If you’re in your 20s and want to start crypto trading but don’t know where to begin – this video is for you.
Raj Shamani and Pankaj Balani (Co-founder, Delta Exchange) discuss how young investors can approach crypto trading smartly.
🎙 Full Podcast:
💡 Delta Exchange – Trade smarter with advanced tools and strategies.
#Crypto #RajShamani #PankajBalani #DeltaExchange #CryptoTrading #FinancePodcast #Investing
source
<p>An HBR Executive Masterclass with Harvard Business School professor Sandra J. Sucher.</p>
For the past several years, borrowers with defaulted federal student loans have had an unusual amount of breathing room. The Department of Education paused the Treasury Offset Program in January 2026, which meant tax refunds were off the table as a collection tool for the entire 2026 filing season.
That window is closing. The Department has said involuntary collections restart once its new repayment system is in place, and the pieces are now falling into place — the Repayment Assistance Plan launched July 1, 2026, and borrowers pushed off SAVE were given 90 days from that date to choose something new.
Our reporting has garnishment and offsets ramping back up in the fall, which puts the returns you file in early 2027 squarely back in the crosshairs. There are already signs of movement: seniors with defaulted loans are facing Social Security withholding again, and that runs through the same Treasury Offset Program that takes tax refunds.
If you’re married and your spouse is the one carrying the defaulted loans, back child support, or old tax debt, this lands on you directly. When you file a joint return, the IRS doesn’t sort out whose refund is whose before handing it to the Treasury. It takes the whole thing, which is why understanding how tax offsets work matters before you file rather than after.
Form 8379, the Injured Spouse Allocation, is how you get your half back and it belongs on the short list of tax forms worth knowing before you file.
The name is misleading. “Injured” here has nothing to do with physical harm — it means financially harmed by your spouse’s debt, and it’s one of the more commonly misunderstood corners of the tax code.
Per the IRS, you may be an injured spouse if you file a joint return and all or part of your portion of the overpayment was, or is expected to be, applied to your spouse’s legally enforceable past-due federal tax, state income tax, state unemployment compensation debts, child support, or federal nontax debt — the last category being where defaulted student loans sit.
To qualify, IRS Publication 504 lays out two conditions. You must not be legally obligated to pay the past-due debt. And you must have either made and reported tax payments — withholding from your paycheck or quarterly estimated tax payments — or claimed a refundable credit on the joint return. It’s an “or,” not an “and.”
That refundable credit path matters more than people realize. If you had little or no withholding but claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Child Tax Credit, you can still qualify as an injured spouse. If you live in a community property state, only the first condition applies at all.
In plain terms: you contributed something to that refund, and the government took it to pay a debt that isn’t yours. Your filing status is what pooled the money in the first place.
One important distinction. Injured spouse relief is not innocent spouse relief. Injured spouse (Form 8379) is about recovering your share of a refund that got offset. Innocent spouse (Form 8857) is about being released from liability for tax your spouse understated or failed to pay — closer to the territory of setting up an IRS payment plan than to refund allocation. The instructions are blunt: don’t file Form 8379 if you’re claiming innocent spouse relief.
A few things are worth knowing before you file a return covering tax year 2026, on top of the usual annual bracket and deduction adjustments.
Offsets are expected to be live again. The Treasury Offset Program restarted in May 2025 after a five-year pandemic-era pause, then got paused again on January 16, 2026. Under Secretary Nicholas Kent has previously said collections “will function more efficiently and fairly after the Trump Administration implements significant improvements to our broken student loan system.” Those improvements are the ones now rolling out across the federal loan system.
The Department has not published a hard restart date for the Treasury Offset Program, so treat fall 2026 as a working assumption rather than a confirmed calendar entry. But plan as though your 2026 refund is exposed, and check the refund schedule against how long an injured spouse claim actually takes.
You can now e-file Form 8379 by itself. This is a genuinely useful change. The IRS updated its instructions for tax year 2026 to allow Form 8379 to be filed electronically by attaching it to Form 1040-X even if you are not amending your return. Previously, filing on its own after a joint return had already processed meant mailing paper. If your tax software supports amended returns electronically, this should cut weeks off your wait.
A line reference was corrected. The instructions for line 17 now read “lines 28 through 30, and Part II of Schedule 3 (Form 1040)” — line 30 was missing before. Minor, but if you’re filling this out by hand instead of letting tax software handle it, use the corrected reference.
A second rehabilitation is coming, but not yet. The 2025 budget law gives borrowers a second chance to rehabilitate a defaulted loan, where prior rules allowed exactly one. Watch the date: for loans rehabilitated before July 1, 2027, the old one-and-done rule still applies. Starting July 1, 2027, a borrower can rehabilitate up to twice, which is after the 2027 filing season, and precisely why Form 8379 matters this year.
The form itself is still the November 2023 revision and the instructions are the November 2024 revision. The IRS is not republishing them; the tax year 2026 changes are posted separately on IRS.gov, so don’t assume a printed copy reflects them. Same caution applies to any older tax guidance you have saved.
The IRS calculates your share by running a hypothetical “married filing separately” computation. It figures what your tax liability would have been on your income alone, credits you with the payments you made, and refunds the resulting overpayment. Your spouse’s share stays with the offset — the same mechanism that drives wage garnishment on defaulted loans, just applied to refunds.
That means the split is rarely 50/50. If you earned $70,000 and your spouse earned $15,000, you’ll get back substantially more than half. If your spouse out-earned you, expect less — and if you’re a two-earner household, it’s worth understanding how the tax code already treats married couples before you assume the math favors you.
For reference, the 2026 standard deduction is $16,100 for single and married filing separately, $32,200 for married filing jointly, and $24,150 for head of household. The IRS allocates the standard deduction between spouses in this calculation, so it isn’t a clean apples-to-apples comparison with actually filing separately.
Community property states work differently. If you live in Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, or Wisconsin, state law overrides the income-based split. Generally, 50% of a joint overpayment (excluding the Earned Income Credit) goes to non-federal tax debts — so a defaulted student loan or back child support typically eats half your refund regardless of who earned what. If that’s your situation, getting out of default is a far better use of your energy than filing this form annually.
For federal tax debts, the rules vary by state. The IRS points to four separate revenue rulings: Rev. Rul. 2004-71 (Arizona and Wisconsin), 2004-72 (California, Idaho, Louisiana), 2004-73 (Nevada, New Mexico, Washington), and 2004-74 (Texas). A community property state plus a federal tax debt is a conversation with a tax pro, not a guess — and possibly a case for an installment agreement with the IRS instead.
The form runs two pages and four parts. Most people should let tax software walk them through it, but it helps to know what’s being asked.
Part I — “Should You File This Form?” is a short branching questionnaire that determines eligibility. Line 1 asks the tax year. Lines 2 through 9 walk through whether the debt belongs solely to your spouse and whether you made payments or claimed a refundable credit. Answer honestly — a “no” in the wrong spot means rejection, not just delay, and you’ll be back to tracking a refund that never arrives.
Part II asks about the joint return: names, Social Security numbers in the same order they appeared on the return, and which spouse is the injured one. Getting the name order wrong is one of the more common reasons these get kicked back, which is exactly the kind of error free filing options will catch for you.
Part III is the allocation itself. You split income, adjustments, deductions, credits, other taxes, and federal income tax withheld into three columns: the amount on the joint return, the amount allocated to you, and the amount allocated to your spouse. Line 19 says to enter federal income tax withheld from each spouse’s income as shown on Forms W-2, W-2G, and 1099 — and you have to attach copies. If you have education expenses in the mix, your 1098-T matters here too.
Here’s what Part 3 looks like:
Part IV is your signature, required only if you’re filing Form 8379 on its own rather than attached to a return. If you’re filing it alongside an amended return, the 1040-X process governs the rest.
Most major tax software supports Form 8379, including TurboTax, H&R Block, FreeTaxUSA, and TaxSlayer. Support quality varies, so check our current tax software rankings before committing.
This is the part that frustrates people, and it’s worth setting expectations against the normal refund timeline. The IRS estimates:
|
How You File |
Processing Time |
|---|---|
|
With your joint return, electronically |
About 11 weeks |
|
With your joint return, on paper |
About 14 weeks |
|
By itself, after the joint return is processed |
About 8 weeks |
Those are estimates, not guarantees, and they run from when the IRS receives the form — not when you hit send. Backlogs push them longer. If you’re counting on that money, build in a cushion, and know that the “Where’s My Refund” tool often shows confusing status codes while an injured spouse claim is pending.
