• A new year brings often brings reading resolutions that end up falling to the wayside by mid-January.
• To help you stay on track and provide some guidance, Amazon's book editors have handpicked a list of noteworthy titles for the site's Best Books of the Month section.
• This January, you'll find plenty of page-turners, from engaging thrillers and cultural commentaries to thought-provokers and grisly fairy tales. 
• Check out this month's top picks below, with short synopses provided by Amazon's book editor, Erin Kodicek.

When it comes to New Year's resolutions, you're sure to find healthy-eating credos, self-care mantras, and lofty financial benchmarks on pretty much everyone's list. But for bookworms, those more typical goals are often supplanted by one simple objective: to read more. 

To help meet your reading goals, the Amazon Books team has released their favorite new books of January, kicking off the Best Books of the Month section for 2020. This month's list lauds a diverse group of psychological thrillers and self-improvement guides, among others. Prolific writers such as Anna Wiener from The New Yorker are honored for redefining what it means to be a powerful storyteller.

Get started on your reading resolutions with January 2020's book selection below — or take a trip down memory lane with the complete breakdown of Amazon's Best Books of 2019. 

Captions have been provided by Erin Kodicek, editor of books and Kindle at Amazon.com.

"American Dirt" by Jeanine Cummins

Buy it here >>

In this compulsively readable, empathy-arousing read, a mother and son are forced to flee from Acapulco to the United States after inadvertently getting in the crosshairs of a drug cartel.

"Uncanny Valley" by Anna Wiener

Buy it here >>

In this timely memoir that serves as a cautionary tale, Anna Wiener describes her transition from book publishing to the Silicon Valley bubble, a place with excesses and unbridled ambitions that overshadowed its progressive ideals.

"Boys and Sex" by Peggy Orenstein

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Hyper-masculinity, hookup culture, racial stereotypes, and consent are among the numerous topics discussed in this compassionate, insightful, and potentially uncomfortable read by Peggy Orenstein.

"Tiny Habits" by BJ Fogg

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A perfect new-year-new-you read, "Tiny Habits" is a prescriptive guide for changing behaviors that are impeding you from achieving goals ranging from getting more sleep, to losing weight, to reducing stress and anxiety.

"Long Bright River" by Liz Moore

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In this Dennis Lehane-esqe thriller that's also a moving story of family and addiction, a policewoman must investigate the disappearance of her estranged sister, who may have fallen prey to a serial killer.

"Dear Edward" by Ann Napolitano

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Twelve-year-old Edward Adler is the sole survivor of a plane crash that kills 183 other passengers, including his family. "Dear Edward" is the poignant story of some of those passengers, and of summoning the resilience necessary to move forward after unimaginable tragedy. 

"Agency" by William Gibson

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In William Gibson's thought-provoking sequel to The Peripheral, which can also be read as a stand-alone, individuals in the future are reckless puppeteers with other people's pasts. 

"Wilmington's Lie" by David Zucchino

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Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino sheds light on a dark and little-known part of history: the overthrow of an elected government in the U.S. by white supremacists bent on destroying their mixed-race community.

"The Night Country" by Melissa Albert

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In Melissa Albert's fascinating (and macabre) follow-up to her dark fairy tale, "The Hazel Wood," Alice Proserpine escapes the Hinterlands, but her attempts to forge a normal life in New York City prove highly challenging (and potentially deadly).

"The Wives" by Tarryn Fisher

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Seth has three wives. After finding a piece of paper with a random woman's name on it, the wife he is legally married to surreptitiously seeks her out. This sets off a chain of events with catastrophic consequences in this page-turning psychological thriller.

Need more inspiration? See last year's Amazon Book Of The Month picks below:

• The 10 best books of 2019
• The 10 must-read books of January
• The 10 must-read books of February
• The 10 must-read books of March
• The 10 must-read books of May
• The 10 must-read books of July
• The 10 must-read books of August
• The 12 must-read books of September
• The 12 must-read books of October
• The 10 must-read books of November
• The 10 must-read books of December

• Michael Ungar, Ph.D. is the founder and director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University. His work as a family therapist and resilience researcher is recognized around the world and his latest book, "Change Your World: The Science of Resilience and the True Path to Success," was released by Sutherland House in 2019.
• If your resolution this year is to change your workplace or your career, there are five easy strategies.
• Look for a better supervisor, create work comraderie, change up your physical environment, bulk up your credentials, and set aside some money.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Lots of us will commit in January to making changes at work or in our careers. Most of us will, unfortunately, feel like failures by March. Here are five effective strategies for changing your workplace and your career in ways that are likely to last until at least this coming December. 

All of these resolutions share one thing in common: they remind us that we have to change the world around us if we want to make individual changes stick. Simply adapting to a bad workplace or a lousy career is not a long-term plan for success.

SEE ALSO: Here's how to set financial goals for the new decade

1. Before you accept full responsibility for your performance on the job, look for opportunities to find a better supervisor.

Good leadership can motivate us and bring out our best. Lousy leaders do the opposite.

2. Get to know your colleagues

A cohesive team will make it much easier for you to withstand turmoil in the workplace. If your New Year's resolution is to sell more, or be more productive, try first building a team atmosphere. It will make it easier to achieve your goal when others are rooting for you.

3. Change your physical environment at work

If you are working too many hours, or feel like your work is slowly wearing your body down, find ways to make the work environment healthier for your mental and physical wellbeing. If standing desks aren't your thing, then at the very least commit to taking more frequent short breaks or use your lunch time to get away from your desk and sit under a tree. There is plenty of research that shows our productivity improves when our workplace makes us feel better.

4. Retrain or increase your credentials

Look for the financial and human resources you need this year to keep growing. You're more likely to successfully improve your job prospects when you ask others to support you while you build your skills. Can your partner help? Are there government subsidies? Even downsizing your home for a time is likely to make it easier to realize a promise you make to yourself.

5. Put aside some money for a Plan B

The best New Year's resolutions are those that are well resourced. If you can't achieve everything you want to achieve this year, at least build a little hidden capital so that you can make a bigger, more successful change next year.

• In the 2010s, millennials struggled to build wealth amidst the fallout of the recession and student-loan debt.
• But one expert thinks millennials will come out on top in the 2020s and finally gain financial footing for five key reasons.
• Millennials are likely to enter their peak earning years and become members of double-income households, receive a wealth transfer from their parents, buy a home, and overcome their student debt.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The past 10 years have seen millennials cope with myriad financial hardships, but there might be a brighter future waiting for them in the next decade.

The 2008 financial crisis left many millennials financially behind: The oldest have been playing catch up in wealth building after entering a tough job market, while the youngest became risk averse by watching the recession unfold. And both age groups have had to balance this all with the weight of student-loan debt.

But Jason Dorsey, a consultant, researcher of millennials, and president of the Center for Generational Kinetics, told Business Insider that he anticipates many positive financial changes for millennials— who will be nearing their mid-30s to age 50 in 2030 — over the next 10 years. According to Dorsey, the generation will finally find its financial footing for five key reasons:

• The average student-loan debt per graduating student in 2018 who took out loans is nearly $30,000. But millennials will be 15 or more years past traditional college age on average, and many will have figured out how to manage their student-loan debt, Dorsey said.
• Many millennials will enter the mid-career stage over the next decade, which Dorsey said is prime time for increases in earnings through promotions and career changes. Mid-career is typically the stage in which one earns the top tier of their income.
• "The Great Wealth Transfer" will see an estimated $68 trillion pass down from boomers to their millennial children over the next 30 years — and it could make them even richer than previous generations. Dorsey said it's likely this significant wealth transfer will begin in the 2020s.
• Millennials have traditionally delayed homeownership as they've struggled with debt and living costs, but they're set to fuel the US housing market in 2020. Dorsey has also seen signs that millennials are finally buying houses, an investment that historically leads to wealth creation, he said.
• Financial troubles have also caused millennials to delay marriage, but as they age, they're becoming more ready to commit. As a result, more millennials are teaming up into two-income households, which Dorsey said is another positive sign for wealth building.

The predictions finally spell good news for a generation that's barely seen income growth since 1974 and whose wealth levels are significantly below where they should be.

"The next 10 years may finally be the decade where millennials feel a more solid financial foundation, especially after the long economic headwinds and recovery many of them have faced due to the Great Recession, wage stagnation, rising cost of real estate, and student-loan debt," Dorsey said.

SEE ALSO: The Great Recession split the millennial generation down the middle, creating 2 groups with very different financial habits

DON'T MISS: Millennials have been called the 'brokest' and the 'richest' generation, and experts say both of those are true

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Traditional Japanese swords can take over 18 months to create — here's what makes them so special

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is regarded as one of the world's most repressive and bombastic rulers.
• After a year of ushering in historic international peace agreements and much discussion over North Korea's nuclear arsenal, Kim's rule continues to cause concern on the world stage.
• Despite his high-profile career, there is still relatively little known of the reclusive 35-year-old.
• Here is the story of how he became one of the world's scariest dictators.
• Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.

Kim Jong Un assumed leadership at such a young age that many thought his rule would be doomed.

The current head of the family dynasty that's ruled North Korea since the 1950s has overseen several nuclear tests, dozens of missile tests, and presided over his country's shocking, uninvited entrance into the nuclear club. 

After having the most tense, heated exchanges with a US commander in chief in his country's history, Kim met with President Donald Trump twice.

Between threats of nuclear annihilation, brinkmanship, and attacks on South Korea, Kim has kept a firm grip on power throughout, and his people have very few freedoms.

With all this attention, still relatively little is known of Kim. But thanks to a new book from Washington Post Beijing bureau chief Anna Fifield, "The Great Successor," we now know more about his secretive childhood.

Here's what we know of how Kim grew to be one of the world's scariest dictators.

Paul Szoldra,Jeremy Bender, Gus Lubin, and Veronika Bondarenkocontributed to previous versions of this story.

SEE ALSO: Mystery children, sibling rivalries, and sudden disappearances: This is Kim Jong Un's family tree

DON'T MISS: The mysterious life of Kim Jong Un's wife, Ri Sol Ju — who probably has 3 children and frequently disappears from the public eye

Kim Jong Un was born on January 8 — 1982, 1983, or 1984.

His parents were future North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and his consort, Ko Young Hee. He had an older brother named Kim Jong Chul and would later have a younger sister named Kim Yo Jong.

While Kim Jong Un's official birth year is 1982, various reports suggest that the year was changed for symbolic reasons, including that it was 70 years after the birth of Kim Il Sung and 40 years after the birth of Kim Jong Il.

But when the US Treasury Department sanctioned Kim Jong Un in 2016, the agency listed his official date of birth as January 8, 1984.

Kim, here with his mother, lived at home as a child.

During this period, North Korea was ruled by "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung. While Kim Jong Il was the heir apparent, Kim Jong Un's path to command was far less certain.

Then it was off to Switzerland to attend boarding school.

Called "Pak Un" and described as the son of an employee of the North Korean embassy, Kim Jong Un attended an English-language international school in Gümligen, near Bern.

He lived in the suburbs with his aunt, Ko Yong Suk, his uncle, Ri Gang, and their three children, according to Anna Fifield's book, "The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un."

Some former classmates described him as a quiet student who spent most of his time at home, but had a sense of humor.

"He was funny," former classmate Marco Imhof told The Mirror in 2011. "Always good for a laugh."

"He had a sense of humor; got on well with everyone, even those pupils who came from countries that were enemies of North Korea," another former classmate told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. "Politics was a taboo subject at school ... we would argue about football, not politics."

But others pained Kim as an unremarkable boy who was bad at school and lashed out at others.

According to Fifield's book, classmates said Kim was embarrassed to answer questions in class and frequently lashed out because he struggled to speak in German.

"He kicked us in the shins and even spat at us," a former classmate told her.

The book also outlines how Kim was introverted, avoided girls, and lived in Adidas tracksuits with Nike sneakers.

Kim Jong Un loved basketball and idolized Michael Jordan.

The young Korean reportedly had posters of Jordan all over his walls during his Swiss school days. Although Kim Jong Un was overweight and only 5-foot-6, he was a decent basketball player.

"He was a fiercely competitive player, very explosive," former classmate Nikola Kovacevic told The Mirror. "He was the play maker. He made things happen."

"He hated to lose. Winning was very important," said former classmate Marco Imhof.

He also had a "fantastic" collection of Nike sneakers.

After school in Switzerland, he returned home for military schooling.

Upon his return to North Korea, Kim Jong Un attended Kim Il Sung Military University with his older brother. Some reports say they started to attend their father's military field inspections around 2007.

While his father faced death, Kim Jong Un was rapidly promoted up the chain of political and military leadership, despite having little experience in either.

He was made a four-star general, deputy chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party, and a member of the Central Committee, according to the BBC.

Kim Jong Un has a theme song known as "Footsteps."

"Footsteps" looks and sounds like a propaganda song from the Soviet Union.

The song calls people to follow in "Our Admiral Kim's footsteps." Here's a sampling of the lyrics:

Footsteps, footsteps ... spreading out further the sound of a brilliant future ahead ... tramp, tramp, tramp, ah, footsteps.

Many North Koreans see Kim Jong Un as a youthful version of "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung.

Kim bears a clear resemblance to his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, in appearance, haircut, and mannerisms.

Rumors had circulated that Kim Jong Un had received plastic surgery to enhance the resemblance even further, although the North finally responded and called the allegations "sordid hackwork by rubbish media."

"The false report ... released by enemies is a hideous criminal act which the party, state, army and people can never tolerate," said the official Korean Central News Agency.

After his father died, Kim Jong Un was quickly declared "Supreme Leader" of North Korea.

When Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack on December 17, 2011, the young Kim Jong Un inherited the world's fourth-largest military, a nuclear arsenal, and absolute control over North Korea.

He took over ahead of his older brother Kim Jong Chol, whom their father thought was "effeminate" and weak. His other brother Kim Jong Nam apparently said negative things about the regime, according to The Australian. He was killed in 2017, reportedly on the orders of North Korea.

Taking the reins of the country when he was around 30, Kim Jong Un was the youngest head of state in the world when he took power.

Some originally believed that Kim Jong Un's aunt and uncle were actually calling the shots.

Among Kim Jong Un's most trusted advisers were his aunt Kim Kyong Hui and her husband, Jang Sung Taek, both 66. The couple was reportedly ordered by Kim Jong Il to control the country's military and help the young leader consolidate his position while he gains more experience.

At a meeting of the DPRK Workers' Party, both were photographed sitting close by. Their most important job, it seems, is to push his role as a powerful figure among some generals who do not trust him, according to The Telegraph.

But at the end of December 2013, Kim Jong Un had his uncle and his uncle's family executed, apparently in a bid to stop a coup against his rule.

On December 12, 2013, Kim Jong Un had his uncle Jang Sung Taek executed. He was charged with having tried to take control of North Korea through a military coup.

Following the uncle's execution, there were reports that Kim Jong Un continued to purge the rest of the uncle's family.

But North Korea's ambassador to the UK denied that Jang Sung Taek's family was also executed. Instead, the ambassador claimed that only Jang Sung Taek was killed by firing squad following a trial.

He's married to a former cheerleader and may have three kids.

Leaders in the Hermit Kingdom are often very secretive when it comes to their significant others, but Kim Jong Un often has his wife join him and allows photographs.

North Korean media revealed in July that he was married to Ri Sol Ju— a former cheerleader and singer — but no one knows exactly when they were married, according to NBC News.

South Korean intelligence believe the couple probably married in 2009 and had their first child in 2010.

Ri Sol Ju reportedly gave birth to a girl in 2013, and is believed to have had a third child in 2017.

Kim Jong Un lived out a childhood fantasy when former Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman visited.

Everyone in the family is apparently a huge Chicago Bulls fan.

His father owned a video library of "practically every game Michael Jordan played for the Chicago Bulls." Kim Jong Il tried unsuccessfully to get Jordan to visit in 2001.

Kim Jong Un had tons of Jordan posters as a kid. Brother Kim Jong Chol was photographed as a child wearing a Bulls Jersey: No. 91 — Rodman.

In the first years of his rule, things didn't go so well.

In 2013, Kim was reportedly the target of an assassination attempt. South Korean intelligence believes the young leader was targeted by "disgruntled people inside the North" after he demoted a four-star general, which resulted in a power struggle.

Perhaps as a means of reasserting control, Kim Jong Un has become extremely belligerent, shutting down all links with South Korea and threatening thermonuclear war against his neighbor and the US. His father and grandfather used to make these threats all the time without following through.

Kim Jong Un continued to be belligerent with South Korea and the West throughout his rule in hopes of bolstering his authority.

North Korea has continued to test ballistic missiles and nuclear devices under Kim Jong Un's rule, despite the threat of sanctions. In 2012, the country launched its first satellite into space.

Since Kim Jong Un has taken over, the country has continued to push ahead with its construction of ballistic and nuclear weapons.

In 2013, North Korea conducted its third-ever nuclear test and its first under Kim Jong Un. Since then, Kim Jong Un has overseen three additional nuclear tests, including the test of a hydrogen bomb, which is much more powerful, and dozens of missile tests, including missiles with the range to reach the US.

The nuclear tests and international condemnations continued into 2017.

On September 3, 2017, North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test, which experts estimate was many times the size and of the bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to close out World War II. Pyongyang claims the test was a miniaturized hydrogen bomb.

Kim's sprint to nuclear capability, and each test along the way, drew international condemnation.

In response to North Korea's continued nuclear testing, world leaders have strongly come out against the Kim regime. Even Kim's treaty and ideological allies in China and Russia have signed on to sweeping sanctions and condemnations against North Korea's nuclear program.

That test was followed up by a series of increasingly successful ballistic missile launches that have landed in the Sea of Japan. North Korea has also successfully test launched a ballistic missile from a submarine.

The assassination of Kim's half-brother Kim Jong-Nam in a Malaysian airport led to a global investigation of North Korea's involvement.

On February 13 2017, Kim's half-brother Kim Jong Nam was fatally poisoned in a Kuala Lumpur airport.

Amid worldwide suspicion of North Korean involvement, Malaysian police conducted an autopsy against the wishes of the Kim's government and named a North Korean official and several other nationals as suspects, alongside two foreign women believed to be working as hired assassins.

By March, the conflict between the former allies escalated after Malaysia directly accused the North Korean government of orchestrating the murder. North Korea issued an order that prevented Malaysian citizens from leaving the country while Malaysia responded by canceling visa-free entry to North Koreans.

In the Trump era, conflict with North Korea reached a new high.

Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump reportedly labeled North Korea the single biggest threat to the US.

Breaking with former President Barack Obama's attempts at diplomatic negotiation via "strategic patience," the Trump administration started demanding North Korea's immediate de-nuclearization and hinted at the possibility of a preemptive military strike if its impulsive leader does not comply.

In April 2017, Kim retaliated by unsuccessfully test launching another nuclear missile at the same time that US Vice President Mike Pence was scheduled to discuss the country's arms program in Seoul, South Korea. After the US threatened a "pretty significant international response" in the event of another test, a North Korean envoy warned that nuclear war could break out at "any moment."

And in November 2017, North Korea has tested intercontinental-range ballistic missiles with the express purpose of threatening the US mainland — something which Trump swore he would prevent.

Throughout 2017 and early 2018, North Korea continued its nuclear threats, and Trump continued to taunt Kim. In December 2017, then-National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the chance of war was "increasing every day."

But then 2018 ushered in the possibility of peace on the Korean peninsula.

A secret trip to Beijing in March 2018 marked Kim's first known trip outside North Korea since becoming supreme leader in 2011 and a historic departure from years of deteriorating relations with China.

