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A report out of South Korea on Tuesday, July 21, claimed SK Hynix was in talks to buy Intel’s unfinished Ohio semiconductor campus, according to Stocktwits.The claim traced back to Korea JoongAng Daily and described a deal that would give SK Hynix front-end memory production in the United States, years ahead of its own internal timeline.Now SK Hynix is dismissing it. In a filing with the Korea Exchange, the company said it “has not pursued or decided to acquire Intel’s Ohio site and Fab as reported in the article,” TipRanks reported.A company spokesperson went further, telling Benzinga simply that SK Hynix has no plans for an acquisition.Intel did not confirm or deny the talks directly. An Intel spokesperson told Benzinga the company does not comment on deal speculation but remains committed to Ohio and to speeding up the site’s readiness.The SK Hynix denial didn’t erase Intel’s rallyIntel (INTC) closed July 21 at $105.45, up 8.64% on the day.That gain held even as the acquisition story it was riding fell apart hours later. This matters because markets usually give back speculative pops once the trigger disappears.SK Hynix followed a similar pattern in Seoul. Shares opened up more than 9% on the original report, then trimmed to a 6.7% gain once the denial filing landed, TradingKey confirmed.A stock that gives back a third of its gain on a denial but still finishes up nearly 7% is not a stock that stopped believing the story.The one exception was SK Hynix’s own US-listed shares (SKHY), which slipped about 1.4% in the overnight session after the denial.That gap between how Seoul traded the news and how New York traded it says something about who was pricing in a real deal and who was just reacting to a headline.

SK Hynix denied plans to acquire Intel’s Ohio chip campus, but Intel and SK Hynix shares held onto sharp gains anyway.Bloomberg / Getty Images

Intel’s foundry losses made the rumor easy to believeThe reason the story had legs is Intel’s balance sheet. Intel Foundry has been bleeding cash, posting a $7 billion operating loss in 2023 and another $2.4 billion in the first quarter, according to TipRanks.A struggling foundry business sitting on a mostly idle 1,000 acre campus is exactly the kind of asset investors expect a cash-strapped company to consider selling.Related: SK Hynix makes jaw-dropping gains in wild Nasdaq trading debutIntel has pushed the Ohio site’s production timeline back to 2030 or 2031, citing challenging market conditions and the need to strictly manage its capital, Construction Dive reported.A campus that will not run chips for another four or five years is easier to imagine changing hands than one already generating revenue.SK Hynix doesn’t need this deal to keep growing in the U.S.SK Hynix is already building a $3.87 billion HBM packaging plant in Indiana, and the market knows it has an appetite for more.SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won recently confirmed the company is aggressively scouting additional U.S. and Korean sites for future wafer fabs, as long as the right power, water, and workforce conditions are met, Bloomberg indicated.More SK Hynix:Jim Cramer’s cryptic comments on key AI supplier turn headsMajor AI chip stock plunges after blockbuster $26.5 billion Nasdaq debutSK Hynix is testing the limits of Wall Street’s ETF boomThe appetite for U.S. capacity is genuine. This particular target just was not it.Moor Insights and Strategy CEO Patrick Moorhead called the Intel talks unlikely, noting that Ohio remains central to Intel’s plan to win outside foundry customers, StockTwits reported.Selling the campus SK Hynix supposedly wanted would undercut the exact turnaround story Intel is trying to sell investors ahead of its Thursday, July 23, earnings report.A denial is not the same as a closed doorWhat happened this week is less about one campus in New Albany and more about how thin the line has gotten between memory chip supply and desperation.AI demand has made HBM capacity scarce enough that investors will bid up two stocks on a deal neither company confirms, then barely blink when it gets denied.Intel reports earnings on Thursday, and direct questions about the Ohio site’s future will be asked.Until then, the market has already told investors what it thinks a deal between these two companies would be worth, whether or not one ever gets signed.Related: SK Hynix is testing the limits of Wall Street’s ETF boom

Every lease starts as a bet between strangers.The landlord bets that the person on the other side of the application is who they claim to be and earns what they claim to earn. The renter bets that the apartment in the photos exists and that whoever is collecting the deposit actually owns the place.For most of the last century, that bet got settled face to face. You met the landlord, you walked the unit, and somebody looked you in the eye and made a judgment call.Then the process moved online, and the eye contact went away. Applications became uploads. Tours became video walkthroughs.Approvals became a decision made by someone three time zones away who has never stood in the building.Renters have been trained to worry about one half of that arrangement. The copied listing. The deal that is too good. The wire transfer that vanishes.Far fewer are watching the other half, where a bigger and costlier fraud fight is under way, and where honest applicants are quietly picking up the tab.What renters already know about rental listing scamsThe visible version of this problem is bad enough on its own. Since 2020, people have filed nearly 65,000 rental scam reports totaling about $65 million in losses, according to the Federal Trade Commission.The playbook rarely changes. Scammers copy a real listing, swap in their own contact details, repost it elsewhere and push the renter to send money before anyone walks the property.More Real Estate:Kevin O’Leary spots a real estate play hiding in plain sightThe U.S. housing affordability crisis just got a major responseWhy mortgage rates are spiking again and what to doFacebook was the most reported starting point, accounting for roughly half of reports in the 12 months through June 2025, with Craigslist next at 16%. The median reported loss was $1,000.Young renters bear the brunt of it. People ages 18 to 29 were three times more likely than other adults to report losing money this way.The defense is familiar. Search the address, check whether the same unit appears elsewhere at a different price, and never hand over a Social Security number before you have agreed to rent, guidance from Zillow explains.That is the fraud renters can see coming. It is not the one reshaping what they pay.

