Growing up in Iowa, Steven and Ashley Evans knew all about the local fire station in Cedar Rapids because it was right by the high school they both attended.

“We always dreamed we’d live here one day. It went up for sale and we thought we’d come check it out,” Steven, 40, tells CNBC Make It. “When we tell people we live in an old firehouse, everyone around here knows exactly where it is and which one it is.”

The station was first built in 1960 and converted into a home by its previous owners in the 1980s. In 2016, when the Evans first saw it was for sale, listed for $125,000, it had been abandoned for years and was covered in black mold.

“We had no intentions of purchasing it because we didn’t have the finances at the time,” Ashley, 33, says.

In 2016, she was working as a dermatology nurse, and Steven had a job working with adults with special needs and owned six rental properties. They owned a house they paid $65,000 for, Ashley says, but “my parents actually had to cosign on the house because we just couldn’t afford it. … It was $550 a month, and we were just struggling.”

Still, they decided to take a look at the firehouse. Even when they had to sign waivers to enter because it was deemed a safety hazard due to the mold, they weren’t deterred.

“The thing that attracted me the most to the fire station would be the fact that it’s all concrete and steel. The bones were solid, the house was level; any other house would have fallen over easily by now,” Steven says.

Without letting Ashley know, Steven put in an offer of $90,000 and it was accepted. He came clean the next day — he says he wanted it to be a surprise to Ashley that he bought the fire station they used to always see by their high school.

The property was listed as a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house with 3,100 square feet of space, but it turned out to be almost double that size since the listing only included the finished square footage, not the unfinished square footage, Steven says.

In order to finance the purchase, Steven applied for a construction loan of $170,000 under his rental property business, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The couple says they did it that way because their original plan was to renovate the fire station and resell it.

Steven says that because of all the work the property needed, they didn’t think they would ever be able to live in it. When the couple closed on the property in June 2016, it lacked walls, electricity or even a working toilet.

With an estimated budget of $80,000, the Evans started on the renovation, with Steven doing most of the work himself to save money. They rented out the house their parents cosigned with them and moved into the fire station while they renovated. Ashley’s parents even moved in with them to help pay the renovation-related bills.

Here are some of the biggest expenses the couple encountered while renovating. All amounts are rounded.

• Paint: $1,100
• Drywall: $4,000
• Flooring: $5,000
• Kitchen addition: $10,000
• Roof: $22,000

“Whatever we could find on clearance, whatever people wanted to give us, that is how we would remodel it. Just trying to make it look the best we can on the cheapest budget,” Ashley says.

“If it didn’t match, we’d spray paint it to match,” Steven adds.

Although the couple had to essentially remodel everything, they kept some original details from the fire station, including the old hose tower, the garage doors and a historic plaque outside. They kept the massive skylight the previous owners had installed to cover a courtyard that was originally part of the fire station as well.

To pay homage to the station’s history, the couple also bought an old fire truck to put in their backyard for their kids to play with.

The couple made the space their own by adding a theater room and a playroom for their kids that looks like a soccer field with fake turf.

“We had friends who had an indoor soccer field [growing up]. I always thought it was the coolest thing ever. I remembered it even as an adult, so I decided to create one down here,” Steven says.

In 2019, Steven and Ashley refinanced their original loan into a mortgage to officially purchase the home in their names. They secured a 5.5-year balloon mortgage for $225,000 at a 4.89% interest rate, with an estimated monthly payment of $1,455, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. When the term ended in 2024, the couple refinanced into a new mortgage; now their monthly payment is around $3,190 and their interest rate is 7.59%.

The couple also remodeled their kitchen recently, which they financed with a home equity line of credit.

Here the monthly expenses related to the house:

• Electricity: $17.49
• Internet: $186.85
• HELOC for kitchen renovation: $423.65
• Utilities: $475.99
• Gas: $426.93
• Solar panels: $553.98
• Mortgage: $3,190.05

Since the couple started sharing what life is like in the fire station on social media years ago, viewers always ask if they will ever leave or sell the property, they say. But the couple says even if they ever move, they will never sell the fire station.

