Rent prices are on the rise in the Midwest, with five of the U.S. cities with the fastest-growing rents located there, according to a recent SmartAsset analysis of Zillow data.

The Midwest has historically been home to more affordable homes than pricey coastal areas, but demand has outpaced supply for rental units in many cities, driving prices up, according to economists at Realtor.com. It’s not just rentals, either. The Midwest is home to five of the 10 most in-demand ZIP codes for home sales, according to a recent Redfin report.

“The South has been the desirable place in previous years because it’s more affordable on the coast, but insurance costs and property taxes have gone up. The Midwest, however, has stable insurance costs, stable property taxes and a stable housing market,” Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist, recently told CNBC Make It.

And despite recent growth, rent is still generally lower in many Midwestern cities than coastal hubs like New York and Los Angeles.

Average rent prices in Newark, New Jersey, which is located just outside of NYC, grew 8.1% to $2,241 between 2024 and 2025 — the fastest clip of any of the 100 largest U.S. cities, SmartAsset finds. Although Cleveland, Ohio, experienced the second-fastest annual growth at 7.3%, the average rent there is only $1,303.

Here are the 10 U.S. cities where rent grew the fastest between 2024 and 2025, according to SmartAsset:

• Average rent, February 2024: $2,073
• Average rent, February 2025: $2,241
• Percent change: 8.1%

• Average rent, February 2024: $1,215
• Average rent, February 2025: $1,303
• Percent change: 7.3%

• Average rent, February 2024: $1,409
• Average rent, February 2025: $1,504
• Percent change: 6.7%

• Average rent, February 2024: $1,144
• Average rent, February 2025: $1,215
• Percent change: 6.2%

• Average rent, February 2024: $1,296
• Average rent, February 2025: $1,376
• Percent change: 6.2%

• Average rent, February 2024: $1,952
• Average rent, February 2025: $2,070
• Percent change: 6.1%

• Average rent, February 2024: $1,034
• Average rent, February 2025: $1,095
• Percent change: 5.9%

• Average rent, February 2024: $1,266
• Average rent, February 2025: $1,339
• Percent change: 5.8%

• Average rent, February 2024: $1,340
• Average rent, February 2025: $1,416
• Percent change: 5.7%

• Average rent, February 2024: $1,396
• Average rent, February 2025: $1,472
• Percent change: 5.5%

It’s worth noting that the cities where rent grew the fastest aren’t necessarily the most expensive. Boston, New York and San Francisco still have the highest rents in the country, SmartAsset finds, with average prices all over $3,350 a month.

These places are major hubs for business, especially the high-paying tech and financial services industries, but strict zoning and construction costs in each of these cities make it difficult to add enough housing supply to meet the constant demand. Boston and San Francisco in particular are among the U.S. cities with the worst housing shortages, according to a 2024 Zillow report.

On the flip side, rent prices fell between 2024 and 2025 in just six of the largest U.S. cities, SmartAsset finds. Aurora, Colorado, saw the largest drop with the average rent decreasing nearly 3.1%.

Austin, Texas, which has garnered media attention for its recent housing developments, saw rent prices drop by 2.3% in the last year.

The city’s population exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic, which drove up housing costs for a period. But those rising costs may have turned political tides in the area, leading residents to vote in a more homebuilding-friendly city council, the Texas Tribune reports.

The city began approving more building permits and boosted the housing supply to the point that rents have been falling and landlords struggle to fill their properties, according to Bloomberg.

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Coca-Cola’s stock has a reputation for resilience — and amid recent market turmoil, it’s once again outperforming the broader stock market.

As a consumer staples company, Coca-Cola sells products that people continue to buy even during economic downturns, helping the stock perform more steadily in volatile markets. Its long history of consistent dividend payments has also made it a blue chip favorite among long-term investors.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, one of Coca-Cola’s largest shareholders, has held the stock since 1988, underscoring its appeal to long-term investors.

The beverage giant reported first-quarter earnings Tuesday morning, with revenue coming in at $11.22 billion, topping analysts’ expectations of $11.14 billion, according to LSEG estimates. Earnings per share were 73 cents, slightly beating analysts’ forecast of 71 cents.

Recent product launches of limited edition soda flavors and strong demand overseas has helped with sales growth despite a more cautious consumer backdrop.

