Houstonians are pretty miserable, new study finds

frowns in H-town

Houston needs to lighten up a little, sheesh. Photo by Rome Wilkerson on Unsplash

Not-so-happy news for Texans living in Houston – they're living in one of the "unhappiest" cities in the nation.

A recent SmartAsset study ranked Houston the No. 81 happiest city in the U.S., based on an analysis of 90 large cities for their residents' quality of life, well being, and personal finances.

The city's rank in the bottom 10 — alongside Texas neighbors Dallas (No. 80), El Paso (No. 83), and Laredo (No. 89) – shows not everything about Houston is as easygoing as people think it is. We can hear Ken Hoffman's disagreement from here.

The study found 28.5 percent of all Houston households make a six-figure salary or more, and 16.2 percent of residents are burdened by their housing costs. Houston's poverty rate is 20.7 percent, so maybe it really is more difficult to live comfortably in the city, after all.

Houston has a marriage rate of 39.4 percent, and its residents have a life expectancy of 79 years old. Nearly 76 percent of residents have health insurance, and a Houstonian has nearly five "mentally unhealthy" days per month on average.

Our beloved city has had some bad press recently: H-Town isn't exactly revered for having the best drivers; the city and its suburbs are apparently less appealing for new residents making the move to Texas; and its popularity in the tech industry seems to be waning.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. There's always plenty of new restaurants to try, our city's inventive art scene remains unmatched, and plenty of hometown hero celebrities, Hall of Fame athletes, and talented musicians praise Houston for its culture and hospitality.

While money can't necessarily buy happiness, SmartAsset suggests that having a higher quality of life can influence a person's financial decisions, therefore leading to a greater probability of beneficial outcomes. Of course, that's assuming high financial literacy and strong money management skills.

"Depending where you live, certain quality of life factors, including metrics like life expectancy, infrastructure and the rate of marriage, can ultimately impact your happiness," the report's author wrote.

Elsewhere in Texas, the Dallas suburb of Plano soared to the top as the No. 2 happiest city in the nation. More than half (52.5 percent) of all Plano households make a six-figure salary or more, and only 12.1 percent of residents are burdened by their housing costs. Plano's poverty rate is less than five percent, its marriage rate is 56 percent, and nearly 90 percent of Plano residents have health insurance.

Other Texas cities that earned spots in the report, that notably aren't as happy as Plano, include: Fort Worth (No. 38), Arlington (No. 47), Irving (No. 64), Austin (No. 65), San Antonio (No. 70), Corpus Christi (No. 77), and Lubbock (No. 78).

The top 10 happiest cities in the U.S. are:

  • No. 1 – Arlington, Virginia
  • No. 2 – Plano, Texas
  • No. 3 – Fremont, California
  • No. 4 – San Jose, California
  • No. 5 – Seattle, Washington
  • No. 6 – Boise City, Idaho
  • No. 7 – Raleigh, North Carolina
  • No. 8 – Chesapeake, Virginia
  • No. 9 – San Francisco, California
  • No. 10 – Anchorage, Alaska
The report ranked the 90 most populous U.S. cities based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau 1-Year American Community Survey for 2022 and from the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps for 2023. Data that factored into each city's ranking included a city's household income, poverty level, life expectancy, health insurance rates, marriage rates, overcrowding rates, and more.The full report and its methodology can be found on smartasset.com

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

A Houston innovator has created a video game that teaches users money fundamentals. Image via eyf.money

Houston startup launches gamified financial education tool

let's play

The fact that the average American would struggle to cover a $400 emergency expense is a sign that there’s a dire need for a better understanding of financial literacy in this country.

But where is the proper starting point? What is the best age to start learning about debt, credit, inflation, loans, stocks, index funds, and personal finance?

According to Grant Watkins, founder of Earn Your Freedom, or EYF, and the startup’s new educational video game, Money Quest, the best time for people to start learning the basics of personal finance and economics is when they’re young.

