Adhering to a strict financial plan is a lot like following a healthy diet. You do it because you know it will help you feel good now and set yourself up for the best possible future.

Traveller, let me give you my most useful tip for visiting Japan: The "konbini" is life. It's a one-stop shop for literally anything a wide-eyed tourist such as yourself may need while you explore the brightly lit corridors of Tokyo, or get swallowed by the serene silence of temples and shrines in Kyoto.

Thanks to today’s global society, almost all of us have family, friends and business contacts spread across the world. With so many international connections, at some stage everybody finds themselves faced with the need to transfer money overseas.

This task can be time consuming and complicated, however there is a way to make the process simple, fast and stress free.

Used to be, you'd sit down once a month with your bank statement, receipts and check register, and make sure all of your deposits and withdrawals lined up.

If you're not already aware, Amazon Australia seems to be knocking the price of a whole swath of products down - perhaps in preparation for Easter? Regardless, that means that the budding bargain hunter can trawl for hours on Amazon's homepage, trying to find a great deal.

Or they can come to us! We've loaded up five of the best bargains to throw cash at.

Very few would have predicted the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies toward the end of 2017 - fewer still may have predicted the dip that occurred shortly after.

How can you find the next crypto to go 'to the moon'. Recently, finder.com.au enlisted nine panellists to help predict just where twelve of the biggest cryptocurrencies may head in 2018 and, interestingly, Dogecoin is predicted to be one of the biggest movers.

There's no denying the gender pay gap. It's there: The average pay for a man, the average pay for a woman, and space between. The gap exists regardless of whether or not you believe it exists. Wage gap deniers don't deny the gap itself; they deny its significance. Women stay at home with children, so the numbers make sense, they say. Women don't negotiate, so of course there's a gap.

Just over a week ago, the Reserve Bank of Australia released the all new $50 note. The $50 is the most highly circulated bank note in this country as it's used to fill ATMs. And highly circulated notes have traditionally been attractive to counterfeiters as they can pass fakes more easily as there are so many notes, at different stages of wear in circulation. But the new "pineapple" is different to its predecessor. And the makers of some of its security features, Leonhard Kurz Australia, say it's almost impossible to copy.

Now that the New Payments Platform (NPP) is live and banks are slowly coming to the party in offering access to their own PayID system for transferring funds, the spotlight has turned to security. Is the NPP platform safe for consumers? Can your PayID be compromised or hacked in some way? Or is it really a reverse lookup system for mobile phone numbers?

Bitcoin's plummeting and a whole lot of cryptocurrencies are going down with it. Since early January, we've seen half the market value disappear. Some initially called it a 'bloodbath'. But it's been getting worse and worse. A single coin was once worth nearly $25000, now it's floating under $10000.

Is it time to get out?

That's a real tough question to answer.

Money is an abstract and complicated topic, made all the more so by a never-ending stream of financial products, such as mortgages, credit cards and student loans. So how do you make the most efficient use of yours?

It's easier to give advice than it is to take it. You tell your friend she really needs to dump that jerk, but meanwhile, you can't break things off with your own jerk. Most of us have been there, and that dynamic rings especially true when it comes to money. According to a recent study, we may overestimate the value of our own money versus someone else's.

How much to have saved by every age is a perennial personal finance question, right up there with how to create a budget and how to start investing. But like so many money decisions, there's no single, magic number that works for everyone.

Good morning! Here's some cracking morning deals for Lifehacker readers!

NBN Co’s business model has been slammed by major telecommunications providers, which say the government needs to reconsider whether the company should have to fully recoup its investment costs.

The holidays are an expensive time for everyone - holiday travel, gifts, food, booze and festive clothes can break the bank for even the most frugal. But December can be especially financially brutal for single people, says Carey Purcell, writing for the Washington Post. This is in large part because single people are generally shouldering their living expenses alone, rather than splitting them with a partner, which obviously reduces their disposable income at holiday-time. But, as Purcell points out, it's also due to differing expectations for singles than for partnered people.

Amazon looms just over the horizon but eBay is here to remind you they are a big deal with 20% off all sorts of tech products - smartphones, cameras, laptops, routers, graphics cards, TVs, drones, headphones... the list goes on!

Today marks Equal Pay Day, when based non the disparity in pay between men and women, the latter are effectively working from free from now until the end of the year. It's an emotional topic, but what does science have to say about the whole issue?

A common argument for why the gender pay gap exists is that women tend to work in lower-paid occupations. But new in-depth research has found even when contributions to their employers are the same, women are still paid only 84 cents for every $1 men receive.

Why? Well, it's sexism, they say.

The first thing I did on my 18th birthday was go play a few hands of blackjack, and I've been playing ever since. I'm no high roller, but I know my way around a casino. If you're not sure where to begin, let me help.