About a year ago, my mother decided to re-do the guest bedroom in her home. Before starting out on the project, she outlined her project to several of her friends, not asking for a single thing beyond advice. The end result? One friend gave her a crib. Another friend gave her a children’s bed. Another friend gave some paint to help refinish the room.

A few months ago, I needed some small cloth drawstring bags for a small project. Instead of just heading to Hobby Lobby, I told several people that I know about the project and mentioned that my next step was to get the drawstring cloth bags. Within a week, I had more such bags than I needed.

These two stories have an obvious connection in common. By exerting a bit of patience on projects and talking to others about those projects, we found success without having to ask for it.

Why did this happen? There are several factors at work.

First, in neither case did we ask for anything but advice. The items we received from people weren’t as a result of a specific request or out of greed. They were delivered out of goodwill.

Second, most people want to help others, particularly if it’s convenient. When a friend tells you a story that’s easily solved by a simple action, most people will respond by fulfilling that simple action. They won’t go to extraordinary lengths to make it happen (at least not normally), but if there’s something a friend can conveniently do to help you, they often will. Plus, they’ll feel great about being able to help.

Third, even if a friend can’t help materially, they’ll often help with good advice. Your friends will see your situation from a different angle than you do. They might know of opportunities, techniques, or other such information that can transform your project.

Fourth, the person actually working on the project showed patience. Instead of just throwing money at the problem and rushing around to complete it – something many of us do in the rapid-fire modern world – patience was exerted. They sat back, asked around, and found a better solution.

Fifth, such value exchanges strengthen friendships on both sides. Not only does the giver feel good about being able to help a friend, the receiver feels good as well because of the generosity of their friend. It’s the type of value exchange in which both sides win.

To put it simply, it’s well worth putting the word out in your social network if you’re working on a project of any kind. Simply tell your friends about the things you’re doing and seek their input. Time and time again, they’ll be happy to give their input, whether you choose to use it or not, and quite often they’ll provide someting of great value to you.

Of course, the reciprocal is true – when your friends ask you for advice and you can easily help them, you should provide the same help. If you have useful advice or information, provide it. If you have an item that could easily solve their problem (and you have little need for it), give it.

After all, in the end, what is a friendship beyond a long series of value exchanges? We are constantly doing things for our friends that lift them and our friends constantly do things for us that lift us.

The real lesson here is the value of patience. The utilization of one’s social network is just one piece of the puzzle. Without patience, both stories would have ended with a trip to the store, less money in hand, and a shallower connection with the people in one’s social circle.

If there’s a project you’re working on that’s not incredibly urgent, be patient. Put out the word about your project. Gather input. You might be surprised at the things you discover and the value you find.

In the past, I’ve strongly advocated for families to introduce their teenagers to financial reality as early as possible. I know that in my own case, I went off to college with almost no idea of how to manage my money and it really showed in the spending decisions I made over the next ten years of my life.

Over the past decade, I’ve had the chance to intimately watch other families raise their children through the teenage years with lots of success and some failure. I’ve been impressed with some of the young people that are the core of Generation Y coming of age. Two in particular, my niece and my first cousin, are the kind of people that are a big net benefit to the world, and I would be incredibly proud if my own children turned out as well as they have.

At the same time, though, I’ve seen many tweens and teenagers spending money with reckless abandon, spending hundreds of dollars on completely unnecessary things and acting repeatedly as though money has no consequences at all. These people, I’m afraid, are headed down the same painful path that I went down.

When my children approach their teen years, what can I specifically do to teach my children the value of managing their money? This is a topic that’s left me thinking for a long time and I’ve been jotting down ideas and findings all the time. Today (finally), I had a chance to read through quite a few of these things and I was able to pull out several strong tactics that seem to work together to teach teenagers the value of managing money.

Start young. You’re better off starting too young than you are starting too old. Introduce an allowance as early as possible. Encourage their entrepreneurial behavior early. Introduce them to basic budgeting early on, too. You’re better off starting before they can fully understand all of the meaning than later on when their ideas for what’s normal have already been set, because it will take far more work to undo bad behaviors.