As of market close on April 28, Coca-Cola’s stock price was $71.79, reflecting a year-over-year increase of approximately 16.3%. That’s nearly double the S&P 500′s increase of 8.4% over the same period.

Here’s how much the total return, including reinvested dividends, for a $1,000 investment in Coca-Cola would be worth today if you had bought shares one year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago or at the end of 1988 — around when Warren Buffett first started investing — based on the stock’s April 28 closing price of $71.79.

If you invested one year ago:

• Percentage change: 19.5%
• Total: $1,195

If you invested five years ago:

• Percentage change: 72.8%
• Total: $1,728

If you invested 10 years ago:

• Percentage change: 116.3%
• Total: $2,163

If you invested in 1988:

• Percentage change: 3,534.2%
• Total: $36,487

While Coca-Cola has been an investor favorite for decades, no stock is completely free from risk. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and even the most established companies can underperform over time.

Most financial experts recommend spreading your money across a range of investments rather than betting too heavily on a single stock.

Low-cost index funds, which invest broadly across the market, tend to offer more stability and lower fees than picking individual stocks.

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While going to college tends to mean better pay, not all degrees guarantee high salaries — especially if you study liberal arts.

That’s according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which shows that graduates who major in education, social work or the arts tend to earn the lowest median incomes within five years of finishing school. The analysis includes only full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree and excludes those still enrolled in school.

The salary figures are based on 2023 data, the most recent available, and show early-career pay in these fields falls below the U.S. median wage of $48,060 for that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While engineering majors can make upward of $80,000 early in their careers, many liberal arts and education majors earn closer to $40,000. The median salary of all majors examined was $50,000.

Here’s a look at the 10 majors linked to the lowest median salaries for full-time workers ages 22 to 27.

While learning a foreign language is a valuable skill, a degree in the subject doesn’t always lead to high-paying roles. That’s likely because language can be learned outside a formal education and many graduates tend to go into relatively low-paying fields, like education, translation or public service.

Liberal arts majors also tend to earn less than graduates in technical fields like engineering or math, largely because there’s less demand for their skills in higher-paying industries like technology and finance.

Unfortunately, many liberal arts majors don’t fare much better as they get older, especially those in education. Here’s a look at the 10 lowest-paying majors for full-time workers between ages 35 and 45.

Early childhood education majors earn the least of all mid-career graduates, with a median income of $49,000 — just $8,000 more than what they earned five years after graduation.

By contrast, engineering majors typically break into six figures by mid-career.

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There are two words that slip out so easily when your child experiences an emotional event. Maybe they tripped and fell or had a fight with a friend. Their face crumples, and before they’ve even had a chance to speak, you say: “You’re okay.”

It sounds comforting. Reassuring, even. But it’s not. As a conscious parenting coach and advocate for children’s emotional health, I’ve studied over 200 kids — and I’ve seen this well-intentioned and overused phrase cause long-term damage in ways that most parents never realize.

In fact, because it seems so harmless at first, it’s the most dangerous phrase in parenting. Here’s why, and what to say instead:

1. It teaches kids to doubt their own emotions.

When a child is visibly upset and hears “you’re okay,” it sends a confusing message: What I’m feeling must not be real. Over time, this disconnects them from their inner emotional world and teaches them to distrust their own instincts.

2. It invalidates their experience when they need you most.

You may say it with love, but a child hears: “Your feelings don’t matter.” Dismissal — however subtle — teaches them that comfort and connection are only available when they’re calm and convenient. This is where emotional suppression begins.

3. It short-circuits emotional processing.

Emotions are meant to move through the body. When we interrupt that natural process with premature reassurance, we rob children of the ability to identify, name and regulate their emotions. Instead of building resilience, we’re building avoidance.

4. It teaches that love is conditional.

Without realizing it, phrases like “you’re okay,” “stop crying,” or “don’t be scared” condition children to believe they must suppress their emotions to remain accepted. And when love feels conditional, emotional safety — the very foundation of mental health — starts to unravel.

5. It can rewire a child’s stress response.

The nervous system develops through repeated experiences. When a child is upset and met with dismissal instead of support, their body learns that it’s not safe to express emotion. Over time, this can reshape their nervous system to expect disconnection, making it harder to trust, regulate and feel safe being fully themselves.

