I’m often tempted to spend money that I shouldn’t.

I’m good at restraining my impulsive nature. I don’t simply go into stores and then emerge later with a hefty bag, a credit card bill, and a dazed look on my face. Still, in certain places, I am strongly tempted to spend. I look around and see tons of items that I’d like to have. Here are seven places that really fuel my spending desires.

Bookstores What can I say? I love to read – I read about ten books a month for my own enjoyment and probably five more for The Simple Dollar and other professional purposes. The smell and feel and sight of a new book is like manna to me. I usually resist most of my impulses by arguing to myself that I can get those books at the library or off of PaperBackSwap, but it’s definitely a struggle – one I don’t always win.

Williams-Sonoma As I get more and more adept in the kitchen, I’m slowly upgrading my kitchen equipment to superior versions of the cheap (and sometimes problematic) equipment I have on hand. Williams-Sonoma does an extremely good job of convincing me to accelerate this upgrade process, enticing me with better knives, a wide array of very nice pots and pans, and lots of other items.

Wineries If I stop at a winery and enjoy a tasting, I usually wind up buying at least a bottle. There’s something about the atmosphere of a winery that gets me into the right mindset, and adding onto that is the fact that I truly enjoy a glass of a distinctive wine, it’s unsurprising that I often leave wineries with a bottle or two in my bag.

Food co-ops Stores that put obvious care into their food selection often entice me to be much more willing to buy foods impulsively. At regular grocery stores, I usually avoid impulsive food purchases by knowing that the item is usually going to be full of ingredients I shouldn’t be eating or won’t taste all that good. At a food co-op, that’s often not the case at all – and thus I’ll find myself picking up items like feta made from sheep’s milk.

Gaming shops I love playing games against family and friends and gaming shops tend to bring out my strongest tendencies. I particularly like board games, and if I witness a game demonstration and the game seems fun at all, I’ll often be very tempted to talk myself into buying it.

Art supply stores My biggest weaknesses in art supply stores usually come down to notebooks/sketch books and writing implements. I can easily fill up notebooks with jotted notes, quotes, ideas, and other things, and the feel of a good pen in my hand is almost intoxicating and actually does a good job of fueling my writing tendencies.

The Apple Store I usually don’t buy anything at Apple Stores. Instead, they just do a great job of convincing me to save up and spend much more than I should to buy a MacBook Pro or a new desktop machine or an iPod Touch. Apple puts a lot of care into the little details of their devices and, after spending a lot of time using them, I’ve come to really miss them when I use other devices.

There, my confessions. Putting them all down on paper like that is fairly refreshing for me, as it helps me to realize that I use quite a few different techniques to minimize the temptation to spend in those places. I’ve mentioned some of these tactics before in various other articles, of course, but here are eight different tactics that I use to minimize the negative influence that these tempting places have on my wallet.

Avoid them entirely. The easiest way not to be tempted is to simply not visit these stores at all. This works to a certain extent. For years, I had a routine of going to a bookstore each Tuesday (to check out the new releases) and each Friday (to “celebrate” the end of a workweek). This routine usually meant that I would wind up buying a book or two at each visit, which could easily add up to $40 a week.

By simply breaking that routine, it was easy to see a tremendous amount of financial benefit – as much as $2,000 per year. While I still do visit bookstores on occasion, they’re no longer part of any sort of routine. This makes the individual visits much more enjoying, since they’re more infrequent and not based on any sort of schedule.

Take notes. If you visit a store, fall in love with lots of items, and are tempted to buy, stop. Pull out a notepad and write down all of the things that are tempting you. List the books, food ideas, clothing, games, or other items that are really intriguing you.

This serves two purposes. First, you can take the list home and do further research on the item(s) and some comparison shopping. Second, it allows you to utilize the “thirty day rule,” where you agree not to buy the item for thirty days and then re-evaluate at the end of the period whether or not you actually want the item.

Go with only cash. If you visit a place with such obvious temptations, leave your wallet behind. Just take in a small amount of cash, whatever you’re completely comfortable with spending there and won’t feel guilty about afterwards. So, if you’re going to a bookstore, take a $20 bill. This allows you to splurge a little, but prevents you from spending more than you should.

The real key here is to not bring in plastic, which effectively gives you access to far more money that you might otherwise have. Without strong willpower, credit cards can be a real danger, so it can be good to avoid them until you do have the personal fortitude to avoid over-the-top spending with them.

Go with the right kind of friend. Some friends encourage you to spend. They talk up the items they see, complement you on your choices and taste, and encourage you to splurge a little. Those kinds of friends will almost always cause you to have a bigger bill than you want.

I prefer shopping with either my wife or my closest friend, John. Neither one of them encourages me to spend more than I should. My wife usually makes no comment whatsoever if I choose to make a purchase. John usually just criticizes items in a humorous way, making them seem less appealing while also being entertaining. The end result? I buy less than I would if I were there with a heavy-spending friend.

Set an explicit budget. Each month, I allot myself a certain amount of money to spend on whatever I wish. Since I plan for it, I can spend that money without guilt, and this money is often spent at the places I described above.

Since I know what that limit is, I can spend up to that limit without any sort of guilt whatsoever. If I’m at Williams-Sonoma and see an item that costs two or three months’ worth of free money, I’m patient with it. I’ll wait two months without spending much “mad money,” then pick up that item without any guilt at all.

This is perhaps my most-used technique, and my wife uses it as well.

Use the ten second rule. Sometimes, on an impulsive whim, you’ll pick up an item and make the split-second decision to buy it. As you head to the cashier, stop for ten seconds and ask yourself if you really need this item after all, or if you couldn’t get a better deal on it elsewhere.

For me, this works quite well to at least slow impulse buys. I’ll usually put the item back and add it to my list (see the earlier tip). It doesn’t necessarily mean that I won’t end up with the item in the future, but it will be bought with a rational, not an impulsive, mind.

Never go without a purpose. And, no, social engagements aren’t a purpose.

