Long seen as women’s work, childcare is underpaid and considered a private matter for families – not government
In 2021, Bri Adams was pregnant with her first child and began signing up for waitlists for childcare – eight, to be exact. She was thrilled when she found a spot, but was quickly horrified when the childcare shut down abruptly.
It “kind of broke my brain a bit”, said Adams, a 34-year-old tech director from Falls Church, Virginia. Scrambling again, she found a new location close to the family’s home.
Donald Trump has launched a mobile phone service and $499 gold smartphone, the latest monetization of his presidency by a family business empire now run by his sons.
The Trump Organization unveiled Trump Mobile on Monday with a $47.45 monthly plan – both the service name and price referencing Trump as the 47th president. The company will also sell a gold-cased “T1” smartphone in September etched with the American flag.
Staff tell Guardian ripped-off Americans will have ‘nowhere to turn’ if Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is undone
Donald Trump’s bid to gut the top US consumer watchdog has left the agency unable to protect consumers amid mounting fears of recession, according to workers.
For months the Trump administration has pushed to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and fire the vast majority of its workforce. Ripped-off Americans will have “nowhere to turn” if it succeeds, staff told the Guardian.
The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a majority of families
There was a moment, just before the pandemic, when Lisset Sanchez thought she might have to drop out of college because the cost of keeping her three children in daycare was just too much.
Even with support from the state, she and her husband were paying $800 a month – about half of what Sanchez and her husband paid for their mortgage in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Ben Affleck is an award-winning actor and director.
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images
Rich people often fear their kids will grow up to be spoiled, entitled, and ungrateful.
Ben Affleck said he keeps his teenager grounded by reminding him: “I have the money, you’re broke.”
Shaquille O’Neal, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Tucker, and Warren Buffett have echoed that sentiment.
Many wealthy people wrestle with how to avoid raising spoiled, entitled brats. When Ben Affleck‘s 13-year-old son, Samuel, showed interest in a pair of $6,000 sneakers, the “Air” actor used a classic line to give him a reality check.
“You like those because they’re expensive,” the movie star said as Samuel admired a pair of Dior Air Jordan 1 shoes at the Got Sole sneaker convention earlier this month. The comments surfaced in a video posted to the Got Sole Instagram account.
When his son protested that he’s always liked how they look, Affleck quipped, “That’s a lot of lawns you gotta mow there.”
The “Gone Girl” lead and “Argo” director said in an “Access Hollywood” interview this week that telling someone they’ll need to mow a lawn means “all of a sudden they don’t want those shoes anymore.”
“There’s always some grift why I need to be buying,” Affleck continued. “I’m like, bruh, you do not need $1,000 shoes. He’s like, ‘We have the money.’ I’m like, ‘I have the money — you’re broke.’”
Mine, not yours
The two-time Oscar winner is the latest celebrity to issue a reminder that their vast fortunes belong to them, and not their children. They typically want to instill in their kids a work ethic and drive to earn what they want in life. They don’t want them to be lazy, not appreciate the value of money, and take it for granted that whatever they want will be given to them.
Along similar lines, Warren Buffett wrote last year that “hugely wealthy parents should leave their children enough so they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing.”
Basketball icon Shaquille O’Neal said on the “Earn Your Leisure” podcast in 2021 that he frequently tells his kids, “We ain’t rich. I’m rich.”
The former Los Angeles Lakers center added that if one of them wants him to invest in a business, they have to present it to him and he’ll decide if it makes financial sense: “I’m not giving you nothing.”
Shaquille O’Neal with his sons Shaqir and Shareef.
Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Turner Sports
Similarly, comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld told Kevin Hart during a “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” episode that if his children ask him if they’re rich, he replies, “I am, you’re not.”
“Rush Hour” star and comedian Chris Tucker made a similar joke in his “Chris Tucker Live” standup special for Netflix in 2015. He quipped that his family members quit their jobs after learning he was making millions of dollars a year, and mimicked them chanting, “We rich! We rich! We ain’t gotta do shit!”
Tucker’s response was, “Y’all ain’t rich, I’m rich. Y’all better get your jobs back before it’s too late.”
Chris Rock reminded his relatives that he was rich, but they were not.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for BET
The pointed reminder about who makes the money in a family dates back at least three decades to “The Cosby Show.”
“None of this would have happened if we weren’t so rich,” complains Vanessa Huxtable in one episode.
“Let me get something straight, okay,” her father says. “Your mother and I are rich. You have nothing.”
Affleck riffed on a timeless reminder with a rich history to check his son’s privilege and keep him grounded. Whether it will work is another question.
The offers and details on this page may have updated or changed since the time of publication. See our article on Business Insider for current information.
The Rocket Visa Signature® Card earns 5% cash back on all purchases — but only if you redeem those rewards toward the closing costs on your new home, and as long as your loan is through Rocket Mortgage. Furthermore, you can only redeem a maximum of 800,000 Rocket Points, or $8,000, per new mortgage loan.
