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When I was six years old, my dad started my financial education. Like money expert Clark Howard with his own children, he rarely missed an opportunity to teach me about unit pricing, comparison shopping and living on less than you make.

Fortunately, those lessons continued into adulthood. My dad graciously coached me through negotiating for my first car and house. He also taught me about the importance of investing for retirement.

But it wasn’t until my dad received a devastating terminal diagnosis that I realized something: Despite a lifetime of financial conversations, I knew almost nothing about his personal finances.

I didn’t know where all of his accounts were. I didn’t know what arrangements he’d made or what information I would need when I needed manage his affairs.

Fortunately, we had some time. More importantly, my dad was willing and able to sit down with me, walk me through what I needed to know and tell me what he wanted.

Not everyone gets that opportunity.

If you have aging parents or other loved ones you may someday help care for, don’t wait for a medical emergency or death to start these conversations.

That doesn’t mean asking how much money they have or demanding access to their accounts. In fact, they can keep account balances private. The goal is to create a map: what exists, where important information is kept, whom to contact and what they want you to do if they can no longer handle things themselves.

Here are the conversations every family should consider having before a crisis.

Table of Contents:

What Estate Planning Documents Should Aging Parents Have?

What Should You Know About Your Aging Parents’ Finances?

What Digital Information Should You Have for Aging Parents?

What Should You Know About Your Parents’ Insurance and Long-Term Care Plans?

How Can You Protect Aging Parents From Financial Scams?

Should You Talk to Your Parents About Funeral and Final Wishes?

How Do You Start a Money Conversation With Aging Parents?

What Estate Planning Documents Should Aging Parents Have?

It’s a given that aging parents, and actually all of us regardless of age, should have estate planning documents. This includes: 

Will – A legal document that states how you want your property and assets distributed after your death.

Trust (when appropriate) – Some individuals may have trust(s) as part of their estate plan to handle complex family situations and/or to avoid probate. It’s worth asking if your parents have trusts as a part of their estate plan. 

Durable Financial power of attorney – allows someone you trust to handle financial and legal matters on your behalf if you become unable to do so.

Advance directive/living will – lets you state your medical wishes and, depending on your state’s laws and the document you use, name someone to make health care decisions for you if you cannot.

However, simply knowing that these documents exist isn’t enough. Someone needs to know where they are.

Another important note: Beneficiary designations must also match what is listed in estate documents. No matter what a will says, the beneficiary designation will override it so it is imperative that these are correct. 

What Should You Know About Your Aging Parents’ Finances?

For many families, talking about estate planning is easier than talking about money. Adult children may worry they’re prying, while parents may understandably want to maintain their financial independence and privacy.

Fortunately, you don’t need to ask how much money your parents have, and you don’t necessarily need their passwords or access to their accounts right now.

Instead, think of this exercise as creating a financial map. You want to know what accounts and assets exist, where they’re held and where to find the information needed to access them if the time comes.

Ask your parents where you could find information about their:

Checking and savings accounts

Brokerage accounts

401(k)s, IRAs and pensions

Social Security benefits

Life insurance policies

Mortgage and other debts

Credit cards

529 plans or other accounts they’ve established for grandchildren

Property and other major assets

Safe deposit boxes and/or home safes

Don’t Forget About the Monthly Bills

Knowing where the money is only part of the picture. If a parent becomes sick or otherwise needs help managing their finances, someone may also need to keep the household running.

This can be a good opportunity to ask:

Do you feel comfortable handling your bills on your own right now?

If you ever wanted help with your bills, who would you want to handle them?

Is there a master list of your recurring bills, or can we create one together?

Which bills are paid automatically, and from which accounts?

Are there bills that still arrive by mail or require manual payment?

That master list might include the mortgage or rent, utilities, insurance premiums, credit cards, property taxes, HOA fees, car payments, medical bills, subscriptions, charitable contributions and other recurring or automatic payments.

Finally, make sure someone knows how to contact the professionals who help manage your parents’ financial and legal affairs, such as their financial advisor, CPA or tax preparer and estate attorney.

Remember: You’re creating a map, not asking for the keys. Your parents can maintain their privacy and independence while making sure the right person knows where to turn if they ever need help.

What Digital Information Should You Have for Aging Parents?

So much of our financial and personal lives now exists online that knowing where your parents keep their paper documents is no longer enough.

If you may someday need to help manage a parent’s affairs, you should know about their:

Primary email account

Phone, tablet and computer

Password manager, if they use one

Two-factor authentication and account recovery methods

Cloud storage

Social media accounts

Important online financial accounts

Digital subscriptions

Digital photos and other important files

But this doesn’t mean asking your parents to email you a spreadsheet containing every username and password. Sending passwords through email or text, or keeping an unprotected list of passwords, can create a security risk. Plus, your parents may not want you to have access to all of this information immediately. 

