Color of Money

What's standing in your way of achieving financial success? I'm not talking about the folks who have lost their jobs, or seen their financial lives ruined because of a crisis such as a major medical problem. I'm asking this question ...

The Internal Revenue Service made a policy change recently that shows an agency many people fear and loathe can also make common-sense decisions.

President Obama wimped out by not nominating Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Instead of Warren, whose idea it was to create an independent and powerful federal agency to protect consumers, Obama selected Richard Cordray, the former ...

People are scared. As President Obama and congressional leaders continue to fight over how to reduce the federal deficit, people are rightly concerned about what they can expect to get from Social Security. Right now, you can take an early ...

I frequently find myself in a debate with a dear friend about the slew of surveys concerning the financial behavior of African-Americans. When the companies release their findings, which often show blacks lagging in savings and investment holdings, the question ...

Annamarie Pluhar has lived most of her adult life in shared housing. In these difficult times, it makes sense to get financial relief by sharing your space, says Pluhar, who has 21 years of experience living with people who were ...

During my online discussions, questions about the best way to handle credit card debt and the repercussions from it still dominate. Here is the advice I gave some readers still digging their way out of debt.

After a disaster, people often want to figure out how to avoid the debacle again. As we continue to deal with fallout from the housing crisis, regulators working under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act are proposing rules to prevent ...

This graduation season, I have two nieces finishing master's degree programs and a nephew about to head off to college. Those of us who have long since hung our diplomas on the wall know that for those leaving college or ...

For many families, the cost of higher education is out of reach, while others can manage it only if they take on debt that could take decades to pay off.

We the people — the people who don't have the money to hire lobbyists — need a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But if we the people don't take action, the watchdog agency, which hasn't had a chance to really ...

What would you do if, in one day, 30 years' worth of life savings just went poof? Geneen Roth found herself in just this situation. She and her husband became one of the many victims of Bernard L. Madoff, investing ...

We've entered an age where financial experts are declaring there's a new American dream. Your house should be your home, not an investment, they now say. Reject the old truths that a student loan is always a good investment, they ...

Aside from long waits to get tax questions answered, a decent but not great accuracy rate in the preparation of some returns by volunteer tax preparers and insufficient quality controls that could lead to fraudulent refunds, the Internal Revenue Service ...

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman sees a major technological change in the agency's future that could make it easier to deter tax cheats and immediately reject tax returns that don't match information in the agency's database.