Got the book on Saturday. Finished it on Sunday. Sad that there won’t be any more on Monday.

How Often Should I Rebalance My Investment Portfolio? A Brief Article Review This is a great summary on how often you should look at your investments (including those in your 401(k) or Roth IRA) and move things around a bit. (@ my money blog)

How Do You Stack Up? A serious look at the overall financial state of people in different age brackets. The average net worth of a person under 35 is $11,600? My wife and I are individually each well above that and we’re substantially under 35. (@ dink’s finance)

How To Take A Shower In Sixty Seconds Or Less I actually tried this last night and it worked pretty well. I have no idea how much water I saved, but I at least halved my water usage in the shower. (@ wise bread)

The Simple Dollar Retro: How Much Does Breastfeeding Really Save? If the mother would eat a healthy, well-balanced diet in either case, breastfeeding can save a lot of money.

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity or personal development book.

Several weeks ago, I reviewed in detail Stephen Covey’s classic personal development book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I found it to be an interesting read and was quite open to reading more books from Covey, and the blurb on the back of this one attracted me.

It spelled out quite clearly that this is a book about the philosophy of setting priorities. It focuses on making the distinction between what’s “pressing” and what’s actually important, and looks at techniques for quickly and regularly identifying those which are important. In Covey’s view, we all strive to do the things that are important to us, but we’re often distracted by things that are “pressing” - things that have to be done right now that aren’t necessarily a part of the central values of our life.

How do we strike a balance between the urgent things and the important things. That’s what this book is all about.

Looking At First Things First

Right off the bat, you’ll notice that this book is dense. It’s roughly 350 pages long and each page has a lot of meat on it. I tried reading through it all at once and it simply didn’t work - I had to slow down and read it a bit at a time. The book is split into four sections, but these are more general divisions - the book actually flows well from start to finish.

Section One - The Clock And The Compass

Immediately, First Things First argues that even if you discover an incredibly powerful method of personal productivity that enables you to get stuff done at a much faster rate, it doesn’t always solve the problem of having lots of things to do. The real key is knowing how to seek out things that are really important to you and focusing on those, allowing the other things to simply fill in the remaining gaps in your life.

1. How Many People On Their Deathbed Wish They’d Spent More Time At The Office?
First Things First opens with a review of time management philosophies, pointing out the weaknesses in each one. Mostly, these weaknesses boil down to the fact that almost all time management philosophies are centered on the clock - focused on maximizing the use of the moment and making sure you make it to meetings on time - and fail to deliver on the compass, or the greater central values in one’s life.

This was actually explained using a rather brilliant analogy, that of the parent who discovers suddenly that his/her child is on drugs. Obviously, this isn’t a desired outcome for most parents, and a parent can quickly see that quality time spent with a child could have prevented this from happening, but their time management philosophy was too focused on filling the schedule and getting things done and failed to actually focus on what was important to the parent, spending time with the child.

I will say that at this point in the book, I looked at my own philosophy of managing time and noted that it worked because I devoted blocks to the things important to me, like spending time with my family and cooking a supper at home. There’s nothing in the world valuable enough to interfere with these times - if my job started to interfere regularly, my job would go and I would find something else to do.

2. The Urgency Addiction
I found this chapter to be extremely interesting. Covey argues that most people are in fact addicted to urgency and gives some self-evaluation questions to prove the point - I found that I was somewhat addicted, but I believe that at other points in my life I was very addicted to urgency.

From there, Covey lays out a time managment matrix, made up of four quadrants:
Quadrant I - Important and Urgent - crises, deadline-driven projects, and pressing problems
Quadrant II - Important and Not Urgent - preparation, planning, and relationship building
Quadrant III - Not Important and Urgent - interruptions, most phone calls and mail and reports
Quadrant IV - Not Important and Not Urgent - trivia, busywork, time wasters, and escape activities

If you sit and think about it for a bit, you’ll realize that most of what you spend time doing is in quadrants I and III, but most of the really valuable things in life are in quadrant II. I know that it’s often difficult to brush aside things in quadrant I and III (writing articles, specific work and household tasks) to do things in quadrant II (quality family time, serious planning).

3. To Live, To Love, To Learn, To Leave A Legacy
This chapter was extremely philosophical in nature. It primarily focuses on introspection and finding the basic guidelines with which we make choices in our lives. Covey breaks this introspective trek down into three main pieces:

The fulfillment of the four human needs and capacities Our basic human needs are physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, and truly profound experiences come from the point where all of these meet. Those are moments that we should strive for above all, because they deeply fulfill us. When I actually try to visualize moments when these all meet, I imagine playing with my son in the yard.

The reality of “true north” principles These are the basic rules by which we govern our life, and we find ourselves feeling as though we’ve failed somehow when we violate them, even if on many levels we succeed. Covey uses the example of cramming for tests when in college; it might get us through and get us a degree, but we didn’t really learn much and we missed out on the opportunity to really expand our mind. Cramming in college is something I often regret - and I also regret how much time I wasted on stuff that really didn’t matter in the end.

The potentiality of the four human endowments Covey states that four things separate humans from other species: self-awareness, conscience, independent will, and creative imagination. Whenever we spend time working with these traits, we benefit ourselves. Covey recommends several specific activities that really bring out these traits and show how they can be used to help our own lives, and one of them (interestingly) is keeping a personal journal, something I do almost to excess, but that I find incredibly powerful from time to time.

Section Two - The Main Thing Is To Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing

This second section is really the meat of the book, as it focuses on how to organize your life in such a fashion that your choices truly reflect importance instead of urgency. I felt that there were a lot of little pieces from this section that could be applied to anyone’s life, no matter how they choose to organize their time.

4. Quadrant II Organizing: The Process Of Putting First Things First
First Things First recommends that instead of focusing on planning out individual days, you should look at a week at a time. From there, much of this chapter reads a lot like the third habit from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

The central idea is that before you plan out a week, you should identify what your roles are in life (for me, that would be parent, writer, worker, husband, and volunteer) and then identify a goal or two you really want to focus on this week for that role. For example, as a parent, I would want to take my son for a long walk in the park and read him five books. Then pencil in these central goals above everything else. Let the other tasks in your life fit around these central ones. Give this a shot - it’s really powerful.

5. The Passion Of Vision
This is all about the long term. Take the roles from the previous chapter and then imagine your eightieth birthday party. What would you like for people to say about how you acted within each of those roles? Be serious - what would make you feel like you really accomplished good things with your life? Those are the central goals of your life, and your choices should always move you towards these central goals.

By putting in those “quadrant ii” tasks from the previous chapter before you put anything else on your weekly schedule, you are giving yourself room to really build up these important things. Select goals each week for each of your roles that really match these lifelong goals that you imagine when you think about your eightieth birthday.

6. The Balance Of Roles
Many people feel as though their roles in life are very isolated from one another. Take my own: parent, writer, worker, husband, and volunteer. Where is the overlap there? Most of the time, it feels like there isn’t any, and thus it often feels like there isn’t enough time to really fill all of the roles.

The key is to find things that fulfill multiple roles. For example, let’s say that my wife and I take our son to the park and we spend our time there walking around picking up trash and cleaning the park, and also talking to each other and playing a bit. That one activity fills the roles of father, husband, and volunteer. Let’s say, also, that my wife and I are having a serious discussion on a particular finance issue, so I get out my laptop and start taking notes that express both of our perspectives, and later am able to convert this into an article or two. I’m being a husband and a writer there, so it’s worthwile for me personally to occasionally plan for such talks with my wife, where we plan out where our money is going.

One useful way to do this is to look at who you’re responsible to in each role. For example, as a parent I’m primarily responsible to my son and daughter, while as a husband, I’m primarily responsible to my wife. When I have opportunities to spend quality time with my children and with my wife, I fulfill both roles. As a volunteer, I’m responsible to the group I volunteer for, but as a writer, I’m responsible to my audience. Thus, when I find ways to translate volunteer work into material for an article (I’m betting that if you look around The Simple Dollar much, you can probably figure out a few), I’m being responsible to both roles.

7. The Power Of Goals
I often talk about setting goals on The Simple Dollar, even going so far as to have a “goals week” a while back, so I found this chapter to be quite interesting. Covey brings up the interesting point that quite often our goals aren’t very synergistic. For example, I might have goals that are focused entirely on my role as a writer, but they don’t touch at all on other roles in my life.

The solution? Invest some serious time in setting goals. This means not only coming up with them and planning them, but evaluating their real worth in the overall context of your life. For each long-term goal that you are thinking of setting for yourself, ask yourself what precisely the goal is, why you want to achieve it, and how you’re going to get there.

Covey also advocates setting week-long goals by going through each role you’ve identified and asking yourself What are the one or two most important things I could do in this role this week that would have the greatest positive impact? Although I haven’t formally adopted the entire philosophy behind this book, I find it really worthwhile to ask myself this question at the start of each week and jot down a goal or two for each area. Keeping them in mind makes me feel substantially more productive during the week and I usually feel as though I’ve really accomplished something when I meet all or most of the goals.

8. The Perspective Of The Week
Another challenge is the gap between the close up view of life (urgent things, immediate needs and tasks) and the long term view (fundamental needs, long term direction). This chapter offers a multitude of ways to ensure that the close up view never overshadows the long term view of life with the key being that you look at things in the intermediate term (again, a week at a time).

The best way to do that is to actually spend some time thinking about how you’re spending your life. Covey strongly encourages spending a portion of time each week focusing on the goals of the coming week and making sure that they’re in line with your long-term goals. He even advocates spending an entire day each week for renewal, reflection, and recommitment - perhaps a bit much, but it is worthwhile to set aside some time each week for this.

9. Integrity In The Moment Of Choice
A lot of choices are made in the heat of the moment, and we often make gut responses to them that might not necessarily be in line with our big picture. I know that many of my split-second choices are made without really thinking about it (a la Blink).

Covey’s philosophy is that the more time you spend in a relaxed reflection mode, carefully considering your goals without pressure, the better you become at making quick choices that are really in line with your overall goals and values. This is very true - I tend to make better choices when I have more time to focus on those things that are really important to me, because I find that it triggers change in what I like to call my “short term values.”

10. Learning From Living
This final chapter of the second section focuses on how to review a week that has passed as you begin to prepare for the coming week. It’s a nice collection of suggestions on how to turn your reflections on events passed into the foundation for planning the week to come.

One particularly powerful part of the chapter for me was a lengthy list of questions to ask yourself about the week just past. Covey encourages answering these questions in the form of a journal entry about the week. This seemed like a bit “much” to me, but I gave it a try and I actually found it to be quite useful - it spelled out for me the things I did well and the things I could work on in the future, and it really did provide a foundation for the coming week.

Section Three - The Synergy Of Interdependence

This section moves from the meat and potatoes of the previous section and moves into looking at how this philosophy affects your interaction with others.

11. The Interdependent Reality
Anything worth creating is a collaboration between people, not things. That’s the premise of this chapter, which goes on to basically argue that the real power is in the collaboration itself and that the product produced is merely an expected result of a good collaboration. For some, this is a hard thing to swallow (I know it was for me), but if you view the human process as the important part and look at how to improve the human part of the equation, almost everything you do will have a better result.

12. First Things First Together
This is basically an application of the individual patterns from the previous section to a group environment. In effect, it condenses the material and merely points out how it can be used effectively in a team.

Basically, teams should have weekly meetings that are focused around the philosophies spelled out earlier, that of carefully defining goals and actually working towards long term ideals rather than just focusing on the immediate. If people disagree, focus on having everyone understand both sides clearly and then look for solutions that incorporate the logic behind both arguments.

13. Empowerment From The Inside Out
Obviously, many organizations can’t deal well with such a philosophy. This chapter focuses on the traits of an organization capable of handling this type of workflow: trustworthiness (and trust), accountability, self-direction, and willingness to look for the best solution.

I know from personal experience that many environments are lacking some of these pieces, and Covey offers a ton of specific advice on how to handle environments where pieces are missing - and how to find them. This is a great chapter for a manager and not quite as applicable to others.

Section Four - The Power And Peace Of Principle-Centered Living

The book concludes with some examples of how applying this overall philosophy can really change one’s life. There’s not much meat on the bones in this ending portion, merely a lot of examples for people who work well seeing examples.

Buy or Don’t Buy?

I actually found First Things First to be much more profound and also more applicable to my life than The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (and that’s probably why this review went on so long). This book is really stuffed with a lot of good ideas to think about that are much closer to day-to-day life than the material in 7 Habits.

I would recommend this book to anyone who regularly feels like they’re just running in place doing little tasks that really don’t add up to much of anything. There have been points in my life where I strongly feel that way (luckily, I think I’ve moved away from that point) and this book really, really speaks to that frame of mind.

This is a book where it’s worthwhile to read a chapter, spend a day or two thinking about it, then read the next one. That’s actually how I read it - there was so much content stuffed into each chapter that I had to take some breaks to process it. It’s one of the most compacted personal development books I’ve ever read - there’s a lot of meat on every single page.

In short, I definitely found it to be one of the better books I’ve read on personal development and substantially better than The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (which I liked as well). This one is worth picking up.

Brad’s looking at his debt and wondering where to start:

My wife and I are trying to decide what to do with our “extra” income each month: pay down our home equity ($18K at 9.13%), pay down our other debt (student loans of $6K at 7.14% and $13K at 3.75%; car loan of $8K at 4.2%); or put the money into our savings account (at 5.05%).

First of all, let’s ask ourselves about tax deductibility. The only loans here likely to be tax deductible are the student loans (I’m assuming the home equity loan is a HELOC, not just a funny term for a mortgage). Also, you’ll have to pay taxes on the savings account. So, let’s figure you’re in the 28% tax bracket and re-figure the true percentages on each one:

$18K home equity loan - 9.13%
$6K student loan - 5.14% (after the tax benefit)
$8K car loan - 4.2%
savings account - 3.94% (after taxes)
$13K student loan - 2.7% (after the tax benefit)

Assuming that you are actually going to make strong contributions to your savings account, you should pay down the debts that are of a percentage higher than the savings account first. In this case, that means starting with the home equity loan, then following with the small student loan, then the car loan. At that point, you’re better off stocking up in the savings account - but the key is that you’re actually stocking up here and judging by the debt, it’s likely that you will find other uses for the money.

In that case, I recommend largely subscribing to Dave Ramsey’s “debt snowball” philosophy, except that instead of ranking the debts by the amount owed, you rank them by interest rate. That means you should do the following:

Get $1,000 in the savings account as an emergency fund. If you have children, you may want more than that, but have at least $1,000 in there for a car emergency, etc. This way, a bad situation won’t build additional debt.

Pay off the $18K home equity loan at 9.13%. That’s an imposing debt and you need to pay that one off as soon as possible. As long as you have $1,000 in the emergency fund, focus on paying this debt until it’s gone; if you have to tap the emergency fund, focus on replenishing that back to $1,000 before paying down this debt.

Pay off the $6K student loan at an adjusted 5.14%. This is the next debt to go. Again, if your emergency fund goes below $1,000, slow down the overpayments here and build that fund back up. Now that the home equity loan is gone, you should be able to make very big payments here and knock this debt off quickly.

Pay off the $8K car loan at 4.2%. Keep rolling the debt payments forward - you should pay this one off next, paying as much as you possibly can on the principal. Again, remember the emergency fund and replenish it if you use it.

Pay off the $13K student loan at 2.7%. Even though this is a very low interest loan, I’d still recommend paying it off before building more savings. This is mostly due to it being a debt, and any debt is simply a bet that your future self can take care of it. That’s not a bet that I like. There is an argument about not paying this one off immediately, but I would get myself debt free ASAP.

Then, build a 3-6 month emergency fund in that savings account. Shoot for building up six months’ worth of living expenses in that account so that, in the event of a major crisis or a job loss, you’re fine.

