Several evenings ago, I was looking for a movie to watch when I stumbled upon the end of the Woody Allen film Manhattan. A single scene there has stuck in my mind – one in which Allen attempts to piece through why his life is worth living. Bill Joy actually described this scene quite well in an essay for Wired:

Do you remember the beautiful penultimate scene in Manhattan where Woody Allen is lying on his couch and talking into a tape recorder? He is writing a short story about people who are creating unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves, because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe.

He leads himself to the question, “Why is life worth living?” and to consider what makes it worthwhile for him: Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong’s recording of “Potato Head Blues,” Swedish movies, Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, the apples and pears by Cézanne, the crabs at Sam Wo’s, and, finally, the showstopper: his love Tracy’s face.

Each of us has our precious things, and as we care for them we locate the essence of our humanity.

Why is life worth living for me? I carried that question around for a bit and made something of a list: my wife’s half smile when I make a corny joke, the rocking chair in the basement with a great book in my hand, my son crawling up on my lap with the purpose of looking through a pile of family pictures, The Joshua Tree, my daughter spinning around in circles and falling to the floor while shouting “POCKET FUW OF POSE-EEEES!”, a just-finished essay that turned out well, a slice of homemade pizza, jumping into a pile of leaves… that’s a big taste of my list.

A few things worth noting. First of all, the things on that list, for the most part, don’t involve spending any money. Second, my list ten years ago wouldn’t have been all that different – sure, there wouldn’t have been references to my children, but things like successful writing and homemade pizza and my wife’s smile and a great book and The Joshua Tree would have been there then, too. These things touch some core of who I am – not just right now, but always.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I believed variety was the spice of life. Buying new things and trying new experiences were the keys to lifelong joy. What I found, though, is that constantly chasing the new thing didn’t bring me the happiness I expected. I might be happy for a while, but eventually I would feel the need to seek something else – a new rush – and I would only extremely rarely find things that lifted me as high as those key things I had already discovered.

Then my son was born, and I discovered that life often hands you those great meanings – you don’t have to chase them. You don’t have to keep buying albums to discover your Joshua Tree. You don’t have to keep eating at expensive restaurants to find your homemade pizza. You don’t have to keep buying furniture to discover your comfortable chair.

Instead of using my time, money, and energy to chase a mix of good and bad things, I’m using my time, money, and energy to make sure I can always enjoy the great things.

At the end of the movie, Allen chases down his love Tracy. He realizes how much energy and time he’s spent chasing other women was simply wasted – what really mattered to him was already in front of him. He just had to see it.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

The best single coworker I ever had was a fellow named Darwin. Darwin was one of those “jack of all trades” types – he simply seemed to have some insight about everything – and the actual ability to back it up. He knew how to program computers and manage large database systems. He could make a mean strawberry rhubarb cobbler. He could repair his own truck. He could provide good conversation on almost any topic.

In short, he was one of those people that was almost always useful to know or have around. His skill set may not have made him a master in any particular area, but he had skills in almost every area. And, most of the time, it was those basic skills that were needed to get the job done. Unsurprisingly, Darwin’s social network was enormous. You could hardly go anywhere with him without Darwin bumping into someone he knew. His weekends were almost always filled with projects, where he would help someone out with some sort of project or invite others to help him with something.

All of these factors came together when Darwin tackled his largest project: building his own house. Yes, you read that right. He served as his own general contractor on his house. He had the skills necessary to do this thanks to many years of working on a wide variety of projects. He also had a huge network of people to call on to provide the manual labor needed. Thanks to these things, he was able to turn a pile of dirt into an amazing home in a year, saving himself more than a hundred thousand dollars in the process. That doesn’t even include all of the money saved by spending weekends hanging out with friends working on projects instead of out on the town spending money.

That, my friends, is the value of being a jack of all trades.

Of course, it’s a very sharp example of it – most people are never going to build their own home, nor will they ever acquire a skill set as well-rounded and diverse as Darwin’s. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t become something of a jack of all trades of your own. Here are ten steps you can take to developing a large, diverse skill set – and a nice social network to go along with it.