“I stress to kids that the biggest advantage they have right now is their youth,” says former salesman turned entrepreneur Watkins. “If nothing else, I want kids to play our game to learn the value of compound interest. They’re young, so they should start early, plan early, be strategic, and have fun, life isn’t just all work. But the more you invest early, the more you’re going to have later.”

After realizing that it was best to teach solid financial principles to young people, it was a no-brainer to reach the conclusion that the best way for them to learn was via an educational video game.

That’s where Money Quest comes in.

The innovative and interactive web and mobile video game, which officially launched this month to celebrate Financial Literacy Month, was designed to help kids build a strong foundation in money management, economics and investment in a fun and engaging way. It features challenges and real-world scenarios such as renting a first apartment, opening a first bank account, budgeting at the grocery store, buying stocks and index funds and renting or buying real estate.

All of this is set up in the game’s imaginary city called Prosperity Point.

But before Watkins was able to get to his own Prosperity Point, he was in dire straits financially himself.

At only 27 years old, the native of Katy, Texas, and graduate of Oral Roberts University, found himself trying to get his own personal finances in order three or four years ago and quickly realized that had he been taught how to be an adult and all of the different financial obligations that come with that, it could have saved him from racking up thousands of dollars in debt and making other costly financial mistakes.

“After diving into it, I said, ‘Well, this is a pain, but I bet whoever solves this problem, it would be pretty great for them and everyone else in society,’” says Watkins, who lived in Beijing, China and worked in contract sales, before moving back to the United States. “So, I started working on this idea for Money Quest with the central focus on how I could make financial literacy more engaging?”

With the thread of an idea, Watkins joined Houston’s startup community in August 2021 and began to pull at it and after a prompt from Gamification Advisor Cal Miller, began learning how to code so he could build out his educational video game.

“After getting to the point where it was apparent that I couldn’t afford to get someone else to do it, I rolled up my sleeves and started teaching myself how to code,” says Watkins. “I learned it from free resources like Free Code Camp and Code Academy and we started building it in this specific programming language that we built this game in and just started from scratch.

“We went from one little house, to building an 8-bit character, to building out a road, to now it’s grown into a full-fledged city, with banks and grocery stores and cafes.”

For Watkins, half of his job is building the game and the other half is learning how to be better at building it.

When it came time to market Money Quest, he turned to CMO Keely McEnery, a 22-year-old student at the University of Houston’s Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship.

“Grant is a very smart, driven person, so I’m happy to be on this team, we complement each other very well,” says McEnery. “Money Quest is still a work in progress, it has come a long way since the beginning. Moving forward, we are going to be adding content to the game on a monthly basis and always creating more value.”

The partnership between Watkins and McEnery came at the right time because Texas has started passing laws like Texas Senate Bill 1063, which requires a semester of financial literacy in schools.

“Before COVID-19, there were only three states that had any sort of financial literacy requirements,” says Watkins. “But now, post-COVID, there’s 17 states that have already passed or are in the process of passing financial literacy bills.”

To that end, EYF is working diligently to make sure Money Quest meets the requirements of school curriculums across the country.

“All the studies coming out right now about gaming and education are overwhelmingly positive,” says McEnery. “With things like higher retention rates through gaming education. In fact, it’s dramatically higher.”

In addition to working with the Texas Education Agency and school districts like HISD all over the state of Texas, Watkins and team are working with banks that want to connect with their local high schools and middle schools to talk about financial literacy.

“We’re that perfect partner to connect with those schools and banks,” says Watkins. “They need to work with us because of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) credits and it makes it a lot easier to connect with their local communities using us instead of just using pamphlets.”

As Watkins continues to bring Money Quest to the masses, he’s experimenting with creative ways for supporters of the game to get involved such as purchasing special NPC’s.

But as EYF builds its game’s brand recognition and begins to proliferate school curriculums, Watkins remains steadfast in his original goal to empower the next generation with the knowledge and skills to achieve financial freedom, which is the best kind of freedom as far as he’s concerned.

“At the end of the day, I want kids to learn to use money wisely, and not blow all their money in their 20s and get into high debt,” says Watkins. “I want to see them learn to be very strategic with their money from the beginning because not doing so will have repercussions down the line.

“I want to instill in them the importance of financial responsibility, smart money management, and economic literacy, so they can build a better financial future for themselves and their communities.”

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Rice University, Houston Methodist launch new institute to revolutionize health care through AI, innovation

collaboration station

Rice University and Houston Methodist have established through a multi-year joint effort the Digital Health Institute, which aims to transform healthcare through advanced technology and the collaborative expertises of the university and hospital.

Rice’s leadership in engineering, digital health and artificial intelligence will combine with Houston Methodist’s academic medicine and research infrastructure.

“This partnership embodies Rice’s bold vision to lead at the forefront of innovation in health and responsible AI,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches says in a news release. “By combining our strengths with Houston Methodist, we are creating a transformative platform to address critical challenges in healthcare with solutions that are ethical, accessible and impactful. This initiative exemplifies our commitment to driving interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing global health for the benefit of humanity.”

Leading the initiative will be Rice’s Ashutosh Sabharwal, the Ernest Dell Butcher Professor of Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Houston Methodist’s Dr. Khurram Nasir, the Centennial Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine, and Dr. William Zoghbi, division chief of cardiovascular prevention and wellness. Rice and Houston Methodist have worked previously with the Center for Neural Systems Restoration that opened earlier this year and the Center for Human Performance that was established in 2022.

The Digital Health Institute allows for both institutions to share data, and resources that focus on key areas like the early detection through AI algorithms for early diagnosis of cancer, infections, cardiovascular diseases and other conditions, predictive analytics that utilize real-time monitoring that can predict and prevent events such as strokes and heart failure, and the development of novel sensors, wearables and ingestibles to innovate new remote monitoring and care pathways.

The Digital Health Institute will also work to utilize more personalized medicine efforts, developments of new novel and assistive technologies, expansion of telemedicine, and proactive self-care management through AI-driven patient self-management.

“This partnership between our institutions marks a bold new chapter in driving meaningful innovation at the intersection of healthcare and technology through solutions that are both visionary and practical,” Dr. Marc Boom, president and CEO of Houston Methodist, adds. “Our long-standing relationship with Rice University has produced impactful collaborations, but this initiative is by far the most transformative endeavor in our shared commitment of leading medicine through innovation.”

Rice President Reginald DesRoches and Houston Methodist CEO Marc Boom announced the new partnership at the Ion. Photo courtesy of Rice

Elon Musk wants to turn SpaceX's Starbase site into a Texas city

mayor musk?

SpaceX is launching a new mission: making its Starbase site a new Texas city.

Billionaire Elon Musk 's company last week sent a letter to local officials requesting an election to turn what it calls Starbase — the South Texas site where SpaceX builds and launches its massive Starship rockets — into an incorporated city. Residents of the area known as Starbase submitted the petition, according to the company.

The area is on the southern tip of Texas at Boca Chica Beach, near the Mexican border. Earlier this year, Musk announced he was moving the headquarters of SpaceX and his social media company X from California to Texas.

“To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley,” Kathryn Lueders, the general manager of Starbase, wrote in a letter to the county.

It's not the first time turning Starbase into its own city has been floated. Musk proposed the idea in 2021 when he wrote a social media post that simply said, “Creating the city of Starbase, Texas.”

Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., the county’s top elected official, said despite the talks of incorporation in 2021, this was the first time a petition was officially filed.

“Our legal and elections administration will review the petition, see whether or not it complied with all of the statutory requirements and then we’ll go from there," Treviño said on Thursday.

More than 3,400 full-time SpaceX employees and contractors work at the Starbase site, according to a local impact study issued by Trevino earlier this year.

