Texas takes a stand

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial advice, gathered from around the web:

Goldman's gender-parity push

Goldman Sachs is implementing Wall Street's version of a "Rooney Rule," said Liz Hoffman at The Wall Street Journal. The bank's "managers will be required to interview two diverse candidates for any open job" as part of its new initiative to hire more female, black, and Hispanic employees. The edict is similar to the National Football League's Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least one nonwhite candidate for every open head coaching position. "Fewer than 20 percent of Goldman's 400-plus partners are women, and just a handful are black." One goal is for 50 percent of its incoming 2021 class of analysts to be women. But the bank's other initiatives don't have a time frame, "suggesting that racial imbalance is a tougher problem to solve."

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Barring cashless stores in New Jersey

New Jersey just became the second state to ban cashless stores, said David Matthews at the New York Daily News. Gov. Bill Murphy signed a law last week requiring that all stores and restaurants accept currency, joining Massachusetts, which has held a similar law since 1978. Many businesses "prefer cashless transactions because of their ease" and because it is safer than keeping cash on hand. But critics say the practice "discriminates against those who cannot access debit or credit cards." While just 6.5 percent of all U.S. households have no bank account, the figure rises for black households (16.9 percent) and Latino households (14 percent). Online, mail, and phone purchases are excluded from the law, as well as "car rental companies, parking garages, and some airport retail shops."

Texas takes a stand

Lemonade stands might soon get the green light from lawmakers in Texas, said James Barragán at The Dallas Morning News. Unbeknownst to many parents, the curbside sale of homemade drinks is prohibited in a number of states, including New York and California. In Texas they "are banned under the Texas Food Establishment Rules because of health concerns." Three years ago, police shut down a lemonade stand in Tyler, Texas, because the 7- and 8-year-old girls running it didn't have permits. But a new bill to legalize stands selling "nonalcoholic drinks that are run by minors" passed the Texas House last week and is up for a vote in the Senate. Legislators want to give young entrepreneurs "a taste of Texas' lauded economic freedom." A similar bill was recently passed in Colorado.