Rental scams cost renters $65 million, while AI application fraud raises deposits for honest applicants.ABRAHAM GONZALEZ FERNANDEZ / Getty Images

How AI rent fraud slips past landlord screeningLos Angeles landlord Michael Renkow approved a tenant in September 2025 for two units renting at $5,300 a month each. The bank statements, employment records, and ID all cleared.Two days later, his bank flagged the cashier’s checks as fraudulent, and someone was already living in the apartment and refusing to leave, reported Bisnow. The seven-month eviction that followed cost $90,000.What changed is the price of a convincing lie. Forging a pay stub used to take skill or a trip to the dark web. Generative tools cut that down to a prompt and a small fee.Related: Real estate giant updates mortgage rate, home price predictionsMRI Real Estate Software bought 200 artificial intelligence-generated fake IDs, some for as little as $5, and ran them against the optical card readers most leasing offices depend on. The readers flagged 26% of them.Roughly three in four walked through the front door.Documents are the entry level. Some fraudsters now register real limited liability companies and issue real-looking pay stubs from those businesses to people who do not exist, Findigs CEO Steve Carroll explained in an interview with TheStreet.That is a synthetic identity, and it beats document review by design. The document is not forged. The company is.The identity layer is moving the same way. Deepfakes now account for one in five biometric fraud attempts, and deepfaked selfies rose 58% in 2025, according to Entrust.Why honest renters absorb the cost of rental fraudHere is the part nobody prints in a leasing brochure. Fraud losses do not stay with the landlord. They get priced into the next lease.When I lined the industry surveys up against the federal data, the gap was the story. Renters report losses one at a time in four-figure increments. Operators absorb theirs in seven figures and rebuild their screening rules around it.The numbers behind that gap:Nearly all rental housing providers surveyed, 93.3%, reported experiencing fraud in the prior 12 months, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council.The average respondent wrote off close to $4.2 million in bad debt over that period, with about a quarter of it tied to nonpayment on fraudulent applications, the same NMHC survey confirmed.On average, 23.8% of eviction filings traced back to fraudulent applications and the missed rent that followed, NMHC found.More than 70% of property managers said most fraud surfaces only after move-in, according to Snappt.Real estate fraud drew 12,368 complaints and $275.1 million in reported losses last year, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center noted.Each application fraud case runs about $15,000 to clean up, said Kevin Donnelly of the Real Estate Technology and Transformation Center, who told Bisnow the cost “ultimately gets borne by the community.”In a renter’s terms, that is a larger deposit, a higher income multiple, a co-signer requirement that did not exist three years ago and an approval that takes days instead of hours.Not everyone accepts the framing. Much of the data comes from the industry itself, and expanded screening carries its own fees and its own risk of shutting out qualified renters, argued National Consumer Law Center senior attorney Ariel Nelson in the same report.That tension is why rental screening is becoming a policy fight rather than a technology one. What a clean rental application looks like nowThe uncomfortable finding in my analysis is that the honest applicant now competes against a fraudster with better paperwork.A fabricated pay stub can be built to hit the income multiple exactly. A real one from a small employer or a gig platform often looks messier than the fake.So the advantage has shifted toward verifiability: documents a screener can trace to a source, payroll data that can be confirmed directly, an identity that survives more than an optical glance.”A renter can’t out-negotiate a manual review process that takes days and depends on whoever happens to be looking at the file that week,” said Carroll in the interview. “What they can ask for is a process that decides the same way every time, fast, on evidence instead of a gut check.”Findigs says it renders automatic decisions across a network of more than 400,000 units, with fraud signals shared across that network.Whether automation helps renters depends on what it is tuned to do. Pointed at risk, it becomes one more reason to say no. Pointed at evidence, it is the closest thing a renter has to a fair hearing.The arms race will not slow down, because both sides are buying the same tools. What renters can control is how fast they can prove they are real, and that is worth more at the leasing office right now than another month of deposit money.Related: When to buy a home instead of continuing to rent, according to Scott Galloway

Forecasting is mostly a way of buying peace of mind. You want a number for the worst case so you can decide how frightened to be, and once you have that number, you quietly stop thinking and start bracing for it.That instinct is not irrational. It is how you decide whether to refinance, whether to take the job across town, whether the August road trip is still on.Then late February arrived, and the worst case got a number.When the United States and Israel struck Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran shut the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and refined products. The forecasts that followed were not subtle. Trading desks talked about crude at $150 a barrel. Some of them talked about $200.You ran that math in your head. Most drivers did. One tank, times 52 weeks, times two cars in the driveway.Five months later, that number still has not shown up. Brent crude futures peaked around $126 a barrel, comfortably below the 2008 record of $147, and averaged roughly $101 between the start of the war and June 11, before briefly retreating to prewar levels near $70 in early July, according to Reuters.The distance between that forecast and your actual receipt is one of the most underrated personal finance stories of the year. It is also worth real money to you.What 5 months of war actually did to oil pricesStart with what a closed Hormuz is supposed to mean. About 20% of the world’s oil and refined products move through it, and before the war, 100 to 130 ships passed through the waterway daily, according to AAA. Traffic has been a fraction of that for most of the year.That is the textbook definition of a supply shock. The textbook says prices go vertical and stay there.Related: JPMorgan sends blunt verdict on oil, economyThey did not. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, has swung between roughly $68 and nearly $113 since the fighting began, AAA reported. It sat near $85 on Tuesday, July 21.At the pump, the damage was real but bounded. Here is the shape of it.Feb. 28: This is the day the strikes began: the national average for regular gas was $2.98 a gallon, according to AAA.May 21: The national average peaked at $4.56, its high for 2026, AAA reported.Early July: Brent briefly retreated to prewar levels near $70 a barrel, Reuters reported.July 20: The national average climbed back above $4 for the first time since June 17, AAA said.July 21:WTI traded near $85, roughly $18 higher than a year earlier, according to AAA.5 reasons the oil price spike never showed upThe mechanics are not mysterious, and none of the five reasons involve luck, according toReuters. They involve a market that had far more slack in it than the models assumed.China was the surprise. The world’s largest oil importer cut crude purchases to their lowest in nearly a decade by June, curbed fuel exports and shifted drivers toward electric taxis, the wire service reported.More Oil & Gas:Goldman sends a fresh warning to the oil marketDrivers lose control over gas price squeezeBessent tells gas stations the savings better show upThe United States pumped harder. Domestic crude production hit a record 13.93 million barrels a day by April, and Washington drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of a record 400 million-barrel release coordinated by the International Energy Agency in March.Saudi Arabia rerouted. The kingdom pushed far more crude out of its Red Sea port at Yanbu, partly replacing barrels stranded behind Hormuz.Traders stopped chasing headlines. Liquidity thinned, funds refused to build big bullish positions, and the market went numb to each new announcement out of Washington and Tehran. “Everybody is bullish now, but nobody is long,” said Ilia Bouchouev of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.And there was simply more physical crude sitting around than the doomsday models assumed, which is why the European grades that help set the Brent benchmark flipped from a record premium in April to a discount.What $150 oil would have cost you at the pumpHere is where I ran the numbers, because this is the part that lands in your budget rather than on a trading screen.AAA’s own rule of thumb is that every $1 move in crude translates to 2.4 to 2.5 cents a gallon at the pump. Crude accounts for roughly 57% of what you pay for a gallon of regular, according to the Energy Information Administration.Run the $150 forecast through that. With WTI near $85 now, an extra $65 a barrel works out to about $1.59 a gallon, which would put the national average somewhere around $5.60.The all-time record national average is $5.02, set on June 14, 2022. The consensus disaster scenario would have blown past the worst pump prices in American history by roughly 60 cents.The $200 version gets uglier. That is about $2.82 a gallon on top of today’s price, or a national average near $6.80.Now put it in household terms. A two-car family burning 1,000 gallons a year would have paid about $1,600 more under $150 oil, and roughly $2,800 more under $200 oil.That is a car payment. It is also, for a lot of households, the entire difference between funding a Roth IRA this year and telling yourself you will start next year.What struck me running this against the actual pump data is how little comfort that offers, because you are already paying.The national average crossed $4 on July 20 for the first time since June 17, AAA said. At $4.02 against $2.98 on the day the war started, that same 1,000-gallon household is out about $1,040 a year already. Diesel, which sets the cost of nearly everything trucked to your grocery store, hit $5.14, AAA reported.

