October’s pending data, however, points to a significantly sharper pullback for November closings.
Surging mortgage costs reshape buyer decisions
The monthly mortgage payment on the typical US home reached an estimated $2,004 in October, assuming a 20% down payment and excluding taxes and insurance. That’s up 12.8% from a year ago and 4.8% above September, the largest single-month jump in four years.
For Federal Housing Administration (FHA) borrowers putting 5% down, the year-over-year increase stood at 11.8%.
When taxes, insurance, and maintenance are added, a median-income household would spend 41.5% of its monthly income to carry the typical home, up from 39.2% a year earlier.
Mortgage rates averaged 7.33% in October, according to Freddie Mac, climbing from 6.86% in September.
Update 11/7/26: Deal is back again, terms have changed though. Now requires a Genius AI membership, this costs $39.99 per month (must maintain for 12 months). Also requires a $10,000 deposit for 12 months
Update 11/6/26: Bonus has been increased to $1,000, was $200. Looks like the referral to remove the six month requirement has been removed. (Update: expired?)
Update 9/13/26: Looks like the increased earnings/credits have been removed.
I’m reaching back out with an update, and I’m sorry for the delay. We confirmed there doesn’t appear to be a bug here.
It’s expected that you no longer see those other cash back offers because they’ve been removed. Right now, the available cash back offers are for purchases made with any debit card linked to Albert at select retailers, and they can only be seen if you’re on a Genius plan.
I’m seeing you’re on the Standard plan, so I understand if you’d like to cancel if those cash back offers are no longer available to you. Do you want me to go ahead and cancel it for you?
I responded: So what you’re saying is those Albert debit card cash back offers are now only available with a genius plan? When did that change? I never received any communication about it.
Albert: Sorry for any confusion. What I meant is that some cash back offers are available with the Genius plan, and those apply to select retailers.
The offers can be different from what’s available with Genius. The cash back offers that were available on the Standard plan have been removed, but Genius plan customers may still have different cash back offers available.
You haven’t received any communication about this yet, and more information should be shared soon. We just didn’t want to leave you wondering why this was happening when there isn’t anything wrong with your account. The information about some cash back offers being removed should be released soon.
Hat tip to reader Josh
Update 6/13/26: Reposting as we now know what the requirements are, plus the details on increased earning/credits.
Offer at a glance
Maximum bonus amount: $200 in stock
Availability: Nationwide
Direct deposit required: Unknown
Additional requirements:
Hard/soft pull: Unknown
ChexSystems: No
Credit card funding: Unknown
Monthly fees: None
Early account termination fee: None
Household limit: None listed
Expiration date: None listed
The Offer
Direct link to offer
Albert (fintech) is offering $1,000 in stock for free. Requirements are as follows:
Complete the signup flow to create an Albert account
Sign up for the Genius AI subscription tier
Create an Albert Investing account
Deposit at least $10,000 within 90 days of opening your account (the “Minimum Deposit”)
Maintain a Genius AI subscription plan and keep your Albert account in good standing for a continuous period of at least 12 months from the date you created your Albert Investing account (such period, the “Subscription Period”)
Maintain the Minimum Deposit, not including the free stock award, in your Albert Investing account through the end of your Subscription Period, following the date you first funded your investing account with the Minimum Deposit. Maintaining the Minimum Deposit means the sum of your deposits must always exceed the sum of your withdrawals by at least $10,000. Any gains or losses on your investments do not affect this calculation.
You can skip the six month hold period if you refer three people and they complete the above requirements (excluding six month period). Please do not share your referrals in the comments below, they can be shared in this linked post.
The Fine Print
Refer friends: You can unlock your stock early by referring friends. When you successfully refer 3 or more eligible new friends to Albert, you can unlock your stock in as little as 1 month with no deposit required in your Albert Investing account. That’s up to 5 months sooner than the standard timeline. You must have at least 3 referrals complete the following for you to be eligible to unlock your stock early:
Complete the signup flow to create an Albert account.
They must be a first-time Albert customer. Existing and previous Albert customers are not eligible for this offer.
Sign up for any Albert subscription tier
Create an Albert Investing account
Make at least one successful subscription payment
If you do not refer 3 eligible friends, the free stock gift conditions described below apply.
To receive $200 worth of stock, you must complete the following:
Complete the signup flow to create an Albert account
Sign up for any Albert subscription tier
Create an Albert Investing account
Deposit at least $1,000 within 90 days of opening your account
Maintain any Albert subscription plan to keep your account in good standing for 6 months from the date you created your Albert Investing account
The stock will show in your Albert Investing account as “locked” and will be unavailable to sell until the date displayed. The free stock will become available to sell, or to continue holding without restriction after the 6 month hold period has ended and you’ve met all requirements listed above. While the free stock gift is locked, it will show as part of your investing account balance.
This offer cannot be combined with other Albert offers or discounts for signing up or opening an Albert account.
The stock gift will be randomly selected from the following list of public companies: AMZN, AAPL, DIS, GOOG, MSFT, META, NKE, NVDA, TSLA
The value of the free stock granted to you or your friend as part of this offer is not guaranteed and may increase or decrease prior to you or them being allowed to sell it.
Avoiding Fees
Paid subscription plans range from $19.99 to $39.99 per month
Increased Earning/Credits
Albert offers a number of increased earning rates with the Albert debit card. Things to know:
You can earn a maximum of $5 cash back per offer.
The offers reset after one week and you can do it again.
You need to activate the offer and then use your Albert debit card.
You need to have received a direct deposit to be able to use these offers, faking doesn’t seem possible. No minimum
Offers:
10% back on gas
20% back on grocery stores (Whole Foods, Costco, Kroger, and Publix)
10-15% back on food delivery
10% back at McDonald’s, burger king and other fast food chains
10% back on Uber & Lyft
Up to 15% back on Playstation, Nintendo, and other select entertainment purchases.
More sample offers
Referrals
You do not get anything extra for being referred, if you successfully refer three people then you skip the six month hold period for your $200 reward. Please do not share your referrals in the comments below, they can be shared in this linked post.
Our Verdict
You’ll have to pay $479.88 in Genius AI fees. If you put the $10,000 into a 5% earning account you’d also earn $500 so not really a good deal unless you can get the $10,000 invested into something you already wanted to invest in. Shame that they removed the offers that reset after seven days and increased the monthly fee account that is required.
They raised $100 million in 2021 and an undisclosed round in 2025 from Friends & Family Capital. We previously covered Albert when they were offering bonuses from Swagbucks + a direct deposit bonus.
Please do not share your referrals in the comments below, they can be shared in this linked post.
Investors have already taken a severe beating recently, but there’s much more stock market carnage in store as the AI investment boom wanes, according to Capital Economics.
In a note on Friday, Chief Economic Adviser Vicky Redwood said AI still has potential to boost productivity but is bearish about the amount of revenue that can be generated to sustain the rate of investment.
A handful of hyperscalers are expected to spend $800 billion this year, double from a year ago, and invest an estimated $1 trillion or more in 2027. Many forecasts assume annual capital expenditures will remain above $1 trillion for several years.
But Redwood calculated that annual AI-related revenues earned from external customers would have to explode by 10-fold by 2030 to justify all that spending. While that’s possible, it implies a much more severe and rapid disruption to the economy than currently seen, such major displacement of existing businesses and labor.
As a result, she thinks investment will continue to rise next year but at a slower pace—then fall outright in 2028 by around 10%.
Given that higher AI investment added 0.3 percentage point to U.S. GDP growth last year, a capex slowdown should trim that much from its recent growth rate, Redwood estimated, and a 10% capex drop might take 0.1% off GDP.
That’s actually just a slight haircut, especially compared to more AI-dependent economies in Asia. Taiwan’s real GDP growth next year should be around 3 percentage points lower, and South Korea’s should be 1 point lower, with a further drag in 2028.
Meanwhile, the stock market will price in the looming AI capex drop even sooner. Redwood expects the S&P 500 will be 12% below its current level by the end of 2027, putting it 17% off its early-October peak.
“We expect considerably larger falls in tech-heavy indices,” she added. “A tightening of financial conditions driven by factors such as higher energy prices or term premia could also make financing investment hard.”
Lower stock prices will also feed into the economy via the wealth effect, which fuels consumer spending. The market’s rally over the past year lifted GDP by around 0.4%, according to Redwood, so a stock selloff should produce an economic drag of similar scale.
Despite the warnings about capex, GDP and stocks, AI will continue to work its way into the economy and improve productivity, helped by the infrastructure that’s already been built and the new investment that’s on the way, albeit at a slower rate.
In fact, capex could remain relatively high even after declining, Redwood pointed out, as hyperscalers keep spending to replace depreciating equipment, exploit economies of scale, and stay ahead in the “winner-takes-most” AI race. They could also spread out any investment declines over several years instead of all at once.
“The bottom line for the U.S. economy is that we expect slower GDP growth in 2028, but not a major downturn,” Redwood wrote. “Admittedly, recessions have sometimes followed previous capex booms and busts, including in the early 2000s after the dotcom bust. However, a fall in capital spending alone has generally not been sufficient to cause a recession.”
At the same time, AI adoption should continue to expand, boosting productivity and supporting output growth. Redwood estimated that AI will increase U.S. productivity by about 1% per year for several years.
She does not expect an abrupt collapse in AI investment or a severe economic downturn when the boom ends.
“Rather, we expect investment to adjust to a more sustainable pace, with sufficient capacity still being added to support further growth in AI usage,” she concluded.
Allison Ellsworth says building a breakout brand takes more than a good product. With Jetty, she’s trying to apply the lessons she learned at Poppi while proving that brand-building can be a repeatable skill.
New York’s Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC) administered $1 billion in state financial aid to nearly 300,000 students in 2025-26, including 152,438 who newly qualified under higher TAP income limits.
Part-Time TAP now covers students taking as few as three credits a semester, down from six, after the state merged three part-time programs into one.
A three-credit student can get TAP, but federal student loans require at least half-time enrollment.
New York’s Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC) administered $1 billion in state financial aid to nearly 300,000 students in 2025-26, according to Governor Kathy Hochul’s announcement. That count includes 152,438 students who newly benefited from higher income limits for the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP).
The biggest change landed for students paying for college part-time. The 2025-26 state budget merged three part-time programs into a single Part-Time TAP award, and it cut the minimum course load from six credits to three. Aid for Part-Time Study and the Part-Time Scholarship no longer run as separate programs.
HESC began letting colleges certify Part-Time TAP for students taking three to five credits on October 22, 2025.
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Why It Matters
One three-credit class is now enough to qualify for a New York grant that never has to be repaid. That puts TAP within reach of students who can only fit one course around work or family. A Trellis survey of students who left college without a degree found 72% worked while enrolled and 25% were raising children.
The income change reaches further into the middle class. New York raised the dependent student limit in the 2024-25 budget from $80,000 to $125,000 in net taxable income. Net taxable income comes from the family’s New York tax return after deductions, so families with gross pay above $125,000 can still land under the limit.
Our New York financial aid and college cost breakdown shows how TAP works alongside Excelsior and other state awards.
Who Qualifies For Part-Time TAP Now?
Part-Time TAP covers New York residents taking 3 to 11 credits a semester toward a degree at an eligible New York college, according to HESC’s Part-Time TAP rules.
HESC prorates the full-time TAP award by the credits a student takes. It lists full-time awards of $1,000 to $5,665 a year, and the income limits match full-time TAP for New York families. Students who don’t meet the citizenship or residency rules can apply through the NYS DREAM Act.
3 to 11 credits toward a degree (was 6 to 11 before 2025-26)
Programs Merged In
Aid for Part-Time Study and the Part-Time Scholarship
Award Amount
Full-time TAP award prorated by credits taken
Dependent Student Income Limit
$125,000 net taxable income
Independent Married, No Dependents
$60,000 net taxable income
Independent Single, No Dependents
$30,000 net taxable income
Grade Requirement
Cumulative C average, no waiver allowed
Minimum Tuition Charge
$200 a year
2026-27 Deadline
June 30, 2027
Source: HESC. The College Investor.
