Why Your Environment Wins Every Time
During the Vietnam War, heroin use among American soldiers became so widespread that officials feared the country was heading toward a public health disaster. Cheap, highly pure heroin was easy to find in Vietnam. Soldiers were living in an environment filled with chronic stress, fear, isolation, boredom, and trauma — the exact conditions that can […]
Money Scripts: Why High Income Couples Fight Over $50
One cold night in Philadelphia, I was on a beautiful rooftop bar with my girlfriend, filled with amazingly luscious plants and EDM remixes of classic songs that made us want to take out the Shazam app time and time again. It was our third date and somehow, finances came up. What might be a buzzkill […]
Joint versus Separate Accounts: The Decision That Can Undermine Your Relationship
According to a Fidelity report, 45% of couples argue about money from time to time. That stat always strikes me, because in my experience working with clients, the argument is rarely actually about money. It’s about what money represents — fairness, autonomy, control — and whether both people genuinely feel like equal partners in the […]
High Income Financial Stress: The $300K Trap Silently Draining Dual-Income Couples
After diligently saving for over 18 months, my wife and I bought a house. We were very conscious about what the savings would go towards: the down payment, the closing costs, and most importantly, the costs to furnish the place. A few months into making the home ours, the savings stash was lower than either […]
The Worst Time To Buy Something
To most of us, October 2006 has no material significance. For me, the date didn’t matter much either. However, it was a sign that the odds were against me. When was in my basement this week, I happened to notice a pool of water coating the floor in one of the unfinished rooms. Naturally, my […]
The Opoids of the Personal Finance World
Over the last couple of years, the financial services industry has been making it easier and easier to heal your financial pain through new or more accessible products and services. Let’s take a look at some of the offerings I’m referring to: While the offerings seem great on the surface, they come with the very […]
3 Simple Tests to Know If You Can Afford Anything
My brother is a gearhead with dreams of owning a airplane hanger full of Ferraris.* Even though it’ll be some time until his dreams come true (as of this post, anyway), I half-jokingly pressed him to buy a used Porsche. After all, he could snag a pre-owned Boxster for maybe $40k. He chided my sarcastic […]