2008 was the second full year of existence for The Simple Dollar. Over the course of the year, I posted some 700 articles – some good, some bad, and some ugly. Below, I tried to pick out most of the good ones to create something of an anthology for 2008. Hope you enjoy it! (By the way, here’s 2007’s anthology).

January
The Basics: Eight Tactics To Use When You’re Just Starting To Turn Things Around
The One Month Coupon Strategy: A Really Clever Way to Make Coupons Worthwhile
Online Personal Finance Analysis Tools: Some Thoughts on Quicken Online, Mint, and Wesabe
Wallet Hacking: Six Tactics for Modifying Your Wallet to Minimize Your Spending and Maximize Your Time
Video Games and Frugality

February
Little Steps: 100 Great Tips For Saving Money For Those Just Getting Started
The Changing of the Guard: $4 Generic Presciptions at Wal-Mart and Target
Defeating Superman Syndrome: How to Progress Beyond the “Need” to Be the Financial Hero
Training Wheels: Why I’m Spending Less and Less Time Managing my Personal Finances
25 Questions to Think About Before Your Next Job Interview

March
“Freegans,” Dumpster Diving, and the Limits of Frugality
The Financial Recovery Toolkit: Ten Tools I Used In My Financial Turnaround
Ten Ways to Translate Your Passion Into Additional Income
Is Success a Choice?
Is Jim Cramer a Positive or a Negative Influence on the Average Investor?

April
The First Money Talk: The When and How of a Conversation Every Couple Needs to Have
Making Your Own Laundry Detergent: A Detailed Visual Guide
8 Ways to Easily Reduce the Energy Consumption of Your Computer – and Save Big Money
Budgeting 101: How a Simple Budget Helped Me – And Can Help You, Too
Are Rechargeable Batteries Really Cost Effective?

May
Making and Maintaining a Master Information Document
Making Your Own Homemade Oatmeal Packets: A Visual Guide and Cost Analysis
An Interview With Amy Dacyczyn, The Author of The Tightwad Gazette
The Monthly Grind: Sixteen Hardcore Tactics for Minimizing Your Monthly Bills
The Essential Bookshelf: The Only Eight Books I’ve Kept (After Hundreds of Reviews)

June
Review: You’re So Money
How to Budget Using ING Direct (Or Another Full-Service Online Bank)
How We Organize Our Coupons and Execute Our Coupon Strategy
No Time for Frugality: Cutting Financial Corners with No Time Investment
A Clever Trick for Automatically Finding Deals You Want at Amazon

July
The Minimalist Kitchen: What You Need (and Don’t Need) to Set Up Your First Workable Home Kitchen
Should You “Debt Snowball” Directly into a Savings Account Instead of a Debt Payment?
Ten Tactics for Improving Your Luck
100 Things to Do During a Money Free Weekend
Some Thoughts on Being Broke and Being Poor

August
The Frugal Introvert: Fifty Ways to Have Fun By Yourself on the Cheap
A Frugal Guide to the Iowa State Fair (or Any Similar County or State Fair)
This Is the Right Personal Finance Book for You!
Everything’s So Easy for Pauline: Thoughts on Luck, Fate, Money, and Life (my favorite of the year)
How to Avoid the Trap of Splurging as a Reward for “Being Good”

September
Twelve Tactics to Prepare For and Minimize Winter Heating Bills (Besides Woodstoves)
Why One-Budget-Fits-All Doesn’t Work – And Why It’s Difficult to Compare Spending Between People and Families
Fifteen Ways to Have Cheap Fun With Your Kids Using a $1 End Roll of Paper
The Aldi Question: Does One Bad Experience Spoil the Soup?
The Twelve Biggest Personal Finance Mistakes People Make Over and Over Again

October
The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself
Some Thoughts on the Fulfillment Curve
Stop Trying to Impress Other People
Giving Outside the Box: Generosity on a Limited Budget
Eight Things You Should Do Immediately to Save Money When You Buy a Car

November
A Guide to Winterizing Your House
The Readers Speak Out: Their 25 Best Actions for Saving Money
What’s It All About?
A Long December
When a Treat Stops Being a Treat – and How to Get It Back

December
Announcing My First Book, “365 Ways to Live Cheap” (a major moment for me)
Gas Price Deflation: Should It Affect What Automobiles We Purchase?
Eighteen Tips for a Frugal (Not Cheap) Wedding
Synergizing Hobbies and Career for Greater Personal Success
Planning Ahead for Next Year’s Garden

One of my favorite things to do as the new year approaches is hit many of my favorite blogs and find some of their writings about the resolutions they made for the year past – or the resolutions they intend to make for the coming year. I almost always find something insightful in such discussions, whether it’s insightful in the sense that I learn something about humanity or that I actually learn something useful about how to put together a good plan for success. Here are a few of my recent favorite reads on the topic of the new year.

Resolution Makeover: 5 Things to Consider When Setting This Year’s Goals My favorite line: “Having supportive and fulfilling relationships will do more for your well being than any kind of “success” in your career or money in your bank account.” How true! (@ zen habits)

10 New Year’s Resolutions for the Freelance Developer If you’re a freelance worker (like I am), these are some excellent habits to adopt in the coming year. (@ freelance switch)

Don’t Make Resolutions – Set Goals for 2008 This is an excellent older article from Get Rich Slowly. It applies just as well to 2009 as it does to 2008. (@ get rich slowly)

5 No’s Regarding Your New Year’s Resolution Excellent advice for making your own resolution quite successful. (@ geezeo)

42 Ways I’m Going to Make My 2009 Awesome I loved this list because of the variety and ambition. Some of these, though, are things we should all try (like being more optimistic). (@ master your card)

Between Christmas and New Year’s, we’re taking a look at five common New Year’s resolutions that people often adopt for their finances, evaluate some of the traps that people fall into with regards to that resolution, and come up with some real actions that can turn a challenging New Year’s resolution into a success.

I can’t even tell you how many times I offered up some variation of this resolution at the turning of the year. So many times, I pledged to give an intense effort toward launching my writing career, and so many times, I’d start off on the right foot, writing with a vengeance.

And yet, for so many years, I didn’t find any success at all. I’d mail things out and see rejection letters. I’d write and write and write and yet I would find fatal flaws in all of the results. And eventually, I’d tell myself that it was a nice dream and file it away somewhere.

Eventually, I realized I needed to try something new, so I started sharing my writing online here and there. I’d contribute to forums and a wide variety of general interest sites. I started a blog or two that didn’t really go anywhere. And I kept feeling little stings of failure.

Yet, through all of it, I kept going. I didn’t give up. I worked hard at my “real” job, but in the evenings, I kept up with the writing. Eventually, I started writing about personal finance on The Simple Dollar and, for some reason, it clicked like nothing else has clicked before. And now, because of the site’s success and other positive events, I’m able to write full time – and I even allow some of that time for me to chase my fiction writing dreams.

What did I learn from all this? How exactly can a person transform a resolution to chase after their dream career into actual success in following that path? Here are five key lessons I learned that can be applied to any career resolution.

Practice. Every career requires proficiency at some specific skill or set of skills. Perhaps your career requires mastery of a musical instrument. Perhaps it requires successful composition of written words. Maybe you need to be a skilled computer programmer, or effective at speaking in public.

Whatever those key skills are, identify them and practice them daily. If you want to be a writer, write every day. If you want to be a musician, practice your instrument every day. If you want to be a politician, find every opportunity you can to speak in public.

Such practice should fill a significant part of your spare time. If not, you’re not truly working to make that dream career happen.

Learn what the career actually entails from practitioners. Many people who dream of a particular career have a romanticized version of what the actual day-to-day work in the career is like. Instead of picturing the reality of the situation, they envision the things they would most enjoy doing. For example, when I dreamed of being a writer, I didn’t particularly think too much about negotiating with publishers, doing media appearances, or planning ahead for my writing. I just thought about the joy that I got out of writing.

Why is this important? Quite often, success in a career requires adopting some unexpected skills. I would have never believed, for example, that networking skills or public speaking skills or time management skills or accounting skills could be useful in a writing career, but they’ve all come in handy for me over the past year or so.

Spend some time talking to a practitioner of the career that intrigues you and find out what exactly the work is like and what skills will have to be brought to bear in order to be successful. Through this, you might also find some extremely useful tips that can provide insight as to how to find success.

Try new approaches. For years as a writer, I believed that the value in writing was in maintaining your copyright as a gold standard. I resisted any situation where my writing might be easily shared with others and I kept most of my work to myself.

Eventually, though, I built up the courage to start sharing my writing online. At first, I convinced myself that I was just writing to receive feedback from readers, but over time, I began to realize that I was quite happy simply to have readers. Now, the vast majority of my writing is published online for free – instead of charging for the writing itself (as would occur in most copyrighted situations), I give away the writing and put up ads to support the costs of doing so.

It was a new approach for me, far different than what I was used to. It took a lot of courage for me to move in that direction, but when I did, it opened a lot of doors.

If you’re not finding success with your current tactics, try dropping them and trying something entirely new. Look for new angles, and see what others are doing that is bringing them success. You may find the success you’re seeking just by trying a new angle – or combining some ideas that you previously hadn’t combined before.

