The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published cost estimates for April 2026. If you've bought anything over the past month, you've likely noticed a rise. For the Washington Post, Rachel Lerman and Federica Cocco charted the rising cost of groceries this year, before and after the war with Iran.
What happens to a whole generation that never grows up? When the structural markers of adulthood get withdrawn, what fills the gap? Specifically, where does the money go?
The U.S. is unique among advanced countries in its under-provision of health care coverage, and it also incurs by far the world's highest healthcare costs per capita. So now may well be a good time to get behind a new push for major health reform.
Another monthly jobs report, another reminder that healthcare has been the driving force behind U.S. job growth in recent years. And no state appears as reliant on the healthcare and social assistance sector to support its labor market as the nation's most populous and the world's fourth largest economy: California.
Recent and looming changes to the U.S. Department of Education's student loan repayment plans will affect whether and when millions of borrowers get their debt canceled. Here's how to navigate that.
A paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that older homeowners, particularly those 70 and up, earn lower prices when they sell than their younger counterparts. The gap increases with age; an average 80-year-old seller would likely get paid 5 percent less than a 45-year-old, all other factors being equal.
More older Americans are falling into poverty in suburbs built for middle-class stability. Suburbs lack the transit, housing, and services that help cushion poverty in cities, leaving millions of seniors at risk of isolation in the neighborhoods they helped build.
There's a kind of relentless belief that passion isn't just a bonus, it's a requirement. If your job doesn't light you up, if you don't wake up energized and fulfilled, then clearly you've taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.
There's a common belief that as your wealth increases, your capacity to take risk increases as well. After all, when you have more you can afford to lose more, right? This might be correct in the extremes, but this argument doesn't hold in more typical wealth ranges. Why?
In some respects, the market environment you encounter over your own specific retirement horizon is what it is; you don't have any power to control when stocks drop, bond yields shoot up, or spending-power-eroding inflation materializes. But there are a few tactics you can avail yourself of to ensure that if the market gets off to a nasty start during your retirement years, you won't deal your portfolio a death blow.
Low-income years are when you can negotiate with that future tax bill. And if you're on the FIRE path, going part-time, taking a sabbatical, or your household just dropped to one income? You may have more of a fighting chance right now than you think.
Upcoming Event
Show Your Work
Most physicians I know can spot a sloppy patient workup from across the room. Same instinct applies to real estate deals. The difference between a sponsor running honest underwriting and one waving a pretty pro forma usually shows up in the diligence trail, not the cover slide.
That's what makes the May 19th Lightstone DIRECT briefing worth blocking an hour for. Annina Vaisanen is walking through Hidden Lakes Apartments, their newest 384-unit acquisition in Grand Rapids, and she's opening up the full diligence file. How they got the property at roughly a 12% discount to comparable sales and 40% below replacement cost. Why current rents sit more than $100 below market without requiring a heavy capex program to close the gap. What the team learned from owning and self-managing over 10,000 units across Michigan that informs every line of the operating budget.
The projected 12.3% Net IRR and 7.4% average cash-on-cash over a four-year hold are the numbers people will quote. The reasoning behind them is what actually matters. Lightstone is also writing 20% of the equity in this deal themselves, so the alignment question answers itself.
Annina goes live at noon Eastern on May 19th.
Thanks for stopping by!
Jorge Sanchez, MD
Naples, Florida
