Category: Business

• Jim Ward, 61, said he "escaped" to Tennessee after living in Texas for 20 years.
• Ward said he was ultimately tired of Texas' hot climate and relatively higher property taxes.
• Ward had to pay more for his Tennessee house but loves having easy access to hikes in the mountains.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jim Ward, a 61-year-old who works in cybersecurity and moved from Dallas, Texas, to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2022. The essay, which also incorporates quotes from emails between Ward and BI, has been edited for length and clarity.

I am not a native Texan, but I have lived there during three different time frames of my life: Houston from 1991 to 1993, Dallas from 1994 to 1995, and then Dallas again from 2002 to 2022.

Texas has never really factored into any of my life plans, but job and family situations just kept pulling me there.

When I relocated to Texas in 2002, I intended to stay for only four to five years so that I could attend a graduate school program in Dallas and then move elsewhere. But my oldest had just started middle school, and had become very active in school and our church. I did not want to uproot my kids, so we stayed.

After 20 years of living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, my wife and I finally escaped to Tennessee two years ago.

Texas has its pros and cons

Over the years, I have developed a love-hate relationship with Texas.

There are definitely a lot of positives about living in the state. For instance, it has many great public schools and restaurants, especially Tex-Mex ones. And from a financial standpoint, its biggest advantage is that there is no state income tax — though that is more than offset by property taxes.

There are problems though, like oppressive heat and humidity, a lack of natural beauty, and enjoyable outdoor activities.

There's also a lot of distance between key destinations, causing far drives.

It's way too hot in Texas and there's not much to do

One of my primary problems with Texas is its climate and weather.

It gets quite hot during the summer, and throughout the year there are also severe ice and hailstorms. Sometimes it can result in periods of extended power outages during both summer and winter months.

As far as geography goes, in the Dallas area, the terrain is predominantly flat with few trees. Consequently, outdoor activities are limited, and there are few opportunities for hiking and camping.

The lack of foliage also means there is minimal shade. Even activities like running are affected by the relentless heat. I always had to go early in the morning or later in the evening.

That said, there are many lakes, and people do like to go boating or water skiing.

Texas has a great tech scene

Just about every major corporation in the US has a presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — all of them with their own internal technology needs.

As a result, there are numerous technology companies, particularly in cities like Las Colinas and Plano. This makes DFW a great place for tech workers because there are many professional networking opportunities, such as associations, events, and conferences.

While living in Texas, I had a job that required a lot of traveling. DFW's central location was a plus because it was convenient for air travel.

The area has two major commercial passenger airports: Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field Airport.

Depending on your destination, numerous air carriers offer direct nonstop flights to almost anywhere, greatly reducing travel time — though it may limit your frequent-flyer miles.

Taxes are higher in Texas but the homes are more affordable

We owned and lived in four different houses across Texas, while also investing in two houses in Irving and Fort Worth, which we rehabilitated and rented out. We sold both of those rental houses shortly before we left Texas.

The last home we owned and lived in was in Highland Village, a suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth, which was our favorite. My wife and I purchased our 3,600-square-foot home in 2015, and it appreciated by 50% over six years.

Our property taxes only went up by about $1,000 since we purchased our home, but were still significantly higher than in the previous states I lived in, Virginia and North Carolina.

The real estate market favored us when selling the Highland Village house, but we weren't as lucky when purchasing a new house in Tennessee. We ended up buying a home that was 1,000 square feet smaller but 30% more expensive than the house we sold in Texas.

We chose Tennessee because our two daughters moved here. We live in a suburban area fairly close to downtown Knoxville. We're in an apartment as we wait to move into our new house.

Our quality of life has improved in Tennessee

There are certainly several similarities between Tennessee and Texas, but I also see a lot of differences.

For instance, while the summers can be quite hot here, the weather doesn't stay that way for long. Tennessee actually experiences all four seasons.

In Knoxville, there are a lot of the same amenities that you might find in a city like Dallas, but there are also a lot more outdoor activities.

My wife and I have really enjoyed hiking and being near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park — the trailhead is about 50 miles from our home in Knoxville. We visit the national park numerous times throughout the year.

Knoxville is a sizable city, but it's nowhere near the size of Dallas or Houston, so that's been a big change. Even still, we've enjoyed living here so far.

I never really enjoyed downtown Houston or Dallas. But in Knoxville, we go downtown almost every weekend — there's a lot you can do without leaving the city.

It is very "walkable" and easily accessible, with numerous dining and entertainment options as well as frequent special events. We have season tickets for Broadway musicals at the Tennessee Theatre.

While there are some things about Texas I miss, like the abundance of air travel options and its restaurant scene, I do wish we had moved to Tennessee a little earlier.

