Clik here to view.
Giving To Family Beyond Your Parents
One of my roommates in college, a sweet though also sharply intelligent, underestimate-her-at-your-peril kind of Midwesterner, told me that she worked throughout high school and was expected to hand...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Welcome To Our Guest Room! There Are Rules
My husband and I are North American expats with a nice guest room in a relatively central college town in the lowlands. If you’re visiting, we’ll lend you a bike, make you dinner, take you out and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Happy Birthday! I Bought You Something That Costs $5K A Month
What is with getting your special friend real estate for their birthday? Sure, it’s a nice gesture, but residences are, by definition, expensive and non-refundable. How can you be sure what you pick...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On Giving Back When You’re Older
The trouble with “paying your own way” is that it often means “paying the minimum of what you think is your share.” It’s like when one person in a household says “I’m doing 50 percent of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MacArthur Geniuses: They Pay Off Student Loans Just Like Us!
Two days ago, the 2015 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship recipients were announced. Each Genius receives $125,000 per year for five years ($625,000 total) to spend as they choose. The next day, fellowship...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What We Do And Don’t Save For
According to a T. Rowe Price study via Forbes, a lot of American parents have impulse control problems: around 30% of us save for annual events like the holiday season but not for events that are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gifts, Debts, Inheritances: White Millennials Get, Everyone Else Gives
Mel Jones’s Atlantic piece “Gifts, Debts, and Inheritances,” originally, it seems, from Washington Monthly, makes the important point that not all Millennials are created equal. While the majority of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Gift-Giving Question Of The Day
These may be the two most important questions ever asked in the gift-giving universe. Single people without children: do you give a unique gift to each individual member of a couple or family, or do...
View ArticleWhat Are You Getting Your Office Secret Santa This Year?
Michelle Markowitz of Fast Company (and of Hey Ladies at The Toast) sent us Fast Company’s newest comedy sketch featuring the terrible gifts we are likely to receive from our Office Secret Santas this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Functionality of Gift Guides, From Cheap-o To Cadillac
Many of us prefer not to go broke over the holidays simply because we have to buy gifts for everyone from parents-in-law to our kids’ teachers. And, because capitalism abhors a vacuum even more than...
View Article