Five months of war, a closed Hormuz, and gas at $4.02 instead of $5.60.Abraham Gonzalez Fernandez / Getty Images

Why your gas budget is still exposed to HormuzThe reason this matters going forward is that most of the shock absorbers listed above were one-time moves.The Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to 311.4 million barrels last week, its lowest level since March 1983, and has given up more than 104 million barrels since the war began, AAA reported. That cushion does not refill quickly.China can only cut imports so far. Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea workaround carries its own risk, with roughly 2.5 million barrels a day exposed to Houthi threats, and if a ceasefire does not materialize, “the risk of a significant rebound in oil prices would be substantial,” Rystad Energy geopolitical analysis head Jorge Leon said, according to Seeking Alpha.Pump prices nationally had been falling steadily since late May, and drivers “can also expect higher prices in the short term,” said AAA Oregon/Idaho public affairs director Marie Dodds.So stop watching the headlines out of Tehran. They have stopped moving the price, which is exactly what the traders worked out months ago.Watch the reserve level and the Yanbu shipments instead. Those are the two numbers standing between your current fuel budget and the forecast that never came true, and one of them is running low.Related: Chevron makes critical move to sidestep Iran oil risk

A clip from an old Lex Fridman podcast interview with Mark Zuckerberg is making the rounds on X (the former Twitter), and the timing of its revival is the most interesting part of the story. The clip shows Zuckerberg praising Elon Musk’s overhaul of Twitter at a moment when the two men were in the middle of a very public rivalry. Nobody paid much attention when it aired. People are paying attention now.The clip surfaced on X on July 20, and it hit differently than it would have a few years ago. Meta has since gone through versions of the same thing Zuckerberg praised Musk for doing. The question the clip is raising right now is whether it worked.What Zuckerberg said about Musk and the Twitter overhaulSpeaking on Lex Fridman’s podcast, Zuckerberg said Musk’s overhaul of Twitter went deeper than simple cost-cutting. Musk had acquired the company for $44 billion and cut the workforce from roughly 8,000 employees to fewer than 2,000 in a matter of months. Zuckerberg said the more important part was what Musk was trying to build afterward.More Mark Zuckerberg:Mark Zuckerberg says infinite money won’t make him quit his jobMark Zuckerberg makes a move on a new billion-dollar marketMark Zuckerberg admits mistakes in leaked memo after Meta layoffs”I do think that Elon led a push early on to make Twitter a lot leaner,” he said. “You can agree or disagree with exactly all the tactics, but a lot of the specific principles that he pushed on around basically trying to make the organization more technical, around decreasing the distance between engineers of the company and him, fewer layers of management, I think those were generally good changes.”Musk continues to apply versions of that same philosophy across his companies, as TheStreet reported.Zuckerberg also said Musk gave other tech founders permission to do what they’d wanted to do anyway. “My sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought that those were good changes, but who may have been a little shy about doing them.” He was careful not to offer a full endorsement of everything Musk did. “From the outside, it’s very hard to know. Did he cut too much? Did he not cut enough? I don’t think it’s my place to opine on that.”Why Zuckerberg’s take on Musk and Twitter is landing differently nowWhen Zuckerberg made those comments, Meta was in the middle of its own restructuring. The company cut more than 21,000 jobs in what Zuckerberg called a “year of efficiency,” running almost in parallel with the Fridman interview. The praise for Musk fit the moment. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff put the prevailing mood plainly: “Every CEO in Silicon Valley has looked at what Elon Musk has done and has asked themselves, ‘Do they need to unleash their own Elon within them?'” NBC News reported.The clip has resurfaced now because Meta is in the middle of another version of the same bet. The company cut another 8,000 jobs this year and moved 7,000 workers into AI-focused roles, as TheStreet reported. The pitch to shareholders was the same one Zuckerberg praised Musk for making: fewer layers, faster output, engineers closer to leadership.At a July staff meeting, Zuckerberg told employees that AI-agent progress “hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected.” He also said the layoffs earlier this year were messier than planned. The clip began circulating on X later that month.

