• I was recently with a bunch of attorneys at a fundraising event for JusticeMatters, a non-profit that “provides preventive and restorative direct legal services in humanitarian immigration law, family law, and other civil matters.” To be honest I’m still processing the evening, because on one hand it felt like my stomach was being ripped out to

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  • There are two twin maple trees near my office in Raleigh, beautiful old trees that greet me as I make the turn on to our street. And each year at just about this time, they start changing colors from top to bottom: dark green to greenish-yellow at first, and then by late October or early

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  • Have you ever seen the movie Million Dollar Baby? It won four Oscars, somehow, (including Best Picture) despite it being the worst movie ever. Seriously. The one line plot summary from IMDB is, “A determined woman works with a hardened boxing trainer to become a professional.” What it should say is, “A determined woman works

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  • You can join a gym. You still have to go. You can commit in January to start eating better. You still need to be eating broccoli when August comes around. You can read about saving. You can nod in full agreement to the importance of saving. You still have to not spend the dollars. You

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  • Take things to Goodwill

    I typed “how to declutter” into the magical Google search box and got more than 3.5 million results (in 0.30 seconds!!). But, um, you don’t really need to read any of those articles. You don’t even need to read this one. Just, go find some things to give away to Goodwill. It’s not difficult. You just pick

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  • Farhad Manjoo, the inimitable tech-writer at the New York Times, wrote a wonderful piece last week about MailChimp, the tech company responsible for helping lots and lots of small businesses do email marketing. The title of the piece is “MailChimp and the Un-Silicon Valley Way to Make It as a Start-Up,” and it’s worth your time.

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  • Is that sacrilegious of me to ask? Maybe. I think there are multiple answers here, because the question is actually multiple questions. On the one hand the question is: Is “financial literacy” in its ideal format useful? And the answer to that one’s easy (though maybe not terribly practical): YES. I say it’s not practical, because

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  • Maybe a better question is: How does money make you? Seriously, what does it do to you? And what do the things you spend it on do to you? I’ll be honest. I wish my wife and I made more money. I wish the prospect of one of us staying home didn’t make me start

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  • In today’s edition of crazy things you can buy with your money, here’s an article from the Wall Street Journal about how people (and by people, I mean adults) are renovating their dollhouses to reflect modern architectural tastes. And of course, you can now buy a tiny Eames Eiffel chair for your dollhouse for $250,

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  • I meant no harm. I most truly did not. But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got. I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads. I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads of the Thneeds I shipped out. I was shipping them forth to the South! To the East! To the West!

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