Relationships don’t fall apart overnight. More often than not, they crumble under the weight of small missteps that quietly accumulate — until they become too heavy to manage.

As a psychologist who studies couples, I’ve seen many versions of this. Partners come into my office thinking their problem has something to do with frequent fights or arguments. But when we dig deeper, we often find the same root cause: what they say to each other in their arguments.

There’s one phrase I’ve seen come up in these exchanges that’s more damaging than you think: “Why can’t you be more like [insert other person’s name]?”

If you use this toxic phrase, your relationship is in trouble.

At first glance, it might seem like a throwaway line or a sigh of frustration in the middle of an argument.

What couples fail to recognize is that the person named is actually irrelevant, whether it’s an ex, a best friend’s girlfriend, or even “how you used to be.” The real message will always remain the same: “You’re not enough, and someone else — anyone else — could do a better job at being my partner.”

Over time, this kind of comparison can give rise to irreparable insecurity issues. Rather than feeling loved for who they are, the person on the receiving end will start questioning their worth and constantly wonder if they’re living up to expectations.

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Relationships can’t thrive when we ask our partner to be someone they’re not. Happiness can only be achieved when we communicate what we need clearly, without shame or comparison.

That’s why this phrase itself isn’t the real problem. It’s usually a symptom of a much deeper dysfunction: the fear of openly speaking up.

Research helps explain why some partners might not express their frustrations openly — at least, not at first. According to one study, when a partner feels uncertain about the relationship, or unsure of how their partner will respond, they’re more likely to hold back. 

Rather than just saying outright, “I feel disconnected when we don’t spend quality time together,” they compartmentalize it. These moments only pile up over time, until the day comes that they inexplicably blurt out something like, “Why can’t you be more like Sarah’s husband? He actually plans dates.” 

It’s not necessarily that they want a different partner; it’s that they don’t feel safe enough to voice their needs plainly. The more secure and emotionally close a person feels in their relationship, the more likely they are to communicate directly. 

Instead of pointing to someone else as a model, turn the spotlight inward. What are you really asking for? And why are you so afraid to ask it plainly?

If you catch yourself about to say, for instance, “Why can’t you be more like Alex? He never blows up over small things,” give these a try instead:

• “I know we both get frustrated sometimes, but it would mean a lot to me if we could speak to each other kindly, without yelling.”
• “It’s hard for me when our arguments escalate so fast. I’d love for us to work on staying grounded together during tough moments.”

Notice how these versions are rooted in your own experience, not someone else’s behavior. This makes them bids for connection, instead of a sweeping accusation of failure.

Relationships require the willingness to love each other as real, flawed, irreplaceable humans — not as comparisons to someone else. Similarly, they require the courage to speak openly, as well as the trust that your openness will be met with respect.

Mark Travers, PhD, is a psychologist who specializes in relationships. He holds degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the lead psychologist at Awake Therapy, a telehealth company that provides online psychotherapy, counseling and coaching. He is also the curator of the popular mental health and wellness website, Therapytips.org.

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What separates millionaires from the average person struggling to get ahead financially?

It’s not just luck, a high-paying job or an Ivy League degree. It’s the way they think about money and the habits they consistently practice. The good news? These habits aren’t exclusive to the wealthy. Anyone can use them to build wealth over time.

After becoming a millionaire at age 28 and spending over 16 years writing about personal finance, I’ve noticed four distinct habits that set self-made millionaires apart. These are the “get rich” habits that roughly 93% of Americans, who are not millionaires, overlook.

This is especially crucial today, with stock market volatility, inflation concerns, trade wars and recession fears causing hesitation among investors.

But here’s the secret: Millionaires don’t wait for the “perfect” time to invest. They know that time in the market beats trying to time the market. When the market drops, they see opportunity, not panic. They automate investments and treat downturns as chances to buy at a discount.

In contrast, the average American lets fear dictate their financial decisions — selling in downturns and hoarding cash instead of investing. This reactionary approach prevents them from building substantial wealth.

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I always aim to invest at least 20% of my income, and I increase that percentage as my earnings grow. Over time, compounding will work in my favor.

Relying on a single source of income, like your day job, is a risky move. In this day and age of automation, globalization and artificial intelligence, there’s no such thing as job security.

The more income sources you have, the more financially secure you become. The average millionaire has multiple streams of income:

• Dividends from stocks
• Rental income from real estate
• Profits from side businesses
• Royalties from intellectual property
• Capital gains from stocks and private investments
• Interest from bonds or high-yield savings
• Freelance or consulting work

Multiple streams of income act as a financial safety net. If you lose your job, a rental property or dividend portfolio can keep cash flowing. If your business takes a hit, your investments provide a cushion. Diversification isn’t just for your stock portfolio — it’s for your entire financial life.

Look at ways you can generate extra income beyond your paycheck. Could you rent out a room in your home? Start a side hustle? Invest in assets that generate passive income? Give lessons in a skill or sport you are an expert in?

