WE ALL KNOW financial literacy is important. But it’s especially important if you’re a woman.
According to the Gates Foundation, “No matter where you are born, your life will be harder if you are born a girl.” Today is Equal Pay Day—the day when U.S. women finally earn enough to “catch up” with men’s earnings from the previous year. Women in the U.S. earn 82% of what men do for equivalent work and,

IT’S BEEN A TAD OVER five weeks since the S&P 500 hit its all-time high. Five weeks have never felt so long.
It isn’t just all the articles that I’ve been writing and editing. I’ve also been busy with my own finances. I was on the verge of closing on the sale of my apartment here in New York and moving to Philadelphia. But then my buyer’s business collapsed amid the coronavirus slowdown and,

YES, I’M STILL AT SEA. Confinement in our cabin is wearing thin. But unfortunately, with ports closed and politicians opposed to us docking in Florida, the end isn’t in sight.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be totally dependent on someone who you can’t see and have no contact with? Me neither. But now, I know.
Bottles of water show up at our door, the last one a full gallon.

IN RECENT WEEKS, my wife and I have seen scheduled activities for the next few months come crashing down. Two long-planned vacations with friends, our various volunteer work and our son’s college semester have all been cancelled.
It appears we’ll be effectively quarantined at home for the next two or three months. That means plenty of time to worry about—and work on—our investment portfolio. But it’s also a great chance to bring greater order to our household assets:

Every year,

I’VE BEEN TRYING to imagine what the immediate future will look like. How do we make sense of a situation where we seem to have so little control? You hear estimates of a few weeks to 18 months before things get back to normal.
I’ll admit I’ve lately had many sleepless nights worrying about all of this. How can we think about the financial implications in an organized way? It strikes that maybe we should ponder the financial issues we currently face in the same way we think about retirement.

WE OFTEN PREPARE our taxes, only to learn we owe a substantial sum to Uncle Sam. Most of us believe we can’t do much about this—and yet there’s one simple fix available to many taxpayers: Make a tax-deductible retirement account contribution this year for 2019.
Indeed, thanks to the stock market’s decline, this is a great time to shovel more money into your retirement accounts—and you may discover you can add to more than one account.

LATE LAST YEAR, I described how Bill Gates used to take time out from his job running Microsoft to seclude himself for “think weeks.” For better or worse, many of us today are finding ourselves stuck inside, with more time on our hands than usual. If you’re growing weary of the endless news cycle, below are some ideas to help you make the most of this time.
Looking to build your personal finance knowledge?

WE LOVE TO procrastinate. Have you done your taxes yet? IRS data show that nearly a quarter of Americans wait until the last two weeks of tax season to file. It often feels like that nagging task that grows more arduous each year, though the result for many is a juicy refund.
The average federal tax refund is more than $2,800, so it can pay to get your taxes done sooner rather than later.

I FIRST STARTED managing mutual funds a few months before the 1987 stock market crash, and I’ve had to navigate a fair number of market declines since then. My advice: Instead of worrying about how far share prices will fall or how widely the coronavirus will spread, think about the opportunities. I spy four of them.
1. Buy the dip. If you have cash, you might slowly dollar-cost average into the market,

WHEN MY YOUNGEST son graduated college, he had two solid job offers. One would have allowed him to live at home for free and the other was halfway across the country. Guess which one he picked?
In fairness, the job far from home was more interesting to him and provided a great start to his career. I remember him sitting down with his mother and me, and telling us he was planning to move to Texas.

NONE OF US WANTS to contemplate our own mortality. But we all need to think about it—including thinking about life insurance.
I was lucky enough to have a long tenure with a large company that provided term insurance at reasonable prices. My employer provided two times our salary in coverage and we had the option to purchase additional coverage equal to eight times salary. I was also able to buy insurance on my wife’s life equal to three times my salary.

MANY PARENTS ASSUME that what counts are the big events, such as graduations or elaborately planned vacations. But I’ve always found that the best moments in life weren’t necessarily the ones circled on the calendar.
The stock market is a lot like family life. Forget trying to figure out the ideal moment to get in or out of the market. Instead, what really matters is the time spent sitting around in stocks.
Jerry Seinfeld affectionately calls his mundane interactions with his kids “garbage time.” He prefers that label to what most parents aim for—the impossible-to-meet “quality time” standard.

I’M SAYING GOODBYE to an old friend I’ve known for 35 years. We had a special relationship that enriched my life in many ways. Although I’ll be moving to a new city and will never see my old friend again, I’ll always be grateful for our relationship, and how it helped me financially and emotionally.
You see, as I put my dear little friend—a one-bedroom, 789-square-foot condominium—up for sale, I’ve come to realize how important it was to have a home that helped me live below my means.

DESPITE MY independent nature, I called family and friends after my injury. I thanked them for what they’d already done following my husband’s death—and requested additional, more intensive support.
One aunt, a government employee, arranged to work for a week at a nearby federal building. My sister-in-law also came for a week, and a cousin who is a nurse volunteered, too. A professional colleague parked her RV in the driveway and brought along her friendly pooch.

LIKE OTHER WRITERS for this site, I blog often about what’s happening in my own life—my financial mistakes, early retirement, health scares I’ve had, my mother’s death and more. Here are four updates:
Spending. When it comes to parting with money, I have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality. I sit home at night wearing three layers of clothing, two pairs of socks and a hat because I’m too cheap to turn on the furnace—and yet I don’t hesitate to spend hundreds of dollars to be pampered at a five-star hotel.