Last weekend, I took Saoirse for her first time to see kites flying. She was much more interested in seeing the other children than the kites, but the experience brought back one of my favorite childhood memories of flying a kite. Well really, it involves crashing a kite. When I was about 4 years old, my dad took me to a field on a windy day to fly my new Ariel kite. The field abutted...

I have loved dogs for as long as I can remember. I grew up with parents who were on the opposite end of the loving dogs spectrum. My father did not want anything to do with them, and my mother loves them. I have 4 siblings and between the 5 of us and my mother, my father was worn down. On Christmas Day 1982, my mom gave us a puppy. A black lab/shepherd mix we...

With tax season behind us, the big financial news coming from Washington, D.C. now is about the debt ceiling. Here we’ll talk about what’s going on, what could happen, and what it means for your portfolio. Congress authorizes various forms of spending through the legislation it passes. When income (primarily tax receipts) is not sufficient to cover the expenses to which Congress has already committed, the difference must be borrowed. This borrowing increases the national...