Note the counterintuitive part: filing the form by itself after your return processes is faster on paper (8 weeks versus 11), but you don’t see money until the joint return finishes processing first. Filing it with the return is still usually the better move — and it means one filing deadline to track instead of two.
Best case: with your joint return. Attach it and file electronically. Whenever Form 8379 is attached to a joint return, the instructions direct you to enter “Injured Spouse” in the upper left corner of page 1 — tax software handles this automatically when you e-file. This is the cleanest path and avoids a second round of processing.
If the offset already happened: file Form 8379 on its own. You don’t have to wait for a notice, and you don’t need to have received one. If you’re unsure whether a debt is even flagged, your loan servicer can usually tell you where the account stands.
The deadline is longer than most people think. You generally have three years from the due date of the original return (including extensions), or two years from the date you paid the tax that was later offset — whichever is later. Many summaries mention only the three-year rule, which can cost you a valid claim. Check the relevant year’s tax due dates to pin down your actual window.
You have to file it every year. Form 8379 is not a standing election. If your spouse’s debt is still outstanding next year, you file again next year — which is one more argument for fixing the underlying default instead.
If you want to know whether an offset is coming, call the Treasury Offset Program call center at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service: 800-304-3107 (TTY/TDD 866-297-0517). They can tell you whether a debt is flagged, though not the amount the IRS will take. Debt collectors assigned to defaulted loans can sometimes confirm the same information.
Form 8379 works, but it’s a workaround. These are the actual fixes, and most of them run through resolving the default itself.
File separately. If you file married filing separately, your refund never gets pooled with your spouse’s, so there’s nothing to offset. The catch is cost. Filing separately bars the American Opportunity Credit, the Lifetime Learning Credit, and the student loan interest deduction outright.
It also generally bars the Earned Income Credit — with a narrow exception if you had a qualifying child living with you more than half the year and you either lived apart from your spouse for the last six months or were legally separated and not sharing a household at year-end. Run the numbers both ways before deciding; our breakdown of what each filing status actually costs is a reasonable starting point.
That said, there can be real upside to separate filing when loans are involved, because a borrower who files separately has only their own income counted in the payment calculation. Our full analysis of the math behind married filing separately for student loans walks through when it pencils out.
What changed is the surrounding math. RAP has no poverty-line exemption and no family-size adjustment — it’s a flat 1% to 10% of AGI by income band, reduced by $50 per dependent, with a $10 monthly minimum. Under IBR and PAYE, a borrower filing separately could still count a spouse in family size, which softened the tax hit. That cushion is gone. Re-run this for 2026 rather than assuming what worked under the older income-driven plans still holds.
Get the loan out of default. This is the permanent solution. Rehabilitation removes the default and takes you out of the offset system entirely — the regulation requires nine voluntary, reasonable and affordable monthly payments, each made within 20 days of the due date, during 10 consecutive months.
Consolidation is the faster route if you need out quickly, though it doesn’t erase the default from your credit report the way rehabilitation does. Remember the timing on the second rehabilitation: if you already used your one shot, that door doesn’t reopen until July 1, 2027.
Check whether forgiveness applies. Before you build a plan around annual Form 8379 filings, confirm the debt should exist at all. Borrowers regularly miss eligibility for one of the forgiveness and discharge programs, and public sector workers in particular should verify their PSLF standing. Parent PLUS borrowers have a narrower set of options and should check theirs early.
Request a review of the offset itself. If the debt is disputed, already paid, or you’re facing genuine hardship, there’s a separate challenge process. Our guide to stopping tax offsets due to student loan debt covers the paperwork and the deadlines.
Adjust your withholding. The blunt-force option: if the IRS never owes you a refund, there’s nothing to take. Dialing in your W-4 so you break even means you keep the money during the year instead of fighting for it afterward. It isn’t right for everyone — some people rely on the forced-savings effect of a refund — but it removes the problem entirely.
Does filing Form 8379 hurt my credit?
No. Form 8379 is a tax form with no connection to your credit report. Your spouse’s defaulted loan already affects their credit; this form changes nothing either way.
Can I file Form 8379 if my spouse owes back child support?
Yes. Child support is one of the debts that triggers an offset, and it’s among the most common reasons people file — the same offset system handles both.