• UC Berkeley sees a 48% jump in first-year applications to study computer science.
• Despite generative AI advances, students are eager to pursue computer science careers.
• Human developers remain essential for creating something new.

One of the most persistent concerns around generative AI is whether the technology will put workers out of a job. This idea has particularly caught on in the context of software coding.

Github Copilot can write a lot of code these days, so is it even worth studying computer science now? That's been a question on the minds of math-minded high schoolers since ChatGPT burst on the scene in 2022.

There's a new data point that helps answer at least part of this question: Students are still lining up in droves to take computer science in college.

An eye-popping data point

Let's take The University of California Berkeley as an example, as this college at or near the top for computer science.

First-year applications to UC Berkeley's College of Computing, Data Science, and Society CDSS increased 48% this year. There were 14,302 (non-transfer) applications for these CDSS majors in the Fall 2024 incoming class, versus 9,649 the previous year.

For context, the number of first-year applications to UC Berkeley as a whole didn't change much from a year earlier.

This was announced last week by Professor Jennifer Chayes, the dean of Berkeley's College of CDSS. She popped these eye-popping stats during a fireside chat with Governor Gavin Newsom and Stanford Professor Fei-Fei Li at the at the Joint California Summit on Generative AI in San Francisco.

There's a role for human software developers

Afterwards, I got in touch with John DeNero, Computer Science Teaching Professor at UC Berkeley, to talk about this some more.

He's also chief scientist at Lilt, a generative AI startup, and he was previously a researcher at Google working on Google Translate, one of the first successful AI-powered consumer apps.

"Students express some concern that generative AI will affect the software engineering job market, especially for entry-level positions, but they are still excited about careers in computing," he wrote in an email to Business Insider. "I tell them that I think many of the challenging aspects of software development can't be performed reliably by generative AI at this point, and that I expect there will still be a central role for human software developers long into the future."

AI can't do new things very well

Generative AI is currently very good at replicating parts of software programs that have been written many times before, DeNero explained.

That includes computer science homework assignments! See BI's coverage on how much ChatGPT is used to cheat on homework.

What if you want to create something new? This is where smart human coders will still be needed. (This makes logical sense as AI models are trained on data. If that information doesn't exist yet or it's not part of the training dataset, the models often get in trouble).

Generative AI "requires a lot of thoughtful human intervention to produce something new, and all consequential software development projects involve quite a bit of novelty," DeNero said. "That's the hard and interesting part of computing that currently requires clever and well-trained people."

"Generative AI can speed up the more mundane parts of software development, and software developers tend to adopt efficiency tools quickly," he added.

What happens at Lilt?

This applies to what's happening at Lilt, which is building an AI platform for translators.

Google Translate first came out 18 years ago. And still, human linguists have jobs and are relied upon when translations are really important. For instance, you can use Google Translate to read a Japanese train timetable maybe, but would you use the app to translate your business's most important contract without having a human expert check it? Probably not.

"To reliably produce publication-quality translations, human expert linguists are still at the center of the process, but by using Lilt's task-specific generative AI models, those experts are much faster, more accurate, and more consistent," DeNero said. "As a result, more text gets translated at higher quality into more languages."

He expects this same pattern to play out in software development: A small team of highly trained human developers will have an even greater capacity to build useful high-quality software.

"And so, future Berkeley graduates will have plenty of opportunities to use their computing skills to improve the world," DeNero said. "Hopefully some more of them will come work for Lilt."

• Israel is considering mounting rotary cannons on armored vehicles to shoot down drones.
• Israel may put the Vulcan cannon used on F-16s to an armored infantry carrier.
• Ukraine uses autocannons and heavy machine guns to target incoming drones.

Ukraine and Israel are exploring cost-effective ways of countering drones as they both face repeated attacks from their determined adversaries.

Israel is exploring the feasibility of mounting the six-barrel M61 Vulcan cannons found on American fighter jets atop armored vehicles deployed in the country's northern border regions with Lebanon. Iran-backed Hezbollah has tripled the number of drone strikes against north Israel in the past three months, forcing Israel to seek an effective counter without resorting to missiles.

Israel has one of the world's most advanced air defense networks but is still having trouble countering these drones. The M61 may prove a viable, cost-effective solution for point defense of armored columns and ground troops.

Ukraine is at the forefront of drone defenses. Its troops have devised a novel solution for countering Russia's Iran-supplied Shahed drones. Kyiv is using a vast network of sensors to detect Russia's low-flying drones and passing targeting data to heavy machine guns and flak cannons mounted on vehicles throughout the country that then attempt to shoot them down.

There are similarities between Ukraine's strategy and Israel's new approach, said Federico Borsari, a defense expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

"In principle, yes, this effort resembles what Ukraine has done with the creation of mobile anti-drone teams with heavy machine guns, powerful searchlights, and other sensors to counter Shaheds and other low-altitude slow-flying drones," Borsari told Business Insider.

"This type of capability — which is relatively simple in nature — will be relevant for the counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) task in the future but is not the only one, and it will be integrated into a broader set of other capabilities," Borsari said.

Ukraine needs a cost-effective solution to defeat the thousands of Russian one-way drone attacks that have forced Kyiv to expend large quantities of its expensive air defense missiles to shoot down. German-supplied Gepards, a cannon design dating back to the 1960s, have proven highly effective in countering Russia's drones and are a cheaper solution than more modern air defenses like the NASAMS; each NASAMS missile costs about $1 million. However, Ukraine faces severe difficulties acquiring more ammunition for the Gepard automatic cannons.

"I think the Israelis are likely seeing what does and does not work in Ukraine — the key is to create an effective and relatively cheap defense against incoming drones, and Ukrainians are one of the leading developers in that area right now," Samuel Bendett, an expert in unmanned and robotic military systems at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Business Insider.

"Another aspect to consider is that such weapons may work against specific drone types but not others," Bendett said.

CEPA's Borsari believes the M61 cannon could be an "interesting solution" for countering certain drones.

"In principle, its use in both fixed and mobile applications is not new and is conceptually similar to many other anti-aircraft guns that have been used for counter-drone purposes in Ukraine," Borsari said.

"The integration with radar or electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) tracking sensors can certainly improve its accuracy, but this weapon is still intended for close-range C-UAS missions," Borsari added. "The radar-guided Phalanx close-in weapons system, for example, has been in use for decades by the navies of the US and other countries."

The M61 is carried by jet fighters like the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F/A-18 Hornet that can fire the 20mm rounds at targets up to nearly two miles away. It has the power and rate of fire to destroy incoming drones, but its cost-effectiveness turns on how many rounds it must shoot to do so.

"The longer the burst, the higher the cost per interception due to the use of more rounds," Borsari said, noting it costs $180,000 to fire the M61 for one minute, during which time it can fire 6,000 rounds.

"Furthermore, engaging faster drones could be difficult," Borsari said. "There are now short-range ground-launched missiles and guided rockets meant for C-UAS that cost around $40,000 each, along with reusable ones equipped with a high-power microwave payload (Coyote Block-3) to defeat swarms at short range."

"So, in general, the M61 can be a solution, but it's not the only one."

Israel previously integrated M168 Vulcan cannons and FIM-92 Stinger missiles on its Machbet short-range air defense system, which it developed in the 1990s based on the American M113 armored personnel carrier to defend infantry from air attack. Its present evaluation of the M61 may be the first step to developing something similar to deal with low-flying drones.

Interestingly, an unmanned Israeli M113 was reportedly sighted in southern Gaza in recent days.

Borsari believes the M113 is one type of vehicle that can be "repurposed" as an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) to defeat drones.

"Soon, UGVs will certainly be used in the C-UAS configuration and be progressively integrated into maneuver formations, although they won't necessarily be the standard mobile air defense capability," Borsari said.

"Rather, they will be part of a diverse and layered set of capabilities for C-UAS attached to ground formations, some crewed, some uncrewed, and equipped with different effectors — both kinetic and non-kinetic — including heavy automatic guns, short-range missiles, directed energy like high-power microwave, and electronic warfare."

• Jeremy Cullifer sold part of his backyard through startup BuildCasa for $100,000.
• The grocery wholesaler, 46, plans to use the money to upgrade his 70-year-old house.
• Cullifer said California's increasingly bad housing crisis was a big motive for splitting his lot.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jeremy Cullifer, 46, about his decision to sell a portion of his backyard through startup BuildCasa to both make money and contribute to solutions to California's affordable housing crisis. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

I've been in Sacramento my whole life.

I've been in my house for 19 years. I bought it through the family for $180,000 after my great-grandmother passed. She bought it in 1953.

It's a three-bedroom, one-bath house. It's 1,096 square feet on a quarter-acre lot. I have a moderate front yard that wraps around because it's a corner lot, and then a large backyard.

BuildCasa had put out a mailer to my mother — she lives in the same community on a different street.

She said, "You should give some thought to this. You don't do anything with your backyard and you're always complaining about affordable housing for people in Sacramento. You might as well be part of the solution instead of part of the problem."

I'm the only person I know in my peer group that owns a home. Everybody else is renting.

My son is about to get his first apartment, and it's $1,500 a month. It's insane. The supply of available housing is nowhere near the demand, so of course the prices just keep going up and up.

My daughter moved to New York City after she graduated college and struggles with affordable rent. That really was the biggest eye-opener to me.

I sold my backyard for $100,000

A couple of years ago, California Senate Bill 9, or SB 9 — which allows single-dwelling units to subdivide their property — was passed. My understanding is that the subdivision has to be at least 40% of the existing land in order to be eligible.

What BuildCasa is going to do is create a new property line for me, which is about 10 feet off my back porch, and then the remainder of the backyard would then become its own plot of land. It would become its own separate lot with its own separate address, and a developer would build a stacked duplex on it.

I was intrigued at the very beginning, and then I had a meeting with BuildCasa and did some research online. Then I talked to my mom, my brother, and an aunt and uncle — because it's been a family home since the '50s, so I didn't want to create family strife by changing the homestead.

They were indifferent. They were like, "What are you doing to the house?" Well, I'm not doing anything to the house. I'm just going to have less backyard.

BuildCasa laid out a whole bunch of options and let me decide what was best. They checked in with me five or six times to make sure it was actually something that I wanted to do — it was not just a knee-jerk reaction.

They laid out what was possible and a bunch of different paths. I picked what worked best for me, what I was most comfortable with. We ended up listing the property and letting people bid on it. I had a couple offers that I had rejected, and then we ended up partnering with a developer.

I sold it for $100,000, of which I expect to pocket $30,000. I'll have to pay around $35,000 to my mortgage holder — because of the loan-to-value amount is going to change, I'm probably going to have to pay down to my mortgage company to get that back-end ratio.

And then the remainder will be paying BuildCasa for all their time, effort, energy, knowledge, expertise, and going through the process.

I'm selling to the developer, and BuildCasa is facilitating both that relationship as well as going through all the red tape and the government requirements necessary to get the permits, go through the zoning changes, and all that kind of fun stuff.

Once you've divided and sold your property, there's no going back — unless you buy it out from somebody else, and that would be a financial nightmare.

The extra cash is nice, but I think more people will participate once the housing crisis gets worse

There were a number of reasons I did this.

Number one: maintenance and upkeep. I hate yard work, and now I'm going to have to do a lot less of it. That's pretty exciting.

Anybody who tells you they're just solely altruistic is lying to you.

Number two: the money I get from that sale, I'll be able to upgrade my house.

It's a 70-year-old home. It could use a new bathroom, it could use a new kitchen, and I'll be able to do that without financing it, which is pretty exciting. It'll improve my own personal living situation while still contributing to being a part of the solution for housing.

I talked to a few community members about what I'm doing. I've been here for a large portion of my life, so I know people pretty well. I didn't really have anybody who had any significant concerns I talked to.

I think the trend that has grown over the last 20 years of people buying property for investments and flipping them and continuing to raise the prices has really made it almost impossible for anybody less than the upper-middle class to buy a home.

At some point, there'll be a tipping point when people's kids can't buy a house or their nieces and nephews can't buy houses, or their best friend can't buy a home, and people will start to wake up to the scope of the problem.

We've had quite a few ADU-type buildings in the neighborhood, but I have not seen anybody do a subdivided lot in this community yet.

I would be shocked if it didn't catch on.

• Is YouTube's massive content library being used to train its AI models?
• CEO Neal Mohan says some creators' contracts with the platform mean their content could be used.
• He also said that if OpenAI trained Sora on the video within YouTube content, it would violate the terms of service.

Google is betting big on AI. AI models, including Google's Gemini, require a ton of training data to be competitive.

So a natural next question is: Is Google using its massive trove of YouTube videos to further those AI ambitions?

To help try to answer that question, we looked at what YouTube's CEO has said on the topic and what the platform's terms of service say, along with sending some clarifying questions to its parent company Google.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan was asked in an interview about the possibility of Google using YouTube's massive digital content library to train its AI models.

In April, The New York Times reported that "Like OpenAI, Google transcribed YouTube videos to harvest text for its A.I. models, five people with knowledge of the company's practices said. That potentially violated the copyrights to the videos, which belong to their creators."

Mohan said some YouTube creators have specific contracts that can allow their content to be used in AI training.

"Google uses YouTube content really in accordance again back with those terms of service or individual contracts that we might have with creators or uploaders to our platform," Mohan told Bloomberg's Emily Chang in a full-length interview, some of which was first published in April.

"Lots of creators have different sort of licensing contracts in terms of their content on our platform, lots of rightsholders do," he added.

Basically, it sounds like YouTube's CEO is saying that any AI training the company is doing with YouTube content, whether it's scraping video titles or transcripts or the video content itself, is being done in a fashion that honors the terms that content creators have agreed to.

