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

I’ve always been interested in the areas where spirituality and personal finance meet. Blogs like ChristianPF and people like Dave Ramsey who heavily tie their faith into their personal finance message bring a completely different flavor to the table, one tinged with a sense that personal fiance success is a method of getting more deeply in touch with one’s spiritual side and that there is a faith-based calling to better money management.

It’s Not About the Money by Brent Kessel takes another angle on the tension between money management and spirituality. Kessel is a Zen buddhist who practices yoga and spends much of his time seeking spiritual enlightenment. His argument is that in order to find spiritual abundance, one must be free as possible from the shackles of personal finance, and that requires good money behaviors and money management.

Throughout the book, Kessel ties together the principles of Zen buddhism and the principles of personal finance, making a great case for how the two walk hand in hand towards a life of true abundance.

Let’s dig in.

You Will Never Have Enough
Our nature, as humans, is to want more. We’re always looking ahead to the next journey, the next goal, the next desire. We always have a concern of some kind in our hearts and we’re always headed towards something. You’ll never have enough.

That seems to run contrary to most personal finance advice, which encourages you to figure out what “enough” is in your own life. Yet, on many levels, I think Kessel is quite accurate with this assessment. There’s always some new journey to take on, some hill to climb.

Our real challenge in life is not eliminating that desire for more, but figuring out what goals we have. What are we really striving for? What provides us with the most thorough joy? Those are the directions we should be striving for – it’s fine to strive for more in an area where you’re thoroughly and deeply passionate and engaged.

The Unconscious Wins Every Time
We all have a story about ourselves in our mind that determines what we think we deserve. That sense of what we think we deserve drives how we manage our money. If we believe we truly deserve more than we have, we tend to spend more to acquire it. Advertising and social cues often prey on that knowledge, doing everything they can to make us believe that we deserve more than we have and this product or this upgrade is what we deserve.

It’s challenging to rewrite that story. It requires a lot of careful introspection and thought about who we really are and what we want from life. From this perspective, it seems clear to me that part of the impetus for our financial turnaround was my impetus to change my story from “successful young professional” to “good parent.” That alteration shifted my goals and priorities significantly and enabled me to make some serious changes to how we spent money.

Throughout the middle third of the book, Kessel looks at eight different financial archetypes. These archetypes describe the positive and negative traits of a particular mindset. Kessel notes, of course, that every person has some combination of these archetypes, and some mix better for financial success than others. Whatever the story is we’ve written for ourselves in life, it requires that we adopt some combination of these archetypes to make that story happen.

The Guardian
The first archetype is the guardian. Kessel identifies the guardian as being alert and watchful, wishing to protect something. The guardian is often full of worry and anxiety, but is prudent and always aware of threats to whatever he or she is guarding.

I have a lot of the guardian within me. At one time, I zealously guarded my career. Now, I’m more focused on guarding my children – I now see my career as part of guarding my children. That shift in perspective of how I view my career was a big part of why I made the leap to being a full time writer. I made less money, but my time was much, much more flexible than before, which made it easier for me to be a better guardian for my children.

The Pleasure Seeker
The pleasure seeker puts a huge priority on pleasure in the here and now. They want to have fun and enjoy life now and not worry much at all about tomorrow. Pleasure seekers tend to be hedonistic and impulsive, but they also tend to have a high level of enjoyment of what they’re doing.

Over time, my sense of pleasure seeking has gone down a bit. I’m no longer as concerned with maximizing my enjoyment in the here and now. I’m much happier engaging in things that fulfill my other roles in life. For example, I used to go out almost every night and have fun with friends. Now, I rarely do that – I often have much more fun at home with the simpler pleasures in life.

The Idealist
The idealist believes heavily in creativity, compassion, social justice, and spiritual growth. They tend to believe that their efforts really can change the world – and for the better. Unfortunately, because of their idealism and the crooked nature of the world, idealists tend to often be very wary of others, particularly those they see as obstacles to a better world. Idealists tend to have a difficult time with trust and are often averse to the suggestions of others. However, they’re also often compassionate and have grand visions.

Over time, my idealism has gone up. After all, I went from working as a cog in a huge organization involved with projects that tangentially were helpful to the world to working solo on a website with the goal of helping others with their money problems. I believe that what I do does help a lot of people, but I sometimes fall into that “no compromise” trap that idealists tend to fall into.

The Saver
A saver is always looking for security and abundance. They believe this security and abundance can be found through the careful accumulation of financial assets. Quite often, this means that they forsake spending money at all in order to save more and more. They’re hoarders and penny-pinchers. However, they often are self-sufficient and they usually have more than enough to ride through any crises, which makes them very stable.

I’ve never been a saver unless I can clearly see how it matches a goal of mine. Right now, the heavy guardian in me forces me to see the benefit in saving, so my tendency to be a saver has definitely grown over the past few years.

The Star
A star’s self-worth is rooted in what others think of him or her. They’ll save if it’ll make others think more of them. They’ll spend if it’ll make others think more of them. They’ll give money away if it’ll improve how others think of them. A star strives to be seen as cool or hip or classy, and that often translates into pretentiousness and self-importance. At the same time, the star is often a natural leader – they often ooze leadership skills – and they often do a great job of setting the tone or style of an event.

I’m about as far away from a star as a person can possibly get. I really don’t care much at all what others think of me. I try to get along with others, but I don’t have any need to be a trendsetter or to be seen as cool. I’m just me.

The Innocent
The innocent tends to avoid thinking about money at all. Instead, they rely on good luck and the kindness of others. They just simply believe that over the long run, things will work out for the best. Innocents often are helpless and they tend to avoid financial situations, but they’re often very adaptable to whatever situation comes their way and they have a great deal of hope for the future.

I’m also not an innocent. I’ve never believed that things will just “work out” in the future.

The Caretaker
The caretaker gives and lends money to others. Often, if there’s a person in your family that’s always lending family members money, that person is a caretaker. They’ve got tons of compassion for others and lots of generosity. Unfortunately, they’re also enablers, meaning that their presence often enables the worst behavior in others.

I used to be more of a caretaker, but it was often in conflict with being a guardian, plus I often felt like I was being an enabler. Thus, I’ve pushed this mindset more and more to the background.

The Empire Builder
The empire builder is someone who thrives on power. They want to create something of enduring value, something that will last for a long time, and they’re quite happy to step on others to get there. They want power. Empire builders are usually greedy and seek to dominate others, but they’re also very innovative and decisive.

This is another mindset that I rarely see in myself. I don’t feel the need to build an empire of any kind.

The Middle Way with Money
Obviously, there are good and bad aspects of each of these money archetypes. They each exhibit both bad traits and good traits, and people often mix and match them within themselves.

Some mix poorly. An empire builder and a pleasure seeker together in the same person will throw a knife in your back and twist it without ever thinking twice, but they enjoy life from their perspective and they’ve often got power. These people can be very difficult for others to trust.

On the other hand, a guardian and a caretaker tend to mix well, as they seek to protect things but often choose to do it with prudence. People that others think of as being “steady as a rock” often mix a guardian and caretaker mindset inside themselves.

What’s the best thing you can do? Work to cultivate each of the mindsets a little, so that the good traits can be utilized and the bad traits can be counterbalanced by the good traits of other mindsets.

The Conscious Investor
I felt that this was easily the weakest chapter of the book. Kessel argues here that a successful investor utilizes all eight of the mindsets in various ways to improve their holdings and he makes a good case for each one as a tool to an investor.

The only problem is that the overall investing strategy talked about here is all over the place. It involves simultaneous long term investing and very short term market timing. It involves some “hands off” investing, but also talks about technical analysis.

Rather than presenting a cohesive investing plan, Kessel mostly just describes how the various archetypes can actually be useful for a certain type of investing. The only problem is that the mentalities that succeed at short term investing, if left alone, would result in disaster, as prudence isn’t involved.

As always, the best solution is a good mix of archetypes – that’s true in investing and in life.

The Yoga of Money
Kessel closes the book with a look at money’s role in a broader and more complete life. After all, money is merely a tool to allow you to do what you want to do.

In a nutshell, Kessel argues that no matter what your desires are, you’re served by having money in the bank because your options are much wider open. Of course, for some archetypes (like the pleasure seeker), it’s harder than it is with other archetypes. That’s why a balance is useful – it allows you to find happiness now but also seek happiness later.

Good money management allows you to have your cake and eat it, too.

Is It’s Not About the Money Worth Reading?
It’s Not About the Money is a very powerful book to read if you’re interested in the spiritual side of money, no matter what your faith. Kessel does a very powerful job of connecting the spiritual to the financial through the precepts of Zen buddhism – there’s a lot of thought-provoking material here, the kind of stuff that will leave you thinking deeply about what your role in the world is.

This isn’t a particularly strong book in terms of specific money advice. Instead, it works in the sense that it helps you get your bearings in terms of what you actually want out of life and how it relates to your money. If you’re looking for specific advice and tactics, look elsewhere.

It’s Not About the Money succeeds in making you think. That’s what the best books do.