The fine print matters more at three credits than at nine:
Academic pace: HESC warns that taking only three credits for more than four consecutive semesters can leave students short of satisfactory academic progress credit requirements.
Eligibility clock: Part-Time TAP draws on the same lifetime TAP eligibility as full-time awards, capped at four years of full-time or eight years of part-time study.
Federal student loans: Three credits falls below half-time, so students at that load generally can’t borrow federal student loans. A Pell Grant can still apply at a reduced amount.
Grades: Students need a cumulative C average, and HESC won’t let a Good Academic Standing waiver cover a shortfall.
What Else The Annual Report Showed
Veterans gained more access to financial aid as well. Since July 1, 2025, New York’s Veterans Tuition Award covers veterans with at least four years of active duty, even without combat service. For 2025-26, the award equals average SUNY undergraduate tuition of $7,070 or actual tuition, whichever is less.
The state says support through the program rose about 70%, and our state-by-state list of veteran tuition benefits shows how New York compares.
The report also tracked application gains. New York ranked sixth nationally in FAFSA completion by June 2026, according to the state. Completion rose about 6% from the prior class. That came in the same year the class of 2026 set a national FAFSA completion record. About 130 colleges waived fees on roughly 300,000 applications during College Application Month in 2025. The state valued those waivers at $15 million.
That 300,000 figure counts applications rather than students, since one senior can apply to several colleges. Families can still use the New York windows in our list of free college application programs, including CUNY’s free applications for New York seniors through November 16.
How This Connects
TAP pays tuition, which is the smaller part of the bill at SUNY. Four-year SUNY schools charge $7,070 in in-state tuition and fees, according to our New York college cost data. On-campus cost of attendance averages about $24,800. Housing, food, books and transportation sit outside TAP, and they make up most of a student’s cost of attendance.
That’s the same limit we flag with free-tuition offers, which usually stop at tuition.
We tell families to price the full cost of attendance over four or five years with 5% to 8% annual increases. Part-time students need that math even more, since a degree at three credits a semester takes far longer than four years. Only 33.7% of part-time students in the fall 2018 cohort earned a degree within six years, according to a national college completion report. Among full-time students, 67.2% did.
What’s Next
The 2026-27 TAP deadline is June 30, 2027, and students apply through the FAFSA or HESC’s separate TAP application. Students starting in fall 2027 need the 2027-28 FAFSA, which is already open. HESC has also picked a vendor for a new financial aid processing portal, though the announcement didn’t give a launch date.
Students thinking about dropping to one class for spring 2027 should ask their financial aid office how the lighter load changes their TAP award first. Colleges can set earlier priority dates of their own, so check our FAFSA deadlines by state and school before you file.
Editor: Colin Graves
The post New York Part-Time TAP Now Covers Students Taking 3 Credits appeared first on The College Investor.
Amazon has some big discounts on Blink security cameras and video doorbells, with select devices and bundles marked down by as much as 78%.
Here are some of the deals worth checking out:
Best Blink Deals
Blink Mini 2K+ Camera for $15.99 (regularly $39.99).
Blink Outdoor 4 + Video Doorbell Bundle for $27.99 (regularly $129.99).
Blink Outdoor 2K+ Camera for $34 (regularly $89).
Blink Battery Doorbell 2K+ for $38 (regularly $79).
Blink Mini 2K+ 3-Pack for $43 (regularly $109).
Blink Outdoor 2K+ 5-Camera System for $119.99 (regularly $349.99).
These deals include options for indoor and outdoor security, with features such as motion alerts, night vision, and two-way audio. Some advanced features and cloud storage may require a paid subscription.
Shop All Blink Deals at Amazon. Prices and availability can change at any time.
