I’m actually out of town right now (if you read yesterday’s roundup, you can probably guess why). I’m currently using a dial-up connection out in the middle of nowhere. So, without my feed reader, I’m somewhat stuck, so I spent some time reading some of the last few months of columns at Yahoo! Finance and I pulled out three that really piqued my interest.

On Unsolicited Advice Unsolicited advice really bothers me. I enjoy giving advice when it’s asked of me, but I really don’t like it when ol’ Auntie Muriel tells me that I’m investing like a moron. A blog lets me write about financial topics for people who actually want to read about it, thankfully, and it helps me keep my mouth shut and not offer any unsolicited advice.

Kid’s Money Expectations And The Gender Gap I observe this all the time in my nieces and nephews, actually. It seems like my nieces are far more likely to spend their money senselessly than my nephews are - they both seem to be natural savers.

Time Flies When You’re Unprepared My favorite writer on Yahoo! Finance is Ben Stein, so I would have been shocked if I didn’t pull out a good article from his recent writings. Many people ask me why I’m so focused on planning ahead at this point in my life - Ben explains it all brilliantly (as usual).

The Simple Dollar Retro: There Is No “Secret”: Why Feel-Good Thinking Isn’t Enough To Get Ahead Financially I was getting really fed up hearing about The Secret, so I let it all go here. It seems like that fad is dying down, though (thankfully).

I bet Jerry Seinfeld is not a person you’d ever expect me to discuss on The Simple Dollar. I didn’t expect to talk about him either, but then I read an article at LifeHacker outlining Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret. Here’s an excerpt:

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain.” He said again for emphasis.

Basically, once you start accomplishing a task every day, if you create an obvious visual reminder of that continued success, you’re going to want to keep going. Seinfeld applied this philosophy to writing comedic pieces, but you can directly apply it to anything in your life, from weight loss to reading to, well, personal finance!

Here are six ways you can use this chaining technique to improve your personal finance state:

Devote fifteen minutes a day to investigating money saving techniques Each day you manage to do this, put an X on the wall calendar. Soon, you’ll find that that fifteen minutes a day is actually shaving a lot of money from your budget. Here are forty ways to get started.

Research in detail one stock Let’s say you’re an individual stock investor and you have a hard time staying motivated with the necessary research. Start a chain for this - go through your research routine for one stock a day, then mark a big X over that day. As the chain grows, you’ll want to keep up your streak of success - and hopefully, you’ll find a sweet stock pick or two.

Eat at home Many people get started eating at home, but then get burnt out on the effort. Each day you manage not to eat out, put a big red X on the box. Soon, you’ll find yourself trying to keep the streak alive - and discovering a lot of extra money in your budget.

Check your online account balances I do this every day, methodically, to make sure there aren’t any errors (and because I enjoy watching my investments and my interest go up). For some people, though, they need reminders to do this, so this “chain” technique can work really well.

Don’t watch television Television is expensive in a lot of ways. Many people want to give it up, find the initiative for a few days, then slack off. Use this technique to psychologically push yourself to keep that television turned off.

This is a very clever psychological technique for providing extra motivation for yourself. Don’t break the chain.

A couple days ago, I wrote about the philosophy that one could rent and become richer over time. In that piece, I used a very simple description comparing the two:

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you have a home that is eating $1,200 a month in payments, $500 a year in insurance, $1,000 a year in extra utilities, and $3,000 a year in taxes versus a rental situation that costs $800 a month to rent and $100 a year in insurance. The home will cost $767 more per month for the life of the mortgage, but the day that the mortgage is paid off, you own an asset worth $200,000 or so and suddenly have $433 a month more to invest than the renter.

Now, this scenario can bring on a lot of arguments about which is better, but it’s leaving out one factor: inflation. The cost of the insurance, the utilities, the taxes, and the rent will go up at the same rate as inflation, but the actual payments on the house will not. So, in the first year, it is correct that the home will cost $767 more a month than the apartment. Let’s keep going with this - given 4% interest, what will be the difference between the two at various points?

At the five year mark, the difference is $693.06 in favor of the renter.
At the ten year mark, the difference is $583.23 in favor of the renter.
At the fifteen year mark, the difference is $449.61 in favor of the renter.
At the twenty year mark, the difference is $287.03 in favor of the renter.
At the twenty five year mark, the difference is $89.23 in favor of the renter.
At the thirty year mark, the last year of mortgage, the difference is $151.42 in favor of the homeowner.
After the mortgage is done, in year thirty one the difference is $1,405.47 in favor of the homeowner, and in each subsequent year that gap grows by about 3%.

