Many Fail on Living Wages, Women’s Equality, and Racial Equity — A nonprofit designs programming for poverty elimination. They don’t pay their entry level workers a living wage. A nonprofit touts programing that will empower women. Their staff handbook has no childbirth leave policy. A nonprofit declares that their work will advance racial equality. Their staff of 100 only has 1…

Locations to Choose and Avoid for 2060 — Photo by Brett Meliti on Unsplash If you are like most people in their 20s and 30s, planning for your retirement means maxing out your 401k contributions at work. You might have an IRA account too. Maybe even real estate. You might be consulting a financial planner who tells you…

Suburban Architecture Shows Our Assumptions and Our Ableism — Not a single house in my neighborhood is wheelchair accessible, not even the ground floor. Every house could be. Why should I care? After all, I am not in a wheelchair. I have never needed a wheelchair — yet. One day, though, I will. And you will too. Why? It…

Not Being Able to Do Much For Someone Is Exhausting — My sister came down to visit me for the first weekend of November. We’d both been playing it safe during the pandemic— masking, avoiding crowds, etc. She figured that the early part of the month would be better for traveling than Thanksgiving. We didn’t reckon on Chicagoland having a massive…

They Might Be Your Guide to Happiness — As a junior in college, I looked at a study abroad program that would have let me spend a semester at Oxford. I decided not to apply, largely because I had just started dating a cute boy. That cute boy became my husband two years later. To this day, we…

Concerns and outcomes around raising pay — Last week I published “A $15 Minimum Wage Won’t Cut It”. The one comment I received was a criticism that relied on two arguments: One — not all jobs are worth a “middle-class income”. Two — small businesses would collapse if required to pay minimum wage. Those are pretty typical…

We should fight for localized living wages instead Can you afford living in America? For more than half of this nation, the answer is “no.” A little bit of this is due to the present pandemic. Since this started, homelessness has gone up. Lines for food pantries now routinely wrap…

Four steps to evaluate an organization before giving them money As year-end comes into view, many families start to think more about giving. For some, the motivation to give is tax-deductions. For others, it’s the spirit of Christmas. But every year, just as people start getting into the spirit of giving, a number of articles and memes will circulate telling…

Eight Financial Planning Exercises Our Marriage Counselors Should Have Made Us Do I married my husband about a year after college. At 23 and 24, we were naïve about many things. Money was one. While we did receive marriage counseling, the experience was downright abysmal. So bad, in fact, that we quit one counselor because he was convinced I cared more about…