For many women - myself included - pregnancy brings on tremendous anxiety and confusion, along with the joy.

One of the big take-aways from a lot of economic theory is that people should engage in consumption smoothing.

As people do a task, they improve at it.

Good household decision-making often relies on thinking about your household like a firm.

Being pregnant was a lot like being a child again. There was always someone telling you what to do.

Economics works great for planning your life when you don't have a work passion, since we tend to assume that your job delivers only money and you trade off job hours with leisure hours. If you think your job will just be a job, pick one that pays well per hour and leaves you some time off, even if the activity of the job is boring.

The key to good decision making is evaluating the available information - the data - and combining it with your own estimates of pluses and minuses. As an economist, I do this every day.