By Kimberly Palmer, NerdWallet

Mykail James is not ashamed to call herself a “recovering overspender.”

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The Washington, D.C.-based financial educator, who also goes by “the boujie budgeter” online, says she used to spend too much money on splurges like concert tickets and clothing.

But today, she has her spending under control thanks to a set of rules she follows.

One rule? She gives herself a limit for how much she can spend in certain categories. She can buy a concert ticket, but not if it costs more than $45, for example.

She also keeps her spending money separate from her bill-paying money. That way, she has a set amount dedicated to “fun” each month. Once it runs out, she can’t spend any more.

That technique allows her to enjoy herself without added financial stress.

“I don’t avoid concerts, but I set limits,” she says.

Setting boundaries with plenty of wiggle room for enjoyment is a key to tackling overspending without burning out, according to financial experts.

Here are five more tips:

Go category by category

James suggests taking a close look at where your money is currently going. Are there certain monthly expenses that continue to be bigger than you expected?

That information will help you figure out where to focus your efforts. Food, entertainment and subscriptions are common culprits for many people, she says.

“Think about how that spending fits into your overall lifestyle,” James adds, and what you might want to tweak.

Define your wants and needs

“Identifying where the line between needs and wants lies can be healthy in terms of deciding where to cut back,” says John Jones, certified financial planner and investment advisor representative at Heritage Financial in Newberry, Florida.

While needs are essential costs like groceries and housing, wants include discretionary purchases such as restaurant meals or entertainment.

Opting to delay or modify certain splurges can alleviate budget strain.

Perhaps you “need” a vacation, but can opt for a lower-cost hotel instead of the luxury resort, Jones says. Or maybe you need new clothes but can shop sales instead of paying full price.

“We can still satisfy those needs, but not frivolous needs,” he says.

Save before spending

Like James, Jones also recommends separating out money designated for essentials before spending on any wants.

“As soon as your paycheck hits the bank account, put a certain percentage into savings so you don’t have the urge to spend it,” Jones says.

Those savings could be for retirement, college or an emergency fund. Setting the money aside first helps you prioritize whatever savings goals you may have.

Plan splurges in advance

Jones loves buying guitars, but he tries to wait until he has the money saved up in cash. He takes a similar pay-in-advance approach to travel. To pay for his honeymoon to the Bahamas, Jones booked the cruise with a 0% interest loan, which he pays off every month in advance of the trip.

“That way we don’t have to tap into any reserves,” he says.

Trae Bodge, a shopping expert at TrueTrae.com who is based in the New York area, offers a similar tactic. If she sees something she wants online or in a store, she doesn’t buy it right away. Instead, she walks away.

“If I forget about it, I know it’s not important,” she says. If it’s on her mind days later, then she might make the purchase.

Turn saving into a social game

Start a friendly competition with friends to see who can save more, suggests Molly Ward, a CFP with Equitable Advisors based in Houston, Texas.

“You can share savings tips and check in to see how it’s going for each other,” she says.

Having those conversations with friends also helps reduce any stigma around prioritizing saving over spending, Ward adds.

It can be easier to save money if your friends are doing the same. You don’t have to keep explaining why you’re opting to stay in instead of paying for a night out.

That’s why James doesn’t hold back when it comes to sharing her goals around spending less.

True friends, she says, will understand and support efforts that help you achieve your goals.

Kimberly Palmer writes for NerdWallet. Email: kpalmer@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @kimberlypalmer.

The article Practical Ways to Tackle Overspending originally appeared on NerdWallet.

By Paula Span, KFF Health News

Benjamin Han, a geriatrician and addiction medicine specialist at the University of California, San Diego, tells his students a cautionary tale about a 76-year-old patient who, like many older people, struggled with insomnia.

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“She had problems falling asleep, and she’d wake up in the middle of the night,” he said. “So her daughter brought her some sleep gummies” — edible cannabis candies.

“She tried a gummy after dinner and waited half an hour,” Han said.

Feeling no effects, she took another gummy, then one more — a total of four over several hours.

Han advises patients who are trying cannabis to “start low; go slow,” beginning with products that contain just 1 or 2.5 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient that many cannabis products contain. Each of the four gummies this patient took, however, contained 10 milligrams.

The woman started experiencing intense anxiety and heart palpitations. A young person might have shrugged off such symptoms, but this patient had high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia. Frightened, she went to an emergency room.

Lab tests and a cardiac work-up determined the woman wasn’t having a heart attack, and the staff sent her home. Her only lingering symptom was embarrassment, Han said. But what if she’d grown dizzy or lightheaded and was hurt in a fall? He said he has had patients injured in falls or while driving after using cannabis. What if the cannabis had interacted with the prescription drugs she took?

“As a geriatrician, it gives me pause,” Han said. “Our brains are more sensitive to psychoactive substances as we age.”

Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia now allow cannabis use for medical reasons, and in 24 of those states, as well as the district, recreational use is also legal. As older adults’ use climbs, “the benefits are still unclear,” Han said. “But we’re seeing more evidence of potential harms.”

A wave of recent research points to reasons for concern for older users, with cannabis-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations rising, and a Canadian study finding an association between such acute care and subsequent dementia. Older people are more apt than younger ones to try cannabis for therapeutic reasons: to relieve chronic pain, insomnia, or mental health issues, though evidence of its effectiveness in addressing those conditions remains thin, experts said.

In an analysis of national survey data published June 2 in the medical journal JAMA, Han and his colleagues reported that “current” cannabis use (defined as use within the previous month) had jumped among adults age 65 or older to 7% of respondents in 2023, from 4.8% in 2021. In 2005, he pointed out, fewer than 1% of older adults reported using cannabis in the previous year.

What’s driving the increase? Experts cite the steady march of state legalization — use by older people is highest in those states — while surveys show that the perceived risk of cannabis use has declined. One national survey found that a growing proportion of American adults — 44% in 2021 — erroneously thought it safer to smoke cannabis daily than cigarettes. The authors of the study, in JAMA Network Open, noted that “these views do not reflect the existing science on cannabis and tobacco smoke.”

The cannabis industry also markets its products to older adults. The Trulieve chain gives a 10% discount, both in stores and online, to those it calls “wisdom” customers, 55 or older. Rise Dispensaries ran a yearlong cannabis education and empowerment program for two senior centers in Paterson, New Jersey, including field trips to its dispensary.

The industry has many satisfied older customers. Liz Logan, 67, a freelance writer in Bronxville, New York, had grappled with sleep problems and anxiety for years, but the conditions grew particularly debilitating two years ago, as her husband was dying of Parkinson’s disease. “I’d frequently be awake until 5 or 6 in the morning,” she said. “It makes you crazy.”

Looking online for edible cannabis products, Logan found that gummies containing cannabidiol, known as CBD, alone didn’t help, but those with 10 milligrams of THC did the trick without noticeable side effects. “I don’t worry about sleep anymore,” she said. “I’ve solved a lifelong problem.”

But studies in the United States and Canada, which legalized nonmedical cannabis use for adults nationally in 2018, show climbing rates of cannabis-related health care use among older people, both in outpatient settings and in hospitals.

In California, for instance, cannabis-related emergency room visits by those 65 or older rose, to 395 per 100,000 visits in 2019 from about 21 in 2005. In Ontario, acute care (meaning emergency visits or hospital admissions) resulting from cannabis use increased fivefold in middle-aged adults from 2008 to 2021, and more than 26 times among those 65 and up.

“It’s not reflective of everyone who’s using cannabis,” cautioned Daniel Myran, an investigator at the Bruyère Health Research Institute in Ottawa and lead author of the Ontario study. “It’s capturing people with more severe patterns.”

But since other studies have shown increased cardiac risk among some cannabis users with heart disease or diabetes, “there’s a number of warning signals,” he said.

For example, a disturbing proportion of older veterans who currently use cannabis screen positive for cannabis use disorder, a recent JAMA Network Open study found.

As with other substance use disorders, such patients “can tolerate high amounts,” said the lead author, Vira Pravosud, a cannabis researcher at the Northern California Institute for Research and Education. “They continue using even if it interferes with their social or work or family obligations” and may experience withdrawal if they stop.

Among 4,500 older veterans (with an average age of 73) seeking care at Department of Veterans Affairs health facilities, researchers found that more than 10% had reported cannabis use within the previous 30 days. Of those, 36% fit the criteria for mild, moderate, or severe cannabis use disorder, as established in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

VA patients differ from the general population, Pravosud noted. They are much more likely to report substance misuse and have “higher rates of chronic diseases and disabilities, and mental health conditions like PTSD” that could lead to self-medication, she said.

Current VA policies don’t require clinicians to ask patients about cannabis use. Pravosud thinks that they should.

Moreover, “there’s increasing evidence of a potential effect on memory and cognition,” said Myran, citing his team’s study of Ontario patients with cannabis-related conditions going to emergency departments or being admitted to hospitals.

Compared with others of the same age and sex who were seeking care for other reasons, research shows these patients (ages 45 to 105) had 1.5 times the risk of a dementia diagnosis within five years, and 3.9 times the risk of that for the general population.

Even after adjusting for chronic health conditions and sociodemographic factors, those seeking acute care resulting from cannabis use had a 23% higher dementia risk than patients with noncannabis-related ailments, and a 72% higher risk than the general population.

None of these studies were randomized clinical trials, the researchers pointed out; they were observational and could not ascertain causality. Some cannabis research doesn’t specify whether users are smoking, vaping, ingesting or rubbing topical cannabis on aching joints; other studies lack relevant demographic information.

“It’s very frustrating that we’re not able to provide more individual guidance on safer modes of consumption, and on amounts of use that seem lower-risk,” Myran said. “It just highlights that the rapid expansion of regular cannabis use in North America is outpacing our knowledge.”

Still, given the health vulnerabilities of older people, and the far greater potency of current cannabis products compared with the weed of their youth, he and other researchers urge caution.

“If you view cannabis as a medicine, you should be open to the idea that there are groups who probably shouldn’t use it and that there are potential adverse effects from it,” he said. “Because that is true of all medicines.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, Associated Press

HAYWARD, Calif. (AP) — Amazon is gearing up to make as many as 10,000 robotaxis annually at a sprawling plant near Silicon Valley as it prepares to challenge self-driving cab leader Waymo. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also vying to join the autonomous race.

The 220,000-square-foot robotaxi factory announced Wednesday heralds a new phase in Amazon’s push into a technological frontier that began taking shape in 2009, when Waymo was launched as a secret project within Google.

Amazon began eyeing the market five years ago when it shelled out $1.2 billion for self-driving startup Zoox, which will be the brand behind a robotaxi service that plans to begin transporting customers in Las Vegas late this year before expanding into San Francisco next year.

In this undated handout photo provided by Zoox, Zoox robotaxis are assembled at a 220,000-square-foot factory located in Hayward, California. (Zoox via AP)

Zoox, conceived in 2014, will be trying to catch up to Waymo, which began operating robotaxis in Phoenix nearly five years ago then charging for rides in San Francisco in 2023 before expanding into Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Waymo says it has already more than 10 million paid rides while other would-be rivals such as Amazon and Tesla are still fine-tuning their self-driving technology while tackling other challenges, such how to ramp up their fleet.

Amazon feels like it has addressed that issue with Zoox’s manufacturing plant that spans across the equivalent of three-and-a-half football fields located in Hayward, California — about 17 miles (27 kilometers) north of a factory where Tesla makes some of the electric vehicles that Musk believes will eventually be able to operate without a driver behind the wheel.

Since moving into the former bus manufacturing factory in 2023, Zoox has transformed it into a high-tech facility where its boxy, gondola-like vehicles are put together and tested along a 21-station assembly line. For now, Zoox is only making one robotaxi per day, but by next year hopes to be churning them out at the rate of three vehicles per hour.

In this undated handout photo provided by Zoox, Zoox robotaxis are assembled at a 220,000-square-foot factory located in Hayward, California. (Zoox via AP)

By 2027, Zoox hopes to making 10,000 robotaxis annually in Hayward for a fleet that it hopes to take into other major markets, including Miami, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Although Zoox will be assembling its robotaxis in the U.S., about half of the parts are imported from outside the country, according to company officials. Waymo is also planning to expand into Atlanta and Miami and on Wednesday took the first step toward bringing its robotaxis in the most populous U.S. city with the disclosure of an application to begin testing its vehicles in New York.