The Zuckerberg clip has resurfaced now because Meta is in the middle of another version of the same bet.Reynolds/Getty Images

The management philosophy Silicon Valley is still being asked to proveMusk’s Twitter overhaul became a Silicon Valley reference point for a specific reason. The cuts were dramatic, but what actually spread across the industry was the theory underneath them. Tech companies had grown fat on low-interest-rate money and had built organizations with layers of management that slowed everything down. Musk’s argument was that cutting them back would make the companies better, not just leaner.That argument spread, and most large tech firms have been through some version of it. The philosophical case was easy to make, although the financial case is still being built, and the timeline on it keeps moving. Meta has been spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI this year while trimming headcount, and Zuckerberg is now conceding that the returns haven’t emerged on the timetable he expected.What this means for Meta investors watching the efficiency betWhen Zuckerberg praised Musk’s Twitter cuts, he was doing more than tipping his hat to a rival. He was telling Meta investors that his own restructuring made sense and that a leaner company would be a better one. Investors went with it. Meta stock climbed back hard from the year it bottomed out, and the company has been spending more than $100 billion a year on AI since then, with relatively little shareholder resistance.The clip’s revival asks a harder question. Leanness was supposed to produce faster, better output. Yet three years into that experiment, the largest tech companies are still spending heavily, and the returns are not arriving on the timelines their leaders described. The management philosophy Zuckerberg praised Musk for pioneering is now a financial thesis that the market is still waiting to see confirmed.Related: Mark Zuckerberg says infinite money won’t make him quit his job

When I was younger, I would hear the term “starter home” tossed around by my parents and teachers.The starter home was a house they bought when they were younger. It wasn’t the biggest or best house, but it provided them with their own space and allowed them to start building equity. That way, they could eventually sell it and use the earnings to make a down payment on their “forever home.”They had bought starter homes, and it was implied that I could one day, too.Fast forward 15 or 20 years, and this simple tale doesn’t feel simple at all. I reported on the housing market through the COVID-19 pandemic and have watched it struggle to recover ever since.Due to the housing inflation resulting from the pandemic, paying less for starter home so you can get your foot in the door seems … frankly, unrealistic.New research from Realtor.com found that starter homes are still more expensive than before 2020. But the ship may finally be turning — starter home pricing and availability have improved since 2022.Well, in some parts of the U.S.Realtor.com breaks down starter home pricing and inventoryLet’s be clear about what Realtor.com is referring to when it talks about “starter homes.””To capture the starter home market, we focus on homes priced at roughly 80% of the area’s median, capturing the relative affordability of the lower end of the market,” wrote senior economist Hannah Jones.”We also track absolute dollar thresholds like the share of listings priced under $350,000 to reflect real-world affordability for households trying to qualify for a mortgage at current rates,” she explained.The real estate listings website used this methodology because, traditionally, starter homes have been geared toward two types of people: first-time homebuyers who aren’t ready to buy their forever home and/or lower-income earners who can’t yet afford the larger house they might want.In 2019 (before the pandemic), the starter home price threshold was $256,000 nationwide. In 2022, it peaked at $359,000. Now, it has dropped by 4.2% since 2022, sitting at $344,000.Related: Boomers have unfair edge over younger homebuyersThis is obviously still a huge jump from 2019 prices. But the good news is that the national housing market is improving a little bit for starter homes.Your location plays a major role in the affordability and availability of starter homes, though. The starter home price threshold has decreased since 2022 in the West (-7.3%) and the South (-3.5%), but it’s up quite a bit in the Northeast (12.6%) and Midwest (10%).It’s a similar story with starter-home inventory — and inventory is critical, because when there are fewer houses on the market, buyer competition drives up home prices.In 2019, 55.6% of houses listed on the U.S. market qualified as starter homes. That share plummeted to 37.9% in 2022.National inventory has increased since 2022 … but only by 0.1 percentage point to 38%.Again, housing inventory in the West and South has improved since 2022, but it’s worsened in the Northeast and Midwest.So, America’s starter home offerings have started to improve. But the country still has a long way to go. Especially with inventory.

Starter home pricing and inventory is improving, but only in certain parts of the U.S.Cravetiger / Getty Images

Building more housing would lead to more starter homesEssentially, the solution to the starter-home crisis is to build more homes. The Northeast is the perfect example. Starter home prices have increased in this region since 2022, and inventory has lagged. This is the part of the country where it’s probably the toughest to build more housing. There isn’t much developable land, strict zoning laws stop new construction, and a lot of the buyer demand is in bigger metro areas, Realtor.com explained.The housing shortage is the main culprit behind the national home affordability crisis. When there aren’t enough properties to meet demand, there’s more competition among buyers. Competition drives up prices.More Housing Market:New Redfin data shows housing market is changing fastWhy mortgage rates are spiking again and what to doFannie Mae predicts shift in mortgage rates, housing marketThe 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which became law on July 11, could help with building more affordable housing units. It did away with the rule that manufactured homes must be built on permanent steel chassis. This could save thousands of dollars on the construction of a manufactured house — savings that could be passed onto the buyer.There were roughly 300,000 vacant lots under five acres listed for sale in June, according to Zillow research. The company estimated that if a manufactured house was built on each spare lot, it would decrease the U.S. housing deficit by 6.3%.And that’s assuming you only build one house on each lot.Capital gains tax also hurts inventoryThere’s another reason that inventory is low in America — not just for starter homes, but in general. And once again, it goes back to the COVID-19 pandemic.Due to the housing inflation in the early 2020s, many existing homeowners gained a ton of equity. If they were to sell their homes now, the houses would sell for much more than they originally paid. This sounds great until you factor in capital gains tax.”Many want to avoid paying large capital-gains taxes on the sale of a long-held home that has appreciated a lot in value,” wrote The Wall Street Journal.If they don’t move, then those houses don’t go on the market for younger, first-time homebuyers.”It’s better for [elderly homeowners] to wait until death when the property will get a stepped-up basis and will get shielded by the generous levels of estate tax exemptions as the properties will become inherited by heirs,” Corey Burr, senior vice president at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, told TheStreet.Currently, an individual is exempt from paying capital gains taxes on up to $250,000 in profit when selling a house, under the IRS Sale of Home Exclusion. Married couples filing jointly are exempt from up to $500,000.Burr pointed out what he believes to be a fatal flaw in the capital gains tax exclusion: The numbers are the same nationwide. The IRS doesn’t consider cost of living differences around the United States. Burr believes it should.”This would result in much higher exemptions levels from capital gains and would immediately incentivize elderly Americans to sell their houses and move into more appropriately-sized properties,” he said. “In turn, this would free up inventory for eager buyers who dream about these larger properties.”Tips for affording a starter homeBuy in a starter-home-friendly area. Not everyone can relocate to buy a house. But if you are interested in moving, consider going to the South, where starter home prices and inventory are improving. The situation isn’t necessarily getting better in the Midwest, but Realtor.com research shows that starter home prices start lower here overall. Find the right balance between the down payment and monthly costs. You don’t need a 20% down payment. First-time homebuyers can often qualify for a conventional mortgage with just 3% down. However, a lower down payment results in a higher monthly payment. Make sure you can comfortably afford both.Search for down payment assistance programs. Although roughly 80% of homebuyers qualify for DPA programs, only about 13% actually use them, according to a study by Realtor.com. Buy a fixer-upper home. Buying a fixer-upper has become less popular, according to Keller Williams. People don’t want to dedicate the time or money to huge maintenance projects. But buying a house that needs a little TLC could cost less. And if fewer people want to buy them, you could face less competition and avoid a bidding war.Related: The U.S. housing affordability crisis just got a major response

