Now is the best time to find better and faster ways to build a secure financial future.

However, it's hard to find the time to work on an investment strategy with all the other commitments in life.

Frequent Lifehacker readers already know that I need all the help I can get when it comes to saving money, so it should come as no surprise that I am interested in the ways people attempt to save money. Is it as simple as putting a few dollars into a different account every month? Or do I need to take a more concerned effort?

Chances are good you’ve at least heard of Bitcoin and the concept of digital currencies. Lately, they’ve been in the spotlight more than usual.

With good reason. Bitcoin prices have skyrocketed from just under $1,000 for one Bitcoin on January 1, 2017 to more than $6,000 at the beginning of November 2017.

That’s 600% in less than a year.

Enough people have made a decent amount through Bitcoin that investment groups are sitting up and taking notice.

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.