Money Tips Network

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This week's topic: Retirement Readiness!

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup!

The air is starting to chill and the leaves are starting to fall. Pools are coming down, and plans for how to prepare the yard for winter are being made.

Save for retirement. Period.

There are very few adults in the United States that are of working age that aren’t affected in a positive way by saving for retirement. For virtually all of those people, saving for retirement – or saving more for retirement – is a strong positive move.

If there was one financial move that I got right before my personal finance meltdown in 2006, it was that I saved for retirement from the day I started working. Almost every mentor I had in my life encouraged me to sign up for this the second I started work and, for once, I actually listened to their money wisdom. (If only I had listened to other elements of their advice, such as “pay off your student loans quickly” and “don’t elevate your lifestyle now that you’re making more money” and “spend less than you earn.”)

Let’s start off with the most obvious question.

Devices that track driving behavior can help lower your premiums — and keep tabs on teens. Photo: State Farm

Car insurance companies have always looked for ways to maximize profits by minimizing their risk. Insurance companies make money by taking in more in premiums than they pay out in claims. It’s hard to raise premiums in a competitive market, so reducing risk is the easiest way for them to become more profitable.

Making money would be a lot easier for insurance companies if they weren’t in competition with one another. All they would need to do is tally up how much they expect to pay out in claims based on their own history, add in a profit margin, divide it all by their number of policyholders, and voila: The insurance company makes a tidy profit.

I am a perfectionist without end, and I want to do my best at everything I do. I hit a point a couple of years ago, though, when perfectionism had worn me out. Holding myself to high standards had paid off, in some ways.

Talk to anyone 19 to 90, and they’re likely to have very clear memories of their first experience going steady. Mine came at the decidedly ancient age of 17, and I can recall that star-crossed life chapter like it happened last week.

My perky, mahogany-haired, 16-year-old inamorata and I didn’t have much in common other than a passion for hours-long sessions in lover’s lane. When we stopped long enough for a conversation, I became aware that her hopes for the future centered on a single day — her wedding day.

It didn’t matter that we had no money. It didn’t matter that I was headed to my freshman year of college and she still needed to matriculate from high school. It didn’t matter that there was no way in hell to support ourselves as newlyweds.

There's nobody better than a professional traveler to know how to get great hotel rates, free upgrades, and tweak their rooms to make their stay as comfortable as possible. In this article, a panel of professional travelers share their 25 best hotel hacks.

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup!