Our wallets have a tendency to bleed cash. It’s how you put 20 bucks in there, and when it’s gone, you only can remember what roughly three-quarters of those dollars were spent on. Two years ago, I decided to bank that blood from my wallet, changing how I “keep the change.” It paid off bigger …
If New Year’s resolutions were called what they really are – self-improvement chores or promises to do something differently – no one would ever make them. The problem is that most of these promises for personal change never get accomplished. Typically, resolutions are forgotten by the time February rolls around. Self-improvement, however, is an ongoing, …
Janet, a grandmother from New Orleans, wants to give a little something extra this year for the holidays, but doesn’t want to go to the mall to get it. She’s not shopping online for it either. She wants to buy her six grandchildren stock. “I saw something that said that a gift of stock is …
My oldest daughter turned 30 years old last month. So did the first of her United States Savings Bonds. Since my children often turn to me for financial counsel, it prompted me to take a fresh look at a stale investment. And right now, there’s a lot more reason to consider the lowly savings bond …
There was a lot of “bad-decision making” at my house this Halloween, and it wasn’t about eating too much candy. Instead, it was the way the children in my neighborhood responded to my annual effort to turn All Hallows Eve into a lesson about money. Each year, it’s a fun evening filled by conversations with …
I recently bumped into my friend Mike, a pilot and former lacrosse teammate who I hadn’t seen in years. After catching up about family and friends, he reminded me that our last conversation had included him asking about where to invest, to which I asked him “What is your greatest financial fear?” I had explained …
Linda and her husband Stan heard me as a guest on a podcast recently. They are retirees, living near Daytona Beach, Fla., unsure of “just what course to take with our monies.” Linda thought I sounded like “just what we are hoping to find, someone who speaks our language, who is honest, who can help …
More than half of Americans report that either no one taught them about money or that they learned how to handle finances on their own. Combine that lack of formal training with a desire to improve personal money management and you create as much potential for trouble as for profit. It’s hard to know who …
Two recent surveys highlight problems that American consumers and investors are having now, not with the market but with their own behavior. Finding the real lessons in each of these studies involves looking past the headlines and digging deeper, so let’s pick up the shovel and search for the hidden gems that people should really …
Americans are so busy working on retirement savings that most of them aren’t properly planning their retirement spending. The result is that they’re not living their best life, actually getting the gold out of their golden years, because they spend too little of the money they amass. As problems go, this is a nice one …
