Articles
Financial Literacy Life Lesson: Car-buying
My fifteen-year old minivan bit the dust over the summer, so I reluctantly pulled out the vehicle research I’d done over the past few months this was not an entirely unexpected event) and became a car shopper. I took advantage of the fact that my son was home from...
Teens and Money
I see a lot of people asking advice on how to help their children to transition to financial adulthood, particularly when they’re heading to college or otherwise leaving the nest. As a parent of four teenagers, this is something I’ve personally been navigating for the...
Digging into an Imbalance of Power in Your Finances
I usually write about somewhat lighter topics – a podcast review or a blog about how to combine finances with a partner. Today I want to talk about a subject that alarms me, and I see it with some regularity: an imbalance of power regarding finances. I’m looking at...
Overcoming a Common Money Stumbling Block
A few months ago I started to recognize a pattern that some of my clients were struggling with when I’d ask them to come up with a summary of their spending. It turns out that they’d hit an expense that could have fit into a couple of different categories, and then...
Lending Money to Family or Friends
I had a client come in recently who wanted to talk about lending a significant amount of money to a family member. It’s not something I see a lot, and it got me thinking about what you need to consider before lending money. Lending money to a loved one might make...
Taxes in Divorce
Heading into a divorce, you’re likely so overwhelmed with the legal, emotional, and financial issues that you’re dealing with that the last thing you probably want to be thinking about is how it’s going to affect your taxes. But considering the tax effects of your...
The Money Date
Photo by Jonathan J. Castellon on Unsplash I get a lot of couples coming in to my office, and one thing that we tend to talk about is communication. What do you need to talk about, and how often? Note that right now I’m talking about a couple in a long-term...
Financial Goals, Part Two
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash As a follow up to my last blog about setting financial goals, I wanted to address a little more specifically how to choose your goals, and also the importance of giving direction to your money. This isn’t limited to New Year’s – we...
New Year – New Financial Goals
I’ve become a big fan of goal-setting in recent years. I started out with financial goals back in 2012, and in recent years have added other areas; last year I had goals in four other categories: Professional, Health/Wellness, Family, and Friends. I love this...
When Life Throws You a Financial Curveball
Sometimes, we find ourselves on a good path. We may not be breaking any records for paying off debt or saving for the future, but we’re doing okay. Everything is chugging along. And then life happens. What does that look like? It might be a major medical event, or a...
Saving For a Purpose
I got my Holiday Club check in the mail a couple of weeks ago. You might know what I’m talking about – through my local bank I have an automatic transfer set up so that every time we get a paycheck, a small amount is transferred into our Club account. The year starts...
How to Combine Finances
How to combine finances is a question that every couple has to deal with when getting married or otherwise merging their lives. [Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash] There’s a spectrum of how joint or separate your finances can be. and you can choose to fall anywhere on...