Following up on his New Year's address that called for "peace and stability" between the two nations, Kim was the first leader to set foot on South Korean soil as part of a summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

The two leaders agreed to seek an end to the armistice agreement and sign a peace treaty, as well as achieve "complete" denuclearization.

Other measures that were announced included ending all propaganda broadcasts and leaflet drops along the border, creating a joint liaison office for the two countries, and holding four-way talks with the US and China.

Kim has continued his country's close relationship with China throughout his reign.

In January 2019, Kim Jong Un rode his personal armored train to China to spend his 35th birthday with Chinese President Xi Jinping. It was Kim's fourth trip to China in a year.

He rode his personal armored train to Beijing for a four-day summit with China, which is North Korea's most important trading partner and a buffer against pressure from the US.

After a fiery start, relations between Trump and Kim softened to suggest a new era for the two countries.

After Trump tweeted in January 2018 that his nuclear button was bigger than Kim's, the US placed what Trump described as the "heaviest ever" sanctions against North Korea in February, which the country decried as "an act of war."

In March 2018, Trump accepted Kim's offer for a meeting to discuss denuclearization, which would later result in a historic first-timemeeting between the two leaders and the signing of an agreement that called for establishing new US-North Korea relations and supporting building a stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.

But many experts were wary that North Korea wasn't held to strict, specific requirements to denuclearize.

Though the meeting was widely received as a positive development for global relations, many experts and some Trump administration officials were reportedly frustrated with the slow-moving reality of denuclearization and concerned with the president's "very public embrace" of Kim.

After intelligence processed in late 2018 suggested the rogue state has privately continued its nuclear activities, officials grew wary of Kim's previous promises for progress that eventually gave way to threats toward the US as relations with China and South Korea blossomed.

Trump announced during his February 2019 State of the Union address that he and Kim would meet in Vietnam for a second summit, and remained optimistic about Kim's intentions.

"As part of a bold new diplomacy, we continue our historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula," Trump said in his address. "Our hostages have come home, nuclear testing has stopped, and there has not been a missile launch in 15 months."

Trump's comments were in harsh contrast to widespread reports the US intelligence community had seen little progress towards denuclearization after the June 2018 summit. A January 2019 report from the director of national intelligence concluded Pyongyang is "unlikely" to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Despite the indications that progress had fizzled, Trump touted optimism.

"If I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea with potentially millions of people killed," Trump added. "Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one. And Chairman Kim and I will meet again on February 27 and 28 in Vietnam."

Ahead of Trump's arrival to the summit, reports again turned to Kim's mysterious habits and travel logistics.

Kim was spotted by hidden cameras smoking a cigarette in rural China after most of his nearly three-day, 2,000-mile train journey to the summit in a rare candid glimpse of the leader standing with his sister and an aide nearby.

His choice to take a train to the summit was still up for speculation, with analysts floating several possibilities on the trip as possible commentary on North Korea's relations with China, one saying the leader didn't want to look needy.

But the second summit largely ended in failure.

Trump said the summit ended early because Kim wanted total sanctions relief in exchange for only a few nuclear site closures.

North Korea contradicted Trump's reason for the collapsed summit in a rare press conference, and true to form, state media hailed the summit as "extraordinary" and "successful."

It's unclear where Kim will take North Korea next.

The US and North Korea seem stalled on sanctions and nuclear tests, but the two leaders remain somewhat friendly — much to the concern of foreign policy experts.

Trump praised a "beautiful letter" he received from Kim this summer, which was reportedly birthday greetings for the president's 73rd on June 14.

"I think North Korea under [Kim's] leadership has tremendous potential," Trump told reporters.

In October 2019, North Korean media released photos of Kim riding a white horse, and the propaganda shots were full of symbolism.

As Business Insider's Ellen Ioanes wrote, the photoshoot was on Mt. Paektu, a symbolically important mountain for the Kim family. Such releases often herald a major military announcement, and the photos had experts worried that North Korea had a nuclear advancement to unveil.

Nuclear negotiations between the US and North Korea have stalled.

The US is still sanctioning North Korea, and fears grew that the country would conduct another nuclear test by the end of 2019, but the year closed without a major incident.

• Cruises to cold-weather destinations like Antarctica and Greenland are becoming more popular than tropical destinations, Fran Golden reported for Bloomberg.
• The rising appeal of the Arctic stems from its remoteness and inherent exclusivity, thanks to high prices and how much time it takes to reach, according to the owner of luxury travel company Black Tomato.
• Going on an Arctic cruise has become "the high-end version of saying, 'I'm going on a big Alaska cruise,'" says another luxury travel exec.
• Wealthy travelers today — particularly millennials— want unique, exclusive experiences and adventure in their travels.
• Cruise lines are also offering shorter trips to the Arctic, drawing in a younger generation that may not have been able to afford a two-week or longer cruise, according to Bloomberg.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Forget the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

Cruises to cold-weather destinations like Greenland, Norway, and even Antarctica are becoming more popular than traditional tropical cruising destinations, Fran Golden reported for Bloomberg.

These destinations are increasingly attractive to travelers because of their remoteness, exclusivity, and air of adventure, according to luxury travel experts. To meet the rising demand, cruise lines are adding more itineraries and building ships specifically meant for navigating polar waters. 

The appeal of the Arctic lies in its exclusivity and air of adventure

Traveling to places like Antarctica, Greenland, and the fjords of Norway requires a large chunk of both time and money. Many other limiting factors make traveling to such places even more difficult. That's especially true of Antarctica, according to Tom Marchant, the owner and cofounder of luxury travel company Black Tomato— and he doesn't expect that to change.

In fact, Marchant told Business Insider he doesn't expect Antarctica will ever be serviced by such a supply of transportation options that the price of getting there will be driven down.

"At the end of the day, it's a very remote, hard to access, wild, and extreme environment," Marchant said.

This inherent exclusivity may be particularly appealing to wealthy millennial travelers, who want unique, exclusive experiences and adventure in their travels.

"Experience, that's become the currency," Seabourn president Rick Meadows told Bloomberg. "People want stories to tell their friends and family — to say 'We went to Greenland and saw all these things' to a room full of people who have not had that experience."

Cruise lines are building more Arctic vessels to keep up with the demand — and the ships are getting smaller and more luxurious

While ships to Arctic destinations used to be "mostly bare-bones expedition ships," Golden wrote, the "new breed of polar ships is smaller, nimbler, and far more comfortable."

Take the Lindblad Expeditions ships, some of which can only carry 40 or 45 passengers and are booked out by only one or two families, according to Albert Herrera, senior vice president of global product partnerships at luxury travel company Virtuoso.

Lindblad is offering more than 25 itineraries to Arctic destinations in 2020.

Then there's the brand-new Magellan Explorer, which has just 35 cabins, most of which come with king-size beds and private balconies. The ship includes a glass-enclosed observation lounge, a fully-stocked bar, a gym, a sauna, and a fleet of 10 Zodiac boats.

In 2019, Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours launched the Scenic Eclipse, an all-suite ship that will bring 200 passengers to Antarctica with luxury trappings such as an indoor pool, a meditation room, a 110-bottle whiskey bar, two helicopters, and a six-seat submarine, according to Bloomberg.

And Silversea Cruises, a luxury cruise line based in Monaco, has seen "a huge increase in bookings to colder destinations," and they've adapted their offerings in response, a publicist told Business Insider. 

The company recently converted the first ship in its fleet, Silver Cloud, into an expedition ship so it can join Silver Explorer, the company's first ship built specifically for cruising Arctic destinations. And in 2020, another Silversea ship, Silver Whisper, will be the first-ever cruise ship to visit all seven continents in one journey — including Antarctica — in a journey that costs a minimum of $65,400 per person.

Silversea is offering roughly 80 Arctic itineraries in 2020, ranging from $9,990 per person for nine days in Norway to $38,100 for 10 days in Antarctica.

Arctic cruises are are also getting shorter, making them accessible to a wider demographic

Arctic cruises have traditionally been pricey and long, with itineraries lasting two weeks or longer, which limited the customers to mostly to baby boomers, according to Bloomberg.

But as travelers are increasingly interested in cold, remote destinations, cruise lines are starting to offer trips as short as seven nights, which appeals to younger travelers who may not have otherwise been able to afford a multi-week polar cruise, or find the time off work for them.

Herrera recently told Business Insider that he thinks Antarctica will be one of the top travel destinations of 2020.

Going on an Arctic cruise has become "the high-end version of saying, 'I'm going on a big Alaska cruise,'" Herrera says, showing how the boundaries of luxury travel are being pushed to ever more distant — and frigid — destinations. 

SEE ALSO: A luxury travel company exec says Japan, Slovenia, and Antarctica will be the hottest travel destinations of 2020

DON'T MISS: The 8 best places to travel in Asia in 2020

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Traditional Japanese swords can take over 18 months to create — here's what makes them so special

• New York City's skyline has changed dramatically in the past decade.
• One World Trade Center, completed in 2014, became the city's tallest building at 1,776 feet.
• Hudson Yards, the city's new $25 billion megadevelopment, has transformed Manhattan's West Side.
• New supertall skyscrapers have risen along the southern edge of Central Park on Billionaires' Row.
• Parts of Brooklyn and Queens are also filling up with skyscrapers and starting to look more like Manhattan.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The New York City skyline has dramatically transformed in the past decade.

For years, the skyline was defined by the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, both of which were built in the 1930s and stand over 1,000 feet tall, as Stefanos Chen recently wrote for The New York Times.

"But New York's horizon has been in perpetual flux now for the better part of a decade," Chen wrote.

In Lower Manhattan, One World Trade Center was completed in 2014 and became the tallest building in the city. The island's west side was also transformed by the new $25 billion megadevelopment Hudson Yards, which brought luxury residential skyscrapers selling condos as pricey as $59 million, office towers, and a massive shopping center to the area. And along the southern edge of Central Park, multiple supertall towers have risen into the clouds, vying for the best views of the park.

In Brooklyn, the borough's soon-to-be new tallest building is rising downtown. And in Queens, fast-growing neighborhoods like Long Island City have seen major changes.

Here's how the New York City skyline has changed in the past 10 years, in photos.

SEE ALSO: The 11 tallest buildings in New York City right now, ranked

DON'T MISS: Amazon is opening an office in NYC's Hudson Yards. Here's a look inside the $25 billion development that that was financed with money meant for 'distressed' urban areas.

This is what the Manhattan skyline looked like from Weehawken, New Jersey, in 2010.

Today, the iconic Empire State Building still stands out, but numerous other skyscrapers have risen above it all along the island, altering the entire skyline.

In 2011, the view from 30 Rockefeller Center's observation deck, The Top of the Rock, showed One World Trade Center under construction in the distance in Lower Manhattan.

Today, One World Trade Center, completed in 2014, is the tallest building in New York City at 1,776 feet. It's easily visible from The Top of the Rock, towering over the other buildings in Lower Manhattan.

Source: Business Insider

Looking in the other direction, the view of Central Park from The Top of the Rock was mostly unobstructed at the beginning of the decade.

Now, several supertall skyscrapers, including the new tallest residential building in the world, have risen along the southern edge of the park in an area now known as "Billionaires' Row."

Source: Business Insider

From Central Park in 2010, you could see stately luxury hotels, condos, and co-ops lining Central Park South.

Now, those buildings are dwarfed by the new towers, which include the world's skinniest skyscraper, One57, and Central Park Tower, which became the tallest residential building in the world in 2019 at 1,550 feet.

Source: Business Insider

At the start of the last decade, Manhattan's West Side between 30th and 34th streets was home to only a few apartment buildings, office buildings, and the West Side Yard, where Long Island Rail Road trains were stored.

Source: Curbed

Today, the area is dominated by Hudson Yards, the city's new $25 megadevelopment of luxury condos, offices, entertainment, and shopping, which opened to the public in March 2019.

Source: Business Insider

In 2011, this was the view of the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn.

Since then, an 80-story luxury condo tower, One Manhattan Square, has risen behind the bridge.

In 2010, this was the view of Lower Manhattan from New Jersey on September 11, when twin columns of light were projected into the sky in remembrance of the September 11 attacks.

Today, the lights are still projected every year on September 11, but the Lower Manhattan skyline looks dramatically different after the completion of One World Trade Center and other skyscrapers in the area.

Brooklyn has not gone unchanged either. Here's what part of its skyline looked like In 2010.

Source:Business Insider, City Realty

Today, parts of Brooklyn have been filled in with skyscrapers, and the borough's skyline is starting to look more and more like Manhattan's.

Source: Business Insider

And in northern Brooklyn, areas like the Williamsburg waterfront have been rapidly changing. Earlier in the decade, the site of the Domino Sugar Factory sat abandoned and decrepit.

Source: Curbed

Today, the 11-acre area is in the midst of a massive redevelopment project. The area has been transformed by a pristine new park and luxury condos.

Source: Curbed

• In March I left New York to travel around the world as Business Insider's international correspondent. Over the course of more than six months, I have so far visited 18 countries.
• While I've had some epic adventures, not everything lived up to the hype. Some bucket-list attractions were overpriced, uninspiring, overcrowded, or just plain boring.
• Among the offending attractions: the "most dangerous hike in the world" in China, the Marina Bay Sands mega-hotel featured in "Crazy Rich Asians," and the Greek isle of Mykonos.
• I thought it might be helpful to share which of my recent adventures weren't worth the trouble.
• If you're looking for the things you should do, I have a list of those too.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Let's be honest: Some things simply don't live up to the hype.

There's a temptation when going on a big trip abroad to come back singing the praises of everything you did and saw, whether it's a mediocre, all-inclusive island resort or an adrenaline-pumping off-road trip through the desert.

But that muddies the waters. Sometimes, you get to a place, attraction, or activity only to find it overpriced, uninspiring, overcrowded, or just plain boring. If you don't call that out, how do you know some experience you've had really was life-altering?

When I left to travel as Business Insider's international correspondent in March, I knew there would be amazing adventures along the way. I also knew there would be more than a few duds. Among them: the "most dangerous hike in the world" in China, the Marina Bay Sands mega-hotel featured in "Crazy Rich Asians," and the Greek isle of Mykonos.

With 18 countries and nearly a year checked off on the trip so far, I decided it was time to pinpoint my least favorite adventures. Perhaps it'll help you reevaluate an upcoming trip, adjust your expectations for a bucket-list location, or feel less pressure to go see or do that thing that everyone is telling you that you must do.

Here's what they are.

This article was originally published in October 2018.

SEE ALSO: From off-roading in China to 22 hours of sunlight in Moscow: the one thing you have to do in 12 countries around the world

In China, I headed to Mount Hua, or Huashan, considered to be one of China's five sacred mountains and one of the most popular tourist attractions and pilgrimage sites for Chinese people. The mountain actually has five main peaks: a North, South, East, West, and Center.

While breathtaking, it's considered to be one of the world's most dangerous places to hike, due in large part to the infamous plank walk located on the mountain's highest peak, South, which has a height of 7,070 feet.

Unfortunately, I never got to the plank walk. The easiest way to get to the mountain's peaks is by cable car. The line was incredibly long. You can't even see the cable car in this picture.

After two hours or so, I got to this holding area. It was another two hours before I got on the cable car. I didn't have enough time to hike to the plank walk by the time I got to the top.

Read More: I tried to climb the 'plank walk' in China known as 'the most dangerous hike in the world,' but just getting there was the hardest part»

In South Korea, I took a day trip to the country's border with North Korea, also known as the demilitarized zone, or DMZ. It's one of the world's most heavily fortified borders.

Surreally, it is possibly the country's top tourist attraction with 1.2 million visitors a year. Depending on the tour, you visit a selection of military compounds, viewpoints, and tunnels.

It feels really strange. What struck me was how commercialized the DMZ felt, from the variety of North Korean products you could buy to the '80s-action-movie-style video about the border they screen to the cartoon soldier statues for touristy photos. I wouldn't go back, and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a real history buff.

One of the places I was most excited to visit in China was the Terracotta Army, the vast collection of terracotta warrior sculptures that guard the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China.

For some reason I thought the pit of terracotta warriors would be an open-air complex, or that you'd be able to walk close to the sculptures. It's not, and you can't.

It is hot, sweaty, and crowded. I was there on a weekday in April — hardly peak tourist time for Chinese travelers — and could barely move. You have to fight your way to the balcony around the sculpture pit.

Before getting to Bali, I had been told by many that I had to try Kopi Luwak, a traditional Balinese coffee considered to be the most expensive coffee in the world.

Kopi Luwak is coffee made from coffee beans that have been digested and defecated by a civet cat. Balinese farmers have touted for generations that this method produces the best-tasting coffee.

Perhaps it produced better-tasting coffee when the method was first developed hundreds of years ago. When I had it at one of the few coffeeshops that produces kopi luwak humanely, it tasted somewhat bitter and overly earthy. Nothing special.

One of the places I was most excited to visit was the Greek isle of Mykonos, known as a party capital and vacation hot spot for billionaires.

While the island was beautiful, it was unimaginably crowded. The island was choked with hundreds of thousands of vacationers, hard-partying dance-music junkies, and cruise-shippers.

And it felt prohibitively expensive. Getting a lounger at a popular beach could run you hundreds of dollars a day, and you have little room to stretch out.

The waters off the most popular beaches were crowded with the yachts of millionaires and billionaires. The water was beautiful and clear, but it makes it feel like you are swimming in a marina. Unless you're stopping by in the off-season, head to a less crowded island. There are many.

Read More: I visited the glittering Greek island of Mykonos, the summer destination of choice for billionaires — and it's a very different experience if you aren't swimming in money»

China has lots of unique natural landscapes and geological formations. One of the most interesting ones I saw on Reddit prior to my visit to China was the Danxia landform of Zhangye, also known as the "rainbow mountains."

The Danxia landform is a spectacular sight, but I'm including it on this list because its beauty is exaggerated in many of the photos you see online. This is how it looked when I visited. Compare those colors to the previous picture.

I would definitely still recommend visitors to China make plans to visit the landform if interested in the country's natural beauty. Just adjust your expectations.

One place I would unequivocally avoid in China is the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge. It is the longest and highest glass bridge in the world.

But visiting the bridge is no fun. After waiting for several hours for my turn on the bridge, I found it to be crowded and anything but peaceful.

It felt like one of the first tourist attractions built specifically for people to take selfies on. Just about every person on the bridge was laying or sitting on the glass trying to get a "floating" selfie. Unless you like overpriced tourist traps with long lines, skip it.

Read More: I visited the viral, 1,400-foot glass bridge in China — and it was a traveler's worst nightmare»

One of the joys of visiting Hong Kong is wandering the city's alleyways and streets. In the hilly Central District, however, it can be exhausting. To make it easier to navigate, the city built the Central-Mid-Levels Escalator, a half-mile escalator system considered the biggest of its kind.

There are restaurants and bars along the 18 escalators, which run downhill in the mornings and uphill in the evenings.

While the escalators are a useful way to commute to work for Hong Kongers, it's nothing you need to go out of your way to visit. It mostly just looks like this.

Tourism to Portugal has exploded in recent years, for good reason. The country has gorgeous beaches, great food, and interesting architecture. One of the places capitalizing on the boom is Livraria Lello, one of the world's oldest bookstores.

Located in the coastal city of Porto, the bookstore has become popular thanks to its association with J.K. Rowling (who reportedly based certain Harry Potter settings on the store), and breathtaking photos posted to Instagram.

Unless you visit Portugal during the winter, don't expect the bookstore to look like the previous photo. It's more likely to be packed with hundreds of people. There's barely room to move, let alone take a good photo.

