A new vehicle can be one of the biggest financial expenses you face, which is why you must explore your options before you make your final decision. When you break it down, there are really only two routes you can take: buy or lease. So the question is, which option better suits your lifestyle?

It’s one of the hardest jobs you will ever do, and you may never actually get any true credit for it: single parenting. Since the 1960s, there has been a clear jump in the number of children living in a single-parent home. According to the United States Census Bureau, between 1960 and 2016, the amount of children living in with two parents decreased from 88% to 69%. It is reported that this was caused by an increase of births to unmarried women and an increase in divorces among couples. In 2010 alone, 40.7% of all births in the U.S. were to unmarried women. The latest Census data shows that approximately 26% of children live in single-parent households today.

Growing up, it’s not uncommon to get “the talk” from your parents. Of course that talk is usually about the birds and the bees, not your emergency savings or 401(k). So, let’s have that chat now, shall we?

How many of us can look back at our childhood and say we wish we learned more about money? Maybe you were even one of those people who graduated college and still had no clue how to manage your money and pay off your debts? Most people gain their money skills and knowledge from their parents and caregivers as they grow and develop. Your children will learn their financial habits from watching you spend, save, borrow, and earn. Although you are the top influencer in their financial life, you don’t have to be a money expert to help them achieve positive and strong financial habits.

I keep coming back to the prospect of adding gold to diversified portfolios. It seems so tantalizing. The enduring popularity of gold as an investment has to do with its tangible nature. Unlike a stock or a bond, you can feel and touch golden coins and larger ingots. And, it appears such a good diversifier. It tends to react in the opposite direction to economic changes as many other asset classes. The problem with such tangible assets, of course, is that there is nothing alive about them; that is, there is no claim on the fruits produced by the labor of thousands of workers, in the form of dividends or growth of the enterprise. As Warren Buffett famously pointed out, if you owned all the world’s gold, you could mainly polish it and admire it in your front yard.