For Fatherly, I reached out to self improvement experts to see if new parents should give up on getting better.

For The Plunge, I wrote about making the best of a bad holiday situation.

For Fatherly I spoke with Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan about raising kids for a future vastly different from the present.

For BTRtoday, I wrote about how one of my favorite songs from high school accidentally predicted our current world.

For BTRtoday I wrote about the greatest rock band of all time.

I’m a professional writer. I’ve made peace with the editorial process. Editors change your text and if you don’t agree with it, you move on and write another day.

That said: With this story, I want to applaud my editors for not changing some stuff. The assignment was to write about wedding loans. All of my research made them seem like bad ideas. My draft included a long and early warning against using them before providing information about them. I’m very happy that The Plunge ran the section excerpted below verbatim not because it’s scintillating, untouchable prose but because it’s what the people considering wedding loans really need to hear.

Real Talk

Let’s get this out of the way early: you should view wedding loans as a weapon of last resort. Personal finance experts strongly caution against wedding loans. In fact, two financial planners contacted for this story flatly refused to comment based on the premise.

Good on The Plunge for keeping that in. As always, click on the picture to read the full story.