your-money

Hint: Forty-nine percent of us don't have a household budget and thirty-one percent are struggling to pay bills.

As a mother of two small kids, I’m used to getting plenty of unsolicited advice from others about parenting — some of it's useful and some not so much. But there is one kind of advice we moms don’t receive enough of and that's advice about money.

At 78, my friend Rose (not her real name) has always been an independent woman — long divorced, she raised five kids on her own, has strong opinions about everything and has a quick, and at times downright ribald, wit.

My credit card got rejected over the weekend - not because I was over the limit or behind on payments, but because the magnetic strip on the back had stopped working. The salesperson had swiped it about ten times before finally admitting defeat and asking me for another card.

Unlike some of my friends, I’m not a regular Costco shopper. I find the sheer size of the place overwhelming — you can’t quickly stop in on the way home from work to pick up milk. You also have to buy a membership, at $55. The other major drawback to Costco for me is that every time I go in, I’m hit by an inexplicable urge to buy large quantities of things I don’t really need — like a massive box of meatballs that won’t fit in my freezer or a huge store-sized package of Swedish berries.