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases made through this article. Using links on the site for Amazon purchases is the best way you can support the site as you normally can’t earn cash back for these purchases. But, you should still check shopping portals such as Rakuten, TopCashback, RebatesMe, ShopBack and others for possible cashback. Your support is always greatly appreciated!
For decades, the markers of extreme wealth were easy to spot: the second home, the fancy cars, the Ivy League education. New analysis of Federal Reserve data points to a subtler one: a third child.
Mike Konczal, vice president of policy and research at the Economic Security Project and a former White House economist, studied households headed by 45- to 64-year-olds in his analysis of the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances, pooling five surveys from 2013 through 2025. He found that 49% of top-1% earners have three or more children, compared with about 40% of the rest of the top 10%.
Families with four or more kids are about as common in both groups, so the gap comes down to the third child: 34% of the 1% stop at exactly three, versus 24% of the merely affluent.
What changed isn’t the rich. Since the 1990s, families with three or more kids have become less common overall and among the rest of the top 10%, while the 1%’s share barely moved. “What’s new is that it has become rarer for everyone else,” Konczal writes.
Big families thin out in the upper middle class. Rank families by wealth instead of income, and among those wealthier than about three-quarters of Americans their age, but well short of the top, only about a third have three or more kids.
That’s well below families further down the wealth ladder. In the top 1%, half do.
Many of these families earn too much for federal child care subsidies, which are capped at 85% of a state’s median income, but not enough to hire their way around the problem.
Elaine Shi and her husband once thought they might have four kids. They stopped at three. Asked how much cost factored in, Shi, the CEO and co-founder of body-composition scanning company BodySpec, said simply: “None.” What settled it was their third child’s “firecracker personality,” along with her health during each pregnancy.
Shi doesn’t see that divide among the people she knows. “Candidly, this has not been my experience,” she says. What stands out to her is timing: “Relatively few of my peers in our late 30s have chosen to have three children because they started having the first one relatively late in life.”
Americans still say they want three
Big families used to be ordinary. In 1976, about two-thirds of mothers in their early 40s had three or more kids; by 2016, 38% did, according to Pew Research Center.
The U.S. fertility rate, close to two children per woman in 1995, hit a record low of 1.57 in 2025, by a Wall Street Journal calculation using federal data.
Americans still say they want more: 42% called three or more kids ideal in Gallup’s July 2025 poll. But more than 7 in 10 say that raising kids is unaffordable for most people, according to BYU’s 2025 American Family Survey.
Where the money goes
Shi’s third child arrived at a hectic moment. Her older two, about two years apart, were starting school, and their needs were diverging.
“It didn’t seem fair to drag an infant along to every gymnastics and swim class, nor did it seem fair to forego those kinds of activities to stick to a baby’s nap schedule,” she says. She was also mid-fundraise and needed to get back to work fast. “So we ended up investing in multiple caregivers to better meet everyone’s needs.”
The biggest financial change from two kids to three, she says, was “definitely childcare.”
Most families can’t hire their way out. Full-day care for a child cost $6,552 to $15,600 a year in 2022, or 8.9% to 16% of median family income, according to the Labor Department. And that’s for one child.
By one LendingTree estimate, a two-child household needs to earn $400,000 a year for childcare to be affordable.
A third kid often means a bigger house, too. The typical existing single-family home sold for $412,500 in 2024, about five times the median household income, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. In the 1990s, it was closer to three times.
Why it matters beyond the family budget
The U.S. recorded just over half a million more births than deaths in 2025, and Census Bureau and Congressional Budget Office projections show that cushion ending in the next decade, the Wall Street Journal reported. After that, population growth would depend on immigration.
Economists warn that fewer births mean a smaller future workforce, slower growth and more strain on Social Security.
Konczal cautions that his numbers show a correlation, but it’s the one you’d expect if money solves the hard parts of raising kids. He argues that some of what money buys the rich, like stability and support, could be offered to families now, through policy aimed at the years when kids are young and budgets are tightest.
Shi’s own fix is more about time than money. She and her husband run BodySpec together, and their favorite workday, she says, is Saturday.
