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A college education, while a worthy achievement, does not come cheaply. Forbes has estimated that the price of a college education has increased 8 times faster than wages, making it a struggle for even upper middle-class families.

The waters have turned choppy on Wall Street, with international brewing that may continue to affect our economy and financial markets. Thus, our market, which had set one record after another, has come under pressure recently.

Managing finances properly is mainly common sense. While we’ve all made financial mistakes, most of those mistakes are easily rectified, particularly when promptly corrected. However, there are some financial decisions that can be much harder to recover from. Here are just a few of them:

The economy is stumbling out of the gate this year, with the painful government shutdown, a sudden drop in existing home sales, and a marked downturn in consumer sentiment behind much of this early 2019 slowdown. Of course, the big story is the shutdown.

Personal finance, like just about everything else, is mainly common sense. Advice like “don’t spend more than you make; start investing while you’re young; don’t loan money to friends with the expectation of getting it back,” have been around for generations, and most likely will survive the next few generations as well.

Earnings reporting season is well under way, with expectations for the recently ended fourth quarter still quite positive. In all, forecasts call for another double-digit percentage rise in S&P 500 earnings, as companies capitalize on recent economic gains.

Wall Street is keeping a closer eye on the Federal Reserve, especially after its policy making committee suggested it would resume hiking borrowing costs rather soon. The Fed cited continued strong economic growth and a persistently low jobless rate as arguments for raising rates at its December meeting.

The often turbulent month of October has come and gone, and once again, it lived up to its reputation. True, the selloffs were not historic, in the mold of those suffered in 1987 and 2008. And there were intermittent rallies, some quite impressive. Still, there was considerable pain inflicted, as the indexes fell sharply during the 31-day span.

The Federal Reserve is assuming a more restrictive monetary stance, an adjustment that is leading to steadily rising interest rates. And that is not sitting well with investors.

Various factors are influencing market sentiment. When the focus has been on the healthy economy and the mostly upbeat second-quarter earnings performance, stocks have rallied. Conversely, when the attention has turned to tariffs and trade and to other global headwinds (most recently the financial crisis in Turkey), equities generally have weakened.