Money Tips Network

This article is by staff writer Sam. Sam spent 13 years working in Equities on Wall Street and discusses financial independence strategies on Financial Samurai. Sam is also the founder of the Yakezie Network, the largest personal finance blog network on the web.

Out of the 500 or so college graduates I interviewed over a 13-year period, practically every candidate was extremely enthusiastic about getting their butts kicked working 14-hour days in finance. When you can crack the six-figure mark after your first full year, why not bear torture to get ahead, right? Just don’t tell them they are working below minimum wage if you go by an hourly rate.

We all know the importance of keeping in touch and communicating with your colleagues when it comes to professional success. However, sometimes keeping in contact with your colleagues can be expensive. Luckily, there are ways to offset the cost of maintaining communication with your professional contacts!

How do you stay in touch with colleagues without spending a fortune? Do you use any particular apps or tools? What money-saving strategies have you found to be useful useful when communicating with your colleagues?

Tell us how you stay in touch with colleagues without spending and we'll enter you in a drawing to win a $100 Skype Gift Card or one of two $50 Visa Gift Cards!

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found some great articles on cleaning tips that will save you money, awesome ways to give, and finding small appliances for cheap.

Top 5 Articles

5 spring cleaning tips that can save you money — Donating your old items can save you money when you spring clean. [Living on the Cheap]

13 Awesome Ways to Give to Unsuspecting Random Poeple (Brave Enough for #11?) — Paying for another patron or organizing a meal shower are a couple great ways to give to unsuspecting people. [Christian PF]

Sarah and I are subscribers to the “buy it for life” philosophy. In short, it means that we’re willing to pay more for a product that does its job well but, just as importantly, will last a very long time, preferably for the rest of our lives. Here are six principles of “buying it for life” that I suggested earlier, along with a few extra ones:

1. We prefer to pay more now to not have to deal with replacing an item for a very, very long time. Ideally, I’d like to not have to replace it in my lifetime – and I’m in my mid-thirties.

2. We tend to strongly favor companies that put extensive warranties or guarantees on their products.

3. We tend to strongly prefer products that are low maintenance or have maintenance we can do ourselves.

This article is by staff writer Lisa Aberle.

Why spend less than you earn?

There are the obvious reasons. Spending more than you earn isn’t sustainable, of course. You can’t build your net worth unless you spend less than you earn. And spending less than you earn decreases your stress level.

But is there another reason to spend less than you earn … something that doesn’t benefit you at all?

Keeping up with the Joneses is a concept frequently mentioned on personal finance blogs. In fact, not keeping up with them is often heralded as one of the first steps toward turning your financial life around. And keeping your life headed in the right direction.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated, in 2013, that outstanding student loans have swelled to over $1.2 trillion. Seven in ten college seniors who graduated in 2012 had student loan debt, at an average of $29,400. Scary! It is extremely important for kids to have a good handle on personal finance before they enter college. Personal finance is now becoming a part of the K-12 curriculum in many school districts, but the best education can only come from parents and habits developed at home. So how can we raise money smart kids?

How do you teach your kids about money?

Jim, a reader of our Facebook page, shared some of his personal finance journey in Facebook comments a while back. We reached out and asked him if he would elaborate so we could share his story with the Get Rich Slowly website readers. This is Part 2.

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.

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Over 80% of employees say they’d love to work from home at least part of the time. Bosses on the other hand, well, not so much. But employers are starting to come around. Regular telecommuting has grown by nearly 80% since 2005. Why? It saves companies money. A typical employer saves over $11,000 per year per half time telecommuter. That’s news you can use if you want to convince your employer to let you work from home.

This article is by staff writer Kristin Wong.

Happy Financial Literacy month!

I’ll be honest. Four or five years ago, “financial literacy” meant nothing to me. I was far from being financially literate, and I didn’t really understand why it was important. I’ve always been pretty good at being frugal. But I never truly understood it. And I never understood just how much there is to learn in order to achieve financial security and, ultimately, financial independence.

In 2011-ish, somehow I became more interested in my finances. A few things were responsible for this change: