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The best way to keep your home’s outdoor spaces lit up is with a good set of solar lights. There are solar string lights, in-ground solar lights, and a host of other options that can keep your patio looking bright. We found a version of these convenient illuminators that may be the most versatile of all. That’s because they’re able to clip onto a fence, onto your patio, or just about anywhere else that has an exposed edge. This adaptable design allows you to place the lights wherever you need them most at any given time, making them perhaps more adaptable than any other form of lighting you’ll find when shopping for outdoor lights.

There are so many reasons why clip-on solar lights for your yard are a good idea. With inflation impacting just about everyone’s monthly budget, having a light source that doesn’t add to your electricity bill is highly desirable. What’s more, these lights allow for constant repositioning if that’s something you need. Finally, they add a level of security that you won’t find with other types of outdoor fixtures. If this all sounds appealing to you, then keep reading, as you’ll find a lot more details below.

Lifengsoler Motion Sensor Clip-On Solar Lights

Courtesy of Amazon

Check price at Amazon

The Lifengsoler Motion Sensor Clip-On Solar Lights are on sale for only $38 at Amazon. When you break down the price of the four-pack, that equals just $9.50 per light. These lights may be some of the best you can buy for keeping your space nice and bright even on the longest and darkest nights. Included are four flood-light style fixtures with helpful mounting clips on the back of each light. Each lamp includes 176 mini LED lights that shine at an impressive 800 lumens. The motion sensor has a range of 120 degrees, covering up to 600 square feet of space. The lights come in both black and white variants, so they’re easy to match with your patio decor. And if the four-pack doesn’t meet your needs, the set is also available in packs of one, two, and six. 

Benefits of motion sensor clip-on solar lights 

As mentioned above, there are a number of advantages to this style of lighting for your backyard. Financially speaking, the benefits are two-fold. For starters, this type of light, as evidenced by the Lifengsoler example, can often be purchased at a discount. Even at the original price, many of these solar lights are quite affordable. Additionally, their solar charging capabilities allow you to have outdoor lighting year-round without adding any additional cost to your utility bill. At a moment when energy costs continue to rise, this is absolutely a welcome benefit.

As for positioning, clip-on lights never leave you stranded in the dark. They can be placed on railings, patio umbrellas, fences, gutters, or even tree branches. These lights offer far more options as to where they can be placed than string lights or even in-ground lights. Also, since they’re not wired to one another, you’re not forced to place a cluster of lights in any one area. While you can certainly group them together if you wish, you can also spread them out throughout your yard to be sure you can brighten every nook and cranny. 

Perhaps the favorite feature of these lights is what they mean for your sense of security. Because they have a sensitive motion detection capability, this type of floodlight allows you to feel safe and secure at any time of the night. They shine brightly and can be placed all around your yard so that any motion is captured. There’s nothing like laying your head to rest on your pillow knowing that your home is protected from every possible angle. That peace of mind is worth every cent you may spend on outdoor motion lights. 

More motion sensor clip-on solar lights

If the Lifengsoler Motion Sensor Clip-On Solar Lights aren’t what you need, then the following list may be helpful. We’ve compiled some of our other favorite picks from both Amazon and Walmart. Both retailers have great selections of outdoor lights of every sort, and their inventories of clip-on solar lights have something for just about everyone. Take a look for yourself and see what you find. There are many that are sure to brighten your day (and your nights).

Thumok 2-Pack Clip-On LED Solar Lights

Courtesy of Amazon

Check price at Amazon

Etetale 3-Mode Clip-On Motion Lights

Courtesy of Amazon

Check price at Amazon

Mehoom Clip-On Motion Solar Lights

Courtesy of Walmart

Check price at Walmart

Daybetter Clip-On Solar Outdoor Motion Sensor Light

Courtesy of Walmart

Check price at Walmart

TheStreet Shopping is your guide for shopping insights and advice. We look beyond the price tag to find the best value in home, tech, and wellness gear based on product features and real-world use. Read more about our Editorial Standards and How We Choose Our Shopping Deals.

Financially planning for retirement can be complex. But there are simple moves you can make to potentially boost your lifetime income.
Here’s a brief checklist you can use to review your current situation and determine whether you might be leaving money on the table.

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1. Verify your earnings record
Start by getting a snapshot of your current Social Security information. You can create or log into your Social Security account via the Social Security Administration’s website to see your lifetime earnings and an estimate of how much you will receive in benefits.
This snapshot lets you see how much you can receive from Social Security, but it also gives you the opportunity to detect any errors with your income. Addressing any errors now could result in higher checks in the future.
2. Assess when you should claim Social Security
If you delay claiming Social Security, you can end up with a larger benefit. In 2026, if you claim at 62, the maximum benefit is $2,969 per month, depending on your lifetime earnings. However, the maximum grows to $5,181 per month if you wait to claim it until you turn 70.
Your benefits go up each year that you wait, but the growth of your checks accelerates to 8% per year when you reach full retirement age, which is 66 or 67, depending on when you were born, until age 70.
While it makes financial sense to wait until you are 70, that isn’t feasible for everyone. Some people need money to make ends meet now, and while a full-time or part-time job is an option, not everyone can return to or stay at work.
3. Plan for taxes and Medicare
Social Security doesn’t get taxed as much as ordinary income, but it’s still taxable, depending on how much income you report each year. Remember, any withdrawals from a traditional retirement account are treated as ordinary income, so you can end up with higher tax rates than you may expect.

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Depending on how much you earn from Social Security, traditional retirement account withdrawals and other sources, up to 85% of your benefits may be taxable. That’s why it is often makes more sense to take out Social Security when you have already retired and your income is lower than when you are still working.
You also have to factor in Medicare Part B premiums, which are automatically deducted from your Social Security check, as long as you are receiving Social Security while enrolled in Medicare. You will be billed directly for Medicare premiums if you delay Social Security, so you can’t avoid these premiums either way. However, it’s smart to calculate if Social Security is enough while considering Part B premiums, which will trim your checks.