When you’re there, suddenly life becomes a lot less stressful.

For every frugal idea that I have and am able to implement, I have at least two or three that simply aren’t reasonable at the moment. They seem incredibly fun and, in the long run, would save some significant money, but due to various factors (my living location, the time investment required, etc.), they aren’t particularly feasible. So I thought I’d share them - perhaps you’re in a situation where you could give one of these ideas a shot (you can freely assume that I’m jealous).

Raise chickens My parents raised chickens when I was younger and it wasn’t as big of a chore as you might expect and it was useful in many ways: the eggs, of course, and the chicken meat, but we would occasionally scrape off some of their droppings in the fall and till them into the garden, replenishing the soil. The only problems were the noise and the smell, which were minimized by living in the country and keeping the chicken coop far from our home. Now, though, I live in an area where a chicken coop would not be particularly welcome - I guess I’ll have to hold onto this dream for a while.

Install a wind turbine I live in a very windy area, so as I’ve discussed before, a wind turbine can actually become profitable in less than a decade. Given a lifespan of forty years or so, it’s not only incredibly environmentally sound, it also turns a solid profit over time and vastly reduces your energy bill. Unfortunately, a wind turbine in my back yard wouldn’t exactly be smiled upon in the neighborhood.

Initiate a large community garden This is one where everyone is involved with a percentage of the effort and the expenses, and everyone takes equally from the food. You have to have a trusted arrangement with people and also need to have a centrally available location. My neighbor growing up used to do this - he had a ton of land and liked to garden somewhat, but he wanted a huge variety of vegetables. Thus, he co-oped his garden with the people living around him. Everyone was involved with the work in this multi-acre garden, and everyone got a share of the vegetables. It worked out really well and they’re actually still doing it.

Implement a home water recycling system Basically, I’d like a system where some home waste water (say, from the kitchen sink when rinsing stuff off, for example) could be drained into a receptacle which could then be used for watering the garden. This would save on water usage substantially. My father actually did this for a while using water from the shower / bathtub; it worked fine at first, but then the soap started to mess with the Ph of the soil, so I wouldn’t want to use bath water.

Install solar panels This idea is actually within reason - I might do it in the future when the efficiency of the panels grows and their price drops a bit more. Simply install them on the roof and have an electrician splice them into your home energy feed and suddenly you’re gobbling a lot less energy off of the electric company than before, meaning savings on your energy bill.

Construct an enormous garden By enormous, I mean at least half an acre. The problem? This would devour our entire back yard and I also don’t have the time to properly devote to it. For now, I’ll stick to just a pair of small rectangular gardens - not all that long ago, I was content with just a tomato plant.

Practice manual lawn mowing I’m referring to using a non-electric lawnmower, which means you have to move across the lawn a bit slower and take multiple passes. I tried this a few times in the past, but I have a good portion of an acre to mow and the time commitment each week makes this not worthwhile (though it’s great for getting into shape). What I’d actually like to do is get three or four of them and do the yard all at the same time with my kids, all of us running around out there with our non-electric mowers - great for the environment, a good workout, and it can be fun, too.

Today, my son took a tumble down the stairs. He was attempting to go down the stairs in the same way that I do, but his twenty month old legs simply aren’t long enough to traverse the steps forward and he started to tumble. I was watching him come down from the bottom and was able to catch him after only one flop, but it still scared him pretty badly (and scared me a bit). He grabbed ahold of me and started crying, so I carried him over to the living room and just whispered in his ear quietly for a bit. Soon enough, he was up again, running around and playing with his favorite toys (a tractor and a teddy bear).

I was able to be there to provide security for my son when he needed it, and for that I’m incredibly glad. To me, that’s one of the big parts of being a parent, to make sure that when bad things happen, these bad events don’t completely knock his life for a loop. He can sit on my lap for a minute or two, hug me a time or two, then get down and things are largely as they were before.