Children don’t need a fix — they need to feel. And more importantly, they need to know it’s safe to feel, especially with you.

Here are powerful alternatives that validate their inner world and build emotional strength:

• “I believe you.”
• “Your feelings make sense.”
• “I’m right here with you.”
• “You don’t have to be okay right now.”
• “I saw what happened. How are you feeling?”

These phrases do more than soothe. They strengthen. They teach your child: My emotions matter. I can trust myself. I’m not alone.

These responses take practice. You’ll still say “you’re okay” sometimes. And that’s okay, too. The goal is to practice conscious parenting: noticing our patterns and choosing, moment by moment, to respond in ways that build emotional safety rather than undermine it.

These moments may seem small, but they actually help to build a child’s emotional foundation. And in a world where anxiety, depression and disconnection are on the rise, this is how we protect our children’s mental health — one moment of emotional safety at a time.

Reem Raouda is a leading voice in conscious parenting and the creator of FOUNDATIONS — the transformative healing journal for parents ready to break cycles, do the inner work, and become the emotionally safe parent their child needs. She is widely recognized for her groundbreaking work in children’s emotional safety and strengthening the parent-child bond. FFollow her on Instagram.

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Sora Lee has worked for some of the biggest names in tech — and earned six-figure salaries doing so.

The 34-year-old worked at Netflix, Meta and TikTok before starting Kurated Agency, which aims to connect Korean beauty brands with creators and outlets in the U.S., in 2023.

Lee didn’t plan to work in tech when she was an undergraduate student studying economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley. But she started her career at a startup called TubeMogul, and continued in tech from there.

In a little over 10 years, Lee honed her business skills and leveraged her connections, growing her salary from around $40,000 to the $400,000 in total annual compensation she was earning when she left TikTok. And in recent years, she brought in additional income through speaking engagements and content creation on the side. 

She became a millionaire in 2024 due to consistent investing and maximizing her salary with every job change.

Here are four of her best pieces of advice for scaling up your career and your income. 

Many people ask Lee what they should major in in college, she says. But your major is less important than what you’re actually learning from your coursework, early jobs and internships.

“Be adaptive and focus on building skills that you can translate to other companies easily,” Lee says.

Especially in an industry like tech, what you study in college could become fairly obsolete by the time you’re looking for jobs, Lee says. There’s also a chance your dream job doesn’t exist yet.

Learning newer technology and staying up to date on the systems big companies use can help you pivot into roles you may not have previously considered. Lee says she could go after AI jobs because of her experience using those kinds of tools in her previous roles, despite not having held an AI-specific position.

If you’re exploring different career opportunities, it might seem exhausting to send out dozens of applications and attend multiple interviews. But Lee says interviewing with a variety of companies helps her learn what she wants in her next role. 

Interviewing for jobs is “very similar to dating,” she says, in the sense that if you go on a bunch of dates with potential partners, there will likely be a healthy mix of good and bad ones, and you can learn from both.

The more interviews you do, the more you’ll see yourself getting excited and energized by certain aspects of each position, which can help you narrow your search, she says.

“You need to pay attention to how things make you feel,” Lee says.

While it’s important to know what you’re good at and what you enjoy, Lee says it’s just as crucial to identify which of your skills can help you make money.

“Especially when you’re younger, unless you’re rolling in money, it’s important to start gaining skills that you have seen [provide] some success,” she says.

“Follow your passion” is one of the worst pieces of advice Lee received when she was in college, she previously told CNBC Make It. That’s because plenty of people are passionate about something that won’t necessarily help them land a high-paying job.

“Figure out what you’re good at that people would pay money for and figure out your passion, and ideally, it’s aligned,” Lee says. 

Especially in the face of rejection, it can be tempting to fake certain traits to try to get through an interview or land a role. But authenticity is incredibly valuable, Lee says.

“Be really unapologetically you,” she says. That can be difficult for young people still trying to figure out who they are, but “having your personal brand is really important.”

Lee says her content creation side hustle has helped her become more comfortable and confident in her own skin, which has helped her do her full-time jobs better. Her social media following has also been an asset when interviewing with companies like Meta and TikTok because it shows she understands the platforms both from the technical side and the creator side, she says.

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