Americans working for themselves, whether full time or as a side pursuit, has become a lot more mainstream in 2026. While freelancers, contractors, real estate agents, content creators, and online sellers all have different workflows, what they share is a personal responsibility to plan for retirement. Unlike W-2 earners, no employer is helping set that up for them.The list of tax-advantaged accounts available to someone with self-employment income runs long, spanning IRAs and Roth IRAs, SEPs, SIMPLEs, and solo 401(k)s, and each one carries its own limits, deadlines, and tax treatment. Sorting through them is where a lot of would-be savers stall out. And while this is especially relevant for self-employed Americans, even corporate workers—especially those with side hustles—face difficult decisions on how to best save for retirement.In a recent video on his YouTube channel, Mark J. Kohler, a CPA and attorney, walked through the exact order he believes savers should use and warned that treating the choice casually can be expensive.”I’ve got a strategy to share with you and it’s not that complicated, but it requires you to kind of go through this decision tree with me,” Kohler said.Why the wrong plan costs self-employed saversThe audience that can benefit from Kohler’s advice is sizable, as roughly 1 in 3 Americans keep a side hustle, and more than 45 million people report side-hustle, 1099, or small-business income, according to figures he cited in the video.Kohler noted that all of it counts as self-employment when it comes to retirement accounts, no matter whether the work runs through an LLC, an S corporation, or no entity at all.Someone can also keep a workplace 401(k) at a day job while opening a second plan for their side income, a distinction Kohler emphasized for people who assume they are limited to one account. In Kohler’s telling, the problem is that the sheer breadth of options tends to stall people instead of moving them forward.More on retirement and investment accounts:Fidelity, Vanguard have a warning for anyone taking RMDsDave Ramsey warns Americans on 401(k)s, IRAs (he’s not wrong)Americans get blunt message on early retirement”They hear about Roth IRAs, traditional IRAs, SEPs, SIMPLEs, solo 401(k)s, and suddenly it becomes alphabet soup,” Kohler said.That paralysis is the mistake quietly draining Americans’ retirement savings, as the cost goes beyond suboptimal returns or missed time.”The wrong retirement plan can quietly drain tens of thousands of dollars from your future through missed tax benefits, lower contribution limits, and years of lost growth,” Kohler said.Instead of simply giving his recommendation for the best retirement account, Kohler laid out his five exact steps for optimal retirement planning. The right path, in many cases, depends on how a particular individual conducts business.

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The five-step order for retirement account planningKohler’s remedy for the alphabet soup is to rank the accounts rather than weigh them all at once. The first step, and the one he presses hardest, is a straightforward IRA funded on a yearly basis.”But before we talk about anything else fancy, I want you to fund your IRA every year,” Kohler said.He favors a Roth over a traditional IRA, paying tax on the money going in so that the growth and later withdrawals come out untaxed, and he said the argument only gets stronger the younger the saver is. Married couples can each contribute, and a non-earning spouse’s IRA can be funded off the other partner’s income. The 2026 IRA limits Kohler cites come directly from the IRS, and are $7,500 for savers under 50 and $8,600 for those 50 and older, or roughly $625 a month under 50.”In my opinion, 99% of the time, the Roth wins,” Kohler said.Step two is to self-direct the IRA so it can hold assets beyond the standard menu. Step three adds a health savings account. Step four, reserved for owners with no qualifying employees, is a solo 401(k). The 2026 solo 401(k) figures Kohler cited allowed an employee deferral of up to $24,500, an $8,000 catch-up at 50 and older, and a company match of 25% of profit or W-2 wages.Step five applies only when the business has employees. A full-time worker on staff a year or longer, or a part-time worker of three years or more, rules out the solo 401(k) and points instead to a safe-harbor or group 401(k), where Kohler said the required match can run as low as about 4%, against the solo plan’s 25%. He left SEP and SIMPLE IRAs off the list altogether. Kohler added getting the order right can put six figures or more into a retirement account over time, and potentially millions down the road.Key takeaways on retirement account orderThe plan can matter as much as the saving: Getting the plan wrong is not a rounding error, Kohler warned: he said the cost at a sum is well into five figures, tracing it to missed tax breaks, a lower contribution ceiling, and growth the money never gets years to compound.Kohler’s order begins with an IRA, funded every year: Before any fancier plan, he tells self-employed savers to fund an IRA annually, preferably a Roth, and said married couples can each contribute, with a non-earning spouse’s IRA backed by the other partner’s income.Employees change where the sequence ends: A full-time worker of a year or more, or a part-time worker of three years or more, rules out the solo 401(k), Kohler said, though a safe-harbor or group 401(k) stays available in its place.Retirement strategies and contribution limits are important to confirm: Every contribution number Kohler cited, from the $7,500 and $8,600 IRA limits to the solo 401(k)’s $24,500 deferral, is a 2026 tax specific that should be confirmed to see how it applies to each individual.What stays the same: the accounts themselves: Nothing about the underlying accounts, limits, or tax rules has changed. Kohler’s sequence only tells self-employed savers which one to fund first, second, and beyond.Related: Americans receive new warning on strict 401(k), IRA rules