What if we already filed and the refund was taken?
File Form 8379 on its own. You have up to three years from the original return’s due date including extensions, or two years from the date the tax was paid, whichever is later. Confirm your year’s deadline before you assume you’re out of time.
Do I need to file it again if I filed last year?
Yes. It applies to a single tax year, so file again each year you need protection — or resolve the default and stop needing it.
Will Form 8379 stop the offset from happening?
It protects your share, not your spouse’s. Filing it with the joint return can keep your portion from being taken at all; filing after the offset means clawing it back. Either way, your spouse’s share still goes to the debt. The Taxpayer Advocate Service also warns that filing separately from your original return risks the refund being offset before your claim is processed — one reason understanding the offset process up front is worth the time.
I’m no longer married to that person. What now?
If the offset came from a joint return filed while you were married, Form 8379 still applies for that year. Once you’re filing single or head of household, the issue shouldn’t recur — see how filing status affects your return.
Where can I get more help with tax questions like this?
Our tax resource and help center covers filing, credits, deductions, and refund issues in one place.
Editor: Clint Proctor
Reviewed by: Chris Muller
The post Injured Spouse Relief: How To File Form 8379 And Protect Your Tax Refund In 2027 appeared first on The College Investor.
High-net-worth, self-employed borrowers often have difficulty obtaining mortgage financing. Being self-employed has its advantages and disadvantages. In this case, our self-employed borrowers have difficulty obtaining conventional financing, which carries cheaper rates. Still, our non-QM loan programs help these types of borrowers get the financing they need. It might be a quarter higher on the rate, but the programs exist.
Scenario Overview
Our borrower is a successful self-employed interior designer working in the luxury home market. Her spouse is a freelance photographer. Together, they have built a thriving business and maintain a strong financial profile, including a 773 credit score and significant liquidity.
They recently sold their home and entered into a contract on a luxury property, seeking a $4.4 million loan. Despite their financial strength, they were declined by conventional lenders. The issue was not credit, assets, or down payment. It was their tax returns.
Like many self-employed borrowers, their CPA strategically minimized taxable income. While beneficial for tax purposes, this created a high debt-to-income ratio under conventional underwriting standards, making them ineligible for a jumbo loan.
The Non-QM Solution
This is where our Non-QM Super Jumbo Bank Statement program made the difference. Instead of relying on tax returns, we evaluated the borrower’s actual cash flow using 12 months of bank statements. Their accounts showed consistent, strong deposits, accurately reflecting a healthy and growing business. By focusing on real income rather than reported income, we structured a loan that matched the borrower’s true financial capacity. With a 35% down payment, resulting in a 65% loan-to-value, strong post-closing reserves, and excellent credit, this became a well-qualified, low-risk transaction that conventional underwriting failed to recognize.
Program Highlights
Self-employed borrowers in high-income professions, such as designers, consultants, entrepreneurs, and creatives, often report lower income on their tax returns due to legitimate deductions. Conventional Jumbo financing does not account for this reality, leading to unnecessary denials. Our Non-QM Jumbo Bank Statement program bridges that gap by recognizing true earning power through documented cash flow.
If you’re a self-employed borrower seeking jumbo or super jumbo financing, we have the loan programs to help you purchase or refinance a property.
Grayscale Investments has highlighted that the HYPE token linked to the Hyperliquid protocol continues to appear attractively priced relative to publicly traded fintech companies, even after substantial price appreciation earlier this year.
The assessment comes from Zach Pandl, the firm’s head of research, in a recent note published on the company’s research platform.
Hyperliquid stands out as a decentralized platform focused on perpetual futures trading.
Unlike conventional corporations, it does not issue equity shares. Instead, value generated by trading activity on the network flows to holders of its native HYPE token.
Analysts at Grayscale argue that this cash-flow dynamic allows the token to be evaluated in a manner comparable to traditional stocks, using an adapted metric called earnings per token rather than the more familiar earnings per share.
Under their framework, the research team projects that Hyperliquid could produce roughly one billion dollars in earnings during 2027.
That figure represents an increase of about 20 percent from estimated 2025 levels.
Growth is expected to stem from a rebound in overall cryptocurrency trading volumes and additional revenue streams created by a newly introduced stablecoin arrangement.
A portion of the income generated from stablecoin reserves is expected to flow back to the protocol under its updated infrastructure design.Token supply considerations also play a central role in the analysis.
Circulating HYPE currently stands near 270 million units.
The supply can expand through staking rewards and scheduled releases of tokens held by core contributors, while protocol fee burns work in the opposite direction by reducing the total.
Grayscale anticipates that circulating supply by the end of 2027 will fall somewhere between 270 million and 310 million tokens.
The range depends largely on the speed of contributor unlocks.
Core team members have been releasing approximately 550,000 HYPE each month; the firm’s models examine scenarios ranging from continuation of that pace up to five times the current rate.
Combining the earnings forecast with the projected supply range produces an estimated earnings-per-token figure of between 3.25 and 3.75 dollars for 2027. At a reference price of 54 dollars used in the study, this translates into a forward earnings multiple of roughly 15 to 18 times.
According to Pandl, that valuation multiple appears modest when set against those of comparable publicly listed fintech firms.
The research note therefore concludes that HYPE may still be undervalued relative to its traditional-market peers.
The analysis is not without caveats.
Potential risks include weaker-than-expected growth in network revenue or faster expansion of token supply than currently modeled.
Even so, the key message remains clear: despite the gains already recorded by HYPE this year, the token continues to look inexpensive on a comparative basis with fintech equities.
This perspective arrives at a time when institutional interest in decentralized trading platforms has been rising, with multiple exchange-traded products now offering exposure to HYPE. Grayscale’s earnings-based approach provides one structured method for investors seeking to assess the token’s fundamentals beyond pure market momentum.
The market is giving investors a few gifts right now. There are several companies whose shares are on sale, and investors should be taking advantage of these deals while they are available. Two stocks down significantly from their all-time highs that look like solid buys are Alphabet (GOOG +0.95%) (GOOGL +0.90%) and Broadcom (AVGO -2.78%). Alphabet is down more than 15% while Broadcom is down about 20%.
I don’t expect these levels to last for long, as each has several growth catalysts that can push them to new all-time highs before 2026 is over.
Image source: Getty Images.
Alphabet is a major player in artificial intelligence (AI). It’s competing with its own large language models, as well as supplying computing infrastructure for others to rent out to run AI workloads and applications. Lastly, it’s integrating AI across all aspects of its business, including its legacy Google Search engine. This transition is paying off big-time for Alphabet, as its revenue throughout its business is skyrocketing. Overall, Alphabet’s Q2 revenue rose 24% year over year, and its operating margin widened from 32.4% last year to 34% this year. So, Alphabet is not only growing larger but also becoming more efficient.
Today’s Change
(0.90%) $3.00
Current Price
$336.71
Market Cap
Day’s Range
$331.62 – $342.50
52wk Range
$187.82 – $408.61
Volume
122.9K
Avg Vol
33M
Gross Margin
60.94%
Dividend Yield
0.25%
Alphabet also has a huge paper gain on its balance sheet from a early Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -3.32%) investment, which it may choose to liquidate to fund more data center construction once the lockup period ends. Alphabet is really crushing it right now, and its success is headlined by its cloud computing division delivering 82% year-over-year growth.
Valuing the stock is tricky because Alphabet’s earnings have been skewed by its SpaceX profits on paper (which it’s required to report as actual earnings). But when valued on operating profits instead, Alphabet has come down significantly from recent highs.
GOOG Operating PE Ratio data by YCharts
I think the stock is a phenomenal investment with a reasonable price tag. Wall Street is also on board, as analysts expect 24% revenue growth this year and 22% next year, which is easily enough to surpass the long-term growth rate of the broader market. With a great future growth story on hand and a valuation that’s off its all-time highs, it’s a perfect stock to buy now.
Broadcom is emerging as an AI computing powerhouse. While Nvidia (NVDA -3.55%) may get most of the attention in this industry, Broadcom is starting to make a name for itself. Instead of making broad-purpose graphics processing units (GPUs) like Nvidia, it’s partnering with AI hyperscalers to develop custom AI chips that are tailored to their workloads. The best example of this is the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) designed in collaboration with Alphabet. These computing units have become so popular that Alphabet is starting to sell them to others, allowing more companies to benefit from a purpose-built chip.
Today’s Change
(-2.78%) $-10.59
Current Price
$370.32
Market Cap
Day’s Range
$369.51 – $386.12
52wk Range
$281.61 – $495.00
Volume
75.6K
Avg Vol
25.9M
Gross Margin
65.66%
Dividend Yield
0.69%
Broadcom is seeing monstrous growth in its AI semiconductor division, which grew a blistering 143% year over year to reach $10.8 billion in Q2. In 2027, management expects this division to generate more than $100 billion in revenue. That’s a rapid and sustained growth rate, and will transform Broadcom into an entirely different company.
If you value Broadcom’s stock using next year’s earnings (to account for the huge growth it anticipates), the stock trades for less than 20 times next year’s earnings.
AVGO PE Ratio (Forward 1y) data by YCharts
That’s a pretty reasonable price to pay for a company that Wall Street expects to put up 66% revenue growth this year and 63% growth next year. As a result, I think Broadcom is one of the top stocks to load up on now, as it will have significant growth that will push the stock to new heights.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
If you are building a personal brand and are not actively learning how to use AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT, you are leaving real results — and real revenue — on the table.
That might sound blunt, but the market is blunt right now. Increased visibility does not cut it anymore. You have to produce more content, articulate resonant ideas, build stronger positioning and stand out in ways that actually mean something. And it is less about volume than it is about precision.
At my company, D2 Branding, we work with speakers, founders, authors and podcast hosts whose ideas are their business. Their brands encompass a lot: social media, yes, but more broadly, reputation, intellectual property and market influence. Getting AI right has completely changed how we help them scale — but we did not get it right the first time.
Here is the honest part. Like many businesses, we first approached AI as if it were a productivity shortcut, using it to quickly spit out captions, blogs and emails. Efficient on the surface, sure. But we hit a wall pretty fast when we realized that premium personal brands need sharper thinking, not more content.
Established founders, speakers and industry leaders are not valuable because they post constantly and show up at the top of your Instagram feed. They are valuable because they can communicate clearly what others cannot, with more conviction and more precision.
Once that clicked, our approach changed. Instead of prompting AI with vague tasks like “write a post about leadership,” we started using it to challenge and deepen perspectives. We asked harder questions: Where is this founder’s philosophy being misunderstood? Which parts of their expertise are flying under the radar? What would make this message land harder?
That shift turned AI from a content-producing machine into a genuine thought partner. Now, we use it to hone keynote messaging, test frameworks and shape content that actually resonates.
The second thing we got wrong was not building any real intelligence around the brands themselves. Every time we opened Claude or ChatGPT, we started from scratch — re-explaining the founder’s backstory, positioning, target audience, offers and tone of voice every single time. That approach was inefficient, and worse, it held us back from reaching real strategic depth. When a brand is built on ideas and voice, you cannot operate that way.
So we changed how we work. For every premium personal brand client we take on, we now build a structured ecosystem inside platforms like Claude Projects. Before a single prompt is typed, the system already knows the brand’s foundation — origin story, core philosophies, audience and positioning.
That adjustment turned AI into infrastructure. When a brand has a centralized intelligence system behind it, it can actually scale. Speakers sound aligned whether they are on stage, on a podcast or in copy on their website. Authors expand across channels without becoming scattered. The brand grows without losing what made it take off in the first place.
Our third mistake, and possibly the biggest, was underestimating the power of real-world data. Most businesses are still guessing what their audience wants. They open an AI platform, type in a prompt and hope the response lands with their target audience. Premium brands should take the guesswork out of the equation altogether.
The move that changed our work the most was starting to feed AI actual data. We uploaded podcast transcripts, sales conversations, event recordings, customer questions, comments, DMs and Google reviews. Then we asked AI to show us patterns we might be missing. What emotional triggers keep surfacing? Where are people stuck but struggling to articulate why? Which ideas are resonating but need to be more fully developed?
The answers to those questions build stronger brands. When you use AI to identify the exact language, pain points and desires your audience has already been expressing, your messaging becomes far more effective. You are building an evidence-based strategy that makes people feel genuinely understood.
This is where AI becomes one of the most valuable tools a personal brand can use. It can take human insight and sharpen it, help create messaging that converts into high-ticket offers, uncover themes that become books or keynote addresses and translate years of lived experience into scalable intellectual property.
