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 “Look what I came up with,” Barbara said excitedly in an email to Margaret with an accompanying photo. It’s “The Henry.” Margaret sat there staring at a grilled cheese sandwich on her screen.  Huh? “What am I looking at?” After uproarious laughter, Barbara confessed that she had spotted the Grilled Cheese Academy competition online, which was designed to honor and find more ways to use, yup, cheese, and in this case from Wisconsin and in sandwiches. And the reward was tempting bait: $15,000 for the Grand Prize winner.  “See what you can come up with?” she challenged. I took her...

It's so easy when you're our age to tip in the direction of devoting most of our time to aging parents, grown children, and grandchildren, if we're lucky to have those family members in our lives. Add in work and that's another time zapper and stressor. And, maybe, you also are able to squeeze in time for reading, exercising, and having fun with your partner. What gets shortchanged too often is schmooze time with female friends, who often may be your best listeners, laughing, and wine or Martini drinking buds, and all-around soul mates. They're the ones you can share...

A few months back, I was singing the praises of my contractor and how I had found one who showed up on time each day, worked hard daily, cleaned up, listened, and seem destined to finish the job..and well!  He sort of did but not fully. I spoke too soon, and alas that contractor has now followed in the footsteps of so many others in this profession that I've learned about after writing on the subject of houses and design for decades and having four homes worked on over the course of three decades. Now, at age 60+, I join...

Welcome to our new website, which now features our weekly blog as well as information and updates about our forthcoming book. We hope you'll take the journey with us and visit weekly. Maybe, you've already been along for the ride. Unfortunately, a computer glitch caused us to restart the connection and now we’re back on track. Send us your ideas for columns, we're open to all ideas. Thanks so much!

It's always been a touchy subject, but having discussions with our aging parents, siblings, and grown kids about money and possessions and how they'll be left to survivors is crucial to family harmony and financial well being. We've learned through our own experiences as well as those of friends, that you can never plan too well when it comes to this enormous and highly-nuanced topic. Don't leave anything to chance or to just any lawyers or judges, who sometimes may not be up on all the familial dynamics and sometimes even the law. This requires meeting with a competent financial...