Personal finance tips: Canceling a gym membership, and more

Three top pieces of financial advice — from narrowing down your investment options to safeguarding your data

Treadmill running
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Too many choices

Are your investment options overwhelming you? asked Carl Richards at The New York Times. The sheer number of available choices for parking your cash can make your head spin. There are almost 25,000 investment options among mutual funds and exchange-traded funds alone. "Realistically, you could spend your entire life looking for the perfect investment." Don't drive yourself crazy; just "use a broadly diversified, low-cost index fund" and call it a day. Excessive choice can be a paralyzing trap in any financial scenario, whether you're buying a house or a new insurance policy. "We could spend the rest of our lives researching an ever-increasing number of choices and searching for perfect, but to what end? We have better things to do."

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Sergio Hernandez is business editor of The Week's print edition. He has previously worked for The DailyProPublica, the Village Voice, and Gawker.