I’ll admit it; I love March Madness. Even if I have a million problems with the way the NCAA runs its business (and, it is a business). As long as we are all losing precious work hours checking in on our brackets, we might as well learn something. CNBC / [Keep reading]
Laziness is one of humanity’s most powerful driving forces. It’s also perhaps the greatest insight from the field of behavioral science — or the one that’s been put to the most practical use, anyway. It goes by the fancy name “default bias,” and societies around the world are now using [Keep reading]
Where can you buy a $1,000 TV for $2,169? Soon, at a Best Buy electronics store near you. The retail giant is poised to roll out a new “lease to own” program that will sound a lot like the Rent-A-Center or payday lending model to observers. Consumers with little or [Keep reading]
It took more than four hours of questions aimed at credit bureau CEOs, but finally, after a marathon House Financial Services Committee hearing on Tuesday morning / afternoon … the National Consumer Law Center’s Chi Chi Wu said what had to be said. “I’ve testified before Congress … six times,” [Keep reading]
When you’re suffering from constant financial stress — an anxiety-riddled state of being researchers now call “precarity” – you can’t be your best. Your family suffers, your health suffers, and your work suffers. And if your workers are worried about money, they’re going to make more mistakes on the job. [Keep reading]
You know you should invest for the future, but you are afraid of today’s market. Bad news seems to be lurking behind every corner, and uncertainty is …. the only thing that seems guaranteed. Should you buy now, or buy later? One good solution: Do both. CNBC and Grow recently asked [Keep reading]
I’m writing some stories for a site called Successiblelife.com that focuses on health issues. I’ve long believed there are a lot of parallels between healthy eating and “healthy” money habits. Both require you to make decisions involving trade offs between today and tomorrow. Do I eat this cookie now and complain about [Keep reading]
Valentine’s Day hopefully gives you a chance to appreciate your loved ones. But if this holiday – also known as “Singles Awareness Day, or SAD” — is nudging you or someone you care about to look for love online, there’s something you should know: Reports of sweetheart scams are soaring, [Keep reading]
It’s a question you’ve probably heard over and over: When will the current bull market end? Depending on how you do the math, the stock market has risen for almost a decade, with a quick pause last December. Back in elementary school, you learned “what goes up must go down.” [Keep reading]
Ever see a price for an item online, then look again and see a different price, and think you were going crazy? Probably not. You were probably encountering some form of dynamic pricing, which retailers have quietly dabbled in for many years. Quietly, because every time consumers find out about [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan