If I had to give someone advice on how to keep a marriage in good shape, here’s what it would be.

Every day, do two things. One, tell your spouse that you love them and tell them something specific about them that you love. Two, spend half an hour doing something that helps them in some way and expect no compliments or comment from it – do it just because you care about that person. This works better if you focus on something that you know will really matter to your partner. For instance, if your partner loathes doing the dishes, just do them without comment once or twice a week.

Do these two things every day and you’ll be surprised how much better your relationship goes.

Money Lessons Learned from Traveling Well For me, money is better spent on experiences than stuff. (@ saving advice)

Can Money Buy Freedom? It can do that only in a limited sense. On some level, you have to choose to be free from the things that worry you. You can be rich and still be depely worried (and controlled by) lots of things. (@ get rich slowly)

Beware the Entrepreneur’s Recoil If you succeed at something, you tend to become more risk-averse and that often leads to undoing what made you succeed in the first place. (@ jonathan fields)

How to Get the Most from Your Gym Membership & Avoid Burning Out I usually have two things that keep me from really hitting a home run at a gym. The first is the soreness that comes from a period of not exercising. It goes away in a few weeks, but it’s hard to get through. The second is injury and convincing myself to return to the routine after recovering from a minor injury. (@ len penzo)

One of the fun things about my wife’s car is that it has a constant readout of the miles per gallon on the dashboard. It lets you know what your miles per gallon over the last five minutes is, the mpg of your entire trip, as well as your estimated miles per gallon right at that moment.

The data it produces is really accurate. We’ve measured this ourselves by checking the gas mileage manually by calculating it from the odometer and gas receipts and comparing it to the data in the car.

It’s often a competition between Sarah and myself to see who can get the best gas mileage over a given trip. Not only is it a bit of friendly competition, the reward for it is that we save money over the course of that trip.

For example, I managed to drive an entire three hour car trip while keeping the fuel economy average over 50 miles per gallon. I did this by utilizing lots of little tricks along the way, and doing so saved us several dollars in gas while only eating up a few more minutes of driving.

Sarah, on the other hand, managed to drive about fifteen miles while keeping the fuel economy average over sixty miles per gallon. She was aided by wind, which was blowing strongly in almost the perfect direction for her route, but it was still quite impressive. It added maybe thirty seconds to the drive but saved her about $0.50 in gas.

If this sounds like hypermiling, you’d be right. Although we don’t go to the extreme measures often advocated by hardcore hypermilers, we do try out the techniques.

The real impact of doing it is that several techniques for improving our fuel economy have become completely second nature for our driving. Here are some of those techniques that you can easily translate to your own driving. They might add a minute or two to your drive, but they’ll save you enough money along the way to make up for it.

Stick close to 55 miles per hour on the open road. This seems to be the sweet spot in terms of speed. If you go much faster than 55, your fuel efficiency starts to decrease. If you get much above 65, it decreases rapidly, somewhere in the realm of about 1% fuel efficiency lost for every mile per hour you’re going over 65.

When going through stoplights, accelerate slowly and coast. Rather than accelerating strongly out of a light, racing up to the next light, and then hitting the brakes, instead accelerate slowly out of a light and when you see the light turning red half a block in front of you, let off the accelerator and just coast until you need to stop. This minimizes your gas usage and gets you to the stoplight with plenty of time to spare.

When going down a hill, lay off the brake. Let your car accelerate a bit naturally, then use that extra acceleration to coast for a while when you get to the bottom of the hill.

When going up a hill, lay off the accelerator. Many people hit the accelerator when going up a hill. Don’t do it. Instead, let your speed go down as you’re climbing the hill, then slowly bring it back up when you get to the top. Often, hills link into each other, so you’ll often use the speed from the previous hill to climb the next one or get your speed back from the previous climb when going down the other side of a hill.

Things I don’t recommend that you might see as gas mileage tips include rolling through stop signs and overinflating your tires. The former is simply begging to get into an accident, while the latter tactic makes it very easy to blow out a tire.