1. Define what you actually want to achieve – and the skills you will need to achieve it.
When you close your eyes and imagine the types of things you’d like to be able to do, what do you imagine? Perhaps you envision being able to do home repair, or maintenance on your car. Maybe you’d like to learn some carpentry in order to eventually build a shed. Maybe you’d like to learn a musical instrument. One friend of mine actually dreams of opening a small catering business, cooking good food at a large scale.

Figure out a large goal or two that you’d like to achieve, then break this goal down into some basic skills. Let’s say, for example, that you wanted to learn how to do basic home repair and also learn how to cater food for a large group. You could easily extract a long list of home repair skills, as well as a sizable list of culinary and kitchen techniques. In short, you’re crafting lists of the things you want to learn – a checklist for your near future.

Another good exercise is to figure out the skills you already have. What do you know how to do that many others do not? Is this something that’s useful to others? Perhaps you’re good at computer repair, or maybe you already can bake quite well. Quite often, the skills you already have can be bartered to learn new skills.

2. Start with the people already around you.
The people already in your social network are the best people to start with in your endeavors. Look for the friends and family you already have that have skills you’d like to learn, and simply ask to learn from them. In exchange, you should offer them something as well – one of your skills might be put to use in their life, or you might be able to simply serve as a helping hand for one of their projects.

As you get more comfortable with sharing your skills and with the process of picking up new ones, expand your horizons a bit. Look for people further and further out on your social network to trade skills with. Not only does this provide an opportunity to learn new skills, it also gives you a chance to forge new relationships with people.

3. Keep your ears and eyes open.
If you pay attention, almost every day gives us opportunities to share our skills and abilities as well as learn from others. Keep your ears and eyes open and see what’s available around you.

Perhaps a neighbor is working on a project in the yard. Why not ask if he or she could use a hand? Maybe someone will mention that their brother is adept at exactly the thing you’re yearning to learn. Step up and ask if you can give that person a ring. It might even be as simple as offering to help someone fix their car in a parking lot – it gives you an opportunity to learn, after all.

Just look for every opportunity that life reveals to you to pick up a skill you’d like to have. Those opportunities come more often than you might think.

4. Volunteer.
Another great avenue for picking up skills is through volunteer projects. Groups like Habitat for Humanity are constantly engaged in projects where you can not only learn a useful skill, but you can spend your time in a way that provides for others at no direct cost for yourself. Browse through the charities on Volunteer Match and see what charities are available in your local area.

Be aware, though, that volunteer work isn’t strictly an excuse to learn new skills. Most of the time, you will be engaged in activities that utilize the skills and talents you bring to the table. Stick with it, though – volunteer opportunities can teach you a lot of skills if you give them time to flourish.

5. Share what you know.
Many people often feel that they don’t have something of value to share. Very rarely is that actually true – all of us have something valuable to share right in between our ears. Share what you know freely and widely. Often, people have valuable information and insights in areas that they never expect until others ask about it.

Never fail to share with others. Why? When an opportunity comes around and you want or need something, if you’ve shared with someone in the past, they’re much more likely to help you when you need it. The best place to start is with what you know, so get sharing.

6. When learning, master the basics first.
When my three year old is learning about something new, he asks “Why?” over and over again, even if he already knows why. Why does he do this? It’s not to annoy us – it’s to reinforce basic principles. Over time, he begins to tie things together – the numbers on the clock are the same as the numbers in his counting song, for example. When you have the basic principles behind things down cold, it becomes much easier to build more complex ideas on top.

I find that, when I’m learning a new skill, it’s often valuable to continually work on the basics as I go along, even if they seem familiar. For example, whenever I’m preparing a dish with vegetables, I often quite enjoy the chopping of the vegetables, even though it’s the most basic of steps. It’s a technique that, when well-practiced, makes the entire process of preparing a meal much easier. If I really focus on mastering technique when chopping vegetables, I get better and better and better at it, so that when the time comes that I need to chop very quickly, I have the skills in place to do it.