When I first started becoming interested in cooking, I went through a short period where I watched a lot of programming on Food Network. The idea behind it – in my own mind – is that I could learn about cooking through watching and then I could immediately apply it in the kitchen.

What I found is that I would absorb a few good ideas or techniques, but I would have absolutely no desire to go out in the kitchen and actually employ these new ideas and techniques. Instead, I always had this vague sense that I had somehow already accomplished the cooking effort for the day, so instead I would prepare something incredibly easy and call it good enough.

My only success, in fact, came when I would actually be in the kitchen preparing the meal at the same time as the hosts. I would do this by using the DVR, pausing when I needed to. If I didn’t do that, I usually wouldn’t bother. Not always – there were rare exceptions to this – but usually.

What I found instead is that if I actually wanted to prepare a meal in the kitchen, I was a lot better off reading about the technique and visualizing myself doing it. If I had no idea, I could always watch a YouTube video, but usually a passage from a technique-heavy cookbook like Joy of Cooking and some imagination would do the trick.

I never really thought about this again until recently, when I had a long chat with a guy who has a side business revolving around home repair and remodeling. He related a very similar experience to my own. Whenever he’d catch a show or two of a program like This Old House, his motivation to actually get out and do something went straight downhill.

What do these two experiences have in common? After watching someone else accomplish something, we felt much less compelled to go out and accomplish the same thing ourselves and, often, felt a subtle sense of having actually accomplished something merely by watching someone else do it.

There’s a biological explanation for this: mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are neurons (i.e., pieces of the brain) that fire both when a person acts and when a person observes the same action performed by another. In other words, parts of our brain respond exactly the same when we do something or when we watch someone else do that same exact thing. Like, for example, preparing a meal or watching Paula Deen prepare one, or do a home repair project or watch Bob Vila do that same project.

To put it simply, we often get the same feeling from watching someone else do something that we would get from doing things ourselves.

When you think about it this way, it pops up time and time again in our lives. We feel happy when we read about someone else experiencing happiness and sad when they experience sadness. We feel a sense of accomplishment and joy when the hero overcomes adversity. We feel fear when the monster is sneaking up behind the hero on screen, even though there’s no monster in the room with us.

And, quite often, those emotional rushes are enough to fulfill us, reducing our drive to actually accomplish things.

Let me put it as simply as I can. If you want to succeed, do. If you want to follow, watch.

After a period of watching a lot of Food Network shows, I began to realize that I wasn’t actually becoming a better cook or, frankly, cooking much of anything at all. Instead, I began to read a lot more about cooking, often in the kitchen with the book open in front of me as I mixed something up and threw it in the oven.

The same phenomenon repeated itself when I dug deep into my own personal finance recovery. I would read lots of tips and often feel a strong sense that my finances were already in better shape because I had read it. It was only by continually pushing myself that I was able to actually improve my financial life, not just rely on mirror neurons to give me a sense that it was improving.

Watching and reading about someone else’s success is a great starting point for your own success. But that’s all it is, a starting point. It’s up to you to take the next step and actually do something. Don’t trick yourself into a false sense of accomplishment just because you watched someone else succeed with these tactics.

What are you going to do today?

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 (October 4 – 10, 2008)
How to Read a Stock Chart in Just Five Seconds Looking at a stock chart on a site like Google Finance can be information overload for a person just getting started. This article breaks down the details into a few simple pieces so that you can quickly find the key information that’s actually useful to an individual investor or stock researcher.

Creating a CD Ladder for Your Emergency Fund or Other Savings to Earn a Better, Safe Return Having a large emergency fund can be really useful, but having a large amount of cash just sitting there means it’s not earning as well as it could be. A CD ladder is a way to get some of that money earning a little more without losing access to it. I use CD ladders myself.

The Entrepreneurial Drive (Or Lack Thereof) Some people have the initiative and the interest to dig into entrepreneurship, while others do not. What is the difference between the two, and is it crucial for personal finance success?

A Do-It-Yourself Guide to a Romantic and Highly Frugal Date Night You truly do not need to bust out your wallet while having a romantic date. You also don’t have to spend your time just doing the “same old thing,” either. Instead, follow up on these ideas and you might just find a great date for very little cost.

Ten Things I Wish I’d Done Differently While Buying a House One of the big themes of The Simple Dollar is mining my own failures and figuring out what went wrong, then transforming them into realistic suggestions for others so that they don’t waste their time and/or money making the same mistakes.

Two Years Ago (October 4 – 10, 2007)
How Can A Frugal Person Buy Expensive Items? A Deeper Look At Frugality For me, frugality often means not buying the cheapest item – and sometimes means buying an expensive one. For example, you’re better off buying one good kitchen knife than a whole set of cheap ones.

