I love watching my daughter sleep. I think babies are at their cutest while sleeping, and she’s no different. She’s sitting right beside me as I type this, snoozing away.

Network and Self-Marketing: Meet the Thriving Introvert The writer here recommends How to Win Friends and Influence People; I’d add Never Eat Alone as a follow-up. Good advice here, though. (@ queercents)

10 Negotiable Ways To A Fatter Wallet I often negotiate for prices at a farmer’s market – if I buy several items, I usually ask for a reduction in price. I often walk out with a “buy two, get one free” unlisted special. (@ wise bread)

Where Exactly Is The Pressure To Spend? A lot of interesting thought here on consumerism. (@ money, matter, and more musings)

The Simple Dollar Retro: Consumer Reports, Total Cost of Ownership, and Why I Buy What I Do I don’t mind paying a lot up front for an item if it’s going to be a high quality item – efficient at its job and highly reliable. I usually attempt to figure out the cost of an item over its lifetime – and I usually find that the “high end” items provide the overall better value.

This post is part of The One Hour Project, in which you can spend just one hour to put your finances in a better place without a big lifestyle change, through frugality or other financial choices.

It’s something so simple that so many of us overlook in our busy lives: stopping to help people out when they need a hand. For the longest time, I would only stop and help out people if it was completely convenient for me – I didn’t really see the point of helping others out if it didn’t directly benefit me.

One day, though, that all changed. I was sitting on a city bus riding to class (I was a college student at the time) and I saw a woman getting on the bus. She didn’t have change for the fee and the driver asked her to get off the bus. She got upset – she was in a work uniform on her way to a job – and something inside of me just clicked. I saw myself in her shoes. So I walked forward, deposited the change in the slot, and she was able to board the bus.

She sat down next to me and thanked me for paying, then told me a bit about her life. She was married to an individual who was on active duty overseas (this was in the late 1990s – he was not in Iraq, I don’t believe) and trying to raise two children. Her mother lived there, too, and watched the children while she worked, and she was trying very hard to get a promotion at her job. As I watched her get off the bus and go to work, I realized that stepping forward and putting that change in the meter might have caused her to get to work on time – or even a bit early – and might have helped her get that promotion, improving the lives of those children. Who knows what the domino effect from that might be.

Since then, I make a regular effort to help people out if I see an opportunity. Although the time adds up over a long period, individual acts don’t take very long at all and they usually go a long way towards lifting someone’s day out of the doldrums.

There are three ways that this can benefit you – one directly and two indirectly:

First, you feel better about yourself for having done it. If I help someone get their cat out of a tree or return a shopping cart for an old lady, I feel better about myself. It genuinely lifts my mood for some reason.

Second, the person you did the favor for has a good chance of doing a similar favor for someone else. This is the “pay it forward” phenomenon and it actually exists – I’ve witnessed it over and over again.

Finally, on rare occasions, that small deed will pay off in some hugely unexpected way. Once, I spied an abandoned child in a department store. He was crying. I stopped for a moment and asked him who he was there with and when he saw her last, then I grabbed a worker at the store and asked if he could page the mother over the intercom. He didn’t know her name, so we just used a description of the boy. I then kneeled near the boy for a while and calmed him down by telling him his mother was coming for him – and sure enough, she arrived. The mother had been quite upset as well. I began to walk away and the mother handed me a gift card for the store, saying “Take it – and thank you so much!” The gift card was for $100. While you should never expect such things, they do occasionally happen.

Over the next week or so, keep your eyes open for people that might need a helping hand. If you notice someone who is having a problem that you might be able to help with, from a cell phone call to pushing a cart or anything else, just step up and offer to do it. Do it several times. See how you feel inside after you do it, and then see if this little move didn’t just make the world a better place.