There is a moment almost every successful entrepreneur hits. The business is finally throwing off real cash, you are ready to start building wealth outside the company, and rental property looks like the obvious move. So you walk into your bank, the same bank that has watched six figures flow through your accounts for years, and ask for an investment property loan.
And they turn you down.
Not because you cannot afford it. Because your tax returns, optimized by a good accountant to minimize taxable income, make you look broke on paper. Every write-off that saved you money in April just cost you a mortgage approval. It is one of the great ironies of entrepreneurship: the better your tax strategy, the worse you look to a traditional underwriter.
Here is what the bank did not tell you. There is an entire category of financing built for exactly this situation, and the flagship product is called a DSCR loan. Real estate investors have used these to build portfolios of five, ten, and fifty properties without ever handing over a tax return. This is the playbook.
What a DSCR Loan Actually Is
DSCR stands for debt service coverage ratio. The concept is simple and, once you see it, obviously right: instead of qualifying you based on your personal income, the lender qualifies the property based on its rental income.
The math is a single division problem. Take the property’s monthly rent and divide it by the monthly cost of owning it, meaning principal, interest, taxes, insurance, and any HOA dues. If a property rents for $2,500 and costs $2,000 a month to carry, the DSCR is 1.25. The property earns 25 percent more than it costs. It covers itself.
That is the whole pitch. No tax returns. No W-2s. No employment verification. No explaining to an underwriter why your Schedule C shows a loss while your bank balance grew. The property either pencils or it does not.
Why This Changes the Game for Entrepreneurs
Traditional mortgage underwriting asks one question: does this person’s documented personal income support this payment? DSCR underwriting asks a better question for investors: does this asset support itself?
That reframe has three consequences that matter if you are building something.
First, your tax strategy stays intact. You can keep taking legitimate deductions without sabotaging your borrowing power.
Second, you can scale. With conventional loans, every property you buy adds debt to your personal ratios until you hit a wall, and conventional financing caps how many mortgaged properties you can hold anyway. DSCR lenders care about each deal standing on its own, so the portfolio can keep growing as long as the deals keep working.
Third, you can borrow through your business. Most DSCR lenders will lend to an LLC, which is how experienced investors hold rentals for liability protection anyway. Conventional lenders generally will not.
What You Actually Need to Qualify
DSCR loans are flexible on income and rigid on a few other things. Requirements vary by lender, and guidelines change, so treat these as the typical shape of the box rather than exact walls.
The ratio itself: most lenders want a DSCR at or above 1.0, meaning the rent at least covers the payment, and the best pricing usually starts around 1.2 or 1.25. Some lenders offer no-ratio programs for properties that do not cash flow yet, at a price.
Down payment: plan on 20 to 25 percent. DSCR loans do not come with 5 percent down. The lender’s protection is equity, and they want you to have real skin in the deal.
Credit: minimums commonly land in the 620 to 680 range depending on the lender and the deal, with better scores unlocking better rates and lower down payments.
Reserves: expect to show a few months of payments in the bank after closing, commonly three to six.
The rent number: on a purchase, an appraiser documents market rent on a standard form. For short-term rentals, many lenders now use documented booking history or market data from tools like AirDNA, which has opened DSCR loans to the Airbnb crowd.
Two honest trade-offs. Rates run higher than conventional owner-occupied loans, typically by a point or two, because the lender is taking asset-based risk. And most DSCR loans carry prepayment penalties for the first few years, so know your exit plan before you sign.
The Playbook, Step by Step
Step one, run the numbers before you fall in love. Take realistic market rent, subtract the full carrying cost including taxes, insurance, and HOA, and check the ratio. In high-insurance markets, and I say this as someone who lends heavily in Florida, insurance quotes kill more deals than interest rates do. Get a real quote early.
Step two, get your credit and reserves in order. Those are the two levers you fully control, and both directly move your rate.
Step three, get pre-qualified with a DSCR specialist. This takes days, not weeks, precisely because there is no income documentation to grind through. A broker who works Non-QM loans daily can shop your scenario across many wholesale lenders instead of one bank’s single guideline set.
Step four, make offers knowing DSCR loans close fast. Thirty days is routine, and speed wins deals in competitive markets.
Step five, after closing, keep clean records of the property’s performance, because your next DSCR loan gets easier when the current one is performing.
A Worked Example
Numbers make this concrete, so here is a simplified version of a deal structure we see constantly.
An entrepreneur finds a single-family rental listed at $400,000 in a solid rental market. Market rent, confirmed by the appraiser, is $3,000 a month. She puts 20 percent down and finances $320,000. Say the monthly principal and interest on the loan work out to around $2,200 at prevailing DSCR rates, with taxes, insurance, and no HOA adding roughly $500 more. Total monthly cost: about $2,700.
Divide $3,000 in rent by $2,700 in carrying cost and the DSCR is about 1.11. The property covers itself with a modest cushion. Most DSCR lenders approve that deal, though the pricing improves if she can push the ratio higher, either with a larger down payment that shrinks the loan, or by finding a property where the rent-to-price math is stronger.
Notice what never came up: her tax returns, her business’s chart of accounts, or an underwriter’s opinion about the stability of entrepreneurial income. The property carried the application. That is the entire product in one example, and it is also the discipline of it. If the rent had been $2,400 against the same costs, no amount of personal income would have dressed up a deal that does not cover itself.
The Mistakes That Cost Investors Money
The biggest one is underestimating expenses to force a ratio. The appraisal and the insurance quote will surface the truth anyway, so run honest numbers on day one.
The second is shopping only one lender. DSCR pricing varies widely between lenders for the same deal, far more than conventional pricing does. This is a product where a broker’s access to multiple lenders directly translates to basis points.
The third is ignoring the prepayment penalty structure. If your plan is to renovate, raise rents, and refinance in year one, tell your loan officer up front so the loan is structured for it.
The fourth is quitting your homework at the loan. A DSCR loan finances the deal; it does not fix a bad one. The asset still has to be a good rental in a market with real demand.
Beyond the Rental: Financing the Rest of Your Life
One more thing entrepreneurs figure out quickly. The same documentation problem that blocked your investment property loan also complicates buying your own home. The parallel solution there is a bank statement loan, which qualifies you on the actual deposits flowing through your accounts instead of your tax returns. If your income is real but your returns understate it, it is worth reading up on how bank statement loans work, because the combination of a bank statement loan for your residence and DSCR loans for your rentals is the standard stack for self-employed wealth builders.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do DSCR loans show up on my personal credit? Typically the loan is underwritten to the property and often held in an LLC. Policies on credit reporting vary by lender, so ask. Either way, it will not tangle your personal debt-to-income ratio the way a conventional loan does.
Can I use a DSCR loan for a short-term rental? Many lenders now allow it, using market rent data or your booking history. Expect slightly stricter terms than a long-term rental.
What property types work? Single-family homes, condos, townhomes, and small multifamily like duplexes through fourplexes are standard. Some lenders go larger or handle mixed-use.
Can a first-time investor get one? Yes, though some lenders price experience. Owning your primary residence helps.
What if the property does not cash flow yet? No-ratio and sub-1.0 DSCR programs exist with larger down payments and higher rates. Sometimes that is a smart bridge on a value-add deal; sometimes it is a warning sign about the deal itself.
How fast can these close? Two to four weeks is common, since there is no income documentation to verify.
What markets work best for DSCR deals? Markets where the rent-to-price ratio is healthy enough to clear the ratio comfortably. High-appreciation coastal markets often struggle to cash flow on paper, while stable mid-priced metros pencil easily. Investor-heavy states like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee see the most DSCR volume, but the math, not the map, is what qualifies the deal.
Does rental income from the property count toward my next loan? With DSCR lending, each property qualifies on its own rent, which is exactly why portfolios scale. Your personal debt-to-income never becomes the bottleneck.
Are the rates worth it versus conventional? If you can qualify conventionally and you are under the property cap, conventional is usually cheaper. DSCR wins when tax returns do not tell your real story, when you are scaling past conventional limits, or when you need the LLC and speed advantages.
Can I refinance an existing rental with a DSCR loan? Yes, including cash-out refinances that pull equity from one property to fund the down payment on the next. That recycling of equity is the engine behind most fast-growing rental portfolios.
Do I need an LLC first? No, you can close in your personal name with most lenders. But if you want the LLC, set it up before you go under contract to keep the closing clean.
The Bottom Line
The entire game of building wealth through real estate depends on access to financing, and for self-employed people the traditional system is quietly rigged against you. DSCR loans un-rig it. They judge the deal, not your tax strategy, which is how it should have worked all along.
Guidelines and requirements shift over time, so verify current terms with your lender before committing. If you want to know exactly what you would qualify for, the team at Select Home Loans specializes in DSCR and self-employed lending and can price your scenario across dozens of wholesale lenders. If you need help, you can call Nick at (888) 550-3296 and bring him a deal. That first property is the hardest one; it gets easier from there.
The post How to Get Investment Property Loans Without Tax Returns: The DSCR Playbook appeared first on Addicted 2 Success.