Instead, talk about how you would securely get the information you need if your parent became incapacitated or died.

Create a Secure Emergency Access Plan

One option is a reputable password manager. In addition to securely storing passwords, some password managers offer family or emergency-access features.

For example, Bitwarden allows eligible users to designate a trusted emergency contact who can request access to their password vault. 

Another option is to keep emergency-access information offline in a secure physical location, such as a locked fire-resistant home safe or safe deposit box. Your parent could keep instructions there explaining where passwords are stored and how the appropriate person can access them.

Whichever method your family chooses, make sure the trusted person knows that the plan exists and where to find it. A perfectly organized emergency file won’t help much if nobody knows about it.

Also think about two-factor authentication (2FA). Even if you eventually have the appropriate authority and login information for an account, access could still be difficult if verification codes are being sent to your parent’s phone or authenticator app. Your emergency plan should identify what authentication and recovery methods your parent uses and where any recovery information is securely stored.

Important Tip: After a loved one’s death, keep their cell phone active because you will likely need it for 2FA codes. 

What Should You Know About Your Parents’ Insurance and Long-Term Care Plans?

Like with your parents’ finances, you don’t need the details of every policy now, but you or another trusted contact needs to know where to find this information so that you aren’t searching through stacks of documents when a crisis arrives. 

You can ask where you could find: 

Medicare information

Medicare supplement/Medicare Advantage

Prescription coverage

Long-term care insurance

Life insurance

Homeowners/renters

Auto

Umbrella coverage

Then, the bigger part of the conversation is understanding what happens if they eventually need help living independently.

 Do they envision: 

Aging in place?

Moving closer to family?

Moving in with family?

Independent/assisted living?

Using a Long-term care policy?

You don’t have to solve every aspect of their long-term care plan now. But this can give you insights into their wishes and how you can support them. 

If you’re concerned that your parents are talking about moving to an expensive retirement community you don’t think they can afford, or that they are planning to move in with you (surprise!), this initial conversation can help you prepare for follow-ups. 

And you don’t have to do it alone. You can hire a fee-only fiduciary financial advisor and/or a geriatric social worker to help support your parents in developing an attainable long-term care plan. 

How Can You Protect Aging Parents From Financial Scams?

Most of us know a story about a senior citizen targeted by a scam. For me, it was my elderly neighbor who kept believing that he had “won” a sweepstakes and sending large sums of money to “claim” his prize. His family was playing a heartbreaking game of whack-a-mole with the scammers who kept changing their phone numbers because they knew they had a live target. 

A critical part of your aging parents’ checklist is talking to them about scams before they are targeted. 

It may help to share the scams that most frequently target seniors so they know the common trends. But even if your parents are experiencing cognitive decline, there are some simple rules that they can use to help protect themselves. 

The most basic rule is to have a trusted contact to check with before sending money:

Before you send the money, call your person.

A more detailed scam-prevention list includes: 

Help your parents freeze their credit if they haven’t already. 

Don’t move money because an unsolicited caller says an account is compromised.

Be suspicious of requests for gift cards, crypto or unusual payment methods.

Set up transaction/account alerts where appropriate.

Discuss AI voice/deepfake impersonation scams and establish a family safe word.

Identify one trusted person to call before acting on a suspicious financial request.

Should You Talk to Your Parents About Funeral and Final Wishes?

Talking about what happens after a parent dies isn’t easy. But having the conversation now can prevent family members from having to make difficult decisions — or guess what Mom or Dad would have wanted — while they’re grieving.

You don’t need to plan every funeral detail together. Start with the bigger questions:

Would you prefer burial or cremation?

Do you want a funeral, memorial service or something else?

Are there religious or cultural traditions you’d like followed?

Do you own a cemetery plot or have other arrangements already been made?

Have you prepaid for any funeral or burial expenses? If so, where are those records?

Are there particular people you would want notified?

Do you have preferences for your obituary or memorial?

Have you documented your wishes regarding organ donation?

Who should care for your pets?

Are there sentimental possessions you’d particularly like certain people to have?

My mom has come up with a simple solution that I love: She keeps a physical “Funeral File” for me.

It includes information about what she wants when the time comes, right down to the music she’d like included. She can add to it or change her mind over the years, so her wishes aren’t set in stone. I don’t need to keep track of every detail now. I just know where to find the file when I need it.

That’s really the goal of this entire checklist. Your parents don’t have to hand over control of their lives or make every decision today. But if they have preferences that would matter to them — and to you — encourage them to write those wishes down and make sure the right person knows where to find them.

It’s also important to understand that expressing a preference isn’t necessarily the same as creating a legally enforceable instruction. State laws vary, and wills, beneficiary designations and other estate planning documents may govern how certain property and decisions are handled. An estate planning attorney can help your parents properly document wishes that need legal effect.

But not every decision needs to be part of an estate plan. Your family may simply need to know what Mom or Dad would want.

The goal isn’t to plan their funeral for them. It’s to make sure the people who love them don’t have to guess.

How Do You Start a Money Conversation With Aging Parents?

Even if you know these conversations are important, starting one can be difficult.

Money is personal. Your parents may be uncomfortable discussing their finances, and you may worry that asking about their accounts will sound like you’re prying into how much money they have.

So don’t start there.

Instead, try asking:

“If something happened and you needed me to help, would I know where to find everything?”

You can also make the conversation less about your parents by talking about what you’re doing yourself. If you’ve created your own financial emergency file, for example, tell them you’ve been organizing your accounts and important documents so your family could find them in an emergency — and ask whether they have something similar.

Most importantly, don’t turn the first conversation into an interrogation.

And, don’t attempt to cover this entire checklist in one sitting. Your first goal may simply be finding out whether your parents have an estate plan, who they would want to help them and where they keep their important information.

Then revisit the conversation over time. Financial accounts change. People move. Passwords change. Insurance policies are added or dropped. And your parents’ wishes and needs may change as they get older.

Think of this as an ongoing family conversation, not a one-time financial audit.

Final Thoughts

My dad spent my entire life teaching me how to manage money. But neither of us realized there was one more financial lesson I would eventually need: what to do with his financial life when he could no longer manage it himself.

We were fortunate. We had time to sit together, go through his accounts and documents and talk about what he wanted.

Not every family gets that time.

That’s why these conversations are so important to have while your loved ones are able to make their own decisions and tell you what they want.

You don’t need to know every dollar your parents have, and you don’t need access to every account. You need a map: what exists, where to find the information, who can legally step in and what your parents want.

Then make sure someone knows where that map is.

Having these conversations now may feel uncomfortable. But they’re much easier to have around the kitchen table than in a hospital room or in the days after losing someone you love.
The post The Aging Parents Checklist: Money, Scams, Estate Plans and Final Wishes appeared first on Clark Howard.

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If you got an unexpected diagnosis or had a medical emergency, would someone know how to pay your mortgage and keep your lights on? Could they find your health insurance information? 

And if you died unexpectedly, would your family know where to begin? Do you have life insurance? Would they know where to find it? 

While a will and other estate planning documents are, of course, a critical part of preparing for the unexpected, there’s another, more practical part of the process: making sure someone you trust knows how to find and access your estate and financial information.

You don’t need to hand over your passwords or give someone access to your money today. Instead, think of it as creating a financial emergency file — a map of what you have, where important information is kept and the key people your loved ones should contact if you can’t manage things yourself.

Here’s what to include in your financial emergency file: 

Table of Contents:

What Estate Planning Documents Should Everyone Have?

Create an Inventory of Your Financial Accounts

Make a List of Your Bills and How They’re Paid

Document Your Insurance Policies

Create a Secure Plan for Passwords and Digital Accounts

Make a List of the People Your Family Should Contact

Decide Where To Keep Your Financial Emergency File

Tell Someone You Trust Where To Find Your Financial Emergency File

How Often Should You Update Your Financial Emergency File?

Have This Financial Emergency Conversation With Your Partner and Aging Parents

1. What Estate Planning Documents Should Everyone Have?

Let’s start with the key legal documents:

Will: A legal document that states how you want your property and assets distributed after your death.

Trust (when appropriate): Some people have trust(s) as part of their estate plan to handle complex family situations and/or to avoid probate. Unlike a will, not everyone needs a trust. 

Durable Financial power of attorney: allows someone you trust to handle financial and legal matters on your behalf if you become unable to do so.

Advance directive/living will: lets you state your medical wishes and, depending on your state’s laws and the document you use, name someone to make health care decisions for you if you cannot.

Review these critical documents periodically and after major life changes. However, simply creating these documents isn’t enough. Someone you trust needs to know they exist and where to find them.

Don’t Forget Beneficiaries 

Don’t forget to update beneficiary designations on your accounts, because they can override what is listed in a will.

2. Create an Inventory of Your Financial Accounts

Now it’s time to create a map of your financial life.

Make a list showing where you have:

Checking and savings accounts

CDs

Brokerage accounts

401(k)s, 403(b)s and other workplace retirement plans

IRAs

Pensions

Social Security information

529 plans

Health savings accounts (HSAs)

Life insurance

Mortgage or home equity loans

Credit cards

Auto, student and personal loans

Other significant assets or debts

Safe deposit boxes and/or home safes

You don’t have to put complete account numbers, passwords, PINs or even balances in your financial emergency file.

