Money Tips Network

If you want to avoid spending your entire life worrying about money, having an emergency fund is a must. With some savings tucked away for a rainy day or a surprise bill, you’ll have the means to stay afloat financially if you face financial hardship or simply want to splurge without capsizing your budget.

A fully funded emergency fund will also be your best friend if you lose your job or otherwise face a sudden loss in income. With some money set aside, you can buy yourself some time to get a new job, pick up a side hustle, or find a way to get by.

Financial independence and early retirement continue to attract mainstream attention. This is a good thing. Check that, this is a great thing. Of course, with this attention there are more naysayers and critics than ever.

One of the main criticisms of the FIRE movement — and of frugality, in general — is that those who seek FIRE are depriving themselves. Or leading lives of deprivation. On the surface, these two arguments may sound like the same thing but they're not. There's a big difference between “deprive” and “deprivation”.

Here are the definitions of these two words:

No one does their best work when they're hungry. A quick snack can help you power through the day, but not all snacks are created equal!

With college almost close enough to touch, your high schooler has probably been talking your ear off about which universities they want to visit and which majors they're considering.

Over the past several months, I’ve written a number of articles about how different schools of philosophy have directly helped me to achieve greater personal and financial success.

The first article focused on stoicism, which I summarized as “the separation between the way the world happens to be and my emotional response to it. In other words, I strive to separate the things I can control – my internal emotions and thoughts – from the things I cannot control – the rest of the world.” Stoicism is valuable in helping a person gain emotional control – not that they don’t feel emotion, but that they respond to it well. This can greatly help a person overcome temptations and respond well in challenging situations.

Earlier this month, Southwest announced a newer credit card offer that sounds like a stellar deal. Through Feb. 11, consumers who sign up for one of three personal Southwest credit cards and spend $4,000 on their card within three months of account opening would qualify for 30,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points and the Southwest Companion Pass for the remainder of 2019.

If you’ve never heard of the Southwest Companion Pass before, it’s a sort of holy grail among credit card rewards enthusiasts. This pass allows a designated companion to fly free with you on any Southwest flight, whether you pay for your initial fare with cash or with Southwest Rapid Rewards points. It’s a perk that lets you save money on airfare or stretch your points further by making them worth twice as much.

Picking up a travel rewards credit card may seem like a good idea, but what happens when you can’t afford to cash in your points and miles? Maybe you thought you’d be able to travel soon, but fell on hard times. Or perhaps you decided to give credit card rewards a try only to wind up in over your head with credit card debt.

This kind of thing really does happen all the time — even to people who don’t expect it. After all, it doesn’t take much to throw your budget out of whack if you lose your job, get sick or injured, experience a loss in income, or face some expensive bills you hadn’t planned on or prepare for.

And, you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. Sometimes travel just isn’t in the cards for various reasons, whether the money isn’t there or your health isn’t as good as it should be.

Another year, another search for the best savings account! That's right: It was almost exactly a year ago today that I was hunting for an online savings account so I polled you, the Get Rich Slowly readers.

Last year, Ally Bank was the clear winner. More GRS readers had their money there than anywhere else. But folks also liked Discover Bank, Synchrony Bank, and several others.

This year, it's my girlfriend who is trying to find a better bank. Kim is perfectly happy with Ally — in fact, she's a vocal crusader for Ally, which I find amusing — but at the same time, she's curious if she can find a better interest rate somewhere else.

Mary writes in:

Trying to follow your food strategies but I have a very picky 6 year old and a picky 2 year old at our dinner table. They refuse to eat most things that are put in front of them and insist usually on a certain kind of mac and cheese that’s not the cheapest. Thoughts?

When our children were younger, they were somewhat picky, though they grew out of that pickiness over time.

Our strategy for picky eating children was to simply prepare and serve the meal before bringing them to the table, which meant that they could decide for themselves whether to eat what was before them. This eliminated the sense that they could dictate what they were served at meal time. Since the food was already on their plate when they sat down, they lost that sense that they could dictate what was being prepared, which helped a lot.