Why are you shopping? If you’re doing it just to spend time with a friend – or even mostly to spend time with a friend – your wallet will thank you if you find something else to do. Why not go through the stuff you already have? Why not spend time in a public place that’s not designed to convince you to spend money?

If you actually do go shopping somewhere, particularly in places that you know tempt you to spend money, make sure you’re going with a specific purpose. There’s a book you want to pick up. There’s a French oven you want to look at. You have some technical questions about your MacBook. You get the idea.

Find a substitute. Remember above, when I mentioned that I’d buy three or four books a week at the bookstore? Sure, I did read most of these books, but very rarely more than once. So, why not use the library?

Most of the big temptations above have great substitutes for me. Instead of going to game stores (usually to talk and browse games), I visit a few community gaming websites to get most of the same effect. Instead of hitting food stores, I use farmers markets for the same effects. This helps me stay away from many of my worst temptations.

What places tempt you the most? And what techniques do you use to control your spending there?

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

The cost of education is increasing at an alarming rate. At some point it will come down to a cost benefit thing. Is it worth it to pay $150K for a 4 year degree say in creative writing where you struggle to find a job?

At what cost will college be worthless if tuition is increasing at its current rate? Yes you can say that education shouldnt have a price, but what if it cost you $250K just to get a 4 year degree? That’s a 30 year mortgage for a lot of people.
- Jake

I’m going to throw out my own theory here. I think we’ve reached the peak of the power of the bachelors’ degree as a ticket to a career.

What’s happening is that at many schools, the cost – both in time and terms of dollars – are eating up enough of a person’s lifetime earnings that a properly motivated individual can find other avenues for earning a good living without going through that process.

Entrepreneurship doesn’t require a degree of any kind, and the internet has opened the door to entrepreneurship in countless interesting ways. The door is open wider to self-employment and entrepreneurship than ever before.

When everyone can show off their work online, we move closer and closer to a true meritocracy. Degrees were once ways to show that a person had a set of experiences, but today, one can find evidence of experiences and talents online by viewing a person’s Facebook profile, personal website, online portfolio, and shared thoughts.

I’m not devaluing a college degree – the experience of getting it, if properly utilized, is life-changing and life-affirming. But viewing your degree as simply a ticket to riches is on the verge of becoming a thing of the past.

My suggestion to people thinking of entering school: what are you sharing with the world? Are you creating value for others? The earlier you start doing that, the better off you’ll be.

I hate everyone at my job and I want to quit. Why should I bother maintaining any sort of relationship with any of these bloodsuckers after I leave?
- eldrick

Sounds like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays!

You might view the people around you as soulless cretins better suited for True Blood than real life, but those people are still involved in your current career path – and may even hold valuable connections in other career paths.

You might not like some people in your office and will be fine severing ties with them – that’s fine. But if you have a positive relationship with anyone in your office, you’ll always do well to cultivate that relationship.

No matter what, though, don’t burn your bridges in some childish fashion when you leave. All that does is create a negative impression of you – it doesn’t “show them” a thing.

Trent, what’s the problem with shilling for things you DO believe in? You’re in a fantastic position to provide for your family by blogging — blogging, of all things! I wouldn’t trust you any less for getting paid for peddling products and services you actually do find useful. I think the trust has already been established; we know you can’t be bought. Other readers, you with me?
- Leah

I do write about things that I do believe in. I talk about PaperBackSwap and ING Direct and Vanguard and Evernote and SmartyPig and books and games I enjoy all the time.

The catch is that I restrict my positive comments and reviews to things I actually use in my own life. If I don’t use it myself, I don’t endorse it, period. I don’t even talk about it except on rare occasions where something deserves clear commentary.

It would be incredibly easy for me to expand that a bit and cash in big time. I could start recommending banks that seem to have good service, but that I don’t use because I find more value at other banks. Talking about banks is good, right? And I can certainly make some cash from that with affiliate links. The same goes for some credit cards with good rewards programs. Or supplies for cooking at home. Or investments. The list goes on and on.

I don’t do that. If I write something, it’s about what I’ve found useful for me, not what I’m paid to talk about. Period.

Yes, I’ve been asked to try a lot of things over the years. The only ones I’ve bothered to write about at all were the ones that were compelling enough for me to start using them regularly – like PearBudget and Wesabe. I use both of those things semi-regularly (I use the PearBudget spreadsheet with some homebrew modifications and I follow discussions on Wesabe all the time), so I have no problem mentioning them. However, both of those things were brought to my attention by people who practically begged me to try them. I’ve tried hundreds more and never went back – so I never wrote about them.

If I did anything else, I’d not be honest. That means I leave money on the table all the time. My reward for that is loyal readers, like the 2,000+ who have signed up to be “Friends of the Simple Dollar” and the many thousands of others who share my articles with their friends and mention them on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s more than a fair trade, in my opinion. Full honesty has rewards far beyond a few dollars left on the table.

Frugality is for old people. I want to live now, not later.
- Dimes

What do you mean by “live”? Is “living” buying every consumer product you see? Is “living” throwing cash down the drain on convenience foods and convenience purchases. Is “living” burying yourself in credit card debt and watching more and more of your paycheck vanish into the gaping maw of interest payments? Is “living” working at a job you hate so you can “live it up” on the weekends?

I tried living like that for a while. Before long, I found myself masking a lot of pain – big debt bills in the mail, a career that paid well but didn’t seem to have many prospects and didn’t include work that I was passionate about – with a lot of “living.”

The end result? I almost lost everything I had – my marriage, my job, and my small amount of remaining happiness.

What I discovered is that “living” meant figuring out what I actually wanted to do and then doing it with abandon, then paring down the other aspects of my life that weren’t as important. That’s frugality in a nutshell, and it changed my life. Writing went from being a vague dream I tortured myself with to a way of life. My debt bills went away and I was able to start saving for some big goals. I was able to take some huge professional risks to chase what I wanted to do, not what my spending habits dictated.