3. Make a List of Your Bills and How They’re Paid

What happens if you’re alive but you are sick or injured and temporarily can’t manage your household?

Someone else may need to pay the bills. 

Create a master list that includes expenses such as:

Mortgage or rent

Utilities

Homeowners or renters insurance

Auto insurance

Health insurance premiums

Credit cards

Property taxes

HOA fees

Car payments

Medical bills

Tuition or child care

Subscriptions

Charitable contributions

Other recurring expenses

For each expense, document how it’s normally paid, which account pays it and when it’s due.

One easy way to get started is to review your bank and credit card statements from the last month or two. You may even discover recurring expenses you’ve forgotten about.

And don’t forget about autopay bills. Autopay doesn’t mean you can forget about a bill entirely. If the account funding those payments becomes inaccessible or doesn’t have enough money, those payments could eventually stop.

4. Document Your Insurance Policies

Your family shouldn’t have to search through filing cabinets, email accounts and old mail to figure out whether you had life insurance.

Make a list of your major insurance coverage, including:

Life (including employer and privately purchased plans) 

Health

Homeowners or renters

Auto

Umbrella

Disability

Long-term care

For each policy, identify the insurance company, type of coverage, where the policy information is stored and the appropriate agent or contact information.

Again, you don’t necessarily need to put the entire policy into your financial emergency file. You’re simply answering: If my family needed this policy tomorrow, would they know where to find it?

5. Create a Secure Plan for Passwords and Digital Accounts

A growing share of our financial lives exists entirely online. That makes digital access an important part of your emergency planning.

Start by identifying the digital information someone may eventually need, including your:

Primary email account

Phone, tablet and computer

Password manager

Two-factor authentication and account recovery methods

Cloud storage

Online financial accounts

Social media accounts

Digital subscriptions

Important digital photos and files

Don’t create a Google Doc containing every password you have and call it an emergency plan. Instead, create a secure way for someone to access your digital accounts if and when it’s appropriate.

A low-tech option is to keep emergency instructions offline in a locked, fire-resistant home safe or another secure location. You don’t need to give anyone the physical key now, but someone should know that it exists and how to find it if needed. The drawback is that this can be challenging to keep up to date, but it is certainly better than nothing. 

A password manager can be a helpful alternative. In addition to securely storing passwords, some password managers offer features specifically designed to give trusted people access in an emergency.

For example, Bitwarden’s Emergency Access feature allows eligible users to designate a trusted emergency contact who can request access to the user’s vault. You can set a waiting period before access is granted, giving you time to reject the request if you’re still able to do so.

Don’t Forget About Two-Factor Authentication

Knowing a password may not be enough to access an account. Two-factor authentication (2FA) can create another hurdle if a verification code is sent to your phone, email or authenticator app. 

Important Tip: After a loved one’s death, keep their cell phone active because you will likely need it for 2FA codes. 

Team Clark has a full guide to making your online accounts accessible when you die, including more information about password managers and other ways to prepare your digital accounts for the future.

6. Make a List of the People Your Family Should Contact

During an emergency, knowing who to call can be just as important as knowing where your accounts are.

Your financial emergency file should include contact information, when applicable, for your:

Estate attorney

Financial advisor

CPA or tax preparer

Insurance agent

Employer or human resources department

Business partner

Executor

Financial power of attorney

Health care agent or proxy

Don’t make a loved one search through your phone and email trying to figure out the name of your estate attorney.

7. Decide Where To Keep Your Financial Emergency File

Once you’ve gathered all of this information, you need somewhere secure to keep it. 

No storage method is right for everyone. Depending on what you’re storing, options might include:

A locked, fire-resistant home safe

A safe deposit box for appropriate documents

Secure digital storage

A password manager for login credentials

Your estate attorney’s office for certain original legal documents

You may end up using a combination of physical and digital storage.

Whatever system you choose, it needs to be secure enough that the wrong person can’t access your sensitive financial information, but accessible enough that the right person can find it during an emergency.

That’s why you should be especially careful about what you put in the file itself.

Don’t create a single document containing your Social Security number, complete financial account numbers, PINs and every password you use and then leave it in an unlocked desk drawer or unsecured cloud folder.

8. Tell Someone You Trust Where To Find Your Financial Emergency File

A perfectly organized emergency file is worthless if nobody knows where to find it. 

Choose an appropriate person and tell them:

“If something happens to me, here’s where you’ll find my Financial Emergency File.”

The goal is simply to make sure the right person knows that you’ve created a plan, where you’ve stored it and what they’ll need to do if the time comes.

