Category Archives: Balance

Think You (or Your Students) Need Willpower?  Think Again!

“How do I change my behavior?” That’s the question one of my students asked after a GCC Money Talks session. It was the Fall of 2019 and Money Talks had just launched and this student was one of the first to participate. It was a great question, unfortunately, I didn’t have a great answer. I did find a blog post with 5 Ways of Changing Your Financial Behavior but I knew that I needed a better answer.  Fortunately, I found that I already had a great resource on my bookshelf. The book, Change Anything is exactly that – a great answer and set of strategies

A BIG Mistake that Parents Make About Paying for College

As a College Financial Educator, I’ve become familiar with several mistakes that students, and their families, make when paying for college. And one that concerns me is when parents prioritize college over building their own retirement fund.  I get it, parents love their kids. But here’s the thing, there are loans for college, no one’s going to give you a loan for your retirement. I also get that your kids are headed to college before you’re retiring, but your money needs time to grow. For every 10 years that you hold off investing, you’ll need to double the amount of money that you invest to

A Closer Look at the Value of Appreciation

To appreciate something is to pay attention to its value (and in so doing, to increase its value in our own eyes). When we don’t do this, we fail to see the value in the people, situations and things around us – they depreciate (lose value) in our eyes.  So, why do we do this? After all, why would we want any part of our lives to lose value? Well we don’t want to but often people get focused on other things and many things get overlooked or taken for granted. This Thanksgiving weekend, I want to remind you of the value of appreciation.  Gratitude