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This article is by staff writer Kristin Wong.

I recently read a short article in The New Yorker titled “The Cult of Overwork.” In it, James Surowiecki writes:

“For decades, junior bankers and Wall Street firms had an unspoken pact: in exchange for reasonably high-paying jobs and a shot at obscene wealth, young analysts agreed to work fifteen hours a day, and forgo anything resembling a normal life.”

Reading that, I had a thought. If you’re working 75 hours a week, is your job really “high-paying”?

Let’s say you have a choice  between:

A) 40-hour-a-week job that pays $100,000 a year, and

B) 75-hour-a-week job that pays $100,000 a year.

Obviously, “A” is the better deal. And if you break it down by the hour, without holidays, “A” pays $48/hour and “B” pays $25/hour.

Suddenly, that high-paying job seems pretty average-paying.

This post is by staff writer Honey Smith.

Jake and I have two cats and a dog. To us, having pets is one of the most important aspects of our lives and identity. You might even consider it a hobby. Unfortunately, it is a hobby that, as you will see, has not always been entirely strategic.

Our love for animals has permeated much of our lives. I’ve been vegetarian for over a decade, and Jake was veggie for six years and still cuts back where he can. We also have a standing commitment to donate only to animal welfare organizations. They’re our charities of choice!

Meet Julius, the almost-third cat

This article is by editor Linda Vergon.
Part 2 is What do you do if you can’t make ends meet? (Part 2)

There are times when it doesn’t work. You lost your job or you can’t get a job. Your ex-wife takes you to court. Your partner absconds with the money in your business account. Your business fails. Your car dies. Your health takes an unexpected turn for the worse. Sometimes you’re actually just trying to get to the next day – and you don’t know exactly how you’ll get there.

This article is by staff writer Holly Johnson.

These days, my monthly budget is on the boring side. Aside from our regular spending, I’ve got a mortgage payment to fork over, groceries to buy, and utility bills to pay. Throw in some payments to my kids’ 529 plans and my SEP-IRA and I’m basically done for the month. After all of the bills are paid, the key for us is making sure that the rest gets transferred into savings so that it doesn’t accidentally get spent.

But it wasn’t always this way, and I was reminded of that fact the other day when I was flipping through one of my old notebooks. That’s when I found our monthly zero-sum budget for August of 2010, and that’s when our old lifestyle smacked me right in the face. Want to know how many bills I paid in that month? Twenty-four.