Important legal note: Knowing your passwords or where your financial records are stored doesn’t necessarily give someone legal authority to manage your finances. That’s one reason it’s also important to have the right estate planning and power-of-attorney documents in place.

9. How Often Should You Update Your Financial Emergency File?

Your financial life isn’t static, so your emergency file shouldn’t be either.

Choose a date each year to review it. You might use your birthday, the beginning of the year or another date you’ll remember.

During your annual review, check whether you’ve:

Opened or closed financial accounts

Changed jobs or retirement plans

Changed insurance policies

Bought or sold a home

Changed financial advisors, attorneys or tax preparers

Changed passwords or your password-management system

Named new beneficiaries

Changed an executor or power of attorney

You should also revisit the file after major life events such as a marriage, divorce, birth or adoption, death in the family or significant change in your health or financial situation.

You don’t need to rebuild the entire file every year. The point is simply to make sure the map still leads to the right places.

10. Have This Financial Emergency Conversation With Your Partner and Aging Parents

Once you’ve organized your own financial life, make sure the people closest to you have a plan, too.

If you share finances with a spouse or partner, you should both understand how your household operates. That’s particularly important when one person typically handles most of the money.

And don’t stop with your own household.

If you have aging parents or other loved ones you may someday help care for, ask whether they’ve created their own financial map.

One way to make that potentially awkward conversation easier is to start with yourself:

“I’ve been organizing all of my financial information so the family could find it if something happened to me. Do you have something like that?”

You’re no longer asking your parents to reveal their finances. You’re asking whether they’ve created their own map.

Final Thoughts: Give Your Family a Map Before They Need It

In his special edition podcast “An Honest Conversation About Death and Finance,” money expert Clark Howard explains his direct approach:

“I have always been pretty matter-of-fact about this… I prepare for [death]. My wife is 15 years younger than I am and in her family women live to 100 years old or older, so I’ve always thought about making financial decisions … so that she is okay when I’m gone.” 

Many people don’t like thinking about what would happen if they became seriously ill, incapacitated or died unexpectedly. But organizing this information now can be a tremendous gift for the people you love.

And remember that you don’t have to hand anyone the keys to your financial life today. 

Instead, you just need to create the map, store it securely, and tell someone you trust where to find it.

Check out our free Clark.com Financial Emergency File printable to help you get started.
The post Don’t Wait for a Crisis: The Financial Checklist Your Family Needs Now appeared first on Clark Howard.

Every car starts losing value the minute you drive it off the lot. Most buyers accept that, because a car does a job and nobody expects it to pay rent.

Tesla (TSLA) spent years telling its customers a different story. The pitch was that your car would one day drive strangers around while you slept, then hand you a cut of every fare.

Plenty of owners bought in. Some paid thousands of dollars extra for self-driving software on the promise that it would turn a depreciating asset into a small business.

I understand the appeal. A car that covers its own loan payment sounds like the rare purchase that pays you back.

That promise always hinged on one question: Who owns the cars? If Tesla runs the fleet, Tesla keeps the fares. If owners supply the cars, the money gets shared.

Wall Street has now put a price on that split, and the gap is enormous.

A fresh JPMorgan Chase (JPM) forecast of Tesla’s Robotaxi business suggests the owner payday Musk promised has shrunk to a rounding error.

Musk promised Tesla owners Robotaxi income for years

At Tesla’s Autonomy Day in April 2019, Musk predicted the average Robotaxi would earn about $30,000 a year in gross profit, with owners keeping roughly 70% after Tesla’s commission, according to Fortune. He said Robotaxis could hit the road in 2020.

That date came and went. So did the next one.

“I feel very confident predicting that there will be autonomous robotaxis from Tesla next year,” Musk said in 2020, reported TechCrunch.

More Tesla:

Tesla Cybercab features unexpected restriction at launch

Musk just turned the Cybercab into a gaming console

BYD sends blunt message to Tesla with 35.4% of exports

On the July 2025 earnings call, he got specific about owners. Asked when privately owned cars would join the Robotaxi network, Musk said, “I’d say confidently next year. I’m not sure when next year, but confidently next year,” according to Fortune.

“Next year” is now late September 2026. Tesla’s Robotaxi service still runs on company-controlled vehicles, and owners who paid as much as $15,000 for Full Self-Driving (FSD) are still waiting.

“Not one of them can run their car as a robotaxi,” Fred Lambert wrote for Electrek.

JPMorgan sees Tesla keeping 98% of $320B in robotaxi fares by 2035.Bloomberg / Getty Images

JPMorgan’s Robotaxi forecast leaves Tesla owners less than 2%

Tesla’s Robotaxi revenue could reach about $320 billion by 2035, according to a JPMorgan forecast flagged on X (the former Twitter) by prediction market Kalshi on Sept. 20.

That headline number grabbed attention. The split underneath it matters more if you own the car.

Related: Uber stock took a hit it didn’t earn over Tesla Cybercab

About $314 billion of that total comes from Tesla’s own fleet, while the owner-run “Tesla Network” contributes only about $5 billion, reported 24/7 Wall St.

In other words, the model treats Robotaxis as a capital-heavy fleet business that looks more like Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Waymo than a ride-sharing app built on other people’s cars.

Here’s how the numbers stack up:

Total Robotaxi revenue by 2035: About $320 billion (JPMorgan, via Kalshi)

Tesla-owned fleet: About $314 billion (JPMorgan, via 24/7 Wall St)

Owner-run Tesla Network: About $5 billion (JPMorgan, via 24/7 Wall St)

JPMorgan rating and price target: Neutral, $475 (JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta’s June 5 note, via TheStreet)

Musk’s own words line up with the bank’s model. “We expect to be vertically integrated with robotaxi as we are in the rest of our business,” Musk said on the July 22 earnings call, according to a transcript from The Motley Fool.

Vertically integrated means Tesla builds the car, writes the software, runs the app, and keeps the fare. There is no obvious slot for your Model Y in that chain.

What the Robotaxi math means for your Tesla

I ran the numbers to see how many owners that $5 billion could realistically support.

Start with the 30% commission Tesla floated in 2019. That leaves owners about $3.5 billion a year by 2035.

Musk’s 2019 pitch implied roughly $21,000 a year for each owner. Divide $3.5 billion by $21,000 and you get about 167,000 cars.

Tesla built its 10 millionth vehicle in July. In my analysis, that means roughly one Tesla in 60 would earn anything like the income Musk described, and that math is generous, because it treats revenue as if it were profit.

Owners of older cars face a second hurdle. About 4 million Teslas would need new hardware for FSD, according to JPMorgan’s June note.

The cautionary tale already exists. Dutch leasing firm MisterGreen bought more than 4,000 Teslas, betting on rising values and Robotaxi income, and its December 2025 bankruptcy left bondholders with about $40 million in losses, reported Electrek.

Tesla now courts Cybercab fleet buyers instead of car owners

On Sept. 3, Tesla posted an interest form asking businesses whether they want to buy Cybercab fleets or build “mobility hubs and infrastructure,” reported TechCrunch.

That is a different customer from the one Musk courted in 2019. A fleet buyer brings capital, takes the depreciation risk, and negotiates as a business. A driver with one Model Y brings none of that.

“Companies don’t outsource money machines. They outsource risk,” Lambert wrote for Electrek.

Tesla also controls the app, the pricing and the dispatch, so it could steer rides to its own cars first, Electrek noted.

Early rides show who sets the terms. A 2.5-mile Cybercab trip on South Congress in Austin was quoted at $12.15 with a 40- to 50-minute wait, versus $7.96 and under 10 minutes on Uber, reported Forbes.

What Tesla owners and shareholders should watch next

Tesla stock closed at $375.21 on Sept. 21. If JPMorgan’s model holds, most of the robotaxi upside flows to shareholders, while owners split a sliver.

The next checkpoint is Tesla’s third-quarter report, due in late October. Listen for any date, any fee split or any pilot for private vehicles. Silence would say plenty.

Regulators matter, too. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened audit AQ26002 into how Tesla self-certified the Cybercab, Forbes reported. That review could decide how fast Tesla’s own fleet grows.

If you own a Tesla, the practical move is to value FSD for what it does for you today. Any robotaxi check that shows up later is a bonus.

The Robotaxi money may well arrive. JPMorgan’s model says it lands in Tesla’s ledger first, and your driveway barely shows up in it.

Related: Elon Musk sends strong message to SpaceX and Tesla investors

Trump said “freedom will be coming to Cuba.”

Meta (META) made two moves last week that Wall Street has been watching for. One is about cutting what it costs to run AI. The other is about charging users for it.

Together they give investors a more concrete answer to the question that has been hanging over the stock all year. Meta has been spending at a scale that makes even other hyperscalers look cautious. The question has always been when that spending starts paying back. These two moves are the first real answer.

In a note shared with TheStreet, Bank of America reiterated its Buy rating on Meta and kept its $810 price target unchanged. That implies roughly 20% upside from the stock’s September 16 close of $673.31.

Meta’s chip strategy and what it means for costs

Meta confirmed it will start deploying its third-generation custom AI chips, called Arke, in the first half of 2027. A fourth-generation chip called Astrid follows in late 2027. Both were built with Broadcom for AI inference, the process where trained models generate responses, Bloomberg reported.

