Helping people make sense of money
Featured In:
AARP, Bankrate, Barron's, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNBC, ETF.com, Financial Planning, Fortune, Fox Business, Investor’s Business Daily, Investopedia, Kiplinger, MarketWatch, Money, MSN Money, NerdWallet, Reuters, The New York Times, TheStreet, ThinkAdvisor, U.S. News & World Report, and The Wall Street Journal
Porch Pirates and Fake Delivery Notifications – Securing Your Holiday Gifts
The convenience of online shopping makes holiday preparation easier, but it also opens the door to porch pirates and delivery scams. Here’s how to outsmart them this season. Porch piracy spikes during the holidays when thieves take advantage of unattended deliveries. A single stolen package can ruin the joy of gift-giving and cost you hundreds…
Gift Card Scams – Don’t Let Scammers Steal Your Holiday Cheer
Gift cards are a favorite holiday gift, but they’re also a favorite tool for scammers. Every year, thousands of people lose money to fraudsters who use clever tricks to steal from unsuspecting buyers. Let’s break down how these scams work and how you can protect yourself. How Gift Card Scams HappenScammers often impersonate someone you…
The Weight of Worry: Managing Stress as Retirement Approaches
Retirement: a word that conjures dreams of freedom, relaxation, and fulfillment—but also an undercurrent of uncertainty. For many nearing this milestone, worry becomes a persistent companion. Will my money last? How will I fill my days? What happens if my health declines? These concerns are more than fleeting thoughts; they can evolve into chronic stressors…
Prioritizing Health in Your Financial Planning: Building a Secure and Healthy Future
When people think about financial planning, they often focus on saving and investing for retirement. Yet, health-related expenses are a major part of financial security, especially in retirement. By prioritizing health within your financial plan, you can reduce long-term costs, protect your retirement funds, and enjoy a well-rounded approach to securing your future. Why Health…
Romance Fraud: A Costly Love Affair
When it comes to scams, few are as emotionally devastating and financially ruinous as romance fraud. It’s a deceptive trap set by criminals who exploit feelings of affection, trust, and loneliness to steal from victims. While the promise of love can make people feel safe, romance fraud is becoming a growing concern, especially in the…
Navigating Loneliness During the Holidays
The first holiday card arrives in your mailbox – another picture-perfect family in matching sweaters. Your social media feed fills with office party photos and family reunion videos. And something in your chest tightens, because this year, your holiday season looks different. Whether by circumstance, distance, or loss, you’re facing these celebratory weeks alone. If…
Teaching Money Skills to the Next Generation
Teaching kids about money is one of the most valuable life skills parents can pass on. Financial literacy can start at home in a way that’s approachable and even fun. This guide shares practical tips and modern tools to introduce money skills at different stages, helping children and teens develop habits that can lead to…
Assessing Your Risk: Are You Vulnerable to Investment Scams?
Investment scams are nothing new but there are some tools that you can use to assess your vulnerability to falling for one. FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) has created two simple quizzes you can take so let’s explore how you can use them to better understand your own risk—and ultimately safeguard your financial future. The…
Is Retirement Planning Missing the Point? A New Approach to Living Well
We spend most of our working years planning for the distant horizon of retirement, fixating on one question: Will I have enough? Enough money to support myself when the paychecks stop, enough savings to handle life’s surprises, enough to enjoy the so-called ‘golden years’ after decades of hard work? Retirement planning, as it stands, often…
Is Disability Insurance Really Necessary?
Insurance in general really annoys most of us, doesn’t it? We pay for something every month and get absolutely nothing in return—until we do. When money’s tight, it feels like an incredibly painful, albeit necessary, expense, and in better times, does it ever really spark joy? (That was rhetorical. We all agree it doesn’t.) HOWEVER—when…
Lesson 23: Life and Disability Insurance
Protecting income and protecting people who rely on it Earlier this year we explored insurance that protects your property and well being – auto, home and health. But what about another valuable asset most people have during their working years: the ability to earn. Life insurance and disability insurance sit behind the scenes until they…
Lesson 20: Money for Real Life
Sinking funds, planned enjoyment, regular spending, and why not every dollar belongs in a retirement account Whether you’ve been here since January or you joined somewhere along the way, this year has been about building structure. We’ve worked through cash flow, essential expenses, emergency reserves, debt, investing, asset mix, and staying invested when markets test…
Lesson 17: Asset Mix Made Simple
What stocks and bonds do, why mix matters, and how risk shows up over time Over the past month, the focus has been on investing and growth, how money compounds, how to open accounts, and how to get started. Once money is invested, the next step is understanding how it works. You are not expected…
Lesson 14: How Money Grows
Turning stability into momentum Up to this point, the work has been about understanding how money moves through your life. You’ve been tracking cash flow, spotting inefficiencies, and learning that with some attention, it’s possible to pull money away from places it quietly leaks out and redirect it toward something more intentional. That process often…
Lesson 11: Beneficiaries & Account Access
Making sure the right people can act when you can’t This part of your financial life rarely gets attention because it doesn’t surface regularly. There is no monthly statement reminding you to check beneficiaries. No alert asking whether account access still makes sense. No prompt to confirm who could step in if you were unavailable.…
Lesson 8: Your Credit Snapshot
How everyday behavior quietly shapes access, pricing, and flexibility Credit scores are often treated like something mysterious or fragile, as if one wrong move sends everything spinning. In reality, your credit score is a summary. It reflects a handful of behaviors over time and reacts slowly, not emotionally. Businesses understand this instinctively. They borrow, repay,…
Lesson 5: Month-One Closeout
Seeing how your system actually works January was about easing into a new year where you gained visibility, started to recognize pressure points, became familiar with bill creep, and began to understand the role timing plays. This week is your first quick review – not to perfect anything, but to see how the process felt…
Lesson 2: Identify Your Pressure Points
Seeing where things snap under pressure Last week we talked about getting everything out of your head and onto one page — income, expenses, the whole picture. Think of it like a vision board, a seating chart, or a house plan. The point isn’t the tool itself. It’s that you can see everything at once.…
The Year That Taught Us How Money Really Works
SO how’s your year going!?!?! 2025 is about to come to a close – and while we never meant to rhyme, it certainly kept us on our tippy toes. BUT- it also proved to be quite useful, albeit exhausting at the same time. But mindset is crucial here because why go though all of the…
Last-Minute Money Checklist: 10 Smart Moves to Make Before December 31
Every December, the same headlines circulate: “Boost your 401(k), harvest tax losses, make your charitable contributions.” Helpful, for sure, but if you’re trying to drum up some extra cash before the year resets, here’s where to look. Let’s dive into your year-end “cash sweep” – the lesser-known places where real dollars are hiding. 1. Wellness…
Lesson 24: Protect Your Accounts
Two-factor authentication, alerts, credit freezes, and cleaning up old access Up to this point, we have talked about protecting income, protecting assets, and protecting against interruption. This week shifts to something quieter but just as important: protecting access. Most financial disruption today does not start with a market crash. It starts with compromised credentials, an…
Lesson 21: Lifestyle Creep
How rising income can quietly stretch the system you’ve built Over the past few months, we’ve focused on structure – tracking cash flow, building reserves, investing, and thinking deliberately about how each dollar is used. At the same time, most people are working toward higher income, better opportunities, and more stability. When income rises, life…
Lesson 18: Staying Invested
Volatility, fees, and the reasons people second-guess the plan At some point after you start investing, a shift happens. You’ve cleared the hurdle of opening the account and setting up contributions. Then you wait for the money you just parted with to grow. It can feel unsettling at first. One day you log in and…
Lesson 15: Workplace Plan Basics
Understanding how employer plans fit into your bigger picture Workplace retirement plans are often introduced early and then left largely unexplored. You enroll during onboarding, pick something that sounds reasonable, and then life moves on. Contributions happen in the background, statements pile up unread, and years can pass before you stop to ask what role…
Lesson 12: Tax Prep Check-In
Making sure taxes don’t quietly undo the rest of your plan Filing season brings clarity. You see the final numbers, the refund or balance due, and how the year played out. This week is about using that information while it’s still useful. Withholding decisions are often set once and left untouched, even as income changes,…
Lesson 9: Month-Two Closeout
When the numbers stop feeling foreign By the second month, something shifts. You’re no longer staring at a blank sheet, and the process starts to feel familiar instead of intimidating. Month one often feels like a heavy lift. You’re setting everything up, uncovering things you hadn’t looked at closely, and maybe finding a few places…
Lesson 6: Set a Real Emergency Fund Target
Turning clarity into a real safety net Last week, you pulled together the numbers that run your life. Real monthly costs, plus the non-monthly expenses that sneak in throughout the year. That work gives you something most people never have: a clear baseline. This week, we use it. The goal is simple. Turn that baseline…
Lesson 3: The Bill Creep Audit
Seeing the small increases you stopped noticing Autopay is one of the most useful tools in modern finance. It keeps bills from slipping through the cracks, protects your credit, and saves time. We use it too. But convenience has a tradeoff. When money moves automatically, it also becomes easier for costs to drift without being…
A Little Cushion Goes a Long Way
If you’ve ever been through a layoff or even a close call, you know the feeling: once you get back on your feet, you never want to be that exposed again. Parallel income isn’t about becoming an entrepreneur or squeezing more work into an already full life. It’s about insulation – a way to stay…
Revenge Saving: When Discipline Turns Into Overcorrection
There’s a lot of talk about overspending, impulse buying, lifestyle creep, and holiday pressure. Almost none of the conversation covers the opposite problem: what happens when people swing too far into restriction after a hard financial year. It’s common. People stabilize after job loss, illness, divorce, a layoff scare, or a period of high debt,…