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

An old friend of mine loaned me Never Wrestle With A Pig in the mail recently, with a little Post-It note that said “This is the best career advice I’ve ever read, even if I don’t follow all of it.” That note intrigued me, and I dove into the book headfirst.

Never Wrestle With A Pig by Mark McCormack offers up a ton of specific points of advice for building either a management career or your own business. In either case, the book basically assumes that the goal is to be in charge of some sort of organization. It also assumes that you’re just getting started in this process – big dreams, but not a lot of success yet. In other words, it speaks very well to a lot of people in their twenties and thirties.

But not to me. I’m not quite part of that target audience, as I don’t have any deep interest in management. I’m much more interested in self-employment or perhaps a very small business with just one or two employees. Does the book still hold something for me? If it does, it’s a pretty good read for any young person with goals – if not, it belongs just in the hands of people shooting for Let’s dig in and find out.

The Ideas Within Never Wrestle With A Pig

Most of these sections had many interesting points worth noting in them. Rather than having this summary turn into a book itself, I tried to pick the single most interesting point from each one and discuss it.

Giving Yourself A Reality Check
The book opens where it should, with the realization that you have to work hard to make it happen. Hard work underlines everything, and the moment you start slacking off is the moment you lose. My favorite point is that if you’re relying on luck to carry you through something, it probably won’t work – instead, your time should be spent making your position “luck proof.” Make sure all of your bases are covered as well as you can, and also go the extra mile to show that you’re a valuable part of the organization.

Speed, The Defining Factor
McCormack addresses time management here, making several astute points. The biggest one – and the one that I see many people not actually doing – is to set a very strict time for leaving work and sticking to it. Doing that ensures two things: one, that you have adequate time for personal growth and rest so that, two, during the time you’re actually there, you can be highly productive. I’ve seen people burn the midnight oil quite often – it works fine for a little while, but they usually wind up exhausted, underproductive, and bitter about things, none of which are helpful for your career.

Giving the Workplace a Reality Check
Most workplaces are dysfunctional in some way or another. They often reward being a “yes man” over being a valuable employee, encourage people to work less and network more, and discourage honesty and candor. Most of those effects, if seen, are indications that something is amiss at work. Another great sign: a consistent desire by everyone to minimize their workload and pass the buck. In fact, it’s much better to try to fill your day with work (but not overfill it). That way, you’re constantly producing – and that production will get noticed. It’s fine to foster relationships, but without the production to back it up, it’s not that valuable.

Office Politics
For many of us, office politics are a fact of life, especially when most of the people involved have the same goals: success, raises, and promotion. There are only so many slots to go around and only so much money that can be given for raises, so we compete – and that creates office politics. Many Machiavellian folks will encourage you to “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” but McCormack offers another solution: focus on and cultivate friendships. The more friends you have in the workplace, the more likely that absurd backstabbing tactics will fall flat on your face. I personally live by this and attempt to befriend everyone at work – not just the people at roughly my same level, but people both above me (management) and below me (janitors, administrative assistants) on the hierarchy. I’ll gladly chat with the janitor for a while or help the secretary change printer paper, because I’ve come to realize that these people are often information brokers at work and it’s very worthwhile to be on their good side.

Acquiring a Power Base
This section may as well be called “How to Play Well With Management,” because that’s the focus here. Most of the advice makes a great deal of sense, but perhaps the most valuable piece is to not let your intelligence become a hindrance. Sure, you might be the person in the room with all the answers and you also might often recognize that others are throwing up suboptimal ideas, but it never pays to be the “smartass.” Don’t surround yourself just with other smart people – for example, if you’re in IT, don’t just surround yourself with the IT folks. Never brag, and never overcomplicate anything – try to make things as simple as possible for others to understand. When you get feedback, even if you think it’s wrong, accept it – it’s often a hint that something you’re doing is wrong, even if it’s misdiagnosed.

Promotions, Demotions, and Other Career Hiccups
The basic advice here is that the promotion game often isn’t fair and that your best weapon for playing the game is to persevere. Don’t give up, and don’t panic. Instead, constantly look at yourself and figure out what you can be doing better. Nothing is bad enough that it can’t be recovered from, and even a demotion is not the end of the world. The key is to constantly seek improvement, especially when you see signs that promotions and rewards may be going to others.

Rules for Deal Makers
This information mostly applies to people who are in sales or in upper management – people who need to make deals with other people and other organizations. Given that, there are still some tips that anyone can use. For instance, in a normal meeting (one where no one is directly presenting), you should never do the majority of the talking – if you do that, it will make you look bad, even if you’re saying the right things. Instead, let others talk and use just your best points – quality over quantity earns respect.

When You Are In Charge
What about when you’re actually in charge of a situation, and it’s your call? This section offers a lot of specific advice on various situations, but I found the hiring advice to be the most compelling. In a nutshell, the key to good hiring is to really understand what you want. Let’s say you’re hiring a programmer. Is that person just going to be churning out simple code, or is that person going to be solving large problems? There’s a big difference there – two very different skillsets under the same job description. The first one should have programming language skills all over their resume, but the other one should be able to solve a thinking puzzle right in front of you. Know what you actually need before you hire.

Etiquette for the New Millennium
The book closes with a few general etiquette tips, the strongest of which I hinted at earlier: be nicer to your subordinates and tougher with your superiors. Why? People generally thrive on respect and kindness from people above them in rank and will often produce better if given that respect. At the same time, people don’t like brown-nosers – there’s no need to be rude to superiors, but simple respect goes a lot further than bootlicking ever will.

Buy or Don’t Buy?

Never Wrestle With A Pig is a great book to read if you’re in the early stages of your career, trying to find that right balance of time and work and networking. It offers a lot of solid career advice in digestible little pieces, perfect to stick on the bedstand and read one or two a night before closing your eyes. Even better, unlike many books that are filled with so many small pieces of advice, most of these are action-oriented – it’s pretty clear what action follows the advice and the rationale for that action.

That being said, none of this advice is world-shattering, either. It’s strong, sensible advice that includes pieces that will help with your career, but it’s not a “sea change” book like Getting Things Done or Never Eat Alone.

Check it out from the library, put it on your nightstand, and read a little piece at a time. Let those ideas simmer in your head, and see what comes out of them. What you’ll probably find is that the catalyst for jump-starting your career is already inside you, but it just took a little nudge for it to come out. Never Wrestle With A Pig can definitely be that nudge.

As many of you know, I’ve been writing a book over the last several months in my spare time, and it’s basically completed. I wanted to give you an update on the project and let you know where things are going with it.

What’s the status of the book?

The first draft is finished and it’s in an “incubation period” – it doesn’t have a final title yet. The incubation period is a technique I’ve used for a long time on important writings that I’ve done. Basically, when you finish something, you put it away for a month or two and not even look at it at all. Then you get it out, print it, and read it offline with a pen in hand. That elapsed time takes away the intimacy of the writing, allowing you to read it with a somewhat fresh perspective. I hope to do this at the end of February, which would bring me to a second draft. When the second draft is done – depending on how I feel about it – I’ll either incubate it again or give it to a few close friends to read, and then I’ll be ready to do something with it.

What’s the book about?

Unlike most personal finance books, it’s got a large amount of autobiographical material to it. In fact, the original framework of the book was an expansion of my very popular Road to Financial Armageddon series, which was basically a financial autobiography.

The biggest focus is on the time when I was making the big mental switch from spending too much to being a fairly frugal person. How did I make that mental switch? What things did I focus on? How did I begin the debt recovery process? What thoughts really shocked me into change? I tried to address these questions in great detail, focusing both on how I answered the questions and also the techniques people can use to make that transition.

I think it turned out really well. It’s the book I wish I had during my financial meltdown.

When can I read it?

That’s the question I’m puzzling over right now. My original plan, when I first started writing it, was just to see if I could actually do it. Writing a book is a significant undertaking, particularly one that anyone will actually want to read. I didn’t really think about a publishing plan when I started with it.

Now that it is (in large part) finished, I’ve got to make some tough decisions. Here are the three routes I’m looking at.

The first and most obvious option is to publish the traditional way, by getting a literary agent and having that person “sell” the book to a big publishing house. I’ve had casual conversations with a few agents, but I’ve not cemented any sort of formal agreements with anyone. This route probably offers the best route in terms of wide distribution for the book and has the most potential to attract mainstream media attention to what I’m doing, but it is probably the least directly lucrative option and likely would take the longest time to actually get the book into people’s hands.

The second option is to self-publish and try to promote it myself. This means that I would take on the burden of getting the book published and distributed, but all promotional efforts have to be handled alone. This offers the best opportunity for a return on my time investment, but it’s worse than the first option in terms of distributing the book to a wide audience.

The last option is to publish it as an ebook or as a series of posts. This is the option that requires the least effort from me at this point and gets it out there the fastest, but it also is the worst option for wide distribution. Part of the advantage of doing a print book is it enables my writing to exist in another medium that can get distributed in ways that this site really can’t.

Honestly, I’m unsure which path to take right now. This is an area where my expertise is rather limited. My goal is to maximize my audience, and I’m willing to earn less per copy sold to ensure that, but that doesn’t firmly point me towards one route or another.

What do you guys think? I’m open and listening, as always.

Once a person has their debt under control, the next thing that they want to do with their money is figure out ways to maximize it, and most of the time the potential gains of the stock market look like a great place to put money.

But how? For the average person, the diversity of options for investing in stocks are overwhelming. Should I buy a mutual fund? Should I buy individual stocks? How do I even get started when I’ve figured out what I want to do? What are my investing goals? How do I even describe those goals?

I used to feel overwhelmed by such questions until I sat down and did the research, but I discovered that for the beginning investor, there’s really only a handful of simple steps that you need to follow to make smart investment choices. If you’re at the point where your debt is under control, your savings account is getting quite fat, and you’re looking for better options, here’s how you get started.

1. Figure out your goals.
When you first start thinking about this, it seems nebulous. It’s often hard to tangibly state what your goals are, especially if you’re young and single. However, you often find that they day you get married, it feels like a flood of goals hit you at once – buying a house, having a child, and so on.

Here’s what to do to get started. Take out a sheet of paper and list every financial goal you have in your life right now. What are you saving for? What would you like to be saving for? Things that might wind up on this list are retirement, your children’s education, a house down payment, complete debt freedom, a car, “walk away from your job” money, money to start a business, and so on. Some of those will be important to you, some won’t, and you may have some that aren’t even listed there.

Then, take that list and rank them by importance to you (or to you and your spouse). Don’t worry about what society says, but I will say that younger people tend to undervalue the importance of retirement. Other than that, it’s really about what’s important in your own life – not in what society thinks or what someone else sees as being important in life.

I tend to argue in favor of focusing on the top two to four goals. This way, an average person can actually reasonably accomplish those top goals in a reasonable timeframe. Figure out that time frame for those top goals. How much time is it before you reach that goal?