If your version of “living” involves designer labels, a pile of gadgets, and drinking and partying and eating to cover up the pain of your job and that growing wall of debt, feel free to have at it. I’ll take my version instead.

I live in a one bedroom apartment in Utah and will be moving to Ohio to live with my sister and her family at the end of September. Due to having been unemployed since March, I can really only afford to take whatever will fit into my 2003 Oldsmobile Alero.

My question is this: what is “worth it” to take with me, and which items would best to sell and buy again once I get a new job and a new place?
- Misty

Take the things that have personal value to you or that you use every single day and sell everything else. Seriously.

A move like this is the perfect opportunity to pare down your possessions to the things that are really valuable to you. No expectations of others. No anything. Just you and what’s important to you.

You’re far better off just taking enough stuff to fill a few bags and a healthy wad of cash than to bring a bunch of stuff you don’t really value and a significantly lighter wallet. You’ll save time, save mental clutter, and have more money by going light when you do this.

What kind of correlations have you made between finance and your previous research job? I’m sure there have been some.
- Mol

Science and finance are both about evaluations of data. The biggest difference is that most of the evaluations done in finance relate heavily to human nature.

In its idealized state, science is about making predictions based on facts. Finance does the same thing. However, hard science generally isn’t impacted by human psychology – the facts are often concrete and stable.

Personal finance is much different. Human behavior can only be predicted to a certain extent. I find that personal finance is actually closer to psychology than it is to hard science.

I don’t understand the “absolutely no debt” philosophy. Do people who advocate this really believe that a person should rent their housing for years and years and years before buying a home?
- Flo

From a pure numbers standpoint, the debt free lifestyle makes a great deal of sense. Virtually every debt you incur requires you to pay back that debt with some interest attached, which is a net loss of resources. Avoiding debt means that you retain all those resources and can invest them, generating more resources.

But do those numbers reflect real life? It’s hard to come up with a concrete answer to that one. I certainly believe that having a nice, stable home is beneficial to my children in ways that are difficult to directly express in dollars and cents.

I think that it’s easy to argue on behalf of no debt in areas you don’t personally value in a deep way. It gets harder when debt intersects with your key values, like your family and the decision to buy a home.

What do you think of the third season of Mad Men so far?
- Ralph

A long-time reader sent me the first season of Mad Men on DVD and got me hooked. It’s an incredible series, one that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed…

… up to this point. The third season hasn’t really clicked with me yet. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t finished watching the second season, but something just seems to not quite click.

Of course, I’ll admit that the first episode or two of the first season didn’t quite click with me either. It took a while for it to really click. Maybe the same thing will happen again.

Ignore the experts for a moment. How big of an emergency fund do YOU think people should have?
- Walt

Honestly? I don’t think there should be a limit. I think people should contribute a healthy amount to an emergency fund with every paycheck.

Why? I think that the definition of an “emergency” is often limited to negative things, when it should also include positive things. My life regularly offers me great opportunities that I could jump on if I had a bankroll – investment in businesses, taking advantage of enormous sales, taking giant career risks with potential rewards.

I’m not saying all of that should be in cash – I believe in a CD ladder approach to maximize your returns. But there should still be a large amount safely in cash for you to grab when an emergency – both good and bad – occurs.

Should Pete Rose be in the Baseball Hall of Fame?
- Larry

I’m a lifelong baseball fan, and the whole Pete Rose question is a nugget that constantly gets kicked around among baseball fans. Several readers – a few of whom I’ve played fantasy baseball against – have asked me this question, so I’ll give it my best shot.

I think Pete Rose not being in the Hall, as things are now, is dishonest.

If he’s excluded for his actions, Ty Cobb, Smokey Joe Wood, Tris Speaker and others should be tossed out of the Hall of Fame because there’s similar strong evidence that those guys also bet on baseball. Yet those fellows remain in.

On the other side of the coin, if Rose is allowed in, then “Shoeless” Joe Jackson should also be eligible for the Hall of Fame.

My personal opinion is that the Baseball Hall of Fame should simply reflect the nature of the game itself and the players that had a significant impact on the game’s history. In that regard, Rose and Jackson should unquestionably be in, as should the guys in the modern era who used performance-enhancing drugs (yes, if I were voting, I’d vote for McGwire and Sosa). After all, many players from the 1970s who used amphetamines to get an edge (like Mike Schmidt, for example) are currently in the Hall, and if that’s the established standard, then that standard should apply to everyone. Given that, I would also understand if they raised the guidelines for membership and cleaned house, getting rid of people that would be effectively “banned” by the character guidelines that are already in place.

In my eyes, the disgrace here is the Hall of Fame and the voters, which is clearly using a double standard for determining who should be in. I’ve loved baseball all my life, but I have no interest in going to Cooperstown if it merely reflects some warped view of the history of baseball rather than the true history of the sport. Put Rose in or kick Cobb out, in my opinion – leaving things as they are is hypocritical.

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

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

Every once in a while, I stumble upon a personal finance book that makes me really wish someone had put it in my hands earlier in my life. Sure, it might not have made a difference in terms of the financial mistakes I made back then, but simply having such useful and direct knowledge available to me would have made a pretty big impact.

Which brings us to today’s review, The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Your Financial Life by Karen Blumenthal. The title alone sums up what you’re going to get from this book – straightforward facts and information about the best financial moves you can make early in your financial life, primarily in the handful of years right after leaving school and entering the workforce. In fact, it seems almost perfectly made to be a college graduation gift.

As with all of the Wall Street Journal personal finance guides, the writing’s just a bit on the dry side, but not too tedious. Blumenthal does a good job of connecting personal finance facts and information to the realities of day-to-day life for recent graduates.

The book is split up into five “parts,” each with quite a few short chapters on very specific topics. Let’s dig in and see what Blumenthal has to say.

Part I – The Basics
Blumenthal starts off talking about goals – where do you want to be in five years (or later)? For me, this is the big piece that really underlines all of personal finance, because personal finance is really just about utilizing tools to achieve your goals.

