Emily Guy Birken

If you’re the resolution or goal-setting type, early January is the time of year for making your plans on how to do and/or be better in...

Several years ago, I was talking to a college friend about retirement, and he told me that his retirement plan was to assume climate...

Though I have spent the last 11+ years working as a personal finance writer, I’m actually an English teacher by training. Teaching seemed...

This past Saturday, my husband and I took our old couch to the dump. After 18 years of faithfully supporting our behinds while we watched...

I can vividly remember the first explicit lesson I had on the power of compound interest. Mr. Bosley, my 9th grade Social Studies...

There was a time when I struggled to figure out why I was so drawn to the study of Behavioral Economics. It's not a natural attraction,...

One of the foundational works in the development of my financial philosophy is the classic book Your Money Or Your Life by Vicki Robin...

The start of a new year is supposed to feel like an exciting new beginning. We have the opportunity to shed old habits and rewrite our...

Over the weekend, a friend tagged me on Facebook in a discussion one of her friends was having on how to teach kids about money. The...

In November 2012, about a month after my dad was diagnosed with the glioblastoma that would take his life in April 2013, my husband and I...

I’m not in the habit of getting into knock-down drag-out fights with my financial institutions. I prefer to reserve my WWE style...

Some of the unfettered joy and extreme discomfort of parenting comes from recognizing your own traits in your child. Not only does my...

Note from Emily: I originally wrote this piece in September, 2020, but after the devastating June 24, 2022 Supreme Court ruling that...

Many years ago, I learned that Samuel Johnson, one of the most prolific of all English writers, spent his days lamenting his own...

If you’re not a regular in the personal finance corner of the Internet (where spreadsheets are sexy, fluent NASDAQ speakers proliferate,...

What if I were to tell you that time travel is possible? No, I don’t have a DeLorean (or any other novelty 80s sports car) with a flux...

Several weeks ago, after having spent 103 straight days with my family, I asked my husband to give me a list of errands that had gone...

For the last several months, my brain has been…mushy, for lack of a better word. I stare at empty Word documents, unable to start writing...

Not only has 2020 seemed to last at least a decade so far, but sometimes, it can also feel like there is no relief on the horizon. A...

While this blog is usually a place for discussing difficult financial questions, today I’m going to talk about how one of my financial...