

“It was a gamble that we had taken at the time, and it’s definitely paid off, fortunately,” Sebastian says.

Between May 2019, when Sebastian says he made his first investments, and the end of September 2025, bitcoin’s value in Canadian dollars has grown by around 2,000% and ethereum’s has grown by around 2,500%.

In September, Sebastian and Julia brought in a total of $9,500 — $7,900 from their day jobs and $1,400 in rental income. They also receive $180 a month from the Canadian government to help cover expenses for their 6-month-old daughter, most of which they invest in an account set aside for her future.

Sebastian and Julia combined their finances in 2020 before getting married in 2022, and they sit down about once a month to talk through their budget and track their net worth, Sebastian says. He says the couple currently puts 15% of their income into index funds.

“At the end of the day, we’re working on the same goal,” Sebastian says. “We’re very similar minded when it comes to spending money.”

Here’s a look at how Sebastian and Julia spent their money in September 2025:

• Annual insurance payments: $4,279 for their rental property and primary home
• Housing and utilities: $2,276 on their mortgage, phone, internet, water and other utilities
• Savings and investments: $1,478 toward various savings and investment accounts
• Rental unit expenses: $928 for the mortgage, landscaping and electricity
• Discretionary: $875 on personal care, recreation, entertainment, toys for their daughter and supplies for their dog
• Food: $772 from groceries and eating out
• Transportation: $420 on gas, car repairs and a speeding ticket
• Subscriptions and memberships: $130 on nine subscriptions including SleepWatch Premium, Netflix, iCloud and Google Nest for home security cameras
• Life insurance: $18 monthly payment

The couple’s September spending was higher than average largely due to two insurance payments he prefers to pay annually, Sebastian says. In a typical month, Sebastian says his family spends closer to $4,300 to $5,700 on personal expenses, while setting some of their income aside to prepare for these large annual payments.

The couple doesn’t have any outstanding debt other than their two mortgages.

Sebastian estimates he could probably afford to retire around 35 due to his early and consistent investments. However, “I don’t really like to think of it as retirement, but more so as financial independence,” he says.

He may jump back into real estate in the “near future,” but for now, he says he’s focused on enjoying time with his family.

“It’d be nice to obviously make more money,” Sebastian says. “However, at the end of the day, I think it has to do with what you do with your money.”

All amounts are in U.S. dollars, converted from Canadian Dollars at the OANDA exchange rate of 1 CAD to 0.71824 USD on Sept. 30, 2025.

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