Master the basics and the advanced techniques will seem much more attainable.

7. Read something new every day.
Each day, make an effort to read something new related to your interests. Read a chapter in a book, a magazine article, or some blog entries on that topic.

This helps in two ways. First, it keeps your mind focused on the skills you’re trying to learn. If those skills are constantly present in your mind, you’ll find yourself drawn to practice them and grow them naturally. Second, it exposes you to new ideas and thoughts and facets related to that skill. Reading what others have written on the topic constantly exposes your mind to new angles on what might seem like a familiar area.

Whenever I’m interested in a topic, I usually start by following a few blogs on it. I do some Googling for blogs on my topic of interest, follow some links, and find a well-written one or two, then I follow them in Google Reader. This is a great, inexpensive way to get my feet wet and my mind working.

8. Try something new every day.
There’s no better way to master a new skill than by simply doing it. Dive in and get your hands dirty as often as you reasonably can.

Again, there are two ways to do this. On one hand, you can tackle a small project each day – cooking your own supper from scratch, for example, is a great way to get up to speed in the kitchen. On the other hand, you can also keep a larger project and contribute to it each day. Perhaps you’re trying to become better as a writer – you can start a novel and add a certain number of words each day. Let your imagination run with this – but make sure you’re doing at least a little something each day as you build your new skill.

9. Share the things you produce.
If you begin to produce quality items from your practice, share the things you produce with others. Invite people over for dinner and cook something stunning. Build a jewelry box for the daughter of a friend. Give away some of the vegetables from your garden.

What you’ll find is that if you start sharing what you know, they’ll share what they know. You’ll find someone that can help you fix your toilet (and probably teach you how to do it yourself). You’ll start getting dinner invitations – and some delicious meals.

Most of all, you’ll receive friendship, upon which so much can grow.

10. Apply the skills you’re learning in your own life.
Best of all, as you acquire these new skills, you can apply them in your own life. The better you become at cooking, the better your diet becomes and the less expensive your food becomes. The better you become at home repair tasks, the more likely it is that you can handle things that break down in your home without calling the repairman. The better you become at writing, the more likely it is you can sell a piece or you can start a successful blog that can earn you a bit of money.

All of this comes back to two things: building skills and building relationships. The more you do of both, the better off you are.

This is the final entry in a five part series this week on the stages of a relationship and how you can make financially sound choices throughout. Other entries include courtships;, engagements;, weddings, and honeymoons.

You’re now a married couple, settling into a long life together. Now what?

It’s easy to fall into routines in your marriage, and often those routines are hard to break. You can establish routines that lead to a healthy marriage that’s grounded in healthy relationships and healthy money practices, or you can establish routines that are very disruptive.

Which do you choose? Here are ten tactics for getting yourself on a great path to a long-term successful marriage, both financially and otherwise.

Talk to each other as often as possible. Have a healthy conversation every single day. Ask what your spouse is doing and what they’re thinking about. Tell your spouse what you’re up to and what you’re thinking about. The better you understand your spouse in the good times and the normal times, the easier it will be to work through the difficult times.

Listen to what the other person is actually saying. It’s easy to get used to the routines in your life and in your spouse’s life, making it easy to somewhat gloss over the specifics on a daily basis. Don’t fall into that trap. Listen. Almost every time that a problem is developing, your spouse is telling you about the problem in some fashion. Pay attention to the things your spouse is saying, and if something doesn’t seem right, don’t blow it off. Follow up – and be there for your spouse.

Be honest and actively admit your mistakes – you will make them, after all. Everyone makes mistakes in their marriage. They make a poor choice. They don’t correctly interpret what their partner wants. I know I certainly do it often enough. The best thing you can do when you make a mistake – money or otherwise – is to confess to it. Tell your partner about your splurge. Tell your partner about your mistake. Not only will your honesty make it easier to talk about, you’ll also be driven to do better.

