Money Tips Network

Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life. Please enjoy the archives of earlier collections of inspirational things.

1. Seneca on happiness

“Happy the man who improves other people not only when he is in their presence but even when he is in their thoughts.” – Seneca

I can tell you from personal experience that one of the best feelings you can have is a realization that someone you’ve helped and influenced in a positive way has gone on to do good things without your involvement whatsoever.

In recent years, people all across the country have shifted their attention to the dangers of texting and driving. This shift in public discourse may not be surprising. The latest data on the dangers of distracted driving show that in 2018 a staggering 349 fatal crashes were reported to have involved distraction by cell phone […]

The post 60+ Texting and Driving Statistics 2021 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

With over 221 million licensed drivers on the road in the U.S., enforcing road safety is more imperative than ever. However, after much research, we found that drinking alcohol doesn’t stop millions from getting behind the wheel. But, what exactly are the facts and statistics behind drunk driving accidents?

And an even better question — why do people continue to break the law by driving under the influence when they know it’s not only irresponsible, but dangerous? Not only do drunk drivers put themselves and others in danger, but drivers must remember that car insurance rates increase after accidents and other irresponsible driving behaviors.

Many consumers use their debit cards for everything they buy. Using debit instead of paying with a credit card can help you avoid the potential for debt.

Most of the time, tips you find for improving your credit center around checking your credit score and following some basic tips for improving it. Those strategies are mostly based on tips given out by the three major credit bureaus (who maintain the credit reports upon which those scores are calculated) and the Fair Isaac Corporation (who actually handles the formula for calculating the most common score, the FICO score).

Let’s talk about our home printer, not just because we need a replacement (and you might, too), but also because it’s a good example of the thinking behind making a sensible purchase.

For the last several years, we’ve had a home printer that we have to constantly “baby” to get it to print. It has had several minor but fixable problems along the way, but it seems to have a slightly defective printer head that noticeably reduces print quality but not irreversibly so. We’ve tried about everything under the sun to fix it, but now we largely just use it for emergency printing purposes and find other places to print when the document has to look good.

Hello from Portugal!

Last Thursday, I returned to Europe for the fourth time in the past ten months. This time, I'm here for work. I'm speaking at yet-another chautauqua about financial independence and early retirement. As always, it's fascinating — and the people attending the event are amazing.

For this trip, I decided to experiment with ultra-light packing. I am not a minimalist, but I like minimalist travel. I wanted to see if I could carry everything I needed for 20 days of travel in a single small backpack.

After traveling to thirty countries in the past twelve years, I've learned that “more is less” when it comes to packing. It's senseless to carry things you're not going to use. And most of the time, you don't need to pack items you'll find (or can buy) at your destination.

It costs less — physically, mentally, and financially — to travel light.

When I turned 40 earlier this year, I decided to celebrate in style with a theme party at a local pub. When I went to a party store to buy decorations for the event, I went a little overboard with balloons, streamers, hats, and kitsch.

When it comes to moving forward in one’s career path and thus improving one’s income, the biggest challenge is often finding the time to make it happen. Many of the most powerful career steps that people can take involve spending quite a lot of extra time outside of work to be able to pull it off.

Want to get a new degree? That’s going to mean a lot of evenings and weekends.

Want a new certification? Be prepared to spend a lot of nights and weekends studying.

Want to start going to professional meetings and conferences? Unless your job sends you, you’re going to be giving up your work time.

Want to join a local professional group? You’ll be going to meetings in the evenings.

There are quite a lot of people out there who want to advance in their career, earn more money, and take on new challenges, yet they don’t have the time to give to those commitments.