• John and Matine Yuksel moved from San Francisco to the Midwest in 2020.
• The brothers and business partners lived in Iowa and Cincinnati while launching their startup.
• They sometimes miss California life but love Cincinnati's friendly people and affordability. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with John Yuksel, 33, and Matine Yuksel, 29, two brothers who moved from San Francisco to Dubuque, Iowa, in 2020 to start Beltways, an accelerating walkway company. The brothers then moved to Cincinnati in 2022. Their company is based nearby in Northern Kentucky.

John: We're children of immigrant parents who grew up in southern Arizona.

I've always known I wanted to be close to my brother. He's my only sibling. We lived in San Diego for a few years after college, and then we moved to San Francisco in 2018.

Matine: San Francisco is amazing. It's the most diverse environment I've been in, and it's high-caliber for business, especially tech.

John: Matine was working for Walmart e-commerce and then later got a job with Apple. I was working as an attorney.

We were paying incredibly high rent but we had the best view, looking over the Pacific Ocean with the sunset in our windows each night.

But San Francisco was apocalyptic. During COVID, the streets were barren. It felt unsafe. I had my car broken into multiple times.

Matine: COVID helped us rethink and reprioritize things. Rather than work to release the next-generation iPhone, I wanted to make a new product that few people have ever heard of.

John: Beltways is really our father's dream. Forty years ago, he was living in Istanbul and he realized today's forms of mobility were not moving people efficiently. He thought up a modular design to make walkways 10 times faster.

My brother and I always wanted to do something together and years after our father came up with the idea, we started looking into it.

Matine: We established Beltways in July 2020. We quickly realized we had to move out of San Francisco. It would have been way too expensive to do what we needed there.

John: It wasn't the right place for our startup. We're a big hardware manufacturing startup. It made a lot more sense to be near industrial clusters of technology. We wanted to be in the Midwest, where there's still viability for manufacturing.

Matine: John met someone with experience in the walkway industry and he offered us a shop out in Iowa.

We moved to Dubuque, Iowa, in 2020

John: It was a very small town in the middle of the cornfields, an hour and a half from any airport. Dubuque is a beautiful, quiet town on the Mississippi River. We could drive anywhere in town in two minutes.

We basically lived in a mansion. We had a three-story, four-bedroom place for half the price of our condo in San Francisco.

Matine: The snow was definitely a change of pace. We got our fair share of workout shoveling.

It was a different way of life. We needed to be focused and Iowa was good because we didn't have too many distractions. The two years we spent in Iowa went by very fast.

John: We built the prototype for the world's fastest-moving walkway while we were living there. It was a hundred-foot-long system and it got us our first VC check.

That was a big milestone for us. We put all our money into this company. We left stable jobs. We refinanced our home. There's been nothing more fulfilling than making our father's invention something commercial.

Matine: It was a surreal day when he came out and rode the system for the first time. It was the icing on the cake to see his excitement standing on something he thought up so many years ago.

John: We needed to start scoping out the next spot for our company. The next step was to pilot our walkway. We were invited by several airports to do a pilot demo of our system.

We knew CVG Airport in Cincinnati had a real track record of innovation and taking care of startups. The area was also advantageous for manufacturing. It's super cheap. The facility we're currently in is only a little more expensive than my rent in San Francisco, and this is 20,000 square feet.

We moved to Cincinnati in 2022

John: We even moved our parents out here, too. We wanted our father to work with us and be part of the company in person. Our parents live three floors below us in our building in the Mount Adams neighborhood.

Moving to Cincinnati felt like we were back in a big city after two years in Iowa. We have major sports teams and a large hub airport. It's a much more temperate climate.

The winters have been pretty mild so far. The spring is lush and green. You can kayak down the rivers, and there are amazing trails nearby. The air quality is great. And the summers aren't 120 degrees like they were in Arizona.

I met my partner, and now I have a child that was born here in Cincinnati. The city has become home for us. The company is here, the whole family is here.

We miss life on the coast sometimes. California is a beautiful place. We love that climate and the diversity of people. San Francisco is where tech starts and bleeds out from. It's really the birthplace of a lot of amazing stuff.

Matine: But Cincinnati's tech scene has also been very good to us. It's growing. It's a close-knit startup community. From the moment we got here, the community has been so welcoming.

John: And it's a lot cheaper here.

Bringing our father's dream to life has been incredible

Matine: We started Beltways in a humble garage in Tucson, where my brother built prototypes himself. Now, we're in a 20,000-square-foot facility here in Northern Kentucky, right next to our first airport customer. And we're US-made.

John: Our goal is to become an official partner of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics to provide temporary high-speed conveyance.

Cincinnati is a great place to raise a family and have a business. We see ourselves staying for the foreseeable future.

But our ultimate goal is to make our walkways commonplace and spread this technology around the world. So wherever we have to go to make that possible, we will. This is bigger than us.

• Rising unemployment in 21 states points to a recession later this year, Nancy Lazar says.
• Piper Sandler's top economist flagged stark divides between the rich and poor, and big and small.
• A recession would probably hit stocks and home values, but inflation and interest rates could fall.

Job markets in nearly half of US states are flashing red, signaling a recession will hit by the end of this year, one expert warned.

Nancy Lazar, Piper Sandler's chief global economist, told Business Insider that unemployment has risen significantly in 21 states.

Specifically, three-month average unemployment has increased by at least 0.5 percentage points from its low over the last 12 months in all 21 states. The group, which includes California and Illinois and numbered 19 states a few weeks ago, generates more than 40% of US GDP.

Lazar said that when joblessness has spiked across that many states in the past, a protracted downturn has followed almost every time. The state-level indicator is based on the "Sahm Rule."

"We do think the economy moves into recession in the back half of this year," she said.