Many of the basic tools are discussed here – cash, savings accounts, checking accounts, budgeting, credit cards, credit scores, contracts, and so on. This is really the bread and butter of managing your money and Blumenthal writes about it briefly and matter-of-factly, getting the facts out there without bogging down in the details too much.

I particularly enjoyed the four page section on budgeting, which mostly encouraged people to just keep careful track of their spending. However, the real idea here was that when you stretch to spend money on some purchase, you give up a lot of flexibility in other areas. Sure, you can make a big purchase happen by using credit or taking out a big loan, but that big purchase will come back to bite you in the form of reduced flexibility in most other aspects of your life. Your money is now tied up in that car and in that house and you simply can’t afford to make other choices that might actually be more important to you and your long-term happiness (like a career change, for example).

She’s 100% right on – and I learned that lesson the hard way.

Part II – Earning It
Most people reading this book are aware of why we work – we sell our time and energy to others in exchange for money. However, when you get a job at Home Depot, you aren’t just selling an hour of your time for $9 – there are a lot of hidden costs to get there.

Sure, the big one is taxes, but that’s just the start. Often, you have to pay for your benefits. You also have to contribute to Social Security and Medicare. You might be making retirement contributions. This means you take home a smaller paycheck.

When you get that paycheck, even more comes out. You have to pay for transportation to and from work, as well as the clothes you wear. Some workplaces have all-but-required social engagements, too, which eat away at your take-home and your time.

Quite often, you’ll find that a great job really isn’t all that great after you take out all of the extra costs and figure all of the extra time you need to invest in it.

Part III – Spending It: The Big Stuff
The biggest bill that most graduates face straight out of college is the student loan bill. Blumenthal offers a lot of actionable advice – get on an automatic payment system, for one, because this often means a rate reduction on your loan. Also, if you can, pay off the loan(s) early, as freedom from loans means more flexibility to make other choices.

For housing, Blumenthal suggests renting for as long as possible, since renting (on the whole) is usually substantially cheaper than owning a home, thus giving you more flexibility in your choices (noticing a theme here?). Similarly, Blumenthal recommends driving a used car, keeping up the maintenance on it, and driving it for as long as possible – again, because this is the least expensive route and that gives you flexibility.

What do you do with this flexibility? Your best bet is to sock it away for whatever your big goals are (which Blumenthal encouraged people to identify right off the bat) and eliminate any debts you have as fast as possible. When you’re freshly out of college and single, you have a lot of potential opportunities that your later life (with a spouse and potential kids and a potential business and a home …) doesn’t afford you, so keep things as light as you can.

Part IV – Spending It: The Little Stuff
The fourth section of the book seems to focus on a somewhat random selection of little things, from cell phones to gym memberships. While the tips in each area are very solid, each one comes off almost like a blog post on a frugality blog, as the section is far from comprehensive in terms of the small expenses people face out of college.

Blumenthal’s best advice is to simply only pay for things that you actually need. What do you need a cell phone for? For most people, it’s just voice and text messages, so don’t throw tons of money on a complex phone and data plans if you’ll rarely use them and they’re mostly extraneous. What do you need a gym membership for? Why not exercise at home and/or go jogging?

Quite often, if you break down your expenses into terms of what you actually need, you might find that many of your seemingly-required expenses are actually pretty unnecessary.

Part V – Investing It
If you’ve adopted a lifestyle of spending less than you earn and you get rid of your debts, you’re going to start building up cash. And that’s a good thing. The only problem is that the cash you build up won’t earn much of a return for you just sitting in a checking or a savings account. What other options are there?

Blumenthal walks through many of the investment options available to people with relatively low bankrolls – people new to the working works. Stocks (great for aggressive investing). Bonds (great for more conservative investing). Mutual funds (great for diversification).

At the end of this section, Blumenthal touches on estate planning in a limited fashion, focusing mostly on what young people might want to have in place. For example, it’s often useful to get a 30 year term life insurance policy when you’re young because the rates will be way cheaper than if you wait even ten years.

Is The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Your Financial Life Worth Reading?
The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Your Financial Life is perhaps the best “default” college graduation book I’ve yet read. Sure, there are a few books written well for specific subsets of graduates, like Farnoosh Torabi’s You’re So Money (for female graduates about to enter “professional” careers) or Michael Masterson’s Automatic Wealth for Grads (great for entrepreneurial-minded graduates that intend to start their own businesses), but in terms of getting the basics of personal finance across in terms of the financial situation of a recent graduate, The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Your Financial Life is an excellent choice.

That being said, if you’re more than five years out of college or you’re 30 or over, this book probably won’t be a significant help to you. The advice is clearly written for people right out of the chute who have 40 years of professional life ahead of them before even considering retirement issues.

If you’re in your twenties and want a good guide to basic personal finance tuned to your age or you’re seeking a great college graduation gift for a thoughtful young person, The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Your Financial Life is a pretty solid choice.

Here in the Midwest, it’s harvest season. People’s gardens are full of produce which is currently being picked, and many kitchen tables are full of vegetables. For a gardener, this can be the best part of the year – the sheer possibility of all of these fresh vegetables and fruits is intoxicating.

But it can also be overwhelming.

For some people, after several months of keeping a vegetable garden in tip-top shape, collecting giant baskets of vegetables means just the beginning of another round of work – often a round that they don’t enjoy as much. The deep, frugal pleasure of spending hours out in the garden with your hands in the dirt is often far separated from the work involved processing the harvest.

So what can you do with all of the vegetables?

The worst choice is to let them go to waste. You’re far better off doing something with the vegetables you harvest than letting them grow old and unusable. Thus, if you’re unable or have no desire to do anything with the vegetables, consider one of the first options on the list below.

Here are seven methods my family uses for dealing with the abundance of a large garden harvest.

Eat it fresh – go vegetarian.
There’s truly no better time to dabble in a vegetable-heavy diet than when fresh vegetables are coming in out of the garden. Just eat them, as many as you can!

It’s surprisingly easy to find creative and tasty ways to use an abundance of vegetables. Slice up cucumbers and onions and put them in a bowl of water with a bit of vinegar mixed in and some salt and pepper available and just leave them out on the table – you’ll find they quickly become your snack. Prepare dishes using all of the vegetables you’re bringing in – go beyond salads to preparing things like tomato pie. Slice zucchini and squash, dip them in olive oil, and grill them.

The possibilities are endless. Try going vegetarian – or almost vegetarian – and sock those veggies away. They’re good for you – and in a few months, you’ll wish you had all of those fresh veggies again.

Give it away.
If you have extra produce, give it away. Give it to your friends. Give it to your neighbors. Give it to the local food pantry. Leave it on the doorstep of families that could use the food.

This is the simplest way to handle the produce – and it has its own benefits as well. First, it provides a great opportunity for social interaction as well as a chance to get to know the people around you. After all, if you’re giving vegetables to your neighbors, there’s a perfect chance to have a conversation and build a relationship a bit. Second, it simply feels good to donate food to people who truly need it.

Dry it.
Yes, bust out the ol’ food dehydrator. It enables you to take garden-fresh fruits and vegetables and put them into a form where they can be stored dry. This works really well for some items, like tomatoes, but not as well for others. You can also dry them outside on a screen, if you’d like.

The advantage of this method is that dried fruits and vegetables are incredibly easy to store while also being very flexible in terms of consumption and cooking. The work to dry them is also quite passive – you mostly just let them sit. The disadvantage, though, is that it requires some equipment to dry (you either need a screen to do it in the sun or a food dehydrator).

Sell it.
Drive around Iowa in the middle of August and you’ll see countless roadside stands with people selling corn and other vegetables, and the farmers markets are loaded with people selling produce. Similarly, August seems to be the month when people really buy these things by the ton – you’ll always see people at the sweet corn stands, buying a dozen ears.

Perhaps the best tactic I’ve seen was a large pile of corn in front of an old farmhouse. The sign said “Peaches and Cream Sweet Corn Here!” I wandered over, only to find that there was simply a box with a slot on top with a sign attached that said, “Take what you need. Pay what you can.” I dropped in a five and took a dozen ears. This is a great way for them to get rid of their excess corn, giving to people who need it and selling to people who can afford it without a ton of additional effort.

Freeze it.
If you have a large freezer, many vegetables can easily be frozen for a few months, particularly if you just intend to use them as ingredients in other dishes. Freezing vegetables is incredibly easy – just soak them in water for an hour, dry the surface, spread them out on a baking sheet, and stick them in the freezer for a few hours. Once they’re frozen, put the whole veggies right into bags or other storage containers.

Obviously, the big requirement here is a freezer for long-term storage. Without a large freezer, vegetable freezing isn’t really an option. Another drawback with this solution is that vegetables last at most several months before beginning to have serious taste and texture degradation, making them unusable.

Still, you’ll find quite a few vegetables in our own freezer. We make sure to use these frozen vegetables during the following winter so stale veggies don’t build up.

Have a party.
You’ve got a harvest, so why not have a harvest party?

Not sure what to do? Boil up fifty ears of corn. Get some cheese, grill the tomatoes, and put a bit of cheese on each one. Use the cucumbers and onions idea from earlier in the article and make a giant bowl. Slice zucchini and squash, rub them in olive oil, and grill them. Make coleslaw. Have a gigantic salad bowl.

In other words, use simple techniques to make these vegetables as delicious as you can and share the results with everyone around you. It takes the idea of giving away your vegetables to a whole new level, creating a great social event out of your harvest bounty.

Can it.
We usually have an abundance of tomatoes and, as a result, we often end up making a lot of different things with the tomatoes: whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato sauce, ketchup, tomato jam, salsa, pasta sauce, and so on. Given the acidity of the tomatoes, it’s incredibly easy to can these items without spoiling them – just get some jars and lids, sterilize everything, boil what you’re going to cook, fill up the jars, put rings and lids on them, bathe these in boiling water for half an hour or so, then allow them to sit. When they cool, tap the lids – if they spring back, then eat what’s inside right away – otherwise, they’ll keep for years.

My parents tend to grow acres of tomatoes and put away so much canned tomato items that, frankly, we don’t have to do this ourselves – they give us jars regularly. We intended to can some salsa this year, but we had a disastrous year with our tomatoes and it didn’t quite work out.

Another good idea – if you’re able to can salsa or hot sauce or pasta sauce, the jars can easily be decorated and given as wonderful Christmas gifts. It’s a great thing to give to your neighbors during Christmas season, for one.

These are merely the techniques I’ve used myself in my own life to handle an abundance of garden vegetables. What do you do with yours?

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 (August 23-29, 2008)
Everything’s So Easy for Pauline: Thoughts on Luck, Fate, Money, and Life This may be my favorite post I’ve ever written for this site. Luck plays such an enormous role in financial success, and looking down on people who haven’t achieved success because of things out of their control is just poor form.

How to Avoid the Trap of Splurging as a Reward for “Being Good” I fell into this trap more than a time or two. In the end, it undermines the value of “being good” – there’s no point to good behavior if you’re just going to shoot it in the foot.

The Retirement Perspective: Today’s Dollars Are Far More Valuable Than Tomorrow’s Inflation ensures that a dollar will be worth less tomorrow than it is today. This is a huge consideration when it comes to long-term planning, like saving for retirement.

Is a Positive Attitude Enough? This is my response to the plethora of “positive thinking” and “positive attitude” books out there. In a nutshell, no, positive thinking isn’t enough.

Personal Finance 101: Money Market Accounts Versus Normal Savings Accounts What’s the difference between a money market account and a savings account? It turns out that there’s a big difference, and knowing that difference can be quite important.

