At one of my previous jobs, we passed around a special trophy. The trophy had to be earned in an unusual way. It sported a marble base, a tall plastic column, and, adorning the top of the infamous award, the trophy featured a gold plastic backend of a donkey.

The donkey’s — ahem — bottom award was awarded to a staff member who made a major blunder at work. Think about replying all to a sensitive email, publicly saying something stupid or accidentally calling the fire department for a nonexistent emergency.

One staff member was notorious for earning and keeping the donkey’s bottom award. He had a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease, or as Prince Philip used to call it...

Dear Editor,

As new Mexicans,  we’ve made significant progress in improving the economic well-being of our children and families, including passing new and expanding existing tax credits for working families, requiring that employers provide paid sick leave, and passing a constitutional amendment that increases funding for early childhood education to help families afford childcare.

However, a number of barriers continue to prevent working families and their children from reaching their full potential. One devastating barrier many New Mexicans face is the sprawling and unfair use of fees in our criminal legal system that hinder their ability to provide for their families.

Fees are...

Our parents and grandparents both taught us that making mistakes was part of life.

Some mistakes are easier to recover from than others. But when it comes to money and time, the closer you are to retirement, the less time you have to recover from bad money moves.

My advice is not to take any chances you can’t afford. As you near retirement, you’ll need to spend more time creating an investment approach that aligns each account to its specific goal for cash flow requirements during retirement.

The worst times for your investment portfolio to take a hit are somewhere in the five years before and five years after you retire. Some have called this the red retirement zone. Lose money...

I’ve always been a numbers guy. In elementary school, if anyone made fun of my disproportionately large head, I would withhold answers to math homework. Yes, I was an egghead in more ways than one.

Of course, I love to think about the intersection of words and numbers. The other day I heard someone say “to the tenth degree.” As a number and word nerd, I knew this was wrong. In fact, to the tenth degree is a large amount; however, the correct term is “to the nth degree.”

To the nth degree means “as much as possible.” In math terms, to the nth degree means the highest power of the variable in a polynomial — think something “squared,” which would be a number with a...