It’s easy to see this kind of security because it’s so tangible. A little boy on his father’s lap, shedding a few tears after a tumble, then getting up and going back to play just as happy as he was before - that’s security for him. He knows that I’ll make the bad things in life better and because of this base security, he’ll have the room to stretch his wings and learn how to fly.

What’s often harder to see is that the same idea applies to family finances. Let’s say, for example, that I wreck my truck on the way home from work this week. My wife and I pay for comprehensive insurance (a form of financial security) and we have enough in savings that the deductible could easily be covered. This is security - knowing that if a disaster happens, there are things in place to help us out.

Not only is this security for myself, it’s also security for my son. If I lose my job, we’re in a financial state (because of wise and frugal choices that I’ve learned to make) that lets us keep our house and keep some approximation of the life we enjoy right now. If I were to be physically disabled, we’d be in the same situation - our life would change, but it wouldn’t be disastrous. If I suddenly die (or my wife does), my child’s financial future might arguably improve.

Much as I can pick up my son after he tumbles down the stairs, good financial planning means that there’s something there to pick me up if I were to tumble. And I will tumble at some point or another.

Here are five things you can do right now to improve your security:

Start an emergency fund Open a savings account at a new bank, then have a small amount automatically deposited into that account each week. I constantly mention emergency funds, but there’s a reason for it - when something goes bad in your life, it will save the day.

Look for ways to curb your required spending A while back, I made a list of 40 ways to reduce your required monthly spending. Go through this list right now and find a few ways to trim some fat from your required purchases. Then, take that money and use it to build up your emergency fund, or …

Pay off your debts Instead of buying some new stuff, spend your money paying off your debts. If something happens in your life, it is the debts that will really harm you - creditors will come seeking their money. I recommend trying the debt snowball method or the highest interest method, and get to work paying off those debts.

Start exercising and eating better This seems completely crazy at first, but if you’re in better shape, you’re much more likely to deal well with medical and personal crises.

Check your insurance Does your current insurance adequately cover the most likely crises that would befall you (car issues, disability, a fire in your home)? I stupidly went years without renter’s insurance and it came very close to biting me in the back for it. We also carry comprehensive car insurance, and a tornado smashed my truck pretty strongly about two years ago. Without the insurance, I don’t know what we would have done (it was barely drivable).

The next time you see a child take a bump, begin to cry, and run to their parents, remember that it’s all about security - and you can make choices right now to ensure that kind of security is there for you when you need it.

Michael writes in and asks:

I am planning to eventually get my PhD in 4-10 years. Should my savings be in a high-yield savings account or is there a significantly better place to put it with a little more risk but not as risky as an index fund?

An index fund is about as low risk as you can get in the stock market. A broad-based low-fee index fund simply invests in a huge portion of the stock market and just rides the whole thing, minimizing the risk by investing in thousands of companies simultaneously, some of which will skyrocket, some of which will tank, and some of which will just float along calmly.

Onto the bigger question, though: how does one invest for the intermediate term? Stock investments work best over the long term, because the peaks and valleys will average themselves out - if you invest for just a few years, you may hit a valley and lose some serious coinage. On the other hand, cash investments work best in the short term - you can earn 5% very easily with cash (HSBC has a 5.05% APY savings account, for example).

Let’s look at a few investment options for $10,000 over the intermediate term (say, five years). I’m sticking with simple options, ones that allow the investor to merely put in money, leave it, and not worry about micromanagement; I’m also skipping over investments with a high level of risk:

A savings account Let’s say you put $10,000 into HSBC Direct and just sat on it for five years. It would earn a 5.05% APY and after five years, you’d have $12,788.93. A big advantage here is that the investment is almost risk-free - the only things that can happen is that HSBC lowers their interest rate (at which point you could move to another investment). Another big advantage here is that the cash is completely liquid - there’s no penality for withdrawal at any time. Given that a treasury note can’t currently match this level of return, we can pretty safely discard treasuries for investment at this time.

A CD Many banks offer certificates of deposit with rates up to 5.60% APY. At that rate, a five year CD would give you $13,124.34 at the end of five years. A better return than the savings account, but it has the disadvantage of being rather illiquid - you’d be hard-pressed to get your money out.

