• My car has over 112,000 miles on it, and my family keeps asking me when I'll get a new one.
• The financial benefits of driving a paid-off older car outweigh those of purchasing a new one.
• The car has served my family well, and I trust the vehicle to help keep us safe.

When I bought my Volvo XC90 in 2017, I was thrilled to get a safe, third-row vehicle. With three kids between the ages of 3 and 8, the extra space meant fewer fights and more room, and reassured me that the car's safety features would help me drive through snowy roads and city traffic.

Almost a decade later, that same Volvo has over 112,000 miles on it. I still remember when my family and I sat on the front porch, excited, as we watched the car get delivered from the truck.

These days, my kids have been asking me when I'm going to get a new car, and my answer remains the same — I love my car and I'm going to keep driving it.

The car is still reliable — and I trust it

Aside from regular maintenance and tire changes, the car has been reliable. Before the warranty expired, we purchased an extended warranty on the vehicle. Now that the extended warranty has expired due to mileage, I am still in awe at how reliable the car has remained.

Years ago, we appreciated that the trunk could hold the double stroller, and that the built-in booster seat allowed us to drive car pools with small children. These days, we appreciate the third-row flexibility that allows us to fit our skis, snowboards, soccer gear, backpacks, and all the other essentials my kids need.

I spend a lot of time in the car driving people around, and I am thankful for a car I can rely on.

My mom used to say that the best car is one that reliably gets you from point A to point B. I still agree with this statement.

I appreciate the small safety features that I now take for granted. From the computer technology to the warning lights on the mirrors and back-up cameras, the car has helped keep my family safe on numerous occasions and helped me avoid some near accidents.

The car is part of our family. We have taken it on adventures to national parks, ski resorts in the Rockies, and even to an alligator farm. The vehicle has had its share of muddy shoes, candy wrappers, and dog hair. It also has dings from when I backed the car into the garage.

The economics don't make sense for a new car right now

When my car is in the garage, the dealer provides me with a loaner car — a brand-new version of my current vehicle. I get tempted and think about how nice it would be to get a new car. The latest vehicles have more power, fewer scratches, are cleaner, and have that new-car smell.

I've crunched the numbers. After years of car payments, my car is now paid off. Every month that goes by without a car payment means more money toward saving for the future. More money for food, utilities, saving for college, and the occasional splurge. Saving money now means more financial freedom for tomorrow.

Buying a new car is expensive. Borrowing money for car payments these days costs more than it did in the past. Even yearly vehicle registration costs less for an older car.

Part of me feels proud to keep driving my older car

We live in a world that tells us that newer is better, that we should want more. Although external validation of a new car is nice, I am focusing on the internal satisfaction that comes from knowing I am saving money by driving an older car.

My car may not turn heads in the school pick-up line, but I view the scratches and door dings much like wrinkles- a sign of a good life.

I will continue to drive my older car, and I am thankful for a safe and reliable vehicle that has served my family well.

• The pandemic created uncertainty about the upcoming school year, so we chose an outdoor school.
• The school offered unique opportunities and a learning environment where my kids thrived.
• They missed out on a library and gym, and struggled to adjust to public school, but they loved it.

In 2019, my 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter were excited to start their first year of public school. But like millions of students in March of 2020, they never got to finish the school year.

The COVID pandemic closed the classrooms, forcing my husband and me to rethink how we wanted to handle our children's education. An outdoor learning school at The Learning Tree, a local day care, became our solution.

The unique education exceeded our expectations in every way.

Why we chose an outdoor learning school

The pandemic made us nervous to send our kids back to school after summer break. We were told that if someone in their class contracted COVID, the entire class would shut down for two weeks. This wasn't feasible for us as parents with full-time jobs, plus it would disrupt the learning experience for our kids.

That summer, the day care our kids attended prior to starting school announced a new opportunity: a K/1 program focused on interactive, accelerated education. It promised small class sizes (roughly 12 students per class), project-based and student-led learning, and academics balanced with outdoor activities and healthy habits.

Despite the $125 weekly tuition fee per child, we were sold on smaller classes, less exposure to others, and the included after-school care.

