Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Dave Ramsey has built a big following on one blunt idea: money problems usually start with habits, not calculators. His tough-love style treats personal finance as a behavior challenge first and a math exercise second. He argues that even smart people stay broke if they keep repeating the same self-sabotaging routines. In 2026, with rising…
Consumer debt is rising again across the United States, and Georgia is one of the states helping drive that climb. National data show balances hitting new highs and early trouble spots in non-housing loans easing a bit, but state-level numbers reveal that some regions are taking on heavier loads than others. The issue is not…
Credit card balances are rising fast enough that the headline figure, $1.28 trillion after a $44 billion jump in the final quarter of 2025, has become shorthand for household financial stress. Yet the official data that is available so far paints a broader and in some ways more troubling picture: Americans are not just leaning…
Grocery shoppers have been told for months that inflation is cooling, yet the checkout total still has a way of jolting the stomach. A year-long test of 114 everyday items at one Walmart suggests that the story on the shelf is more complicated than the headline numbers. The data points to a quieter, more persistent…
President Donald Trump has staked his second term on a promise to make everyday life cheaper, from rent and mortgages to credit cards and car payments. The White House points to falling housing costs and strong consumer spending as proof that the strategy is working, while critics argue that some of the same ideas could…
The widening trade gap is already feeding into higher prices, and the next rounds of tariffs and supply disruptions are poised to hit everyday budgets even harder. If I want to shield my wallet before the trade gap really bites, I need to think like a small-scale quartermaster and focus on items that are both…
Warren Buffett has spent decades telling shareholders that the best job feels like “tap dancing to work,” but he has now traced that mantra back to a surprising source: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay “Self-Reliance.” When he talks about the guidance he gave his own children, he describes a simple test rooted in Emerson’s insistence…
President Donald Trump’s promise to cap credit card interest at 10% for a year landed like a lifeline for millions of Americans carrying balances at two or three times that rate. The idea taps into real anger over double digit annual percentage rates that barely budged even as other borrowing costs fell. But a closer…
Robert Kiyosaki has spent decades telling readers that the traditional playbook of working hard, saving diligently and paying off debt is not the path to real wealth. His latest provocation is even sharper: he argues that parking cash in a savings account is what “losers” do with their money, because inflation and low yields quietly…
Household finances in the United States are starting to look less like a cushion and more like a pressure cooker. Total household debt has climbed toward $19 trillion, while essential costs have jumped roughly 25 percent even as paychecks barely move. The result is a middle class that is not just stretched, but beginning to…