In your 30s, responsibilities pick up. You’re likely to buy your first home and grow your family. Marriage, a mortgage and little mouths to feed can drain your earnings. Even the family dog eats a portion of your paycheck.

It’s easy to think that saving for retirement is impossible in your 30s, but it should remain a top priority, ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- There are a lot of reasons why people reach out to Teen Line, a Century City-based hotline that connects young people in crisis to trained teenage volunteers.

They call because someone is hurting them or they are afraid of hurting themselves. They text because an important relationship has ended or a troubling conflict has ...Read more

No one can say we didn’t see this coming.

Since the earliest days of the birther movement, Donald Trump has been diligently and incrementally chipping away at the American people’s constitutional right to free and fair elections.

He has repeatedly sowed baseless mistrust about the legitimacy of leading candidates. He has called numerous ...Read more

Dear Anna,

I've been with my boyfriend for over six years, and I'm exhausted from constantly attending family gatherings and social events alone while he stays home playing video games. Every wedding, birthday party or holiday celebration, I'm the only one without a partner while everyone else shows up as couples. I've started making excuses ...Read more

LEE VINING, Calif. — At a trailhead surrounded by sagebrush, a naturalist welcomes a group of visitors to Mono Lake beside a sign that reads “Oasis in the Desert.”

Guide Ryan Garrett, his face alight, greets the group of vacationers and entreats them to see the value in the saline lake — it teems with migrating birds, it’s around a ...Read more

This was a leap year for several of my Luminary tall garden phlox in more ways than one, as I’ll explain shortly.

For those newbies to the world of perennials, we always explain that in year one, they sleep. This means they are there and will bloom, but they are getting those roots established. Year two they creep, meaning they put on some ...Read more

SEATTLE — It's beautiful, ethereal: When we hear the sound of the Swainson’s thrush in the Pacific Northwest's woods, we know our summer is truly here. Our bird is back, with its signature song gracing our long, summer twilights.

And yet, this is not really “our” bird at all. It is a bird of two worlds. Arriving here by late May for its...Read more

I often get questions from friends and potential clients alike: “What are your clients like? How old are they? What kinds of things do they ask you?”

Let me let you in…

My client base is about 70% women and 30% men, ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-70s. But most are in their 30s, 40s and 50s. In general, I believe that women are more ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Isaac Santos, 22, remembers growing up with family barbecues at his aunt’s house in Imperial Beach, south of San Diego, and swimming with his cousins. Sure, the ocean was dirty sometimes, but the beaches were open and accessible.

But since late 2021, swaths of the south San Diego coast have been closed every day — 1,345 days in...Read more

Our primary care doctor announced he is joining a concierge practice and invited us to follow him. We were excited, thinking this meant luxurious fluffy white robes in the exam room and 500-thread-count cotton sheets on the table instead of that crinkly deli wrap paper.

Visions of coffee bars danced in our heads. The concierge practice could ...Read more

Try as we might to avoid it, sudden, expensive emergencies can happen to anyone. A pet might need an unexpected vet visit, your car might need a replacement part or you may experience a layoff. That’s where emergency savings come in: By keeping a savings fund that you only use for emergencies, you can have peace of mind knowing you can tackle ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS -- On her first outing with a running club, Bria Black got passed. A lot.

“They were so sweet and so welcoming, but they were like, eight-minute pace marathoners,” she said. “I had never even ran before, so when we were running together, they would just pass me up,” Black said. “They would be encouraging, like, ‘Go Bria,...Read more

Dear Kid Whisperer,

I can’t believe I am asking this, because it seems so simple, but I can’t figure out how to do it. How do I get my 4-year-old to clean her room? With my now-8-year-old, we would just tell her to do it, and she would do it. Not with our second. She says she’ll do it and then doesn’t. I threaten her with loss of ...Read more

Q. My 14-year-old son refuses to come to my home and I have no idea why. I’m supposed to see him a night or two during the week and every other weekend, but he just won’t come over. I don’t talk to his mother much and when we do, it’s not pretty. She tells me there’s nothing she can do. I think she’s probably badmouthing me and is ...Read more

Something fishy is going on in my family. And it involves, for approximately the hundredth time, a dead fish.

The latest fine finny friend to go belly-up was Igor, a blue boy betta who belonged to two of my granddaughters, which made him, I guess, my grandfish.

But not to worry: There’s a replacement Igor swimming in the tiny bowl on the ...Read more

If you’re expecting to get an annual bonus this year, it can be tempting to think about everything you want to buy or start planning for an extravagant vacation.

But before that extra direct deposit hits your checking account, take some time to consider how you want to use it. No matter the size of your hard-earned bonus, you should think ...Read more

My friend Jason is getting ready to drop off his daughter, his firstborn child, at college. And by “getting ready,” I mean crying himself to sleep at night and asking strangers what to do.

Normal. If there’s another way to do it, I certainly don’t know it.

“I feel like the dad in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding,’” he texted me the ...Read more

Dear Anna,

I’ve been with my boyfriend for three years, and I love him—he’s funny, supportive and kind. Right now, we’re living at my sister’s place while saving for our own apartment. He’s 29 and I’m 27. I work full-time as a freelance writer and make a comfortable living, but his part-time retail job barely covers his own ...Read more

Logic would tell you that if you put the magic in pink lemonade, you can do it to grapefruit too. That’s just what happened, and the horticultural blogosphere is rumbling with excitement.

Superbells' Magic Pink Lemonade calibrachoa has been out for a couple of years and has won awards like Perfect Score, Top Performer. Director’s Select ...Read more

While a lot of the advice I give revolves around how to get the first date, even more important is how to nail that first date.

Let’s take a look at some tips for the all-important first date:

What not to do on a first date:

1. Be late without notice

2. Be excessively late, with or without notice

3. Have your phone out or text ...Read more