Read More: I visited one of the world's most beautiful bookstores, which is over 100 years old and a rumored inspiration behind Harry Potter»

When doing research about Hong Kong, one place that kept coming up as a must-visit was Chungking Mansions. Alternately billed as the cheapest place to find a room in the city and a hotbed of illicit businesses, it is considered one of the most infamous places in Hong Kong.

I was too wary to book a room in the 17-floor complex. But after spending a few hours there, I wondered why.

The place seemed to be a relatively tame building of small businesses and cheap guesthouses.

While there were plenty of small-business and restaurant owners hawking for your business, it hardly felt dangerous.

There's little reason to go unless you are in need of a cell phone or have a hankering for tasty South Asian, Middle Eastern, or African food. I had fantastic curry after wandering the complex.

When I looked into where I might stay in Hong Kong, I was very excited to try out SLEEEP, the city's first capsule hotel, a concept invented in Japan in the late 1970s that aims to provide cheap, convenient "sleeping pods" for travelers who do not require the services of a full hotel.

It all sounded futuristic until I got ready for bed. While the sleeping pod looked cozy and inviting ...

... the pods got very hot, very quickly, and did little to block out sound. SLEEEP was supposed to be completely designed around getting you the best night of sleep. Instead, I woke up every time someone went to the bathroom or opened a locker.

Read More: I stayed at Hong Kong's first 'capsule hotel' to see what it's like to live in micro — and the experience was a nightmare»

One of the hottest sectors of Chinese tech is "dockless-bike sharing." The two primary companies, Mobike and Ofo, have expanded aggressively in recent years across the world.

I was very excited to check out the services while in China, which are supposed to be super cheap and convenient.

While the bikes were definitely cheap and convenient, they were pretty terrible to ride. It didn't matter if I was using an Ofo or a Mobike. In most cases, I found the bikes to be flimsy, rusted out, with loose handlebars, or a seat stuck too low.

Read More: I tried the two Chinese bike-sharing giants trying to take over the world, and it was immediately obvious why they can't seem to crack the US»

While I don't have a formal "bucket list," if I did, seeing and swimming in the Dead Sea in Israel would be on it.

The Dead Sea and the surrounding landscape was undoubtedly beautiful, particularly at sunrise and sunset.

But swimming in it was kind of a nightmare. I made the mistake of going in July when the water temperature approaches hot-tub levels and the air outside feels like the middle of an oven. It isn't refreshing. And while you can definitely float, beware if you get water in your hair. It dribbles down your face and burns your eyes. Bring a water bottle or a pillow.

In Busan, I visited the Haedong Yonggungsa temple, one of the only temple complexes located on the ocean in Korea.

It is reputed to be the most beautiful temple in Korea, and I was told repeatedly that it was a must-visit while in Busan.

While the complex is beautiful, it's hardly a must-visit unless you absolutely love temple architecture or practice Buddhism. I was wishing that I hadn't hiked out of the city to visit it and instead spent more time exploring Busan.

One thing that recurred during my travels was the difference between the magazine and Instagram images of a place and the reality. It was perhaps most striking at the Marina Bay Sands, a landmark building in Singapore that features a hotel, casino, museum, shopping mall, and incredible views of the city and the bay.

I had expected the extravagant $6.6 billion USD hotel and casino to be the most lavish experience in the world. The bed in my hotel room was super comfy as expected, but, honestly, the decor was all very dated. It seemed like it was cutting edge when it opened, but now it's kind of drab for a hotel that costs $500 a night minimum.

If you plan on getting that perfect Instagram photo in the world's largest rooftop infinity pool, beware: Everyone else is trying to do the same thing. It's exhausting.

Read More: I stayed in the $6.6 billion mega-hotel in the heart of Singapore, and it wasn't anything like 'Crazy Rich Asians'»

The Majorelle Gardens in Marrakech, a landscape garden designed and cultivated by French artist Jacques Majorelle and later bought and restored by designer Yves Saint Laurent, is considered the top tourist destination in all of Morocco. From the magazine photos, it looks serene.

Most of the time, there is a line to buy tickets that stretches around the corner. The garden's tight environs are no match for the number of tourists. At every point in the gardens, I was jumping out of the way of a tour group or stopping to allow someone to compose a perfect selfie.

That's before you get into the Instagrammers waiting in line to get their perfect shot. As one Moroccan told me, "It's lost much of its charm over the last few years."

Read More:One of Morocco's top tourist destinations has become overrun with tourists and Instagrammers trying to get the perfect photo

While visiting the pyramids of Egypt is as mind-blowing as you might expect, actually going inside the pyramids is a different story. I decided to go inside the Red Pyramid, so named for its red limestone blocks. It's the third-largest pyramid in Egypt.

There's not much to see inside any of the pyramids, just narrow passageways and empty rooms. Grave robbers, explorers, and museum officials have long since taken anything of interest out of the tomb.

The smell of mold was the worst part. I found it hard to breathe and started holding a scarf over my mouth so that I didn't have to breathe in the mold directly. I was still coughing.

Towering over the city, at 2,717 feet tall with 160 floors, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest tower in the world. It's a marvel to look at from below.

Going up to the top, however is a bore. The cheapest ticket costs $40. The walk to get to the top of the tower is almost comically long.

The observatory at the top of the Burj is cramped with glass and metal bars obscuring the view of the Dubai skyline. Because it's small, there's always someone jostling behind you to get in your spot.

It's been a strange, fascinating, exhilarating, and exhausting trip so far. These disappointments only scratch the surface of things I did that did not live up to the hype. One thing people fail to tell you about travel: Not everything is as good as it looks in the magazines.

• Facetune, PicsArt, and other apps have become popular among influencers and vloggers who want to edit themselves to look polished and unblemished before their content is published on the internet.
• However, it's a little different for videos. Beauty vlogger RawBeautyKristi recently shared on Twitter that many YouTubers use face-smoothing filters built into their cameras, like the Sony A5100 and the Canon G7X Mark II.
• Here's how the skin-smoothing filter on these cameras work, and why these particular models have become so popular among influencers.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you've ever wondered how some faces of vloggers and beauty YouTubers look so smooth and blemish-free, there may be a piece of tech to thank rather than simply good genes and expensive skin-care routines.

Tech companies are now selling digital cameras with built-in skin-smoothing filters that seem to particularly cater to the influencer industry, which is set to be valued at $15 billion by 2022. Some YouTubers have started to share online just how easy it is to use these features, revealing how mainstream this type of editing has become without fans and consumers even knowing.

The secrets to Instagram-ready photos have long been revealed and made widely available, thanks to photo-editing apps like Facetune, PicsArt, and VSCO. In the interest of transparency or appeals from fans, influencers are frequently upfront in sharing what photo-editing apps — and even particular filters — they prefer. YouTubers have followed suit, and many will put in their bios and video descriptions the specifics behind their tech, from what kind of camera they use for vlogging to what they use for the perfect lighting setup for makeup tutorials.

However, the details of skin-smoothing and softening features have not been as widely shared and reported. Beauty vlogger RawBeautyKristi recently shared on Twitter how widespread she's seen these filters used in videos on Instagram and YouTube. 

Two camera models with these built-in "skin softening" and "skin smoothing" effects are the Sony A5100 series and the Canon G7X Mark II. Both cameras have pop-out monitors that allow users to see themselves while filming, making these models perfect for vloggers and YouTubers.

While both Sony and Canon say on their websites that these camera models have "face detection" features, neither goes into detail to explain that these work as skin-smoothing filters. The simplest way to discover the existence of these camera features, and how to use them, is ironically on YouTube itself. There are less thana dozen videos that focus solely on the use of these skin-smoothing filters, and none of them surpass 100,000 views.

One such YouTuber who demonstrated the difference these skin-smoothing filters make is Julie Camille, a beauty vlogger with 40,000 subscribers. In a video back in 2017, Camille revealed how to turn on the Sony A5100's "soft skin effect," and offered side-by-side stills showing the difference the camera makes.

The difference in video with the skin-smoothing filter, as seen in the top image, reveals how difficult it would be to tell whether someone is using the feature or not in their videos. The result of the filter is perceptible, but hard to notice unless compared side by side with an original non-filtered video.

As YouTuber RawBeautyKristi said in her Twitter thread, vloggers' failure to disclose they're using such skin-smoothing features can help to feed into perceptions about what constitutes acceptable skin and beauty standards.

"I'm comparing [my face] to something that's not really real. I make videos and know these exist and STILL struggle with feeling that I am doing something wrong," RawBeauty Kristi wrote on Twitter. "People have texture, and the internet can be weird and make u feel like something is wrong and its not."

SEE ALSO: A year after Tumblr's porn ban, some users are still struggling to rebuild their communities and sense of belonging

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 8 weird robots NASA wants to send to space

• Any random object can become a luxury item if it is plated in gold or produced by a well-known, high-end designer.
• Business Insider rounded up some of the most over-the-top luxury items currently on the market.
• The list includes everything from toothpaste infused with 23.75 carat gold dust to Swarovski crystal-covered bathtubs for babies.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Toothbrushes, dog collars, trash cans, and fire extinguishers are all standard products that ultimately have no indulgent or elaborate qualities.

But if you plate them in gold? Or slap a designer name on them? They'll positively drip with extravagance; they'll become luxury items.

Business Insider rounded up a few over-the-top luxury items that are currently on the market, including a $920 Louis Vuitton keychain and a $7,650 Hermès waste basket, among other ordinary-yet-fancified objects.

Note that this list is only a small sampling of the exhaustive luxury market. It's organized in ascending order of price.

SEE ALSO: The 9 most valuable luxury brands in the world

DON'T MISS: 15 common, expensive things that aren't worth your money

A single Saint Laurent branded condom is currently selling for €2 (or just over $2). The foil comes in multiple designs, including zebra print and leopard print.

Standard, non-designer condoms typically cost well under $1 when bought in larger packages, according to Planned Parenthood.

Source: Saint Laurent

A Goop-approved 1.2-ounce bar of dehydrated caviar wrapped in gold foil costs $99.

Source: Business Insider, Calvisius

A Mercedes-Benz branded dog collar will set you back €99.90 (or roughly $110).

Source:Mercedes-Benz

A Swiss luxury dental company called Swiss Smile released a fancy $119 toothbrush and toothpaste combination set. The toothpaste is said to contain 23.75 carat gold dust while the toothbrush is plated with real gold.

Source: Neiman Marcus

Another personal grooming luxury item is a famous $240 English hairbrush. The Mason Pearson hairbrush is handmade and has "premium-grade boar" bristles.

Source: Business Insider, Nordstrom

Prada is currently selling a single luxury paper clip. It retails for $240 and is meant to be used as a money clip.

Source:Prada

Another outlandish, Goop-approved holiday gift is a $250 handcrafted brass fire extinguisher.

"Because yes, even something as practical and purposeful as say, a fire extinguisher, can skew sexy," writes Goop in the product description.

Alas, the brass fire extinguisher is currently sold out. However, the copper and chrome models (each selling for the same price as the brass version) were still available at the time of publication.

Source: Business Insider, Goop

Burberry is selling a $320 cotton bucket hat. While it may look like any beach hat meant to simply protect your face from the sun, the seam is Burberry-branded.

Source:Burberry

Louis Vuitton sells a $920 holiday-themed keychain and "ski bag charm." It features a skiing wooden figurine wearing a mink fur coat. And yes, that's real mink.

Source:Louis Vuitton

Even umbrellas can become a luxury item. Dolce & Gabbana created an umbrella with an eagle head handle that retails for $1,395.

Source:Farfetch

In the market for a baby gift for an upcoming shower or birthday? How about a handmade-to-order miniature bathtub, encrusted with 8,600 Swarovski crystals? The customized creation costs $5,200.

The company that handcrafts these tubs offers them in "every color on the Swarovski color palette" and suggests that they can also be used for pets or as an elaborate ice bucket at parties.

Source: The Diamond Bathtub

You can find hat boxes on Amazon for under $30, but a new Gucci hat box with floral imagery layered over Gucci's signature print retails for $5,800.

Source: Amazon, Gucci

Why gift anyone an iconic Hermès scarf when you can splurge on Hermès home decor — like this $7,650 solid maple wood waste basket — instead?

Source: Hermès

A customized, hand-embossed Monopoly board from a London-based luxury game-maker costs between £3,865 and £11,680 ( roughly $5,000 to $15,000), depending on customization options, and includes sterling silver playing pieces.

Source: Geoffrey Parker

A Smeg x Dolce & Gabbana stainless steel range from the collaboration's Divina Cucina Collection currently retails for $10,000. The home appliance collection also includes an $850 4-slice toaster and a tiny $1,500 espresso machine.

Source:Neiman Marcus

Fancified fast food furniture pieces from Bergdorf Goodman can make your living room sizzle for just over $12,000. The hot dog couch retails for $7,100 while the hamburger chair sells for $4,950. Note: tomato and pickle cushions sold separately.

Source: Business Insider, Bergdorf Goodman, Seletti

A $75,000 sterling silver and 24k gold chess set from Tiffany is listed as an "Everyday Object" on the jewelry giant's website — alongside a $490 protractor and a $700 set of two ping pong paddles made from leather and walnut.

Source:Tiffany & Co.

• Fad diets may be popular weight-loss strategies, but they don't typically work very well.
• Instead, dietitians recommend sticking to a sustainable healthy eating plan that you enjoy and preparing more of your own food.
• Other simple weight-loss strategies include staying hydrated, avoiding sugar, and planning ahead so you're not making impulsive food choices when you're hungry.

Going on a diet is a losing game. Some research suggests more than nine out of every 10 people who try to diet will fail.

Even people who are able to diet successfully often fight a tough battle against the body's evolutionarily savvy attempts to store extra energy. In fact, scientists have found that the bodies of severely overweight people who lose weight can work against them: as they slim down, their metabolism drops, making it harder to lose more weight. 

Experts agree that extreme diets and juice cleanses aren't good long-term strategies for maintaining a healthy weight. To that end, the US News & World Report's 2020 ranking of the best diets put the trendy ketogenic diet in one of the bottom spots.

But there are a few simple things you can do to stay trim and satisfied in the long run. 

We asked dietitian Jason Ewoldt from the nation's top-rated hospital, the Mayo Clinic, for his simplest, sanest ideas for staying lean. Here's his advice.

SEE ALSO: The most surprising foods Weight Watchers considers zero points — and why

Stay hydrated. If you hate drinking water, zest it up with citrus or drink it carbonated (without adding empty calories into your diet).

Ewoldt noted that patients often end up misinterpreting thirst for hunger.

"A lot of times, people just seem to be a little dehydrated," he said. 

A 2016 study of more than 18,000 people in the US found that those who drank more water were consistently more satisfied and ate fewer calories on a daily basis. They also consumed lower amounts of sugar, fat, salt, and cholesterol than more dehydrated participants. 

There's also some limited evidence that drinking water can help you burn through more calories, at least for a little while. So keep sipping.

Whatever you drink, it's best to steer clear of sugar — and probably artificial sweeteners, too.

Many studies have found that drinking a lot of sugary soda or juice could increase your risk of an early death.

The most recent research — a long-term study of more than 118,000 men and women— suggests that the more sugar people drink, the more likely they are to die. 

There's also some evidence that consuming drinks with fake sugar may not be any better for our health and may lead to weight gain.

Scientists studying the blood vessels of rats discovered that while sugar and artificial sweeteners act in very different ways inside the animals' bodies, they can both up the odds of developing obesity and diabetes.

The researchers think this is because artificial sweeteners may mess with the way our bodies process fat. More research needs to be done in humans to know for sure, though.

Aim for seven to eight hours of shut-eye per night.

Most of us like to think we can operate well without a full night's sleep. But neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker says that's wrong. According to Walker, a lack of sleep is literally killing us.

And it makes us more likely to eat unhealthy food. 

Research published in 2013 in the journal Nature Communications revealed that sleep-deprived eaters are more likely to reach for high-calorie foods and gain weight than well-rested people. That's because being sleepy also snoozes the region of the brain that helps tell us when we're full.

Taking time to enjoy breakfast and lunch is a good way to avoid overeating later in the day. Try to eat before you get irritable and impulsive.

The advice is almost a cliché at this point, but research suggests that breakfast-eaters stay trimmer and avoid putting on belly fat compared to people who don't eat in the morning. 

Last year, research from the Mayo Clinic found that people who skip breakfast put on roughly five to eight more pounds in a single year than regular morning eaters. 

Ewoldt said your breakfast doesn't have to be big, but you should eat something to help avoid impulsive hunger-fueled binges of fatty or sugary food. 

"When we're hungry, we're going to go with what's quickest and easiest," he said.

Often that translates to more processed, high-calorie foods with little nutritional value. 

If you're wondering what to start your day with, consider a high-protein yogurt sprinkled with nuts and berries (without added sugar).

Yogurt is a favorite breakfast staple of many nutrition experts.

Ewoldt likes to sprinkle his Greek yogurt with some berries in the morning for a simple, quick breakfast.

Likewise, Harvard physician Monique Tello often eats a high-protein Icelandic yogurt with a side of fresh fruit, nuts, and seeds at the office.

Cancer researcher David Harper, a professor at the University of the Fraser Valley in Canada (who adheres to the restrictive high-fat ketogenic eating plan) also often starts the day with a high-fat yogurt topped with a few berries and some roasted nuts. 

If you want to try this breakfast, be sure to choose an unsweetened yogurt that is naturally low in sugar.

Consider incorporating a healthy mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack into your daily routine.

"If you have a small, healthy, filling snack, you're still hungry for lunch, you're just better able to manage choices," Ewoldt said. 

When selecting a snack, avoid carb- or sugar-heavy foods that masquerade as healthy and won't keep you feeling full, such as cereal, granola bars, and bottled smoothies.

Ewoldt said he often opts for a cheese stick, banana, or other piece of fruit. Nuts are also a good option, since they're full of protein.

Plan ahead by getting your veggie chopping and meal prepping done before you're hungry.

When we're hungry, it can be hard to say no to processed foods, which are bad for our waistlines and are associated with a higher risk of cancer.

Ewoldt said having a daily plan "makes healthy eating a heckuva lot more attainable."

He packs his lunch for work at least four days a week and picks out foods that will keep him satisfied for hours. He stocks up on chicken patties, crunchy vegetables and hummus, as well as guacamole. 

Make your days a little nuttier.

Nuts are a fatty, wonderful way to stave off cravings between meals, and they're a healthy source of protein.

A study of more than 81,000 people in North America found that people who ate just a handful of mixed nuts or seeds each day reduced their risk of developing heart disease. Getting a little nutty also helped the study participants lower the "bad" LDL cholesterol levels in their bodies.

Work out in the morning.

Studies have shown that people who work out in the morning on an empty stomach can burn up to 20% more body fat during their workouts, since they have to use more stored-up fat as fuel.

But in general, incorporating more movement into your routine at any time of day will lead to major benefits. Exercise has been shown to provide a smorgasbord of health improvements: it can help stave off depression and keep your heart, lungs, and mind healthy into old age. 

Eat more filling whole grains like quinoa and brown rice.

Whole grains like oats, cracked wheat, and brown rice are a great way to satisfy your appetite and stay full. Plus, they're also rich in potassium, iron, and B vitamins.

These fiber-rich foods take more time for the body to break down, and can fuel us for hours. That makes them a better choice than processed, nutrient-stripped grains like those in white breads, crackers, and white rice.

Enjoy some fruit.

Fruits are another great way to incorporate hunger-satisfying fiber into your diet. Plus, they're a great source of vitamins and water. 

