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By Joel Dresang Partly because they’re reluctant to spend, partly because they lack opportunities, U.S. consumers have been squirreling away record mounds of money. They socked away nearly $3 trillion in 2020, a stash that could eventually help quicken economic recovery. In our occasional look at the meanings and origins of financial expressions, we consider…

The common name for the day after Thanksgiving has more than one story behind it. One story dates back almost to the first national Thanksgiving holiday and has nothing to do with the occasion. Another uses “Black Friday” as a term of disparagement. A third story appears to be just made up. […]

The expression “silver bullet” is a conflation of a medical term coined by a Nobel laureate and the calling card of a legendary lawman of the Old West. […]

Credit for coining the term “skin in the game” commonly goes to the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett. But as wise and quotable as the billionaire is, the internet can easily overattribute him. As Yogi Berra is said to have said, “I never said most of the things I said.” […]

When President Obama referred to earning “some serious Tubmans,” he reminded us that we like to use slang when we’re talking money. […]

By Joel Dresang In common parlance, a loophole is a technicality – an often obscure window of opportunity – that allows someone to get around a requirement or to exploit a benefit. In the case of the Social Security file-and-suspend strategy, a loophole in administrative policies let married couples collect partial payments from a spouse’s…