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 9-15, 2008)
A Frugal Guide to the Iowa State Fair (or Any Similar County or State Fair) County and state fairs can be a great (and surprisingly inexpensive) way to spend a day out and about with your family. Here’s how I did it in 2008 with my clan.

Personal Finance and the Bucket List What’s on your “bucket list”? And why aren’t you marking off those things, one tick at a time?

Review: Young Bucks This is an excellent book for parents who want to encourage their children to be entrepreneurs (something I want to do very much).

The Big Debate #2: Leasing, Buying New, or Buying Used? My only real conclusion is that leasing is the worst option because you don’t wind up with a car in the end.

How I Deal With My Financial Fears In a nutshell, I spend some time figuring out what the real fear is, then I tackle those fears head on.

Two Years Ago (August 9-15, 2007)
Fixed Rate Mortgages: Are 15 Year Mortgages Really Cheaper Than 30 Year Mortgages? If you put inflation into the equation, it’s closer than you might think.

Entrepreneurship In Your Spare Time: The Rocks And Sand Philosophy What are your rocks? What is your sand? Figuring out the two can make a huge difference in your life.

Is Not Spending Money Bad for the Economy? In a nutshell, no, it’s not. The only thing that’s bad for the economy is burying your money in the back yard (and even that’s potentially debatable).

Visiting Williams-Sonoma: How To Avoid Overspending On Something That Stirs Your Passions I am often tempted to spend a lot at Williams-Sonoma. Here’s how I get around that huge personal temptation without just erasing all visits there from my life.

Six Ways Planning Ahead Saved Money This Weekend A bit of planning can make an enormous difference in your spending. Here are six examples of how we actually did that one weekend.

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 – or other social networks. 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.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

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!

As I alluded to on Twitter a while back, a friend of mine started selling Amway recently. She sent me a long sales pitch via email, outlining the great products she was selling.

I flatly said “no” and deleted the email.

I didn’t even hesitate. Why? Over the years, many of my friends have pitched various direct sales products to me, my wife, and other family members. I’ve seen a lot of them – Amway, Mary Kay, Princess House, Pampered Chef, Tupperware, the list goes on and on.

I’m not criticizing the quality of the products they sell in any way – that’s an entirely separate issue, one that varies from product to product. What I do question is the true cost of the sale.

Here’s the scoop: if you’re looking to make money by having products pitched to and sold to your friends, you run the risk of damaging those friendships.

Quite often, you put the friends in the uncomfortable position of feeling obligated to buy an item that they don’t want in order to please you. You’re directly exchanging the value of your friendship for the small commission you get for your sale.

A close friend won’t mind too much. They’re likely to understand completely what you’re doing and will support you no matter what you choose.

But is this really something you want to ask of the people you care about the most? Do you want your best friend to feel obligated to buy something from you?

On the other hand, your more distant connections will likely not appreciate it nearly as much. The “cost” you’re asking from them – buying a product they don’t want at an exorbitant price – is often enough to seriously damage the relatively weak connection you have.

What about other people, ones you don’t have a connection with at all? Sure, they’re great guilt-free sales targets, but they’re very difficult sales targets. Unless you’re a professional salesperson, well-trained in convincing people to buy, you’ll not see much success with that avenue.

Here’s the honest truth. I’ve run the numbers on many different programs and listened to the amount of time people have invested in these programs. Almost always, unless they’ve got exceptional sales skills, their earnings for the time invested are significantly below minimum wage. Sometimes, when they’ve paid to participate, they’re actually at a net loss. For that money, they’ve had to essentially call in a favor from many of their friends as well.

In short, there’s a lot more value in working a minimum wage job than there is selling to your friends. You’re not alienating friends and you’re likely earning more per hour than you are from selling the products.

What if you’re asked to buy? My solution is simple. Unless it’s a really close friend who clearly needs the help, I’ll just say “no” to their invitation to buy their products or attend their “product party.” If it is a really close friend, I’ll have a talk with them about it. Why are they selling this product? How much can they actually make? What will they have to give up to make that amount? I’ll run through the numbers with them so they can see how much they’ll realistically earn in exchange for these negative trades on their friendships and relationships.

