As you gaze at your newborn or newly adopted son or daughter, one of these thoughts may run through your head:

• "Will I be able to afford to put you through school?"
• "Am I required to put you through school?"
• "Right now it's all I can do to pay for Pampers and child care. I'll worry about college later."

Time has a way of sneaking up on us. Seemingly overnight, that gurgling infant morphs into a 12th-grader looking at college or vocational education.

According to The College Board, tuition and fees (but not housing) at U.S. colleges in academic year 2014-15 ranged from $9,139 (state residents at public college) to $22,958 (out-of-state residents at public universities) to $31,231 (private colleges).

This is a guest-post from Tim Ellis, author of Seattle Bubble, a blog and forum dedicated to discussing real estate market conditions in the Seattle area. Tim is a long-time GRS reader. During my last trip to Europe, he shared a controversial article on renting vs. buying.

Given the fact that each year around sixteen million Americans move to a new county, it's likely that at some point in your life you'll find yourself moving to an unfamiliar area.

Starting a new chapter of your life in a fresh locale can be an exciting and memorable time, but it can also be rough on your personal finances. Many of the expenses associated with a major move are unavoidable, but there's one major mistake that is easy to avoid: buying a home immediately upon arriving.

Divorce. It's an unattractive yet common end to a relatively high percentage of marriages in the U.S. In fact, as many as 50 percent of American marriages end this way, often leaving catastrophic personal and financial consequences that linger for years.

The division of assets. Alimony. Child Custody Issues. Who gets the Stuff? These are all things that must be dealt with during and after a divorce, whether one likes it or not. And the truth is, it isn't always pretty.

Unfortunately, my beloved brother recently learned all about divorce the hard way -- by actually going through one. And since he could no longer afford his giant house on his own, he had to move and sell most of his bigger stuff. I wanted to help in any way I could, so I offered to sell some of his bigger items on Craigslist and eBay. And within the timeframe of a few months, I sold his lawnmower and baby grand piano without too much hassle.

In the past few months, I've had a noteworthy number of conversations about the trend toward frugality. More of my friends seem interested in finding ways to save, I can't throw a rock at the Internet without hitting a money-saving "hack," and, during a job interview, I had a lengthy discussion about how "personal finance is now trendy."

Get Rich Slowly reader and money blogger Mrs. PoP noticed it too, and wrote about it on her blog:

"Recently I've begun to notice something a bit unusual. An interest in personal finance seems to be becoming more common, and dare I say, trendy… Maybe I'm just drawn to [friends'] comments because of our own interest in personal finance. But maybe, there's also a chance that personal finance -- in a non-gimmicky way -- is actually starting to be 'cool'." Continue reading...

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An Experiment in Cheap Living

Earlier this week, I shared some of the highlights from three years of GRS articles about saving money on food. Brett from The Art of Manliness, who knows that I collect old self-help books, sent me an excerpt from Dio Lewis's 1872 volume, Our Digestion, or, My Jolly Friend's Secret. Here Lewis describes his "experiment in cheap living", during which he spends just 54-1/4 cents for a week of food. This makes for some amusing reading. Enjoy!

It is now Saturday afternoon, and I will tell you in confidence, my dear reader, a little of my personal, private experience during the past week.

My philosophy on credit cards has changed completely in the last five years. I've gone from anti-credit-card to pro-credit-card — but only for those who can use them responsibly. I think they're a great convenience, and I like getting cash back when I use mine.

But not everyone thinks this cash-back feature is a good thing. In fact, my inbox is a-flutter with folks who want me to comment on the recent credit-card study from the Consumer Payments Research Center. This study (which can be downloaded as a 810kb PDF from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston) found that credit cards transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. How? Through fees and rewards programs.

From the abstract: Continue reading...

I wanted to title this post, "Can you be friends with people in decidedly different financial situations than you?" but that wasn't very catchy. (And I know: some of you ARE rich!)

But I was reading the acclaimed recent novel, "The Interestings," with my writer's craft book group (we discuss books based on writing analytics rather than whether characters and stories are likable). The book's main character is just ordinary, with an ordinary job and ordinary talents. But Jules has some extraordinary ("interesting") friends, friends that she met long ago at a summer camp for the arts.

Because Jules hasn't pursued her art as a career, and she probably wouldn't have made a ton of money at it in any case, she often finds herself terribly envious of her friends that have; notably, her friends whose talents have made them a huge financial success. (The male half of the couple seems to be loosely modeled off Matt Groening; his animated series quickly becomes huge and he's rich within months of winning a network deal.)