The Nintendo Switch 2 is nearly here. If you managed to preorder Nintendo’s much-hyped Switch successor, you’ll be able to play new games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza starting June 5.

In anticipation of the Switch 2’s launch, Nintendo just rolled out a big new software update for its existing lineup of Switch consoles: the original Switch, the Switch OLED, and Switch Lite. This is version 20.0.0 of the Switch’s software, and if you know anything about software, round numbers usually denote major updates.

Version 20.0.0 isn’t groundbreaking, by any means—this isn’t Nintendo’s iOS 19—but there are a number of significant changes and features to note here. Perhaps most notably, the update lays the groundwork for the Switch 2 itself, especially if you’re someone planning to move from an existing Switch over to Nintendo’s newest console.

Virtual game cards and GameShare

Some of the biggest changes to ship with this update have to do with how you access and play digital games. First, there are Nintendo’s new virtual game cards, which the company announced earlier this month. Virtual game cards are a workaround for playing your digital games across two of your Switches: Just as you can swap a physical game card between two of your consoles, you can choose to load and unload virtual game cards to switch which console you’re playing a digital game on.

As part of this rollout, Nintendo added a brand new “Virtual Game Card” icon to the Switch Home menu. Click this icon to manage the virtual game cards on your Switches. That said, this update also adds “Online License Settings” to your Switch, which lets you play downloaded digital titles or DLC when connected to the internet—with or without the virtual game card loaded.

In addition to being able to load virtual game cards between two of your Switch consoles, you can also lend these game cards to family members for two weeks at a time, as long as you’re connected within the same Nintendo Account family group. You can retrieve them at any time as long as the other party is online, but if they keep their Switch offline, you’ll need to wait until the two-week time limit expires.

Speaking of sharing games, version 20.0.0 also introduces GameShare. This feature, exclusive to the Switch 2, lets you share certain software titles between Switch 2 consoles. You need to be within the same local wireless network to share software, and the feature does not work with any of the original Switch consoles.

Get ready for Switch 2

Following the update, you’ll find an important new function under System Settings > System: System Transfer to Nintendo Switch 2. You will want to use this feature if you buy a Switch 2, as it allows you transfer the contents from your current Switch console to your new one. If you decide to sell or trade-in your existing Switch before you have access to the Switch 2, the feature lets you upload your data to a Nintendo server which you can download on your new console at a later time. (When you choose this method, your original Switch console will be reset to factory settings, so make sure you really plan to restore from a Switch 2 if you choose this function.)

You can also select multiple save data files to transfer at once. You’ll find the option under the “Transfer Your Save Data” menu.

Other changes with Switch version 20.0.0

If you’re managing a child’s Switch, Nintendo added a way to protect access to the Virtual Game Card menu with a PIN or Nintendo Account login. You’ll find this setting in User > User Settings.

Nintendo changed the Nintendo eShop and Nintendo Switch News icon colors, as well as “some user icons,” though the company doesn’t specify which in the update’s release notes.

Most people still rely on banks for most of their financial needs: In fact, 96 percent of the country has at least one bank or credit union account. (And if you use a bank to deposit your salary and pay your bills, you should even consider having a second bank, just in case something goes wrong.)

But what happens if your bank fails? Bank failures aren’t common, but they do happen—two failed just last year, and 2025 has already seen one bank failure back in January. While your money is probably generally safe even if your bank fails, a bank failure can still cause you a lot of trouble because your funds may be unavailable for days (or longer) as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) sorts out the mess, and any loans or mortgages you have with your bank will be sold to other creditors without your input. So being able to spot the signs of bank failure early can enable you to make smart decisions that can save you a lot of stress down the line.

Signs your bank is about to fail

“Bank failures almost always follow a similar pattern,” says Cory Frank, founder and CEO of Robora Financial. “Actual or expected losses lead to questions about capital adequacy, which then spark concerns about solvency. Fears around solvency often prompt customers to take self-preserving actions, such as pulling deposits. These actions, in turn, can cause a liquidity crisis. Liquidity risk is unique among risk types in that the perception of a problem can create a real problem—customer behavior itself can drive a bank or credit union to fail.”