How To Minimize The Cost (And Maximize The Benefit) Of Eating Out For Business Sometimes, during the course of work, you’re required to eat out with coworkers, business guests, or other people. This can be a real money sink if you’re not careful. Here are some strategies for minimizing that impact without affecting your effectiveness during the meal.

Ten Steps To Financial Success For A Minimum Wage Earner How can you implement good financial planning if you’re earning minimum wage? Here are ten steps that anyone earning a low income can implement to get their financial life in a better place.

Your Money Or Your Life: How Much Is Enough? The Nature Of Fulfillment This is one of my favorite entries from our month-long discussion of the great personal finance book Your Money or Your Life. The idea of fulfillment fascinates me – it is often a lack of fulfillment that convinces people to spend needlessly.

The $21 Food Week: Is It Possible? Is It Healthy? Is it possible to actually eat well while only spending $1 per meal over the course of a week? How much nutrition can you really get for a dollar? And how does that knowledge affect how you actually eat?

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 twelfth 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 twenty-third and twenty-fourth chapters – “Build Your Brand” and “Broadcast Your Brand” – which appear on pages 224 through 245.

What do others think of when they think of you? Do they have any sort of a consistent image? Is the image they come up with a positive one, one that you’re happy to be associated with? Is the image an interesting one?

In marketing-speak, this is your “brand.” In terms of your future – social relationships, career opportunities, and so forth – the better and more interesting your brand is, the better off you are.

It can seem like a strange way to look at things, but it really works. We constantly make snap decisions about who to invite to events, who to call, and so on, and those snap decisions are based on a very simple image of people that we have in our mind – their brand. Quite often, that “brand” is based on simple things, things that the person could easily alter if they so chose.

The question of course becomes what can we do to improve our own brand?

Figure Out What You Want
On page 229, Ferrazzi addresses the big question underneath all of this.

What do you want people to think when they hear or read your name? What product or service can you best provide? Take your skills, combine them with your passions, and find out where in the market, or within your own company, they can best be applied.

The beginning of this whole matter lies in what you want. What do you want other people to think of you? When they hear your name, what would you like to be the first thing or two that pops into their heads?

If you spend a bit of time defining this, the conclusions that you come to will often direct you immediately towards what you should be doing with your time. If you want to be known as good at something, then you better well be good at that thing – and you need to be willing to share what you’re good at. If you want to be known as having a particular character trait, then you’d better have that character trait – and you need to exhibit it clearly to others.

Similarly, if you recognize negative traits in yourself and you don’t want people to identify you for those traits, work on them. If you think people identify you as quiet – and you don’t like it – work on it!

Looking at yourself through the eyes of someone else is a great way to figure out how you really want to present yourself to the world – and brutal honesty when doing it exposes the areas of your life that need work (and there are areas of everyone’s life that need work).

Growing Yourself
Ferrazzi reinforces that ‘grow yourself’ message on page 228:

You can’t do meaningful work that makes a difference unless you’re devoted to learning, growing, and stretching your skills. If you want others to redefine what you do and who you are within organizational boundaries, then you have to be able to redefine yourself. That means going above and beyond what’s called for. That means seeing your resume as a dynamic, changing document every year.

In other words, if you want people to see you differently, you need to start taking real action right now to make that happen. Just wishing for it won’t make it so.

If there’s some aspect of yourself that you’d like others to really notice and identify with you, you need to work on it. You need to polish it. You need to focus on it. You can’t just wish that others would notice your raw talent.

One of my closest friends is a really gifted writer, but she rarely shares what she writes. She keeps it to herself. Thus, when others think of her – both personally and professionally – they don’t think of her as a writer at all. She doesn’t have that reputation.

What can she do to change that? Write. Practice writing. Take every opportunity to get published. Share her successes as a writer by sending links out to her friends showing off her work. Make her personal website all about her writing, and include a link to it in the signature of her email. But it all comes down to one thing – she’s got to practice that writing, improve at it, and start sharing it with the world. Without that, everything else is just a pipe dream.

Be Unique
People remember uniqueness. That’s how you’ll stick in people’s minds. On page 230, Ferrazzi gives an example:

When I was younger, I used to wear bow ties. I felt that it was a signature that people would not quickly forget, and it worked. “You were the guy who spoke at the conference last year wearing the bow tie,” I’d hear over and over again. Over time, I was able to give up that signature, as my message and delivery became my brand.

My unique feature is that I’m very tall and broad shouldered, almost in a “football linebacker” kind of way. People remember me for my size.

