Consumer News: A database of 149 million passwords was exposed — and it could affect you

And how to use these menu changes to save money

• Restaurants are adding smaller, protein-focused meals as drugs like Wegovy change how people eat, and these items often cost less than full-size entres.

• You can save money by ordering a side of grilled protein with veggies instead of a full combo meal.

• Even when not on a medication, choosing smaller portions means less food waste and a lower total at the register.

Weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound are shrinking appetites nationwide and big restaurant chains are adjusting.

NBC News recently reported that instead of giant plates and bottomless sides, more menus now feature lighter portions, protein add-ons, and snack-size meals. Even if youre not on a GLP-1 medication, this shift can help you eat better and spend less.

Heres how to take advantage.

Look for 'lighter,''fit,'or 'protein'sections

Many big-name chains are adding smaller, or more protein-packed meals, to their menus.

And their using health-focused wording to grab the attention of those who dont eat big meals anymore.

Examples:

• Chipotle sells high-protein sides that work as small meals.
• Shake Shack now offers lettuce-wrapped burgers on what they call their Good Fit Menu.
• Subway has smaller protein-focused wraps they call Protein Pockets.
• Smoothie King features high-protein, no-sugar smoothies they actually call GLP-1 Smoothies.
• Olive Garden now offers 7 existing dishes with smaller portions, all at lower prices.
• Panera Bread Theyve been leaning heavily into their You Pick 2 Combos which acts like a mini-meal at a lower price.
• Jack in the Box has new Protein Bowls and Jack Wraps on the menu for those looking for less food thats high in protein. Some of the bowls deliver up to 35 grams of protein.

Savings tip: These smaller meals often cost $3$7 less than full-size entrees.

Order protein 'sides'as your main meal

Many chains built for big portions now sell single servings of chicken, steak, or eggs as protein add-ons.

So, instead of dropping $12$15 on a combo meal, you could order this:

• A side of any grilled protein.
• Add a side salad or veggies.

Youll often cut the price nearly in half while still getting full.

Dont automatically 'size up'

For decades, upsizing or Super Sizing was marketed to consumers as the best bang for your buck. Thats clearly changing.

With smaller appetites trending right now, restaurants are making these changes:

• Adding half portions
• Offering smaller bowls
• Selling snack-size wraps

Pro tip: Get in the habit of asking, Do you have a smaller portion option? Many locations do if you ask, even if its not clearly on the menu.

Be careful with 'protein'drinks

High-protein smoothies and shakes sound healthy but can pack more calories than a fast food meal.

Specifically, watch for the following:

• Large serving sizes (20 oz+)
• Added nut butters, syrups, or sweeteners

A smarter order: Choose the smallest size, skip add-ins, and pair it with real food instead of drinking all your calories.

Use the trend to fight food waste

Restaurants are responding to people eating less and you dont have to be on a GLP-1 to join the trend.

Smaller portions mean:

• Less overeating
• Fewer leftovers tossed
• Lower bills

Even if GLP-1 meds arent part of your life, the smaller-meal movement can help your wallet.

The bottom line

The era of bigger is better at chain restaurants seems to be fading.

Smaller, protein-packed meals are becoming normal and theyre often cheaper and easier to portion control.

The good news is you dont need a prescription to benefit. Just start ordering like someone who has a smaller appetite and keep the extra cash in your pocket.

HOA fees add to the cost of owning a home

By Mark Huffman of ConsumerAffairs

• Nearly 44% of homes for sale in the U.S. now come with a homeowners association (HOA) fee, making monthly dues an increasingly common part of the cost of buying a home.

• HOA fees continue to rise, with the median monthly payment hitting $135 in 2025, up sharply from pre-pandemic levels.

• Florida stands out for both the prevalence and cost of HOAs, with several metros where dues consume a significant share of typical mortgage payments.

If you live in a neighborhood without a homeowners association, youre still in the majority, but barely.

Homeowners associations with monthly or annual dues are becoming a defining feature of the modern U.S. housing market. In 2025, 43.6% of homes listed for sale included a non-zero HOA fee, according to the newly released Homeowners Association Report from Realtor.com.

That marks a steady climb from 34.3% in 2019 and reflects how HOA obligations have moved well beyond condos and gated communities into the mainstream of homeownership.

HOAs are no longer confined to condos or brand-new developments, said Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com.

HOA-heavy construction

He noted that a surge in HOA-heavy construction earlier in the decade is now reshaping the resale market, as those newer communities age and change hands. At the same time, rising insurance premiums, stricter building safety requirements, and higher labor and material costs are forcing many associations to raise dues, increasing the long-term financial commitment for homeowners.

The growth of HOAs is not just about how many homes are subject to them, but also how much they cost. The median HOA fee rose to $135 in 2025, up from $125 in 2024 and $108 in 2019, continuing a multi-year upward trend. Realtor.compreviously found that both HOA prevalence and fees were increasing between 2023 and 2024, and the latest data show that momentum carried into 2025.

Condo and townhomes

HOAs remain most common among condos and townhomes, where 84.8% of listings include monthly dues. Still, their presence among single-family homes is expanding, with about one-third (33.4%) of those properties now carrying HOA fees.