Some of the key signs of a failing bank are easy to spot if you’re paying attention:

• Branch closures. An obvious sign of distress in any business is shutting down locations, which often implies a need to cut costs and concentrate resources.

• Layoffs. If your bank starts cutting staff, it’s time to at least start researching its financial situation.

• Frozen HELOCs. If you have an old home equity line of credit that you haven’t used in a while and your bank suddenly freezes it, it could indicate the bank is trying to claw back enough funds to stay afloat.

• Raising rates. If the interest rates your bank charges on loans suddenly soar, it’s a sign that the bank is looking to boost income fast.

• Not renewing loans. If the bank suddenly begins letting existing loans with local businesses expire, it might mean a liquidity crisis is brewing there.

• Delays in payment processing. If your bank starts dragging its feet on paying interest or processing other payments, it might indicate the bank is struggling to maintain its cash reserves.

Frank notes that banks also often activate what’s called a “Recovery Playbook” when failure is imminent, including cutting or delaying stock dividends, selling off assets, and launching aggressive deposit campaigns with above-market rates in hopes of slowing down withdrawal rates.

What to do if you suspect your bank is going to fail

There are a few basic things people can do to protect themselves against bank failure. “Stay informed,” Frank says. “Search for recent news about your bank or credit union for any of the red flags mentioned. Analyze financials, if you can: Download and review the institution’s Call Report (for banks) or the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) 5300 report (for credit unions) to spot negative trends.”

But even if you’re paying attention, bank failure can still surprise you. “There doesn’t need to be a deep recession or collapse of the economy if there are internal problems at the bank that the public is simply unaware of,” says Adem Selita, co-founder of The Debt Relief Company. “However, banks do undergo stress tests and are checked for these issues quite often in order to minimize the risk of this happening. But that doesn’t mean the system is foolproof.”

Both Frank and Selita stress the simplest way you can protect yourself: Make sure your deposits are within FDIC (for banks) or NCUSIF (for credit unions) insured limits, which are both currently $250,000. “Even if your bank goes belly up, you will still hopefully be made solvent to that amount,” notes Selita.

If you have several accounts with the bank and you’re not sure that your deposits are covered in full, you can use the FDIC’s insurance estimator to estimate how much of your money will be protected in the event of a bank failure. If you don’t think 100% of your funds are insured, you should consider moving some of that money elsewhere before the worst happens.

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If you’ve ever stood in front of a wall trying to figure out what shade of white it is, the Nix Mini 3 Color Sensor can save you from guessing games and bad decisions. This tiny gadget is made for painters, designers, contractors, or DIYers who needs to match a paint shade or reproduce a brand’s exact color. About the size of a golf ball and weighing just 20 grams, it’s small enough to toss into your bag but precise enough to scan colors with serious accuracy. The Nix Mini 3 is currently on sale for $79.99 on StackSocial (down from $119), which isn’t exactly cheap, but if you need precise color info, it’s a valuable investment.

The Nix Mini 3 pairs via Bluetooth to your phone using the free Nix Toolkit app (available on iOS and Android) and gives you instant access to over 200,000 brand-name paint colors. You just scan a surface, and the app gives you the closest paint matches, plus the color codes you’d need for design software or print. If you work in digital design or printing, you’ll appreciate that it also provides RGB, HEX, and CMYK codes with each scan. And if you subscribe to their premium plans, you can match to Pantone, RAL, and NCS libraries too. The subscription might be a deal-breaker for some pros, but the free tier covers a lot of ground if you’re mostly working with mainstream paint brands.

The device is dust- and splash-resistant (IPX4), which means it can handle a messy construction site or a day in a paint-splattered studio. It charges via the included USB-C cable and now scans with 3x the resolution of the previous Mini 2, offering better accuracy and faster results, according to the manufacturer. It also comes with a lanyard and a diagnostic tile for calibration. If your work depends on color accuracy—or you’re just tired of guessing at shades while staring at a paint wall—this might be worth adding to your toolkit. Just know that serious pros who need Pantone-level precision might have to factor in the extra subscription cost.

