Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal development, personal growth, or career book.

Over the past several months, I’ve reviewed a lot of books about entrepreneurship, building relationships with others, and climbing the career ladder. All of these techniques have one thing in common: they require you to stand up for yourself and be assertive. This is a point that often comes up in the comments for such book reviews and other articles about moving forward in your career or dealing with workplace problems. Either people aren’t assertive enough, they’re ridiculously over-aggressive (which creates conflict), or they switch between the two extremes (passive-aggressiveness).

All three of these elements usually result from a lack of a naturally-developed sense of appropriate assertiveness. Appropriate self-confidence, the ability to express your ideas, the ability to accept criticism without it destroying you personally, the ability to say “no” without guilt, and the ability to stand up for yourself all revolve around being appropriately assertive and, frankly, many people simply don’t have it.

For most of my life, I wasn’t assertive enough at work (I’m usually assertive enough in my personal life, but even there, I’m not always assertive enough). I was scared to death to speak in public. I’d often allow others to walk all over me, often ending in disastrous work situations. I was usually willing to state my ideas, but I would usually fold immediately in the face of criticism of those ideas.

The Assertiveness Workbook by Dr. Randy Paterson takes on the spectrum of assertiveness problems and strives to point people towards an appropriate, mentally healthy level of assertiveness in their lives. Having that appropriate level allows a person to easily stand up for themselves, their ideas, and their goals, enabling them to climb the career ladder and build what they want for themselves. Let’s dig in.

1. What Is Assertiveness?
Assertiveness is largely the realization that you are in control of what you will or will not do, but not in control of what others will or will not do. Passive people tend to not recognize the control of what they themselves do, while aggressive people tend to try to control what everyone does (and passive-aggressive folks alternate between the two in often-confusing ways). Assertiveness simply means sticking up for yourself – your time, your energy, your money, your work, and your ideas. Assertiveness strikes a happy balance between passiveness and aggressiveness, enabling you to control your own destiny without treading on others.

2. Overcoming the Stress Barrier
Stress often pushes us, revealing the nature we fall back on. Do we run away (the passive response)? Do we attack the source of the stress (the aggressive response)? Do we gossip and offer indirect attacks (the passive-aggressive response)? None of these are good solutions to stress. Instead, the best solution is to simply minimize the stress so that we don’t slip into our default biological “flight or fight” response – instead, we deal with it rationally, using a cool head, and often wind up choosing the best solution for the problem (usually, the assertive one). You can minimize your stress by eating well, getting adequate sleep, minimizing your caffeine intake, getting exercise, and trying to live a balanced life that mixes work, personal, and leisure time. You can also utilize quick stress responses that are outside the “fight or flight” dichotomy, like stopping and breathing deeply a few times.

3. Overcoming the Social Barrier
If you attempt to be assertive instead of your normal response to stress (whether it be passive, aggressive, or passive-aggressive), the people around you might not react positively – not because assertiveness is bad, but because they’ve come to expect that you’re passive or aggressive. They might be confused as to how you’re acting and it might make the relationship worse in the short term. In a nutshell, bear with it. Instead of caving and resorting back to your previous behaviors, keep acting assertive. Things may get worse before they get better, but they will get better – for you and for the people around you. Relationship strain is natural and should be expected, but in the end, assertiveness will make you more valuable, not less, and will build stronger relationships. Be patient.

4. Overcoming the Belief Barrier
Many people build up a set of beliefs that reinforce their natural responses. Naturally passive people, for example, believe that assertiveness is selfishness and passivity is the way to be loved and valued – neither of which is actually true. Similarly, naturally aggressive people believe that full honesty is always the best policy and that if they’re not aggressive nothing will happen – neither of which is actually true. Paterson works through a ton of such beliefs in this chapter, evaluating why they’re not generally true and offering techniques for eliminating them from your life.

5. Reality Check
You are in charge of your own behavior, others are in charge of their behavior. That’s really the key point of this entire book. You can’t really control the choices of others, but you can control your own choices. Sure, you can use aggression to strongly influence other’s choices, but there’s a huge cost there – resentment happens whether you see it or not. Similarly, if you’re passive and let others dictate your choices, you become their doormat.

6. On the Launchpad: Preparing for Change
Assertiveness is what you do, not who you are. You may naturally be a passive person, but you can choose to act in ways that are assertive. You may naturally be aggressive, but you can choose to scale back on the aggression towards others. Instead, focus on what you’re doing when you interact with others. Stand up for how you spend your time and energy – and let others make their own choices. You’re going to make some mistakes along the way – that’s fine, just keep trying to find that sweet spot of assertiveness. One great technique is to minimize your communications – focus on making your messages as slim as possible, only communicating the bare assertive essentials.

7. Becoming Visible: Nonverbal Behavior
This chapter comes straight out of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It offers a very long checklist of nonverbal behaviors for you to work on to make your presence felt in a room without dominating others aggressively. Integrating these individual behaviors can be difficult, so Paterson encourages people to practice each behavior for a week, focusing intently on that behavior, until it starts to become at least a little natural. I find that, for me, it takes more than a week of such focus for it to become a natural behavior.

8. Being Present: Giving Your Opinion
Passive people tend to not give their opinion at all, while aggressive people tend to state their opinion in such a way to make it clear that other opinions are wrong – neither one is cool. Instead, focus on actively expressing your opinion, but frame it well. State it from your perspective: “My take is…” or “I enjoyed it…” Don’t criticize other’s views – it’s quite likely that other reasonable people will have their own take that differs from yours. This works in almost any conversation and, when prefaced that way, is almost always welcome. If anyone attacks you for stating what you think – if you make it clear that it’s just your take – they are the ones who will come off as aggressive and rude, not you.

9. Taking the Good: Receiving Positive Feedback
Many people find it hard to accept compliments. They view it as unbalancing the situation and either should be ignored, devalued, or met with a reciprocal compliment. If you feel this way, the best thing you can do is let it go. Accept a compliment with a polite “Thank you” and move on with life, accepting the complement as a positive. Of course, sometimes compliments are given with an ulterior motive, but you cannot honestly know what the motives of others are. Instead, respond positively to the comment in the now and allow other actions and statements to reveal the other person’s true character.

10. Giving Helpful Positive Feedback
The best way to give good positive feedback is to avoid all ulterior motives. Never give a false compliment, nor a backhanded one. You should also try to compliment things that have already happened, like complimenting someone on a lovely dinner after the dinner. Avoid compliments where you’re trying to use the compliment to get something, like complimenting someone on their car when you need it for a ride. The best positive feedback is honest positive feedback that only serves to tell someone else what they’re doing well from your perspective. Anything beyond that begins to spoil the soup.

