Category: Family & Relationships

Losing a loved one is one of the most difficult experiences you will ever have, which is only compounded by having to handle their final affairs and their estate. There’s no doubt that dealing with a subject like the loss of a friend or family member is emotional, stressful, and a cause of great despair. When you get to be around my age, you have probably dealt with this kind of event far too often, and frankly no matter how many times you have, it is never a comfortable feeling.

There are many details that must be taken care of to make this kind of event orderly and to take care of all of the important details that the decedent wanted. This only adds an element of anxiety and pressure to an already stressful situation. Knowing what needs to be done can help to ease your mind.Continue reading“How Will You Handle The Final Affairs Of A Loved One?”

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Managing money together as a couple can be one of the most stressful parts of a relationship. Everyone has their own ideas of how much to save and how much to spend, not to mention different priorities and different habits. So imagine how much more difficult it becomes when one partner is a classic “saver” and the other is a classic “spender”. How do you cope and manage your money together as a couple?

I consider myself fortunate to have found a partner who generally feels the same way I do about money, saving, and spending. And yet, my wife likes to spend a bit more money than I do, sometimes putting her in the spender role and me in the saver role. We always manage to work out any monetary disagreements with a quick conversation and a bit of time to think. One of the key things we’ve realized though is that it isn’t so much that she’s the spender and I’m the saver, but that we spend on different things.Continue reading“Couple Money Management: When a Saver Loves a Spender”

Wow, has been a whole year since we last spoke about celebrating St. Frugaltine’s Day? I guess so and once again it comes as the challenge of showing our valentine how much we care without going way overboard or appearing to be a cheapskate…our worst fear! Being frugal doesn’t mean being cheap. Let’s make that perfectly clear. Rather, it means a way to show how much you care about the emotional side of an event like St. Valentine’s Day, and not the commercial side.

According to the National Retail Association, the average person will spend $150 this year celebrating and buying gifts for this “holiday”. That adds up to over 19 billion dollars nationally, enough money to make Kevin O’Leary happy and get him “his money” back and more for any valentine Shark Tank investments he’s made! But seriously, 19 million? It makes Frugal Gary shudder…how about you?Continue reading“Avoid Spending a Fortune on St. Frugaltine’s Day”

When you’re a parent, you don’t want to see your children suffer in any way, whether it’s from a boo-boo when they fall off their tricycle, or because they can’t pay their bills after a job loss. But as parents, we also know that we can’t protect them from everything and sometimes those bumps and bruises are needed to teach us things in life.

I have two adult children, a daughter in her thirties and a son in his twenties, and while I don’t hear from them as often as I’d like, my daughter recently called me. She was looking for money to pay some of her bills, and this wasn’t the first time. When your adult child asks for help, as a parent your first instinct is to protect them, but before your heart hits send on that money transfer, there are some questions your head should ask:Continue reading“How to React When Your Adult Child Asks for Help”