Expect some failure. I know that when I first started trying to chase a writing career, I firmly believed that I was going to be successful quickly. I had passion. I believed I had noteworthy talent. And I also thought I had a very valid gameplan.

It turns out all I really had was passion, and even that didn’t extend as far as I thought it would.

Any time you try something big, new, and audacious, you’re going to fail along the way. In fact, you’ll probably grow weary of hearing the word “no” over and over again.

The best way to prepare for this is to expect that it will happen and, more importantly, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t quit your current job to chase the big dream. Instead, hold onto that day job as a steady source of income until you start finding success – or at least find a workable, realistic plan that will guide you there.

Look for any and all freelancing opportunities. Since you’ll likely be taking the first big steps in your new career in your spare time, one great way to get your feet wet is to look for any and all freelancing opportunities that relate strongly to your career of interest.

For example, if you’re thinking of starting a catering business, start slow and look for small jobs that you can handle in your spare time. If you’re dreaming of writing, try selling shorter articles that you can easily write instead of huge, complex pieces – or take up blogging. If you’re a musician, look for local parties that you can play at for a few dollars instead of trying to get big gigs all the time.

The key is to get work and get yourself out there to be noticed by others. You’ll build up your resume along the way and likely meet a lot of people who will associate you positively with your endeavor. These connections will very slowly begin to open more doors for you.

Good luck!

Tomorrow evening, like billions of people around the world, my wife and I will be celebrating the coming new year. Some people celebrate this by having a big New Year’s Eve bash at their home. Others go out to various parties, enjoying the celebrations put on by others. Still others spend the evening quietly at home with their family – or with themselves.

We tend toward the first option. This year, we’re having a small New Year’s event at our own home, but we wanted to keep costs down. Here’s how we’ll be celebrating.

First, we kept our invitation list pretty short. Instead of throwing open the doors and inviting everyone we know, we were very selective in our invitations. We don’t expect a large crowd even if everyone we invited were to show up.

Because our invitation list is short, this means we don’t have a large budget for refreshments or entertainment. Our foods and other party materials will come quite inexpensively, even if we go for high-quality items. Most likely, because of the number of attendees, we’ll make most of our own treats from scratch, further reducing the costs.

Second, in order to keep the intimate gathering from being boring, we chose people that we knew had several overlapping interests. Virtually everyone who is invited immensely enjoys playing Guitar Hero, actually, and only one person has a skill level that’s far out of the range of the others.

This creates a ready-made form of entertainment. When everyone arrives, we just pull out the game and organize a fair rotating basis that allows everyone to play every fifteen minutes or so.

Aside from that, almost everyone invited is also at least somewhat skilled at a musical instrument (yes, these people recognize that Guitar Hero is a fun game but a distinctly different activity than playing an actual instrument). So we encouraged people to bring their own musical instruments to our event so that they could jam together.

In short, much of our entertainment is taken care of and the people invited will naturally fit right into the group – with almost no cost.

Finally, we requested that each guest bring a bottle or two of wine. This saves us the cost of providing much of the beverages. We will have some other beverages on hand, of course, but the biggest expense would have easily been several bottles of wine for our guests.

We also plan on making simple foods that are easy to serve yourself. A large batch of chili? Check. An assortment of “serve-yourself” finger foods? Check. We’ll just rotate the finger foods regularly to keep them fresh.

A basic chili recipe is quite simple – all you really need are plenty of beans, chili powder, some onion, and some meat, along with “fixings” (crackers, cheese, etc.). For the finger foods, we plan on utilizing several of our usual Christmas gifts – we almost always wind up with some summer sausage, some cheeses, some crackers, and the like, so this is a great time to share and use these items.

The end result? A pleasant gathering of people with similar interests to celebrate the new year that will only cost the hosts a few dollars in expense. A frugal way to ring in the new year, indeed.

Between Christmas and New Year’s, we’re taking a look at five common New Year’s resolutions that people often adopt for their finances, evaluate some of the traps that people fall into with regards to that resolution, and come up with some real actions that can turn a challenging New Year’s resolution into a success.

We grow up. Many of us get married. Some of us have children. And when that happens, everything changes. You realize that you’re responsible for the positive upbringing of a child, and you can’t simply wing it any more. You have to plan for the future now, because your child can’t simply make it on his or her own if you can no longer provide.

I went through this very process myself as a young adult. When I was single, I didn’t really worry about the future much at all – if I were to suddenly drop dead, it wouldn’t really have much of an impact on the rest of the world. When I got married, I occasionally thought about how my passing would affect my wife, but again, it was not something that ever seemed pressing.