11. Taking the Valuable: Receiving Negative Feedback
What about negative feedback? Again, if someone offers you negative feedback, your best bet is to always hold back. Accept what they’re saying. Your only response should be for clarification or to explain without offering excuses. Don’t try to change their mind or argue with them – it won’t work and creates more of a scene. Later, reflect on what they’ve said and draw your own conclusions. Quite often, particularly from people with aggression issues, the negative feedback has little to do with you but instead has to do with their own hangups. Careful reflection will reveal whether the feedback is something you need to work on or something to ignore.

12. Constructive, Not Critical: Giving Corrective Feedback
How do you give negative feedback? This is very hard for passive people to do, but there are a few principles that can make negative feedback really helpful. First of all, state what you observed so that they understand the specific element you’re coming from. “Joe, you walked in at 9:15 and the store opens at 9.” Then, make it clear what about that action or statement is problematic. “Being late means that there’s no one to man the register, so others have to take up your slack.” Follow that with a suggestion on how to correct it or move towards some sort of solution. “Let’s go have a talk about why you’re regularly late.” That framework will create corrective feedback that works instead of just tossing off negative feelings.

13. The Assertive “No”
If you cannot say no to someone or something, you’re not in charge of your life. Learning how to say no doesn’t mean you’ve decided to ignore the needs and wants everyone around you. Instead, it’s merely a realization that your needs come first in your life. There are several strategies for saying “no” that really work. First, decide what you’re going to say before you even speak – if you don’t know yet, then don’t answer. Second, if you’re going to say no, be strong about it. Don’t try to soften the “no” or else aggressive folks will see it as practically a “yes.” Don’t apologize and don’t make excuses for the “no” unless you’re actually changing your statement from an earlier promise. Also, many aggressive people will continually keep asking if they want something – if you’ve decided to say “no,” keep saying it and don’t reword it (which is a cue that you’re starting to waffle).

14. Making Requests Without Controlling Others
Another part of balancing assertiveness well without falling into passivity or aggressiveness is to make requests that are clear but aren’t controlling. Paterson breaks such requests into four parts: describe, express, specify, and outcome. Describe simply means to describe the situation as you perceive it to be right now. Express means explaining how you feel about this situation – stick with “I” statements. Specify means identifying clearly (but briefly) what you’d like the other person to do to change the situation. Outcome expresses the results you hope to see if they fulfill the request. Surprisingly, it’s quite easy to condense these four pieces down into a total of just a few sentences, but they’re all needed to make a clear and fair request of others.

15. Countdown to Confrontation
Sometimes, confrontations are unavoidable, particularly when someone is demanding more than is realistic or socially unacceptable. Confrontations are occasionally part of appropriate assertiveness, as long as you prepare for that confrontation in a rational fashion. First, state the issue to yourself and make sure you understand why this is an unresolved problem. Next, figure out the symbolic value – at the core, why is this a problem? Is it a realistic conclusion (“he makes sexist comments and demands ridiculous things of me, so the problem is that he’s sexist”) or unrealistic (“he leaves the toilet seat up so he doesn’t love me”)? Next, figure out what you want to come out of the confrontation – do you want a behavioral change or do you want a person to reflect and make a personal change within themselves? Ask yourself if it’s really you that needs to change, and make sure you’re picking a worthwhile battle here. Then, choose an appropriate place and time and make sure you’re safe during this confrontation (as some aggressive people tend to not react well in such situations).

16. Constructive Confrontation
The biggest key is to focus on relaxing during this. If things get intense, emotions tend to take over and no resolution to the problem can happen. Try to keep your voice even and don’t show off obvious signs of agitation – if you feel that way, take a time out. Focus on making it clear how the problem is negatively affecting you. Don’t focus on “winning” but on making your concerns heard. Don’t bring up old history, either – let sleeping dogs lie and focus on the issue at hand. Avoid absolute statements like “You always…” as they’re usually wrong and send the discussion down a bad path; instead, say that something happens “… more often than I’m comfortable with.” Try to find solutions that are based on common ground, recognizing that both sides have needs. Don’t get angry and if there are periods of silence, just wait them out. Doing these things will make confrontations much more palatable and likely to achieve a result you want and less likely to result in ongoing problems.

Is The Assertiveness Workbook Worth Reading?
To put it simply, if everyone in the workplace actually used the ideas in The Assertiveness Workbook, the workplace would be a wonderful place to be. You’d have a good idea where others stand and people wouldn’t commit to unrealistic things. Confrontations would be handled without disaster and people with good ideas would be unafraid to express them but wouldn’t use them as weapons, either.

Naturally, the first step you can always make in creating such a workplace is to do it yourself – be assertive, not aggressive or passive or (worst of all) passive-aggressive. If you find that you fall into one of the other areas, The Assertiveness Workbook can be really useful in helping you assert yourself without trampling all over others.

One final note: this is closer to a “book” than a typical “workbook.” Though there are a few blanks to fill in throughout the book, most of the suggested thought exercises are better done in another notebook, not in this workbook itself.

A while back, a reader suggested that I watch the 1938 Frank Capra movie You Can’t Take It With You, featuring Lionel Barrymore and Jimmy Stewart. I recently had a chance to sit down and watch the film and it left my mind flooded with thoughts about money and why we really chase it.

The plot of the movie is very straightforward. A businessman falls in love with his secretary and proposes marriage to her. One of the business deals revolves around buying the final unpurchased house in a twelve block area which would allow that whole area to be developed in a different way. The house is, of course, owned by the secretary’s family. That family doesn’t care a whit about money and instead focuses their energies on friendships and enjoying themselves. When the secretary introduces the businessman’s parents (the Kirbys) to her family (the Sycamores), there’s an inevitable culture clash, and eventually the secretary has to choose between the two – and she chooses the friendships and simple pleasures of her family in the end.

One might expect that a personal finance blogger would admire the Kirbys. After all, they’re the ones who carefully invest their money, focus on their careers, and have accumulated serious wealth. Isn’t that what we want here?

In truth, though, I identified much more with the Sycamores. They were far from rich, but they had enough financial stability in their lives that they simply didn’t have to worry that much about money. They didn’t have all of the material trappings, but they had worry-free relationships with each other, deep friendships, the ability to freely laugh, and a full life.

My own life brings this to bear. If my focus were on making as much money as possible, I’d be handling my professional life in a much different fashion. I’d focus on making every post as palatable as possible for social bookmarking sites, with lots of lists and articles that are intentionally written to shock or stand out instead of presenting ideas I really believe in. I’d spend every spare minute following up on every single media request – I’d probably even hire a PR firm to suck up some more attention.

I’d also be spending every evening honing things. Gone would be the lazy evenings playing Agricola with my wife. Gone would be the afternoons chasing my children around the yard. Gone would be the long weekends back in my hometown where I don’t even bother checking my email or anything else.

