You normally don't get a margin call unless your securities, minus the debt, are worth 30% or less of their nominal market value.

hindsight is not a strategy.

The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.

For all the huffing and puffing of the doubters, a home of our own is still the rock on which our hopes are built. Price appreciation aside (and most houses will appreciate, eventually), homeownership is a state of mind. It's your piece of the earth. It's where a family's toes grow roots. It's where the flowers are yours, not God's.

You get the most out of what you need the least.

Everyone needs a small-town banker. Especially in a big town.

It seems like only yesterday that savers were dorks. They kept piggy banks. They drove last year's cars. They fished in their change purses for nickels while the superstars flashed credit cards. Today, values have changed. The new object of veneration is not money on the hoof but money in the bank - and the dorks all have it.