Lazar predicted GDP would decline by 1%, unemployment would jump from below 4% to nearly 6%, and there would be even greater pain in vulnerable sectors like commercial real estate.

Two worlds

The economy is starkly divided between the rich and the poor, and between big corporations and smaller businesses, Lazar said.

Since the pandemic, rich people have grown wealthier thanks to rising stock and house prices and larger interest payouts from their bonds and savings accounts. Large companies have kept costs low and raised prices to bolster their profits.

In contrast, lower-income households are battling inflated prices for basics like food, fuel, and rent; larger monthly payments on their credit cards, car loans, mortgages, and other debts; and a worsening job market. Smaller businesses face steeper input costs, higher interest expenses, and tighter bank lending.

Lazar, the cofounder of Cornerstone Macro and ISI, called the US a "bifurcated economy." The minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting show the central bank's officials see similar trends — rising delinquency rates and greater reliance on credit cards and "buy now, pay later" services among the less affluent, and "hefty wealth gains" from stocks and homes for the rich.

Bleak outlook

Consumer confidence surveys, retailers' earnings reports, and rising volumes of late payments show households are being squeezed hard by inflation and higher rates, Lazar said.

If that trend continues, consumer spending could falter and company earnings could suffer, resulting in a recession. On the bright side, that would likely result in inflation falling toward the Fed's 2% target, Lazar said, freeing the central bank to cut rates to stimulate economic growth.

However, if no recession materializes, inflation could prove sticky and rates might stay higher for longer.

"We think we need a recession to see a sustained shift down in inflation," Lazar said, explaining that higher unemployment would reduce people's real incomes and cool upward pressure on prices.

Yet a recession, which many experts agree isn't off the table, would be bad news for investors.

"You usually do see a decline in the stock market," Lazar said. "Companies will struggle as earnings start to disappoint."

There isn't the same kind of dangerous leverage in the real estate market as there was during the mid-2000s bubble, but Lazar cautioned that the sector could also see a correction. "We would expect some weakness in housing."

The veteran economist underscored that if the US does dodge a recession, inflation lingers, and rates stay high, that could support stocks in the short term. But she warned that persistent price increases would make her "worry about the stock market going down."

• The F-method helps recruiters identify key info by structuring résumés for how they read them. 
• This approach can help job seekers because recruiters might spend only seconds looking at a résumé.
• Highlighting key skills and accomplishments up top can help hiring managers and scanning software.

Sometimes, an F can be a good thing.

Take the so-called F-method. It's a way of organizing your résumé so that a recruiter can read the most important parts across the top — like the upper portion of the letter F.

The next most essential info goes farther down with keywords or points sticking out like the arm on an F.

The idea behind the framework is to help someone looking over your résumé get to the good stuff right away. That's because recruiters might spend only seconds scanning your work history and other accomplishments, and you need to make sure you really stand out, really quickly.

"The skills section on my résumé is in that 'F.' It's in that direct line of sight," Lee Woodrow, owner and principal consultant at Bigger Fish Executive Branding, told Business Insider.

Highlighting the top information right away is all the more important in an environment where it's getting harder to get desk jobs — and where the ease of applying means recruiters are often overrun with applications.

'Buzzword bingo'

Woodrow, who's been writing résumés for others for many years, said the top of a CV built around the F-method should include essential information about the value you bring: details like who you are professionally, what area your expertise is in, and which industries you've worked in.

"It's an elevator pitch," he said. That information belongs at the top near your name, he said, so that it gets seen. "That entices the reader to read on."

It's also important, Woodrow said, to have the right words and phrases up high where a busy recruiter can see them.

"It's like buzzword bingo," he said.

This is often important when recruiters are trying to fill technical roles. They might not have a lot of background in the particulars of a job, so they might be on the hunt for phrases or words that a hiring manager has flagged.

Setting your résumé up with the F-method can mean a break from traditional formats, such as listing your work experience in reverse chronological order, which may surprise some.

But Woodrow said floating the most important ideas to the top makes sense if, for example, your most relevant experience for a job isn't tied to your latest role. Or, in other cases, he said, a job posting might call for someone with a master's degree or a Ph.D.

"Why would you put it lower down on page two or three? You'd want it on page one somewhere — highlighting it in that area which is in the 'F,'" Woodrow said.

In any case, he said, it's important to keep the most relevant information on the first page of a résumé.

Have a few goals in mind

Woodrow said one goal for your résumé should be ensuring it can be easily read by the applicant-tracking software companies often use to sift through job applications. Another aim should be having clear section titles so the document is a breeze for a recruiter to navigate. Highlight things like relevant job experience for a role you're going for, he said.

Last, Woodrow said, a résumé needs to influence a decision-maker by giving proof of your accomplishments. He recommends including three brief examples on the first page about how you solved a problem. To do this, describe a situation, give context, and use metrics from the business, if possible, to demonstrate how you improved a situation.

It's an abbreviated version of the STAR technique, sometimes used in interviewing, and involves describing a situation or task, actions, and results.

Kyle Samuels, founder and CEO of the executive search firm Creative Talent Endeavors, told BI that using the F-method to lay out a résumé can make sense for technical roles where a recruiter needs to know you have a certain amount of experience with, say, a particular programming language or modeling.

But in other cases, where a job might be more senior, artificial intelligence tools that do a first pass on a stack of résumés might make the F idea somewhat moot because AI bots can scoop up huge volumes of information.

"It kind of feels like a poor man's AI," Samuels said, referring to the F-method.

He said that with a role like a VP of marketing, you might have several candidates who would be a great fit.

"We're not expecting to see the exact same formatting or skills or experience, and so we really pore through the résumé," Samuels said.

That's why, especially when recruiting for more senior roles, there's little substitute for reading a résumé thoroughly, he said.

"I study it like the Torah," Samuels said.

