By: Laura Walton AFC® Yes, they’re a burden. I talk to very few young adults who don’t carry some student loan debt. But, as with every personal finance decision, the student loan debt experience is very different from one person to the next…and there are some interesting new options available. Maybe you’ve heard “SoFi at…
By: Laura Walton AFC® I had planned to blog about median home prices versus median incomes in the 20 Best Value Towns listed in the February issue of Sunset Magazines (Prescott was ranked #4 by the way) but I got sidetracked into something much more timely. Did you know Tucson ranked #6 out of 20…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman says “it’s nonsense to say money doesn’t buy happiness, but people exaggerate the extent to which more money can buy more happiness.” He famously set that tipping point at $75,000 based on 450,000 survey results collected in 2009. He went on to say… “It turns out there is…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Occasionally I hike with friends on Friday mornings. Afterwards, we gather at Starbucks and, even though I’m there infrequently, I’ve come to spot regulars, folks who apparently stop by every Friday morning for their brew. The same thought rolls through my brain each time – how do they afford the time…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Definition: Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you’re thinking in order to make your thinking better. Really? I started down the rabbit hole of critical thinking after reading an answer given by Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard and champion of index funds. Asked if he’d read an article that…
By: Laura Walton AFC® These last few days of 2016 are a time of both reflection on the year just ending and anticipation of the year to come. The following is meant to prompt some fun as well as thoughtful answers as we look back and ahead. If you had to give 2016 a theme,…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Last month I attended Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch event at which seven select non-profits competed to inspire the audience through their stories, told in just three minutes, their “fast pitches.” The speakers for each non-profit did just that – they inspired – and so did the keynote speaker, a former…
By: Laura Walton AFC® That was my reaction when I saw the article titled “Financial Illiteracy and the Ineffectiveness of Financial Education Programs.” The TCI Foundation runs a financial education program, the 3rd Decade. Are we irrelevant? No, thank goodness, but… the eye-opening take-away from this was that financial education only affected 0.1% of later financial…
By: Laura Walton AFC® I spent yesterday morning talking about investing with a high school Personal Finance class. This is a classroom that the TCI Foundation has been visiting for the past three years – this time was different. Many teachers use The Stock Market Game and their teacher had received a grant to bring…
By: Laura Walton AFC® With Thanksgiving behind us (I hope you enjoyed yours) and 24/7 holiday music everywhere, let’s have fun with some holiday facts. First, the most expensive Christmas card… Apparently the Christmas card was conceived as a way to encourage ordinary folks to use the Post Office! In 1843, Sir Henry Cole asked…