Sammy Tran articles

Your parents thought they were leaving their grandchildren a financial head start. Then the parents said, “They’re our kids, so give us the money."

A stressful week becomes a cart full of impulse purchases. We call it “retail therapy” because shopping can genuinely feel good in the moment.

Your brother wants the house, you want your share, and keeping the property in the family sounds much easier than putting it on the market. Then he names a price that feels suspiciously low, and suddenly a simple solution starts looking a lot more complicated. Fortunately, neither sibling has to guess what the house is worth because there are fairly objective ways to establish a reasonable starting point.

There was a time when certain company names were practically part of the furniture. Their televisions, cameras, computers, movie rentals, records, and gadgets helped decide how American families spent an evening at home. Then technology changed, and some of the most familiar names in the country discovered just how quickly a dominant business could become yesterday's habit.

Walk through a supermarket today and plenty of ordinary foods suddenly feel like little luxuries. Pull up grocery prices from the 1980s, and some of the old numbers look almost unbelievable. Of course, a dollar went much further back then, so these are not perfect apples-to-apples comparisons. Even with that caveat, though, some of those old supermarket prices are startling to see.

Convenience fees used to feel like a rare annoyance. Now they show up when Americans buy tickets, pay bills, order food, book travel, and so much more.