“It’s an exciting time to be heading on this journey,” Zoox CEO Aicha Evans said during a Tuesday tour of the robotaxi factory that she co-hosted with Jesse Levinson, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

Although Zoox will be lagging well behind, it believes it can lure passengers with vehicles that look more like carriages that cars with seating for up to four passengers. Waymo, in contrast, builds its self-driving technology on to cars made by other major automakers, making its robotaxi look similar to vehicles steered by humans. Zoox isn’t even bothering to put a steering wheel in its robotaxis.

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As it continues to test its robotaxis in Las Vegas, Zoox recently struck a partnership to give rides to guests of Reorts World. It’s also still testing its robotaxis in San Francisco, where Waymo already has turned driverless cars into an everyday site in a city that has been renowned for cable cars since the 1870s. While testing in San Francisco last month, a minor collision between a Zoox robotaxi and a person riding an electric scooter last month prompted the company to issue a voluntary recall to update its self-driving technology. No injuries were reported in the incident.

Tesla is still angling to compete against Waymo too, although it remains unclear when Musk will fuflil his long-running promise to build the world’s largest robotaxi service. Musk still hasn’t given up on the goal, though his current ambitions are more modest than they were in 2019. when he predicted Tesla would be running a fleet of 1 million robotaxis by now. He is currently aiming for a limited rollout of Tesla robotaxis in Austin this Sunday, although that date could change because Musk is “being super paranoid about safety.”

Zoox, in contrast, is planning to operate 500 to 1,000 of its robotaxis in small to medium-sized markets and about 2,000 robotaxis in major cities where it eventually operates, according to Evans. The company thinks each robotaxi produced in its Hayward plan should be on the road for about five years, or about 500,000 miles

By JENNIFER McDERMOTT and ALEXA ST. JOHN, Associated Press

A federal judge in Massachusetts said Wednesday he plans to deny a motion by the Trump administration to dismiss a lawsuit over its blocking of wind energy projects, siding with a coalition of state attorneys general.

Led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C. are suing in federal court to challenge President Donald Trump’s Day One executive order halting leasing and permitting for wind energy projects.

Judge William G. Young said during a hearing that he plans to allow the case to proceed against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, but will dismiss the action against Trump and cabinet secretaries other than Burgum named as defendants.

He said he thinks states do have standing to sue, which the federal government had argued against. The states can proceed with claims that blocking permits for wind energy projects violates the Administrative Procedure Act, which outlines a detailed process for enacting regulations, but not the Constitution, Young said.

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Young said his rulings from the bench were tentative and reserved the right to alter them in writing his formal opinion.

The coalition of attorneys general sued to ask that a judge declare the executive order unlawful and approve an injunction to stop federal agencies from implementing it. They argued that Trump doesn’t have the authority to halt project permitting and doing so jeopardizes the states’ economies, energy mix, public health and climate goals.

The government is arguing that the states’ claims amount to nothing more than a policy disagreement over preferences for wind versus fossil fuel energy development that is outside the bounds of the federal court’s jurisdiction. Department of Justice Attorney Michael Robertson said in court that the wind order paused permitting, but didn’t halt it, while the Interior secretary reviews the environmental impact and that this effort is underway. He said states have not shown that they were harmed by a specific permit not being issued.

Turner Smith, from the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, countered that the government has provided no end date and that Trump’s order imposes a “categorical and indefinite halt.” She said states have been harmed and pointed to a offshore wind project for Massachusetts, now pushed back by two years because its three outstanding permits are delayed due to the wind order. She said Massachusetts can’t meet its targets for procuring offshore wind energy without the SouthCoast wind project.

Wind is the U.S.’ largest source of renewable energy, providing about 10% of the electricity generated in the nation, according to the American Clean Power Association.

Trump prioritizes fossil fuels and said last week that his administration would not approve wind energy projects except in cases of emergency. The administration had ordered a Norwegian company, Equinor, to halt construction on a fully permitted offshore wind project in New York, though Equinor has been allowed to resume work.

The coalition includes Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington state and Washington, D.C.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.