Month: November 2025

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kathy Curtis, 81, who works part-time in customer service and data entry for a local water company. Curtis, who lives in rural Northern California, said the extra income is necessary for making ends meet each month. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I don’t imagine that you can call what I’ve done a career because I’ve done so many things just to survive.

When I graduated from high school, women couldn’t do everything I wanted to do, so I never became anything. My mindset was more that I’d take what I could get. I should’ve gone to college, but I didn’t because in those days, you were expected to be either a teacher or a nurse.

I started working at a department store at the age of 15. I worked at banks for a while, then moved from position to position based on what was available.

My first husband and I had two children. When I married the second time, we were married for seven years. That took the financial burden off for those seven years, but immediately after my separation, I was working four jobs at a time, seven days a week, just to keep going because I didn’t have help.

I’m still working to keep going at 81.

My last few jobs were all industry-specific

I’ve been a traffic person for a cable company. I’ve prepped houses for painters. If there was something to be done and I could earn money doing it, I never hesitated. I’ve always felt that if I don’t know how to do something, I can learn it, and I’ve been fortunate in achieving success in the things I’ve chosen to learn.

I worked in the office of a furniture store for over 10 years, ending as the salaried customer service manager at $18 per hour in 2008. I left there thinking I would move to Texas. Then there was the real estate crash, buyers lost their jobs, fell out of escrow, and the rest is history. I went back to work part-time until my cancer diagnosis in 2009.

I had breast cancer treatment in 2010, and three years after that, I had a brain tumor. I next had a hip replacement, and I also had blood clots in both lungs and one leg. I was out of commission for a while. Between 2011 and 2013, I searched for a job but was unable to find one.

My health is pretty average now. I get out of breath and tired easily. I don’t usually get sick or get the flu. If I do, I just power through because that’s what we used to do in the olden days.

I now work for a local water company in the office

I’ve been here for 10 years. I started after a large wildfire, which resulted in a loss of a substantial number of homes in the area.

I work Fridays and fill in whenever anybody wants to take off. It’s a customer service and data entry job, and it involves some problem-solving. I started making minimum wage, which in California is $16.50 per hour. I recently got a raise to $18 an hour.

We’re a small community, so it’s a very neat job because it gets me in touch with people. If I didn’t have the job, I would probably be more of a homebody and not do much. It’s almost a social event to go to work, as strange as that sounds.

I’m lucky that I was raised by my grandmother

I learned a whole lot about life from her. I’ve never made a lot of money, but I’ve also never looked, acted, or felt like a poverty case either, even though a great deal of the time, I’ve stayed just barely above poverty.

My Social Security is $1,186 a month, and my work brings me an additional $200 every two weeks. My Social Security benefits cover my house, insurance, and utilities, and my job provides for my food. I can also cover my day-to-day expenses, including groceries and dog food. I feel like I’ve managed to survive pretty well.

My insurance costs me around $2,700 a year because I live in a fire zone. Car insurance is another $80 a month. My water bill runs me about $155 every two months. I manage to keep my gas bill under $70 each month, as my heating is pretty much firewood.

I don’t look at work as a chore

I’m going to work until I can’t, or until the company no longer needs me. I just don’t see myself not working at this point.

I’m content with the amount of work I do and the earnings I receive. I live in a poor county. I would have to commute at least an hour on a mountain road to do any better than what I’m doing. The stress and the expense of the commute wouldn’t be worth it.

I’ve got my adult grandson here with me, and he’s a big help

When my first grandson was a year old, I took him in and raised him. My daughter and my other two grandchildren moved in after I moved out of a big house into a smaller one. My granddaughter started kindergarten here and graduated high school, and she’s now out on her own. I’ve always had somebody else I’ve taken care of.

There was never a time when I was able to save money for the future. It was always a matter of managing to get through until the next day.

It’s been a huge achievement for me to own my own home. I wouldn’t own a home if it weren’t for the fact that, when my father died in 1995, I was left with money, and I immediately put it into buying a home.

I still had to go the private money route, which had a higher interest rate, because I never made enough to qualify for a loan. My son helped me secure a conventional loan for the house.

I try to visit my three great-grandkids periodically, as two of them live nearby. That’s probably the one thing I have that brings me joy.

I think regrets are a waste of energy

When you hit this time in your life, energy is something you’re short on.