Instead, in 2020, Steven and Ashley bought the house next door for $180,000, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Ashley’s parents have taken ownership of the property, she says.

Last year, Ashley and Steven also bought another house near the fire station for $175,000. They call it their “cozy cottage” and have it listed on Airbnb for $160 to $189 a night. It is fully booked through March.

“We talk about what it would be like to live in a house that was already finished all the time … But also, I can’t imagine living in a house that was completely new and that we didn’t put any blood, sweat and tears into,” Ashley says.

“It’s a dream home for our kids to grow up in. And just for us to be so proud that we can provide for our kids to grow up in this home, it means a lot,” she adds.

Want to improve your communication, confidence and success at work? Take CNBC’s new online course, Master Your Body Language To Boost Your Influence.

What skills can help make you more attractive in the job market or workplace today?

LinkedIn’s 2026 Skills on the Rise list, published Tuesday, identifies the fastest-growing skills in the U.S.

“We’ve seen the skills required to do our jobs evolve dramatically in the last 10 years, with even more change on the way, largely fueled by AI,” Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn News Senior Editor-at-Large for Jobs & Career Development, tells CNBC Make It. “Employers are looking less at job titles or degrees and more at what people can actually do.”

The list was determined by analyzing year-over-year growth in “skill acquisition” and “hiring success” from Dec. 1, 2024 to Nov. 30, 2025, compared to the period from Dec. 1, 2023 to Nov. 30, 2024. The report looked at the increase in LinkedIn members adding a given skill to their profiles (skill acquisition) and the increase in members with a given skill who got hired during that period (hiring success).

LinkedIn grouped individual fast-growing skills into broader categories based on use cases and other factors.

“Think of your skills like career currency — they help determine who gets hired, who gets promoted, and who’s tapped for new projects,” Seaman says. “Even as industries evolve or companies change, skills are what give you flexibility and resilience, especially in an uncertain job market.”

Here are the top categories in LinkedIn’s 2026 skills on the rise list and some of the individual skills that fall under each:

• AI engineering and implementation, including data annotation and prompt engineering
• Operational efficiency, including logistics management and process optimization
• AI business strategy, including data governance and responsible AI
• Executive and stakeholder communications, including public speaking and relationship development
• Financial operations and reporting, including cash reporting and financial data analysis
• Leadership and people management, including cross-functional team management and talent development
• Business revenue growth, including account development and go-to-market strategy
• Risk compliance management, including policy compliance and safety monitoring

The list is a mix of “hard” skills, particularly in AI, and “soft” skills like communication and people management.

“Those [who] embrace AI, are curious with the technology, and use it in their daily work will be seen as the future leaders at each company,” LinkedIn COO Dan Shapero previously told Make It. AI literacy was the top skill on LinkedIn’s 2025 Skills on the Rise list.

Soft skills like conflict mitigation, adaptability and innovative thinking made up roughly half of LinkedIn’s 2025 list. They’re crucial to our day-to-day work, Andrew McCaskill, formerly a career expert at LinkedIn, previously told Make It. “Human-centric skills” like these, he said, are “really game changers.”

Want to improve your communication, confidence and success at work? Take CNBC’s new online course, Master Your Body Language To Boost Your Influence.

It’s only February, and Charly Stoever has already made a sizeable portion of their investments for the year.

At the beginning of each year, Stoever, the founder of Traveler Charly Money Coaching, makes the maximum contribution to a Roth individual retirement account, meaning they hit the $7,500 limit for 2026 back in January.

“A lot of people think that it’s better to drag out investing for retirement throughout the year and do what’s called dollar-cost averaging,” Stoever says, referring to a strategy of investing a set amount of money at regular intervals. “But for me, it just works better to front-load and max out my individual retirement account the first week of January in order to capture the entire year’s worth of gains.”