This doesn’t mean that your goals are set in stone. Everyone’s life changes over time and your goals may in fact change. The point is that your investment decisions are led by your goals, so before you even start investing, you should have a good grasp on what your goals are.

In my own life, I have several goals: retirement (targeted for age 60), my children’s college education (targeted for about seventeen years down the road), a new minivan (targeted for 1-2 years from now), and a new house in the countryside (targeted for about twelve years from now). Each of these have a different investment strategy, which we’ll get to in a minute.

2. Know your risk tolerance.
One major piece of the puzzle that people don’t address before they start investing is their risk tolerance. Often, they overestimate their risk tolerance, then find themselves in an investment situation that leaves them feeling very nervous about their financial position.

Spend some time thinking about this. Would you not worry if you woke up and found out that you had lost 5% of your investment if you knew in the long run it would build up in value? How about 20%? If you had $10,000 in stocks, and then over a very bearish month, $2,000 of that vanished, how would you honestly react? Would you take your money out?

The reason this is important is that it is extremely dangerous to be invested in something that exceeds your risk tolerance. If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night nervous about where your money is, you’re likely to make an emotional move, like taking your money out when it’s about to rebound.

As a general rule of thumb, if you feel nervous about losing money at all, you probably shouldn’t be invested in stocks. Keep it in cash, in either your bank account or in certificates of deposit. Don’t feel weird – my best friend is in this camp.

On the other hand, most people have some degree of risk tolerance, though, and if you find that losing 10% or so won’t make you scared and ready to pull out, then you should dip your toes into stock investment. We’ll get to the specifics later.

3. For short term goals (less than two years or so), keep the money in cash.
That means store it in a savings account or perhaps buy a short term certificate of deposit at a bank – whichever option gets you the best interest rate and enables you to have cash in hand on the day you need it.

Why? Keeping it in cash means that it won’t be exposed to the up and down nature of the stock market. Quite often, over short term periods like two years, it’s quite possible that not only will you not turn a profit, but you might actually lose a piece of your invested money.

4. For medium term goals (two to ten years), diversify at your comfort level.
If your investment window is more than two years, the odds that you’ll come out ahead on the stock market start to get better, but it still comes with some risk. The stock market is never a guarantee, and past performance is never a guarantee of future returns.

Another factor to consider: how much is your life relying on this money? It makes sense to be more conservative with retirement money than with, say, money you’re saving for a new car. That’s because a downturn in your retirement can force you to work for years longer, while a downturn in your car savings just means you might have to continue to drive an older car for a year longer. The more vital that money is to your life plans, the more conservative you should be with it. If you’re not sure, be more conservative than less – keep plenty in the savings account and just dabble in the stocks.

5. For long term goals (ten years or more), stocks are a pretty good place to put your money.
Over the history of the stock market, almost every period longer than ten years has seen a profitable return in a broad stock investment. Even better, during many ten year stretches, the returns are quite impressive. Because of that (even though past performance isn’t a guarantee of future returns), it generally makes sense to put long term money heavily in the stock market.

6. The best place for first-time stock investors to put their money is in a low-cost index fund.
There are several reasons for this.

First, an index fund allows you to be invested in a lot of stocks at the same time. That way, you’re not affected by the ups and downs of a single company just as you are getting your toes wet in stocks.

Second, a low cost fund means that the investing house isn’t eating much of your money. Look for a fund with a cost less than 0.2%. That way, the gains go into your pocket, not in the pocket of your investing house.

Third, an index fund will introduce you to the ups and downs of stock investing. While they’re nowhere near as volatile as individual stocks, they are volatile. Many index funds can go up or down 3% on a single day. In other words, it’s a great way to find out where your risk tolerance really is without a deep risk of losing a lot of your money.

Personally, I only invest in index funds, for reasons I’ve specified in the past.

How can I get started with these? The best way is to get an account with a large investment house and transfer your money in online – the interface is often like online banking. I personally use Vanguard when I invest (though I’m currently focused on eliminating debts), as Vanguard offers a wide array of low-cost index funds.

Once you sign up with an account, the best first fund to buy is an index fund made up of a huge number of domestic stocks. If you sign up with Vanguard, take a serious look at the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index. It has a total expense ratio of 0.15% – in other words, when you invest, each year Vanguard charges only 0.15% for managing the fund, which is very cheap – and includes virtually every significantly large company on the New York Stock Exchange.

Once you’ve started, set up an automatic investment plan so that you put in a certain amount each week or each month. Not only does this make it incredibly easy to keep up with your savings, it essentially automatically follows the investment strategy known as dollar cost averaging (which reduces investment risk).

Just sit on that for a while. Watch it. See whether you’re comfortable with the ups and downs of it. Learn more over time, and then you’ll figure out on your own where to go next. Maybe you’ll find that the volatility is too much for you and you’ll move the money to savings. Maybe you’ll want to diversify and buy an international index fund. Maybe you’ll have no problem at all with the volatility and dip your toes into individual stocks. It’s up to you.

Remember, though, that today is always the best day to get started.

Since starting The Simple Dollar (and discovering, when it became successful, that it required constant attention) and having two children, I’ve found that getting financially ahead and finding the time to get everything done both became significantly more challenging than before. While the big things really help, it’s the little things – repeated often – that add up to a whole lot.

That being said, here are the twelve little things I do almost every day that make it possible for me to stay in great financial shape, manage The Simple Dollar, spend time with my kids, have some time for personal growth and recreation, work at my regular job, and still maintain my sanity. Each one is coupled with a “take home” that you can try to see if it works for you.

1. I set aside a block of time at the start of the day exclusively to work on The Simple Dollar and related projects.
I look at The Simple Dollar as a side business that requires a significant amount of attention on a daily basis to thrive. Spreading it out into little bits throughout the day didn’t really work – I found that spreading the three hours or so I devote to the site out across the day resulted in much less than three hours of productivity. Thus, I took a block of time to devote to my side projects, the chief of which is The Simple Dollar. This block is about two hours long, stretching from 4:30 AM to 6:30 AM (on average). Most of the intense parts of my projects are handled then – the brainstorming, the writing, and so on. I will often do small tasks in pieces later on, like answering emails, but by setting aside time to get most of the work done in one chunk, I free up the rest of the day to devote to things that are really important.

The take home: Try finding a block of time in your day to devote to a specific project. One common place to find the time is by replacing evening television viewing. Another one – the route I take – is to wake up earlier and do things in the early morning.

2. I do three things before anything else in the morning.
The first thing is take a shower. Immediately upon waking, I find that a shower wakes me up and makes me feel invigorated. I follow that with something healthy for breakfast, be it yogurt or a piece of fruit or some toast. Then, I solve some puzzles to get my brain into gear – I like doing Sudoku or other puzzles on my DS. This, in all, takes about thirty minutes, but when I’m done, I’m in high gear for the day – I can dive right into my block of time for side projects.

The take home: As soon as you wake up in the morning, take a shower and follow it with a bite to eat of something healthy with natural sugars in it, then follow it with something that tickles your brain. A routine to energize you in multiple ways makes all the difference.

3. I pay all bills online via online bill pay at my bank.
As many of you know, I use ING Direct as my primary checking and savings bank. They offer an incredibly nice online banking system that basically allows you to cut a check to anyone you wish just by filling in a simple form. Better yet, they save the address information so you can do it time and time again – you only have to fill in the info on your cell phone bill once, for example, and then next time you just enter the dollar amount and hit submit. Even better, if the amount stays the same every month (like a car or mortgage payment), you only have to fill out that information one time, tell it to pay it automatically every month, and never worry about it again. Seriously, I have not touched my paper checkbook in four months, haven’t used a stamp to send in a bill in even longer, and it takes almost no time at all to do the bills.

The take home: Sign up for a bank account with good online banking and bill pay (here’s a guide for finding a new bank and also a guide for switching your accounts to that bank – I personally recommend ING Direct), then go through and set up all of your bills in the service. Once that’s done, the time to pay bills almost completely vanishes, forever.

4. I automate all of my savings and investments.
Along with that online bill pay, I also automate every bit of my savings and investments. Having an automatic savings plan for large purchases, like a house down payment or a car, is kind of like making early payments on it, except the interest works in your favor (building up in your bank account) instead of against you (interest payments on a loan). Even better, automatic investing is effectively the same as a great investment strategy on its own – dollar cost averaging. I just set up an automatic investment – a certain dollar amount every week or every month – and then I don’t even look at the investment except once in a great while when I make sure my portfolio is how I want it to be. My money builds with no effort.

The take home: Don’t make it a “goal” to save, just make it happen automatically. That way, you’re doing the financially prudent thing and you don’t even have to think about it. For starters, use your online banking service and have it set up to deposit a certain amount each week into a savings account – even if it’s a small amount – and forget about it for a while. When you look, you’ll be pleasantly surprised – it just works like magic.

5. I have only two email sessions a day, and I empty my email inbox at the end of every email session.
I used to keep hundreds of emails in my inbox, but I found that this lack of organization was often distracting and kept me from keeping on the tasks that I needed to get done – plus, it was psychologically overwhelming to see all of those messages all the time. Even worse – I kept my email program open all the time and I’d be interrupted from my current task by the latest messages. No more. I now check my email in two batches – once early in the morning, first thing, and once later in the day. At the end of each session, I make sure my inbox is empty and that I’ve got copies of any emails related to tasks I need to work on – and I close the program. No more interruptions. No more despair at the mountains of email. No more lost tasks – I file the messages appropriately and use a “TO DO” folder.

The take home: Go through your entire inbox and file away everything that isn’t pressing. Everything that is pressing should become a to-do list in a separate place. Close your email program when you’re not answering email, and only deal with it once or twice a day. Anything more than that is just distraction from real work.

6. Whenever I have an idea of any sort, I write it down.
This has saved me more times than I can count. I simply keep a notebook (or voice recorder) open (or available) wherever I’m at. Then, when I have an idea of any kind – from something to get at the grocery store or a reminder to pack a new blanket in my daughter’s daycare bag to a post idea for The Simple Dollar or a innovative idea for the workplace or a topic I want to learn more about – I jot it down immediately. I don’t hesitate – if I do, there’s a decent chance that core idea will float right out of my head. I try to jot down as much detail as I can quickly so I’m not distracted from whatever task is at hand, and then I forget about the idea until later, confidently knowing that I have it recorded. Later in the day, I go through these jotted-down ideas, designating some of them for action, discarding a few, doing research on a few others.

The take home: Leave an open notebook and a pen on your desk, and just write down anything that seems remotely important that drifts into your head. At the end of the day, deal with that list of stuff you jotted down.

