Credit Karma will run as a stand-alone outfit, with existing CEO Kenneth Lin still in charge. Intuit expects the acquisition to close in the second half of 2020 if it clears the regulatory process.

The deal makes sense for Intuit. While it has the budgeting site Mint under its wing, it doesn’t have a credit tool quite like Credit Karma — Turbo is as close as it gets. The buyout gives Intuit a more complete picture of your financial health, not to mention more customer data and an easy way to push more TurboTax sales. On top of this, Credit Karma’s customers tend to skew younger. This could help Intuit reel in users who otherwise wouldn’t consider its apps, which also include QuickBooks.

There are concerns about the deal, though. Credit Karma is free at its heart (it makes money by pitching related products), but there are no guarantees it’ll stay that way. After all, Intuit is one of the companies that hid free tax filing options from Google searches. There’s also the question of overlap. Credit Karma offers some similar tools, including free tax filing. Will those survive, or will Intuit shutter them in favor of its own offerings? Credit Karma’s relative independence under the deal suggests its features will stick around for a while, but we wouldn’t rule out long-term changes.

The new restrictions make some important exceptions. First, they permit tobacco- and menthol-flavored goods. They also apply only to cartridge-based products, which the FDA says are easier for teens to acquire and conceal. Tank-based vaping devices, like those sold in vape shops that typically cater to adult smokers, are not restricted by the new rules.

The FDA says it is ready to take action against those who continue to manufacture and sell the unauthorized products. It will “prioritize enforcement” against those who target youth, whether they do so through kid-friendly labeling and advertising or promoting how easy it is to conceal or disguise their product.

“The United States has never seen an epidemic of substance use arise as quickly as our current epidemic of youth use of e-cigarettes,” said Department of Health and Human Service Secretary Alex Azar. The ban on fruit- and mint-flavored vape products is an attempt to ensure vaping products “don’t provide an on-ramp to nicotine addiction for our youth” while also maintaining e-cigs as a potential off-ramp for adults using traditional tobacco products, Azar added.

The new rules come just weeks after Congress said it will raise the minimum smoking and vaping age to 21. The law is expected to go into effect sometime this year and will cover all tobacco products. According to the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey, more than five million US middle and high school students are current e-cigarette users, with the majority reporting that they use cartridge-based products. Other federal data says youth users are particularly attracted to fruit- and mint-flavored products.

In addition to the concern that vaping has led to an increase in youth tobacco use, vaping has also been associated with over 2,000 cases of lung injury in the US, and the CDC has confirmed 54 related deaths.

Juul will stop selling mint-flavored vape products in the US. The company says it’s pulling mint pods from its website, as well as no longer taking new orders from retailers. As of this article, the company only sells three flavors: Classic tobacco, Virginia tobacco and menthol.

Juul says it made the decision based on a study that came out this week that found mint-flavored vapes are popular among middle and high school students in the US. However, the company declined to comment on why it plans to continue selling menthol-flavored vapes when Bloomberg pointed out that the same study found both mint and menthol flavors were popular among youth.

The move comes after Juul stopped selling fruit-flavored vapes on its website last month. Echoing a statement he’d made at that time, new Juul CEO (and former tobacco exec) K.C. Crosthwaite said today that “These results are unacceptable and that is why we must reset the vapor category in the U.S. and earn the trust of society by working cooperatively with regulators, Attorneys General, public health officials, and other stakeholders to combat underage use. We will support the upcoming FDA flavor policy and will follow the PMTA process.”

Earlier today, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) said that the number of vaping-related lung injuries in US is up to 2,051. Cases of vaping-related lung illnesses have come up in 49 states, which, combined with rising use among youths has lead a variety of regulators to look into a ban of vapes — the Trump Administration is expected to announce a temporary ban on flavored e-cigarettes as soon as this week.

Good money habits

It doesn’t matter if you’re starting high school or graduating college; right now is the ideal time to develop good money habits. If you can live by a few rules, you’ll be able to survive, regardless of what happens in your future. The first rule is the simplest: Your income needs to add up to more than your spending.

Dire emergencies aside, you shouldn’t be getting into debt for any reason if you’re not earning a regular (and decent) salary. Credit cards offer the temptation of a spending spree, with the pain deferred for months (or even years) afterward, but don’t you dare. That new purchase may seem exciting now, but you’ll come to resent it when you’re paying 20 percent interest on it.

Third, set yourself a budget and do not, for any reason other than a serious emergency, break those rules. And no, Coachella tickets, illicit substances or a Seamless order to your dorm do not count as emergencies. With any purchase, channel Marie Kondo and ask if you need it or if you could do without or find a cheaper alternative.

Budgeting 101

Setting a budget can be hard, because it requires you to be mindful about how much you’re regularly spending, and on what. The end result, however, is that you’ll be able to understand where your cash goes and if you’re making the best use of it. Use your budget as a way of learning where your weak points are, and set rules to combat that in the future.

The first thing to do is to work out how much cash you’ll expect to have on hand for the year and what your fixed costs are. These are the things you’ll pay on a regular basis, either week by week or month by month, for the duration of your education. You know what a fixed cost is, because you know that bad things happen if you stop paying it.

Then, you’ll want to make a list of your costs that, while not fixed, you’ll be expected to pay on the regular. Food and drink, transport, not to mention fun, are all things you should keep in mind when building a budget. Plan how much you’d expect to spend in a good week and turn it into a fixed target, giving you a clear set of rules.

If you’re struggling with this, remember that your spending must be less than your income. So if there’s an imbalance, you’ll need to find ways to cut your spending by eating less lavishly or taking cheaper forms of transport. And don’t forget that you also need to account for emergencies and regular savings, so budget those in.

One more thing: You know those articles in which crusty rich people talk about how darn kids are spending too much money on store-bought coffee? It’s world-class bull, because the dollars spent on drinking a $3 latte every day for a year wouldn’t cover your loans, a car or down payment on a house. You need to include room in your budget for fun. Otherwise what’s the point of living? Set a figure that you can afford, and spend it on whatever brings you joy.

OUR FAVORITE WAYS TO BUDGET

Spreadsheet

The cheapest thing you can do, of course, is plug your finances into a spreadsheet and do the rest manually. Spend half an hour in Google Sheets or Excel and you’ll be able to knock out a half-decent budget that’ll last years. I should know: The same spreadsheet I used as a student is still working well a decade later.

Obviously, it’s far more work than some of the apps and services below, but there’s something rewarding about doing it yourself. And if you’re struggling to build your own, here’s a sample Google spreadsheet you can experiment with yourself, when you’ve copied it to your own drive.

You Need a Budget

Pricing: $6.99 per month after an initial 34-day free trial, although the figure is taken as a $83.99 lump sum. The company says that if you aren’t satisfied with the app or your service you can get a full refund, “no questions asked.”

You Need a Budget (YNAB) is one of the most popular money-management apps, and it’s available for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. It’s based on Jesse Mecham’s budgeting system, which gets you working your way out of debt through a combination of smart management and saving. Mecham’s methods are, at first blush, unorthodox, but its users are often enthusiastic to the point of being evangelical.

That includes planning for expenses based on the cash in your bank rather than what you expect to have at the end of the month. And YNAB tasks you with “aging” your money, keeping the cash in your bank until it is more than 30 days old before spending it. If you can do that, it’s likely your earnings are covering your spending and then some.

The platform offers goal tracking, education and a litany of workshops laid on every week to help people grapple with their budgets.

Subscribe to YNAB – $7/month

Mint

Pricing: Mint is “free” because, like Facebook, you are the product that Mint can sell ads to, and the platform gets a commission from every financial product it sells you. A premium, but not ad-free, version, called Mint Credit Monitor, costs $17 per month, offering credit-score tracking and identify theft protection.

Mint is the budgeting website owned and operated by Intuit, the accounting-software giant that also owns TurboTax. The service can pull together your various bank and credit card accounts and track your spending and saving through a single page. You’ll be able to develop your own budget and crucially, get reminders when it’s time to pay your bills.

Mint may not have as much focus on clearing your debt as YNAB, but it does have one killer feature: It’s owned by Intuit. That means come tax season (assuming your parents don’t claim you for the credits), you can import your 1099 documents from Mint straight into TurboTax.

Subscribe to Mint – $0+/month

PocketGuard

Pricing: PocketGuard itself is free, but there are limits on what you can track (and you can’t add in cash transactions at all). The unlocked product, PocketGuard Plus, costs $4 per month, or $20 annually.

PocketGuard’s selling point isn’t that it aims to totally shift your financial habits but that it acts as an angel on your shoulder during the month. Once you’ve imported your accounts and categorized your spending, you can start adding things like spending limits. These are, unsurprisingly, ways in which you can limit yourself — like only allocating $30 per month to entertainment and so forth. And PocketGuard is designed to look for cheaper alternatives to the financial products you already have.

Subscribe to PocketGuard – $4/month

Clarity Money

Pricing: Clarity Money is free, and the company has said it will remain so even now that it’s owned by Goldman Sachs. Over time, it’s likely that Clarity will be integrated further into Marcus, Goldman’s new online bank (of which it is now a part).

The idea behind Clarity is to put all of your banking into a single place so that you can organize your funds more easily. What separates Clarity from other apps is that it promises to help you save money by finding subscriptions you may have forgotten about, and it helps you cancel them. Even better, however, is the pledge to negotiate bills you’ve already incurred to try to get a better deal.

Subscribe to Clarity Money – Free

Image: David-Prado via Getty Images (Budgeting 101)

Ahead of the New York Internal Auto Show Genesis unveiled its Mint concent car. The small two-door EV was of course green. But it’s styling and short wheelbase make it perfect for urban environments where you’re going to be judged for your fashion and style choices. I guess.

Genesis says the tiny car will have an estimated range of 200 miles and will support fast charging up to 350kW. It’s a concept car so those numbers are sort of made up. But they could be a good indicator of a potential small EV that the automaker could introduce in a few years. Plus, if you’re just cruising around town you don’t really need more than a 200-mile range and if a car does support 350kW charging, it’ll quick in and out of a charging station.

The rear of the car is interesting. Instead of a traditional hatchback, a pair of doors open skyward like a supercar. It’s weird and makes zero sense for a cargo area and it’s also sort of awesome. But I never want to see it on a production car.

Manfred Fitzgerald, global head of the Genesis brand said, “Mint belongs in the city, and we are proud to introduce our evolution of the ideal city car in New York.”

The Mint itself will unlikely ever see the light of day, but in a world where electric crossovers are becoming the norm, it’s nice to see a small two-seater is on the minds of some automakers.