It’s never easy saving money. And with prices rising on everything from groceries to gas, it’s hard to scrounge up extra cash to stash away. However, even as more Americans save less and borrow more from their retirement funds, Gen Z shines as the only generation to have bucked that trend over the past three years, according to Dayforce’s second annual State of Retirement Savings report.

The total savings rate for full-time employees—including those who save for retirement and those who don’t—declined to 8.9% in 2025 from 9.2% the year before and the first annual decrease in three years, the benefits platform company told USA Today. In contrast, Gen Z’s savings rate has risen every year since 2022, most recently jumping to 6.2% in 2025 from 5.9% in 2024.

Younger people do seem to be a financially savvy and hypercautious bunch. A recent Charles Schwab survey found that the average Zoomer started saving at age 18, younger than other generations had. (The typical Boomer, for comparison, began at 34.) Nearly half are investing, and most began that before age 20. According to a study by the Investment Company Institute and the University of Chicago, which adjusted for inflation, Gen Z households have nearly three times more assets in defined-contribution retirement accounts than Gen X households did at the same age.

As The Atlantic points out, all of that “might seem counterintuitive for a generation with a bit of a Peter Pan reputation—known less for buying bonds than for living in their parent’s basement.” And it’s true: A ton of young people are postponing the traditional adulthood milestones, putting off having families or buying homes at least in part because they don’t feel they can afford them. But what seems like falling behind could actually be planning ahead: watching and waiting, always trying to prepare for the future. Maybe young adults, far from being in arrested development, are growing up exceptionally fast.

President Donald Trump renewed his threat to destroy Iranian bridges and power plants if the country doesn’t soon agree to reopen the world oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz, arguing that the Iranian people supported the U.S. and Israeli bombing. “The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” he said Monday, issuing a deadline of 8 p.m. Eastern tonight and pledging destruction by midnight if leaders don’t comply.

The Washington Post reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iranian officials were embarrassed by their failure to capture the U.S. aviator who was injured and stranded in rugged hostile territory for two days. Still, the Iranians showed no interest in surrendering, rejecting a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal on Monday.

Mediators from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey are working to avert that outcome by brokering a deal—or at least putting time back on the clock. “If the president sees a deal is coming together, he'll probably hold off. But only he and he alone makes that decision,” a senior administration official told Axios. A defense official said they were “skeptical” there would be any extension this time around. And in Iran, officials issued a video message calling on youths of the Islamic Republic to form “human chains” around power plants in the country ahead of threatened strikes.

Uh oh … Have we overshot Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity? Actually, it seems we overshot it decades ago. That's the central message from a new scientific study finding that humans have pushed the planet far beyond its long-term limits. If we continue down this road of unfettered consumption, the paper warns that it will only intensify environmental and social problems for people worldwide.

Researchers estimate that we are now using resources about 70-80% faster than the Earth can regenerate. This means humanity would need around 1.7 to 1.8 Earths to sustain current lifestyles. Exceeding the limits, they found, is what creates an “ecological debt, leading to climate change, los of biodiversity, deforestation and resource depletion.”

According to Science Alert, our own species, Homo sapiens, is particularly good at pushing the limits of what that carrying capacity might be, with our penchant for finding technological solutions to overcome the natural limitations of resource renewal—especially by exploiting fossil fuels. Prior to the 1950s, they found, the human population was growing at an ever-increasing rate, but in the early 1960s, that growth rate began to slow, though the population has continued to increase.

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