I told the story elsewhere of how my wife and I woke up in our late 40s to a harsh realization: our investment cupboard was bare. We were not alone, though. In fact, millions of Americans in their 40s or 50s don’t have nearly enough money saved to retire. In a recent GAO survey, 29% […]
image: wikimedia commons If you are old enough, you will remember 1973, when OPEC caused the price of oil to quadruple. (If you’re too young, simply Google “1973 oil crisis images” to see an endless parade of people stranded at gas stations with hand-written signs like the one in the picture.) That crisis changed life […]
An acquaintance of ours returned from a missionary trip to Tanzania recently. As these cross-cultural encounters go, each side had plenty to share with the other about their lives. Toward the end the trip, she asked one of the locals what stood out from everything the Americans related. It was that there are people on […]
If you didn’t hear it on the news, you probably noticed it the last time you filled up your car: gasoline prices have been dropping lately after holding fairly steady for a year or so, following world oil prices. After clicking your heels at the gas station when nobody was looking, you probably got in […]
Have you ever watched the popular television show “Shark Tank”? In it, entrepreneurs pitch their young businesses to five rich tycoons (the “sharks”) in hopes of attracting an investment from one or more of them. Some entrepreneurs are youngsters with a great idea, some are savvy veterans, and others are ordinary families hoping to turn […]
Statistically, 80 to 90 percent of you live outside of California. When you read reports of the drought in California, then, your reaction may be something like, “Bummer for those dudes. Patti, please pass the peas.” You might want to reconsider, though, because chances are this drought could affect you more than you think. Saying […]
image: apple Which side are you on? The universe these days seems to be split into Apple lovers and Apple haters. The lovers anxiously awaited Apple’s annual model change, wondering what they were going to do to save us from that most dreaded of modern conditions: gadget deprivation. Everyone knew the iPhone 6 would come […]
photo: Wikimedia Commons We were at the Seattle airport a few years ago, my wife and I, checking in our baggage at the counter. We had some work to do in Chelan and were on our way back to Denver. As we made our way to the airport, we stopped at a Trader Joe’s to […]
“Burger King abdicates US citizenship, ” shouted the normally staid BBC. Burger King seems to be vilified everywhere for its plan to merge with Tim Hortons, the Canadian breakfast giant. Why? This thing called tax inversion. The goal of this post is simply to break through the rhetoric and lay out the basic issues of the […]
If so, you might be in a better position than you think. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS as it’s more commonly known, keeps track of more than just unemployment statistics. Any time geeks try to analyze something, they go into inordinate detail, which glazes over the eyes of everyone trying to understand what […]