Hey friends - it’s Friday. If you’ve got the long weekend, enjoy it.

🌎 The Big Picture

Here's what you need to know this week:

• More adults are leaning on their parents for support

• Mortgages are getting a lot more expensive

• Millions of kids just got new free investment accounts

• Venture investors are writing bigger checks to fewer startups

▶️ More adults are leaning on their parents for help affording the cost of living.

The Census Bureau found about 2.6 million parents sent a combined $26.6 billion to grown children living elsewhere in 2024, a median of $4,725 each. And that doesn't even count the money flowing to the nearly half of adults under 30 still living at home, a share that's jumped 12 percentage points since 2019, according to the Federal Reserve. More than 1-in-8 Americans aged 30 to 34 haven't moved out, nearly double the share from 2000.

Finding work isn't the real issue. About 70% of those young adults living at home are employed, Realtor.com found, so this is an affordability story, not a motivation one. Housing costs have just blown past what early-career salaries can handle.

For parents, a longer runway of supporting dependents is seriously shifting their plans. Some are building bigger homes, trimming everyday spending, or handing over inheritance money early just to give their kids a foothold. If retirement's coming up for your family, it's worth taking a real, honest look at your spending plan and how long you can carry the next generation.

▶️ Buying a home has gotten way more expensive as mortgage rates keep climbing. 

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported the average rate on a 30-year mortgage has hit 7.49%, up from near 6% at the start of the year and the highest in almost three years. Buyers are already pulling back, with purchase applications down 15% from last year.

The bond market is to blame. Mortgage rates track the 10-year Treasury yield, which investors use as the baseline for long-term borrowing costs since US government debt is considered the safest bet around. That yield hit 5.3% this week, the highest since 2002 and roughly a full point above where it sat just a year ago.

A few things are pushing investors to demand higher yields: Middle East tensions driving up fuel prices, companies borrowing heavily to build out AI infrastructure, growing government deficits, and the expectation that the Fed's keeping rates higher for longer. That means home purchases, refinancing, and any new borrowing all cost more right now, but folks holding cash in savings or bonds are earning more for it.

▶️ Millions of American kids just got a head start on retirement. 

Nearly 70 million American kids now have a Trump account, after the Treasury Department auto-enrolled more than 60 million children this month. Think of it like a pint-sized retirement vehicle: money grows tax-deferred, earnings get taxed as regular income at withdrawal, and nobody can touch the funds before age 18. Parents of kids born between 2025 and 2028 can also grab a one-time $1,000 deposit to kick things off.

The newest update is about who can actually contribute and how. Enrollment used to require parents to sign up manually, and accounts were restricted to index fund investments. The Treasury changed both rules in late September. Now wealthy donors can gift individual company shares instead, which can't be sold for five years. Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX pledged over 2 million of her shares, and the Dell family committed $6.25 billion for lower-income kids. The catch: kids can't refuse a stock gift or choose which company lands in their account, so some end up with their growth tied to a single stock instead of a diversified fund. Could be good or bad, but it’s just more risk.

▶️ Venture investors are cutting way fewer checks this year, but making each one count. 

Startups worldwide pulled in a record $698B through the first three quarters of 2026, even as founders landed 23% fewer deals compared to the prior quarter. Money's concentrating fast: J.P. Morgan found investors sent more than 80% of all venture dollars into AI startups through September, and CB Insights said OpenAI and Anthropic alone raised a combined $227B, roughly a third of all global venture funding this year. The average deal more than doubled to $50M from $23M in 2025, while AI-focused rounds averaged $91M, reflecting just how expensive it is to build compute-heavy infrastructure.

If you're not building AI, fundraising has gotten slower and a whole lot messier. J.P. Morgan also noted investors are pivoting toward infrastructure and compute-access companies rather than apps layered on existing models. Meanwhile, startups have increasingly treated IPOs as a real path to raising money and rewarding early backers, with public equity issuance on pace for a record year. Bottom line: venture returns are now riding heavily on a smaller set of massive AI bets, and founders not building in AI might have a harder time getting attention.

🏭 The Companies Everyone’s Talking About

❔ The Big Question of the Week

Scoops app users: We have taken the beta app offline for a short period for some major updates. Can’t wait to show you all what we’ve been working on! Reach out if you have any questions.

We’re going to switch up the content in this spotlight for a bit to make sure you all have the info you need to master your week.