For others, it can be trickier. However, there’s usually some way to stand out a bit in a crowd. One of my friends who’s involved in businesses wears a fedora almost everywhere he goes in relation to his work. It makes him appear a bit taller and really stands out visually. Another friend of mine – a personal trainer – has his business card done on what appears to be a piece of an Ace bandage. People remember things like that – you stick in their mind.

When you stick in their mind, you become the person that they recall later on. When they need a personal trainer, they’ll remember the guy who had the business card made out of an Ace bandage. When they think back to the conference, they’ll remember the guy with the enormous hands who gave the talk about money. They’ll remember the guy with the fedora who was astonishingly quick at remembering a large set of names (a little parlor trick he’s mastered). They won’t remember the person that didn’t bother to stand out at all.

Talk to Journalists
One of the easiest ways to get your unique story known is to talk to journalists about it. It’s easier than you think, actually. On page 233:

Journalists do less sleuthing for their stories than you’d imagine. They get a majority of their stories from people that have sought them out, and not the other way around.

This is surprisingly true. I’ve been called out of the blue by reporters who merely went to Google, typed in search terms, and found The Simple Dollar because it matched a story they were interested in.

The reverse is also true. When my first book, 365 Ways to Live Cheap, was about to be released, I attempted to drum up some traditional media about the book. I just simply contacted lots of different publications directly, telling them about the book. I did NOT do a press release – those don’t seem to work when there are people out there issuing them by the hundreds of thousands. Instead, I contacted people directly myself.

It worked. I ended up with a small flood of stories about The Simple Dollar and my book last December. Yes, just because I’m some guy writing a blog about his inability to manage money and his struggle to find a career path.

Once you’ve figured out what you want your professional brand to be (probably a mix of your passions and your personality), look at journalists as one way to spread the message. Maybe you’re a stay at home mom trying to make money selling handmade Norwegian food on the internet (and if you live in central Iowa, let me know what your lefse prices are!). Maybe you’re a government employee who spends his spare time making exquisitely-finished wood flag cases for the parents of deceased soldiers. Maybe you’re wheelchair bound and you’re writing fiction by using transcription software. Whatever it is, you probably have a story that someone would want to share. So send it out there.

Go Small
But where? Many people swing too hard and strike out quickly. On page 242, Ferrazzi offers a clue:

Are you Bill Gates? No. Maybe you’ve developed the antidote for the common cold? No again. Well, the New York Times probably isn’t knocking on your door quite yet. Go local first. Start a database of newspapers and magazines in your area that might be interested in your content. Try college newspapers, the neighborhood newspaper, or the free industry digital newsletter you find in your inbox. You’ll get the fire started and learn how to deal with reporters in the process.

In my area, I’d start with the smaller papers and the free papers. I’d also talk to people running websites that cover issues in central Iowa. If I were running a local side business like the ones I mentioned above, I’d shoot for the independents, not for the Des Moines Register – at least not at first.

Once I was comfortable talking to reporters about what I was doing – and if you’re going to go through stages of nervousness and screw up, you’re way better doing that in front of a reporter from a tiny paper than a big one – then I would move up and try to contact bigger sources. View it as a mix of practice and of ultra-local marketing of your story.

Yes, you’re marketing yourself. For some people, that’s uncomfortable. But if you’re doing something that requires others to be interested, you have to start somewhere. Start telling your story if you want people to start finding you.

Don’t Be Annoying
On page 243, Ferrazzi makes another key point about all of this:

There’s a fine line between marketing yourself properly and becoming annoying. If a pitch of mine gets rejected, I’ll ask what else it needs to make it publishable. Sometimes it will never be right in the editor’s eyes, but other times, you can answer a few more questions or dig deeper.

Sometimes people won’t be interested in what you have to say. That’s fine – just let it drop, or else find a way to re-work it. If you just keep trying again and again to catch a fish with the same old rotten bait, you’re not only wasting your time but you’re learning a bad technique through repetition.

A rejection isn’t a bad thing. It just means that what you’re saying needs some additional work to make it compelling. Many people think that if they tell their story to someone and the person is not interesting, that person is rejecting them. Rarely is that the case – usually, it’s the story that’s being rejected.

Step back and ask yourself what’s interesting about what you’re trying to do. Why would other people care about this? If you were reading about what you’re doing, what would make you want to keep reading and find out more? The better you are at answering that question, the better you’ll be able to explain that very thing to a journalist and the more likely they’ll want to write about your story – and then you both win.

On Wednesday, we’ll tackle the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth chapters – “The Write Stuff” and “Getting Close to Power.”

