Best new ways to save money

Towns with a city side

For a better housing bet, consider an "urban burb."

That's the term, coined by Fortune's Leigh Gallagher in her book The End of the Suburbs, for neighborhoods with a walkable downtown and access to mass transit. (Fortune and Money are part of Time Inc.)

Related: Best Places to Live

Homes in these areas held their value better during the recession and, says urban strategist Christopher Leinberger, will continue to do well as farther-flung suburbs lag.

Best new retirement tool...that you might be using wrong

From virtually nothing, sales of a product called a deferred-income annuity shot to $2 billion in 2013. What is it? Insurance against outliving your cash.

You pay a lump sum now and pick a future date to start collecting a monthly paycheck for as long as you live. The annuities caught on thanks to a bumpy stock market and a new marketing twist: Insurers now let you get income as soon as 13 months after you buy, so people are using the policy for income at younger ages.

Michael Kitces of Pinnacle Advisory Group likes the insurance feature -- you don't know how long you'll live. But he says returns are less appealing if you collect too young. "You need to start in the mid-seventies or eighties," he says.

For $100,000, a 55-year-old man can buy about $48,000 of income starting at 80. As with any insurance, you might not collect, but you'll be glad you're covered if you do.

Best new way to build a better bond portfolio

An advantage of individual bonds over funds is that you know what you get back if you hold to maturity. That allows you to "ladder": Use short-term bonds to protect against rate spikes, but also grab higher rates by buying longer-term bonds with money you won't need until later years.

Now a new kind of exchange-traded fund -- assets hit $4.3 billion in 2013 -- lets you ladder with diversified corporate bond funds. ETFs like the Guggenheim BulletShares series and iShares term-maturity funds give you exposure to bonds maturing in the same year. You might, for example, spread your interest-rate risk by splitting money among the 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 Guggenheim funds.

Best new index fund

The missing piece no more. If you want to diversify, you shouldn't ignore foreign bonds. But it took until this year for indexing giant Vanguard to launch Total International Bond. With fees of 0.23% of assets, VTIBX is the cheapest international bond mutual fund you're likely to find.

Best new way to build a better bond portfolio

An advantage of individual bonds over funds is that you know what you get back if you hold to maturity. That allows you to "ladder": Use short-term bonds to protect against rate spikes, but also grab higher rates by buying longer-term bonds with money you won't need until later years.

Now a new kind of exchange-traded fund -- assets hit $4.3 billion in 2013 -- lets you ladder with diversified corporate bond funds.

ETFs like the Guggenheim BulletShares series and iShares term-maturity funds give you exposure to bonds maturing in the same year. You might, for example, spread your interest-rate risk by splitting money among the 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 Guggenheim funds.

Best tweet

Man creates "all weather" portfolio strategy, God laughs. @ReformedBroker -- The Reformed Broker is Joshua Brown, an adviser and blogger

Brush up your LinkedIn profile

If you're looking for a new job -- or even thinking of thinking about it -- you probably have a LinkedIn page. You also know that working out how to use the site can be a job of its own. LinkedIn recently added two new features that could make a difference in job hunting, if you handle them well.

Show your work. When you set up or edit your profile, you now have the option to add web links and upload files. You might share with people in your industry a video of a great speech you made, a presentation, or examples from your creative portfolio.

Endorse (sparingly). The site also added a one-click function allowing you to "endorse" someone's skills. If you are on LinkedIn, you already know this can be an in-box-flooding pain. (More than 2 billion endorsements have been made since last fall.) How to handle it: Accept endorsements only for a few critical skills you really have and want to advertise, and make a few for people you know well. But don't drive slight acquaintances crazy with your clicks.

Best new ultracheap MBA alternative

An online course worth paying for. MOOCs -- that's for "massive open online courses" -- offer free web-based classes designed by some of the top universities in the world. While the cost is hard to beat, taking a free noncredit class doesn't do much for your résumé. That may be starting to change.

MITx, the MOOC program developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will offer an "XSeries" certificate to students who can pass a series of courses. The price is $100 per course for a service that verifies your identity and monitors your tests. (Go to Edx.org for more.)

This fall MITx began a seven-course certificate series in computer programming. This spring it will begin a three-course series in supply chain management.

Three hundred bucks to show you've learned a key business skill? You don't need a sky- high GMAT score to see that's a bargain.

Calling out the banks

Five years after banks' toxic loans imploded and brought the stock market down more than 50%, some things have changed. Banks face new regulations, and the financial sector (about 15% of the S&P 500) is posting profits.

That doesn't mean we've protected ourselves, says Stanford finance professor Anat Admati. While other critics focus on the size of the biggest banks, Admati argues the problem is really that banks are still allowed to borrow far too much.