I’d be a “success,” but would I be successful? For what I want out of life, not really.

I want financial success not for the success, but for the fact that it secures my life with my family and my hobbies and interests and enables me to do work that I enjoy. I want to achieve some degree of wealth not so I can drive a Bentley, but so I can drive a Toyota and not worry at all about tomorrow and can just enjoy the day today without worrying about bills or work responsibilities or anything else.

The financial success I want isn’t the exorbitant riches of the Kirbys. It’s the simple life of the Sycamores, surrounded by the things that make me happy and secure in the knowledge that they’re safe from the world. Give me a quiet little country house with a big garden, not a mansion and a Rolls Royce.

At the end of my days, I’d rather leave my children and grandchildren with a slate of great memories and a great personal character than leave them with a fist full of money. One is a part of you for the rest of your life and is passed down over and over again to the people you love. The other one helps you remodel your kitchen.

You can’t take it with you, after all.

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 30-September 5, 2008)
Creation versus Consumption This is a really interesting way of looking at the world. The more things you do that create and the fewer things you do that consume, the better off you’ll almost always be.

What’s An Appropriate Home Food Budget for a Family of Four? Even though we buy lots of expensive foods (like gruyere cheese and direct-from-local-farm milk and eggs and so on), we still manage to match the USDA’s food spending targets for a family of four.

Why One-Budget-Fits-All Doesn’t Work – And Why It’s Difficult to Compare Spending Between People and Families Everyone has a different living situation and different values. Thus, trying to hit someone else’s budgeting target for how much you should spend in a particular required area (like food or energy) is something of a fool’s errand.

Ten Methods I Use to Keep Productive Wherever I’m At No matter where I’m at, I have the ability to collect and record my thoughts and ideas. The ability to do this has made all the difference in terms of maximizing my work time and my personal time.

Opportunity If opportunity comes knocking in your life, are you prepared to answer the door?

Two Years Ago (August 30-September 5, 2007)
Seven Things I Thought About While Holding My Second Child For The First Time So, yes, you’re reading this post very close to my daughter’s second birthday. In fact, her birthday party is today. She turned out to be everything I hoped for and more.

Five Financial Moves I Made Within Three Days Of The Birth Of My Daughter These are good moves to make whenever you have a child – we’ll basically do the same exact things again if we have a third one.

Is An “Entertainment” Coupon Book Worth It? To put it simply, it’s only worth it if you put it front and center and use it. Start off your entertainment choices by looking at that book. If you don’t, this book gets forgotten and it’s not worth the cost.

What Constitutes An “Emergency” Where One Should Use An Emergency Fund? An “emergency fund” really only works when your spending is fully under control and you’re actively spending significantly less than you earn. If that’s true, then it’s clear – emergencies happen when unexpected expenditures go beyond what you have the ability to pay without tapping your emergency fund. But, without the spending control, it’s a moot point.

Is A Roommate Worth The Financial Benefit? A roommate can be a great way to save money if you’re single, but there are caveats – you have to be able to trust them, and just thinking it isn’t quite enough. This is your money you’re talking about, after all.

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!

This is the second of sixteen parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz’s Never Eat Alone, where this book on building a lifelong community of colleagues, contacts, friends, and mentors is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the third and fourth chapters, “What’s Your Mission?” and “Build It Before You Need It,” which appear on pages 23 through 47.

One of the most fascinating parts (for me) about Never Eat Alone is the connection established between personal relationships and personal goals.

It’s not a connection that many people make. Most people think of goals as something that we define all on our own and work towards on some sort of solitary journey, like John Wayne or Lao-Tzu.

In truth, we’re often heavily dependent on the people around us for success in our goals. We need our family to be on our side. We need other people to provide us with key advice when we need it. We may need others to provide more tangible help, like an opportunity or an interview or a loan.

This human aspect of goal-setting is something I’d not considered at all before reading Never Eat Alone, and this portion of the book really focuses on that idea.

“A Goal Is a Dream With a Deadline”
One of the best summaries I’ve ever heard of what a goal actually is appears on page 25:

The best definition of a “goal” I’ve ever heard came from an extraordinarily successful saleswoman I met at a conference who told me, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” That marvelous definition drives home a very important point. Before you start writing down your goals, you’d better know what your dream is. Otherwise, you might find yourself headed for a destination you never wanted to get to in the first place.

For a long time, I fell into this trap. I’ve always been good at setting short- and medium-term goals, especially in my career, and for a long time, I marched into my previous career using these goals.

At some point, though, I realized that my career march wasn’t in line at all with my biggest passions in life – my family, writing, and learning new things. I had done a great job of figuring out short-term goals for myself, but I didn’t really ask myself if I was walking along a path I really wanted.

I did a great job of keeping my eyes on the sidewalk and putting one foot in front of the other, but I hadn’t really thought about where I’d wind up and whether I wanted to be there.

When I stepped back and thought about it, I realized that the place I wanted to go was a place where I was a full-time writer with enough flexibility to spend time with my family whenever and however I wanted. And although I was proceeding right along a career path, it wasn’t really the path I wanted to be on.

Goals don’t mean much if you’re unhappy with where you’re headed.

Creating a People-Oriented Plan
Ferrazzi argues that the best way to achieve a big goal is to plan carefully for it and recognize that it’ll require the help of others to get there. On page 29:

The [p]lan is separated into three distinct parts: The first part is devoted to the development of the goals that will help you fulfill your mission. The second part is devoted to connecting those goals to the people, places, and things that will help you get the job done. And the third part helps you determine the best way to reach out to the people who will help you accomplish your goals.

Yes, other people are essential to successfully accomplishing your goals. They motivate you. They open doors for you. They offer you advice and help. Ferrazzi’s twist is to focus on people as a big part of your goal planning. And doing that can really transform the way you do things.

Take, for example, my desire to get into better shape. That might seem like a deeply personal goal, but there’s a huge social component to it. I need my wife to be supportive and to be willing to give me the daily hour or two I need to get into shape. I need my kids to be supportive and be open to eating healthier options. I certainly utilize people on websites where I share my exercise data and set shared goals with them.

Try this on for size. Take a big goal you have in mind for your life. Now, start thinking of all of the people you’ll need to help you and be supportive towards you for you to make it. Usually, it’s going to be a lot of people.

Right there, you have a list of relationships you should be focused on shoring up. Because without those people, you won’t reach your own goals.

Specific Goals
Another big part of making goals successful is to make them very specific and very tight. On page 32:

Your goals must be specific. Vague, sweeping goals are too broad to be acted upon. They must be concrete and detailed. Know what steps you’ll take to achieve your goal, the date by which it will be accomplished, and the measurement you’ll use to gauge whether you’ve achieved the goal or not.

It can be really hard to do this with big, nebulous long-term dreams, and thus many people ignore this kind of advice with regards to them.

