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

Without really paying attention, I picked up Daniel Pink’s book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko at the library. I just glanced at the cover, noting the subtitle (“The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need”) and that it was written by an author I like, and checked it out.

I got it home, opened it up, and found I was in for a surprise. The book is actually a manga – a short graphic novel drawn in the black-and-white Japanese style.

At first, I didn’t know what to think, but after reading it, I realize that this style was a brilliant choice. It takes the relatively mundane topic of careers and presents it in an entertaining and unusual fashion, one that’s particularly relevant to a younger audience (yes, I was a huge manga fan in my college days).

But is the advice worthwhile? Instead of destroying the rather fun plot of The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, I’m just going to delve a bit into the six big points the book presents for career management.

There Is No Plan
There’s a lot of talk out there about “career planning” – deciding in high school and college where you want to go with your life. In my opinion, most of that talk is bunk. By the time you get through your college career, the world will have changed. By the time you’re ten years into your professional career, the world will have drastically changed again.

You’re quite likely to find yourself, ten years from now, in a career path you couldn’t have possibly considered today. Five years ago, if you had told me I would be living as a personal finance writer, I would have laughed at you. But look what happened.

Don’t spend all your time planning out what you’ll be doing in your career in ten years. It’s hard to predict that. Instead, focus on the now and the skills and relationships you can build that will serve you no matter where your path leads you.

Think Strengths, Not Weaknesses
People hire based on strengths, not weaknesses. People become rich because of their strengths, not because they balanced out their weaknesses.

Everyone has a few natural talents and passions. The people that really succeed are the people that figure out those passions and talents and hone them while finding ways to minimize their weaknesses. This runs completely counter to the idea that if you have a glaring weakness, you need to work on it and improve it.

If you know you have a weakness, the best thing you can do is to find ways to have that weakness affect you as little as possible. Investing significant time in improving that weakness is a fool’s errand – it’s time that you’re not accentuating the positive.

It’s Not About You
The people who rise to the top are the people who offer value to others, not people who take the value of others and contribute nothing.

Are you useful to your organization? Are you useful to your peers? Are you useful to the community as a whole? If you are, you have value. If you’re not – if all you do is gobble up time and resources – you don’t have much value in your career.

Look at the things you do through this lens. Is this activity leading to some sort of value for the organization or for others or for yourself without taking as much value away? If it’s not, you’re treading on dangerous ground.

Persistence Trumps Talent
The person that tries and fails then gets back up and tries again is usually in a better place than the person who succeeds right off the bat. Why? They’ve picked up lots of little intrinsic skills along the way and they’ve learned that it’s okay to fail.

In other words, passion trumps talent. If you love something enough that you’re going to keep at it even after failing over and over again, you’re going to succeed over the long run. Each failure will teach you something, and that passion will keep you moving forward.

Talent alone won’t do that. Unless you’re truly the best in the world, eventually you will fail if you ride on nothing but talent – and you won’t have the skills or the drive to pick yourself up again.

Make Excellent Mistakes
If you’re going to make a mistake, make it in a way that shows off positive traits as well. In fact, this is often better than making no mistakes at all, because it makes you human.

Don’t be afraid to step up to the plate for fear of failure. Instead, throw everything you have at it and see what happens. Sure, you might fail – but if you’ve thrown your drive and talent at it, you’ll show some very positive things in the failure.

The person who succeeds is the person willing to take a risk and the person willing to fail.

Leave an Imprint
Your actions should always leave a mark on what you’re doing. If you’re working on something over a long period and your contributions can’t clearly be seen, what difference does it make if you were never there at all?

You make a mark by putting forth extra effort. You make a mark by adding your own angle to a project. You make a mark by standing up when everyone else is sitting down. You make a mark by loving what you do.

You don’t make a mark by just following along all the time.

Is The Adventures of Johnny Bunko Worth Reading?
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko is an absolutely brilliant graduation gift, in my opinion. It shares some big, powerful ideas about careers in a format that’s very readable and attractive to people who might not want to sit down and absorb a three hundred page career tome.

If you want depth, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko is probably not the best choice. It’s light, fun, and brings only a few big ideas to the table. To its credit, though, it explains those ideas in a very enjoyable way.

I intend on giving two copies of this away for graduation gifts in the next twelve months.

You’ve finally paid off that credit card. It’s sitting there with no balance on it and you regret ever owning it. It’s got a high interest rate and no rewards program and you will never use it again.

But should you close it? This is an interesting debate that often comes up in personal finance circles. I think there are benefits and drawbacks no matter which you choose and the “best” answer isn’t absolute in all cases.

So let’s dig in.

If you keep the card…
If you decide to keep the card, there are a few things you should think about.

First, simply having the card is a small identity theft risk. If you’re no longer actively using the card, the risk is pretty small, and you can make the risk even smaller by taking action.

Second, not closing the card opens the door to spending temptation. Obviously, if you have the strength of character to pay off all of that debt, you’re able to keep the temptation in check.

There are two big steps you can take to reduce the two risks above even more, chopping them down to an incredibly tiny sliver.

For one, destroy the physical card. Cut it up so that there’s no risk of losing it or having it stolen. I tend to actually melt used credit cards over an open fire (seriously – I’ll toss them into campfires).

For another, remove your credit card information from any online retailers that may still have it. Check your Amazon account or any other retailers you might use and make sure your zero balance card isn’t listed there. Just get the information completely out of the system.

If you cancel the card…
Let’s say you decide to cancel the card. What are the drawbacks of canceling it?

The big one is that canceling a card results in a negative bump on your credit score. This negative bump goes away after roughly a year, but during that year, your lower credit score can have some short-term negative implications. It can cause your insurance rates to go up. It can reduce your chances for getting work.

The big one, though, is that it can also hurt you if you’re attempting to get a mortgage. A lower credit rating right at the time when you’re attempting to secure a home mortgage is not a good choice.

So what should I do?
From my perspective, the answer is simple. Before you do anything, ask yourself if you’re going to be changing jobs or getting a mortgage or a car loan in the next year.

If you’re looking forward to a major move like this in the short term, don’t cancel the card. The risk of the short term drop in your credit rating is higher than the risk of just cutting up the card and forgetting about it.

Instead, cut up the card, but hold onto the account until you’re past that hump that you’re facing in the short term. When you’ve made it, then make the call and cancel that credit card.

On the other hand, if you don’t see a major move in your future, cancel that card. Doing so eliminates the temptation and eliminates the (small) chance of identity theft.

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, as well as the five best posts from two years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (July 12-18, 2008)
100 Things to Do During a Money Free Weekend It’s surprisingly easy to have a fun, social weekend without spending any extra money at all. Here are 100 ways to do just that – just pick out the ones that work for you!

Preparing a Budget? Ten Tips for Making That Budget Successful Many people jump into budgeting using a ready-made budget they found in the back of some ten year old personal finance book – and then they wonder why it doesn’t work. This article describes a much better approach to that problem.

Ten Tip-Offs That You’re Getting Bogus Financial Information – And Five Antidotes There are a lot of sources of bogus financial information out there. A big part of becoming financially successful is knowing how to figure out quickly if an offer is indeed a rip-off. Here are ten ways to do just that – and five ways to handle such discoveries.

Ten Ways to Find Bargains on Fresh Food My family enjoys eating fresh food, particularly in the summer. However, finding bargains on it can be tricky. This article describes ten ways for finding fresh food on the cheap.

The One Skill That Will Earn You Money, No Matter What You Do What skill is that? You’ll just have to click through to find out!

Two Years Ago (July 12-18, 2007)
The Ten Biggest Money Mistakes I’ve Made Since My Financial Meltdown Everyone makes mistakes, and I’ve certainly made my share. Mistakes are also a big part of learning, and here I discuss ten of my biggest mistakes and what I learned from them.

Lessons From My Grandfather In The Garden All these years later, I still miss my grandfather. He passed away in 1985, when I was seven, but I still have memories of him. He left a real imprint on me during the all-too-brief period that our lives overlapped.

How To Get A Free iPhone Yes, you too can get a free iPhone! Just follow these easy steps and you can have this gadget in your hands! This is not a scam!

Dealing With Those Piles Of Old Baseball Cards In Your Closet This may be the question that I hear the most often from readers: “I have tons of baseball cards from the 80s and 90s in my closet. What’s the best way to sell them?” Hint: if everyone’s looking to sell and few people are looking to buy… the results aren’t good.

How To Set Up Multiple Savings Account Funds Within ING If you use ING Direct, they offer the ability to easily set up multiple savings accounts that you can use for specific savings goals. Here’s exactly how to do it.

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!

This is the sixth of twelve parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover, where this book on debt reduction is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the seventh chapter, finishing on page 132. The next entry, covering the eighth chapter, will appear on Wednesday.

You’ve got a big pile of debts in front of you. They’re scary. The totals of all of the debts takes your breath away when you think about it. You don’t know where to start. You need a plan.

Dave Ramsey calls his plan the “debt snowball,” and it’s based on psychology, not math. If you’re going for pure math, the best way to pay off your debts would be to start with the one with the highest interest rate, since that will save you the most interest per dollar that you pay back.

Dave’s plan is different – he encourages people to pay back their debts from smallest balance to largest balance. The smallest balance debt gives you a “win” as early as possible in your debt repayment – which is a huge psychological boost.

Do I buy it? I played with the numbers a while back and my conclusion was that the difference between the plans – unless you’re talking about enormous debt loads with huge disparities in interest rate – doesn’t save you enough to not try the debt snowball method.

Identify the Enemy
On page 109, Dave makes a worthwhile point about figuring out what you’re working against:

The bottom line is that it is easy to become wealthy if you don’t have any payments. You may get sick of hearing it, but the key to winning any battle is to identify the enemy. The reason I am so passionate about getting rid of debt is that I have seen how many people make huge strides toward being a millionaire in the short time after they get rid of their payments.

I agree with this to a large extent, but I don’t think Ramsey really spells it out fully here or even later in the passage. If your goal is financial freedom, the enemy is unnecessary spending, not the debt. Debt is merely a symptom of that problem.

Let’s say you spend $100 more a month than you bring in without anything in the bank. This behavior means that you’re building up debt. Make a handful of spending changes and now you’re spending $100 less than you bring in. Put that extra $100 towards the debt and it goes away. Then you can start saving that $100 (and probably more, since you don’t have those debt payments to cover) towards a big goal.

It all comes back to getting your spending under control. If you can’t get your spending under control on a consistent basis, all of the debt planning in the world won’t do a thing.

Debt Repayment Is Hard
Ramsey argues that repaying your debts is hard on page 111:

This is the toughest of all the Baby Steps to your Total Money Makeover. It is so hard, but it is so worth it. This step requires the most effort, the most sacrifice, and is where all your broke friends and relatives will make fun of you (or join you).

Is it that hard? I think it’s hard in the sense that when you’re standing there at the starting line of a marathon, the finish line looks impossibly far away. Then you start running and you’re caught up in the race. You get into a rhythm, you’re gliding along, and before you know it, the finish line is there.

Lao-Tzu was absolutely right. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

That first step is the hardest part.

It definitely was the hardest part for me. I knew for a long time that “someday” I’d have to fix my debt problems, but that “someday” was always put off into the future.

Then, finally, I was forced into taking that first step. The fear of not taking a step grew greater than the fear of getting started.

But once I took that first step, the second one was easier, the third one was easier, and before you know it, I’m well along the path and it’s like a slow train coming around the bend, clickety clack.

Math Versus Behavior
The idea of psychology versus numbers comes to a head on page 111:

We have discussed that personal finance is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent head knowledge. The Debt Snowball is designed the way it is because we are more concerned with modifying behavior than correct mathematics. [...] Being a certified nerd, I always used to start with making the math work. I have learned that the math does need to work, but sometimes motivation is more important than math. This is one of these times.

As I mentioned earlier, I ran the math myself, comparing the “optimum” strategy (which means you repay your debts in order of interest rate, highest to lowest) to the “debt snowball” strategy (which means you repay your debts in order of balance, lowest to highest). What I found is that the math difference isn’t that big of a deal if you’re really hitting those debts with a strong force.

At the same time, it’s easy to see situations where the psychological difference is enormous. Let’s say that your smallest debt is your lowest interest debt and your highest interest debt is much bigger. If you throw the kitchen sink at the smaller debt, it goes poof pretty quickly – and that feels good. If you throw the kitchen sink at the bigger debt, it takes a long time for that debt to go poof. It’s a real slog – a painful one.

Some people get irritated if they think they’re doing things in a way that’s even slightly suboptimal and are also self-motivated enough to push through. Frankly, there aren’t too many of those people – those that are out there are probably not considering the “debt snowball.”

So, I think Dave’s plan works quite well.

How It Works In Detail
He lays out the plan in a single paragraph on page 114:

The Debt Snowball method requires you to list all your debts in order of smallest playoff balance to largest. List all your debts except your home; we will get to it in another step. List all of your debts – even loans from Mom and Dad or medical debts that have zero interest. I don’t care if there is interest or not. I don’t care if some have 24 percent interest and others 4 percent. List the debts smallest to largest!

This is a very good first step, but I don’t think it’s quite the final step.

Once you have that list, it’s worthwhile to call up each of your creditors and negotiate a bit. The big move is to ask for a lower rate on each of your credit cards. Some people get paranoid with this, asking things like “What if they cancel my card?” Well, what if they do? If you’re committed to reducing your debt, that shouldn’t be a real problem.

Another step you should take is stopping by your local credit union and seeing what they can do to help you consolidate some of those debts. You might be able to drastically reduce some of the interest rates via a personal loan or some other vehicle. Don’t get involved with a “debt reduction” company – use your local credit union.

Once you’ve tried those things, your list will be different – and easier. Cross off those debts that you consolidated – they’re done! At that point, rewrite your list, again with the debt with the lowest balance on top.

Then comes the hard work – paying them off.

The Big Payoff
Dave explains why it’s a snowball on page 117:

After you list the debts smallest to largest, pay the minimum payment to stay current on all the debts except the smallest. Every dollar you can find from anywhere in your budget goes toward the smallest debt until it is paid. Once the smallest is paid, the payment from that debt, plus any extra “found” money, is added to the next smallest debt. (Trust me, once you get going, you will find money.) Then, when debt number two is paid off, you take the money that you used to pay on number one and number two and you pay it, plus any found money, on number three.

It’s like a snowball rolling down the hill. Your extra payments on that first debt are small, but it’s rolling along. Eventually, it’s paid off, and your extra payment picks up the minimum payment of the first debt. The snowball gets bigger as it rolls. Your next debt is done, and the snowball gets even bigger, picking up another minimum payment.

The part I found interesting here is this one: Trust me, once you get going, you will find money.

This is absolutely true, but it’s something people can scarcely believe when they first start. Once the debt starts slipping away, you start to really get into it. I know I certainly did. Watching the debt getting smaller and smaller is really exciting, and you want next month to be even more awesome. So you start looking for ways to save. You start looking for things to do differently.

And you find them.

After all, you wouldn’t be in debt trouble to begin with if you were spending your money in an optimal fashion.

There’s Not Enough Money To Get Started!
There usually is if you do things the right way. On page 124, after a story about a logjam on a river:

When the dynamite blew, logs and pieces of logs would fly into the air. After working so hard to cut the trees, some of them were a total loss. They had to blow up some of the timber to get the rest of the crop to market. That’s the sacrifice the situation required. Sometimes that is what you have to do with the stopped-up budget. You have to dynamite it. You have to get radical to get the money flowing again.

Radical usually gets people uncomfortable. I know this from experience – people don’t mind frugal tips as long as they’re easy, but I start getting flamed if I suggest something personally challenging. Cancel the cable? You’ll pry the remote from my cold, dead hands. Sell your car? Get a rope.

Here’s the thing, though. When you sit down and rationally consider getting rid of something you consider beyond question, quite often you find that it’s not really a bad move at all to get rid of it. Getting rid of cable is completely unthinkable to many people until they think about it. What are they getting from the cable that isn’t fulfilled by other avenues, like Hulu.com or over-the-air television or a $1 DVD rental once a week?

What about selling a car? I can’t stand the loss of freedom! What freedom? How often do you use the car in a way that isn’t served by the metro or a short walk or a bit more careful planning? Is it really worth the insurance cost to keep it around?

Look at something big. Ditch your house and move into an apartment. Rent out a room. Give up all beverages but water. Sell your television. The impact of a truly big move will be like a tidal wave over your debt – or any other big financial goals you have.

Do you have any other thoughts on this chapter of The Total Money Makeover? Please share them in the comments – and feel free to respond to any of my impressions as well. After all, a good book club is all about discussion!

On Wednesday, we’ll tackle the eighth chapter – Finish the Emergency Fund.

In April and May, National Public Radio featured a series on inexpensive gourmet dishes entitled “How Low Can You Go?” Although many of the dishes looked quite tasty, most of the dishes weren’t actually all that inexpensive, often narrowly getting below $10 to feed a family of four, and many involved arduous cooking processes. I decided to try out some of these recipes throughout the summer to see how I could take the recipes and reduce them down to a simple and very inexpensive form.

One “How Low Can You Go” recipe that sounded incredibly tasty (but also pretty unhealthy) was Cheesy Corkscrews with Crunchy Bacon Topping, submitted to the contest by Pat and Gina Neely, authors of the cookbook Down Home with the Neelys: A Southern Family Cookbook. Here’s the recipe, as submitted to NPR:

Cheesy Corkscrews
—
6 tablespoons butter, plus more for greasing
Kosher salt
1 pound cavatappi (or other tubular pasta)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups whole milk, warmed
1 teaspoon dry mustard powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
Dash hot sauce
Dash Worcestershire sauce
4 cups grated sharp white cheddar cheese
1 1/4 cups grated Pecorino Romano cheese

Crunchy Bacon Topping
—
1 1/2 cups crushed potato chips
1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese
5 slices cooked bacon, crumbled
3 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Heat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a 3-quart casserole dish.

Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil and cook the pasta until it’s al dente. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Whisk in the warmed milk and bring to a simmer, whisking constantly (the mixture will thicken as the heat increases).

Stir the dry mustard, salt, black pepper, cayenne, nutmeg, hot sauce and Worcestershire sauce into the thickened milk. Stir in 3 cups of the cheddar, and the Pecorino Romano, until the cheeses melt.

Add the cooked pasta to the cheese sauce, and toss to combine. Pour the cheese-apalooza mixture into the prepared casserole dish.

Make the topping: In a medium bowl, combine the potato chips, Pecorino Romano, crumbled bacon, parsley and the remaining cheddar. Sprinkle the crumb mixture on top of the macaroni and cheese, and bake for 35 minutes. For a crunchier topping, finish under the broiler for 3 minutes, until golden brown and crisp. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes before serving.

I have a three year old boy and a one year old girl at home and macaroni and cheese is pretty much a guaranteed hit. However, I usually find the stuff out of the box to be pretty blah – I’ll jazz up my own with all kinds of things, but it’s still not the best. Thus, I really like homemade mac-and-cheese recipes – they let me create something quite enjoyable for me and the kids still go wild. This recipe is right in that wheelhouse.

However, it’s awfully unhealthy. Six tablespoons of butter? Five slices of bacon? Potato chips? Six cups of cheese? Four cups of whole milk? Wow. That’s not the most healthy recipe one could make, though the thought of it from a purely flavorful standpoint made my mouth drool. Unsurprisingly, the NPR commenters felt similarly, offering up such thoughts as:

To select this dish as a “meal” is an insult to your listeners.

NPR says “a budget-conscious meal for a family of four that’s healthy”. I guess that we should expect a not-so-healthy option from the owners of a BBQ establishment.

… and so on.

My perspective is a bit different. I fall in line with Julia Child, who advocated a widely varied and balanced diet that included some fat, and she lived a very long life doing just that. For us, a recipe like this is fine if it’s used as a side dish and is complemented with some healthy options – we chose to eat it in conjunction with a large spinach salad, as you can see in the picture above.

However, we did make some substitutes right out of the chute. Instead of using pork bacon, we chose substantially healthier turkey bacon. We used skim milk instead of whole milk. We used low-fat cheeses as well and we used a healthy penne rigate for the pasta because we couldn’t find a healthy cavatappi. Even with those choices, though, this wasn’t the healthiest entree – it should definitely be a side dish.

Here’s what we wound up using:

I started off by melting the butter in a pan, then added the flour and stirred rapidly. As expected, it became a lumpy paste quite quickly, looking like this:

This is arguably the most unhealthy substance on earth, but it gets quite a bit better from there.

Next, I poured the milk on top, stirred it steadily over the heat, and waited until it was bubbling. The milk thickened up a bit from the flour and butter but it still largely looked the same, with perhaps just a very slight yellow hint (contributed by the butter):

I then added the spices and the cheese and stirred it rapidly as the cheese melted. It began to look like a very tasty cheese sauce at this point – I couldn’t help myself and tasted it a time or two … or six:

At the same time as I was preparing the sauce, the pasta was boiling over on the other burner. Once the sauce was consistent (and delicious!), I drained the pasta, then added the creamy sauce to the penne, stirring them together. This itself looked good enough to serve as a side dish – and tasty enough, too.

I wasn’t done yet, though. I poured the pasta and cheese into a three quart casserole (note: a three quart isn’t quite big enough to contain all of the ingredients – I had just a bit of extra pasta that wouldn’t reasonably fit). Then I tossed the remaining ingredients together – the chips, the crushed turkey bacon, and the cheese – and put this mixture on top.

Here it is before it went in the oven.

I baked it at 375 F for thirty five minutes, then moved it under the broiler for three minutes. But just after I moved it under the broiler, disaster struck. The kids needed help, so I ran and helped them. When I got back, sure enough…

It was fine, though. The top was a bit crunchier than expected, but still tasty, especially if you broke it up and stirred it into the pasta.

As I mentioned above, we served this with a large spinach salad. We also had a white wine with it – Twin Fin Pinot Grigio. Here was my final plate:

We had a ton of leftovers. We wound up eating this as a side three more times, so this will make plenty unless you eat an exorbitant amount. I would halve the recipe.

Did we like it? We loved it, all of us. The kids ate it like there was no tomorrow and my wife and I both loved the variety of flavors it offered.

Our cost (minus fractional things we had on hand) was $11.04, more than half of which was cheese. Given that we were able to get roughly 16 servings out of our pot, the cost per serving was about $0.63.

Changes I Would Make to Save Cost and Time (and Health)
First, I’d substitute ingredients all over the place. Use margarine instead of butter. Use skim milk instead of whole. Use low-fat cheese. Use turkey bacon. Use whole-grain pasta. Surprisingly, if you want to substitute for the chips, slice some kale and bake it – it tastes an awful lot like a potato chip. These things won’t drastically change the taste but will drastically reduce the fat content.

Second, I’d halve the ingredients and serve it as a side dish. The whole dish would have served a small army, even as a main course. I wound up with an overflowing three quart baking dish – totally overkill for a family of four.

Third, I wouldn’t sweat the cavatappi. Cavatappi can be hard to find and expensive when you find it. Just use whole wheat penne as your pasta, or even elbow macaroni.

Fourth, I’d grate your own cheese. Turn on the water to boil the pasta first, then sit down to grate the cheese. It won’t add any time to the overall recipe, but it will save you some cash.

If you want to get ready for it the night before, grate the cheese and cook the penne. The rest can be done pretty quickly.

With those things in mind, here’s the recipe I would prepare:

Trent’s Cheesy Mac with Crunchy Bacon Topping

Cheesy Corkscrews
—
3 tablespoons butter, plus more for greasing
1/2 pound penne
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups skim milk, warmed
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Pinch nutmeg
Dash hot sauce
Dash Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 cups grated sharp white cheddar cheese
3/4 cup grated Romano cheese

Crunchy Bacon Topping
—
3/4 cup crushed potato chips
1/2 cup grated white cheddar cheese
1/4 cup grated Romano cheese
2 slices cooked turkey bacon, crumbled
1 tablespoon parsley

Heat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a 3-quart casserole dish.

Bring a large pot of water with a pinch of salt in it to a boil and cook the pasta until it’s just slightly firm. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Whisk in the warmed milk and bring to a simmer, whisking constantly (the mixture will thicken as the heat increases).

Stir the dry mustard, salt, black pepper, cayenne, nutmeg, hot sauce and Worcestershire sauce into the thickened milk. Stir in 1 1/2 cups of the cheddar and 3/4 cup Pecorino Romano, until the cheeses melt.

Add the cooked pasta to the cheese sauce, and toss to combine. Pour the cheese-pasta mixture into the prepared casserole dish.

Make the topping: In a medium bowl, combine the potato chips, cheddar, Pecorino Romano, crumbled bacon, and parsley. Sprinkle the crumb mixture on top of the macaroni and cheese, and bake for 35 minutes. For a crunchier topping, finish under the broiler for 2 minutes, until golden brown and crisp. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes before serving.

A reader asked me if I could break down my ideas into a handful of principles. After some careful thought, I came up with a list of fourteen basic “rules” that summarize my money and life philosophy. I’ll be presenting these as a weekly series.

It’s late April 2006. I’ve finally realized how bad our financial situation really is. Finally, after weeks of stewing, I’ve decided to talk to my wife about it. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with some papers, about to tell her about the situation and that we need to make some changes. I’m scared to death.

She calls. She’s on her way home from work and has just picked up our son. I’m thinking of ways to avoid this talk. So I do. I stack up the papers and work on supper, deciding to talk about it after our son is down for the night.

We have a strangely tense dinner. I’m tense. My wife is wondering what’s going on (for good reason). She puts our son to bed and I sweat it again, not wanting to talk to her.

But I finally bite the bullet.

And it’s easy. Much easier than I thought. It was calm and rational and we came to a lot of agreements by the end of the evening. Sure, we were up until after midnight that night and up pretty late a few other nights shortly thereafter, but we started to put some pieces in place to turn our lives around.

I was afraid to talk about money – and it cost me. I avoided talking about money for years and instead watched our financial situation spiral downwards. When I realized I had to talk about it, I still kept putting it off.

And for what?

Another example: my parents are getting older. I keep seeing little signs of it, time and time again. There’s a half step that’s missing. There’s a parent getting tired surprisingly quickly. There’s a wrinkle or a gray hair I hadn’t noticed before.

I don’t want to talk to them about their finances and their estate planning. It scares me to ever think that they might pass away. So I put it off – it’s easier, right?

But one day that event will come. Maybe that event will take both of them at once, or it’ll leave one of them behind, unable to handle what comes in the aftermath. The thought of that moment, as it comes quietly closer, is beginning to worry me more and more.

So I finally did it. I called up my parents and suggested that sometime soon, I spend a weekend with them figuring out everything in their estate and walking through it.

Breaking through that social and personal barrier of talking about money is incredibly difficult, but it’s vital. Without doing it, you open yourself up to paying the penalty of countless mistakes and facing some deeply painful situations that could have easily been avoided had you just spent a bit of time talking about it.

Here are six important things to think about.

What’s Unresolved?
Look around your life, particularly your closest family and friends. In each of those relationships, there are likely things that are left unresolved, things that, in your perfect world, they would be resolved. Here are some examples.

Your partner. Are you sharing the same dreams for the future? Do you have any debts that you’re hiding? Are you in better – or worse – financial shape than your partner might believe? Are you in agreement about how to handle your respective property in the event of the other’s passing? Is your relationship fulfilling you, making you happy?

Your parents. Do they have an estate plan in place? A will, at least? Are they prepared for the financial costs of retirement? What are they expecting from you when they retire?

Your children. Are they expecting you to pay for college? Are you expecting to? Are they expecting you to help with a wedding? Are you expecting to? Do they understand your estate planning?

Other relatives. Do they owe you money? Do you owe them money? Are there other problems, such as caring for older family members? Who’s responsible for what?

Your close friends. Are they constantly engaging you in activities that cost more than you are comfortable spending? Do they owe you money? Do you owe them money?

This is just a start. Even in my own life, after lots of talking about money with the people around me, I still don’t feel as though the door is shut on all of these issues.

I will say this, though: every time I made an effort to actually talk through these issues with someone important to me, I found that I had put it off for too long and worried about it too much, because it went easier than I expected and there was much relief afterwards.

Is Everyone Involved That Should Be?
Whenever you address a complex issue, the ramifications often affect all sorts of people, and it’s usually a very poor idea to start making big changes without seeking their input.

So, before you even start discussing these things, get everyone involved that should be. If you’re talking about a person’s estate, make sure anyone who has a significant stake is involved in the discussion – or is at least carefully considered to be a part of the discussion.

Quite often, this seems painful. I immediately think of some of the estate planning situations I’ve witnessed and been involved with. It was obvious at times that things – and people – were being cut out in order to preserve the comfort of now while postponing the painful part until later.

Each time, it ended in disaster. Siblings not speaking to each other for the rest of their lives. Friendships ended because of “backstabbing.” Lawsuits.

You’re better off swallowing your pride and getting everyone relevant to sit down and talk about things. If someone won’t participate, that’s their decision, but the door needs to be very open to them – and it needs to be clear that the door is open to them.

Getting the Necessary Information
Data is the enemy of lies, lies are the enemies of trusting relationships, and the maintenance of trusting relationships is why you’re doing this in the first place.

Yes, people are defensive. Yes, it hurts to tell the whole truth sometimes. So make it easier on everyone – bring as much real data to the table as possible. Get out those statements. Figure out how much is there.

People are going to be uncomfortable with this. The best thing you can do to quell that is to step up to the plate yourself. Bring your information and offer to show it if they will. Your openness and honesty creates a standard that others will feel some strong desire to live up to, lest they look as though they are being dishonest or are hiding something.

What about feelings? Again, honesty is the best policy and, again, your best bet is to lead by example. Behave in exactly the way you’d like others involved to behave. Share every drop of your relevant information. State your opinions and feelings openly, honestly, and calmly.

Real information and real honesty are powerful tools for cutting through the layers of personal feelings and getting directly to the heart of the matter.

Getting It Done
You know what you want to talk about. You’re prepared to bring honesty to the table. You know who needs to be involved. Now, you just need to do it.

Plan to talk about it in a place that’s as safe as possible for all of the participants – a comfortable place. A person’s home is usually the best choice unless it inherently causes some discomfort.

It should also be a place where, if numbers are going to have to be analyzed, all of that data is easily available. Thus, if you’re going to walk through some estate planning, you may want to do it at the home of the person whose estate is being planned.

You should schedule a very clear time when this is going to be discussed and make that time and date known to everyone who might be involved. Give plenty of time for this, so that you can schedule around any conflicts. Don’t just decide one Saturday morning that everyone is going to meet that afternoon.

Another key factor: if it’s really involved, plan things around another activity. Make dinner during the discussion so you can dine together afterwards – or dine as a break.

