This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which examines how people earn, spend and save their money.

Charly Stoever is staying put. Well, sort of.

The 35-year-old financial coach has lived in Portland, Oregon, since August — but you’re unlikely to find them at a particular address for more than a few weeks.

Stoever, who uses they/them pronouns (but also answers to he and “papi”), has spent the past 18 months working remotely while booking a steady string of in-home pet-sitting gigs in lieu of renting their own place.

For someone like Stoever — an animal lover who has had their share of tricky roommate experiences — the lifestyle comes with some obvious upsides, a major one being not having to pay for housing costs, including rent.

But more importantly, Stoever says it affords them the ability to do what they want, when they want. In April, when they picked up and embarked on a monthslong tour of Europe, working and pet sitting along the way, there was no manager to report to or time off to ask for.

“I am my own boss. I am the first trans, Latinx boss I’ve ever had and will ever have,” Stoever tells CNBC Make It. “So that’s the best part, being able to call the shots and have the freedom that I’m already accessing.”

In 2025, Stoever traveled to 10 countries while running their business, Traveler Charly Money Coaching, through which they provide clients guidance for paying down debt, building credit and saving for retirement. Six months of private money coaching, which includes biweekly hourlong calls, costs $6,000.

Last year, the business brought in a little less than $60,000. Stoever takes home less than that after business expenses and taxes, but supplements their income with the occasional paid pet-sitting gig (most of the ones they take are in exchange for free accommodation) and performances at a queer burlesque.

Stoever says that working as a pet sitter in exchange for living rent-free allows them to treat themselves now while working toward a secure financial future. It’s the same balance they hope to help clients achieve through their coaching.

“I wanted to give back to my community and help people like me who were LGBT, BIPOC, first-gen, trans people [and] estranged from family,” they say, they said, using an acronym for Black, Indigenous and people of color. “I wanted them all to feel that sense of relief that future me is set up. Future me is good.”

Stoever first looked into pet sitting in 2022, when they had moved back to the U.S. from Mexico (they hold dual citizenship) and were crashing with friends.

“I said, ‘Well, I don’t have to stay with my friend. I’m not tied to this place. So let me just start pet sitting and seeing what happens,’” Stoever says. “And in 2022, I made $4,000 in three months pet sitting through Rover,” an app that connects pet owners with professional sitters and walkers.

At the time, it felt like a win-win, says Stoever. They got paid, and families taking long trips away from home knew their pet was being cared for.

Stoever started to consider full-time pet sitting when they relocated to the Pacific Northwest in 2024.

“I just started looking at apartment prices as a single person who has had horrible roommate experiences over and over, and I was like, ‘I need my own space, but I hate living alone. I love the companionship of animals.’”

Paid gigs were difficult to come by on a consistent basis, though, they found. So Stoever signed up with TrustedHousesitters, a networking site where pet owners and sitters pay an annual fee to list a profile. Other than that, little to no money changes hands.

Stoever spends a couple hours a week managing upcoming pet sits, generally booking stays one or two months in advance.

“Usually I’ll look out for one-week, two-week, three-week … six-month-long sits are chef’s kiss because I don’t have to move around as much,” Stoever says.

For the few days in a given month when they don’t have a pet-sitting gig, Stoever says they will typically travel to see friends, book a local hotel room or plan a quick getaway, such as a weekend ski trip in the winter.

Of course, some travels are more intentional. Last February, Stoever found a pet-sitting gig in Alaska during the Iditarod. Their spring travels in Europe included a 10-day stay with a “bougie” orange cat in downtown Paris — a gig that Stoever says was so competitive it felt like applying to Harvard.

“It was unpaid, but it was still worth it because I got to save thousands of dollars on an Airbnb,” Stoever says. “And the cherry on top of that was that I got to see Beyoncé perform in Paris on Jay-Z night at the Stade de France. Pet sitting has allowed me to unlock so many core memories that I’m so grateful for.”

Stoever’s itinerant lifestyle means that they have to keep some things pretty simple. Pretty much everything they own fits in a 50-pound suitcase and another carry-on suitcase, which typically houses work stuff, like their laptop, tablet, notebooks, keyboard and other tech.

Stoever travels with clothes for all climates, from booty shorts to ski jackets. And because they like to dress stylishly, given the space limitations, adding cool new clothes often means that something else has to go.

“If there’s something that I haven’t touched or worn, bye bye. We don’t have time to wonder about if I should donate this old pair of jeans,” Stoever says. “If they don’t fit me anymore because I’m eating too many delicious croissants in France, then we’re donating those jeans and moving on.”

