This is the season when everyone’s planning for next year. When it comes to money, I can assure you that the secret isn’t in some fancy investing tactic, hot stock tip, or obscure cryptocurrency. 

If you and your partner set just one money resolution for 2026, make it this: You both stay actively involved in your finances.

As a financial advisor for more than 20 years who’s operated my own wealth management firm for nine, I know that this is the single most impactful commitment most couples can make. Yet it’s missing in so many relationships. 

Leaving the money to be handled by one spouse leaves your family vulnerable. If something happens to the person handling everything (illness, death, or even divorce), the other is left to scramble. I’ve helped heartbroken spouses try to piece together accounts, passwords, and plans during the worst moments imaginable, and I wouldn’t wish this outcome upon anyone. 

But even in less dramatic circumstances, it’s still ineffective to leave one overwhelmed person to make all the decisions. You miss out on the power of two perspectives, and the disengaged spouse loses their agency and confidence.

I’ve sat across from countless couples who, even with the best intentions, have lost the plot over time. Most of them never addressed the subtle shifts in their dynamic that made it easier for one partner to take the lead with their money. I’d often end up with just one client at our financial planning meetings, and their partner, I was told, was too busy, disinterested, apprehensive, or overwhelmed to join us. 

For a long time, I didn’t understand why, until it happened in my own home. 

During the pandemic, my wife, Heather, was juggling too much: lawyering in the general counsel’s office of a Fortune 100 company, moonlighting as my business consultant for my wealth management firm, and keeping me and our two daughters clothed, fed, entertained, and safe. 

As a result of the physical, mental, and emotional labor she was carrying for all of us, she disconnected from our household finances. Money felt like the one thing she didn’t have to worry about. In truth, it was the one thing I was willing to own from start to finish, and it was damaging to our relationship. 

I’m grateful she had the courage to say, “This isn’t working anymore.” The tough conversations that followed caused us to rethink what we wanted out of our careers, how we divided labor, and how we could approach money as a team again. 

Talking about money is never just about money, which inspired Heather and me to spend two years interviewing other couples for our new book, “Money Together: How to Find Fairness in Your Relationship and Become an Unstoppable Financial Team.” 

Effective communication is the bedrock. 

Here are some ways to connect with intention, move beyond the numbers, and engage in your finances together — even when it’s the harder thing to do.

• Start with an honest review. Schedule a distraction-free time and place to get into everything. Do you both have access to your accounts? Are all passwords saved in your password managers? You should both have a baseline understanding of your net worth. Review what you earn (cash flow), what you have (assets and investments), what you owe (debt), and what you want (goals). 
• Examine time, from each of your perspectives. Ask whether each of you feels you have the time to do what you want and need to do. You may need to shuffle responsibilities and automate or outsource less-critical tasks to free up time for finances. 
• Create a regular practice. Make recurring money dates non-negotiable. We suggest having them quarterly, which won’t become overwhelming and will create enough space between meetings to recognize real progress.  
• Meet your partner where they are. I’ve often encountered couples where one partner has less knowledge or comfort with all things finances than the other, and that, in part, is why they’ve disengaged. It can feel daunting. Tailor your approach to your partner’s learning style, checking in to see what resonates.
• Bring in outside help if needed. A neutral financial advisor or therapist who specializes in money dynamics can guide tough conversations without bias, and offer financial advice that’s tailored to your specific situation. 

When Heather and I finally reconnected around money, it secured our wallets and also deepened our relationship. Make 2026 the year you prioritize staying connected to your finances together — I know from experience just how transformative it can be. 

Douglas A. Boneparth is the president and founder of Bone Fide Wealth, a wealth management firm based in New York City that focuses on millennials, young professionals and entrepreneurs. He is a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council. Boneparth and his wife, Heather, are the co-authors of ”Money Together: How to Find Fairness in Your Relationship and Become an Unstoppable Financial Team.” 

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On my first day of work at the neighborhood ice cream shop, my boss lined up cups on the counter, handed me a scooper, and set a timer.

“A perfect scoop takes under 24 seconds,” he said. 

Ice cream splattered as I tried to keep up. It humbled me, but I kept showing up. The pay is $16.50 an hour plus tips, and I — a 31-year-old with years of experience in news and tech — expected to be working alongside teenagers. 

Instead, when I started working at Lady Moo Moo in Bed-Stuy, I found myself surrounded by people who, like me, had already built careers and are now navigating an unpredictable job market. Some had been laid off just as I had. Others, like my colleague who is a sex educator and public health advocate, lost funding in their fields. A few are juggling multiple part-time roles to stay afloat. 

We’re all piecing together income however we can, showing up where steady work exists. We have responsibilities and ambition. We’re trying and adapting. There is zero shame in it. 

My life used to look very different. At 23, I was the U.S. news lead for ByteDance’s first U.S. content product, TopBuzz. By 25, I oversaw content strategy at SmartNews, a Japanese news aggregation startup that once felt like the future of media.

I still remember the 10th anniversary celebration. The company flew the U.S. team and several colleagues from Japan to San Francisco and put us up in beautiful hotel suites. The CEO opened a five-figure bottle of whiskey in front of everyone. The future felt bright. A few months later, most of the U.S. team, including me, was laid off. Talk about whiplash.

In 2024, Meta offered me a job that was listed in New York, which has always felt like home. After I accepted, the role shifted to San Francisco. I was hopeful about this next step in my career when I moved west. But no one on my team worked in my building, I had five different managers, and I was laid off again after only a year.

I moved back to New York with part of my severance, assuming my experience, especially with Meta, would help me find work quickly. Instead, I stepped into the most brutal job search I’ve ever experienced. When I logged onto LinkedIn, my feed was full of people going through the same thing.

After a long interview process at Yahoo, I didn’t get the full-time role I’d applied for. But a month later, the hiring manager offered me a part-time weekend contract. I accepted immediately. It meant waking up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and going without benefits, but I loved the work and wanted to stay in the industry.

I figured a job at the ice cream shop in my neighborhood, which is open every year from April through November, might help fill the gap. 

I never expected to get a scooping job in my 30s. I took it to make some extra money until I regained my footing. But I ended up finding so much more in it. 

At Lady Moo Moo, the line wraps around the block even on rainy days. On Halloween, a little girl dressed up as the shop’s golden gumball. The basement is filled with gifts, drawings, thank you notes and even a paper mache cow a customer made.

People come in after long workdays, school pickups, and difficult conversations, or simply because they want a moment of sweetness. I saw couples on dates, friends catching up, and neighbors stopping by because the shop is part of their daily rhythm. 

Every shift, I met people who never imagined they would be picking up part-time work: artists, teachers, nonprofit workers, tech employees, museum curators, and neighbors doing their best to make life work in a difficult economy. No one was ashamed. Everyone showed up for themselves and for each other.

During our final week of the season, the owner took the entire staff out to dinner. I’ve worked full-time jobs with far larger budgets that never expressed appreciation like that. Walking home afterward, my arms sore from 24-second scooping drills, I didn’t feel “behind” in my career. I felt grounded and grateful. I felt like I belonged somewhere again.

Do I want another full-time role? Of course. I miss health insurance. I miss buying fresh groceries. I miss sleeping past dawn. But this experience gave me something I didn’t realize I needed — and when the shop opens its second, year-round location in early 2026, I’ll keep scooping while I continue my job search as long as my schedule allows it.

In a moment when the job market felt chaotic and stability seemed elusive, I found steadiness in a community that held me up. It reminded me that life is about more than titles and résumés.

It’s about the places you go and the people you meet who show you that you’re not alone — the ones who scoop beside you and turn a side gig at a small neighborhood shop into something that feels like home.

Kaila Curry is a journalist, senior content manager, audience engagement and social media strategist and, most recently, an ice cream scooper. She has held editorial and content leadership roles at ByteDance, Meta, and SmartNews, and is currently seeking a full-time role.

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I spent seven years studying high-achieving students, interviewing hundreds of them and their families.

Many young people I met described monitoring grades, rankings, and résumés as if they were constantly evaluating their worth. In some families, achievement took on an outsized role, leading some children to wonder whether their parents’ love was tied to how well they performed.

Achievement culture promises to open doors, suggesting that better grades and better college degrees guarantee better futures. But a growing body of research shows that this relentless chase can breed perfectionism, a trait linked to higher rates of anxiety and depression.

So what can a parent do to protect against this narrow view of success and self-worth?

We can help young people turn their self-focused attention outward. When children shift from “How am I doing?” to “Where can I be useful?” they develop a stronger identity, rooted in contribution rather than performance. Small, everyday ways of being needed — helping a neighbor, being counted on at home, showing up for a team — can buffer against that harmful inner-scorekeeping and build a sturdier sense of self-worth.

When kids anchor their efforts in something beyond themselves, everyday stressors become more manageable. They stop believing they are only a grade or a score, and start feeling like a person who matters in the world. Here’s how:

Recently, a woman told me she was on her way to the park with her two young kids when she saw their elderly neighbor raking her lawn. The neighbor waved off the woman’s offer to help, but still, she unloaded her kids from the car, and they grabbed rakes, piling leaves into bags.

The kids talked about it all afternoon — how happy their neighbor was, how much fun they had, and how good it felt to be useful. They were experiencing what psychologists call a “helper’s high” and a growing sense of agency.

To help children look beyond themselves, try prompts like “What do you think she might need today?” or “Who could use a hand right now?” Regular acts, such as checking on a neighbor, delivering a meal, and volunteering, strengthen kids’ sense of belonging within their community.

One mother I interviewed taped a sheet of paper to the front door with a short list of family tasks. When her kids came home from school, she’d ask them to sign the ones they could take on that day. 

Over time, these small commitments helped her children see themselves not just as children who sometimes help, but as contributors to their family.

That shift toward a helper identity matters. In a study of 149 children ages 3 to 6, researchers found that thanking children for “being a helper” rather than “helping” significantly increased their willingness to pitch in. They were motivated by the idea of becoming someone who helps. 

Across studies, people who feel useful and connected show lower stress and greater resilience, suggesting that contribution is protective.

Kids learn generosity by watching us. But modeling alone isn’t enough. We have to make our thinking visible. 

When you check on a neighbor, bring soup to a sick friend, or help someone who looks overwhelmed, narrate the “why” behind your actions. 

You might say, “I brought her soup so she knows she’s not alone.” Or, you might explain, “He looked like he needed a hand with those bags,” or, “I texted her because I had a feeling today might be hard.” These small explanations give kids a mental model of why we help and an internal script they can use themselves.

In a culture that too often reduces young people to what they achieve, helping them look outward is one of the most potent antidotes we have to excessive pressure. 

When young people discover ways to contribute that aren’t tied to external metrics, they gain a more grounded sense of who they are and the larger role they can play in the world.

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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A 2025 poll from the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan asked American parents of children ages one to 18 about their views on various child health topics including bullying, internet safety, lack of physical activity, parental stress and diet.

The Mott poll report, released in August, found that a majority of parents surveyed, 69%, think the physical health of American children and teens is getting worse. And even more parents are worried about their kids’ emotional wellbeing: 83% believe the mental health of U.S. children and teens is also on the decline.

Results of the poll also show that parents believe social media, too much screen time, and internet safety to be some of the top concerns kids are facing today.

“Since the increased use of social media starting around 2010, the prevalence of mental health problems in youth has also increased significantly,” according to the report. “This increase, particularly in depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts continued through the COVID-19 pandemic years.”

Jonathan Haidt, social scientist and author of “The Anxious Generation,” is one of the many experts sounding an alarm about the connection between increased anxiety and depression among young people and smartphones and social media.

“All these devices are designed to keep kids scrolling for hours and hours,” he previously told CNBC Make It. “The average screen time is eight to 10 hours, not including school.”

“We have to roll that back if we want any hope for them to grow up healthy,” he said.