When I had children, though, everything changed. As I held my children in my arms and witnessed how defenseless they were, I quickly began to realize that I needed to plan for their future – and protect them in the event of the unthinkable.

This is a resolution that many new parents make. Their heart is in the right place – they sense that they need to protect their kids – but actually taking the steps to ensure protection can be harder than it seems. Thus, like many resolutions, this one falls to the wayside along the road paved with good intentions.

Don’t let it happen. Here are some direct actions you can take to protect your family’s future right now.

Life insurance A simple term life insurance policy for yourself (and for your spouse) to cover your child-rearing years can go a long way towards ensuring the financial stability of your children during their childhood. For younger adults (such as those with young children), term policy rates are pretty inexpensive – don’t hesitate to shop around.

How much should I get? There is no set recipe to follow in terms of amount, but it’s probably good to have a policy worth at least enough to pay off all household debts plus provide at least a couple years’ worth of your income to the family.

Long term disability and care insurance Many people overlook these types of insurance, but much like life insurance, they’re very low cost for a young adult and they provide protection for your children against an unthinkable situation. Much like life insurance, shop around for both kinds of policies and know what they cover.

Your will This is often something that’s done in conjunction with one’s spouse. The major decision that most people have to make with regards to their children is who you wish to assign guardianship to in the event of both of you passing.

Don’t take this decision lightly. Spend some time considering the options available to you, and don’t be surprised if you come to an unexpected conclusion in the end. You may find that as you consider the situation more deeply, the factors of highest importance to you in choosing a guardian actually change, and that may actually change who you would choose to be a guardian for your child.

The actual process of creating a will is simple and only takes a brief session with a lawyer (I tend not to trust do-it-yourself will packages). Even if you’ve not considered the question above, call now and make an appointment with a lawyer you trust. That way, the date is set in stone and you’re sure to go through with it.

College education planning Another important element for parents to consider is their child’s college education. Do you intend to pay for all of it, just contribute a portion of the cost, or have the child pay for the cost? Different parents have different philosophies when it comes to this crucial decision, but if you decide to help, you should start as early as possible.

How? The most straightforward route – and one that has solid tax benefits, too – is to open up a 529 college savings plan for your child. 529 plans allow all interest earned to be tax free if it’s used for educational costs, and often the contributions are tax-deductible on one’s state income tax. Use Google to identify the plans available in your state. Most plans offer a customized investment vehicle that starts off aggressively when the child is young, then scales back to more conservative investments as the child grows older and approaches college age.

The big dilemma will be choosing how much to contribute. I recommend setting up an automatic contribution plan where you contribute a small, reasonable amount each month. This way, once you’ve set up the plan, you really don’t have to actively think about it too much – it just slowly builds up for your child over time.

Each Monday, The Simple Dollar opens up the reader mailbags and answers ten to twenty simple questions offered up by the readers on personal finance topics and many other things. Got a question? Ask it in the comments. You might also enjoy the archive of earlier reader mailbags.

As usual, we’ll start things off with a few links to older articles that directly answer questions I’ve heard recently. Here are some ideas on New Year’s resolutions from years past on The Simple Dollar.
How to Define and Stick To a Successful New Year’s Resolution, Financial or Otherwise
Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail (Especially Financial Ones) – And How You Can Make Yours Succeed
Defining My Financial New Year’s Resolutions – And Their Action Plans

And now for some reader questions!

don’t you have a laptop computer that should work through power outages? And if power outages threaten your income, wouldn’t you consider it wise to purchase a generator?
- George

While I think it would be fun to have a tax-deductible reason to get a home generator, I really don’t have a need for it. Quite a lot of my writing activity happens far away from the keyboard, as I jot down notes here and there and work out posts in my head before I ever sit down. The biggest purpose of the computer, actually, is to actually finish composing and then posting articles, which is something that can wait.

I do have a laptop that I could use in a pinch, but it would be useless for posting articles in a power outage, because when the power is out, we don’t have internet access even if the router in the house is powered up.

What steps did you take to obtain corporate advertising on your blog?
- Lauren

The first step I took was to simply sign up for Google AdSense. Through that program, Google basically just supplies you with a bit of code for your site, then they do all the work of finding advertisers and matching appropriate ones (well, mostly appropriate ones) with your website. They do all this automatically.

Another good place to get ads if you’re a blogger is BlogAds, where advertisers go to target specific sites. The income is more irregular than with AdSense, but you have a lot more control over the ads that are delivered to your site.

After that, most of the subsequent offers came to me once my site reached a certain size. Advertisers of all stripes contact me, but I’m pretty selective on the ads I accept.

If we could get a mortgage payment lower than what we would pay for rent, is it better to save the money for a downpayment on a house, or are we better off knocking down a lot more debt before we take on such a huge financial commitment?
- Bekki

If the debt is high interest (which is how I’d describe anything over about 7% interest), I’d unquestionably knock down the debt first. Not only do high-interest debts squeeze your monthly budget tight, they also tend to hurt your credit rating if you have a substantial amount, which means you’d get a worse rate on your mortgage.

Owning a house comes with a lot of additional effort and expense that many first-time homeowners don’t see coming. You’re suddenly responsible for all of the maintenance of the home and the lawn, for starters, and you’re now on the hook for homeowners’ insurance and property tax. It’s not a leap you necessarily want to make just because the mortgage payment is a bit lower than your rent bill.

Since you mentioned that you liked the Watchmen novel, are you looking forward to the movie?
- Toni

Not at all. I’m almost always disappointed by film adaptations of books that I love, and I don’t see any reason to expect that Watchmen will be any different.

I can only think of a very small number of film adaptations of books that I actually liked and those were ones where a huge amount of liberty was taken with the original book, often to the point where the book and the movie are basically different stories.

I recently bought term life insurance. My work place also provides Group Life Insurance at much reduced cost as a benefit. I could get almost equivalent coverage (7X salary) from this option. I had heard that Group Life policies are very restrictive. But with 7X coverage, would it be terrible to switch to the life insurance from work and ditch my individual policy?
- Pankaj

While that might look like a good move at first glance, the problem with a life insurance plan through your workplace is that if you were to ever leave employment with that company, you’re no longer covered.

What does that leave you with? You’re suddenly older and left completely without a life insurance policy. If you wait until then to turn to private coverage, you’ll be saddled with a substantially higher rate than you are now.

My advice is to balance the two, actually. Make sure that you’re not uninsured when you leave your employer, but also take advantage of the benefit you’re being provided. I’d probably split my life insurance between the two.

Of all of the magazines you subscribe to, which one do you enjoy the most?
- Lily

The Atlantic gets the most attention per issue, easily, but each issue of that magazine has a ton of good content.

Over the course of a year, I probably spend the most time with The New Yorker, but it’s a weekly magazine, not a monthly. I usually read two or three of the feature articles in each issue, each of which are ten pages long or so.

Most of the other magazines I read tend to get less focus per issue than those two, usually because I tend to just browse through them rather than read them carefully in depth.

Even for a single person – how much higher does your salary have to be to make it worthwhile to uproot, sell your house and move somewhere else? And in our case, with the ridiculous car debt, how much does that skew the options?
- BudgetBride

It depends on where you’re moving from and moving to. If you’re moving from New York City to Omaha, Nebraska, for example, you can accept a substantially lower salary and still be cash ahead in making the move.

I think that, in any move, you need to be content with the change that you’re making. Are you moving towards something you actually want? If the move is going to make your life miserable, there’s no price that’s worth it. On the other hand, if you’re dreaming of making that move, then you can probably handle a pretty steep fall in income.

Do you listen to classical music? What classical music do you like?
- Edgar

I often listen to classical music while writing. I usually download a classical album or two each month from emusic and enjoy most of the picks that I’ve made.

The best thing I’ve heard in a long time, though, is Simone Dinnerstein’s interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. It’s absolutely magnificent from beginning to end – I love the music and I love the performance of it. To me, this is what good classical music is all about.

I’m seriously dating a woman with a bad spending habit. I’d like to spend the rest of my life with her, but I’m concerned that if she can’t get her finances under control now, how will she ever deal with making mortgage payments and having more than her own mouth to feed? And how do I convince her that just because she can afford something, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to buy it (especially when she truly convinces herself that she *needs* the new BMW)?
- Dave

It’s clear from this that you and your partner are in very different places when it comes to spending, and unless you get on the same page, things are not going to work out.

You need to have a very serious heart to heart about money, possibly with a counselor involved. If you’re met with a constant wall of denial and rejection, then it may not bode well for the long-term future of your relationship, because it indicates an unwillingness to work through problems.

If you decide to overlook it, you’re likely going to either have to subscribe to her spending philosophies (and spend your life constantly running on the treadmill) or spend all of your time being a frugal counterweight to keep your head above water.

Do you ever feel like quitting blogging?
- Andrew

Of course. There is no sustained activity that anyone does that isn’t occasionally tinged with a fair amount of regret. It doesn’t matter how much you love it – a long-term period of focused work will at some point make you wish you were doing something else.

How do I deal with it? I usually try to keep ahead with my writing so that if I ever feel like I want to step away, I take a short break (a few days or so) from the rigors of constantly writing articles. So far, after a few days away, the fire to write has come right back.

