Money Tips Network

A long while back, I wrote an article discussing class warfare and personal finance advice. In short, my conclusion was that you’re making a mistake by mistrusting financial advice from someone just because of an income gap. Financial advice given to someone making $100,000 a year isn’t useless to someone making $25,000 a year because the core principles are the same.

That isn’t to say that there isn’t some personal finance advice that applies better to certain income levels than others. Someone who is completely unemployed, for example, is going to be much more interested in advice relating to government programs and resources than someone making six figures. At the same time, someone making six figures is going to be more interested in investment advice than someone who is unemployed.

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. Vacation spending
2. Tablet as exercise tool
3. Personal finance TV shows
4. Oil-filled radiators
5. Kindle e-books
6. Finding new friends as adult
7. The repair-or-replace dilemma
8. Television as background noise
9. Old silver certificates

Many things can cause or contribute to a bad mood, even if you're usually an optimistic person. Circumstances such as stress at work, a disagreement with a friend, or a difficult family situation can send your mood into a funk. Sometimes, you're just having a bad day and you need a little pick-me-up. If you feel like you woke up on the wrong side of bed, here are some ideas to quickly change your mood and get you feeling better about your day. (See also: Happiness Habits to Feel Better Now)

Note: If you think you may be suffering from depression or chronic anxiety, talk to your doctor.

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 winning the jackpot.

Imagine that you’re a farmer. You live in a rural county where everybody raises sheep.

The county’s farmers, on the whole, prosper. Their flocks tend to grow by 10 percent every year. Some years are better than others. In the best years, the sheep population in the county grows by 40 percent. Little lambs are everywhere! But in the worst years — years filled with frost, famine, and disease — the sheep population can collapse to half of what it was before.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea." On any given day 158 million Americans drink tea — and for good reason. Different types of tea have been shown to boost the immune system, regulate cholesterol, and fight cancer with significant supplies of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Plus, tea in its many forms feels comforting and tastes delicious. (See also: The Best Online Tea Merchants)

…And What You Can Do About It

We live in a complex world where many things happen around us that we’re at a loss to understand or explain. High CEO compensation, soaring health care costs, a biased media and politicians being bribed are but a few of the things we see wrong with the world. Those (and other) problems have their root in a single trait of human nature. The study of that trait is called agency theory. In a nutshell, agency theory states that when a principal hires an agent, the agent is supposed to act in the best interests of the principal. However, despite being compensated in accordance with the principal’s interests, agents will pursue their own best interests, even at the expense of the principal compensating them. That may sound abstract and ivory-tower irrelevant to your daily life, but it isn’t. It affects your pocket book, directly and often.

Health Insurance

It’s a pretty common principle of time management. When you have a list of tasks to do, choose the one that’s hardest and do that first. That way, you tackle it with the most energy and the freshest mind.

What’s interesting is that many well-organized people use this principle quite well in the short term, but then completely discard it when looking at the long term. When they figure out today’s to-do list, they’ll choose the hard task, but when they look at plans that cover years, they avoid the hard task.

The easiest example I can think of for this phenomenon is retirement savings. Many, many people, when they’re first given the chance to save for retirement, choose not to save anything at all. They choose the easiest part first – not saving anything at all – and save the hardest part for later – socking away 10% or 15% for retirement.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to slowly adjust my daily routine to incorporate some new habits.

The biggest challenge I’ve found is that it’s really easy to slip back into old patterns without thinking about it.

My solution? I’ve set up “reminder” software on my computer – a mix of Fantastical and Breaktime – to yell at me about the new habits I’m establishing. It interrupts what I’m doing, but it grabs my attention.

Do You Really Need Self-Discipline? It depends on the angle you take on the challenges in your life. If you can find ways so that the path of least resistance leads you toward your goal in your day to day life, you don’t need much self-discipline. Doing that may not be as easy as it sounds, though. (@ dumb little man)

When we interact as humans, there's an implicit assumption that the other person is dealing with you in good faith. This is why liars are such insidious creatures; they prey upon the natural trust that must exist between people in a civilized society. However, you don't have to be at the mercy of the liar. There are a number of ways you can tell if someone is lying to you. If your natural suspicions are aroused, just look for these signs, and you'll become a human lie detector… or close enough. (See also: 16 Ways to Improve Your Body Language)