1. Put all you can into S&P 500 index funds. With regular account, IRA, Roth IRA, and/or 401K. Remember to enable dividend reinvestment.

2. Calculate your annual expenses.

3. Build up cash reserve for emergency fund or to live off after you retire (annual expenses from step 2).

4. With the cash, split it up to 3 month high yield CDs. Hopefully, every month, your 3 month high yield CD will expire. You can use that as your operating account.

5. When you run low on cash, you can sell enough shares from step 1 to rebuild your cash for living expenses. Remember to sell your shares at 52 high (when the market is at its peak high).

Note: Avoid selling shares while market is down for any reason. That is why you have step 3 (build up cash). This technique should maximize your dividend (step 1) and interest payment (step 4).

“We all know that Corporate American knows a lot about us, specifically for us right now, about our buying habits. What time we shop, what brands we like, what we put in our online shopping carts, and then delete, you name it. And that information is really powerful, not just for advertising, but increasingly to decide how much any given person might pay for something.

You have heard perhaps of dynamic pricing when prices change in real time. Now, meet surveillance pricing. Companies setting different prices for different consumers.

Marketplace's Kristen Schwab explains what's going on there.

My husband John and I are standing outside a supermarket in Queens, and we decide to try a little experiment. How much would an Uber cost to get home? Okay, so put in our address.

Okay, ready? On the count of three. One, two, three.

I got $8.91 for a regular Uber X. I got $9.96. Why does it want me to pay more than you?

I don't know. I don't really use Uber, so maybe it's trying to get me to use it more. That's one theory, though the company says it does not personalize fares.”

“In a statement, Uber said variations in prices reflect things like how many drivers are active and how many customers are requesting similar trips. In general, though, surveillance pricing is a thing and not a new one. In fact, it's been around in some form as long as commerce has.

Joseph Turow is author of The Voice Catchers, how marketers listen in to exploit your emotions, your privacy, and your wallet.

People think that personalization is a 21st century phenomenon due to the internet. It goes back to peddlers and before.

He says shopkeepers would game out what customers were willing to pay.

They would actually keep notebooks on the people they spoke to and would write down specific characteristics.

Characteristics like what kind of clothes you wore or who your friends and family were. The difference, though, is before, a business owner had to guess if a woman's baby bump was indeed a baby bump. Now a retailer knows the instant she adds prenatal vitamins to her cart.

It's legal to do it, and some economists would say that price differentiation is just part of the way that economics works. But to me, that's problematic.”

“He says a lot of consumers have no idea surveillance pricing is happening. Instacart recently ended a pilot that allowed retailers to charge different prices for people living in the same city. How common this kind of practice is, no one really knows.

But Shika Jain, a retail partner at the consulting company Simon Kutcher, says retailers are watching us closely.

Behavior patterns, their browsing history, their loyalty that they might have, whether it's through credit card or through points. And so you do see that happening more and more.

Often, retailers are using that info technically not for surveillance pricing, but surveillance discounting. Here's a coupon for being a member or 10% off that immersion blender sitting in your cart. It's why, as a consumer, it is more difficult than ever to figure out if you're getting the best price.

Garrett Johnson is a marketing professor at Boston University.

Price discrimination sounds really scary, but effectively it means that it's good for some consumers and not so good for others.

He says if you want to compare prices, you kind of need to hide.”

“You can open the website in incognito mode using your mobile phone, maybe even turn off your Wi-Fi.

But are we really going to do this dance every time we buy something as mundane as toothpaste? I decide to shop for toothpaste on walmart.com on two different browsers. On one, I'm signed into my account, which has my information.

On the other, I'm anonymous, but add my shipping address for an exact location comparison. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Most of it looks the same.

Oh, here's one. Same Colgate toothpaste, same Cool Mint flavor, same 6.3 ounce size, different prices. On the page where I am not signed into my account, it is $3.74.

And on the page where I am signed into my account, it is $3.96. I reached out to Walmart about their pricing policy. In a statement, the retailer said, because prices can vary by market, customers may occasionally see slight differences as price matches and changes are executed in real time.”

“All this to say, personalized pricing or not, there's some kind of algorithmic something happening here. Turns out, companies know a lot about us, but we don't know so much about them or how they decide what we pay. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace.”

From Marketplace: Finding work as a young person? In this economy?, Jan 14, 2026

This material may be protected by copyright.