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.

Linda Watson submitted this rather simple recipe for potato-peanut curry to the How Low Can You Go? contest, a recipe that intrigued both me and my wife:

1 pound potatoes
1 can (14 oz.) diced tomatoes
1 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons peanut butter
1 teaspoon ground chipotle or cayenne pepper
4 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
2 tablespoons chopped parsley leaves

1. Scrub potatoes. If they are not organic, peel them. If they are, just cut out any bad spots. Dice the potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes.
2. In a medium pot, add the potatoes, tomatoes with the juice, water, and salt. Cover and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then turn heat down to medium low so the mixture just barely boils.
3. In a small microwave-proof bowl, combine the vegetable oil, tahini, peanut butter, and chipotle or cayenne pepper. Put garlic through a garlic press or mince it very fine. Stir the garlic into tahini mixture. Cover bowl and microwave on medium-high for about 2 minutes, until the mixture is fragrant. Stir in the turmeric, then add the tahini mixture to the potato mixture.
4. Simmer for about 10 minutes, until the potatoes are tender. Garnish with chopped parsley.

Tahini is a paste of ground sesame seeds and is far and away the most expensive element of this meal. Honestly, I had never heard of it before I attempted this recipe, but I figured, “Why not be experimental?” The only jar we could find at nearby grocery stores cost almost $7 and we used only a small portion of it, which isn’t exactly a value proposition. Thankfully, we do like this recipe and we intend to make it again.

Here are the ingredients we used:

The preparation of this dish was quite easy. You just simply cooked the potatoes and tomeatoes together with water and salt…

… then combine the other ingredients and microwave them:

Once that’s done, combine everything together and wait until the potatoes are done:

Then serve!

Really, not much commentary needed. We served it with some leftover couscous and some green beans straight out of our garden, simply because they were nutritional sides that were right on hand.

Did we like it? My wife and I really liked the dish – we both ate it hungrily and had seconds. Neither of our young children seemed to like it at all, though.

Our total cost was somewhere near $11, with most of the cost coming directly from the tahini, which you can find in the Asian food section of a well-stocked grocery store. We had enough leftovers for all four of us to eat it as leftovers again for lunch two days later, so it makes plenty.

Changes I Would Make
This recipe was inexpensive and straightforward enough that I wouldn’t modify anything at all.

Having said that, though, people might not want to drop $7 on tahini – understandable for an ingredient used in such small quantities. If you decide to skip it, substitute two more tablespoons of peanut butter for it. The curry will definitely have a stronger peanut flavor, but it’ll be substantially less expensive and still quite delicious.

I would definitely recommend a green vegetable as a side dish with this, however. We found the fresh green beans were a very nice complement.

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.

Whenever I’m in a financially destitute area, I start seeing many of the same things.

I see homes that are creaky, often with paint falling off. I see front yards and back yards full of items left out in the rain to fall apart. I see cars in poor shape, a mixture of rust and lots of hard miles on them. I see overgrown and patchy lawns. I see air conditioning units that sound like they’re about ready to explode, covered in dust and cobwebs.

In short, I see a lot of items that people own that simply have no care given to them at all. Unsurprisingly, these items will have to be replaced sooner than they would with even a little bit of TLC – or else they’re items that were bought completely frivolously, were barely used, and will never be replaced.

A poorly-maintained air conditioner? It sucks down more energy than one that’s well maintained – adding to your energy bill – and it fails quicker – adding to your repair and replacement bills.

A house with paint falling off? It needs repainted and treated or else you open yourself up to additional weathering from the environment, reducing the lifespan and resale value of the house itself.

Items left out in the yard? The sun bleaches them, the rain wears away at them, and they live a very short life. You’ll be buying a new basketball before you know it.

I’m not picking on people who make these lifestyle choices. Instead, I’m drawing a connection between their financial state and the way they treat their stuff. With every item that sits out there and dilapidates, some of their financial resources are simply blowing away. Taken together, those resources provide the opportunity to have the things you dream of.

Take the air conditioner, as just an obvious example. An average air conditioner has a lifespan of fifteen years. If you maintain it well, you can likely stretch that a few more years – let’s say eighteen years. If you do nothing with it, the lifespan will be shorter – say, twelve years.

