Money scripts are beliefs we have acquired about money and how it works. We are usually unaware of these beliefs, in part because we see them as facts—”just the way it is.” We typically hold 50 to 200 money scripts, which affect every financial decision we...
Home title theft. This is a “threat” I only learned about from frantic radio commercials warning that your home can be stolen from you. They claim thieves can deed your property to themselves and then mortgage or even sell it without your knowledge. In...
For our ancestors, even as recently as the 19th Century in many places, survival skills were hands-on. If you didn’t know how to build a house, farm, hunt, butcher animals, sew, and cook, you couldn’t provide well for your family. Money skills were largely...
Is maintaining good physical health a worthwhile investment? The statistics suggest that in the long run, poor health will cost far more than the money or time it takes to maintain good health. Most of us might say we agree with this conclusion, but our behaviors say...
In a recent column, I discussed financial trauma—money-related occurrences that, either as single extreme events or chronic patterns, can overwhelm a person and become traumatic. Some emotional signs of financial trauma are depression, ambivalence, regularly reliving...
A common estate-planning question is whether it makes sense to leave inheritances with strings attached. My typical answer is “it depends.” It’s natural to want your legacy to be used wisely, but trying to control from beyond the grave can have...