Don’t tie a basic allowance to specific chores. A basic, small allowance should be given without strings attached. It’s not a tool to leverage for good behavior, it’s a tool to teach basic money management. There should be certain behaviors expected in the home, but the allowance should not be a bludgeoning tool to force those behaviors.

Offer extra allowance in exchange for specific extra tasks. If you have extra tasks that go above and beyond normal household duties, you should offer a separate payment to your child in exchange for the task. Allow them (or even encouraged them) to negotiate for the exact amount so that they can learn the art of negotiation.

Make basic budgeting part of the equation from day one. I’m a huge fan of the Money Savvy Pig for this purpose. A child’s budget should be very simple, especially at first, and that’s exactly what the Pig helps with. It just splits a child’s allowance into four pieces – spending (they can spend it on whatever they want), saving (saving for a bigger goal), donating (giving to some cause), and investing (learning how to invest money). This forms a perfect simple budget for children. Later on, you can work on more complex budgets with them, with multiple savings goals and so on, but this type of thing forms the backbone in their mind.

Open bank accounts when the “investing” portion grows large. When they’ve built up quite a bit in the “investing” portion of their budget, take them to the local bank and open a savings account for them. Have them deposit their money. Then, when there’s an interest statement, show them the interest that’s been earned. As they grow older, you can talk about other investments with them and allow them to try these investments (stocks and so on). Set a very long term goal for their “investments,” such as college or a house down payment (seriously) so that they can begin to get a taste for the long term, plus it allows you to differentiate between short-term savings and long-term investments.

As their money grows, move to a checking account. Migrate toward allowing them to manage their entire budget themselves, incorporating saving, spending, donating, and investing to their own desires. One big step in this direction is their own checking account with a debit card – a great tool for a pre-teen. Make the card only able to access the checking account.

Give them a credit card when they’re teens. Gulp. Many parents avoid this because it seems like a recipe for disaster, but it actually serves a very important purpose. By giving them a low-limit credit card while they’re in your home, they can learn about how to use a credit card – and, likely, the dangers of getting into debt with them – while there’s still a safety net. Ideally, you want them to get into a bit of debt with it so that they can see the pain of interest.

Show them your monthly budget. Seriously. Show them how much you earn in a given month, then how that money breaks down into mortgage payments, car payments, electric bills, food, and so on. This is a firm taste of the real adult world, something that teenagers crave. Let them see the reality of adulthood and how expensive it is. Talk about the choices that you have to make along the way.

Work on distinguishing between wants and needs. This ties in perfectly with showing your children your monthly budget. Some of the items are needs – your housing, your electricity. Others are wants – entertainment. Others are somewhere in the middle – food spending. The better you’re able to distinguish between needs and wants – and to control those wants – the more likely you are to teach them to control their own wants. That’s one of the biggest keys to adult personal finance success.

This is my gameplan for raising my children to better manage their money. Hopefully, you can pull out a nugget or two for your own children or grandchildren.

I love cooking at home.

I used to hate cooking at home, though. I was awful at it. I burnt things. I messed up scrambled eggs beyond all recognition.

But over time, I got better at it. I started figuring out lots of little things that made the entire process smoother and made my results much better without necessarily improving my skills.

Now, I vastly prefer what I make in my own kitchen over what I can get at most restaurants. What I make at home is tastier, usually healthier, and quite a bit cheaper, too.

Along the way, I’ve picked up lots of little techniques for making home cooking much easier and faster. Here are ten that really changed things for me.

Hone your knives. One of the biggest frustrations I had with home food preparation is that whenever I had to chop anything, it took forever and I often smashed them into oblivion. I thought it was cheap knives, but after getting a much nicer one, I had much the same problem after the first use or so. The entire problem was a simple one – the edge of the knife wasn’t honed. Honing a knife’s edge is incredibly simple. Just take a sharpening steel and lay your knife on it, with the hilt of the blade near the hilt of the sharpening steel. Then, with the blade forming a small angle with the steel, drag the blade slowly but firmly back down the steel to the tip. At the end, the tip of the blade should be near the tip of the steel. Then, switch hands and repeat with the other side of the blade, and alternate back and forth a few times. Your previously-dull knife will now slice through vegetables like a hot butterknife through butter.