An average central air unit uses 161 kilowatt hours during an average summer month. A well maintained conditioner, with clear vents, might shave 5% off of that, while an unmaintained unit might add 5% more to that.

Replacing such a unit will cost about $4,000.

So, what’s the total cost over a thirty year period? If you maintain your unit well, you will have replaced it once and be two-thirds of the way towards replacing a second unit – a total unit cost of $6,667. Over thirty summers, you will have used 13,765 kilowatt-hours of energy – at a price of ten cents per kilowatt hour, that’s $1,376.50. Your total cost? $8,043.50.

What about a poorly-maintained unit? You will have replaced your unit twice and be halfway towards a third replacement – a unit cost of $10,000. Over thirty summers, you will have used 15,215 kilowatt-hours of energy – at a price of ten cents per kilowatt hour, that’s $1,512.50. Your total cost $11,512.50.

Spending a few minutes each spring and a few minutes each fall making sure the air conditioning unit is clean and in proper working order saves a family $3,469 over a period of thirty years.

Start carrying that across other expenditures. Your house – the wood, roof, and foundation. Your equipment. Your clothing and shoes. Your vehicles. All of these things have significant savings that come around when you put even a small amount of care into maintenance. Over a decade, you can easily save tens of thousands of dollars by properly maintaining your belongings.

All earned by spending a minute or two here or there taking care of your stuff.

It’s pretty easy to do, actually. You can get started by using a home and auto maintenance checklist and running through it on a regular basis. Most of the home maintenance tasks you do are pretty simple ones – they’re just somewhat numerous and are easy to forget at times.

What you’ll find when you do this is that things run just a bit better. Your air conditioner doesn’t kick on quite as often. Your dryer runs efficiently. Your appliances rarely seem to have problems. Your refrigerator doesn’t run constantly.

All of those little things add up to a bit of energy savings now – and a lot of savings later, when you’re not replacing these expensive items.

You can carry this through to more items in your home as well. Take your shoes, for example. Making sure they’re clean, treating expensive shoes well, and storing them in places where they won’t continually take bumps is a good step towards extending their life. Or your lawnmower – taking the time to occasionally sharpen the blades and check the oil reduces the wear and tear on the engine greatly, saving you money on gas and also on replacing your mower. Or your roof – keep those gutters clean and your roof will take less wear and tear.

It doesn’t take much time to do these things, either. Compare the two minutes here or there spent doing maintenance to the time you’d have to invest buying a new unit early – research, shopping around, and so on – and the time begins to balance out, too.

You can easily expand this philosophy beyond the material. Take care of your relationships. Take care of your work contacts. Take care of your career. Take care of your body.

There are other positive effects, as well. Take the environment, for example. The fewer items you replace, the fewer things that wind up in landfills. The less energy you use, the fewer fossil fuels you burn.

There’s also the positive psychological benefits of taking care of your things. In many ways, it’s akin to taking care of yourself psychologically. You’re doing positive things with your time which fills you with positive feelings all around. You’re improving your things that you value, which by extension improves you.

Adding together all of these benefits, I find it to be essential to take the time to maintain the things you have.

Yesterday, I stumbled across a brilliant presentation on Netflix’s corporate culture, via Jason Kottke’s website. The presentation did a brilliant job of outlining how Netflix has used an atypical corporate culture to build a very successful business. Here’s that presentation:

In fact, successful is an understatement in describing Netflix. Netflix was born in late 1997. Today, it has over ten million customers, brings in $2 billion in revenue a year, and has had their stock value go up 550% since the IPO. Not only that, they have one of the best customer service ratings of any retail corporation in America. They have a lot of happy customers, turn a healthy profit, and do it in some unorthodox ways.

After reading the presentation (and thoroughly enjoying it), what I found is that the presentation was actually loaded with ideas that people can port to their own life to fuel them to great personal, professional, and financial success.

I pulled out the basic framework of the show – the seven aspects of Netflix’s culture – and I’ve highlighted a few principles from each aspect that you can apply in your own life with great success.

