Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Is a Multigenerational Household Your Only Option?
Economic policies after the Second World War led to the era of the single-family home, in which the single family included a married couple and their children. As the decades wore on, houses got bigger and families got smaller, until by the beginning of the present century, it was common to find three people… Read More »
Debt Consolidation Is Not a Panacea
The generation that grew up playing video games on the original Nintendo game system remembers what it looked like when you were in the Tetris equivalent of checkmate. The pieces piled up on the screen, and even though you frantically rushed to line them up to clear some spaces, they eventually reached the top… Read More »
The Plight of Florida’s Condo Owners
If there were a Family Feud game where contestants had to think of a word to describe Florida, the word “flat” would probably be somewhere on the leaderboard, behind “hot,” “dangerous,” and “unhinged.” One story buildings are the norm, both in residential and commercial architecture. For kids who grew up in Florida, elevators are… Read More »
Are High Costs Forcing You to Leave South Florida?
If you are truly ancient, you remember a time when travel content was geared toward people who could afford to travel and then return home. In the back of every seat on every airplane was an in-flight magazine full of breezy articles about travel destinations you could reach via the airline that was currently… Read More »
Cars Can Wreck Your Finances at Any Price Point
It is depressing to think about the costs of being poor. You work as hard as everyone else, and all your money goes to expenses that seem beyond your control. You rented your apartment because it was the most affordable one available at a time, but your rent keeps increasing. It is your landlord’s… Read More »
Summer Fun for Broke People
Summer is here again in South Florida, and this one could be especially brutal. Yes, there is the usual summer stress. There are the terrifying lightning storms that send everyone running for cover. What if one of those knocks out the power in your neighborhood, and the electricity doesn’t come on until the food… Read More »
Marginally Attached Worker Blues
Back in the old days when Facebook was fun, you could choose from an array of relationship statuses; you could be single, in a relationship, engaged, married, or it’s complicated. Imagine if there were that many choices of employment status, whether you were creating a profile on a job search site or simply making… Read More »
AI Personal Finance Assistance: Friend or Foe?
Our society is still trying to figure out the contexts in which it is appropriate to trust AI chatbots. When we order at the Taco Bell drive through, the chatbot usually gets our order right, but on the other hand, the price of Taco Bell food has not decreased since the chatbots came to… Read More »
Don’t Let Your Indebtedness Take Away Your Passport
Unpaid debt burdens you in many ways. It eats up most, if not all, of your paycheck. It makes it more expensive to borrow money, and sometimes it causes lenders to reject your loan applications outright. Employers and landlords can turn you away because of your troubled repayment history, and let’s not even get… Read More »
Your Vantage 4.0 Credit Score
Your credit score is only one of many reminders that working people can rarely catch a break in life, even as the rich get richer for doing absolutely nothing. How many times have you been turned down for loans simply because you did not have enough credit history? It didn’t matter that you always… Read More »