Two Years Ago (August 23-29, 2007)
Seven Nifty Tactics Credit Card Companies Use To Get Into Your Pocket – And How To See Right Through Them Credit card companies try all kinds of ways to extract a few dollars from your pocket, some obvious and some not so obvious. Here are seven of the most common tactics – and how you can protect yourself from them.

Should A Frugal Person Bother With The Coupon Section In The Sunday Paper? Many people immediately associate being frugal with clipping coupons from the paper. I don’t necessarily believe frugality leads one to coupons, though.

An Interesting Voluntary Simplicity Exercise That Can Really Improve Your Financial Situation This is so simple, yet so effective. Just walk into a room in your house and take an inventory using this lens. You might be surprised as to what you find out.

Ten Things Any College Student Can Do To Prepare For Success In Life College sets the foundation for later life in so many ways – I wish I had seen it then. Here are ten things that college students should consider doing because they put some of the foundations for a successful life in place while you’re cracking the books.

What To Do When Debt Seems Insurmountable Many people find themselves in such terrible debt situations that it seems like there’s no way they’ll ever find their way out. What do you do in this situation? Here are some thoughts on how to handle 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!

Over the past few months, our finances have been in something of a “reset” mode. In the process of taking more control of the advertisements on The Simple Dollar’s website (which is my primary source of income), I had to change billing systems. With my previous primary advertising representative – Google – I would get paid the month after an ad runs – so if an ad runs in May, I would be paid for that ad by the end of June. In April of this year, I switched most of my advertising away from Google to Federated Media, which handles things in a different fashion. Since they run in a campaign-by-campaign fashion, if I run an ad in May, I have to wait until September to receive payment.

So, at the end of April, we made the switch. Thus, at the end of May, I received my last payment from Google – and then received essentially no income during June, July, and August (and much of September, too).

Ouch.

Now, this switch was, in the long run, worthwhile. My monthly income will go up. However, it made for a painful summer. We had to tap strongly into our “opportunity” fund to make this happen – I am very glad that we had such a fund in place to make this transition possible.

But, here we are, at the end of the summer. We now have a depleted “opportunity” fund and we’ve even touched our emergency fund a little bit, but our monthly income is about to return to normal – in fact, perhaps a bit higher than normal.

In other words, this is a perfect time to re-assess our financial goals for the near future.

Over breakfast several days ago, Sarah and I talked about our plans and here’s what we came up with.

By the end of 2009, we intend to replenish our emergency savings and our “opportunity” savings to the balance they held on April 1. Maintaining an “opportunity fund” is something that’s very important to both of us. It allows us to take advantage of opportunities that life throws our way without tapping into our emergency fund, since a great opportunity isn’t really an emergency.

In fact, maintaining our “opportunity fund” was the big reason we elected to finance a Prius early this year instead of paying cash for it. After a lot of thought, we decided that it was better for us over the long term to keep that cash on hand for other opportunities – and it turns out we were right.

However, that leaves us with a strongly depleted opportunity fund – we lived out of it this summer, since we viewed this transition as an opportunity, not an emergency – and even a bit of money taken from the emergency fund, too (to fix a broken-down truck).

Our goal for the rest of the year is to replenish both of these funds to the level they were at prior to this past summer. In terms of our day to day living, it doesn’t mean too much, but it does mean that our excess income will be put directly into savings before anything else. I think it’s very realistic to do this by the end of the year, based on what we expect to bring in over the last four months of 2009.

That brings us back to where we were prior to the “summer of transition,” as I like to call it, but leaves us in better shape than before by far. Our monthly income is higher and even if I chose to shut the site down for some reason, we’d still have three more months’ worth of income already earned to survive off of, which is a much nicer position.

At this point, we’ll turn our attention to our remaining debts.

By the end of 2010, we intend to be debt free except for our mortgage – and that includes replacing our semi-functional truck with a van – while maintaining our fund levels. Sometime in the next year – and it may be sooner rather than later – my truck, which is on the verge of complete breakdown, will be traded in for a late model used minivan and we intend to make up the difference in cash. We’re trying as hard as we can to stretch this out, largely functioning as a one vehicle home at the moment. So, one big priority is making that van purchase happen.

Obviously, my hope is to stretch that purchase out until at least near the end of 2009, at which point paying cash will be relatively easy thanks to our renewed savings.

Once the van is ours and paid for, our only outstanding debts will be our mortgage, the remainder of our Prius (after the down payment and several months’ worth of regular payments), and a single student loan. By the end of 2010, I intend to have the non-mortgage debts paid off, and I’ll celebrate each success right here on The Simple Dollar.

I’m going to essentially use a debt snowball to wipe out these debts, ordering them by interest rate minus any tax benefits. This means the Prius goes first, then the student loan, then…

Yes, the mortgage.

After the other debts are paid off, by the end of 2010 at the latest, I’m going to throw everything I’ve got at the mortgage. We’ve already

The big key is that none of this changes how we live day to day. We’ve basically done the same things day in and day out since 2007 or so. We spend less than we earn (excepting, of course, this summer, where income was quite low by choice). We don’t spend extravagantly. When opportunities present themselves – or we’re faced with emergencies – we just use the cash we already have saved for these purposes.

In short, for us, extra income just means we arrive at our big goals a little quicker. Our dream is to be living in our long-talked-about farmhouse before the kids are finished with grade school – within nine years.

That means daily extravagances keep us from our dreams. Every day we continue to live cheap between now and then is a day we march closer to our goal. Every day we’re able to take advantage of an opportunity that comes our way is a step closer to our goal. Every emergency that doesn’t require us to use plastic means that … well, we’re not closer, but we’re not going back any farther than we have to be.

Frugality underlines everything we do. Sure, we strive to earn more along the way, but if our efforts in that direction mean spending with reckless abandon, we’ll soon find ourselves where we were in 2006 – in a very rough place that takes a long time to climb out of and even longer to reach the things we want. And that’s a scary place to be.

Set goals. Take care of them by living frugally. Get there faster by earning more and taking advantage of opportunities. That’s what it’s all about.

If you’ve read The Simple Dollar for long, you’ve seen tons of lists of money-saving tips, from 100 little steps for saving money and 100 free things to do this weekend to fifty ways to have fun by yourself on the cheap and my frugal vacation guide to Dallas/Fort Worth, just to name a few.

A few days ago, an old friend of mine wrote to me about The Simple Dollar. She’d been reading the archives for a while and had finally caught up with the most recent posts. One of her comments was quite interesting and worth discussing:

The articles I didn’t like were when you listed tips for cutting your spending. Most of them are just simply outside the realm of possibility. Most people don’t want to do a bunch of extra work or do something really unenjoyable or ruin something fun just to save a few bucks.

Her example actually revolved around a tip she found on the site where I suggested making sandwiches on vacations instead of eating out for every meal:

I’m on vacation to have fun. Eating a “sandwich” that consists of some awful lunchmeat jammed between two pieces of dry bread does not equal fun. I just simply won’t do it, and most people won’t, either.

Since I couldn’t find the tip she mentioned after searching for an hour, I’ll explain it in more detail in a “mini-post” right now – two posts in one!

A Frugal Vacation Tip From My Childhood
We rarely went on vacations when I was a child. The only true vacation that we went on before I was in high school – meaning a trip that wasn’t either camping within 50 miles of home or visiting relatives – was a trip to Saint Louis in 1986 with my parents, one of my brothers, and one of my cousins.

We didn’t have a huge budget for the five day trip, so my parents used several techniques to save money. My father got discount Six Flags and baseball tickets through his credit union in some sort of package deal. All five of us shared a single room with one large bed, leaving us three kids to sleep on the floor. At least two of the days, we didn’t do anything at all – instead, we either just stayed at the hotel in the pool much of the day or wandered around Saint Louis near our hotel, exploring.

But one big trick that my parents used on this trip was to eat sandwiches for every lunch on the trip. The day before we left, my parents bought several loaves of bread, some cheese, and some bologna from a local deli counter, along with some condiments and chips. Each day for lunch, we’d either gather in the hotel room and make sandwiches at lunch time or we’d pack a lunch in the morning and eat it when we were out and about.

We plowed through several loaves of bread, a few packages of bologna, a few packages of cheese, and a bottle of ketchup and mustard, but the total cost of the food was less than $15 – and it provided five lunches for five people. Compare that to the cost of eating out … anything. It was a huge savings – it likely amounted to getting our hotel room for free.

Since then, I’ve been a big believer of making picnic lunches while traveling whenever there’s a reasonable opportunity to do so. Often, on long road trips, we’ll stop at an exit and instead of hitting a restaurant, we’ll stop at a park, pop open the back, and dig into the sandwiches we packed – or stop at a grocery store, pick up a loaf of bread and a few other items, and head to a park to make our own sandwiches (and save the inevitable left over bread).

It’s cheaper and healthier and almost as fast as the other options.

So, here we have it. I like to make my own sandwiches for lunches on road trips and vacations, but my friend comments that such tactics are “outside the realm of possibility” as it degrades the quality of the vacation just to save a few bucks.

This type of phenomenon pops up time and time again. It might be “outside the realm of possibility” to pry that morning coffee from your hands. It might be “outside the realm of possibility” to drive a ten year old car (my truck is thirteen years old! I must be a loser!). It might be “outside the realm of possibility” to make your own laundry detergent. You wouldn’t even think of doing such things.

But why?

Here’s the way I look at the world. If something has an obvious benefit, I’ll consider it instead of brushing it off immediately. Most money-saving tactics fall straight into this category – so, in this example, the obvious benefit of making such sandwiches is that they’re healthier than fast food and quite a bit cheaper.

The obvious benefit of trimming out a morning coffee is that you save $5 every morning and break a caffeine addiction.

The obvious benefit of driving an old vehicle is that you’re not spending money on a new car payment.

The obvious benefit of making your own laundry detergent is that your detergent is about 1/10th the cost of detergent bought at the store.

Thus, I’m willing to at least consider most frugal tactics – I don’t immediately rule them as being outside the realm of possibility.

Obviously, each of these options has some sort of cost.

A sandwich on a trip is likely not going to be quite as tasty as going to a restaurant, and you’ll likely be eating in a park instead of a restaurant (with kids, this latter part is an advantage, but it might not be for others).

Trimming your morning coffee means that you’re either drinking lower quality coffee or you’re giving it up entirely. Maybe you can just move from the Starbucks routine to making your own (a big savings right there) or just try different brands to find one that suits you (for example, my wife reports that Eight O’Clock Coffee is the best bang for the buck out there).

An old vehicle is somewhat less reliable and likely gets worse gas mileage. These two factors pushed us to upgrade our car earlier this year, moving from a 1999 Mercury Sable with a failing transmission and about 24 MPG to a 2009 Toyota Prius that gets 46 MPG. We debated the upgrade for the better part of a year.

Making your own laundry detergent takes about fifteen minutes, so it’s really a factor of how you value your free time in the evenings or on weekends.

In some cases, I’ll go for it – I’m still driving my old rust-bucket truck, I make my own laundry detergent, I make sandwiches on the road, and I don’t drink coffee anymore at all (aside from a once-a-month or so treat).

Others might balk at one or more of those choices, choosing to stick with what they’re already doing or a more expensive route. I do this with many food choices – I’ll buy eggs from a local farmer at a premium, for example.

That’s fine – it’s all about personal value. What’s dangerous is not even considering such options and immediately ruling them out of the realm of possibility. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think it comes down to one thing: fear of change.

Frugal choices often require doing things differently than you did before. For some, the thought of changing their routine – even if there’s an obvious net benefit – is bad. This can affect every aspect of one’s life.

Here’s a great example of how powerful routine can be. Once a year, my wife and I spend a day with two of our friends that live about six hours away. It’s usually a “weekend getaway” for them that we interrupt for an afternoon or so. Every single year, though, the two of them choose to go to the same place. They stay in the same hotel. They go to many of the same places. Earlier this year, when we met up, I asked them why. They both shrugged their shoulders and then suggested it was because it was familiar – it fit like an old glove. Choosing something different would just seem… wrong.

