This 'as-told-to' essay is based on a conversation with Juli Ford, a 57-year-old real estate agent and certified senior advisor based in Massachusetts. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When my children were young, we saw my parents all the time.

We lived very close to each other in South Plymouth, Massachusetts, and my parents always helped with the kids. From the time they were born, Wednesdays were Grammy and Grampy Day.

My dad got sick in 2005. When we learned in the summer of 2011 that he probably didn't have much time left, we talked about what life would be like after he was gone, including where my mom would live.

When he passed in December 2011, my mom was not ready to live with us. At 68, she had never lived on her own. She'd been with my dad since she was 15.

Then, in April 2015, a house in Pembroke, Massachusetts, about 30 minutes from South Plymouth, came on the market. The second I saw it online, I thought, "Oh, this is perfect."

The house had a beautiful in-law apartment

The house is 4,300 square feet, and the basement is about 800 square feet. Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

My mom fell in love with the home's basement apartment. It's full of beautiful natural light. It's one bedroom with a den, a full kitchen, a fireplace, its own laundry, 1.5 baths, its own outdoor patio, and two entrances.

We made an offer within two days. We bought the house in April 2015 for $630,000.

My mom had no interest in ownership. Instead, she made a financial contribution toward the down payment equal to what she would have paid in rent for the next five years.

She also gave us money every year for utilities. Last year, she started making a bigger monthly contribution to help cover household expenses. She essentially has not had to pay rent for 10 years, and as the house gets older, the cost of maintaining it grows.

It was a dream when we first moved in

My mom helped me a lot with my kids, especially with their schooling. My kids were 10 and 11 when she moved in, and they were homeschooled. We drove around a lot because we were going to museums and other activities in Boston. She sometimes helped with driving, and she became their English teacher because her first career was teaching English.

Grammy Wednesdays continued when we moved into the house, and my kids, who are 20 and 22 now, would go down and visit her on their own.

My mom has exceptionally good boundaries. I'm sure we did things differently than she would have done with our kids, but she's always been very good at keeping her opinions to herself.

My mom is still independent, but needs our help now

At 82, she's a bit less independent than she was 10 years ago because of health issues. Still, she has privacy: I don't know everything that she does all the time, and we can go days without seeing each other. Other times, we see each other a lot more often.

We have had a few medical emergencies with my mom, so I got in the habit of keeping my phone next to my bed. There have been a few times that she's had to call me.

I cannot imagine how much harder it would be to be a daughter of an aging mom if we weren't in the same house. I would be so much more concerned about her being alone and getting lonelier. It would be more time-consuming for me if I had to go somewhere else to support her.

The house gave us other financial benefits

In the beginning, the only financial benefit I really thought about of combining households was that we could get a nicer house than my husband and I could afford on our own.

Around the time we got this house, my brother's family went through a foreclosure after his wife had been hit by a drunken driver and had a traumatic brain injury. They had a lot of housing instability during that time because she was unable to work and had massive medical bills. They were not sure where they were going to live.

Because we combined households with my mom, we were able to tap into the equity in this house to help them. We took out a home equity loan and bought a small, lovely house, and rented it to them. We weren't really making any money on it, but the rent was paying the bills.

Within two years, they recovered their credit enough that they purchased the house from us. They were able to rebuild their financial well-being in that house.

We used the proceeds from the sale to buy a vacation property in Vermont, which we turned into an Airbnb for four years. When we sold it, we paid off our kids' student loans.

We were all able to build wealth because we combined households with my mom. We feel so proud and grateful. It's not something I saw coming 11 years ago.

I see multigenerational living as one of the most compelling solutions to our elder care and affordable housing crises. Bringing families together around this is really an underutilized solution.

• Pokémon cards have become valuable assets on the playground and in cafeterias.
• Preteen collectors aren't playing around: They view the cards as investments and a tool to build value.
• I caught up with kids at a recent trading event. Here's what I learned.

My introduction to Pokémon was the cartoon, which premiered in the US when I was five. My brother watched and built a small collection of cards, only for them to be stolen, marking the end of his short-lived hobby.

I hadn't really thought much about the pocket-sized monsters since then, aside from when Pokémon Go became an inescapable phenomenon in 2016.

Then, a few months ago, a couple of my colleagues with elementary school-aged kids said Pokémon was back, but it wasn't the game they remembered.

Thanks to the internet and smartphones, today's kids treat their Pokémon collections like stock portfolios. Kids bragged, some inaccurately, about million-dollar cards, and parents coached their youngsters on how to make the best trades.

I decided to see for myself and headed to the hottest club in New York for the under-16 set: Bleecker Trading.

The financial center

On a Thursday during spring break, the hobby shop on the Upper West Side was welcoming, with boxes of free pizza stacked near the door and a Pikachu balloon signaling that it was open for business.

Business, indeed. During my afternoon at the Bleecker Trading, I watched as dozens of kids wheeled and dealed, spewed financial jargon — like appreciation and interest — that I didn't learn until I was twice their age, and negotiated with adults.