Meta’s vice president of engineering told Bloomberg the chips are engineered to outperform “whatever Nvidia is currently shipping” on a per-watt and per-dollar basis. More than one gigawatt of custom chip capacity is planned over the next 12 months.

The company also tried to build a chip that could handle both training and inference. It canceled that project after finding the design would cost roughly 30% more. Not worth it.

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The note said Bank of America ran the numbers on what the savings could look like. If Meta deploys five to six gigawatts of owned capacity in 2027 at $200 billion in total infrastructure spend, with chips making up 60% of that cost, custom chips at 40% savings versus third-party alternatives could mean roughly $8.5 billion saved. That is a model estimate, not company guidance.

Google’s TPU program is worth noting here. Custom silicon took years to pay off for Alphabet but is now central to how it manages AI infrastructure costs. Meta is making the same long-term bet. The chips arriving in 2027 are the first real test of whether the economics actually hold.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said it directly on his own earnings call. “When you co-develop a chip that is optimized for your particular LLM workloads, you will outperform any GPU,” he said, adding that customers can do it “at half the cost.” He confirmed Meta’s program is on track and that three MTIA generations will ship by end of 2027.

What Meta One is and why it matters

Meta launched Meta One on September 15. It is a global subscription service bundling AI features, customization tools and creator capabilities across Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Meta AI. More than 50 features launched with it. The service has already recorded 15 million subscriptions and trials.

Consumer plans start at $2.99 per month for individual apps and go up to $19.99 for the Premium bundle. Creator and business plans run from $14.99 to $499 per month.

The 15 million figure mixes trials and paying subscribers. Nobody knows yet how many of those convert to actual recurring revenue. But it is the first signal that people will pay for features on platforms they have used for free.

The math from the note is simple. Every 1% of Meta’s 3.6 billion users that subscribes at $10 per month average revenue adds roughly $4.3 billion a year. That is about 1.2% upside to 2028 revenue estimates. Snapchat Plus has reached 5.5% daily active user penetration. That is the benchmark Meta is chasing.

Meta still earns the vast majority of its revenue from digital advertising.VIEW press / Getty Images

Two catalysts still ahead

Bank of America flagged five catalysts for Meta at the start of its coverage. Three are now announced: Muse, custom chips and Meta One.

Two remain. The Connect conference is first. No major AI announcements are expected there, though any Muse adoption update would be useful. Muse is Meta’s AI image and video generation system, and how quickly it is pulling users into paid tiers matters more than most people have focused on.

The bigger remaining catalyst is Watermelon, Meta’s upcoming frontier LLM. A strong model could improve Meta’s advertising systems and open API licensing fees as a new revenue line. It would also be the clearest signal yet that Meta’s AI research is producing results that translate into financial outcomes, not just benchmark scores.

What the risks look like from here

The chip savings are a model. Meta One conversion is unknown. Watermelon has not shipped. All three are bets, not bookings.

Meta still earns the vast majority of its revenue from digital advertising. A macro downturn or a pullback in ad spending hits the whole thesis. The company’s fixed asset base has also grown fast enough that cost flexibility in a downturn is more limited than it used to be.

There is also a competition risk that lies beneath the advertising risk. AI-native platforms are starting to compete for the same user attention Meta’s apps have dominated for years. If engagement shifts, the ad revenue picture changes before any of the new revenue lines have scaled enough to compensate.

The $810 target is 24 times the 2027 GAAP earnings estimate. That is a premium to the broader market. Whether Meta earns it depends on whether the chip economics land, the subscription business scales and Watermelon actually performs. None of that is settled yet.

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A surviving spouse is sometimes left with less income and a higher tax bill. These tax-saving strategies can soften the impact.

Politicians have a favorite number. The trick is finding one that is true, flattering, and narrow enough that nobody checks what sits next to it.

Wage data makes that easy. The government publishes dozens of pay measures every month, covering hourly and weekly pay, managers and rank-and-file staff, factory floors and restaurant kitchens, with many of them also adjusted for inflation.

In a good year, most of those measures point in the same direction. In a rough year, they split apart, and whoever holds the microphone gets to choose which one you hear about.

This has been a rough year for your grocery and gas budget. Gasoline costs 27.4% more than it did a year ago, and the Federal Reserve just raised interest rates for the first time since 2023.

For most households, that combination adds up to a paycheck that buys a little less than it did last summer.

So when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went looking for good news about American wages on Monday, Sept. 21, he had to be choosy. He found two numbers that still look great, and both belong to people who build things for a living.

Why real wages matter more than the raise on your pay stub

A raise only counts if it outruns prices. Economists call what is left over “real” wages, and it is the closest thing the government has to a measure of whether your paycheck is truly growing.

Right now, that measure is flashing yellow. Real average hourly earnings for all private-sector employees fell 0.3% from August 2025 to August 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Rank-and-file workers, whom the BLS labels production and nonsupervisory employees, fared only slightly better. Their real hourly pay slipped 0.1% over the same 12 months.

Prices did the damage. Consumer prices rose 3.4% over the year through August, with energy costs up 16.3%, reported the BLS.

“Since April, prices have been climbing faster than average wages, so the typical worker’s paycheck doesn’t stretch as far as it used to,” NPR noted.

Manufacturing and construction pay beat inflation since January 2025, BLS data shows. Vithun Khamsong / Getty Images

Bessent’s blue-collar wage numbers check out

“As wages continue to outpace inflation, real weekly earnings for blue-collar manufacturing workers have risen 4.1%, while blue-collar construction workers have seen a 5% increase since January 2025,” Bessent wrote on X (the former Twitter).

I ran his math against the BLS payroll data, and it holds up.

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Average weekly pay for rank-and-file manufacturing workers climbed from $1,161.99 in January 2025 to $1,266.43 in August 2026. Over that stretch, the consumer price index for urban wage earners (CPI-W), the inflation gauge built around hourly workers’ spending, rose about 4.7%.

Strip out inflation, and factory paychecks gained 4.1%. Construction workers did even better, landing almost exactly on five percent.

Here is how those two paychecks stack up against everyone else since January 2025, after inflation:

Construction workers’ real weekly pay rose 5.0%. 

Manufacturing workers’ real weekly pay rose 4.1%.

Real weekly pay for all private-sector rank-and-file workers rose 1.5%. 

Rank-and-file workers in service industries gained 0.9%.Source: BLS data

Every figure above is calculated from seasonally adjusted BLS earnings and CPI-W data. The two sectors Bessent picked grew roughly three times faster than the private-sector average.

Longer workweeks are driving blue-collar pay gains

This is where the numbers get less flattering. Weekly pay equals hourly pay multiplied by hours worked, and blue-collar workers have been putting in more hours.

Construction workers averaged 40.2 hours a week in August, up from 39.4 in January 2025, according to BLS data. By my calculation based on the agency’s hourly and weekly figures, factory workers added roughly one hour a week, too.

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Measured by the hour, the gains shrink. Real hourly pay rose about 1.6% for manufacturing workers and 2.9% for construction workers since January 2025.

In my analysis, that means more than half of the factory gain came from longer shifts rather than better pay rates. Extra hours are real money in your bank account, but they cost you evenings and weekends, and they are the first thing employers trim when orders slow.

There are cracks even inside Bessent’s favorite numbers. Manufacturing’s real weekly pay slipped about 0.3% from July to August, and the sector employs roughly 35,000 fewer workers than it did in January 2025, BLS data confirmed.

What Bessent’s wage claim means for your paycheck

Translated into August 2026 dollars, the typical factory worker takes home about $50 more a week than in January 2025, or roughly $2,600 a year. A construction worker is ahead by about $75 a week, close to $3,900 a year.

The typical rank-and-file worker across the whole private sector is ahead by about $16 a week. That works out to roughly $840 a year, a fraction of what Bessent’s two groups gained.

If you work in a store, a restaurant or an office, your year-over-year number is closer to flat. Real weekly pay for rank-and-file service workers is down about 0.2% from August 2025, based on my analysis of BLS data.

Bessent has used this playbook before. In June 2025, he pointed to nearly two percent real wage growth for blue-collar workers in the administration’s first five months.

“The only other time it has been this high … was during President Trump’s first term,” Bessent said, according to the White House.

Why the Fed rate hike could test blue-collar wage gains next

Construction and manufacturing are two of the most interest-rate-sensitive corners of the economy. Builders borrow to break ground, and factories borrow to buy equipment.

That borrowing just got pricier. The central bank lifted its benchmark rate to a range of 3.75% to 4% on Sept. 16. “Inflation remains elevated,” the Federal Reserve said in its statement.

Price pressure is not limited to the gas pump, either. Non-housing services inflation is “still running north of 3% on a twelve-month basis,” wrote Thomas Feltmate, director and senior economist at TD Economics.

If higher rates cool home building and factory orders, the extra hours that powered Bessent’s numbers are likely to shrink first. Hourly pay would then carry the load alone, and on that measure, blue-collar workers are only modestly ahead of inflation.

The August figures for manufacturing and construction pay are preliminary and could be revised in the next jobs report, due in early October. Watch real hourly earnings in that report, because hours can be cut far faster than pay rates.

If you are one of the workers Bessent cited, you have earned a real cushion. Put some of that extra-hours money toward savings now, while the extra shifts are still there.

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