Imagine: you give a teenager access to car keys when they have never driven a car or taken Driver's Education.  You simply tell them to drive carefully and you hope for the best. That would be setting them up for failure, and yet, we do this every day with personal finance. The stakes might not be dying in a car crash, but racking up massive amounts of student loan debt before even starting a career may be a death of a certain kind, nonetheless. According to The Student Loan Report, national Read on...

My son considered his course options for next year. His dilemma was how to meet the visual arts requirement; art classes interest him like watching paint peel. We suggested a digital photography class. “I hear it’s a lot of work!” he said, “It’s not easy, you have to know about camera settings – you don’t just go off and use the camera.” I started to scold him that he was being lazy and not challenging himself, but the truth is I remember looking for the easy way out to classes that didn’t Read on...

I have a bird’s-eye view into the many ways investors have been misdirected by their financial salespeople; but this past week I encountered a perplexing situation – which is rare, as I’ve seen a lot. In the past, the usual "suspect-behavior" has been selling investors expensive mutual funds and annuities when better, lower cost options existed.  I’ve seen investors saddled with unnecessary surrender charges and no asset allocation strategy.  In short, I’ve seen no rhyme or reason to the Read on...