The office is empty, and one of the kids usually tags along, most often her son, the middle child. He gets to build a LEGO set without his sisters taking it apart, then has lunch alone with his mom.
“Nobody told us this counted as work-life balance, but it’s the closest thing we’ve found,” Shi says.
Mortgage rates are a touch better to start the week, moving back toward their best levels in a month.
The 30-year fixed is averaging close to 7.375%, down from recent highs of 7.625%.
While not great, it could be worse and there’s still hope rates can inch closer to the high 6s before the midterms.
In the meantime, the “win” will be avoiding any major setbacks that push us back toward recent highs.
And this is a loaded week, with another Fed meeting, a major inflation report, and Big Tech earnings all coming over the next few days.
Lower Oil Is Helping Mortgage Rates Today
Oil prices are lower today after surging on Friday, with Brent crude falling on hopes the situation with Iran improves or at least doesn’t escalate.
However, there’s also been chatter about strikes on Iran after the midterms, which are now just over a week away.
Oil remains above $100 a barrel, and that continues to be a problem because higher energy costs feed inflation, and bonds hate inflation.
That keeps upward pressure on bond yields and mortgage rates follow.
So until oil prices really settle down, any major relief for mortgage rates will likely prove elusive.
The Fed Could Impact Mortgage Rates This Week
The Fed wraps up its October meeting Wednesday afternoon, and while a rate hike looks very unlikely, what Fed chair Kevin Warsh says can still move mortgage rates.
As I always say, the Fed doesn’t control mortgage rates, but Fed rate expectations can certainly play a role.
The current odds of standing pat are nearly 90%, per CME. So nobody really expects any movement in the federal funds rate.
But they will be looking to Warsh for clues about what happens next and when another hike might come.
Perhaps he won’t want to rock the boat right before the midterms, though that’s just a guess on my part.
The bigger question is the December meeting, where markets are currently pricing in roughly a 73% chance of a hike.
That means Warsh’s press conference following the meeting will matter a lot more than the decision itself.
In other words, a hold here is expected and isn’t necessarily going to be good news for mortgage rates unless Warsh frames it as such.
If the Fed sounds like it’s backing off a December hike due to the recent stock market rout, bond yields (and mortgage rates) could head lower even with no policy change.
Thursday’s GDP and PCE Inflation Data May Reinforce Recent Trend
A day after the Fed meets, we get the first look at third quarter GDP, along with the September PCE report, which is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge.
A favorable PCE report could take some pressure off bonds as well and also make a December hike a little less likely.
A hot report would do the opposite, so that’ll be the thing to keep an eye on this week.
Still, it’s just one report, but it does have the power to keep this recent mortgage rate rally going or pump the brakes.
Pay attention to whether the 10-year bond yield can stay under 5%, since that’s obviously a big threshold.
Does Tech Matter Most to Mortgage Rates Right Now?
I was having a conversation with another dad this weekend who follows the market closely.
I noted that the only thing that really got bond yields to stop rising was the tech stock selloff.
On the one hand, it’s troubling that nothing else seemed to work. On the other, there are still lots of levers that haven’t been pulled yet that could do the same.
The biggest one being some sort of positive development in the Middle East.
In the meantime, we have a lot of tech earnings this week, with Microsoft and Alphabet reporting Wednesday and Amazon on Thursday.
That will factor into mortgage rates because last week’s big bond rally was mostly about worries related to AI spending.
You aren’t necessarily rooting for major weakness there, but if those companies do report poor numbers, it’ll likely help mortgage rates move even lower from here.
Read on: Compare mortgage rates and monthly payments side by side with my mortgage rate calculator.
Before creating this site, I worked as an account executive for a wholesale mortgage lender in Los Angeles. My hands-on experience in the early 2000s inspired me to begin writing about mortgages 20 years ago to help prospective (and existing) home buyers better navigate the home loan process. Follow me on X for hot takes.
Parkev Tatevosian, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Take-Two Interactive Software. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Parkev Tatevosian is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.