The next time you outright reject a frugal choice, ask yourself whether you’re rejecting that frugal choice for a good reason or you’re rejecting it because it would mean you’d have to change a comfortable behavior. Quite often, stepping outside a comfortable behavior can offer huge benefits, not only in the immediate choice, but in that it makes you more flexible and open to other little choices.

Making your own laundry detergent or your own sandwiches on the road isn’t outside the realm of possibility, after all.

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.

I’ve watched it over and over again: the people that succeed in a particular career path are the people who are able to tap into their natural passions and aim that fire hose into their professional life. They know what they love and they find ways to translate that into a way to make a living. Sometimes they make a nice income – and that’s awesome. At other times, they earn just enough to get by – and that’s awesome, too.

What matters is that, in both cases, it’s a joy to get out of bed in the morning and get started on your day. Your work itself fills you with joy and excitement. When you reach that point, the line between work and play disappears – you’re happy doing whatever your day throws at you. That has a value that can’t be measured in dollars and cents. It transforms your life.

I hear from many people who claim this is impossible. It’s not. Every single day, I get out of bed, excited to write. If anything, I write more each day than I did when my passion for writing was still new. I know others who feel the same way about what they do. It makes them want to get out of bed in the morning and get started. When you feel that passion surging through you, it makes a lot of the little difficulties of life not matter too much.

If this seems completely alien to you, you simply haven’t discovered your passion yet. I discussed this a while ago, but here are seven ways to figure out your passions:

1. Maximize your health. Eat well. Get some exercise. Get away from any and all situations that are emotionally holding you back. Get plenty of sleep. Without these pieces in place, it will be hard for you to open up to new opportunities and directions.

2. Ask lots of questions. If you come across something of interest to you, ask. Follow up with more questions until you’re satisfied – at least for the moment. Research interesting topics online. Do things like a “Wikipedia stumble” – start at a general topic you’re thinking about, then click on whatever article in Wikipedia that’s most interesting to you – and keep reading and following links.

3. Ignore what’s “cool.” Remember the idea that you should stop trying to impress other people? It comes through big time here. If you enjoy it, it doesn’t matter what others think. Don’t be afraid to dive into something that seems exciting to you over a fear that others might find it “dorky.” Their label says more about them than it does about the activity.

4. Dabble in everything. If something seems interesting, try it. You might not find it enjoyable or you might find it fascinating. It’s often hard to tell the difference until you dive in. For example, having a garden might seem interesting, but until you try it, it’s hard to tell whether it’s just conceptually interesting to you (but not necessarily in practice) or something that you truly enjoy.

5. When something piques your interest, dig in. You try it. You like it. So try it again. And again. There are many things that seem quite fun on the first shot, but grow boring quickly as you hit “the dip” (where the newness wears off but you’re not very good at it). If you’re passionate about something, you won’t mind that dip.

6. Associate with others that share this growing passion of yours. Look for events in your area where people might be involved with this interest. Look for groups online where people are talking about this activity. Join in, share your thoughts, and ask questions. Nothing’s better for fostering a growing interest than a group of like-minded people.

7. If it dries up, don’t push it. True passions are sustaining – you’ll keep coming back to them because you want to. If you no longer want to engage in it, don’t make yourself. Just back away and find another path. You may find yourself returning in the future, or you may find yourself on a completely different path.

You’ll know your passion when you find it. It’ll ring inside of you like a hammer hitting a church bell. It’ll consume your thoughts and your activities, even if you’re not very good at it yet. You’ll get up each morning excited to do more. This is how I feel about writing, for one.

What do you do if you discover your passion, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to translate that into income? After all, you have to pay the bills, and even though you’ve found something you love so much you’d be happy to do it every day, it doesn’t put food on the table.

There are countless avenues for channeling that passion into income. However, almost all of these paths require you to start doing it on a part-time basis. Give up the frivolous things you were spending your evenings on and devote some of that time to a new path. Here are ten suggestions for transforming that passion into cash.

Blog Start a blog on the topic you’re passionate about. Share something new every day on there. Put a few ads on the site to earn a bit of revenue.

Teach / tutor If you have patience, hang out your shingle and volunteer to teach your passion to others. This is a great avenue for a passionate musician.

Provide services Maybe you’ve found that you’re passionate about a particular task that others find to be drudgery – scooping snow or repairing computers. Sell these services directly to others.

Create videos If you want to teach how to do the things you love, consider making videos and sharing them online. Put them on YouTube and make a simple blog to share the videos. If you start gathering followers, sign up for their rewards program and you can translate this into solid income.

Sell at farmers markets If you make things, from soap to bread to wicker baskets, you can likely do well selling the items at farmers markets. It’s a great way to make some sales and meet people interested in what you’re doing.

Write freelance articles / books If you simply enjoy writing, practice and attempt to sell some of your best work as a freelancer. Expect plenty of rejections, but also expect feedback and suggestions, especially as you improve.

Develop projects through work Take what you’re passionate about and see how it can connect to your workplace. If you’re into catering, volunteer to spend some work time getting catering set up for a work event. If you’re into art, look for ways to incorporate your art into work projects.

Take classes Work towards a degree in the area of your passion. It’s a great way to get yourself into the marketplace and to connect with lots of like-minded folks.

Volunteer / apprentice Don’t be afraid to spend your spare time volunteering to share your passion with others. Time and time again, people who share their talents freely and build their skills find themselves in other opportunities to earn an income from it.

Sell by consignment If you have a product to sell, talk to local sellers and see if they sell by consignment. They provide the space and the sales work for a cut of the revenue, while you get to focus on what you love.

Finding your passion is a life-changing event. It pushes you in new directions that fulfill you in ways you’d never expect. If you’ve never found your passion, you’re missing out on life by not seeking it out.