"And so some portion of that YouTube corpus may be being used for those models, but it's going to be in concert with whatever the terms of service or the contract that that creator has signed before uploading their content to YouTube," Mohan said.

As The New York Times reported, Google may not be the only company looking to YouTube for AI training data.

In a March interview with The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati was asked if the company's AI text-to-video generation tool Sora was trained on YouTube content. She responded that she was "actually not sure about that."

Mohan says that, depending on what, if any, data OpenAI scraped, it could violate YouTube's terms of service.

"Our terms of service does allow for some YouTube content like the title of a video or the channel name or the creator's name to be scraped because that's how you enable the open web for that content to show up and maybe show up in other search engines or what have you and be available that way," Mohan told Chang.

"But it does not allow for things like transcripts or video bits to be downloaded and that is a clear violation of our TOS," he said.

YouTube's terms of service define content as "videos, audio (for example music and other sounds), graphics, photos, text (such as comments and scripts), branding (including trade names, trademarks, service marks, or logos), interactive features, software, metrics, and other materials whether provided by you, YouTube or a third-party."

The terms say uploaders "retain ownership rights in your Content" but also "grant certain rights to YouTube and other users of the Service."

"By providing Content to the Service, you grant to YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works, display and perform it) in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and Affiliates') business, including for the purpose of promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service," the terms say.

So while Mohan's remarks and YouTube's terms of service shed more light on the matter, it's still not entirely clear if and how the average YouTube video could be used by Google for AI training purposes.

Business Insider reached out to Google to ask if the company was training any of its AI models or products, such as its recently announced text-to-video generator, Veo, on the actual video files of YouTube content. We'll update this post if we hear back.

• Both new and used car prices are normalizing from pandemic peaks. But sales have flatlined, Bank of America says.
• Consumers are still priced out of the market due to rising interest and insurance costs.
• Some have turned to electric vehicles and hybrids, with EV loan originations rising steeply.

Car prices are falling back down to earth, in a steady decline from 2021 peaks. But that's no relief to consumer wallets, as car affordability remains low.

According to Bank of America, overall car sales have flatlined, despite post-pandemic recoveries ing both pricing and supply. 

During the COVID years, new car inventory slumped heavily, as stimulus-rich buyers looked for alternatives to public transport. Deepening the crunch were supply chain issues, which dented the availability of needed components for manufacturing. 

Used car purchases picked up as an alternative; as a result, used vehicle prices swung past those of new models.

But supply has since bottomed out, and inventory is showing slow signs of recovery. Despite this, buyers are not coming back as expected, with both new and used vehicle loan originations tumbling through 2023. That suggests that sales have plateaued.

"One reason for this flattening, we believe, is that the total 'all in' cost of ownership — including elevated interest rates, insurance, and maintenance costs — has become more expensive even as auto prices are declining," the bank wrote on Friday.

For instance, the note points out that car loan interest rates have jumped steeply since mid-2022. Citing a nearly four percentage point gain since then, it means that consumers would have to pay close to $100 more a month for the average new vehicle loan as of March.

And insurance costs are similarly trending upwards, having risen 22.6% year-over-year in April. According to the bank, premiums are likely to remain higher.

"In fact, Americans feel that vehicle maintenance and loans were two of the top five most difficult household expenses to afford as of April 2024," the report said, citing a recent Bank of America proprietary Market Landscape Insights study. "Nearly 45% of respondents reported difficulty affording these items, while the share was even starker for Gen Z at nearly 60%."

Owners are instead holding onto their vehicles longer, potentially as they wait out for affordability to improve. The average US vehicle age jumped 40% between 2001 and 2023, reaching 12.5 years.

For some consumers, this market has prompted interest in electric vehicles and hybrids, marked by a sharp rise in EV loan originations. But this trend has limits, Bank of America said, as buyers will need to face limited access to charging stations.

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.

• At the beginning of the year, I was facing nearly $30,000 in credit-card debt.
• I made a budget to pay it off in 18 months, but a big project let me pay off most of it in just one.
• This article is part of "My Financial Life," a series helping people live and spend better.

When December ticked into January, I knew it was time to face something I had been putting off: my credit-card debt. When I added it up, it was even worse than I'd thought. I owed $29,357, and my monthly payments alone were approaching $1,000.

If I were reading about this happening to anyone else, I'd probably think, "How did that happen?" The truth is, it was just too easy. I wasn't dining out regularly, shopping impulsively, or doing anything extravagant. I racked up most of the debt improving my house, which I bought as a foreclosure in need of serious repairs. Another major chunk was from a bucket-list trip to Italy with my sister and cousins for a wedding.

