Money Matters

Sane Spending

Ashley Campos worked for a large electronics and entertainment retailer for nine years and the experience made her loathe the holiday shopping season. “I hate how people act,” the Frederick resident says. Plus, the deals “aren’t always that great during the holidays. You can sometimes find better deals during the …

Read More »

Start-Up Spirit

The rules have changed, Aisha DaCosta says about of today’s job market—for adults as well as for kids. “There’s no such thing as job security. How do you make yourself valuable,” asks DaCosta who founded I AM O’KAH! (pronounced “I AM OKAY!”) in 2011 to teach Baltimore students about the …

Read More »

Home Work

by Liz McMahon Flexibility is a “tremendous benefit” when it comes to being a parent and a business owner, says Kelli Gravelle, owner of Kelli’s Sign Painting Parties and Custom Vinyl. Gravelle, 34, of Reisterstown, is the mother of three children aged 6 and under. She had career in law …

Read More »

Buying a home, with debt

In this country, there has always been a well-worn path to household wealth—and that’s buying the house itself. Since the 2008 recession, the home is “still the major source of stable wealth” in this country, says J.P. Krahel, an accounting professor at Loyola University Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business and …

Read More »

All in a Day’s Work

Summer job. Those words may conjure up different reactions, depending on your age. If you are old enough to look back on a summer job, you likely have fond memories of fun co-workers, not-funny-at-the-time-but-hilarious-now workplace horror stories and that feeling of money in your pocket that was all yours. But …

Read More »

Score!

  When I was a kid, exercise consisted of running around the neighborhood and playing backyard games with friends. The most organized sport I participated in was summer swim team where, quite frankly, I was mostly in it for the permission to eat strawberry Jell-O crystals straight from the box …

Read More »

Downsizing

  Baltimore-area family the Smiths followed the trajectory of countless homeowners before them. They bought a “starter house”—a reasonably sized duplex—where they lived when their two children were young, before “buying up”. Their second home was a big old house dating to the late 1800s with a large wrap-around porch, …

Read More »