Got any questions? Ask them in the comments and I’ll use them in future mailbags.

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book.

A week and a half ago, I wrote a piece about Christian themes in personal finance books. I wrote that piece mostly because I was trying to work through my feelings about this book.

Living Well on One Income by Cynthia Yates is an excellent book on how to seriously cut your income, particularly if you’re considering a family situation where only one member of the family is working. The book is absolutely loaded with great tips on this topic and I quite enjoyed reading it.

At the same time, though, the author is a Christian homeschooler that wears both beliefs on her sleeve to an extent that it often comes close to overshadowing the great tangible advice that the book contains. There are points in this book where Yates comes right up to the line of making this book about Christianity with a personal finance theme than personal finance with a Christian theme.

I have no real problem with this, actually. Yates is simply speaking from the heart here, revealing ideas she believes in to everyone. Where I become uncomfortable – and this is where I get uncomfortable quite often when reading material from Christian writers – is that theology is often very uneven ground. Different people interpret the Bible differently, and even though I define myself as a Christian, I often completely disagree with the interpretations of others, and in places throughout this book, I strongly disagreed with Cynthia Yates and her interpretations.

In short, I would have enjoyed this book quite a bit more if it were not bogged down with a lot of theology. Thus, as I discuss the book in detail below, I’m going to intentionally avoid the theology entirely and, in essence, review the book that’s under the hood here.

A Walk Through Living Well on One Income

1. What’s the Rub?
The reason that many people are uncomfortable with the idea of a one-income household is, well, it’s guaranteed to hurt the bottom line. You’re making the active choice to live with much les financial income than you might otherwise have – thus, there must be a valuable, compelling reason for someone to choose this state of affairs. Cynthia encourages people to think of the reasons they choose to be a part of a single income family when they’re being frugal. Use your personal choices and beliefs (the ones that led you to make the single income choice) as your motivation to practice better personal finance habits, because frugality is a key part of the life choice you’ve made.

2. A Cheerful Heart: The Right Attitude
The most important part of the entire puzzle, according to Yates, is having the right attitude about living frugally. Frugality is not a punishment, nor is it a black mark on yourself. Instead, it’s a means to an end – it’s choosing to value things just a bit differently than mainstream culture would encourage us to value things. Look at everything through the lens of how you value things, not how others value them. When you start truly applying that to every aspect of your life, cutting your spending becomes much, much easier.

3. Live Within Your Means
Once you’re on board with making changes and re-evaluating your priorities, the next big step is to start keeping track of your spending. Yates uses the word “budget,” but what she describes is actually very flexible. Just start keeping track of every dime you spend, then group the expenses together into groups that make sense to you and look for places where you can make cuts. Set spending targets that realistically match what you’re currently spending – in other words, don’t resolve to cut your spending by 80% because it’s not realistically going to happen. Keep a positive attitude and focus on your goals and you’ll see success.

4. Let’s Organize
I was incredibly happy to read this chapter because I also feel strongly that being organized is often directly tied to being frugal. Clutter is the enemy of frugality, and breaking through the clutter mindset is often a big key to getting on board with cutting your spending. Focus on going through all of the clutter in your house, then begin focusing on the areas that attract clutter and make it a point to keep them clear. Doing this will help you avoid “losing” things and will also help you be mindful of the things that you own.

5. It Pays to Be Savvy
Here, Yates focuses on tactics for reducing your shopping bills. This, like many of the remaining chapters in the book, is a very tight collection of tips, bursting with good information on almost every page. My favorite suggestion is actually one of the most audacious: go into a store and simply ask them what their best sale in the department of interest is. For example, let’s say I was going to get a new sweater for my wife at J.C. Penney. Yates advises simply going up to the cashier and directly asking what the best bargain is on the item. It’s something that would have been outside my typical thinking about how to look for bargains, but it makes a lot of sense.

6. Roll Up Your Sleeves
Hard work saves money. If you put in the effort to do many common things yourself, you will save money, and if you’re living in a one-income situation, spare time is something you should have. Learn how to cook for yourself, particularly starting with basic ingredients. Learn how to do basic car maintenance yourself – change your own oil and check your own fluids. Learn how to fix your own toilet (ironically, I actually spent part of today doing just that). The more things you do yourself (and a big part of that is teaching yourself how to do it), the less you have to spend hiring others to do these things for you, and the more money you’ll keep in your pocket.