7. I spread out my eating, particularly to enjoy an energy-rich snack in the early afternoon.
This seems crazy, but it really works. I used to run into the problem of the “afternoon doldrums” – an energy valley around two in the afternoon. Since a nap didn’t really fit, I tried various tactics until I hit upon one that worked. Instead of eating three meals a day, I often eat only one “large” meal in a day – dinner with my wife and children. The rest of the day consists of four small meals – one in the early morning, one in the late morning, one in the early afternoon, and one mid-to-late afternoon. The key ones seem to be the early morning one (mentioned earlier) and the early afternoon one – both of these are great times to eat an energy-rich snack or small meal. I usually eat yogurt or a piece of fresh fruit. The late morning one is usually a small sampling of leftovers from supper the last few nights, and the later afternoon one is usually something small right when I arrive home. This keeps my energy level pretty constant throughout the day.

The take home: Eat a smaller lunch, then eat an energy-rich snack a bit later, like a piece of fresh fruit. This will help keep away the afternoon doldrums.

8. I utilize my lunch break for other tasks.
Since I can easily eat the small “snacks” at my desk, I don’t have to use my lunch break for actual lunch. Instead, I use that time to run errands or complete other tasks that need done. Without the obstacle of lunch, that hour (I have an hour-long mandatory lunch break, though my exact time for taking it can vary) is a great time to go shop for staples at the grocery store, ship a package, or just do something uplifting like writing a long, handwritten letter to an old friend. That hour during the day to take care of “stuff” is invaluable.

The take home: Don’t always look at the lunch break as being “the time when you eat lunch.” Instead, look at your day with a bit more creativity.

9. I drive a slightly longer route to and from work in order to avoid temptation.
The most direct route from my home to my workplace and back takes me past several tempting places to stop. On the way in, there are three coffee shops and a bagel shop. On the way out, there are two bookstores, a used video game shop, and at least two electronics stores. It used to be very easy for me to slip into one of those places, burn some time, and even worse, burn some money I didn’t really need to spend. When I realized how quickly cash was slipping away from me, I studied my route and found a slightly longer route to work – I just took the next exit and backtracked for about five blocks through some parks and a light residential area. What happened? On average, I started getting home about twenty minutes earlier each night and spending about $40 less a week – and I didn’t really miss it at all.

The take home: If there’s a place you consistently stop on your normal commute that wastes time and/or money, look for an alternate route to take that avoids these distractions, even if that alternate route is slightly longer.

10. I meditate once a day, to clear the “work” cruft from my mind and prepare for a family evening.
When I first arrive home from work, I go into the guest bedroom, do a few stretches, then meditate. I just try to clear out all of the things that were on my mind and stressing me from my work day and replace them with… well, nothing at all. That way, I’m relaxed and ready to spend time with my family when they arrive home. What exactly do I do? I do a few basic stress relieving yoga stretches, then I do some basic meditation. In all, I spend about twenty minutes doing this and I suddenly feel like a new person.

The take home: When you first get home from work, don’t vegetate in front of the television or dive straight into household tasks. Instead, take just a few minutes in a quiet place to completely and totally unwind. I recommend closing your eyes, then specifically relaxing each part of your body. It reinvigorates you and cleans out much of the stress of the day.

11. I don’t allow anything to interrupt my “core” evening.
From the time my children get home to the time my son finally falls asleep, nothing interrupts my family time. That is the most valuable time in my day, the time where I get to fully enjoy the people I’m with. I work hard so that I can provide a good home and a good life for my family – to not spend valuable, uninterrupted time with them each day basically undermines why I do these things. It keeps me emotionally and spiritually centered, and I honestly believe I learn as much from my children as they learn from me. In other words, I work to live, not live to work.

The take home: Figure out what’s most important in your life. Maybe it’s your children or your spouse. Maybe it’s mastering an artistic medium. Maybe it’s volunteer work. When you have it figured out, set aside a block of time for that each day. Realize that you work to live, not live to work, and life will seem substantially better.

12. I save small, menial tasks for the hour before bed.
That final hour before bed, when I’m getting sleepy, is the best time for me to get menial tasks done, ones that don’t require a lot of mental concentration. I save things like cleaning up supper dishes, taking out the trash, answering simple emails, and so on for that last hour. This serves two purposes. First, my more “alert” time earlier in the day is spent on more important tasks. Second, by giving myself a checklist of stuff to do right before bed, I use the desire to go to bed and get some sleep as a “carrot” to get these tasks done. I think, “when I do the dishes, make my daughter’s daycare bottles, wipe off the table, pick up the Legos in the living room, write back to my editor, and answer any other trivial emails that are around, I can then go to bed.” That way, the joy of falling asleep is a final reward for a good day.

The take home: Save the mindless tasks for when you’re mindless. Do something enjoyable and mentally engaging earlier in the evening and then do the mindless tasks like loading the dishwasher just before bed.

Each Friday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book.

Few things annoy me more than hidden costs. In fact, it was repeated hidden costs that finally made me ditch the bank I had been using for a decade – I got tired of hidden maintenance fees and ATM fees sneaking up on me time and time again. This sorry trend is prevalent in a lot of industries and is a quiet frustration for a lot of people.

Bob Sullivan, the writer of MSNBC’s Red Tape Chronicles, takes on this topic in Gotcha Capitalism Subtitled How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day – And What You Can Do About It, it simultaneously seeks to expose the wide variety and depth of such tactics and to offer advice on how to fight back against them.

It’s an interesting topic to discuss, but as I look at the cover, I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t better covered by a series of blog posts rather than as a full book. Initially, I would expect this to be a seven or eight part expose on the Red Tape Chronicles – is there really enough meat in this topic to make a compelling book? Let’s find out.