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For anyone who dabbles in photo editing but doesn’t need the full creative suite and its subscription fees, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025 offers a simpler alternative, and it’s currently available for $99.99 for a three-year license on StackSocial. That’s a one-time payment for three full years of access—no monthly charges or auto-renewals. It’s the 2025 version with updates included, and yes, it works on both Mac (including M1/M2 chips) and Windows as long as your system meets the basic requirements (8GB RAM, 10GB storage, modern OS, etc.).

This version leans on AI to do the heavy lifting, trying to make editing feel less intimidating. You’re still getting solid editing tools, just without the pressure to master every detail. There’s an AI-powered object removal tool that can wipe out background clutter or photobombers in a few clicks, and you also get new tools to adjust depth and motion, like adding a shallow-focus effect to a portrait or animating a still image with quick motion overlays. The color transformation feature lets you change the color of an object without needing to mask or trace, which saves a ton of time if you’re not a pro. And if you’ve ever tried to blend two photos manually, you’ll appreciate the automatic seamless blending feature. There are also 59 Guided Edits that walk you through specific techniques, so you don’t have to learn through trial and error. Plus, you can use a mobile and web companion app to play around with your projects on the go, though those are still a work in progress and only available in a few languages.

Home renovation projects always start out in a rush of excitement—you’re finally going to solve all those annoying problems, update those dated aspects of the house, and live the life you deserve! And sometimes it actually works out that way—but there are a lot of ways a renovation can go wrong. That’s why nearly three-quarters of homeowners come to regret their renovations to some extent.

Most of the reasons behind renovation regrets are pretty straightforward: Cost overruns, dissatisfaction with the final result, or shoddy work (either by contractors or DIY efforts) are the problems most people worry about when embarking on a renovation. But there are other, less obvious ways your renovation plans can backfire on you—problems that will only seem obvious in retrospect.

Utility red tags

I once innocently called my local utility company to come out and service my water heater, and ended the day with a dreaded “red tag” on my mechanical room—a paper notice that I had to bring something up to code. The worst part? The problem had nothing to do with my water heater, furnace, or anything else—it was the door to my mechanical room. When we renovated our house we had a new door hung, and it didn’t have any ventilation built in. We passed city inspections after the reno, but now the utility company insisted I cut a louver into the door.

In another instance, a utility worker came by and noticed that our electrical panel was just in the wall. They informed me that there was a new requirement that panels be enclosed, so we had to build a fairly ridiculous box around the panel.

Those are mild cases—it can be a lot worse. A nearby neighbor is renovating his house, and the utility company discovered that he shares a gas supply with his next-door neighbor, and that now has to be separated and re-routed despite the fact that neither of them have ever had a problem. The project is adding weeks to the renovation schedule and aggravating everyone involved. Often our homes have non-ideal setups or infrastructure that was code-compliant decades ago—and when the utility company comes by you’re suddenly the proud owner of a shiny red tag, and your renovation has just backfired on you.

Hidden problems

Your utility company doesn’t have to be involved for a renovation to ruin your day. Just opening walls and floors can expose all manner of scenarios where stuff that is working just fine will suddenly need to be replaced, at great expense and frustration:

• Wiring. You have exactly zero problems with your electricity—no flickering, so shorts, no non-functional outlets. But when you open up your walls, you discover your wiring is old (most modern electrical wiring will last about 50 years, but your panel typically has a shorter lifespan) and suddenly you have to replace it. While this might be a good idea from a safety standpoint, it’s hard not to think you could have lived a happy life without ever knowing about it.

• Plumbing. Like your power, you’ve never had a problem with your plumbing. Everything drains, nothing leaks, and your water pressure is fine. Then your contractor digs into your walls and floors and suddenly the drain slopes are wrong, the pipe connections are outdated and no longer meet code, and your supply lines are insufficient for modern appliances.

• Permits. More accurately, a lack of permits. Pulling permits for new renovation work can reveal that the previous owners did a lot of DIY work without getting a permit, and now you’re faced with getting old work you had nothing to do with retroactively permitted and possibly brought up to code before you can even begin your intended project.

• Craptastic DIY work. Do-it-yourselfers can perform miracles: Their work can look pretty good in a casual inspection and be revealed as a shoddy, lazy mess the moment you take a closer look. Whether it’s a living room floor being held up by wishes and dreams because the previous owner enthusiastically cut every joist in the basement or uncovering a host of buried electrical boxes they couldn’t be bothered to remove properly, the ghosts of incompetent DIYers will haunt you the moment you start your own project.

Lowering home value

It’s true: Sometimes a renovation project can actually lower the value of your house. Sometimes it’s personal taste that will require effort to change, like wallpaper. Sometimes they’re features that come with hefty maintenance bills, like swimming pools. Sometimes it’s a practical decision to delete something from the home—removing one bedroom to expand another, or taking out a garage to add a bedroom, for example.

You shouldn’t assume your renovation is going to pay for itself by raising the value of your home. If you want to change something because you like it a certain way—hey, it’s your house. But don’t be surprised if your decision to carpet the entire house results in a drop in its value.

Paying for nothing

Hiring contractors can be stressful. You’re dealing with people who have specialized knowledge and connections that you lack, so it’s easy to feel intimidated. We rely on recommendations from friends and neighbors, internet reviews, and the general vibe when they come out to give you a quote—but things can still go wrong. Some of those worst-case scenarios have obvious solutions—if a contractor ghosts you in the middle of a project, you hire someone else. But a bad contractor experience can be surprisingly difficult to resolve, especially if you rely on a simple contract provided by the contractor themselves when you hire them.

There are surprisingly few legal protections against what’s known as a mechanic’s lien—a claim against your property designed to force payment for work performed there. If you refuse to pay a contractor for poor work, or seek to fire them in the middle of a job for some reason, they can—and often do—slap a lien on your home, and you’ll have to head to court to fight it. And there’s no guarantee that it will go your way, especially if the contract you signed is vague about deadlines or other requirements.

For example, a woman refused to pay her contractors over a renovation job that ballooned to $500,000 and ended with an unfinished house filled with defects. But the courts dismissed most of her complaints, and she wound up paying her crappy contractor an additional $32,000—in addition to a hefty legal bill. And she still had to hire someone else to fix and finish her house.

Relationship stress

If you want to test the strength of your relationship with a partner, renovate a house with them. Renovations are so stressful they can damage even the strongest relationship: A 2018 survey found that 7% of people who’d worked on house projects together seriously considered separation or divorce as a result. Even if you don’t get to that point, there’s no doubt that living in a construction zone (or a cramped rental) for months, watching your savings melt away, and disagreeing about design choices and scope on a daily basis can have a negative effect on your partnership.

A renovation can also negatively affect your relationship with your neighbors. Months of dust, noise, and contractors trooping around will stress anyone out, and if your work damages your neighbor’s home in some way things can get heated. You might wind up with a beautifully renovated house but lose the friendly vibe you used to enjoy around the block, so it pays to tend to those relationships while the work is going on.

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If your photo library lives across five devices and looks like digital chaos, Lightroom can help, and this $119.88 deal on a one-year Adobe Lightroom subscription gives you access to a full suite of tools that work just as well on a phone as on a desktop. The cloud-based platform comes with 1TB of storage, so even if you’re editing a vacation album on your tablet in transit, the edits sync seamlessly everywhere. You can start on your phone, tweak more on your laptop, and finish on your desktop—without exporting or juggling file versions.

Adobe’s AI additions make Lightroom feel smarter with features like Generative Remove, which lets you clean up background distractions with a click, and Lens Blur, which adds that soft, DSLR-style bokeh effect if your phone didn’t quite nail the depth. The new Quick Actions are especially helpful if you’re not looking to deep dive into sliders—Lightroom now suggests edits automatically, tailored to each photo. That said, it’s not just for beginners. Lightroom Classic still lives on for power users who need the old-school tools like Map or Develop modules for bulk editing or geotagging.

This subscription includes both the modern Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, which is a solid deal for anyone wanting flexibility. Just keep in mind the system requirements—macOS Ventura 13.1 or later, or Windows 10 and up—and it’s limited to one device at a time. Whether organizing decades’ worth of photos or just trying to make your social posts pop a little more, this bundle offers a streamlined way to edit, store, and sync everything. But this might feel like overkill if you don’t care about editing on mobile or prefer offline-only workflows. It’s built for the cloud, so you’ll want to be, too.