Author: Editor

The growth of Johnny Hilbrant’s PE Guy character over the past year has been, to borrow one of his favorite phrases, “substantial.”What had started as a joke has turned into a real business, one that PE Guy might even want to invest in. While people in finance might complement Hilbrant on “his little skits,” they might be surprised to learn just how much money he’s taking home — $1 million in the past year.Hilbrant, who is based in the suburbs of Boston, walked us through how he makes money, why he chose to manage himself, and how he stays sane…

It’s 4 a.m., and Whitney Stefko Dover’s family “chief of staff” has already sent her the daily briefing.It’s called the “Daily Dover.”The early morning operations briefing helps Stefko Dover and her husband, Chris, coordinate their complicated lives with two young sons. An AI assistant scans their emails and calendar apps to map out the day ahead — school schedules, au pair or babysitter coverage, camp drop-offs, travel plans, family birthdays, recycling-bin reminders, and anything else that might otherwise rattle around in Stefko Dover’s brain until it is either handled or forgotten.At the bottom of the email, the AI drafts two…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 30-year-old Hashim Mahmoud, a strategy and operations manager at Angi, an online home-services marketplace formerly known as Angie’s List. His identity and background have been verified. This story has been edited for length and clarity.I found my current position after just a few months of job hunting in 2024, largely thanks to how I went about networking. I reached out to more than 1,200 people, spoke with about 150 of them, and got about 20 interviews before landing the position I have now at Angi. The job market may be more…

Jill Dooley said she’s her “family’s cruise director.” She’s been planning trips and homeschooling lessons on the road after her family of four decided to sell their house to live in an RV full-time.”We did the normal life thing, where we both had a really good job, kids were in sports, they were going to school, all the right things,” Jill, a mom of two daughters, said.Jill was a math and science teacher, but realized her love of teaching was being overshadowed by burnout. Because she was feeling exhausted, it felt hard to be fully present for her daughters after…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Luis Noguera, whose father is selling a luxury home in Miami and accepting shares in Anthropic, OpenAI, or SpaceX as payment. It has been edited for length and clarity.My father owns a modern waterfront home in South Florida that’s currently on the market. Most sellers are hoping for cash offers or conventional financing.We’re open to something different.If the right buyer came along and wanted to use shares in OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX as part of the deal, we’d seriously consider it.A mix of cash and private-company stock would probably make the…

The median income in the US is about $83,000 — and you could make more or less than that number depending on where you live. But which states are the highest earning overall?A new WalletHub study used three income-related measures to rank states: the average annual income of the top 5%, the average annual income of the bottom 20%, and the median annual household income of the state’s entire population.The resulting rankings include some surprises. None of the states known for being home to billionaires, like New York, California, and Florida, took the top spot.WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said New…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brian Winch, the founder of Clean Lots. The following has been edited for length and clarity.As a young kid, I watched my parents work hard to keep food on the table. What is now called picking up a few side hustles was then just a way of life: they’d head to second, or even third jobs, to ensure we could make ends meet.As one of three boys, once we became teenagers, we found ourselves helping too. So, it wasn’t a surprise when my dad told me we were going to head…

Over the past week, one conversation has dominated Hollywood executive lunches and studio staff meetings: What’s the next “Backrooms”? The industry is scrambling to figure out how to replicate the phenomenon of “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” low-budget psychological horror films directed by YouTube creators that have dominated the box office over the past two weeks. But “Backrooms” producer Peter Chernin, whose production company cofinanced the film, said he thinks the rush to sign deals with YouTube creators is a “big mistake.””It’s no different than making sequels. It’s jumping on an existing bandwagon,” Chernin said in an interview. “I guarantee you 80% will…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Worchihan Zingkhai, 40, a content creator from a village in Manipur, India. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.I’ve loved football for as long as I can remember.Growing up in a village in Manipur, in northeast India, football is everywhere. We don’t have proper equipment, so we make footballs out of plastic and old clothes rolled into a ball.I can still remember staying awake until 3 a.m. to watch my first World Cup in 1998. We had one black-and-white TV for the entire village, and we pooled money to…

After graduating with a bachelor’s in computer science in 2023, a software company offered me an exciting job that paid $60,000 a year.The catch? I had to move away from home.I had grown up on Long Island all my life, but the company didn’t have an office within commuting distance of my parents’ house. Moving felt daunting. Moving across the country? Even more so.But I felt like I had no choice because of the difficult job market and the rising costs in New York, so I packed up and moved to Texas.The East Coast was nearly impossible to affordI did…