Financial Mindset

Home buyers are paying more for smaller homes , a phenomenon called shrinkflation. A new LendingTree study found new single-family homes have shrunk 11% in the past decade, while their price per square foot has jumped 74%. Driven by surging land, labor, and material costs (compounded by tariffs and worker shortages), builders are trimming square footage and eliminating wasted space like hallways. Just like how serving sizes at restaurants feel smaller, yet more expensive, a similar phenomenon has hit the housing market. Shrinkflation —essentially getting less for more—is plaguing nearly every housing market region in the U.S. A study published Aug. 11 from LendingTree shows new homes are 11% smaller yet 74% more expensive per square foot in the past decade. The average size of a new single-family home dropped from 2,707 square feet in 2014 to 2,404 square feet in 2024, according to the report. And over that decade span, the average price per square foot for a new single-family ho...

The newest iPhone operating system, iOS 26 , might be the biggest update yet in a whole variety of ways, including a complete design and visual overhaul to make the entire interface feel like you’re touching what Apple calls “ Liquid Glass .” But among the many nifty features you’ll discover is an eye-catching feature that almost feels like a parlor trick: the ability to give any photo a 3D effect. In iOS 26, you can take almost any 2D photo you’ve captured with your phone and give it a 3D parallax effect , where it looks like you can peek around the foreground of your image when you move your phone around. Apple calls it “Spatial Scenes.” It looks like a hologram, and it’s pretty cool. This fall, you’ll likely find lots of family and friends experimenting with Spatial Scenes, especially since you can do it with almost any photo, on any recent iPhone (12 or later), and apply these 3D effects to your lock screen. But if you dig a bit beneath the surface of this update, you’ll see how...

On a rainy afternoon in May, the 96 members of New York University Grossman School of Medicine, Class of 2025, gathered with their families in Carnegie Hall. They crossed the stage, collected their degrees, and all together recited the Hippocratic oath. But while their graduation into the ranks of medical doctors was the point of the ceremony, in some ways it did not feel like the day’s main event. That belonged to another pair on stage, Dr. Robert Grossman and Ken Langone—graduates of a different sort, who as dean and board chairman respectively were presiding for the 18 th  and last time over the graduation ceremony. This was their swan song, or maybe something more of a victory lap.  Grossman spoke of his hard-fought path to the top of NYU Langone—“I had no sponsors, no mentors, no coaches. No one was there to introduce me to any ‘important’ people or direct my career”—before imparting 15 nuggets of wisdom he had collected. (No. 1: “It doesn’t matter where you come from,...

President Donald Trump says he has begun arrangements for a face-to-face meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss a pathway to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelenskyy,” Trump said in a social media posting following lengthy talks at the White House on Monday with Zelenskyy and European leaders. “After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself. Again, this was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years.” Earlier on Monday, Trump  said during talks  with Zelenskyy  and European leaders that a potential ceasefire and who gets Ukrainian territory seized by Russia should be hashed out during a face-to-face meeting between the warring countries’ two leaders. The talks at the White House came days after Trump hosted Putin ...

Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell turned down his former employee, the late Steve Jobs , when he was offered to buy a third of Apple for $50,000 in the 1970s. With the iPhone titan now standing at $3.1 trillion, the video gaming pioneer missed out on making $1 trillion from his relatively small investment. But he isn’t troubling himself with regret, reasoning he might not be as happy—and Apple may not have been as successful—if he accepted the deal.  Many people may be kicking themselves for not buying Bitcoin or investing in Nvidia stock sooner—but few will have missed out on a bigger deal than Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell , the first Silicon Valley boss of the late Steve Jobs .  A young Jobs offered the gaming mogul an eye-popping deal: buy a third of Apple for just $50,000. What might come as a shock to many is that Bushnell turned it down. Apple has since grown into a $3.1 trillion sensation with over a billion iPhones sitting in people’s back pockets, and o...

Rose Hammond pushed authorities for years to lower the 55 mph speed limit on a two-lane road that passes her assisted living community, a church, two schools and a busy park that hosts numerous youth sports leagues. “What are you waiting for, somebody to get  killed ?” the 85-year-old chided officials in northwest Ohio, complaining that nothing was being done about the motorcycles that race by almost daily. Amid growing public pressure, Sylvania Township asked county engineers in March to analyze whether Mitchaw Road’s posted  speed is too high.  The surprising answer: Technically, it’s 5 mph too low. The reason dates back to studies on rural roads from the 1930s and 1940s that still play an outsized role in the way  speed limits are set across the U.S. — even in urban areas. Born from that research was a widely accepted concept known as the 85% rule, which suggests a road’s posted speed should be tied to the 15th-fastest vehicle out of every 100 traveling it in...

Wall Street is heading into a pivotal week , with stocks riding high on expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut rates next month and signs that tariffs aren’t weighing on the economy as much as feared, so far. But minutes from the Fed’s last meeting, Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech, and retail earnings will put the market’s views to the test. U.S. stock futures pointed higher on Sunday evening ahead of a critical stretch for markets as investors brace for fresh clues on rate cuts and tariffs. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 30 points, or 0.07%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.08%, and Nasdaq futures added 0.15%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was flat at 4.322%. The U.S. dollar was down 0.11% against the euro and flat against the yen. Gold fell 0.11% to $3,378.80 per ounce. U.S. oil prices dropped 0.21% to $62.67 per barrel, and Brent crude fell 0.32% to $65.64. Energy markets will also be in focus this week amid continued dipl...