Reality Check You’re looking at your budget and your chest gets tight. Rent, groceries that cost more than last year, childcare, car insurance. And now those student loan bills again—after years of on-again, off-again “relief,” legal fights, new plans, paused...
Reality Check Your paycheck stops; your life doesn’t. It’s Day 31 of the shutdown. Rent is due today, the daycare draft hits tomorrow, and you’re staring at an empty “pending deposits” line like it’s a bad joke. You’re not alone....
The Plain‑English Take There was a time when a steady paycheck, a pension, and a gold watch weren’t a fantasy. They were the deal. If you put in decades, the company carried the risk: markets, longevity, healthcare. In the 1980s,...
Most middle-class households aren’t “bad with money.” They’re paying a quiet tax in fixed costs and frictions—housing, healthcare, childcare, and high-APR debt—that eat the raise before it ever hits savings. The way out isn’t hustle culture or guilt; it’s design....