7. Use Things Up!
Here, Yates talks in depth about the value in using everything, from utilizing all of the leftovers from a meal to actually enjoying any media item that you possess. The primary focus of this chapter is on food, as Yates talks about methods for ensuring that you actually use up all of the food that you purchase, since food thrown away is money thrown away. One of the biggest keys here is substitutions – Yates encourages people to use either coriander or cilantro and not both, for example.

8. Waste Not
Hand in hand with the philosophy of using things up is the idea of finding alternate uses for things instead of throwing them away. Yates goes beyond the simple idea of wasting materials, though, and focuses on things like wasting talents – if you have a particular skill that others might find valuable, why not use it instead of squandering it? If you can play a musical instrument, for example, why not share your skill with that instrument with the world instead of potentially squandering it? This chapter is absolutely stuffed with tips on how to reuse items, but it was the idea of “reusing” talents and skills that really got my mind working.

9. Discover Your Creative Genius
As the book winds down, Yates argues that the two best frugal tools that people have are their minds and their mouths. Our minds can come up with creative solutions to all sorts of life problems – solutions that not only save us money, but often perfectly solve a difficult problem. Our mouth enables us to ask questions (the answers to which often point us in useful directions) as well as connect with others (who might point us in useful directions if we keep our ears and eyes open). Frugality is about creativity and about finding out more information – and we already have the tools to do it.

10. Presentation Is Everything .. or Is It?
Inexpensive things, when treated with class and dealt with creatively, can create a very elegant and sophisticated appearance. Take flowers, for example. It only takes pennies to grow many different flower varieties, but put a cut flower in a simple vase and you make a room substantially more elegant. Got an old, junky, rickety table? Cover it with a low-cost white tablecloth and the table goes from junky to classy. What’s the point? You don’t need to shell out cash for classiness. You just need to be creative, that’s all.

Some Thoughts About Living Well on One Income
Here are three things I think I think about Living Well on One Income.

There’s a lot of very good frugal content jammed into this fairly small book. Most of the latter chapters are mostly just nice collections of short tips for shaving dollars from your spending. I quite like such detailed tip lists, because I can usually pull out an item or two for myself, and if they’re good tips, they more than pay for the time spent reading the book.

Yates really shines when she’s anecdotal. Detailed anecdotes about how other people actually practice frugality are one of the highlights of personal finance books for me – perhaps that’s why I liked The Complete Tightwad Gazette so much. A few times each chapter, Yates lets that anecdotal nature come through – and it really shines.

I think Yates had a very specific audience in mind for this book. Although most of the tips work for anyone, quite a bit of the supplementary material seems to speak directly at Christian homeschooling parents. While that might seem like a niche group, Yates is speaking directly to that group with passion – and I think that comes through to readers who aren’t in that group (like me).

Is Living Well on One Income Worth Reading?
If you have a passion about frugality tips, read this book. Alternately, if you’re a devout Christian who is in a single-income situation, you’ll love this book. If neither of these really describe you, Living Well on One Income may be worth a skim to pick up some tips, but I don’t think the book will stick in your heart.

Clearly, Yates is speaking to a specific audience with this book – and for that audience, this book is probably the best I’ve read. I actually know a few people who fall into this category, and I intend to pass along my copy to one of them, actually, who I think will absolutely love the book.

As for the rest of us? Yates provides a lot of tips here which are well worth digging through, but it may or may not be worth the effort for you if you’re not in that specific target audience.

Over the next few days, we’re going to take a look at five common New Year’s resolutions that people often adopt for their finances, evaluate some of the traps that people fall into with regards to that resolution, and come up with some real actions that can turn a challenging New Year’s resolution into a success.

On New Year’s Eve 2005, my wife and I made a solemn commitment to start seriously saving for a down payment. We had a one month old child and were living in a tiny apartment that, even with just the three of us, was already getting tight for space. We knew that we would have to upgrade our living quarters soon and so together we resolved to make a change.

It didn’t go so well. Just four months later, we reached our financial low point – and we realized that just making such a resolution didn’t really help anything at all. We needed a plan in place if were were going to make things work, and so we got down to business with a real plan for saving for a down payment. Today, we’re happily entrenched in our own home.

What could we have done differently back then to make our resolution work? Here are some tactics that we used later on for our down payment plans that would fall right in line with such a hefty resolution.

Set a very clear goal right off the bat. So, you want to save up for a down payment. How much money is that?

Surprisingly, many people stumble even at that first question. The idea for a down payment is very vague in their head. I know that our original thoughts on the subject were incredibly vague – we just knew that we needed to save quite a bit of money.

Chasing after such an intangible goal is almost a guarantee that you will fail. Instead, do some basic house hunting in your area and get an idea of the prices on the type of house you would like to buy, then set a savings goal based on that price.