Talk about your long term plans together on a regular basis – and be open to changing them as you grow. Where do you want to be in a year? In five years? In ten years? Tell your partner your thoughts and encourage your partner to share their thoughts. You’ll find that some of them are different, but that many of the goals are in common. The common goals are great ones to focus on because you’re both driven to get there – and you’re able to reinforce each other’s resolve. Talk about these goals regularly.

Work together on the small steps you can do right now to reach those big shared goals. Once you’ve figured out the goals you have in common, spend time talking about what you can do right now to bring you closer to those goals. For us, this has been invaluable at keeping our spending choices in check. We talk about almost every significant purchase and decide together whether or not it’s in line with what we want out of life. Which leads to…

Plan big purchases together – and think about how they’ll impact your other big plans. Excepting any “spending allowance” that you both have, any significant purchase should be discussed together. My wife and I discuss anything more than $20 – and often, we discuss it to death (which is a good thing, because then we don’t spend the money). We are basically checks against unnecessary spending for each other – and that enables us to accomplish our real goals faster and keep our less-focused sides in check.

You’re going to disagree. Work on disagreeing well. You’re never going to agree all the time with your partner. Sometimes, your partner is going to be right and you’re going to be wrong. This will happen. Don’t turn disagreements into competitions. Instead, look at disagreements as opportunities to really figure out the truth of a situation. Do your research and figure out the real deal, then follow whichever side is actually in the right. You’re far better off being wrong and then changing your mind than being wrong and sticking with it like a dog with a stick just so you can “win” – that’s a recipe for long-term failure in multiple ways.

Always strongly support the positive moves your partner makes. Whenever your partner makes a good move, congratulate them. Reinforce the idea that the move was a good thing, and then use their good choice as motivation to make your own good choice, not as an excuse to coast because your partner is carrying the weight. At times, my wife and I almost compete at positive things like cleaning the house or saving money.

Don’t plan for retirement in a bubble – include your partner’s plans and income to develop an overall plan for retirement. Plan for retirement together and make choices that will provide you both with the money you’ll need for your later years. This may mean that one partner saves more than the other because they have a better 401(k) opportunity or they have a higher income. Having said that, it is a good idea to not have all retirement handled by one partner – if one partner has a fully funded 401(k) in his/her name, the other partner might want a Roth IRA in their name, just in case. However, the overall planning should reflect your shared goals.

Reaffirm your love every single day. Tell your partner you love them. Give a hug or a kiss or an embrace. It’s so simple to do, yet so many couples miss out on it. Simple little tokens of love provide a constant reaffirmation of your relationship, plus they ensure that you’ll never feel regret if something unthinkable happens.

Here are some earlier thoughts on tactics for a successful marriage, though they’re not financial in nature.

Got any good, reasonable, frugal advice for people getting started in their marriage? Please leave them in the comments.

For me, few things are more compelling than biographies of compelling people who led exceptional lives. In their lives and decisions, we can all find things to think about and perhaps to emulate in our own lives.

Recently, I’ve been enjoying the first volume of Edmund Morris’s biography of Theodore Roosevelt, entitled The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy led an extremely exceptional life – his presidency just scratches the surface. Beyond his political career, Roosevelt was also a professional historian, a naturalist, an author, and a soldier.

Early in the book, Roosevelt is attempting to figure out what he wants to do with his life. In Roosevelt’s own words, here’s the advice his father gave him (with emphasis added):

My father … told me that if I wished to be a scientific man I could do so. He explained that I must be sure that I really intensely desired to do scientific work, because if I went into it I must make it a serious career; that he had made enough money to enable me to take up such a career and do non-renumerative work of value if I intended to do the very best work that was in me; but that I must not dream of taking it up as a dilettante. He also gave me a piece of advice that I have always remembered, namely, that, if I was not going to earn money, I must even things up by not spending it. As he expressed it, I had to keep the fraction constant, and if I was not able to increase the numerator, then I must reduce the denominator. In other words, if I went into a scientific career, I must definitely abandon all thought of the enjoyment that could accompany a money-making career, and must find my pleasures elsewhere.