Meanwhile, new homebuyers who participate in Bilt Rewards can earn 1 Bilt Point per $2 on the total cost of a new home — as long as their real estate agent works under Bilt’s partner brokerage eXp Realty. Bilt Rewards is the company behind the popular Bilt Mastercard®, which lets renters pay rent on a credit card without incurring a transaction fee.
Bilt Members can also redeem Bilt Points toward a down payment on any home, so this double benefit can be worth a good chunk of change.
Both cards offer a tantalizing proposition for prospective homebuyers, many of whom find the American dream of home ownership more difficult than ever. But both cards also have some real limitations, since the savings only apply when you work with Rocket Mortgage or an eXp agent (or both).
The good news is you don’t need a specialized card to save money as you prepare to buy a home. The best cash-back credit cards earn up to 5% on common household expenses.
Rocket Visa Signature® Card
The Rocket Visa Signature® Card is a great option for prospective homebuyers who plan to finance their purchase with a Rocket Mortgage loan.
This no-annual-fee credit card earns 5 points for every $1 spent on all qualifying purchases — a generous rate that outstrips most of the standard cash back credit cards, since none earn 5% back on everything.
Rocket Points vary in value based on how you redeem them. They’re worth the most — 1 cent apiece — when redeemed toward closing costs, down payment, or buying down your interest rate on a new home purchase financed through a Rocket Mortgage loan.
You can redeem up to $8,000 (800,000 Rocket Points) per new Rocket Mortgage transaction. Using your rewards this way can save you tens of thousands of dollars in compound interest savings over the lifetime of your mortgage.
Rocket Points are less valuable when redeemed in other ways. They’re worth just 0.4 cents apiece, or the equivalent of 2% cash back per dollar spent, when used to pay down your existing mortgage principle.
And if you redeem your rewards as a statement credit on your card balance, they’re worth a measly 0.25 cents apiece, or the equivalent of 1.25% cash back.
Bilt Rewards
The Bilt Mastercard® is already becoming a household name for renters looking to maximize credit card rewards, and you can continue that relationship as you enter your homebuying era.
This $0-annual-fee credit card () won’t cost you an additional fee to keep long-term, and earns great rewards on dining, travel, and other expenses especially on Bilt Rent Day, when most purchases, excluding rent, earn double points, up to 1,000 points each month. Note that you must make at least five transactions per statement period to earn points.
You don’t even need to be a Bilt credit cardholder to earn Bilt Points — simply joining the Bilt Rewards program is sufficient. All Bilt Rewards program members can earn 1 point per $2 spent on a new home purchased through an eXp Realty real estate agent.
The best way to maximize the value of your Bilt Points is by using them for travel. But if you’re buying a home, you can also redeem any points you’ve already earned up until this point as a credit toward your down payment, at a respectable value of 1.5 cents per point.
If you buy a $500,000 house, you’d earn 250,000 Bilt Points. However, you wouldn’t be able to claim that windfall until your purchase is complete, since you can’t redeem points you don’t yet own. Once the Bilt Points from your home purchase reach your account, however, you can redeem them for travel, credit toward future credit card statements, and more.
Since there’s no cap on how much you can earn on home purchase prices or redeem, Bilt members can come out way ahead with this program, especially because there aren’t any annual fees to factor in. And if you happen to utilize Rocket Mortgage for your loan as well, you could double-dip on both sets of savings: $8,000 in Rocket Mortgage credit, plus however many points you earn from your home purchase.
What really matters when buying a house
A standard-issue cash-back credit card may sound uninteresting when compared to the Rocket card’s 5% cash back in mortgage savings on everything, or 2 Bilt Points per dollar spent on a new house. But the most important aspect of buying a house is making sure that the home — and the homebuying process — is right for you.
In the grand scheme of things, $8,000 or even 200,000 credit card points is small potatoes compared to the life-changing investment you’re about to make. Don’t allow the excitement of earning rewards distract you from finding a real estate agent you jive with and shopping around for a trustworthy lender with the best mortgage interest rates available to you.
Cash-back credit cards have their pros and cons, but they generally share a common trait: They’re easy to use. Whether you opt for a flat-rate 2% cash back credit card or choose one that earns 5% cash back on bonus categories, what you earn is what you keep.
Many cash-back credit cards also don’t charge annual fees, so you can keep your card open for years without worrying how much it costs. This is especially valuable leading up to a new home purchase, when you need to maintain your credit score to buy a house and to get the best mortgage rate.
If you’re wondering whether you can use your credit card to pay your mortgage, however, the answer is typically no. Lenders generally frown upon using debt to pay off other debt — your credit card represents a line of credit and your mortgage is a fixed monthly payment on the sum of what you owe for your house.
But some credit card issuers are warming up to the idea, so stay tuned for new developments in credit cards that can be used for paying mortgage payments in months to come. Bilt claims it will begin allowing program members to pay mortgages in 2025, while new fintech company Mesa has an invite-only waitlist for a credit card designed for paying mortgages.
In the meantime, you can use a service like Plastiq to pay your mortgage — or most check-based payments, for that matter — using your credit card, as long as you’re willing to pay a processing fee around 2.9% per transaction.
When every penny counts, make sure your credit card rewards fit your lifestyle and your needs — not the other way around.
