Money Tips Network

Sometimes, you really need a good travel credit card. One that's on your side. One that has your back. The Barclaycard Arrival™ World MasterCard® and Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard® are both great credit cards for a number of reasons. Let's dig in and see if they're right for you and your family!

You can use your cell phone as usual when you travel abroad, but cellular providers charge outrageous fees for this service — and you can expect to find a huge phone bill in the mail when you get home. Instead, here aere are some economical ways for you to stay connected with your loved ones at home while traveling abroad. (See also: Fantastic Phone Services for People on the Go)

Know Your Roaming Fees

The simplest way to minimize your phone charges is to keep track of them. For a short trip, this is a great solution that doesn't require much time or effort.

Just last week, I shared my list of fifteen essential personal finance and career books (if you haven’t checked out that list, I highly recommend it). Each of those books has proven to be an inspiration to me in one way or another, but one book stands out because of how the ideas were presented.

William Bernstein’s great book The Four Principles of Investing outlines four extremely valuable (and easy to understand, if you take your time) principles for investing one’s money. Bernstein calls them “pillars,” because almost any investing action you take relies on those core principles.

This article is by staff writer Holly Johnson.

Your car breaks down on the side of the road … again. It’s rush hour and it won’t start. You have to have it towed and you’re not happy about it. At all.

So what do you do?

You head to the local dealership in a fury, ready to replace it with something far more reliable, but also affordable. But the dealership has a few tricks up their sleeve and, according to Paul (the salesman helping you), it must be your lucky day. Amazingly, your car died at the most opportune time in history.

“Amazing deals are on the table for today only, folks, and we are in the midst of a complete liquidation,” says Paul. “Prices are being slashed left and right, and you need to act fast.”

“This is the sale of the century!!!”

Over the years, the world has become more and more reliant on new technologies. Most people don't go very long without using a cell phone, digital camera, or flashlight. Many of these gadgets are powered by batteries. The television remote, your child's favorite toy, and MP3 players would be useless without batteries.

Batteries come in several varieties, including the less expensive, but quicker to die alkaline, the longer lasting but harder on the wallet lithium battery, and rechargeable batteries, which are the greenest choice of the three. They also come in many sizes, as indicated by a lettering system including AAA, AA, and D with almost every other letter of the alphabet in there.

My frugal hobby: snapping photos with my iPhone. Digital photography can be low-cost activity for those times when I am bored and looking to spend some quality time without spending a lot of money. But sometimes, the frugal path can be boring. Fortunately, I've found some inspiration in a post I wrote a while ago:

5 Things to Do When You Get Bored With Being Frugal

Turn off the lights. Check the receipt. Clip the coupons. And so on....Being frugal can get old and boring after a bit. 

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found some wonderful articles on tips for discussing money topics with your partner, things you should never buy at Sam's Club, and DIY cleaning products.

Top 5 Articles

23 Powerful Tips for Discussing Money Topics With Your Partner — When discussing money topics with your partner, establish a "no yelling" rule and start by talking about goals. [The Simple Dollar]

Neil Irwin at the New York Times points out that all asset classes around the world are expensive compared to their historical prices. If that’s the case, is there any investment class available that has the potential to provide great returns over the long-term?

Stocks and bonds; emerging markets and advanced economies; urban office towers and Iowa farmland; you name it, and it is trading at prices that are high by historical standards relative to fundamentals. The inverse of that is relatively low returns for investors…

But frustrating as the situation can be for investors hoping for better returns, the bigger question for the global economy is what happens next. How long will this low-return environment last?

I love playing tabletop games – board games, card games, role playing games, pretty much anything like that. Ever since I was a little kid playing Acquire at my aunt’s house, I’ve loved sitting down at the table with other people and playing a game together. You’ll find me playing games with friends many weeknights and weekend afternoons.

One of the first real lessons that playing games taught me was the difference between tactics and strategy. Let’s look at the definitions of each, pulled from Wikitionary:

Strategy: A plan of action intended to accomplish a specific goal.

Tactics: The military science that deals with achieving the objectives set by strategy.

Here’s an example of the difference using the boardgame chess, as chess is likely a game most of you are familiar with.