With no rent and little space for things, what does Stoever spend money on? Here’s how things broke down in November 2025.

• Dining: $618 on food, coffee and drinks out
• Health and wellness: $550 on massage, nail, salon and pharmacy costs
• Groceries: $338
• Discretionary: $328 on apparel, travel, entertainment and miscellaneous expenses
• Hotels: $222
• Transportation: $203 on ridesharing and public transport
• Subscriptions and memberships: $55 for Spotify, Netflix and a gym membership
• Phone: $25

The biggest piece of the budget is food. Stoever says they typically cook most of their meals, sticking to an organic and “vegan-ish” diet to help keep some chronic health issues at bay.

Stoever is happy to go out too, either to grab a bite with friends or to partake in Portland’s rich queer scene.

“I’ll meet up with friends, go to salsa classes, perform at burlesque strip nights, take a transmasc pole dancing class,” Stoever says. “There’s so much to do all the time in Portland, which is why I love sitting out here.”

Another major line item: self-care. Stoever tends to get at least one massage a week — two or three if things are particularly stressful.

One expense that’s conspicuously missing is insurance. Stoever let coverage lapse when they went abroad, and had failed to pick up a policy in November. Soon after, a blood clot sent them to the emergency room — an incident that was personally and financially stressful, but that could have been worse.

“Immediately after this happened, I got back on health insurance,” in the form of Medicaid, they say. “That was just a very hard lesson for me to learn that I feel like more people should know about, because there is a lot of shame in saying, ‘I’m uninsured right now,’ and there shouldn’t be.”

Stoever is keenly aware of the balance between present and future health and happiness. Despite having many irons in the fire — in addition to coaching and pet sitting, they host a podcast and promote their business on social media — Stoever generally works 40 to 50 hours a week and tries to wrap up each workday by about 2 p.m.

“It’s more self-care. I like to get massages every week. I cook most of my meals, I might go out to dinner, and since I’m single and with no dependents, it’s really up to me to take care of my emotional and mental health,” they say.

The future version of Stoever is getting taken care of, too.

“Not having to pay tens of thousands of dollars in rent a year has allowed me to put my retirement savings into overdrive,” Stoever says. “As somebody who still pays myself less than $45,000 this year alone, I’ve invested about $13,500.”

Stoever’s net worth currently stands at about $225,000, the vast majority of which is held in a mix of tax-advantaged and taxable investment accounts.

Each January, Stoever makes a maximum contribution to a Roth IRA and plunks another chunk of cash in a solo 401(k). A brokerage account acts as a hybrid retirement and cash account, with Stoever occasionally selling stocks to raise cash. They also maintain an emergency fund worth about $15,000.

The goal, eventually, is to get to “work optional” — a lifestyle with the flexibility to put investment income toward funding some or all expenses.

“The more you invest, the more you can say no to things and decide, ‘Do I want to work because it fills my cup or because I physically need the money to pay for my bills now, or to fund my retirement?’” Stoever says. “For me, being work optional and being on the trajectory of retiring early means doing a lot more outsourcing than I am now.”

In the meantime, Stoever is focusing on building their financial coaching business. Eventually, they say they’d like to add multiple coaches to their team and teach group classes. They could even see themselves having a TV show, like “Queer Eye” but for personal finance.

And while Portland feels like home for now, don’t expect to see Stoever signing a lease anytime soon.

“I keep waiting until the moment where I just say, ‘I’m so tired of living out of a suitcase and having so many options, and the world being my oyster,’” Stoever says. “Right now, it doesn’t feel urgent or romantic to be stuck in an apartment.”

What’s your budget breakdown? Share your story with us for a chance to be featured in a future installment.

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It’s often difficult to talk about a failure or shortcoming in a job interview.

But that’s exactly what Sandra Oliver wants from candidates.

Oliver, who is global assurance talent leader at accounting firm EY, tells CNBC Make It she likes to ask candidates to give an example of a goal they set for themselves and how they achieved it, as well as one goal they didn’t achieve.

“That’s the way I like to start the interviews, to see how people think about themselves,” she says. “People don’t like to ever talk about those things.”

Rather than trying to skirt this discussion, candidates should be willing to talk about failures or mistakes, taking accountability where appropriate and sharing what they were able to learn from them.

Oliver, who often interviews recent grads, says many were high-performing students who struggle talking about challenges rather than successes.

“They’re used to being the best and being successful, and I think it’s really important to learn that when you get into the workforce, success is measured differently,” she says. “It’s not the exam question, it’s not tests, it’s working as a team, and sometimes you’re not going to know things, and that’s okay. Sometimes you may try something or set a goal, and you fail at it, or it doesn’t come out how you think.”