Along those same lines, if you’re ever in a situation where you need a hand, look around you and imagine if others had this same philosophy. By doing your part to encourage a philosophy of offering a small social helping hand, you encourage others to do the same – and eventually that helping hand will come back around to you when you really need it. Consider it a form of social insurance – by paying the premiums of helping others, sometimes you’ll collect some amazing dividends.

Recently, I read through Staying Frugal in the Age of the iPhone, an article on Yahoo! Finance by Anya Kamenetz (whose book, Generation Debt, I reviewed positively a while back). The article basically extols the virtues of frugality and spending less on items – none of the suggestions are particularly unusual and they match up well with the frugal topics I’ve talked about on here before.

What shocked me were many of the comments. Here are a few choice ones (out of the many, many negative ones):

Whatever…..get a clue. You are only young once.

It’s not marketing. It’s fact. You need to get an iPhone.

Used clothes? Are you kidding me? Maybe if you are living below the poverty belt.

I highly doubt she lives this way, which is why her articles are so bad. I can’t believe Yahoo! still keeps her on. She’s misinforming thousands of young people who think shes right. Please young professionals, listen to your parents, dont listen to Anya.

I love reading the crap that this misguided 26 year old girl writes. She preaches this garbage as if it’s actually a healthy way to live.

What’s the point in making money if you’re going to live your life like a miserable miser. All this money that you’re “saving”, what do you do with it? Take it to the grave?

It goes on and on and on like this.

So, why is there such an intense backlash against frugality? I have some guesses.

First, people see only the pieces that they’re uncomfortable with. Anya wrote about things like buying clothes at a second hand shop and getting rid of your television. These are rather strong steps that will save a lot of money, but they’re beyond the comfort level of a lot of people and thus when they read such advice, they throw the baby out with the bath water.

Second, consumerism plays a more powerful role in their lives than they think. Many, many people equate material goods with happiness. Why? My primary blame is marketing – it is extremely effective at tweaking our emotions, quite often making us feel inadequate in some way if we do not have the product. For example, the iPhone and other objects of technolust – a big part of the appeal of owning one is the idea that it makes you appear “cool” or part of some group that is a “cut above” for owning it. If it was truly about features and aesthetics, there are better choices than the iPhone out there – but none are marketed as well. Yet I’ve constantly witnessed people being quite happy with their iPhone, even though the only features they actually use are found on many far less expensive phones.

In particular, many people equate youth with spending money – they think that frugality is something that older people do. In actuality, this is just marketing, too – marketing directly targets younger people and shows them spending money and owning all sorts of material goods, specifically targeting those people who have discretionary income but haven’t really figured out a plan for their life yet.

Third, people who openly reject consumerism are seen as outcasts. It’s easy to look down upon someone for making choices outside of the norm, and it’s something that many people fall into. Most people have a deep internal need for acceptance, and by rejecting someone whose behaviors don’t match what is normal to them, it’s easy to feel accepted by a larger group.

Finally, most people don’t see frugality as a path to being rich. Being rich, to most people, means having a huge income, but as I’ve mentioned before, there are two guaranteed ways to improve your financial situation, and one of them is directly through frugality. I like to call this The Millionaire Next Door phenomenon – the average person thinks of a millionaire as being someone with a high income that spends a lot of money, when that’s actually just a myth perpetuated by pop culture.

What do these statements add up to? A person who preaches frugality is going to receive some backlash, for better or worse.

As for me, I’ve seen frugal living work incredible wonders in my personal financial life. Thanks to frugal choices and a big slowdown on consumerism, I now have money in the bank, no high interest outstanding debts, and I have a lot of plans for the future that I actually have a clear path toward. Frugality works, and I don’t really mind the backlash – I’ll keep talking about it.

In the past, I have made many references to my preference for living in a small town over living in an urban area. For me, there’s no question – the advantages of small town rural life far outweigh the advantages of city living.

That’s not to say that I think city living is foolish – there are many benefits to living in a city that simply aren’t available in a rural area. The difference is priorities – which aspects of life are most important to you? The answer isn’t the same for everyone.

