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When you are living in challenging circumstances, every small victory counts. The fact that most people who buy lottery tickets have less employment income than they need to make ends meet surprises no one who has ever lived paycheck to paycheck. Winning a free lottery ticket is worth the price of the original ticket, if…

In the corners of the Internet dedicated to the debt-free lifestyle, people will tell you that you should never borrow money under any circumstances. People who manage to do this are relying in part on good luck. Who can own a house without taking out a mortgage loan?  Only people who inherited houses from relatives…

Reading the news can fill you with dread, and most Internet content is designed to play on your insecurities, even if they are of a personal nature, but you can also count on the Internet to find evidence that there are other people out there who are even more hopeless than you are. According to…

It is infuriating when old people give you outdated financial advice that makes it sound like your financial problems are all your fault. They tell you that you are wasting money by paying rent instead of a mortgage, but they do not have a plan for how you can qualify for a mortgage and get…

If you have accessed the Internet at any time in the past decade, you have probably found content about how people your age do not understand the financial struggles that young people are facing, and that you and your peers are unfairly blaming the young generation for their dismal financial situation. Now think about the…

You work all the time, but you are still in debt. Economists use the term “the working poor,” but you would never use that term to describe yourself. It sounds like something that supervillains say when peering down from their penthouse retreats at the working poor, trying to tilt their magnifying glasses at just the right…

Unless you are extraordinarily wealthy or extraordinarily disciplined about screen time, you probably keep track of every penny you earn and every penny you spend, but you have probably long since lost count of how much time you spend on the Internet. Your phone might send you an alert on Sunday mornings telling you your average amount of screen time for…

Much like homeownership, a comfortable retirement is looking more and more like an outdated aspect of the American Dream. Most people leave the workforce and start drawing Social Security, not because they have enough money saved to pay their expenses until their 100th birthday, but because they are no longer healthy enough to work, and many of them…

Qualifying for a home mortgage has never been easy; if you want to buy a house, you either need generational wealth or an extraordinary stroke of luck. Today, a disproportionate share of homebuyers have their parents contribute to the down payment, or else the mortgage loan principal would be so big that lenders would refuse to issue the loan.…

Hats off to Amsterdam. It had legalized recreational cannabis long before California did. Maybe it is time for California to borrow another page from the Netherlands’ playbook. Like Amsterdam, California already has bike-friendly streets and a climate that welcomes tourists year-round, and we probably don’t need our own equivalent of Amsterdam’s red-light district. What we do need is affordable housing, and renting…

“Winding up a business that has become insolvent is as easy as ABC,” said no one ever. Closing a business because it has caused too many financial losses for its shareholders is stressful and, somehow, at least as time-consuming as maintaining the operations of a business that is currently viable. Deciding to cut your losses…

Compared to most other events in an average consumer’s year, receiving a tax refund feels like a cause for celebration. The saying that it is expensive to be poor is as painfully true today as it was decades ago. From unaffordable interest rates on loans to getting your paycheck on a debit card that charges…

the Benefit of the Doubt When you tell your family about your plans to file for bankruptcy protection, there is always that one family member who is convinced that you are so bad with money that, no matter how much debt relief you get from your bankruptcy case, you will just end up broke again.…

The less need you have for something, the more willing people are to give it to you. This is especially true of credit. If you have one million dollars in your bank account, banks will not think twice before lending you another million, but if you needed to buy and furnish a house for a…

Credit card debt is a major drain on your finances these days, and you are not the only one. As of early 2024, American consumers owe a total of more than a trillion dollars in credit card debt. Minimum payments on credit cards take up a big portion of your paycheck, so even as you…