Looking back on the last month in business news, there’s been a recurring theme: Billionaires Behaving Badly. No need to name names. Let’s just say that anybody who regularly spends time chatting up the world on Twitter or invests in crypto was tossed into the upside-down in November.
So that recession thing…it put a damper on all the fun for a while, eh? Don't buy this. Don't spend money on that. Well, cheer up, because, according to Chris Farrell, author of The New Frugality: How to Consume Less, Save More, and Live Better ($26, Bloomsbury Press), the "great recession" was also a giant dividing line between the spenders and the borrowers of the last eight decades. It also resulted in a future where we're more mindful with our money. If the cutback message is working your last nerve, consider resetting your brain by focusing on being frugal (which, by-and-by, can be a very stylish way to live).
Here’s just some of what’s on 16-year-old Ali Goedecke’s mind: Latin class; crew team and field hockey; the state of public libraries in her hometown, Washington, D.C.; and the middle-class quagmire.
The middle-class quagmire?
Yes. The middle-class quagmire. With two and a half years to go until she takes a seat in the first massive lecture hall of her college career, Goedecke knows that her family probably won’t qualify for a ton of financial aid. But the sophomore overachiever — her daily schedule would exhaust an ultramarathoner — is putting her passions in play to make sure her parents don’t get stomped by college costs.
Read the rest of the story on Continental magazine online.