A final key factor: make sure that the meeting ends with some very clear actions for some or all of the people to take. What needs to be done to make these plans a reality? Without specific actions, nothing will actually happen as a result of the talk.

Dealing with Anger or Hurt Feelings
Because money has such a huge emotional factor, you can pretty much expect that if a discussion is intense enough, people are going to get angry or upset or have some sort of emotional response. So, plan ahead for it.

First, make a very clear rule that raising your voice or being obviously angry isn’t allowed. If someone gets angry, just call a time out and let everyone chill out. Nothing good comes from allowing a discussion to continue if participants are angry or upset because the emotion will just rapidly escalate. Then follow that rule. If someone gets upset, just take a break until everyone is calm again.

Second, make it clear to everyone what the end goal here is. Make sure you all agree on this. If it’s about estate planning, for example, make it clear that the goal is to help your parents develop a plan that reflects their wishes – and that their wishes are final because it’s their estate.

Finally, don’t let hard feelings run after the event. If you’re sure that emotions are going to run high, plan a family dinner or other special event immediately afterwards to work on healing those stressed bonds. Feelings like these should not be allowed to fester.

Following Up
After the conversation, you’ll likely find yourself with a list of actions and probably some bruised feelings. Both elements deserve some follow-up.

Talk to the people involved afterwards and see what you can do to alleviate any hurt feelings. Pull back to the general purpose of the meeting and remind them that the big goal actually happened, even if it hurt. Listen to their concerns and don’t talk them down – agree with them, at least to the extent to let them know that their feelings are at least understood, even if you don’t agree.

You should also follow up on any decided actions. Make sure that the people who agreed to do things actually do them. This might even involve some follow-up meetings to ensure that these actions happened or that further input is received.

This sounds like a lot of work but the benefits are tremendous: stronger relationships, an assurance that the important things are taken care of, and potential crises averted. Talking about money honestly is a huge positive once you get past one’s fear of it.

I define frugality as getting the maximum value for your dollar while living squarely within your means, which is a pretty reasonable definition. I wouldn’t expect someone making $15,000 a year that doesn’t sweat what they eat to make the same food choices as someone making $50,000 a year who highly values the quality of their food, for example. The person with more income might have a “bang for the buck” that includes organic milk and farm-raised eggs, for example, while the other person won’t care and buys the least expensive milk and eggs at the store. Both are fine, because both have resulted from a personal realization of what’s valuable in their life and an effort to seek the best value for their dollar with those personal values in mind.

Take me, for example. I’m much closer to that person who makes $50,000 a year and puts a lot of personal value into food. For me, there is added value in seeking out farm fresh eggs, the kind that have a rich yellow yolk that bobs up way above the egg white. There is a big added value for me in buying milk at a premium directly from a local producer, where I can watch the cows grazing in the field eating fresh grass and I can see that the cattle aren’t being given hormones to drive milk production.

At the same time, the only factors that I personally value in cars are reliability and fuel efficiency, as long as the car has enough size to seat my six-and-a-half foot frame. Nothing else really matters to me at all – I don’t care whether the car is upscale or economy, new or old.

This brings me back to the idea of sacred cows – dogmatic ideas that some people believe must be followed if you are to be considered “frugal.” If you don’t follow these ideas, you must be wasting your money.

I think the idea of such sacred cows are stupid and limit the options for finding the best value for people.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. If you’re buying a car, many frugal people believe that the discussion begins and ends with cars that are at least three years old. If you even consider anything else, you’re throwing money away on depreciation and you’re, flatly, an idiot.

That perspective is very limiting and sometimes draws you away from the best value. Let’s say, hypothetically, that I’m about to replace that incredibly fuel-inefficient 1997 Ford F-150 that sits in my driveway with a van to haul my family around. I have enough cash in the bank to simply pay for the new vehicle, so the danger of a loan isn’t a factor, either.

Now, a “frugalista” might say that I should start shopping around for used vans and look for the best deal on used ones, sell my truck, then put together all of the cash and buy the vehicle. Clearly, that’s one approach. I did some research and I found a used 2003 Toyota Sienna with about 80,000 miles on it for $10,200. Since my truck is an utter rust-bucket with almost 200,000 miles on it, I might be able to get $1,000 out of it with some footwork, meaning my cash outlay for that vehicle (after negotiation) would be about $8,000.

But simply subscribing to that philosophy leaves out an option that’s at least worth consideration. My F-150 qualifies for the “Cash for Clunkers” program, which equates to a $3,500 voucher on a new vehicle. A new Sienna is $24,000, but also has a $1,500 discount on it and, with negotiation, I can get the price down to $22,000. Thus, my cash outlay for the vehicle – with 0 miles on it and a warranty covering all repairs up to 100,000 miles – would be $18,500.

The $10,500 you would pay for the first 80,000 miles (as compared to the other option) would be the most reliable miles (meaning no uncomfortable breakdowns at inopportune times), plus those miles are covered by warranty.

I’m not saying that the new Sienna is the best deal, but what I am saying is that it’s at least good enough to carefully consider and to subscribe to the dogma that one absolutely must buy used is not good. Doing so can cause you to miss a real value.