Values Are What We Value
Your real values are represented by what you do, not what you say. You can talk big all you want about saving money or making changes in your life, but it’s just talk unless you do something. A resolution or a goal is worthless unless you’re willing to work for it.

Valuable traits include judgment, communication, impact, curiosity, innovation, courage, passion, honesty, and selflessness. What do these things all have in common? Many lead to trusting relationships with other people. And when you have those trusting relationships, they support you over and over again, in direct and indirect ways. Others lead you to discovering new things. New discoveries are where the value comes from in the modern economy. Coming up with useful ideas, implementing them to the extent that you can, and sharing those ideas with others will always increase your personal value.

Actions inconsistent with those values should always be questioned. Always question your own effort in those areas. Can you do better? Similarly, ask yourself if the people around you are also reflecting those values. If they’re not, they’re probably dragging you down and holding you back.

High Performance
Surround yourself with good people. Good people are those that exude good qualities (like the nine traits listed above) and push you to exude those same qualities. Hanging out with selfish people who aren’t curious will encourage you to be selfish and incurious, but hanging out with people who are unselfish and curious will inspire those traits in you.

Merely adequate isn’t good enough. Surrounding yourself with associates and friends who are “kinda okay” isn’t good enough, because they’ll make you “kinda okay.” Strive to surround yourself with people who show off many more good qualities than bad ones. Think about it this way: if a friend or business associate of yours said they were leaving town for good in two months, would you be greatly upset and want them to stay? If the answer is no, they’re holding you back, so why not just move on now?

Hard work is much less important than results. Trying and failing over and over might mean that you should try something else instead. Similarly, acting in ways that drive away and insult other people doesn’t help anyone at all.

Freedom and Responsibility
Be responsible for your own actions and your own mistakes. Being responsible for things means that you’re more valuable to others because that means you take pressure off of them. If you just take care of things, that means others can rely on you – and you’re more valuable to them. This is true in every aspect of life, personal and professional.

Making mistakes is part of getting better. Many people, when they start to see success, start getting more careful. They’re much more afraid to make mistakes. But without mistakes, you can’t get better. You pretty much slot yourself in at the level of success you’re at – you can never be anything more if you spend all your time just avoiding mistakes. This has been a hard one for me to learn and I’m finally really putting it to work by writing about new things and new angles on The Simple Dollar (and it seems that people are really responding to it).

Don’t marry yourself to routines. Routines are very helpful, but they can also be very damaging. A good routine can help you get lots of things done, but bad routines can cost you a lot of money and time. Even more dangerous are routines that start off good but become bad when you and your situation changes, like my coffee shop routine. Always question what you’re doing. Is this worthwhile?

Rapid recovery is always a great model. That means have a big, healthy cash emergency fund as well as a lot of transferable skills, such as communication skills and the values described above. If you have those things in place, it becomes much easier to recover rapidly from whatever happens to you.

Context, Not Control
Think about big, long term goals. Where do you want to be in five years? What would you like to be different in your life? Imagine what you’d like things to be like at that future point. Sketch out the details. Make it as real as possible – and think about it often.

Take those big long-term goals and make smaller goals out of them. Break down those big points into smaller bites. What can you do this week to take yourself closer to that goal? What kind of exercise and diet can you enjoy today to start building better health? Can I cut back on my spending this month to reach my financial goals? What do I need to do this week to get me into that MBA program?

Don’t let the little things get in the way. We all have tons of little things that need to get done in our lives and it’s easy to lose sight of the big goals and the steps you need to take to get there. Those things often don’t return immediate results. What’s important is to ask yourself whether the things you’re doing today will actually matter in five years. Will it build the kind of future you want?

Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled
Choose activities that are helpful in multiple ways. Making better dietary choices is often both a money-saver and helps in the long term with your health. Getting more exercise makes you more productive and energetic in the short term and also helps with your health. Turning off the television exposes you to less advertising (direct and indirect) and frees up time for other activities. Working on transferable skills helps you professionally and personally, now and later. Doing things that are really synergistic in your life are always helpful.

Find friends that also engage in these activities. Find someone to walk with in the evenings. Find someone who’s interested in the same hobby you’re interested in. You can have very different lives, but you’re aligned in one aspect of your life. You can use that to push each other in unexpected ways towards greater success.

Associate with people slightly better than you. If you decide to find a workout buddy, find someone who is in a bit better shape than you (not Michael Phelps, but someone just a bit better). This pushes you to succeed but doesn’t overwhelm you by being completely outclassed.

Pay Top of Market
If a service is truly vital to you, don’t be afraid to support it. If a service is really invaluable to you – you use it every day and you want to keep using it every day – support that service. Sign up for their premium options. Tell your friends about the service. Fill out surveys if they send them your way (and be dead honest with any criticisms you have). Without support, valuable services go away, and if you rely on those services, you’re stuck out in the rain.

If you rely on equipment, make sure that equipment is reliable and efficient. Again, if you find yourself doing certain tasks every day, make sure that equipment is as reliable and efficient as you can make it. If you cook every day using the same pans, make sure those pans are the best you can get. If you work on a computer every day, make sure you’ve got a stable computer with plenty of memory and a big monitor and other peripherals and software that maximize your use. Don’t worry about the equipment in your home that you rarely use – you can go bargain-basement there, since you don’t rely on it. The things that should be quality are the things you really use, because you rely on them.

If someone is valuable to you, let them know. If you have a friend or family member that’s really important to you, don’t hesitate to let them know. Whenever those important people need help, stand up and help as much as you possibly can, without hesitation. Again, if those people are key in your life, you need to show them how valuable they are to you. It’ll do nothing but cement your relationship and make it much more sustainable.

Promotions and Development
Don’t be afraid to move on when you change. Over time, you grow and change as a person. Your passions change. Your interests change. Your skills and abilities change. Your personality changes. If your job doesn’t change, it won’t always be a great match for you. Don’t be afraid of that – be willing to look around for other options when you find yourself changing.

Don’t be afraid to move on when the situation changes. Obviously, many jobs do change. Sometimes, they change with you in a positive direction. At other times, they change away from you. The work you do changes, moving from tasks you enjoy to tasks you loathe. The culture changes, with the people you valued moving on. Again, don’t be afraid of this – it’s a sign that you need to make a change, too.

Never shy back from taking on big challenges. We are often thrown big challenges, things that will push us far outside of our comfort zone into areas that we might not be comfortable at all with. They push our skills and abilities beyond the limit. Those aren’t things to be avoided – those are things to dive into, throwing everything you’ve got at them.

To put it simply, Netflix’s corporate model is a great model for success in life. It’s well worth trying them out, don’t you think?

For many people, junk food is a serious temptation. It helps them feel a sense of comfort. It provides a quick burst of flavor. It helps them de-stress. It provides an energy boost at an opportune moment. In the short term, it’s a big gain.

In the long term, though, it’s a different story. It causes weight gain and other health problems. It can cause a negative body image and make people feel worse about themselves. Those effects cause an overall negative emotional sense, so they turn to the things that comfort them.

Many things in modern life follow that same structure: they’re nice in the short term, but incredibly painful in the long term. Credit card debt – you get what you want in the short term, but you wind up paying a ton of debt over the long term. Diapers – we use the convenient disposables for now, but later we lament filling up landfills with things that will take many, many years to biodegrade. A home mortgage – you get to move into a home, but you make huge interest payments for many years.

Again and again, humans choose to value the short term over the long term. We do it with countless daily actions each day, from the food we eat to the activities we choose to fill our time with. Our focus is on the now, not on the five years from now.

This is natural, though. Throughout the course of human history, humans have spent most of their time living a true hand-to-mouth existence. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors constantly benefitted by keeping their eyes on the immediate prize – the food in their stomach today and this winter, nothing else. Agriculture took many, many millennia to take off, and it’s easy to see why – you have to see some real success at agriculture to see it beating the benefits of picking a bunch of wild berries.

Today, though, we live in a different world. Food will be available tomorrow, but many of us still behave as though it might not be. There are thousands of apartments and rentals in most areas, but we buy a home because it fits our needs better – but our biggest “need” is simply a false sense of stability.

I do this myself all the time.

My focus is always on the short term with The Simple Dollar. I obsess mostly over the posts for the next week or so, without often worrying about anything beyond that. On the occasions when I do focus on the long term (like writing books, writing and preparing downloadables, working on projects with other bloggers, and so on), I usually find that over a longer period, I’m glad I did it.

I often try to put off meals that take a long time to prepare because, in the short term, I don’t want to make that time investment. Over the long haul, though, the great meals I enjoy and remember are often the ones I spend a long time on – the pasta made from scratch, the coq au vin cooked slowly and carefully, and so on.

Some days, I do not want to go exercise at all. It seems like a short term gain to just relax and kick back. I could read a book, after all, instead of going out there, getting out of breath, getting all sweaty, and having my legs feel like lead. If I don’t do it regularly, though, my daily life goes down in quality. I have less energy. I have less motivation to do … well, anything. I gain weight and my body image goes downhill, as does my appearance to others.

Sometimes I’m tempted to go the easy route when with my kids. Why don’t we just play in the backyard instead of loading up and going to a state park? It’s rainy – let’s just watch a movie instead of getting out all of the art supplies. In five years, though, what will have built a stronger bond with my kids? Time spent doing something adventurous and creative with their father, or time spent sitting on the couch or playing on the backyard slide?

In each case, the simple choice in the short term is far from the most enjoyable choice in the long term. However, the pain in the long term from the “easy” choice is far, far worse than the short term disadvantage.

Here’s an interesting exercise to highlight how much the phenomenon impacts your life. Spend a day thinking about what this activity will be worth to you in five years. If you eat that junk food, will the impact on you be positive or negative five years down the road? What about if you eat spinach instead? What will be the impact on you if you buy that DVD five years down the road? What if you put that cash towards your debt instead?

You make the little choices every single day to build your future. The better your choices, the better your life will be.

So, today, eat a little broccoli and save a few pennies. Over the long term, big dividends will be paid out.

This is the eleventh of twelve parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover, where this book on debt reduction is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the twelfth chapter, finishing on page 218. The final entry, covering the thirteenth chapter, will appear on Saturday.

A financial recovery plan reminds me of a well-thought-out video game. The first levels are fairly easy – get a $1,000 emergency fund, build the snowball, and so on. The middle levels get harder – saving big for retirement and college. The final level is very hard – getting completely debt free.

So now we’ve beat the game. The princess is no longer in another castle.

But where do we go next? Anywhere you want.

Three Good Uses for Money
On page 204, Dave argues that there are really only three:

After years of studying, teaching, and even preaching on this subject across America, I can find only three good uses for money. Money is good for FUN. Money is good to INVEST. And money is good to GIVE. Most anything else you find to do with it doesn’t represent good mental and spiritual health on your part.

I agree for the most part with what’s being said here. Pretty much everything worthwhile that one could do with money revolves around fun, investing, or giving – or some combination thereof.

I spent some time asking myself what sorts of things I would do if money were no object. I’d probably give a serious crack at writing a great novel. I’d move out in the country somewhere with a lot of trees and a pasture. I’d probably spend two or three months a year living in another country. I’d consider homeschooling, but not without a lot of research.

In short, I’d do a lot of things that are just extensions of my values. I wouldn’t really become a different person even if I had limitless money.

When Dave says that things you would find to do that aren’t fun, investing, or giving would constitute poor mental or spiritual health, I think what he’s getting at is that some of the spending choices made by people who suddenly have plenty of money go away from the core values that get them there. Stick with what’s really important to you, and you’ll be fine.

Winning
On page 207:

The grown-up inside us likes the INVESTING of money because that is part of what makes you wealthy. Also, the growing dollars are a way of keeping score in our Total Money Makeover game.

I like the idea of keeping score, because I think it’s important no matter where you are in your financial turnaround. I’ve kept careful track of my family’s net worth since 2006 on a monthly basis (I even did it weekly for a while) and I found that watching the progress of it is incredibly motivating.

It’s pretty simple. Each month, I calculate my net worth, adding up all of my debts compared to all of my assets (my assets are the balances of my investment accounts and the tax assessed value of my home, nothing else) and see where I stand compared to previous months. Almost every month, my net worth goes up – it only takes a hit when I do something major, like buying a car.

This is a good sign. Your overall balance of assets and debts should improve every single month unless there is a very big, very significant purchase in the way.

Keeping score is a huge psychological motivator, no matter what you’re doing. Personal finance is no different.

Simple Investing
Many people get obsessed with perfect portfolios and the like – I admit that I find it personally interesting, too. But is it necessary? On page 208:

You can choose to be a little more sophisticated, but until you have over $10 million, I would keep your investing pretty simple. You can clutter your life with a bunch of unnecessary stress by getting into extremely complex investments. I use simple mutual funds and debt-free real estate as my investment mix – very clean, simple investments with some basic tax advantages.

In other words, if you own less than $10 million in investments and things are so complicated you’re using a financial planner, it’s time to simplify. Unless you have a huge bankroll, the advantages of getting too complex are eaten up completely by the complexity itself.

I agree with this, with one caveat: if you actually enjoy managing your investments yourself, by all means, jump into the deep end of the pool. To put it frankly, I enjoy it to a certain extent, but I’m nowhere near as interested in it as I am in other areas of my life. Investments are a tool to get me to where I want to be, in my eyes.

If things are so complicated that you need a financial planner and you’re not exorbitantly rich, you’re paying that planner for a service you don’t really need. You’re far better off learning a little bit about investing and taking care of it yourself using the countless services out there. Don’t pay a salesman to be the middle man – it’s not that hard.

The “Pinnacle Point”
Dave gets really into the concept of the “pinnacle point,” going on about it for several pages. I’ll pick out a money quote, on page 211:

It is hard to describe reaching the “Pinnacle Point” without some emotion. This Baby Step takes us to the point at which your money works harder than you do, the “Pinnacle Point.” It is the instant in time where focused gazelle intensity has reached critical mass, and your money takes on a life of its own.

I’ve had inklings of this feeling here and there. I noticed it most strongly during the handful of months just before we moved from the apartment to our home, when I had very little debt at all and the vast majority of my income was going straight into savings for it. It was amazing watching the savings grow at that rate. I was living my life happily and the money was just racking up.

Over the last two years, with my job change (resulting in a loss of income but an increase in personal happiness), the stock market downturn, and our home mortgage, I’ve lost some of that sense of the “pinnacle point” – and I miss it. I want back there pretty badly at times and I’m currently evaluating my income and other choices to figure out how exactly to get myself back there as efficiently as possible without sacrificing what we have.

I don’t think there is a strict dollar amount that matches up with the “pinnacle point” – it varies a lot between people and situations. I think it happens when you don’t have any debt, have a real, adult income, and aren’t spending most of it – the savings just rolls along.

Giving?
One of the big things I look forward to in the future is more giving. I have some plans for charitable giving and a lot of volunteer work once I reach that “pinnacle point” and I know that my family is safe and my children are protected from whatever may happen to me.

Dave gives several impassioned examples of the personal power of giving, but one sentence on page 215 sums it up:

The givers often report having more fun than the receivers.

The ability to do something that makes a positive change in someone else’s life is incredible. I’ve been able to see that in things I’ve done already in my life, and every time I’ve perhaps received more joy from it than the person receiving the gift.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, try it sometime. Help out someone who really needs it in a pinch. If you hear about someone who is really in trouble, give them $100, no questions asked, and see how they react. Spend a day working for a volunteer project. The impact on you is amazing.

Sure, there are some people out there who don’t see any value in this. Personally, I think I’ll avoid such people.

Do Something
I think there is some danger of becoming a miser if you watch every penny for too long. As Dave says on page 217:

Someone who never has fun with money misses the point. Someone who never invests money will never have any. Someone who never gives is a monkey with his hand in a bottle.

In other words, if you have a lot of money and your bases are all covered, do something with it. If you’re not, what is the point?

