Personal Finance
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‘Am I cheap?’ I used to give my nieces and nephews $100 gift cards, but I left my job in tech. Is $25 insulting?
Dear Quentin, I am 52, and live alone without other income. For the past 15 years, I earned a large salary in a demanding role at a tech company. The company was sold and I took time off, and then started a different job in a new industry. I earn half of my old tech…
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Apple CEO Tim Cook has not answered the $1 billion question about his Vision Pro VR headset
Thanks a lot, but no thanks. Thanks for the 10,000 steps a day and FaceTime,Thanks for the darling iPhone that’s mine,But I’m a guy with only so much time,Thanks a lot, but no thanks. Apologies to the writers Betty Comden, Adolph Green and André Previn for butchering the text of their classic song, “Thanks a…
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As the Equal Pay Act turns 60, ‘an uneven playing field’ remains. Here’s where pay equity stands.
A female manager who was paid less than a male worker she supervised. Female managers fired for complaining about not being paid the same as their male counterparts for performing the same duties. Female professors who weren’t paid as much as male professors. African-American women discriminated against in pay and promotions. Those are among the…
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Want to live in these 11 cities? You’ll need to make at least $100,000 to avoid being ‘rent burdened,’ researchers say.
To avoid spending more than a third of their income on rent, tenants paying average prices in 11 major U.S. markets would need to earn six figures, according to a recent analysis from university researchers. In fact, the average renter in the U.S. overall would have to make almost $81,000 — about $10,000 more than the…
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P.F. Chang’s 34-year-old CEO on what he learned from billionaire John Paulson
Damola Adamolekun is far from your typical CEO. As head of the Asian fusion restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s, the 34-year-old Adamolekun is one of the youngest chief executives in the corporate world. He’s also one of a small number of Black CEOs in the country. The son of a neurologist and pharmacist, Adamolekun was born…
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More baby boomers are becoming homeless: ‘It takes just one crisis’ to push someone onto the streets
People aged 65 and older are the fastest-growing group of people who are homeless and their ranks will peak by 2030. This daunting forecast comes amid escalating rents nationally, stubborn inflation and a potential recession that compounds woes for baby boomers who have minimal savings for retirement. It also comes as traditional workplace pensions are…
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‘I worry about outliving my money’: I’m a 65-year-old widow in good health. Should I wait until 70 to collect my pension?
I am a 65-year-old widow in good health, and just started collecting my late husband’s Social Security benefit of $4,000 per month. When I turn 70, I will switch to my benefit since it appears it will be around $100 higher every month at that time. My current expenses are running high at about $10,000…
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What Google, Martha Stewart, Amazon and others have gotten so wrong about the remote-work debate
When most couples split up, sleep in separate bedrooms or spend time apart and then decide to get back together, they might go to couple’s counseling or air their grievances in a backstreet coffee shop as a last-ditch effort to repair a once fruitful and happy relationship. Successful conscious re-couplings typically have one thing in…
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We are a diverse couple looking for the stars and good libraries in Florida. Where should we retire?
We are a multiethnic couple with cats who live in Miami but we would like to move farther north in Florida for at least part of the year, (sort of reverse snowbirds!). We have a few weird preferences in that my husband is an astronomer and therefore we would like to be near an observatory,…
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Should you try a concierge doctor? Here are the pros, the cons and the costs.
My primary care doctor recently left her practice and invited me to join her at her new gig — a concierge medicine group. There, for a membership fee, I’d have better and more personal access to her services: same-day appointments and long conversations! Concierge medicine — a model in which patients pay a membership fee…