Janet Kidd Stewart

It's a "Big Ask." So big, in fact, that many of us don't do it. Asking someone to be your child's guardian in the event of your death is a...

Perched on the retirement threshold, Linda and Jim Jeschke have more income than they need and are sitting on some of the fastest-appreciating land in the Midwest. So why is...

Attention, shoppers: Challenging your broker may be cheaper in October. But whether it's a good deal depends on your situation. When hiring a broker, investors typically sign waivers agreeing to...

Call it feng shui for investors. Investment advisers are rearranging the furniture, so to speak, in their clients' financial floor plan by casting decisions in the broader context of clients'...

Connecting with an old friend living in Baton Rouge, La., brought to life the horrific images that had been at arm's length in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Formerly a...

All may be fair in love and war, but in the sticky middle ground of consumer credit, figuring out what's fair is murky at best. At least two pending legislative...

We're paying more and more protection money on our financial lives. Identity theft, phishing scams, viruses and worms are turning the convenience of online personal finance into a jungle of...

While demographers debate the true size of the Baby Boomers' wealth transfer in the coming decades, the actual figure may mean less to the Me Generation than originally thought. Sentimental...

Entrepreneurs make notoriously bad investors. They risk their personal credit getting companies off the ground and plow back too much of their profit. They too often invest within their own...

American workers are changing the way they think about their retirement accounts, dipping into them for short-term spending in much the same way homeowners have tapped into equity. Nearly half...