Charitable Giving & Taxes- What you need to know
Around Thanksgiving and the calendar (and tax year) end is when commercials and requests for donations tend to really pick up. Most people I talk to wish that they could give more financially to the causes they love but given the high cost of living and high taxes most people feel they cannot afford it. […]
The Diligent Squirrels
It’s been seven years since I first met the Squirrel family, who live in San Francisco, have three children, aspirations of the best education for those children and a strong desire to be homeowners. With all of these goals, they seem to make the improbable possible. A family needs to make more than $250,000 per […]
Money Club
I hate book clubs. I have tried a few over the years and find that either I’m the only one who reads the book, or we talk about the book for five minutes and spend the rest of the time drinking wine. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it just isn’t for me. […]
Maximizing Fun
I love doing fun things! Who doesn’t? Living in Europe provides me with a new playground of opportunities, and after being in France for more than a year I can look back and see how much money I have spent on that fun. My budget is not unlimited, so for the next year I am […]
Keep On Truckin’
In 2014, I started working with Bill. He wasn’t my typical client. Divorced, dad to two teenage sons, not working in finance, law or technology. He was laid back, and he knew what he loved: his boys, his dog, music and surfing. Financially speaking, he felt like a wreck. He wanted a budget, to get […]
Should You Both Work?
Affording life in the Bay Area is expensive. In general, it takes two working parents to make ends meet and be able to save for your bigger financial goals like home, retirement and education savings. The breakeven point is trending upward with the cost of housing, which is most families largest expense (25-45% of all […]
Cost of Taking Care of You
The sky could be the limit when it comes to spending money on self-care, but as a busy parent, it is hard to find the time and sometimes hard to justify the expense. Adulting is physically exhausting. With grandparents no longer living down the street to help with the kids, most parents are “on” all […]
Keeping up with the Joneses and Social Spending
“Keeping up with the Joneses” refers to benchmarking oneself vis-à-vis your neighbors or social circle when it comes to material goods or social class. This idiom dates back to a comic strip that started in 1913 and ran all the way to 1940. While social climbing and keeping up with your neighbors is mostly seen […]
Optimize Your Employee Benefits
For a lot of working people, open enrollment is approaching (October through November). This usually means boring emails from your HR department and having to make a bunch of decisions to make that you may not be sure about. According to the Department of Labor, benefits through work account for 31.8% of the cost of […]
How to Teach Your Children that Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness
My son is seven years old and thinks it is super cool to pretend to “make it rain” with his hands and imitate stacks of money flying in the air. My first reaction is to cringe and wish he didn’t think it was cool. Sometimes I hear him say things like, “If I had a […]