But there’s a much better way.

Instead of focusing on those huge dreams, break them down. What do you need to do in the next month to get there?

Let’s say you dream of running a marathon, but you’re a couch potato. Saying “I’ll run a marathon someday” won’t get you there. Instead, ask yourself what you can do this week to get there. You need to surround yourself with supporters. You need to get out there and start walking, because that’s the first step. You need to keep track of exactly what you’re doing.

Personal finance goals are the same thing. You need to get your spouse or your parents on the same page with you. You need to start looking at the short term – cutting spending this week and this month and setting up a debt repayment plan now. What are you going to do at the end of the month? Not add any more debt… and make a double or triple payment on one of your debts.

That’s how you do it, and it works with any big goal you have in your life.

Getting It Backwards
Many people put the cart before the horse, putting the “me” part of personal goals ahead of building relationships. Ferrazzi talks about a discussion he had with someone doing this, on page 42:

“Have you started to reach out to potential clients?” I asked.

“No,” he told me. “I’m taking it step by step. My plan is to work my way up in my current company to a point where I can afford to leave. Then I’ll incorporate, get an office, and start searching for my first customers. I don’t want to start meeting with potential clients until I can presnet myself as a credible PR person with my own firm.”

“You’ve got it totally backwards,” I told him. “You’re setting yourself up for failure.”

You have goals in mind right now and you’ll likely have more goals in the future. All of those goals will require people for success – you know that now.

So why not start building those relationships now?

Sure, you might find that some of the relationships you build now might not match up well with you in the future. You completely change careers. You move far away.

But many of those relationships will remain if you’ve put real value into them, and you might just find that those relationships pop up when you need them.

The internet makes the world a smaller and smaller place every single day. I have friends in Africa and Australia that I’ve never met face to face – but if I ever go to the Ivory Coast or to Sydney, they’ll be the first people I get in touch with – and I have no doubt they’ll help me get my feet on the ground. I keep in touch with tons of people from my past, dating all the way back to my close friends in grade school – and we’ve helped each other as adults without ever bumping into each other face to face.

Every time you have a chance to give of yourself to someone else, do it. You’ll be amazed how often those relationships you’ve built will pop up again and again in your life.

Efficiently Doing Ineffective Things
Busywork is often the opponent of building such relationships. On page 44:

Too often, we get caught up efficiently doing ineffective things, focusing solely on the work that will get us through the day. The idea isn’t to find oneself another environment tomorrow – be it a new job or a new economy – but to be constantly creating the environment and community you want for yourself, no matter what may occur.

I certainly fall into this trap. Many days, I’m busy from the moment I get up to the moment I fall in bed. I’ve grown pretty efficient at managing a lot of things in my life – my family, my writing, connecting with readers, and so on. Still, it’s easy to let the “important but not urgent” things fall through the cracks in my life.

Clearly, keeping tabs with old connections (and building new ones) fall into the category of “important but not urgent.” So, I treat it the same way that I do other “important but not urgent” tasks – I make room in my life to do a few of them a day.

In fact, I plan ahead for this. I keep a big list of people I like to keep in contact with and each day, I make an effort to at least look them up and see what they’re up to. Quite often, this will lead me to giving them a call or sending them an email. Sometimes, I can contribute something of use to what they’re doing – offering advice, exposure of their work, a direct helping hand, or making a connection for them.

This type of “touching base” is just a part of my daily routine now – and I’m glad that it is.

Right Here, Right Now
What kinds of things can you do proactively to build new relationships. On page 45, Ferrazzi outlines four options:

Right now, there are countless ways you can begin to create the kind of community that can help further your career. You can: (1) create a company-approved project that will force you to learn new skills and introduce you to new people within your company; (2) take on leadership positions in the hobbies and outside organizations that interest you; (3) join your local alumni club and spend time with people who are doing the jobs you’d like to be doing; (4) enroll in a class at a community college on a subject that relates to either the job you’re doing now or a job you see yourself doing in the future.

These just scratch the surface. If you dig into each one, it’s easy to see tons of options inside of those, and it doesn’t even include online networking possibilities.

I’ll walk through each one of these four and point out some opportunities that might work for you within each one. If you have some great ideas, don’t be afraid to toss them up in the comments.

Create a work project. Many people wait for the opportunity to plop on their plate, but quite often these rewards go to the proactive. Look around. What doesn’t work at work? Are there some ordinary tasks that just annoy everyone? Why not come up with a plan to fix it and ask for permission to make it happen? Estimate the time/money you could save everyone and just pitch it. The worst thing that could happen is that you get told no. The best thing? You make the workplace better for everyone, learn some new skills, and get the profound respect of your boss.

Leadership in hobbies and other organizations. What do you enjoy doing? What personal skills would you really like to build? Are there any groups in the area that revolve around those areas? Find these groups and get involved. Step up to the plate and be a leader. If these groups don’t exist, start one.

Join an alumni club. Facebook and LinkedIn have effectively become online alumni clubs. Dig through people who identify themselves with your schools, with organizations you were involved with, and with places where you’ve worked. Boom – you’ve found a big group of people you have something in common with.

Take a class at a community college. It’s not even so much about the class, it’s about the people. If they’re taking an evening or weekend class, they want to be there, and thus they’re the perfect people to build relationships with.

On Wednesday, we’ll tackle the fifth and sixth chapters – “The Genius of Audacity” and “The Networking Jerk.”

“Let’s play catch, Daddy!”

“Sure!” I said as I put away the final bits of our family’s picnic. Joe picked up the little football and ran out into the grassy field, ball in one hand, with his arms stretched out to the sides, catching the wind as he ran. The late summer sunlight made his hair shine and as he turned around, ready to toss the ball back at me, he had a grin of pure boyish joy on his face.

The family was on a four hour road trip to visit his grandparents and it was time for dinner, so instead of stopping at a restaurant or a fast food place and dropping $20 and a good portion of an hour on a likely-unhealthy meal there, we stopped at a rest stop along the interstate, pulled a pre-packed picnic basket out of the back, enjoyed a healthy hand-prepared meal at the picnic table in the outdoors, then stretched and ran around a bit playing with our kids.

Certainly, the picnic meal was cheaper. Many of the ingredients were leftovers from meals earlier in the week – a couple pieces of roast chicken made into chicken salad sandwiches, carrot sticks from a few leftover carrots, and so on. Our beverages were water bottles, packed before we left from our own faucet.

It was better in other ways, though. Eating in the outdoors on a nice late summer day. Eating immediately instead of waiting for food with impatient and energetic children. Running around in the grass and playing touch football for a bit before loading back in the car. These are aspects of life that you simply can’t get from a restaurant stop.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about frugality over the last few years is that the cheaper option is often the better option regardless of money. When I step back and evaluate some of the experiences I’ve had while digging into frugality, I realize that these were great experiences, never mind the dollars and cents. I spent quality time with my children. I tried many fun new things that I would have never tried otherwise. I learned countless new ideas and skills. And along the way, I grew significantly as a person.

