Spending

I TUTOR MY 10-year-old niece once a week in math and science. After the study sessions, we often talk about other things—mostly kid stuff. Recently, her treasured piggybank got a nice boost on her birthday and we discussed what she might do with the money.
That’s when my niece asked, “How much money will I need when I grow up?” I guess she was trying to figure out if she did indeed have to study hard and get a job—or whether her current savings would be enough.

MY ELDERLY MOTHER’S credit card was recently compromised. This required her to move all her automatic payments to a new credit card.
That, in turn, prompted her to reevaluate these various charges. Her cable bill, for instance, had gone up more than 15% over the past two years. My mother complained that, while she gets many channels, she only watches broadcast TV. She dropped the cable package.
As she added the autopay information to her new credit card,

IT CAN BE HARD TO find time to make healthy meals, plus—with the convenience of fast food restaurants—why bother? It’s way easier to enter the drive-through at the local burger joint than it is to scramble together ingredients at home and make a healthier version.
But these decisions come at a cost, financial and otherwise. Most fast foods are loaded with sodium and calories, while lacking the nutrients you need for optimum health. This can lead to weight gain,

WHEN IT COMES to your financial life, should you care what other people think?
I’ve always found this a tricky question. On the one hand, it’s easy to fall into the trap of keeping up with the Joneses. If you care too much about what other people think, life can become very expensive—and that can be detrimental to your financial health.
On the other hand, it’s also natural to want to be accepted by one’s peers.

OUR WEALTH IS usually measured by net worth, which is total assets minus all debt. But there’s an alternative measure—which is to assign our wealth to the purposes it serves. What purposes? Two come to mind: physical and social.
Let’s start with physical wealth. We’re talking here about a family’s ability to maintain basic physical comforts, such as enjoying decent food, a comfortable home, a reliable car and access to good health care.
You don’t have to be rich to afford these.

CALL IT THE NEW conventional wisdom: Forget trying to spend less—and instead focus on earning more.
This change in thinking is no great surprise. We have endless opportunities to make an extra buck, thanks to all the “side hustles” available in our “gig economy.” Meanwhile, many folks bristle at the admonitions to spend less on lattes, happy hours and avocado toast. Let’s face it, will eliminating such expenses really put us on the fast track to financial freedom?

I HAVE LONG ADMIRED my good friend Nick for his generosity with friends—but also for his inspiring ability to pinch a penny. The man can pinch so hard he makes Lincoln cry, so I knew the world was changing fast when he installed a Ring video doorbell. Really? Pinch me.
A decade ago, new technologies inspired fantasies of living in a Jetsons-style “smart home.” There was a nascent market for internet-connected products,

THE EARLY RETIREMENT movement has many naysayers and outright haters. My husband Jim and I can sympathize: We sometimes get strong pushback when we share our strategies for living frugally.
“That seems like a lot of work,” some people respond. “It sounds like you don’t have much fun,” others say. Some even accuse us of lying.
I readily admit it takes effort to be frugal. But then again, it takes work and sacrifice to exercise regularly,

UPON RETIREMENT, I picked up additional duties at home. One was cooking and the other was grocery shopping, both of which I enjoy. The shopping part furthers my ability to observe people, a favorite pastime.
I have concluded that you can tell a great deal about people’s spending and lifestyle habits simply by what’s in their shopping cart. And you can tell quite a bit about individual responsibility and personal behavior by what people do with their empty shopping cart.

ON A RECENT VISIT to the U.S. from our home in Spain, I used one of my last days to do some shopping, including purchasing a new laptop power cord to replace one that failed the night before. I have a Dell computer, so I entered the store confident I could easily buy a cord tailor-made for my brand.
“We only sell universal power cords,” the clerk told me.
“I don’t need to power the entire universe,

I WAS 51 YEARS OLD when I ate prime rib for the first time. As it turned out, it was a life-changing moment. It might be difficult to believe eating a choice cut of beef could lead to an altered understanding of financial priorities, but it did.
I grew up in a fairly typical 1970s middle class family. Hamburger Helper, tuna casserole and peanut butter sandwiches made up the bulk of my diet. Our family rarely ate out and,

IN EARLY MAY, I WROTE about 16 ways that people waste money on everything from tattoos to shoes to children’s toys. That blog was subsequently posted on MarketWatch, where it collected almost 800 comments, most positive, but many not so much.
I was called out of touch, accused of having an entitlement mentality, talking down to people, privileged and more. I had clearly touched a nerve. Some commenters went into great detail about how difficult their lives were and how there was no money to waste.

JIM AND I GOT married 16 years ago in our modest home. We spent just $500 and only invited immediate family members. Back then, we didn’t have any clue where life would take us. Neither of us planned to retire early, let alone retire abroad.
Still, how we got married was a sign of how we wanted to live—in a financially prudent manner. We set out to keep our living costs under control, and that set us on a path to financial independence,

WHEN FINANCIAL writers tackle the topic of spending, the result is all too predictable: lectures on the dangers of lattes, the glories of budgeting and the financial apocalypse engendered by avocado toast, as well as suggestions that earlier generations were far more prudent.
I’ll admit it, I haven’t entirely avoided these pitfalls.
So how should we think about spending? I would focus on how your income gets divvied up among four key categories:
1.

THERE ARE AREAS in my life where I’ve spent too much money and time trying to be cheap. My reward: steady aggravation—until I spent a bit more to get the right solution.
Which brings me to home networking technology. Most of us spend some $500 a year or more for internet broadband service. The problem: Many families are still living with old networking gear that’s slower than it should be, sometimes unreliable or provides poor wi-fi coverage in parts of their house.