Financial Mindset

It’s a perplexing time in the world of luxury ingredients. Prestigious products have become inextricably tied to fast food. Caviar  now adorns chicken nuggets ; truffle features in supermarket hummus and  Starbucks egg bites ; wagyu beef is getting  smashed into burgers  and has made the menu at Burger King in the UK. Even lobster—bright red and festive—has gone from attention-getting centerpiece to mac-and-cheese mix-in.  Yet crab retains its mystique. It’s beloved for its delicately flavored, finely textured meat—and for its fatty, rich roe and tomalley, culinary categories unto themselves. Now large, live specimens from the far corners of the world, like snow crab from Japan and red king crab from Norway, are this season’s luxury signifiers. “Even the cheapest crab that we sell is typically double the price of what Maine or Nova Scotia lobster costs,” says Ian Purkayastha, founder of  Regalis Foods . “King crab pricing is...

Workers may be hoping that AI can finally take over their drudge work in the new year—ease their loads and shorten the workweek, or at least make more space for life outside the office.  And it’s something young people in particular are eager to have: 74% of Gen Z rank work-life balance as a top consideration when choosing a job in 2025—the highest of any generation—according to Randstad. And in the more than 20 years of producing its Workmonitor report, it’s the first time work-life balance outranked pay as the top factor for all workers. But as AI has reshaped corporate structures and enhanced productivity levels, many executive leaders are working harder than ever—and expecting everyone else to follow. From pushing return to office mandates to praising around-the-clock availability, CEOs are modeling a culture where the lines between work and life blur. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang, for example, said he worked seven days a week this year—including holidays. Zoom’s CEO Eric Yua...

A financier has been extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States to face allegations that he cheated investors who were promised monthly 10% gains in what was actually a Ponzi scheme, authorities said. Matthew Melton, 61, of Boulder, Colorado, has remained jailed at a federal lockup in Brooklyn after appearing in court Saturday to face securities fraud and wire fraud charges. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Authorities said Melton falsely told at least 20 investors that his investment fund, Price Physics, used a proprietary trading algorithm to invest in futures contracts and produce record returns. But U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Melton was not doing anything groundbreaking or cutting-edge in the scheme, which he used to fund a luxurious lifestyle from 2018 to 2020. “In reality, Melton was allegedly operating one of the oldest scams around, taking new investors’ money to pay old investors and pocketing funds for himself along the...

Tom Freston has never been a typical media executive. He began with a countercultural spirit that shaped an adventurous career spanning from cofounding MTV to leading Viacom and Paramount Pictures. After spending 26 years at Paramount—now caught up in the $100 billion bidding for Warner Bros.  Discovery —he remains a defining figure in the evolution of modern entertainment. The 80-year-old executive, who sounded remarkably youthful in a phone interview with Fortune, harkened back to the days in the 1960s and ’70s when “freedom was in the air.” The vibe was very different then: “It was like, I don’t want to work for ‘the man,’” he told Fortune, referencing a formative summer when he worked as a bellboy at Lake George in the Adirondack foothills of upstate New York. “I had sort of been on the traditional conveyor belt: Go to college, get out, get a job. And then I met all these sort of bohemian characters who—their idea was, you didn’t have a career. You kind of improvise your life. ...

Many parents and kids alike are wondering whether college has the same return on investment it once did. Going to college was once seen as a one-way ticket to a successful and lucrative career. Still, there are a growing number of six-figure jobs that don’t require a degree , while entry-level job opportunities for recent graduates remain sparse .  Some parents are so anxious about today’s job market that they’re exploring alternatives to the four-year degree, with one in three open to the idea of their kids attending a trade school instead, according to new survey results from American Student Assistance (ASA), which surveyed more than 2,200 parents of middle and high school students about their attitudes, perceptions, and decision-making regarding their kids’ post-high-school plans.  The fact that 35% of parents believe career and technical education is best suited for their children represents a major jump—from just 13% in 2019, according to ASA. While parents still pre...

There were some highs amid a lot of lows in a roller coaster year for clean energy as President Donald Trump  worked to boost polluting fuels while blocking  wind and solar , according to dozens of energy developers, experts and politicians. Surveyed by The Associated Press, many described 2025 as turbulent and challenging for clean energy, though there was progress as projects connected to the electric grid. They said clean energy must continue to grow to meet  skyrocketing demand for electricity to power data centers and to lower Americans’ utility bills. Solar builder and operator Jorge Vargas said it has been “a very tough year for clean energy” as  Trump often made headlines criticizing renewable energy  and  Republicans muscled a tax and spending cut bill through Congress in July  that dramatically rolled back tax breaks for clean energy. “There was a cooldown effect this year,” said Vargas, cofounder and CEO of Aspen Power. “Having said that...

“Avatar: Fire and Ash”  opened with $345 million in worldwide sales, according to studio estimates Sunday, notching the second-best global debut of the year and potentially putting James Cameron on course to set yet more blockbuster records. Sixteen years into the “Avatar” saga, Pandora is still abundant in box-office riches. “Fire and Ash,” the third film in  Cameron’s science-fiction franchise , launched with $88 million domestically and $257 million internationally. The only film to open bigger in 2025 was “Zootopia 2” ($497.2 million over three days). In the coming weeks, “Fire and Ash” will have the significant benefit of the highly lucrative holiday moviegoing corridor. But there was a tad less fanfare to this “Avatar” film, coming three years after  “Avatar: The Way of Water.”  That film launched in 2022 with a massive $435 million globally and $134 million in North America. Domestically, “Fire and Ash” fell a hefty 35% from the previous installment. Reviews...