I have waded into the birth rate discourse. Appealing to concerns about needing more worker bees to fill future cubicles and pay into Social Security is not a compelling argument for having more kids (or kids at all) IMO! marketwatch.com/story/im-a-mil…

The DC Council chair released his proposed budget today, which restores some, but not all of the $$ allocated to a fund that boosts pay of childcare workers in the city. Read more about this effort to deal w/the child care crisis: lims.dccouncil.gov/Hearings/heari… x.com/JillianBerman/…

The data is good, but the vibes are bad. What if we just looked at different data?? Venessa Wong + I explore other econ metrics that explain how Americans are feeling marketwatch.com/story/a-114-00…

Learned a lot about the future of financial advice from this one by hannah erin lang. Today's advice-givers are highlighting how 'personal finance is about 20% your personal choices and 80% your circumstances.' marketwatch.com/story/money-ad…

'A look at how individual traders have performed against their bigger counterparts underscores just how much predictive power lies in the hands of Main Street.' x.com/nathanvardi/st…

Most people think of college admissions as being based on merit, but who applies to and who gets into colleges has more to do with schools’ priorities than students’ qualifications. And the big priorities for many colleges: revenue + rankings. marketwatch.com/story/revenue-…

Love this from Pamela Herd 🐀: 'It is a political choice to build an administrative infrastructure that makes it easy for the public to access government benefits or to shift all of that burden onto individuals.”

Do we actually need the FAFSA? The botched rollout of a simpler version of the form has made college decision season a headache, drawing more attention to a radical solution: Getting rid of it. marketwatch.com/story/the-botc…

So happy to return to personal essay writing at MarketWatch! Today I share my thoughts about Mother's Day, a ~$33.5 billion holiday. For all the pricey gestures families are planning this Sunday, there is one thing many mothers really crave: relief (1/4) marketwatch.com/story/this-mot…

Instead of the Met Gala, a debt gala nytimes.com/2024/05/06/fas…

Lawmakers are threatening to cut funding to colleges over protests. It could just be rhetoric, but it comes as the public is growing skeptical of higher ed. It also sits amid the backdrop of the 1960s, when threats to cut funding over protests became real. marketwatch.com/story/if-histo…

👀 tidbit here: The govt found that 1 Art Institutes campus included Serena Williams' salary in its calculations for the average salary advertised to students, which allowed the school to skew the numbers (Williams attended the school in the early 2000s) x.com/MarketWatch/st…

Navigating financial aid packages can be challenging in any year, but it's particularly complex this spring, given the botched rollout of the new FAFSA. Some tips for sorting through offers during one of the most complicated college decision seasons yet. marketwatch.com/story/college-…

The botched FAFSA rollout has made this college decision season one of the most challenging yet. Here's how to navigate offers: marketwatch.com/story/college-…

From Venessa Wong: Across the U.S., many families — even those with a six-figure income — are struggling to support a middle-class quality of life, meaning they can afford to cover their needs and some of their wants, and still set aside money for savings. marketwatch.com/story/a-100-00…

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

There's been a lot of debate about who benefits from student debt cancellation and how it impacts borrowers' lives -- but not a lot of data. Now, we have some. Here's what it says: marketwatch.com/story/heres-wh…

Biden has cancelled $153 billion in student debt so far. Young borrowers haven't felt it. “He’s doing the bare minimum. He’s doing enough to appease people and cover his butt to say, ‘I’m not ignoring this issue.’” marketwatch.com/story/biden-ha…