An index fund I’m going to use the Vanguard 500 as a model here as it is a great long-term example of an index fund. Let’s say, for example, that you put $10,000 into the Vanguard 500 on January 1, 1996 and then withdrew it on January 1, 2001. Your $10,000 would be $23,211.44 - a return that is pretty hard to beat over a five year period.

On the other hand, let’s say you put $10,000 in the Vanguard 500 on January 1, 1999 and then withdrew it on January 1, 2004. Your $10,000 would be worth $9,466.44 - you could have had thousands more with the money in a savings account.

Over a given term of five years, the stock market, even in a relatively safe index fund, is too risky for my tastes - I’m much more comfortable with a term of ten years or so.

So what should one do? If you have a definite set-in-stone timeline, you can buy a certificate of deposit that matures before the end of the timeline, then put that cash into savings until the end. However, if you’re unsure about when you’re going to make the move into the Ph.D. program, just stick all the cash in a high-yield savings account and sit on it. It’ll safely return above 5% and you don’t have to worry about it a bit.

A while back, I wrote about the joys of a money free weekend, and followed that up quickly with a list of fifteen free things to do during a money free weekend. Here’s the list of those fifteen to get you started (but I really recommend reading the whole original post):

Play board games
Have a “cupboard potluck”
Organize a walking tour
Write some letters
Have a quilting bee
Play football / soccer
Practice yoga
Read a book
Have a yard sale
Get things done
Volunteer your time
Get spiritual
Blow bubbles
Pick up a musical instrument and learn it
Check the community calendar

My wife and I had a tremendous amount of fun writing that post (that was one she got into quite a bit), and we kept it alive by sharing ideas back and forth and saving the good ones. Most of these things can be enjoyed to some degree with any group, but I’m listing them here because they’re things I enjoy doing with my own family or have enjoyed in the past.

Here are fifteen more things that you can do during a money free weekend.

Go on a wandering walk This is great fun with a toddler and he and I do it regularly. Go out the front door and let the child pick the directions. Almost always, you’ll eventually wind up in someplace new and interesting - if that doesn’t happen, at the very least you got a healthy walk out of the deal.

Play a card game I spent a weekend learning how to play contract bridge once - it was one of the most fun times of my life and it merely took a deck of cards to learn it.

Clean out a closet I actually enjoy doing this - I always find an interesting thing or two that I’ve forgotten about, plus I wind up clearing out a lot of clutter and have a big pile of stuff to take to Goodwill. Unfortunately, having just moved, our closets are still really organized.

Attend a dress rehearsal This sounds completely crazy, but try asking around at local events to see whether or not you can bring your children to see a dress rehearsal of their show - quite often, they’re happy to do this for families with children who want to see the show. Why? Children can often interrupt performances out of boredom or bathroom necessity, which isn’t nearly as big a deal during a dress rehearsal, plus the troupe is often very happy to expose children to the arts. Call up a local theatre and ask whether this is possible.

Dig an old video game console out of the closet and play some of your old favorites I did this in about 1998 with my roommate at the time - we dug out an old Nintendo and played several of the games all weekend long when it was raining. Spectacular fun and it only cost a bit of electricity.

Get involved in local community sports Join a softball league, or look to volunteer to coach or umpire for youth leagues. Even tasks like being an equipment herder for a pee wee league team can be a lot of fun.

Attend a church service In college, I used to attend the service of a different religion every week (at least the ones where I was welcome as an outsider). I didn’t really understand most religions, and I definitely didn’t understand the differences between Protestant sects. It became an interesting routine for me, I learned a lot, and I wound up finding a church that really fit me well. Even if you’re not a deist, you can learn quite a bit and be entertained by attending a service.

Learn how to juggle Seriously, spend an hour or two trying to learn how to do it. Find three juggle-able objects and give it a whirl (I first learned with golf balls in a garage). Quite fun, and no one can do it well at first, so it’s good for a laugh, too. It took me quite a while to master it, but now I can even do five balls for a short time.

