Money Tips Network

Link for teaser title: 

http://www.wisebread.com/forex-trading-a-beginner-s-guide-from-commexfx

Learn what makes Forex trading unique and how you can improve your chance of success.

In a post a few days ago, I made an offhand comment about how I didn’t really receive personal pleasure from seeing my net worth increase, though I once did. A few people emailed me on that subject, so I thought I’d clarify what I meant.

When I first began to overcome my personal finance mistakes, I found that calculating my net worth and looking at the change from month to month was incredibly powerful. It was a single number that provided “proof” that I was making better decisions than I was making before.

An increase in net worth meant that I was unquestionably spending less than what I earned, which is the key to personal finance success. An increase in net worth meant that all of the hard day-to-day choices I was making were actually adding up to something big.

I’ve come to find that I trust short news stories very little. The little segments that you hear on news breaks on the radio or on cable news programs are often so short that all you hear are a few selected elements of a story and that rarely gives you the full picture, and most of it is completely useless and uninformative.

Over and over again, I find that the real story doesn’t become apparent until you dig in a little bit – much longer than a shouting-filled interview segment or a news blurb.

I’d rather spend an hour learning about one issue with some depth than spend that same hour learning only a selected little piece of a bunch of different stores.

How I Kept Saving Even During a Job Loss It’s all about keeping your eyes on the prize. (@ get rich slowly)

So you probably missed out on getting tickets to the Super Bowl this year. That's OK. The thrifty crowd here at Wise Bread knows a good value, and we'll tell you that tickets to any major championship game rarely fit that mold. (See also: How to Watch Sports Without Cable)

But being frugal doesn't mean you have to be stuck watching every sporting event on television. It's possible to show off your team loyalty in person without dipping too deep into the savings account.

If you follow these tips below, you can have a great time at a live sporting event without spending a lot of money.

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found some amazing articles on cutting the cost of pet care, saving on flowers, and why you need a side hustle.

Top 5 Articles

6 ways to cut the cost of pet care — Save money on dog treats by giving your dog carrots instead of bones. [Living on the Cheap]

9 Tips to Save a Bundle on Flowers — To save money on flowers, opt to purchase flowers that are in season or potted plants. [PopSugar Smart Living]

Though the National Sleep Foundation advises healthy adults to get seven to nine hours of sleep per night, a recent study found that 30% of working Americans sleep less than six hours per night. According to the National Academy of Sciences, sleep deprivation is bad for your health; it elevates the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, and it increases weight-gain and stress. In desperation, many people turn to sleep aids to make their sleep more effective. The pharmaceutical sleep aid market is estimated to be $4.5 billion annually. (See also: Effective Sleep Tips You Haven't Tried)

In the 1960s-era suburban landscape where I spent my formative years, the atmosphere was much less structured than it is today. If we kids wanted to see our friends, it was routine for us to run to their homes, open the back screen doors and stroll right in.

But if their parents were fighting, as wasn’t uncommon, we beat a hasty exit out that same rear portal. With the potential of pots and pans and anything not nailed down being picked up and flung, you wanted to be elsewhere, and quick. To do otherwise was to risk stopping a flying coffee mug with your ear.

It was right around age eight or nine that I came to realize all wasn’t peaches and cream between married couples. The enclave sometimes reverberated with shouted oaths and bellowed accusations between two folks who had a few years earlier posed happily for photos, slicing into a multi-tiered cake.

Now they were throwing cake, and pastramis, and canned sardines.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that a person can save a ton of money by preparing meals from scratch at home. Restaurant meals are incredibly expensive by comparison and even convenience meals at home can be costly compared to preparing them on your own.

If you can get into a routine of preparing meals at home and then consuming the leftovers as well, you’re going to save a ton of money on your monthly food bill compared to eating out or eating convenience foods. It’s just that simple.

My Moorish-style chickpea and spinach stew, which can easily work as a make-ahead recipe

Recently, I found myself browsing through a book called Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. The idea behind the book is that an optimistic approach is the best way to handle the problems that life throws at us.

I was particularly struck by Seligman’s comparison of how optimists and pessimists handle problems.

In Seligman’s view, pessimists respond to negative events by explaining them with what he calls “the three P’s” – permanent, personal, and pervasive. If you fail at something, it’s because of something you can’t change (permanent), some inherent characteristic of yourself (personal), and/or something that is woven into the fabric of life (pervasive). In other words, a pessimist views failure as a normal outcome and fighting to overcome failure is pointless because of the three P’s.