Stories by Sarah Catherine Gutierrez

Money clubs not for other people If you are celebrating with family and friends this holiday season and hear grumblings about inflation or credit cards or student loans, I have the perfect response for you: Join the club.No, really. ... December 11, 2022

Student debtors signed up for what? We are in a student loan crisis, and, as with every crisis, we want to point a finger at someone, anyone. With lending, almost always we zero in on the borrower. After all, they signed up for this deb... November 13, 2022

Money’s taught best from home This month I challenge you to start teaching your kids about money using your own family economy, however you choose to design it. If you are wanting some inspiration, read on, and I will lay out our ... September 11, 2022

Volatility is part of the deal In the book "The Psychology of Money," Morgan Housel lays out the bargain we make to become investors. "Successful investing demands a price. But its currency is not dollars and cents. ... August 14, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Group helps public service employees maneuver loan forgiveness "Look for the helpers," says Mr. Rogers.Since the student loan waiver was announced, I have come to accept that only a small percentage of people will take advantage of the significant finan... July 10, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Social media’s big cost isn’t cash Money should be the servant of time. When we save into our retirement plans, for instance, we are acting on this belief and buying our future time. We can also use money to buy time in the present. Fo... June 12, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: It’s OK to spend less on wedding My kids love a show called "Avatar" whose superheroes bend air, water, fire, and earth to their will. If you haven't seen it, imagine the waterbending superheroes parting water like Mose... May 8, 2022

Tame brain way to ease money pain I recently saw a quote from Dr. James Dahle, aka "The White Coat Investor" where he mused "How do you go broke on $250,000? Spend $250,001."Yep. In my paycheck-to-paycheck life pos... April 10, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Money is servant of time in strategy to Save Yourself Dear "Save Yourself" readers, I am excited to let you know that this column is moving to the second Sunday of every month.In a reductive sense, Save Yourself is a financial column. Sure, fro... March 29, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Learning legalities of car ownership is rite of ‘adulting’ One imagines the classic rites of passage where young people are sent out into the wild, facing fears and self-doubt, navigating the uncertainty of their surroundings, and then returning as adults.Whi... March 22, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Time to get on top of spending before it’s on top of you Last week we got the inspiration to stay the course in our budgets, to adapt them to our changing circumstances. My grandmother, a representative of children of the 1930s Depression, as measured by a ... March 15, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Live, don’t suffer, below your means and joy will follow It's time for budgeting. Inflation is getting us. I feel it, and chances are you feel it. Inflation is making us all feel like we make less money, and that's because we can't buy the same ... March 8, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: When stocks fall, think about saving or doing nothing So the stock market has taken a small tumble. What now? Could it take a bigger tumble? Could it rocket to the moon? The real question you might be asking yourself is, "What should I do with my in... March 1, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Owe? No! declare those discovering life after debt It's Valentine's Day week and time for cheesy romcoms or, really, any movie with Tom Cruise in it. Also happening in my life is that I just returned home after speaking at the White Coat Inves... February 15, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Advising family on finances? First, ask three questions Last week I had THE question that comes up over and over and over. It's a question I find myself pondering from time to time. While the specifics change, it is a version of:How can THEY afford THA... February 8, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Children score As on their first stock market lessons My goal as a parent is to get my kids to say no to drugs, cigarettes and internet meme stocks.On the latter, I am finding it difficult to type out this column with my fists pumping so hard in victory ... February 1, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Time right to tame 'get to it later' pile, tackle student loans Do you have a "get to it later" pile? If it's like mine, it sits there right under your computer. It's a pile of really important or even not really important things that you need to... January 25, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Marco's birthday cake comes with food for thought Dear Marco,Happy birthday! I regret that covid took your celebration away. Then the rain took away your one request for a day of family soccer. But I don't regret seeing your resilience and lack o... January 11, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Texarkanan uses funny bone to find financial wisdom Ten years ago in February a guy down in Texarkana started a podcast in his mom's basement to talk to people about money. To put it modestly, the podcast has become a sensation. Joe Saul-Sehy's... January 4, 2022

