• Eric Morrow was diagnosed with severe prostate cancer at age 49.
• He had no symptoms aside from a slightly enlarged prostate that showed up during a colonoscopy.
• His primary care physician never tested him for prostate cancer despite Morrow's family history.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Eric Morrow, a prostate cancer survivor, US Air Force veteran, and volunteer advocate for Zero Prostate Cancer, a nonprofit focused on supporting patients and eliminating prostate cancer. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I was diagnosed with prostate cancer on June 8, 2021, at 49. It was shortly before my 50th birthday.

I'll admit I did not know a lot about prostate cancer then. I knew it was fairly common and, to the best of my knowledge at the time, I thought it primarily affected older men in their 70s and 80s.

Five years prior, in 2016, I'd learned that my father had previously had prostate cancer and that he was in remission after being successfully treated.

So, the next time I saw my primary care physician, who was assigned to me through the Air Force, I told her about my family history and asked if I should get checked for prostate cancer.

She said that I was too young and didn't need to worry about getting screened until my 50s.

The phone call that probably saved my life

In 2020, my PCP said I was old enough to have a colonoscopy to check for colon cancer. That's when it all started.

After my colonoscopy, the gastroenterologist said my colon looked great, but my prostate looked a little enlarged, and I should schedule an appointment with a urologist.

I had no other symptoms to suggest I had prostate cancer. Also, this was during the height of the pandemic. I got distracted by work and didn't make the appointment immediately.

I was really lucky that the doctor called me back a month later to see if I'd seen the urologist. It was a really simple follow-up, but that phone call prompted me to make the appointment and probably saved my life.

My PSA level was in the hundreds

The urologist scheduled me for a digital rectal exam and an MRI, and then drew my blood for a PSA test, which measures specific proteins in the blood to identify possible prostate cancer.

I got a call a few hours later about my PSA level. I was told that anything over four would be a concern for a man of my age. My PSA level was 225.

The urologist said there could be many reasons for my extremely high PSA levels, but a later biopsy revealed that I had prostate cancer with a Gleason score, which measures how aggressive the cancer is, of nine. The highest the scale goes is 10.

I got the trifecta of treatment: surgery, radiation, and pills

I was lucky enough that the Department of Defense's Center for Prostate Disease Research at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, was nearby, and my case was aggressive enough to qualify for their treatment.

There, I had a cancer team including a urologic oncologist and radiation oncologist who recommended a multi-step treatment involving surgery, radiation therapy, and hormone therapy to turn off testosterone production in my body.

I started surgery in July 2021, after which I had issues with incontinence. Despite physical therapy to improve it, I never regained full control of my bladder. This made the radiation therapy, which came about five-and-a-half months later, very challenging.

Each time, I had to come in with an empty rectum and a full bladder. The full bladder basically pushes the rectum, so it's not as much in the field where they're going to shoot with radiation.

Each of the 39 radiation sessions I completed only lasts about 15 minutes, but I had a hard time getting my bladder full enough and then holding it long enough for the therapy.

To get through it, I'd play a game with myself: They had music going, and I would just listen to the music and try to memorize it. Then, I went on Facebook afterward and posted a list of all the songs — it became my "Playlist of the day" for friends and family.

The androgen deprivation therapy, aka hormone therapy, was a shot that I got every three months, along with pills that I was taking every day. I did this therapy for about 24 months.

The side effects were pretty harsh. I experienced hot flashes, mood swings, additional abdominal fat, loss of muscle mass and bone density, and it killed my libido. I got back into lifting weights that I hadn't been doing for probably more than a decade, and that helped minimize some of the weight gain and muscle loss.

Since coming off hormone therapy, my testosterone has luckily gone back to pre-treatment levels, and my PSA level has remained undetectable.

I quit my job after getting cancer

I wouldn't wish cancer on anybody, but the one thing it does give you is perspective. I realized I wanted to do something more.

So in December of 2022, I left my job with a medical device company I'd been with for over nine years. I was ready to give back to the prostate cancer community.

I'm now doing a lot of work on a year-round basis with Zero Prostate Cancer. I also volunteer at Walter Reed, where I received my cancer treatment.

I also speak with new prostate cancer patients and try to give them hope. I tell them, "Four years ago, I was sitting right where you are and I thought I was going to die. But I'm still here, and I'm doing OK."

• Taylor Nissi is a senior VP and wealth advisor at the wealth management firm Farther.
• He shared his top tips he would give to clients navigating recent market volatility amid tariffs.
• Nissi said everyone should have three buckets: emergency fund, growth strategy, and retirement plan.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Taylor Nissi, a wealth advisor at Farther. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It's important that people have a financial plan they can refer to during times of economic uncertainty.

In the current climate, people may want to reevaluate their risk strategies for their investment portfolios and cash management.

As a wealth advisor, it's my job to help both small business owners and employees through this time of economic uncertainty. Here are my top tips.

Make a plan and prioritize your emergency fund

We like to say you should have three buckets. The first bucket is your emergency fund, the second is your taxable growth strategy, and the third is your long-term retirement plan.

Having a financial plan gives people a reference point to return to during market fluctuations. It can help with decision-making in times of high anxiety.

Everyone should prioritize building their emergency fund or "first bucket." Your emergency fund is a way to prepare for market risk and life risk.

If your household has one income, you should have at least six months saved in your emergency fund. If you have two incomes — either two income earners, one person with two incomes, or a person with one income and a trust fund — that number could drop to three months.

Any other money you know you'll spend in the next 24 months, a college tuition to pay or a house down payment, for example, should all be added to your emergency fund.

This money should be held somewhere that it can be easily converted to cash without affecting its market price. You want something safe, easy to access, and earning a little interest: High-yield savings accounts, money market accounts, or short-term CDs are all good.

If you're not coping, remove volatile assets like stocks and add bonds

The "second bucket" is your taxable growth strategy: investments to help your money grow, even in accounts where you pay taxes, like a regular brokerage account. We've been talking with a lot of clients about how they felt when the market crashed in early April. Our clients hold a lot of wealth in stocks and were very uncomfortable.

If clients were very stressed or couldn't sleep at night, then we'd look at their "second bucket" and change the allocation of their portfolio to more bonds and fewer stocks.

However, we'd also tell people that selling stocks and buying bonds can impact your long-term financial goals. If you sell stocks when prices are down, you lock in those losses. Buying bonds instead may mean you miss out if the stocks rebound.

If you were emotionally OK during a volatile market, I'd say continue buying stocks. They're the best way to compound wealth. You want to buy companies with strong balance sheets and a strong moat around them.

Do not make reactionary portfolio decisions

If you make an emotional decision to sell everything and go to cash, there could be a knock-on impact on achieving your financial goals.

If my clients call me and tell me they want to sell everything, I generally try to walk them back, share historical data about why that might not be a good idea, and tell them to sleep on it.

Taking your money out of the market, say the S&P 500, when you're most uncomfortable and returning after a couple of days will reduce your annual average returns.

Knowing when to invest back in is the hard part. The best days in the market often come immediately after the worst days. So if you take your money out on the worst day, and wait for some kind of "all clear sign," you will almost certainly miss the best days.

I talk a lot about what we learned through the 2008 financial crisis. A lot of the people who got hurt the most were the people who reacted emotionally.

Consider long-term investments

If you're younger, under 50, I'd advise clients to own mostly stocks in their "third bucket," their retirement savings plan. Stocks have much more growth potential compared to bonds. If you didn't cope emotionally with what happened in early April, you could adjust to having fewer stocks and more bonds, but that will have a downstream impact.

If you are nearing retirement, you should be thinking about moving some of your "third bucket" assets into more stable investments. Or if you cannot handle the market swings, think about building a more stable and less growth-oriented portfolio.

I always try to help my clients who are getting ready to retire be conscious of the "sequence of returns" risk. This is when you have to pull money out of your retirement fund during bad market conditions, which can drain your savings faster than you planned for.

If you retire during a market decline, you'll be forced to sell assets at a discount rather than their fully appreciated value, which will decrease your future value. Selling investments while they're down means you'll have less money left to grow in the future, so your total retirement fund shrinks faster.

If you're preparing to retire in the next two or three years, your third bucket should have an emergency fund of its own. You want to have two years of expenses in cash in addition to the emergency fund you already have. It will protect you against stagflation and market uncertainty.

• Magnus Grimeland, the CEO and founder of the VC firm Antler, said demand for software engineers will only grow.
• AI will continue to make errors, and only software engineers will optimize this technology.
• AI will also lead to further specialization among software engineers, he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Magnus Grimeland, the CEO and founder of Antler, a global early-stage venture capital firm. He also cofounded Zalora, a fashion e-commerce platform in Asia. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

There have been a lot of headlines about software engineering being replaced by AI, based on the assumption that anyone can just go in and code any program with natural language. It's actually much more likely that the need and demand for great software engineers will grow in the next couple of decades.

