Category: Blog

My now 13-year-old boys started skating before they were even potty trained. I was blessed to start ice skating for hockey around 5 years old; my twin boys started even earlier. I knew that I had wanted them to have the opportunity to enjoy the game I love, so I took them to the rink for the first time just past their third birthday.  They’d only been skating for two months when our club’s annual ice show came up. The club had a policy of putting the littlest, cutest kids in the ice show...

Once upon a time, a married couple with two small kids moved out of their starter home. They both work and make decent money. They sold their house for $250,000. And moved into a $600,000 house—their dream home. Now they have a big mortgage with a big interest. And even bigger household expenses. They also have a higher property tax.  They now have a dedicated home office, and the wife started a small business. They don’t know it but their tax situation has changed dramatically....

Fifty years ago, a dairy farmer named Max Yasgur thought it would be a rockin’ idea to rent his field to a bunch of kids who wanted to throw a concert. From August 15-17, 400,000 hippies, peaceniks, and plain old music fans converged on the scene. If you’re a 60s fan, Woodstock represents the high point of that era, a giddy celebration of peace, love, and good vibrations. If you’re a hung-up Mr. Normal, you might dismiss it as three days of mud-soaked filth, drugs, and public...

Parenting is full of special moments that create lifelong memories. Your heart bursts in joy as you watch them take their first steps, ride their first bike, and bring home their first report card. When they get a little older, there’s the pride you feel when they bring home their first “real” paycheck, tear into the envelope, and listen to them wail in distress, “hey, what the &#@* is FICA?!?” Glenn Giersdorf, who lives an hour outside Philadelphia, didn’t...

Great Britain’s new Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfefel Johnson, inspires the same sort of love/hate relationship as a certain novice head of state on our side of the pond. Johnson’s fans celebrate him as a self-deprecating man of the people, happy to zip-line across a park waving Union Jacks to celebrate Olympic gold. His opponents mock him as a dangerous buffoon, a gaffe machine, and a bitter chutney of ignorance, racism, and lies. With a “hard Brexit” looming...

Fifty years ago this weekend, in what many people consider the crowning accomplishment in all of human history, astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. Eight years earlier, President Kennedy had challenged the nation, before the end of the decade, to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. An army of 400,000 scientists, engineers, administrators, and other dreamers assembled to take up the challenge — and did it with five months to spare. Who thinks we could get a lousy...

Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money. Maybe that’s why the heist movie is still a Hollywood staple. It’s been a while since we thrilled to classics like Heat, or Oceans 11, or The Sting. But who can resist the heist film’s enticing promise: the coolest crew coming together to take the ultimate shortcut to the American Dream, the one huge payday that means never working again? They say Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, so it shouldn’t...

Showtime’s hit series Billions invites us into the gilded life of Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, a working-class kid from Yonkers who makes his billions running a hedge fund. The camera teases us almost erotically with the spoils of his success: the $63 million Hamptons house he buys on a whim, the his-and-hers private jets he and his wife take when just one jet isn’t enough, and the helicopter that drops his sons off at Little League practice. Axe is a guy who loves every...

Back in December 2017, while you were finishing up your holiday shopping and spiking the eggnog, Congress spiked the tax code. The goal was simple. First, eliminate a bunch of deductions that made the whole thing more complicated. Then, take advantage of that broader base to cut overall rates. There’s nothing radical about that sort of tinkering. The hard part is deciding which sacred cows get gored to make it work.Much to many peoples’ surprise, the state and local tax deduction...

Turn on any television, any time of day or night, and you’re likely to see an insurance ad, or two, or a dozen. Flo is showing off her “name your price” tool, which sure looks like her company’s way of saying “you may not be able to afford all the insurance you need, but we’re happy to sell you whatever you can afford.” There’s the ubiquitous gecko, telling you his company sells insurance for your RV and motorcycle, too. And there’s Duncan,...