Making a few little changes to how you drive can save you a surprising amount of fuel without adding much time at all to your trip. I’ll happily arrive a few minutes later if I’m saving a few bucks in gas.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

In the past few months, we’ve ended our subscription to GameFly, reduced our subscription to Netflix to streaming-only, stopped receiving four magazines, and given away or sold a bunch of items around our household.

At first glance, one might think we were going through some sort of economic crisis. After all, this is the exact same kind of cutting back that I regularly suggest to people who are finding themselves in a financial pinch.

We actually made these decisions based on time, not money.

With each one of those spending cuts we made, we realized that we simply weren’t getting our money’s worth out of the item.

With GameFly, I recognized that my time playing electronic games was actually pretty small, and most of that time was actually spent at my computer. We would get a game in the mail, it would get played an hour or two on the day it arrived, then it would usually sit for a long time and eventually get mailed back.

With Netflix, we had a very similar problem. The disks we’d get in the mail would sit for a month or so until we could find a great evening to watch that film.

With the magazines, we realized that some of our magazines were consistently going unread. We’d end up with a pile of unread magazines, then one day we’d just flip through them, tear out a piece or two that we wanted to read, and toss a pile of magazines.

With the other items around our home, we just got rid of items that we didn’t use.

In each case, we cut our spending on an item that we didn’t use enough to justify the cost.

Over and over again, though, I see people having a challenging time making that justification or, in many cases, never bothering to make that justification at all.

My own original experience with Netflix is a perfect example of this.

About eight years ago, I opened a Netflix account. Sarah and I used it like crazy for several months, then the usage dropped off. It reached a point where we would have a couple of Netflix envelopes on our DVD player for weeks, almost gathering dust. Why didn’t we cancel? We liked the convenience of having the movies available if we did decide to watch them. We ended up keeping the account until our 2006 financial meltdown, and only resubscribed a few years later due to the availability of streaming and a large backlog of children’s movies that our kids wanted to watch.

The natural counterargument that many people have when they hear about such changes is that we’re losing some degree of convenience or joy by making these changes. In fact, we actually have great alternatives to each of these if we were to use that service.

For example, the reason we had GameFly is so that I could try out new video games if I wished. However, at the rate of one per month, it’s actually less expensive to just keep trading games at the local used game store. If I end up keeping a game for two or three months (as would happen), I’m far ahead simply trading games.

With Netflix, if we decide that we want to watch a particular movie that’s not on streaming, we have lots of options to rent that movie, from Redbox to Amazon Instant Video. Considering that we’re looking at most one rental a month, it’s far cheaper to just rent them individually.

The same concept is true for the magazines. If I just bought a weekly magazine at the newsstand once a month when something interested me, it’s still far cheaper than the cost of the subscription.

A subscription can save you money if you use it consistently, but if you’re not using it consistently, you’re better off just buying or renting individual items when the opportunity comes up.

In the end, it’s all about time. If your interests are such that you’re actually devoting a lot of your time to a particular hobby, a subscription service might make it worthwhile for you. If you’re doing it mostly for the convenience of the one time every month or two you actually end up using it, drop the subscription and find another option. Your wallet (and your clutter) will thank you.

Depending on the specific model, your car loses 1-2% fuel efficiency for every 100 pounds of extra weight in the car. That’s a surprising amount that can really add up.

For example, let’s say you’re matching the extra weight that a friend of mine (who we’ll call Cathy) carries in her car. She consistently carries (mostly) unused car seats in the back seat of your car, plus she hauls around a box of books in the trunk along with a few other excess items. The sum total of that extra load is about 70 pounds.

That means, depending on the model, Cathy is burning an extra 0.7 to 1.4% in gas just due to this extra weight. Let’s say it’s 1%.

If her car gets 20 miles to the gallon with the weight in it and she commutes, putting 20,000 miles on it per year, she’s burning 9.9 extra gallons of gas per year just due to carrying the extra junk.

Say goodbye to $33 or so a year in just fuel costs, Cathy, never mind the additional wear on all of your car’s components.

Even a slight difference of just ten pounds can have a real financial impact. Let’s say you’re driving the same car Cathy is, where you’re getting 20 miles to the gallon and you’re driving 20,000 miles per year. That 0.15% in additional weight is eating up 1.5 gallons in gas per year, costing you about $5 in additional fuel along with slight additional wear on your car.

The message here is clear: get the excess weight out of your car.

How can you do that? Simply make sure that you’re not carrying anything unnecessary in your trunk or your backseat. Evaluate what’s in there and get rid of the things that you don’t need to be carrying back and forth.

I’m constantly amazed at the things people carry in their trunk, from huge assortments of shoes to large gun cases. These things add weight to the car and you pay for that weight directly at the fuel pump and indirectly whenever you get maintenance work done on your car or need a repair done.

There’s only one exception to this rule that I’ve found. If you’re seeing any chance of icy roads, it’s worthwhile to have extra weight in your car because it improves your traction and keeps you safe. I often carry that extra weight in the form of sand bags or rock salt, both of which can help you in a rough winter situation. The extra safety is well worth losing a few percent in fuel efficiency for a season.

Aside from that, you’re only saving money and helping your automobile’s lifespan by reducing the load you’re carrying. If you’re not hauling it around for a purpose, don’t haul it around.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Vacuum sealed bags
2. Boardgame with new couple friends
3. Investing for house down payment
4. Roth IRA versus Roth 401(k)
5. Hedging bets for retirement
6. Multiple savings “funds”
7. Extra mortgage payment impact
8. Car selling advice
9. Dodgy mortgage lender behavior
10. Going back to school

Sarah and I attended a Super Bowl party yesterday hosted by a couple who have two giant Saint Bernards as pets.

I love the dogs. They’re like children in a very big body. They want to hug you and play with you and they wear themselves out from all the excitement.

Q1: Vacuum sealed bags
I was wondering what your take on vacuum seal bags is. We have 2 freezers and stock way up on meat and frozen vegetables when we catch a really good sale. Especially since we live way out in the boonies with the closest store being 17 miles away. My question is, with the price of the vacuum seal rolls (we make our own bags) how much are really saving by doing this. I do wash, sanitize and re-use the bags until they get too small to use. So, I get 3-5 uses out of each bag depending on what the size of it was to begin with.
- Megan

I used a vacuum sealing system for a while. I found that they merely make it possible to store food in the freezer for just a little while longer than ordinary Ziplocs. Eventually, the freezer burn gets to the vacuum sealed stuff, too.

Dollar for dollar, I’m pretty happy with the gallon freezer Ziploc bags that we use. We get at least a dozen uses out of them (using masking tape for the labeling) and there’s no equipment.

The only disadvantage with freezer Ziplocs is that the food doesn’t stay protected from the freezer burn for quite as long, but if you’re reasonably consistent about eating your frozen goods, it’s not a big deal.

Q2: Boardgame with new couple friends
You’ve probably run into this, so I figure I would ask you. My wife and I play board games and card games with each other quite a lot and we also play with other friends. We’re going to have a couple over soon that’s open to trying some games, but have never played anything other than things like Monopoly when they were kids. Do you have any “go to” games for this situation?
- Shawn

My default games for these situations is either Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan. I usually bring them both out and give a one-sentence explanation of each, then let them decide.

However, I throw that out the window if I know there’s a game that will really fit the other interests of the people involved. For example, my wife has a friend who is really into the “zombie apocalypse” subgenre, as is the friend’s husband. We’re already planning on inviting them over to play Last Night on Earth after dinner.

Remember that you never want to overwhelm someone with a game if they’ve never played many games. Some games are just more complicated than others, and when in doubt, go for the one with simpler rules.

Q3: Investing for house down payment
I am 26 and my soon to be fiancee and I want to buy a house in 5 years. We are debt free, already have an adequate emergency fund, and I recently got a raise from 62k/yr to 85k/yr. I had been saving $100/month for the down payment, but that’s not nearly enough and I intend to take the difference in my paychecks and put it all to saving for this goal. I have been using SmartyPig to save for this, but the interest rate of 0.7% is bumming me out. Would you recommend investing in bonds? I know bond duration should be less than my investment time frame, but I’m also concerned about the tax implications (as I’ve never invested in bonds, and only know that they are less tax efficient than stocks). I already max out my Roth IRA contribution in an aggressive portfolio, and I contribute another 5k/yr to a similarly aggressive portfolio at my employer (no match there, sadly). Is there any tax sheltering I can do for my house down payment saving? I know IRAs allow you to withdraw for a first time home purchase, but I’m concerned about losing out on my retirement goals if I do that (plus 5k/yr is not enough to get me where I need to be for this down payment). Am I worrying too much about taxes and should just go for a short- to intermediate-term bond index fund at Vanguard (where my Roth IRA is)?
- Rick

I think you’re worrying far too much about the taxes here.

The real reason people worry about tax sheltering is that they’re trying to minimize their total tax bill taking into account a lot of years. For example, they might want to pay minimal taxes on their investments in a year where they earn a lot of income from other sources, and pay more of the tax load in a year where they earn little income from other sources. Eventually, you do have to pay the income tax on your investments – and it’s only on the gains, anyway. If you invest $100,000 and earn a 2% gain on that investment and find yourself in the 25% tax bracket, you’re talking about only $500 in taxes.

It sounds like you’re looking at a fairly short term period where you’re worrying about this, and it doesn’t sound like you’re expecting significant changes in income during that period. The only real advantage that such tax manipulations might get you is if you think you won’t be prepared to pay such an amount one year, you expect huge changes in how income taxes are assessed, or you think you might see a big income bump. If neither of those is true, you have very, very little to be worrying about.

Q4: Roth IRA versus Roth 401(k)
My employer gives the option to contribute to a regular 401K and/or a Roth 401K. I currently contribute 14% to the Roth 401K, 0% to the regular 401K, with my employer matching the a percentage of the first 6%. My employer matches the first 4% and I currently do not contribute to a Roth IRA. My yearly contribution comes out to about 12,000.

Should I instead be contributing in the Roth 401K up to what my company matches, then maxing out the Roth IRA at 5,000, and then anything leftover going back into the Roth 401K?

The past couple of years I have put any increases in my salary straight to retirement contributions. I should be on pace to be able to max out the Roth 401K and Roth IRA contributions within the next 4 years so it’s more of a short term problem for me.
- Sully

The first thing I’d do is make sure I was milking every single drop of possible employee matching, as the value of that blows away any tax benefits you might get.

Once that’s covered, I would max out the Roth at $5,000 and contribute the rest to the normal account. This diversifies you in both pre- and post-tax retirement savings, which hedges your bets against whatever may come in terms of taxation changes.

You seem to be completely on the right path here. Good work.

Q5: Hedging bets for retirement
My husband (31) makes $120,000 and I (26) make $70,000 per year, so we are well over the income limit to contribute to a Roth IRA. We would like to take advantage of the Roth accounts at least in part to hedge our tax burden in the future. Currently my husband contributes the max in a non-deductible, traditional IRA and I contribute 5% of my income to my Roth 401k. My employer matches that 5% dollar for dollar and has a discretionary extra contribution which has been 10% of my salary per year for a number of years. Since all of my employer’s contributions are pre-tax and we are not eligible for Roth IRA or deductible traditional IRA accounts as it stands now we are only contributing 5% of my income on a Roth basis.

Should we put more money in the Roth 401k or convert some of the money in the traditional IRA to a Roth in order to hedge our tax bets for retirement? Additionally, would it make sense at all to convert the traditional IRA to Roth since we are already using after tax money to fund it, even though it is treated as pre-tax? That seems like we’d be paying taxes twice on the money.
- Kendra

Converting a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA more or less means that you’re paying the income taxes on the money now rather than at retirement age.

