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We’re fast entering the season of giving, with the year-end calendar crammed with one holiday after another. But in an uncertain economy, it’s important to get your giving right.

That means avoiding the usual waste, like plastic toys that will get ignored or broken or discarded within days. In fact, last year Americans spent more than $10 billion on unwanted gifts, according to a survey by Finder.

Instead, think about a gift with a more durable future: Something with the potential to grow, to be used for an important life goal down the line, and to teach valuable lessons along the way.

In other words, money.

Not the most sentimental of gifts, sure. But if you can use the holidays to teach young adults about how to handle money – saving, spending, budgeting, investing – you are equipping them with skills they will be able to use for the rest of their lives.

To really impart some financial lessons, it’s going to need to be more than a throwaway gesture like $20 from Grandma’s purse. So what’s the best way to pass along lasting money smarts? Current, a consumer fintech banking platform, shares a few ideas:

Open their first accounts. If they don’t have accounts already, this kind of basic financial infrastructure is where you need to start. Ideally you’re looking for a spending account that won’t sock them with charges — so seek out those with no annual fees, no overdraft fees, no minimum balance requirements, and an extensive ATM network. Since young adults don’t have much of a credit record yet, look for an account that also has a credit building feature

Youth IRAs. You might not realize it, but it is possible for young adults to open a Roth IRA. Getting an early jump on saving might not seem like a big deal now, but fast forward to their own retirement years, and the difference could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“I often recommend using a Roth IRA to teach teenagers the process of saving,” says Brian Cody of Cody Financial Advisors in Gillette, N.J. “The teens can spend some of what they earn over the summer, while the parents match those earnings with a Roth IRA contribution. It’s one of the most effective ways I’ve seen to get young people excited about working, saving, and developing lifelong financial habits.”

The rule here is to open such an account, they have to have some earned income: That could be from part-time or summer work that issues them W-2s or 1099s, or it could be from more informal arrangements, like babysitting or mowing lawns (keep records in case the IRS wants it).

College savings. The holidays are an ideal time to top up kids’ 529 plans — not just for parents, but grandparents as well. According to the College Board, average annual tuition for four-year public in-state colleges is now $11,950; out-of-state rises to $31,880; and private to $45,000. So you want to st

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When something goes wrong with your otherwise functioning home, you might feel a bit like Clark Griswold — with a perfectly relaxing Christmas vacation spoiled by a houseful of annoying relatives and their destructive tendencies. A properly maintained home, on the other hand? Well, it’s like a one-year membership to the Jelly of the Month Club: a gift that keeps on giving.

Most of the home-destroying hijinks in the classic “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” are, thankfully, just for laughs. And while your holiday guests may not tear your house to pieces like the Griswold family, it can’t hurt to get your home in tip-top shape so it’s ready for anything.

HomeServe shares nine lessons this iconic Christmas comedy film could teach you about holiday — and everyday — home maintenance.

Banish Pests

Unless you’re cutting down the tree from the neighbor’s yard and bringing it directly into your living room, you probably don’t have to worry about your holiday decorations prompting a squirrel attack. However, even pre-cut trees purchased from a lot can carry some stowaways. Spiders and insects such as aphids, bark beetles and praying mantises can hitch a ride into your home inside or on top of what was once their home.

Don’t spray your tree for bugs; that can make an already flammable object even more prone to catching fire. Instead, just treat them as you see them. Most are small enough that you can vacuum them up or remove them with a paper towel.

Water Your Christmas Tree

Lest you want one lit cigar to light up the whole, dry fir tree, you’re going to want to make sure your tree is well-hydrated. Christmas trees cause about 160 home fires per year, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Dried-out trees make the best kindling for a house fire. Well-watered trees will also last longer and lose fewer needles than their dehydrated counterparts.

Use a tree stand with a water reservoir and keep it filled. Miracle-Gro recommends submerging the cut trunk of the tree in at least two inches of water. Oh, and keep the pets away from it — it’s not a water bowl, after all!

