WE HAVE A HARDWIRED biological incentive to promote the wellbeing of our kids, so that the family line will continue. This is the selfish gene in action. Yet modern human behavior suggests that the wiring may be at least a little faulty—for three key reasons.
Environmental. Our domination of natural resources continues to create tremendous improvements in global wealth, but it sometimes comes at the expense of the only confirmed habitable space that’s practical for our species.

WE ALL DO THINGS that make us feel good right now, but which aren’t so good for us over the long haul. Yes, even me. Yes, even you.
Some of this behavior stems from hardwired instincts passed down to us from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, like our tendency to consume whenever we can and to focus too much on today, while giving short shrift to tomorrow. Other damaging behavior is the result of habits we’ve developed,

MY GREAT-UNCLE, Jerry Kelly, was an American pilot in the Second World War. On Oct. 20, 1944, he was flying a close-support mission over Germany when his P-47 Thunderbolt was hit by anti-aircraft fire. After he radioed that he had smoke in the cockpit, his plane began losing altitude and was last seen disappearing into a cloud. Jerry was 20 years old.
More than 71 years later, a UPS carrier delivered a blue box to my home.

LET’S SAY YOU COME into some extra money. Do you take the family on a great vacation or do you remodel that room you try to stop guests from seeing? To come to a decision, you might weigh the fun of the vacation against the pride of the redone room.
It’s at this point that some intrepid economist, risking his or her life-of-the-party reputation, would pop up and say, “You’re not doing it right.”
Economics is the study of choice—and the big engine for choosing is cost-benefit analysis.

MANY BELIEVE WE’VE raised a bunch of financial illiterates. If people were better educated about personal finance, the argument goes, they’d make smarter money decisions.
North Carolina this year became the 20th state to require high schoolers to take a financial literacy class. Its Lieutenant Governor, Dan Forest, said the new law would “ensure future students, prior to graduating high school, will be more financially literate and economically sound in their decision making as adults.”
But many aren’t sold on the idea that a personal finance class in high school is going to make much of a difference.

IN WINTER 2012, I experienced what every traveler dreads: a lost bag. Stranded without so much as a toothbrush, I had to replace everything—and fast. At first, this seemed like a pain. But in the end, I came to see it as a blessing. Why? Replacing everything—from head to toe, including the toothbrush—became an unexpected opportunity for a fresh start.
To be sure, all I’m talking about here are clothes and toiletries. Still, the experience made me realize that,

ONE SUNDAY, MY SON was lamenting that he had a school project due the next day, but hadn’t yet taken any steps to get it done. When I asked what his plan was, he replied, “I could use a really good montage right about now.”
For those who aren’t procrastinating teens with a father who delves into media literacy, a montage is a series of quick shots in a TV show or movie that accelerates time around a theme—that theme often being the effort and time expended to achieve a goal.

WHEN WE WATCH advertisements, we tend to think of ourselves as stationary, with the marketers coming to us and then, if we don’t respond, heading elsewhere. Like an Einstein relativity paradox, however, we observers are also in motion, being coaxed toward the marketer, often without knowing it.
A good business knows its customer niche—and good marketers know how to speak to that niche. Customer niches are defined by demographic attributes. When I discuss these attributes with students,

I’M FRUGAL AND FEEL fortunate to be so. Indeed, among all the financial skills I’ve learned, frugality stands out as the most powerful. But at the same time, I also feel affluent. This might seem like a contradiction, but the mindset of frugality and the feeling of affluence strike me as two sides of the same coin.
Frugality is often associated with being cheap. Frequently, “affluent” is used interchangeably with “wealthy.” I beg to differ.

I’VE TAKEN TO TELLING folks that HumbleDollar is the site for folks who are striving to be rational about money—but who are acutely aware that they’re human.
Figuring out what’s rational is relatively easy. We should save diligently, diversify broadly, invest in stocks if we have a long time horizon, favor index funds, take on debt cautiously, only insure against major financial risks, avoid buying a house that’s larger than we really need and,

ONE OF MY GOALS is not to think about money. This might sound odd coming from someone who has written about money for 34 years, runs a financial website and, indeed, wrote a book entitled How to Think About Money. So let me clarify: I’m happy to think about money in general. I’m even happy to think about your money. I just don’t want to think about my own.
I used to think about my finances all the time.

SHOULD THOSE OF US who are better off financially feel guilty? When I read about income inequality, folks living paycheck to paycheck and the like, I occasionally feel a twinge of guilt. But it quickly passes.
This lack of guilt doesn’t imply a lack of empathy on my part or that of others who have been financially successful. Indeed, wealth is frequently used to help others. Society has benefited greatly not just from the jobs created by the Rockefellers,

FOR MUCH OF MY adult life, my view of financial planning was similar to that of many others: Simply put, financial planning equaled investment management.
I spent my career in aerospace engineering, surrounded by highly educated, mathematically competent colleagues. I was lucky enough to span the transition from defined benefit pension plans to defined contribution plans. My colleagues and I closely followed the market’s performance, our own company’s shares and emerging tech stocks. Some of the more mathematically inclined dabbled in options.

IF YOU LIVED through the Great Depression of the 1930s and then the Second World War, your view of money was likely molded by those traumatic back-to-back experiences. You might respond by trying to build wealth, so you’re better prepared for the future, whatever it brings. Alternatively, you might hunker down and become ultraconservative for fear of losing everything.
My parents, born in 1910 and 1918, took the hunker down approach. When I was born,

WANT GREATER financial success? It may all start at the local gym and in the fresh food aisle.
“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” —Benjamin Franklin.
Well, Ben, if only it were that simple. While the timing of our repose may not produce all of these outcomes, this aphorism offers food for thought. Are there connections between cognitive ability, physical health and wealth accumulation?