• The US isn't in a recession; a majority of Americans in a Harris poll for the Guardian said there is one.
• Media coverage is one possible explanation for why Americans feel the economy isn't doing so great.
• Business Insider looked at data to see what's actually going on with the US economy.

Hey, America, we totally understand if you're not feeling so great about the economy.

But if you think we're in a recession, here's some good news: We're not in one, and there likely isn't one coming, based on economic data and what experts who talked to Business Insider are seeing.

A Harris poll for the Guardian found 56% of Americans believe the US is in a recession. Plus, it found a majority think we have a shrinking economy. Two reasons people may be feeling like the economy isn't doing so well — despite the US not being in an official recession since the two-month one in early 2020 — are due to media coverage and how people view economic trends.

David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management; Eugenio Alemán, Raymond James' chief economist; and Gregory Daco, EY's chief economist, told Business Insider the US isn't in a recession.

"Americans' negative attitude towards the economy is largely due to incessantly negative media coverage of economic and social issues amplified by an even more negative social media feed," Kelly told Business Insider in a statement.

Of course, not everything is perfect, and that could sour people's views. Daco said that when you consider cost fatigue, inflation's cumulative effect, the largely frozen and unaffordable housing market, and also "the reduced amount of churn in the labor market and this perception that there are fewer opportunities out there in terms of jobs, then that leads to more pessimism about the implied state of the economy."

"And I think that's really what we're seeing in terms of this particular survey — is that there is this difference between how people perceive consumer spending trends, inflationary trends, employment trends, and how they are from a data perspective," Daco said, adding "that misperception is exacerbated by the fact that we have different sources of intelligence, different media sources that may bias the underlying take as to how the economy is behaving."

If you're interested in learning more about what's going on with the economy take a look at the charts below.

US GDP is still growing

Kelly listed "growth and expected growth in quarterly GDP" as one of the "most important numbers to watch" in addition to payroll gains — which recently cooled but are still signaling a strong labor market — and the weekly unemployment insurance claims — which have been low as large-scale layoffs have not yet emerged.

Real GDP for the US has continued to be robust, even if growth has been slowing.

Unemployment rates in the US have been low

The unemployment rate did climb from 3.8% in March to 3.9% in April, but that's still low.

"We're still seeing strong job growth momentum," Daco said. "We have a historically low unemployment rate."

In the Great Recession, the US unemployment rate skyrocketed from 5.0% in December 2007 to 9.5% in June 2009. It took years for the job market to fully recover after that recession, while unemployment plummeted after the brief but deep Covid recession in 2020.

CPI data shows US inflation is stubborn but has been under 4%

Inflation is still elevated and stubborn, but the year-over-year change in the Consumer Price Index has cooled from the high 2021 and 2022 rates. Alemán said while inflation is comparatively low, "the surge in inflation since 2021 has pushed Americans to try to figure out what to buy and what not to buy — something that we were not used to doing before."

"Probably the cost of searching for a better price has put a lot of stress into Americans' lives that they did not have before," Alemán said.

The S&P 500 has generally been rising for over a year

In 2024, the S&P 500 hit multiple all-time highs. The Harris poll for the Guardian found nearly half thought the S&P 500 index had actually been down.

There isn't a US recession now or one coming soon either

If you're worried about a recession coming soon, you may feel better knowing that experts don't think so. Alemán said Raymond James doesn't foresee one but expects a slowdown in economic activity. Looking at the next 12 months, Daco said recession odds are relatively low. Kelly said the US isn't "even close" to a recession.

"Indeed, the so-called 'misery index', the sum of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate is currently 7.3%," Kelly said. "This is better, that is lower, than it has been more than 75% of the time over the past 60 years."

There are still some data points and trends Americans may be concerned about. Sales for existing homes and new homes dropped recently. While mortgage rates are back below 7%, they're still elevated. Layoffs are happening at some major companies, inflation is still not back to the Fed's 2% target, and it looks like interest rates are still going to be high for a while.

"The longer we have very, very high interest rates as we have today, that will increase the probability that something will break and that we might face a recession in the future," Alemán said.

So hooray for no recession and likely no recession anytime soon. However, just because we aren't in a recession doesn't mean the economy is perfect.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appears to be entering a new era.
• Altman was lauded as the leader behind ChatGPT when it launched in 2022.
• But recent exits from OpenAI's safety team and a dispute with Scarlett Johansson have brought scrutiny.

Many of them start the same, with a potent mix of genius and idealism and a promise to improve the world with their brilliance. People believe them — pouring millions of dollars into their nebulous ideas — and soon, they are gracing the covers of magazines and headlining summits and conferences the world over.

And then, inevitably, gravity does its thing. They fall.

We've seen it time and again with tech founders: Mark Zuckerberg went from boy genius to a string of scandals. Elon Musk went from "the real Tony Stark" out to save the world to critics casting him as the caricature of an evil billionaire seeking world domination. Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried were once regarded as saviors. Now, both are in prison.

It looks like Sam Altman, who has been hit with bad headline after bad headline over the past couple of weeks, is the latest to succumb to the narrative: The OpenAI CEO and cofounder appears to have entered his villain era.

After ChatGPT took the world by storm in late 2022, Altman went from being virtually unknown outside Silicon Valley circles to a household name. He was named Time Magazine's 2023 CEO of the year, and Microsoft showed its confidence in him with a $10 billion investment. His short-lived ousting last year — marked by colleagues and the tech elite rallying around him — only strengthened his power (though it also pointed at some of the AI safety concerns that have flared up again this week.)

"It's Sam's world, one prominent tech developer told BI last year. "And we're all living in it."

All the while, he promised to do good through his work.

"I think we can have a much, much better world," Altman told BI last year about AI's potential. "I think there's a few things that need to happen for it. And I like feeling useful."

Meanwhile, Altman was personally investing in clean energy and research into antiaging, and he even cut a check to help a startup fund payroll during the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

"Sam Altman is a hero of mine," former Google CEO Eric Schmidt tweeted in November "I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work — it's going to be simply incredible. Thank you @sama for all you have done for all of us."

From hero to antihero: the initial villain inklings

As Bruce Wayne once learned — and Altman is likely learning in real time — you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.

For months now, there have been murmurs that Altman may not belong on the pedestal the world was putting him on. (To be fair, Altman has never claimed to be perfect or all-knowing and has been quick to respond directly to criticism.)

Some in his circles have raised eyebrows at his web of investments, which seemed to promote an outlook reminiscent of a sci-fi film.

"Look, if your worldview is that you have AGI and it's basically superhuman, and these are like the gods, we invented god, yeah then maybe you should turn the whole planet upside down," Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told BI earlier this year. "I don't think that's what's happening."

There were signs in March that some in the VC world were starting to see past the Altman hype.

"Him and his brother have always been superhyped," one VC partner told BI in March, referring to Sam and his brother Jack. "It's always been like, 'Oh, the Altman brothers,' it's just going to be way overpriced just because of who they are."

"He's one of the more intellectually dishonest guys in tech," another said at the time."I've had plenty of meetings with him where he says things where I'm like, 'That just cannot possibly be true,' but he can kinda get away with it."

Sam Altman's rough couple of weeks

Now, the criticisms seem to have expanded beyond Silicon Valley circles.

Last week, OpenAI announced its new flagship AI model, GPT-4o, which can interact via text, audio, and video. On X, Altman seemed to liken the new model to the AI from the movie "Her" — but it's not clear he watched the film to its dystopian completion.

Critics were quick to respond, saying the AI assistant sounded sexualized and was too flirtatious. One said it gave them "mega ick," and others said it sounded eerily similar to Scarlett Johannson, who voiced the robot in "Her."

The actor released a scathing statement, saying she had declined multiple offers from Altman to voice the AI and was "shocked" and "angered" by the similarity.

A week after the voice, named Sky, was launched, it was put on pause. The company has maintained it did not deliberately set out to mimic Johannson's voice.

Still, the seeds of a dystopian future — one in which artificial intelligence could take on a human's likeness without their permission — were sowed.

The company was simultaneously waging a defensive war on another front. The day after GPT-4o was released, cofounder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and machine learning researcher Jan Leike stepped down. Together, they led OpenAI's superalignment team, which had seen several other departures in recent months.

By the end of the week, the team, whose job it was to keep humans safe from AI superintelligence, was completely disbanded, leaving OpenAI's commitment to safety in question.

"Over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products," Leike wrote in a series of social media posts announcing his departure.

To make matters worse, Vox published a damning report about OpenAI and Altman's leadership. Former employees were unhappy with safety standards at the company and lost their trust in Altman, per the report, and they were afraid to talk about it because they could lose vested equity if they disparaged the company or even mentioned signing NDAs.

Altman appeared caught with his back against the ropes. He and OpenAI president Greg Brockman wrote a lengthy social media post on Saturday delineating their commitment to safety.

In response to the question of the unusual NDAs, Altman expressed regret: "This is on me and one of the few times I've been genuinely embarrassed running openai; I did not know this was happening, and I should have."

But he would only look worse. In a follow-up, Vox reported that it seemed as if Altman did know about the equity.

If tech's fallen star history repeats itself, things are not looking good for Altman. His dream of a utopia seems more like a dystopia to some, and his image as a Silicon Valley do-gooder is unraveling.

Of course, it's not all over for Altman. As far as we know, he's done no crime that would see him suffer the same fate as Bankman-Fried and Holmes.

And there's the chance he can pull a rebrand — something no one has done better than Zuckerberg. It looks like Altman may need to hit the gym, pick a few well-timed fights with another tech billionaire, and maybe even get a chain necklace.

• An estimated record 122,000 millionaires moved to new countries in 2023, up 45% from 2022.
• Henley & Partners data shows Australia topped the net inflow of millionaires, outpacing the US.
• China faced the highest net loss of millionaires, followed by India and the UK.

Millionaires are leaving China and the UK, and flocking to Australia and the United Arab Emirates.

That's according to data from Henley & Partners, a firm that advises the wealthy where to move to protect and grow their wealth. The firm says a record number of millionaires moved to a new country in 2023. While the US remains the home to the most HNWIs — high net worth individuals — it is not the country seeing the biggest influx.

Henley & Partners estimated that about 122,000 millionaires migrated to a new country in 2023, either for citizenship or residency. While the US is home to 37% of all people with $1 million in liquid investable assets, Australia topped the list of countries with the highest net inflow of millionaires.

The number of millionaires in 2023 was up 45% from 2022 and is the highest on record since Henley & Partners started tracking the data in 2013.

According to Henley & Partners calculations, based on data from the first six months of 2023, Australia was expected to gain 5,200 more millionaires than they lost from the previous year. That was more than double the US, which grew by 2,100 HNWIs and ranked fourth.

At the other end, China was on pace to lose the most millionaires for the second year in a row, with a net drop of 13,500. That was more than twice as much as the next country, India, which had 6,500 fewer millionaires at the end of the year. The UK was third with a loss of 3,200.

Below is a look at the countries seeing the biggest net inflow of millionaires and why they chose those countries.

1. Australia

2023 estimated net gain of millionaires: 5,200

2022 net gain of millionaires (rank): 3,800 (2)

According to Andrew Amoils of Henley & Partners, Australia attracts most of its new millionaires from Asia, Africa, and the UK.

Amoils explains that many millionaires are likely attracted to Australia because of their immigration laws, which award points to candidates based on age, education, professional experience, and ability to speak English.

"Australia consistently attracts sizable numbers of millionaires every year," Amoils wrote. "These consistently large inflows are possibly linked to Australia's points-based immigration system, which favors wealthy individuals and those with professional qualifications."

He also pointed to other factors such as the weather, low population density, safety, economy, education opportunities, taxes, and a first-class healthcare system.

2. United Arab Emirates

2023 estimated net gain of millionaires: 4,500

2022 net gain of millionaires (rank): 5,200 (1)

According to Henley & Partners, the number of net new millionaires in the UAE has quadrupled from its pre-pandemic levels of about 1,000 annually.

That recent growth also coincides with EXPO 2020, the most recent World Expo, where nations and millions of visitors gathered to look for solutions to issues the world is facing. This event is credited with putting the UAE on the international map.

Amoils described the UAE as the "foremost wealth hub in the Middle East" and credits its attractiveness to factors such as its safe haven status, diverse economy across several key sectors, low taxes, luxury real estate, good schools, and a top healthcare system.

The millionaires moving to the UAE come from many areas, including the UK, Russia, Africa, Asia, and other Middle Eastern countries.

3. Singapore

2023 estimated net gain of millionaires: 3,200

2022 net gain of millionaires (rank): 2,900 (3)

According to Henley & Partners, most millionaires migrating to Singapore come from other Asian countries.

Amoils noted that many tech entrepreneurs are moving to Singapore as it attempts to become the "Silicon Valley of Asia." However, he notes that the country's wealth management status is also attractive.

"Singapore is the top wealth management center in Asia and one of the number one hubs for family offices globally," Amoils wrote. "This is a major drawcard as, over time, often wealthy people gravitate to where their money is held."

4. United States of America

2023 estimated net gain of millionaires: 2,100

2022 net gain of millionaires (rank): 1,500 (5)

According to Henley & Partners, most new millionaires moving to the US come from Asia.

The most common sectors among these HNWIs are entertainment, financial services, and tech. The latter is especially popular as tech start-ups often move to Silicon Valley and other parts of the US to grow their companies.

Investors are attracted to the US because of the US EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program which gives immigrants a faster route to acquiring residency in the US if they invest at least $800,000 in a domestic business.

For business owners, there are a few avenues offered to launch a startup or expand an existing company in the US. These either require an investment in the domestic business or proof that it will benefit the public.

5. Switzerland

2023 estimated net gain of millionaires: 1,800

2022 net gain of millionaires (rank): 2,200 (4)

Switzerland still ranks high for millionaires despite scandals associated with the country's banking system and the near collapse of Credit Suisse.

Henley & Partners notes that Switzerland is still attractive because it is safe and provides a good lifestyle for the wealthy. It also still has a strong reputation because of its banking secrecy laws.

Switzerland does not offer citizenship through investment, but it does offer residency. This can be achieved by investing in the Swiss economy, starting a business that benefits the economy, or paying a minimum annual tax of $270,000.

6. Canada

2023 estimated net gain of millionaires: 1,600

2022 net gain of millionaires (rank): 1,200 (7)

Amoils notes that Canada checks off most boxes regarding why millionaires pick a new country, especially those who own businesses. These include a safe and stable environment, lifestyle options, building wealth, diversifying investments, and sustaining the long-term performance of their businesses.

"A strong financial, legal, and regulatory environment — combined with universal healthcare and a world-renowned education system — make the country a particularly desirable place to raise a family and operate a business," Amoils wrote.

• BI talked to seven parents who said they're making sacrifices so their children can eat.
• Some said they can't invest in their kids' college funds or extracurricular activities.
• Many ALICE families face tough financial decisions as costs rise and assistance remains insufficient.

Ryan Arbuckle, 36, makes too much money to be eligible for government aid to support his five children but can barely afford to put food on the table.

Arbuckle dropped out of college, had kids at a young age, and spent years toiling away at a minimum-wage job. Then Covid hit, and he had to declare bankruptcy as he looked for a new job.

After his divorce a few years ago, Arbuckle, who lives near St. Louis, now cares for his kids three to four days a week in between his new IT job that pays $45,000 a year.

While he has just enough to pay for food and shelter, he fears he'll never earn enough to pay for his kids' extracurricular activities. Car payments, cable, insurance, and phone bills eat up $870 a month from the net $3,000 he makes, he said. He buys the cheapest toiletries and groceries he can find, and he can't afford mental health resources.

He wishes he could be a better father to his kids; his father used to take him to baseball games, airshows, and other fun things he can't afford.

Arbuckle is an ALICE: He's asset-limited, income-constrained, but employed. And he's not alone: According to United For ALICE, 29% of Americans fall into the gap between the poverty line and being able to actually thrive. It's worse for parents; 37% of families with kids in the US fall below the ALICE threshold, and more than half of single-parent families do.

"The most obvious thing is children are expensive, hands down," Stephanie Hoopes, national director at United For ALICE, told BI. "It's a group that's got a big challenge."

Per data released Tuesday by the Federal Reserve, just 64% of parents living with children under 18 said they were doing OK financially in 2023. This compares to 72% of all respondents — and 75% of nonparents.

Many parents have become wedged in the cracks of the country's safety net and are facing a near-impossible calculus: How can they deliver a stable economic life for their kids when the country's guardrails aren't protecting them?

"You have people like me and thousands of families out there who cannot afford basic necessities and happiness in life. You're not giving us a defined path to go out and achieve our goals as a family," Arbuckle said.

$50,000 for a family of 4 in Georgia

Kristin Musselwhite, 36, and her husband William, 41, raise two boys with special needs in a small Georgia town. For about six months, both of them were out of work.

"We haven't caught up yet, so every paycheck hits, and then it's gone," Kristin said. "If we get groceries or anything not absolutely necessary, it's a good week."