Tempus AI (TEM) spent three years selling someone else’s cancer test. On Monday, July 20, it decided to just buy the whole thing.The AI diagnostics company agreed to acquire Personalis (PSNL) in a deal valued at $1.5 billion. The move hands Tempus full control of a test that spots cancer coming back before a scan ever could.Investors did not treat it as a win. Tempus stock dropped, and it has kept sliding since.That gap between the strategy and the stock price is worth understanding. Wall Street likes the deal. It just does not want to pay for it yet.What Tempus is buying with the Personalis dealAccording to a Tempus press release, the company is paying $16.25 per share for Personalis, valuing the company at $1.5 billion, including debt. That works out to a 6% increase over the prior Friday, July 17, close and a 28% jump against the 30-day average price.More Tech Stocks:Cathie Wood buys $36.1 million of tumbling tech stockCiti revamps Microsoft stock price target for the rest of 2026Top-rated analyst sets a jaw-dropping Intel stock price targetThe prize is a test called NeXT Personal. It tracks tiny fragments of tumor DNA in the blood to catch what doctors call minimal residual disease, or MRD.MRD is the cancer that lingers after surgery or chemo and hides below the reach of normal scans.The two companies have worked together previously. Tempus invested in Personalis back in November 2023 and has sold the test through its own sales force ever since, according to Reuters. This deal turns that partnership into ownership.

Tempus is buying full control of an ultra-sensitive test that detects cancer left behind after treatment.SOPA Images / Getty Images

Why owning the whole cancer test matters more than sharing itUnder the old setup, Tempus split the money from every NeXT Personal test it sold. Full ownership means every dollar now flows to one place.That matters because the market is large. Tempus and Personalis peg the MRD opportunity at roughly $20 billion, and fewer than 10% of eligible patients are tested today, according to MedCity News.The test is also selling fast. Personalis reported preliminary second-quarter revenue of $22.4 million.The company also ran 10,384 clinical tests, which is a 33% jump in volume from the prior quarter, Quartz reported.The data engine behind the dealThere is a second reason for Tempus to own Personalis outright.Tempus sits on a library of more than 8 million de-identified patient records, and it rents access to that data to drugmakers. The company’s SEC filing showed that Insights, which is Tempus’ data-licensing arm, grew about 44% in the first quarter.Folding Personalis genomic data into that library makes the whole thing more valuable to drugmaker partners. AstraZeneca (AZN), for instance, is paying Tempus up to $200 million across a multi-year model-building deal, Fierce Biotech noted. GSK is another. More data means more leverage in those contracts.In plain terms, Tempus is not just buying a test. It is also buying more of the raw material its most profitable business runs on.Why Tempus stock fell, even though the logic holdsIf the strategy is sound, why did the stock drop close to 9% on the day and keep falling to about $49 by Tuesday, July 21?The answer comes down to how the deal gets paid for.This is mostly a stock transaction, which means Tempus will issue new shares to Personalis holders. Related: UnitedHealth CFO sends stark warning after earningsNew shares dilute existing owners, and markets tend to punish that first and ask questions later, according to TipRanks.Tempus can also pay up to half in cash. If it does, that cash comes from its balance sheet and credit lines, and the company already carries a debt-to-equity ratio of around 2.45.The timing problem investors are stuck onThere is also a timing concern. The deal is not expected to close until late 2026 or early 2027, pending a Personalis shareholder vote and regulatory sign-off.That means investors absorb the dilution risk now and wait more than a year for the benefits, Benzinga reported.Tempus was already tracking toward adjusted EBITDA of about $65 million for 2026, a milestone that signals the business is nearing self-sustaining cash generation. Absorbing Personalis costs could delay that milestone.What Wall Street analysts still see in TempusHere is the part that complicates the sell-off. The analysts who cover Tempus mostly ignored the drop.Morgan Stanley called the case compelling and pointed out that about 80%of Personalis clinical volume already runs through Tempus channels, according to Stocktwits. That limits the integration mess that usually affects acquisitions.Needham kept its buy rating and a $75 target, according to Investing.com. The average price target across 15 analysts sits at $65.77, well above where the stock trades now.The bull case, in plain termsFor the outlook to work from here, a few things need to line up.The deal closes on schedule without regulators forcing changes.MRD testing keeps growing volume the way it did last quarter.The data-licensing business keeps signing pharma deals.Tempus holds its path toward positive adjusted EBITDA, despite the added costs.None of those are guaranteed. The stock trades below its 52-week high of $104.32 for a reason, and a company still posting losses has less room for a misstep.How Tempus stock stacks up right nowTempus shares have had a rough stretch. The stock is down about 16% over the past five trading days and roughly 21% from the start of the year. It is now trading near $49.39.That is a long way from the highs, but it also sits above the 52-week low of $41.73.The next real test is approaching soon. Tempus reports earnings on July 30, and management will field direct questions about how it plans to pay for Personalis without stalling its own profitability, Benzinga noted.What this means for investors watching TempusThe Personalis deal gives Tempus something rare: a leading position in a market that is barely tapped, and a richer data set to sell to the world’s biggest drugmakers, Bloomberg reported.The payoff will not show up soon. Investors have to accept dilution and a heavier debt load now, in hopes of a market that pays off in 2027 and beyond.Long-term holders who buy the AI-and-oncology outlook may see the drop as noise around a sound strategy.Anyone focused on the next few quarters should watch the earnings call on July 30. It will say more than the deal announcement did.Either way, watch the gap between what Tempus is building and what its stock is doing. That gap is the clearest signal on the table right now.Related: Stanford Health AI Week: How AI Can Support Aging in Place