Stoever’s business has never made more than about $60,000 in a year, and, after taxes and expenses, the financial coach pays themselves even less. According to Stoever, that means their Roth investment is roughly 25% of their annual income.

“But if I don’t do that, I will not retire. So I’m willing to bite the bullet and just front-load my investments,” they say.

A Roth IRA is a tax-advantaged retirement account funded with money you’ve already paid taxes on. Money grows within your account tax-free and when you turn 59½, provided you’ve held the account for at least five years, you can withdraw all of your funds, including your gains, without owing a dime to Uncle Sam. For 2026, single filers can make the maximum contribution provided they earn a taxable income of less than $153,000. The benefit phases out completely for those with incomes above $168,000.

When it comes to funding long-term accounts, many savers and financial pros are fans of dollar-cost averaging. Part of the thinking behind this strategy is practical. Not everyone has a few thousand dollars laying around to invest. Plus, many investors already do it without thinking, in the form of contributing to a 401(k) via regular payroll deductions.

The other thing going for dollar-cost averaging has to do with investor psychology. Investing in this robotic sort of way can help take the emotion out of managing your money, says Juan G. HernandezAriano, a certified financial planner and principal at WealthCreate in Houston, Texas. It doesn’t matter if the market is up, down or sideways — you just invest the way you always do.

″[Dollar-cost averaging] is not about maximizing the returns,” he says. “It’s about maximizing the probability that someone will actually stay invested and continue to stay invested.”

So far, Stoever has had no problem staying consistent in their lump sum strategy. And over long periods, HernandezAriano points out, it’s a mathematically superior strategy. “If someone’s used to contributing lump sum, it’s much better,” he says.

Consider two investors, one who invests $7,500 at the beginning of the year, and another who chops it up into $288 biweekly investments. If the market climbs over that 12-month period, the lump sum investor comes out ahead, since they had more exposure to the upswing.

The gradual investor would come out ahead if the market trended downward, with whatever cash they had on the sideline throughout the year safe from the decline.

Because the U.S. stock market has historically trended upward, a lump sum strategy will tend to produce higher returns over time. In an analysis of 1,000 overlapping seven-year historical periods, analysts at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management found that a lump sum approach generated higher returns than a periodic investing strategy in more than 56% of cases.

Overall, the method you use to save doesn’t matter as much as establishing the habit of consistently saving a portion of your income toward long-term goals, such as retirement, HernandezAriano says. It can also be beneficial to speak with a trusted financial professional about which strategy is right for you.

Stoever recalls receiving that message at age 26 from a financial mentor.

“She pretty much convinced me that I just need to max out my Roth IRA — at the time, the limit was about $5,500 a year … And that was a significant part of my overall income,” they say. “But I saw it as non-negotiable for me, because if I don’t do this, I’ll have to work forever.  And I’m not about that life.”

Want to improve your communication, confidence and success at work? Take CNBC’s new online course, Master Your Body Language To Boost Your Influence.

Washington-born couple Cassandra Tresl, 33, and her husband, Alex Ninman, 34, were living in the Czech Republic with her grandfather when their daughter was born in 2020. They faced a crossroads: move back to the United States or stay abroad?

The couple had moved in with Tresl’s grandfather around March of that year after learning they were expecting, using her grandfather’s place as their home base while traveling around Europe before Tresl was due to give birth.

Tresl says they had told friends they’d move back to the U.S. after their daughter was born, but when they started looking at how expensive it would be to buy a house and pay for childcare, they decided to look to Italy instead. 

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

They decided to explore options in Italy after Tresl remembered seeing stories about towns across the country selling one-euro homes in order to attract foreign investors to buy the houses, rehab them and drive up the dwindling population numbers.

