The word ‘hacker’ generally has a fairly negative connotation, hackers (traditionally) are the people who somehow get your credit card details and then buy lots of things without you knowing, the get into Pentagon missile systems and do all the things that are taboo electronically. Accepted that there are white and black hat hackers, white hat means they hack on the side of good (most of the good ones didn’t start out that way though!), black hat means they are on the side of evil (generally speaking). Damn hackers….

That was until ‘hacking’ became a good and positive thing in the form of ‘lifehacks‘ and ‘moneyhacks‘. This new phrase describes a ‘hack’ in its original meaning, a ‘hack‘ is a clever or quick fix, and it applies to more than square-eyed phreaks who get into your pc and rip-off your identity etc.

Lifehacks or moneyhacks are simple ways of doing everyday things with less effort or quicker, and they have dedicated followers and sites that share that information. And anybody can contribute, and anybody does.

Tips can range from anything such as ‘how to get more mileage from your fuel’ to budgeting to advanced mortgage information, like many things Internet based, it is a huge resource, its value however is only there if you choose to actually use the site.

Another site which is related to moneyhacks is ‘get rich slowly‘ which takes the popular ‘get rich quick’ and turns it on its head with common sense ideas and advice for people who want to use their money intelligently. These sites have a uniquely American take on things, and much of the advice is centred around the system in the US however, that doesn’t mean that the concepts are lacking in virtue, quite the opposite, in many cases all you have to do is change the $ to a € and it’s a perfectly rational proposition.

Ireland could use a site like this with a uniquely Irish perspective, my biggest surprise is that when I googled ‘how to save money’ in google.ie (Ireland only) almost all of the articles are from newspapers, there is not a dedicated moneyhacking site in this country yet, entrepreneurs, where are you?