After this conversation, I fully intended to make science my life-work.

There are a lot of interesting things at work here.

Spending less than you earn is an underlying principle here. If you have a job that doesn’t earn much, you simply cannot spend your money as though you have a job that earns quite a bit. It seems like common sense, but based on my own past and what I have seen others do, it’s not.

If you choose a low-paying career path, you are also choosing a comparatively low-spending life. Not long ago, I had a job as a researcher in a lab. I viewed it as my career and planned to eventually work on a Ph. D. while I worked there, but I hadn’t earned that degree yet. Instead, I was earning a salary appropriate for the path I had chosen. Yet, quite often, I would get caught up with spending on a level with some of the professors around me, even though they were making twice my salary. It was simply not sensible or sustainable.

When I did get my spending under control, I found myself actually in the opposite boat – I was spending a lot less than I earned. Then I made a difficult choice – I jumped to a job (writing) that paid substantially less than I was making. This, again, lowered what we could spend.

Making good money isn’t everything. Even with that reduction in income, I felt I gained quite a bit more than I lost in that transition. I moved to writing, something I’d always dreamed about doing and something I thoroughly enjoy. I work from home, which means I don’t waste time (or money) on commuting. Most important, though, my schedule is really, really flexible, giving me more time to spend with my family when they need me and also to chase other pursuits.

There’s much more to a job than the salary. Are you happy doing what you’re doing? Do you actually enjoy the work? Is the schedule flexible enough to let you enjoy the things you want? Those things have value – for me, they carry quite a lot of value.

What about my own children? Is it okay, if I’m in a very financially strong position, to give financial help to my children if they choose a career path that doesn’t earn much at all? I’ve often wondered about this question. If my child devoted his or her life to social work or some other low paying career, but showed obvious deep passion about it and was really making a difference with his or her work, should I support that child financially, at least in part?

To be honest, I haven’t come to a satisfactory answer to that question. I see both sides of the coin. One solution that I quite like came from an old friend, whose parents were giving one low-income child their inheritance early, doling it out over time and noting it with regular updates to their estate plans.

Here’s the real truth revealed by this quote, though: chasing the high salary isn’t everything. If you’re making a career choice, don’t let the income be your primary deciding factor. If you choose a career where income is the big calling card, you’ll wind up regretting it.

This is the fourth entry in a five part series this week on the stages of a relationship and how you can make financially sound choices throughout. Other entries include courtships;, engagements;, weddings, and marriages.

Many couples immediately follow their wedding with a honeymoon – and for good reason. A honeymoon is a great time for a newly married couple to bond and discover together what marriage means for them. At the same time, though, a honeymoon can be a huge expense that can weigh down the early years of your marriage.

My wife and I went on a very expensive honeymoon. We traveled to Great Britain, stayed a week in a hotel overlooking Hyde Park, and ate at expensive places the whole time. It was a magnificent trip, of course, but looking back on it, it was a mistake. Not only did it leave us with a giant debt to overcome, the memories we both hold from it are of each other, memories that could largely have happened anywhere.

That’s not to say a honeymoon is a mistake. Here are ten tactics for putting together a great honeymoon that won’t break you.

Ask yourself if you even want a honeymoon. For some couples, a honeymoon might not even be the right option. Perhaps both partners feel that it’s not an effective use of time, or perhaps there are other circumstances that make a honeymoon difficult (like an upcoming birth, etc.). Maybe you’re both content settling into a new home – or into a home together. Ask yourself (and your partner) whether you even want a honeymoon.

Do something that expresses what you both want – and what your relationship is about. It’s easy to get caught up in the idea of a huge, over-the-top honeymoon. It sounds so romantic, doesn’t it? Yet, when I look back at the trips I’ve been on with my wife, I have more great memories from trips where we did something that we both found personal value in than I do from our honeymoon. My favorite trip of all wasn’t our honeymoon – it was a long camping trip to a national park. Why? It better reflected what we’re about than a big over-the-top trip.

