Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or entrepreneurship book.

Lately, I’ve been working hard on improving my presentation skills. Why? As The Simple Dollar gets more and more popular, more and more opportunities come my way for presentations. I hear things like “Can you give a ten minute talk to get people excited about money management and frugality?” all the time.

When I go into these situations, it would be very easy to just throw up a few PowerPoint slides of the best stuff from The Simple Dollar, more or less just read the slides, and get off the stage as soon as possible. I see other presenters doing this all the time. Here’s the thing, though: those “read the slide” presentations are boring. It’s very rare that they contain a message that people will remember. If the people in the audience look back on the presentation, it’s likely that they look back with boredom.

If you’re involved in a career where presentation is a regular part of your work – or you dream of such a career – presentation skills are an invaluable part of your skill set. If you want your presentation to be valuable – and thus have the audience perceive you as valuable – you need to learn how to give a truly compelling presentation, one they won’t forget. That’s basically the whole message behind Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen. Reynolds argues that most presentations are far too complicated and that simplicity is the key to great presentations – an idea I strongly agree with. More importantly, the book revolves around showing one how to do this.

Let’s dig in and see what we can learn.

Introduction
Presentation Zen opens by simply stating that presentations and written documents are very different things, but many people apply the same principles to presentations that they apply to their documentation (Reynolds refers to this as “Death by Powerpoint”).

In essence, a document is usually intended as a reference point – a collection of facts and information about a topic. On the other hand, when you present, you’re striving to tell a story. The document, in many ways, supports the presentation – it provides the little details that support the larger story you’re trying to tell.

The best presentation is one that tells a story that engages the crowd in as many ways as possible. This story has very little to do with the slides themselves – the story comes from you, not the slides. The slides should only be used if they directly support the story you want to tell, not to inundate with facts and details.

Preparation
When most people sit down to begin a presentation, they fire up PowerPoint and open up a template. Right there, you’re restricting yourself and the story you can tell.

Instead, Reynolds suggests starting with a much different slate: paper, whiteboards, an array of Post-It notes. Remember, you’re not making slides – you’re telling a story, so you want to put together the pieces of that story.

I particularly like using the Post-It method. It allows me to spread out all of the little pieces of the story and then easily rearrange them, remove them, add new ones, or do whatever I want.

The key, though, is to focus in on one key thing: what is the central point of the story I’m telling? When you go up there, you’re trying to communicate one key message. Can you state the entire point of your presentation in one sentence? If you can’t do that, you need to rethink what you’re presenting. Once you’ve got things whittled down to that one sentence, the entire flow of your story should go to reinforce and support that point. That’s your story.

Every slide you show should do nothing but provide the bare facts that support your point. If you want to provide supplementary material with more detail, have a takeaway document (or some other type of side presentation) that provides that detail.

Design
So, what should those slides look like? Most likely, you’ll start by tossing together the general outline of your story in slide form. That can be a start, but there’s one fundamental question you should be asking about each slide you toss up there: what value does this slide have? Is it providing any value that I’m not providing standing there speaking?

If your slide is nothing more than a reiteration of what you’re saying in bullet point form, then that slide is useless. If your slide has images that aren’t related to what you’re saying, those images are useless. Instead, every slide should contain only text, images, and pictures that actually contribute something to your story.

If you’re talking about something tactile and real, you should have a slide that depicts it. If you’re talking about some data, you should have a slide that displays that data as minimally and simply as you can – cut out all of the irrelevant data. Images are a great addition to each slide, as long as they’re not distracting from the main point and also that they cue some sort of emotion in the audience, an emotion that you want to be there.

This section offers a ton of great little tips for making great slides: making sure that pictures of people are facing your point and not looking away, using images as your backgrounds (and not those generic PowerPoint images), making sure that your slides all have a cohesive theme, and so on. The key, though, is to make sure that the slides really are doing everything they can to complement the story you’re telling.

Delivery
The biggest point here, from my perspective, is to watch a lot of great presentations by great presenters. Scavenge around on the internet for videos of presentations that are considered excellent and note the things that they do. Often, you’ll see that they eliminate barriers between themselves and the audience (meaning no podiums), they are self-deprecating and loose, and they’re paying attention to the audience and responding to their responses (which turns the presentation almost into a conversation).

