As Bob Schrader approached retirement, he wasn’t planning to take it easy.

For 37 years, Schrader worked as the assistant director of the center for agriculture at UMass Cooperative Extension, part of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Five years before he retired, he bought a Christmas tree farm.

“I had good experiences working on a farm when I was younger — much, much younger,” Schrader, 72, says.

Now, with the help of his son Jake, he owns and operates Chestnut Mountain Christmas Tree Farm, a 133-acre farm located in Hatfield, MA. 

The farm hadn’t been operational for nearly a decade and was “fairly overgrown” when Bob Schrader bought it in 2010 for $215,000.

“It wasn’t perfect at the time, but after looking for a while, I realized this was a pretty good deal,” he recalls.

Jake Schrader began working with his father on the farm after graduating from UMass Amherst with a bachelor’s degree in plant soil science.

“I’d like to think I’ve been with my father every step of the way, through the good times and the bad,” he says.

Now 39 and a co-owner of the farm, Jake Schrader works a day job as a public utility foreman at Berkshire Gas. He primarily works at the farm mornings, nights, weekends and on vacation days, he says.

For the majority of the year, “it’s pretty much just me and my son working part-time after work,” Bob Schrader says.

“I think we both have our roles,” Jake Schrader says. He takes on the majority of maintenance and equipment repairs, he says, while his father handles bookkeeping, accounting and business management.

“I don’t think he could do it without me, and I don’t think I could do it without him,” Jake Schrader says.

The planting cycle for Christmas trees takes about 11 years, according to Bob Schrader.

Each spring, he purchases around 6,000 fir seedlings, which are usually about five years old — “about the biggest that you can get, and still be able to plant them,” he says — for approximately $2 per tree.

He, Jake and a few helpers plant the seedlings in about two days using a tree planting machine.

It takes between seven and nine years of nurturing the trees — fertilizing them, applying herbicides, mowing nearby weeds, shearing the sides and shaping the tops — to get them ready for Christmas.  

After a section of mature trees are harvested, they begin clearing the area to replant, which can take another two to three years.

Few people understand how much ongoing work it takes to grow Christmas trees, Schrader says.

“On more than one occasion, when I’ve been selling trees, the person would say, ‘Boy, you really have a good deal. You plant the tree for like three or four bucks. You come back eight years later, and you sell it for $75. What could be bad about that?’”

“The truth is a long ways away from that,” he continues.

For Chestnut Mountain Christmas Tree Farm, Thanksgiving is the busiest time of year, Bob Schrader says.

The farm typically sells around 2,500 trees every year, and one-third of those sales take place over Thanksgiving weekend.

Visitors pay between $75 and $90 to choose and cut their own trees, with saws and wheelbarrows provided. The price for pre-cut trees varies based on height: 6-8 foot trees cost $75, and 8-9 foot trees cost $90.

Every tree needs to be “processed” before it can be sold, “meaning we shake them, we bale them, we trim the bottom, and we make sure it looks the way the person wants to have it look,” Schrader says.

About a dozen people, including friends, family and part-time employees, help the Schraders on the farm during peak weekends in November and December.

In addition to selling trees, Schrader says their goal is to create a “family experience” filled with Christmas wonder: the farm offers an outdoor firepit, horse-drawn wagon rides for $2 and free hot chocolate.

“It looks like you’re walking into like a Hallmark setting when you come to the farm,” Jake Schrader says.

Around the third weekend of November, Bob and Jake Schrader transform one of the farm’s outbuildings into a cozy gift shop that offers wreaths, tree stands, wood crafts, ornaments from local artisans and branded farm merchandise.

Approximately 5,000 people pass through the gift shop each year, according to Jake Schrader.

Those extra features don’t come cheap – it costs around $400 a day to hire the wagon and horses, for example – but “it’s part of what attracts people to the farm,” Bob Schrader says.

The farm’s Christmas festivities are part of a broader trend of agrotourism, according to Schrader.

In New England, “wholesale prices are not going to keep you in business on most things,” so he and other farmers have gotten creative in cultivating destination experiences, he says.

By mid-December, Christmas tree sales have slowed to a trickle, Bob Schrader says: “You do a huge amount of work for a season that lasts three to four weeks.”

Chestnut Mountain Christmas Tree Farm’s net income varies based on labor and equipment costs, Schrader says, but they typically end the year with between $50,000 and $100,000 in profit.