Here’s a scenario worth thinking about. You hire a brilliant junior analyst. Instead of learning to build financial models from scratch, he or she asks Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do it. Instead of structuring arguments from first principles, they prompt a chatbot. 

And yes, they get the right answer. Most of the time. But five years later, can this analyst think without the machine?

That’s the question keeping one Goldman Sachs partner up at night. And the fact that it’s coming from inside one of Wall Street’s most aggressive AI adopters makes it worth taking seriously.

Chris Churchman, who leads Goldman’s Marquee platform — the firm’s digital hub for institutional clients including hedge funds and trading desks — went on Goldman’s Exchanges podcast and called overreliance on AI a “huge danger.” Not a risk. Not a concern. A huge danger.

“There’s a huge danger here that in the era of AI, we outsource our reasoning to these models, and we have cognitive atrophy that stops us from being able to reason from first principles ourselves,” Churchman said, according to a CNBC transcript.

That’s a striking thing to say when your firm is simultaneously deploying AI across trading, banking, and client services at record speed.

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Churchman didn’t just raise an abstract concern. He shared a specific moment that had me pausing when I first read it.

While building out Marquee’s internal AI capabilities — still only available to Goldman employees for now — the team pushed the system hard on accuracy. The response the AI gave back was remarkable for its candor.

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“When we challenged it hard, at least it was honest,” Churchman said. “It was like, ‘Look, in the end, I’m better at sounding thorough than being thorough.’”