Many people want “easy entrepreneurship,” and when they see the numbers provided by programs like these, it’s easy to see a big profit. What they don’t see is how it taps out friendships and how it eats enough time that the profit per hour of effort is really pretty tiny.

Successful entrepreneurship is never easy and it doesn’t need to rely on the giving nature of your friends to succeed. It’s a much harder road, but it’s a sustainable road, one that your friends and family will be happy to see you succeed on.

Good luck.

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.

Sarah and I were looking for a very simple “How Low Can You Go” recipe that we could actually use for a picnic at the park. It had to be quite simple, something that could be mostly prepared at home with only minimal prep at the park, and it had to be easy to transport.

We were intrigued by the flavor in Kenzie Crosley’s vegetarian burrito bowl submission to the “How Low Can You Go” contest, but we didn’t want to use the amount of prepared food suggested. Here’s Kenzie’s recipe:

1 box Archer Farms(find at Target) Cilantro and Lime Rice
2 Cans Black Beans
Guacamole
Sour Cream
black olives
Queso (Rotel and Velveeta)

Prepare rice as directed on box. Boil black beans in a small pot. Melt 1 can rotel and velveeta in a small dish in the microwave. If family of 4, bring 4 bowls out to serve individually and lawyer as follows. Rice at the bottom, black beans, queso, quacomole, sour cream, olives on top.

These are all things I love-so I just threw them all together for a yummy and easy meal for my husband and I. We have lots of leftovers!

Velveeta? An Archer Farms boxed meal? Hmm… why don’t we just do it from scratch? So that’s what we did.

Here are our ingredients:

Our guacamole spice packet is just a mix of various herbs that’s really tasty and pretty much everything else is from base ingredients.

You’ll notice no black beans are present – that’s because we boiled up some dried beans:

The guacamole was simple to make. Simply peel and core the avocado, then add some spices – salt, a bit of black pepper, garlic, cumin, and/or cilantro. We just used a packet that had this stuff already in it that we had in the cupboard:

Since our daughter is a little iron-deficient, we chose to add a little bit of ground beef that we had in the refrigerator to give her a little extra iron. Not a requirement at all, just something we keep an eye on.

Anyway, we packed up everything into two reusable bags, with reusable bowls and containers:

Once there, we assembled the bowls. Here’s Sarah (who handled most of the prep work for this meal), scooping beans into each of four bowls:

And here’s my finished bowl, enjoyed with a bottle of Dos Equis XX:

The best part about a picnic at the park is that it can immediately be followed by fun on the playground equipment.

Everyone loved it. The bowls were devoured with only a bit of leftovers. It helps that my children love black olives, which made the overall meal seem better than it otherwise would have been.

Our cost for this was about $9, without many leftovers. All we wound up with was leftover black beans, which we intended to use in another recipe later on. So, the cost per bowl was about $2.25 – a little high, but it was very easy to prepare, pretty healthy (aside from the sour cream), and portable enough that it could be eaten at a park.

Changes I Would Make
Obviously, we weren’t strong fans of the prepackaged original meal, so we modified it big time. Here’s what we did instead, which turned out really well.

Trent’s Vegetarian Burrito Bowls

1 cup dry black beans
1 1/2 cups dry rice
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon cilantro
1 avocado
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup black olives
2 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese
sour cream to taste

Cook the black beans according to recipe. Cook the rice according to recipe, replacing half a cup of water with half a cup of lime juice and the cilantro. Cut up the avocado, add the salt, garlic, and black pepper, and blend into a paste to make guacamole. Assemble the bowls, starting with rice, then beans, then cheese, then guacamole, then sour cream, then black olives on top. Enjoy!

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.

A couple times this spring, I watched a TruGreen van park at the house next to mine. The person inside got out, loaded up a push cart with lawn fertilizer, and pushed it around the lawn. He then loaded up the cart and drove away. It took maybe twenty minutes each time.

I do basically the same thing, except on my own. I’ll get some quality seed and feed from the local gardening store, load up my little cart, and push it around the yard during the spring. Again, it takes me about twenty minutes and costs me maybe $15 in supplies.

I was intrigued that my neighbor used this service, so I asked him how much it costs. He quoted a price of about $80 for a “spring treatment” – which was apparently the two sessions I observed.

I kept it in mind and watched our lawns throughout the spring. For a while, there was a difference, but it was mostly due to shade differences in the spring and different times of application. Now, in mid summer, I can’t tell the difference between the two yards.

By spending twenty minutes doing it myself, I saved $60. That sounds like a deal to me.

One big caveat, right off the bat: I’m not claiming that you should do everything yourself. There are certainly situations where paying others to do things for you is beneficial, and those opportunities become more prevalent as your income rises.

However, the more things you do for yourself, the less money you spend on overpriced services.

This spreads across more avenues of life than you might initially think. “I don’t pay for a lawn service,” you might think, “and I’ll never hire a maid or a cook.” It goes far beyond that.

When you go out to eat, you pay for someone to serve you. Much of your cost of the meal isn’t in the food – it’s in the cost of the cook to prepare it and the waiter to bring it to your table. Instead, cook the same meal at home. Almost always, it will be significantly less expensive – and often healthier. Even more surprising, it often won’t take you as long as your trip to the restaurant took.

When you buy produce at the grocery store, you pay for people to serve you. Most of your cost comes from people picking the vegetables and people transporting them to you. Instead, why not have a small vegetable garden in the back? It can be a bit of a time sink (but less than you might think if you don’t garden), but the costs can be extremely low, particularly for the quantity of vegetables you can get from a good garden.

When you shell out for snow removal, you’re backing away from a great opportunity for winter exercise – and losing some cash along the way as well.

When you go get an oil change, you’re paying for someone to unscrew a couple caps and dump liquid out of a jug. Why not buy your own oil, get a pan, and do it yourself? It doesn’t take long and you won’t be given a sales pitch along the way.

When you call up the plumber or the electrician, you’re likely paying someone to handle something that could be figured out from a YouTube video. If nothing else, it’s worth a few minutes to check YouTube for a how-to video to see if your problem can be easily fixed.

In each case, the same theme is clear: you pay a high price for someone else to do something for you.

One common counterargument to this is the idea that a person’s time is more valuable than that. “My time is worth more than the cost of just paying someone else to do it.”

Here’s the catch, though – what are you replacing that time with? Are you doing something really productive with it? Or are you recouping that time with an extra episode of a sitcom?

Often, the argument that one’s time is more valuable is a front for laziness. It’s simply easier to throw cash at a problem. While that may be true on one level, step back for a minute and look at it from a distance. Do the people who succeed in life succeed by taking the lazy route? Rarely.

That’s not to say that there isn’t value in relaxation time. Unquestionably, there is. However, there is an enormous gulf between relaxation and laziness. Relaxation refreshes you and makes you ready to succeed in other aspects of life. Laziness passes time and merely reinforces laziness. Sitting down to relax and enjoy a television program that really fulfills you is relaxation. Flipping on the cable box to see what’s on? Not so much.

If you’re truly replacing a drudgery task with something that fulfills you deeply or earns a much better income than the cost of the service, then by all means, consider it. Just keep the bigger picture in mind and make sure you’re not paying a lot of money so that you can idle away the time.

It goes further. Doing things for yourself has a big psychological benefit. It shows you that you actually can do these things for yourself and improves your self-worth. It increases your skill set. It often gets you moving and applying your mind and your body together in a task. These are all enormous benefits that aren’t derived from simply throwing cash at a problem.

In the end, the personal and financial benefits of doing things yourself add up to an enormous benefit for the time you invest in it. The next time you have something that you could do yourself that you’re about to pay someone else to take care of, step back and ask yourself if this is really the best move for you.

Kevin writes in:

Your examples of how to live frugally make it sound like your life [is terrible]. Why are you sacrificing all happiness to save a buck? If I had your life, I’d be miserable. Live a little, dude.

Most of the frugal advice I give usually revolves around some clever substitutions or the replacement of a few habits. A few examples: I stopped going to the coffee shop every day. I started making my own laundry detergent instead of buying it. I started using the library and using PaperBackSwap instead of hitting the bookstore all the time. I started using Last.fm and Pandora instead of buying piles of CDs. I sold off most of my DVD collection and started renting DVDs. I started shopping for clothes at thrift stores. I subscribed to magazines I bought on the newsstands and killed subscriptions to magazines I didn’t read very often. I started trading used video games.

For many people, at least one change on that list will seem really painful. “I can’t imagine giving up my daily latte – it’s the spice of my life.” “My DVD collection is awesome – I love it!” “Nothing excites me more than a new book that’s mine!” “I love freshly-cleaned clothes with that Tide smell!”

And they conclude that frugality is misery.

Here’s the thing, though. The examples I gave above are the things that I did, not necessarily the things that will work for you.

I took a very serious look at my life and asked myself what I really valued.

I enjoyed watching a movie once a week, but the DVDs on my shelf didn’t really mean anything to me, so I just sold off my DVDs and moved to occasional rentals. Maybe you do enjoy your DVD collection – a big row of DVDs brings some real personal value to your life because you’re a movie buff who loves rewatching some of the great films you own. But perhaps it’s the experience of watching a new movie that you enjoy and you rarely rewatch those movies that you’ve bought. So… why not just sell them off, stop buying them, and use Netflix?

I went to the coffee shop every day, but I realized that it was more of a habit than a true source of enjoyment, so I stopped. Maybe your morning latte really is a key source of happiness for your day – it wakes you up, provides that perfect little rush, and makes you genuinely smile with that first taste, every time. For me, though, I realized that my enjoyment came from memories of sitting around coffee shops with my friends, not from that cup of coffee in front of me, so I stopped going every day.

Aside from a few clothes kept for special occasions, I really look at clothes as being functional. I’m happy in an old pair of jeans and a scruffy t-shirt – or whatever else happens to fit well and is clean. So why should I shop at an expensive clothes shop? I am tall, which means it can be hard to find clothes that fit well, but I can often find good stuff for just a buck or two at a thrift store.

Tide is not a personal value in my life. You might find value in the enzymes in commercial laundry detergent. For me, though, if something gets my clothes clean to the eye and to the nose, I’ll use it. Nothing’s cheaper than homemade laundry detergent and it’s not hard to make – I can make it while talking on the phone or playing with my kids. So why not?

I love to read and I love to book browse, but a bookshelf stuffed with books I’ve already read does nothing for me. Perhaps a library of well-loved books adds aesthetic appeal to your life (it does for my wife), but it doesn’t do much at all for me. So I started going to the library and I found that their book selection was way better than I thought. I also started using PaperBackSwap, trading away the books I had hoarded and getting fresh ones to read for about $2.50 a pop.

To me, frugality is all about figuring out what you really value. I don’t value a bookshelf full of books I’ve already read. I don’t value the latest clothes. I don’t value a shelf full of DVDs I’ve already seen. I don’t value store-bought laundry detergent.

I value other things. I value quality food, especially produced from local sources. I’ll happily pay more for eggs from local farmers and milk from the creamery down the road and beef bought directly from a rancher and vegetables at the farmers market. I’m also willing to invest in good kitchen equipment to prepare it. I value my family and experiences that we share. I won’t even think twice about buying tickets to the state fair for all of us or investing in the best child care I can find for my children or planning ahead for life-changing experiences for them (like spending a summer or two living abroad when they’re older). I value my work. I want tools that make writing simple and efficient for me and I’m happy to invest in those tools. I value helping out others that help me. If I find a service that I use, I’ll happily shell out to be a premium user, even if it’s just to support that service, and I don’t hesitate to tip for good service at restaurants or at other places.

