This time of year, we are surrounded by opportunities to give. Both our email inboxes and our snail mailboxes are jammed with solicitations for donations to charities, food banks, religious organizations, arts organizations, and more. We can give locally, nationally,...
Financial scams and con artists have probably been around at least as long as people have been using money. In the past when I read stories about scams, I often wondered how people could be so gullible. I assumed that the victims of fraud were the vulnerable elderly...
Encouraging a 20-something friend at my gym to attend a workshop I was giving on investing and financial planning, I quipped, “I’ll teach you how to be a millionaire.” “Really?” she responded. I quickly explained that, if someone her age invested $6,000 a year in...
If you lose your job, what emotional and professional support should you expect from your financial planner? Ideally, the planner’s first response would be, “Tell me more about what you’re experiencing. How can I best support you in this moment?” Since every client’s...
The term money scripts, describing the unconscious beliefs that underlie our financial decisions and behavior, has been used by financial planners and therapists for over 15 years. Since the term (coined by Brad Klontz, Ted Klontz, and I) was first published in my...
In two recent columns, I suggested that consuming a politically unbalanced media diet could negatively affect your long-term investment returns. The more strongly people buy into the rhetoric of their political parties, the more difficult it is to be pragmatic about...