Choosing to be frugal means looking for new ways of doing things – and trying these new ways to see how they work for you. It doesn’t just mean seeking the cheapest way of doing things. Instead, it’s all about maximizing value and always being willing to try new things.

In fact, I’d argue that the opposite of frugality isn’t spending more than you should, but refusing to consider a new way of doing things. The opposite of frugality is being stuck in your ways, refusing to try new things, and criticizing those things that are different than what you expect.

Sure, sometimes those new ways are failures. They don’t work as well as you expect or hope that they will, or they just feel like a waste of time once you’ve tried them. That’s fine – chalk it up to experience.

At times, though, the successes go far, far beyond saving a few dollars. They’re simply a better way of doing things. Packing picnic baskets before long road trips falls into this category, as does making my own laundry detergent. I initially tried these things because they save money, but now? I’d still do things this way even if it didn’t save money because they’re enjoyable in other ways.

My “better way” might not be your better way, but the principle still holds: trying new ways of doing things will always reveal your better way of doing things. You might not get a level of personal enjoyment out of doing things like going on family picnics that I do, but stepping outside your comfort zone on a regular basis and trying new things will always lead you to a better place over time.

Try a new way today – it might save you money and enrich your life. Here’s a good place to start.

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.

Many people argue that the fundamental unit of value in the modern world is the dollar. I disagree – I think the fundamental unit of value in the modern world is the relationship, and income derives from those relationships.

Think about it for a moment. What happens if your relationship with your boss and your coworkers sours? You lose your job – your income goes down. What happens if you build stronger relationships with your boss and your coworkers? Your income goes up – you get raises and promotions and bigger projects.

You can easily carry this over into your personal life, too. Let’s say you’re about to move. If you have a lot of real friends, a few phone calls will get you all the help you need. If you don’t have these relationships, you’ll be shelling out cash for a moving service (a big cost) or doing it yourself (a huge time sink).

This phenomenon pops up in pretty much every aspect of our lives. Food? If you have lots of relationships, you get a lot of dinner invites. Household supplies? If you have a lot of friends, at least one will have a warehouse club membership and will likely split some bulk purchases with you. A leaky roof? If you have a good friend that’s a carpenter and several other friends willing to hammer nails, you can likely get that roof fixed on the cheap. Entertainment? Swap piles of DVDs with your friends.

The list goes on and on.

From this, it’s easy to see that building up a lot of real relationships with people is valuable. What do I mean by a real relationship? I’m referring to one where something of positive value is exchanged on a regular basis – useful advice, a helping hand, loaning of items, an ear to truly listen, and so on. Any relationship worth its salt has a healthy dose of positive exchanges of value with a minimum of negative exchanges (insults, backstabbing, gossip, incorrect advice, being an obstacle).

I confess that for a long time, I didn’t know how to do this well at all. It wasn’t that I thought other people should give me value in exchange for nothing – I just simply didn’t understand the value of such exchanges. I was naturally quiet and it felt to me as though the effort expended in making myself reach out was much more than any value there was in what I might have to offer. In other words, introversion and a lack of self-confidence left me in a state where I didn’t build many relationships.

So how do you build a lot of value-based relationships? Most of the ideas I found on this topic came from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (see my notes on it) and Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz’s Never Eat Alone (see my notes on it). The former helped me with the mechanics of actually communicating with people and helped me to build the courage to talk. The latter helped me figure out how to use those mechanics to build lots of value-based relationships.

Here are seven things to do.

1. Open up a little. If you’re an introvert and prefer to be quiet, the best thing you can do for your life is to work on overcoming that nature. Talk to people. If you find this hard, bone up on techniques for basic conversation. Work on tactics that make you appear more confident, even if you aren’t.

2. Surround yourself with people. Go to where people are and open up. Attend conferences and conventions and meetings. If you hear someone talk who seems interesting, follow up directly with that person. Volunteer to present – it’ll give lots of others a chance to hear you.

3. Host parties. Start having dinner parties and backyard barbecues on a regular basis. Don’t just invite the same old people, either – rotate the people you invite. Try to mix it up, too – don’t just invite the same circles. Mix the circles. This gives you the powerful opportunity to introduce people who may not know each other but may actually have a lot in common. If you don’t know where to start, start with your neighbors and your current friends.

4. Keep in touch. Make a regular habit of keeping in direct contact with people. My technique is simple: I keep a big list of people I want to maintain relationships with and I strive to contact people on that list on a regular basis. I let them know what I’m up to directly and ask what they’re doing.

5. Give of yourself freely. If someone needs help, help. Don’t worry about “payback.” Don’t worry about what you might get out of it. Just help them. If you contact someone and find out they’re stuck on a project, need a job, or need a helping hand in some other way, either provide that help yourself (if you can) or find someone who can provide that help and make the connection.

6. Ask for advice – and share what you get. One thing I’ve found very useful is to treat my circle of friends like something of a help group. When I’m stuck on a big purchase or something like that, I ask a large group of friends for help and suggestions. I then compile all of that, figure out what’s best for me, then take the best of the information and send it back to all of my friends, letting them know what I found out. This is almost universally valuable – people love participating to help a friend, they love getting that info back, and when I mention them, they sometimes make new connections themselves.

7. Show appreciation for help that you get. At some point, you’ll need some direct help from the people you’ve built relationships with (you’d be surprised how often they provide indirect help). When you do ask for that help, be thankful. Thank them for showing up, thank them for whatever help they provide, and do what you can to make their contribution easier – plenty of beverages, food, or anything else you can provide.

Doing these things over and over again will cause you to build a lot of stable, value-based relationships over time. Time and time again, those relationships will come through for you when you need them in your career and in your personal life.

Jennifer writes in:

You often talk about how spending less doesn’t have to make your life miserable. Yet, most of the ideas you give seem miserable to me! What ideas do you have that won’t make my life boring?

Given that everyone’s life is different, it’s hard to point to a list of things that’s guaranteed to not be boring for everyone. For example, I find things like making a batch of laundry detergent to be fun because I can get the kids involved with it, but I recognize that others might not enjoy such things.

So, I made a list of twenty one spending reducing suggestions that I felt either didn’t have any impact at all on quality of life (things you can do once and benefit from for a while) or, if they’re repeatable, are inherently fun.

1. Get rid of stuff you don’t use.
Take a trip through your home and look around for things that you simply don’t use – and do something about it. Collect together things you rarely use and will probably never use again. Sell them off, give them away – just get rid of the clutter.