Don’t fear the crock pot. Crock pots have this strange reputation for turning out bland food. In truth, though, crock pots are just as good as what you put in them – all they really do is cook things at a low heat over a long period of time. The trick is to make sure your ingredients are good and that you’ve added plenty of herbs and spices right off the bat. Crock pots are absolutely perfect for making stews and soups and chilis that benefit from long, slow cooking – just put the ingredients in the crock pot in the morning, turn it on low, and let it sit all day. In the evening, you’ll have a tremendous meal waiting for you. We’ve also found a lot of success slow-cooking pot roasts with lots of vegetables in a crock pot.

You can almost never over-season a dish. The only exception to this seems to be hot peppers, which can drive some people away. Aside from that, you have to go to almost grotesque lengths to over-season most dishes. So, if you’re unsure, toss in some more spices. It’ll usually make the dish more tasty than simply following the recipe absolutely.

Use fresh ingredients. Fresh ingredients are often the key to making a recipe really pop. While frozen vegetables (for example) are passable, nothing beats the pop of fresh vegetables in your mouth. While canned vegetables can work in a pinch, they just don’t compare. Canned meats are convenient … that’s about all I’ll give them. In most cases, there’s more nutrition in fresh ingredients as well.

Store staples in the freezer. Whenever you prepare something that might be used as a staple in another meal, make plenty of it and store the extras in the freezer. Chicken breasts, loose ground beef, loose sausage, and diced onions all work well in this way.

Always make stock out of leftover bones and leftover vegetables. The meal is done. You have leftover chicken bones, or maybe you have some leftover vegetables of various kinds. Perhaps you have a leftover hambone or the bone from the middle of a roast. Quite often, these things get thrown out. Save those leftovers. Just take them to a crock pot, add enough water to the crock pot to cover whatever you add (and maybe half an inch more), then turn it on low and let it slowly cook all night. In the morning, strain the liquid (just to get the big pieces out) and save the liquid in a jar in the fridge. Then, the next time you need to make something using those flavors, just bust out that jar. That stuff is fantastic flavor.

De-glaze at every opportunity. Another great source for flavor is the “glaze” on the bottom of a frying pan after you cook something – that stuff is pure flavor! Just put some water into the hot pan, watch it sizzle, and notice how much of the glaze on the bottom of the pan comes off into the water. That liquid can now be used in a lot of ways, from adding flavor and moisture to rice and side vegetables or allowing the meat to simmer in it.

Stick with comfort foods at first. It’s easy to get caught up in the sexy idea of preparing some novel dish in the kitchen, but if you don’t have the skills yet, it will likely end in frustration and an underwhelming result. Instead, at first, stick with dishes that you know you like that you’re intimately familar with. For me, that means tuna casserole, hamburgers, and broccoli with rice.

Try cooking something familiar without a recipe. Another great way to really amp up your skills in the kitchen is to attempt making a familiar recipe from memory without using a recipe. This requires you to begin thinking on the fly a little bit as you cook and often forces you into doing things a little different. Sure, sometimes you’ll fail, but you’ll learn a lot from abandoning the recipe.

Get others involved. For me, no kitchen experience is better than cooking in the kitchen with people whose company I enjoy. Being in the kitchen while my wife chops vegetables, my daughter stirs a mixture, my son snaps green beans, or my best friend butters some garlic bread makes the entire experience far more enjoyable no matter how the meal turns out. Get people into your kitchen and cook together – it becomes an amazing social experience.

It’s often said that people are reflections of their five closest friends in many ways: behaviors, income levels, values, and so on.

Five years ago, almost all of my closest friends spent money like it was water. They were constantly doing things like playing poker, pushing each other to “one up” the rest with better gadgets and other material things, going out for drinks all the time, making fun of each other for looking less affluent, and so on. To put it simply, if you didn’t show many signs of material affluence, you were made fun of and ridiculed. You felt like less of a person if you weren’t spending money hand over fist.