Looking At Gotcha Capitalism

1. The World of Gotcha Capitalism
Amazingly, the first thirty six pages of the book lay out the main idea of the book: companies often ding their customers quite vigorously with hidden fees of all kinds. This opening piece reads like an extended, well-edited edition of Sullivan’s column, laying out in great detail how and why companies do this. In short, companies toss in these fees because they’re a very easy way to make a profit and most people simply don’t bother to complain about them. And why not? If you, as a company, can slip an extra $10 out of the customer’s pocket, that’s basically pure profit, adding straight to your organization’s bottom line.

Amazingly, the rest of the book merely expands on this opening thesis, exposing specific examples of these fees as well as offering tactics for fighting them.

2. Sneaky Fees in Everything
There is a ton of good advice in this section of the book on fighting fees of all kinds. I’m just going to highlight just a few of these tips.

Credit Cards Credit card companies will find creative ways to ding you if you carry a balance at all. Thus, your best technique is to pay off your whole balance every month like clockwork. If you can’t manage that, use online bill pay to automatically pay $50 or $100 each month well in advance of your due date so that you don’t get dinged with late fees, ever.

Banks Never get overdraft protection – it only takes a few months for the fees from that protection to outpace the cost of an overdraft. Instead, use online banking (I use ING Direct, an online-only bank, for my primary banking) and check your balance consistently so that you know where you’re at. Also, never assume something has deposited, ever – I used to make this mistake with my old bank. Instead, use that online banking to make sure something has deposited before you go to spend that cash.

Retirement/401(k)s Have a meeting with your plan representative and flat-out ask about hidden fees and expense ratios, because quite often the funds with the best returns also have huge hidden fees and a very high expense ratio (meaning that, in an average year, this fund will do pretty badly). The best rule of thumb? Choose the investment choice that has the best return after you subtract out the expense ratio and the fees, because that’s the fund that’s most protected against a downturn in the market and isn’t just capitalizing on the “trend of the moment.”

Mortgages and Rentals Shop around, and try to get good faith estimates for identical loans across lenders – same number of years, same interest rate. This will reveal differences in closing costs. Then, once you have an idea of who’s ripping you off on the closing, you can use that to decide between competitive lenders with similar rates. My tip? Don’t forget the local credit union. They treated us very well in our mortgage process.

Cell Phones Right off the bat, ask the provider to waive termination, activation, and upgrade fees. If they won’t do this, move on – a slightly worse plan that won’t ding you with these nonsensical fees is usually a better deal. Another useful tactic: download cell phone unlocking software so that you can keep your phone after your plan terminates, making it easy for you to move to another carrier without the cost of buying a new phone.

Home Phones Best tip, and one that I’ve used in the past: study your bill, then call the phone company and get rid of every service you don’t need. By default, they usually put on “services” that you’re unaware of and don’t really need.

Pay TV With so many competitors out there, pay television services are often quite willing to cancel any fee you get and often will lower their rates (or maintain earlier rates you received) just to keep you as a customer. Call up and ask for any fees to be removed and ask for a lower rate – just be sure you avoid any long term contracts.

Internet Access Service providers often slip fees onto a bill and make them appear to be taxes. If you don’t know what a line item is, ask, and if it’s not a tax, ask for that fee to be waived. Also, regularly use speed testers like Speakeasy to make sure that you’re getting the speed you’re paying for.

Travel Hotels in particular like to tack on extra charges, so be sure to go over what will be on your bill before you even make a reservation – and try to get those fees waived before your trip.

Groceries The worst deals in the grocery store are usually at eye level and are usually closer to the entrance. In other words, to find the best deals, look far higher than your eye level and far lower, and also be willing to go around the whole store looking for good prices. Also, loyalty cards are a good deal, but it’s a good idea to regularly swap them with your friends in order to obscure your buying history (for privacy purposes).

Gift Cards If you’re thinking of giving a gift card, give cash instead. A gift card is basically a gift of cash with restrictions on it – fees, expiration dates, and such.

Rebates Fill them out as soon as possible or else you’ll forget about it. This is so true – I found a rebate form a while back from 2005, meaning I lost out on a significant rebate that I would have collected had I just jumped on the ball right after receiving it.

Student Loans The best tip? Get all of the public loans you can before getting private ones, then pay off the private ones first. Almost always, private loans have worse rates and tend to be much less forgiving than public loans.

3. Toolkit
So how do you fight back? The book offers a lot of suggestions. Here are a few.

Customer Service Calls Don’t be afraid to call customer service, but realize that many companies will put you on hold in order to make you go away. Also, being angry on the phone will never help you resolve your problem.

Sample Letters That Work Writing letters (or emails) to a company can also work, and the book offers several templates for this. The key is sticking to the facts, being brief, and clearly stating the response you expect on this issue.

The Legal Options For most minor situations, legal solutions aren’t worth it – they’ll cost you more in the long run. Don’t bother with a lawyer unless you have a deeply legitimate complaint worth significant reimbursement and it’s well-documented.

Buy or Don’t Buy?

Although I was quite aware of the concept of “Gotcha Capitalism,” I was almost shocked at the breadth of it. This book does a great job of showing you how your wallet is being almost constantly nickel and dimed by companies of all stripes. The first half of the book is a great read for anyone, if just for the shock factor. The advice is also useful, particularly for people who haven’t ever even considered raising a complaint about unfair fees. Quite often, organizations will roll back at least some of this craziness and Sullivan offers a great guide to doing so.

