Money. Purpose. Joy.

What's one of the most valuable yet underutilized corporate perks? Answer: tuition reimbursement. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, about 85 percent of large employers offer some type of educational assistance. However, less than 10 percent of eligible employees make use of such benefits.

Matt's View

One of the best investments we can make is an investment in ourselves. There's no such thing as guaranteed employment anymore. Yet by keeping our knowledge and skills up to date, we go a long way toward guaranteeing our employability.

Does your employer offer tuition reimbursement? If so, and if you're not making use of it, you're leaving a lot more than the cost of tuition on the table.

There's some good news for all of us non-Mensa members: A high IQ is not required for wise money management. As reported by ABC News and the Motley Fool, Ohio State University research scientist Jay Zagorsky has found that while people with higher IQs do tend to earn more, "there is no relationship between IQ scores and net wealth." In fact, something that often works against those of the smarty-pants persuasion, according to Zagorsky, is overconfidence. Some justify overspending with the assumption that they can always earn more.

Matt's View

After all of his considerable number crunching, Zagorsky concluded that one of the most important factors for building wealth is the habit of saving money each year. And it doesn't take a degree in rocket science to do that.

Let's face it; there are few more boring things we could do than spend a few hours creating a detailed inventory of our stuff. However, should we ever lose our stuff through a fire or other disaster, we'll be glad we fought off the yawns to get the job done. While several companies will gladly sell us software to make the job easier, Money magazine recently reported that the Insurance Information Institute offers an excellent free software program called Know Your Stuff.

Matt's View

Once you've created your home inventory, e-mail a copy of it to a friend or family member so there'll be a record in case your computer is stolen or destroyed. Or, save a copy on a CD or flash drive and keep it in a safe deposit box.

The average car loan today stretches to about 70 months--up from 62 last year. Some financing companies are even writing auto loans for as long as nine years. And nearly 30 percent of today's new car buyers owe more on their trade-ins than they're worth--up from about 20 percent five years ago. In part, a Wall Street Journal article attributed the trends to people's increasing tendency to evaluate the affordability of what they buy based on the monthly payment instead of the total cost, and the more frequent introduction of new features and designs by auto makers, which entice buyers to trade up before they've paid off their current cars.

Matt's View

Since most people could benefit more from some added financial margin than temperature-sensitive cup holders, the best way to do the car thing is to pay cash. If you're currently making payments on an auto loan, once the loan is paid off just keep making those same payments, but direct them to a savings account instead of your finance company. In about four years you'll have enough to pay cash for your next car--that is, assuming you can get by with one that can't parallel park itself.