I know of a person who lives in what I would describe as shocking poverty. This person lives in a trailer on the verge of falling apart, rarely does anything outside of the home, eats an awful lot of bologna and cheese, and counts every single penny. This person is bitter and unhappy most of the time, wondering why others have fun when this person does not.

That person I mention has over a million dollars in the bank.

What’s the point of having that money if you don’t enjoy your life? Sure, there’s no reason to just throw money out the window, but making your life miserable in exchange for a few more dollars in the bank – particularly when your bases are covered – isn’t a good trade at all.

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

On Saturday, we’ll tackle the thirteenth chapter – Live Like No One Else.

I’ve been a Cubs fan all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this season. The team has been an utter train wreck all season long, massively underperforming and losing boatloads of games they should have won.

Their reward? As August rolls around, they’re right in the mix in their division.

What’s the lesson? Never give up on anything you do. You might be in better shape than you expect.

How to Quit a Job My general rule of thumb: the less drama, the better. The more drama you create on the way out the door, the harder it will be to maintain any connections to that job or the people there, connections that will be valuable in the future. (@ frugal dad)

How to Disaster-Proof Your Home and Finances This is really sound advice for pretty much everyone. (@ the wallet)

Supermarket Psychology (and a Few Insider Tricks) Supermarket psychology refers to the use of psychological tricks to coerce you subtly into buying more than you intend to. (@ bargaineering)

Don’t Depend on Your Job A successful life is one that minimizes risk – and anything you rely on is risk. Your job is a big one – if your life won’t fall apart if you lost your job, you’re in very good shape. (@ productivity501)

Walk, Walk, Walk, Walk, Walk Walking is a free activity that cuts down on transportation costs and health costs. Why not find ways to incorporate more walking in your life? (@ wisebread)

How to Budget for an Irregular Income I actually plan even tighter than J.D. for my irregular income, but I tend to worry more because of my kids. They sometimes drive me almost to paranoia about making sure there’s a steady income. (@ get rich slowly)

$22,000 per Year and a 2 Hour Commute for a Bit of Security At this point, I would hire a nanny. Seriously. (@ clever dude)

Frugality vs. “Big Wins”: Why You Shouldn’t Care About Either I couldn’t help but thinking about “gazelle-like intensity” with this article. (@ man vs. debt)

Killing Email: How and Why I Ditched My Inbox I wish I could do this. The big reason why I don’t is that people are constantly communicating things to me that are extremely private – that they wouldn’t share in a more public fashion. (@ zen habits)

The tenth episode focuses on the challenges of managing money in a relationship. What makes it work? Total length: 11:45

Listen In!

Other options for enjoying The Simple Dollar Podcast include:
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Though I hope you do subscribe using one of the above methods, don’t worry – each episode will be featured in its own post, much like this one, on Tuesday afternoons. The podcast itself may appear earlier than that, however, if you subscribe using one of the above forms, but the notes won’t appear until I post about it here on The Simple Dollar.

Episode Notes
Here are some additional notes that go alongside the comments in the podcast. Approximate times for the corresponding links and notes are listed.

0:00 – The theme song is a snippet of a Camper van Beethoven concert on October 25, 1986, shared via their very open taping policy. Listen to the concert in its entirety.
0:24 – A peek at the early years of our marriage.
1:11 – Smart Couples Finish Rich is a very good book for couples to read.
3:32 – Should a couple combine their finances? I was as unsure then as I am now.
6:01 – Some thoughts on setting goals together in a marriage.
9:42 – Here are some good general tips for a successful marriage.
11:30 – A preview of next week.

One thing I’d like to do in a future episode is have an audio reader’s mailbag. If you have a microphone on your computer and can record an MP3 of a simple, short question you might have on personal finance, careers, pop culture, or anything else you’d like me to answer, record it as an MP3 and send it to me. Keep the total recording under 15 seconds, please. Also, if you use Skype, feel free to ask your question that way – my username is trenttsd.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

I received a long and thoughtful email recently from a reader who had been following The Simple Dollar for a long time. From a very well-meaning perspective, this reader outlined in detail their feelings on several posts I had written recently, outlining how they were simply out of bounds when it came to his faith – and what he perceived to be my faith as well.

