Personal Finance Advice

I see many people give up on careers and activities that they love (or might love) because they don’t believe they have enough talent to succeed. Whether it’s acting, writing, designing, athletics, or even something more practical like computer programming or teaching, they just don’t feel like they have that magical ability that will make [...]

It was not that long ago that a young person could find a job and expect to keep that job until he retired. Experience was rewarded. Seniority was respected. Pensions were offered. And at the end of a long career, employers expressed their gratitude. Those days are gone and it is now exceedingly rare to [...]

I see a lot of people these days working for very little money. I’m not talking about minimum wage work; that pays a fortune compared to the work I’m talking about. I’m talking about people who write blog articles for content aggregator sites for a dollar for 400 words, take hour-long surveys for $0.50, or [...]

I’m always a little surprised at how much everything in our society is measured in terms of money. We measure our worth by our salaries, not by how much we love our work. We measure our remodeling projects by how much we can get back when we sell and not on how much we love [...]

My last “real job” where I worked full-time for someone else was a mess. There was sexual harassment, bullying, unfair hours and demands, and all sorts of other foolishness going on. I was young and hadn’t yet saved up a large emergency fund, so leaving wasn’t possible unless I had another job lined up. Not [...]

After close to thirty years of working for other people, I have finally decided to hang out a shingle on my own. For some people, self-employment is a natural extension of who they are. For me, as I insist on the possibility of great success in anything I undertake, the decision to go into business [...]

Lately I’ve been speaking to a friend who doesn’t know what to do about her job. She hates it. She hates the work, the boss, and her coworkers. The environment is toxic, with a lot of sexual harassment and verbal abuse. She desperately wants to quit but can’t because she needs the money. She knows [...]

By now, almost everyone has probably read of the huge bonuses that AIG recently paid to more than seventy of its executives with money that AIG received from the US government as part of its bailout. If you have not read about it, take a few moments to do so. Although there is tremendous outrage [...]

For all the time and expense involved and for all the talk about how a college degree will help you land a job and make a higher salary, there sure are a lot of important things that many college curriculum don’t teach you about how to excel in the working world. Here are a few [...]

When you’re a young adult preparing for a working world that you haven’t yet experienced, knowing what to expect is difficult. Here are a number of things I wish I had known about work when I was 20 that would have gotten me off to a better start. Why learn these lessons the hard way [...]

I have been out of work for a few months. At first, I enjoyed having a bit of stress free time. As I look back on the most tranquil times of my adult life, they were almost certainly the summer after I finished college, the summer after I finished my law degree and the summer [...]

I know someone who has been out of work for four or five months. (He had been a big-wig at a financial/investment firm and got laid off.) I greeted him the other day when we were both out raking leaves and asked how the job hunt was going. “It’s been hard. I can’t find anything,” [...]

As the old year draws to a close and a new year is about to dawn, I like to take a few moments to look back on the past year and to reflect on what went right and what went wrong, how things have changed and whether those changes were for the good. I am [...]

I have been fortunate. For most of my adult life, I have been able to telecommute to work. Indeed, from 2000 through 2007, I was able to hold a position as a corporate vice president at a 700+ employee company. During that time, I only had to make a total of 5 business trips, totaling [...]

Unless you’re very fortunate, at some point in your life you’re likely to have a job you hate. You might not hate it in the beginning but sooner or later, whether it’s because management changes, your responsibilities are shift, or your coworkers become morons, you’ll wake up one day and say, “I hate my job.” [...]

It never fails: You encounter new people and the first question they ask is, “So, what do you do?” Occasionally you’ll encounter people that seem to ask this question out of a genuine interest in you and your life, but most of the time you can tell that it’s their way of quickly sizing up [...]

Both online and in the real world, I’m seeing more and more people desperate to work from home these days. I hear many reasons for this: The high price of gas is making commuting too expensive. Those already at home need to bring in extra income to make ends meet or pay for extras. It’s [...]