Money Tips Network

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. Michael J. Fox on happiness, acceptance, and expectations

“My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations.” – Michael J Fox

The future rarely pans out exactly how you want. If you expect great things to happen, life is going to constantly disappoint you.

2. Patience

Patience is one of the greatest gifts you can give to those you love.

3. Robert Brault on finding relationships

“Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool.” – Robert Brault

Every once in a while, it’s useful to look at the state of the automobiles that your family owns and ask some hard questions about upcoming costs, both in terms of repair and eventual replacement. I thought I’d walk through these questions as they relate to our own cars to provide some ideas of what you might want to be thinking about. We try to revisit these questions a few times a year.

Automobile #1: 2004 Honda Pilot

We purchased our Honda Pilot off of Craigslist for cash in April 2010. It was actually a very easy purchase, as they took the vehicle we were replacing off of our hands at the same time for a reduction in the cost of the Pilot.

Best-selling author Robert Greene writes, "To rise to the level of mastery requires many hours of dedicated focus and practice. You cannot get there if your work brings you no joy and you are constantly struggling to overcome your own weaknesses." (See also: Secrets to a Joyful Life)

Our society has always valued that struggle, believing that the only way to be the best you can be is to work on the areas you find most challenging.

But what if we have it wrong? What if the way to bliss and lasting success wasn't about the stuff you were bad at? What if, instead, you could get there by doing the things you loved the most?

It’s that dreaded time of year, but we all must face it. So let’s talk about taxes today. I’ve got some questions (and offer my answers).

1)      Do you get a refund or max out your withholding? A recent Moneyrates.com survey found that 31 percent of the 2,000 people surveyed prefer to get a refund. I confess – I get a refund every year.

If you want to stop the refund madness for tax year 2014, just go to IRS Publication 919 and see how to change your withholding.

The following is the latest post in my "Reader Profiles" series. Each post in this series details the financial situation and challenges of an FMF reader. The purpose of this series is to help us all identify with people like us (in similar situations -- not all will be, of course, but eventually I'm sure you will find someone like you here), get to know the frequent commenters on the site, and hear some financial wisdom/challenges from people other than me.

If you're interested in contributing to this series, then drop me an email. The series seems to be very popular with readers and I need a steady stream of new ones to keep it going.

I received a review copy of Timothy McCarthy’s The Safe Investor: How to Make Your Money Grow in a Volatile Global Economy a few weeks ago.  Any book that can give me at least one good idea is a win.  It usually covers the cost of a book, or an e-book, or a membership to a site.  This book had many good ideas for me.

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. Helping sibling with retirement
2. Cheap haircuts
3. Podcast baby steps
4. Recent graduate with car trouble
5. Selling car
6. Handling big raise
7. Down payment or investment?
8. Contradicting financial advice
9. Splitting rent

Savings Account Rates

An online savings account is a helpful tool in your financial life. When you want to set up an emergency fund or other savings account for short-term liquidity, an online savings account usually offers higher interest rates than many brick-and-mortar banks.  In addition, many consumers think online banking is much more convenient.

Even though rates are low right now, they will eventually rise as the economy recovers. An online savings account, money market account, certificate of deposit (CD), interest checking or rewards checking account can help you make the most of your funds on deposit. Don’t throw your money away by saving it somewhere that doesn’t pay. An online savings account is a safe and convenient way to earn interest on funds that you may need easy access to, and it is far better than simply keeping extra sums in cash or in a checking account.

A reader passed along this interesting interview from the Wall Street Journal with Mark Cuban. For those unfamiliar, Cuban is a billionaire who made a significant amount of his wealth in the early days of the internet era. His argument in this interview? Diversification is “for idiots.”

First of all, let’s talk about what diversification actually means.

Diversification means that you’re investing in a number of different things so that you’re not as badly affected if one of them falls. For example, when the stock market falls in price, that doesn’t mean that real estate will also fall.

So, let’s say you have half of your money in stocks and half of your money in real estate. If stocks fall 40% this year and real estate stays steady, you’ll only lose 20% of your money. Of course, on the other hand, if the stock market goes up 20% and real estate stays the same, then you will only gain 10%.