I don’t know about you, but one of my absolute favorite activities from my childhood was playing games with my family members. I have lots of fun memories of playing everything from card games to board games, and everything in between. The number of evenings that we spent as a family, sitting together and playing one of the many games we acquired over the years, is uncountable.

Of course, as with any game, there were plenty of lessons for life that worked their way into our games. Some of the best money lessons I’ve ever gotten I actually learned as a result of playing games, particularly some of the board games I played with my sisters.

It’s trite, it’s contrived, and like so many sayings, it just so happens to be true: ‘stuff’ happens. The more, uh, explicit form of this saying has a colorful term used to describe this ‘stuff’, and to label it as universally bad. Sadly, too much of the time it seems that the bad ‘stuff’ does come more often than the good in our lives. This is where insurance comes into play.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for insurance, because negative, unplanned events would never happen. Alas, we do not live in an ideal world, so insurance is and will continue to be an important part of any financial plan. There are a variety of insurance types you will encounter.

This post is the first “staff” post from Roger of The Amateur Financier. He is going to start contributing some posts on a more regular basis to the tune of a few a month or more. I hope you enjoy this post as it is very timely, and give Roger a nice welcome!

It can happen to the best of us. One day, you’re going along like normal, working steadily at a job you tolerate, if not love; the next, you’re out of a job.

You are not alone; even as most economists are calling this latest recession over and are starting to talk about the recovery, unemployment is still over ten percent in the United States.

As you all know I am away in the Dominican Republic this week. Hopefully all my posts have been posted as scheduled up until this point. I thought that this week would be a perfect opportunity to introduce you to another pretty new PF blogger. He writes very well and touches on some great subject matter! His name is Roger from The Amateur Financier. Hope you enjoy his post (which I think is great especially if you are a highschooler, are a parent of a highschooler, or know a highschooler), and feel free to check him out or subscribe to his RSS feed!

If you’re a high school student, chances are that planning for your financial future is pretty low on your list of priorities, somewhere between studying Latin and mowing the lawn. But if you get started now, you’ll be amazed at how much more prepared you will be with only a few simple steps. Here are three things I wish I had done while I was still in school: