A lot of us parents wonder should I give my kids an allowance? If so, how much? Do you tie it to chores? This post is an explanation as to how we do an allowance and why in order to give you a glimpse into how we handle our kids and money. Like a lot of parenthood, we’re just winging it, but after giving our son and daughter an allowance for a few years, we feel like we’ve found something that really works for us. How Much We Give and Why Both of our children, who are aged seven and eleven, get an allowance and the amount they receive is…

A few days ago I did our budget, and like a few other months, I found we didn’t have quiiitttteee enough left over to reach all our savings goals. Grumbling and a bit ashamed of my spring fever induced high spending ways, I thought to myself “Where does it all go?” Then today I opened up the great economic tome The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert Gordon and was reminded that most of it is going to things my ancestors wouldn’t even recognize. So much which today feel like necessities didn’t even exist prior to 1870. You probably can think of a lot of them, for example, cars…

The millennial generation in America is suffering from the ill effects of Baumol’s disease. But despite its name, Baumol’s disease isn’t an illness, it’s an economic phenomenon. First described in the 1960s by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, it explains how we can possess luxuries barely dreamed of in our childhoods—like smart phones and 60” televisions—while the necessities such as quality housing, medical care, childcare and education are too often drowning young adults under piles of debt.

In October 2016, right before the presidential election, we finally fully funded an IRA  (Individual Retirement Account) for me. And since I don’t currently make a significant amount of money being a SAHM, we created what is called a “Spousal IRA” in my name, which allows us to use my husband’s income to fund an IRA for me since I don’t have enough income to meet the IRS qualifications to fund an IRA. We’re blessed to have the luxury of having enough income from my husband’s work to fund it, and this is the first year we have had enough to contribute enough to reach the yearly limit of $5500.…