In general people start out at 18 debt free.  Then most of us go to college and end up with some student loan debt.  Then we get jobs, buy cars, move out on our own, etc.  And get caught up in “starter” debt.  Maybe not a lot, maybe a ton.  It could be borrowing $1k [...]

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Was the entitlement generation created by their parents?  Was it the fault of the boomers, that they felt their children should have everything and not suffer like they did?  Is this what caused many 20-30-40 somethings to feel that they needed to continue living the lifestyle they had with the parents now?  There is no [...]

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I am currently going through a rough time with my dog.  He is very sick and I am very worried.  We don’t have pet health insurance for him, because we adopted him and getting insurance wasn’t feasible.
So when given a choice about caring for a dog, I’ve always said that finances don’t matter. And the [...]

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When should you take advice from others regarding your personal finances and when should you ignore it?  Honestly it’s a really tough call. Sometimes it’s hard to take advice when you know you are doing something really stupid.  And sometimes it’s easy because it’s the exact decision you’d want to make for yourself.
One truth at [...]

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A commentor wrote a cool email that made me think.  Broke is a spending problem, while poor is an income problem.  People can spend their way into a lot of problems. They can also have a problem with not earning enough to cover basic bills.
When my DH and I were both graduate students we were [...]

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You aren’t squeaking by if you make $300k/year.  There is no way, no how!  This article in the Washington Post is BullSHIT!  Okay, again I’m being snarky, but here the majority of us are worried about our jobs, our mortgages, paying for kids, car payments, etc, and these people are complaining about “barely” making it [...]

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MP Dunleavy wrote an interesting article about women not taking finances seriously.  They compared women to men, and while found women to be sadly lacking in the savings, credit card debt, and investing departments.  Now realize, the men in the survey aren’t great either.  MP says that women aren’t taking their financial future as seriously [...]

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Is there such a thing as planning too much?  Can you overly plan?  Does it matter if you do or don’t?  Do you even need a plan.  Probably if you are reading this, you’re a planner. You probably follow a rough budget, set up financial goals, and are attempting to plan to for retirement, a [...]

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Grace from GracefulRetirement asks the question “Why is the answer to the economy to take away benefits from the poor, instead of expanding them to the middle class?”  She later referenced an article about Washington Post “High Cost of Poverty” article.  She says she understands it’s envy that causes us to say “people on welfare [...]

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Grace from GracefulRetirement talked about Not-So Financially Responsible Grown-up Kids.  She references an Ask Amy post about the topic of parents helping out adult children.  Two parents wrote it asking Amy, if it were unreasonable to ask their adult children to split the dinner meal out.  These children were more financially secure than the parents, [...]

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