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“Financial Flexing” Is a Top New Gen Z Money Habit. Are You Guilty of It?

If you’re Gen X or older, your parents or grandparents likely lived through multiple wars and the Great Depression, and most of them were probably frugal, modest and prudent. But things have changed. Even through major world conflicts, a global pandemic and an economic roller coaster, today’s young adults are just built differently. Gen Z is the generation that includes people born between 1997 and 2012, and their current age range spans from 13 to 28. “ Gen Z grew up online , so their image on social media has always been part of their identity,” says Alex King, founder of Generation Money, a financial education platform. From hosting Instagrammable parties that cost attendees thousands of dollars to buying expensive workout clothes to wear in a fancy gym, Gen Z is all about image. From the outside, it looks like all these young people are earning six figures , living in luxury apartments and funding a lavish lifestyle without a care in the world, but Kristy Kim, founder and CEO of ...

It’s Not Your Imagination, You Are Getting More Emails Than Ever from Stores. Here’s How You Can Put an End to Them for Good

Everyone who uses email has to deal with inbox clutter at some point. But if you’ve noticed an increase in marketing spam lately, you’re not alone. Retailers and advertisers rely heavily on email marketing nowadays, and it ramps up around the holiday shopping season . At some point, we’ve all added something to an online shopping cart without buying it, only to find that we’ve been added to the retailer’s mailing list and are now receiving unwanted marketing emails and annoying “cart reminders.” Modern inbox clutter isn’t just a nuisance that makes you waste time deleting emails, unsubscribing from mailing lists (which you probably didn’t sign up for in the first place) or flagging certain senders as spam. It can also make it harder to find actually important messages, such as bills or account notices. But you don’t have to resign yourself to a chaotic inbox. Proton, a company perhaps best known for their privacy-forward Proton Mail email service, just published their Spam Watch 2025...

Here’s What Those Gen Z Dating Terms Actually Mean

If you’ve been seeing terms like rizz , soft launch , delusionship or sneaky link float through your feed—or you’ve listened in on a group of teens and 20-somethings—and realized you’re not really sure what those words mean, you’re in good company. Even those of us who are chronically online can miss a few updates. Dating slang moves fast, and Gen Z is leading the linguistic revolution. To learn what Gen Z dating terms  are on the rise (and what they mean), I went straight to the source: actual high school and college students and young professionals who live and breathe this vocabulary . I put out a call on social media and contacted all my friends and relatives with Gen Z kids. To my delight (and surprise), 52 individuals between the ages of 13 and 28 responded to my survey, with definitions, explanations and (occasionally) gentle corrections. But understanding the slang is only half the story. To decode what this language actually means for modern relationships, I turned t...

Is It Really Rude to Take Your Assigned Appetizer Home After a Party?

In  Reader’s Digest ’s new series, “Is It Really Rude to…,” Charlotte Hilton Andersen tackles low-stakes etiquette questions from everyday life using a combination of her common sense and vast knowledge from writing 50-plus etiquette stories for this site. Have a situation you can’t stop ruminating on? Email us at  advice@tmbi.com . Last weekend, I went to a big work party , the kind where everyone signs up to bring something. Being the responsible, health-conscious adult that I am, I showed up with a vegetable salad. But not just any vegetable salad. This was my favorite hearts of palm salad, a recipe that’s been in my family for generations. It’s got crunchy water chestnuts, tiny baby corn (which I always nibble sideways like I’m reenacting Big ), marinated artichoke hearts, olives, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and hearts of palm, which I believe—if I’m understanding botany correctly—are the actual beating hearts of baby palm trees? Anyway, I set my glorious salad out on the...

The 22 Weirdest Driving Laws in the Country

Most driving laws are pretty standard: Stop at stop signs. Don’t drink and drive. Pass on the left. You know, the ones you memorized for your driver’s test. But as it turns out, there are others you probably aren’t familiar with—and in some cases, they’re strange. Very strange. In fact, weird driving laws are found throughout the country. These regulations go beyond the usual traffic rules and prohibit some highly specific situations—many that aren’t typically associated with driving at all. We all took driver’s ed, and you may think you know the basics. But trust us when we say that some of these dumb laws will come as a shock to you. Are you breaking any of these strange driving laws? Keep reading to find out. How we chose the weirdest driving laws We scoured the internet looking for weird driving laws (or driving-adjacent laws) in each state, then narrowed it down to the 22 most bizarre. We consulted statewide laws and local ordinances. As it turns out, there are tons of urban...

This Is the U.S. City with the Worst Traffic—And It’s Not L.A.!

Anyone who has to regularly commute in one of America’s major metropolitan areas knows that heavy traffic during the morning and evening rush hour can be a soul-killer. There’s nothing worse than watching your 8 a.m. meeting time come and go while you’re stuck behind a belching semi. Now, a new study from traffic data firm INRIX tallies just how costly congestion really is in both time and money. Given their densities, I expected my home city of New York or its West Coast counterpart, Los Angeles, to rank among the worst. Instead, I was surprised to find that another metro, much smaller than the Big Apple and even the City of Angels, claimed the unwelcome title of America’s most congested city. Even more surprising? This city ranked third worst in the world, beating out the likes of notoriously traffic-clogged London and Paris. Ahead, we’ll discuss the report, and if you live in this major metro, you’re probably already nodding along in solidarity. Read on to find out which cities ...