Handle Sewage Properly

Ideally, you won’t be handling sewage at all this holiday season. But if you have guests staying in a camper parked in your driveway, now’s a good time to be reminded about where their waste can go, and where it can’t. Of course, there’s the famous scene where Cousin Eddie empties this RV’s chemical toilet into a suburban neighborhood storm drain. This violates not just his neighbors’ noses, but also (likely) local laws. See, storm drains are meant to divert relatively clean rainwater and snowmelt back to freshwater sources like rivers and lakes. To empty an RV blackwater tank, you

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Between 2019 and mid-2025, the housing market in America has rewritten what it means to build home equity. From small Southern metros to massive coastal abodes, homeowners have seen property values soar or stagnate depending on where they live. To find out which markets saw the biggest gains over this six-year time period, Splitero analyzed Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) home price index data from both 2019 and 2025 to measure annual changes in home prices. This story provides aggregated snapshots of how much equity the standard homeowner has gained in the last several years.

Key Takeaways

• Atlantic City, Knoxville, Athens (GA), and Hilton Head are among the biggest winners, each adding roughly 90% in home equity for the typical homeowner.
• Fifteen major metros, including San Francisco and Lake Charles, lagged badly with home price increases under 40%, barely growing despite already-high values.
• The Southern Atlantic corridor, from Florida through the Carolinas into Tennessee, now dominates housing wealth growth; 16 out of the 22 metro areas with house price indexes increasing above 80% from 2019 to 2025 are positioned in this region.

The equity growth leaders

The biggest winners across the country weren’t in the traditional power markets for real estate. It was instead mid-sized metros in the South and Southeast regions of the country that dominated. Fueled by factors including pandemic-era migration, remote work flexibility, and relatively affordable starting prices, the following snapshot compiling data from the FHFA tells a unique story. 22 of the 233 most populous metro areas saw their house price indexes increase above 80% from 2019 to 2025.

Splitero

Atlantic City-Hammonton in New Jersey tops the list with a staggering 97.8% jump in home values between Q2 2019 and Q2 2025. Hammonton average prices were a little over $300,000 and Atlantic City prices were a little over $200,000 in Q2 2019, resulting in an average home price for the areas of around $220,000. This means that the 97.8% average jump results in an increase of roughly $215,000 in equity for owners in that market.

Right on the heels of this region are Knoxville, Tennessee (95.2%), Athens, Georgia (92.9%), and Hilton Head Island, South Carolina (90.7%). Again, pandemic-era relocations met limited supply in these markets. Based on the same data, average home prices in Knoxville hovered around $190,000 back in 2019, resulting in roughly $180,000 in new equity for homeowners in

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It is a common question and one that makes perfect sense. If the landlord is insured, surely that coverage extends to the tenant and everything inside the unit if the worst happens. A tenant has a roof over their head, a lease is signed and the landlord’s policy is often seen as a magical protective shield for the entire property.

Well the cold hard truth is that a landlord-provided protective shield has a major blind spot on the renter and the entire life the renter has built inside the walls of the unit.

The landlord’s insurance policy is purely a business decision designed to protect their investment in the physical building itself. Critically it absolutely does not cover the renter’s personal belongings, their temporary living expenses or provide the renter with any protection from personal liability claims. To be crystal clear, the landlord’s policy insures the house, while renters insurance insures the life the tenant has built inside the home.

In this story, Cheap Insurance explains how essential this protection really is. If a renter chooses not to secure their own renters insurance, they are walking a financial tightrope without a safety net potentially facing total financial ruin from a sudden unexpected event.

Landlord Insurance vs. Renters Insurance

To truly understand why a renter needs their own renters insurance coverage, the purpose of each distinct policy must be known. The policies are not interchangeable; they are two completely separate financial safeguards with distinct purposes.

What Landlord’s Policy Covers The Building

The landlord’s insurance, often called a dwelling fire policy, is laser-focused on the property owner’s interests.

• The structure: This is the core coverage. It pays to repair or rebuild the physical dwelling, the walls, the roof, the fixed plumbing the landlord-owned appliances like the stove or built-in AC unit if they are damaged by a covered peril like fire hail or a burst pipe.
• Landlord’s liability: This protects the landlord if found legally responsible for an injury on the property due to landlord negligence for example a visitor trips on a broken step the landlord knew about but failed to fix.
• Loss of rent income: If the property becomes uninhabitable after a covered event, this helps the landlord recoup the lost rental income while repairs are being made.

What the Landlord’s Policy Doesn’t Cover: The Renter’s Things

This is the critical part. Landlord insurance explicitly does not cover the renter’s interests, which is where renters insurance becomes essential.

• Personal belongings: A renter’s clothes, electronics, furniture, books, irreplaceable family photos, and anything else owned inside the unit are not covered by the landlord’s p