All over the country, but especially in California, people who used to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle are now complaining that their six-figure household income leaves them living paycheck to paycheck. They used to be able to transfer a percentage of every paycheck into savings and to afford leisure travel and restaurant meals. Now, they anxiously…

Young people have plenty of reasons to be in a bad mood about their finances. Buying a house is prohibitively expensive, but so is renting. Robots and chatbots are proving themselves to be increasingly competent at an increasing number of our jobs. Married people are better off financially than single people, and marriage rates are…

Losing money is a natural part of gambling, and if you are sure that there will be a chance to win the money back and then some, it can be part of the fun. If you have ever used the proceeds from gambling to pay your bills, you are not alone. So many people rely…

You have been trying for years to pay off your debts, and you are getting nowhere. It is only natural to feel demoralized. Even those lab rats that press the lever multiple times, but it gives them treats less and less often, eventually give up. Of course, you are not a lab rat, and you…

When you are watching every penny, you sit at home and make financial calculations in your mind while other people are out engaging in leisure pursuits, or so the influencers on YouTube would have you believe, then you try to spend your free time on income-generating activities, or at least on doing things that do…

If you are bummed out about the fact that everyone in California has been in a foul mood for as long as you can remember, count your blessings. Try driving a few states east to Utah or Texas, where the older generations have managed to impress upon their daughters, even in these turbulent times, that…

In a perfect world, no one would need to use credit cards, but a perfect world is so far away that you have already maxed out one credit card with grocery purchases and other expenses that no one would consider luxuries, and now you are running up the balance on at least one other card.…

How bad your finances are is, at least partially, a matter of perspective. Sure, you don’t have any money left at the end of the month to put into savings. If you are so optimistic that you transfer a percentage of your paycheck into savings every payday, then you end up transferring it back into…

After introductory quotes from texts in Latin, Classical Greek, and Italian, T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” begins, “April is the cruellest month.” It is true that April is not especially cuddly, but all of the months are cruel these days. It is as if the financial death toll of the Christmas holidays never ends. Chances…

When people meet with debt relief lawyers to discuss bankruptcy filings and other possible solutions to their debt problems, most of them tell a similar story of a debt problem that started gradually. Yes, there are people whose finances tanked suddenly after a personal disaster such as an injury or a divorce, but an even…