I listen to a lot of personal finance podcasts and radio programs, probably too much to be honest. One of the most frustrating questions that continues to circulate, without necessarily a good answer, is how much should parents save for the kid’s college education. I mean we have guidelines for retirement savings (most people recommend …
My life over the past couple of weeks has been fairly busy as you might imagine. My posting has become sporadic, at best, over the past month or two. First, it was because I was just in a funk with all of the adoption stuff and now I am just plain tired. It takes all of …
Over the past month or so I have really neglected this blog. My apologies for doing so. I think it is probably a combination of the end of the semester, trying to do my own academic writing (which was sort of successful), and just the fact that I don’t think I have anything interesting to …
t is amazing what can happen in a week or so. Last week I discussed my latest student loan update. In that update I noted that I was still trying to obtain public service loan forgiveness and had been unsuccessful in my attempts to at the TEPSLF opportunity (Temporary Expanded PSLF). Two days later, I was …
As Halloween rolled around I was thinking about what my weakness was for candy and the like (it is M&Ms I am a huge fan). For whatever reason that got me to thinking about what my biggest financial weakness is. On this blog I have talked about my biggest financial mistakes. However, I have never discussed …
A lot of you probably heard about the market downturn last week. In just over two days, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped over 1300 points or about 4.5%. The other major stock market indices didn’t do much better. Both the Nasdaq, S&P 500, Russell 2000 Index and others all got walloped last week. It …
For me, the fall is my favorite time of the year. I have never been really a fan of the summer. I think primarily it was because I didn’t do a lot during the summer when I was a kid. Even when I was in college, I would basically come home and work, but I …
The past couple of posts have been really dedicated to my students. I have been thinking them a lot lately as they face a constantly changing job market, the uncertainty of the future with robots, the sharing economy, the gig economy, and the ability to afford the things there parents were able to. As I …
Many universities have already started the school year. My university starts this week and considering it is Labor Day weekend I thought it might be a good thing to think about the idea of labor, particularly for my students who will participate in the workforce. I have the privilege of being one of the primary …
I was listening to a radio show over the weekend that takes callers and the host(s) try to answer their specific questions. One particular caller got me thinking about today’s post. This caller was an older woman, about 63, who had about $20k in consumer debt and still had about 100k on her mortgage. Her …