Even the best software engineers today make errors. AI models will also continue to make errors, at least for a very long time, and the only ones who will optimize this technology are software engineers.

At least over the next 20 to 30 years, what you will see is the best software engineers getting a tremendous amount of leverage to be more efficient and deliver better products faster. Software engineers will work in a different way than before.

In the not-too-distant future, we also need to adapt to an entirely new computer ecosystem, and the ones who are going to be able to do that are software engineers. We've already started investing in a few companies that are preparing for that.

Further specialization

AI will also lead to further specialization.

Today, software engineers are grouped a bit more generally. Some work on hardware, some on different types of software languages, and some are great mobile developers.

The complexity of the type of roles that you'll see for software engineers will increase significantly because the way this is being implemented in different industries will require specialized goals.

You'll also see fewer general engineers and more people who are really good at one specific thing.

Software engineers will work closer with businesses. AI will enable business leaders to work better with engineering departments because they can tinker with the early versions of the products themselves.

This should lead to more efficiency in terms of how the technical and less technical parts of the business work together, and that should actually give software engineering an even more important role in the business.

A new era of learning

When we were building Zalora and now at Antler, some of the best engineers we hired in Southeast Asia were self-taught.

They didn't have computer science degrees from universities. They read up on the internet, tinkered, and built their own programs.

AI has made it better than ever to teach people — as long as they have the right drive and basic intrinsics to learn how to become a great software engineer.

You'll see many more self-help people who are just as good as people who've done a full university degree.

• Julie Beckham is a financial educator and mom of two.
• Her daughter is a high school senior, and her son is about to graduate from college.
• She's had honest conversations about the cost of college since they were young.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Julie Beckham, assistant vice president of financial education and development and strategy officer at Rockland Trust Bank. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up in a middle-class family and was lucky to have my parents pay for my education at New York University. NYU was still expensive back in the 1990s, but it was the type of expensive that a middle-class family could still afford with a moderate amount of sacrifice.

Today, as a financial educator, I still consider myself middle class, but there's no way I could pay the entire cost of college education for my two kids, who are 18 and 21. That's true for many families, thanks to the skyrocketing cost of college.

Because of that, I've been very intentional about talking with my kids about paying for college — from the time they started high school.

Here's how we've planned together to manage the cost.

Choose more affordable schools

Schools with a lower profile yet more affordable tuition can offer a better return on investment for many families. Getting kids to consider these can be tricky since colleges are so good at marketing. Sometimes, going to a "name brand" school is less about the degree and more about the swag.

Ask your kids what they love about a well-known school. Then, provide alternatives that have that same characteristic, at a lower price point. Boston College is popular near where I live because of its football culture, but the same vibe can be found elsewhere for a much lower price.

I've told my kids to consider schools that may not be well-known or have all the swag but are nonetheless special. These schools can give talented students more financial aid and a chance to stand out.

Understand what you can afford, and tell your kids

As my kids approached college age, their dad and I talked about the amount that we could afford to pay toward their education. It's based on what works for each of our budgets.

My kids are expected to pay the difference between the cost of their college and what we're able to cover as their parents.

I recommend parents be very honest about what they can afford, so students can decide whether they're willing to take on student loan debt to cover other costs.

Ditch the guilt about what you can't cover

Sometimes I feel guilty that I can't pay for their whole education. But this is my reality and what I can reasonably afford.

Although I'm a financial educator, I didn't have the means to start saving for college until my kids were in their teens. When I did, it was very simple: transferring a small portion of each paycheck to a savings account I named "college." It wasn't a 529 college savings plan, it wasn't a lot of money, and it wasn't very sophisticated, but it was a start.

It's easy to criticize ourselves as parents, but we need to acknowledge we're often doing the best we can for our kids.

Apply for grants and scholarships

Small grants and scholarships might seem insignificant against the huge bill for college, but they add up. You think $500 isn't going to make a dent, but when you're paying $80 for a book, you realize $500 can be helpful.

I helped my kids apply by researching opportunities, reminding them of deadlines, and encouraging them to work on applications. Sometimes they weren't happy to write another essay, but I reminded them it would take an hour and they could get hundreds of dollars.

Ask for more financial aid

Once you've applied to schools and received your financial aid packages, you might notice significant differences in how much aid your student gets from each school. If that's the case, you can ask a school to match what a comparable school has provided.