Why do this? For one, it makes your home less cluttered and more enjoyable. The result of this is that it’s more enjoyable to spend time at home – and to invite people over (see point #6). For another, you can take any money made on the items you’ve sold and apply them to your debts. This reduces your monthly debt payments and helps you get rid of entire debts more quickly.

Both of those come in exchange for just getting rid of stuff you don’t use. Sounds like a good deal to me!

2. Do some basic energy efficiency around your living quarters.
Replace your light bulbs with CFLs and LEDs – each bulb replaced adds up to at least $15-20 in energy savings over the lifetime of the bulb. Install a programmable thermostat to replace your current one, then program it to have the heating and cooling shut off when you’re not at home, saving you the cost of running it. Spend a couple of days air sealing your home, using this really handy guide from the Department of Energy, which can reduce your energy bill by about 20% every month with no additional upkeep work at all (it’s a great weekend project). Turn the temperature on your water heater down to 120 degrees F (or about 50 C).

Each of these tactics are things you can do once and result in a drastically lower energy bill every month thereafter without changing the quality of your life one iota. After all, a 40% lower energy bill each month means a wad of cash you can put towards other goals, like paying down your debts.

3. Unless you’re a heavy cell phone user, switch to a pay-as-you-go phone.
I use Skype for the vast majority of my phone calls (even when I’m out and about). Thus, I use my cell phone less and less, and given that I’m under contract, I’ve made the decision to drop it and go to a pay-as-you-go plan for the few minutes a month I use it.

If you use your cell phone less than a couple hours a month and send and receive infrequent text messages, a pay-as-you-go cell phone can be substantially cheaper than a cell phone plan. Look into some pay-as-you-go plans and see if any fit your usage needs and add up to significant savings over what you already use – in my case, pretty much all of them do, so I’m comparing reviews to see which one offers the best bang (reliability) for the buck.

4. Buy in bulk the staples you use all the time.
Quite often, people march through the store, buying things without careful consideration. They’ll either buy everything at the size that’s the cheapest per unit – even if they rarely use it and much of the item will go to waste – or they just grab the most reasonable size of each item.

The best approach is somewhere in the middle: get the best deal you can without wasting stuff. The best way to do that is to buy items in bulk if you’re sure you’re going to use all of it in reasonable time or before it becomes unusable. Think household supplies – toilet paper, dishwashing detergent, laundry soap, and so on. Everything else, don’t buy it in bulk unless you find yourself buying a smaller (less expensive) version of the item quite often.

Does this mean you should get a membership at a warehouse club? It depends entirely on how much you buy in bulk. It might be worthwhile, though, to share a membership with your best friend (many memberships issue two cards), halving the costs.

Don’t change what you buy. Just do it a little smarter, and you’ll save money without changing your day-to-day life one iota.

5. Get some exercise.
Exercise? How does that save money?

For starters, most exercise is free or at least very inexpensive. Long walks around the neighborhood are free. Jogging is free. Squats are free. Jumping jacks are free. Situps and pushups are free. Even simple weight exercises are really inexpensive – buy some hand weights and that’s all you need. Many simple sports have minimal equipment and have all you need in your neighborhood – soccer just requires a ball, basketball requires just a ball and a hoop (available in many neighborhoods), and parkour requires nothing at all.

Thus, if nothing else, exercise is a way to spend time without cost.

But there’s another benefit. Regular exercise reduces your weight, often not directly, but by raising your metabolism. For most Americans, this is a great thing – it improves your long-term health (reducing your medical costs) and improves your day-to-day energy level. It can also help improve the state of ongoing conditions like diabetes.

Overall, it sounds like a great way to regularly spend an hour, regardless of the financial benefits.

6. Invite some friends over.
Yes, invite a bunch of friends over and revel in the savings!

How does that work, you might ask. Quite often, when friends come over, they devour a meal and snacks and beverages, leaving you footing the bill.

Here’s the thing, though. If you invite some friends over, likely those friends will offer an invite back in the near future, where you can go and hang out and devour food and beverages without cost. Not only that, you’ve built up some friendships that will come through for you time and time again.

But what about that initial cost of inviting friends over? For one thing, you’re at home, which means you’re not paying the high prices of appetizers and meals eaten out. The food is simply cheaper, as are the beverages. Even spread across a lot of people, a simple dinner and beverages won’t break you much more than a meal or two eaten out will.

Even better, you can buy (and cook) the items for the meal in bulk for that purpose. You can stock up on things like “buy one, get one free” on buns or get a large piece of cheese for a homemade pizza at a much lower per-pound rate. Thus, your meal becomes much cheaper, even though you’re covering for a lot of others.

Plus, the entertainment’s really cheap. Bust out the movies or video games you already have. Pop out a board game. Sit out on the deck and enjoy a glass or two of wine with friends. All quite entertaining, all very cheap (or free).

7. Unplug electronic devices you’re not using.
Many plugged-in electronic devices eat up a small amount of energy, even in standby mode. This can seriously add up – if you leave an XBox 360 plugged in in standby mode for a month (using about 0.02 kilowatt hours, according to my measurements), it eats up about 15 kilowatt-hours of energy use, which is about $1.50 (and that doesn’t include the cost of the heat the device blows into your home, which makes cooling less efficient). If you have several such devices that you rarely use, like a coffee pot you only use when guests are over or entertainment devices you don’t use very often or so on, unplugging them can save you a significant amount of money on your energy bill each month. Just unplug ‘em, forget about ‘em, and just plug ‘em back in when you actually need them (of course, if it’s too long, why bother keeping that item at all?).

Obviously, if you’re a regular user of a device or it’s extremely hard to unplug it, it’s not worth it, but if it’s a matter of just reaching a little bit to unplug a device, it’s certainly worthwhile.

8. Use refillable water bottles and keep them in your fridge.
Almost all of us grab quick convenience beverages out of our refrigerator and gulp them down. For some of us, the drink is bottled water – for others, it might be soda or something else. Whatever it is, it’s pretty expensive.

Try this, instead. Keep an eye out for high-quality reusable water bottles – it’s often easy to get them if you participate in lots of community events and other things. As you acquire them, fill them up with water and stick them in the fridge. Then, when you need a drink, grab that reusable bottle and chug down the water.

How does this save money? For starters, tap water is far, far cheaper than pretty much any other beverage you can drink. You’ll be able to refill that bottle dozens of times for a penny – compare that to buying any beverage. For another, water is a lot more healthy than many other beverage options.

What if you’re addicted to soda, or you crave something sweet? Just mix up something tasty in the water bottle. Get a big bottle of lemon juice and put a few drops in the water bottle after you fill it, along with an optional small pinch of sugar, then shake it up. It’s a quick, simple lemonade that costs you maybe a cent or so, and it’s just as convenient as popping open a bottled beverage (and likely healthier, too).