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Rethink spending; make '22 a happy savings new year A happy new year is a great time to adopt happy saving, and if you have been on the fence, I want you to jump over. But what exactly is happy saving?Let's say you celebrated Christmas and bought p... December 28, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Money books fill stockings, minds The Supply Crisis of 2021 has played out as expected. Demand to buy stuff is high but availability of stuff is low. It's a nightmare for pocketbooks of shopping early birds and playing to the wors... December 21, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Struggling to give? Focus on freeing fiscal bandwidth It's Giving Tuesday. The appeals have already been showing up in your email inbox, your voicemails and the radio. You know this is a joyful act, in theory. But instead, you might be overwhelmed an... November 30, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: How much is enough? EconoMe offers many answers Is there such thing as enough money? Is it important to think about what that would be for ourselves? Last weekend I found myself immersed in a group of people at various stages of defining and living... November 23, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: I-Bonds offer way for inflation-safe emergency saving I feel bad for emergency funds. Really, they can't win. They have to sit there in low rate interest-bearing accounts while their counterparts in equity mutual funds have historically risen in doub... November 16, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Supply crisis offers escape from commercial Christmas A good friend ranted the other day that she was so sick of the supply crisis of 2021 as a reason for every malady in our lives. It's like 2019 when we explained every ill tempered neighbor as a victim... November 9, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Make good student loan choices as cure for Zombie mindset A Zombie apocalypse is here, but did you know we can fight it with a focused money mindset? A focused money mindset means that all financial decisions -- from student loans to funding kids' colleges ... November 2, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Student loans are being wiped away I remember a few years ago when my dad learned how to text message, he kept sending group texts in all caps. Things like "GREAT DAY. HOW IS EVERYONE FEELING?" After a few months of this, my sister and... October 26, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Financial-knowledge compounding can span generations Let's talk about compound financial interest, but not the kind you learn about in a finance class. Sometimes in the workplace, there is that one person who cares a lot about money, enough to pull frie... October 12, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Get hunting: Forgotten money just waiting to be found Are you up for a treasure hunt? I sure hope so. But for this hunt, you won't need a metal detector or a shovel -- just a phone and the internet. A study released last summer estimated there is more t... October 5, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Thank, then think about retirement; gratitude rewards Do you struggle finding the willpower to save for retirement? Try practicing gratitude. Last week I attended the Power of the Purse luncheon for the Women's Foundation of Arkansas. One of the honoree... September 28, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Ex-prisoner had much to learn, now has much to teach "No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don't have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have." (Seneca, Moral Letters) I want ... September 21, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Secret to saving is plain: Don't believe your lying brain I am celebrating two milestones today. First, Save Yourself is celebrating its first full year. A year! I can't believe that you all tolerated an entire year of reading week after week about retiremen... September 14, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: A strategy always beats out Next Big Thing in investing I hear a lot about people's investment opinions and in many different venues. Often, it's in an official meeting, but there seems to be something about the bread aisle at Kroger or the sidelines at my... August 31, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Doctor, heal thyself financially; self-pay before anything else Congratulations to all the physicians who are completing their training and starting new jobs. It can be an exhilarating month with those initial paychecks. For many the pay raise can feel like monopo... August 24, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Nudge is enough to break away from break-even living People always ask me how to get a family member to save. Whether we have been savers our whole lives or are still relatively new to the practice, it's hard not to want this life for our loved ones. So... August 17, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Maintain vigilance for forgotten costs to be a budget ninja In six days the no-spend challenge officially kicks off, and whether you are doing the challenge or not let's use this month to get skeptical of all our spending. Have you ever paid a year's worth of... August 10, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Keep those comments coming as we save, learn together The last few weeks I have gotten a number of emails from readers which is nothing short of thrilling. A couple were requests to write about the child tax credit but a lot of personal anecdotes and res... August 3, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Stop putting it off: Organize finances It's time to get financially organized, and trust me that this is an all hands on deck effort. I am very comfortable with division of labor when it comes to money. We live in a busy world, and one sp... July 27, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Take the challenge: Live a month without spending Do you know what customer friction is? According to "the internet" it's anything that hinders the process of buying a product. How many times have you gone to buy something and, just because you had t... July 20, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Maturing as a saver begins with trusting one's fresh identity Do you struggle with developing new money habits? It could be that you are living a past identity when it comes to money. Let's start with me and how I identify with money. It seems totally reasonabl... July 13, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Life's happening now, so be mindful of your priorities In a previous column, I observed that I had never met anyone who regretted how much money they saved for retirement. I can't say that anymore. Two weeks ago on a podcast, the host, Laurice Duffy, expr... June 29, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: In financial choices, time is the most precious commodity My father-in-law came to visit over the weekend from Bogota, Colombia. He saw his son and grandchildren for the first time in 18 months. On a stroll Sunday, 4-year-old Lucia grabbed his hand to walk t... June 22, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Early focus on retirement leaves room for comforts later I got some important feedback from a reader last week. He contended that my home affordability metric of a payment of less than 14% of gross monthly pay was too conservative. He made a compelling argu... June 15, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: No matter the purchase, a dollar cannot be stretched Last week a retirement plan participant had a question: Where best to redeploy a monthly expense the size of a car payment that was going away? Her house was on track to be paid off, and she didn't ha... June 8, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Slow, not sudden, money gets investors across finish line A reader who is a successful entrepreneur, saver and investor recently had an experience she shared with me that has her worried. An employee had made a handsome return on a Bitcoin investment. He loc... May 25, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Make the most of new law's provisions on child care I remember going to Capitol Hill as part of an entrepreneurship day several years ago. I told my business startup story to lawmakers, including the part about paying $2,100 per month in day care expen... May 11, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Financial discussion this evening could change your life The most memorable financial advice, I find, is the kind that is parroted. How do I know? It gets parroted back to me all the time. Here are just a few: • Stop throwing away money on rent. If ... May 4, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Legislators need a rethink: SNAP savings limit misguided "Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure." This quote by Alexis de Tocqueville hits home with Senate Bill 650, which failed to move forward in the state's Se... April 27, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Teachers: Don't ignore building blocks of solid retirement Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a law last week raising the median teacher salary by $2,000. While this will be a gradual rollout over two years, could there be a better time to talk about how teachers and... April 20, 2021

OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Jump-start your future with May 4 money conversation The truth is truer than the lie, especially when it comes to money. The Women's Foundation of Arkansas has been home of the Save10 movement since 2019, and the concept has been simple. One way to imp... April 13, 2021