That’s the core tension at the heart of AI in high finance. Consumer chatbots can get away with confident-sounding errors. In a trading environment where a misquoted risk figure or a hallucinated covenant can cost millions, honestly, the tolerance for such a mistake is essentially zero. 

Related: Goldman Sachs sees an upside in a new industry

Churchman acknowledged Goldman hasn’t yet “figured out” how to manage that transition. That’s notable honesty from a co-chair of the firm’s Global Banking and Markets AI working group.

This isn’t a fringe view inside Goldman. I covered a similar warning back in June from AMD CEO Lisa Su, who told MIT graduates that technical AI proficiency alone won’t define future leaders. 

Her point? AI can process datasets and generate answers, but it can’t determine which problems actually deserve attention or take moral responsibility for outcomes. Human judgment, she argued, remains irreplaceable. This is something we all agree on.

Churchman’s version of that argument is more specifically Wall Street. In fact, more urgent.

The apprenticeship problem Wall Street hasn’t solved

Here’s the structural issue Churchman is really pointing at that I would want you to take some time to reason through. 

Investment banking runs on tacit knowledge. I mean the kind that was never written down, that gets transmitted by watching a senior trader price a client request under pressure, through sitting beside someone who has navigated three market crises, through learning not just what to do but how to think.

You learn by doing, and a lot of knowledge is tacit. It was never written down.

The danger isn’t that AI replaces senior bankers. No. It’s that AI replaces the training ground that creates them. 

Junior traders traditionally learn by fielding client pricing requests under supervision. Churchman acknowledged Goldman could automate that workflow entirely.

Related: Goldman Sachs sends strong message on AI and jobs

The question he raised is whether automating it produces the next generation of senior traders who actually understand what’s happening or just competent prompt engineers.

Sep. 2025 CNBC report showed that Wall Street firms were examining ways to use AI to lower the ratio of junior bankers to senior employees.

If that ratio shrinks, so does the pool from which future senior talent develops. The apprenticeship culture and the headcount math are on a collision course.

Goldman Sachs signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Goldman is using AI to post record numbers while warning about AI

Digging deeper, I found an irony. The context makes Churchman’s warning more compelling, not less. Goldman isn’t a firm that’s struggling with AI adoption. It’s actually thriving because of it.

Goldman reported Q2 2026 net revenues of $20.34 billion, up 39% year-over-year (YoY), with Global Banking and Markets generating $15.52 billion, up 53% YoY, according to Goldman’s Q2 presentation. 

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Equities revenue hit $7.42 billion, up 72% YoY (a record). Diluted EPS came in at $20.98, up 92% YoY. Return on equity reached 23.5%, according to the same presentation.

Management explicitly credited AI-driven trading strategies and AI infrastructure investment banking as structural drivers of that performance, according to Goldman materials. Goldman is making more money, faster, with AI deeply embedded in its operations.

Also Read: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Latest News and Stories

GS shares were trading at $1,036.28, up 19.04% year-to-date and 42.49% over the past year, according to Yahoo Finance data as of this reporting.

So Goldman is winning with AI. And one of its most senior AI architects is publicly warning that winning today could cost the firm the talent it needs to win tomorrow. You may think of it as a contradiction. 

But that’s exactly the kind of honest tension that sophisticated institutions grapple with. In fact, most prefer not to say it out loud. Churchman said it out loud. And I think Wall Street should probably pay attention to this. I mean, really pay attention.

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Do you have your streaming TV situation settled for the 2026 football season?

If not, you may be surprised to find things are a bit more expensive than last season.

Major sports streamers ESPN Unlimited and NBC’s Peacock have announced price increases in the weeks leading up to the 2026 NFL and college football season.

This will soon impact “full-time” subscribers of these products.

But the “part-time” subscriber who pays for these services during football season and cancels or pauses in the “off-season” is likely to return this month and learn they’ll owe more right away.

Let’s take a quick look at how each service will increase its pricing and talk through a couple of ideas for optimizing your subscription strategy to get the most value for your dollar this season.