William landed a job in production making $50,000 a year — so much that the family lost food stamps. They have $75 a week for groceries. Due to the cost of childcare, Kristin decided it makes more financial sense to stay home to take care of her kids full-time. Childcare costs remain an immense burden for Americans across the income spectrum, and it's a cost that particularly weighs on ALICE parents.

"It's impossible at times, trying to be an advocate for your child when you don't have the income to be an advocate in the right place," Kristin said, noting she's striving to get enough money for a vacation with her kids.

The Musselwhites are working with their mortgage company to make up missed payments of $1,400 a month and are consolidating debt. They can't fix their truck, which was totaled last December, while also making payments on another car. They can't afford proper mental health and medical treatments, which are few and far between in their rural community.

Retirement has never been a thought; they planning on working until the day of their funerals. Still, Kristin is hopeful that things will improve for her family as her kids grow older and her husband works his way up the ladder.

$40,000 for a family of three in Pennsylvania

Joey Lovello, 42, is also walking a precarious tightrope. He lives with his girlfriend, Beki, and her 10-year-old son in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Finding the money to cover all of their basic needs has been challenging.

Beki and Joey were laid off at the start of the pandemic. They started a cleaning company, work another cleaning job, and drive for Uber Eats, working five or six days a week. But they make just under $40,000 — slightly too much to qualify for assistance.

"I know the world and life doesn't owe anybody anything, but it is hard to keep the splinter of being betrayed or lied to out of one's thoughts when trying just to make ends meet," Joey said. "I'm always asking, 'Where did I go wrong?'"

Since 2020, their rent has skyrocketed to over $2,000, not including fees for late payments. They're constantly under the threat of eviction for missing payments, and they're forced to rotate paying their various bills each month. In the past two years, their car was repossessed twice, their electricity shut off, and Beki limited her asthma medication due to the cost.

"We live in constant fear, in a carousel of doom and anxiety. Checking the mail each day garners more stress than a person should be under every single day," Joey said. "The strain we live under has been visibly eroding our physical and mental health. A worry-free, good night's sleep is a thing of the past."

$130,000 for a family of 7 in Illinois

Even parents at the upper bound of the ALICE threshold are just scraping by.

April Schultz, 40, and her husband Kevin, 45, earn a gross combined income of $130,000 — slightly above the ALICE threshold — but can't afford to spend $200 a week on groceries for their family of seven. They work two jobs each in addition to caring for their five kids, but they're breaking even at the end of every month.

"We shouldn't have to have four jobs in one family," April said. "I feel like that's crazy when, in 2017, we had one income and we were doing just fine."

Stuck in a 'hellish loop'

ALICE parents often decide between what they can and can't go without. John S., a 49-year-old parent of two, said his family struggles to make ends meet on his $70,000-a-year salary. He sometimes goes to food banks and said there's nowhere they can cut the fat to reel in their budget. Sometimes, he said, he and his wife don't eat as much so their kids can have enough to eat — a fact they conceal from their children.

At the same time, though, they're ineligible for most public assistance.

"To be honest, if we have a dollar to our name at the end of the month, we're both happy," John said.

Even when ALICE parents can obtain assistance, it's often not enough to account for the realities they face.

Katelynn W., 29, said she is the primary support for herself and her two children with disabilities, working overtime as a general production associate.

She makes about $45,600 annually and qualified for Medicaid and food stamps, which cover about 1.5 weeks of dinners per month. But based on annual income limits, she fears she'll no longer be eligible for assistance in the coming months.

The Dover, Delaware, resident said she frequently struggles to balance her income with expenses. She often sacrifices or cuts back on things, sets up payment arrangements for bills, and makes late payments. She, her partner, and his mother have been homeless since January and have lived in hotel rooms and their vehicles — her largest expenses.

"I often feel extremely frustrated, stressed and very hopeless, like I'm working life away to not move any closer to financial stability," Katelynn said. "It feels overly difficult to constantly afford basic things like housing, transportation, food for the month, and personal hygiene. It also feels impossible to ever be a homeowner, obtain higher education, or have any financial cushion."

To afford a two-to-three-bedroom rental in her area, she'd need a deposit between $5,400 and $7,400 — the equivalent of saving every penny of her income for two months. She sacrifices meals, clean laundry, and personal hygiene so that her kids can feel as safe and happy as possible.

"My inability to afford necessities on my income alone is absolutely not due to any kind of laziness or unwillingness to work," she said.

Many ALICEs find themselves in a neverending cycle, even as parents aspire for more for both themselves and their kids.

"Are we all stuck in a hellish Sisyphean loop of debt and repayment?" Joey Lovello said. "Having to decide whether to keep the lights on, getting four badly needed tires for a rolling death trap, or getting a migraine-inducing broken molar fixed?"

Do you live above the federal poverty line but struggle to afford daily expenses? Are you open to sharing your story? If so, reach out to these reporters at nsheidlower@businessinsider.com and jkaplan@businessinsider.com.

• A new community of net-zero homes in Florida is being marketed as nearly disaster-proof.
• The homes at Hunters Point, which start at $1.4 million, have already withstood two hurricanes.
• "We built these homes to be able to deal with the climate crisis," said developer Marshall Gobuty.

Florida faces a crisis of rising insurance costs in the face of increasing extreme weather. Already, major insurers have pulled out of the state and Floridians have been hit with skyrocketing home-insurance bills.

One solution, said real-estate developer Marshall Gobuty, is to build more resilient homes.

"People say they build to code, and my answer is 'Great,'" he told Business Insider. "Building over code and doing things that haven't been done — that's something to be proud of."

Enter Hunters Point. An 86-unit community in Cortez, Florida, a hour south of Tampa, created by Gobuty's company, Pearl Homes. Residents first moved into the net-zero single-family homes in 2022, and they have withstood two hurricanes so far while also producing more energy than they consume.

