AS SHARK TANK STAR Lori Greiner once said, “Entrepreneurs are the only people who will work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.”
Got the entrepreneurial itch? When I hear people say they have a great business idea, but don’t have the money to launch their business or quit their day job, my heart sinks. They’re missing the point: In today’s world, there are countless opportunities to start a business without any initial investment.

AFTER NEARLY 50 YEARS in the employee benefits profession, there are a few conversations that stand out—and they all relate to money. What people do, or don’t do, when it comes to money never ceases to amaze me. All the stories below are true.
I received a call from a recently deceased employee’s wife, followed by a call from the same employee’s other wife, both named Mary. One was in New Jersey and the other in South Carolina,

SELF-EMPLOYED individuals, freelancers and commissioned workers all struggle with a key area of their finances: managing a variable income. When you don’t know how much you’ll make this month or this year, it’s tough to start saving. I know this all too well as a self-employed financial planner.
The uncertainty can leave you stuck, unsure which steps to take next. How can you risk putting money into long-term investments if you might need it to pay the bills a few months from now?

THE TOP COUNTRIES for gender-equal pay are Iceland, Norway and Finland, according to the World Economic Forum. As it happens, those three countries also rank among the top four countries for Gross National Happiness. The U.S. didn’t crack the top 10 on either list.
The gender wage gap is a major problem in the U.S.—and it affects all of us. Over half of American families are dual income. That means women not receiving their financial due impoverishes American families.

IF YOU’VE EVER ASKED for career advice, you were probably told to “follow your passion.” This seems like great advice. Who wouldn’t want to do what they’re passionate about every day?
The reality: What you’re passionate about may not be a viable career. I’m passionate about the game of golf. But I fell short of making it my career, despite playing collegiately.
There have been plenty of times when I’ve thought I needed to change direction.

THE GENDER PAY GAP is quantifiable. But there are also other, subtler forms of workplace discrimination that are harder to quantify, but which women face every day.
When I was part of a five-person analyst team, my manager invited everyone on the team to a poker night at his house—except me, the only female. When I asked why I was left out, he said the absence of women would make the guys feel freer to relax.

BACK IN 2002, I WAS part of a three-person financial analysis team at a major mortgage lender. I was better qualified than my two male colleagues, thanks to my master’s degree and greater years of experience. Imagine my surprise, then, when I compared my performance review with one of my colleagues. I discovered that, while we both received the same rating, he got a year-end bonus and I didn’t.
Like many women, I was aware of the gender pay gap,

MY FIRST JOB WAS in 1963, at age 12, delivering newspapers for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. There must have been at least five children from my neighborhood who were newspaper carriers. Today, you rarely see anyone delivering newspapers. The Herald Examiner went out of business in 1989.
My next job, as a teenager, was working at a machine shop that made tools for aerospace companies, such as McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell North American.

AROUND THE TIME of my birthday each year, I request a copy of my Social Security Statement. This year, as l reviewed my report, I realized many life stories lie behind the numbers that appear in my earnings record.
The first year I had taxable earnings was 1985, the year I graduated high school. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour and my annual income that year was $861. My earnings over the following seven years were meager,

MUCH PERSONAL finance literature, including most of what I write, focuses on how to handle money—how much to save, which investments to buy, and so forth. But what if you have a more fundamental question: How do I earn more in the first place?
To help answer that question, I have five new summer reading recommendations. Each of these books offers strategies to help you increase your productivity—and your happiness—on the job. That, in turn,

IF WE’RE TO RETIRE in comfort, we need to be deadly serious about saving money for perhaps three decades. That leaves a little wiggle room: If our careers span four decades, we might have a decade or more when we can be a little less focused on making and saving money.
The question is, when should this “goof off” period be? Conventional wisdom has its answer: We should pursue our passions in our 20s,

ON THE AFTERNOON of Sunday, Sept. 28, 1941, it was cool and damp in Philadelphia. Inside Shibe Park, where the hometown Athletics were suiting up to face the Red Sox, all eyes were on Boston’s 23-year-old slugger, Ted Williams. It was the last day of the regular season, and Williams’s average stood just a hair short of .400, at .39955.
According to baseball’s official rules, this would have rounded up to an even .400 in the record books,

EACH SPRING, I WATCH a fresh crop of college graduates transition from the world of fulltime academics to the world of fulltime employment. Eager to begin “adulting,” many of them focus on the salaries offered by their employer-of-choice and give little consideration to the various benefits that supplement that salary.
That’s a mistake. As someone who’s been employed fulltime for the last 26 years, I’ve learned the importance of performing a cost-benefit analysis on the perks offered by various employers.

IT ALL BEGAN WITH an afternoon phone call between Andrew, my twin brother, and me. I made an off-the-cuff comment about starting our own company. For the previous eight years, both of us had worked at a large lawn care company and then, for a few brief months, at a medium-sized landscaper.
Neither of us doubted we would be successful. But we were taking a large financial risk: Starting our own company meant leaving the security of a regular paycheck,

I WAS LESS THAN 10 years old when I decided that I wanted to earn some extra cash over and above my weekly allowance. I took day-old sections from the Washington Post and went door-to-door in my neighborhood, selling each section for a dime. Not many fell for it, but there was a couple who were willing to hand over a dime to a young boy looking to supplement his allowance.
I doubt that I earned much from this endeavor.