Make a 101 Goals In 1001 Days list - then start on some of them Looking back at my list, I’ve made advances on a few of them and have accomplished about six of them - not bad for the first 60 days or so, I think.

Take some photographs Go on a walk (by yourself or with family) and look for interesting things to take pictures of. Even better, share them on Flickr (or another image-sharing site) when you’re done!

Learn something new Go to MIT’s OpenCourseWare, find a topic you’re interested in, download some mp3s of lectures, and listen to them while you’re doing household chores. I’ve learned about many things while doing this - and it doesn’t cost a dime.

Make something homemade This isn’t entirely free, but it’s almost always a savings over buying the “real thing.” I make my own wine and my own laundry detergent, and my wife makes her own soap. In each case, it’s cheaper than buying it from the store and it’s always an interesting experience.

Practice origami For a while, my wife folded paper cranes by the thousands while doing other things (watching our child, etc.). I like folding paper frogs that jump when you tap them on the back. Both are basically free - just fold them out of newspaper, old magazine pages, junk mail, and so forth.

Have a film festival Invite some friends over for several hours of movie-watching. Have each person bring one of their favorite “obscure” movies, and then watch them all together. This can be an absolute blast, and the only expense is the popcorn and beverages.

Do a neighborhood cleanup Invite some people to go out and clean up your neighborhood for a few hours, picking up rubbish along the road and in any public places in the area (like parks or walking paths). This is a great way to interact with neighbors, make your community look better, get some fresh air and exercise, and not waste money, either.

Angela writes in with the following situation:

I didn’t see any archives where you unexpectedly come into money. My husband is re-enlisting for a big chunk of change (in the end we will get about 37k after taxes). Here is where we are now:
Credit Card 1 - 10k @ 14.25%
Credit Card 2 - 1k @ 16.99%
Debt consolidation loan - 11.5k @ 14%
Truck loan - 12K @ 12%

So you can see that we can pretty much wipe the slate clean there. Here is my real question. Will all that debt just gone, we will have a little over $2,000 a month left over. How do we make sure that we are not just going to blow it? We have four kids to put through college and a neglected retirement fund to look at. But it seems like it is just too much money to really handle. Help!

According to my math, that debt is about $34K, and you’re getting about $37K. With interest rates like those, you’re definitely in the right to pay all of them off as soon as you get the money. Step one is to get that debt completely gone - any time you’re paying out double-digit interest, you’re never going to get ahead.

This leaves you with about $2,000 a month in excess on your monthly budget, which is great. I also understand that, without a plan, you’re going to be prone to spending all of it, which is not great.

What I would do is start automatically putting that money in various places. Set up automatic deductions from the paycheck into a 401(k) and into 529 college savings accounts for each of your kids - $500 a month into the 401(k) and $100 a month into the 529s will eat up $900 of it.

What about the rest? First of all, I’d build up a nice emergency fund to protect yourself from things like a car breakdown - if your car dies and you suddenly have a large bill at the auto repair place, you don’t want to dip into credit to cover it. I would set a goal of having an emergency fund equal to six months’ worth of your monthly budget - with four kids at home, lots of things can happen when you least expect them. This will siphon off that extra $1,100 each month for a while, but when the time comes, you are going to be incredibly happy that you have that money.

What about when the emergency fund is full? Between now and then, spend some time with your husband figuring out what your most important goals are. Do you want a bigger house? A better retirement? Do you want to really fund your children’s education? Some amazing family vacations in the future? Paying cash for automobiles so you never go into debt again? Each of those goals points to different things to be doing with that money. By putting cash into an emergency fund now, you’re not only building security, you’re also giving yourself plenty of time to think about what you really want to do with your money after the emergency fund is completely funded.

My wife and I dream heavily of a country estate, for example, so we’re focusing on paying down all of our debts with some seriously large overpayments right now, then saving rapidly for this home.

The real key, though, is making it automatic - just set up automatic deductions into appropriate accounts. That means that you’ll never touch that $2,000 a month and never be tempted to spend it. Good luck!