We enrolled our kids for the 2020-2021 school year: our daughter in kindergarten and our son in first grade. When the school added second grade the following year and then third grade the year after, we stayed.

We missed out on traditional opportunities, but gained so much more

We didn't plan on sending our kids to a private program for most of their elementary school years. But after comparing what public school offered that The Learning Tree didn't, and vice versa, the outdoor learning school was a no-brainer.

At The Learning Tree, there was no library, computer lab, or even a cafeteria. They didn't have art, music, or gym classes. The playground was small, and there was no option for gifted testing.

However, they did have an in-ground swimming pool, and swimming was built into the curriculum during warm months. A mile-long nature trail and morning fitness exercises replaced the gym. Students helped to build gardens and grow food, which made its way into their lunches. Most notably, screen time was minimal — almost nonexistent.

There was also more parental involvement. We went kayaking on the river as part of a history lesson, and we always had special celebrations for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Instead of reading math word problems, they acted them out in real time with things like farmers' markets and food prep. Projects, not worksheets, were a focal point for each grade. And since students played a role in their own education and pacing, there was no need for a separate "gifted" curriculum.

Transitioning back to the 'real world' was a tough lesson

The original K/1 program added a new grade each year, up to fifth grade. However, we pulled our children out when they started fourth grade to give them time to transition back into public education before middle school. Where we live, fifth grade is at the middle school, and we felt like jumping from outdoor learning to a public middle school would be too stressful.

Both of our kids already had lots of friends in public school, so it wasn't completely unfamiliar to them. Still, it was challenging.

They went from spending most of the day outside to getting only 20 minutes of recess. Classes were much larger, so they didn't have the opportunity to learn at their own pace. They had more rules and a more rigid structure to follow. There was more sitting and busywork than they were used to.

They missed the kindness and genuine interest of their teachers at their old school. They also lacked the opportunities to guide their own education and pursue their own interests in the classroom.

While we loved our time at the outdoor learning school, all good things must end. Our kids gained a solid foundation of work ethic, self-discovery, and leadership that continues to help them in and out of the classroom, and we'd do it again in a heartbeat — pandemic or no pandemic.

• My mother's husband died, so she's spending the holidays with me for the first time in years.
• I have to be there for her emotionally and financially this Christmas, but I'm already at my limit.
• I'm trying not to buckle under all this pressure.

I have not spent Christmas with my mother in more than a decade. We have spent our Christmases apart simply because of geography. We've been living on opposite sides of the country: a five-hour flight or a 26-hour car ride through unpredictable weather.

So, she's kept to herself for the holidays, and I've become the keeper of Christmas for my immediate family. Even as my sons grew up and moved away, taking on their own roles to make our holidays special, I'm still the list-maker, the "don't forget" reminder, and the decider in all things.

My four sons, all between 25 and 31 years old, have helped lighten my load over the years, especially as their partners have come onto the scene. Christmas was just starting to take on a new, easier shape.

But this year, my mother lost her husband of nearly 40 years, so she's coming to visit, and I'm realizing how far I will need to stretch my budget.

I have to be my mother's Santa this year

At first, I didn't really think about how my mother's arrival might change my own role for the holidays. I just thought about my mom, exhausted and heartbroken and unmoored by the loss of the husband she has lived with for more than half her life.

But as she gets ready to fly to me for Christmas, I'm realizing she's going to need me to be her Santa.

My mom needs a Santa. She has suffered this year in a way I cannot even imagine. She needs soothing; she needs to be reintroduced to a big family Christmas. She needs a stocking filled with fun, thoughtful trinkets. She needs me to make this year extra magical, and honestly, I'm worried I'm not up to the task.

I'm struggling to keep up with everything this Christmas

I'm finding this Christmas overwhelming because everyone in the family needs me for different reasons. My kids need me to bring them together, to cook for them and bake for them, and organize a big rental space for the group of us.

I'm also paying attention to everyone's finances, thinking about who is doing well and who is not. I'm thinking about who might need a bit more and how I can give a bit more without playing favorites. How can I afford a bit more?