By paying now, you’re providing yourself some level of tax-free income in retirement. If you can shoulder that tax hit now, it can be a good idea.

I usually recommend that people do as you suggested and hedge their bets between pre-tax and post-tax (Roth) retirement investments. This way, you’re spreading out your taxes between now and retirement since you don’t know for sure which point will have the higher tax rate.

Q6: Multiple savings “funds”
One thing that I’ve noticed through reading your posts is that you mention you several ‘funds’ that you put money back into. Savings, emergency, appliance replacement, etc. My question is: how do you manage these various funds? Do you have multiple bank accounts, one bank account and a spreadsheet showing the balance on each fund, multiple piggy banks, etc? That’s one of the biggest problems we’ve had when it comes to allocating money to specific funds. No matter what method we try, it takes more time to put money in each one, or maintain the balance in each one.
- Calista

I do use multiple savings accounts for this. I handle all of the transfers automatically from one bank which makes the automatic transfers really easy from their online banking servies.

ING Direct, to name one specific bank, also allows you to open as many savings accounts as you wish under your name and handle them all through one login. You can set up all kinds of transfers using their service – it’s one I’ve used for years.

It really comes down to how convenient your bank’s online services make such tasks. If you have great online services, this type of thing can be really easy.

Q7: Extra mortgage payment impact
I have a $107,895 mortgage that I have 23 years left to pay on (it is a 30 yr mortgage) at 5.5% interest. If I make two extra payments a year (that go to principle only) how quickly can I get it paid off?
- Leona

For starters, I’d highly suggest playing around with a mortgage calculator like this great one at Bankrate.

As for your specific situation, the exact answer depends on when exactly you started paying your mortgage off and exactly how long ago that was. I guesstimated that your original mortgage was for $120,000 and you’re just a little over seven years into the mortgage.

Given that, making two extra payments a year would shave just a bit under six years off the end of your mortgage. For just making 17% in extra payments, you’re shaving about 25% off the length of your mortgage. That’s money ahead, no matter how you slice it.

Q8: Car selling advice
My husband recently bought a new car, and now we’re in the process of getting his old car ready to sell. We’ve checked the Kelly Blue Book value for it, which says in its condition, we should be able to fetch about $3,500 for it in a private sale. Neither one of us has sold a car before, and we’re not sure how to go about doing it. What would be the best places to list it? How should we go about negotiating? Should we start at $3,500, higher or lower? We both find it hard to believe we could sell it for so much just because it has so many miles, but it’s in pretty good condition otherwise. Plus, we have proof for why we would ask that much; it’s not like we pulled a number out of nowhere. We need to get at least $2,000 out of it because our emergency savings recently took a hit when we had a plumbing emergency, and that will get us back to where the savings needs to be at, but is going down all the way to $2,000 ridiculous when supposedly we can get $3,500 for it?
- Tessa

First of all, the Blue Book value of a car is what you should consider a reasonable selling price for the car. It’s not a guarantee or anything at all. In order to sell a car, you have to have a willing buyer for the price.

My suggestion would be to define what you consider to be the minimum amount you’d sell the car for, then add at least 25% of that price to the car without exceeding 10% more than Blue Book value. If you exceed Blue Book value by too much, very few shoppers will bother looking at your car.

Pricing a car fairly high gives you plenty of room for negotiation, and buyers that can negotiate the price of a car down some is more likely to buy it. Just don’t put it so high that you scare away people to begin with.

Q9: Dodgy mortgage lender behavior
A few years ago I fell behind on my mortgage. My mortgage company was “good” enough to restructure the mortgage even though it took almost 2 years to get everything settled with them. The initial lapse was my fault, but it took them 9 months between 2 separate decisions to let me restructure the mortgage. The whole time they’re adding fees. The original loan amount was $169,000. I had paid on it for 2 years when this happened. Now the loan amount is $203,000 and I can’t get any information from them about why this is. I’ve called a number of times over the past 6 months, each time they promise to send me all the information, and I never get it. Is this illegal what they are doing since they can not provide me with the information?
- Mark

If I were you, I’d contact a lawyer.

My initial impression is that you’re dealing with a financial institution that’s struggling in some fashion or another. The current climate of the real estate lending market is a mess, and some companies are not handling it well.

$35,000 is a significant amount of money. A decent lawyer should be able to help you resolve this situation.

Q10: Going back to school
I currently have a student loan of $14,700 at 4.5% fixed interest rate. I have a master’s degree in marine biology and work in my field, but my salary is quite low. I’m playing with the idea of going to nursing school in the fall of 2013, which would give me job security and a better income (very important in my rural area). I love my job, but I want to go in a different direction. Nursing school tuition would be about $11,000 (3 semester program, since I already have a degree), would require increased use of my car, and because it’s an accelerated program, I would not be working. Of course there will be books, and normal living costs as well. I’m wondering if I should save every penny for nursing school, or pay as much of my loan down as possible?

I pay $200/month to my IRA. My minimum student loan payment is $132 (I have no other debt). Right now, I can probably pay about $350 towards that loan monthly. Is it best to pay off this loan, or save for school, and thus decrease the amount of a second student loan that I will need in the future? Should I decrease my IRA contribution and put it towards my loan?
- Erin

If I were in your shoes, I would continue the IRA payments and the minimum student loan payments for now and save as much as I possibly could to have a fat chushon in your savings account for when you start school.

Having that cash in your savings account will make it much easier to make ends meet during this period of reduced income. That’s really the key – you need to make sure you’re still paying your monthly bills. Your best friend is improved cash flow and access to an easy cash reserve, and since the first doesn’t really seem possible, your best bet is to maximize the second.

I would also look into forbearance on that student loan for any period where you return to school. If you can eliminate that monthly payment during your crunch time, all the better.

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

Of all the useful specific pieces of information in your car’s manual, the manufacturer’s maintenance schedule is perhaps the most useful. It tells you exactly how often normal maintenance should be performed on your car based on the odometer, and it’s that maintenance that will keep your car on the road without worry for a long time.

I can speak from experience on this topic.

The very first car I owned was a 1985 Buick Skyhawk. It was a rusty old beast that a friend of my parents had basically abandoned. He had driven it practically to death and it needed several repairs to become road worthy, so I invested some significant time and quite a bit of savings into that car.

I loved that car and the sense of freedom that it represented, but I didn’t have a clue about how to keep it running. Once I had the thing working, I pretty much drove it into the ground. When it stopped running once, I took it to a garage where a guy showed me that my fluids were basically sludge.

That got me to regularly replace my oil and transmission fluids, but most of the rest of the maintenance was lost on me.

In college, my wife-to-be Sarah was driving a van when a master timing belt blew out. It turned out that the belt was about 25,000 miles past time for replacement according to the maintenance schedule. This resulted in us spending a night in a very tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

Rather than looking at the schedule, though, I just kept adding things like this to the “checklist” in my head. Whenever I would go to a repair place, they’d just tell me something else to worry about and I’d try to remember it – and usually fail.

It wasn’t until 2006 or so when I really began to recognize that the maintenance schedule in the glove compartment was really useful. It’s just so simple to schedule an appointment every two or three months, get the next line in that schedule filled in (usually, it’s every 5,000 miles on newer cars), and be on your merry way.

It’s also far cheaper, less stressful, and easier on your time management, too. It’s just better to drop maybe $20 or $30 every few months and maybe an extra $100 to $200 a year on maintenance on your vehicle than to watch something blow out a year and a half later, causing you to lose hundreds out of pocket on repairs and likely find yourself in a real pinch in terms of getting to work or getting to other life responsiblities.