But if I run across things that fall outside my values, I’m cheap. I don’t hesitate to buy generics. I’ll find every way possible to trim my energy bill. I’ll look for simple behavior changes that cut my usage of everything from toilet paper to shower water. I carefully plot and comparison shop for most of the items I buy. I could care less about luxury automobiles – what vehicle can I get the most miles out of for the dollar with some degree of reliability?

In my eyes, frugal misery comes about when people try to apply cost-cutting tactics in areas that have a high personal value for them. They love their morning coffee, hear talk about the “latte factor,” and hide. They are movie buffs and they watch two DVDs a night – mostly from their own collections – so the thought of trimming that collection down to “save money” sounds nightmarish. They really value going out on the town with their friends, so cutting back on their “going out” seems like the worst thing they can imagine.

We all value a certain handful of things quite a bit, and don’t value other areas nearly as much. Frugality means figuring out those things that you value and then cutting back hard in the areas you don’t value.

Because if you don’t value it in your life, why are you spending anything more than the minimum possible on it?

My response to Kevin is simple. How exactly are you enjoying life by spending money on things you don’t value?

Several days ago, I made coq au vin and from-scratch French baguettes for dinner for my family. It took about three hours of work, all told, and required some things to be done the day before (starting the dough for the bread and chopping the vegetables).

To put it simply, it turned out fantastic. My wife kept saying beforehand that there was no way that it wasn’t going to be worth the time investment, but after eating and savoring the meal, she sat back and said, “I changed my mind. That was worth the three hours.”

After dinner, the conversation turned towards a new direction. Obviously, I really loved being in the kitchen, as I was already talking about trying it again with some minor changes and also giving slow beef Bourguignon a try sometime soon. My wife asked, “Have you ever thought about a cooking blog?” (If you’ve been reading The Simple Dollar for a while, you know I have.) There was also a bit of talk about me attending cooking school, too.

Yes, having a food-related career is something that’s been on my mind for a long time. I thought for a long time about having a cooking blog, and I’ve even thought about pursuing a career as a chef or as a food writer.

When does that kind of itch become something more serious?

Over the last week, I’ve been thinking about this question a lot. Right now, my calendar is really full with keeping The Simple Dollar up and going, working on my second book, keeping up with my reading, being involved in the community, and, most importantly of all, spending time with my children and wife. Where would I possibly find time to squeeze this in?

That’s the first kicker: time. If you look at your day and can’t find room for something you want to do, then the things you’re already doing are more important to you.

One of my most controversial pieces of advice is to suggest that people should turn off their televisions. The conclusion there is that I’m criticizing the hobby of watching television, something many people do. Actually, what I’m encouraging is looking at your time and asking yourself what’s really important to you.

For example, if you watch the Food Network and see someone preparing a meal on there and think to yourself, “I’d really love to prepare that,” but then you just watch the next program on the Food Network, what’s important to you isn’t making that dish, but watching the Food Network.

Now, that’s a fine conclusion to make if it’s what you value in life, but I tend to believe that many people who watch Food Network, think of preparing a dish, but instead keep watching haven’t really thought about it at all. What would happen if they turned off the program, went out, and did it? Then, instead of seeing a great dish prepared by someone else, they get the sensory experience of having done it themselves, the pride of having done it, and the product – something that can be shared with people they care about.

How you spend your time reveals what you really value. If you can’t find the time to do something, you must not value it much. And, thus, if I’m not willing to find time to follow up on that food passion, that means I value the things I’m already doing more.

After some thought, I realized that I would be willing to scale back The Simple Dollar to pursue it. Maybe I could just post once a day after the book is finished and then focus on starting a truly great food site?

This leads us to the second factor: security. The thing we’re doing now – and seeing success with – offers some degree of security. It’s clear that, by the fact that we’re earning an income and people are interested in what we’re doing, that we’re, to some degree, successful at it and, likely, we’ll continue to be successful at it. It’s scary to toss that away and try something new, even if the money is in place to make it happen.

Take my own situation. Right now, The Simple Dollar has 66,000 subscribed readers (meaning they get it by email or by RSS, not directly on the site) and hundreds of thousands of site visitors a month. No matter how good my food writing is, I’d still be essentially starting over. I’d be devoting a good chunk of my daily effort to an endeavor that will take a lot of work to start paying off.

Now, this is fine with me if it’s strictly a hobby – that’s how The Simple Dollar started, after all. But when you start looking at making major career changes, it becomes a much bigger question.

A big part of what I enjoy doing is helping people and reaching people. Starting over is a huge risk – I might be able to help and reach new people, but at the start, I help and reach virtually no one, and if I’m not providing anything new or interesting, I’m not going to help or reach anyone. That’s a huge risk.

This leads to factor number three: the money. If no one values what you’re doing, that means that you’re not going to earn anything. You have to give some of your value to others to earn an income.

Sure, it would be easy to make altruistic statements and talk about how I’m doing this to serve people – and that’s true. But I have a three year old and a one year old at home who rely on me for food and shelter, and thus making radical career changes into things that may not earn any sort of income at all is not a safe proposition.

So where does that lead us? We all have lots of inklings in life, things we’d like to do. The ones that grow are the ones that we find time for. The ones that are really something special are the ones that we’re willing to take a risk for. The ones that change our lives are the ones we can jump on the back of and believe that they’ll take care of us, no matter what.

So what am I doing? I’m going to take that first step and find some room. I’ll treat it like a hobby, much like I started The Simple Dollar. Once my book is finished, for an hour or two a day, I’m going to devote myself to writing and creating and sharing about food. I’m going to store up a lot of material on the subject, then launch something related to it, just to see how it goes.

In the end, for me it is enough of a passion that I’m willing to give up some other things in my life for it. I’ll put away a few video games, utilize the time that’s currently taken up by my book a little better, and see what happens.

Here’s the take home message. If you have an inkling, sit up. Make a little room in your life – if you can’t find room, then it’s probably not worth thinking about, but if you look around a little bit, you might be surprised at the space you have if you make a few different choices. Dip your toes in the water just to see how it feels. Don’t worry about success or failure – just enjoy yourself and see what happens next.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of advice that I would give high school graduates. Two children that I watched grow up are going to graduate this coming May. What could I possibly tell them that would be of use in their life? I’ll be exploring this off and on over the coming year, but here are some initial thoughts in that direction.

Recently, I was listening to a story on National Public Radio (the August 3, 2009 episode of Marketplace, listened to a few days later as a podcast) about how twentysomethings were spending money as though it were 2007. One person who spoke during the report said, “We’re young… I’m going to buy what I want now and worry about it later.”

On one level, I think that’s a good thing. If you’re single or married without children, you should by all means spread your wings a little and try things that would be impossible with children. Five or ten years ago, I could have just hopped on a plane and went to another country for a week with little crisis; now, it’s just not happening.

There’s a problem with this, though. Quite often, that freedom is transformed into a drive to buy, buy, buy. The latest gadgets, the latest clothes, the latest media – it’s all just stuff. It provides a quick thrill when you buy it, often fueled by a lot of careful marketing that tells you that you’re supposed to feel good when you buy it, but then it winds up gathering dust in the corner.

Most of my twenties was filled with just that. Sure, I went on several great trips during that decade. I visited London, Edinburgh, Inverness, rural Mexico, and British Columbia within a single year early in the decade, and I’ve been to almost every state in the United States over the last seven years or so. All of those trips and experiences have left lasting memories with me and transformed my life in some way.

On the other hand, I reached a point when I was twenty seven where I looked around my apartment and saw a lot of stuff that I didn’t use. DVDs that had gathered dust. Piles of video games that hadn’t been touched in months. Trading cards, CDs, computer software, gadgets of all sorts, bookshelves full of books – and I rarely used any of it.

The worst part? I was in a desperate debt situation, one that could have really easily been avoided. It’s a situation with consequences that still have a negative impact on my life and will for a long time.

