Recent Blog Posts
What Good Is Affordable Housing If No One Can Afford It?
Everyone is broke these days, and being broke is always painful, no matter the specifics, but being rent-burdened is a special kind of pain. When you apply to rent an apartment, the property management decides that they can trust you to pay rent on time if your monthly income is at least three-and-a-half times… Read More »
Car Ownership Is Painfully Expensive, Even When Car Dealers and Mechanics Are Honest
If you can remember when a car payment on a five-year loan was affordable, you are officially old. Today, five-year auto loans are for people who are so rich that they can afford home mortgages with a repayment term of twenty years or less. Seven-year loans are the new normal, and even many of… Read More »
Hope for Pennsylvania Residents Struggling to Pay for Air Conditioning
The summer has gone on long enough that we are tired of the heat, but not yet long enough that we are ready to start counting the days before school starts. We have another month before school buses become a common sight, and even longer before we can comfortably sleep without air conditioning. It… Read More »
Emergency Coping Strategies When You Can’t Pay Your Bills
You tried everything to stretch your budget as far as it would go. You clipped coupons and charged your grocery purchases on buy now pay later (BNPL). The last time you spent money on entertainment was years ago; your idea of fun is watching free YouTube videos, ads and all, at the public library…. Read More »
Should You Worry About the New Rules for Condominium Mortgage Loans?
Homeownership is out of reach for an increasing share of Americans, but you have a plan. Your older colleagues are always grumping about how they are strapped for cash because they bought too much house, so that most of their income goes to mortgage payments and home repairs. You are younger and more practical…. Read More »
Surviving Back to School Season When You’re Broke
Back to school season evokes feelings of dread in almost everyone, but children feel it differently from adults. For children, the angst is about having to spend most of their waking hours in a strict routine, without the unstructured time and outdoor fun that they enjoyed during the summer. For adults, the worries are… Read More »
Don’t Let Repair Shops Pressure You Into Unnecessary Vehicle Repairs
Personal finance experts advise you to build an emergency fund before you start trying to save substantial amounts of money in the long term, and even before you start aggressively paying down your credit card debt. Emergency expenses are lurking around every corner, and often these require you to take money out of your… Read More »
Death by a Thousand Unfulfilled Zelle Promises
The fact that young people are far less materialistic than their parents were at their age must be something to celebrate. Owning a house in the suburbs and two cars was once an attainable goal, but if we are being honest, it always left the people who achieved it just as lonely as they… Read More »
How Risky Is It to Hire a One-Person Home Contracting Operation?
If you have the talent and the patience for a routine task that most people find unpleasant or perplexing, a lucrative career awaits you. Can you spend eight consecutive hours with a toddler, or with several toddlers, and not run out of things to do or get frazzled by their tantrums, whining, or rambunctious… Read More »
Car Dealership Owner Faces More Than 100 Charges for Illegal Business Practices
Buying a used car is an inexact science. There are so many stories out there about cars that disintegrated almost as soon as the buyer drove them out of the dealership parking lot that you cannot be sure that this will not happen to you until you have been driving your car without incident… Read More »
