Category Archives: Debt
Are Any Budgeting Methods Even Feasible?
When people who make a living giving personal finance advice tell you that you should budget, it feels the same as when physicians in private practice tell you that you should diet. You work 80 hours per week, and another 10 commuting, and you could spend the other 38 on meal prep and traveling… Read More »
Can the “Girl Math” Social Media Trend Help Your Finances?
Whoever first decided to use the term “girl math” to refer to purchases that do not have an immediate effect on your bank account balance had a keen sense of clickbait. It inspired the clicks of men who blame their current and former wives for wrecking their finances, as well as women whose minds… Read More »
Is Reverse Budgeting Only for Rich People?
It must be nice to be rich. You get free checking accounts and low interest loans. If you manage to get in over your head with debt despite earning a high income and borrowing money at low interest rates, you can file for chapter 13 bankruptcy, where you do not place any of your… Read More »
Would Cash Assistance for Housing Make Life Simpler?
When you are struggling to pay your bills, you wish for a windfall, but when you wish for a windfall, it only brings more stress. The stories of people who won the lottery and quickly ended up in worse shape, financially and otherwise, than they were before they bought the fateful scratch off ticket… Read More »
Tell the CFPB What You Think About Earned Wage Access
Earned wage access apps have been around for a long time, under a variety of names. Minus the app part, they predate the invention of the smartphone. The concept of earned wage access is that employers tally up how much money an employee has earned at the end of each workday and keep a… Read More »
Don’t Count on an Inheritance to Get You Out of Debt
Yes, your financial situation is better than some people’s. You own a house, and you have never missed a mortgage payment. You have a job, and your employer withholds taxes and pays the after-tax amount into your bank account through direct deposit; you rarely get an unpleasant surprise on payday, and at tax time,… Read More »
What Can Underconsumption Tell You About Your Financial Problems?
Online content, from gloom and doom news stories to aspirational videos by influencers, has a way of amplifying our negative emotions. Everywhere you click, someone is trying to make you feel like everyone else has more money than you do, that your financial problems are your own fault, and that everyone is judging you… Read More »
Can ABLE Accounts Bring You Financial Relief?
Managing your finances in today’s economy is a challenge, even if you are healthy and steadily employed. You never know when the next price increase or natural disaster is going to throw off the delicate balance that enables you to live from paycheck to paycheck, with a few cents left in your bank account… Read More »
Are Subscriptions the New Junk Fees?
One of the fundamental rules of business is that companies charge customers as much money as they can get away with charging them. The difference between the amount of money needed to cover the cost of a product or to provide a service and the amount you pay is the company’s profit, so businesses… Read More »
Tread Carefully With Good Debt
You know you are rich when you can divide your debt into good debt and bad debt. There is an old saying that circulates widely in debt-free lifestyle content that says that if you have zero debts and you have ten dollars in your pocket, you have a higher net worth than most Americans. … Read More »