Practical but adventurous, logical but entertaining, business columnist Scott Burns made reading about boring stuff like retirement savings, estate planning and buying the perfect used Airstream trailer a lot of fun. OK, if not fun, then interesting. Burns was not part of the financial establishment, so he had no vested interests, almost impossible in the business of financial advice where everybody's selling something. He thought outside the box. Instead of giving advice on earning an extra $500 a month, he stressed finding ways to cut $500 in expenses. And most important, Burns reported on research firms and investment advisors that normal people have no access to. Yeah, it's easy to glaze over some of the details involving consumption indexes. But with most business writers stressing how to earn more, invest more, spend more, it was nice to see someone write about how to live more simply. Guess Burns can take some of his own good advice now. He was one of the journos to do the recent buy-out thing, though his syndicated column will still appear in the pages of the DMN.