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Dear Dave, I’ve started your personal finance course in high school, so I’m asking this for the entire class. What happens to your debt if you pass away with no relatives or heirs to take responsibility for what you owed? — Elizabeth Dear Elizabeth,...

The return of volatility in the first quarter versus 2017 was our focus last week. Some interesting pushback followed the premise that prices seem to ignore news sometimes and at other times hang on every headline. My explanation: most people have th...

Dear Dave, How do you sell a vehicle with a lien amount that’s higher than the actual value of the car? — Michael Dear Michael, First, you need to find a way to cover the difference between the amount of the lien and what you can get for the car. Le...

Why do workers in the financial industry get paid so much? There are many possible explanations, none of them completely satisfying. The financial industry commands a much larger share of the US economy than in the past, causing some to worry that th...

Dear Dave, I’m about to graduate from college, and while I’ve been in school my mom has been handling most of my finances. Recently, I discovered she’s been taking my student loan money and spending it on herself. So far, it looks like she’s taken ar...

Matt Carey studied Arabic at the University of Pennsylvania, preparing for what he hoped would be a career at the Central Intelligence Agency. Eleven years later, he’s pitching annuity contracts. He’s actually happy about that. A summer job at the St...

Historical data show that stocks tend to post strong performances during periods of rising interest rates but only below-average results when inflation is rising or above average. This counterintuitive dynamic was explained by Warren Buffett in 1977 ...

Dear Dave, I received a call the other day from a company saying it could negotiate the balance on my credit cards to a lesser amount. The caller also said they could get me a zero-per cent interest rate until the debts were paid off, and then the ac...

Dear Dave, My wife and I have $72,000 in debt from student loans and a car loan. We’re trying to pay off our debt using the debt snowball system, and we each make about $45,000 a year. She’s a teacher, and she’s planning on going back to school for h...

Buying a home can be lots of fun. It’s exciting to see all those years of dreaming come to life in a place you can finally call your own. With so many possibilities at your fingertips, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement before asking yourse...