Today, all of my inner circle of closest friends are pretty happy just spending an evening together playing cards or a board game. Instead of constantly going out on the town, we go to each other’s homes and hang out, watching each other’s DVD collections or playing each other’s games. We’ll make meals together and eat them together instead of going out for dinner all the time. Instead of talking about who has the latest gadget, we talk about who’s developed a better strategy at a well-played game or what sort of things we’ve been doing to improve the property we already have.

In that same time frame, my own feelings about spending money changed drastically. I went from spending rampantly to being careful about my money. I started spending more time at home rather than out and about, focusing my energy on getting good at a smaller number of things instead of chasing the new.

Perhaps most interestingly, I went from feeling pretty awful about myself to feeling pretty good about myself.

Look at your close circle of friends. What do you see? Chances are, you see something that looks much like you.

If you like what you see in your circle of friends when you look at them from a detached eye, you’re probably doing well for yourself. A good circle of friends is supportive and reinforces your best attributes.

On the other hand, if you don’t like what you see there, you’re probably struggling. A poor circle of friends brings each other down and reinforces one’s worst attributes.

To put it simply, if you want to find success beyond what you’re able to find right now, you may want to look at your circle of friends.

I’m not saying “ditch your friends” at all. Instead, my belief is that people change and grow over time and that growth is often reflected in who you choose to spend your time with.

In my own case, I observed my friends gradually shifting over time. The first major shift occurred when I had my first child. Since I was no longer nearly as available to go out on the town, some of them stopped emailing and calling me. Some of the rest continued inviting me to do social things, but I found that we had less and less to talk about because they weren’t genuinely interested in my life.

After my financial epiphany and, later, my second child, this became even more stark. The things filling my time were my family and my work, so when I would do anything with these riends, we would have very little to talk about. I couldn’t talk about the latest movie or much of anything else, simply because it was no longer any sort of priority in my life.

Over time, I found myself digging deeper into friendships with people who were either going through the same experience I was or were at least supportive of the things I wanted to do. I actually re-established some close friendships from an earlier period in my life and, today, my circle of friends once again reflects me. A single, introverted, frugal guy who loves to play games. A married couple where the husband loves gaming and works at home and the wife is kind, frugal, and has a quirky sense of humor. These are the kind of people we socialize with today.

To put it as bluntly as possible, this change in friendships was in large part responsible for many of my personal changes for the better over the past few years.

What can you do if you don’t like what you see? If you don’t like what you see, it likely means you’re growing as a person in a direction away from some of your friends – and that’s fine. Simply seek out others in your life that reflect your current values better and work on establishing a relationship with them.

You are a reflection of your closest friends. Do you like what you see in that mirror?

A big part of successful frugality is the routine with which you live your day-to-day life. Here are twenty four little things that you can incorporate into your daily routines that just trim a little money away from your spending – and puts it into something more important to you.

1. Brush your teeth. An unclean mouth is a perfect place for unwanted bacteria and germs to take root. Good oral hygiene reduces the chance for bacteria to grow in your mouth. This reduces doctor visits, medicine costs, and productivity lost to illness – not to mention the time spent feeling awful.

2. Take leftovers to work for your lunch. If you have something left over in the fridge from a previous meal, pack it up and take it with you to work. If you choose to eat it there, it’s a double savings – you save in that you didn’t waste the food you made at home and you also save by not buying the overpriced food options at work (eating out or the food vendor).

3. Take a piece of fruit or toast with you as you leave. A simple high-energy breakfast raises your energy for the rest of the day, making you more productive. It also helps with alertness, helping to ensure that you make better decisions throughout the day.

4. Adjust your thermostat before you leave. In the summer, raise the temperature several degrees; in the winter, drop it several degrees. Don’t waste money controlling the environment of your home while no one is there.

5. Prepare a grocery list before you leave. Look in your refrigerator and cupboards to identify the things you actually need, then make a list from them. Look in the freezer, too, and make a rough meal plan while you’re at it so that you’re sure to be buying only the things you actually need and will use.

6. Turn off all possible electronic and electric devices before you leave. Devices left on that aren’t doing anything sap electricity which you pay for. Devices even as simple as toasters devour energy throughout the day. Turn off your television, your cable box, any gaming consoles, kitchen appliances, radios, and also don’t forget to turn off your lights. This can be made much easier by putting your home entertainment equipment on a switch, so you can simply flip it before you leave.

7. Take a new route to work (and do the same on your way home). Every six months or so, it’s worth trying an alternate route to and from work. Why? For one, there might be a better route for you to take due to new roads or simply a lack of earlier observation on your part. For another, traffic flow changes constantly based on road construction and new roads, often affecting roads not under construction, meaning a previously-discarded route that’s close may in fact be a much better route now.

8. Park far away from your office. Why? Two reasons. For one, at many workplaces, parking far away from the building is less expensive, because closer spots are often in restricted lots (this was the case in my previous workplace). For another, parking far away from the building requires you to walk much further to get in there, giving you a bit of exercise.

9. Wash your hands a few times a day. This works for similar reasons as brushing your teeth – it reduces your chance of getting sick, which saves on doctor’s bills, medicine, and lost productivity. Get your hands wet, get soap on them, and rub them together for the length of time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice.

10. Use your work downtime to spell out in writing your personal goals. It’s far more valuable than just surfing the web or sitting idle. Make lists of your short term and long term goals, then flesh out how you’ll achieve each one. Come up with specific things you can do and write them down.

11. Eat lunch at your desk. Eating lunch at your desk is far less expensive than eating out, plus it gives you time to work on your goals (as mentioned above). Of course, this is even easier if you brought your lunch, as suggested earlier.

12. Drink water instead of soda or coffee. Water is virtually free and quenches your thirst more effectively than coffee or soda, both of which have adverse health effects (caffeine addiction, weight gain).

13. Invite a friend over. Make a plan for doing something social at your home. Inviting a friend over is far cheaper than going out with a friend and, even though you might have to spring for some costs such as food, it’s likely that such an invitation will be reciprocated later, giving you a free evening of entertainment.

14. Touch base with some people you haven’t heard from in a while. How does this save money? The more established relationships you have, the more likely it is that you can tap your social network for advice (and sometimes more), plus friends often drop each other useful things all the time. Friends are useful to have all around.

15. Meditate or pray. Meditation and/or prayer calms you, improving your health and making it easier for you to make better choices afterwards. Take some time near the end of your work day or the start of your post-work day to meditate for a bit or offer up a prayer in quiet solitude.

16. Try a generic product. When you’re trying to decide at the store which product you should pick up, consider giving the generic alternative a try. It’s almost always far less expensive and it’s often identical to the name brand – many times, they are the same item in different packaging.

17. Hit the library. Libraries offer an abundance of entertainment options for free: books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, games, and countless other items are there to easily be checked out.

18. Air up your car’s tires. Filling your car’s tires up to the maximum recommended pressure once a month or so has an enormous positive impact on your car’s gas mileage. With some recent testing on my wife’s car, we found that it improved her mileage by four miles per gallon.

19. Wash your windshield when you stop for gas. A messy windshield reduces vision (which increases the likelihood for accidents) and can have a subtle negative aerodynamic effect on your car. Since it’s free and you’re just standing there pumping gas, wash it up!

20. Have something in the freezer for dinner. Instead of going out to eat or stopping by the grocery store to pick something out, take a look at what’s in your freezer. Likely, there’s something in there you’ve forgotten all about that will make a wonderful, cheap dinner.

21. Read a book for your evening entertainment. A book (particularly one checked out from the library) is an incredibly inexpensive way to entertain yourself. Turn off the television and the cable box (saving energy) and crack open a book instead.

22. Go for a thirty minute walk. Not only can it be a free form of entertainment, it’s also a great way to improve your physical fitness a bit, reducing your health care costs.

23. Do some of your morning routine the night before. Pack up your leftovers. Turn off as many of your devices as possible. Put the things you’ll need to take in the car. Why? Doing this now helps to ensure that you’ll do things more efficiently in the morning – and you’re more likely to remember everything, too.

24. Turn down the thermostat before you go to bed. Just drop the temperature five degrees or so. You won’t notice it until the morning, at which point you can raise it right back up when you’re still toasty warm from a long night’s sleep. This can easily save you a few dollars.

And a final bonus one… go to bed early. A well-rested mind is a more alert mind, more able to avoid marketing tricks and also more capable of helping you to get ahead in the workplace.

In 2003, shortly after getting married, I had an ambitious goal of saving for a 20% down payment on a house by the end of 2007. Over the next year, I did make some savings progress, but I kept falling behind my milestones. Eventually, fed up with myself, I gave up and more or less just spent the money freely. I thought of myself as a complete failure.

When I made that choice, I was exposing my own idiocy in several different ways.

First, I was demonstrating a complete lack of commitment to a goal. Rather than making small sacrifices to fulfill a big long-term dream, I let the dream fall by the wayside in the name of instant gratification.

Second, I didn’t step back, revise, and rework the plan. When I realized I wasn’t making the goals I had set, I didn’t sit down and re-evaluate things. Instead, I acted like an idiot again and just spent the money with reckless abandon.

Third, I allowed that failure to define myself more broadly as a failure at money management. I just believed I didn’t have what it took to be successful at saving. I let myself believe I was a broader failure just because I couldn’t handle that goal.

Setting a big, audacious goal for yourself is inspiring. It makes you feel good about yourself and pushes you to accomplish things beyond what you believed to be possible for yourself.

I’m going to be debt free in three years.

I’m going to have six months’ of emergency fund in the bank by the end of this year.

I’m going to have seed money for my business idea an a year.

We conceive of these great goals, we plan for them, we sacrifice for them.

And then they fail.

Something changes along the way. An unexpected event occurs. We make a few bad spending choices. We overlooked some key element that completely alters the picture.

And we’re left with that empty feeling of failure. We didn’t make that goal. Instead, we just messed it up, like countless other things in our lives (yes, everyone messes up – a lot).

I could sit here and list my own goal failures all day long – as if the one starting this article wasn’t bad enough – but one thing this failure has taught me is that failing at a goal doesn’t mean you’re a failure or even that the goal or the plan was a failure. It just means you need to go back to the planning stage for a bit. Here’s how.

First, never define yourself as a failure because you failed to accomplish a goal. The inability to accomplish a goal is, yes, in part due to your mistakes, but there are usually countless other factors involved as well. A breakdown in a plan merely means that you need to step back, look at what went wrong, and re-work the plan.

Second, look for the root cause of what went wrong. There’s usually an obvious answer, but that’s not the one you want. I suggest using the “five whys” game when figuring this out. State why it seems that the plan failed, then ask yourself why. When you answer that, ask yourself why again. Repeat it until you get down to a root cause that can’t be broken down again. Often, it takes five or so “whys” to get there.

Third, address that root cause. It might be something you can take care of immediately. It might be something that you’ll have to slowly modify over time. Whatever it is, figure out a plan for addressing that specific root cause and focus on changing that.

For me, the real root cause of many of my financial troubles was a lack of persnal control. I would constantly sacrifice the long term for the short term, because I loved the rush of instant gratification. So, the first step for me towards completing a lot of my bigger goals was to simply break that addiction to instant gratification. I mostly did this by utilizing the other changes in my life (having a baby, mostly) and finding ways to get that gratification rush without spending money (like snagging a hot book on reserve at the library, for example).

You may find that your bigger goal has to be delayed a bit while you deal with the more immediate problem. Maybe you need to work on your own behavior, or maybe you found you need a bigger emergency fund. Get the smaller goal finished first – the bigger goal can wait.

Fourth, ask yourself if the big goal was something you really wanted in the first place. You may find that, after fixing the root problem, your perspective has changed. The long term goal you had in the past doesn’t reflect the new understanding of yourself that you now have. If that’s the case, great. It’s a powerful sign that you’re growing as a person. Don’t be afraid to abandon a goal that no longer matches what you want or the person that you are.

Finally, try again. Start over on your modified goal or give some thought to a new goal. A failure doesn’t mean that you should give up on your big dreams. Instead, it’s just more insurance that you’ll make great progress towards your goals.

Now that my book is finished, I’ve decided to embark on another big time-consuming project, but this one is a little different.

I’m a big fan of online banks. I think they’re an incredibly powerful tool for helping you with your personal savings. For a long time, I’ve wanted to talk about a slew of online banks, just to review all of the different options out there.

There’s been a problem with this, though. I don’t like to talk about products that I don’t actually use myself. I won’t review a book unless I’ve read it and thought about it. I won’t review a financial tool unless I’ve used it extensively myself. And I won’t talk about a bank unless I’ve used it myself.

I use ING Direct as my primary bank. I talk about it often. But I don’t mention other banks for the reason above, and I want that to change. There is a huge diversity in online banks, offering different features, different interest rates, different offerings, and different tools for managing your money.

Here’s my solution. Over the next several months, I’m going to open accounts at a bevy of online banks. I’m going to try them out, see in detail what services they offer, transfer some money in out, test their customer service, and close the accounts (if I don’t intend to replace an account I’m already using).

Then, once a week, I’m going to post a detailed review of that bank in an effort to outline clearly what distinguishes it from other banks. What do they do differently? Who is this bank most appropriate for?

So I’m going to open this up to you a little bit. What would you like to see in a review of an online bank? What features really matter to you and would cause you to make the move to switch to a new bank?

While you chew on that, here are some interesting personal finance articles that might interest you.

“Natural Inclinations…Are Hardly Ever Altered or Overcome.” Over the last few days, I’ve been enormously inspired by this little quote. (@ the happiness project)

Do you do your most important work first? I used to have a very organized morning routine, where I would do most of my “routine” tasks before starting the day. What I found is that I got my “routine” tasks done, but most of the real meat of my work – the creative tasks – didn’t go nearly as well. (@ unclutterer)

How to Change Your Motor Oil Changing one’s own motor oil is a tremendous way to save money – when you pay someone else to do it, you’re essentially paying someone $20 so you can sit in a waiting room while some guy unscrews a nut, collects some oil in a bucket, screws the nut back in place, then dumps some clean oil in the top. Why not do that at home where you can do something worthwhile while the oil drains and save yourself $20? (@ art of manliness)

What To Do With A Financial Windfall This is a great step-by-step guide to handling a windfall. If you don’t have a plan, windfalls can actually be a large negative disruption in your life, as we talked about a bit last week. (@ moolanomy)

Results of a Week Without Spending Can you go an entire week without spending any money? As an experiment, this family attempted to have a week without any spending and managed to get by only spending $3. Fairly insightful stuff. (@ pt money)

As I announced on Twitter a few days ago, I recently turned in the manuscript for my upcoming second book.

I’m extremely proud of this book, as I conceived of the entire idea myself, spent literally hundreds of hours researching materials and interviewing dozens of people, and spent the last three months tying together the manuscript.

Since I’m so excited to talk about it (and I know a lot of you are interested in what’s coming based on the emails and Twitter comments and instant messages I’ve received), I thought I’d offer up a little “question and answer” session about the book to whet your appetites.

What is the book called?
The book is tentatively titled “Making Change.” We hope to settle on the final title of the book within the next week or two. In fact, earlier today I submitted a revised title, subtitle, and very basic cover mock-up to my publisher, based on a brilliant suggestion from Sarah (my wife) a few days ago.

What is “Making Change” about?
The world is changing at a rapid pace. Twenty years ago, the web was nonexistent – today, virtually all of us use it as a key information gathering tool. Fifteen years ago, cell phones were a novelty at best – now, they keep us connected with each other in ways inconceivable a generation ago. Ten years ago, Asian economies were in ruins – today, products made in China and jobs outsourced to Bangalore are the norm. Five years ago, Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist – today, hundreds of millions of people use these services to maintain social connections.