With our two newest vehicles, we’ve followed that maintenance schedule in our manual to the letter. Every item has been handled right on time, within a few hundred miles on either side.

Guess what? We’ve had no significant breakdowns of any kind in years. No emergencies, no unexpected smoke from under the hood, no thousand dollar towing and repair bills.

It’s just been regular maintenance and cheap, worry-free driving.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

I’ve decided to discontinue the weekly book reviews for the time being. I have reviewed hundreds of personal finance books over the years and, frankly, there aren’t enough new and compelling personal finance books coming out to justify weekly reviews. I’ve read too many books recently that just duplicated stuff said in other books. Instead, I’ll irregularly review interesting new personal finance books on Sunday mornings, and I’ll cap off the series by listing the ten books (of the hundreds I’ve reviewed) that have had the most impact on me.

Each of these ten books contains some powerful ideas that made me rethink some aspect of my finances, my career path, or my other personal choices that impacted these things. Each one of these is a powerful and useful read, and I highly recommend that everyone read most of the books on this list. They’re presented in no particular order after the first one.

Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
This is the personal finance book that turned my life around. It’s as simple as that.

I picked up this book at the library when I was struggling with figuring out what to do next. I had come to the realization that I was in real financial trouble, but as for coming up with a plan and really understanding how money fit into my life, I was lost.

This book isn’t really about how to invest your money or what specifically to do with your dollars. It’s much more about figuring out why you earn money and why you make the choices you make with it. It forces you to think about your finances in a completely different way.

I read this book in mid-2006. Since then, I have paid off almost $300,000 in debt and am currently debt free. It took a massive mental shift for that to happen, and I attribute much of it to this book.

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
If there’s one single book I’d suggest for dealing with the challenges of debt, it would be The Total Money Makeover, without a doubt.

It does the things that people seriously in debt most need better than any other book. It provides an incredibly straightforward plan for escaping from the pit of debt and it provides forceful cheerleading to go right alongside that message.

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz
Never Eat Alone addresses the challenges of building a social network, but it adds two ingredients to the mix that Dale Carnegie and the like are missing.

First, Keith is pretty obviously an introvert, and the book is written from that perspective. There are many elements of this book that may seem obvious to a strong extrovert that aren’t as clear-cut for introverts. This made the book click for me.

Second, a big part of the book is service oriented. If you want to achieve something in life, help others. It’s as simple as that. This is the way I tend to view the world, and it’s a perspective that’s been reinforced over time.

Born to Buy by Juliet Schor
This book, more than any other, really opened my eyes to the impact that marketing has on all of us, starting even before birth and really picking up during infancy. Our brains are just inundated with marketing messages all through life.

If you doubt the power that such messages have, this book is an essential read. I would encourage anyone with a child – or anyone even considering having a child – to pick this one up, read it thoughtfully, and reflect on it deeply, not just in terms of your child but in terms of the impact on your own life.

Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun
I consider public speaking to be one of the two most valuable career skills a person can have. If you can present your ideas clearly to others, you’re going to do well.

This is, far and away, the best book I’ve ever read on the art of public speaking. It includes every tactic I’ve ever used successfully in getting myself up there on a stage and includes countless more useful ideas and anecdotes for making that challenging process work.

The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, and Michael LeBoeuf
This is the single volume I’d recommend for anyone who wants to know more about investing. It tackles investing from the basics (getting your personal finances under control, because the less you spend, the more you can invest) through to almost every investment topic an ordinary individual investor would want to know about.

What sets this book apart is the consistent ideas and tone. The key idea, really, is inexpensive and simple diversification. You want to be invested in a lot of things so that if one thing collapses, you’re not completely bankrupt, while at the same time you don’t want it to be overly complicated so that you can’t really understand what’s going on.

The “Bogleheads” lay it all out clearly in this book. It can be a challenging read at times, but it’s a consistently worthwhile read and one that will really help you solve your investing problems.

