How many subscriptions do you pay for each month? Your money zips away via autopay, and you grow accustom to the benefits of such memberships: The trial-size makeup box. The monthly video-game t-shirt subscription. That app that lets you customise at-home yoga routines. The $20 or $30 per month may seem like small potatoes in the greater scheme of your monthly budget. But what if you started thinking beyond the monthly cost? Would you still want that subscription if you had to pay up front for it?

According to You Need a Budget (YNAB), my total net worth is currently $108,940. That’s $27,213 higher than it was six months ago, when I switched my budgeting app from Mint to YNAB and began focusing on growing my net worth as quickly as possible.

I wasn’t expecting the numbers to grow quite this fast, honestly. So let’s look at how they did.

A lot of us think about our money in terms of what it can get us. When we’re earning X (or when we’ve saved X), we can purchase Y. But if you’re working towards long-term wealth — whether for financial security, financial independence or retirement — it’s just as important to think about what you aren’t buying.

As someone who usually defaults to tracking expenses by hand, I challenged myself this month to determine the best app to facilitate expense-tracking. There are plenty of options out there, but I put Daily Budget, Wally, EveryDollar, and Dollarbird through the wringer of my everyday spending.

Every dollar counts when you’re saving for retirement or another big financial goal. That includes the dollars you’re paying in brokerage fees and losing to expense ratios - which can add up to a lot more than you realise, thanks to what’s called “negative compounding.”

If you’re no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck, it’s time to get that money out of your everyday transaction account.

Whether you finally landed that big client or you finally won the lottery, an influx of surprise cash is always a good thing. And it also requires some planning. Here are my thoughts on the best ways to allocate that extra money, in order.

Everyone who reads this site has heard a thing or two about the importance of having an emergency fund. But when such an emergency comes along, how do you use that money wisely?

I took two weeks off - two weeks, in a row - this month.

Automating your finances fixes everything, right? Well, only if you’re still monitoring your money on a regular basis, it turns out. The Wall Street Journal interviewed a handful of money experts about the biggest ways people waste money. And we won’t talk about what they said about that, because this Lifehacker vertical is a latte shame-free zone.

Budgeting apps are plentiful, but it can take some trial and error to find one you love. And if you’re someone who’s trying to spend less time in front of a screen, sometimes the last thing you want to do is open your budgeting app for a checkup.

When I stumbled into adulthood a couple of decades ago, money was an absolute mystery to me—or at least, the management of it was. Expenses like car maintenance, water, trash, health insurance and taxes came as a huge shock, stunning me with how quickly they could consume my pay. And who knew food was so expensive?

If there’s one message that we’ve heard over and over about the trade war, it’s that life is going to get more expensive. And that could be a reason to do some shopping right now.

How many money apps do you have? Turns out, the perfect number might be two: a budgeting app and an investment tracker.

If you aren’t getting as much freelance work as you used to, it’s time to start pitching again.

It seems that while many people are embracing new payment systems that help to extricate finds from their wallets and bank accounts, they aren't quite as good at managing their finances as they should be. While banking apps and online payments are popular, tools for managing expenses are far less popular.

As a person who recently lost their job, I’ve quickly had to adapt to a routine of unemployment.

In 2017, for the first time in my life, I actually stuck to a resolution. What's more, I'd failed at the same resolution -- to make a budget and stick to it -- for many previous years. Now, if you think there's something shameful in a grown person not being able to handle her finances, you're right!

There are lots of arguments for the respective benefits to freelancing versus full-time employment. It still seems like there are more freelancers every year, and fewer people get to choose. And in any case, one of the notable downsides of freelancing is the marked lack of stability.