Earlier this week, when we looked at Kathy’s decision to move away from Washington D.C., it was clear that Kathy was ready for a change from her urban environment – and that’s a great thing to have really figured out what you want. She just needed a bit of encouragement.

However, there are a lot of people out there living in urban areas who are unhappy with their environs – and there are also a lot of people in rural areas who yearn for something different (I live very close to at least a few of these folks – they lived in a small town because they thought it would benefit their children, but they’re not happy with the tradeoffs).

Having said that, I tried to build a list of the most positive aspects of both urban and rural life, based on the aspects of each that I find most appealing. I’m quite sure the readers will throw in a lot more factors for each side.

One key thing: if you’re feeling unhappy with your environs, think of making a change. Read through this list and ask yourself which factors are most important to you. They’ll likely point you one way or another, either towards appreciating what you have now or encouraging you to make a move.

So, let’s get started.

Trent’s Top Advantages of City Life

Public transportation One of the biggest leashes around my neck is the requirement of owning a car to get anywhere. For example, I do not have a grocery store of any kind within walking distance of my house. The ability to just walk and use public transportation to get where you want to go is invaluable.

Cultural life If you value going to diverse concerts, attending art galleries on a very regular basis, and other such cultural trappings, city life is for you. I enjoy galleries, but I’m fine with just visiting two or three on a vacation. I do regret the lack of top-shelf concerts in Iowa, but it’s not quite as bad as it sounds – I did get to see Prince.

Diversity You get to meet a huge variety of people on a daily basis. Although it’s not a whitewash, most of the interior of the country is not incredibly diverse with the exception of the college towns. In smaller towns in particular, if you just glance at the surface, you’ll not see a wide diversity of opinion (it’s there, but not obvious).

Trent’s Top Advantages of Rural Life

Cost of living I fired up a cost of living calculator to get some real numbers:

To maintain the same standard of living, your salary of $85,000 in Boston, Massachusetts could decrease to $52,759 in Des Moines, Iowa
Stated another way, it’s 37.9% cheaper to live in Des Moines, Iowa than Boston, Massachusetts.

Enough said. I could go on and on about the inexpensiveness of the housing market, the fact that lower salaries means less of your money goes to the government, and so on. The difference is huge.

Space and nature From my house, I have cornfields directly to the west, a large wooded area to the northwest, a giant park several hundred feet due east, and there’s enough space between the houses in my area that kids play sports games between houses, let alone in their own backyard. I’m close to nature – it’s right out my back door – and I have plenty of room to do whatever I wish. The air is clean and never smoggy, and I can literally sit on my back porch with the lights off and see the Milky Way at night. All this and the low cost of living – I own this 2,000+ square foot house for less than $180K.

Independence In rural areas, you’re generally left alone to do whatever you want. There’s a strong libertarian streak in almost every rural area I’ve lived in. I have a giant compost bin in the back yard full of rotting material that I intend to put on my garden. I have the room to do this and the people that live near me don’t care too much.

Community At the same time, I’ve only lived in my current house for about three months and I already know about one hundred people on my block, many of them well enough that I talk to them several times a week. If I ever need something in a pinch, anything from a tool to a cup of sugar to a helping hand, I can practically just shout out what I need from the driveway and someone will help.

Hopefully, you can sit back, compare these lists (and the ideas that readers offer), and figure out for yourself which side of the fence appeals to you more. If you’re living on one side and you yearn strongly for the other situation, make the move. You’ll never regret it.

A friend of mine sent me an interesting thought problem.

Civilization as you know it is about to end. You have the option of taking yourself and ten other people to a desert island with you. Who do you take?

I listed the ten most obvious people and thought I was done. But the question wormed around for a while and I began to revise my list, eventually only having four people from the original list on the final one. I considered the idea of being trapped on a small island with some of these people, the fact that some are quite old and wouldn’t live long anyway, the need for non-related people (assuming you’re going to be there for many, many years), and so on.