This is, perhaps, the crux of Christmas this year. The weight of giving to my children and my mother when they all need more. Whether it's holiday gifts, time, or food, everyone needs me to be their person this year.

Even though everyone in the house will be a grown-up, I'm left feeling, for all intents and purposes, like the only grown-up for the holidays.

I'm struggling financially

I'm worried that I simply cannot afford to be Santa for everyone — not this year. Like many others, I have lost job after job in 2025. I am swimming just below the surface of losing everything, and I can't seem to come up for air.

I know that no one in my family expects a lot for Christmas, but even a little something to make the day special for each person who so deeply deserves it will be a struggle. There are 10 people in our family, and $100 each means $1,000. We all know that $100 each is next to no budget at all.

And so this year, I'm getting creative. I'm buying secondhand gifts. I'm trying to become a crafty person to create something meaningful for all of my loved ones. I'm wishing I had helpful elves to take on some of my Santa tasks. I'm actively choosing to leave the stress of trying to find work at the door until after the holiday. I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying.

I'm focusing on giving my mother support

My mother's first Christmas as a widow can't be consumed by my own stress. She needs comfort. She needs family. She needs joy. Luckily, all of that is free.

She needs me to be the grown-up in the house. She needs me to be Santa. They all do, and I refuse to buckle under the weight of it.

Instead, I'm going to choose to feel grateful that I have all of this love in my life.

• Much of the AI-discussion, both hopes and fears, centers on efficiency and cost-cutting.
• At buyout firm Tide Rock, there's a "mandate" to not use AI resources to cut costs, says its CEO.
• Ryan Peddycord walked Business Insider through how the firm uses AI to grow businesses.

Most fears and hopes surrounding AI center on its ability to save on labor costs. Whether it's Jamie Dimon predicting a three-and-a-half-day workweek, the chorus of CEOs saying that AI will help its workers get more done, or the research predicting potentially catastrophic white-collar job cuts, the focus is on efficiency.

But at one investing firm, cost-cutting is practically a forbidden word.

"The mandate across the company is don't talk about using our resources in AI or tech to cut costs or create efficiencies," Tide Rock CEO Ryan Peddycord told Business Insider.

The firm has had AI engineers for two years, but they're aimed at growing business, not cutting, said Peddycord.

The San Diego and New York-based firm, which invests in smaller businesses than your typical private-equity giants, does not use debt to finance its acquisitions. It manages $1 billion, including its current investments and dry powder. It has done over 50 acquisitions, with growth, not just financial engineering, as its goal.

"Our foundation is, and our principle is, that we are focused on being growth engines for these businesses, and that's where we want to focus our resources," Peddycord said.

Peddycord spoke to Business Insider about how the firm's use of AI fits into its business model and gave some real-world examples of where it has made an impact.

Tide Rock's model

The company buys founder-run businesses when founders have "a catalyst to change," like their own looming retirement or an illness in their family, which means they're much more protective of the asset they're selling than your typical financial investor.

They then focus on growing those companies, which means Tide Rock hires chief marketing officers and chief revenue officers "who know how to run businesses" instead of your typical private equity partners, Peddycord said.

The firm's companies have seen organic revenue growth of 24% a year since Tide Rock was launched 13 years ago, said Peddycord. (He also said the firm has only lost money on one deal over that time period.)

They're looking for a way to monetize what they built over time, but really just as important to them is for their brand and their legacy and their employees to be able to kind of continue on without them," Peddycord said.

For founders like this, the story of growth is an essential reason they'd choose to sell to Tide Rock. As such, any discussion of using AI to cut employees or costs is anathema to their sales pitch, whereas AI for growth is a selling point.

AI is becoming an integral part of the firm's strategy, but they've been doing this for years before the advent of LLMs some operational best practices in a library of over 100 videos and 500 pages of documentation.

"A CEO of a portfolio company has access to certain information, a controller has access to a different set of information, a VP of sales has access to information," Peddycord said.

AI tools have become another operational best practice that the firm shares across the companies it manages, which it tracks in a library of 100 videos and 500 pages of documentation.

The firm also has other centralized resources in-house, "as a bridge" to get the businesses to a place where they can operate on their own, including a centralized talent acquisition team and centralized chief marketing and revenue officers.

This has led to a world where the firm has, for example, been able to integrate a customer relationship management system in "30 to 45 days" instead of "12 to 18 months," said Peddycord.

How does AI fit in

The company is happy to use third-party applications that can cut costs, but it's a waste of their own resources, said Peddycord.

"I have a belief that everybody's so focused on cost-cutting that third parties are going to pick off all the low-hanging fruit there," Peddycord said. "So us trying to invest our dollars to go create things that other people are creating and probably investing more dollars to do isn't the right place to spend our money."

The first tool they invested in was finding companies to purchase. The data on platforms like Pitchbook and Crunchbase is "very, very incomplete" at the sub-$10 million EBITDA level the firm invests in, said Peddycord, so the firm first invested "heavily" in ways to find these companies and start pitching them.

Soon, the firm realized that this ability to find a lot of "non-public information" about companies and then reach out to them would also be "super relevant" for their portfolio companies when they're looking for new customers, Peddycord said.

Peddycord provided the example of identifying potential customers for its manufacturing portfolio companies that sell to the government, aerospace, or defense industries.

"When Blue Origin wins a large contract, there is some public information that we are able to gather to identify what it is that they won the contract for, and we can even reverse engineer what sub-component parts and services are going to be necessary to then go create that," Peddycord said.

From there, the firm's portfolio companies could "get in the door earlier" to offer their sub-component manufacturing help, Peddycord said.

"In those high-growth areas like aerospace and defense, they are working as hard to find new qualified suppliers as we are to find new customers," Peddycord said.

• Jane Post, 81, lives in a small mobile home that she calls "The Teapot."
• She lives on her younger daughter's land and enjoys freedom and independence with family close by.
• Though her home is small, she has everything she needs, and shares it with her animals.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation between writer Jennifer Jane and her mom, Jane Post. It has been edited for length and clarity.

After moving out of the home I loved and lived in for 31 years, it took me a few years to settle on a housing situation that suited me. I was used to living alone and liked it, but my home became too much work and responsibility once I reached my mid-70s, and I needed something different.

I lived with a friend for a few months, then moved across the country from Florida to New York in 2020 to live with my older daughter for a couple of years. However, neither of those arrangements was the right fit for me.

I call my small mobile home 'The Teapot'

I left New York and moved back to Florida without a plan. My younger daughter offered me a mobile home on her property to stay in while I figured it out. I moved in and didn't move out. It felt just right. It is small and easy for me to take care of. It's the perfect size to fit the things I hold dear. I call it "The Teapot."

I have always loved teapots. I once read a story about a retired Colonel who bought a very tiny cottage in England that had belonged to a little old lady who used it as a tearoom for walkers that wandered by. It was so small that it had just one tiny table and two chairs. The Colonel said it was like living in a teapot. I recalled this story when I stepped into the mobile home, and I knew I had at last found my home sweet home…The Teapot.

I like nearly everything about living in my Teapot. Old people often have balance issues… if I lose my balance, I always have a nearby wall, table, or counter to bounce off of. The only thing I don't like is that there aren't enough electrical outlets.

I share my home with my animals, and everything I love is close by

I share my little home with a cast of characters: Penny, the tubby brown mystery mutt mix; Choccy, the chihuahua who has difficulty walking due to old age; Little Thing, a three-legged tiny chihuahua mix; Pinkie, the cat; Agatha Raisin, the bantam chicken; Sarose, her evilness, a seabrite chicken; Jaeger, the barn cat; and then there's me, the human who does their bidding. My animals bring a huge amount of joy into my small space.

My day begins around 5 am when I start taking care of my animals. I take the ones with special needs outside one by one. I feed and water them. I make my tea. I take Penny for a walk, then put the chickens outside in their pen. I make more tea. I feed and water the wild birds.