Millionaires don’t just work for money — they make money work for them in multiple ways.

Millionaires have the ability to think in terms of opportunity cost: what they’re giving up in order to make a financial decision. This mindset shift is powerful because it helps them prioritize wealth-building activities over short-term gratification. With opportunity cost in mind, each dollar spent is thought out more thoroughly.

For example, instead of impulsively buying a new luxury car, a millionaire will ask: If I invest this $60,000 instead, what could it be worth in 10 years? If I invested the $60,000 in the S&P 500, at a 8% compound annual return, I could have $130,000 instead.

Instead of spending $5,000 on a vacation, they consider: Could this money be better used to acquire an asset that will generate returns to help take care of my retirement?

This doesn’t mean they never spend money on nice things. They spend strategically, only after ensuring their core wealth-building goals are met.

Before making a major purchase, ask yourself:

• Will this increase in value over time?
• Will this improve my ability to earn more money?
• What am I sacrificing by spending this money today?

While the three habits above are practical, there’s one more habit that’s just as important: self-belief. Millionaires don’t see money as something reserved for a select few — they see it as something they can create and control.

The difference between someone who accumulates wealth and someone who doesn’t often comes down to mindset. Do you believe you have what it takes to become a millionaire? Or do you assume wealth is out of reach? With millions of millionaires in the world, do you constantly ask yourself: Why not me as well?

The self-made millionaires I’ve met have a relentless drive. If they lose on an investment, they learn from their mistakes. They aren’t afraid to ask for raises, start businesses or invest aggressively. They take action, take risks and put themselves in positions to succeed.

Sam Dogen is the founder of Financial Samurai and the author of ”Millionaire Milestones: Simple Steps To Seven Figures,” his latest book on building wealth in today’s world. He also wrote the Wall Street Journal bestseller “Buy This, Not That.” In 2012, Sam retired at 34 after working in investment banking for 13 years. He has been helping others achieve financial independence ever since.

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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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In the spring of 2022, a lot of people who were sent to work from home during pandemic lockdowns started returning to the office.

There were new protocols to learn about social distancing, masking and doing temperature checks.

For one of my friends in New York City, Trish, she had one more task on top of a dizzying list of to-dos to prep for the office: She had to book her desk for the day.

No big deal — until Trish realized one of her coworkers regularly ignored the booking policy and would sit anywhere.

Now three years later, “it’s a joke in the office that people know she just doesn’t do it,” says Trish, who asked to withhold her real name to keep the peace at work. Every now and then, that rogue colleague’s seating choice can set off a game of musical chairs.

Once, Trish says, “my desk was taken by someone else, and so I went to go sit somewhere I hadn’t booked, and then the office manager comes up to me and says, ‘Someone else booked that seat, so you’re going to have to move. If you need help looking a desk, I’ll help you.’”

“I was like, but someone took my seat, and now I’m the one that’s being punished?” she says in a tone I can tell is joking, but still annoyed.

As more people return to the office, many, like Trish, are finding they don’t have an assigned place to sit. The concept, known as hot desking or desk hoteling, has ticked up in recent years: Roughly 20% of desk spaces in U.S. offices are unassigned today, compared with 10% of unassigned desks in 2020, according to data from Gensler, the office architecture firm.

The uptick spans industries but mostly comes from tech companies experimenting with a new way of designing their workspaces, says Brian Stromquist in San Francisco, who co-leads Gensler’s technology workplace practice area. More traditional sectors like financial services and government offices are less likely to take up the idea, he says.

“From where I stand, I see it as the future of where [office design] is going, that when you come to a workplace you have zones of energy” for focused work, meetings, collaborative spaces and socializing, he says.

Jason Munger, 47, works in manufacturing near Lansing, Michigan. In one office, he recalls roughly 25 people sharing 10 desks on a first come, first served basis.

Some desks were unofficially known as “belonging” to certain people, but “if you beat them into the office that day, you didn’t know if they were going to be there or not,” Munger says.

That scenario would lead to a spiral of questions, Munger says: “Do I set up shop and start working, or am I going to have to move? And then what if I’ve got to get up to go to a meeting? Can I leave my stuff here and or do I take it with me? And is this quote-unquote ‘reserved’ for me all day? Or if I’ve got a four-hour meeting, should I take my stuff with me, because someone else might use it?” 

Hierarchies would come into play, too: If a junior employee took a desk but someone more senior showed up later, “do you get up and give them the desk, or does it go back to first come, first served?” Munger says.

Sometimes, Munger would show up to work 30 minutes early just to avoid any number of awkward encounters. “In my opinion, I’ve got more important things to worry about than a place to sit for the day,” he says.

Munger no longer has to worry about any of that, though. He now works in a building where he has his own office and even a connected bathroom. “It’s a big value,” he says.

While hot desking is seeing a slow rise in the U.S., it’s more popular abroad. Over 60% of global employees have unassigned seats at their workplace today, up from 38% in 2020, according to data from Leesman, an employee experience research firm.

Polly Frier, 29, used to work in an animal sanctuary in Cornwall, UK, where she and a dozen colleagues shared unassigned seats.

Frier always chose a spot in the corner where she could see everyone in the room and easily join conversations, but also duck down for focused work or a quick TikTok break.

“I always had that seat and they always left it as mine, because they know they’d get an absolute death stare from me if they sat in my seat,” Frier recalls. “I never ever meant it maliciously; it was always just part of a joke.”

Frier left that job a year ago and says old colleagues still make mention of “Polly’s desk.”

She now has a new job in social media that comes with her own desk. “It feels wonderful. I don’t have to fight with anyone,” Frier jokes.

For some people, hot desking isn’t all bad.

Brendon Bentley, 50, was tasked with helping the Institute of Directors in New Zealand move to a new office and introduce hot desking in late 2024.

The firm’s 45 employees now share 35 desks and work on a hybrid schedule with at least three days in the office.

On a busy day, the office is roughly 75% full, Bentley says, so there’s never been a desk shortage. Seating is arranged in two zones: a main work area, and a quiet zone with six spaces for short sprints of focused work.

Bentley says the company made an effort to communicate why they were moving to hot desking “so that we can have a fantastic new office with more meeting collaboration zones,” he says.

Leaders made the transition easy for employees by keeping the old spacious desks they were used to, upgrading to ergonomic chairs, giving everyone a new keyboard and mouse for individual use, and making sure the IT equipment at each space is in good working order.

Workers also get their own storage tote to keep their desk belongings organized, which they stash in a locker at the end of the day.

Hot desking has been a success for their office by “making [employees] feel comfortable that the purpose behind it was genuine,” Bentley says. “It’s not a just a cost saving.”

Still, the recent rise in hot desking could see its limits in the U.S., where office return rates have lagged behind other countries. Some companies have even promoted assigned desks or cubicles as an RTO perk, Bloomberg reports.

That means those who dip into the world of hot desking might not have to stay there forever.

Ash Duke, 32, learned the ropes of hot desking for her job in Nashville, where employees were expected to be in on a rotating schedule and everyone had a seat if they stuck with their designated days.

If someone came in on a non-designated day, however, there wouldn’t be a space for them. And though each person typically got their own cubicle, if a sales colleague needed to take a private meeting with a client, they’d ask their neighbors to move.

Duke says her workplace changed to assigned seating at communal tables in November.

There isn’t space for drawers or storage anywhere nearby, and the spaces are tight. “I could reach out my arm and touch” a neighbor, Duke says, and “we’re kind of on top of each other.”

That being said, “this is definitely better,” she adds, “because at least I know I’m not going to have to pick everything up and move again after however many minutes because someone needs” a desk.

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Many Americans keep just a few hundred dollars in their checking account, making overdraft fees from mistimed payments a common concern.

So, how much cash should you keep in your debit account?

Financial planners generally recommend enough to cover a month’s worth of bills, plus maybe a small buffer for peace of mind. But you don’t want to keep so much in checking that you miss out on the interest you could earn in a high-yield savings account, or leave your money more exposed to fraud.

“I encourage people to keep a month of expenses in their checking account, especially if they don’t closely monitor their cash flow,” says Jessica Goedtel, a certified financial planner in Pennsylvania.

However, “checking accounts often lack the protections of credit cards,” meaning that “funds can be more difficult to recover” if your card is compromised, she says. For that reason, it’s best not to hoard cash in your checking account.

Gregory Guenther, a chartered retirement planning counselor in New Jersey, recommends keeping enough in checking to cover a typical week or two of bills.

However, “the right checking balance isn’t just about dollars, it’s about headspace,” he says. “Too little, and you’re anxious about every swipe; too much, and you’re missing out on growth in higher-yield accounts. The sweet spot is personal, but it should let you live without double-checking your balance before buying groceries.”

While maintaining a healthy checking balance can help you avoid overdraft fees, it’s not a substitute for emergency savings.

Emergency savings are meant for big, unexpected expenses, like medical bills or job loss. Financial planners typically recommend setting aside three to six months’ worth of essential costs in a separate, easily accessible place, such as a high-yield savings account. That way, the money is available when you need it, without the risk or delays that come with stocks or retirement accounts.

While six months of savings might sound like a lot, think of it as a goal to build over time. Any amount you can put aside will help in case of an emergency.

“I typically tell my clients to keep working capital in checking … meaning, income comes in and they pay their bills from there,” says Catherine Valega, a CFP in Massachusetts. “Keep enough so you have a margin of error.”

An emergency fund gives you breathing room for the unexpected and lets your checking account do what it’s built for — handle everyday cash flow, Guenther says.

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