Conversations
Today, I decided to tell Jake, who was home sick from school, what life was like in the distant past when mommy was eight years old. Me: Televisions only had thirteen channels. There was no remote. You had to get off the couch and change the channel. Jake: That’s horrible. Me: And if you called someone ...Read more.Housing and Babies
Apparently McMansions can inspire more than just lust for a new home. Demographers are now speculating that the formerly gangbusters housing market was the cause of the baby boom of 2006, the first year in more than three decades that the United States birth rate reached population replacement levels. The argument goes something like this: When housing is hard ...Read more.In Case Anyone Is Wondering
Now that John Edwards has withdrawn from the race for President, I’m planning on voting for Barack Obama....Read more.Let’s Stop Scaring Women
No more coffee or diet soda during pregnancy: Too much caffeine during pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage, a new study says, and the authors suggest that pregnant women may want to reduce their intake or cut it out entirely. I’m sorry, but this old saw has been around for years, and I don’t believe ...Read more.Mistakes I Won’t Make Again In This Lifetime, Part I
Never, ever tell a child you think the school district will call a snow day till you receive a confirming email. It wasn’t pretty....Read more.California Dreamin’
It was 65 and sunny today in New York. Driving in my car with the windows down, I suffered from geographic dislocation. I kept thinking I was driving east down Beverly Blvd, toward La Brea. But then I would look up and see the Hudson River and the Palisades, not the snow capped hills surrounding the L.A. basin. ...Read more.The Latest in Outsourcing
The latest trend is outsourcing is in wombs. That’s right. Baby brokers are matching up would-be first world parents with Indian women desperate to earn enough money to raise their families out of poverty. A full-on parenting package, which includes everything from the cost of in-vitro fertilization to the paying the birth mother what it ...Read more.A Belated Christmas Tale
I confess to utter bafflement when it comes to the emergence of Joni Mitchell’s wonderfully depressing song “River” as a Christmas standard. So I enjoyed reading this article in TNR about how it all came about. Of course, I am probably not one to talk. A few weeks ago, my older son asked me to ...Read more.Enough
Can we all agree to leave this poor woman alone already? It’s enough....Read more.On Iowa and elections
At a dinner last winter with my writing partner and her husband, I said that when it came to the next presidential election I would bet on an African American man over a woman any day. Needless to say, I stand by my prediction....Read more.About Helaine Olen
I am the voice of The Bills, a column about the intersection of money and life, at Slate. At Inc., I contribute to the Spread the Wealth personal finance column. My work on politics, economics, workplace culture and women’s issues has been published in numerous other print and on-line publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Salon, Pacific Standard, and The Los Angeles Times, where I wrote and edited the popular “Money Makeover” feature.
I'm the author of the critically acclaimed book Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry, and The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to be so Complicated, which I co-wrote with Harold Pollack.
What else? I’m a passionate bibliophile, a fan of 1970s pop music and a lover of rummage sales. I live in New York City.
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