Listen up:

Hedonic Adjustment on aggressive debt collectors, and our need to have credit despite their methods:

"Life without credit should be cheap and easy. What happened?"

Single Ma's got no problem with credit:

"In my experience, credit has improved my financial life in many ways. Therefore, I can only conclude that credit is good and people (who are not disciplined when using credit cards) are bad not so good."

At Aridni, a cautionary tale:

"In the summer of 1999, my father invested the approximately $1 million from the sale of our old house into the stock market only to lose the vast majority of it when the market crashed the next year. My father blamed the loss on the 2000 presidential election and everything else under the sun except for the real culprit: he did not diversify his investments. In addition, he invested (and therefore risked) the entire $1 million. As a result, my father, who is self employed, will never be able to retire."