Tresl first wanted to determine the actual cost of purchasing one of those homes to see if it was an option for the couple, since they didn’t want to spend more than 20,000 euros, or about $23,627 USD, on the purchase.

Many of the one-euro properties come with a catch. In some towns, the one-euro purchase is symbolic and the real prices are in the thousands. In others, the bids start at a single euro, but the final price is usually higher. And once buyers get their properties, they generally have to complete the renovations within a certain timeframe.

“I started to look online for houses for sale in Italy. Since we were in Europe and we’ve been to Italy, it wasn’t a problem to go there and check out some of these houses. I’m also not the type of person that would have ever done anything like this sight unseen,” Tresl tells CNBC Make It.

In 2021, the couple went on a house-hunting tour in Italy and viewed 15 homes across Abruzzo and Tuscany. They ended up purchasing a two-floor, two-bedroom house just under 1,076 square feet, with a third bedroom in the basement and an attic, in Abruzzo.

They knew renovations would be costly, so Tresl says they picked their home largely based on the price — and the fact that the terrace has a view.

“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,” she says. “In hindsight, there are a lot of other reasons why I’m glad that we landed here, but at that point in time, I knew nothing else besides the price and that I wanted the best deal.”

The couple closed on the house in February 2022 in an all-cash deal for 11,500 euros, or $13,150 at the time, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

“I loved the price and the terrace,” Tresl says. “People think that it’s super easy to just throw a rock in any direction and find a house with a garden in Italy, but it’s just not the case. We do have a terrace, and we have a really nice view, and that was a nonnegotiable for me.”

The price also 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.”

Tresl, Ninman and their daughter briefly returned to the Czech Republic to develop a plan for where to live, since their Italy house wasn’t habitable at the time — it needed a lot of work since it had been empty for 30 years, Tresl says. They decided to rent an Airbnb in a nearby town in Abruzzo for a little over a month while their house was renovated.

Because the house had been empty for decades, the walls needed resurfacing, some electrical work needed to be redone, the windows and doors needed redoing and the bathroom and kitchen needed to be gutted. Ninman did most of the work himself, but the couple hired out to do the plumbing, Tresl says.

In total, the couple spent around 12,000 to 15,000 euros, or $14,207 to $17,758, to renovate the home, they estimate.

As part of the renovation, the couple made the terrace bigger, added a bathroom downstairs and turned the basement into a proper guest suite. They finished most of the renovation in the fall of 2022, but redid the basement and attic in 2023.

Tresl says she wanted the house to have an eclectic design, so she visited thrift stores and flea markets to source vintage pieces.

“I wanted natural materials and to combine both warm and cold. I have a lot of color in the house in terms of paint because I felt like the house was small, so I wanted to make it a happy house,” Tresl says. “Everything I picked out, I have a reason for it. I wanted to set a goal for myself that everything I look at reminds me of where I got it from.”

Although the couple doesn’t have a mortgage, the house isn’t completely free to live in. Here’s a breakdown of the couple’s house-related expenses, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. All expenses are rounded.

• Internet: 12 euros (about $14) per month
• Property taxes: 61 euros (about $72) annually
• Water: 91 euros (about $108) every two months
• Electricity: 217 euros (about $256) every two months
• Garbage: 286 euros (about $338) annually

The couple also has a pellet stove that they use in the winter. It can cost an additional 42 euros a week, or about $200 a month, for heating, Tresl 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. Ninman left his job as a butcher when the couple moved out of the U.S. and now manages a second property the couple owns and rents out on Airbnb.

In addition to their primary residence, Tresl and Ninman acquired a second property in Italy in 2024, which they rent on Airbnb for up to 85 euros, or about $101, per night.

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.

Tresl says she’s been asked before why the couple doesn’t make it their primary residence, but she says she loves being in the center of her town. “It’s really nice just to be able to walk anywhere from our house,” she adds.

Now that the couple has two properties in Italy, they say they are staying put — most likely until they are empty nesters.