The farm is structured as an LLC, according to Bob Schrader, and neither he nor Jake take a salary from the farm’s revenue.

As another revenue stream, the Schraders also grow hay on 20 acres of the land. They sell about 5,000 bales of hay yearly, as well as around 25 gallons of maple syrup and some firewood.

Looking ahead, their main challenge will be “understanding and responding to the impacts of climate change,” Bob Schrader says.

“The impact of small changes in the climate, in terms of temperature and moisture, are huge, absolutely huge,” he continues.

Extreme weather events like drought and heavy rain put stress on the trees, which makes them more susceptible to disease.

This year, after a particularly rainy spring, the Schraders are grappling with an outbreak of a plant-damaging waterborne fungus called phytophthora.

“If it gets to the roots of the trees, the tree is going to be dead within about three months,” Schrader says, and the farm has already lost a few hundred young trees this year.

He is working with the University of Massachusetts and the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station to learn how to combat the fungus, and to prepare for future climate challenges.

For many reasons, farming is an uncertain endeavor, Jake Schrader says. He jokes that “guys who farm are the biggest gamblers in the world.”

Fifteen years in, he still feels new to the profession, but his dream is to one day retire from his day job and work full-time on the farm, he says.

Bob Schrader has a similar dream: that the farm will continue “to operate and prosper,” and that his son will one day take over.

“I’m 72 years old, so I feel fine, but you know, you don’t kid yourself that you’re going to live forever,” he says. “How many good years do you have to keep going the way you’re going?”

Jake Schrader says his father is both “a best friend and a great partner” on the farm.

“I couldn’t do it without my father,” he says. “I’m thankful that he is still in good health, and able to live out his retirement years to do what he’s wanted to do his whole life.”

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What’s it like to wake up in the most unique apartment in New York City? For the price of $19.25 million, you might have a chance to find out.

This penthouse sits atop 108 Leonard Street, a landmark Tribeca condominium developed by Elad Group, marketed by Douglas Elliman Development Marketing and redesigned by Jeffrey Beers International.

This triplex apartment features 8,770 square feet of indoor space with five bedrooms, five bathrooms, and two powder rooms. It also boasts an impressive 3,082 square feet of outdoor terraces, including a wraparound deck at the very base of the clock.

There’s also a private internal elevator and circular staircase that serves both duplex floors and the clock tower base.

“As you ascend level by level, new experiences sort of unfold as you go up,” Tim Rooney, partner at Jeffrey Beers International, tells CNBC Make It. “We drew a lot of inspiration from that Clocktower penthouse for the whole building itself.”

The clock remains fully functional after being electrified in 2023.

The penthouse was originally the New York Life Insurance headquarters. Before it hit the market in April for $19.25 million, it had never been listed. It recently entered into a contract, although representatives for the Elad Group stated to CNBC Make It via email that they had no comment on the identity of the buyers or final sale price.

The clocktower penthouse was first designed in the late 1800s by McKim, Mead & White. It is part of the iconic Gilded Age architecture in New York City and was designated a landmark in 1987.

The top terrace features hand-carved eagles and gargoyles and offers panoramic views from the Empire State Building to the East River.

“We thought of the concept of a modern insertion inside a classic shell. We wanted to preserve some of the details, like those soaring ceiling heights and things you can’t get in a new build today,” Rooney says. “We wanted it to be so in a way it had a slightly more modern profile so it felt a bit updated but still embraced that sort of classic language.”

108 Leonard Street offers an array of amenities, including a drive-in motor reception with private valet parking, multiple lobbies, a fitness center, a 75-foot lap pool, and a children’s playroom.

The sale of the clocktower penthouse comes 12 years after developers Elad Group and the Pebbles Corporation bought the building in 2013 from the Bloomberg mayoral administration for $160 million. They transformed the 19th-century palace into 152 condominiums.

When Rooney first saw the finished clock tower penthouse, he says he was still taken aback, even after creating the renderings and envisioning what the space would look like.

“The scale of the clock tower, the soaring ceiling heights and the staircase going up to the upper level was really a surprise to me,” he says.

“Even though you do render it and design it, it was just so impressive with the amount of light pouring into the space with those giant windows. You really feel the scale and it was so special.”

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President Donald Trump and his administration will begin imposing new limits for federal student loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026.

Undergraduate borrowers will have the same current limit of up to $7,500 a year for dependent students, depending on their class year. But graduate and professional students will see new limits of up to $20,500 per year ($100,000 total) for graduate studies and $50,000 a year ($200,000 total) for professional programs.