Getting Things Done by David Allen
What’s the other valuable skill, the second career skill I alluded to above? It’s time and information management. You need to be able to utilize your time effectively and know how to tackle the genuinely important things (and toss the rest).

That’s exactly what this book does. It offers up a number of incredibly powerful principles for getting the multitude of things you need to get done in your life finished. It goes beyond that and offers a complete system for using those principles, but honestly, it’s the principles that really make this book.

This book changed how I organized my time in such a drastic fashion that I was able to launch and build The Simple Dollar while working full time at a demanding job and spend a ton of time with my family to boot.

EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey
For many people, entrepreneurship is the most powerful route there is to financial success and personal fulfillment in life. I’ve read many books on entrepreneurship, from the “idea in your head” stage to the thriving business stage, and none of them work nearly as well as a single guide as this one.

EntreLeadership does just what I describe above. It takes a person from an idea for a business to the point where the business is large enough that delegation needs to happen. It offers tons of ideas and food for thought during that entire process, and does it in a readable and comprehensible manner.

Raising Financially Fit Kids by Joline Godfrey
This is the single best handbook I’ve yet found for taking on the challenge of teaching children about money. It’s also one of the most well-worn books on my shelf, simply because I’m raising three children of different ages.

This book offers real parenting tips for children in each age group, offering up countless ideas for introducing kids to money and giving great suggestions to the common struggles that parents have with their children and money at each age level, from very young children to young adults. I anticipate I’ll be using this book for many years to come.

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko
The final book on this list works well for one reason alone: it completely debunks the ideas most people have about what it means to be rich.

The guy in the Armani suit with the sportscar is probably broke. The ordinary looking guy in the reliable automobile is probably the millionaire. Why? People who have spending habits that lead them to buy the flashy things rarely are on a path to financial success.

The book backs up insights like these with extensive interviews and research, creating a fascinating and eye-opening study of what wealth actually looks like.

If you read these ten books, you’ll have a much deeper view of your money, your career, and the financial world around you.

Whenever I go get an oil change (often, whenever I find myself with a good coupon to a local oil change service provider), I always notice that little sticker in the corner of my windshield that they affix during the oil change.

Usually, it lists the mileage at which I should get my next oil change (according to them) and often lists the approximate date at which I should reach that mileage.

The only problem is that, without fail, that mileage revolves around getting an oil change every 3,000 miles. An oil change that often just isn’t necessary. It’s akin to getting an annual checkup at the doctor every six months.

Let’s just say I tear that sticker off.

We’ve all heard the mantra of getting your oil changed every 3,000 miles. It gets repeated to us every time there’s an ad for motor oil or oil change services.

That actually might have been true thirty or more years ago, when engines were built very differently than they are today.

However, the reality is that most of today’s car models require oil changes every 5,000 miles, and some models require it even less frequently than that.

The information you need is (again) in the owner’s manual for your car. It tells you the exact number of miles recommended for your car between oil changes. For most modern models, it’s 5,000 miles between a change.

So, how much does that save you?

Let’s look at a 120,000 mile life span for your car. I have a pile of coupons for a Jiffy Lube oil change (including oil) for $29.95, so we’ll use $30 as a base price.

With an oil change every 3,000 miles, you’ll have to change the oil 40 times. That’s a total cost of $1,200 over the car’s lifespan just for oil changes.

With an oil change every 5,000 miles, you’ll have to change the oil only 24 times. That’s a total cost of $720 over the car’s lifespan just for oil changes.

That’s a savings of $480 just by cutting out unnecessary oil changes.

Not only that, oil changes every 5,000 miles put you in line with the rest of the maintenance schedule (also found in your car’s manual) in most modern cars. If you have an oil change every 3,000 miles, you’re going to be very out of whack with that schedule, causing you to either delay other maintenance (risky) or get oil changes even earlier (expensive).

Take a peek at your car’s manual and see what it says about oil changes. You might just find yourself ripping that little sticker off, too.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.