Money Tips Network

Whenever I want to make a positive change appear in my life, I usually approach it in one of two ways.

I either try to get rid of a bad habit or I try to establish a good habit.

Habits are at the center of both of those ideas. It’s around that hinge of habits that I try to improve myself. I see some flaw in my own life and I want to get rid of it (or at least reduce it), so I turn to my habits.

It makes sense to really look at what a habit is. I tend to like Wikipedia’s definition of the word:

A habit (or wont) is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur unconsciously.

Let’s break that down a little.

A habit is a routine of behavior At its core, a habit is just a sequence of things that you do.

This post comes from one of our readers, Adam Fisch. Some reader stories contain general advice; others are examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success or failure. These stories feature folks with all levels of financial maturity and income. Want to submit your own reader story? Here’s how.

In my short time as an entrepreneur, I’ve begun to understand the people that describe running your own business as a rollercoaster. Like most cliches, it comes from truth: In any moment, the grandeur and surety of your world-changing vision vanishes only to be replaced by doubt and the sinking feeling that you’ve made a horrible mistake, your parents were right, you should have stayed in that boring, stable job, and disaster is imminent. In those moments, your resolve is tested.

Each week, I highlight ten things each week that inspired me to greater financial, personal, and professional success. Hopefully, they will inspire you as well.

1. Henry Ford on avoiding problems

“Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.” – Henry Ford

It’s usually easier to drill a hole through the mountain than to build a road around it.

2. Guy Clark – My Favorite Picture of You

This manages to be both warm and haunting, not an easy trick to pull off.

3. Kurt Vonnegut on seeking true happiness

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” – Kurt Vonnegut

It’s those little moments that make life great.

What's the good of ordering food via your smartphone's Grubhub app or ordering a car via its Uber app if you don't also have an app to make sure there's some money left on your credit card when it gets there? (See also: Apps to Manage Credit Card Rewards)

Well soon you will, thanks to Ondot, a San Jose-based company that just unveiled Card Control, a mobile command center for defeating fraud, all built into your phone.

At the most basic level, the app serves as an extra line of protection against fraud, allowing the user to toggle the card's use on or off, or set the card to only function within certain parameters.

One of the biggest arguments against being “frugal” is that it restricts you from “living life.” Whenever I hear that argument, I usually think that the person involved isn’t actually being frugal at all.

In fact, I would go so far as to argue that making frugal choices actually does the opposite – it enables you to live life more fully than before.

I think I can explain this idea simply in terms of a grocery store trip.

Let’s say you go into the grocery store and have $100 to spend to buy a week’s worth of groceries for you and your partner (we won’t talk about kids here – we’ll keep it nice and simple).

When you walk down the bread aisle, some of the breads cost $1 a loaf and others cost as much as $5 a loaf.

When you examine the cuts of meat, some of the meats cost $2 per pound and others cost $8 per pound.

Naked With Cash is an ongoing series at Consumerism Commentary in which readers share their households’ finances with other readers. These participants benefit from the accountability that comes from tracking their finances publicly and the feedback of the four expert Certified Financial Planners (CFPs).

For more information, read this introduction.

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Want to broaden your horizons? Learn new languages? Understand other cultures? Whether at home or abroad, you can develop relationships with people in other countries in a variety of ways that don't involve spending big bucks.

I've been traveling full-time since 2007, and I have a wonderful collection of international friends I've met using many of the techniques in this article (and who I continue to keep in touch with). Here are 14 suggestions to increase your international circle of friends.

You can find really great travel deals online. With numerous price comparison websites for flights, hotels, and car rentals, it's easy to identify the cheapest online options. (See also: Get the Lowest Rates From Travel Websites)

But the prices you see on the Internet may not be the best deals available. If you're willing to spend some time and effort, you may be able to haggle prices down even more. The downside? You'll have to speak to an actual person and charm your way into lower prices.

So, you have a health or fitness goal and you've started hard work toward getting there, but you're still having trouble hitting your mark. Not a problem! One of the most motivating ways to stay the course is by documenting your progress. Whether it's toward a certain number on the scale or particular finish time at an upcoming race, logging food/exercise/etc. is definitely something worth trying. (See also: Best Strength Training Apps)

Here are seven websites to help — along with my favorite way to keep track of my own goals. These sites come highly recommended by my blog readers, and I've used several of them myself. I have now even found a few more to try!