In the end, that’s the real truth of the situation: a presentation is part of a conversation that you’re having with the crowd. You’re telling them something you’re excited about and enthusiastic about, and you want them to be excited and enthusiastic, too.

The Next Step
Merely practicing your presentation skills isn’t enough to keep growing as a presenter. You need to continue to grow as a person. Meet people. Grow in your knowledge, not just in your topic area, but in new areas, too. Look for opportunities all throughout your life to learn and to share what you know (using those presentation skills). Presenting is just the beginning of the conversation.

Is Presentation Zen Worth Reading?
I am of the belief that the ability to communicate well with others is truly a key part of modern life. Communicating well allows you to spread your ideas to others. It allows you to build connections with people. It allows a lot of people to gather an impression of you and even begin to build a connection with you. In short, knowing how to communicate is a giant benefit for most people in the modern world.

If you have any interest in improving your ability to communicate with others – and not just presentations, either – Presentation Zen is practically essential reading. It made me carefully reconsider how I communicate with others, not just in terms of when I give a presentation, but when I converse with someone I don’t know well. How can I tell a compelling and interesting story? That’s really what this book is about: storytelling.

Jamie writes in:

I’m twenty eight years old and am now debt free. I’d like to start investing, but I have almost no tolerance for risk. I don’t mind not earning a great return because of this, but the thought of losing any of my investment makes me feel very uncomfortable. Any suggestions?

Before I begin, it’s worth noting that if you look only at extremely low-risk investments, you’re going to forego very nice returns in other investments. Most investments that include a significant amount of risk – like stocks, real estate, precious metals, and so on – are intended as long term investments. Yes, they lose significantly over short periods, but over longer periods (more than ten years), most of these investments do quite well, significantly better than investments with low risk. Low risk, low reward, after all.

It should also be noted that all of these investments – any investment that you might make – does have a number of risks. Even holding cash in your hand has risks. Inflation is a risk – over time, dollars become worth less than they used to be. Economic disaster is a small risk – look at what’s happened in Iceland and Zimbabwe in the last year. Investment house failure is another small risk, though virtually all of your investments will be insured.

That’s not the question that was asked, however. The big question here is how to invest with minimal risk. I see four distinct avenues for this that are available for most people.

Treasury notes These are basically direct investments in the United States federal government. You can buy these directly from the government at TreasuryDirect.

When you purchase a treasury note (or treasury bond, as they’re called for terms longer than ten years), you pay a certain price (set at auction) for a note that has a face value and a coupon rate. Each year (it’s actually split into two payments, paid every six months), you’re paid out a percentage of the face value (the percentage is the “coupon rate”). At the end of the time frame of the note, the government will pay you that amount.

So, let’s say there’s a ten year treasury note for $10,000 available with a 2% coupon rate, and you can buy this note for $9,800. Every six months, the government would pay you $100 during that ten year period, totaling $2,000 in payments, and at the end, you’ll get the $10,000 back.

These are about as safe an investment as you can get – if these start to fail, there’s going to be a global economic meltdown beyond comprehension. However, they typically don’t earn a great return – it’s usually something just a bit higher than whatever inflation is at the moment.

Alternately, you can invest in TIPS, which are much the same, except (in effect) the coupon rate is recalculated regularly to take inflation into account. These generally just barely match inflation, but often sell for rates higher than their face value (you’ll have to pay more than $10,000 to get one with a $10,000 face value).

Cash Another safe thing to do with your money is to simply keep it as cash. Put it in a high-yield savings account (below the amount insured by the FDIC – currently $250,000) and just simply let it earn interest over time. Online savings accounts tend to vary their rates based roughly on the actions of the Federal Reserve, and since the Reserve has their rates very low right now, online accounts aren’t earning particularly well – 2% to 3.5% is pretty expected. However, if the Fed begins raising rates, many of those banks will begin raising their interest rates, too, up to the 5 to 6% that was once reasonable to expect back in 2006 or so.

Efficiency and self-sufficiency Many people who are concerned about the long-term safety of financial investments are trending towards investing in long-term self sufficiency and efficiency. This would basically involve improvements to your living situation so that you’re not reliant on basic services provided by others: electrical self-sufficiency, food self-sufficiency, and so on.

Some examples of this include buying a home in a rural area, installing a well or a sand point for a renewable water source, installing solar panels or a wind turbine for renewable energy for yourself, setting up a greenhouse and perhaps some micro-farming facilities for self-sustaining food sources, and so on.

If this has appeal to you, many people who are adopting this mode of operation are currently selling their surplus production at farmer’s markets or directly to grocery stores or selling excess energy back to the electrical grid. This creates something of a profit on the effort in the short term, subsidizing the capital investments. Plus, with such self-sustaining materials around you, you won’t be spending much at all on regular bills.

Yourself A final route to consider for investment is investing in yourself. What sorts of self-improvement (that would help your career or earning potential) could you make? Perhaps it’s worth investing in dental work. Perhaps some continuing education might be worth your while. Perhaps you need to update your wardrobe a bit.

All of these areas lead directly to some sort of financial return without much risk.

However, there is something else worth considering. It won’t lead directly to financial return, but it is a worthwhile use of your money. Charitable giving. You always have the ability with your money to help bring about profound positive changes in the lives of others.

Hopefully, you’ve now got some things to chew on. Good luck!

Today is Valentine’s Day, and what better way to talk about the day than to talk about my wonderful wife and how she constantly and subtly pushes me to become a better person.

I grew up about six miles away from my wife, but we barely knew each other for the first sixteen or seventeen years of our lives. We went to the same school, but we were in different grades taking different classes and largely hanging out with different friends. We knew each other from an early age, but not well.

It wasn’t until the very end of my high school years that our social circles began to overlap. We did a few social things together as friends, but when I left for college, it was still purely a friendship. I dated a few people during my first year at college while she was still in high school, though we kept up correspondence via email and letters.

Eventually, she made the choice to attend the same college that I attended, and once that choice was made, we began to gradually spend more and more time together. Eventually we began dating each other – a period that went on for six years – and eventually, some twenty years after meeting, we were married in 2003.

In short, my wife and I came from very similar backgrounds. We both grew up in a rural environment to relatively low-income families. We went to the same primary school, the same high school, and the same college. We have a lot of life experiences in common and a lot of people in common as well from our early days.

Yet, in many ways, we’re perfect opposites. I tend to throw myself passionately into things, obsessing over them and focusing intently on them for long swaths of time, whereas my wife remains pretty centered, tending to do a much better job at juggling a variety of things. I’m better at implementing, at actually getting specific tasks done, while my wife is a better manager, seeing all the things that need to be done and gently pushing me (and herself) to accomplish certain tasks (yes, she’s far better at assembling a to-do list than I am).

This held true when we first decided to turn around our financial lives. I came at it with passion, quite ready and willing to make big, radical changes. I obsessed over our situation, rooting out all kinds of changes we could make. My wife, however, was the source of levity, distinguishing between the radical ideas and the more reasonable ones and pushing us to accomplish the reasonable things. Then, when my passion would fade a bit, she’d be that quiet voice that would keep us going.

I say without hesitation that my wife is the real heart of our family. The unwavering love and quiet support that she shows me and our children in almost every aspect of our lives is amazing, especially when she makes it look so effortless. One minute, she’ll be gently encouraging our son to use the potty, then she’ll be reading to our daughter and teaching her a new word. Before I blink, she’ll be brainstorming ideas for tomorrow’s evening meal and encouraging some of my better writing ideas. Most amazing of all is that she does it without hesitation and without waver. It’s not a sustained effort for her – it just comes naturally.

Sarah provides both the levity and the beauty in my life. She keeps me focused on what I need to focus on, yet often inspires me to reach ever higher. She’s been the real motivation behind all of the wonderful things that have happened in our lives over the last decade – our children, our financial turnaround and success, our career opportunities.

Simply put, she’s the one for me. Without her, none of this – The Simple Dollar, 365 Ways to Live Cheap, some of my other projects – would be possible.

I love you, honey.

Earlier this week, I tossed out an interesting question to the people following me on Twitter:

What would you do if someone gave you an unexpected $10,000 gift (meaning it’s tax free)?