Haidt encourages parents to be more intentional about reducing their child’s use of devices and social media. Here, he and Jean Twenge, a psychology professor and author of “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World,” offer up some recommendations for how parents can work to get that done.

Haidt argues for a clear boundary: Kids should not get a smartphone before they reach high school.

A global study of 27,969 18-to-24-year-olds by nonprofit Sapien Labs found that mental wellbeing improved the older the age of first ownership of a smartphone. Haidt also recommends parents refrain from enabling the use of social media on kids’ phones before the age of 16.

When kids get their devices, Haidt suggests parents have a designated place for them.

“They live on the kitchen counter,” Haidt said as an example. “If you need it, you check it out.”

Twenge advocates for keeping screens out of the bedroom overnight.

“That’s just a situation where there’s, kind of, no argument: ‘You do not need that phone in your bedroom when you are supposed to be sleeping. Period. End of story. Mic drop. We’re done,’” Twenge previously told CNBC Make It.

Devices in the bedroom can disrupt children’s sleep, whether they’re up late scrolling or their notifications are waking them up. “Not getting enough sleep is a risk factor for just about everything we’d like our kids to avoid, from getting sick to feeling depressed,” Twenge wrote in her book “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World.”

Haidt would go a step further: no screens in the bedroom whatsoever, he said.

To ensure kids don’t get too sucked into their devices, Haidt also recommends parents encourage them to spend time outside with friends.

Communities can decide to enact what he calls “free play Fridays.”

“Everyone knows that’s when kids get together at the park, they play baseball, football, whatever,” he previously told Make It. “Maybe they just stay at the school playground.”

Ultimately, playing with friends and without screens is “the most fun kids can have,” he said. They might have so much, they’ll ask to continue spending time with their friends over the weekend.

Want to give your kids the ultimate advantage? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course, How to Raise Financially Smart Kids. Learn how to build healthy financial habits today to set your children up for greater success in the future.

Even billionaires think about starting side hustles.

If Mark Cuban were 16 years old again and “needed to make some extra money,” he’d start one specific side hustle in just three steps, he tells CNBC Make It.

First, he’d learn how to write prompts for artificial intelligence language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Next, he’d teach his friends how to use those prompts on their school papers. “Then, I would go to businesses, particularly small- to medium-sized businesses that don’t understand AI yet,” says Cuban. “Doesn’t matter if I’m 16, I’d be teaching them as well.”

More than half of Gen Zers in the U.S. currently have side hustles, a LendingTree report found in February. AI prompt engineering — or, the ability to phrase inquiries to chatbots to get desired responses — can be a particularly lucrative opportunity. The average pay for AI tutors starts at about $30,000 per year, and full-time AI prompt engineers can make up to $129,500, according to job board platform ZipRecruiter.

DON’T MISS: The ultimate guide to earning passive income online

You don’t need a college degree to become an AI prompt engineer, but you do need practice — and, often, certifications — to learn how those large language models operate. Some online certification courses, like Vanderbilt University or IBM’s offerings on Coursera, say you can master the basics in one month.

Cuban’s hypothetical side hustle is more high-tech than his actual first job, selling garbage bags door-to-door to his neighbors outside of Pittsburgh at age 12 to save up for a new pair of basketball shoes. He continued to earn extra cash as a teenager by selling collectibles like baseball cards, stamps, and coins, eventually helping him pay to attend Indiana University. There, he bartended, hosted parties with cover charges and even picked up work as a dance instructor.

After a brief post-college stint in banking, Cuban turned to entrepreneurship full-time. He sold his first company, a software startup called MicroSolutions, to CompuServe for $6 million in 1990. His second company, audio streaming service Broadcast.com, made him a billionaire when he sold it to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999.

Today, Cuban has a net worth of $5.7 billion, according to a Forbes estimate. He spends much of his time advocating for his online pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs, which aims to make a variety of common prescription drugs more affordable by selling them at cost, plus a 15% markup.

 “I was a hustler … I have always been selling,” he said during an episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank” that aired in 2016. “I always had something going on. That was just my nature.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Mark Cuban sold garbage bags door-to-door at age 12.

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank,” which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.

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