“They’re so programmed to do everything great that it’s hard to really pause and say, okay, how can I learn from the failure?” she adds.

Psychologists have said focusing on what a mistake has taught you can help you reframe failure. Confronting any shame you have around it is key, as is adopting a growth mindset, where you believe your skills and talents can grow over time and that mistakes are part of that process.

“One of the best ways of doing that — of getting better over time — is to actually experience failure, to experience the consequences of messing up,” psychology professor Dr. Laurie Santos previously told CNBC Make It. “That allows us to learn more about how to do better in the future.”

Likewise, EY’s Oliver stresses that “failure kind of is learning.”

“It’s really important to have that mindset when you’re working that you’re going to work as a team,” she says. “You’re going to maybe not have the best idea, or the way to think about it. Somebody’s going to have a different idea, and that’s going to be good, and you’re going to learn from that and take that forward.”

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When a child is upset, most parents reach for the same question instinctively: “What’s wrong?”

It’s well-intentioned and it comes from care. But after years of teaching conscious parenting and studying over 200 kids, I’ve seen how often that question does the opposite of what parents hope. Instead of opening children up, it can shut them down.

Emotional intelligence develops when children feel safe enough to reflect. Without that foundation, even the most caring questions can feel overwhelming in the moment.

Across my research, one sentence reliably helped children pause, reflect, and communicate more openly: “Tell me what feels hard right now.”

This magic phrase works because it matches how children actually experience emotions in real life. Rather than pushing for clarity or explanations, it creates the conditions where insight can emerge naturally.

During meltdowns, after-school emotional releases, or moments of sudden irritability, children are already on edge. The word “hard” feels human and non-threatening. It signals to your child that they aren’t in trouble and don’t need to justify their feelings, making it easier to stay engaged instead of shutting down or pushing back.

Children don’t need to label emotions precisely. They can describe a situation, a sensation, or a moment that felt overwhelming. Over time, this gently expands emotional language, allowing insight to develop naturally rather than being forced before a child has the words.

Before problem-solving, before advice, before correction, this phrase tells a child: “I can handle what you’re feeling.” Emotional intelligence grows in welcoming environments where emotions are met with steadiness instead of urgency.

Rather than demanding an explanation, this question invites reflection. The child decides how much to share and when, reinforcing a sense of agency over their emotional experience, which is an essential foundation for self-regulation and confidence.

When children feel emotionally safe, their stress response begins to settle. This phrase is especially effective when behavior feels disproportionate or confusing because it prioritizes regulation before reasoning.

By focusing on what feels hard, parents communicate that emotions can be noticed without being rushed or fixed. It teaches kids that feelings can be experienced and moved through rather than avoided or suppressed.

Children learn emotional intelligence through experience, not instruction. When parents respond with calm curiosity instead of control or urgency, they model how to approach emotions with steadiness and reflection. These are skills children eventually apply to themselves.

Our job as parents is to create an environment where our children feel safe sharing their inner worlds. When you adjust your language, you shape the emotional tone of your relationship. Over time, children learn that their feelings are important signals that deserve attention.

Reem Raouda is a leading voice in conscious parenting and the creator of the BOUND and FOUNDATIONS journals, now offered together as her Emotional Safety Bundle. She is widely recognized for her expertise in children’s emotional well-being and for redefining what it means to raise emotionally healthy kids. Connect with her on Instagram.

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. 

At just 15, Tuan Le made a bold promise: He told his parents he would help them retire in 10 years.

The family had just immigrated to Canada from Vietnam, and Le’s parents worked tirelessly to provide for him and his sister.

“I remember my old man coming home at, like, 7 a.m., and my mom told me that he lost like five pounds after one week,” the 25-year-old tells CNBC Make It. “That was an awakening moment for me. That’s when I told my parents, ‘Give me 10 years, I’m gonna retire you guys.’”

His parents wanted better opportunities for Le and his sister, he says. While their family was “extremely comfortable in Vietnam,” he says, the opportunities for college graduates weren’t as abundant as they are in the U.S. Although Le says his parents “sold everything” to move the family to Canada, the move caused a lot of depression and anger for Le, who didn’t speak much English when he immigrated.

But in 2025, Le made good on his promise of helping his parents retire. The success of the video production company he founded, Toronto-based ShortsCut, allowed Le to start sending his parents $5,000 CAD — around $3,652 USD — per month. It’s enough to cover their rent and expenses living about an hour outside of Toronto. 

“My parents are still working because they told me they wanted to do something with their time, but they don’t have to work,” he says. His parents work two days a week at a farmers market stall his mom runs.