How could this have easily been avoided? I could have stepped back, looked at my life, and realized that the stuff wasn’t fulfilling me. I was seeking experiences and a deeper understanding of who I am and what really mattered to me. More stuff didn’t do that at all.

Let’s see if I can clear it up. Watching a film is an experience. Owning a DVD is accumulation of stuff. Going to a concert is an experience. Owning a pile of CDs is accumulation of stuff. Playing through a great video game is an experience. Accumulating a big pile of such games is just stuff. Traveling to rural France is an experience. Buying $500 worth of French cookware that you’ll barely use is accumulation of stuff.

The solution is simple, especially when you’re young and have the freedom and energy to easily go out and explore the world: load up your twenties with experiences, not stuff. Explore the world and figure out who you are and what you want from life. Minimize the items you have, maximize your experiences, and do it without sacrificing your future.

That’s right, without sacrificing your future. How? If you don’t accumulate a bunch of stuff, you’ll not be spending a big chunk of your money on things. You can also live in a much smaller home, drastically reducing your housing costs. That excess money can be used to make sure you’re not spending more than you earn – and it can also be used to have a lot of great experiences along the way.

So, how about instead of buying a BluRay player and a pile of discs, go out to a couple of movies? How about instead of buying a $500 phone and a $2,000 laptop, just use a freebie phone and a netbook … and take a trip to France that you’ll never forget?

Sure, eventually your life will change. You might wind up married. You might have a job that keeps you in one place. You might have children (which can be the death knell for impromptu experiences). You might get older, have less energy, and so on. When that happens, sure, start accumulating (within reason). A home theater setup is great if you can’t go out to the movies once a week. A killer computer setup is well worth it if you’re driving a career with it. $1,000 worth of kitchen implements is fine if you’re preparing a great dinner at home every single night and not going out.

Until then, take advantage of your youth. Have some great experiences and hold off on the stuff. Let your bank account grow a little bit or at least stay steady. What you’ll find is that, by not sacrificing your future now for stuff that’s not really important for living a free life, you’ll have a great future a little bit later on when the rules of your life change.

Good luck.

I’ve been dabbling in a number of very genre-specific social networks as of late, ones that are designed to take real advantage of specific interests. So, here are several worth noting.

If you’d like to keep tabs on what books I’m reading and have read and reviewed (outside of the PF stuff I’m reviewing here), check my GoodReads profile (a reader pointed out that I mentioned this one in a reader mailbag last week).

If you’d like to see what computer software I use and like, check my Wakoopa profile.

I also have started sharing the links I use when building my weekly roundup, comments and all. See my del.icio.us profile if you like the weekly roundup stuff, since I usually share 20-30 of these types of links a week there (and then filter it down to a handful for the weekly roundup).

Finally, if you’d like to keep up with ALL of my stuff in one place (Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and so on), check out my FriendFeed profile.

If you use those services, feel free to friend me on them. If you’re just curious, don’t hesitate to take a peek whenever you like.

The Frog in Boiling Water: Don’t Complain, Do Something I think the entire “frog in boiling water” analogy is perfect for the personal finance situation many people find themselves in. The environment is getting dangerous, but they’re completely oblivious to it. (@ saving advice)

The Best Book I’ve Ever Read About Making Change Stick I love to highlight posts that introduce me to new books I’ve never even heard of before. This certainly sounds like a good one. (@ wise bread)

The Serenity Prayer, and How It Applies to Your Finances The message behind the serenity prayer is powerful, even if you don’t believe in God. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. (@ saving for serenity)

You Don’t Have to Be the Best I know some people who are driven to be “the best” in every aspect of their life. Usually, they’re either incredibly stressed or things eventually fall completely apart. Instead of being “the best” at everything, choose one or two things and be “good enough” at the rest. (@ unclutterer)

Your Home Never Was an Investment I will never get as much out of my house as I put into it. The best I can hope for is that the time and money aren’t too much of a loss. (@ free money finance)