The topic of the book is pretty narrow, though, and if you’re diligent about your money and your spending, you’re probably already avoiding a good number of these fees. However, the sheer number of tips on how to avoid such fees is very valuable – I wound up actually busting out the highlighter and just marking tips that were useful to me. That means, yes, this one was a keeper for me if for nothing else than the sheer number of useful tips for avoiding being nickel and dimed to death – thankfully, it’s an inexpensive buy at amazon. A frugal person might want to check it out at the library, but bust out the notepaper – you’ll find yourself taking tons of notes. Good work, Bob Sullivan!

Several months ago, I offered up a detailed and rather negative review of the well known personal finance book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. In it, the author, Robert Kiyosaki, encourages people to take on a substantial amount of risk in order to get rich and largely derides people who choose not to take on that risk.

Let’s get the facts straight: I feel that the actual advice as well as the tone of Rich Dad, Poor Dad borders on the absurd. Yet, at the same time, it is easy to understand how someone with an entrepreneurial bent and some competitive fire would find a lot to be inspired by in this book, and I’ve seen comments from lots of people that were inspired by Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

The question then becomes is there value in reading a “bad” book? Years ago, my answer would have been an automatic “no.” What’s the point in reading rubbish advice that you won’t follow? In fact, it wasn’t too long ago when I would toss aside a book or a blog as soon as I read something that I disagreed with.

As I’ve grown and thoroughly explored some subjects (like personal finance), my opinion on the idea of bad books (and blogs I disagree with) has changed quite a bit. It is incredibly valuable to get a diversity of perspectives on any subject. That’s why I actually read all the way through Rich Dad, Poor Dad – I extracted a few positive points from it and was able to really grasp the overall message that Kiyosaki was trying to sell.

In short, I try to read as much as I can on a topic and never stop growing in my understanding of it, even if that means reading things I disagree with, don’t fully understand (yet), or find incredibly challenging in some way.

Let’s take a look at Rich Dad, Poor Dad. What did I learn from it?

I learned that some personalities thrive on financial risk. “Rich Dad” thrived on taking on a huge amount of financial risk. I personally think it’s foolish to dive into businesses cash first, but I’m apparently wired differently. I’m a conservative investor who prefers to manage my money carefully – I’d rather see smaller, stable returns than to toss my cash on the roulette wheel.

I learned that even people who thrive on such risk are rewarded by frugality. “Rich Dad,” in some ways, was a rather frugal person. Of course, Kiyosaki coupled that with promises of fast cars and such for the person who followed the “Rich Dad” path, but there is value in frugality even for risk-taking entrepreneurs.

I learned that some people who thrive on this risk look at people who avoid risk with disdain. Kiyosaki looks down upon “Poor Dad” and refers to people who work for others and slowly accumulate wealth in a less-risky environment as “hamsters.” That perspective actually explains a lot about how CEOs and many business leaders operate – we’re just “hamsters” in the machine to them.

These were useful lessons, and they altered my perspectives on some issues, even if I thought much of the advice in Rich Dad, Poor Dad was rubbish.

How can you decide what’s right? If you read a bunch of books on the same topic, you’re bound to find contradictions between them. The best guidance is finding the points where lots of sources agree and trusting your own intuition after you’ve read a lot of material.

For instance, after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad and some individual stock investing books, coupled with reading stuff like Your Money or Your Life and The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing, you might find that the answers that make the most sense to you are entrepreneurial and have a lot of risk. If that’s the case, then by all means jump into entrepreneurship and aggressive investing – but don’t ignore lessons that come from more conservative sources. The greatest dangers are never bothering to learn more, ceasing to grow in what you know, and failing to understand what others are thinking even if you disagree.

For me (and for a lot of my readers), conservative investing, frugal living, and a debt-free lifestyle are the goals and the ideas that make the most sense – and books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, though they provide valuable insight into other perspectives, just reinforce the idea that the debt-free road is the right road for me to follow. So, yes, I might sometimes review books or link to blogs that are way off base from this perspective, but even those books can teach us a lot.

This sentiment comes up quite often in the comments at The Simple Dollar: people leave notes complaining that they make frugal choices, but their spouse interprets that move not as a long term financial benefit but as more money to spend right now. Thus, their frugal ways go without the long term reward – they’re careful about spending their money, but their bank account balance doesn’t seem to grow.

I’m lucky – I have a spouse who is very frugal and has most of the same philosophies that I do. In fact, she’s probably more frugal than I am – her only weakness is books, but she participates in PaperBackSwap to help keep that low. She’s also in line with all of the same goals I have – freedom from debt, saving for major purchases so we don’t have to go into more debt, and so on. Our goal as a family is to eliminate all of our debt by my fortieth birthday – a goal we’re both on board for.

Unfortunately, many people aren’t in such a lucky situation. They may be in sync with their spouses in a number of ways, but in terms of personal spending, they’re in different worlds. Naturally, the frugal spouse is going to be frustrated, watching their efforts dissipate in a spending binge by their spouse. On the other hand, the spending spouse probably feels some frustration too, as their spouse won’t “live a little.”

How can these two sides meet? Here are five suggestions, culled from a number of sources, particularly my own experiences interacting with my spouse and observing couples as well as the excellent It Pays to Talk.

Accept that your spouse is operating from a different set of beliefs than you. You believe in the power of frugal living and have chosen to live frugally – that’s great. Realize, though, that it is a choice and that your spouse has made a different choice. You can’t force someone to make a different choice, but you can convince them over time to make a different choice for themselves.

