Traditional rules of retirement no longer apply — The following post was sent to subscribers of my Never Retire newsletter last week. If you find yourself saying I’ll Never Retire, this newsletter might be one that belongs in your inbox 1-to-3 times per week. You can subscribe here. I hope you find our frequent reviews of academic work…

Most of us can’t even comfortably come up with the down payment — Get a load of the latest data on how much it costs to buy a house. It’s so insane, if not surreal, the numbers never get old. In fact — unless you’re directly affected — it’s actually pretty entertaining. We’ll start with the most absurd, move to the less absurd…

A shift in how we view earning versus spending could change our habits— for the better — In a recent Medium article, we discussed why traditional pie chart budgeting can be bad for your personal finance: Because the pie chart speaks for pretty much all your income, you’re left with little to no wiggle room and undesirable choices as you attempt to make ends meet. The solution…

They key to understanding city living and rent versus own — As we argue back and forth about whether it’s better to rent an apartment or own a home, let’s bring some nuance — some fine-grain nuance — to the discussion. I rent, primarily because it costs exponentially less money than it would to own a home in or around the…

It’s all relative — you don’t have to be poor to be one paycheck away — I gotta admit. I’m sort of obsessed with the research showing how many people — at all income levels — report living paycheck to paycheck. Lending Club and PYMNTS.com conduct this survey monthly, so you’ll see articles summarizing the results on the regular. Another story just hit. But from a…

Interesting data in the ongoing rent versus own debate — Probably some of the more interesting — and convincing — data you’ll come across in the rent verus own debate. This doesn’t mean home ownership doesn’t work for some of the people, some of the time. Or even a lot of the people, a lot of the time. As with…

Now more than ever, we see the flaws of traditional budgeting — The problem with this should be obvious. Now more than ever.

Building usable wealth is easier, more predictable when you rent — In the rent to own debate, one thing’s certain. Using conventional wisdom, it’s easy to make a renter look like an idiot. Even if they’re cash poor, it’s much more difficult to call out a person’s decision to buy a home. Because we assume home ownership equals wealth building. Renting…

There’s something wrong, but it’s not what you think — We’d like to chalk this incredible statistic up to keeping up with the Joneses, except that old money adage likely doesn’t tell the whole story.