I spend the afternoon doing whatever I want. It's heavenly to sit and watch the birds at the feeders, just six feet away, and sip tea. Everything I want is close by and easy to reach. There is a stack of books sitting on a table to be read.

There are shallow boxes of fossilized shells on top of the two chickens' indoor overnight pen. I love looking through the shells, thinking about how to make them into lovely works of art. I can't do that if they are in a box out of sight. I have made many beautiful things in my small world. I think the smallness helps me to focus and be even more creative.

I love that my two great-grandsons, ages 4 and 8, who live nearby, enjoy visiting my little enchanted world. They pop in and out to spend time with me and my collection of little creatures. They feel the magic and love the Teapot as I do.

My home makes me feel happy, even in difficult times

I was very ill recently, and all I could manage was to feed all my animals and get them in and out, then I had to go back to bed, too sick to read or watch a movie. As I lay there, I really felt as if the Teapot was giving me comfort like a warm hug. I could look around and see, with one glance, all the things I hold dear that bring me happy memories.

When you get old, the list of things you'll never get to do, have, or own might seem never-ending, and past memories are your lifeline. Every memory I've fit into my little home brings me happiness and comfort.

Living in a small space is not for everyone, but for me, the Teapot is heaven on Earth. I'm in my 80s now. My younger daughter is nearby if I need anything or want company, but I am able to live independently in a way that works for me. I can have everything that's important to me at this time of my life — family, freedom from the responsibilities and demands of home ownership, my animals, privacy, peace, and most everything I love at my fingertips.

• Earlier this year, I was seeking new routines to help boost my mood.
• I realized that if I stopped pressing the snooze button, my mornings would feel less rushed.
• My morning routine has become my favorite part of the day, and I've become a morning person.

At the start of the summer, I was desperately craving some new routines to propel me into a new chapter. I wanted to create some scaffolding in my daily life that would help hold me up during a difficult time. I didn't intend to become a morning person in the process, but that's what happened.

I realized that if I wanted to change the way I felt throughout my day, the best place to start would be, well, at the start of it. If I could get myself into a better headspace as close to when I woke up as possible, maybe that good mood would be more resilient, and so would I.

I decided to ditch the snooze button

By waking up with just enough time to walk my dog Rooney and hop on my computer to work, I was starting my days feeling rushed and cranky; that needed to change. So, I started getting up so we would have enough time to take a more leisurely stroll and go to the dog park in the mornings.

I didn't even need to change the time my alarm was set for — I just needed to stop pressing snooze.

When I thought about it, I realized that I'd never been glad I pressed the snooze button; I'd never thought to myself, "I'm so glad I got that extra seven minutes of sleep." Instead, I often woke up after a snooze — or series of snoozes — feeling more groggy and disoriented than had I just stuck to the tiny promise I made myself the night before when I set the alarm and put my feet on my floor when it first went off.

Over time, both Rooney and I started to love the dog park; not only did it become part of our routine, but we both made friends. He is learning how to play with other dogs — he used to just make the rounds from person to person, enjoying getting pet — and I enjoy starting my day talking to other people, rather than staring at screens.

After the dog park, I also have the energy to exercise

I also realized that by waking up earlier and starting my day with something I actually enjoy, it's become easier to exercise in the morning afterward. I've tried — and failed — plenty of times to be a morning exercise person, but it's never the first thing I want to do when I open my eyes.

By doing something I actually look forward to first, it eases me into my day, and I'm awake enough to then get some intentional movement in when I get home. And if I still don't feel like it, I still get on my yoga mat and do a very gentle video that basically amounts to a nap with a stretch, just so I don't get out of the habit of doing something.

I feel more grounded since starting my new morning routine

Starting my morning like this has a few benefits. I feel less rushed and more productive by the time I sit down to work, which sets me up to feel more positive throughout the day. Overall, I feel less anxious, and I've been sleeping better, as well.

It also means I've barely looked at my phone for the first couple of hours that I'm awake; for some reason, this has translated to less mindless scrolling throughout the day. I feel more grounded, calmer, and more mindful, and though I rolled my eyes at them before, I'm now a proud member of the morning person club.