I was lucky to learn along the way to let go of things that I couldn’t do anything about. It’s nothing more than attitude, and I would much rather be happy and content than focus on any of the negative.

• An audience at a top AI conference in San Francisco was asked what startup they would short.
• Perplexity, an AI search browser trying to take on Google, landed at the top of the list.
• There was little disagreement at the conference that we are in an AI bubble.

In a city obsessed with betting on the next big thing, the Cerebral Valley AI Conference turned that instinct inward. Before panels featuring AI heavyweights like Anthropic and xAI wrapped up on Wednesday, founders and investors in the audience were asked a question that Silicon Valley rarely says out loud: Which billion-dollar AI startup would you bet against?

The crowd’s verdict? Search startup Perplexity topped the list of companies most likely to fall, followed by OpenAI — a surprising second place for the poster child of the AI boom.

The informal survey, conducted by organizer and independent journalist Eric Newcomer, of more than 300 attendees, underscored what many insiders are whispering: that even as AI money floods the Valley, confidence in its biggest players is starting to crack.

Any unscientific, anonymous survey should be taken with a heavy dose of skepticism. Still, it was revealing because while plenty of VCs and founders at this conference and elsewhere talk about an AI bubble, they are usually too polite to name names. Unlike public markets, private investors do not actually short companies, and it is considered bad form in Silicon Valley to speak negatively in public about a startup without a verified reason.

To anyone who follows Silicon Valley, Perplexity, an AI search browser trying to take on Google, landing at the top of the list is not surprising.

Perplexity has become the poster child of what some see as an AI bubble because it’s raising back-to-back funding rounds every few months and seeing voracious investor demand at valuations from $14 billion to as high as $50 billion, Business Insider recently reported.

Asked to comment on the Cerebral Valley survey, Perplexity spokesman Jesse Dwyer replied in an email: “Geeze, it sounds more like the judgmental valley conference.”

OpenAI landing second on the list might be a bit more surprising because it’s seen as the clear consumer winner of the AI revolution.

Still, its ballooning valuation and trillions of infrastructure spending have spooked some investors. (OpenAI didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Even while he says we are in an AI bubble, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman strongly refuted that his company’s valuation is inflated in a recent interview with investor Brad Gerstner.

“How can a company with $13 billion in revenues make $1.4 trillion of spend commitments?” Gerstner asked Altman.

“If you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer,” Altman said in response to Gerstner’s question. “Enough.”

Altman has a point. Lest you think everyone is trying to dump their OpenAI and Perplexity shares, those companies both appeared on the other side of the trade in another survey question asking which company you would bet on.

Anthropic, which Business Insider recently reported was exploring a new funding round valued at $350 billion, led the list.

One thing on which there was little disagreement is that we are in a bubble, but that is not necessarily something to be worried about.

“I think every technology cycle, by definition, is a bubble,” Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman said onstage. “And the real question is, what are the enduring companies and how big will they be?”

On the same panel, solo VC Elad Gil compared the current bubble to the dotcom bust of the late 1990s.

“There’s going to be a few dozen things that become massive, a handful that will be truly outsize generational things, and then everything else is going to go away in one form or another,” Gil said.

Whether Perplexity will be the next Google or Altavista is what investors like Gil and Fushman are paid to predict.

• Walmart CEO Doug McMillon announced Friday that he plans to retire in January after 12 years on the job.
• Retail leader turnover is nearly 80% higher than in 2024, an executive coaching firm found.
• CEO turnover is lower outside the retail sector, as the industry faces high tariffs and labor costs.

When Walmart CEO Doug McMillon announced Friday that he plans to retire in January after 12 years on the job, he joined a growing wave of retail executives stepping down during a record year of turnover.

Retail leader turnover is up 79% year over year, according to a report released by the business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which included an analysis of executive departures through September.

Between January and September 2025, 43 retail CEOs had left their posts, compared to 24 CEO exits recorded during the same timeframe in 2024. The firm’s findings were published on November 4, before McMillon announced his resignation.

McMillon will be succeeded on February 1 by John Furner, the head of Walmart’s US division.

Other high-profile retail CEOs who have left their posts this year include former Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, who Business Insider previously reported resigned in March after an investigation into his “personal conduct,” as well as former Kohl’s CEO Ashley Buchanan, who was fired in May, just months after being appointed to the role, after investigators found he had given favorable business deals to a close acquaintence.

Satish Malhotra, CEO of The Container Store, resigned in March after the company’s restructuring. Vivek Sankaran, CEO of Albertsons, retired in May, following the company’s merger attempt with Kroger. Target CEO Brian Cornell announced in August that he plans to retire in February.

CEO turnover is lower outside the retail sector, with September marking the fourth consecutive month in which CEO exits across industries were lower than in the corresponding month one year earlier, according to the Challenger report.

Leaders in the retail industry are facing increased pressure to perform as the sector navigates high tariffs, rising labor costs, and shifting consumer behavior, leading to slowing sales.

With several retail leaders announcing retirements effective early next year, the sector’s leadership shake-up shows little sign of slowing heading into 2026.

Kamila Staryga’s husband asked her to marry him years after their chance meeting in Golden Gate Park. She said yes. Later, he popped another question: Would she get a prenup?

Staryga, the founder of a reproductive health startup, Rita Health, didn’t take offense. “I’m a super-high risk profile,” she says matter-of-factly, and legal contracts are part of her daily reality. “You don’t write a contract for good times,” she says. “You write them for when stuff goes south.”

For Staryga and her husband, cash isn’t the only asset at stake. He works at a leading artificial intelligence company. Both receive part of their compensation in stock options. But where Staryga’s equity is a bet on the future, his is already a winning lottery ticket.

Prenups go with death and taxes on the list of things no one wants to discuss, and yet, they’re having a moment. Surveys suggest they’re on the rise. On TikTok, lawyers and money influencers cast them as basic financial planning. For ultra-public couples like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, attorneys dissect who-gets-what in a divorce with ESPN-level draft-night energy.

Monica Mazzei, chair of Buchalter’s family law group, calls it “the Kardashian effect”: The public interest in their prenups helped ease taboos. Family law attorney Susan Scherman has a slightly darker explanation for millennials and Gen Z signing prenups: “Their attitude toward marriage is, ‘Look, the statistics are against us, so let’s just go in and do the best we can.'”

Survey data suggests more couples are proposing prenups. Fifteen years ago, a Harris Poll survey of 2,000 married or engaged adults in the United States found that just 3% had signed a prenup. In 2023, Harris Poll and Axios reran the survey, albeit with a smaller sample; the share jumped to about 20%. Rates were even higher among millennials (47%) and Gen Z (41%).

The climb tracks a shift in how younger Americans think about marriage. Some of them grew up during the peak divorce rates of the eighties and nineties. They wait longer to say “I do,” then marry with careers, mortgages, and other assets worth protecting: social media handles, bitcoin, frozen embryos, and Labubus. Which is why, more than ever, they’re saying, “We want prenup!”

It also helps that tech has made getting a prenup easier than filing a joint tax return. Staryga and her husband used First, a TurboTax-style prenup service. It walked them through a questionnaire and let each bring in a lawyer to review the draft before signing. First’s no-frills prenups start at $599. The company has raised $4.3 million in venture capital to expand.

For Staryga, getting a prenup was a natural choice. Being a tech founder, she’s accustomed to signing contracts online. She’s also part of a generation that expects on-demand everything.

“We bought a Tesla on a website,” she reasoned. Why not a prenup?

Historically, prenups were the province of the ultrawealthy, pushed by parents to protect family money. One attorney described a photographer-client who deferred to parents on every term in their prenup because a mega-million-dollar inheritance loomed. Lois Liberman, a partner in Blank Rome’s renowned family law practice, has a name for this cohort: “the lucky sperm club.”

That world hasn’t vanished. The children of boomers and older generations are staring down a record wealth transfer — about $100 trillion by 2048. But the fastest growth is among self-made couples, lawyers in New York and San Francisco say. They’re building their fortunes faster than their parents did, as the housing and stock markets surge and float their net worths higher.

Prenups aren’t recorded in any central registry, so there’s little hard data on who uses them or why, said Elizabeth Carter, a professor at Louisiana State University Law and a practicing attorney. Her research suggests that the rise isn’t only about soaring assets, but also about who’s earning them.

Women are more likely than ever to be the household breadwinner. More own homes, hold college degrees, and run teams. In that light, the legal document that once shielded dynastic wealth now protects dual xf, which is why, more often, she’s the one asking for it.

You can’t handshake your way into a marriage and expect that to protect you.Rachel-Jean Firchau

Social media director Kate Winick found love at 34. Before she swiped right on her husband, she’d spent a decade growing her savings working in media, then at Peloton.