9. Step up to the plate for a cause you’ve always cared about.
Almost all of us are touched in our lives by a cause of some kind – a charity that can really use our help. Perhaps it’s the local food pantry. Maybe it’s the loneliness of senior citizens in retirement homes. It might be keeping the parks and trails in your town clean. Maybe you wish you could help a foundation that fights a disease or promotes public education.

Whatever it is, why not allocate some of your time towards making that thing happen? Why not spend an afternoon a month or so engaged with a cause that really tugs at your heartstrings? Just call up an organization in your area that deals with such charities and ask how you can help one Saturday a month.

How can this save money? First of all, it’s a way to spend an afternoon without spending money. More importantly, though, doing such things helps you to feel better about yourself. It raises self-esteem and naturally makes you more resistant to the influences of others – marketers, for example.

10. Switch to a bank that respects you.
Do you regularly get dinged with fees at your local bank for every little thing? Is there a “maintenance fee” you have to pay? Are you getting no interest at all on your checking account? Or a very low interest rate on your savings?

Start hunting around for a bank that respects you. See what banks are available in your local area – and don’t forget ones that offer full service online, like ING Direct. Find one that doesn’t charge you ridiculous fees, has solid customer service, makes online banking easy and accessible, and offers some interest on checking and solid interest on savings (in my opinion, banks lacking this are essentially charging you another fee).

Switching banks can save you $20 a month and make absolutely no difference at all in your day to day life – or maybe even make it a bit easier, with good online banking or a more useful debit card and ATM network. Sounds like a plan to me.

11. Sign up for the customer rewards programs at the places you already shop.
Most customer rewards programs just result in free stuff. At many grocery stores, they’ll automatically find coupons for you, reducing the cost of your bill with no effort at all for you. At many chain stores, the customer rewards program will result in discount certificates mailed to you – things like $5 off your next purchase – which you can just hold onto until the next time you go there.

Some people hesitate to do this out of privacy or out of laziness. For the privacy concern, just make up a name and start a new email account to collect the emails. If you’re just being lazy, you’re missing out.

So, next time you’re standing in line somewhere that has a rewards program, sign up. It’ll take you a minute or two at most, result in free stuff coming in the mail, and also possibly result in discounts for you right there at the checkout. Awesome deal, all around – you don’t have to change how or where you shop at all.

12. Figure out your most cost-effective grocery store and shop there.
This takes a little bit of up-front work, but the rewards over the long run are really worthwhile. To put it simply, all you need to do is figure out which grocery store available to you has the best prices on the staples you normally buy all the time, things like milk, fruit, eggs, vegetables, fruit, your favorite cereal, and so on.

Here’s what you do. Make a quick list of all of the grocery stores near you where you’d be open to shopping regularly – don’t include stores that are inconvenient or you don’t shop at for other reasons. Whenever you go for a normal “big” grocery trip where you’re picking up most of your staples, go to a different store on your list and save the receipt.

When you’ve gone through all the stores (and figured out any that you won’t shop at because of item selection or other reasons), get out those receipts and compare them. Figure out the items you bought at all of the stores and add up the prices on those items at each store. So, if you bought milk and bread and eggs and cereal and cheese and sauerkraut at each stop, get the price for these items from each receipt and add up the total for each store.

The cheapest store is where you should shop regularly, and by shopping there, you’re naturally spending less on your food bill. Just make that store part of your routine and buy the stuff you normally would and you’ll be spending less money each week – no change except for the money you save.

13. Check your cupboards and fridge before you hit the grocery store.
You know you need milk and something for dinner the next few nights, so you decide to hit the grocery store on your way home from work.

Stop.

Before you go to work that morning, spend a minute glancing in the fridge to see what you have. Then make a quick list of the things that are missing – and the things you’d like to have for dinner or have on hand for the next several days.

it’ll take you just a few minutes and it’ll save you money in multiple ways. First, you’re much less likely to realize you’ve forgotten something and have to make another trip to the store. That quick list will save you time and money by not sending you back to the store. Second, having a list to focus on means you’ll buy less random things at the store. That makes your bill at the end of the trip lower than it would be otherwise.

That little list, prepared in just a couple minutes before you split for work, will save you money and is likely to save you time as well without influencing your buying choices one whit.

14. Whenever you make supper, if it’s reasonable, make twice as much and freeze the extras.
Or three times as much. Or more.

If you’re cooking a pound of loose ground beef, cook three pounds of it and put the extra two pounds into two separate one pound freezer containers. If you’re making a casserole, make two of them and freeze the second one at some appropriate point in the preparation. If you’re preparing vegetables, chop up some extras and put them away for soups or stews in the future.

The possibilities are endless.

Doing this saves money and time. In the here and now, it only adds a small sliver of time to your preparation (and even that’s arguable, considering you’re only picking up the item once at the store instead of two or three times), but later on, preparing a second meal just got a lot shorter. Even better, though, is that you can buy items in larger quantities, often grabbing savings, and having a very easy to prepare meal at home means you’re much more likely to do just that, meaning you’re not ordering takeout or delivery and instead eating a lot cheaper.

You don’t have to change a bit about what you eat – instead, you just make it a bit quicker and a bit cheaper, too.

15. If you’re married, talk to your partner about where you want to be in five years.
Sure, this seems like a good relationship tactic. After all, it’s always useful to make sure you’re on the same page.

However, doing this regularly has another significant impact: it helps both partners to set goals together that they’re both committed to. During such a conversation, people tend to find the things they have in common, the desires that they share. When those desires become clear, quite often the conversation and thoughts move towards how to actually make them happen.

Making those dreams happen usually revolves around better financial control – but you’re not in this alone. Your partner will be supporting you to some degree, ideally to a strong degree. You’re in this together, and you’re working toward something you both want. That makes difficult choices quite a bit easier, as you have a partner that understands what you’re doing and encourages it.

16. On a lazy afternoon, do a maintenance run.
Spending a lazy afternoon at home? Why not spend it doing a maintenance run?

What’s a maintenance run? Basically, you just spend a few hours going around to all of the major appliances and equipment in your home (including your car) and doing the little maintenance tasks that need to be done to keep them running well. Here’s a big checklist of such activities.

For starters, it’s a free way to spend an afternoon, since most maintenance just costs you a bit of time. The big benefit here, though, is that by doing this maintenance, you’ve made things last longer and made them run more efficiently. Cleaning the coils on your fridge makes it run a bit quieter and with greater efficiency and a greater lifespan. Emptying out your hot water heater (and getting rid of the sediment that comes out) means it’ll run more efficiently and longer. And so on.

You can get lots of these tasks done in a lazy afternoon. Suddenly, your home is a bit quieter, a bit more energy efficient, and the equipment there is bound to last a lot longer, too.

