Making Change with your Money

Imagine being a teenager holding your very first paycheck, trying to make sense of the words gross and net — and asking your dad whether you should tithe on the big number or the small one. And your dad grins and says...

Imagine sitting across from a business school professor, ashamed. Three jobs in three years. A venture you're not sure will work. And you're terrified that if it doesn't, the resume just gets messier. Then he says...

Imagine sitting on the couch after the second failed fertility treatment, not knowing what's next — and your husband looks at you and says: "Let's just go to Paris for three months." And you go. At some point you've...

Imagine driving past a beautiful house and the words just come out of your mouth: "I bet he's a crook." You don't even know where it came from. You clap your hand over your mouth. And in that moment, you realize a...

Imagine waking up one morning barely able to move — shivering, sweating, unable to swallow — and realizing the first thing you're calculating isn't how to get better. It's how much money you're going to lose by not...

Imagine growing up on a remote island in rural Alaska — where if your outfit matched, people thought you were showing off. Where survival wasn't a metaphor. Where your grandfather lived on a floathouse and float planes...

Imagine calling your manager and asking to be laid off. You're the primary breadwinner for a family of six. Two kids in college. And you're volunteering to walk away — with no plan, no next step, nothing but a severance...

Imagine being twenty-five years into a marriage and then finding yourself standing at the edge of a choice you never thought you'd have to make. Not because you stopped caring. But because your body had been telling you...

Imagine standing in a Taco Bell with your young son, counting the change in your pocket, and realizing you can afford two tacos for him — but nothing for yourself. You've always worked. You've always hustled. And...

Imagine you've done everything right. Good grades, good job, good friend, good daughter. You followed every rule, checked every box, never gave anyone a reason to worry. And then one day you wake up in the middle of a...

Imagine going from "we're poor, we can't afford groceries" to a million-dollar payout—and back again—all before you're fifteen. Now imagine carrying that financial whiplash into adulthood, through single motherhood...

Imagine growing up as one of seven children, watching your mother stretch every dollar until it couldn't stretch any further—and still somehow never making you feel poor. She would hand down clothes to the next sibling...

Imagine you're a month away from giving birth to your second child. Your toddler is eighteen months old. Your husband is a military pilot about to deploy for six months, just three weeks after the baby arrives...

Imagine growing up watching your mother drive past a neighborhood mansion and say: "That family has money — and they're miserable." Now imagine that lesson becoming the foundation of everything you believe about wealth...

<p>What happens when the financial plan is solid, but the client still can't move? That's the question at the heart of this week's conversation with Ashley Quamme, a financial behavior specialist and former marriage and...