Graduate PLUS loans, which previously allowed students to borrow up to their total cost of attendance, will be eliminated.

According to the proposed regulation, a professional degree “signifies both completion of the academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession and a level of professional skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor’s degree.”

The Department of Education has named 11 degree fields that meet the requirements to be considered professional, and thus eligible for higher loan limits under the new rules:

1. Pharmacy (Pharm. D.)
2. Dentistry doctorate (D.D.S. or D.M.S.)
3. Veterinary medicine (D.V.M.)
4. Chiropractic (D.C. or D.C.M.)
5. Law (L.L.B. or J.D.)
6. Medicine (M.D.)
7. Optometry (O.D.)
8. Osteopathic medicine (D.O.)
9. Podiatry (D.P.M., D.P., or Pod.D.)
10. Theology (M.Div., or M.H.L.)
11. Clinical psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.)

The addition of clinical psychology came out of the department’s recent negotiated rulemaking session where stakeholders debated the loan limit rule and how it should be applied.

The department also said programs in at least 44 other fields could qualify if they meet certain criteria, including giving students a “level of professional skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor’s degree,” generally resulting in a doctoral level degree and requiring professional licensure to begin practice. 

Potentially eligible programs include a number of other pharmacy degrees, clinical counseling and theological studies. Institutions are responsible for determining whether a program meets the requirements to be considered a professional degree or not, says Sarah Austin, a policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

Some professional organizations have expressed concern over the list of degrees eligible for the $200,000 aggregate federal loan limit and the Department of Education’s definition of professional programs.

“Despite broad recognition of the complexity, rigor, and necessity of post-baccalaureate nursing education, the Department’s proposal defines professional programs so narrowly that nursing, the nation’s largest healthcare profession, remains excluded,” The American Association of Colleges of Nursing said in a press release on Nov. 7. “Should this proposal be finalized, the impact on our already-challenged nursing workforce would be devastating.”

“Declassifying the [Master of Social Work] and [Doctorate of Social Work] degrees will reduce access to affordable social work education, thereby increasing reliance on high-interest private loans,” the National Association of Social Workers’ Florida chapter said in a press release on Nov. 20.

In a fact sheet released on Nov. 24, the Department of Education said, “The definition of a ‘professional degree’ is an internal definition used by the Department to distinguish among programs that qualify for higher loan limits, not a value judgement about the importance of programs. It has no bearing on whether a program is professional in nature or not.”

The intention behind the loan limits is to discourage borrowers from taking on more debt than they will be able to handle and to encourage institutions to rein in tuition costs, the department said.

The loan limit regulation is not final, however. The Department of Education will publish the regulation in its current form in the federal register in the coming months where the public will have the opportunity to give feedback before it becomes final.

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This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Six-Figure Side Hustle series, where people with lucrative side hustles break down the routines and habits they’ve used to make money on top of their full-time jobs. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.

Becky Powell spends 10 hours per week, on average, making digital worksheets for her fellow educators to purchase.

The 41-year-old kindergarten teacher in Beaverton, Oregon, brought in $125,500 doing that last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. She posts her worksheet booklets — designed to help teach literacy to young students — to her online store on Teachers Pay Teachers, an Etsy-style marketplace.

Powell’s store, Sight Word Activities, currently features 427 different listings, ranging from free downloads to a $30 bundle of 20 booklets. When she first launched the side hustle in 2015, she earned enough to pay her monthly car insurance bill — roughly $60 — in a matter of weeks, she says. After three months, the extra income covered her and her husband’s monthly student loan payments.

Her classroom was her research lab, and her knack for teaching children to sight-read helped her fill a niche on the website, she says. She ramps up work on her side hustle each summer, so she can keep a more flexible schedule during the school year.

You don’t have to spend any money to get started, Powell notes: Teachers Pay Teachers has both free and paid tiers for sellers. “Basic sellers” keep 55% of their sales, while “premium sellers” pay $59.95 per year to keep 80% of their sales.

Powell pays that subscription fee, as does her husband Jerome — a full-time computer engineer who manages another Teachers Pay Teachers store, called Editable Activities. His store brought in an additional $51,800 last year, and his search engine optimization expertise helped Powell get her store off the ground, she says.

Here, Powell discusses what you need to start a worksheet side hustle, why her side hustle has succeeded so far and how her confidence as a first-time entrepreneur has helped her grow as a person.