I didn't regret either of those things, but I was starting to feel suffocated. I vowed to pay off my debt as aggressively as I could.

I realized I was undermining my financial security

I've been freelancing for more than a decade, and I believe there's a lot of job security in being a contractor. If one client goes under, I can find another. Yet at the start of this year, I barely had any work.

This compounded my stress about my credit-card debt. A major change in my workflow could make it impossible to keep up with even the minimum payments. That much debt could easily snowball and overwhelm me, flattening my plans for a stable financial future.

Over the past five years, I've worked hard to create a stable career — and eventual retirement — as a freelancer. To me, that means being able to pay for my needs and wants comfortably while doing the type of work I love. I save monthly for retirement and budget diligently for quarterly taxes. I felt frustrated with myself when I realized I was leaking money on credit-card interest when it would otherwise help build my security.

I made a budget and planned to pay off the cards in 18 months

My resolve was strong, but I was still overwhelmed by the sheer amount of debt. I thought about a home-equity loan, but I didn't want to change unsecured debt for a loan that put my home on the line.

Instead, I put together a budget — something I'd been good about sticking to in the past — and laid out all my household expenses. With my low January income, I would just meet them. I decided to do a no-spend month, where I didn't purchase anything but essentials — not even coffee. I stopped using the cards and canceled any automatic charges and subscriptions linked to them.

I planned to stick to my budget and direct any extra income toward my debt. I thought it would take me about 18 months, which made me think twice about how much I really needed that trip to Italy or the new floors.

An unexpected project gave me a huge boost

I stuck to that plan for the first few weeks of the year. Then, in February, I had a huge windfall. An occasional client explained they had a massive project that needed to be finished that month. At first, I thought it would be about $5,000 of extra income, and I was thrilled to be able to pay off a chunk of my debt.

As the month went on, the project ramped up instead of slowing down, and I worked long hours daily. I felt glued to my computer, but by the end of the month, I had made almost $25,000 more than in a typical month. It all went to my credit cards.

I feel like I have a clean slate and a better understanding of my financial goals

Getting that project felt like a gift — a chance to right the wrong choices I'd made financially. I had $5,000 in credit-card debt left after that, and I'm following my budget to pay that off. That feels like a much more manageable amount, and I'll be able to pay it off this year.

Now, I'm determined to use my clean slate to set up a solid financial future, not one built on debt. I'm already planning to increase the amount of money I put in my retirement plan and tackle my remaining student loans next year.

Like most millennials, I can get distracted by the shiny spend-now, pay-later promise of credit cards. But after feeling overwhelmed by them and being lucky enough to escape, I know that the real goal is a future where I'm financially stable enough to fit major expenses into my cash flow, including the travel and home improvements that almost took me down. 

• A number of NATO members have relaxed restrictions on Ukraine using their weapons to strike Russia.
• The US and its allies have moved recently to allow Ukraine to hit targets across the border. 
• The policy changes could help Ukraine repel Russian glide-bomb strikes in and around Kharkiv city.

A handful of NATO countries have lifted the restrictions on Ukraine using their weapons to strike military targets inside Russia, giving Kyiv's forces new battlefield options that could help them defeat the highly destructive glide bombs they have so far struggled to stop.

Ukraine had long been barred from using Western-provided weapons to strike beyond its borders, as many of its partners — including the US — were concerned that allowing Kyiv to do so would lead Russian President Vladimir Putin to escalate the conflict even further.

Western positions on this issue have softened in the wake of Russia's ongoing offensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region, which began last month. Ukrainian officials argued the restrictions essentially prevented Kyiv from stopping the onslaught by giving Moscow space from which it could mass troops and launch glide bombs with impunity.

Multiple NATO countries have now either partially or completely lifted their restrictions. Facing increasing pressure from Ukraine and its European partners, the US finally changed its long-held stance last week, allowing Kyiv to strike inside Russia — but only in the area near the Kharkiv region.

Conflict analysts at the Institute for the Study of War think tank said "the provision of Western air-defense systems and the lifting of Western restrictions on Ukraine's ability to strike military targets in Russian territory with Western-provided weapons remain crucial for Ukraine to repel Russian glide bomb and missile strikes against Kharkiv City."

"These policy changes will allow Ukrainian forces to use Western-provided systems to strike Russian firing and staging areas in Russia's border areas and airspace," the analysts wrote in a June 2 assessment.

They said Ukraine's demonstrated ability to down Moscow's warplanes in front-line areas in past battles suggests Kyiv can likely find success again and protect Kharkiv city and the greater region from glide-bomb strikes launched from Russian airspace.