An archipelago composed of over 7,600 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, the Philippines has gone from being largely overlooked to a travel destination that has skyrocketed in popularity among tourists from Western countries in the last five years.The number of international travelers to the Philippines jumped from 5.45 million in 2023 to 6.48 million in 2025 while, in the first half of 2026, that number was already recorded at 3.2 million.”One of Southeast Asia’s most important commercial and cultural centers”: Delta on new LAX-Manila flightAmid the increasing demand, both local and international airlines have been looking to launch new routes to both the capital of Manila and other destinations across the country. In March 2027, Delta Air Lines will launch a new route between Los Angeles International (LAX) and Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL) in Manila that will be the only direct service between the two cities offered by a U.S. airline (local flag carrier Philippine Airlines runs what at peak times can be a twice-daily flight).The flight will run on an Airbus A350-900 with 275 passenger seats including 40 in the Delta One business class. After launching in March, the flight will go three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays before being upped to daily service on June 7.Related: Popular tourist destination adds ‘bikini ban’The large distance between the two cities means the flight will take 14 hours and 40 minutes on the way to Manila and clock in at 13 hours and 25 minutes on the way back to Los Angeles.”As the capital of the Philippines, Manila is one of Southeast Asia’s most important commercial and cultural centers,” Delta said in its release on the new route. “The city attracts business travelers, customers visiting friends and family, and visitors eager to experience its rich history, diverse cuisine and vibrant neighborhoods.”

Delta says that The Philippines is a growing market that will help it bring in new passengers.Michael Derrer Fuchs / Getty Images

Which U.S. airlines are flying to the Philippines in 2026Delta had previously tried launching service to the Philippines through fifth-freedom flights to Manila from Incheon International Airport (ICN) in Seoul and Narita International Airport (NRT) in Tokyo. Those flights were discontinued during the covid-19 pandemic while competitor United Airlines has been running this type of flight with a stopover in Tokyo to the island of Cebu that has been particularly popular with tourists looking for beach holidays.Other “big three” competitor American Airlines has a codeshare agreement with Philippine Airlines and does not fly to the country on its own.More Travel News:Airline to launch unusual new flight to Cayman Islands from the U.S.There is a very cool Irish version of swimming pigs in the BahamasUnexpected country is most luxurious travel destination for 2026Low-cost airline launches easier way to get to Sri LankaDelta, meanwhile, said that the new route is key to expanding the carrier’s “growing network from LAX” and serving as a “primary international gateway” for U.S. travelers on the way to the rest of the Philippines as well as members of the diaspora traveling between the two countries.”Whether customers are traveling for business, visiting loved ones, or discovering everything the Philippines has to offer, this new service makes those journeys even easier,” Jeff Arinder, Delta’s vice president of network planning, said in a statement.Related: Another airline cancels 3 flights to U.S., offers refunds

Households nearing six-figure incomes, known for responsible budgeting and reliable bill payments, are facing a growing sense of financial uncertainty. New survey data points to a growing disconnect between income and financial confidence, with near-six-figure households reporting some of the steepest declines in perceived stability. The AARP Financial Security Trends Survey, released in June 2026, tracks how more than 6,700 adults aged 30 and older rate their finances. The top-line number moved only slightly, with 42% of respondents reporting they feel financially insecure, up from 39% in 2022.That modest national average, however, conceals a much sharper story unfolding inside middle-income and upper-income households across the country.Financial insecurity nearly doubles for near-six-figure earnersAmong households earning $75,000 to $99,000, the share of people who feel financially insecure surged from 20% to 36% between 2022 and 2026. That is a near-doubling of financial anxiety in a group that most people would describe as solidly middle class.Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate, pointed to the persistence of elevated prices as a key driver behind deteriorating financial confidence, even among households with steady incomes.Inflation, and the resulting affordability challenges, clearly rules the roost when it comes to hampering the ability to save more money. This helps to explain why people are relatively downbeat on the outlook for their personal financesEarners above $100,000 also reported rising unease, with insecurity in that group climbing from 14% to 21% over the same four-year period.Among adults earning less than $40,000, 67% reported feeling insecure, a rate that remains far higher but rose only 3 percentage points since 2022. That stability at the bottom of the income scale makes the rapid erosion of confidence among higher earners all the more striking, the survey found.”People who look financially comfortable on paper are now feeling uneasy about their finances,” Rich Johnson, vice president of financial security at the AARP Public Policy Institute, told AARP. “A big part of that is driven by concerns about how inflation is squeezing family budgets across the board, not just among lower-income people.”Healthcare expenses hit a record high in AARP’s trackingOne force behind the shift is the rising cost of medical care, which is eroding purchasing power even for households with employer-sponsored insurance.A record 49% of adults aged 30 and older said their monthly healthcare spending is higher than it was 12 months ago, AARP reported. More Personal Finance:Bank of America offers critical debt elimination planFidelity challenges long-standing retirement savings ruleGallup data expose record financial anxiety in the U.S.That figure stood at 42% when the survey launched in 2022, representing a 7-percentage-point jump in four years of national tracking, the AARP survey found.Out-of-pocket healthcare spending for someone on Medicare now exceeds $6,300 a year, compounding alongside rising food and energy prices, Johnson reported.Overall, 72% of adults aged 30 and older reported that prices are outpacing their income, a concern that persists despite national-level wage growth. Average weekly earnings for private-sector workers rose 17% from January 2022 to January 2026, while the Consumer Price Index climbed 16% over the same period. Credit card debt separates secure households from struggling onesCredit card balances represent one of the clearest dividing lines between people who feel financially secure and those who do not, the survey showed.Among respondents who reported feeling insecure, 56% carry a credit card balance from month to month, compared with 29% of those who feel secure. The balances are growing larger, too, with 34% of insecure adults who carry credit card debt owing more than $10,000 in 2026, up from 25% in 2022. Healthcare costs are fueling part of that increase, with 54% of insecure adults naming medical expenses as a contributor to their card debt in 2026. That share stood at 47% when the survey began tracking this question four years earlier, marking a notable and steady climb.”The volatile stock market and questions about job stability have made it harder for many families to feel secure, even if they have good incomes,” Johnson said.Emergency savings remain the clearest marker of financial healthWhether a household has money set aside for unexpected costs may be the single strongest predictor of financial confidence in the AARP data.Among adults who feel financially secure, 84% have some form of emergency savings, compared with just 33% of those who feel insecure.Financial shocks reinforce the divide, with 59% of insecure respondents experiencing a large surprise bill, sudden income drop, or fraud loss in the past year. Among secure respondents, 35% reported a similar shock, with vehicle expenses, housing costs, and medical bills ranking as the most common triggers.Older adults nearing retirement face steeper financial consequencesThe data carry particular weight for Americans between 50 and 64, because a financial setback at that stage leaves far less time to recover.”Families without savings are often one job layoff, major repair bill or serious illness from falling deep into debt,” Johnson warned. “That kind of financial shock can be especially debilitating for people in their 50s and early 60s, because it leaves them less able to put money away for their retirement,” he statedAARP’s chief advocacy and engagement officer, Nancy LeaMond, stated that 6 in 10 adults in that same age group worry about whether their money will last through retirement. She also noted that 42% of adults 50 and older who aren’t yet retired have less than $50,000 saved: “Considering that retirement today can last 20 or even 30 years, these numbers just don’t add up,” LeaMond said.Related: AARP reveals 56 million workers missing out on a 401(k)