I've tried this twice. Once, I called the financial aid office, and they said they couldn't make changes. But another time, I was asked to email the other offer, and they'd see if they could adjust the financial aid package. It never hurts to ask.

Consider graduating early

My son is about to graduate from college a year early, which is a huge savings for our family. He did it by taking advanced placement (AP) classes in high school and earning a few extra credits during college. It was hard work, but it will likely save our family thousands of dollars.

College brings up a lot of feelings for parents and kids. There's so much pressure to get this step right. It's helpful to remember that this is just the first of many steps. Although it feels important, it's the decisions we make every day that really impact our lives.

• Mike Crabtree, a data engineering director at Ford, took over 25 online courses to skill up.
• He said learning new skills is crucial to protecting your job amid recession fears.
• Online courses improve your problem-solving and communication skills, applicable in multiple fields.

This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Mike Crabtree, the Director of Data Engineering at Ford. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2008, I had just received my associate's degree in industrial mechanics and electronics engineering. Then, the recession flooded the labor market.

In a crowded field, my degree and resume — mostly retail experience — didn't stand out as much to employers.

As I pursued a bachelor's in business and computer information systems, I knew I needed to differentiate myself more. I started taking paid online courses from platforms like Coursera, edX, and Udacity, earning certifications in everything from business analytics to leadership skills that I shared on my LinkedIn.

While I didn't major in data science, I took supplemental online classes that helped me stand out and pivot into the field. Ford reached out months after I graduated in 2016. The company hired me as a data scientist that November, a role I stayed in for five years before becoming the manager of a data engineering team. After leaving Ford to work for a data-specific organization, I returned in 2023 and eventually became the director of data engineering.

These days, the job market is a little tougher to break into, let alone stay in. Some people are looking to recession-proof their jobs amid concerns of AI disruption and economic uncertainty.

My experience taught me that the key is to keep learning. By choosing challenging online courses, I tapped into skills I never used before, from technical ones like programming to soft skills that helped me grow as a manager. Taking classes in everything from entrepreneurship to self-driving car engineering also signaled to managers that I was proactive and willing to learn — qualities that are important for feeling secure at a job or getting a promotion.

Here are three ways to recession-proof your job as much as you can — or land a more stable one.

Find your gaps

To feel like you're in good standing at your job or that you're prepared for upcoming interviews, you need to be as well-rounded as possible. If you're incredibly self-aware, you might already know your skill gaps. Personally, I didn't learn mine until I started challenging myself with online courses.

Because statistics and the scientific method are foundational in data science, I took a statistics course. I got stumped on probability and had to improve my understanding before I could move forward. Later, I took a machine learning class and realized that linear algebra wasn't my strong suit. In addition to learning the needed technical skills from those courses, I also learned how to spot my weaknesses — and take action to fix them by studying more.

This can apply to all fields. You might be a manager, for example, and need more leadership training. If your job doesn't directly offer many opportunities to push yourself outside your comfort zone, courses can help you quickly spot what you struggle with.

Grow your problem-solving skills

Being able to think critically, solve problems, and lean into your intuition makes you a more valued team member.

The good news is you don't need to stuff your brain with as many facts or programming techniques as you think. It's more important to be able to assess direction, build business acumen, and make confident decisions.

You might know how to build a linear model as well as AI does. But when you can just look that up, what matters more is realizing that a linear model isn't the best solution to a problem in the first place.

One way I beefed up my critical thinking skills was by taking a course in quantum computing taught by IBM, which heavily involved physics — something I wasn't an expert in at all. It taught me to think quickly and wrap my head around a lot of conceptual topics. I went in thinking I was learning one skill, but I left learning four.

Be communicative

Forming strong workplace relationships is important, especially in a tough job climate. After I worked at Ford as a data scientist, I left for a managerial role at a data company. When I exited that job, some old coworkers at Ford started reaching out the moment they knew I was back on the market.

Throughout my career, I've seen many brilliant technical professionals struggle to move up — not because they're mean or ornery, but because they're super quiet and keep their heads down. Because they weren't assertive enough, people didn't know much about them.

In my own career, I've taken public speaking courses to improve my communication and confidence. Beyond simply speaking up, it's also crucial to be able to share your suggestions in a clear and approachable way. This is especially true if your job is highly technical.

You can be the smartest person in the room, but if no one knows your name or understands your ideas, it doesn't really matter. Bridging that gap by building up your soft skills is the best way to set yourself up for success.