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Typical investment advice either sounds incomprehensible (The blockchain does the hokeypokey and fiat currency goes the way of the dodo!) or too simple (Just get in on the ground floor of the next Apple!) and does very little to help the average person become an investor. This kind of standard advice doesnt work because it assumes investing is a onetime event. Instead, newbie investors should look at growing their money as a consistent habit. Habitual investing allows you to take advantage of the so-easy-its-complicated advice to buy low and sell high. Thats because consistency is the key to an investment strategy called dollar-cost averaging. Heres what you need to know about how dollar-cost averaging works and how it can protect your money from market fluctuations. What is dollar-cost averaging? When you use the dollar-cost averaging strategy, you invest the same amount into an asset at regular intervals. This practice ensures that you are consistently investing a set amount of money, which is an important part of retirement planning. But dollar-cost averaging also ignores any fluctuations in the assets price over time. You invest the same dollar amount on the same schedule no matter what, rather than trying to time your purchase for when the asset is on sale. This releases you from the stress of trying to time the market. How dollar-cost averaging works Lets say you started a new job in June and determine you can invest $250 per month starting in July. You decide to try dollar-cost averaging, investing the same amount into the same asset each month. The number of shares you purchase might change from month to month as the price changes, but it will average out over time. Thats because youre purchasing the same dollar amount at regular intervals, so you dont have to worry about timingand since you make a purchase of the same dollar amount each time, you purchase fewer shares when prices are high and more shares when theyre low, lowering the average price over time. Over the last six months of 2025, heres how your monthly $250 investment might affect your average share price: MonthAmount InvestedShare PriceNumber of Shares PurchasedJuly$250$1025August$250$1220.83September$250$1025October$250$831.25November$250$735.7December$250$927.78 Total InvestedAverage Share PriceTotal Shares Purchased$1,500$9.06165.56 By investing $1,500 using dollar-cost averaging over a six-month time period, youve paid an average of $9.06 per share and purchased a total of 165.56 shares. Compare that to investing $1,500 all at once in July, when the share price was $10 per share. You would have only 150 shares and would have spent almost a dollar more per share. Benefits of dollar-cost averaging This strategy gives normal people a no-muss-no-fuss method of taking advantage of all the good investment mojo Warren Buffett is banging on about without having to get a degree in finance. Specifically, it offers these benefits to retirement investors, noobs, and anyone else who doesnt feel a thrill when cracking open a fresh new prospectus: It lowers your investment risk. Consistent smaller investments reduce your risk of making a hefty investment when the market (or the specific asset) is at its peak. And since this strategy lowers the average cost of each share you purchase, using dollar-cost averaging lowers your overall investing risk. It eliminates emotional investing. Emotions tend to lead us astray in financial decisions, and thats especially true when it comes to investing. Dollar-cost averaging helps you avoid the emotional investment roller coaster. Rather than buying when youre feeling irrationally exuberant or selling because youre afraid there will be no tomorrow, you invest on a schedule. It makes investing more accessible. Unless you were born with an emerald spoon in your mouth, its unlikely that you have thousands of dollars sitting around to invest. Dollar-cost averaging not only helps smooth out the effects of market fluctuations and timing but it also makes investing possible and accessible for those of us who dont have a lump sum to invest from the beginning. Know the downsides There are some potential drawbacks to the dollar-cost averaging strategy, although Im convinced the benefits outweigh them. Specifically, dollar-cost averaging does not negate the need to do your research. Consistently investing in a failing asset will not mitigate the risk of losing your money. Before you start using the dollar-cost averaging strategy, take the time to research and identify investments that align with your goals, risk tolerance, and time horizon. The other potential downside to remember is that the market tends to rise over time, so even with dollar-cost averaging, youll probably spend more money per share in your 10th year of investing than you did during your first. But this is a minor problem, since the alternative is to invest a lump sum, which most people cant afford to do. Slow and steady Dollar-cost averaging not only helps investors build a kind of rational investing discipline, but it also mitigates the risk of volatility and timing while making the practice of investing more accessible. Building a consistent investing habit may sound less sexy than jumping on a hot stock tip that makes millions overnight, but its a proven strategy that will treat you right. What more can you ask for?