Think about it. It’s not as obvious as you might first believe.

How To Budget With ING Direct A lot of great tips rolled up here into one pie. If you’ve got an ING Direct account like I do – or are even considering one – this is a nice read. (@ christian pf)

12 Investing Mistakes I’ve Made (And How You Can Learn From Them) Some excellent thoughts on mistakes made – and how they can be used to choose a better path later on. (@ get rich slowly)

In Defense Of McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger Lazy Man takes on my recent cheeseburger obsession … and argues with himself about it. (@ lazy man and money)

The Simple Dollar Retro: The Big Battle – Money Versus Job Satisfaction If you’re in a job that pays well but fills you with a lot of stress, this may be worth reading.

This post is part of The One Hour Project, in which you can spend just one hour to put your finances in a better place without a big lifestyle change, through frugality or other financial choices.

One of the biggest expenditures in many people’s lives is that of bottled and canned beverages, whether it be soda, sports drinks, or even bottled water. Considering that you can get four gallons of tap water from your tap for a single cent, it’s easy to see that substituting other beverages for this highly inexpensive resource can save you a lot of money rather quickly. If you drink a case of soda a week (costing $6), that’s an annual savings of $312 – well worth it.

Not only that, most people don’t drink a healthy amount of water in a day. The National Institute of Medicine advises that “men consume roughly 3.0 liters (about 13 cups) of total beverages a day and women consume 2.2 liters (about 9 cups) of total beverages a day.” Since only 20% of that comes from food, men should be drinking a little over 10 cups a day and women should drink a little over 7 cups a day – and the average American drinks far less than that.

Plus, it’s always a healthy choice to replace beverages that you’re drinking with water. Every time you make that choice, you’re choosing to eliminate all sorts of things from your diet – everything from caffeine to high fructose corn syrup and excess salts.

The problem for most people is upsetting their routine, so spend some time making it easy for yourself to change the routine. Here’s the game plan.

Every time you have a tendency to grab a beverage, get water instead. Make it your mission to do this for one week, and if you don’t like it, then don’t continue with it.

Fill some water bottles and put them in place of where you normally store beverages. I have a shelf in my refrigerator for beverages. As I went through my last go-round of Gatorade, I refilled the bottles with water and put them back in the fridge. This way, my normal routine of reaching in and grabbing a bottle wasn’t interrupted.

Don’t buy replacements for the beverages you already have. If you buy Gatorade or soda – or even ordinary bottled water – by the case, stop buying it. Instead, just keep water around and available in the refrigerator.

The real key to changing your beverage drinking habits, as with changing any habit, is to focus on changing the routine of it. Converting to drinking mostly water for your liquid intake is financially worthwhile (and healthy, too), but taking the time to modify any expensive habit is worth your time.

The one personal finance issue that I debate internally over quite a bit is whether one should pay off debt or invest if all they have are relatively low interest rate debts (7.5% or less, for instance). All of my remaining debts are below 7% and, thanks to careful frugal living, my spending is quite a bit below my earnings each month.

My current plan is that I take that excess and split it 50/50. Half of the excess goes towards debt repayment (I’m making extra payments on my highest-interest loan right now) and the other half goes towards investing in building a small portfolio of Vanguard index funds (which I’ll talk about someday, but isn’t particularly relevant right now).

At my innermost core, I believe I should be investing all of the excess. Here’s why:

The return is better. The portfolio I’ve designed has a 13% annual return since 2000. Yes, that includes the dot com bust. That’s far better than the 7% or so return I would get from paying off debts.

It moves us more directly towards our dreams. We have long dreamed of a very nice house in the country, with a large vegetable garden, a small barn, lots of trees, and hopefully no neighbors in sight. Our portfolio is designed to make this dream come true and thus investing now pulls that dream a little bit closer.