Similarly, many people will jump in and say that I wasn’t really looking for the best “deal” when I’m shopping for a van because I didn’t bother to look at vans with poor reliability data. And that’s true – my focus is on vans with strong reliability data from Consumer Reports, and that means my focus is first and foremost on Honda Odysseys and Toyota Siennas, with a few other models trailing behind and other models that make me shudder.

But, remember, my value with buying a vehicle is reliability. I don’t care about leather seats or stow-and-go seating or a drop down DVD player or any of that stuff. All I want is a vehicle that’s not going to die along the side of the road, and I’m willing to pay more for a vehicle that’s more reliable on average.

That, to me, is frugality at work. I know what my core values are and I seek out the best “bang for the buck” with regards to those values. Doing that with both eyes open causes me to consider things that violate the “rules” of frugality. And, frankly, I don’t care – I’m finding the best value for my own situation, not yours.

Another example of how sacred cows can be dangerous comes from buying generics. According to the old rules, buying anything other than generics is a complete waste of money and the coupon sections in newspapers are a scam to trick you into buying overpriced household goods unless they’re huge coupons that get the price down below that of a generic.

I completely disagree with this “rule.”

A while back, I wrote (fairly controversially) about using cheap garbage bags. What I found is that using the generic garbage bags resulted in bags ripping and food all over my kitchen floor. I wound up buying name brand bags (and using coupons and bulk buying techniques to get the cheapest price per bag) because those bags didn’t break on me. For me, it’s not a “bargain” if you wind up with food all over your kitchen floor, even if that is the cheapest bag.

I have a similar issue with window cleaners, but in a different way. I’ll take out a squirt bottle, put in two cups of water, three tablespoons of vinegar, and half a teaspoon of dish detergent, swirl the bottle, and get to work. This cleaner costs me pennies and does the job – so why would I ever go to the store and buy it? My core value here is whether or not it gets the window clean (it does) and whether or not there’s a big time investment getting there (there isn’t). I follow a similar logic with my homemade laundry detergent and with cooking at home.

Once you start looking at frugality through the lens of “getting the maximum value for your dollar while living squarely within your means” and you consider what you actually truly value (and that means a lot more than money), many of the tired old dogmatic rules start to fall away. Yes, they still work as a good starting point, but when you start throwing out any idea that doesn’t subscribe to dogma, you’ll find yourself missing out on opportunity after opportunity to maximize value in your life.

A final note: this kind of absolutism invades anything people are passionate about. There are “absolute” rules about food, about any hobby you can imagine, about clothing, about exercise, and so on. Most of the time, those “absolute” rules are exactly what they are for frugality – they’re nice starting points, but if you make them your ending points, you’re limiting yourself and your perspectives.

If you’re like a lot of Simple Dollar readers, you’re reading this article at the start of your work day (and if you’re not, imagine you are, at the start of your next work day). You’ve got a pile of things to do today, some of them urgent, but many of them not so urgent. You’ll probably find some big holes where you can sit around idle, browsing the web or reading a magazine.

I’m going to suggest a challenge to you for today, one that might just be a revelation to you.

Your eight hour workday has 480 minutes in it. Spend every single one of those minutes doing something to make your work life easier. Let me walk you through it.

First, take care of the work you need to do today. There are likely some pressing matters around you that need to be dealt with and some projects you need to work on. This will take some portion of the day.

But, obviously, there will be some downtime in there – the time that you would ordinarily use to daydream, chat with others, click on links, and so on. Use that time differently today. Here’s how.

One, clean your workspace. Get rid of the junk sitting on your desk. Go through it and either file it or trash it, since that’s where most of it should be. Throw away any garbage you have lying around.

Two, think of your regular routine tasks at work and ask yourself how they could be done faster. Perhaps you have a really poor way of managing and handing in expense reports. Maybe (like me in the past), you have a really poor way of handling time sheets. Perhaps your days are interrupted by lots of meetings that aren’t beneficial.

Then develop ways to make these things more efficient. Find out if you can get some of those meetings rescheduled into a solid block of meetings instead of spread out throughout the day – or maybe try to get out of a few of them. Come up with your own efficient template for time sheets or expense reports that can shave a few minutes off the time – and share those templates.

Still got time? Look at your daily work. Are there any pieces of work you find yourself wasting time on again and again? Maybe you’re a technical writer and you use many of the same elements over and over again in your writing. Maybe you’re a programmer and you keep using some of the same elements in your code.

Spend some time creating a library for your own use. Make a clear framework for those documents you write all the time so you can easily just fill in blanks and change a few pieces instead of writing a ton again or heavily editing an old document. Add some new programming functions to a shared library that you can access yourself.

It should be easy to fill up every minute of a focused day with these tasks.

All of these things have one big central thing in common: they don’t help you right now at all, but they shave off minutes of work almost every day in the future. You can write faster. You can find things faster. You can program faster. You can get your expense reports turned in faster.

That shaved time gives you more time to devote to the things that will make you stand out. If you save fifteen minutes each day where you’re not searching around for things, filling out paperwork, hopping from meeting to meeting, or rewriting things you’ve already essentially written before, you now have fifteen more minutes each day to turn an average project into an impressive one, to build your relationships with other people on your field, or do something else to genuinely stand out.

And it’s those who stand out who get the raises, the promotions, and the opportunities.

You have 480 minutes. What are you going to do with them?