I puzzled over exactly how to respond, so I decided to turn my thoughts into a post for all of you to share and comment on.

I’m a Christian, though I don’t talk about it much on The Simple Dollar. I’m more of a believer in faith as a personal struggle and that in terms of evangelism actions speak far louder than words, so I usually refrain from wearing my faith on my sleeve. The Simple Dollar isn’t a place for theological debate.

Having said that, I read a lot of websites with Christian themes and ideas, from theological discussions, atheistic and theistic debates, pastoral and biblical reading blogs, and interfaith talk, to Christian personal development and personal finance sites (like ChristianPF).

Over and over again, I see examples of how people draw upon their personal faith as a guiding principle for their financial growth.

I’ll see a Christian quote the Bible to talk about frugality, where Proverbs 12:27 states that “the lazy man does not roast his game, but the diligent man prizes his possessions.”

I’ll see a Muslim quote the Qur’an in a frugality discussion. Sura 7:31 says, “…wear your beautiful clothing at every time and place of prayer. Eat and drink, but do not waste by excess for Allah does not like those who waste.”

I’ll see a beautiful, deep discussion among thinking Christians attempting to figure out whether the “gospel of prosperity” is vital, quoting things like “He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and he who gives gifts to the rich — both come to poverty” (Proverbs 22:16) and “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2-4) to figure out the right balance between serving others and building personal wealth.

Then I’ll see a Muslim use Imraan 130 (“O ye who believe! Devour not interest, doubled and multiplied; but fear Allah; that ye may prosper.”) in an investment discussion, seeking ways to invest that simply return dividends without interest.

Simply put, faith can be an incredibly powerful and thought-provoking driver for believers in all avenues of life. It can help set personal goals, provide answers for deep questions about giving and sharing their wealth and personal gifts, and push them to build strong relationships with others.

Stepping back even from there, all of us, regardless of our personal religious beliefs, have fundamental moral and philosophical truths in our lives that guide us. One of my oldest friends is a strong atheist who does more charitable work with his time than almost anyone I can think of, driven by a personal credo built by reading lots of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.

As always, though, it’s not that easy.

I see time and time again when people draw upon their faith and personal convictions to drive their life and their finances in a powerful direction. Where things break down is when that personal conversation goes outside of the personal and becomes an expected direction for everyone.

A few months ago, my wife and I stopped by a group of Amish people selling handwoven baskets along the side of the road. I don’t agree with or believe in many of the principles of Amish life, but I do respect some of their conclusions and I definitely respect that they walk the walk of what they profess to believe. It’s hard to fake a horse-drawn carriage.

I was exhausted, so I stayed in the car while my wife and son looked at the baskets. What I do remember as I looked out the window is an Amish boy, about four years old, with a mop of thick blond hair. My son was watching him carefully. The boy would look at my son, then he would peek around the corner of the wagon and grin at me.

I couldn’t help but compare those two little boys in my head. One will be raised in a closely-knit community without any modern conveniences, while the other will have a thoroughly modern childhood. They’ll grow up with different beliefs, different sets of rights and wrongs, and different goals in life.

But the sparkle in both of their eyes told me the truth: they’re both little boys. They’re both people. They’re going to grow up and follow different paths and different faiths and different choices, but in this moment, they’re two little boys, eyeing each other along the side of the road – and, hopefully, both growing a little bit because of the interaction.

I unquestionably don’t agree with some aspects of how this other little boy will be raised, but I can look at that child, see his bright eyes, and see that he’s happy and full of life and vigor. What right do I have to tell them that they’re wrong? Instead, I’d rather sit down and have a cup of tea with that family, ask them how they live, and perhaps come out the other side with new ideas and perspectives.

We’re all on our own journeys and we have countless opportunities to learn from the journeys of others. Where we run into trouble is when we immediately discard someone else’s journey and their ideas and try to substitute our own in their place.

Look around you at the vast number of people, all with different stories to tell. Why not pull up a chair and listen instead of deciding that they’re wrong – and telling them that they are?

The best lessons come from the places where we least expect them, and it’s awfully hard to hear them if you’re doing the talking.