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I've tried out ChatGPT a lot since adding it to my repertoire, but my favorite use case so far has been as a tour guide in Italy.

A virtual private network (VPN) can help add an extra layer of security to your devices while online.

When actor and entrepreneur Mark Wahlberg sold his Beverly Hills mansion in 2023 for $55 million, many brokers said the price was low. Wahlberg had listed the 30,500-square-foot home for $87.5 million but slashed the price in order to close before Los Angeles’ looming mansion tax took effect. Perhaps he should have waited. That home was the most expensive sale in June, flipped for $63 million, giving the sellers a profit even after accounting for LA’s mansion tax. The buyers this time around: Paris Hilton and her husband, Carter Reum, whose Malibu home was destroyed in the wildfires. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gGJPbGvN

If you can't make payments, there are ways to get out of your car loan. Some will enable you to keep your car, though many involve surrendering your vehicle.

Before launching the computer software company that made him a millionaire, renowned investor Mark Cuban thought a different business idea would be his runaway hit. At age 24, Cuban decided to sell powdered milk as a recent college graduate eager to strike out on his own. His stint as a powdered milk salesman lasted just about 30 days before he threw in the towel. Powdered milk may not have been lucrative, but the foray taught him a valuable lesson about failure. Read more: cnb.cx/4mi0oaz

Solar energy is booming across the U.S. and, for the first time, Florida is catching up to industry powerhouses Texas and California. Despite removing climate change from its official state policy in 2024, Florida added more utility-scale solar than California last year, with over 3 gigawatts of new capacity coming online. "This is not a fluke," said Sylvia Leyva Martinez, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie. "Florida is now shaping national solar growth."

Many engaged couples in the U.S. are relying on forms of credit to pay for their wedding. Experts say that approach can be smart, if done carefully. Otherwise, a credit card can be a slippery slope, leading couples to walk down the aisle with long-lasting and expensive debt, experts say. Read more: cnb.cx/4l4KXS4

Curating your fitness routine to better match your personality could help you get the most out of your workouts, a new study shows. The paper, published last month in Frontiers in Psychology, shows that certain personality traits may indicate which type of exercises people enjoy and how likely they are to stick with them. "We found that our personality can influence how we engage with exercise, and particularly which forms of exercise we enjoy the most," Flaminia Ronca, one of the study's co-authors and an associate professor at University College London, said in a press release.

How much space you can get for a monthly rent payment of $1,500 depends entirely on where you live. In Manhattan, New York, it's an average of 216 square feet — roughly the size of a bedroom. But in Wichita, Kansas, the same amount will get you an average of 1,329 square feet — enough for a multi-room apartment or even a modest house, according to RentCafe. The rankings are based on average rent and apartment size data for March 2025, from real estate data platform Yardi Matrix, which is operated by the same parent company as RentCafe. The ranking used U.S. Census Bureau estimates to define the 100 most populous cities in the contiguous U.S.

In 2017, Doug Barnard, a college student at the time, took a trip to India with his mom. The experience was so impactful that it eventually inspired him to become a full-time traveler—a path he didn't know was possible for him. "Going to India was an eye-opening experience for me. It was the first time I'd been to some place so foreign, so stimulating and for me it was this epiphany that I needed to experience more," Barnard tells CNBC Make It. "The most exciting part was talking to the people and seeing how things work. The immersion was what really got me."