We have a big emergency fund. If everything fell apart, we have a cash emergency fund. If we blew through that, we could start pillaging the investments. In other words, having investments keeps us much farther away from the edge of the cliff.

My wife, on the other hand, believes that we should be paying off all of our debts first. Here’s why:

It reduces our monthly expenses much quicker. By getting rid of our debts as fast as possible, we reduce our required monthly expenses much more quickly than with a pure investing plan.

It provides a tangible goal that keeps us motivated. We know the exact dollar amount of our debt and can use that as a constant motivator. It’s much easier to pull money from a more nebulous investing goal.

Freedom from debt means we never have to go back. The idea of being completely free of debt has a lot of psychological appeal to both of us – not owing anyone a dime sounds quite good.

Which is right? One could argue this subject until the cows come home without resolving it. Both aspects have valid positives and valid negatives. My belief is that if you assume personal stability over the next several years, the investing solution is better – however, if a major life change happens soon, you’ll be much happier without the debt.

So what’s the answer? Spend less than you earn, then do what seems right for you. You’re not going wrong by paying off your debts quickly, or keeping debts while investing rationally. In both cases, you’re still sticking to that central idea – just spend less than you earn.

Where do you fall in this debate?

Over the last month, our house has held a toddler just entering his “terrible twos” (which basically means energetic, rambunctious, and without a knowledge of society’s basic expectations) and a newborn who has her days and nights largely juxtaposed. In other words, many of the entries for The Simple Dollar this month have been written while rocking a newborn’s cradle with my foot, often late in the night or very, very early in the morning.

This experience has taught me a lot of things – the biggest of which is that patience is the greatest virtue a parent can have. I’ve also learned a lot about how to live less expensively – and surprisingly, having a fourth member in our house has actually made living cheaper. Here’s what I mean:

Children in multiples make eating out not worth it. The effort required in hauling a toddler and a newborn to a restaurant takes away almost all of the benefit of eating out, leaving you just as frazzled as you would be at home, except with an expensive bill. There’s basically no eating out in our near future (say, a year at least), which means we’ll be saving money by eating at home.

You can reuse virtually everything from your first child. If you have an infant and think there’s any possibility of having another one, throw nothing away. We loaded up a closet with stuff and now we’re reusing it with our daughter. Don’t get rid of the stuff until you’re certain you’re done with children, even if it clutters storage space – if you do have another child, you’ll certainly reuse a lot of the stuff. Along those same lines…

If you plan on having multiple kids, invest in quality stuff the first time around. We long planned to have at least three children (and yes, that’s still the case), so we decided the stuff we bought for the first child would be high quality. We invested in a high-end breast pump, bought a very sturdy high-quality crib, a quality food processor (to puree foods we made for the little one, like steamed vegetables – I’ll talk about this in another post), and so on. These items are now being used with the second child – and they’re proving to be just as efficient and reliable as before.

Your parents are more helpful than ever before. Let them be as involved as they want to be and blow off any minor disagreements. The help that they provide when they’re around is incredible, and it seems to grow with each family addition. If you are having a child, get your parents involved, even if it means patching up a relationship. Not only does the child deserve to know and bond with his or her grandparents, the grandparents are wonderful at helping you to keep your house running and also to relieve you when you need a break. When I was younger, I wanted to live far away from my parents – now I wished they lived a lot closer.

Prepared food is the best gift of all. Of all of the items we received as gifts from well-wishing friends and family, the ones that were the most useful were the prepared foods for the freezer. Just pull out a casserole and pop it in the oven, or just grab the pre-cooked and frozen bratwursts and put them straight on the grill – it saves us the time of having to prepare meals and saves us the cost of having to buy the food. If you know of someone having a child and they have freezer space, make them a meal – if you have one coming, make some meals in advance.

The key to everything? Start establishing a routine and stick to it. There’s so much stuff that needs to be done when you’re a homeowner with multiple kids – especially if you’re trying to get ahead financially – that a routine is vital, even if it is boring.