What if I asked you to rate your financial well-being on a scale of 1 to 10 -- 1 being poor and 10 being excellent. How would you answer? Perhaps it would be helpful if we made an effort to first define financial...
How often do you ask yourself, 'why didn't I do this sooner?' We love to drive when our car is clean. Work seems more enjoyable when our work space is neat and orderly. Our homes were never so delightful to live in until putting them...
As Jack reminds me almost daily, next week is his last in kindergarten which means summer is just around the corner. Soon we’ll all be packing our bags and heading to the beach (or elsewhere) for a vacation. As I was thinking about my family's...
Now that the 2018 tax season is over (unless you extended, but you know what I mean), we've gotten through our first official tax year of higher standard deductions, which, among other things, means for most people the relative value of each dollar given to charity has gone down...
I started banking with my current bank almost 30 years ago. I chose NCNB because they had a branch a short walk from my dorm room. As a college freshman, proximity and the fact that they were willing to give me a credit card was...
In 1992, during the Barcelona Olympics (where the greatest basketball team of all time was assembled), Seinfeld began its fourth season with a two-part opening called "The Trip." Like almost all Seinfeld episodes, there's no point in me trying to recap what happens in those...
I mean this in the best possible way: You do not keep yourself alive. The breathing, the movement of blood, the functioning of the kidneys and liver and all the rest--you and I have no role whatsoever in making it all work. The most we can...
"Just as a doctor learns to diagnose disease from certain symptoms, failure and success can also be diagnosed. . . A person does not simply find success or come to failure. He or she carries their seeds around in his personality and character." Dr....
There’s a scene in the 2006 movie, Failure to Launch, where a couple is lamenting the fact that their adult son still lives with them. “The boy’s thirty-five years old!” says one. “It’s just not fair,” says the other. “We were good parents and now...
A few years back I read a great article by personal finance writer and artist Carl Richards. He was lamenting how all the budgeting strategies he’s tried over the years have failed. He’s cut credit cards, only used cash, and tried all sorts of other...
