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My fiancée and I live with my parents in a New York City apartment. It’s helped us save money and open a business.

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Whenever I tell someone I live with my parents, there’s an immediate moment of palpable judgment. It then gets compounded by the fact that not only do I, a 28-year-old man, live with my parents, but so does my fiancée.

Most people immediately look for a justification. It’s assumed I’m unemployed, broke, a caretaker for one of them, or generally just a bit weird. And I get it, in popular media, a grown man who lives at home is depicted as a failure and a burden on his disappointed parents.

In reality, multigenerational living in New York City is quite common and extremely financially responsible, not only for younger people like me, but also for aging adults like my parents. Beyond the money saved, I also just genuinely enjoy spending time around my family, and I cherish the relationship I have with them.

This apartment has been in the family for decades

I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in the same two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment I live in now.

My parents, who are in their 70s, are also both born and raised New Yorkers — my mom from the Bronx and my dad from Brooklyn.

In his late 20s, my dad moved to the Upper West Side with some friends, and while his roommates eventually moved away, he stayed and ended up raising a family in that same apartment. In the 50-plus years my dad has lived there, the rent has increased marginally, and as long as I live in the apartment, it will remain rent-controlled for another generation.

In 2020, I moved back in and now share the rent with my parents.

Without the significantly reduced rent this apartment afforded my family, we likely wouldn’t have been able to remain living in New York City, despite all of us being born and raised here.

My living situation has allowed my fiancée and me to significantly save

Four years ago, we pooled our savings with my childhood best friend and opened an art gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, signing a 10-year commercial lease.

My parents aren’t rich, but they were smart with their money, and their responsible decisions have now granted me the opportunity to take risks.


Ciaran Short and his fiancée

The author and his fiancée live with his parents. 

Courtesy of Ciaran Short



I don’t have a trust fund, nor have my parents given me a dollar to “invest” in building my business, but having a very affordable apartment has removed a major burden in a very expensive city, giving me a safety blanket.

With the money that I would have been paying for an average residential apartment, I got my business off the ground.

I try to pay my parents back in different ways

While I have benefited from living at home, I do everything in my power to make sure my parents benefit, too. A great portion of my efforts goes into troubleshooting WiFi, navigating Gmail, downloading apps, and finding the “channel” for Netflix. But beyond serving as an in-house IT specialist, I also aim to give them some time back.

They spent years pouring into my life and cultivating my growth, so it feels only fair for me to do the same for them. Although I’ll never be able to truly repay them for the time commitment, the bratty behavior they endured, and the actual financial investments they made, I can try. Moving to another borough or a couple of stops away on the 1 train would feel counterintuitive to making a significant impact on their lives.

Instead, my fiancée and I cook every day, do the grocery shopping, clean the dishes, walk the dog, and handle a list of general household chores, freeing up my parents to spend more time doing whatever they want.

While I wish I was in a position to bankroll a lifestyle for my parents that would allow them to travel to exotic destinations, dine out at the nicest restaurants, and even afford a second country home, that’s not my current reality, so the next best thing I can do is to show up for them and demonstrate my love and appreciation through my time and care.

Admittedly, I do still get embarrassed telling people I live with my parents sometimes, but I also know that one day I won’t have the privilege to come home and hear their voices greeting me, so I try to focus on what I know is most important.




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What’s next for 7 million student-loan borrowers now that SAVE is over

by with No Comment Xpandfy

Repayment for millions of student-loan borrowers could soon look very different.

In recent days, a series of court decisions sealed the fate of the SAVE student-loan repayment plan, which has been up in the air for years.

The 8th Circuit ordered a district court to approve President Donald Trump’s proposed settlement with the state of Missouri to eliminate the plan ahead of its 2028 phaseout.

This means that once the settlement is formally approved in court, the Department of Education can proceed with eliminating the SAVE plan and transitioning borrowers to new plans that are likely to result in higher monthly payments.

