CNBC Make It

A family of four needs to make more than $275,000 to live comfortably in some of the most expensive U.S. cities, a SmartAsset analysis reveals. “Comfortable” is defined as the income needed to cover a 50/30/20 budget for a family of two adults and two kids. This budget assumes that 50% of the monthly income can pay for necessities like housing and utility costs, 30% can cover discretionary spending and 20% can be set aside for savings or investments. SmartAsset extrapolated the income needed for a 50/30/20 budget based on the cost of necessities, using data from the MIT Living Wage Calculator. Here’s a look how much income a family of four needs to live comfortably in the 20 most expensive U.S. cities.

If you’re looking for the best place in the U.S. to raise your family, consider moving to Illinois or Pennsylvania. Both states contain several towns that ranked highly on a report from Niche assessing the nation’s top family-friendly locales. The two states combined were home to seven of the top 10 places to raise a family in America. Chesterbrook, Penn. took the top spot on Niche’s list, thanks in part to the Philadelphia suburb’s highly-rated public school system. Check out the full ranking. ??

For years, 36-year-old?Anders Boisen?lived in apartments all over the city of Aarhus, the second-largest in Denmark. Despite having a comfortable living situation — a two-bedroom apartment he shared with a girlfriend at the time — and a job working in city development at a local municipality, Boisen tells CNBC Make It he felt confined by his lifestyle and the societal pressure of what life should look like at his age. Boisen left his apartment and moved into a garden house where he came up with the idea to build a tiny home. In 2018, Boisen started building a mobile one, but it was stolen just a few months later. But Boisen didn’t give up and started building another the following year. In the spring of 2020, Boisen finished the tiny home after working on it on and off for eight months. He did most of the building himself and estimates he spent 80,000 to 90,000 Danish Krone or USD $11,366 to $12,787. The tiny house is six and a half meters long and two and a half meters wide, or 21.3 feet long by 6.6 feet wide. Since quitting his job, Boisen has made his career creating content for YouTube and giving talks around the country on tiny living and life off-the-grid. Take a closer look inside Boisen’s tiny home: https://cnb.cx/4eZ0ss1

Of the many types of people in the workplace, one is easily Jason Buechel’s least favorite. It’s “somebody who thinks they know the answer to absolutely everything,” Buechel, the CEO of Amazon-owned grocery chain Whole Foods, tells CNBC Make It. “Somebody who thinks that it has to be exactly like this because this has always happened before. It’s always going to happen this way.” Sticking to one way of doing things, or failing to consider other people’s points of view, can significantly stunt your growth and hinder your company, he adds.

While SpaceX founder Elon Musk may be dead set on one day living on another planet, the firm’s chief operating officer says she plans to keep things terrestrial, for now. “I think Elon wants to retire on Mars. I’m not interested in Mars,” Gwynne Shotwell, the SpaceX president and COO told Baron Capital founder Ron Baron at his firm’s annual investment conference last week. “I don’t like camping, and I think it will be a long time before Mars is nice enough — probably not in my lifetime.” Nevertheless, like her boss, Shotwell’s visions for SpaceX remain stratospheric. Here are 3 visions she has for the company's future.

People in their 50s are often juggling a number of financial responsibilities, from paying for kids’ tuition to caring for elderly parents — on top of saving for their looming retirement. You might feel like your life, retirement savings and finances are set in stone at this age. But this mindset can be one of the biggest financial mistakes you make in your 50s, says one expert. Here are three smart decisions to make with your money in your 50s, according to three certified financial planners.

Four years ago, Rachel Jimenez was struggling and wanted to make a change in her life. She was dealing with postpartum depression after the birth of her second child and felt unfulfilled by her 9-to-5, a higher education administration job. Jimenez was also going to school part-time to earn her master’s degree in Positive Organizational Psychology. She decided to start an Etsy store, selling digital products like business templates and party games. It was not an overnight success, but today at 36, she has a thriving living room side hustle that regularly brings in $10,000 a month or more in passive income. Here is how she built it.

Checking off all the requirements in a job description isn’t enough to land a new role right now — your potential new boss wants to see that you’re disciplined, reliable and care about your work. “A strong work ethic” is the top skill companies are looking for in new hires, but is one of the hardest to find, according to research from ADP. “A strong work ethic” is a nebulous term. But people who embody it are typically punctual, organized, efficient with their time and, most importantly, willing to go the extra mile to get the job done well, per ADP’s research. Here are some other soft skills employers are seeking. ??

Lexi Tobin was always “the planner” among her siblings and friends. In 2019, Tobin helped her brother-in-law to-be plan his proposal. She ordered picture frames, strung lights across an archway, put candles in paper bags and set them up at her family’s beach house in New York state. On the day, she shakily filmed her sister running down a white runner across the deck into her fiancé’s arms. A year later, she uploaded the footage to TikTok, on a whim. Within 30 minutes, more than 100,000 people watched the 41-second video, says Tobin, now 27 and living in New York City: “I think 9 million people watched it in the first 48 hours. I was completely blown away by the thrill of going viral.” A side hustle — planning other people’s wedding proposals and posting bride-to-be’s reactions on TikTok — was born. Tobin brought in six figures of revenue, including roughly $9,000 in median monthly revenue, during the 12-month period ending last month, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. In her highest-earning month, November 2023, Tobin’s side hustle brought in more than $20,000. Here's how Tobin built her side hustle into what it is today.

Bachelor’s degree holders who received identical degrees in the same field of study can earn vastly different salaries depending on which school they attended, according to a report from salary data provider Payscale. Its findings note that mid-career earnings for the same degree can vary by as much as $130,000. If you want to get the most bang for your buck out of college, consider these 10 schools that yield the highest salaries for graduates, according to Payscale.