SpaceX's rapid expansion in the region has drawn pushback from some locals. Earlier this year, a group called Save RGV sued the company in July over allegations of environmental violations and dumping polluted water into the nearby bay. SpaceX said in response that a state review found no environmental risks and called the lawsuit “frivolous.”

Editor's Picks: 7 favorite Houston Innovator Podcast episodes of 2024

year in review

Editor's note: This year, recorded over 40 episodes of the Houston Innovators Podcast — a weekly discussion with a Houston innovator, startup founder, investor, and more. I've rounded up seven podcast episodes that stood out for me looking back at the year of recordings. Scroll through to see whom I selected and stream their individual episodes, and tune into the last episode of the year where I explain why I enjoyed each conversation.



Episode 220 - Better than just 'inclusive' - Denise Hamilton of WatchHerWork

Houstonian Denise Hamilton is coming out with a book she hopes helps leaders reach beyond inclusivity. Photo courtesy of WatchHerWork

Denise Hamilton says she's been used to looking around and realizing she's the only woman or African American in the room, and for the past nine years, she's been providing resources and education to trailblazing women like her. Now, she wants to prepare current and future leaders on how to go beyond inclusivity and work toward indivisibility.

Hamilton's book, "Indivisible: How to Forge Our Differences into a Stronger Future," publishes February 6 from Countryman Press. She explains that the book comes from years of her on personal experiences, as well as inspiration from the women she's met with her company, WatchHerWork, multimedia digital platform providing advice and resources for professional women.

"I've learned a lot of lessons about what skills work, what behaviors are not intuitive, and built WatchHerWork with the intention of creating a space where people can get all of that advice — and juicy goodness — so that they can learn what they needed to do to be authentically successful," Hamilton says on the Houston Innovators Podcast.

"This led to me being brought in as a speaker, and ultimately has led to me becoming an author," she continues. "It's always shocking when people want to listen to what you want to say. It's unbelievable." Continue reading the original article.

Episode 231 - Fostering a collaborative energy transition ecosystem - Barbara Burger

Houston energy leader Barbara Burger joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the energy transition's biggest challenges and her key takeaways from CERAWeek. Photo courtesy

When Barbara Burger moved to Houston a little over a decade ago to lead Chevron Technology Ventures, she wondered why the corporate venture group didn't have much representation from the so-called energy capital of the world.

“I had no companies in my portfolio in CTV from Houston, and I wondered why,” Burger says on the Houston Innovators Podcast.

Much has changed in the ecosystem since then, she says, including growth and development to what the community looks like now.

“There are a few things I’m proud of in the ecosystem here, and one of theme is that it’s a very inclusive ecosystem,” she explains, adding that she means the types of founders — from universities or corporate roles — and the incumbent energy companies. “The worst way to get people to not join a party is to not invite them.”

“No one company or organization is going to solve this. We have to get along,” she continues. “We have to stop thinking that the mode is to compete with each other because the pie is so big and the opportunity is so big to work together — and by and large I do see that happening.”Continue reading the original article.

Episode 233 - How a Houston angel earns their wings - Mitra Miller of Houston Angel Network

Mitra Miller, vice president and board member of the Houston Angel Network, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to share her passion for growing angel investors in Houston. Photo via LinkedIn

One of the biggest components of a well-functioning startup ecosystem is inarguably access to capital, and Mitra Miller is dedicated to enhancing education around investment and growing Houston's investor base.

As vice president and board member of the Houston Angel Network, the oldest angel network in Texas and one of the most active angel networks in the country, Miller strives to provide guidance to new and emerging angel investors as well as founders seeking to raise money from them.

"Most founders have no idea or understanding of how investors think — we are not an ATM," Miller says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "We are really partners you are getting married to for the next 5, 8, 10 years — sometimes longer. We need to bring your allies in every sense of the word." Continue reading the original article.