“In the coming weeks, the Department will issue clear guidance on next steps for borrowers enrolled in the illegal SAVE Plan, including details regarding how borrowers can move into a legal repayment plan,” Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent told Business Insider in a statement. “The Trump Administration will continue to realign the federal student loan portfolio to better serve students and taxpayers.”

The SAVE plan was created by former President Joe Biden in 2023, intended to give borrowers cheaper monthly payments with a shorter timeline to debt relief. The plan has been blocked since the summer of 2024 due to litigation filed by GOP-led states, including Missouri. Prior to the settlement, Trump’s “big beautiful” spending legislation called for eliminating the plan by the summer of 2028.

What’s next for SAVE student-loan borrowers

Before the proposed settlement was announced in December, the Department of Education resumed charging interest on SAVE borrowers’ accounts on August 1, 2025, and encouraged borrowers to switch to new plans — such as the income-based repayment plan — due to ongoing litigation.

While it’s unclear how soon the department will require SAVE borrowers to switch to a new plan in light of the latest ruling, the terms of the proposed settlement offer some detail on what could come next. According to the department, once the settlement is approved, it will not enroll any new borrowers in SAVE, it will deny pending SAVE applications, and it will move all SAVE borrowers to existing repayment plans.

The department advised borrowers to use Federal Student Aid’s Loan Simulator to estimate what their monthly payments would look like on a new plan. Borrowers have previously told Business Insider that their projected payments are hundreds of dollars higher than what they owed on the SAVE plan, and they’re concerned about their ability to afford the new payments in addition to their other monthly expenses.

David Chatman, a 51-year-old borrower on SAVE, said that his $86 payment is projected to jump to $689.

“When I saw that my payment was going to be this much more, I just sat there and looked at it,” Chatman said. “There’s no way. There’s no way.”

For now, enrolled borrowers await further guidance from the Department of Education once the settlement is implemented. Advocates criticized the decision and its impact on millions of borrowers.

“The millions of borrowers who had a right to lower monthly student loan payments and relief through SAVE will now face thousands of dollars in higher bills every year, thanks to the right-wing campaign against borrowers,” Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director at advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said. “Nearly 8 million people will see their costs climb, even as voters across party lines beg Trump to do something about America’s affordability crisis.”

Have a story to share? Contact this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.




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I make my own sourdough bread to save money on groceries. Here are 5 things I wish I’d known before starting.

by with No Comment Xpandfy

Seven years ago, I started making my own sourdough bread.

In addition to being a relaxing hobby that’s taught me the importance of patience, making bread also keeps me from spending ridiculous amounts of money on loaves from the grocery store.

However, baking sourdough is pretty different from other types of bread. This is partially because sourdough requires a starter — a fermented mixture of flour and water that creates its own yeast and bacteria.

The process of creating a starter, and eventually bread, isn’t foolproof and can take beginners a little while to grasp.

Here are five things I wish I’d known before making sourdough bread for the first time.

A sourdough starter needs to be fed like a pet


A jar of sourdough starter next to a loaf of the baked bread.

A sourdough starter should be fed often.

leonori/Getty Images



To keep a sourdough starter active, it has to be fed regularly using flour and water. However, I didn’t realize this until I inherited my first one.

How often it’s fed depends on where it’s stored. For example, if I leave the starter on the counter, I feed it once every 12 to 24 hours.

When I keep it in the refrigerator, however, I can feed it less, typically about once a week. This schedule also varies depending on how often I bake.

The starter can be preserved in a few different ways

When I first started making sourdough, I didn’t know I could store my starter for a while without feeding it.

Turns out, it can be left in the freezer for up to a year. Another more reliable, long-term storage option is to dehydrate the sourdough starter.

This would’ve been good to know when I let mine go bad because I went on a work trip and couldn’t find a friend to feed it for me.

A starter can be brought back to life

Luckily, even if the starter looks grim, it’s still possible to bring it back to life.

To do this, I feed mine filtered water and flour and wait a few days to see if bubbles start to form. It may take a while to get the cultures moving again, especially if the starter has been freeze-dried or dehydrated.

When it bubbles up and doubles in size, I know I have a pillowy, healthy starter to resume baking with.