Accentuate the positives of frugality. Point out some of the most obvious frugal choices and indicate how much of a difference that will make. “If we hold off a year in replacing the car but save up the money now, we’ll save $6,000.” “If we skip out on one shopping spree a month and turn that saved money into one extra house payment a year, we can pay off our mortgage five years earlier – think about how much extra money we would have each month then!”

However, when making spur-of-the-moment entertainment or social choices, suggest frugally but don’t point it out. If your spouse wants to do something today, take the initiative and suggest something that doesn’t break your budget in half. Instead of a trip to the mall, suggest going to a free museum. Instead of going out to eat somewhere expensive, propose that you make a romantic dinner at home. The best tactic is to suggest the idea spontaneously, but don’t focus on the fact that it’s cheap.

Make your saving automatic. One reader had a spouse that, at the end of the month, felt like it was her obligation to spend most of what remained in the checking account under the idea that it was extra money. A much better approach is to treat saving like a bill – set up a separate savings account and have a certain amount transfer to that fund on a regular basis. That way, there isn’t “left over” cash in the checking account and you can use that savings account stash for major purchases, like a car down payment.

Propose “equal spending.” If none of the above work well, propose to your spouse that the “extra” money should be spent equally, then sock yours away. That way, if there’s $200 left to spend at the end of a month, you each take $100 of it, your spouse spends it, and you save it. This works well if it’s pretty clear that your spouse will likely never come around to making frugal choices.

Most of these ideas have one thing in common: they strive to show the benefits of frugality without the preaching. Don’t tell your spouse about how great frugality is and how “bad” they are for not believing in it – that will just drive them away. Instead, walk the walk and let the benefits show themselves – when something goes wrong, just pay for it with the cash you’ve been saving and then suggest that saving money has a lot of benefit. Eventually (hopefully), the power of frugal living will become clear.

Never, ever push it to confrontation, though – that will just result in two unhappy people in a marriage. If you’re constantly telling your spouse to spend less, there is probably already a level of resentment building up, and that’s a tactic that will always end in failure. Instead, focus on being a good example of frugality and when the benefits are clear, point them out. Also, be willing to compromise a little – if your spouse wants to go out to a nice dinner on occasion, go along with it sometimes. Marriage is about compromise, in the end.

Whenever the Federal Reserve makes a move, it dominates headlines. I watched CNN for a while yesterday while waiting for a meeting and they kept going back to the big news that the Federal Reserve cut the prime lending rate by 0.75%. Most news stories make it clear that this is theoretically beneficial to stocks, and it did prevent a stock market collapse, turning a potentially terrible day on the stock market into just a mildly bad one.

However, for most people the actions of the Federal Reserve seem to have no connection to their day to day life. The prime lending rate? What does that have to do with my day to day life?

First of all, the prime lending rate is the interest rate that banks charge each other for short term loans. If a bank needs some quick cash, it can always borrow it from a bank down the road for that prime lending rate. Thus, most banks use this rate as the baseline for the interest rates they can give on savings accounts (they should be less than the prime rate, or at least close to it) and also on the interest rates they can give on loans (these should be above the prime rate, but competition keeps them low).

Thus, many, many other rates that do affect your life are affected by the prime lending rate. Let’s look at them.

The interest rates on your savings accounts will drop. Your local bank probably won’t change much – they offer so little on the average savings account that it doesn’t matter too much. However, over the next few weeks, a lot of online savings accounts will adjust downwards – probably something close to 0.75% in their savings rate. Some banks will change faster than others, so the next month is a bad time to do any rate jumping. Just stick with where you’re at, know that rates will go down, and wait it out for a bit.

The interest rates on mortgages will drop, perhaps convincing you to refinance. If you were looking at buying a house with a nice, stable thirty year fixed mortgage, this is amazing news because your mortgage rate will drop around 0.75%. On a $200,000 thirty year loan, Ben Bernanke just saved you $71 a month for the next thirty years – a total of $25,635.

That’s a lot of cash, and people out there with a fixed rate mortgage might be interested in refinancing if they can save $15,000 over the life of their loan. It might cost $3,000 or so to refinance, but if the total savings is $12,000 over the loan’s life, that’s plenty of incentive for most people. Incidentally, this will drive a lot of cash into the coffers of mortgage lenders, which will help with the subprime mess.

The interest rates on car loans will drop. This means that if you buy a car in the next few months, the payments will be substantially lower than they would have been without this drop. Since I’m personally thinking about purchasing a van in the early summer, this is good news for me.

The interest rates on variable rate credit cards will drop. Most credit cards have their rate fixed at the prime rate plus some specific percentage – prime plus 11.9%, for example. Since the prime rate just dropped by 0.75%, many credit card rates just dropped 0.75%, which will help a bit if you have a large credit card balance.

In a nutshell, when the Federal Reserve drops the prime lending rate, they’re encouraging you to spend money. Savings accounts become less of a bargain while, at the same time, loans become cheaper. This encourages people to go out and buy stuff.

In terms of stocks, when it looks like people are going to be buying more in the next few months, the stock market goes up, as that means a lot of companies that sell stuff are going to be getting more business.

In short, now is a good time to start thinking about larger purchases that you may need to execute soon. If your car is having troubles, you may want to start investigating good deals on cars, for example, or if you’re looking to buy a home, consider moving forward with that process. That doesn’t mean that you should go out and spend, but instead realize that it may be a frugal time to make a necessary big purchase.