Money may not be able to buy you love, but conflicts about it can certainly bankrupt your relationship.

Money may not be able to buy you love, but conflicts about it can certainly bankrupt your relationship.

You still need to save but being debt-free in retirement is and should be a goal.

Priorities lead to prosperity.

I've found that when you can quickly knock out debt you get motivated because you see progress. Then you attack the other debt so fast that even if it's at a higher interest rate, you don't end up paying much more because you've gotten rid of it.

The sad thing is many people learn how to manage money after they've made a lot of financial mistakes, some that take decades to fix.

My Big Mama is my No. 1 financial role model. Much of my advice stems from what she taught me. She never made more than $13,000 a year, yet she paid off her home before she retired. She saved money from every paycheck. She taught me to be skeptical. It makes me cry to think that I'm a nationally syndicated personal finance columnist for one of the world's best newspapers and my core advice comes from my black grandmother who was a nurse's aide with just a high school education.