Money Tips Network

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Pets can be a delightful addition to your household, but they aren't cheap, and dogs can be especially tough on families looking to save.

If you're looking to bring a canine into your life, there's a lot to consider from a financial perspective. There's the cost to buy the dog, of course.

About 7% of Americans have been rejected for a credit card in the past 12 months.

This is about 17 million Americans, a number that went up by 3% from the previous period.

This post is by staff writer Honey Smith.

When I was in college, one of my co-workers at my part-time, on-campus job gave me a funny little gift that I use to this day. What was it? It’s called a “wallet fairy.” According to the note that came with my little talisman, you put it in your wallet and “you’ll never be out of money when you need it.”

I can’t honestly say that the “magic” has been foolproof. I believe I’ve mentioned on a couple of occasions the time I didn’t wash my hair for a month because I couldn’t afford shampoo. And I distinctly remember crying after going to the grocery store on a couple of occasions because I didn’t know how I was going to pay my bills after buying food. But I guess if the magic were foolproof, this fool wouldn’t have learned her lesson and started digging her way out of debt, right?

Looking for a job that offers more than the standard salary and health benefits combo? Look no further.

The initial public offering (IPO) of the international e-commerce company Alibaba recently attracted a lot of attention — not to mention a couple billion dollars of investment money. This might be okay if it were an isolated occurrence, but lately there has been a flurry of IPOs — and they make me feel a little itchy about the investment environment.

I understand the principle that growing companies opening themselves up to new sources of capital is one way the economy grows. However, when investors go overboard for IPOs — either by overpaying for specific stocks or supporting too many new issues at once — it raises questions about both individual stocks and the market as a whole.

What kind of questions? Well, here are nine things that IPOs make me wonder:

There are about 45 million businesses in the United States of which more than 99 percent are considered small businesses. More than 40 million of those small businesses have fewer than 20 employees. All businesses, small and large share a common need for protection against the unexpected, and small business insurance satisfies that need. Unlike, big businesses that can have policies tailored to their exact needs, small businesses must rely on off the shelf solutions.

The challenge when it comes to small business insurance is twofold, having the right coverage and enough of it to provide adequate protection. The answers to both challenges are unique to the individual business, however, making a decision about how much insurance is necessary cannot be done without knowing what kind of insurance is needed. To help decode the myriad business insurance offerings, we’ve created an overview of each of the different business insurance products available.

In my experience, many of the truly useful frugal tactics come about from little tweaks to one’s daily routine. If you can look at something that you do almost every day and find some little way to shave a minute off of it, you’ve saved more than six hours over the course of a year. If you can look at that routine and shave a quarter off of it, you’ve saved $90 over the course of a year. If you can do those kinds of changes to several routines in your life, you’re starting to look at some impressive savings.

I’m not talking about things that throw your routine to the wolves and force you to start over from scratch. I’m talking about simple little ways to alter a routine so that the expense of each run of that routine is a little less or the time involved is a little less.

Here are six examples of pretty normal daily routines in my life that I’ve managed to “hack” in significant ways over the years to save both time and money.

Clothes can say many different things. Such as: “I’m quietly confident.” Or: “I’m hip and stylish.” Or even: “I’m utterly tacky.”

Regardless of the specifics, all clothes say: “I’m not naked.”  This is largely what I demand of my clothing, and it’s largely what everyone else demands of my clothing as well.

My wife has a few more criteria than I do about my clothing, one of which is that the color of said clothing shouldn’t make me look naked. Because that’s nearly as bad as actually being naked.  (If you can picture Slim Goodbody’s evil doppelganger Fat Badbody, then you get the point.)

Aside from actual nakedness or faux nakedness, though, I’m brand-agnostic as long as it fits reasonably well.

And if the clothes come from a thrift store, so much the better!

Simple clothing needs make for small clothing bills