Where’s the peer pressure to live small today so that we might live comfortably tomorrow?  Where’s the celebrity spokesperson to tell us how way cool it is to eschew the little luxuries of the moment in order to afford a long-term-care policy?  Where’s the slick marketing campaign that can convince us to forgo a year’s [...]

Doing money right is not a core competency for most people.  This is either a baffling irony or a natural consequence of a materialistic culture.  People feel stupid about money, so they keep it at arm’s length, sometimes for decades.  People may be OK when it comes to earning money and quite adept at spending [...]

Debt Warp holds that our whip-it-out credit card culture makes it so easy to buy stuff that people delude themselves into thinking they’re more affluent, better set for the future, than they are.  Debt Warp reshapes reality and turns age-old precepts about frugality upside down.  We are so accustomed to buying things we really don’t [...]

The greatest uncertainty of all may be the uncertainty over what money is good for.  We bury this uncertainty under a million cliches.  Money can’t buy happiness.  Oh, no?  Money can buy time and opportunity to do the things we most love.  It can help us fulfill our obligations as parents to our kids and [...]

Easy credit makes it easier to spend than to save, more pleasant to shop than to plan.  We throw money around.  We piss it away.  We treat ourselves to new shoes or a smart phone when we’re feeling blue.  The Wall Street Journal recently reported that since 1990, median household income has risen 11 percent, [...]