Family Finances

After publishing my piece on the shocking cost of eldercare, a question kept nagging at me that I couldn’t shake: when money is finite and the people you love are not, how do you decide who to help or save first? A $230,000-a-year group home in Hawaii for one person. Four parents to potentially care […]

At the Diamond Head pickleball courts in Honolulu, I met a man who said he had just put his 94-year-old mother in an eldercare home. Since my parents are 78 and 80, my ears lit up. I know it will be up to me to take care of them when they can no longer take

Since 2009, I’ve been writing about all the ups and downs of my financial independence journey, the good and the bad. What I can clearly say is that who you partner with in life is one of the most important variables for achieving financial freedom. Get that right, and everything else gets easier. Get it

One of the biggest conundrums parents face is managing their own emotions when a stock market, real estate market, or any other risk asset takes a dive. On one hand, it’s painful to watch your portfolio shrink. Every dollar you lose represents time, the most valuable commodity of all. On the other hand, there’s a

I recently realized something that completely reframed how I think about income in America: a $200,000 household income is no longer middle class. Instead, under increasing college financial aid formulas, earning up to $200,000 now qualifies as low income or even poor. Being labeled “poor” or “low income” doesn’t sound great. But if $200,000 is the new poor according to

So you’ve read my post on the growing importance of Identity Diversification and now you’re wondering what it actually takes to prove your ethnicity and heritage. Doing so can help you better navigate the shifting socioeconomic winds of society and, in some cases, even improve your odds of getting into school, landing a job, winning

If you decide to forsake making maximum money to become a FIRE parent or stay-at-home parent, then you had best spend more time with your kids. Otherwise, you might as well go back to the office and grind under fluorescent lights for 10 hours a day to make that sweet coin. One of the greatest

As soon as both my children were born in 2017 and 2019, I superfunded their 529 plans equal to the five-year gift tax exemption. At the time, I was thrilled to do it given a parent’s number one responsibility is to provide for their children. Finally, a tax-efficient way to shift some of my assets

One of the main reasons I refused to spend a small fortune renting a vacation property in Honolulu was because I wanted to stay in my childhood home. The home was built in 1986, when I was nine years old, and I’ve been going back almost every year since. But staying there isn’t just about