Money Tips Network

Your best friend’s birthday is coming up, or maybe it’s your significant other’s birthday, or your mother’s birthday. Whatever it is, it’s a special event, one that in your heart of hearts you know you should be playing a role in celebrating.

At the same time, however, you don’t have a dime to spare. Your financial situation is perilous. You want to celebrate. You want to show that person that they’re meaningful to you. At the same time, you simply can’t afford to buy them a gift.

What do you do?

The first thing to recognize here is that celebrating a meaningful life event does not have to involve spending money. There are many ways to celebrate and commemorate someone’s life event without simply opening the wallet.

What’s the catch? These strategies usually require some time, and they often require some forethought and planning.

Editor's Note: Congratulations to John, Patricia, and Lindsay for winning this week's contest!

You can count on summer to be hot, but many areas are facing heat waves and record high temps all across the U.S.

With all of the TV shows, books, blog posts, academic studies, and everything else dedicated to the subject of investing, it would be reasonable to think that, with enough research, you could create the perfect investment strategy that maximizes your odds of getting the best returns possible.

The exact right mix of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, in the exact right percentages, placed in exactly the right accounts.

In my profession I see a lot of people get caught up in this search for the perfect investment, and as well-intentioned as it may be, it typically leads to one of two undesirable outcomes:

Bankrate tells us that the average side hustler earns $8k per year. The details:

Side hustlers make $686 per month, on average. Within a year, it’s possible to earn more than $8,200. Those who work a second job at least once per month earn an average of $836 on a monthly basis.

Most survey respondents (59 percent) say they consider the money they earn from their side job to be disposable income. And 38 percent say they use their extra funds to cover ordinary living expenses.

A few thoughts here:

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup!

Now that I’m 38, I’m starting to have mixed feelings about my age. It’s almost as if I’m stuck between two generations. I’m not young enough to be cool or overly idealistic anymore, but I’m definitely young enough to feel like I have plenty of life ahead of me— and to have fun. On the other hand, I’m way too old to care what anyone thinks and maybe should care more. Or maybe not.

As my two oldest children have started to enter their teen years, we’ve begun giving them more and more responsibilities and more and more freedoms. We’ve also been having lots of conversations about what the future might hold for them. Will they go to college? What might they study? What are they interested in? What do they think they’re good at?

One big issue that’s come up is what exactly the purpose of education after high school is. I don’t want college to be merely something they “do” after high school, but instead it should be something attacked with purpose, and if they don’t have a clear purpose for it, why go?

This led into a conversation of what the purpose of going to college is. My answer? It’s either to get an education or to get job training, depending on what you study. To me, those are distinct things that are both fulfilled by colleges today.

Your child is on the verge of moving out and living on their own. Are they prepared?

Arming them with the right personal finance knowledge will give them a strong foundation to go and achieve many of their life goals.

Sitting still on a jet for an 11, 14, or even 16-hour flight is an endurance sport. Just like running a marathon, it's something you have to train and plan for.