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When to Spend

When to Spend

by | Saturday, April 15, 2023 | , ,

IF YOU HAVE READ enough HumbleDollar articles, you’ve probably noticed that frugality has played a major role in the financial success of many of the site’s writers. Peruse the article comments and the site’s “Voices” section, and you’ll find that readers often share the same thriftiness. Frugality is also a key theme running through many of the 30 financial life stories in the forthcoming book, My Money Journey. Sure enough, I highlighted frugality in the essay I contributed to the book, as well as in my most popular HumbleDollar article to-date. But while we might be good at saving, we...

A Home Run

A Home Run

by | Thursday, November 3, 2022 | , ,

MY WIFE SARAH AND I recently dusted off our old Scrabble board. We reviewed the rules and were reminded of the Scrabble Bingo—the 50-point bonus awarded to a player who figures out how to play every letter tile from the tray on a single turn. Neither of us could remember ever achieving the Scrabble Bingo. That wasn’t surprising, we reasoned, because it’s rare for all the stars to align. You’d need the right combination of seven letters, the vision to see the word they can form, and the perfectly accommodating space on the board to play the long word. On top of all that, you’d need to...

Making It

Making It

by | Friday, August 12, 2022 | , ,

FLETCHER WHITE, my great-grandfather, was one of the young American doughboys drafted to fight in World War I. He also helped set the financial direction for our family for generations to come. Fletcher may have lacked military acumen, but he compensated with ingenuity and resilience learned growing up in rural Appalachia. In fall 1918, he and a million fellow American soldiers pulled off in a few months what the French had been unable to accomplish in four years. At a cost of more than 26,000 U.S. lives, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive dislodged the German soldiers from their trenches,...

No Help

No Help

by | Friday, July 8, 2022 | , , ,

OUR LAST SUMMER road trip didn’t exactly go as planned. That ordeal changed my mind about an annual expense I’d been paying without much thought. I gained a new perspective—even if I did learn my lesson the hard way. On a Saturday morning last summer, Sarah and I woke our kids at 4 a.m. for a predawn drive through the mountains of East Tennessee and across the Carolinas. We were on our way to enjoy the beaches of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. For the first eight hours of our planned nine-hour trek, we all watched the trees go by in peace—a significant feat, as any parent will tell...

What’s On Matt’s Blog

What’s On Matt’s Blog

by | Friday, January 28, 2022 | , , ,

When you have questions about money, who do you go to first? A financial advisor The financial media Your friends and family Your pastor or a leader in your church Do you ever find it challenging to decide who to listen to? What a variety of perspectives! The blog at MattChristopherWhite.com will help you seamlessly integrate the kinds of wisdom and knowledge that you might hear from each of them, capably think for yourself, and make confident and joyful money decisions. Here’s a look at how: Financial Advisor Money is complicated. It takes hard work to understand it. I’ve spent the better...

Christmas All Year

Christmas All Year

by | Wednesday, January 26, 2022 | , ,

I GAVE THE BEST PEP talk I could muster, but it didn’t help. Our family of four entered Walmart in solidarity, planning to buy gifts to fill an Operation Christmas Child shoebox. Two of us left early in disarray. I had to wrestle my screaming two-year-old all the way to the car because she knew only one way to approach the toy department—with herself in mind. Eliza melted down over her refusal to part with a cheap plastic toy. As much as we romanticize the idea of giving, it seems we have a hard time actually doing it. A growing body of research shows that giving does more for...