Recent Blog Posts
Dude, Where’s My Emergency Fund?
Building an emergency fund seems like a manageable first step when it comes to paying down your debts. Under ordinary circumstances, even the most disciplined people end up spending money on the unexpected, because life happens every pay period. Your shoes wear out and you need to buy new ones. Your dental insurance pays… Read More »
Rich in Optimism, Poor in Cash
Optimism is a great predictor of happiness, regardless of your current observable circumstances. It is better to feel rich when your bank account balance says that you are poor than the other way around. You might have noticed that some people tend to have possessions that others would find enviable, and yet they are… Read More »
Pinching Pennies in the Post-Penny Era
It feels like the stakes are getting higher for everything, and the constantly increasing prices only add to the stress. In the old days, if you wanted to go to the movies, you could read the showtime listings in the newspaper, count the money in your wallet, make up the difference by searching for… Read More »
How to Save Money on Interest
When students ask math teachers why they should bother to learn math, the teachers’ answers usually have something to do with money. They might even give the example of compound interest. Just knowing how much you will have to pay over time does not show you the whole picture, though, which is why a… Read More »
How Affordable Are Affordable Housing Units?
Economists seem to live in their own world, far from the financial struggles that the rest of us live with on a daily basis. For example, economists swear by the avalanche method of debt repayment, where you devote all the extra money in your budget to the debt with the highest interest rate, even… Read More »
Settling Your Tax Debts
The AI summary you get after a Google search about which debts you can and cannot discharge in bankruptcy will tell you that tax debts are among the most difficult debts to discharge. The easiest debts for a bankruptcy court to discharge are the ones owed to private lenders, such as credit card debts… Read More »
New Opportunities for First-Time Mortgage Applicants
The wealth gap only seems to be widening. An increasing number of residential real estate purchases are investment properties, bought by people who already own another house as their primary residence, or else by companies where the profits go to people who own mansions that you could never dream of affording. Meanwhile, it only… Read More »
The Painfully High Price of Car Ownership
If you are looking for a topic of conversation, choose something, anything, and then complain about how much more expensive it has become in recent memory. Your interlocutors are sure to be able to relate. Grumbling about the price of groceries is getting old, though. If you can remember when a dozen eggs was… Read More »
BNPL Debt Is for Salaried Employees, Too
For years, the media has been saying that families with a household income of more than $100,000 per year cannot make ends meet, but the feeling of not making ends meet approaches gradually. At first, you looked at your income tax return and smiled in a self-satisfied manner. Your income is not very far… Read More »
Home Repair Blues
In the South Florida summer, the relaxing sounds you fall asleep to in the summer are not the chirping of crickets and the hooting of owls, but rather the whir of your air conditioning window unit that is just loud enough to reduce the honking of the car horns of impatient drivers, the barking… Read More »