So, the only possible way for the renter to get ahead here is to really hit a grand slam with those investments in the early years. Each year that passes, the monthly advantage over the homeowner dwindles, and in some cases (like this one), the late years of the mortgage can actually see the homeowner paying less for housing, including their mortgage, than the renter. Obviously, when the house is paid off, the homeowner is way ahead.

So when is it preferrable to rent? If the monthly home payments are three times your rental payment or more, then you’re better off renting, but if they get closer than that, you’re likely much better off buying.

Many people look at once a month cooking and shy away because the effort required to make dozens of complete meals at once is quite frightening. To tell you the truth, it scares me a bit, too.

What I’ve found, though, is that some items are actually very suited to once a month cooking. These items usually work well for quick meals, actually, because they’re wholly prepared for you and can usually be microwaved when you want to eat them. You just have to devote a couple of hours to preparing a large number of them. Some of these have been mentioned before in brief, but here I’ll formalize them more, giving you an ingredient list to work with when you go shopping.

Ready? Here are six recipes that will only take an hour or two to make a bunch of. All you need is freezer space.

Breakfast Burritos

What you need:
2 pounds of cured smoked sausage, cubed
4 medium onions, diced
2 bell peppers, diced
2 tomatos, diced
2 pounds of shredded cheese
16 eggs
32 big flour tortillas (10″ ones work well)
1 jar of picante sauce
Saran wrap or Ziploc freezer bags (for packing)

Cut up the meat and vegetables and split it into four separate equal batches. Crack all sixteen eggs, blend them so the yolk is even, then separate this into four equal batches. (If you have a huge skillet, you can do this in two batches instead.) Saute a batch of meat and veggies for about ten minutes, then add a batch of the eggs and stir regularly until the eggs are cooked. Each small batch here makes eight burritos, so spoon some of the egg/veggie/meat mix onto a tortilla shell, put some cheese and a bit of picante sauce on top, then fold it up and wrap it in Saran wrap. Toss the finished burritos in the freezer. I can make 32 burritos in about an hour and a half following this process.

Breakfast Sandwiches

2 dozen eggs
2 dozen bagels or English muffins
2 dozen slices of Canadian bacon
2 dozen slices of cheddar cheese
Saran wrap or Ziploc freezer bags (for packing)

Easy as can be. Just fry the eggs. Each sandwich consists of a bagel/muffin, a fried egg, a slice of Canadian bacon (optional), and a slice of cheese. Pack them up and toss them in the freezer to be microwaved later.

Cold Cut Sandwiches

2 dozen bagels/English muffins (these freeze well, but you can use buns or sliced bread, too)
3 pounds of your favorite cold cut (this assumes 1/8 pound per sandwich)
2 dozen slices of an appropriate cheese
Saran wrap or Ziploc freezer bags (for packing)

Again, incredibly easy. Assemble the sandwiches, then freeze them. All you have to do is defrost them for a minute or so in the microwave, or put them in the fridge at breakfast time to eat them.

Chicken Strips

A box of unsweetened corn flakes
4 pounds of chicken breasts
A half-cup of flour
Salt and pepper (to taste)
Grated parmesan cheese (optional)
A dozen eggs, beaten
Saran wrap or freezer Ziplocs (for packing)

Slice the chicken breasts into strips. Take one of the Ziploc bags, add six cups of the corn flakes to the bag and crunch into oblivion (a rolling pin or a beer bottle turned on its side works well). Add a few dashes of salt and pepper, the flour, and the grated cheese to the bag. Then, take each strip, dip it in the egg, roll it around in the crumbs, then lay it on a baking pan. Do this for as many as you can fit on the pan, then put them in the oven at 375 F for about eighteen minutes or so. Pull them out, let them cool, pack them away. You can quickly reheat them in the microwave and they’re quite tasty.

Quick Chicken Casserole

3 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast
3 pounds broccoli
6 cups rice
4 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
2 chicken boullion cubes
Freezer Ziploc bags for packing

Steam the rice and broccoli separately using water with a chicken boullion cube in it. Boil the chicken breasts until cooked, then dice the chicken breasts. While everything’s warm, mix the cooked diced breasts, the broccoli, the rice, and the cheese together in a giant bowl, then pack appropriate amounts of it into Ziploc bags (however much you think you’ll need at a meal). Delicious, cheesy, rather healthy, and it takes a microwave and about seven minutes to go from freezer to dinner plate.

A relative that my wife is very close to is extremely ill and likely won’t make it for a lot longer. She has been very upset the last day or so. I didn’t know this relative very well, so mostly I’m providing a shoulder for my wife to cry on. Seeing her hurt makes me hurt, too.

