Money Tips Network

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found some amazing articles on making sure you are buying the right house, maximizing your dollar at Subway, and creating work/life balance when your kids return to school.

Top 5 Articles

7 Steps to Make Sure It's the Right House to Buy — Scoping out the neighborhood and making a pros and cons checklist is important when deciding whether or not to buy a home. [Save Outside The Box]

Ask anyone how much sleep they should be getting and most people will tell you 8 to 9 hours. But new research suggests that you might actually need less sleep than that — possibly as little as 7 hours for full rest and maximum health benefits.

I love buying a new book. To me, a book represents many hours of getting lost in a story or learning about something new. It’s a portal to another place and having a number of books just waiting to be read when I have time for them makes me happy.

I also love opening, learning, and playing board games. I love reading the rules, punching out the tokens, and playing games with my friends. Our game nights are most fun when they feature a mix of old and new games.

Spending on those things – as well as on occasional things like a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop – bring me a lot of personal joy. I would be very upset if our budget tightened to the point where I couldn’t enjoy these things.

In romantic relationships, career choices, even struggles with drugs and alcohol, professionals often ask us to look out for warning signs. Well the same should be done with credit cards. (See also: 12 Habits of Highly Responsible Credit Card Users)

This article is by staff writer Holly Johnson.

I just sat down to write this post a moment ago and literally stared at the screen for twenty minutes. I’m still ready to bolt out the door at a second’s notice, if needed, and the tears won’t stop rolling down my face.

But thankfully, these are good tears.

My mother told me I might feel this way on my daughter’s first day of kindergarten. Like it or not, the little person I gave birth to five years ago is no longer a baby, but a little girl.

A fearless little girl.

I looked into her eyes this morning and told her how much I loved her.

“I’m so proud of you,” I said, with tears in my eyes and a knot in my stomach.

“Stop worrying, momma,” she said.

Shopping for everything on the back-to-school list can be a real pain. Not only do those $0.75 highlighters add up (especially if you have several children), but it's easy to feel overwhelmed when you're adding that shopping on top of everything else you have to do to prepare for the coming season. (See also: Back-to-School: Saving on College Textbooks)

While there's usually not one place where you can consistently go to get the best deals, it is possible to make the whole back-to-school shopping process easier. Here are some ideas that should help you lift the overwhelm and even enjoy the chance to spend some time with your kids.

Anyone who has ever owned a home entertainment system is aware of the plethora of remotes required to control each component and the chaos that can ensue if you were to lose one of them. This is where a universal remote can come in handy, as it gives you the ability to control all your favorite electronic devices on just one convenient remote.

There are a number of key factors to look for when searching for the ideal universal remote. We here at Wise Bread have done the homework for you, and we're happy to present our list of the five best universal remotes.

These days, there’s a lot of attention being focused on the subject of bullying. This emphasis is well justified. The whole bullying experience tends to be destructive and wreak long-term consequences. As one who was, at times, both bullied and a bully as a kid, I can testify that while I have almost repressed the former experience, I’ll never be able to live down the latter. I join the chorus of those arguing the more we can reduce bullying, the better off society will be.

It’s fitting, too, that we are finally getting around to acknowledging there is such a thing as financial bullying, just a couple eons after the first spouse was castigated for shelling out too many beaver pelts for a bushel of corn.

Brain Hacking, also known as "mind hacking" has become increasingly popular over the last few years. According to Squidoo, mind hacking is "to perform some act that gains access to the fundamental mechanism behind your mind and other people's minds by here-to-fore unknown or apparently mystical means." (See also: 13 Easy Ways to Improve Your Brain)