Glide bombs have been a threat to Ukrainian forces throughout much of the war, but they have proven to be a significant problem in recent weeks as Russia used them to pound Kharkiv city and the surrounding area. Russian aircraft can launch these standoff weapons from the safety of their own airspace and out of the reach of Ukraine's air-defense systems.

The only ways for Ukraine to defend troops and civilians from these bombs is to intercept the Russian aircraft before a launch or strike them on the ground. Kyiv has largely been unable to do this, but the policy changes — and the additional air-defense capabilities from the West — could help give the country more reach and resources to engage the threat.

"Ideally, launch aircraft would be caught on the ground, but as a fallback, a surface-to-air missile (SAM) system like Patriot — with a range of around 100 miles (depending on the target) — could be pushed closer to the front line to shoot down Russian aircraft before release," Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at RUSI, wrote in new commentary.

He said that these "so-called 'SAMbushes' involve removing launchers from around infrastructure and putting them at greater risk of attack, but pose a challenge to Russian aircraft which currently fire from airspace where they believe themselves to be safe."

Experts like Savill, however, have warned that the policy changes are not necessarily a silver bullet for Ukraine, and deep-strike capabilities alone won't be enough to win the war.

The Biden administration's relaxing of its policy also comes with its limitations. Ukraine can only conduct cross-border strikes in Russian territory right around the Kharkiv region, and it is still barred from conducting longer-range strikes with its most powerful US-provided missiles. Kyiv must instead rely on American-provided rockets and artillery.

Washington's guidance is "specifically focused on Ukraine's defense against military targets that are just over the border, and targets that Russia is using to physically launch offensives against Ukraine proper," White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday.

The US policy prohibiting Ukraine from using its supply of MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, also known as ATACMS, or conducting long-range strikes inside Russia "has not changed," Kirby added.

US officials have stressed that Washington could still make further adjustments to its policy, but it's ultimately dependent on evolutions on the battlefield. Whether the Biden administration will become even more lenient with its restrictions — following in the footsteps of some of its European allies — remains to be seen.

Speaking in Prague on Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the "hallmark" of American support for Ukraine has been to "adapt and adjust as necessary to meet what's actually going on on the battlefield, to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs when it needs it, to do that deliberately and effectively."

"That's exactly what we're doing in response to what we've now seen in and around the Kharkiv region," Blinken told reporters. "Going forward, we'll continue to do what we've been doing."

Ukraine has already taken advantage of the new policy. On Monday, for instance, Kyiv reportedly used rockets fired from its US-provided M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, to strike Russian air-defense assets in the Belgorod region, which is just over the border from Kharkiv.

According to media reports and open-source intelligence accounts, Ukraine struck Russian S-300/S-400 air-defense systems that have been repurposed for surface-to-surface applications and have been used in attacks around Kharkiv.

• The CEO of Athletic Brewing, Bill Shufelt, feels that the term "sober" is outdated.
• "Why does there have to be a word for when you're not consuming" alcohol, Shufelt asked.
• The CEO, who is in the alcohol-free beer business, argued for terms that allow for more flexibility.

Bill Shufelt gave up alcohol over a decade ago and cofounded a non-alcoholic beer company several years later in 2017.

Now, Athletic Brewing is reportedly the most popular non-alcoholic beer brand in the US, according to NielsenIQ data.

But, Shufelt, who hasn't had a drink in over 10 years, finds the term "sober" outdated and a concept that society has largely outgrown, the CEO said in a podcast episode of The Logan Bartlett Show released on Friday.

"Why does there have to be a word for when you're not consuming it," Shufelt said, in reference to alcohol. He said most people are sober most of the time, and said that there wasn't a term for people who abstain from energy drinks.

Shufelt told Business Insider that the word "sober" was in use before prohibition and it became a word to define people who never drank after that period.

"The perception is that most people are consuming alcohol anytime they leave their house for a social outing," Shufelt said. "But it turns out that way more people rarely drink versus those who drink daily or even weekly."

Shufelt said that in modern life, alcohol fits into fewer occasions, and many Gen Z's are changing their drinking habits based on the availability of alternative options, not even necessarily because of a distaste for alcohol.

The term "sober" is defined as abstaining from drinking or drugs, according to Merriam-Webster, but there are several variations in the way it's used today.

Others more recently use the term "sober curious" to refer to an exploratory period where they cut down or abstain from drinking alcohol. Others call themselves "Cali sober" for ditching alcohol but using Marijuana.

Shufelt brought up the term "flexitarian diet" in the podcast, which refers to when people eat meat occasionally on an otherwise plant-based diet. Whether people call themselves "flex sober" or say that they drink alcohol occasionally, Shufelt told Bartlett it should be a "much more flexible mindset these days."