ESPN Unlimited and Peacock Raise Subscription Fees

ESPN Unlimited, which is a major hub for college football and the NFL’s Monday Night Football, and NBC’s Peacock both announced price increases in August 2026.

Here’s a breakdown of what each is doing:

Peacock

NBC is home to 22 NFL games this season, including the weekly Sunday Night Football telecast. It also carries major college football games, including much of Notre Dame’s schedule and select Big Ten matchups. Subscribers to Peacock’s Premium and Premium Plus tiers can stream these events live.

On August 18, Peacock announced it is raising prices across all three subscription tiers. That increase is effective now for new subscribers, while existing subscribers can expect to see a bump on their first billing date on or after September 17, 2026.

This increase will impact both monthly and annual subscription pricing, with monthly fee bumps ranging from $1 to $3 and annual increases ranging from $10 to $30.

ESPN Unlimited

Roughly one year ago, ESPN launched its much-anticipated “sports-only” streaming service that allowed you access to its family of sports networks without having to pay for a full cable, satellite or live TV streaming subscription.

ESPN Unlimited gives you access to live streams of ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, SEC Network, ACC Network, ABC on ESPN, and more. This is where you’ll find the NFL’s Monday Night Football broadcast, as well as the overwhelming majority of SEC and ACC football games this season.

On August 23, ESPN revealed it plans to raise the price of its ESPN Unlimited subscriptions effective September 17.

This increase also impacts any legacy Disney+ bundle that includes ESPN Unlimited. Check your upcoming bill for more details on how that will impact your specific bundle’s pricing.

Strategies for Finding Streaming Value During 2026 Football Season

If you’re a big football fan who needs to see all of the college and NFL action, you have a couple of money-saving strategies you can use to mitigate the increased pricing of these services:

Install an antenna at your home to get games for free. Money expert Clark Howard implemented this strategy last season, and he’s able to pull in high-quality reception of all games that are played on ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS via over-the-air transmission. It costs him nothing beyond the initial antenna purchase and he says he sees the action much faster than his friends who are watching via slight delay on streaming services.

Consider returning to live TV streaming via skinny bundle. Many of the top live TV streamers (YouTube TV, DIRECTV, Fubo, Sling TV) have started offering niche “skinny” bundles to attract customers who are primarily interested in a specific genre of content. Each of them offers a sports package that costs less than their full streaming subscriptions. And several of them now feature ESPN Unlimited as an included part of the subscription price.

For many cord cutters who implement a “part-time” subscription strategy for football season, the simplest answer may be to simply eat the extra few bucks a month on the ESPN Unlimited and Peacock subscription to keep their strategy intact for 2026.

Will these price increases impact your decision to keep either of these services? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the Clark.com community.
The post These 2 Popular Streaming Services Increased Prices as Football Begins appeared first on Clark Howard.

Mark Cuban has never been shy about airing his opinions on money, and lately his favorite subject is who gets to keep it.

The “Shark Tank” investor, whose fortune is estimated at $10.2 billion, has spent years pushing the idea that workers deserve not just a paycheck, but also a bigger piece of the companies that employ them.

Cuban has now sharpened that argument into something closer to a proposed policy. Rather than simply encouraging founders to be generous, he now wants the tax code itself to enforce it by rewarding companies that share ownership broadly and penalizing those that don’t.

Mark Cuban employee equity proposal and corporate tax code plan

Cuban laid out his thinking after a follower on X (the former Twitter) asked what he would do to close the wealth gap.

His answer was blunt. “Increase the taxes of any company that doesn’t offer equity to every employee on a pro rata basis to non-founder executives,” he wrote. “If they get rich from the market, so do they,” Fortune reported.

He expanded on the idea on the “What It Takes” podcast, describing to host Sarah McCammon a system where the standard 21% corporate tax rate becomes a reward rather than a default, according to Fortune.

Related: Mark Cuban predicts radical change for American workers

“You can give them incentives to say, ‘Look, if you want that 21% tax rate, then you need to give every single employee the same percentage in stock warrants, options, whatever it may be, of their cash compensation that you give to the CEO,’” he explained.

If a chief executive receives stock worth 10% of their cash pay, a janitor earning far less would receive stock worth the same 10% of their own salary, not the same dollar figure, but the same proportion, according to Inc.

