The Second Best Thing To Do

Personal finance advice has a bad habit of sounding pass/fail. Save 15% for retirement. Have six months of expenses in cash. Put 20% down on a house. Never carry a credit-card balance. Have a will. That advice isn't wrong. In fact, most of it is excellent. The problem is what happens when the "right" answer feels so far away that people do nothing at all. This week, we're not lowering the standards. We're building staircases to them. For some of the biggest financial decisions in your life, we'll identify the best thing to do—and then figure out the next best thing to do when the ideal isn't realistic yet.