Robo advisors have become popular options for investors. They use tools to automatically, effortlessly manage and help diversify your investment portfolio - no human interaction required. And while this kind of automation makes them cheaper than a traditional financial advisor, that doesn't mean they're free.

We're all for "set and forget" investment portfolios, but keep in mind: That's not literal. You shouldn't completely forget about your investment accounts, because every now and then, they need a tune-up. Here are the three questions you should ask when rebalancing your portfolio.

Every time you hear that the market's taking a downward turn, you get the itch to sell your stocks, cash out your investments and hide in a hole, right? Turns out panic almost never helps investments.

People often get excited about the possibility of getting a nice return on their money through investing, so as soon as they have a little bit of cash in hand, they're ready to invest. They want to make their money work for them, and that's completely understandable. But not everyone is ready to jump in.

The Australian market closed with more losses today, ending a bad week for Aussie shareholders. The S&P/ASX 200 index is a market-capitalization weighted and float-adjusted stock market index of Australian stocks listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. This week, the index fell 4.2% and has fallen a whopping 10% since the start of 2016.

The popular US finance app Acorns is now available in Australia. Like the nut it is named after, the app takes something small -- your leftover change -- and attempts to grow it into something much bigger. This is achieved by automatically investing the money into a diversified portfolio of exchange traded funds (ETFs) whenever you make an online purchase. Here's how it works.

The Sydney property market is insanely hot right now, and the city attracts a lot of tourists. It doesn't automatically follow that it's a good idea to invest in holiday accommodation in Sydney, however.

Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI) is a one-off fee payable when borrowing more than 80 per cent of a property's value. It's yet another expense that can make life difficult for cash-strapped home buyers; even for a modestly priced property. This "hustler's guide" from Home Loan Experts outlines the various ways you can reduce -- or completely avoid -- your LMI fee.

Peter Ray is a private collector of war memorabilia based in Bilpin, NSW. The jewel of his collection is a Matilda II Mk IV infantry tank used by Australian army regiments during World War II. Purchased in 1980 for a mere $700, it currently commands a price tag of more than $400,000. Sometimes, weird investments have a way of paying off.

We've always recommended having a good emergency fund set up for when things go wrong. However, not all of life's surprises are bad. You should also consider setting up a fund for when opportunities find you.

My superannuation plan is currently set to a high-growth plan, and it has performed quite well this year. What are the signs I should look out for to judge if it is a good time to switch to a safer investment plan and safeguard myself from loss?

If you live in one of Australia's major cities (we mostly do), it can seem impossible to find a house or unit that's affordable and a reasonable distance from the centre. But it can be done. Here are the five most affordable suburbs for houses and units located within 20 kilometres of the CBD in Australia's capital cities.

House prices in Australia only dropped marginally in the last quarter, but the year-on-year picture is a little grimmer. The average decline in house prices between the last quarter of 2011 and the year before was 4.8 per cent, with Brisbane and Adelaide the worst-hit.

Generous tax concessions and a widespread belief that investing in property is the safest choice mean that owning a rental property is a popular choice for Australians. But where should you buy a house to get the best returns?

If you started investing $448 a month at 30 years old, Yahoo Finance says that a reasonable 8% return would put your savings over the million dollar mark in 35 years. The problem, of course, is finding that extra $450. To help ferret out every quarter in your couch cushions, the article suggests seven different potential expenses that, with slight adjustments, could easily produce the extra cash you need to start down the road to a million.

Mint, the web-based financial management application that took us by storm a few months back, is adding investment tracking to their already impressive feature set. Mint's investments, currently in beta, tracks everything from the performance of your Roth IRA to the value of your 401k, all from its attractive, easy-to-understand interface. As with Mint in general, you'll need to be comfortable trusting your data in their hands (if you're curious, you can read more about their security measures here). Mint investments is currently in private beta, but if you follow the link, they've set up a page for Lifehacker readers to sign up. You should get access to Mint's investments sometime next week, and we've been assured that there's no limits on signups. In the meantime, hit the jump for a closer look at Mint's investments interface.

Fortune magazine drops in on a Q&A Warren Buffett offered to 150 business students, and the advice dispensed by the Oracle of Omaha on investing and money in general is elegantly simple. When one student asked Buffett how to best spend his free time to further his investing knowledge, Buffett avoided generalised advice and told him to stick to what he knows. Fortune paraphrases:

For most people, the bulk of their income is going to come from earning power in their chosen profession. Therefore, from the standpoint of building wealth, free time is better spent sharpening one's professional skills rather than studying investing.

Does watching TV news or checking business news sites give you cold sweats as you ponder how your investments are doing? Are you logging into your financial site every day but still feel your money slipping away? Just ignore your money, J.D. at Get Rich Slowly says—stocks pay off in the long term, not day-to-day, and worrying about it is the easiest way to make a money-losing mistake:

In Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, the authors note that it's dangerous to watch your investments every day. When you pay close attention, you tend to become emotionally invested in even small movements. You lose sight of the long-term and make decisions based on short-term events. Peek in every month or so, but don't constantly check your investments.

The Simple Dollar personal finance blog posts a helpful primer for those thinking about getting started with stocks, or even just mutual funds and other market investments. Getting debt under control and keeping a reserve fund is the first priority, of course, but once you're comfortable in your financial skin, Trent recommends performing a risk inventory on yourself before even looking at a stock chart:

Spend some time thinking about this. Would you not worry if you woke up and found out that you had lost 5% of your investment if you knew in the long run it would build up in value? How about 20%? If you had $10,000 in stocks, and then over a very bearish month, $2,000 of that vanished, how would you honestly react? Would you take your money out?

Sage advice, and the rest of the post should be familiar to those who have met with financial counsellors before. For more beginners' guidance, check out Moolanamy's 35 common sense rules for investing.