THE FATHER LIFE

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” These simple words by Founding Father Thomas Paine were read to the Continental army in the opening months of the American Revolution shortly before the Battle of Trenton in December of 1776. The circumstances in 1776 were certainly much different than today, however I am afraid that [...]

Editor’s Note: We are honored to welcome guest columnist Don Harrold from practicaldad.com.  This article is the second in his three-part series exploring college planning. The first column, published in January, is “Rethinking the College Model.”
The experience of choosing a college is very different when you’ve got a teenager and are looking at it [...]

Some of you may be thinking, “Dr. E…, you’ve got that all wrong. It’s supposed to be ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.” Well let me tell you all, we’ve got trouble… right here in River City…with a capital T that rhymes with P… (sorry, I digress). But seriously, we do have [...]

The dawning of a new year prompts many people to take a fresh look at their annual budget, and what they’ll find is that auto insurance costs are substantial.  Even after that revelation many people just grin and bear it, but a larger number of people are now spending more time searching for better insurance [...]

Orthodontists and College. No two words scare me more since each involves kids and significant amounts of money.

But college is the scarier word. Orthodontia might or might not be required, but if the kids are going to have a leg up in the world, then some form of higher education will be required.

Talking to children about tragedy is a job most parents would love to avoid. If only our children did not need to hear about things like this week’s devastating earthquake in Haiti. But they do hear. And they are full of questions: Could this happen to me? What’s going to happen to the children? Can [...]

One thing auto industry veterans will tell you is they never saw a year like 2009 … and they never want to see another one like it. The year included the seemingly unthinkable: bankruptcy for General Motors. And as an added fillip, Chrysler went bankrupt too and was rescued by the unlikely combination of the [...]

Bye-bye, Aughts — don’t let the door hit you in the ’00s on your way out.
True, there were all those years of economic euphoria. Only thing is — like that classic sitcom Seinfeld — they were based on nothing. As a result, the United States is stumbling into the Tweens with a full-on nasty hangover [...]

Using technology makes filling in and shipping out your tax forms easier. Now, your use of gadgets can help you even more by reducing the amount of tax dollars you owe. Computers, iPhones, GPS devices, and other gadgets may be tax deductible if you use them for work. Congress recently added recession-era provisions to [...]

Tiger Woods has probably had the most regrettable week in his life.  For fans, it was the fall of what many thought was one of the true great ones…both inside and outside of the ropes.
Woods had a car accident in the early morning hours on the Friday after Thanksgiving outside his home [...]