Let’s say, for example, that you decide that a $200,000 house is right for you. How much of a down payment on that house are you going to save for? A 10% down payment? 20%?

The larger the down payment, the better. You’ll need 20% down in order to get a typical fixed rate mortgage at a low interest rate. If you have less than that, you’ll usually have to get separate mortgages (an 80% mortgage along with an additional 10% mortgage) or, if they’re still being sold, an adjustable rate mortgage of some kind.

These two numbers will tell you what your dollar goal is, but what’s your timeline? Are you intending to save $40,000 in four years? That’s roughly $10,000 a year – $800 a month will get you there.

Your timeline, you see, will help you break down this big goal into smaller short-term goals. $800 each month – can you do that? Can you do it if you get creative with it? $800 is a tangible goal that you can shoot for each month – a vague notion of “saving for a down payment” will never push you towards your goal.

Make sure the goal is a realistic one. Once you’ve started breaking things down into real numbers, you’ll probably start gasping at the high amounts. Can I really afford that? Likely, you can make a pretty strong goal each month if you put your mind to it, adopt some frugal strategies, and settle in for the battle.

However, there is often a temptation to make the goals too high. If you’re attempting to save 50% or more of your monthly income for this goal, you’re probably not going to make it.

My suggestion is to try your savings plan for a month or two and see how it works for you. If it’s beyond your means, go back to the drawing board. Don’t be afraid to toss your plans aside and adjust things. Perhaps you can expand your timeline. Perhaps you can set your sights lower in terms of the house you intend to buy.

The key is to not decide that things are hopeless just because you’ve decided that your first attempt at a plan is just too much. Step back, look at the overall plan, and make some adjustments. Don’t just walk away because you find it too difficult.

Figure out where that money is going to come from. So, you’ve elected to save a certain amount of dollars each month. Where is that money going to come from?

In some situations, people are already natural savers and they already spend less than they earn, but this seems to often be the exception rather than the rule. Quite often, people who make a resolution about a down payment aren’t saving much at the moment to begin with, and coming up with a savings plan is going to be difficult.

First, look for ways to easily cut your spending. Look for big pieces and also ones that repeat monthly. Instead of leasing a car, perhaps you can buy a late model used one and drive it for many years, saving yourself a car payment that you can put away for your down payment. Perhaps you can eliminate that monthly Netflix bill, or maybe you can cut back on your cell phone usage – do you really need that many minutes or that big of a text message plan? Maybe you can adopt a “one meal out a week” plan instead of dining out every other evening – that will likely save you $10-20 a meal at least.

Second, adopt some simple long-term cost savers. Install CFLs throughout your apartment to cut down on electrical use. Install a programmable thermostat in your apartment (check with your landlord) and program it so that you’re not wasting money on your heating or cooling bills while you’re at work. Put your home electronics on a switch so you’re not paying for your cable box to sit there idle while you’re not at home. These solutions will save you significant money on your energy bill without thinking about it.

Finally, look for some extra income. Perhaps you could work a part-time job to earn some extra cash, or maybe you have some marketable skills that would work well in a freelance environment. If you can bring in extra cash, that cash could go straight to your savings without skipping a beat.

Automate the savings. As you begin to save, you’ll find that it’s often tricky to keep your savings in balance with your normal spending. You’ll try hard to keep money swept into a savings account, but it doesn’t always work smoothly.

Make it smooth. Institute an automatic savings plan with an online bank that has a good rate of return on their savings account (I use ING Direct). Then, each week, have the plan automatically withdraw a certain amount from your checking account. $190 a week, for example, equals out to roughly the same amount as $800 a month over the course of a year.

With an automatic savings plan, you know that the amount will be withdrawn each week, and you can plan ahead for it. It’ll force you to be much more careful with your spending, even if you seem to have the cash on hand to afford something frivolous. Even better, after a while, you can check that new account and see that the savings is really starting to add up.

Utilize windfalls effectively, even small ones. Another useful tactic is to immediately pass along any windfalls that come your way straight into your savings. Did you just get a small inheritance? Don’t spend it foolishly – instead, apply it directly to your savings without a thought.

This goes for little savings and windfalls, too. Let’s say you find a $20 bill on the street. You might be tempted to spend it on something fun, but why not just go ahead and put it towards your big dream? The same goes for any small savings you might make – let’s say you don’t eat out at all this week and save $25 in the process. Go ahead and sweep that straight into your savings.

What this will do is accelerate your dream just a little bit, and perhaps take some of the pressure off.

The real key to making a resolution to save for a down payment work is persistence. This isn’t a goal that will happen overnight. Instead, you need to provide a degree of constant focus in order to make it work. Good luck!