“My husband and I have talked about probably moving out of Italy once we know what our daughter is doing and if she decides to go to school somewhere else,” Tresl says. “It will free us up to do whatever, but that’s not something we’re thinking about for at least another 10 years because I want my daughter to have stability.”

They visit the U.S. about once a year, and although it will always be home, Tresl says it feels more foreign each time she returns. 

“I feel like an outdoor cat having to go back in or vice versa … It just feels odd. I grew up in the ’90s and I feel like my childhood was so different compared to what I witnessed on my last visit. It’s a huge part of why I love being in Italy right now, because my daughter, I feel, is getting a much more wholesome experience and a genuine childhood,” she says.

Conversions from euros to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 euro to $1.18 USD on Feb. 9, 2026. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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.

Andy Hill is coasting.

The 44-year-old and his wife have built up a net worth north of $1 million, and for now, neither plans to add another dollar to their long-term investments. Instead, they’ll let their money to continue to grow, secure in the knowledge that they’ll have enough to retire by the time they get there.

The strategy is known as “Coast FIRE,” a variation on a movement short for “financial independence, retire early.” In the early days of FIRE, many of its adherents pursued a straightforward objective: sock enough money away in investments to be able to leave your job and live off of distributions from your portfolio indefinitely.

In 2016, shortly after Hill began a side gig hosting the “Marriage Kids and Money” podcast, he began to do exactly that, insisting that he and his wife save as much as they could in order to retire as quickly as possible. The resulting friction over money landed them in couples therapy, Hill says.

Hill emerged with a new outlook on managing money as a couple — a philosophy he shares in his new book, “Own Your Time: 10 Financial Steps to Put Your Family First and Escape the Corporate Grind.” The goal, he tells readers and clients of his financial coaching business, isn’t to get to the retirement finish line as soon as possible, but to secure your future while creating the freedom to spend on the things you value now.

That process, Hill says, with starts with encouraging couples to dream together rather than diving straight into numbers.

“Really most of the time should be spent on, what do I want out of my life? What do I desire for my dream life?” Hill says.

To narrow in on the answer, Hill urges couples to ask themselves some big questions, such as:

• If I got a $5 million check in my mailbox tomorrow, and I didn’t have to worry about money anymore, what would I stop doing immediately?
• What am I constantly worried about, and what can I do with my money to help me eliminate those worries?

Getting to the bottom of these questions as a couple can give you a roadmap of where to put your money first, says Hill. If your biggest worry is losing your job and losing your home, for instance, you might focus your joint financial energies on paying down your mortgage, he says. If your biggest dream with a windfall is guilt-free travel, you might prioritize building a vacation fund.

“It’s about starting from that position of dreaming and then sharing those dreams with your spouse, asking them to do the same, so that you can come together for some cool family goals that work for both of you,” Hill says.

For Hill, and for many of the couples he works with, the ultimate goal is what he calls “time freedom.” After putting enough money in your investment accounts to “coast” to retirement — an amount that requires some future projection that’s worth discussing with a financial professional — you can use money you would have been socking away to enrich your life, either by spending more on things you want or by effectively buying back your time.

“Do we want to inflate our lifestyle and just have more fun, or do we both want to work less?” Hill says.

Hill and his wife have taken the latter approach, using their financial flexibility to scale back at work. Hill’s wife left a job in marketing to return to school and now works part-time as an esthetician. Hill went into business for himself full-time in 2019.

“The year I left my corporate career, I was making around $180,000 per year working 40 to 50 hours per week,” he says. “This year, I’m paying myself $100,000 working 20 to 25 hours per week.”

Couples with this kind of extra time can use it to be more present parents and partners, focus on their health, care for aging parents and devote more time to hobbies and passions, Hill says.

“There’s so many other things that you can do with your life besides working,” he says.

Want to improve your communication, confidence and success at work? Take CNBC’s new online course, Master Your Body Language To Boost Your Influence.