When I was in college, there was a local independent bookstore – the name completely escapes me now, but I could still almost walk to it blindfolded – not too terribly far from campus. It was a very popular hangout for the heavy reading crowd and the store did all they could to maximize customer loyalty, both with students and people in the broader community. They had book clubs, author signings, frequent buyer programs, and countless other little perks, plus the staff was spectacular at finding books you’ve never heard of that were just perfect for your reading taste.

That store is now out of business.

There was also an independent record store. The owner (and constant checkout clerk) was this burnt-out guy who looked like he’d pretty much seen it all. The store was constantly playing eclectic music of all kinds and had that perfect “independent record store” atmosphere. What made it special was that you could describe your rough musical tastes to the guy, he’d nod, go flip through a few giant stacks of CDs, put something in the store’s audio system, and you’d immediately hear this perfect music that you’d never heard before. Similarly, if you wanted to hear something that he didn’t have an opened copy of, he’d shrug his shoulders, cut open the copy of the CD or record, and play it for you so you could make up your mind if it was worthwhile. If you didn’t want to buy it, he didn’t seem to mind too much. He’d also have artists in his shop regularly – they’d sit in the corner and play acoustic sets and sell and sign their CDs or records.

That store is now out of business.

Another shop I frequented was a gaming and comics shop. They sponsored free events literally every night of the week, allowing people to play the games they sold for free just to enjoy themselves. They had comic artists in the shop constantly and would commission the artists to draw a few pieces, then give the pieces away in a free raffle. The staff at the store would immediately break the shrink wrap on any item you wanted to look at and were endless fonts of information if you were looking for something in particular.

That store is barely surviving.

Why did these stores, with the great customer service they offered, close up shop? To put it simply, they weren’t able to compete with the lower prices offered by big box stores or the internet. Rather than paying full price for a book, people would go to Amazon and get a 25% discount. Rather than paying full price for a CD, people would go to WalMart and get most of their music needs fulfilled for $2 or $3 cheaper. Rather than buying games or comics in the shop, people would go online and order straight from a distributor for a 20% discount.

From the perspective of the individual customer, they’re saving a few bucks and they get what they want in the short run.

In the long run, though, the businesses died not from one big problem, but from a thousand small cuts. Then, the people that got a lot of value from the customer service provided there realized – too late – that those services were gone. The book clubs went away. The free game nights vanished. The recommendations of someone with countless years of music listening experience were gone. The opportunity to actually meet artists and writers face to face went up in smoke. The staff with tons of expertise on the topics you’re interested in vanished.

Instead, we’re left with poorly trained salespeople at big box stores and internet recommendations written by clever marketers.

The real story here isn’t some sort of guilt trip that seeking the bottom dollar has killed main street. That’s not the case at all. I encourage everyone to seek the absolute best value for their dollar that they can find.

But what’s the best value for your dollar? Is it worth it to you to pay $3 more for a book once in a while so that there’s a local place that has author signings? Is it worth it to pay $11 for a CD from a wise old guy who just opened up three new CDs for you to listen to so you could find the right one and will throw in a free Phish bootleg if you ask? Is it worth it to pay MSRP for a graphic novel so that you can meet the artist the next time he’s in town doing a signing?

That’s the type of thing your extra few dollars buys you. For some people, it’s worth it. For other people, it’s not.

But for many people, those who are just seeking the absolute bottom dollar on the item, they’ve never considered whether or not that lowest possible price is actually the best value for their money.

Whenever you’re thinking of purchasing an item, step back and ask yourself what you’re actually buying. Are you just buying an item for personal enjoyment? Or are you supporting something larger that you enjoy and value participating in?

What do I do, honestly? I mix it up. I’m quite happy to pay a little more to buy items from local businesses, but I don’t exclusively shop them, either. I usually try to ask myself if the business is adding extra value to my life beyond the item – and if they’re adding extra value to the community I care about. The more emphatic the “yes,” the more likely I am to support them with my business.

This is a decision we all have to make on our own. There is no right or wrong answer. But we all get to contribute to the final result with how we spend our money.

The answer? Do what you always do. Seek the best value and keep in mind, for you, what the best value really is.

Many weekends – like this upcoming one, for instance – our family is quite busy. We have guests over. We go on family excursions to places like the Science Center of Iowa. We shop for groceries. We go to club meetings. We go to church. We play for hours with the kids. We get caught up on housework – and on our reading. We play a few family games.

Sometimes, I’ll put aside time to prepare a really special meal, but many weekends, we look for ways to get a healthy and inexpensive meal on the table quickly. Even better are meals that are conveniently eaten by guests whenever they arrive.