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E-Commerce
With burgers sizzling and classic rock thumping, many Americans revel in summer cookoutsat least until that wayward cousin asks for a pop in soda country, or even worse, a coke when they actually want a Sprite. Few American linguistic debates have bubbled quite as long and effervescently as the one over whether a generic soft drink should be called a soda, pop or coke. The word you use generally boils down to where youre from: Midwesterners enjoy a good pop, while soda is tops in the North and far West. Southerners, long the cultural mavericks, dont bat an eyelash asking for cokelowercasebefore homing in on exactly the type they want: Perhaps a root beer or a Coke, uppercase. As a linguist who studies American dialects, Im less interested in this regional divide and far more fascinated by the unexpected history behind how a fizzy health drink from the early 1800s spawned the modern soft drinks many names and iterations. Bubbles, anyone? Foods and drinks with wellness benefits might seem like a modern phenomenon, but the urge to create drinks with medicinal properties inspired what might be called a soda revolution in the 1800s. The process of carbonating water was first discovered in the late 1700s. By the early 1800s, this carbonated water had become popular as a health drink and was often referred to as soda water. The word soda likely came from sodium, since these drinks often contained salts, which were then believed to have healing properties. Given its alleged curative effects for health issues such as indigestion, pharmacists sold soda water at soda fountains, innovative devices that created carbonated water to be sold by the glass. A chemistry professor, Benjamin Stillman, set up the first such device in a drugstore in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1806. Its eventual success inspired a boom of soda fountains in drugstores and health spas. By the mid-1800s, pharmacists were creating unique root-, fruit- and herb-infused concoctions, such as sassafras-based root beer, at their soda fountains, often marketing them as cures for everything from fatigue to foul moods. These flavored, sweetened versions gave rise to the linking of the word soda with a sweetened carbonated beverage, as opposed to simple, carbonated water. Seltzertodays popular term for such sparkling waterwas around, too. But it was used only for the naturally carbonated mineral water from the German town Nieder-Selters. Unlike Perrier, sourced similarly from a specific spring in France, seltzer made the leap to becoming a generic term for fizzy water. Regional naming patterns So how did soda come to be called so many different things in different places? It all stems from a mix of economic enterprise and linguistic ingenuity. The popularity of soda in the Northeast likely reflects the soda fountains longer history in the region. Since a lot of Americans living in the Northeast migrated to California in the mid-to-late 1800s, the name likely traveled west with them. As for the Midwestern preference for popwell, the earliest American use of the term to refer to a sparkling beverage appeared in the 1840s in the name of a flavored version called ginger pop. Such ginger-flavored pop, though, was around in Britain by 1816, since a Newcastle songbook is where you can first see it used in text. The pop seems to be onomatopoeic for the noise made when the cork was released from the bottle before drinking. Linguists dont fully know why pop became so popular in the Midwest. But one theory links it to a Michigan bottling company, Feigenson Brothers Bottling Workstoday known as Faygo Beveragesthat used pop in the name of the sodas they marketed and sold. Another theory suggests that because bottles were more common in the region, soda drinkers were more likely to hear the pop sound than in the Northeast, where soda fountains reigned. As for using coke generically, the first Coca-Cola was served in 1886 by Dr. John Pemberton, a pharmacist at Jacobs Pharmacy in Atlanta and the founder of the company. In the 1900s, the Coca-Cola company tried to stamp out the use of Coke for Coca-Cola. But that ship had already sailed. Since Coca-Cola originated and was overwhelmingly popular in the South, its generic use grew out of the fact that people almost always asked for Coke. As with Jell-O, Kleenex, Band-Aids and seltzer, it became a generic term. Whats soft about it? Speaking of soft drinks, whats up with that term? It was originally used to distinguish all nonalcoholic drinks from hard drinks, or beverages containing spirits. Interestingly, the original Coca-Cola formula included wineresembling a type of alcoholic health drink popular overseas, Vin Mariani. But Pemberton went on to develop a soft version a few years later to be sold as a medicinal drink. Due to the growing popularity of soda water concoctions, eventually soft drink came to mean only such sweetened carbonated beverages, a linguistic testament to Americas enduring love affair with sugar and bubbles. With the average American guzzling almost 40 gallons per year, you can call it whatever you what. Just dont call it healthy. Valerie M. Fridland is a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Work-related stress is on the rise. And to quote Gen Z, who loves some dramatic verbiage, the overwhelm has employees totally “crashing out.” Crashing out can look like having a full blown freak out (think: losing it at a coworker, crying at your desk, or screaming in your car) or simply feeling internally unhinged and saying quietly to yourself Im crashing out. Im crashing out so hard right now. On TikTok Gen Z is crashing out over the big and small. (Think their dog eating their new Nike kicks.) However, one of the most common