Read location-specific travel guides before you go to learn about the ease or difficulty of using a credit card at your destination.

FORBES: 8 Considerations For Using Your Credit Card Abroad

The survey of each country covers the ease or difficulty of doing business by a number of measures, such as procedures needed to start a legal business, rules concerning the hiring and firing of workers, registering property and enforcing commercial contracts.

FORBES: This Money Won't Buy Happiness

Miyamoto recognizes that there is pleasure in difficulty but also in ease, in mastery, in performing a familiar act with aplomb, whether that be catching a baseball, dancing a tango, doing Sudoku, or steering Mario through the Mushroom Kingdom, jumping on Goombas and Koopa Troopas.

NEWYORKER: Master of Play