Treat yourself sometimes.

If there's one thing dietitians and food experts agree on, it's that deprivation and villainizing "bad" foods leads to binging and diet failures. 

So indulge once in a while, Ewoldt said — in moderation. 

If it's wine you crave, he suggests limiting your intake to one 5-ounce glass (that's about a fifth of a bottle) and "really sip and really enjoy it."

• On Monday Bill Gates wrote that "the rich should pay more than they currently do" on his blog, Gates Notes.
• Billionaires including Mark Cuban, Marc Benioff, Ray Dalio, and George Soros have publicly called for the United States to raise taxes on the wealthy.
• Soros was part of a group of 18 ultrawealthy Americans who published an open letter in June asking presidential candidates to support a moderate wealth tax.
• A wealth tax like the one proposed by presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren would make ultrawealthy Americans pay the federal government a small percentage of their net worth each year.
• Here's a running list of the most high-profile, ultrawealthy Americans who have requested a wealth tax since 2017.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Bill Gates' New Year's resolution is to get the federal government to raise taxes on the ultrawealthy — including himself.

In a post on his blog, Gates Notes, published Monday, the billionaire advocated for higher estate taxes.

"We've updated our tax system before to keep up with changing times, and we need to do it again, starting with raising taxes on people like me," Gates wrote.

Gates is not alone with this messaging. Billionaires from Warren Buffett to George Soros have proposed a wealth tax as a way to combat America's growing wealth gap and fund healthcare and education initiatives. In June, a group of 18 ultrawealthy Americans, including Abigail Disney and members of the Pritzker and Gund families, published an open letter asking presidential candidates to support a moderate wealth tax.

Politicians, too, are rolling out proposals on this front: A wealth tax like the one proposed by presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren would make ultrawealthy Americans pay the federal government a small percentage of their net worth each year. And in September, Bernie Sanders unveiled a wealth-tax plan that is even more aggressive than Warren's.

These politicians' and billionaires' calls for a tax on the ultrawealthy come as the divide between America's rich and poor continues to expand. In 2018, income inequality in the US reached its highest level in more than half a century. The ultrawealthy actually paid a smaller portion of their income in taxes than average Americans in 2018, an analysis of tax data by the University of California at Berkeley's Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found.

While the idea of using a wealth tax to solve America's inequality problem has gained traction in recent years, proposals have been hampered by questions over the effectiveness and the constitutionality of such a tax, Business Insider previously reported.

Keep reading to learn more about some of the most high-profile billionaires and multimillionaires who have publicly supported raising taxes on the 1%, listed in chronological order.

SEE ALSO: Former billionaire Michael Novogratz says it's 'insanity' that his billionaire friends feel like 'victims' of Elizabeth Warren's proposed wealth tax

DON'T MISS: You now need to make more than $500,000 a year to be in the 1% in America, new study shows — and that's the highest it's ever been

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban proposed taxing the wealthy to offset cutting payroll taxes in a November 2017 tweet.

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/934132414644973568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Lol. I don't like the proposed tax cuts. I think we should cut payroll taxes so everyone with a job gets a raise and make it up via other taxes on people like me and spending efficiencies https://t.co/OQeSRZt3S7

Now best known for his appearances on ABC's "Shark Tank," Cuban built a $4.1 billion fortune through a lifetime of business deals, including the $5.7 billion sale of Broadcast.com, and his ownership of the Dallas Mavericks, Business Insider reported.

Bill Gates has said he's paid over $10 billion in taxes over his lifetime — but he doesn't think that's enough.

"I need to pay higher taxes," Gates said in a 2018 interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria. "I've paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else, but the government should require people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes."

In a December 30, 2019, post on his blog, Gates Notes, Gates proposed raising the estate tax and removing the cap on the amount of income subject to Medicare taxes. He also suggested closing the carried interest loophole that allows fund managers to pay lower capital gains rates on their incomes and making state and local taxes fairer, Market Insider's Theron Mohamed previously reported.

"That's why I'm for a tax system in which, if you have more money, you pay a higher percentage in taxes," Gates wrote. "And I think the rich should pay more than they currently do, and that includes Melinda and me."

On CNBC's Squawk Box, Warren Buffett said raising billionaires' taxes is the best way to help "a guy who is a wonderful citizen" but "just doesn't have market skills."

"The wealthy are definitely undertaxed relative to the general population," Buffett said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" in February. Buffett has suggested that Congress expand income tax credits for low-income Americans, raising taxes on high earners in the process, CNBC reported.

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said he "should be paying higher taxes" at a CNN town hall in February, but called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's proposed 70% marginal tax rate for millionaires "punitive."

Schultz built a $3.8 billion fortune running the coffee chain, Business Insider previously reported. While Schultz left Starbucks in 2018, he still owns more than 37.7 million shares — or roughly 3% — of the company's stock.

When asked if the wealthy should pay more in taxes on "60 Minutes," billionaire hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio replied: "Of course."

In the "60 Minutes" segment, Dalio said he thinks the American dream is lost and referred to the wealth gap as a "national emergency." Dalio, 70, founded his hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, in his apartment in 1975, Business Insider reported. It now has $150 billion in assets under management. Dalio has a net worth of $18.7 billion, Forbes estimates.

Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of The Walt Disney Company cofounder Roy Disney, has made a name for herself as one of the biggest advocates for closing America's wealth gap.

The granddaughter of The Walt Disney Co. cofounder Roy Disney has made a name for herself as one of the company's most outspoken critics. The 59-year-old heiress has criticized the salary of Disney CEO Bob Iger and defended Meryl Streep after she called Walt Disney a "bigot," according to CNN Business.

Disney has a net worth of $120 million, she said in July. "The internet says I have half a billion dollars and I might have something close to that if I'd been investing aggressively," Disney told the Financial Times.

Disney was one of 18 ultrawealthy Americas to sign an open letter in June asking presidential candidates to support a moderate wealth tax. The letter isn't the first time that Disney has spoken out about tax reform. Disney criticized the 2017 Republican tax bill in a NowThis video, saying the bill unfairly benefited the wealthy.

Heiress Agnes Gund and her daughter Catherine Gund also signed the wealth tax letter.

In 2015, Forbes estimated that the Gund family had a net worth of $3.4 billion and ranked them among the 100 wealthiest families in America.

Agnes Gund, 81, used the fortune she inherited from her father, the president of an Ohio-based bank, to become a philanthropist in arts and social justice, according to The New York Times. Agnes Gund received the National Medal of the Arts in 1997 from President Bill Clinton for her work, which included serving as the president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Catherine Gund, 54, is an Emmy-winning film director and producer. Gund founded nonprofit production studio Aubin Pictures in 1996, according to her biography on the studio's website.

The Gunds weren't the only family who signed the letter together. So did Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes and his husband, political activist Sean Eldridge.

Hughes, 35, is a cofounder of Facebook. He left the social network in 2007 to become the online organizer for Barack Obama's first presidential campaign. Despite calling for Facebook to be broken up in May, Hughes has a stake in the company worth $850 million, Newsweek reports. In 2016, Forbes put Hughes' net worth at $430 million.

Eldridge, 32, is a political activist and former congressional candidate in New York, according to Vanity Fair. Eldridge was born in Canada.

Ian and Liesel Pritzker Simmons signed the letter together.

"This is really a conservative position about increasing the stability of the economy in the long term and having an efficient source of taxation," Simmons told the Associated Press.

Simmons, 44, serves as the cofounder and principal of impact investing firm Blue Haven Initiative alongside his wife and fellow signatory, Liesel Pritzker Simmons, according to the firm's website. Simmons is the heir to a family fortune that stems from the construction of locks on the Erie Canal, according to Forbes.

Pritzker Simmons, an heiress to the Pritzker family fortune, has a net worth of $600 million, according to a 2013 Forbes article. Simmons, now 35, is also a cofounder and principal of Blue Haven Initiative.

As a child, she starred in several big-name Hollywood productions, including "A Little Princess" and "Air Force One," alongside Harrison Ford. In 2002, Forbes reports, she sued her father and the Pritzker family and came away from it with a $500 million payout.

Simmons called retired Massachusetts real-estate developer Robert Bowditch and convinced him to sign the letter, too.

"Charitable giving by itself simply cannot provide enough money to support public goods and services, such as public education, roads and bridges, clean air," Bowditch told the Associated Press in October. "It has to be done by taxes."

Bowditch, 80, has previously advocated for raising taxes on the wealthy: In 2010, he signed an open letter to President Obama asking him to allow tax cuts for millionaires to expire, according to a CBS affiliate in Boston.

Billionaire financier George Soros signed the letter with his son, Alexander Soros.

According to his personal website, Alexander Soros, 34, serves as deputy chair of the Open Society Foundations, a nonprofit founded by his father.

George Soros told The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin he supports a wealth tax even though it creates "a moral problem" for him.

"I am in favor of taxing the rich," George Soros, 89, told The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin in October, "including a wealth tax. A financier makes people suspicious ... and it does create a moral problem for me. As I became so successful, it basically put a self-imposed constraint on me that actually interfered with making money."

The philanthropist made his fortune running Quantum Fund, which was once the largest hedge fund in the world. Soros has a net worth of $8.3 billion, Business Insider reported.

Investor Nick Hanauer believes a wealth tax would be good for America's economy.

"A wealth tax would not just be fair — it would be pro-growth," Hanauer wrote in an essay advocating for a wealth tax published on Business Insider. "And don't let the trickle-downers tell you otherwise."

Hanauer, 60, was an early investor in Amazon, according to his personal website. Business Insider previously reported that Hanauer is a longtime critic of America's income inequality.

Business Insider's Rich Feloni reported that Hanauer has said he's not a billionaire, but that, as both he and his wife have signed The Giving Pledge, their combined net worth at least approaches the $1 billion threshold.

Heiress and attorney Molly Munger told the Associated Press that seeing empty Newport Beach mansions from her family's boat on Memorial Day made her consider a wealth tax.

"It's just too much to watch that happen at the top and see what is happening at the bottom," Munger told the Associated Press in October. "Isn't it a waste when beautiful homes on the beach are empty for most of the summer?"

Munger, 71, is the oldest daughter of Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger. Munger is a Harvard Law graduate who works as a civil rights attorney in Pasadena, California, according to the Los Angeles Times. In 2012, she advocated for a tax hike in California to boost funding for the state's public schools.

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in June 2019 advocating for a wealth tax, saying American capitalism "isn't working."

Broad doesn't believe that his philanthropic work and other policies including a $15 minimum wage, expanding access to health care, and reforming public education are doing enough to help low-income Americans, he wrote in The New York Times.

"It's time to start talking seriously about a wealth tax," Broad wrote in The Times. "I simply believe it's time for those of us with great wealth to commit to reducing income inequality, starting with the demand to be taxed at a higher rate than everyone else."

Broad built a $6.8 billion fortune after cofounding home builder Kaufman & Broad, according to Forbes.

Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff proposed a wealth tax in an October New York Times essay.

"Local efforts — like the tax I supported last year on San Francisco's largest companies to address our city's urgent homelessness crisis — will help," Benioff wrote in The New York Times on October 14. "Nationally, increasing taxes on high-income individuals like myself would help generate the trillions of dollars that we desperately need to improve education and health care and fight climate change."

Benioff built a $6.5 billion fortune after founding software developer Salesforce. Benioff currently serves as the company's co-CEO.

Michael Bloomberg has made raising taxes on the wealthy a key part of his 2020 presidential campaign.

Bloomberg has included promises to support "taxing wealthy people like me" in ads since launching his campaign in November, Bloomberg News reported at the time. The former New City mayor has yet to release a tax plan, but it's not likely to mirror the proposals of his fellow Democrats. Bloomberg believes that Warren and Sanders' wealth tax "just doesn't work," he said at campaign stop in Phoenix in November.

• When it comes to dry, irritated, and chapped skin, fast-acting and effective moisture is important.
• O'Keeffe's Working Hands Hand Cream delivers relief and lasting moisture, making it our top pick, hands down.

Winters can be harsh all-around, but the dry, cracked skin that the winter weather brings makes the season particularly difficult to cope with. When your hands are dry and chapped, doing simple chores like washing the dishes can be painful and irritating. Unfortunately, you can go through dozens of products before you find the right cream to help heal and prevent chapped hands. That's why we've done the work for you.

I'm no stranger to dry, chapped hands. I have horses at home, which means I'm outside at least four or five times each day, even in the harshest of winter weather. I also wash my hands frequently, which only makes the problem worse. Because of my dry skin, I've accumulated a significant collection of lotions and hand creams. Many of them didn't solve the problem — but some of them did.

The products in this guide are intended for anyone who deals with dry skin in the winter or even year-round. I've tested many of them and tried to select products that aren't heavily scented, greasy, or that require frequent applications throughout the day.

To get the best results from these products, apply them according to the brand's directions. Using these products after washing your hands or showering can get you positive results, and try to make a habit of using your lotion or hand cream before bed for overnight moisturizing.  

Here are the best hand creams for dry, chapped hands:

• Best hand cream overall: O'Keeffe's Working Hands Hand Cream
• Best for soothing relief: Eucerin Intensive Repair Enriched Lotion
• Best organic hand cream: The Naked Bee Moisturizing Hand & Body Lotion
• Best for intense repair: Duke Cannon Bloody Knuckles Hand Repair Balm
• Best time-saving treatment: NatraCure Gel Moisturizing Gloves

Updated on 1/2/20 by Caitlin Petreycik: Updated formatting, links, and prices. Added related guides. 

The best hand cream overall

O'Keeffe's Working Hands Hand Cream offers healing and protective properties in a greaseless formula.

For valuable healing paired with protective properties, you can't go wrong with O'Keeffe's Working Hands Hand Cream. This hand cream is designed to heal, relieve, and repair extremely dry, cracked hands.

This cream contains paraffin, which helps to establish a barrier that protects your skin from losing water. At the same time, glycerin draws moisture to your skin in order to accelerate the hydration process. The cream is greaseless, yet effectively reduces the rate of evaporation on your hands, helping to restore your hands' moisture balance while healing your cracked, irritated skin.

Available in both a jar and in a tube, this hand cream is scentless, so you can put it on before leaving the house and no one will know. It's recommended that you use it multiple times a day, which is easy to do because the cream absorbs so easily into your hands.

The rim of the jar is textured for extra grip, but I've found I've never needed that texture because the cream doesn't leave my hands greasy. I have personally had excellent results using this product, and I make a point of applying it after coming in from the barn, before bed, and always after shoveling snow.

This cream is safe for diabetics to use, and it's affordable enough to keep a jar in your home, your workplace, and anywhere else where you need protective and healing relief.

Pros: Greaseless, odorless, highly affordable

Cons: Can sting a bit when applied to cracked hands

The best lotion for soothing relief

Formulated for very rough, dry skin, Eucerin Intensive Repair Lotion both gently exfoliates and conditions for healthier skin.

Eucerin Intensive Repair Lotion is a rich, creamy lotion that has long-lasting effects. The triple-acting formula moisturizes, exfoliates, and conditions. The gentle exfoliating nature helps to improve the appearance of dry or rough skin, and the moisturizer offers intense hydration that helps to create smooth, comfortable skin. This fragrance-free formula won't clog pores.

This is one of my favorite lotions. The pump bottle is quick and easy to use when you're on the go, and this formula provides soothing relief, even when my hands are at their worst. I particularly like that this lotion is unscented, and it's easy to massage into my hands.

There is a bit of a film left on my hands after use, but wiping my hands off with a tissue solves the issue. This lotion is versatile, too; you can also use it on your feet, arms, and other problem areas.

Pros: Fragrance-free, gentle exfoliating action, won't clog pores, ca use on hands, feet, and more

Cons: May increase skin's sensitivity to the sun and increase the chance of sunburn, leaves behind a slight film

The best organic lotion for dry, chapped hands

Certified organic and available in nine different scents, The Naked Bee Moisturizing Hand & Body Lotion softens and hydrates your skin.

The Naked Bee Moisturizing Hand & Body Lotion is made in the US and is certified organic. There's no worrying about chemicals and irritants in your hand lotion with The Naked Bee. This lotion contains natural ingredients including certified organic sunflower seed oil, glycerin, beeswax, white and green tea leaf extract, arnica extract, honey, and more.

You can choose from delicious scents like Orange Blossom Honey, Chai Tea, Coconut & Honey, Grapefruit Blossom Honey, and more. There are no dyes or pigment in this lotion.

While the ingredients in this lotion have been carefully selected for their healing and moisturizing effects, the ingredients you won't find are just as important. The Naked Bee makes products without parabens, propylene glycol, mineral oil, or lauryl sulfate. Additionally, this company never tests its products on animals. 

Pros: Available in multiple scents, certified organic, made in the USA

Cons: Some scents are more potent than others

The best hand cream for intense repair

For hands that take a beating, Duke Cannon Bloody Knuckles Hand Repair Balm offers deep moisturizing without a greasy feel.

Duke Cannon Bloody Knuckles Hand Repair Balm is designed to repair hard-working hands in need of moisture. This balm is made with lanolin and shea butter, which help to moisturize your hands without a sticky or greasy feeling.

You can quickly massage the balm into your hands, and it's ideal for use on dry, cracked skin. Plus, a portion of the proceeds from this repair balm benefits US veterans, so you can feel good about your purchase.

One major advantage of this balm is that you can often see results after just a few uses. It's much thicker than most lotions, so a little bit goes a long way. With its rapid absorption, you can put a bit of this balm on and go right back to work.

Pros: Made with premium ingredients, offers intense moisturization, no greasy feel

Cons: Has a faint natural scent (though no scent is actually added to the balm), more expensive than some similar products

The best time-saving treatment

Put on your NatraCure Gel Moisturizing Gloves for just 20 minutes to get a full moisturizing hand treatment.

Lotions, creams, and balms are great ways to treat your irritated hands, but for a deep-moisturizing treatment, NatraCure Gel Moisturizing Gloves give you the intensity that you're looking for. A non-breathable gel lining locks in moisture, steeping your hands in hydration.

The instructions say to wear these dermatologist-tested gloves for just 20 minutes two to three times per week. They're even backed by a satisfaction guarantee, so you can return them to Amazon in the first 30 days if they aren't just right for you.

I've used these gloves for the past three years and they've made a significant difference in my skin. I often put them on while watching TV at night, and my hands feel immediately smoother and softer after removing the gloves.

The lining contains jojoba oil, olive oil, and grapeseed oil which is released by the heat of your hands. It's like a mini spa treatment in the comfort of your own home. Best of all, these gloves are reusable, and you can even use them with your favorite lotion. 

Pros: Use for just 20 minutes a few times a week, hypoallergenic, deep moisturizing treatment

Cons: Gloves can be difficult to put on (but a little talcum powder can help)

Check out our other skin care guides

The best lip balm

So many lip balms rely on the placebo effect — they feel nice, but don't actually do much for your mouth. That's why we made it our mission to hunt down the products that lock in moisture, prevent flaking, heal cracks, and protect your lips from the elements. Here are the best lip balms you can buy: 

• Best lip balm overall: Burt's Bees Lip Balm
• Best overnight lip balm: Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask
• Best daytime lip balm: Glossier Balm Dotcom
• Best demi-matte lip balm: Mario Badescu Rose Lip Balm
• Best unscented lip balm: Aquaphor Lip Repair

The best sheet masks 

Sheet masks act like flash facials to provide an instant fix for your skin and address all sorts of concerns. Despite the fact that sheet masks make you look terrifying temporarily, these K-beauty staples have reached cult status among celebrities, dermatologists, and beauty junkies alike. With the incredible number of sheet masks on the market, working out which one is right for you can be a minefield, so we've done the work for you. Here are the best sheet masks you can buy: 

• Best overall: SK-II Facial Treatment Masks
• Best for hydrating: Patchology Hydrate Flashmasque 5 Minute Facial Sheets
• Best for brightening: Erno Laszlo White Marble Bright Hydrogel Masks
• Best for soothing: Dr. Jart+ Water Replenishment Cotton Sheet Masks
• Best for breakouts: Leaders AC Clear Treatment Masks
• Best for anti-aging: Tatcha Luminous Deep Hydration Lifting Masks
• Best under $5: Tony Moly I'm Real Avocado Masks
• Best for a quick fix: Talika Bio Enzyme Brightening Mask
• Best for sensitive skin: St. Ives' Nourish and Soothe Oatmeal Mask
• Best for pollution: Leaders Cosmetics 7 Wonders Amazonian Acai Anti Pollution Mask

The best exfoliators for any skin type or budget

A good exfoliant is like a magic bullet for any skin-care routine because it truly helps just about anything that's ailing your face. It's especially clutch in the winter when you're dealing with scaly skin and dry flaky patches that never seem to go away no matter how much moisturizer you use. Here are the best exfoliators for a range of skin types, desired outcomes, and budgets. 

• Best exfoliator overall: Glossier Solution
• Best drugstore exfoliator: Simple Kind to Skin Smoothing Facial Scrub
• Best exfoliator for daily use: Dermalogical Daily Microfoliant
• Best exfoliator for sensitive skin: Juara Radiance Enzyme Scrub
• Best exfoliator for uneven skin tone: Ole Henriksen Transforming Walnut Scrub

• Michael Bloomberg, a 77-year-old billionaire philanthropist, is running to be the next Democratic presidential candidate.
• He spent 15 years working in finance, before getting fired when he was 39. With the severance check, he co-started his own IT firm, which he called Bloomberg LP.
• It was a success, and he expanded it to cover the media. Fifteen years later he was a billionaire. But that wasn't enough, so he entered politics.
• In 2002, he was elected mayor of New York City, and kept the post for 12 years.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Michael Bloomberg is not your typical billionaire.

From modest beginnings in suburban Boston, Bloomberg rose up through the ranks of New York's financial world only to get fired at the age of 39.

That same year, using his IT expertise and a healthy chunk of his severance pay, he started Bloomberg LP, which provided data to financial traders. The service was a success, and 15 years later, along with starting his own media company, he became a billionaire.

But that wasn't enough for Bloomberg. He entered politics and served as New York City mayor for over a decade, earning only $1 a year.

Forbes values his net worth at $56 billion, and he has pledged half of that fortune to charity after his death. Bloomberg Philanthropies says he's already donated more than $6 billion to various causes over the years.

As Chris Smith wrote for New York Magazine, "Instead of using his money to withdraw from the messiness of the everyday world, Bloomberg has thrust himself ever more into it."

Now, he's running to be the Democratic presidential candidate. He's previously identified as a Republican and an independent. Smith wrote that while Bloomberg was a liberal, his "real religion has always been pragmatism."

Here's a look back at Bloomberg's life to date.

SEE ALSO: Michael Bloomberg built a $54 billion company. For 2 decades, women who worked there have called it a toxic, sexually charged nightmare.

DON'T FORGET: Wall Streeters are speculating that Microsoft could buy Bloomberg. Here's why a deal might actually make sense.

Michael Bloomberg was born on February 14, 1942. He grew up in a family of four in Medford, Massachusetts, a blue-collar suburb of Boston.

His Polish immigrant father worked seven days a week as an accountant, while his mother worked as a secretary.

In 1964, he graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in mechanical engineering. During his studies, he worked part-time at a parking lot, and was president of his fraternity. In 1966, he received an MBA from Harvard University.

Sources: Politifact, MichaelBloomberg2020, Politico

In 1966, he moved to New York and started work at Salomon Brothers, an investment bank. His first role was down in a vault known as "The Cage" counting stocks.

He didn't stay down for long. By the time he was 30 in 1972, he had made partner working in sales and trading.

In 1976, while working his way up, Bloomberg married Susan Brown.

Sources: The New York Times, The New York Times

They had two daughters — Georgina Bloomberg, now a professional equestrian rider, and Emma Bloomberg, who works in non-profits. The couple later divorced in 1993.

According to a 2001 interview in The New York Times with Emma, her parents remained best friends.

In 1979, Bloomberg was moved to the IT department. It was not a promotion. IT wasn't a glamorous sector, since it was removed from the glory of trades and deals. But it was there he learned about computers.

Sources: The Gentleman's Journal, The New York Times

In 1981, when Salomon merged with another company called Phibro, Bloomberg was fired. He was 39 years old. He had spent 15 years working 12-hour-days, six-days a week. But he had to walk away.

He was helped along by a $10 million payout.

"Afterward, I didn't sit around wondering what was happening at the old firm. I didn't go back and visit. I never look over my shoulder. Once finished: Gone. Life continues!" he wrote in his memoir titled "Bloomberg", which was published in 1997.

According to the biography on him "Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics" by Joyce Purnick, at one point he told his bosses, "I could run the goddamn company better."

Bloomberg wasn't embarrassed about being fired, but he worried his wife would be ashamed about the loss of status, or his ability to support his family. So the week he was fired he ordered her a sable fur coat from Third Avenue.

"A sable jacket seemed to say, "No sweat. We can still eat. We're still players," he wrote in "Bloomberg."

That same year, using $4 million from the Salomon payout, he co-created Bloomberg LP, a financial services company. He knew that traders needed reliable data, and decided his company would be the one to provide it.

He saw that computers would revolutionize Wall Street, and was one of the first to capitalize on it.

According to his website, the provision of this information was a way to "democratize financial information, empowering investors and smaller firms and result in dramatically improved returns for pensioners and retirees."

The company's first customer was Merrill Lynch.

Bloomberg still owns 88% of the company. In 2018, it bought in $10 billion in revenue, employing nearly 20,000 people in 120 countries.

In 1986, he bought a five-story townhouse in the Upper East Side of Manhattan for $3.5 million. It became his home base and a venue for dinner parties.

According to New York Magazine, these dinner parties "were often pretentious in their unpretentiousness." Bloomberg served things like fried chicken and coleslaw.

At one point in 2013, Bloomberg owned 14 properties worldwide, with homes everywhere from New York to London to Bermuda.

Due to the success of the company, he branched out into the news media. In 1990, he launched Bloomberg News, with 50 reporters spread out in key cities like Tokyo, London, and Toronto. In 1994, he launched Bloomberg TV.

Sources: Politico, The Gentleman's Journal

In 1995, Bloomberg joined the ranks of billionaires. Money was flowing. As well as his property purchases, Bloomberg was donating hundreds of millions of dollars. But it wasn't enough to satisfy him.

That same year he donated $55 million to John Hopkins, a sizeable chunk of the $1 billion he has donated to the university, according to Politico. The John Hopkins School of Public Health was renamed after Bloomberg, because of the donations.

According to New York Magazine, Bloomberg told the school's dean Alfred Somner that he needed another challenge, and it wasn't building another company. "I don't need any more money. Where can I make a difference?" he said.

News anchor Barbara Walters, one of Bloomberg's close friends, told New York Magazine, "This was not a man who used his money because he was going to take us all out on a yacht."

Source: New York Magazine

According to Boston College professor Paul Schervish, Bloomberg had "conquered the business world, but he still had in his soul this command to use his talents and his will in another arena."

Source: New York Magazine

In 2000, Bloomberg, until then a Democrat, registered as a Republican. A month later, he hosted an election night party with magazine editor Tina Brown and (now disgraced) movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

They invited hundreds of friends to a restaurant on Manhattan's Upper East Side. When The New York Times asked at the party if he wanted to spend his 60s standing over wounded New York police officers as mayor, he responded, "I'd like to prevent cops from getting shot."

According to The Times, he became a Republican because if he'd remained a Democrat he would have lost in a mayoral primary.

He also met Diana Taylor in 2000. Taylor was the unofficial first lady during his time as mayor and later served as the New York State superintendent of banks. Both parties have said marriage won't be in the cards.

Source: The New York Times

In 2000, he bought his daughter, Georgina, a $3.6 million equestrian estate in Westchester County's North Salem. It was once used as an exercise ground for circus elephants.

Adjacent to his daughter's house is a $4.55 million home he purchased in 2012.

He bought the house so his daughter Georgina, a competitive horse jumper, could keep her horses there.

But when he tried to extend a special-use permit from six horses to 20, several neighbors complained, arguing renovations could harm the environment, property values, and "bring a pervasive smell" to the neighborhood, according to The New York Times.

Bloomberg campaigned for mayor. But in an unusual move, at a press conference where former Republican Gov. George Pataki endorsed him, Bloomberg repeatedly said, "I'm a liberal. I'm a liberal. I'm a liberal. I'm a LIBERAL."

Source: The New York Times

It didn't matter. In 2002, he was elected mayor of New York, narrowly beating Democrat candidate Mark Green. He stepped down from running his company, and over the next 12 years earned $1 a year.

Sources: Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New York Times

He held more than 80 public forums during his first three-year tenure as mayor, and seemed to be, according to New York Magazine, "a one man complaint department."

Source: New York Magazine

His tenure had a number of positives — he led the city through its recovery after 9/11. He helped the city's finances by raising property taxes and cutting down city services. His administration introduced Citi Bikes and banned smoking in restaurants.

Sources: The New York Times, City & State NY

One of his big focuses was gun control. In 2002, he announced a gun buy-back program. Anyone who provided information about an illegal handgun would be rewarded $1,000.

In 2006, he also co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which later became Everytown for Guns Safety.

The environment was another one of his priorities. To protect the city's drinking water, he had the city buy a large piece of land in the Catskill mountains to ensure development didn't contaminate water.

His administration also spent billions cleaning waterways and wetlands, creating parks, and planting trees.

His tenure had its negatives. One of the things he's most often criticized for was defending police commissioner Ray Kelly's push to get police to "stop and frisk" people.

The policy has been called racist, because the police did stop and frisks primarily in high-crime areas, disproportionately impacting African American and Hispanic people. In 2002, there were about 97,000 stops; by 2011 there were 685,000.

A district court declared the methods unconstitutional in 2013.

His politics weren't entirely traditional. According to New York Magazine, one "endearing habit" of Bloomberg's was to explain some "spin" and then a moment later undercut that spin by explaining how it might not be as accurate as it seemed.

Source: New York Magazine

But something was working, because in 2005, Bloomberg beat former Bronx Borough president Fernando Ferrer by nearly 20 percentage points. Bloomberg won in all of the boroughs except the Bronx.

Sources: The Guardian, Gothamist

In 2005, he also had one of his biggest losses as mayor — the state legislature wouldn't approve the West Side Stadium, a proposed massive stadium in Manhattan.

Source: The New York Times

In 2007, Bloomberg announced he was leaving the Republican Party to become an independent. The move triggered speculation that he would run for president in 2008.

In a statement released about his change, he said, "Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology."

Instead, he ran again for mayor. Before Bloomberg, there had been a two-term limit for New York mayors, but he campaigned to change the law, won, and went on to serve a third term.

The New York Times said he "strong-armed" the city council into letting him have a third term.

And while he was re-elected in 2009, he only beat the city comptroller Bill Thompson narrowly, winning with 50.7% of the vote.

During his tenure as mayor, his wealth played a defining role. It allowed some things to happen that otherwise wouldn't have been possible.

For instance, police commissioner Ray Kelly said after a meeting in Miami, one of Bloomberg's planes had a problem, so they simply got on his other plane.

Bloomberg also spoke to New York Magazine about readily using his wealth to achieve his end-goals, including to help win elections.

"If you really believe that you're making a difference and that you can leave a legacy of better schools and jobs and safer streets, why would you not spend the money? The objective is to improve the schools, bring down crime, build affordable housing, clean the streets—not to have a fair fight."

Another interesting aspect of his wealth was how he allowed it to be scrutinized. Bloomberg let reporters review his annual tax returns and financial disclosures, but not copy them, because he was concerned giving away too much would benefit his competitors.

Source: The New York Times

In 2011, he purchased a Hamptons home, called "Ballyshear." The estate's 35 acres and 22,000-square-foot house had an asking price of $22.5 million. He also owns a neighboring house and another 4.8-acre plot of vacant land.

Source: Business Insider

In 2012, Bloomberg tried to combat obesity by banning soda and sugary drinks in cups more than 16 ounces — at least in restaurants, cinemas, and street carts.

It would have been the first city in America to enforce such a ban, but it was struck down by the New York Supreme Court, and again on appeal in 2014. The idea was widely derided on late night talk shows.

Though nutrition was one of his signature issues as mayor, he had been chided for not following his own advice. He loves Cheez-Its, puts salt on everything (even pizza), and drinks three to four cups of coffee a day.

The manager at Viand, a Greek diner near Bloomberg's Upper East Side townhouse, told The New York Times he liked so much salt on his bagel, "it's like a pretzel."

He also made headlines for recommending going to the toilet less to get more done.

In 2013, after the Boston Marathon bombing, Bloomberg called for constitutional privacy protections to be weakened, according to The Atlantic.

"We have to understand that in the world going forward," he said, "we're going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff. That's good in some senses, but it's different than what we are used to. And the people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry, but we live in a complex world where you're going to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution I think have to change."

That same year, he was succeeded by current mayor Bill de Blasio. The New York Post wrote that his impact would be most-felt through his pro-health policies.

"In his three terms, Nanny Bloomberg waged war on salt and soda, banned smoking in parks and pushed breast-feeding by having hospitals hide the formula," the Post wrote.

The New York Times was less critical, and said after Bloomberg left he would "bequeath a litany of record-shattering statistics on crime reduction, sidewalk safety and skyline-altering construction."

It also noted that while usually "the city paid its mayor; Mr. Bloomberg paid to be the city's mayor." It estimated he had spent $650 million of his own money on things related to running the city, like campaigning and travel costs.

A portion of that went on keeping fish alive. Bloomberg loves marine life. While he was at City Hall, he had two enormous tanks installed, and spent $62,400 of his own money a week to maintain them.

Source: The New York Times

In 2014, eight months after stepping down as mayor, he resumed control of Bloomberg LP. With his return, former CEO Daniel Doctoroff stepped down.

Doctoroff told The New York Times, "Mike is kind of like God at the company. He created the universe. He issued the Ten Commandments and then he disappeared. And then he came back. You have to understand that when God comes back, things are going to be different. When God reappeared, people defer."

In 2014, Queen Elizabeth II made Bloomberg an honorary knight for his "prodigious entrepreneurial and philanthropic endeavors." Since he's not British he can't call himself "sir."

Source: The Telegraph

He owns two houses in London — a city he's referred to as his second home. The first, which Bloomberg has owned for a while, is in the exclusive borough of Knightsbridge. It's reportedly filled with American art.

Sources: New York Magazine, New York Daily News

He bought a second London home was for $25 million in 2015. It sits along the River Thames and was once owned by novelist George Eliot.

Source: The New York Times

Although he was out of public service, Bloomberg continued to donate. Bloomberg Philanthropies says he has donated more than $6 billion to a variety of charitable causes over the years.

In 2015, he gave $100 million to Cornell's technology campus on New York's Roosevelt Island. The university won a competition put on by the city while Bloomberg was still mayor to build an applied sciences campus on the island. It was named "The Bloomberg Center," after his daughters.

He's an avid skier and owns a top floor unit in the Mountain Haus ski resort in Vail, Colorado. He's also a member of the exclusive Game Creek Club, a restaurant located midway down a ski slope.

Source: New York Magazine

Another of his international abodes is in Bermuda, where it's notoriously hard for non-natives to purchase a home. In the comfort of his private jet, he can get to his Bermuda house from New York City in two hours.

Cab drivers in the area often compete to drive him, as he is a very good tipper, according to The New York Times.

Bloomberg has his own private jets — including a trijet Dassault Falcon 900B.

Source: Wall Street Journal

He's also passionate about helicopters. He owns a six-seat Agusta SPA A109S — which he is fond of flying — worth $4.5 million. Bloomberg is said to be an excellent pilot and received his flying license in 1976.

Source: The New York Times

His love of aircrafts doesn't stop there. He's one of 50 who have "expressed interest" in owning an Agusta Westland AW609 Tilt-rotor, a futuristic plane and helicopter hybrid. The company plans to deliver the first units in 2020.

Sources: The New York Times, Airway1

As for suiting, his closet is filled with threads made by legendary Brooklyn tailor Martin Greenfield.

Source: New York Daily News

In 2016, Bloomberg's political roots re-emerged when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Source: Politifact

In 2017, he published "Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet." He has donated $650 million to fund the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, and positioned himself as a global leader pushing for climate action.

Sources: Politifact, InsideClimate News, The New York Times

In 2018, he officially registered as a Democrat. In the elections that year, he was the second-largest donor, contributing about $95 million, almost entirely to Democrats.

Sources: Politifact, OpenSecrets

In November, his adviser Howard Wolfson told The Guardian that Bloomberg thought President Donald Trump was an "unprecedented threat" to America, and the Democrat presidential candidates didn't have what it took to beat him.

Source: The Guardian

At the end of November, Bloomberg announced he was running for president. It was a late entry — five Democrat debates had already been held.

"Defeating Donald Trump — and rebuilding America — is the most urgent and important fight of our lives. And I'm going all in," Bloomberg told The New York Times. "I offer myself as a doer and a problem solver — not a talker. And someone who is ready to take on the tough fights — and win."

He's previously contemplated running in 2016 while he was an independent, and earlier in 2019.

Within the first week of entering the race, he spent $30 million, the most a candidate has ever spent in a week in a primary, and by the end of the first month, he had spent over $100 million on TV ads alone.

After he entered the race, he apologized for supporting the "stop-and-frisk" policy while he was New York's mayor.

Source: The Nation

He also advised Bloomberg Media not to investigate any Democrat candidate, including himself. He told CBS News, "They get a paycheck. But with your paycheck comes some restrictions and responsibilities."

Source: NBC News

In November, Business Insider published a report delving into decades of court records about the culture of Bloomberg LP, which has been described as a sexualized, predatory environment.

The reporting showed that Bloomberg permitted his company to become — in the words of one former employee — a "reckless playground" for male senior executives to "target young, female, naive employees" for sex.

Bloomberg's spokesperson said the comments were unfortunate episodes from decades ago, but the company faces five active discrimination complaints.

Read the full story here »

In December, Bloomberg moved his expanding campaign team, of 300 staffers, to a new space in Times Square. He has 200 more staff members around the country.

He said when he was president he'd turn the White House's East Room into an open plan office, where he'd work beside his team, and that he'd never use the Oval Office for tweeting.

The new office also has countdown clocks ticking down to Super Tuesday and the General Election. This is because he's skipping the first four states in his unusual campaign to be the next president of the United States.

We rounded up the 13 best sales and deals happening online today, with savings on activewear and wellness items at Nordstrom Rack, menswear at Bonobos, Nike sneakers, TurboTax software, and more.

Deals in this story are subject to change throughout the day. The prices listed reflect the deal at the time of publication. For even more deals and savings across the web, check out Business Insider Coupons.

The best sales and deals happening today at a glance:

• Save up to 60% on activewear and wellness items at Nordstrom Rack
• Save an extra 40% on sale styles at Bonobos
• Save up to 65% on sale styles at Kate Spade
• Save an extra 20% on sale styles at Nike
• Save $20 Intuit TurboTax software
• Save up to 65% on sale styles plus an extra 10% at Cole Haan
• Save up to 50% during Nordstrom's half-yearly sale

Additional Business Insider-exclusive deals and longer-term sales going on now:

• Get free sheets and two pillows when you purchase a mattress at Purple
• Get a one-month free trial through ClassPass 
• Get 50,000 miles when you sign up for a Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card 
• Save 30% off your first delivery and get free vegan cookie dough for life at Hungryroot
• Save up to $500 on your order at Burrow

Find the details of each sale below:

SEE ALSO: The best mattresses you can buy

DON'T MISS: I got my teeth straightened through an online service called Candid for under $2,000 — here’s how it works

1. Save up to 65% on sale styles at Kate Spade

Shop the Kate Spade sale now. 

The holidays might be over, but designer handbag and accessories brand Kate Spade is still holding its holiday sale. Until January 5, you can save up to 65% on sale styles by using the promo code "BIGGESTSALE" at checkout. You can save big on totes, backpacks, crossbody bags, belt bags, and more. 

2. Save up to 60% on activewear and wellness items at Nordstrom Rack

Shop the Nordstrom Rack sale now. 

If your New Year's resolution for 2020 is to be healthier and more active, then you may need a few things to support your new lifestyle. Nordstrom Rack is having a huge sale with up to 60% off activewear, sneakers, water bottles, smartwatches, and more. 

3. Save an extra 40% on sale styles at Bonobos

Shop the Bonobos sale now. 

Popular menswear brand Bonobos has all of the pieces you need for casual weekends, days at the office, or formal occasions — and right now, you'll find many of them on sale. For a limited time, you can get an extra 40% off final sale styles by using the promo code "GOTCHA" at checkout. The sale includes dress shirts, flannels, lightweight button-ups, chinos, jeans, activewear, and more. 

4. Save an extra 20% on sale styles at Nike

Shop the Nike sale now.

To ring in the New Year, Nike is still offering huge discounts on sale items. Now through January 4, you can save 20% on sale styles by using the promo code "GOBIG" at checkout. The promotion includes sneakers, clothing, and other athletic gear. 

5. Save $20 Intuit TurboTax Software

Intuit TurboTax Deluxe + State 2019 Tax Software, $39.88 (Originally $59.99) [You save $20.11]

Tax season is almost here. If you don't want to spend a fortune paying an accountant, you can do them by yourself and even save money on the software needed. Right now, you can pick up the simple and fast TurboTax software for $20 off on Amazon. The software is available for MacOS and Windows users.

6. Save up to 65% on sale styles plus an extra 10% at Cole Haan

Shop the Cole Haan sale now.

Cole Haan is ending the year with a huge sale. Right now, you can get up to 65% off sale items, plus an extra 10% off your order. The sale includes popular styles from the ZERØGRAND line, dress shoes, boots, and much more.

7. Save up to 50% during Nordstrom's half-yearly sale

Shop Nordstrom's half-yearly sale. 

Two times a year, Nordstrom holds its half-yearly sale where you can save up to 50% on clothing for the family, footwear, bags and accessories, home and kitchen, beauty, and more. The sale runs until January 2 and popular brands are sure to sell out fast. Shopping the sale is easy with free shipping and returns and the option to buy online and pick up in-store. Check out our top picks for the half-yearly sale here.

8. Get a free sheet set and pillows when you purchase a mattress at Purple

Shop mattresses at Purple. 

With a 100-night free sleep trial, you have nothing to lose if you opt to give Purple a try. One Insider Picks reviewer claimed the Original helped him keep cool at night and feel more refreshed in the mornings.

For a limited time, you'll get a free sheet set and two free plush or purple pillows when you buy a Purple Hybrid or Hybrid Premier mattress (valued up to $327), or choose from one sheet set, Purple pillow, or Plush pillow when you purchase a Purple Mattress (valued up to $129).

9. Get a one-month free trial through ClassPass

Start your one-month free trial with ClassPass.

After the holidays, you may have resolved to get back to the gym and start fresh in the new year. ClassPass is offering a one-month free trial for all new sign-ups from now through the end of January. Your free trial will give you 35 credits that can be used to access thousands of studios and gyms in over 2,500 cities. Click here to find out more about ClassPass and this deal.

10. Get 50,000 miles when you signup for a Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card

Click here to learn more about the Capital One Venture.

If traveling is on your bucket list for the new year, then you might want to consider signing up for a Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. You'll get 50,000 miles when you spend $3,000 in your first three months and your first year's annual fee of $95 is waived. This card will also earn you 10x the miles when you book hotels through hotels.com and for every 10 nights you book through Hotels.com, you'll earn a free night. Learn more about the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and other credit card deals here.

Business Insider may receive a commission from The Points Guy Affiliate Network if you apply for a credit card, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective.

11. Save 30% off your first delivery and get free cookie dough for the life of your subscription at Hungryroot

Browse Hungryroot's meals.

Hungryroot is a health-conscious meal delivery service that allows you to customize your preferences based on dietary needs and likes. Meals are delivered on a weekly basis, and all of them can be made in approximately 10 minutes. Now through January 23, receive 30% off your first delivery plus get free almond chickpea cookie dough in every box for the life of your subscription. You can read our full review here.

12. Get four months of Apple Music for free at Best Buy

Sign up for a free four-month Apple Music trial here.

Apple Music is one of the most popular streaming services available, and Best Buy is offering a free four-month trial with no purchase required. All you have to do is make sure you're signed into your account — and if you don't have one you can sign up here.  

13. Save up to $500 on your order at Burrow

Shop all of Burrow's couches and furniture.

If you can't stand spending hours putting together furniture, then Burrow is for you. This startup will deliver your order free of charge and you'll be able to easily assemble your couch or furniture completely tool-free. Burrow isn't the cheapest option out there, but right now you have the opportunity to save a little more on large order sizes. From now until January 5, you can save 10% off $1,499, $200 off $1,500, $250 off $1,800, or $300 off $2,200, $400 off $2,600, and $500 off $3,000 using the promo code "NYE" at checkout. Read our full review here.

• Influencers have turned into household names in recent years, and the industry is now worth up to an estimated $8 billion.
• However, people still struggle to understand what the non-traditional career consists of, so I followed an influencer around New York City for a day to offer people a better idea.
• In a day with style influencer Courtney Seamon— one of the two women behind Mimosas & Manhattan— I attended events for bedding and shoes, gained insight into how she makes a living, and learned what she does in her day-to-day life as a full-time influencer. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When your entire career is based off of content on Instagram and social media, it's difficult for others to realize the full story that goes behind that one picture.

The wild world of influencers is still a relatively new industry that people struggle to understand, but that hasn't stopped it from growing into something worth an estimated $8 billion in 2019. While it's not a typical 9-to-5 job, being an influencer is more than just posting a photo and watching the money roll in, says Courtney Seamon, a full-time influencer who runs the blog Mimosas & Manhattan and its associated Instagram account alongside her cousin.

It's why I decided to shadow Seamon for a day in her life. Like many entrepreneurs, Seamon is in charge of communicating with brands, organizing event appearances, and managing her own expense reports. We attended brand events and networked with public relations representatives, and recorded Instagram Stories and walked around New York City. 

Here's what it was like. 

SEE ALSO: Logan Paul reveals his plans to become a professional boxer, release a music album, and try out TikTok in the future

This is Courtney Seamon, a 26-year-old who runs the Instagram account CourtandKelly alongside her cousin. Although their following of 62,000 puts them solidly in the category of "microinfluencers," Seamon runs the account and their blog, called Mimosas & Manhattan, as a full-time job.

Seamon originally comes from a small town in Indiana, but found herself in New York in the summer of 2013 working as an unpaid intern alongside her cousin, Kelly McFarland. On a whim, they bought the domain mimosasmanhattan.com and created a matching Instagram account to document all the various brunch places they went to that summer.

"Blogging was a thing. Instagram was just starting to make a splash," Seamon told me. "We were also 20 years old. We had to find places that didn't ID."

The Mimosas & Manhattan venture was short-lived at the beginning, as both had to return to their colleges. But after Seamon graduated in 2015 and moved back to New York for work, they started to gain traction. Seamon still remembers how they made their first dollar in January 2016, with a following of 15,000: a lip gloss campaign that netted them $150 in exchange for one blog post and two Instagram photos.

It wasn't until September 2018 that Seamon figured out she could afford quit her job at Macy's and become an influencer full-time. That same year, McFarland got offered a job to move out to Los Angeles, and the duo rebranded their Instagram account to CourtandKelly to reflect their bi-coastal presence.

"We started at 0 followers. We weren't reality stars," Seamon said. "We've had to work our a---- off to get to this position ... You have to have those humble beginnings."

First up in Seamon's day is a breakfast at La Mercerie, a trendy restaurant in the just-as-trendy New York neighborhood of SoHo. The restaurant was flooded with light and is completely photo-ready, just like the influencers and magazine editors seated around us. In my normal work outfit of jeans and a t-shirt, I felt completely out of place.

The event is hosted by Bed Bath & Beyond, a company Seamon says she has worked with before and that often works with influencers. That history of working with influencers is something that Seamon looks for in brands that reach out to her, explaining that there are many retailers and companies who don't quite understand the influencer industry and business model.

Seamon recognized a few of the women seated around us from past events and past interactions, pointing out a former "Bachelor" contestant and the two women behind the popular fitness Instagram, Sweats & the City.

We were seated at a long table filled with pastries, jams, and fruit, and were immediately offered a selection of espresso-based drinks and fresh juices. The breakfast selection was nothing short of a multi-course meal — something way different than the oatmeal Seamon said she usually eats for breakfast.

While I may usually feel the need to sneak a photo of something like a menu at a restaurant, I was far from the only one snapping away at this breakfast. The photogenic influencers around me were carefully adjusting their place settings and thrusting their phones high in the air to capture the best bird's-eye image, posing with their drinks for photos across the table, and taking careful panorama videos of the scene — many, surely, to be posted in Instagram Stories.

Bed Bath & Beyond was hosting the breakfast to show off its sleep products, and had brought in its chief brand officer for a nearly half-hour presentation. Each attendee was given a trendy sleep mask reading "Wake up happy," and given a form to fill out to get a full set of sheets and blankets to be sent to them in the mail.

The event yielded a copious of free products for attendees, especially considering Seamon is under no obligation to post anything online in exchange for the invite. Seamon said she gets invited to lots of events around New York, and decides which ones to actually go to by thinking about how it could positively impact her business. 

Like any professional, not every move Seamon takes is for an immediate payoff. Some events are for showing face and making connections, and others are to work on longer-term campaigns and partnerships in the future.

"You have to think of everything as a business move," Seamon said. "You have to ask yourself, 'Is it going to pay off in the long run?'"

When we got the main dish of our breakfast, it was, as expected, picture-perfect.

The dishes were served during the presentation, and the clank of silverware and clicks of cameras snapping shots of the $22 crepe were clearly audible.

The rest of the event was spent mingling with other attendees, and guests were given the opportunity to ask questions about Bed Bath & Beyond's products. Seamon actually went around to each set-up to read up on the products, more than many of the other attendees.

Seamon seemed cognizant about going around and talking with nearly everyone at the event. She didn't shy away from sharing details about her life as she recounted stories and struck up conversation.

Seamon is responsible for promoting her brand, which is really just selling herself and her personality. Because of that, Seamon is open about who she is, both with me and her followers. While her blog posts revolve around fashion, style, and beauty, Seamon said some of the most popular posts are ones where she talks about mental health and the "bad days."

"Consumers understand when they're being fed s---," Seamon says. "They like that you're honest and when you're real."

After leaving the Bed Bath & Beyond event, we headed over to a nearby pop-up store for shoe designer Sarah Flint. Expectedly, the store was adorned in stylish patterns and flowers, an aesthetic meant to draw in passersby.

Sarah Flint is a relatively small online-only shoe designer, but the brand's claim to fame is being the regularly cited favorite shoe brand of Meghan Markle. The pop-up store in New York is the brand's first brick-and-mortar location, and an employee told me it's designed based off of Sarah Flint's "dream board."

At the store, Seamon met up for a one-on-one consultation to try on some of the shoes, with the prior understanding she was getting a free pair of shoes out of the event.

Seamon snapped photos of her shoes and other activities throughout the day, which she usually saves to post to her Instagram Stories later in the day after having a chance to edit them.

When in a profession where aesthetic is everything, photos aren't posted without being carefully edited. Seamon's editing software of choice is Tezza, an app created by a fellow Instagram influencer. She pulled up the app on her phone in the Uber after the pop-up store to post her photos from this morning's activities.

Seamon is unique in that she actually shares her daily schedule with her followers each morning on her Instagram Story. Seamon says doing this offers transparency in her day-to-day life, something that many influencers don't share and most people don't understand.

We then took an Uber — free, thanks to a comped code from one of the morning events — over to Madison Square Park to meet up with her boyfriend, who she was having take pictures of her outfit during his lunch break. She had him meet us in front of a massive tree she had had her eye on for a while because its leaves are already changing colors for fall.

Seamon pulled out a DSLR camera from her bag and handed it to her boyfriend, who snapped photos from various angles and with different backdrops. He was obviously a pro, and confirmed to me that he had done this before for Seamon.

Hiring a professional photographer for her daily Instagram posts is out of the question for Seamon — she says that photographers in the influencer space can charge $175 to $200 an hour.

Instead, Seamon usually leaves the photo-taking to her friend and fellow Instagram influencer Lex Dieck. They met after getting seated next to each other at an influencer brunch event, and often travel around the city together to capture photos and help each other out.

"Influencers are like coworkers to me, because I don't have any," Seamon says. "There's none of those mean-girl situations. I do feel like I'm genuine friends with the girls."

Like any good Instagram boyfriend, Kyle knew the angles at which to capture the pictures that Seamon likes to post. The two spent around 20 minutes discussing placement, snapping photos, and checking that they got a shot good enough for Seamon's Instagram.

Seamon and her boyfriend, Kyle Moore, have been dating for four years now. Moore works at a sports betting startup near Madison Square Park and is currently experimenting with intermittent fasting, a trendy diet popular in Silicon Valley and startup culture.

Seamon's openness about her personal life continues to her relationship with her boyfriend. The two of them have a podcast where they bring on guests to discuss sex and relationships. They record the podcast right in the middle of the living room in their shared apartment, and Seamon said they spent close to $800 on podcasting equipment.

While the podcast is a fun thing that the couple can do together, Seamon also said it opens up her work to "another avenue of revenue" beyond Instagram, which she says is "super saturated" with influencers already.

"The Instagram bubble won't be around forever," Seamon says. "If Instagram blows up tomorrow, it'll be hard to market yourself for a new job."

We next headed over to Seamon's midtown Manhattan apartment, where she said she spends the majority of her time. Like anyone who runs their own business — Mimosas & Manhattan has been turned into a registered LLC — Seamon has to take care of her own email, expense reports, invoices, and business deals for sponsorships and partnerships.

Seamon said that McFarland, her cousin and partner behind Mimosas & Manhattan, comes from a public relations background that proved vital when the two first started growing their presence as influencers. The two of them had to learn as they went to run their account like a business, which includes negotiating brand deals, pitching companies, tracking analytics, and writing up reports and invoices properly for taxes.

"There is no guidebook to do what we're doing," Seamon said. "There's no major on how to do it. We had to figure it out as we go."

Home is also where Seamon will post her blog posts and sponsored photos for Instagram. For @courtandkelly, they charge usually anywhere from $800 to $1,500 for an ad-sponsored Instagram post. To keep their feed feeling "authentic," Seamon aims to flood their Instagram with only about 20% sponsored posts, while the other 80% is "organic content" from their lives.

Fashion makes up the majority of what Mimosas & Manhattan posts on their blog and Instagram, and that's evident by Seamon's apartment. Her bedroom has two closets filled with her clothing, while her boyfriend's items are banished to the hallway closet.

One of Seamon's biggest pet peeves is the mistaken assumption the breadwinner is her boyfriend, and that he's the reason they can afford her lifestyle and their nice apartment. Looking around her apartment, nearly half of the furniture was "gifted" thanks to Seamon's work: Allswell gave her the mattress and bedding; the couch was a result of a partnership; the rug and artwork were in exchange for blog and Instagram posts.

"I have to be extremely open about my financials to make my friends take me seriously," Seamon says. "I've never asked my friend at Ernst & Young how much she makes. Nobody's coming from a mean place, people just don't understand."

Seamon declined to disclose exactly how much she makes, but said she makes more now than she did at her previous job as an associate product manager at Macy's — which, according to Glassdoor, makes an average of $70,000 a year.

Before we left her apartment, Seamon laid out outfits for a video she was filming the next day for a blog post. Despite being so fashion-oriented, Seamon rarely buys clothes, and usually buys vintage and secondhand clothing when she does. She said she knows that her followers aren't spending thousands on clothes, and she wants her looks to resonate with them.

Her upcoming video is meant to show followers how to transition your closet from fall outfits to warmer winter wear. With five to six outfits selected, Seamon estimated it can take a few hours to produce a one-minute long video in the end, between set-up, makeup, multiple takes, and editing.

After Seamon changed into outfit No. 2, we then headed over to a trendy nail salon called Paintbox where Seamon was meeting two PR representatives who she had previously worked with on brand campaigns. We were immediately offered champagne flutes and lookbooks of intricate nail design options, with names like Post Malone and Tonya Harding.

As everywhere else we had been that day, the nail salon oozed an aesthetic of modern and trendy. Paintbox looked more like a hip clothing store than a nail salon, and it got increasingly crowded as young people headed in after work hours.

This wasn't Seamon's first time at Paintbox — she was here for nail studio's event to celebrate the launch of its newest line of nail polish.

Talking over manicures was not a traditional meeting setup for me, and Seamon said it's not normal for her either — she'll usually meet over drinks or lunch with brand representatives. Over the course of the nail appointment, Seamon and the PR reps chatted mostly about their personal lives, as well as upcoming ad campaigns Seamon would fit well into.

Despite the style-oriented Instagram presence, Mimosas & Manhattan does partnerships that extend way beyond clothing and fashion. Given the blog's name, it's not surprising that their biggest campaigns come from alcohol brands like Bacardi and Angry Orchard. They've also worked with brands like McDonald's, Equinox, and Head & Shoulders, for which they filmed social media ads in their biggest campaign to date.

This past weekend, Seamon and her boyfriend took a trip to the Catskills in a Jeep, thanks a partnership with the car company. They've also taken free trips to Bermuda and Jamaica, and are soon heading to Puerto Rico.

Seamon and the two PR reps each got gel manicures, which go for $60 to $75 at Paintbox. Fittingly, the manicurist asked to take a picture of Seamon's nails for the Painbox Instagram.

We then headed over to the nearby Crosby Hotel, where beauty and fashion brand Jill Stuart was holding an event for influencers. The event space was, as expected, beautiful and colorful, with a stocked open bar, hors d'oeuvre brought around on silver platters, and stylists offering free makeovers (Seamon declined and said it would be wasted on her because she was just heading home).

We stuck around the event long enough to grab a drink and few bites to eat, as well as some videos and pictures of the makeup that Seamon planned to post later on her Instagram Story. Seamon said that this is the type of event she would usually skip, since there was no event with company reps or little benefit to her brand.

Seamon and I left the event and parted ways around 6 p.m. I finished the day with lots of quotes, lots of photos, and even a cameo on the @courtandkelly Instagram Story.

Seamon told me she hoped this story will help others take her job more seriously, since she still finds herself and other influencers having to prove themselves on a daily bases.