Last year, Pokémon was the world's No. 1 toy product by sales — though perhaps it should be thought of more as a commodity and less as a plaything. Over the past year, Pokémon cards have outperformed both the Dow and the S&P 500, according to Card Ladder's Pokémon index, which tracks market performance on several resale platforms.

Edi, a nine-year-old from Switzerland, was visiting his dad in New York and had begged to visit Bleecker Trading. When I walked in, he was in the middle of shaking hands with the shop owner, Matt Winkelried, to mark a successful deal.

Edi understands how valuable cards can be.

"The best card costs more than a house," he told me.

He's not wrong. In February, a rare Pikachu sold for $16.5 million, setting a record. Edi's own top card cost about $300 or $400, his dad said.

In a back corner, three teenagers were in the middle of a trade. One said he was happy to make a cash deal. Another said, with a bit of jealousy, that the other's grandma always buys him good cards.

They were emphatic about the reason they collect: the money.

They seemed a bit bemused by my amazement. Duh, they understood the basics of investing and how to read stock-like charts that track the values of specific cards.

They prided themselves on trading fairly and following the rules (including sanitizing their hands before engaging, as demonstrated by Bleecker Trading staff). In fact, they seemed downright responsible with their money.

A couple of tables over, RJ and Jasper, who were there with their dads, told me about how they keep some packs and boxes of cards unopened — a strategy Winkelried likened to a low-risk investment like bonds.

It's tempting to rip through them, RJ said, so he keeps them under his bed in a bag. Out of sight, out of mind.

I asked what he was saving for. "A rainy day," Jasper, who keeps track of the interest on various cards, told me.

The kids, it turns out, may be all right.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hady Kfoury, the founder and CEO of Naya, a Middle Eastern-inspired food chain. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I created Naya to share the authentic Middle Eastern flavors I grew up with, in a modern and fast-casual way. Today, we have 43 locations. We're adding 12 more this year, and 25 next year. Our goal is to reach 200 locations by 2030.

It takes a lot of work and it's a competitive environment.

I'm very proud that I'm a CEO and still so hands-on. I work a lot — and I'm not saying this is a healthy lifestyle.

I wake up around 6 a.m.

I try to have a peaceful hour before the rest of my family wakes up. Recently, I've been exercising in the morning because I find it difficult to do it after work, especially if I get home late. So I try to work out between 6:20 and 6:50.

I call my mom at 6:50 a.m. every morning

I call my mom usually every day at 6:50 a.m. We speak for about five to 10 minutes.

My mom is an unbelievable cook and she hosted a lot growing up. She would have 20 to 100 people over for dinner and cook everything from scratch, with flower arrangements and everything. She's a great resource when it comes to understanding the food trends in Lebanon.

I don't eat breakfast during the week

Monday through Friday, I drink tons of coffee but no breakfast. On weekends I eat a heavy breakfast. I don't know why, but that's how my body works.

I wake up my kids and my wife prepares breakfast for them. Then we leave home by 7:50 a.m. and walk to school. My children go to a French International school. Lebanon was a French colony for many years and it was my first language. So I wanted to pass that down to my kids.

I refuse to have an assistant

Our office is next to Grand Central and I head there after dropping my kids off around 8:15 a.m.

I refuse to have an assistant and I schedule everything myself. I'm very into routines and habit. I don't want to have to talk to someone right after I finish a call. I'd rather take a half-hour break and tackle my emails first. It would be very hard to have someone schedule my day and not know what I really need between meetings.

I go to Naya every day

We're surrounded by roughly eight or nine restaurants within a few minutes walking distance. So I go to one every day.

I switch up a lot, but my go-to order is a chicken kebab with a lot of tahini. 70% of our sales go to chicken shawarma. So I try to have that as well, to confirm consistency.

I try and be as incognito as possible. If I go during a lunch rush, I avoid talking to the team and just evaluate the experience. The quality of the food is extremely important.

Sometimes on my way to work, I'll go into a restaurant before opening. I try to make it feel like I'm a partner — not the boss — and everything is business as usual. I ask workers if anything is bothering them, how things are moving, and then I do some spot checks on food quality and cleanliness.

I have a lot of calls to import ingredients

I don't want to turn Naya into an import-export business but I'd love to get 20 to 30% of our products to come straight from Lebanon. We need to be authentic and true to our toots.

It takes a lot of coordination because there's a seven-hour timezone difference. Lebanon also operates differently and that's another challenge. Samples can take time, especially when it's a refrigerted product, so it's a lot of communication.

The tariffs add another layer of complications. I've been trying to negotiate and split the difference between us and our manufacturers. It hasn't been so bad for Lebanon so far, but the uncertainty stresses us.

I have dinner with my aunt once a week

Similar to my mom, my aunt is an unbelievable cook. We have dinner together once a week at her place and she cooks a little bit of everything, but with a big focus on Lebanese food. It's very hard to take her recipes and scale it commercially, but she's an unbelievable person to go for new ideas.

