10 Things You Must Know About a House Before Purchasing

Have You Decided to Buy a House

Buying a house means that you might be risking years and years of hard earned money and possibly putting yourself into debt that could take decades to pay off. There are lots of factors to take into consideration before you make your purchase in order to ensure you have a pleasant experience and come out financially healthy.

The rules are different if you are buying a house as an investment property than if you’re buying to live in it. In this article I will share some of the important things to consider about the property in question before you sign the contract and change your financial future.  Read more...

7 Beautiful Vacation Spots for Traveling on a Budget in 2010

How To Vacation for Less without Compromising Luxury

In the past couple of years, people have been concocting innovative techniques in order to save money while enjoying their vacations. This has led to the rise in popularity of staycations, local trips, and more emphasis on the quality of time spent rather than the city with great things like road trips, family picnics, and nature journeys.

However, there are still great places to vacation at a fraction of the cost. In this article, I will include some national and international vacation spots that will offer you the most luxurious and enjoyable vacation memories without leaving you with a hole in your pocket. To help you further,  Read more...

5 New “Must Read” Articles on Career Management

Economists have been predicting a ‘jobless’ recovery from the recession. In layman’s terms this means that there will slow progress where the economic conditions will improve based on GDP, but unemployment rates will barely changed. This means that people need to be aware of their job climate, where jobs are in demand, and what to do to improve their career prospects.

I’ve been reading some great career related advice from fellow personal finance bloggers and want to share some of these great reads with you. These articles were just written and contain a plethora of information.  Read more...

Free Excel Spreadsheets for Budgeting your Finances

Excel Spreadsheets Organize Your Finances

Personal finances can be very hard to manage without the use of spreadsheets for simplification, organization, and error reduction. However, designing a spreadsheet takes a lot of time and often requires the expert hand of an accountant. This is true especially for business spreadsheets, which take into account lots of expenses and income.

I have selected the finest spreadsheets from around the Internet for your use. Enjoy!

1) 401K Planner

Take into account all the variables of your 401k saving to see your retirement amount. Change the amount saved per check or the age of retirement and even the expected annual return. Comes with a cool graph to visualize your earnings.  Read more...

Countries with the Worst Economies in 2010

You might have read (and enjoyed) reading one of my previous posts, 7 Best Countries to Invest In. It has become one of my most visited posts in the past month and has a lot of interesting information on these seven countries.

I am going to turn the tables now and tell you the countries that have the worst economies in the world. Doing this list will allow people to see some common trends in these countries and help investors identify some trouble spots. Plus, its just interesting for anyone interested in finance to see how things are shaping up around the world after the Great Recession. To identify trouble areas, we list them in red so you can see what is each countries weak spot.  Read more...

5 Hottest Electronic Deals for Easter Week

First of all, Happy Easter everyone! I hope you enjoy the weekend and have a great time with your families.

The iPad was released yesterday and there is a lot of hype surrounding it, so I decided that its a good time for a post on great electronic deals you can find during the Easter weekend. I am hoping people find this post resourceful so that I continue posting posts about money saving deals on Smarter Spend.

These are the 10 hottest deals I found for electronics during Easter.

1) Sylvania 19” 720p LCD From Amazon.com - Price: $151.68
Price at next lowest retailer: $169.99 from Target  Read more...

Joining the Yakezie Challenge

Today I have decided to join the Financial Samurai‘s Yakezie Challenge. The goal of the Yakezie Challenge is to use networking and lots of promotion to raise the Alexa ranking of participating personal finance blogs to under 200,000. Of course, more popular sites that have a ranking already under the goal benefit too as their ranking increases as well.

Currently, our ranking is 795,000 for the past 3 months but a stronger 404,000 for the past 1 month. Of course, this is still way below the goal, but we have a few months to reach and hopefully surpass it.  Read more...

5 of the Best and Worst Stock Picks for Spring 2010

Every quarter, we release the best and the worst stock picks for the next 3 months based on market analysis, economic data, and trend indicators. We have compiled a great list for our spring collection.

If you think there are other must buy/ must drop picks, let us know.

Top 5 Best Picks for Spring 2010

1) WellCare Health Plans (WCG) – One of the most successful companies coming out of the health care reform bill. WellCare was able to successfully maneuver itself to be a mediator between the government and large health care companies. With over $1.2 billion in assets and no debt, it looks like one of the strongest non – pharmaceutical companies.  Read more...