Money Tips Network

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

Most of the personal finance information that we hear and see is delivered in bite-sized nuggets, often in the form of investment recommendations and short cautionary tales.

Because it’s all delivered in such little pieces, it’s hard to step back and get the big picture of how spending, life goals, parenting, and investing all overlap in our lives. It’s not all about earning as much as you can to just save it and spend it according to some recipe.

Here are four books that are invaluable reads for reconsidering your entire life, not just your financial life, and how to actually transform those life decisions into sensible money choices.

“Don’t think money does everything, or you are going to end up doing everything for money.” – Voltaire

It’s not too uncommon for a frugal person to hear the criticism that they are “cheap.” At the same time, it’s also not too uncommon for a wealthy person to hear the criticism that they are somehow corrupt or that they would do anything for a buck.

Both of these criticisms – whether accurate or not – come from the same central idea, that people who conserve and accumulate money are putting money ahead of other human values.

They’re making a value judgment, in other words. You’re presenting an appearance of placing money above values that they consider more important – whether that’s true or not.

I’m one of the last people to ever suggest that anyone should put a ton of weight into what other people think of them. It’s not worth it.

It's here: the time of year when New Year's resolutions curl up and die. We're already at the end of February, which means that most resolutions have been broken, if not abandoned outright. (See also: How to Make Your Resolutions Stick)

If you are considering giving up your resolutions for weight loss and/or eating better, think again. Sometimes, these resolutions are too difficult to attack head on. However, if you can trick yourself into eating less, you just might be able to achieve more success with these resolutions than you had dreamed possible.

This guest post is from former GRS staff writer Donna Freedman. Donna writes for a number of websites, including Money Talks News and Retail Me Not, and blogs about frugality and intentional living at Surviving And Thriving.

I’m back, and I sound just like your mom: Save that damned emergency fund, already.

This week (Feb. 24-March 1) is America Saves Week. And not a moment too soon: As a nation, we’re losing ground. An ASW survey shows that just 51 percent of us have a savings plan with specific goals; four years ago that number was 55 percent. (Still too low, IMHO.) Just 40 percent of us have budgets that allow for savings at all, compared with 46 percent in 2010.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Last-minute retirement savings
2. Personal finance suggestions are unrealistic
3. Assessing state of a car
4. Emergency fund for debt?
5. Never want to retire
6. Breaking routines
7. Savings account or HSA
8. Claim parent as dependent

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.

This article is by staff writer Lisa Aberle.

Until I reached my early 20s, I believed that my childhood had fewer financial advantages than the average childhood. Once I gained more life experience, I saw that my family hadn’t been as poor as I thought we were.

That doesn’t mean we weren’t poor, though. We wore hand-me-downs, didn’t go on vacations much, qualified for reduced school lunches, things like that. But we were “poor with potential.” When I arrived, my parents were in their very early 20s, and my dad was at the beginning of establishing his farm. While they didn’t have much money at that point, they knew how to manage it. And while they didn’t have much income coming in from jobs, they knew what to do to make that happen. Things started to change when I was a teenager. In fact, my youngest sibling remembers a completely different childhood — vacations and new carpet, but nothing about the really difficult times.

The year 2013 was a milestone for me with lots of life changes. As I step deep into my 30s now, I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at my 20s. If I could go back and give my 22-year-old self some sage money advice (I was just out of college and starting graduate school in a new country), what would it be? Over the years, I have made several statements that started with “I wish I had…” I have tried to recover from them, but I still wish I had never done them in the first place.

If you are in your 20s (or even 30s), here are some money mistakes to avoid.

Money mistakes to avoid in your 20s

Something has captured your imagination or your heart. Maybe it’s an expensive physical item, like a tablet computer or a shiny car. Maybe it’s something like a relationship with another person, either real or visualized.

You get wrapped up in this thing that you want. You keep visualizing yourself with this thing in your life and you begin to truly believe that your life will be better when you have this thing, whatever it might be. You begin to see things missing in your current life and buy into the idea that only this thing you’re dreaming of can fill those holes.

This is one of the most painful psychological traps that a person can push themselves into. It costs you time and money and it often leads to heartache.