Costco has a very limited selection compared to other retailers its size.That’s an intentional choice that allows the company to keep prices down. By selling, for example, one SKU of ketchup rather than various sizes and packaging options, Costco maximizes how many of that unit it sells, giving it better bargaining power with its vendors.Essentially, when a retailer negotiates with a vendor, something I did for many years working at my family’s steel scaffolding business, the more you buy, the lower the price. If I ordered steel by the truckload, it was cheaper than a partial load order.Costco uses that principle, and the fact that it only stocks about 4,000 unique products in its warehouse (about 40% of what a traditional grocery store carries) gives the chain leverage to negotiate lower prices. By keeping the product count low, the warehouse club makes every partner earn their shelf space, and sometimes, it means that a store staple, or a new favorite, loses its spot.That can be traumatic to members who see an old (or new) favorite disappear. Costco members, however, can get a little insight into what products may soon go away if they know the chain’s secret code.Costco tells members what items are being discontinued Costco offers two types of merchandise. First, it has core staples that it always offers.Your warehouse club will have milk, coffee, cereal, and other basics. The brands, sizes, and packaging may change, but you won’t go to Costco and find that it’s not stocking the basics.In addition, Costco has its rotating merchandise. Some of those items, like clothing, seasonal sports gear, holiday products, and more, only appear for a short window.If you missed the recent Esprit sweatshirt, which was a viral hit that sold out quickly, according to Today.com, it’s probably not coming back.Some of these non-staple items, however, are regulars. Maybe Costco offers a K-Cup flavor you love, has a candy or chocolate you like, or stocks a frozen meal, beer brand, or something else you truly enjoy.In some cases, those items get phased out. Maybe they don’t sell well enough, or perhaps the manufacturer and Costco can’t reach a deal to keep the item on sale.More Costco:Costco makes silent gas change members will loveBig changes could be in store for CostcoCostco faces a food safety problem members need to knowWhen that happens, Costco discontinues the item without telling members. There is, however, a way to know when your favorite items are being phased out, but you need to know what to look for.”Costco’s limited inventory and constantly rotating selection are part of what gives the warehouse its treasure-hunt appeal. So when you stumble across a product you love, take a quick look at the shelf tag. If the large white price sign has a small asterisk in the upper-right corner, you’ve spotted what’s known as Costco’s ‘star of death,'” Food & Wine reported.

Costco regularly changes its merchandise. Shutterstock

Costco members need to know the codeThe symbol can mean two different things.”The Death Star is typically added to seasonal products that return annually and to unpopular products that will be permanently retired,” according to Delish.Costco does not share whether the item is being permanently removed.“That doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be discontinued forever,” said David Schwartz, co-author of “The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A to Z,” in an interview with Delish. “That could mean that it’s gonna be given a rest for three months, and then come back.”Costco did not return Good Housekeeping’s request for comment on the secret code.Costco is careful with its inventoryCostco constantly adjusts its inventory partially to meet member needs and partly to keep costs down. Global situations like wars and the ongoing White House tariffs can have an impact on what the warehouse club stocks.CFO Gary Millerchip commented on the company’s inventory during Costco’s third-quarter earnings call.”The supply chain is generally stable, and our merchants feel good about our inventory position heading into the summer. We have relatively low inventory exposure to shipping issues stemming from the situation in the Middle East, but we continue to monitor the situation closely,” he said.Costco plans out each item it stocks, according to RTM Nexus CEO Dominick Miserandino.”It’s simply an economics of space. The average retailer could have 10,000 to 15,000 SKUs, but Costco could have 3,500 to 4,000,” he told TheStreet. That’s a significant difference (and a Walmart or Target could have two to three times that many products). So, yes, they’re going to be most efficient and only stock the shelves with what they think will sell.”(Costco SKU counts vary by warehouse.)CEO Ron Vachris shared some insight on how supply chain impacts and sourcing impacts pricing.”One of your examples was you saw some inventory that we had during higher tariffs. Now we’re getting the lower-priced goods in. We may go down earlier in those to get into those lower-priced goods quicker. We’re down quick on eggs when that commodity started dropping,” he said during the Q3 call.Related: More Costco members are paying double for one reason