Homes governed by associations also tend to be larger and more expensive. Single-family houses with HOAs have a median size of 2,306 square feet, compared with 1,818 square feet for those without, and they sell for a higher price per square foot. Condos with HOAs, while similar in size to those without, also command higher per-square-foot prices.

New construction continues to lead the market in HOA prevalence. Nearly 68% of newly built homes are subject to HOA fees, compared with about 39% of existing homes. However, the share of resale homes with HOAs is growing faster, a sign that the construction boom of 2020 to 2022 is now feeding into the broader housing inventory.

On average, homes with HOAs list for $450,000, well above the $374,900 median for homes without associations. Much of that difference is tied to age: existing homes with HOAs were typically built around 1998, while those without date back to about 1968. Despite the added monthly cost, HOA status had little impact on how long homes stayed on the market overall in 2025.

Nevada has the most HOAs

Regionally, HOA prevalence varies widely. Nevada tops the list, with more than two-thirds of listings subject to HOA fees, while South Dakota has the lowest share at just over 12%. The West and South have seen the largest gains since the pandemic, reflecting high levels of new development in those regions.

When it comes to cost, Florida dominates. Several Florida metro areas rank among the most expensive in the country for HOA fees relative to mortgage payments, including Miami, Naples, and Cape Coral. In some markets, monthly dues account for more than a quarter of a typical mortgage payment.

Floridas status as an outlier is driven by a combination of climate-related insurance costs and regulatory changes. Following the 2021 Surfside condo collapse, new state requirements for inspections and reserve funding have increased expenses for condominium associations, which are often passed directly to homeowners.

Between rising insurance premiums and stricter safety and reserve requirements, many associations are facing higher operating expenses that ultimately get passed on to homeowners, Berner said.

As HOAs continue to spread across housing types and regions, buyers are increasingly forced to factor monthly dues into their affordability calculations making associations a central, and growing, part of the U.S. housing landscape.

Experts say these videos are getting better, but there are some giveaways

By Mark Huffman of ConsumerAffairs

• AI-generated financial videos often sound unnaturally polished, lack natural pauses, and promise guaranteed or high returns claims real financial professionals almost never make, especially on social media.

• Watch for mismatched facial expressions, odd eye or mouth movements, overly smooth skin, strange hair textures, or audio that doesnt quite sync with lip movements.

• Deepfakes are getting harder to spot, so experts recommend skepticism verify advice through trusted sources and be wary of public figures suddenly offering direct investment tips or urgent calls to action.

Scroll through a social media feed and youre likely to come across videos featuring well-known and respected financial figures commenting on the market or offering investment advice.

After Fridays gold and silver market crash, there was a proliferation of these videos, especially on YouTube. The experts that ConsumerAffairs consulted told us nearly every one of them was fake, created using artificial intelligence.

These experts offered a number of ways that viewers can spot a deep fake.

One of the first signs is how unnaturally smooth the delivery is, Sharmin Attaran, professor of marketing and director of the Digital Marketing Program at Bryant University, told ConsumerAffairs. Real people pause, hesitate, or slightly stumble over words especially when theyre speaking casually. Many AI videos sound overly polished in a way that feels off, particularly if the person being impersonated is known for a more conversational style.

Another common cue is emotional mismatch. The facial expressions dont always align with the message being delivered. You might see a calm, almost flat expression paired with urgent or high-stakes financial advice. Human communication relies heavily on emotional synchrony, and AI often struggles to replicate that convincingly.

A major giveaway is what the person is saying, Langley Allbritton, digital safety educator and advisor at AI Comms Consulting, told us. Well-known financial figures rarely offer direct investment advice, guaranteed returns, or 'once-in-a-lifetime'opportunities, especially not via social media ads or unsolicited videos.

According to Ira Bondar-Mucci, Fraud Platform lead at Veriff, some technical aspects of the video may be off.

AI is also still struggling with hair it looks like hand-painted paint strokes at points, Bondar-Mucci told us. Skin is looking smoother than it usually does in real life as well, until the person moves closer to the camera, and then a lot of texture is added. These drastic changes in textures are not what usually happens when taking a video like this.

To help students identify whats real and what isnt, The Social Institute has developed a playbook for use in schools that includes a checklist of things to look for.

Visual inconsistencies

The checklist includes looking for visual inconsistencies, such as unnatural eye movements, mismatched lighting, blurry areas, and awkward head movements," said The Social Institutes CEO Laura Tierney.

Dmitry Nazarevich, chief technology officer at Innowise, in Warsaw, Poland, said he has been paying attention to these deepfake financial experts for some time. He says he has to admit theyre getting better, but there are flaws if you look closely.

If you look at a person talking in a video, you will notice that the movement of their tongue and teeth is incredibly complicated and messy, he told us. In many of these investment scam videos, you will notice that the teeth are just a static white blur or a mouth plate that doesnt really work well with the lips. If someone is talking about guaranteed returns and their teeth look like they are projected onto a mask, then they are a fake.