Consider going local. You don’t need to go on a giant trip, either, to find a romantic getaway. There are many, many great places near where you live that are completely unexplored. Look at the states adjacent to your state – places you can easily drive to. You might just find the perfect place far closer to home (and thus far less expensive) than you would have previously thought, allowing you to enjoy a longer honeymoon and still spend far less than you planned.

Focus on time you can spend together – don’t load the trip down with social events and sightseeing. My best memories of my honeymoon revolve around simply spending unplanned time with my wife, lounging around and going on walks together. Don’t load up your honeymoon with a ton of planned activities – instead, let the time simply flow. Spend it together and enjoy each other above all else.

Focus on simple, romantic moments – a picnic in the woods, for example. My best memory from our honeymoon? My wife and I ate a picnic lunch on a hilltop. Seriously. We just looked around, enjoyed the weather, and talked to each other about anything and everything. If you want to create special moments on your honeymoon, don’t go for the ostentatious and elaborate. Go for the simple and beautiful.

Consider going camping. Camping? In a tent? On a honeymoon? Absolutely. I’m speaking from experience here. The most romantic trip I ever went on with my wife came the summer after our honeymoon. We went camping for four days, two in Olympia National Forest and two on Mount Rainier. Totally secluded, totally quiet, and wonderfully romantic. No pretensions, no plans, no pressure – and no big bill at the end.

Hit your social network for help and suggestions. You might be completely surprised as to what pops up. One of our friends wound up with a week at a cabin on a lake in the next state for free because they asked around for honeymoon ideas. Another couple I know wound up with free plane tickets, covered by a friend who gave them tons of unused frequent flyer miles for the trip. Just ask for ideas and see what bubbles up. If nothing else, you’ll get some interesting suggestions.

Plan far in advance – and keep up with it, too. Much as with wedding planning, you’re better off planning far in advance. Schedule your trip as early as you can, then regularly look around for better prices and opportunities. After all, you can always cancel reservations if you do it early enough. Doing this allows you to price compare at your leisure without the risk of losing a great opportunity.

Go native. If you’re planning on traveling to a place you’re unfamiliar with, don’t focus on the tourist-y places – or, if you do, do it only for a day or two. After that, go native. Ask locals where they enjoy eating and what they like about the area. You’ll often find yourself involved with experiences you’d never expect and great stories to tell, plus the prices are usually far cheaper once you get away from tourist-heavy areas.

When actually traveling, don’t hesitate to tell people that it’s your honeymoon. Time and time again, we got nice upgrades and other treats on our honeymoon just by mentioning it. We got a better hotel room. We got a ton of privacy on the plane (first class was full, but they moved us to seats with tons of leg room and no one nearby). We got a really nice free dessert at a restaurant. All of these things were free – they came from people who were happy to help us celebrate and make our honeymoon just a bit nicer.

Got any good, reasonable, frugal advice for people planning their honeymoons? Please leave them in the comments.

As The Simple Dollar has grown in popularity over time, I’ve been able to slowly gain more and more control over the advertising that appears on The Simple Dollar. I’ve been able to avoid advertising that’s unscrupulous, while also keeping the amount of advertising to a minimum. Even better, I’ve been able to build enough traffic to get the attention of some large advertising firms who are interested in placing ads directly on The Simple Dollar. This gives me a great opportunity: I can be much more careful in terms of who I allow to advertise on the site, plus I can negotiate such agreements on my terms.

While there is a lot of good in that situation, I’ve found over the last several months that there’s a lot of bad in there as well. Over the last several months, I’ve spent far too much of my time dealing with ad contracts, talking with ad agencies, and so on.

This is frustrating for me for several reasons.

First of all, I don’t want to spend my working hours dealing with conference calls and detailed negotiations and the like, especially when many of these seemingly promising arrangements fall through. I want to spend my working hours researching, writing, and finding new ways to share my writing, and perhaps find a few more hours to spend with my family.