Le founded ShortsCut, which creates short-form videos for brands, in 2023. The company mainly produces videos for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. He started small, filming food for restaurants around Toronto, and says he eventually leveled up to making high-quality videos designed to go viral on social media. 

In 2025, ShortsCut brought in $1.08 million with a net profit of just over $488,000, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The company generally has 10 to 12 clients on its roster, including pet food and tech companies, Le says. 

While struggling to acclimate to life in Canada, teenage Le played a lot of video games, he says, and eventually started cutting together video montages of his gameplay. 

“That’s how I got into video editing,” he says. From there, “I started editing videos for League of Legends YouTubers and then finance YouTubers [and] some dropship YouTubers.”

Back then, he charged $20 CAD for roughly 20-minute videos, he says. He enjoyed the video editing process so much, he decided to pursue it professionally, enrolling at Toronto Film School a year after he graduated from high school in 2018.

One of his first assignments was to make a video on a subject that was meaningful to him, and he made a short film about his parents. The film landed in the school’s hall of fame, Le says, and at that point, just four months into his time there, he decided to drop out.

“To me it was like, ‘Wow, that’s sick,’ but at the same time, I heard this quote that goes like, ‘If you’re the best in the room, then you’re in the wrong room,’” he says.

After dropping out of film school, Le tried to land “any job” that would let him make videos for a living by cold emailing “every single CEO, production company, marketing agency in Toronto,” he says. But he lacked professional experience and didn’t receive any offers. 

Eventually, Le offered to work for a Toronto-based content production company for free for three months in exchange for training in running a business, such as writing emails and negotiating deals.

During that time, Le started shooting his own videos on the side. He messaged “every single restaurant” in Toronto asking if he could make a video for them in exchange for a meal, he says.

“I was shooting videos for a restaurant in exchange for free food, and I was living out of a suitcase with my laptop on my friend’s couch,” Le says.

He started out making videos for small food stalls and mom-and-pop shops on his phone before upgrading to nicer cameras he got off of Facebook Marketplace. Still, Le noticed the videos weren’t garnering a ton of views or engagement when the restaurants posted them on Instagram.

TikTok was beginning to really take off at the time, and Le saw that as an opportunity. He asked his clients for $2,000 to make 10 TikToks.

“If it doesn’t work, if it doesn’t get any views, I will give you your money back,” he says he told them.

The first video Le made for a client racked up 700,000 views, he says. And the next got 300,000. His strategy was simply to identify trending video formats and make similar videos promoting the restaurants. His viral videos helped one client gain 9,000 followers overnight, he says.

“After that I was like, ‘Wow, I think I got something here,’” he says. “I just took that case study [to other clients] and was like, ‘Hey, I can help you go viral.’”

After his three months of working for free were up, Le left to start ShortsCut at the end of 2022. The company officially launched in January 2023.

Le soon branched out to work with brands outside of the restaurant world, including Buldak ramen noodles and AI software company Replit.

As Le’s portfolio grew, so did his prices. Initially, ShortsCut charged $2,000 a month per client. It uses a retainer model, so the number of videos produced per month varies by client. Now, the company charges between $10,000 and $16,000 a month.

In the company’s early days, Le guaranteed virality or he’d refund the client’s money — and only had to issue one refund, he says.

“Now that I have a track record of making things go viral and have the credential to myself, I don’t have to make that promise anymore,” he says.

Le made his first hire for the company in February 2023 and as of the end of 2025, the staff had grown to 15 content creators, script writers, project managers and other personnel around the world. 

Le says he’s proud of the company he’s built and his ability to accomplish his goal of helping his parents retire, but he’s not done yet.

“I want [ShortsCut] to be doing $100 million [in revenue] in about five years,” Le says. “It’s a bit delusional, but … you’ve got to be a little bit delusional to play this game.”

Conversions from Canadian dollars to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 0.73 CAD to $1 USD on Dec. 31, 2025. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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Everyday living costs play a major role in how much money you need to retire.

A new state-by-state analysis from personal finance website GOBankingRates shows that the estimated total savings needed to retire at 65 can differ by as much as $1.46 million depending on where you live.

In Hawaii, retirees need about $2.2 million to stop working at 65 and cover essential living expenses for 25 years, including housing, groceries, transportation, utilities and health-care costs. That is the highest estimated minimum of any state. By comparison, Oklahoma has the lowest estimated total, at $735,284, to cover the same basic costs.

The analysis is based on the average living costs for retirees 65 or older in each state, drawn from the latest data published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. From there, GOBankingRates subtracted average Social Security payments and estimated the savings needed to cover the remaining expenses using an annual 4% withdrawal rate.

The resulting figures represent a baseline for covering essential costs and don’t factor in discretionary spending such as travel, dining or entertainment. Additionally, the estimates don’t account for factors such as inflation, lifestyle changes or unexpected costs.

Housing is the biggest factor in annual retirement costs, as it varies by roughly $30,000 annually between states. Utilities and health-care costs can range by as much as $5,000 annually, the study finds.

Here’s a look the minimum amount of savings needed to retire at 65 in each state, in alphabetical order.

• Annual cost of living: $53,999
• Savings you need to retire: $789,037

• Annual cost of living: $78,449
• Savings you need to retire: $1,400,286

• Annual cost of living: $66,838
• Savings you need to retire: $1,110,019

• Annual cost of living: $54,859
• Savings you need to retire: $810,538

• Annual cost of living: $83,978
• Savings you need to retire: $1,538,508

• Annual cost of living: $63,091
• Savings you need to retire: $1,016,336

• Annual cost of living: $70,094
• Savings you need to retire: $1,191,417

• Annual cost of living: $63,152
• Savings you need to retire: $1,017,871

• Annual cost of living: $61,125
• Savings you need to retire: $967,190

• Annual cost of living: $56,395
• Savings you need to retire: $848,933

• Annual cost of living: $110,393
• Savings you need to retire: $2,198,902

• Annual cost of living: $60,818
• Savings you need to retire: $959,511

• Annual cost of living: $58,913
• Savings you need to retire: $911,901

• Annual cost of living: $55,657
• Savings you need to retire: $830,504

• Annual cost of living: $55,473
• Savings you need to retire: $825,896

• Annual cost of living: $54,613
• Savings you need to retire: $804,395

• Annual cost of living: $56,456
• Savings you need to retire: $850,469

• Annual cost of living: $56,947
• Savings you need to retire: $862,756

• Annual cost of living: $70,155
• Savings you need to retire: $1,192,953

• Annual cost of living: $73,043
• Savings you need to retire: $1,265,135

• Annual cost of living: $92,639
• Savings you need to retire: $1,755,055

• Annual cost of living: $58,176
• Savings you need to retire: $893,472

• Annual cost of living: $57,869
• Savings you need to retire: $885,793

• Annual cost of living: $52,524
• Savings you need to retire: $752,178

• Annual cost of living: $54,674
• Savings you need to retire: $805,931

• Annual cost of living: $67,452
• Savings you need to retire: $1,125,377

• Annual cost of living: $56,272
• Savings you need to retire: $845,862

• Annual cost of living: $60,572
• Savings you need to retire: $953,368

• Annual cost of living: $67,084
• Savings you need to retire: $1,116,163

• Annual cost of living: $70,401
• Savings you need to retire: $1,199,096

• Annual cost of living: $56,825
• Savings you need to retire: $859,684

• Annual cost of living: $77,773
• Savings you need to retire: $1,383,392

• Annual cost of living: $59,835
• Savings you need to retire: $934,938

• Annual cost of living: $56,087
• Savings you need to retire: $841,254

• Annual cost of living: $57,009
• Savings you need to retire: $864,291

• Annual cost of living: $51,849
• Savings you need to retire: $735,284

• Annual cost of living: $68,681
• Savings you need to retire: $1,156,093

• Annual cost of living: $59,650
• Savings you need to retire: $930,331

• Annual cost of living: $69,664
• Savings you need to retire: $1,180,666

• Annual cost of living: $56,825
• Savings you need to retire: $859,684

• Annual cost of living: $56,395
• Savings you need to retire: $848,933

• Annual cost of living: $55,473
• Savings you need to retire: $825,896

• Annual cost of living: $55,780
• Savings you need to retire: $833,575

• Annual cost of living: $60,879
• Savings you need to retire: $961,047

• Annual cost of living: $69,848
• Savings you need to retire: $1,185,274

• Annual cost of living: $61,493
• Savings you need to retire: $976,405

• Annual cost of living: $69,971
• Savings you need to retire: $1,188,345

• Annual cost of living: $54,122
• Savings you need to retire: $792,109

• Annual cost of living: $60,019
• Savings you need to retire: $939,546

• Annual cost of living: $58,545
• Savings you need to retire: $902,686

Want to get ahead at work with AI? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course, Beyond the Basics: How to Use AI to Supercharge Your Work. Learn advanced AI skills like building custom GPTs and using AI agents to boost your productivity today. Use coupon code EARLYBIRD for 25% off. Offer valid from Jan. 5 to Jan. 19, 2026. Terms apply.