Our solution, often, is a big pot of soup or a stew. Here are some of the tactics we use to keep guests happy and also tantalize our taste buds with a convenient, tasty, and healthy meal that’s also very inexpensive.

If there’s an opportunity, I’ll make stock during the week. Stock is really easy to make. All you have to do is roast a chicken or a bone-in pot roast in the oven. This just requires a roasting pan – put some salt and pepper on the meat, put it in the pan, put it in the oven at 350 F, and check the temperature after an hour or so and keep it cooking until it’s appropriately heated. Enjoy that meat for supper. Then, take the bones, put them in a crock pot, add a few leftover vegetables and any other vegetables you find tasty, toss in a handful of peppercorns, and turn the crock pot on low before you go to bed. The next morning, just strain off the liquid and save that liquid in a jug, tossing everything else. Voila! You have homemade beef or chicken stock! If you’re a vegetarian and prefer vegetable stock, just do the same thing without the animal bones – put leftover vegetables and any others you like for flavor into a crock pot, cover with water, cook on low overnight, then strain and save the liquid.

In my opinion, stock is the best frugal meal ingredient there is. You turn what would otherwise be thrown away into an incredibly flavored liquid that forms the basis for some absolutely mind-blowing soups that weekend – and all it costs is water, a couple minutes of effort, and maybe a dime or two of electricity.

I also cook extra meat on Thursday night. If I have chicken stock on hand and want to make a chicken-based soup, I’ll make some sort of chicken meal on Thursday night and make plenty of meat so I can have a couple of pounds of leftovers. The same goes for beef – I’ll cook extra of whatever beef we use, whether it’s hamburger, steak, or roast. The same goes for vegetables – if I have vegetable stock, I’ll make a very vegetable heavy meal and save the leftover vegetables from the meal.

On Saturday or Sunday, I’ll prepare the stew or soup in the morning. There are countless soup, stew, chili, gumbo, etc. recipes out there – find one you like and just remember the ingredients. Add the ingredients to the crock pot, then turn it on low and just let it simmer all day long.

Here’s the great part about doing it this way: whenever your activities allow you to eat – or whenever guests arrive – you have a bowl of delicious soup/stew/chili/gumbo waiting for them.

Even better, since you’re utilizing the leftovers and remnants of meals made earlier in the week, the soup is pretty cheap. It’s also incredibly tasty, especially if you utilize a stock that you made earlier in the week.

Can’t wait to get started on doing this? Here are five of my favorite soup/stew/chili/gumbo recipes.

Beef Stew
2 lbs. stew meat, cooked
2 cups beef stock (or water)
1 1/2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 clove garlic (peeled, of course)
1 onion, sliced
4 carrots, sliced
4 celery stalks, sliced
2 tsp. pepper
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. corn starch

Put everything but the corn starch in the crock pot and turn it on low. Sometime in the hour before you expect people to begin eating, add the corn starch and stir it in thoroughly to gently thicken the stew.

Chicken Noodle Soup
2 lbs. chicken, cooked (mix of white and dark meat)
16 to 24 oz. egg noodles, uncooked
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, sliced
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 small potato, diced
Enough chicken stock and water to cover the ingredients – if you don’t have stock, add four chicken bullion cubes

Put it all in the crock pot on low.

White Chili
2 lbs. cooked chicken breast, cubed
2 cans great northern beans, rinsed
1 whole white onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
1 1/2 cups fresh mushrooms, sliced (optional)
1 cup frozen corn (optional)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup white wine
2 chiles (or 1 can mild chiles)
2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. coriander
1 tbsp. ground pepper
3 tbsp. olive oil
1 lime
3 cups chicken stock or water – for every cup of water used, add a bullion cube

As before, combine everything and put it in the crock pot on low.

Chicken Sausage Gumbo
3 lbs cooked chicken
2 cups flour
1 onion, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
6 cups chicken stock or water – for every cup of water used, add a bullion cube
1 lb. andouille sausage, sliced
1 tbsp. salt
1 tbsp. ground pepper
1 tbsp. cayenne pepper

Add these all to the crock pot and turn it on low.

Vegetable Soup
4 cups vegetable stock, chicken stock, or water
2 quarts water
2 bay leaves
3 carrots, sliced
3 celery stalks, sliced
8 garlic cloves, crushed
1 small onion, sliced
1 large red pepper, chopped
1 leek, sliced
5 mushrooms, sliced
1 scallion, sliced
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/8 tsp. salt

Add these all to the crock pot and turn it on low.

Good luck!

