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The lottery is like catnip to dreamers. But when it comes to money, I tend to be a pragmatist. It’s hard to earn and I don’t believe in throwing it away on some fantasy. Show me the money not the promise of it. Instant millionaire just isn’t going to happen to someone like me who never wins raffles or even bingo.  However, Barbara threw out the gauntlet. She’s a believer. A dreamer. She’s the one who contacted a clairvoyant to get a read on her future after her divorce. “Try the lottery just once,” she urged. “Buy a cheap ticket....

When I divorced, my financial advisor urged me to use my debit card for all purchases so I would never charge or overspend. The goal was to rebuild my nest egg. More than 13 years later, the habit has stuck to me like a post-it note. It’s a constant reminder not to carry real cash that just takes up room in my wallet.  However, on days when I have a few loose dollars, I find it hard to resist buying a lotto ticket or two—for which you have to pay cash. What the heck. The thought of winning boosts my...

Now that I am single, I can live anywhere; I have global carte blanche. But this begs the question: Do I stay or do I go? I’ve lived in the Midwest (St. Louis with a five-year stint in Chicago) most of my life. I still have a son living here and a great support network of friends and family. But two of my children live out of town---one on the East coast and the other on the West coast--and two of my siblings live in the East, too.  After my husband died in 2011, it took me more than two...

This is the conversation that seems to occur like clockwork when someone new asks how I--a native, suburban New York gal who went to college and grad school in New York City but raised my two daughters in the Midwest--ended up in the Hudson River Valley, farm country two hours north.  How did I? Well, there was a slight detour, I always reply. After moving to the Midwest nine years after I married, I, the proverbial New Yorker who viewed its overblown importance in a similar way to how artist Saul Steinberg did in his famous New Yorker cartoon, came...

The desire to own fewer things in our lives can be seen with the current decline in luxury spending or spending in general, and the cult success of listening to the decluttering superstar author Marie Kondo. Whether we buy fewer possessions or just bid thanks and adieu to things we already own that fail to spark continued joy in our lives, all signs point to the fact that for many of us aged 50 plus, it’s time to move on--and with far fewer things.  As we shed our stuff after each of us lost our spouses, both of us had...