Al Pascual, CEO of Scamnetic, has worked with law enforcement to help identify and weed out deepfake videos. He told us that deepfake video is advancing quickly, not just in the quality of the deepfake, but also in how accessible it has become for everyday users. He said that powerful, high-quality tools are now broadly available for free to create these videos, yet many people are not aware of this fact, and that includes law enforcement.

Aaron Painter, CEO of Nametag, says prominent people in markets and finance such as Warren Buffett are highly unlikely to offer investment advice in a YouTube video.

Another red flag is certainty, Painter said. Real professionals hedge and talk about risk. Fake videos tend to promise unusually high or guaranteed returns because the goal is persuasion, not accuracy.

Pay attention to the voice

Chris Hutchins, founder and CEO of Hutchins Data Strategy Consulting, says AI giveaways can be either surface-level or structural.

An AI-generated voice may initially sound good, but there is often a lack of natural pacing, emphasis placed incorrectly, or a synthetic overtone that makes the voice seem unrealistic, he said.

And the voice may not pronounce words perfectly. There are words in the English language that are spelled the same but have different meanings in how they are pronounced.

For example, the word record is pronounced differently when meaning a record high or record a message. When the person on the screen mixes up those pronunciations, you know youre watching AI.

Emma Grant, co-director at Figment Agency, suggests focusing on many of the subtle inconsistencies of the presentation, such as odd facial movements and audio mismatches. She also advises viewers to be extremely skeptical of public figures suddenly promoting guaranteed returns, crypto tips, or direct calls to action they would never make.

The honest answer is,you often cant tell just by looking anymore, said Ricardo Amper, founder & CEO of Incode Technologies. Some AI videos can be extremely convincing for the general public and even trained professionals can get it wrong on the first try. So I dont recommend relying on your eyes to spot the fake.

New data shows higher paychecks are being swallowed by rising living costs

• Wages are up, but buying power is down. Average pay rose 18% since 2020, but after inflation and local living costs, the typical worker is effectively earning less than they were four years ago.

• Where you live matters more than ever. Most states saw real income decline, with high housing costs playing a major role while a handful of lower-cost states are seeing paychecks stretch further.

• The squeeze is reshaping work and careers. More workers are taking on second jobs to keep up with rising expenses, fueling burnout and making it harder to advance or earn higher pay long-term.

If your paycheck has gone up in the last few years but your bank account still feels stretched thin, youre not imagining it. While wages have climbed since the pandemic, the cost of everyday life from housing and groceries to gas and childcare has risen even faster in many parts of the country.

A new analysis from MyPerfectResume, which looked at federal wage data alongside regional cost-of-living trends, found that most workers are actually worse off than they were four years ago. On paper, average wages jumped 18% between 2020 and 2024. In reality, once inflation and local prices are factored in, the typical workers purchasing power fell by about 2.6% the equivalent of a quiet nationwide pay cut.

Why arent raises keeping up with the cost of living?

ConsumerAffairs spoke with career expert Jasmine Escalera to learn why raises arent translating to better living standards. She explained that while workers pay increased between 2020 and 2024, consumer prices rose even more.

That gap highlights a growing disconnect between workers' earnings and rising expenses, making it difficult for wages to keep pace with the cost of living, she said.

On top of that, Escalera said that many companies adjust pay only at set times of the year during annual performance reviews or when an employee receives a promotion that qualifies for a raise. This means that many workers are struggling to keep up with rising costs while their pay remains stagnant.

Taken together, these trends show a disconnect between real-time changes in inflation or local cost-of-living increases and how salaries are actually adjusted, Escalera said. Even when workers technically receive raises, those increases often come too late or too infrequently to relieve financial stress. This leaves many employees feeling that their pay may never fully keep pace with the true cost of living.

Where do paychecks go the farthest?

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), MyPerfectResume looked at the states where paychecks go the farthest and which states are losing the most ground.

Where paychecks go the farthest:

1. Idaho (+3.1%)

2. Florida (+2.6%)

3. Washington (+2.3%)

4. Montana (+2.3%)

5. Wyoming (+1.8%)

States losing the most ground:

46. Massachusetts (5.3%)

47. New York (5.3%)

48. Maryland (5.4%)

49. Rhode Island (6.9%)

50. New Jersey (7.0%)

One of the biggest factors erasing employee wage gains is likely housing costs, Escalera said. We see that states with the steepest declines in real income tend to have higher housing costs. That pattern suggests that housing expenses are a major contributor to why wage increases arent keeping up with the cost of living in certain regions.

How does this affect workers?

Escalera explained that this trend is likely to affect workers in several ways.

One of the biggest: the need for secondary income. She said that another recent report from MyPerfectResume shows that 72% of workers already rely on a second source of income, with 38% saying inflation has significantly increased the need.

But working multiple jobs takes a real toll: 21% of employees report a decline in health, and 15% report increased burnout, she explained.

On top of that, Escalera noted that taking on secondary jobs can have serious implications for career mobility.

When workers are stretched thin trying to cover basic expenses, they have less bandwidth to focus on growth, strategy, or visibility in their primary role. Over time, this limits promotions and pay increases, creating a vicious cycle in which low wages that dont cover living costs drive secondary work, which in turn drives burnout, and then impacts career advancement and earning potential.