I was utterly flooded with responses to this question, far more than I anticipated. I took the first 250 responses and did a bit of evaluation on them and here’s what I discovered.

89% of all respondents would use most or all of the money to repay debt. That, of course, means that 89% of the people who responded to the question have at least $5,000 in debt.

15% mentioned some sort of investment with the money. Yes, only 15% of the people who wrote to me mentioned investing the money (in something besides debt reduction). About half of these people were people who were splitting money between debt repayment and investment.

Of those mentioning investing, 60% were going to invest in cash. Cash? People often mentioned putting money into a savings account for the purposes of starting or expanding on an emergency fund (7% of all respondents talked about their e-fund).

Only 8% mentioned spending more than 10% of the money on something largely fun. There were quite a few people who talked about spending $100 to $500 on something frivolous, but it was very rare that people mentioned spending $1,000 or more on something purely fun.

This reveals a few things.

First, most of the people following me on Twitter have their heads on straight when it comes to personal finance. A windfall wouldn’t be spent on frivolous things – it would be spent on getting themselves into a better financial place.

However, most of that group have incurred pretty serious debts in their past. Debt repayment is a major part of all of their lives. If $10,000 won’t knock off the debt, then it’s likely that a significant portion of their monthly income is going to debt repayment. That’s a life-altering situation – it locks you into specific jobs and makes you very worried about keeping it.

Another interesting point: a lot of people out there also intuitively see the value of an emergency fund. People who aren’t aiming for debt repayment aren’t simply looking to throw money into traditional investing. Instead, they’re playing it safe – putting the money away into an emergency fund so that if something happens in their life, things are fine. Of course, this might be influenced by a down economy, but it still indicates a real-world focus on personal stability.

What would I do if I suddenly had $10,000 in tax free dollars drop on my lap? I’d use much of it to buy a new car for my wife’s commute to work. Without that money, we’d likely be taking out at least a small loan for the vehicle, so in many ways, this money is effectively debt avoidance.

What’s the real take-home message here? The real message is that you’re not alone in your struggles with debt. A large proportion of the people reading and commenting on The Simple Dollar are going through many of the same experiences that you are. This is not a struggle you’re dealing with alone.

Similarly, many people are on the path to overcoming such a debt load. People are out there trying different things – frugality, better money management, and so on.

These things are struggles that most of us share. When I talk about my own experiences on The Simple Dollar, I might be talking about my own specifics, but that core experience of fighting and trying to overcome debt is one that a lot of people are digging through right now.

Don’t feel alone, because you’re not.

This is the nineteenth in a weekly series of articles providing a chapter-by-chapter in-depth “book club” reading of Benjamin Graham’s investing classic The Intelligent Investor. Warren Buffett describes this book: “I read the first edition of this book early in 1950, when I was nineteen. I thought then that it was by far the best book about investing ever written. I still think it is.” I’m reading from the 2003 HarperBusiness Essentials paperback edition. This entry covers the eighteenth chapter, which is on pages 446 to 472, and the Jason Zweig commentary, on pages 473 to 486.

This is really a “put the principles into practice” chapter, above all else. The premise is really simple: Graham simply picks eight pairs of companies off of a list of stocks available on the stock exchange. He simply chose ones that were adjacent to each other in name on a long list of publicly traded stocks.

The problem with this method is that many of the companies that Graham evaluates are either no longer in business or are completely different entities than they were in 1972. So what’s the value in reading these comparisons?

The value comes in seeing what things Graham looks for when comparing two companies. If you carefully read this chapter, you can tease out a lot of interesting basic concepts that Graham seems to rely on in his analysis. Let’s dig in.

Chapter 18 – A Comparison of Eight Pairs of Companies
So, what “basic concepts” am I talking about? Here are five things that stood out to me in Graham’s comparisons.

Companies that stick to their core businesses are generally better values. Companies that dive into mergers and make big splashes into other businesses get all the attention, but if you’re looking for value, look for companies that focus in one area and do it well.

Investing on what you think will happen in the future is almost always a bad idea. No one can predict the future. If you’re investing for value, don’t bet on a company because of what they’ve done very recently. Look for a long track record.

Overvalued stocks tend to stay overvalued, while undervalued stocks tend to stay undervalued. Why? Conventional wisdom tends to rule the day. If a company is seen as “hot,” it takes a lot for that facade to go away. Similarly, if a company is seen as “boring,” it’s very hard to lose that stigma. That’s why selling short really only works well in certain specific situations where a company is clearly losing something of value, not just merely the fact that it seems overvalued.

A company in a highly competitive market is almost never a value. If a company has a lot of strong competitors, you should never view that stock as a value stock. Most good values sell products in niches where there isn’t much competition – hence the perception that such stocks are boring.

Price volatility is usually a bad sign. If a company is experiencing far greater price fluctuations than the market as a whole is seeing, particularly when it alternates between going up rapidly and going down rapidly, avoid the stock. Such events happen only in companies that are either unstable or are involved in something else going on in the market, both of which are good to avoid.

Commentary on Chapter 18
Zweig attempts to do eight similar comparisons with more modern companies, looking at them as they sat in 2002 and early 2003.

Again, most of these comparisons are really products of their times – they aren’t valid looks at the companies today. However, these comparisons do reinforce most of the principles taught in this book – nice, quiet, steady, stable companies with steady dividends and earnings growth are the ones that make for a great value.

Most importantly, it establishes that Graham’s principles are all about the long term, not the short term. If you’re interested in day trading and selling short, Ben Graham’s philosophy isn’t the right one for you.

Next Friday, we’ll take a look at Chapter 19: Shareholders and Managements: Dividend Policy.

More than a few times, I’ve mentioned that I enjoy calculating my net worth on a regular basis and using that to see how my personal financial situation has improved over time. It’s pretty easy to do this – just create a little table with two columns, one being the date and the other being your calculated net worth. You can then use a spreadsheet to make a nice little graph of this information, allowing you to really see the benefit of all of your little moves over time.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? The problem with this picture, though, is actually getting all of that information. In order to be able to really see your progress, you need to calculate your net worth repeatedly over time. You might also want to keep track of other things over time, such as your total savings or your monthly spending over a long period.

How do you come up with that data? The easy way to do it is to create a simple net worth calculator. Each week or each month or each quarter, you just drop in the balances on your accounts and it keeps track of your net worth over time for you – nice and easy.

After reading Kim Snider’s excellent book How to Be the Family CFO, though, I’ve really come around to the idea of assembling a monthly personal balance sheet. Once a month, I sit down, figure up every number that might be a good indication of my financial state, jot down some explanations, and save that document for later. Whenever I want to look at any aspect of my personal finance growth, I just need to pull out a few of these statements.

Snider offers a great tutorial as to how she creates her own statements in her book, but I’ve found that the statements that work for me are quite a bit different than her example. Here’s how I assemble my own personal finance statements.

First of all, I’ve started doing them on a very regular schedule. I assemble one of these on the last day of every month. For me, it’s very important to do these statements at the same time each month simply so that I’m normalizing for all of the monthly things that happen in my life. For example, each statement includes one mortgage payment, one electric bill payment, one cycle of paying off all of our credit cards (since we use cards for our routine purchases), and so on.

My personal balance sheet contains four sections.

First, income. I include every source of income for the month, including their values. I include cash gifts on this list – if my wife and I receive $50 as a gift from an older relative, we list it here to keep things straight. I try to divide up the income as clearly as possible, noting income from The Simple Dollar, income from other writing endeavors, income from consulting, my wife’s income, and other sources of income on separate lines. I totaled these at the bottom. I do not include interest earned or investment growth as income here – I note them below in the asset section.

Second, expenses. This section takes by far the longest, but it’s well worth it. I go through our expenses and sort them into categories: food and household expenses, children’s expenses, entertainment, utilities, our mortgage, and a few other basic categories. If there’s anything exceptional, I put them in as a separate line by themselves, and I often add notes off to the right to note anything unusual. As with the other section, I total these at the bottom.

Third, assets. I list every account and major asset that I own along with the balance of that account or the value of that item, then I total them.

Finally, debts. Again, I list all of my debt accounts along with the amount I still owe, then I total them.

I also include a summary section. I like to look at income minus expenses (how much money I retained this month) and assets minus debts (my net worth right now).

Why not use a package like Quicken or Microsoft Money to do this? I do not like this information to be reliant on a software package that requires updating (which means buying a new copy) every few years. Keeping these records in an open document format (since I assemble these with OpenOffice) means I’ll be able to access these documents forever without the need to update software unless I want to. Quicken and Money are fine packages, but they require you to get on board with updating software over the long term, and if I can do the same things myself, I’d rather avoid the cost and the related technical issues.

Using these statements for long term analysis There are three big things I like to look at over time.

First, income minus expenses over time. This is the so-called “gap,” the one that is the actual demonstration of how well you’re truly spending less than you earn. This number should be as wide as possible. If you see it narrowing, it’s time to focus – ideally, it should stay roughly the same or gently widen over time (as your income goes up).

Second, assets minus debts over time. This shows your net worth growth over time. If your “gap” is wide (from the above graph) over time, then this should be steadily going up over time – sometimes sharper than others (when the stock market is going well).

Finally, change in assets each month (minus income) This shows the growth in your investments over time not including your contributions. When you see your assets increasing each month at a rate that’s greater than your expenses, then you’ve reached a point where you can pretty much do whatever you like.

These three pictures create a great visualization of how your personal finances are improving over time and, for me, they provide motivation to keep my nose to the grindstone.

All you have to do to have this information is simply make a balance sheet each month. After a few months, you can take those numbers and create some very compelling views of your personal finance situation – and you don’t need Quicken or Money to do it.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a wide variety of podcasts and talk radio stations while writing, mostly in order to expose myself to thoughts and opinions across the spectrum. A few days ago, a host on one of these shows (I believe it was Colin Cowherd) complained quite specifically about personal finance advice in a way that made me think.

His comment was simple: he claimed that personal finance writers and personalities target things like getting a latte at Starbucks because they’re low hanging fruit. He stated that if you just replace a Starbucks coffee with a lower quality coffee, you’ll save yourself maybe a buck a day, adding up to $30 after a month. That $30 is inconsequential, according to him – it’s an amount of money that really doesn’t equate to any significant change in life. Instead, he argued that you should only focus on the big stuff – sell that jet ski you use only twice a year, for one.

On one level, the host has a point: big steps will have much more impact than small steps. Selling that jet ski will help you quite a bit more than skipping a coffee at Starbucks, without a doubt. If you want to make a giant step, sell your car or downgrade your home – those moves will make a sea change in your personal finance situation.

On the other hand, we have a lot of opportunities in our lives to make small steps. Changing your coffee habits is a small step. Changing your light bulbs is a small step. Eating a meal at home is a small step.

In the end, though, big steps and small steps are just steps in a larger journey.

I like to think of the journey to financial independence as being like a marathon. Doing something big, like downgrading your home, is the equivalent of running a mile’s worth of that marathon. Doing something small, like giving up today’s coffee, is only a step in that journey.

The journey, though, is long. It’s a lot of steps to reach that finish line of complete financial independence. One or two big moves won’t do it, nor will a bunch of smaller moves. You need to throw as much as you can at the goal, just like a marathon runner throwing everything they have at the goal.

Many people like to overlook the small steps because they don’t seem to cover much ground along the way to financial independence. After all, giving up one’s daily coffee isn’t going to save you much money by itself, so why do it?

Here’s another way of looking at it. Skipping today’s coffee and putting that money away might be one step in the journey. Do it all month and you’ve got thirty steps. Do it all year and you’ve got three hundred and sixty steps. Add in a few other tiny things like eating at home and replacing your light bulbs and soon you’ll find that you’re taking a few thousand little steps – covering at least as much ground (if not more) than those big steps.

If you truly want financial independence and security, your journey is going to require some big steps and a lot of small steps. Don’t get caught up in the belief that a little step doesn’t matter – every step matters on your way to this marathon’s finish line.

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Leo Babauta’s excellent book The Power of Less, which details a lifestyle philosophy of reducing and simplifying life.

One of the most thought-provoking portions of the book was the idea of the “thirty day challenge.” If you’re attempting to adopt a new habit in your life, simply try it – and focus on it – for thirty days. The book offers a lot of examples for trying this – going vegetarian for thirty days, going to the gym for thirty days, and so on.

Since reading the book, I’ve been really inspired to look for ways to apply thirty day challenges in my own life. I made a giant list of potential thirty day challenges that I could try, whittled it down to a few, and may have selected one to go with (push-up training). Along the way, though, I kept adding more and more great ideas to the original list – ones that meshed well with my life, along with ones that I simply thought were good ideas for almost everyone.

Unsurprisingly, quite a few of these ideas had to do with personal finance. There are a lot of “thirty day challenges” you can take on in your own life to improve your money situation. Here are twelve great ways to use the next thirty days to bring about personal finance change in your life.

Thirty days to avoid all unnecessary spending For the next thirty days, only spend money when it’s absolutely needed. If you’re about to make a purchase or engage in an activity that isn’t strictly necessary, either avoid it (if you’re just buying something frivolous) or find a cheaper solution (like eating at home instead of going out).

Thirty days to track every dime you spend It’s easy – just keep a notebook in your pocket and every time you spend a penny, jot it down in that notebook. Include everything, from paying the bills to buying a cup of coffee. If a cent leaves your pocket or your checking account, jot it down. Once you have this record, at the end of the trial, categorize the spending and add it up – you might be shocked to see how much you’re spending on coffee (for one example).

Thirty days to understand your retirement investment options Many people postpone making major decisions about their retirement plans because of the sheer volume and complexity of options. Sorting through these can make for a great thirty day challenge. Start by making a list of the things you’re unsure about, then devote some time (half an hour might do it) each day to dealing with these questions until you’re confident about your retirement planning.

Thirty days to cook at home Make a pledge to prepare all of your food at home by yourself for thirty days. At the end of the period, not only will you have eaten much cheaper than you would have otherwise, you’ll also acquire many of the basic cooking skills you’ll need to make such home cooking a normal part of your routine, saving you money over the long haul.

Thirty days to develop your presentation skills Spend the next thirty days looking for opportunities to speak in public – and then follow through with them with appropriate prep work, practice, and execution. Doing this will do nothing but improve your ability to share your ideas in the workplace and gain more acclaim for your skills no matter what you’re doing.

Thirty days to seek a new job Do you feel stuck in your current job? You like what you’re doing, but you feel stuck in place by a glass ceiling or by office politics. What you might need is simply a change in perspective that can come with a new job in your area. Spend a month doing some careful searching for positions that might be available to you. Apply to the most promising ones and see what happens.

Thirty days to develop and optimize a debt repayment plan A debt repayment plan is just what it says it is – a plan you develop and execute to manage your debts and eventually get rid of them. Getting such a plan in order and optimized can require a lot of leg work, though, so devote fifteen minutes each day to getting your plan in place.

Thirty days to develop strong personal goals What do you want out of life? Where do you want to be in a year? In five years? In twenty years? If you don’t know, spend some time thinking carefully about those questions. Put some time aside each day to think about what you really want out of life. Once you have those goals in place, it becomes a lot easier to make choices in your life that work towards something truly big instead of just wandering day to day.

Thirty days to improve your work relationships Professional relationships are the lifeblood of many careers, but it’s quite easy to get caught up in the day-to-day bustle of work and let many valuable relationships die on the vine. Spend a half an hour each day sprucing up these relationships. Touch base by email or Facebook. Make a phone call or two. Stop by an office or a cubicle. Ask what they’re up to and offer what you have to share. Every relationship you build with something of value is something that can help you out later when you really need it.

Thirty days to try out budgeting For many people, a budget feels like a major step, one fraught with a lot of stress and a lot of challenges along the way. However, a well-executed budget can really help you to get your spending under control. Pick up a great budgeting guide, develop one for yourself, and pledge to stick to it for thirty days. If nothing else, you’ll learn a lot about yourself and your spending along the way.

Thirty days to investigate a new career Are you feeling burnt out with your current career path? Have you fallen out of love with your work? It might be time to think about a new career. Spend the next month investigating potential alternate careers for your skill set.