Shufelt has previously used the term "flex sober" to describe his consumers, 80% of whom still consume alcohol, according to a company spokesperson. Shufelt also said most adults have less than one drink per week and the alcohol-beverage industry is largely missing out on serving that cohort of people who drink alcohol minimally.

Shufelt grew up facing pressure to drink in social and work-related settings, and he eventually started to rethink his life in terms of health, fitness, and career, a spokesperson said — and he found that alcohol was holding him back. Shufelt said in the podcast that alcohol was impacting his productivity and he didn't want to get to the point where he had children and was "blowing himself up on Friday."

Shufelt co-founded Athletic Brewing Company right before the sober curious movement started to take off in 2018. That year, a survey from the University of Michigan indicated millennials and Gen Zers were drinking less than the last two generations.

By 2021, beverage analysts told Business Insider that they expected the non-alcoholic beverage market to expand, and it has.

The ongoing trend is about being more mindful and moderating drinking more than anything else, an Athletic Brewing Company spokesperson told Business Insider. The company doesn't suggest that people should cut out alcohol entirely, but it's about having an accessible option for people who may want to cut it out, or just cut back, the spokesperson said.

For Shufelt, whose business revolves around convincing people to give non-alcoholic beer a try, he said going cold turkey and abstaining completely from alcohol was right for him at that time in his life.

But, in hindsight, he wondered on the podcast if having a compelling non-alcoholic alternative to switch to after a regular beer when he was younger would have provided "an easy bridge" to moderation, and allowed for a more flexible approach.

You can watch the entire interview with Shufelt below (his remarks around moderation and sobriety start at around the 1 hour, 2-minute mark).

• I'm British, and my kids go to school in the US, where we live.
• There are notable differences between the education system in America and my native UK.
• I envy the British version because it is much easier for children — and their parents.

When my British friends ask what it's like to educate my kids in the US, the first issue they raise is the risk of school shootings.

Last year, no fewer than 21 people died, and 42 were injured in incidents of gun violence in and around American schools.

In contrast, the last school shooting in the UK — when a gunman murdered 16 elementary students and a teacher — happened in 1996. As a result, the public called for tighter gun controls, which the British government enforced.

My friends' next question is often related to academic achievement.

In 2018 — the most recent year the research was performed — the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranked the overall knowledge and skills of British 15-year-olds as 13th in the world in reading, literacy, mathematics, and science.

The same assessment found that 15-year-olds in the US were ranked 25th globally.

It's difficult to compare public school systems forensically because of the countries' vastly different populations and government infrastructures.

However, feedback from my British friends has convinced me that the setup in the UK is more user-friendly for kids and parents.

Here are three key reasons.

Kids in the UK start school as young as 4

By law, children in the UK enter the publicly-funded British school system as young as 4.

Most begin full-time classes in "reception" — the first step on the educational ladder — in the September after their 4th birthday. Research has consistently shown that early childhood education helps kids develop academically and socially.

It also relieves a huge financial burden on working parents, who no longer have to pay babysitters or nursery schools for private childcare.

The age at which American parents are mandated to send their children to school depends on the state. In New York, for example, they are only obliged to attend by law after first grade.

School breaks are better spread out in the UK

My friends in the UK can't believe my kids have an entire 10-week summer break from school.

"What on earth do you do with them for 10 weeks?" my daughter's godmother once asked. She grimaced when I told her we fork over thousands of dollars for day and sleep-away camps.

Almost every child in Britain gets a six-week summer break, two weeks at Christmas and two weeks at Easter. There is usually a one-week "half-term" in February, May, and October.

Responding to parents' complaints about the length of the standard summer break, some education authorities reduced it to five as an experiment. The extra week was added to the May half-term, giving kids 10 days off instead of five in the Spring.

Kids wear uniform

Most government-run schools in the UK require students to wear a school uniform. The protocols contrast those in the US, where most public school kids can wear what they want to class — albeit within reason.

As a mom whose teens can waste hours picking an outfit to wear every morning, I'd like uniforms to be compulsory nationwide. I'm tired of the endless arguments over what clothes are "appropriate" or not.

Meanwhile, I shudder when I hear about "elite" cliques of high schoolers dressed head to toe in Lululemon. I can't bear to think of a kid being bullied because they're wearing something from Old Navy instead.

A friend said her kids wear what they want for a few designated days on the UK school calendar, such as the last day of term. "The stress of competitive dressing is high-octane," she said.

Uniforms are not only levelers but also support the idea of a community or team. Kids look more put together in a uniform, and it's good training for entering a profession.

Do you have a powerful story highlighting the differences between education in the US and other countries? If you'd like to share it with Business Insider, please send details to jridley@businessinsider.com.