Discard doesn’t actually need to be discarded


Freshly baked muffins on a baking rack.

Sourdough discard can be used to make muffins.

AshtonLNelson/Shutterstock



I didn’t realize until far into the process that sourdough discard can be used for other recipes. I figured the term indicated the runoff’s value.

However, it can either be composted or used in other recipes like flatbreads, pastries, rolls, waffles, muffins, and more.

When making sourdough, patience is key

Throughout the process, it’s important to remember that fermentation takes time. Living cultures need the ideal environment to engage, grow, and develop a strong and active formula.

My sourdough hobby definitely hasn’t satisfied any need for instant gratification. But it has tested my patience, indulged my mad-scientist alter ego, and encouraged a certain level of imagination in the kitchen.

This story was originally published on March 13, 2025, and most recently updated on March 9, 2026.




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I used to save nice things for special occasions. Now I wear them to the grocery store.

by with No Comment Xpandfy

I used to save my favorite clothes for a version of my life that never showed up.

The blazer stayed in my closet because it felt “too professional” for a normal day. The heels were waiting for a dinner I’d yet to be invited to. The earrings were longing for an occasion that felt important enough to justify wearing them. Meanwhile, I wore the same outfits on repeat — to work, to run errands, to all the places where my actual life was happening.

I wasn’t saving them for a rainy day. I was saving them for the perfect one. The problem was that “special occasion” never came.

It wasn’t just about clothes

This habit wasn’t limited to clothes. I treated everything the same way. A Sephora gift card sat untouched in my drawer, waiting for something “really worth it.” I rationed my favorite lip gloss as if it were a limited resource. I refused to light my favorite candle unless the night felt special enough to deserve it. I even held onto the last spritz of my discontinued One Direction perfume for years, as if saving it could somehow make more.


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The author started to feel like she was saving her life for later.

Courtesy of the author



The special occasion is always vague — an imaginary fancy dinner, a future milestone, a celebration that exists only in theory. So I wait. Years pass. The things I loved enough to save start to feel untouchable. By the time I consider using it, we’ve waited so long that it feels wrong to start now.

Looking back, it sounds dramatic, but at the time, it felt practical. Why waste something nice on an ordinary day?

Then one day, the thought hit me: why am I living my life like a waiting room?

It felt like I was saving my life for later

That mindset didn’t stop at my closet. Saving a jacket for the right moment slowly turned into saving fun for the weekends, saving joy for later, saving happiness for a version of life that felt more legitimate than the one I was already living.

I realized I was treating weekdays like something to get through instead of something to participate in. When I did the math on how many days I was mentally skipping, it felt less like discipline and more like quietly wasting my life away.

So I stopped waiting.

I started wearing my favorite pieces on regular days

The shift was small at first. I wore blazers to the bars. I strutted in my nice heels to run errands. I put on the earrings just to go to the grocery store. Not for compliments, not for Instagram, not to prove anything to anyone, but because I liked how it made me feel.

The clothes didn’t lose their value because I wore them. They gained it. Each piece started collecting moments and memories instead of dust. Now, when I reach for something I love, it reminds me of a workday that felt a little lighter or a Trader Joe’s run where I found my new favorite snack.


Woman shopping

The author says clothes are meant to be worn more than once.

Courtesy of the author



That’s the part people tend to dismiss as “romanticizing your life,” a phrase that’s been flattened into internet fluff. But this wasn’t about pretending my errands were glamorous or turning my Mondays into Fridays. It was about presence. About intention. About letting regular days count instead of treating them like placeholders.

If I’m being honest, it changed more than my outfits. Work felt less like something I had to endure. Errands felt less like chores. I stopped waiting for permission to enjoy my life. I started dressing for myself instead of an imaginary audience or a hypothetical future. I even started liking Mondays.

I realized the dinner counts. The errand counts. The workday counts. And if the opportunity does truly come? I’ll wear those pieces again. Clothes are meant to be worn more than once.

The special occasion didn’t disappear. I just stopped waiting for it to arrive.




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