For 25 years in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan, a sprawling, week-long conference you’ve never heard of shaped your financial life. It was called the Securities Industry Association Technology Conference, (later renamed SIFMA Tech) and it was where the largest technology firms came to pitch the biggest banks on everything from how your 401k got traded to how your bank let you…

As we approach 2015, bank accounts, like cellphones or those annoying Facebook quizzes, seem like something we should take for granted as part of the fabric of our life. Yet you may be surprised to learn that more Americans actually own and operate a cellphone (90%) than have a bank account (80%). In fact, there’s a lot about banking today that might surprise you. According to the…

By day they are accountants, lawyers, technologists, salespeople. At work they’re focused, productive, successful, often rising to senior positions within their profession. Yet these unassuming salary men and women harbor a dark secret, a secret that burns within them, consuming their evenings and weekends, pushing their endurance and sometimes their relationships to the limit. Meet the part-time entrepreneur. For obvious reasons, legitimate part-time entrepreneurs…