“That nest egg was really important to me,” she says. She and her husband used a mediator to sort out the terms of their prenup before hiring separate lawyers. “I think we both felt like the goal was to walk out whole, not to walk out at an advantage or make a profit,” says Winick, now married three years.

In certain corners of tech and finance, prenup lawyers travel by referral. Mazzei, based in San Francisco, recalled a Google employee who, when he inquired about a prenup, said her name was on “a list.” Staryga says many of her husband’s coworkers advised him to get a prenup.

The comp mix drives it, says Michael Calogero, a partner of Cohen Clair Lans Greifer & Simpson. For startup workers, their pay is often equity-heavy. If the company hits, the windfall can be significant. And if it doesn’t, they’ll move on to the next thing. “Even if they don’t have tremendous wealth,” he says, “they’re hoping maybe one day they will and planning for that.”

Earlier this year, Rachel-Jean Firchau, 32, who recently moved to Australia, raised the idea of a prenup to her then-fiancé. She’d been the primary earner for five years, working in ad-agency sales, and they’d just decided she would quit to build her travel-and-lifestyle blog full-time, betting that a brand with more than 20,000 Instagram followers could become a dream job.

The couple pushed the paperwork to the last minute — it was “not as cute” as choosing wedding favors and her reception outfit change. They used First, filling out questionnaires over a Trader Joe’s dinner and later signing from their studio apartment with a notary on video.

The prenup says Firchau owns her brand’s intellectual property and keeps it if they divorce. “You can’t handshake your way into a marriage,” she says, “and expect that to protect you.”

It’s not just social media handles that younger couples want to safeguard. Clauses now cover pets and sometimes the pet’s TikTok, if there’s real revenue tied to it. Libby Leffler, First’s founder and CEO, says she’s seen it all: sneakers, handbags, game consoles, patents, and crypto art.

Mazzei says she includes embryos on her standard asset questionnaire. She says pre-marriage embryos come up “more than you would think.” One thing a prenup can’t settle: child custody or support. Courts decide those later, under a “best interests of the child” standard.

Once the assets are sorted, couples start writing rules. The hottest example is the infidelity clause, which defines cheating and sets a financial penalty.

HelloPrenup, a four-year-old platform that produces tens of thousands of agreements a year, says that about one-third of prenups generated on its platform have an infidelity clause. The average penalty is about $165,000. First is seeing more inbound inquiries, too.

Lawyers, though, are unimpressed. Cheating is notoriously hard to prove in court, creating a “mini trial within a trial,” says Lidio Duval, a family law attorney at Aronson Mayefsky & Sloan in New York. Enforceability of infidelity clauses is a patchwork. In pure no-fault states, courts often refuse clauses that insinuate fault. California generally won’t enforce them at all.

Where they are allowed, the language has to be surgical, especially for open relationships. HelloPrenup founder Julia Rodgers has seen clauses that read more like a Feeld bio than a legal contract: sex with a third party is fine, “so long as the spouse is in the same room.”

It’s a different scene from nearly a decade ago when my then-fiancé looked aghast at my suggestion that we hire a lawyer to draft a prenup. He’d inherited a tidy sum from his grandmother, and I wanted to spare him the guilt of asking me to sign one. Plus, if we were ever to divorce, I didn’t need the money. We were both pulling in six figures and carried no debts.

When I asked, his face collapsed as if I’d just slid divorce papers across the table. “I’m not counting on us needing one,” he said, part-statement, part-question.

My chest tightened. “Me neither,” I said before dropping the subject.

My husband heard “prenup” and pictured a trip to a law office with a cold receptionist and a candy bowl on the conference table. The new version of that scene looks different — a couch, two laptops open, and a list of prompts nudging couples toward the hard questions while they still like each other.

That’s the spirit Winick and her husband brought to their prenup. Winick, who describes herself as “reasonably feisty,” knows the version of herself that shows up when she’s stressed, tired, or, “God forbid, hungry.” They chose a prenup so that their best selves could set rules for their worst days. “We’re going to guard each other against even the possibility that we will do things out of anger and hurt,” she says.

Seen that way, a prenup isn’t a hedge against love, but a buffer against our worst impulses.

Melia Russell is a senior correspondent with Business Insider, covering the intersection of law and technology.