We have shifted away from using AI to mindlessly pump out more content. Instead, we use these platforms to clarify thinking and strengthen positioning in crowded markets. AI helps us turn expertise into premium assets.
Do not make the mistake of thinking you just need more content to succeed. You do not. You need more precision, more data and more depth. AI alone will not build your personal brand — but used strategically, it can help you package years of expertise faster, communicate it more clearly and scale it further than you could on your own. In today’s market, that is a real advantage.
If you are building a personal brand and are not actively learning how to use AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT, you are leaving real results — and real revenue — on the table.
That might sound blunt, but the market is blunt right now. Increased visibility does not cut it anymore. You have to produce more content, articulate resonant ideas, build stronger positioning and stand out in ways that actually mean something. And it is less about volume than it is about precision.
At my company, D2 Branding, we work with speakers, founders, authors and podcast hosts whose ideas are their business. Their brands encompass a lot: social media, yes, but more broadly, reputation, intellectual property and market influence. Getting AI right has completely changed how we help them scale — but we did not get it right the first time.
PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT class 12 Business studies ONE SHOT | chapter 2 | Gaurav Jain
Principles of Management bst class 12 chapter 2 by gaurav jain
Ye Le Baalak 😀 Mauj kar
Order your HELP BOOKS from here –
Apni website (discounted price ) 🤩 –
From Amazon 😎 –
Direct whatsapp number –
Commerce vaalo ka apna batch
3 CLICKs to enroll in SAARTHI BATCH
STEP 1 – click on –
STEP 2 – Click on saarthi Batch
STEP 3 – Enroll Now ( by filling necessary details )
aajao saare COMMERCE KI TAAKAT SABKO DIKHAATE HAI 🔥
Saarthi Batch for Class 12 Commerce ( Full Year )
It includes ACCOUNTS + BUSINESS STUDIES + ECONOMICS only in 3,100
– Live Classes
– Structured course
– Practice sheets and Webinars
– Test Series and Mock Tests
– Study Materials
– Doubt Solving Session
– Mentor Support
– Career Guidance
– Exam Preparation Strategies
1-year unlimited access
Course Fee – ₹ 3100 ( full year – ACCOUNTS + BUSINESS + ECONOMICS )
JOIN US ON OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES 😀
📣 Whatsapp –
📣 Telegram –
📣 Instagram –
📣 Mobile Application –
📣 Website –
Order your HELP BOOKS from here –
Apni website (discounted price ) 🤩 –
From Amazon 😎 –
WATCH MORE WITH OUR COMPLETE COURSE Playlist and Jugaad videos 😀
🥇 CLASS 12 Accounts –
🥇 CLASS 12 BUSINESS –
🥇 MACRO ECONOMICS –
🥇 INDIAN ECONOMY –
🎗️ CLASS 11 Accounts –
🎗️ CLASS 11 BUSINESS –
🎗️ STATISTICS –
🎗️ MICRO ECONOMICS –
🏆 IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT –
#gauravjain #businessstudies #class12
source
Sponsored by Avail
For most of 2020 to 2023, you could raise the rent, barely try to market a unit, and still fill it by the weekend. That is gone.
The rental market flipped, and most landlords are still pricing like it hasn’t. Costs are up. Rents are down. Vacancy is climbing, but so is retention. Metro leverage has quietly shifted to renters almost everywhere. Put together, that’s a market that punishes the old playbook — the automatic rent increases, the “it’ll bounce back” pricing — and rewards landlords who adjust.
I pulled nine numbers that tell that story, split between Realtor.com’s monthly rent reports* and Avail’s 2026 survey of 4,055 landlords. Each one comes with the thing you’re going to care about the most: what to do about it.
The median asking rent across the 50 largest metros sat at $1,692 in June 2026, down 1.5% from a year ago and marking the 35th consecutive month of year-over-year declines. A year ago, the median was about $1,717, so rents were already sliding then too. Even after almost three years of declines, rent is still 16.4% above pre-pandemic levels, though about 4% below its 2022 peak.
The average vacancy rate across the 50 largest metros rose to 7.6% in 2025, up from 7.2% the year before. More empty units mean more competition for the same renter, so your listing has to work harder than it did last year. But here’s the twist: while vacancy is climbing on paper, it’s not because tenants are leaving faster. It’s because once a unit goes empty, it’s staying empty longer — the renters who’d normally fill it are increasingly choosing to stay where they already are.
