Author’s note: This column was released in syndication on May 11, 2022. There are a lot of financial concerns right now, but two items that I think were lost amid recent headlines stand out to me. In a world where the financial danger signs seem to be everywhere, it’s easy to overlook the warnings that …
This column was released in syndication on April 27. 2022. As I was parking last week, I noticed a dime and a penny on the ground near some teenagers. I asked the kids if they had dropped it and a girl explained as she climbed into the car that the change wasn’t hers. …
This column was released in syndication on April 20. 2022. My mother told me when I was a child that the way people face a challenge says a great deal about them. Every consumer is being challenged by inflation right now, and the way they respond, indeed, is speaking volumes. There’s no …
Inflation is never a feel-good story. Nothing feels good about items getting more expensive, no matter how inconsequential price hikes were for decades prior to 2022. Gas prices have long been the biggest factor determining whether consumers were confident and happy or nervous and displeased. Elections turn on inflation numbers. “It’s the economy, stupid,” was …
The talking head on my local morning news show was gabbing about how “Inflation is everywhere right now. It’s unavoidable.” He and his co-hosts complained about prices for steak and gasoline, the reduced size of standard packages of bacon that are hiding price increases, and more. It was standard chatter about inflation these days, it …
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 …
There’s a difference between complaining about inflation and responding to it. With the inflation rate surging to 6.2 percent in October – its highest level since Thanksgiving 1990 — holiday shoppers are about to feel a pinch harder than anything they may have faced in their lifetime as a consumer. The signs of it are …
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 …
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 …