Recently, the carrier Hunters Point used for builders insurance said they weren't writing any new policies, but Gobuty and his team were able to find coverage by showing details of the homes' construction— like ground-floor flood vents that drain water and full-home metal strappings that tie the property together as one unit — that Gobuty believes made them change their mind.

"They're covering us because the way we built our homes," he told BI.

That's significant as major insurers have recently fled Florida over the increased risk. Since 2022, a dozen insurance companies have claimed insolvency, stopped issuing new policies, or withdrawn from the state entirely. The state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corporation is now the top underwriter as private companies leave.

Take a look at the ground-breaking Hunters Point development.

The Hunters Point community sits on a bay separated from the Gulf of Mexico by a barrier island.

Cortez, Florida — where the Hunters Point development is located — is known for its white-sand beaches and historic fishing villages.

A tiny town of over 4,000 residents, Cortez is an hour south of Tampa, near Bradenton Beach, a popular vacation destination.

Hunters Point developer Marshall Gobuty challenged his team to build homes that were both net-zero and LEED-certified.

In the past, residential homes have been left behind in the push to build LEED-certified, sustainable developments, Gobuty explained.

"There's a lot of museums and commercial buildings, but residential is really like a step-sister. It's not been traditionally dominant for LEED," he told Business Insider.

LEED is a certification developed by the nonprofit US Green Building Council that verifies a building's sustainable design and efficient energy use, according to the Green Building Council. Net-zero means the the amount of energy a building consumes is equal to the amount of energy it produces through renewable means, according the federal government.

Gobuty's team built the first prototype home in a warehouse.

The team observed the prototype over 18 months in conditions that recreated the changing seasons before starting construction in the real world.

Gobuty was able to develop homes that actually produce more energy than they consume.

Gobuty decided he wanted the homes to use a mix of solar and battery energy, choosing the German startup sonnenBatterie to provide the units to power the homes.

"We're generating 35% more power than we modeled and we're consuming 25% less," Gobuty said.

Better insulation also helps the homes conserve energy.

Gobuty explained his team used 2×6 insulation boards for the Hunters Point homes instead of the typical 2×4.

"It creates resiliency, strength, and as well keeps this envelope tight," he said.

In fact, when Hunters Point conducted industry-standard "blower door" tests, a diagnostic tool to see how much air escapes the home, they tested tighter than the established rating system, Gobuty said.

Gobuty's team also added double the amount of fill underneath the homes.

Withstanding major storms was the project's intention from the very beginning, so the homes on Hunters Point start at 16 feet above sea level.

"We built these homes to be able to deal with the climate crisis," Gobuty told Insider.

The first real tests for Hunters Point's homes came in 2022 and 2023.

In 2022, when only three homes were completed, Hurricane Ian struck Florida. A year later, Hurricane Idalia affected more than 20 Hunters Point homes.

"We had a king-size surge that completely covered the docks," Gobuty recalled.

But the homes withstood storms, both labeled category 5 and category 4, respectively.

"We woke up the next morning just like normal," Hunters Point resident William Fulford told the Wall Street Journal in late 2023 about living there during a storm. "It's a damn strong house."

There's no typical profile for Hunters Point residents, Gobuty said.

"There are young families that have bought in that are very sustainability and resiliency-centric, and they love it," Gobuty said. "Then we've got some retirees that just love the fact that they don't have utility bills."

That's right, Hunters Point residents don't pay electric bills.

Gobuty explained that every homeowner has a battery specific to their home.

If their home is able to generate $150 worth of power and their utility bill comes in at $150, the state-run Florida Power and Light company issues them a credit that wipes away the cost.

"We haven't had a power bill yet," Fulford, the resident, told the Washington Post earlier this year.

Hunters Point homes currently cost between $1.2 and $1.8 million.

Each lot is 3,300 square feet, and each single-family home has an interior space of about 1,650 square feet, according to Fox Business. Some have three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and one half-bathroom, and HOA fees are $450 a month, according to a Zillow listing. The ground floor of the three-story units has a garage with two spaces, per the listing.

Gobuty hopes the development sets a new, cutting-edge standard for sustainable development for Florida.

Hurricane Ian alone destroyed nearly 5,000 homes in Florida in 2022, according to NPR.

Gobuty believes the solution to preventing that from ever happening again starts with intentional design and construction.

"You have to do better you can just do to build the code," Gobuty told BI. "There are responsibilities that you have to have now as home builders."

• My partner and I negotiated a lower rent in a very tight market.
• Despite only a handful of homes available in our area, we'll save $1,200 this year.
• Here's how we did it.

According to Zillow, as I write this, there are only 7 properties available for rent under $4,000 a month in my city, a small beach town outside Santa Barbara, California.

So when my partner suggested we ask our landlords to lower our rent — which we had already successfully done when we first moved in last year — I thought it'd be an exercise in futility.

Conventional wisdom says you're more likely to be able to negotiate lower rent if there are plenty of local vacancies or when your rental is going for an above-market rate. That wasn't the case for us.

But we asked anyway, and, to my surprise, we'll be saving an extra $1,200 this year.

Here's what I wrote to get the negotiation going:

We have loved living here over the last year and are beginning to put down roots in [our city] and the surrounding area. The unit has been wonderful, and it has easily begun to feel like home. We've been happy to take care of minor repairs on our own, to promptly notify the mangagement company for maintenance requests like leaks, and our payment history is (and will continue to be) flawless. As rental unit owners ourselves, we know how challenging it an be to find reliable tenants who will care for your property the way you would yourself. We know that good tenants make it easier to sleep peacefully, reduce long-term costs in repairs, and diminish the need for management expenses. We'd like to continue being those renants for you, and respectfully request that you consider a renewable 6-month lease term at the current rate of $3,550 per month, or a 1-year lease term at a rate of $3,450.

