Marketplace Money Stories

Thinking of gifting someone "The 12 Days of Christmas" this year? Well you better be well-off. Sean Cole investigates the true price of the song.

With the fall of the stock market and the Great Recession, everyone from the very wealthy to the not-wealthy felt losses. How much were people really affected? Ted Klontz and Robert Frank discuss with Tess Vigeland.

How we each individually live our lives often depends on how we see our peers live their lives. For people making $250,000 a year, or the top 2 percent income in the country, that means probably surrounding themselves with even richer people. And that's why there was a debate over taxes, says the New Yorker's James Surowiecki.

In a second question posed to financial psychologist Ted Klontz and the Wall Street Journal's Robert Frank, Tess Vigeland asks what it is that makes people feel wealthy. It turns out, the fact that many don't believe they're rich may be the problem.

With money comes a lot of responsibility, and that's what many have learned the hard way. Depending on how you got rich also seems to play a role in how you handle it. Mitchell Hartman reports.

The number of $250,000 a year has been thrown around by politicians as being "wealthy" and "rich." But is it really? Tess Vigeland talks to financial psychologist Ted Klontz and the Wall Street Journal's Robert Frank about wealth in America.

The American Dream — the belief that anyone can work their way up the ladder to prosperity — is deeply intertwined into U.S. culture. But it's also deeply affecting our thoughts about income taxes, says commentator Felix Salmon, and we need to become more realistic.

This is the biggest charity-giving time of the year, and you can probably tell by the amount of mail you've been receiving from non-profits recently. But does this sort of junk mailing work? Jeff Tyler reports.