Rosalyn Engelman was just 15 when she met her future husband, Irwin, she says. That was in 1953.

The two were set up by a mutual friend, and when Irwin, then 19, came to pick her up at her family’s home in the Bronx, “I certainly had not dated anyone like the tall, dark, handsome man in a navy-blue suit with a briefcase who came to my door,” she says.

“He looked like a movie star.” Irwin took her out for a movie and milkshake, and by the end of the night, they were falling in love, she says. After three years of dating, the two got married in November 1956.

In their nearly 70 years together, they had two daughters, stood side by side through life-threatening illnesses, traveled the world, and built their careers. Irwin worked as a CFO at companies like Xerox, and Engelman was a painter and mixed media artist whose work has been displayed all over the world, she says.

They now live at the Apsley, an assisted living facility in Manhattan.

For couples seeking tips on how to stay happily together for decades, here’s Engelman’s advice.

For Engelman, it really comes down to one piece of advice: “Try to understand the other person,” she says.

That can come into play in many ways.

If your spouse sometimes prioritizes their work, for example, put yourself in their shoes. “I never resented his time that he worked hard,” she says, “and I don’t think he resented the fact that I was covered in paint.”

Try to get interested in their hobbies as well. “He liked opera more, I learned to like opera,” she says. “I like classical music most, he learned to love classical music.”

Finally, understanding each other can also mean forgiving each other during mishaps, large or small. Engelman remembers the first time she tried to cook the two of them dinner. She decided on Brussels sprouts, hot dogs, and corn. And the dinner did not come out as she planned. The Brussels sprouts tasted like rubber, she says.

Irwin was not angry. Instead, “we just started laughing and went out for pizza,” she says. That’s the kind of mutual understanding that can keep a relationship strong.

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Stephanie Harrison spent so much of her life trying to get it “right,” chasing the right schools, the right job, the right apartment and the right achievements that would give her life a sense of meaning.

But in 2013, she was struggling. “I was unbearably lonely. I had daily panic attacks, developed a stress-induced autoimmune disease, and felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness almost every day,” she writes in “New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That’s Got It Wrong.”

At her lowest moment, she got curious about why happiness seemed to be eluding her — and realized she was following the wrong playbook. She started making changes in her life: moving cities, studying happiness, and cultivating new relationships, including one with the man she fell in love with, Alex. 

When Alex became ill, Harrison took on the role of full-time caregiver. “It was shocking to compare my 2013 self, who had everything going ‘right’ and yet felt lost, miserable, and isolated,” she writes, “to my 2018 self, who had everything going ‘wrong’ and yet felt far more peace, joy, and purpose.”

Harrison attributes this to throwing out what she calls “Old Happy” and embracing “New Happy,” the philosophy she lays out in her book.

CNBC Make It chose “New Happy” as our February book club pick because we know our readers, like Harrison, are searching for happiness as well as success.

Here are some key takeaways ahead of Wednesday’s discussion in our private LinkedIn group (you can join the group here, then drop your questions for Harrison in the comments of this post).

So many of us craft our lives around the idea that happiness comes from things like perfection, material gain, fame and acclaim, and achievement at all costs.

According to Harrison, there are three pillars that Old Happy culture relies on to thrive:

• Individualism: the idea that you don’t need other people and you have to go it alone
• Capitalism: the idea that you must be successful, and your value is based on your work  
• Domination: the idea that you need to compete and win, and that some people are better than others 

Old Happy is “like the mythical three-headed Hydra monster,” Harrison writes, “snapping at you to isolate yourself, work harder and harder, and prove your worth.” 

One of the biggest lies that Old Happy tells us, Harrison explains, is that the pursuit of extrinsic goals and external approval — popularity, conformity, financial success, aesthetic beauty — is the key to happiness. 

But at the end of the day, Harrison writes. “What makes us happy is acting in alignment with our true selves.”

New Happy is all about the cultivation of intrinsic goals that are aligned with your internal value system, such as taking care of yourself, learning to love yourself, and building community with others. 

Three of the most important questions you can ask yourself are: “Who am I?” “What should I do?” and “How am I related to others?”

Harrison recalls people often asking her if running her company, The New Happy, was too much alongside caregiving, but she actually felt the opposite. 

“It was my lifeline, refueling me, giving me meaning, and connecting me to others,” she writes. “The more I gave, the more I personally received in return. I am certain that I would not have survived those difficult years without it. I am so grateful that I didn’t wait until life was better. If I had, I would still be waiting, and I would have missed out on so much joy.”

When someone is in need, there are two chances for joy and happiness: one for the person who needs help, and one for the person who is helping them. 

“Human beings do not possess a finite amount of love, compassion, and support. If you ask someone for love, you are not draining them of their limited supply. People are not oil wells. Care is not a nonrenewable resource,” she explains. “Asking for help gives someone else a chance to be of service and, therefore, to experience happiness.”

Harrison says she used to describe her experience as “I am a young caregiver for a sick partner who had a mysterious degenerative disease that no doctor understood or could help with.” That perspective was a lonely and isolating one.

But one day, she says, “I started describing my pain in a new way: ’I am a person who has been affected by a devastating illness.” That expansion led to greater connection. There were so many people in her sphere who’d supported a friend or loved one through illness. 

“Finally I went even bigger: ’I am a person who has gone through pain,” Harrison recalls. “In opening up to ways in which our pain connects us, we are able to tap into another level of compassion for ourselves and others,” she writes. “Connection makes our pain bearable.”

One of the biggest ways to find happiness, Harrison says, is to figure out what your gifts are and share them widely. If you’re struggling to figure out what your talents are, Harrison recommends asking yourself a few key questions.

• “What did my seven-year-old self love?” Whether it was a subject in school, or a book or film, regardless of how impractical it might seem, write it down. 
• “Who leads a life that excites me?” Borrow their schedule and see how it might feel to be the person who you look at and think “Wow, I can’t believe they get to wake up every morning and do that.
• “What is something I love and feels like it comes easy to me that other people might dislike or struggle with?”

Then reach out to five to 10 people who know you — family, friends, colleagues, or neighbors. Ask them “What do you think my unique talents are?” or “When have you seen me most alive?” 

Old Happy thrives on the lie that just one hero is coming to save us and change the world. New Happy is built on everyone coming together to share their valuable and transformative gifts. 

“Making our world better is not a soloist task. It is an orchestral one,” Harrison writes. “Our orchestra is incomplete without you,” she writes. “We need you to play the part that only you can play.” 

So how can you do that? Harrison recommends looking to the inspiring stories of others, and seeing how they lead by example, fight for what they believe is right, reject the way that things have always been done, build hope and community, embrace their biggest challenges, and work to achieve their dreams through small, incremental actions.

Then join them.

Ready to dive in? Start reading, request to join our LinkedIn group, and come chat with us and Harrison on Wednesday, March 4, at 12 p.m. ET, at our next CNBC Make It Book Club discussion. 

Any questions for the author? Drop them in the comments of this LinkedIn post (you’ll need to join our private group first, which you can do here). Or email them to us in advance at askmakeit@cnbc.com, using the subject line “Question for Stephanie Harrison.”

Have suggestions for future picks? Send them to us at askmakeit@cnbc.com, using the subject line “Make It book club suggestion.”

While living in the Czech Republic with her grandfather in 2020, Cassandra Tresl, 33, and her husband, Alex Ninman, 34, learned they were expecting their first child.

After welcoming their baby girl, the couple says they considered returning to the U.S. But when they started looking at how expensive it would be to buy a house and pay for child care, they decided to look to Italy instead, where Tresl had read about towns across the country selling one-euro homes.

“I really thought that if I had a kid, I would go back to the States. … And then it ended up not happening, because I realized how much more expensive it would be if we did go back,” Tresl tells CNBC Make It.

Before moving to the Czech Republic, the couple lived in New York City, where Tresl worked in operations at a tech company and Ninman was a butcher at Whole Foods. Even though it had always been the couple’s dream to live in the Big Apple, Tresl says the city’s hustle and bustle made her realize her career wasn’t the most important thing to her anymore.

“If we were going to stay in New York, I would have to continue growing my career,” Tresl says. But although she enjoyed her job, it “wasn’t what I thought about in my free time. Working at a tech company, I would see the people around me really into networking and I didn’t really care about that either.”

“I started questioning everything that was important to others and why it wasn’t important to me. I figured it just wasn’t the right environment for me,” she adds. That realization led her to ask to work remotely, allowing the couple to move abroad.

Tresl and Ninman aren’t alone in their desire to live outside of the U.S. About 1 in 5 Americans say they want to leave the U.S. permanently, according to a 2025 poll from Gallup. And in Italy specifically, the cost of living is 9.5% lower than in the U.S., according to Numbeo, which tracks global cost-of-living data.