That’s the other half of the vacancy story: tenants are staying put. 36.1% of landlords report tenants are staying longer than in past years, and renewals are now outpacing move-outs by roughly 5 to 1. So the 7.6% figure isn’t a warning that your tenants are about to leave — it’s a warning that if they do, you’re competing in a market where fewer renters are actively looking. Retention stopped being a nice-to-have and became the whole margin.
Out of the 50 largest metros, 44 are now renter-friendly or balanced. Only six still tilt toward landlords. Here’s what that split actually means. A landlord-friendly metro is one where vacancy is tight and inventory is scarce — landlords set the price, and renters compete for units. A renter-friendly metro flips that: more listings than qualified renters, so tenants have options and negotiating power, and landlords have to work harder to win and keep them. Balanced metros sit in between — neither side has a clear edge, and pricing comes down to execution rather than market conditions doing the work for you.
For most of us, the leverage just moved to the other side of the table. Only six metros still give landlords the built-in advantage of a tight market. In the other 44, you’re not setting rent in a vacuum — you’re competing for renters who have real alternatives.
Relief isn’t spread evenly. Fifteen markets sit at least 10% below their rent peaks, led by Austin, Texas, at roughly 18% down, with Birmingham, Alabama, and Memphis, Tennessee, close behind. If you own in a heavy-construction Sunbelt metro, you’re feeling this the most.
This is the squeeze: 74.4% of landlords reported ownership costs rose this year, driven primarily by taxes and insurance, according to Avail’s 2026 survey. Costs are up, and rents are down. That gap doesn’t close itself — it comes straight out of your margin. Every dollar taxes and insurance eat into your cash flow is a dollar you need to recover somewhere else, and rent is usually the only lever landlords actually control. Yet plenty are hesitant to touch it, worried a rent bump costs them a good tenant. That hesitation is exactly what’s compressing margins across the board right now.
Here’s the interesting part: Of the landlords who did raise rent, only 44.3% pointed to rising costs as the main reason. Most raised rates to keep pace with local comps instead. Smart investors price to the market, not to their own expense sheets.
Today, 18% of landlords run a strict no-increase policy, betting that a reliable tenant who stays is worth more than a small bump that risks a move-out. That’s not because they’re pushovers—the math changed.
Despite it all, 32.9% of landlords plan to buy more property in the next 24 months, versus just 6.6% planning to sell. The pros are buying while everyone else panics.
The market flipped from “raise rent and relax” to “run it like a business or lose money.” That’s the whole shift in one sentence.
In a renter’s market, sloppiness gets punished first. Price to real comps, screen for tenants who pay and stay, and keep the good ones long enough that turnover stops eating your returns.
If you’d rather run the whole lifecycle from one centralized place, Avail handles every step for independent landlords: data-backed rent comps, free listings syndicated to 19 sites, TransUnion tenant screening, state-specific leases, and online rent collection. Signing up is free, so check out their professional systems that protect your bottom line in any market.
*Data released since February 2026 is not directly comparable with previous releases/blog posts because of methodology changes.
Many people may not realize that even if a POS terminal does not explicitly display the Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Wallet logo, any terminal that supports tap-to-pay payments can accept all three. This means the range of purchases eligible for 3% cash back with this card may be much broader than many people initially assume.
Despite the Samsung branding in its name, Samsung Wallet is not a narrowly accepted payment method. As explained above, Samsung Wallet works at any POS terminal that supports tap-to-pay payments. In other words, any terminal that accepts Apple Pay will also accept Samsung Wallet. These days, the vast majority of in-store merchants in the U.S. support tap-to-pay payments, so this card effectively earns 3% cash back on almost everything. Of course, just like Apple Pay, mobile wallet acceptance for online purchases is still fairly limited. Payments such as taxes, tuition, and rent generally will not accept Samsung Wallet either.
With no annual fee, unlimited 3% cash back on almost everything, and no spending cap, this card is extremely competitive. For some people, it could be an excellent one-card wallet solution.
The main drawback is that you need Samsung hardware. You either need to use a Samsung phone, carry an inexpensive Samsung phone solely for payments, or pair a Samsung smartwatch with your existing Android phone. For people fully invested in the Apple ecosystem, this setup is rather inconvenient.
