Category: Uncategorized
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Is it Time to Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth?
The unusual idiom Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth has its roots in the days when horses were used for work and transportation. If you were given a horse, it was best to receive it as is, because if you opened its mouth and checked its teeth, you might have discovered this generous…
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3 Ways to Give Like a Billionaire
Imagine you have a billion dollars. What would you do with the money? Maybe you’d have a bigger house, take some amazing trips, or provide everything your family needs. How preposterous would it be if you gave it all away? That’s exactly what billionaire Charles Feeney did. Embracing a “giving while living” philosophy, he committed…
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Are You Talking to Your Family About What Matters Most?
It’s the stuff of dramatic tension in books, movies, and TV shows: who’s named in a will, who isn’t, and what money or possessions are at stake. And while most estate plans aren’t nearly that exciting, there are some cases where bequests have been outside the box: Imagine getting a letter announcing you’d inherited a…
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Legacy Planning is an Act of Love
Before Dr. Gary Chapman was a bestselling author, he was a husband in a struggling marriage. His wife was frustrated that he didn’t help around the house. He was disappointed she didn’t respond to his words of encouragement. “One night she said to me, ‘You keep saying “I love you,” but if you love me,…
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3 Ways to Give in Every Season of Life
In 2018, a sculpture caught the eye of a Texas woman perusing the aisles of her local thrift store and she bought it for $34.99. She was curious about the piece and started to do some research. Several years later, a fine arts consultant identified it as an ancient Roman bust that once belonged to…
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4 Ways to Share Your Story This Christmas
One of Dave Isay’s earliest memories involves capturing the stories of his grandparents and great-aunts on a small cassette recorder (remember those?). He turned his love of stories into a vocation as founder of StoryCorps. This organization has recorded stories from more than 600,000 people and preserved them at the Library of Congress. Many of…
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The 90,000 Hour Investment
It’s estimated that the average person spends about 90,000 hours at work during their lifetime. And throughout those 90,000 hours, that average person will change jobs about 12 times. As you reflect on your working life, how did you invest your 90,000 hours? Behind a desk or on an assembly line? Maybe you’re one of…
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The Lifeline for Your Estate Plan
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was an instant hit when it premiered in 1999. The game show featured contestants answering 15 increasingly difficult trivia questions, with the goal of winning one million dollars. If you’ve said, “Is that your final answer?” in the last 20 years, you probably have this show to thank. Contestants…
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A Treasure You’d Never Want to Hunt
In 1982, New York publisher Byron Preiss released a book containing 12 puzzles, each consisting of a cryptic verse that had to be paired with a mysterious painting. If solved correctly, each puzzle would lead to a different park in a North American city where he’d buried a small container and key that could be…
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Your Creativity Can Change the World
Fred Barley was a driven, intelligent 19-year-old. He was also homeless. When the police found him living in a tent on the campus of Gordon College in Georgia, he explained he had traveled six hours by bicycle in 100-degree weather to attend his second year of college. He was two weeks early, hoping to get…