Money Tips Network

Here's an interesting post from Bloomberg asking how much do you need to become wealthy?

The results:

• Millennials say you need $1.3 million to be financially comfortable and $2 million to be wealthy
• Gen X says you need $1.4 million to be financially comfortable and $2.6 million to be wealthy
• Boomers say you need $1.6 million to be financially comfortable and $2.7 million to be wealthy

Interesting how the older you get the more you think it takes to be wealthy. :)

Before you set a number, consider these net worth percentiles in the U.S.:

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found articles on how much you should spend in retirement, ways to save money on Father’s Day gifts, and how to use your vacation to improve your everyday life.
Top 5 Articles

How much should you spend in retirement?

Being able to work from anywhere in the world is an appealing way of life, but without the right gear, it can quickly turn from a dream into a nightmare.

Warning: This is a rare GRS post that contains salty language. If you don’t like salty language, don’t read this article.

Anthony Bourdain killed himself Friday morning.

“So what?” you might be thinking. “He’s just another fucking celebrity who didn’t know how good he had it.” Maybe you’re right. But his death has weighed heavy on me all weekend.

On Friday morning, as I wrote the weekly Get Rich Slowly email, I thought about Anthony Bourdain. On Friday afternoon, as Kim and I worked in the yard, I thought about Anthony Bourdain. On Friday evening, as we soaked in our new hot tub with a friend, I thought about Anthony Bourdain. Yesterday, I thought about Anthony Bourdain. Today, I thought about Anthony Bourdain.

Now I’m writing this article as an act of catharsis. Maybe it’ll help me to stop thinking about Anthony Bourdain.

Shopping is usually a pain-free experience, but not always. Sometimes a taped-up package hides a nasty surprise …

Big department stores are one of the conveniences of modern life that most of us use without much thinking about it.

We're fortunate to live fairly close to an IKEA, the Swedish home furnishings store where things are decent and often surprisingly inexpensive. Most of the time, shopping at IKEA is easy and (dare I say it) fun, but the last purchase we made from there didn't work out as planned.

Shopping IKEA to keep bettas happy

Our daughter has some bettas. I don't really swoon over them, but she has a heart for them, so there you go.

Bettas are properly called Siamese fighting fish. They're basically the fighting cocks of the fish world.

For me, the biggest challenge of any major life change, whether it’s financial in nature or health-oriented or something else, is handling the gap between your goals and your actions.

Let’s say you’ve decided that you’re now going to turn your finances around. You’ve sat down with a good personal finance book or two, read through them, dived deep into the archives of The Simple Dollar (and perhaps some other personal finance sites), and you deeply understand the value of turning your finances around. You’re deeply committed to this goal. Let’s do this!

Yet, just a few days later, you take actions in your daily life that head in the exact opposite direction of that goal. You go out with friends and spend a bunch of money. You stop for a sugary coffee drink or for takeout or buy another Kindle book.

And then, a few hours later, you’re wondering why on earth you just did something so blatantly in opposition to your big goal.

Do you feel like you're stuck in a rut doing the same old things each weekend, and draining your finances while you're at it?

Many relationships have been known to crash and burn because the couple has differing attitudes toward money. You may have one partner who's very frugal, while another loves to spend.

Every once in a great while, I’ll send my wife a message like this:

Don’t plan anything this weekend & try to not bring any work home.

My wife, being who she is, will immediately want to know what I have cooked up. Usually, it’s a weekend getaway of some kind that I’ve whipped up on the spot, something that she’ll almost assuredly like.

Whatever it is that I’ve come up with, though, isn’t breaking the bank. It’s usually surprisingly cheap.

Here’s how I do it.

Identify Target Dates

The first part of this equation is to simply watch the calendar for weekends that are free – or relatively free – of conflicts. These types of getaways work best for us in the late fall and the early spring, for example, because those weekends rarely have any sort of conflict going on, or if they do have a conflict, it’s minor.