Money Tips Network

There are a lot of credit card offers out there that reward you for signing up by giving you a bunch of frequent flyer miles, hotel discounts, or big gift certificates. If you weren’t particularly worried about your credit in the short term, wouldn’t it make sense to sign up for a bunch of these, fulfill the terms of the programs, cash in the rewards, then cancel the cards?

It’s certainly conceivable. In fact, it’s a practice that a lot of people use, and they call it “churning.” Here’s an article from Daily Finance outlining the basics.

Note: This article is from J.D. Roth, who founded Get Rich Slowly in 2006. J.D.’s non-financial writing can be found at More Than Money, where he recently wrote about how to be happy.

The problem with most advice on clearing clutter is that it runs on the assumption that people actually have enough storage space in their homes. I am 100% sure that anyone who saves closet space by rotating their winter clothes out of their closet to make room for their summer wardrobe isn't storing their Christmas sweaters under their house in the crawlspace. (See also: How to Declutter and Keep Your Stuff)

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found some awesome articles on living a life with no regrets, cutting your own hair, and tasks you shouldn't put on the backburner.

Top 5 Articles

11 Ways to Live a Life With No Regrets — If you want to live your life with no regrets, be afraid of being afraid. [Lifehack]

How to Cut Your Own Hair - An Updated Guide! — When cutting your own hair, stay calm and think ahead. [And Then We Saved]

Whether you’re making a decision that has apparent, immediate consequences that could affect the rest of your life, like deciding to quit your job and open a business, or making a purchasing decision big or small, it is worthwhile to gather information and think about the future. When you gather information, you have to be careful, because people, businesses, and even statistics that provide that information might contain inherent biases.

Survivorship bias is often hidden in plain sight, but recognizing the bias when it exists could be the difference between building wealth over the long term and going broke. If a logical argument neglects to recognize that failure is a possible outcome, the argument may be subject to survivorship bias. If a statistic reflects the outcome of only the successful set, ignoring the set of those who fail, survivorship bias is at play, and can give someone a false understanding of the data.

This article is by staff writer Kristin Wong.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or maybe it’s that I’m in a better financial place than I was just a few years ago, but lately, I’ve been thinking a lot more about giving back.

In recent years, it’s becoming more important to me to be socially conscious and charitable. I’m secure, I’m healthy, and I’m free. That contentment seems to urge me to check in on the rest of the world.

Or, maybe it’s coming from a more selfish place.

According to a new research paper from Harvard Business School, spending money on others makes us happy.

Giving makes us happier

The paper, titled, “Prosocial Spending and Happiness,” was published this year in Current Directions in Psychological Science. In it, psychologists write:

No, that’s not a typo. If you haven’t heard of “Heartbleed” yet, listen up.

Events that radically change our lives don’t come along that often. The 9/11 attacks changed not only how we travel, but how we think and act when we go out. Having your belongings searched when you go out to a ballgame was unthinkable before; now it’s routine.

Heartbleed is such an event, and over the next few years it will change how all of us do business.

What is Heartbleed?

It’s a security breach, but not just any security breach. Think of the infamous Target breach as a little rowboat and Heartbleed as the Queen Mary. Some have called it the biggest data security breach in the history of the Internet, and the ripples across the digital landscape have only just begun.

This article first appeared at U.S. News and World Report Money.

Everyone knows about the big things that people should prepare for their loved ones in the event of their untimely passing. A will. Life insurance. A living trust. Those are the big things.

After that, there are a number of little things you can take care of that will make things much, much easier on your loved ones if you were to pass on. These things are all easy to prepare, don’t require a lawyer, and will make a huge impact on your family and friends if these documents are ever needed.

The best thing you can do is make sure that you have a safe deposit box at your local financial institution which contains these documents. Make sure that your executor and your spouse are aware of how to get into the box.

Note: This article is from J.D. Roth, who founded Get Rich Slowly in 2006. J.D.’s non-financial writing can be found at More Than Money.

Eight years ago today, I started a new blog. Inspired by the success of a popular post at my personal site, I sat down to create what I thought would be the first personal finance blog on the Internet. (I was wrong, of course; there were plenty of similar blogs before mine.) I had no idea what I was getting myself into.