On Not Burning Bridges One thing that I have actually done well in my life is never burning bridges when leaving a job or an organization, and because of that I’ve been able to contact people from those earlier relationships for assistance - and they’ve been able to contact me. Never eat alone, eh? (@ an english major’s money)

Reader Question: Pay Off Credit Cards Versus Invest Your Money? I agree with the advice here - put money in your 401(k) up to the match, then get rid of that debt. (@ my money blog)

How To Eliminate Debt In Bursts Instead Of Incrementally I do this myself in a way, by saving money in a savings account and thinking of it as an emergency fund until I have plenty to pay off a debt. This worked splendidly for paying off my truck and I’m now doing it with my highest-interest student loan in mind.

The Simple Dollar Retro: Looking At 15 And 30 Year Mortgages: Which One Is Right For Me? I actually wound up in an odd situation where the 15 year interest rate was rather higher than the 30 year rate. Why? The payments for the 15 year got us somewhat close to the maximum debt threshold and it must have set off warning lights at our lender.

For many people going to college, they’re scared to get involved with a major that won’t pay a lot. I know I was - after strongly considering stints as both an English major and a math major, I instead got into a major with significantly higher earning potential because I didn’t want to face huge student loans with an $18K job right after finishing my studies.

Interestingly, Congress addressed this very issue with the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007; here’s Anya Kamenetz’s review of that very bill (you may remember Anya as the author of Generation Debt, which I reviewed in detail a while back):

To my mind, the most significant student benefit in the bill is income-based repayment. Under these proposed new rules, graduates whose earnings don’t exceed 150 percent of the poverty line (about $15,000 for a single person) would be exempt from repaying student loans. All borrowers could opt to repay no more than 15 percent of their income above that amount, known as “discretionary income.”

So if you earn $25,000 a year, you’d be guaranteed to pay no more than $121 a month regardless of your total loan burden. After 20 years, all remaining balances would be forgiven (10 years for eligible public servants).

This bill helps out students who are considering careers in social work and other humanities fields, but it falls just short of really helping people in another career that really need the help: teachers. There are some teachers at the lower end of the pay scale that will benefit from this, but many teachers make just enough to be out of the higher end of this bill, unfortunately.

Let’s use an example of a teacher making $33,000 a year, a reasonable number in this area. If that person lives alone, their poverty line of income is $9,800 and thus 150% of that is $14,700. That means that the teacher will have $18,300 of their salary that is eligible for student loan debt repayment, of which 15% is required for student loans (a total of $2,745). That means that under this bill, a teacher making $33,000 a year and living alone has his or her monthly student debt repayment capped at $228.75.

This bill will likely help out some people in the first years of their career, and others will be helped over the entire length of their loan. Given the balance needed between helping out low-paying professionals and also making student loans worthwhile for lending institutions and for the government, I think the bill hit a very nice spot.

The real take-home message here is that students majoring in fields that won’t provide a large income post-college are saved from the double whammy of large student loan payments and low salary, which for many students was enough to keep them out of a major that they may have been passionate about. It certainly was for me, and I may have made a different choice had this law been in effect when I was a student.

I confess that I do not shop at the grocery store with the lowest prices on my staple goods. Yes, that’s right - I intentionally go to a different store that, if I buy all of my staples, will actually cost me a few dollars more than the cheapest place. If you’re interested, here’s a visual tour of the place where I sometimes shop.

Why do I choose this store, even though one nearby store has lower prices and another one has almost equal prices? The shopping experience. The store is always clean and presentable, very well organized, and there’s always a person on hand to help me find anything that I’m having difficulty with. I can also observe their meat preparation section. For me, this is well worth paying a few extra dollars on my shopping bill.

Is this justifiable? It’s hard to quantify whether the expense is truly justified, however. The largest difference is really the cleanliness, which does reflect my confidence in produce and meat purchased at the store. Many of the other products are shipped in from outside, are sealed, and aren’t really affected by the store itself. To me, the difference in service and cleanliness does make a difference in where I shop, and I would expect that a few dollars once a week to buy vegetables and other foods in a clean environment is something most readers would support.

On the other hand, I recently spent an hour in a very expensive shopping mall, where I visited a fragrance store. The store was immaculately clean, smelled heavenly, and had a wonderful sales staff, but I knew quite well that I could save a lot of money by buying my preferred cologne elsewhere. Sure enough, I checked at another store in the mall (Younkers) and they had the same exact product for half the price. To me, it’s completely silly to buy the product at the fragrance store.