Second, I find such negotiations really, really boring. I’ll spend hours swapping emails with a representative from an advertising firm, only to find out that they’ve decided to do something else. I’ll spend an afternoon reading through the details of an ad placement contract. I wouldn’t mind investing the time if I found this work interesting at all – but, quite simply, it’s not.

Finally, I find that, time and time again, my location works against me. I live in rural Iowa. Advertising firms want to have a face to face meeting. They’re in New York or Los Angeles. It’s not worth it to me to fly there.

So what’s the solution? After much thought, I’ve hired Federated Media to represent The Simple Dollar for negotiating direct deals with advertisers. Federated Media basically does these things that I don’t want to do – they seek out advertisers, do the face-to-face meetings on my behalf, work out the details of the contract, and put things right at my doorstep for final approval. In exchange, they get a slice of the contract – much like any agent would. This leaves me to what I enjoy the most – writing and researching.

I Need Your Help
In order to get the ball rolling, though, I need to get a strong picture of you. Federated Media and I have developed a survey to get a clear picture of who exactly reads The Simple Dollar. Please, take a moment of your time to fill it out at the URL below. It will help me immensely.

The survey is now closed. Thank you for all your help!

The survey is completely confidential – it asks for no personal information about you. We’re just attempting to get a demographic picture of The Simple Dollar’s readership. Still, there may be questions you are uncomfortable answering – and if that’s the case, don’t fill out the survey.

I truly hope you’ll take a few moments to complete the survey. I’d really appreciate it. Thank you!

This is the third entry in a five part series this week on the stages of a relationship and how you can make financially sound choices throughout. Other entries include courtships;, engagements;, honeymoons, and marriages.

Weddings are a traditional sinkhole of a new couple’s money. In fact, I’ve actually written about it before, denoting eighteen tips for a frugal wedding. In fact, entire blogs are devoted to the topic of frugal weddings – one of the best is A Practical Wedding.

So what do I have to add on the topic? It’s easy to get bogged down in the specifics of wedding planning – and when you start racking up the costs on those little details, before you know it, the entire wedding is out of control and you’re starting married life in a financial (and emotional) hole.

Here are ten “big picture” tactics to apply when planning for a wedding that won’t break your bank – or break your future.

Start your planning as far in advance of the wedding as possible. Set a tentative date as quickly as possible and start planning as soon as you can, even if you’re planning something very simple. The longer you have before the wedding, the more time you have to find sales, discounts, and other opportunities that can shave significant cash off of the total bill. Remember, you can cancel reservations with enough advance notice if you find a better deal.

Be completely open with your partner on what your ideas for the wedding are. Some people want very simple weddings, with just a few friends and family. Others envision huge, elaborate ceremonies with hundreds in attendance. Some people insist on being married in a specific church. Others are happy being married anywhere. As soon as you can after the engagement, talk about both of your expectations about the wedding. You may find your partner wants something completely different. Knowing this early gives you time to find solutions that make both of you happy.

The best place to trim fat for the wedding is the guest list. A long guest list can create a huge bill for your wedding and reception. Instead of inviting everyone you’ve ever known, consider trimming the list down to something manageable. Focus on people genuinely important to you, not merely everyone you can think of. Every additional guest brings a cost – additional supplies, additional food, and so on.

Do as much of the work yourself as you possibly can. You don’t need a wedding planner. Plan it yourself. Poke around online for guides to wedding planning, then move through those guides and take care of them yourself. If you need help with some of the tasks, ask people you trust for advice before you turn to professionals who are usually more interested in selling stuff than actually helping you. You’ll always save money if you go to a place knowing what you want.

Provide as many supplies as you can yourself – go bargain shopping. Minimize the supplies that others are providing and find them yourself. Keep a master list of all of the things you actually need for the wedding, then go bargain shopping. Look at unexpected places like Oriental Trading Company or a thrift store – you’ll be surprised how many quality items you can find for stunningly low prices.