CNBC Make It: Do you think your side hustle is replicable?

Powell: Yeah, I think so — especially if you have a combination of passion and knowing the [education] market. You need those things to identify gaps [in learning] and build your intuition.

What do you mean by that? How do you build that intuition?

It’s one thing to have a career in [a specific] market. It’s another to really know it, so you have to research it. You’ve got to find consumers for that market and interview them, so that you know it so innately and so intimately that you can see the holes.

Once you marry all those things, you won’t make something that might work, or could work, or should work. You know it will work.

You started a business without any entrepreneurial experience. Did running a successful side hustle help you build confidence in or out of the classroom?

I majored in education, so I’ve never had a business or sales mindset at all. It’s not my realm. Jerome helped me understand SEO, marketing and how to step into your consumers’ shoes. That’s why it’s been such an amazing balance.

But I had to overcome the “What do I do know? I’m not in business” mentality. I now see my confidence coming through in my ability and willingness to teach others.

I have helped eight friends and coworkers open their own stores on Teachers Pay Teachers. I never charge them, and never would — I get a thrill when those I mentor experience their own success.

A lot of people have side gigs, but few bring in six figures per year. What do you think is the key to your success?

My husband always told me, “The riches are found in niches.” Find that one area you can do really well with and hone in on it.

For me, it wasn’t just [how to get kids to learn] sight words. It was thinking about hands-on activities and readily available tools that would engage them. I really drilled, drilled, drilled down the ideas, getting more specific, until I hit gold at the very bottom.

So, it’s not just a niche. It’s finding your niche within a niche.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Coffee prices were already rising following poor harvests last year when the U.S. added new tariffs on coffee imports in April. Those tariffs have since been rolled back, but prices at grocery stores and cafés are still high, leaving many shoppers wondering why a simple cup of coffee costs so much.

As of September, roasted coffee sold in stores cost about 41% more than it did 12 months prior, rising from an average of $6.47 to $9.14 per pound, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

While prices can swing by roughly a dollar within a year during volatile periods, the nearly $3 increase in the most recent BLS data is unusually steep — and consumers are taking notice.

“This is ridiculous,” 52-year-old Chuck Smith said in a TikTok video in August in which he showed receipts for the 38.2-ounce tub of Maxwell House ground coffee he buys at his local Walmart in Indiana, which had nearly doubled in price to $21.44 in under a year.

Smith says he filmed the clip spontaneously in the grocery aisle after noticing the price hike. “It was just me in the moment,” he told CNBC Make It, adding that the reaction “captured what a lot of folks are feeling.” Walmart and Kraft Heinz, the maker of Maxwell House, did not respond to requests for comment.

Other brands, including Nespresso and Folgers, have also increased prices in the last year.

Restaurant coffee prices have risen, too: The average cost of a regular cup increased from $3.46 to $3.57 in the year ending October 2025, according to restaurant and café price data tracked by menu software company Toast.

The run-up in average retail coffee prices has been the steepest and most sustained since BLS began tracking those prices in 1980, the data shows.

Weather issues came first. Drought and heavy rain disrupted harvests in Brazil and Vietnam in 2024, tightening supply well before tariffs took effect.

Coffee futures prices then climbed from roughly $2 a pound in May 2024 to a peak of $4 by April 2025, one of the steepest increases the market has seen in decades, according to Intercontinental Exchange data. Because futures serve as the benchmark for what importers and roasters pay for beans, sharp increases often lead to higher costs, which may eventually show up in retail prices.

Tariffs are another factor. In April, the U.S. imposed new tariffs on coffee imports — 10% on key coffee-growing Latin American countries and about 20% for Asian growers, with Brazil hit hardest at 50%. Since then, grocery-store coffee prices have risen about 21%, according to consumer price index data.

In mid-November, the White House rolled back most of the new coffee tariffs, eliminating duties for nearly all producing countries except Brazil, which retained a 40% tariff. Last week, the administration removed the remaining 40% duty on Brazilian coffee as well, effectively ending tariffs on coffee imports from almost all major exporters.

Because retail prices typically lag wholesale costs, it may take time before any easing shows up on store shelves. Still, removing tariffs should eventually help take some pressure off prices, according to the National Coffee Association, an industry trade group.

“Significant coffee price inflation has occurred during the time tariffs have been in place,” a spokesperson for NCA tells CNBC Make It. “Removing tariffs on the world’s leading coffee producing countries is expected to significantly decrease costs.”

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