My own story is a perfect example of this rapid change. Four years ago, I was buried in consumer debt, working in a straightforward career in a monolithic organization, missing out on the work I was most passionate about. Today, we’re free of consumer debt and working in a freelancing career doing exactly what I love the most.

These rapid changes make our lives more unpredictable than ever. They’re changing some of the most fundamental ways the world works – things move faster with far less predictability. Many of the old rules – the old ways of doing things – simply no longer work.

“Making Change” is about navigating these changes – and all of the countless other ones coming our way in the near future. What can we do to protect our hard-earned money – and earn even more? How can we maximize our career opportunities? And whatever happened to the promises of economic and personal freedom that the future was supposed to hold? My own story of making change plays a central role in the story, as does many of the stories shared to me by readers of The Simple Dollar over the years.

Intrigued? I hope so.

When is “Making Change” coming out?
We’re hoping for an April 2010 release date, though nothing is set in stone. The enormous amount of research I did for this book (and an unexpected illness in September) caused me to slip a little in submitting the final manuscript, so this may cause the final release date to slip a little more.

What made you decide to write a book like this?
I originally started out writing a memoir – it was very humorous and self-deprecating in places. As I kept writing, I kept noticing a theme in what I was writing – everything was going along, then something fairly unexpected happened, leaving me gobsmacked.

Why were all of these radical changes always happening in my life?

The most fascinating part was that many of the things that happened to me were things that happened to many others over the last ten years or so. We fell into terrible debt. We had a child when we didn’t expect it at all. We found our career path twist in an wholly unexpected (and undesired) direction. We found large organizations being increasingly disloyal to us as individuals. We found communication tools that put us in touch with countless other people who shared the same seemingly obscure interests that we have. We lost the power of isolation, carrying cell phones that follow us wherever and whenever we are.

At first, I thought this might be a source of a few interesting posts on The Simple Dollar, but the more I began to study these disruptive changes – and how they’re becoming more frequent, not less – I realized that many of the rules of personal finance and career management didn’t really apply any more. They assumed a long period of stability – and those long periods of stability don’t exist any more.

I followed that rabbit hole and out came “Making Change.”

What happened to the memoir book?
Right now, it’s sitting in hibernation. While I did include some pieces of it in “Making Change,” the memoir has such a different tone to it that it’s really hard to compare the two.

In theory, if I ever got desperate for articles for The Simple Dollar, it would work well for that. The “memoir book” as it sits right now is a collection of about twenty essays, chronologically ordered, and about 3,000 words apiece. Each one relates – in a somewhat humorous and self-deprecating way – some personal finance principle that I discovered the hard way.

I’m honestly unsure what I’m going to do with it, but I know one thing – I need a “book break” for a while. It’s going to rest for a while. In a few months, I’ll dig it out, read it again, and decide what I want to do with it. I might ship it around to other publishers, self-publish it (using Lulu.com or something like that), or simply turn it into a long series of posts. I just don’t quite know.

What’s the most surprising thing about the book?
There are two things that I think will really stand out. One, I think I make a very good case for the large amount of unpredictability in our lives – far more than most people think there is. This area drew a lot of my research for the book, actually.

One of my biggest conclusions for solving that challenge is pretty surprising, too. Yes, I talk about all of the usual techniques – emergency funds and so on – but perhaps the best way to protect yourself against such uncertainty comes from a word that our grandparents would find more familiar than we do (but we have surprising ways to access it ourselves). That one word? Community.

When can I read some of it?
In a few months, I intend to start posting excerpts here on The Simple Dollar so you can make up your own mind about the book and discuss a few of the bits in detail with other readers.

People who have signed up in the past to be “Friends of The Simple Dollar” will get a few extra treats as the book release day approaches.

When can I preorder it?
It’s not listed on Amazon.com yet. As soon as it’s listed, I’ll let you know.

I do ask that if you discover a way to preorder it before I announce it here on The Simple Dollar, that you wait until I announce it. The reason is simple – a large “spike” of preorders all at once helps me out greatly in the promotion of the book and makes it that much more likely that it will be a widely-read success.