Look among close friends and family for photographers, organists, florists, and other key roles. At our wedding, my sister-in-law (a florist) handled the flowers (at cost) and my wife’s aunt played the piano (for free), plus a close friend volunteered to be photographer (for free) and another friend volunteered to be the DJ (for free). Look around your social network and see what you can find. One great source can be found at the house of worship where you’re getting married (if that’s your choice) – if you have personal ties there, ask the ladies’ auxiliary for help with things like catering.

Hold the ceremony in your home, your parents’ home, or outdoors. Concerned about the fees of renting a place for the ceremony? Think outside the box a bit. Get married outside or in someone’s home. I’ve attended multiple beautiful outdoor ceremonies over the last decade and none of them had any cost.

Make your own invitations. With the quality of home printing, it’s easy to make your own invitations. Get some classy stationery and print them yourself. You can find lots of templates online if you’re unsure about the design. My wife and I designed our own invitations and saved literally hundreds of dollars.

Use a family-owned restaurant for catering. If you are in a position where you have to hire someone for catering, look for a local family-owned restaurant, even if they don’t typically cater. In particular, look for a local restaurant that you have been a patron of so you can be sure of the quality. Family-owned restaurants are usually very civic-minded and are thrilled at the opportunity to be involved – usually at a good price.

Use a good stereo system for the reception music. Don’t hire a band – and don’t hire a DJ, either. Ask around your social circle to find people that have a good stereo system that can be used, then set the whole thing up yourself. Attach it to a computer with a large music playlist and let people DJ by committee – lots of fun and very little (if any) cost.

Got any good, reasonable, frugal advice for people planning their weddings? Please leave them in the comments.

One interesting element of having a fairly popular blog is the amount of free stuff people want to send you for the purpose of convincing you to review it. I get multiple emails each day with people wanting to send me promotional materials (t-shirts, etc.), books for review, DVDs for review, some truly bizarre things (like children’s toys and blow-up dolls), and other offers (that more or less amount to bribery). Virtually every blogger that builds a reasonably large audience gets similar offers – and I understand why. If a popular blogger mentions something, it reaches a pretty wide audience and comes from a trusted source.

My philosophy on these freebies is pretty simple. I tell them flat-out that I’m not going to review their product unless that product actually turns out to be interesting in some way or another. If they want to take that gamble, they can go right ahead and send it.

What I’ve found is that this response filters out most of the nonsense. The few things that I do get sent – mostly personal finance books and, on occasion, some purely promotional stuff – is either stuff that clearly isn’t going to get mentioned (like a logo t-shirt) or it’s actually worthwhile, like a personal finance book from a reputable publisher.

The only problem is that this free stuff piles up. So what I’ve started doing is taking a box with me when I go to speaking engagements, filled with these freebies after I’ve read them. I then give them away to anyone who asks a question, since, if people are listening to me talk, they must be at least somewhat interested in the topic.

Several people asked how I deal with such things. That’s my policy, in a nutshell.

Sinful Indulgence This article has some great insight into the dangers of splurging and the question of whether conspicuous consumption is actually depriving yourself (I say it’s not). (@ 60 in 3)

Did Your Parents Give You a Whole Life Insurance Policy? Here’s What To Do With It. My wife has such a policy, and we’ve long debated about what to do with it. This is some real food for thought. (@ wisebread)

About Closing Credit Card Accounts and Your FICO Score Just because you finally pay off your credit card doesn’t mean you should close the account. Doing that can actually have a negative impact on your credit score. (@ money under thirty)

The Psychology of Automation This is a pretty worthwhile book excerpt. I strongly agree with the central idea here – automate your savings and it’s a lot easier to save. (@ tim ferriss)

Want To Stand Out At Work? Get The Small Stuff Right I agree wholeheartedly. Get the small stuff right consistently and you’ll be fine, even if the big things don’t turn out perfectly. (@ dumb little man)

How to Save $100 (or More) at the Grocery Store This Month There’s some excellent advice here on grocery shopping. The store circular, meal plan, and shopping list are key. (@ get rich slowly)

Are You Emotionally Invested in Your Credit Card? This is a really interesting perspective on credit card use that I hadn’t considered. (@ bible money matters)