Jane Bryant Quinn

Normally I'd say suck it up, cut spending and repay your debt. But not if you're going broke.

Retirement planning usually focuses on "the number"—how much money you'll need to support the kind of life you want. For early retirees, there's a second question, potentially even more important: will you have health insurance to carry you to 65 when you finally come under the protection of Medicare?

Tax credits would move people out of group plans and into individual policies where the benefits aren't as good.

One strategy is to look for 'merit aid,' tuition discounts awarded without regard to financial need.

These aren't the same economies that went through the wringer a decade ago. They're countries with booming growth.

You're allowed to take money only for things like paying medical bills, buying a home or warding off foreclosure.

It's one thing to write about prenups, and quite another to live through their making. Doing a prenup isn't for sissies.

Enough borrowers are still making payments to keep the pools of subprime loans reasonably profitable.

You'll almost certainly lose if you try to buy and sell as the market churns up and down.

The government had plenty of power to prevent the mortgage crisis. But regulators didn't do their jobs—and still don't get it.

Call your school, right now, to see if your usual lender is providing funds. If not, start the hunt.

When seeking advice, avoid playing minnow to the sharks.

When all the world's markets drop together, commentators like to claim that diversification doesn't work. They're wrong.

Does your retirement plan offer investing advice? Take it. You'll get better results than if you choose the investments yourself.

Ignore the stories about the risks in money-market funds. They're safe because their sponsors will back them up.

If banks would modify the loan terms, the majority of at-risk borrowers could pay their mortgages and stay in their homes.

Bush favors his own program—tax deductions for people at all income levels who buy their own health insurance.

When you think about leaving money to heirs, the process seems simple. You put your decisions in your will (you have one, right?). When the will is read, your family and friends bless your sainted memory.

One employee got disgusted when he saw a customer had paid $8,000 in fees on a $375 loan. 'That made the picture clear.'

When you turn 50, it's more than an embarrassing birthday. It's the outer door to retirement, whether you know it or not. Some people save for years so they can retire early (55 is a favorite age).

You've probably read that investors usually don't do as well as the mutual funds they buy. The reason is simple. You buy, or add to, successful funds after they've started zooming in value, not before.

Every May, the voice of the commencement speaker rings in the land. Go forth! Play to win! But while graduates may be prepared to take up jobs and careers, they're often not ready to handle money.

Prepare to be terrorized, shocked, scared out of your wits. No, not by jihadists or dementors (you do read "Harry Potter," right?), but by the evil threat of ...

Remember the "ownership society" that the administration swore to promote and protect? Remember the admiration lavished on the so-called shareholding class?

There's more reason than ever to leave written instructions about the medical care you want if you're unable to speak for yourself. In the wake of the Terri Schiavo case, in which her husband and parents fought over whether to remove her feeding tubes, right-to-life activists have been working on state legislatures.

Insurers are offering new forms of long-term-care insurance for boomers who might be willing to buy at a younger age.

Ready to retire? Looking for income, safety and growth? You're a sitting duck for a broker selling a fancy new investment product—a variable annuity with "guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits for life." You put up some money; it's invested in stocks and bonds; you're guaranteed an annual payment of 5 or 6 percent of your initial investment for life (that's $5,000 or $6,000 on a $100,000 investment); if stocks keep rising, your future payments can (supposedly) rise, too, but they'll never...

If you're still picking your bank by whether there's a handy branch nearby, you haven't joined the 21st century. Branches are nice, especially when you've got a good book to read while you're waiting in line.

Claudie Harris, 54, of Kansas City, Mo., knows about living on the edge. She owes about$5,000 toward her late husband's medical bills. She's paying it, slowly, from the salary she earns as a housekeeper at a facility for the mentally ill.

So where's the money in climate change? Investors sense a tumultuous market in the making, if they can only hit it right. "Sometimes I feel like a fly on the wall, watching a new era unfold," says Rona Fried, editor and publisher of Progressive Investor, a six-year-old newsletter that follows the field. "We're almost past the final hurdle of 'Do we really have to change?' Yes, we do, and we're going to get there."Wall Street's own change in climate is nothing less than astonishing.