"Nobody gets what we do," Seamon said. "They just see the pictures. But people don't know all the work that went into it."

• International Living's Retirement Index, an annual comprehensive guide to global retirement destinations curated by US expats, was just released.
• The ranking takes several factors into consideration, including the cost of healthcare, the cost of living, the process of obtaining a visa and owning property, the access to entertainment, and the ease of assimilation.
• Five Latin American countries made the list, followed by three European countries and two Asian countries.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In the US, unprecedented numbers of seniors are pushing past the once typical retirement age of 65 and working until about 72. Simultaneously, millennials are hustling to amass income-generating assets and living off rice and beans to retire early.

While there's no one way to approach retirement, many are getting creative in stretching their money for a comfortable — and even luxurious — third act of life. One strategy? Retiring abroad.

International Living, a magazine focused on Americans living overseas, released its annual Retirement Index on Wednesday.

The index, which ranks countries "where you can live a healthier and happier life, spend a lot less money, and get a whole lot more" in retirement, was created through extensive surveys of US expats, the magazine said.

Retirees living overseas ranked their experience across 10 categories: housing; benefits and discounts for seniors; visas and residence; cost of living; assimilation and entertainment; quality and accessibility of healthcare; development; climate; government stability; and opportunity for semi-retirement.

Each category was then given a score out of 100, combining several nitty-gritty details. For example, the housing category encompassed the value of real estate, the cost of building, property taxes, and even whether there is opportunity to earn money renting. The cost-of-living category addressed minutiae like the cost of a liter of milk and a movie ticket, while the healthcare category covered the costs of medical procedures, common medications, and ease of access, as well as quality.

After balancing all 10 categories, the magazine ascribed a final overall score, also out of 100, to each country.

Here are the top countries for retirement, ranked in ascending order of final score, according to expats who have already made the move.

SEE ALSO: 7 of the smartest pieces of advice about saving money from early retirees

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10. Vietnam

Overall score: 76

Housing: 77

Healthcare: 84

Cost of living: 92

John Powell, once a purchasing agent in New York, moved to Hanoi in 2014. He told International Living that he budgeted $2,700 a month and liked the city because of its low cost of living comfortably and its location. "It's a good base for travel," he said.

9. France

Overall score: 76.4

Housing: 68

Healthcare: 85

Cost of living: 66

Carol and Scott Lonsdale moved to Brittany in 2016. They told International Living that they liked the slower pace of life and the access to the European culture France provides.

"In France there's such a great amount of care taken with how well things are managed, maintained, and appreciated," Carol said, adding, "And did we mention the wine?"

8. Spain

Overall score: 76.8

Housing: 72

Healthcare: 97

Cost of living: 81

Michele and Stanton Cohen moved to Girona in 2017 from Yuma, Arizona. They told International Living their favorite aspect of life abroad was affordable dining and entertainment, saying that they not only can go out for three-course meals under $30 but "often go out for breakfast and meet friends for coffee or drinks at least twice a week."

The medical and dental care also helps. "The prices are about one-third of US medical costs," Michele said.

7. Malaysia

Overall score: 81.9

Housing: 77

Healthcare: 93

Cost of living: 85

Keith and Lisa Hockton retired in Penang in 2010. In addition to the low cost of living, they appreciate the temperate weather, noting that the average year-round temperature is 82 degrees Fahrenheit and that it's close to over 878 islands with "white-sand beaches."

6. Ecuador

Overall score: 82

Housing: 84

Healthcare: 84

Cost of living: 90

Mary and Wayne Bustle relocated to Quito, Ecuador's capital, in early 2015. The climate — which Wayne told International Living "hardly varies," with "no snow or extreme heat nor humidity" — drew the couple to Ecuador after they had considered 13 countries.

There are also attractive senior discounts, like half-price airline tickets.

5. Colombia

Overall score: 83.4

Housing: 80

Healthcare: 94

Cost of living: 88

Nancy Kiernan was initially drawn to Colombia because it is so biodiverse, and she chose to retire in Medellín. She found she could obtain a renewable three-year Colombian retirement visa by providing proof of $750 in annual income from US Social Security.

She also said that though Medellín is a bigger city, with a population of nearly 4 million, it had "the vibe of a smaller, friendly town, that makes you feel part of a community."

4. Mexico

Overall score: 83.8

Housing: 91

Healthcare: 88

Cost of living: 86

Don Murray, who retired in Mexico in 2014, found that the country had several expat enclaves, making it easy to assimilate.

"What I and most other expats love most about Mexico is the vibrant life and culture," Murray told International Living. "And it's quite easy to fit in."

Popular spots include villages near the beaches of Cancún or the mountains of San Miguel de Allende.

3. Costa Rica

Overall score: 85.3

Housing: 85

Healthcare: 96

Cost of living: 82

"Here, there's more time to actually stop and smell the roses," Graham Swindell told International Living. "Combine that with great waves, an amazing climate, and a culture that places family, friends, and a relaxed quality of life above all, then it's easy to see why so many people come here for a week and end up staying for a decade or even a lifetime."

Kathleen Evans, another Costa Rica retiree, said: "Once you have acquired your residency, you pay between 7% and 11% of your reported monthly income, and the socialized medicine program is available to you."

2. Panama

Overall score: 85.8

Housing: 88

Healthcare: 94

Cost of living: 89

Jessica Ramesch retired in Panama City and lives there alone for "about $2,600 a month, including rent, groceries, utilities, and entertainment," she said.

She also celebrated the quality and price of healthcare, estimating that doctor visits cost "a nominal fee of between $20 and $60."

Easy access to the US is also a selling point — it is about three hours from Miami by plane.

1. Portugal

Overall score: 86

Housing: 93

Healthcare: 98

Cost of living: 85

In addition to having an affordable lifestyle with quality healthcare, a temperate climate, and "excellent food and wine," Tricia Pimental, who has lived in Portugal for seven years, said she and her husband moved there for a more "ephemeral" reason: "the overarching sense of well-being we experience here."

Portugal also has several expat enclaves, including cities like Porto and Lisbon or "beach havens" like Cascais or the Algarve.

• Wes Modes, a professor and artist from California, spends his summers on 20-foot-long, 8-foot-wide shantyboat.
• Modes travels through river communities across the country and records the stories of the people who live in them.
• The construction of the boat began in 2012 and was completed in 2014, the year of Modes' first expedition.
• In a tell-all interview with Business Insider, Modes explains how he built the boat from scratch and what life is like during these expeditions.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

"It doesn't cost much to live on the river."

That's what Wes Modes, an artist and a university lecturer, told Business Insider about the lifestyle he's chosen for himself every summer.

During the school year, Modes teaches art and design at the California State University at Monterey Bay and the University of California in Santa Cruz. But during the summers, he lives on a 20-foot-long, 8-foot-wide shantyboat he built and travels through river communities across the country.

The creation of Modes' shantyboat, which is named Dotty, began in 2012. Modes told Business Insider that prior to the shantyboat, he would partake in what is called punk rafting — the art of building a raft out of scavenged materials. With his rafts, he would set sail for several weeks at a time on various rivers. 

Eventually, Modes decided he wanted something more permanent

Modes wanted to be more than just an observer and decided he would use a homemade shantyboat to explore river communities and river cultures around the country.

"Rather than just being a tourist who floats through towns, I wanted to give something back to these communities," he told Business Insider. "I thought I might be able to give back the gift of listening."

So, during the summers, with one or more shipmates, Modes lives on the shantyboat and moves through various river communities recording the stories of the people who live in them.

"When I'm not teaching, I'm on the river," he said.

Keep reading for a look inside his boat.

Are you living in a tiny home, boat or any alternate means of housing? If you want to share your story, email this reporter at lbrandt@businessinsider.com.

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Wes Modes is an artist and a university lecturer. During the summers, he lives on a shantyboat and travels through river communities all over the country.

Since its maiden voyage down the Mississippi River, the shantyboat has sailed through rivers all over the US: the Tennessee River, the Sacramento River, the Hudson River, and the Ohio River. Over the last six years, it has traveled 1,800 miles on five different rivers and through 16 states.

The shantyboat, which is named Dotty, is 20 feet long and 8 feet wide.

Source:Wes Modes

In 2012, with the help of his friends, Modes began constructing Dotty from scratch.

Source:Wes Modes

Below is an early drawing of the cabin layout.

From the beginning of construction in 2012 to the launch in 2014, Modes told Business Insider that he spent about $5,000 on the boat's materials.

Source:Wes Modes

It was completed in 2014, just days before it set sail on its maiden voyage on the Upper Mississippi River.

Though it's tiny, the cabin includes a small kitchen area, windows, bookshelves, and a couch.

"The most important piece of equipment on the entire boat is our mocha pot," Modes jokingly told Business Insider.

Though Dotty is just 20 feet long and 8 feet wide, during voyages, Modes and his shipmates eat, sleep, and bathe on the boat.

Above the living area is the captain's quarters, which is a loft area with a mattress.

When it comes time to sleep, Modes and his shipmates disperse to the loft area, the couch, and the floor.

Here's a closer look at the captain's quarters.

There's even a small bathroom area on the boat.

During the summer voyages, Modes moves through various river communities and records the stories of the people who live in them.

Modes told Business Insider that the most challenging part of the project is connecting with people whose stories aren't normally told in history books.

"We work hard to make sure that what we do represents that untold, or invisible history," he told Business Insider. "The hardest thing, I think, is to try to connect with communities in which I might not be a part."

Modes chronicles his project, "A Secret History of American River People," online.

He told Business Insider that his favorite days during these voyages are travel days.

"Our favorite days are travel days, days when we are just getting where we are going," he told Business Insider.

On these days, Modes and his shipmates will nap, fish, and spend time with each other.

Modes and his shipmates also exhibit the project. They have at least one major exhibition every year and will do pop-up exhibitions along the rivers they travel through.

They take care of things like laundry, food shopping, and WiFi when they are exploring towns along the rivers. And, when it comes to charging their phones and heating up the stovetop for coffee and cooking, the crew relies on a couple of batteries aboard the boat.

"It doesn't cost much to live on the river," Modes told Business Insider.

Over the last six years, Dotty has traveled 1,800 miles on five different rivers and through 16 states.

Source:Wes Modes

When on land, Dotty is towed by a truck. According to the book "Cabin Porn: Inside," the boat has traveled along 26,000 miles of road.

Source:Cabin Porn: Inside

Are you living in a tiny home, boat or any alternate means of housing? If you want to share your story, email this reporter at lbrandt@businessinsider.com.

• Carlos Ghosn, 64, amassed a $120 million net worth while he was the head ranking official at the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi Motors automotive alliance over the past two decades.
• Ghosn reportedly fled Japan for Lebanon on December 30 by hiding in a box meant for musical instruments on a private jet, violating the terms of his bail agreement.
• On January 2, Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest, but Lebanese officials have not said if they will take action.
• The former CEO was awaiting trial in Japan after being arrested for misreporting his salary and compensation in November 2018.
• In response to the charges from the SEC, Nissan paid a $15 million fine, Ghosn paid a $1 million fine, and Nissan director Greg Kelly paid $100,000 in September.
• Nissan is now struggling. The automaker will cut at least 12,500 jobs by March 2023, The Times reported on July 25.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Carlos Ghosn has fled prosecution in Japan, storing himself away in a box designed for musical instruments on a private jet on December 30, according to media reports.

Ghosn said in a statement that he would "no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied."

The former Nissan CEO was awaiting trial in Japan on financial-misconduct charges and had been forbidden from leaving the country as a part of $13 million bail agreement. Prosecutors in Japan have alleged that Ghosn earned a salary of about 10 billion yen, or $88.7 million, from 2011 to 2015 but reported only half of that. Ghosn, who is 64, could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 10 million yen if found to have committed wrongdoing.

Keep reading to learn more about the rise and downfall of Carlos Ghosn.

SEE ALSO: How Jeffrey Epstein, the mysterious hedge-fund manager arrested on sex-trafficking charges, made his fortune

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Ghosn was named COO of Nissan in 1999 and later CEO in 2001 after the Renault-Nissan Alliance was formed. In 2016, Mitsubishi joined. The three act as separate entities, while also identifying as a global grouping.

Source:BBC

Ghosn was known for his cost-cutting methods — closing factories and cutting jobs while increasing profits and output. Nissan quickly surpassed Honda as the No. 2 automaker in Japan under Ghosn's leadership ...

Source:BBC, The New York Times

... for which he was greatly compensated. According to BBC's review of company records, Ghosn made over $17 million in 2017 in salary, share options and bonuses. As company success grew, so did Ghosn's net worth. As of 2018, his net worth was around $120 million.

Source:BBC, Bloomberg

Ghosn flew around the world using a series of Nissan-owned Gulfstream private jets, including a G650, which can seat up to 19 passengers, sleep up to 10, fly more than 8,000 miles, and can cost more than $67 million.

As chairman of Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi — three car companies on two continents halfway around the world from one another — Ghosn spent a considerable amount of time flying on Nissan's corporate jets between France and Japan. He also had frequent stopovers in the United States, Brazil, and Lebanon.

Source:Business Insider

According to a report from Bloomberg, Nissan paid over 8,000 euros a month for an Amsterdam apartment that was used exclusively by Ghosn.

Source:Bloomberg

And in Beirut, Nissan reportedly paid nearly $9 million in 2012 for a salmon-colored mansion for Ghosn to live in when he traveled.

Source:Bloomberg, The New York Times

In Tokyo, Nissan paid nearly $9,000 a month for Ghosn and family to live in a flat for only "few days each month on average." But then, all of a sudden, Ghosn's world came crashing down.

Nissan would soon begin seizing keys and blocking access from six of its properties frequented by Ghosn and his family. 

Source:Bloomberg

On November 19, prosecutors surrounded Ghosn’s Gulfstream after it touched down in Japan. Prosecutors alleged that Ghosn hid his earnings from Nissan filings for years.

Source:The New York Times

On November 19, 2018, Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa confirmed the arrest of Ghosn after a months-long investigation into alleged financial crimes, like underreporting compensation to regulators. The Nissan board voted just two days later to remove Ghosn from his position as chairman.

Source:Bloomberg

A week after Ghosn's arrest, Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Osamu Masuko announced the company would be ousting Ghosn from his role, too.

Source: Bloomberg

Ghosn was reportedly kept in the same facility that previously housed death-row inmates and given limited access to the outside world. Reports indicate that he was allowed to bathe twice a week and had 30 minutes a day of exercise.

Source:Bloomberg

In a January court hearing, Ghosn denied any wrongdoing on his behalf, and said he was "wrongly accused and unfairly detained based on meritless and unsubstantiated accusations." The next day his detention appeal was denied.

Source:Bloomberg

On January 23, Ghosn resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of Renault, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire told Bloomberg Television in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Source:Reuters, Bloomberg

Bloomberg reported in February that Ghosn may have used Renault funds inappropriately to "pay for his wedding party at the Chateau de Versailles" — marking the first indecency reported by the company toward its former head executive.

Source:Town and Country Magazine, Bloomberg

At the end of February, Ghosn hired lawyer Junichiro Hironaka, who said Ghosn's arrest was a result of a conspiracy inside Nissan. Hironaka said he believes Ghosn is innocent.

"The prosecutors have made a criminal case out of an issue that should have been handled inside the company," said Hironaka at a press conference. 

Source:The Wall Street Journal

In March, Ghosn, wearing blue workman's clothes and a baseball cap, was released after 108 days in a Japanese jail and after paying a nearly $9 million bail.

Source:Business Insider

According to The Wall Street Journal, Ghosn went to a court-approved residence in Tokyo. A trial was said to be happening later in 2018.

Source:The Wall Street Journal

He was forbidden from contact with anyone outside of the country by phone or computer. "I am extremely grateful for my family and friends who have stood by me throughout this terrible ordeal," Ghosn said in a statement released in March.

Source:The Wall Street Journal

Ghosn was rearrested on April 4 on new charges and then released on a $4.5 million bail later that month.

Source: Business Insider

Nissan is now struggling. In July, the automaker announced that it will cut at least 12,500 jobs — about 9% of its total workforce.

Source: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal

Ghosn and Nissan settled their case with the SEC on September 24. The company will pay a $15 million fine, and Ghosn himself will pay $1 million, the Times reported.

Source: The New York Times

Hari Nada, the Nissan senior vice president who reported Ghosn and is set to testify against Ghosn in a Japanese trial, was found to have also improperly overpaid himself during an investigation by an outside law firm on October 7.

Source: Bloomberg

On December 30, Ghosn fled to Lebanon from Japan, violating the terms of his bail agreement. Media reports said he hid in a box designed for musical instruments on board a private jet. Ghosn said in a statement that he had "escaped injustice and political persecution" in Japan.

Source: Business Insider

Ghosn is now believed to be hiding out in his home in Beirut, Lebanon, where he has citizenship. On January 2, Interpol issued a warrant for Ghosn's arrest, but Lebanese officials have not said if they will take action.

Source: Reuters

• Ring Concierge is an NYC-based luxury jewelry company founded by Nicole Wegman that sells customized engagement rings and other jewelry.
• The brand's engagement rings start at $10,000 and go well into the six figures.
• Last year, I visited Ring Concierge's office to get a consultation and see inside one of their Manhattan bench jewelers that assembles the rings.
• The jewelry workshop was in New York's Diamond District, a block in Midtown Manhattan that's bustling with jewelry stores and served as the setting of the 2019 crime thriller "Uncut Gems," which stars Adam Sandler and was produced by Martin Scorsese.
• Afterward, I have to say that I understand why people pay six figures for the personalized, curated experience of buying one of Wegman's engagement rings.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On an afternoon leading up to Valentine's Day in 2019, I took a trip uptown to Ring Concierge, a jewelry company in New York City that sells customized engagement rings ranging from $10,000 to well into the six figures.

Millennials have somewhat different jewelry-buying habits than past generations, as Business Insider's Aine Cain previously reported. Kay, Zales, and Jared all reported weak holiday sales. But with its popular Instagram account and jewels designed by young women, Ring Concierge seemed to me like a fresh alternative that would appeal to my demographic, so I decided to check it out.

I spent about two hours with Ring Concierge, trying on diamond rings, learning the ins and outs of the "four C's," and getting a peek into the workshop of one of their jewelers in the nearby Diamond District, which was the setting of the 2019 crime thriller "Uncut Gems," starring Adam Sandler and produced by Martin Scorsese.

It was an eye-opening experience that gave me a newfound appreciation for diamonds, which didn't particularly interest me before. I totally get why people will pay well into the six figures for a Ring Concierge engagement ring, even though the average American spends $6,324.

Here's what it was like.

SEE ALSO: A woman who sells 6-figure engagement rings on Instagram says there's a simple way to buy diamonds that look bigger for a lower price

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Founded by Nicole Wegman, Ring Concierge is a NYC-based company that designs and sells customized engagement rings and other jewelry.

Source: Ring Concierge

Ring Concierge is not far from Manhattan's "Diamond District," a bustling block on West 47th Street lined with jewelry stores that was the setting for the 2019 hit film "Uncut Gems," starring Adam Sandler and produced by Martin Scorsese.

Source: The Diamond District BID

Wegman says Ring Concierge sets itself apart from the chaotic Diamond District by offering a personalized, curated experience for people shopping for engagement rings. "We're a private jeweler," she told me. "We're luxury. ... it's a one-on-one, we pull in an assortment that is curated just for that client, and each setting is custom-made for the diamond they pick."

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Ring Concierge's Instagram account has more than 187,000 followers, and Wegman says it's one of the main ways clients discover her business.