I work 14- to 16-hour days

I try to get home by 7:30 p.m. It's important for me to have dinner with the kids. I try to limit myself to two to three business dinners or events per week. When I have those, I go straight from the office to dinner and then I'm back home by around 10 p.m.

I'm constantly working. I check my emails on the subway and while I'm walking on the streets of New York. Even when I watch TV, I try to shift to something industry-related, either from an entrepreneurial perspective or cooking.

Right now, we're emerging and there's so much going on, that I think my presence is very important. So it's an easy 14- to 16-hours a day.

I used to get copies of every review

I can't sleep well knowing that I have so many unread emails. For almost 17 years, I would get a copy of every customer review from Yelp, Google, or customer support.

About three months ago, I handed it over to someone that I trust who has a great grip on the customer experience. Now she sends me weekly reports on how things are going and I reduced my email intake by at least 150 emails per day.

Sometimes I would get emails with a complaint and even if it was 11 p.m., I would email the general manager and ask what went wrong. I learned I should not do that because it stresses out the team and it's not healthy.

I spend my summer weekends in Connecticut

I try to disconnect as much as possible on the weekends, but I still have to spend four or five hours catching up. I love to work a bit on Sunday just to get ready for Monday before it gets crazy.

I spend my summer weekends in a town called Litchfield, Connecticut. We're part of a community that has tennis courts. I play four or five hours on Sunday. It's a lot of socializing and fun.

I play chess before bed

I was told to stop playing chess before bed and give myself an hour break. I'm hooked on Chess.com, where you can play with real people. It's a great way to end my day.

I try to read half an hour before bed and completely disconnect. I love reading, but I don't do more than five to 10 pages a night.

I go to bed around 11:30 p.m. My sleep score varies, but it never goes above 80. I'm trying to get better at that. I try to avoid wine at night. When I don't drink and I disconnect from screens an hour or two before bed, I sleep much better.

• Seven years ago, Matthijs van der Ham won a lottery to rent a tiny home in the Netherlands.
• One of the main reasons van der Ham has stayed is the village feels safe for his 13-year-old son.
• Instead of complaining about noise, his neighbors turned his son's birthday party into a mini festival.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Matthijs van der Ham, 44, an architect and woodworker. For seven years, he and his 13-year-old son have lived in Minitopia,'s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.

Seven years ago, when our landlord told me the apartment on a farm where I lived with my seven-year-old son was coming off the rental market, I needed to find somewhere else to live.

Around the same time, a tiny house became available at a Minitopia village in 's-Hertogenbosch, the first of several in the region. I was already familiar with this particular village because, earlier that year, I'd helped a friend build a home there.

The Minitopia Foundation held a lottery for the rental and hundreds of people applied. With a bit of luck, I won. Within three weeks of losing our apartment, I had the keys to our tiny house in 's-Hertogenbosch.

Living in a tiny-home village has been liberating

When I first moved here in 2019, it was common for tour groups to walk through the site and for drones to fly overhead to film life here. That's less common now. There are many more projects like this around the world, and tiny homes are becoming increasingly normal.

Back then, the site was mostly concrete. Over the course of my time here, however, it has become much greener. Every year, I plant trees along the street and invite the neighbors to join. They often do. On a typical street, the local government would probably remove trees like that or make you go through a long approval process. Here, if I want to plant trees, I can.

In my spare time, I like to create art from wood. On a normal residential street, if someone saw a man walking around with an ax, they might call the police. Here, people ask what I'm making and tell me how nice my art is.

In a place like Minitopia, the entire street feels like your living space, unlike in normal neighborhoods where everything is clearly defined: fenced gardens, parking spaces, a road, a pavement.

Here, there are no fences and no strict boundaries. It's much more fluid. When you live in a space that is less rigid, it becomes easier to think that way, too. Living like this has been liberating, and I feel freer than I used to.

Minitopia is a fantastic community for raising children

I've always been happy here, especially when it comes to raising my son. It's a great place for kids to grow up. It feels safe, and there aren't many cars passing through.

My son is always strolling around outside before returning at a set time. It's really nice that children have the opportunity to explore here. That's one of the main reasons I've stayed.

Another reason is that the people are really great. A few years ago, I threw a party for my son's birthday. At first, I only invited his classmates. Then we ended up inviting their families and everyone at Minitopia. There are more than two dozen homes here.

It turned into a small festival. We had a food truck, music, and neighbors lending chairs and helping out. In a normal neighborhood, we'd have received noise complaints, but at Minitopia, everyone just wants to have fun.

We do a lot together as a community, which is special. Every Tuesday, we have a get-together where we make art, eat, and talk. On New Year's Eve, we had a big party.

You can keep to yourself if you like, but I love that there are so many opportunities to do fun things together.

I've never been tempted to move

Though I rent this house, it feels like my home. I handle most of the maintenance, and I'm free to change it as I see fit. For example, I've made some improvements, such as adding a roof over the porch.

While my dream is to one day live on a piece of land with better soil so I can garden more, at this point in my life, living in a tiny home village works well for us.

In my seven years here, I've never once been tempted to leave.