You can pretty much do this whenever it fits. It’s a great way to fill a lazy afternoon, but there’s no need to give up any sort of activity for it. Keep living your life as it is and just do this some afternoon when there’s nothing else going on.

17. Shop for Christmas supplies on December 28.
Most people buy all their Christmas supplies – wrapping paper, cards, and the like – in the month before Christmas, paying prices like $5 for a roll of paper. A much better approach is to buy it on December 28 or so, where you can get that same roll for $0.50.

What do you do with it, then? When you take down your Christmas decorations and store them, store the Christmas items you bought along with them. Then, when you pull them out next year, you’ll pull out the cards and paper and bows that you need, already ready to go.

This can be done with lots of events where you regularly spend money, like Mother’s Day or Halloween. Buy the items just after the holiday, then put the items into storage along with other items associated with that day. You can save a huge amount by just shifting a regular shopping trip a few days, not by doing anything else differently.

18. Keep a notebook on hand.
If you walk through life with even a hint of observance of what’s happening around you, you’ll see all sorts of little opportunities and hear many different ideas. Keep a notebook with you, in your pocket or purse, and when these ideas present themselves, write them down. Perhaps you’ll hear of a tremendous sale on something you need, or a friend will tell you about someone who’d be happy to give you an old desk, perfect for your needs.

A little notebook makes it very easy to jot down the information that you need to remember later to take advantage of it. Then, once a day or once a week, leaf through that notebook and clean up.

You don’t have to do anything different, other than to just slip a notebook and a pen in your pocket. Then, when an opportunity comes your way, jump on board. Write down that coupon code that gets you a free rental. Jot down the location of that sale. And enjoy the benefits.

19. Ask around about your job benefits.
When I was a boy, one day, my father came home from work with seven tickets to Six Flags. Obviously, me, my older brothers, and my cousins were enthusiastic about these, but where did they come from? He got them through a work program that he’d only heard about via his foreman – not a widely advertised one. The tickets came with a huge discount and we enjoyed one of the few vacations of my childhood.

Not too long ago, I had a similar opportunity at my previous job, collecting four free tickets to a local minor league baseball game.

An unusual benefit? Perhaps. But many jobs offer a lot of little benefits that the employees rarely know about or indulge in, from straightforward things like health savings accounts to little things like travel discounts.

On a lazy day at work, why not browse through your employee manual or the HR website? Or perhaps even stop in at the HR office and read the bulletin board? You might discover something really financially useful to you.

20. Consolidate your debts, particularly your student loans.
A great technique for college students: if you have several student loans from different sources out there (as I did after college), do some research into student loan consolidation as well as automatic payment plans. Quite often, loan consolidation can net you a lower interest rate and lower monthly payments. Even if that’s impossible, many student loans offer a plan where if you sign up for an automatic payment plan, they’ll knock off 0.25% of the interest on your loan.

What’s the result? You still have to make your student loan payments, but the amount you pay will be a little bit less, allowing you to keep a little bit more money in your pocket while still chiseling away on your loans.

You may be able to consolidate other debts as well via personal loans or other such mechanisms. Stop by your local credit union and see what they have available for you. Again, a good consolidation simply reduces both your interest rate and your monthly payments, doing nothing more than saving you money.

21. Stop by the library the next time you want to read a book or rent a movie.
Thinking about renting a pile of movies this weekend or curling up with a fresh new book? Hit the library before dropping cash at retailers. Many libraries have extensive DVD collections which you can check out for free, as well as a huge number of books available.

Since switching to using the library heavily for my reading needs, I’ve been able to read a ton of fresh new bestsellers in hardback and watch a lot of interesting films for free. I can request them online from the convenience of my home and just stop in and pick them up within the next day or two, simply stopping in, picking up my packages, using my library card, and walking out without paying a dime.

Sounds like a great way to trim some spending to me.

“You should try it! It’s a great way to save money! You could write about it on The Simple Dollar!” She looked at me with her big round eyes, and I didn’t know what to say.

To put it frankly, the tip seemed weird and I wasn’t going to try it. I was simply polite and agreed with her that it was a great way to save money. I didn’t mention that the idea of actually doing that at home was not something I was going to do.

Some things work well for some people and don’t work well for others.

Here are several examples of what I’m talking about.

Would you be willing to wash Ziploc bags? I won’t wash the small sandwich ones, but I will wash the gallon-sized Ziploc ones. Some people will wash both, but others won’t bother washing either one.

If sausage is on sale for $0.50 a pound, will you buy it? Some people will be all over it, while others will keep on going because of their dietary choices or their religion. For me, I’d be suspicious and would want to examine it before buying it.

A local dairy farm wants to get you on their milk route (yes, this may actually be happening in our area – a milkman!) and the price is surprisingly low, but not quite as low as the local grocery store. Do you sign up or not? A lot of personal values and personal routines jump in here.

You can hire a maid, once a week for four hours, for $56 a week. Is it worth it? It comes down to how much you value your time and how much overtime you’re pushing.

I know one lady who, when she was unemployed, sucked up her pride and went to several of her closest friends and family members, offering her services as a house cleaner. She was hired by many of them, giving her enough money to get by. Many people simply would not have the personal courage to do this type of thing – their personal pride would stand in the way.

What about my pattern of sometimes jotting down notes from books in bookstores? I’m a writer who has books for sale in bookstores, yet I still support this behavior. Why? I think if you write down a useful tip or two from a book, you’re far more likely to buy it – so by all means, pick up my book in a bookstore and jot down a good idea you find there, because if it’s actually useful, you’ll likely come back to it and eventually buy it. Other people see such note-taking as equivalent to stealing, either from the bookstore or from the author – personal ethics come into play.

Almost every money saving tip you read will involve this kind of balance. When you read a list of tips, some of the tips will work for you and some of them simply won’t. That’s because your life is different and unique, yet we all share a lot of experiences. It’s just that the set of experiences you and I share are probably different than the set of experiences you share with others in your life.

With that in mind, take a look at this list of 100 tips for saving money (it’ll open in a new window). I guarantee that there are at least a few tips on that list you’ll find useful – and a few tips you can’t imagine using. Which tips are simply beyond the pale for you? Which ones perfectly match your life? Why? I’m curious – let me know in the comments.

In the end, personal finance is just that – personal. We don’t all do the same things to save money. Sure, we use some of the same tactics, but we use different ones as well. We can only grow by keeping our ears and eyes open for great ideas from unexpected places.

Oh, and because you’re probably curious, here is the tip she offered me: she uses the old cloth diapers (the ones she used thirty years ago on her children) for toilet paper. She puts them in a small waste can in the bathroom, one of those that you can step on at the base to lift the lid, then she washes them once every other week or so. That’s just beyond the pale for me – I can handle dealing with cleaning up after my one year old daughter, but I really don’t want to confront it from anyone else.