So where’s the line in the sand? How can one determine whether the extra cost for better service, cleaner environments, and more aesthetic appeal is actually worth it? Obviously, paying a dollar or two more to buy food in a much cleaner environment makes sense, just as looking at other options for buying a fragrance instead of paying the high prices at a boutique makes sense. But how do we find that middle ground? Here’s the criteria I use:

Can I order this item online? This is a big factor. Many items - in fact, almost everything short of perishable food and liquids - can be ordered online and often at better prices than you can find at your local grocery store. I run almost every non-perishable purchase through some online checking before I go out and shop for it - and often it comes much cheaper that way.

Do I get personal enjoyment out of the experience of going there? For a few places, yes. I love browsing at Apple stores and at bookstores, but quite often I just jot down potential purchase ideas in a notebook and leave. If I happen to know a price is comparable, I am willing to buy from these stores. I often go to niche stores (like the fragrance place) to check out the samples and observe the items because it provides an environment where I can evaluate them without having to make a purchase.

Is there an added value from going to the store? For example, if I go to Sam’s Club to look for items, there are often tons of free food samples there, which often takes the place of lunch on Saturday for me. I’m also willing to stop in if they have a tremendous deal on a product that I want - I tend to research and hit Black Friday sales pretty hard, for example. Some people may put their pet political cause in here, in terms of not supporting some stores or products (like the anti-Wal Mart crowd). I certainly put cleanliness of consumables in this category, which is enough to justify my grocery shopping choices - cleaner food is a clear value.

In a nutshell, in some cases the quality of the shopping experience justifies paying a bit more, but most of the time there are so many options available to the consumer that they don’t have to pay significant amounts just for aesthetic appeal.

Ken wrote in with an interesting question that sometimes shows that paying down debts might not be the most prudent financial move:

My girlfriend and I both went to a private college. Fortunately, my parents paid most of my tuition, but I still have $11,000 worth of loans, which I plan to pay off as quickly as possible (1-2 years). Unfortunately, my girlfriend was not so lucky. She will have about $60,000 and counting (interest) by the time we graduate. In addition, I will hopefully have a good job that pays well, so that isn’t really a concern. However, she is a music major, so she cannot really use her degree (one of those bad decisions that you only now realize, but it is already too late). She will be getting a job pretty much anywhere. I was wondering what type of repayment plan we should do.

Should we try the snowball effect with me paying off my loans first? Then taking what I would normally be paying and pay it towards her loans. In addition, every time she pays off one of her loans, snowball it into the other loans. That seems like the most logical solution.

To this point, I agree with Ken - they should be snowballing these debts. But then Ken drops a little bit more information that changes the picture:

Unfortunately, we would like to get married in a couple of years (2009), so we need to save for that and of course she needs a car when she graduates. I just was hoping that you could give me an idea if I am thinking about this correctly.

Given that they have two big expenses looming that would likely create a big crater of debt in their lives, likely both at interest rates higher than the student loans, I don’t recommend that Ken starts paying ahead on the student loans. Instead, he should make minimum payments on those and start saving very seriously for the car (until the car purchase happens) and then for the wedding. Here’s why.

First of all, most student loan debt is at a significantly lower interest rate than car loans and especially credit cards. This means that the payments will be large ($70,000+ is a lot of debt) but still manageable. Ken should do everything possible to get these loans as cheap as he can: lock in the lowest rates that he can find, then set up an automatic payment plan if it awards him or his girlfriend a reduced rate. It may only save several dollars a month, but that really builds up over time.

Secondly, with that much debt, they’re likely to not get favorable rates on their first auto loan. They should both find out their credit score and not be shocked if it’s not stellar. It’s because of this potential bad rate on the auto loan that they should save now to minimize this loan - or, even better, just pay for the car entirely. Don’t demand an expensive car; now is the time to buy a used one.

Thirdly, saving for that car will allow interest to work in your favor for a while. If Ken saves his money with HSBC Direct, he can earn a 5.05% APY over the next year as he saves for the car. This will increase the money he can put for a down payment by a few percent, thus decreasing the principal he’ll have on the car loan and thus also the interest on the car loan. This is substantially more effective than simply paying ahead on a low-interest student loan and then incurring a large car loan.

A similar philosophy is true for the wedding, which would likely be “funded” by credit card (meaning with a hefty interest rate) if he doesn’t save ahead for it. Since avoiding such debt is much more effective than paying down a low-interest loan, this is the way to go.

What about risk? Obviously, this method carries a bit of risk with it - Ken needs to have the willpower to consistently save for the car and for the wedding and not spend the money, especially when he sees the balance building up in the savings account. Ken didn’t mention any credit card debt, though, which would lead me to believe that he does understand the dangers of debt and frivolous spending.

Good luck!