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On a recent afternoon, I took the train to Midtown Manhattan to visit Ring Concierge's new office and get a mock engagement ring consultation to see what it's like for their real clients. The office was tucked away behind a plain, gray door ...

... but stepping inside felt like stepping into a pastel-toned oasis.

The space was full of mirrors and gold accents ...

... as well as touches such as fresh flowers ...

... and macarons.

Glass-doored display cases displayed some of Ring Concierge's non-engagement ring jewels. The space was minimalist and serene — definitely the kind of atmosphere I think someone would want for picking out an engagement ring.

In addition to customized engagement rings, Ring Concierge sells earrings, bracelets, necklaces, anklets, charms, and other jewelry that starts at $100.

Source: Ring Concierge

Their most popular range for non-engagement jewelry is between $500 and $1,000.

In addition to Wegman, the founder of Ring Concierge, I met Taylor Lanore, a diamond consultant and the PR director for the company.

We stepped into Wegman's office for my mock consultation.

She set out an array of rings for me to look at and try on, ranging from $12,000 to $80,000. Wegman told me Ring Concierge's average engagement ring price was about $30,000 in 2018.

But some fall on the much higher end of the spectrum. These three rings each cost between $150,000 and $200,000. The left stone and center stones are 5 carats and the right is a 7 carat. I don't think I'd ever seen diamonds of this size up close before. "These are three shapes that are really commonly asked for because they're all elongated," Wegman said.

Wegman showed me the grading scale of the the Gemology institute of America, or GIA, a third party organization that grades diamonds based on the famous "four C's:" color, cut, clarity, and carat weight. "Depending on what shape you're looking at, different things become a priority," she said.

"For example, in emerald cuts, they're really glassy and geometric and you can see right through them, so you'd want to stay higher on the clarity grade," Wegman said. Clarity is the measure of any inclusions in the diamond.

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"Inclusions are little imperfections," Wegman told me. "Basically, any diamond that's not flawless or internally flawless, will have little, tiny inclusions that were formed during the creation of the diamond. It could be like there's a speck of nitrogen that got in there." Most inclusions aren't visible to the naked eye, so Wegman had me look at a 5 carat diamond through a magnifier.

I spotted a few tiny bubbles, but I couldn't believe that these tiny, invisible imperfections made this diamond less valuable. "It's almost good that they're there because if they weren't, now we're talking about a $300,000 diamond," Wegman said.

Wegman used a pair of tweezers to place the 5 carat diamond into an empty setting on my hand. Lanore told me they set loose stones in settings like this to give the idea of a completed ring look. Once a client decides on a look, they go back to hand-select accent stones to match the main diamond. The setting is then handmade.

One of the GIA's four C's is color, which measures whether there is any "warmth" or yellowness in the diamond. Ring Concierge only deals with colorless and near colorless diamonds. Most clients don't want to pay the premium for colorless, so they go down a couple levels to near colorless, Wegman said, "which to the untrained eye, is going to look colorless, but they're going to save so much money we can reallocate towards carat weight."

Many clients come in asking for a colorless, flawless diamond, Wegman said. But the Ring Concierge team tries to "hone in on the different characteristics that should be focused on, because what we really like to do is get them the most bang for their buck."

"If we can go lower in some of these grades that you can't see and focus on the ones you can see — like carat weight, which is what most women care about — we like to play with that," Wegman said. This 2.5 carat diamond is a J on the GIA scale, which falls under "near colorless," but I personally couldn't see any warmth or yellowness in it.

Beyond the diamond itself, clients have to consider the setting, which includes the band, prongs, and any additional rows of diamonds, as can be seen on these two rings. Each setting is custom-made for the diamond the client picks.

One of Ring Concierge's signature ring settings is the Whisper Thin, which Wegman said was their most popular setting in 2018. This 3 carat ring costs $38,000.

The ultra-thin band and prongs "make it look like the diamond is floating on your hand," Wegman said. This particular ring only fit on my pinky finger, but I liked how the minimalist design looked on my hand. Despite its delicate appearance, Wegman said it's "surprisingly sturdy."

During a typical consultation, Wegman and the team at Ring Concierge are trying to narrow down the client's preferences. "And it does take some time, because we really do only pull beautiful diamonds and then it's hard to pick because you're like, 'They're all so pretty,'" Wegman said.

I could definitely see how it would be difficult to choose. Wegman says if a client has always loved a certain diamond shape but is considering taking a chance on a different shape, she usually steers them back toward their initial preference. "You want to be consistent about your preferences," she said.

"We want to make sure it's something you've always loved and something you're always going to love," she added. One of the most requested diamond shapes at Ring Concierge is oval.

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Unsurprisingly, even more than cut, color, or clarity, Ring Concierge clients tend to be most concerned with carat weight. "We're in New York City," Wegman said. "It is what it is."

After my mock consultation, we headed outside to visit the workshop of one of Ring Concierge's jewelers, just a two-minute walk away.

I was struck by how small and ordinary-looking the workshop was. In this room, five jewelers were working on jewelry, each with a different specialty.

The jewelers were often looking through microscopes for the delicate work.

Armen is a diamond setter, which means he has the crucial job of setting the diamonds onto a piece of jewelry and securing them in place with tiny prongs.

Diamond setting comes near the end of the engagement ring making process, just before polishing and any possible engraving. Tashchyan let me watch over his shoulder while he worked, and I couldn't help but think that I definitely would not have steady enough hands or the patience for this type of meticulous work.

Greg, the master jeweler, showed me the CAD software they use to design the rings. Ring Concierge works closely with their master jewelers on each design. As the jewelers have already mastered Ring Concierge's signature settings, Wegman and her team usually communicate the design verbally in addition to using photos and specific millimeter measurements.

"We are all involved in every step of the production process to ensure the design and outcome is exactly as we want," Lanore told me. "We typically only use CADs if it's a completely new design where it's beneficial to have a visual of the piece before it enters production."

The making of a Ring Concierge engagement ring has seven steps.

The seven steps of crafting a Ring Concierge engagement ring:

1. Design
2. CAD or hand carving
3. Printing the wax mold
4. Casting (changing the mold to medal)
5. Jeweler
6. Diamond setting
7. Polishing and finishing. If applicable, the final step is any engraving.

Before we left, Baharyan let me hold this gigantic jewel: An 80 carat vivid yellow diamond worth about $10 million. This one was not for Ring Concierge, but I had to get a picture of it anyway. It was definitely the first time I had $10 million held in one hand — and probably the last.

After visiting the workshop, we took a stroll down the stretch of 47th Street known as the Diamond District, which claims to be "the world's largest shopping district for all sizes and shapes of diamonds and fine jewelry."

Source: Diamond District BID

The east coast location of the GIA (Gemology Institute of America), which only has two locations in the US, is on this block. The other is in Carlsbad, California.

Source: GIA

Jewelry stores were everywhere I looked.

The bustling Diamond District made a stark contrast to Ring Concierge's serene, private office. They would be two very different environments for picking out a ring, and I have to say, I would definitely prefer a private, curated consultation over hunting for a ring in what looks like a shopping mall.

Before my visit to Ring Concierge, I wasn't too interested in diamonds. I thought engagement rings were sort of old-fashioned and boring. But seeing some modern designs — designed by young women — and getting a peek into how they're made changed my perspective.

I left my tour with a newfound appreciation for our culture's most precious gemstones, and understanding, for the first time, why New Yorkers are shelling out six figures for rings.

• The last 10 years of retail have been tumultuous, yes, but they've also been exciting to witness thanks to advancements in product tech, physical shopping experiences, and online shopping. 
• Our list for the top 10 most notable retail companies of the decade includes tech giants like Amazon, Apple, and Google, along with brand-new entrants like Rent the Runway and Glossier.
• When we look back on the 2010s, we'll remember these 10 notable companies for their impressive sales, commitments to larger social values, innovative products, and industry-wide impact. 

Retail has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. The products themselves, along with how we shop for them, learn about them, and receive them, have all evolved — overall, for the better, we think.

In this decade, retail companies attacked problems of sustainability, convenience, and accessibility in new and creative ways, including (but not limited to) packaging design, physical shopping experiences, and shipping logistics. The rise of online shopping hasn't made the transition easy, but many companies have risen to the challenge and written the beginnings of a playbook for how to succeed as a brand or retailer in the upcoming years. 

Having covered and reviewed all types of products and companies, both old and new, I put together a hall of fame for the retail world of the 2010s, taking the following criteria into account: 

• Sales, growth, and funding figures
• Mission-driven actions and practices 
• Product innovation ("newness" and creativity)
• Influence on the retail industry or world at large

Below, I outline why I believe they're so notable and call out one product that made them famous this decade. 

We'll remember the retail world of the 2010s by these 10 notable companies: 

Amazon: An inescapable presence in your home

Shop devices at Amazon

Through devices like Echo speakers and Fire TV streamers, Amazon has wiggled its way into our daily lives beyond just free two-day shipping. These convenient electronics let people gather information and enjoy entertainment in new ways, and their connection to Amazon's existing services was so seamless that you had no choice but to become entrenched in the ecosystem. 

In 2014, Amazon introduced the Echo and forever condemned anyone with the name "Alexa" to a lifetime of smart-assistant jokes. The Echo smart speaker was a major innovation at the time in that unlike Siri and Google Assistant, it didn't require a screen in order to interact with it.

Even though some models were more successful than other experimentations (RIP, Echo Look), Echo devices are now a standard in the smart home world, holding their own against the devices from other tech giants like Google and Apple. According to Amazon's SVP of devices and services, more than 100 million devices with Alexa built-in have been sold (as of January 2019). 

The last decade at Amazon also saw the introductions of the Fire tablet (2011) and the Fire TV (2014), in addition to improvements on the Kindle e-reader and the acquisitions of Ring, Twitch, and Whole Foods. So whether you wanted to play games, watch shows and movies, read, keep your home secure, or shop for groceries, there's now a way to do it with an Amazon device or service. 

Warby Parker: The first of many direct-to-consumer successes

Shop glasses and contacts at Warby Parker

Warby Parker is one of the most well-known examples of a new startup revolutionizing a long-neglected industry through the now-cliched method of "cutting out the middleman." Anyone who has ever tried getting new, stylish glasses knows the problem: they've long been expensive and difficult to buy. By offering competitive prices (starting at $95 including prescription lenses), a variety of designs, and the ability to try on more than a few pairs at home, Warby Parker has made shopping for glasses much more affordable, convenient, and enjoyable. 

We could say that the eyecare startup walked so other digitally native brands could run, but Warby is still running, opening stores across the nation (some of which even offer eye exams) and recently launching a contacts business. And, it's still raising money for more expansions to come. Over eight rounds, it has raised nearly $300 million. 

Its impact outside of business growth also can't be ignored. Since its first day of launch in 2010, Warby has helped distribute glasses to people in need in partnership with VisionSpring as part of its Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program. 

Everlane: Succeeding with simplicity and 'radical transparency'

Shop clothing and accessories at Everlane

Transparency in the fashion world is rare, and if it means higher clothing prices, some consumers actually prefer to turn away and shop in ignorant bliss. Online clothing brand Everlane, on the other hand, abides by a concept it terms "radical transparency." With every single item, it tells you the true costs of the materials, production, labor, and transportation involved, along with information about the factory it was made in (craftsmanship, worker safety, and eco-friendly practices are top factors). 

What's also "radical" and surprising about this popular clothing brand is that its fashion isn't focused on of-the-moment trends. Since its beginnings, Everlane has stuck to classic, ageless basics like straight jeans, plain leather flats, and crewneck cashmere sweaters. In fact, in 2010, the debut item that prompted a waitlist of 60,000 people in five days was ... a T-shirt. Everlane is also nontraditional in that it doesn't hold regular sales. However, you can "Choose What You Pay" and get discounts of up to 50% off on select items.  

The combination of ethical practices and versatile, high-quality style has struck a chord with millennial shoppers who are increasingly thoughtful about where and how their clothing is made and the longevity of their closets. In 2016, its revenue was $100 million, and while no new data has been released since, it's probably safe to say the brand has grown even more. 

Apple: Continuing to thrive in the post-Jobs era

Shop Apple devices at Best Buy

Following the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, the world watched with bated breath to see where Apple would go without its pioneering leader. The world needn't have worried.

Three major products released this decade — the iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods — became strong fixtures in the Apple ecosystem, with the AirPods being the company's best bet for offsetting the decline of iPhone revenue. 

Though some of Apple's design decisions (e.g. removing headphone jacks) continue to be contentious and critics question its limits of innovation, the company remains highly popular and successful among consumers, who have no qualms about upgrading to the newest models every year. In 2018, there were 1.3 billion Apple devices in active use worldwide and the company's total annual revenue exceeded $265 billion.

Looking ahead to the next decade, we're interested in seeing if and how Apple maintains such numbers, or if its previous reliance on the iPhone proves to be a double-edged sword. 

Rent the Runway: The closet of the future

Rent designer clothing at Rent the Runway

No one should have to pay thousands of dollars for an outfit for a single event, but that's exactly what cofounder Jenn Hyman's sister did in 2008 and what got the wheels turning for the idea of Rent the Runway, a service that offers one-time rentals and long-term, unlimited rentals of designer clothing. The Unlimited plan ($159/month), introduced in 2016, can offer a monthly retail value of more than $10,000 depending on how often it's used and the retail prices of the pieces rented. It's all part of the company's vision of creating a "closet in the cloud" that replenishes infinitely without contributing as much to apparel waste. 

The true heart of Rent the Runway is an impressive logistics machine: its warehouse is the country's largest single dry cleaner (measured by pounds cleaned per hour), a mammoth operation with clothing entering and leaving via black garment bag. With more than 9 million members to serve, the company has experienced some blips along the way and in September 2019 had to briefly halt service and turn away potential new members.

However, with new and innovative services like the recently announced partnership with W Hotels and an always-expanding supply of designers and styles, Rent the Runway is still well on its way to changing the way people dress for any occasion. 

Target: A retail giant that never stops adapting

Shop home, kitchen, clothing, and more at Target

Everyone's favorite store to get lost in evolved significantly in the last decade, from opening stores in Canada (and closing them shortly after), to launching a partnership with Italian fashion house Missoni that promptly sold out, to making new philanthropic and educational commitments. 

Several changes made Target a better place to shop: it opened smaller format CityTarget stores in densely populated cities, started a subscription program for household essentials, launched more convenient pickup and shipping options like Store Pickup and Shipt Same-Day Delivery, and integrated CVS Health pharmacies into its stores. 

Though it celebrated its 50th store anniversary and 110th company anniversary in 2012, it proved it could keep up with the times and with the interests of its shoppers by providing shelf space for interesting, up-and-coming startups such as Harry's and Quip.

It also doubled down on sustainability efforts and introduced a Sustainable Product Standard, made stores and facilities more energy-efficient, and signed onto the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action. 

As one of the country's largest retailers, it hasn't fallen victim to the retail plague. It made $75.8 billion in total revenue in 2018, and its most recent earnings report shows Q3 revenue growth of 4.7% from last year to $18.7 billion. You can find Target stores in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, totaling to more than 1,800 stores. 

Casper and Leesa: Going head-to-head in the mattress wars

Shop mattresses, bedding, and more at Casper

Shop mattresses, bedding, and more at Leesa

Neither Casper nor Leesa invented the concept of an online mattress-in-a-box, but they certainly popularized it. Whereas shoppers 10 years ago asked, "Who would buy a mattress online, and how does that work?" shoppers today ask "Who wouldn't buy a mattress online, and from which of the many, many brands should I order?"

By selling mattresses that cost just under $1,000, Casper's revenue topped $400 million in 2018, so the demand for comfortable slabs of foam is clearly there — it appears that people simply weren't sure where to buy them before or found traditional experiences inconvenient or too expensive. Startups like Casper and Leesa are also master marketers, creating unique brands and social initiatives that shoppers who grew up on the internet connect with more naturally. 

A mattress that fits your body's needs and preferences is the foundation of a good night's sleep, but these new brands also know that a mattress isn't the end of it. That's why they're also expanding into complementary accessories like sheets, pillows, bed frames, and even Glow Lights, determined to capitalize on our generation's anxiety and exhaustion. 

Glossier: Beauty that looks and feels authentic

Shop beauty and skin-care at Glossier

While many companies launch a blog to accompany their product, Emily Weiss, a former Vogue fashion assistant, built her company Glossier the other way around. In 2010, she launched Into the Gloss, a website dedicated to the beauty routines of women and all the best products to try. Glossier came four years later. 

Armed with the data and engagement of Into the Gloss' ardently loyal readers, she could create a new brand that uniquely served its customers. Rather than join the scores of other beauty brands that simply told customers what they should use and aspire to, Glossier flipped beauty on its head and made products — like the wildly popular Boy Brow or Cloud Paint— that felt like they were addressing real wants and needs. 

Despite, or perhaps because of, its ascent to an admirable $1 billion valuation, Glossier has remained tightly focused around community. Social media is an important part of how it shows the various and creative use cases of its products, and its limited number of beautifully designed physical outposts only increases its intrigue and prestige among its millennial fans, who line up around the block for access. 

Patagonia: Proving that sustainability is a strong business model

Shop outdoor gear at Patagonia

Almost by default, outdoor companies like Patagonia are connected to larger environmental missions. Since they encourage people to enjoy the outdoors, it follows that they should play a role in protecting those outdoors. As climate change has accelerated dramatically in the last decade to a degree we can't ignore, so too has the urgency of outdoor retailers to play their part. 

Over the years, Patagonia has supported grassroots organizations that are trying to fight back against the environmental crisis. In 2019, it began asking for donations from its community on Black Friday, and within 10 days, it gathered more than $10 million. Patagonia matched these donations and is giving $20 million to grassroots activists to solve issues related to water, climate, biodiversity, and more. It also pledges at least 1% of annual sales to the protection and restoration of the environment every year and has donated more than $100 million to date. 

Other actions Patagonia has taken include producing clothing with sustainable materials (recycled bottles, recycled down, and more) and challenging President Donald Trump in court when he dramatically reduced the sizes of a number of national monuments. While its branded vests are ubiquitous in the finance industry, it's becoming more careful about the companies it associates with. Earlier this year, it announced that it's shifting its focus to working with "similar mission-driven companies that prioritize the planet."

For leading with its values rather than profits, Patagonia was awarded the UN Champion of the Earth honor in 2019. 

Google: Pushing the limits of what we think our phones and home gadgets can do

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Though Google opened the 2010s with the Nexus smartphone, it was the Pixel, first released in 2016, that put Google's name squarely on the map of phones worth buying. In the past, Google worked in partnership with other developers such as HTC to design its phones, but the Pixel line was Google's first phone to be developed and designed in-house. And with a new SVP of devices and services on board, the company was well-equipped to make its mark in the world of smartphones and beyond. 

The phones overall have received mixed reviews over the years, but one thing most critics can agree on is that the Google Pixel's stunning camera is a standout feature and makes the Pixel the perfect phone for photo enthusiasts. Photo storage service Google Photos, now separated from Google+, has made it easy for users to store, organize, and share all these photos for free.  

It's worth mentioning that 2016 was a particularly important year because that was when Google introduced its personal voice assistant, Google Assistant. It's now conveniently integrated into many Android and Google devices to perform tasks such as scheduling alarms, looking up directions, and much more. The Google Home family of devices, in particular, has been a major extension of the Google Assistant. Google's smart speaker solution is a competitive alternative to Amazon's Echo and helps homeowners who are Google fans integrate the utility and convenience of Google into everyday life.