trends is crashing out over work. And while the videos are very often all in good fun and usually hilarious, that doesn’t mean that work-related pressure isn’t a very real issue. According to a new report with data from 2,000 full-time employees, there are definitely good reasons to be crashing out. Research from Owl Lab’s 2024 State of Hybrid Work Report finds 43% of workers say their work stress has increased in just one year. Furthermore, 89% say there has been no improvement in their troublesome work-related stress from the previous year. What is everyone crashing out about? Unfair compensation For starters, a good chunk of workers (22%) don’t feel fairly compensated, per the report. Many employees are “polyworking,” or working an additional job. Over a fifth (22%) of employees have another job in addition to their full-time job. Shockingly, this number is higher for managers: almost a third (32%) have another job. Unsurprisingly, managers’ stress levels are 55% higher than nonmanagers. Not enough flexibility Employees are also over having to go to the office, mainly, because it doesnt feel necessary to them. Half of workers feel that when they are forced to go into work it is only to “fill a seat.” Likewise, most workers (84%) say working from home gives them the ability to eat healthier meals. They also have to spend less money on food and parking. Hybrid workers report spending an average of $61 when working from the office versus working from home. Flexibility is majorly important to workers: 41% say if they lost their hybrid work privileges, they’d look for a new job. Office politics One major reason why employees don’t want to come into the office, aside from getting to work from the comfort of home, is political differences. Nearly half (45%) of U.S. workers said their colleagues’ political views have them wanting to stay home. While older generations are less likely to air their grievances online, Gen Z leans in. Overall one in three workers (34%) has posted something negative about their job or employer. However, nearly half (48%) of Gen Z employees have. And with that, crashing out has entered the chat.
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E-Commerce
If you pick up a pair of the newest sneakers from Stella McCartney, you might notice something unusual: The soles smell like cinnamon. Thats because theyre dyed with cinnamon waste rather than synthetic coloringone of the ways the soles were designed to be as sustainable as possible. Theyre also made from other plant-based components like castor beans. When the sneakers wear out, the soles can either be composted or recycled. [Photo: Stella McCartney] For the brand, the sole was the missing piece in making a circular product. A previous version of the sneaker, which came out in 2022, used materials like grape-based leather in the shoes upper and recycled TPUa type of plasticin the sole. But that wasn’t a complete solution. The fossil-fuel-based plastics in typical soles, like TPU or EVA, have multiple sustainability challenges. They’re energy-intensive to produce, and rarely recycled. When they end up in a landfill, the material can last hundreds of years. Even if a particular shoe uses recycled material, it can break down and create microplastic pollution when you walk or run. To find an alternative, Stella McCartney’s team partnered with Balena, a materials science startup focused on biopolymers. The real hurdle was how to match the durability and flexibility of traditional fossil-based plastics . . . using a bio-based material that could also break down at end of life, says Yael Vantu, head of product at Balena, which is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Milan. That balance of true compostability without sacrificing performance simply hadnt been cracked yet. Most biodegradable materials on the market just arent built to handle the stress, abrasion, and longevity needed in a sneaker sole. Thats where our material came in. [Photo: Stella McCartney] The startup engineered a new product, called BioCir Flex, designed to have the same comfort and resilience as conventional plastic, but with the ability to either be composted in an industrial facility or recycled. Essentially, we created a material that behaves like plastic when you need it, and like nature when youre done with it,” Vantu says. Balena had already started working on the material before the partnership with Stella McCartney, but then spent two years working with the designer label to go through multiple rounds of development, from lab tests to real-world production runs. The white version of the new sneaker, the $550 S-Wave, uses a mix of hemp and agricultural waste from the pineapple industry in the shoe’s upper. When the shoe wears out, it can be sent back to Stella McCartney. The company will then separate the components. While the soles can be composted, the brand priority is to recycle the material into new soles, so it can avoid the environmental footprint of making the material again from scratch. The material is still more expensive than standard TPU, both because bio-based manufacturing and circular supply chains are still maturing. Some brands, like Stella McCartney, are willing to foot the higher bill. “They see the value in future-proofing against regulations, reducing environmental risks, and building deeper connections with consumers who expect products to truly align with their values,” Vantu says. In theory, the material could scale up to be widely used in the industry. “Now its about building out robust supply chains and end-of-life systems and having brands prioritize circularity not just for capsule collections, but across their main lines,” Vantu says. “Regulatory momentum and growing consumer expectations are definitely accelerating that shift.”
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E-Commerce
Half of remote workers run errands on the clock, and over a quarter skip full days altogetherso its no surprise some bosses have grown wary of their employees working from home. But that doesnt mean remote work doesnt work. Were all different. While some people thrive while surrounded by colleagues, others excel in the quiet and comfort of their home office. Most employers will recognize that rigid rules wont produce optimal results, but convincing your boss that the office isnt the right environment for you will still take some hard work: managing your time, delivering consistently, and giving it your all. Heres how you can demonstrate that while remote working might not work for everyone, it is working for you: 1. Quantify your productivity Most remote workers dont manage eight hours of focused workbut neither do those in the office. From chitchat between colleagues to frequent coffee breaks, there are constant distractions. You just need to prove to your boss that youre not spending all of your time running errands and watching Netflix. Work flow tracking appssuch as Rize or Toggl Trackare a great way to quantify your productivity. Integrating with hundreds of common tools and automatically tracking your activity across your apps and browser, you can effortlessly create reports showing what youve done, when, and how long it took. With the right data, you can prove that youre actually achieving more from the solace of your home office. 2. Respond with strategic urgency You might mute your notifications to focus, but to your boss, this silence is suspicious. Are you getting on with your to-do list or running errands, having found a way to trick the employee tracking system? You dont need to live on Slack, but be ready to respond to urgent requests, whether for critical issues or deadlines that cant wait. Its not about being constantly available; its about being reliably responsive. 3. Highlight invisible tasks When working remotely, your behind-the-scenes efforts often go unnoticed. Nobody sees you supporting your junior colleagues, updating spreadsheets, or fixing broken processes, but that doesnt mean they arent important. Dont let your impact slip under the radar. During check-ins, highlight all your contributions with confidencenot as small tasks but as essential work that keeps the office ticking over smoothly. 4. Bring energy to every meeting If you’re half awake, barely dressed, and mumbling through early morning meetings, your boss will assume that’s your default setting. You might work from home, but you still need to show up. Get out of bed, jump in the shower, and put on something workplace-appropriateyou need to show you mean business. When your manager might only see you for 15 minutes a day, making the right impression makes all the difference. 5. Present your progress Your boss can’t see you glued to your screen or tapping your keyboard. For all they know, you’re heading to the shops or learning how to bake the second you switch your camera off. Telling them you’ve been busy is one thing, but showing them? There’s no arguing with evidence. Start the week with a Zoom call to define your goals, share your screen, and walk them through what youve been doing. Log them in a tracking tool such as Weekdone or Teamwork, and end the week with a visual report that shows just how hard you’ve been working. Over time, that visibility and transparency will build trustand your boss will stop worrying about what you’re working on and where youre working from. 6. Share your schedule If you want to build trust, transparency is the fastest way to earn it. Most calendar apps will let you share your schedule with your boss, which nips any doubt about where you are or what you’re doing in the bud. If your calendar is full of team meetings and client calls, there’s no question whether you’re deep in your workload or buried under your duvet. But you need time to work, too, and you should block it off just as you would an important call. Just avoid vague labels such as focus time. Be specific and make it goal-orientedBrainstorming: Q2 marketing or Writing: Leadership blog postso your boss isnt second-guessing whether youre really at your desk. 7. Beat your deadlines Do you constantly deliver work with seconds to spare before the deadline? At best, your boss will assume that you’re managing your time poorly while working remotely. At worst, they’ll suspect you’re deliberately holding back finished tasks to sneak in some extra downtime. The best way to squash these doubts? Deliver work before it’s due. You don’t need to keep ahead of your schedule constantly. However, the occasional early delivery tells your boss you’re working autonomously effectively and wouldn’t benefit from them hovering over your shoulder. 8. Use saved time to upskill You could hit snooze and sleep away all that time you’re saving by not having to commute, or you could invest that time in yourself. What challenges are slowing your team down, and which skills are in short supply? By filling those gaps, you’re not just benefiting your own career but providing additional value to your bosswhich will make them more accepting of your remote setup. If they’re still not convinced? Well, your sharpened skill set will open doors to companies that recognize and value the benefits of remote working. If youre clocking in, doing the bare minimum, and then sneaking out to run errands, your boss has every right to be concerned. But if youre putting in the effort and producing the results? Any doubts about the effectiveness of your remote working setup will fade fast. No decent boss wants to force you back into an environment that stifles your productivitythey simply want to ensure you aren’t spending your workday on social media, shopping, and catching up on sleep.
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E-Commerce
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