Cuban points to his own track record as proof the idea can work. When Yahoo bought his streaming company Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion in 1999, Cuban had already given stock to 330 employees, and roughly 300 of them became millionaires overnight.

He did something similar years earlier at his first company, the IT consulting firm MicroSolutions, handing out equity and cash bonuses to staff.

That history is central to why Cuban frames this as responsibility rather than charity. Most people who build serious wealth do it by selling a company or taking one public, he has said, and if founders accept the tax bill that comes with wealth creation, they should let employees share in the gains, too.

SpaceX IPO millionaires: what employee stock ownership does for workers

The math on this is not complicated. A 2021 Harvard Business School analysis found that if private companies nationwide got to roughly 30% employee ownership, household wealth would effectively double, as TheStreet reported.

Cuban’s argued that the only thing stopping it from happening is that nobody has made it worth the founders’ while to try.

The clearest recent proof of concept came from SpaceX. When the company went public earlier this year, more than 4,400 current and former employees became paper millionaires, and roughly 400 of them are sitting on stakes worth more than $100 million, according to Fortune.

The windfall was not limited to engineers and executives. Welders, machinists, and technicians who had been offered modest stock grants years earlier suddenly found their equity worth six and seven figures.

One widely told story involves Juan Hernandez, a welder who joined SpaceX in 2015 earning $28 an hour and was offered $10,000 in stock as part of his hiring package.

He told CBS News he did not think much of the offer at the time, since none of his previous jobs had included equity. His roughly 6,500 shares were valued at close to $900,000 near the IPO price.

Coverage of the IPO noted that the newly minted millionaires spanned far beyond the engineering ranks, touching cafeteria staff and contract workers alongside rocket designers.

It is exactly the kind of broad-based wealth creation Cuban says should be the norm, especially as pay gaps between executives and staff keep widening.

Not everyone is convinced that Cuban’s tax proposal would work as his own success stories suggest.Billy/Getty Images

Elon Musk KKR and Cost Plus Drugs on employee ownership in 2026

Cuban is not alone among prominent business figures making this case. Elon Musk has said he has always believed everyone at a company should hold stock so they can participate in its upside, according to Business Insider. It’s a philosophy he shared with Texas Governor Greg Abbott shortly before SpaceX’s record-breaking listing.

Private equity has also taken notice. KKR, through partner Pete Stavros, has pushed similar ownership models across its portfolio companies, an approach highlighted alongside the SpaceX story as evidence that helped turn broad-based equity from an individual founder’s philosophy into mainstream strategy used by major investment firms.

Cuban’s other major venture, the online pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs, follows a related instinct, even though it targets consumers rather than employees.

Co-founded with radiologist Alex Oshmyansky in 2022, the company sells drugs at their cost plus a 15% margin, using transparent pricing to challenge the traditional pharmaceutical industry, TheStreet reported.

CEO worker pay gap and what Mark Cuban equity plan means for investors

Not everyone is convinced that Cuban’s tax proposal would work as his own success stories suggest. Critics note that higher costs on companies, whether from taxes or tariffs, can be passed along to consumers rather than absorbed entirely by shareholders, squeezing budgets already stretched by inflation.

Cuban has pushed back, arguing that margin decisions are a choice founders make for competitive reasons, not an inevitable outcome of higher taxes. He has also pointed to the widening gap between executive and worker pay, noting that S&P 500 chief executives now earn roughly 285 times what their median employee does, up from 268 times a year earlier.

Congress is not passing Cuban’s tax proposal this year. That is not really the point. The companies worth watching are the ones already moving this way on their own.

Broad equity plans tend to show up in lower turnover and higher output before they show up in stock prices. If a company’s compensation disclosures show meaningful equity distribution below the executive level, that is worth knowing before the headline numbers do.

Related: Mark Cuban has strong words on taxes and wealthy Americans

Verne Harnish, author of the new “Start to Scale” Workbook and Audiobook, shows how optimizing a company’s cash position allows entrepreneurs many options for growth and improves the company’s valuation.

Troops on the carrier deployed in the Middle East were reportedly facing a mental health crisis.