Lauren Sieben

Ah, the telltale signs of spring: trees in bloom, slightly warmer weather, allergies flaring—and a long list of chores to tackle around the house.
Before you pause to savor the sunnier days, it’s important to make sure your home is ready for the season. Here’s what experts say you need to include on your spring home maintenance checklist.
1. Check for leaks and water damage
Between winter storms and spring showers, this is a key time to check for water damage around your home and prevent smal...

Preparing to list your house? If you want to get top dollar, start sprucing up your kitchen now.
“The kitchen is often the centerpiece in a home and the place where most of the entertaining happens,” says Tony Rodriguez-Tellaheche, owner and managing broker of Prestige Realty Group in Miami. “Sellers should not cut corners.”
A killer kitchen is one of the best ways to sell your home. Before you list your place, start making some of these improvements to help swing buyers in the right directio...

Is it worth spending extra money on a “clean” medicine? The answer depends on your health history, your budget and your priorities. We talked to experts to learn about inactive ingredients in medications and whether it’s worth making the switch to clean alternatives.

If staying active wasn't part of your routine before retirement, you might wonder if it's too late to start exercising now. But even if you're not already a regular at the gym, it's not too late to get moving. And there are plenty of good reasons to get active in retirement.
The Benefits of Staying Active in Retirement
When you start exercising, you'll enjoy a long list of benefits — and not all of them are physical.
Studies from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have shown that physica...

Retirement is a huge accomplishment, and it's also a time of considerable change and new challenges. Fortunately, the path before you is well-worn by retirees who have been in your shoes and overcome the same challenges. Whether your retirement concerns are financial or familial, there are solutions available. Here are some of the most common challenges in retirement and strategies to help you navigate them.
Maintaining Healthy Habits
Committing to regular exercise in retirement can increase ...

It’s a big question with no easy answer: Should you keep renting, or is it time to think about buying a home?
One of the major benefits of being a homeowner is building equity with each mortgage payment, instead of putting money into your landlord’s pocket.
But that doesn’t mean buying is always the best choice—as a renter, you enjoy more flexibility and avoid many of the costs that come with homeownership.
“This is an extremely personal decision,” says David Parsons, broker/owner of Re/Max N...

For many hopeful first-time home buyers, the barriers to purchasing a house are high.
If you're a potential home buyer and you qualify for a conventional loan, you still need thousands of dollars in cash for a down payment, closing costs, and other expenses. If you have only limited credit, you may not qualify for a mortgage at all.
In both cases, you may end up renting when you would rather build wealth by purchasing a home.
But a new micromortgage pilot program is creating a path to homeown...

How the diversity of a liberal arts curriculum informs the human spirit for a career in medicine.
By Lauren Sieben
Eduardo Dolhun, M.D., Arts ’88, arrived at Marquette as a freshman with plans to study biology. His goal: to become a marine biologist, following in the footsteps of his childhood hero, Jacques Cousteau.
“Over the course of my first and second year, I fell in love with humanities and the questions that they asked,” he says.
So Dolhun switched gears, changing his majors to philoso...

We’re finally closing the book on 2020, and many of us have never felt more desperate for a fresh start and a new beginning. And since it's not like we're leaving the house anytime soon, it makes perfect sense that the first place to start anew would be at home. (Plus, decorating and home renovation projects are a pretty good distraction from ever-present existential dread, if we do say so ourselves.)
If you're looking to do a design overhaul, you're probably also looking for some inspiration...

Whether you're buying your first home or your 11th, there's one thing we all think about when it comes time to negotiate the deal: wiggling that pesky price down as much as possible.
Of course, price is important when you’re buying a home. But it’s not the only negotiable part of the sale—there are plenty of other ways to haggle aside from list price.
“In most parts of the country, sellers often have multiple bids right now,” says Danielle Samalin, CEO of Framework Homeownership. “In this mar...

Many of us say we’re “going to the doctor” whenever we have a medical appointment. But are you actually seeing a doctor each time you step foot in an exam room or log on for a video visit? And if not — does it matter?
In a primary care setting, you might meet with a physician (an MD or a DO), or you could see a nurse practitioner (NP) or physician assistant (PA). Each type of provider can specialize in primary care, diagnose and treat illnesses and write prescriptions, but there are differenc...

Two years ago, my husband and I were gearing up to put our first home on the market, which meant our house was due for a deep cleaning and an organizational overhaul.
After we got the house sparkling clean and staged for sale, we started to fall in love with it all over again. We looked around at our newly organized pantry and immaculate closets and wondered, Why haven’t we always lived like this?
Now in our new house, I’ve taken lessons from the home-staging process to maintain a relatively ...