Episode 237 - Gearing up for 100x growth - Tim Latimer of Fervo Energy

Tim Latimer, CEO and co-founder of Fervo Energy, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast. Photo courtesy of Fervo Energy

Geothermal energy has been growing in recognition as a major player in the clean energy mix, and while many might think of it as a new climatetech solution, Tim Latimer, co-founder and CEO of Fervo Energy, knows better.

"Every overnight success is a decade in the making, and I think Fervo, fortunately — and geothermal as a whole — has become much more high profile recently as people realize that it can be a tremendous solution to the challenges that our energy sector and climate are facing," he says on the Houston Innovators Podcast.

In fact, Latimer has been bullish on geothermal as a clean energy source since he quit his job as a drilling engineer in oil and gas to pursue a dual degree program — MBA and master's in earth sciences — at Stanford University. He had decided that, with the reluctance of incumbent energy companies to try new technologies, he was going to figure out how to start his own company. Through the Stanford program and Activate, a nonprofit hardtech program that funded two years of Fervo's research and development, Latimer did just that. Continue reading the original article.

Episode 248 - Houston's beating heart - Dr. William Cohn of The Texas Heart Institute

Dr. William Cohn is the chief medical officer for BiVACOR, a medical device company creating the first total artificial heart. Photo via TMC

It's hard to understate the impact Dr. William Cohn has had on cardiovascular health as a surgeon at the Texas Heart Institute or on health care innovation as the director of the Center for Device Innovation at the Texas Medical Center. However, his role as chief medical officer of BiVACOR might be his most significant contribution to health care yet.

The company's Total Artificial Heart is unlike any cardiovascular device that's existed, Cohn explains on the Houston Innovators Podcast. While most devices are used temporarily for patients awaiting a heart transplant, BiVACOR's TAH has the potential to be a permanent solution for the 200,000 patients who die of heart failure annually. Last year, only around 4,000 patients were able to receive heart transplants.

"Artificial hearts historically have had bladders that ejected and filled 144,000 times a day. They work great for temporary support, but no one is suggesting they are permanent devices," Cohn says on the show. Continue reading the original article.

Episode 251 - Building enduring innovation ecosystems - Jon Norby of Anthropy Partners and EconWerx

Jon Nordby's career has been focused on cultivating a culture for innovation, and now he's focused on human potential technology opportunities. Photo courtesy

In his role overseeing startup accelerators for MassChallenge, Jon Nordby started noticing one industry vertical stood out in terms of success and opportunities: Human potential. Now, Nordby is a founding member of an investment firm looking for those opportunities.

Nordby, who served in various leadership roles at MassChallenge — including managing director and head of ecosystems — said he started realizing the opportunities within the organization's space and sports tech programs.

"What we realized over a couple of years running the program was that sports tech as a theme was too limiting," Nordby says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "We were finding really great technologies, but we were limited at the market size of teams and leagues to deploy those technologies."

"Over the course of that program, we found that the things that were related more to human health and performance tended to out perform all of the other things related to sports tech — like media, entertainment, gambling," Nordby continues. "Still really great markets for those technologies, but we found a lot more traction for human performance." Continue reading the original article.

Episode 263 - Maintaining a legacy of innovation - Reginald DesRoches of Rice University

Rice University President Reginald DesRoches joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss balancing tradition with growth, innovation, and global impact in education. Photo courtesy Tommy LaVergne/Rice University

How does a historic university maintain its legacy while still making room for growth and increased opportunities? That's what Rice University President Reginald DesRoches considers with every decision he makes.

"It's this idea of preserving what's special about the university, while also knowing we need to adapt to a new time, a new Rice, a new time in higher ed, and a new time in society," DesRoches says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "There's a healthy tension between preserving what Rice is known for — the culture of care, the close-knit community — while knowing that we need to grow, have a global impact, and position Rice on a global scale. It's something that's constantly in my mind to make sure we do both." Continue reading the original article.


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