Psychological Schemas & Spending: Children’s Birthday Parties

When our first daughter was very young–not quite two years old–we attended our first-ever birthday party for a three-year-old. (I recently talked about this experience on the Afford Anything podcast with Paula Pant). We went as a family of three. It was 2:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday. We arrived and were somewhat taken aback by the scene: was this a wedding reception? Considering the evidence of the multitude of adults milling around …
A hot topic in the financial advisory space—or maybe more accurately a sore subject—is the high rate of attrition of heirs when clients die and leave their managed wealth to beneficiaries. We have discussed this topic before, noting that a host of factors are at play including critical features like communication with the family-economic unit, relationship building, and personal differences resulting from a generational divide between the heirs and the advisor. But at the end …
Race through your work, and loudly proclaim you are finished. Such is the pattern of some elementary school students (and adults, by the way). You’ll undoubtedly see this tonight: kids racing up to a door, quickly getting their reward (and hopefully saying thank you…or at the least, “trick or treat”), and then they are off to the next task, the next house. A wise teacher in one of my children’s classes is teaching that in …
I know elementary school teachers, coaches, and your parents told you that all that matters is that you do your best. Unfortunately, they all lied to you. The professor who wrote this was responding to a fictional (albeit realistic) scenario: how would you respond to a student who asked for a grade change on a project because she “worked so hard on it?” The idea that you could work hard on something and not …
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. – Winston Churchill Summer is winding down here in the South. In a few days, kids will be leaving the pools, playgrounds, and backyards for desks, hallways, and classrooms. Some lament the return to routine and early mornings and traffic, while others rejoice in the beauty of new opportunities, new friends, new experiences. Many view the end of summer with …

The Latest

Get Updates

Learn About...