The property management company representing the owners of our 2-bedroom, 3-bathroom unit came back offering a $50 a month discount for a 1-year lease term, or $100 off each month if we signed a 2-year lease, which we were happy to do.

Remember your value as a good tenant

My partner and I own small condo units elsewhere in the state, which we rented out when we moved to our city for his new job. We have each had tenants across the spectrum of model leaseholders to downright abusive renters.

Based on what we learned when we moved in, our landlords had a similar experience with a difficult tenant just before us. The tenant caused extensive damage to the unit and might have been renting it illegally through Airbnb. We're a quiet couple who keeps our home clean and in good repair, and we always pay on time, so we leveraged those facts in our negotiation.

Be creative with your asks — and flexible with your expectations

Part of our initial ask included a variation on the lease term (6 months instead of a year), showing our landlords we were open to options other than a standard 1-year lease. We also included the rate we would ultimately be more comfortable paying as an option rather than trying to lowball the owners of our unit by asking for a significant cut or vastly undervaluing the unit.

They returned with a more agreeable rate either way and were open to our preferred amount if we were willing to sign a longer lease. While we didn't initially think about a 2-year lease, which puts pressure on both of us concerning job stability, the consequences for breaking a 2-year lease are the same as breaking a 1-year term, so why not go for the savings?

Get used to asking for what you want

We never would have gotten anywhere had I let my feelings of discomfort get in the way of our negotiating. To me, negotiating feels unnatural and, to some extent, even entitled, especially when it comes to big commitments like rent, where (to me) it feels like the landlord is doing us a favor by extending the lease so we don't have to deal with the stress of finding a new place that'll accept our two dogs or, god forbid, moving.

For our landlord, negotiating is just business. Remembering that will serve me well, and maybe it will serve you well, too.

• Donna Kopman was laid off from her job as a sales operations manager in December.
• After having only two interviews from 400 applications, she's relying on benefits and savings.
• Kopman said she felt some employers were being ageist when assessing her application.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Donna Kopman, from Portland, Oregon, about her experience getting laid off at 57 and her job search. Business Insider has verified her previous salary. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I managed a sales support team of 15 employees for a software company, Milestone Systems, for three years.

The company told people managers there were going to be layoffs in November. I found out on my birthday. I spent my Thanksgiving holiday worried about being laid off. I had a gut feeling it was going to be me. When I got back, I found out it was.

I didn't have any hard feelings, but it sucked.

Job searching is a full-time role

My first thought was that finding another job at this age and stage in my career would be difficult. The older you are when you get laid off, the harder it is to find an equivalent position.

I took a break to clear my head and started my job search in January. I updated my résumé and looked on LinkedIn, Indeed, and job posting apps. From Sunday to Tuesday and a bit of time on Wednesday, I spend eight hours a day researching and applying for jobs. I treat it like a day job. Then, I take a few days off, which keeps me healthy.

I'm applying to jobs around Portland, where I live, and some remote jobs, too.

I've found a few jobs that are very similar to the one I had. Half a dozen times, I spent two hours tailoring my résumé to a job, showing how my qualifications directly matched the role and then got back an auto-generated rejection response within the day.

It's frustrating. Some days, I've felt a little defeated. But I have to remind myself it's not a human at the other end of the line. It's probably AI.

I've applied for 400 jobs and landed 2 interviews

Since January, I've applied for around 400 roles. It's a numbers game.

I've broadened my search to include some junior roles, such as executive assistant jobs. Part of that is a choice: I'm not sure I want to manage people again. The other part is simply to get a job that gives me a paycheck.

I've had two interviews with hiring managers. It feels like an employer's market in the US. For every job I apply for, there seem to be hundreds of other applicants. When I was a hiring manager in my previous role, we'd be lucky to get 20 applications.

I don't think employers have time to screen all those applicants, so they're relying on AI. I understand why they have to automate the process, but it removes human beings from it.

Employers can be ageist

Employers might look at an older person and think they'll require a higher salary because they have more experience. They might automatically screen older people out for that if they have to balance their budget.

But many older people would be willing to get paid less to stay in the job market.

Hiring managers might also assume that older people are stuck in their ways and can't learn new technology. But it's a misconception. I take pride in challenging myself to learn new things to stay relevant.

More junior employees might also have doubts about hiring someone more qualified than them if they feel insecure in their careers. They might worry that an older person will replace them. I try to balance that in interviews and not come off too strong.

Ageism is everywhere in US work culture, but people don't seem to want to acknowledge it. How do we change that? Having a diverse team creates a better work culture.

I'm willing to be paid less

In my previous role, my salary was $110,000 a year, including bonuses. I've been applying for jobs for as little as $60,000 a year.

It's a balancing act. I'm willing to accept that to stay in the workforce, especially given healthcare is tied to employment. I'm paying $900 a month for COBRA right now to maintain the same health policy I had before.

I'm getting unemployment benefits, but they don't cover my expenses, so I'm having to draw from my savings. I hope I get a job before I no longer get the benefits.

Since being laid off, I don't go out to eat as much. I'd love to take advantage of having the time off to go on vacation, but I have to watch my expenses and don't know how long I'll be unemployed. It's a strange limbo.

Being unemployed delays my retirement

I was hoping to retire in my early to mid-60s. But I won't qualify for full Social Security payments until I'm 67. That's 10 years I need to bridge, and if I wanted to retire earlier, I'd have to find a way to build my finances.

We need to do more to keep older people in the workforce. People are drawing down from their 401(k) out of necessity, and that's scary.

Taking longer to find a job or accepting a lower-paid job might delay my retirement. I hope I don't have to do that.

But I remain hopeful. I know I've got a lot of value to add to employers, and I know I will land somewhere that is good for me.