Why she matters. A bipartisan group of senators has come out in support of requiring banks to beef up their balance sheets. In the meantime, her warning suggests that investors in bank stocks should be careful.

Best new read

You don't really know risk. Think risk is just losing money? Adviser William Bernstein says it's a bit more complicated. His latest ebook, Deep Risk, sorts risk into two types.

Shallow risk is a temporary drop in value -- your fund manager bets wrong, or an interest rate rise causes bond prices to fall. Dips are inevitable and a good reason to keep some cash, but you'll usually rebound.

Deep risk is a rare but severe permanent loss. High inflation is one deep risk; a long, Japan-style slump is another. A diverse portfolio that includes foreign stocks and inflation-protected Treasuries (TIPS) helps.

But as you near retirement, you'll need to revisit your asset mix. As Bernstein notes, shallow risk can turn into deep risk if you cannot afford even short-term losses. Know which end of the pool you are swimming in.

Best new long read

A personal finance reality check. In Pound Foolish, Helaine Olen criticizes much of the advice doled out to small investors and savers by Wall Street and the media.

Yes, she has knocks for a few Money articles over the years. But we liked Olen's revealing look at "free lunch" seminars that lure investors into high-priced variable annuities and her biting take on some of the leading finance gurus. She also breaks ground showing how academic behavioral finance researchers are helping financial companies hone their sales pitches.

Best new Nobel winners with ideas you can use

The 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics was shared by Eugene Fama and Robert Shiller. (Lars Peter Hansen was also honored.) Fama is most famous for showing that the stock market is hard to outwit. Shiller, by contrast, proved that sometimes the market can still be dumb and that stocks become overpriced. Sounds contradictory. But the ideas work together as warnings against overconfidence.

You probably don't have the skill to beat the market with your stock picks -- so buy an index fund. But you also can't count on stocks to always deliver high returns -- so hold other assets too.

Just what you really need

Wall Street likes to make money management complicated. University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack proved how simple it can be.

In April, Pollack held an online video discussion with author Helaine Olen about personal finance. "I said, kind of offhand, that the really good personal finance advice fits on one index card," he says. After being challenged on that by a commenter, he jotted down his tips on a four-by-six and posted it on his blog. It went viral. (Click here for a better view of the card.)

Cheap & simple. Pollack's only investment rule is to buy inexpensive diversified mutual funds. He says to avoid picking stocks yourself or paying high fees for active managers.

Focus on saving. More effective than trying to beat the market is targeting a high savings rate. Pollack's 20% is ambitious, but do that and you can afford to get other decisions wrong.

Keep the net. Pollack teaches social policy and helps care for his disabled brother-in-law, so he ended with a note on the importance of Social Security and Medicaid.

Best new bull...who's also a bear

When David Rosenberg was chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch, he was a famous bear -- a stance that looked pretty smart after the 2008 crackup.

Now Rosenberg, who's moved on to the firm Gluskin Sheff, has grabbed Wall Street's attention with his upbeat talk about growth. Yes, the economy is on track to expand only about 1.5% in 2013. Rosenberg, though, argues that any growth at all is a sign of underlying strength, given the artificial damage done by Washington's repeated budget standoffs.

With the stock market already up 30% over the past year, Rosenberg's optimism may not be enough to get you on the bullish bandwagon. Consider then, that Rosenberg's forecast is also a warning for bond investors. If the economy is stronger than most people think, higher interest rates and lower bond returns may be coming soon.

Can an app be your financial planner?

If you don't have a large portfolio, many financial planners aren't interested in you. Now there's a flood of new companies, backed by venture capital, trying to step into the gap with personalized financial advice via the web and apps.

Some, like Wealthfront and Betterment, use software to manage your investments, which they put into low-cost ETFs and rebalance for you. Annual fees typically run from .15% to .35% on top of ETF charges.

Another player, Personal Capital, gives you lots of free app tools, including a cool one that spotlights the 401(k) fees you pay, but also, for up to .95% of assets, will run your money and let you speak to a human planner.

Why it's good news. It remains to be seen if any of these sites will take off. (One hard trick for bots: gauging your true risk tolerance.) Yet as companies compete to get automated advice right and hone the software, better, cheaper options for investors should emerge. The web has already slashed the price of music and news; maybe it can happen with smart advice too.

Best new scary economic thought

Are the big innovations all done? One thing investors count on is that the economy expands over time. Seems like a safe bet: From 1860 to 2007 the U.S. grew 2% a year after inflation.

In a TED Talk in February (check it out at Ted.com), Northwestern economist Robert Gordon argued that the long boom was tech-driven and may be coming to an end. Wait -- aren't we awash in new technology? Sure, he said, but Facebook and iPads aren't as important as electric lights, cars, or even plumbing. As he put it, which would you rather give up -- everything invented in the past 10 years or your toilet?