Money Tips Network

Once in a Lifetime

Stephen writes in:

“I am struggling with continuing to save because of the fragility of my life. Both of my parents and my older sister died in their 50s. I turned 50 last year and there are so many things I still want to do in life. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how it won’t matter how much money I have in the bank if I die in the next few years, but just spending it all doesn’t seem smart, either. I am stuck and I hope you can help.“

This is a scenario that I’ve thought about many times. I have had several friends and relatives die younger than they should, and each time their passing has made me reflect on my own mortality.

Over time, I’ve come to several conclusions with regards to balancing my own mortality and the logical desire to secure a potential longer-term future.

This reader story comes from Elaina. 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.

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. Bob Moawad on the best day of your life

“The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.” – Bob Moawad

No matter your situation, you’re the one responsible for making the best of it – or the worst of it.

2. Yves Morieux on six rules to simplify work

Building an online store seems like an impossible dream for most people. But after talking to Steve Chou at the FinCon conference, I learned that even normal people can build successful, six-figure income, mom-and-pop online stores that allow them to earn a good living and live their passions.

What I love about Steve's message is that he's not promising overnight riches, or even millions in income. He's saying that regular folks can build online businesses that allow them to escape the grind of a job and live the lives they're passionate about.

One feature that Sarah and I have decided to add to our dream home is a “den” of sorts. This den would serve as a game room and a party room of sorts, plus it would be a place to house our board game collection, our book collection, and our remaining movie collection.

As I’ve mentioned before, we have a pretty detailed idea of what kind of house we’re going to build, so we’ve actually been thinking about details like how to furnish the house. What will we take from our current home? What will we need to add to the new home?

Any game room / party room will need at least one solid table and we currently don’t have any that will work well for that purpose (we could use our main dining table, but we intend to continue to use that for dining and if we repurposed it, we’d be buying a new dining table). So, this has left me looking for a good table for a game room.

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Claes Bell

If you’re ever feeling the need to take a picture of your debit card and post it on social media just … don’t. It doesn’t take that much information to make fraudulent purchases online with a debit card account, or clone a physical copy of a debit card, and giving all those potentially listening in [...]

Twitter account dedicated to people who post debit card pics is depressingly busy from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

This blog was posted by Claes Bell

This article is by staff writer April Dykman.

Last month in an Ask the Readers post, I wrote about money worries:

“Even though my expenses are manageable, even though I have money in savings, even though I’ve historically always made enough money to cover the bills and then some, I still worry.”

And longtime reader Tyler Karaszewski made a really good point:

Updated: February 5, 2014

The best credit cards for college students hold one major advantage over the other sources of funding that can be used to pay for college expenses: Student credit cards help students establish credit while other methods of funding do not.

Sure, you can give your kid a prepaid debit card and fill it up occasionally, but they won’t learn the responsibility of paying bills on time. They will have no understanding of credit because it will have no impact on them. They’re certainly not going to earn many (if any) rewards or cash back for purchases, like they would if they owned one of the best student credit cards. Imagine coming out of college with zero credit history. Renting an apartment, buying a car, or even getting a normal rewards credit card would be nearly impossible.