In the late 2010s, towns across Italy gained attention for selling off deteriorating properties for 1 euro (about $1.05 USD at the time), with a goal of attracting foreign investors to buy the houses, rehab them and drive up the dwindling population numbers. Since dozens of towns announced these plans, hundreds of homes have sold, The Guardian reports.

Seeing stories of people buying up these homes inspired Tresl to start looking for a home in Italy herself, she says.

Tresl’s first step was to determine the actual cost of purchasing one of the one-euro homes, since they weren’t looking to spend more than 20,000 euros (about $23,627 USD) on the purchase price. Despite the marketing, buyers generally needed thousands of dollars or euros on hand for renovations, since most of the properties were dilapidated or had been abandoned for years.

In October 2021, the couple went on a house-hunting trip to Italy and viewed about 15 homes across Abruzzo and Tuscany.

“I’m a spreadsheet type of person, so I had all the pros and cons of all these houses and it came down to Abruzzo being a much better value in general,” Tresl says.

Considering their limited budget and the fact that Tresl knew they would need more money on hand for renovations, the couple settled on a two-floor, two-bedroom house just under 1,076 square feet. Tresl says they picked it for the price and the terrace view. 

The couple closed on the house in February 2022 in an all-cash deal for 11,500 euros, or about $13,150 at the time, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. They moved into the house in July 2022 and finished most of the renovations in the fall. They spent about $18,000 on the renovations.

The purchase price allowed the couple to buy the property outright, which “alleviated a lot of stress in multiple areas of my life,” Tresl says. “If my income fluctuates or money gets tight, at least we don’t have a mortgage and our family has a secure roof over our heads. This financial freedom was actually one of the main factors that made this move and decision possible.”

That financial freedom has allowed Tresl to step away from “a career I was never truly passionate about in the first place,” she says. Since moving to Italy permanently, Tresl left her tech job and started creating content for her travel blog and newsletter. She also works for another travel blogger as an operations manager.

“I’ve had the opportunity to be a little ‘reckless’ in a good way and start exploring my own ventures, creating multiple income streams that are fully mine,” she says.

Since moving, Tresl says the couple spends lot less day to day, partially due to the fact that they are in a small town versus a larger city.

“We genuinely want to respect the economic habits of our surroundings,” she says. “We don’t want to come into a place and inflate things with our spending, especially when salaries here are comparatively low, which is why things cost less. It feels important to be mindful of that and maintain some responsibility.”

In 2024, Tresl and Ninman acquired a second property in Italy, which they rent on Airbnb for up to 85 euros, or about $101, per night. Ninman left his job as a butcher when the couple moved out of the U.S., and now manages the Airbnb property.

Located in the countryside of their town, the single-story two-bedroom, one-bathroom house sits on its own land and has a private garden. The couple bought it for 17,000 euros, or about $20,083, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Tresl says she estimates they put another 10,000 euros into it during renovations.

In Italy, the couple only spends about $1,246 per month, including utilities and living expenses. Here’s a breakdown of their monthly expenses, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. All figures are rounded.

• Groceries: 480 euros a month (about $567)
• Electricity: 217 euros (about $256) every two months
• Tresl’s gym membership: 115 euros (about $136) every three months
• Water: 91 euros (about $108) every two months
• Daughter’s gymnastics: 50 euros (about $59) per month
• Airbnb supplies: 50 euros (about $59) per month
• Daughter’s preschool: 40 euros (about $47) per month
• Internet: 12 euros (about $14) per month per house

In the winter, they also pay up to 200 euros a month, or about $237, per home for heat. Annually, the couple pays 286 euros, or about $338, per house for garbage pick up and about 61 euros, or around $72, in property taxes for each house.

The couple’s rental property brings in between 8,000 and 10,000 euros, or $9,486 to $12,000, a year, Tresl says.

“We earn the most money from it when someone decides to stay long-term, which happens quite often, where a couple or a small family works remotely and will rent the house for three to six weeks at a time,” she adds.

Since they clean and maintain the rental property themselves, Tresl says their only monthly expenses for the Airbnb are utilities, including electricity, Wi-Fi and heat during the winter. Annually, they also cover property taxes and garbage pick up.

Instead of being surrounded by the hustle and bustle of New York City, Tresl’s life in Italy involves walking her daughter to school and working from home. She goes to the gym in the afternoon. On Fridays, Tresl and her daughter go to an archery class. On weekends, the family likes to do what Tresl calls “urban hiking,” or exploring different towns around Tuscany.

“The mentality here in Italy is so different because work really is not the most important thing,” she says. “The people have shown me that it’s OK to slow down and it’s something I’m still trying to adapt to.”

Conversions from euros to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 euro to $1.18 USD on Feb. 17, 2026. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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Leslie Edelman has run Tiny Doll House, a miniature figurine shop in New York’s Upper East Side neighborhood, for 35 years. Eighteen months ago, new clientele started routinely coming to the store, he says.

In addition to Edelman’s regulars — parents, grandparents and collectors — groups of 20-somethings now flock to the store on Saturday afternoons. They giggle among themselves, text furiously and buy tiny Labubu keychains, Pez dispensers and mock Eames chairs. Some tell Edelman, “I’ve seen you on TikTok,” he says.

“There’s a hell of a lot of picture-taking,” says Edelman, a 75-year-old lifelong New Yorker.

Business owners like Edelman say they’ve noticed a shift in consumer behavior: Gen Zers increasingly seeking out and spending money on old-school hobbies and habits in an effort to get more offline. For small businesses that sell tactile, nostalgic products and services — like rotary phones, needlepoint kits or embroidery services — average shopper age is down and revenue is up, from extant and new customers alike, some owners say.

DON’T MISS: How to read people and master your body language to be more influential at work

Craft-based activities and retro-style in-person experiences have steadily gained in popularity since the Covid-19 pandemic, says Marni Shapiro, a co-founder and managing partner of research and consulting firm The Retail Tracker. Specifically, physical products related to offline hobbies have hit a new sales peak this winter as the phrase “going analog” achieved social media virality, she says.

Nearly three quarters of adults participated in a crafting project in 2025, up from 62% in 2019, according to Mintel research. The art and craft materials industry was valued at $23.56 billion in 2025, led by supply companies like Crayola and Faber-Castell, according to a Fortune Business Insights report.

“If we are going more and more digital and using more AI, the counter-trend is going to be very tactile,” Shapiro says. “Nostalgia, to me, is the single biggest [retail] trend out there. It’s not dying. It’s getting stronger.”

Louise Carmen, a Paris-based company, sells accessorized leather journals at two storefronts and online for up to €198.55 — or approximately $232.84 — before customizations. The brand reached a new American audience over the course of 2023, says founder Nathalie Valmary, after her daughter started filming bird’s-eye view TikTok videos of employees’ hands as they personalized leather notebooks with engravings, colorful cords and charms.

The videos racked up views, some surpassing 1 million, and roughly 60% of Louise Carmen’s online sales now ship to the U.S., says Valmary. Some Americans have even posted online about booking trans-Atlantic flights to buy the notebooks in Paris.

Political and economic uncertainty — like a turbulent job market, declining home ownership and the rising cost of living in the U.S. — tends to send people clamoring back toward the products, styles and experiences of their, or their parents’, childhoods, says Shapiro. Plus, the more time you spend scrolling on your phone, the more likely you are to engage with media about that uncertainty, so hobbies that keep idle hands busy are in increasingly high demand.

Journaling helps Valmary collect and reflect on her thoughts and be creative, she says. She suspects younger generations benefit even more from the practice. Gen Zers’ lives and experiences have been “exposed on social media, [posted] from them or their friends or their families, since they were very young,” she says. When handwriting in journals, “they don’t have to perform, they can just be honest.”

Part of “going analog” involves aesthetics, too: Nostalgic-looking products can be a fashion statement, says Camp Snap president Trevor George. His Redondo Beach, California-based company sells screen-free digital cameras that automatically apply film-mimicking filter effects to photos, ranging from $70 to $200 apiece. Since launching in late 2023, the brand has sold over 1 million cameras, George says.

The company’s sales were up by 350% at the end of last year compared to the same period in 2024, he says, and celebrities like Taylor Swift and Idris Elba have been spotted with Camp Snap products. “The smartphones a bit tired,” he says. “To be out with your friends or in a community and pull out this what looks like an old school camera, but really has digital features, it’s kind of like a personal statement.”

Gen Z consumers are now between the ages of 14 and 29, meaning many are at an age where they want to explore their identity and have a little money to do so, says Peter Fader, a marketing professor who focuses on consumer behavior at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

In one sense, the generation’s affinity for analog products — or modernized versions of them — represents many Gen Zers’ oft-cited desire to resist the mainstream, Fader says. In other sense, they’re doing exactly the same thing as generations before them: “Going analog” isn’t all that different than millennials’ obsession with polaroid cameras and record players in the 2010s, says Fader.

Plenty of Gen Zers still post about their analog experiences online, which Fader says is evidence of modern technology’s convenience and deep roots in many people’s lives. But even going analog for a little while may help people discover new and rewarding hobbies that make their lives better, he says.

“This analog thing, I’m not going to say it’s a passing fad, because there will continue to be a fad with each generation … [but] I would not be betting big on a giant analog rebirth,” says Fader.

The popularity of any kind of nostalgia is bound to ebb and flow, Shapiro says. Edelman suspects his shop has survived for decades because people want physical items that can elicit strong memories, he says.

“People can create the living room they’ll never have,” Edelman says. He still remembers the first doll house he built for his niece decades ago, a pink Victorian-style mansion with white trim and tiny dark brown shingles. “I feel like there’s a warmth and a comfort in looking at these things, holding them.”

Conversions from euros to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 euro to $1.18 USD on March 3, 2026.

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If you’re thinking it’s tougher to be a kid these days, you’re right. Sky-high rates of depression, anxiety, and chronic school absenteeism tell us that all is not well. While Covid-19 didn’t help, these trends were in motion well before the pandemic.

After working with over 1,000 kids as a clinical child psychologist, I’ve found that these “signals” are best understood as distress responses. Kids communicate distress through their behavior, much like infants do when they’re hungry, tired, uncomfortable, or having trouble digesting food.

As I write in my new book, “The Kids Who Aren’t Okay,” a range of societal changes in the past few decades has made childhood today more difficult. This is not an exhaustive list, but several factors stand out:

• School shootings: There have been more than 400 since Columbine, creating a persistent backdrop of fear and anxiety for students, educators, and parents alike.
• High-stakes testing: For years, educators have warned that forcing every student to clear the same academic bar, while tying teacher evaluations and job security to those outcomes, ignores developmental differences among children. A more effective approach measures progress relative to each student’s starting point and meets kids where they are.
• Social media and smartphones: At best, they’re a distraction in school. At worst, excessive use can harm mental health. Today’s kids are exposed to the world’s darkest content at far younger ages than previous generations.
• A shortage of mental health providers: In many parts of the U.S., children can’t access care. Long waiting lists are common, and kids in crisis may remain stuck in emergency rooms for days, weeks, or even months.
• Political polarization: The most divided political climate since the Civil War doesn’t stop at adults. Kids absorb it, too.

In 1960, psychiatrist Thomas Szasz argued that mental illness is better understood as “problems in living.” While diagnoses can describe how a child is struggling, they often don’t explain why.

Viewing kids’ challenges as problems in living shifts the focus toward identifying what’s causing distress, and fixing it.

Some of the forces affecting kids today are macro issues beyond the control of individual parents and educators. But caregivers can still address the “micro” problems shaping a child’s daily life, including:

• Peer conflicts, bullying or social isolation
• Academic struggles or unresolved learning difficulties
• Family disagreements over screen time, sleep, hygiene, diet or substance use

Helping kids requires a different approach than the one many adults were raised with. Here are a few tips to consider:

1. Make it collaborative, not unilateral

Imposing solutions without input may feel efficient, but it rarely works. Kids are far more invested in solutions they help create. Collaboration also strengthens relationships and communication.

Notably, kids often say adults don’t listen to them, while adults say kids won’t talk to them. All those unilateral solutions take their toll.

2. Be proactive, not reactive

The best time to solve a problem with a kid is not when the problem comes up again. Problems are predictable, so they can be identified and solved proactively.

3. Don’t focus on distress responses (behaviors), but rather the problems that are causing those behaviors

Kids are simply far more likely to talk about problems they’re struggling with than their behaviors.

4. Consequences aren’t good solutions

Rewarding and punishing are motivational strategies, not problem-solving strategies. Consequences aren’t an effective, durable way to treat depression, anxiety, concerning behavior, suicidality, or chronic school absenteeism.

Caregivers are better off recognizing that kids generally want to do well. So what they need isn’t more motivation, but adults who listen, understand and partner with them to solve the problems getting in their way.

If power-and-control parenting worked for you, that’s fine. But your child is not you.

The kids who struggle the most have often experienced more punishment than many adults will encounter in a lifetime. After four decades of working with children and families, my experience is clear: Power and control approaches usually make things worse. If something isn’t working, don’t do more of the same. Do something different.

Ross W. Greene, PhD, is a clinical child psychologist and the author of ”The Kids Who Aren’t Okay: The Urgent Case for Reimagining Support, Belonging, and Hope in Schools.” He served on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over 20 years, and is now adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech, and in the Faculty of Science at The University of Technology Sydney in Australia.

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.