Being a successful adult, as it turns out, is a matter of finding something that works and then doing *that* over and over and over…It’s not about having the perfect job, so much as having a job that is tolerable and funds the things that are important to you.

You are not your vocation. Particularly in a culture where we change careers multiple times before settling into a working retirement, it’s good not to be defined by our employment-of-the-moment.

But repetition…that’s an unexpectedly important part of being a grown-up.

Maryland got it in their head that I didn’t have Insurance on a car for a period of a week several years ago. Every other year or so they would send me a demand to either provide proof of insurance (which I did, repeatedly!) or pay a fine of several hundred dollars. After the 3rd or 4th time It got to be rather annoying, but I refused to pay since I knew I had insurance during that period. If I hadn’t had it, it would have cost more in penalties for that week than I pay for several months!

For example, the reminder that you can cancel services you don’t need.

My husband was laid off recently, and when driving to an interview the tire on his car popped. So we had the car towed with triple A and left it in the driveway, I am taking advantage of discounted student bus pass to get around now and he uses our remaining car.

So, that means we don’t need car insurance on the car missing a tire! Well I pay ahead my car insurance 6 months (they give me a sweet discount for doing that). I called them, told them to take on car off the insurance and reduce the other one to “for pleasure” rather than “for driving to work”. Guess what, they sent me a check for about 100 dollars. And while they were at it they asked my level of education and knocked a few more dollars off my premium.

You repeat things, and I remember them. Sometimes you say something that won’t affect me, “cancel your Cable or your extra Cell phone features.” I don’t have those, but the mentioning it from several different ways of application helped me think outside the box and get nearly $100 dollars of my own money back.

That is just one example of how you have helped my family out. The principals I learn here have actually allowed us to reduce our budget enough that we aren’t much damaged by my husbands lay off.

In a number of your posts, you mention some specific ideas on how to save some money and get closer to the goal of spending less than you earn. While the basic message is the same in these posts, each is valuable because the ideas you discuss may give someone an insight into how to improve things for themself.

Two ideas that I’ve picked up recently (I believe both came from posts here, though one may have been from another blog I also read) were:

1. To start baking bread at home. I’ve since discovered that a loaf of home-made bread is both great tasting and, even with the recent inflation, very economical at about $1 to $1.10 a loaf. And with that bread to supplement my meals, I find myself buying quite a bit less of other foods, resulting in a noticable savings in the grocery store. The only “down side” is that a savings reward I earn on gas at a station my grocery store owns in my neighborhood has slowed down a lot, but given that I have to spend $50 for every roughly $5 I save on gas, it’s actually better in the long run that I am earning fewer of these “rewards”.

2. I recently picked up a copy of “Getting Things Done” after I saw your review. While I am shamed to admit that my copy was lost after only a few days (it was “borrowed” without permission when I was at the laundromat last weekend) so I have only read part of the book, I’ve started to adapt parts of the system it details to improve my organization at work and I’ve seen my productivity pick up quite a bit. Once I get a chance to pick up another used copy, I plan to finish it and see if it has some further suggestions that I can adapt for my personal organization system.

Had I simply read the suggestion to “spend less than I earn” and moved on without continuing to read your site I don’t believe I would have likely picked up on either of these ideas, and I’d still be struggling to find ways to make that principal work. Reading the posts that you and a few other PF bloggers post every day continues to give me new ideas to consider for how to make gradual changes in my own life.

Thank you.

I did find one ‘millionaire’ on the web who was giving some different advice, but I wonder if it will work. His advice was for all of us to use the power of positive thinking and wish ourselves into ‘millionairehood’.

Thanks for your words- Keep up the good work!