Since mid-March, the S&P 500 is up almost 58% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up almost as much. If you opened your retirement savings at the end of the first quarter this year and looked at the numbers with a cringe, it’s likely that if you looked at the numbers right now, you’d feel significantly better.

Why the big rebound? To put it simply, the greater world finally realized that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. The economy didn’t collapse. Instead, we just find ourselves in the middle of – and perhaps moving towards the later stages of – a rather strong recession.

Naturally, as the economy begins to slowly come out of a recession, the stock market goes gangbusters. Companies are beginning to reawaken and slowly increase production, a radically different picture than the massive cost cutting of the past year. Unemployment is somewhat stable – it might go up a little more, but it’s no longer on the rocket ship that it once was.

In short, we’re getting through this and we see sunlight at the end of the tunnel.

What does this mean for you and me, as small individual investors? Does this mean we should convert all of our investments into stocks and ride the rocket ship?

To put it simply, no, it doesn’t.

Hedging your long-term investments on what you think the stock market (or any investment market) is going to do in the short term is called market timing, and it’s never a good idea.

My philosophy is simple, and it’s one that was taught to me by many, many wise investment writers and investment books: unless you’re a day trader or spend a significant amount of time daily studying the stock market, you’re a long term investor, and long term investors have nothing to gain from trying to time the market.

Simply put, the vagaries and complexities and huge sums dealt with on the stock market each and every day, with so much insider information floating around and individuals playing all kinds of manipulative gains, plus the total uncertainty of day-to-day world events (if you recall, for example, 9/11 was wholly unexpected), makes it a very unsafe place for the typical person trying to save for retirement or for another long term goal. Instead, their reward is to simply look at the stock market as a long term place to put their money for a long term investment with a payoff date more than ten years down the road.

It’s all about your goals and your risk tolerance. It has nothing to do with what’s going on today, tomorrow, or next week.

Don’t let yourself be swayed by huge positive returns in the short term – or huge negative returns in the short term, either. Just stay the course with what you’re doing. If you find that the stress of such swings makes you nervous, redirect your future contributions to something with lower risk, like bonds.

Otherwise, just let things ride. Tomorrow might bring a huge unexpected event that we can’t see coming – or that some CEO is keeping under wraps for now. Given time, the stock market will correct itself from that, but over the short term, it’s basically little more than gambling unless you have the time and resources to devote yourself to truly careful study – or you’re investing with a small sliver of your portfolio that’s there solely to play around with.

“Matthew” writes in with a thought-provoking concern:

I’m only 37, but lately I’ve come to the realization that I may be having a mid-life crisis. To even write it down feels stupid and cliche’, but I think it best explains what I’ve been feeling. I don’t want to bore you with the details. How this pertains to you & your site is that over the years I’ve had various goals, such as graduate college, earn my CPA license, get a great job etc. Most of them were achievable within just a few short years. My next goal is to become debt free and I’ve come to the realization that it will take some time for that to happen. Beyond that, the only real goal I have for myself is retirement and that is pretty far down the road. Ultimately those distant goals have been the source of my depression. The feelings of ‘is this all there is’ starts to sink in and then I started disliking going to a job that I love. I spend my thoughts thinking about how things are pulling me in directions I don’t want to go. I’ve recently decided that I need to focus on my goals and create some shorter term goals to help get through my depression and frustration.

I think Matthew hits upon the real problem with long-term goal setting – there’s no immediacy.

Humans are hardwired to focus on the short term. The vast majority of our thoughts are in the present or extreme short term future. We’re thinking about what we’re reading right now. We’re thinking about our to-do list for today. We’re thinking about the birthday party we’ve got planned for next week.

Rarely do our thoughts focus on events more than a few months in the future. These events, for the most part, don’t feel quite real to us. They feel trapped in the mists of time, so we don’t see them clearly – and thus rarely think about them in a concrete fashion.

This gets us back to Michael’s problem. If all of the things we’re looking forward to in life are shrouded in the far-off future, we’re left with little to look forward to in the short term. This, unsurprisingly, leads to unhappiness. We feel aimless. We wonder if this is all there is in life. And sometimes we can become depressed.

The solution, I’ve found, is to keep busy in the short term, both with short term things and with smaller projects that fit in as part of the bigger goals I have in life. Here are some suggestions to chew on.

Keep a full social calendar. Organize your time so that you’re busy with something most evenings instead of sitting at home. A wise old friend of mine used to say that “the devil makes work for idle hands.” I think she meant that the more free time you have, the more time you have to dwell on things and convince yourself of negative thoughts. This has certainly been true in my experience.

In Michael’s case, why not get involved in community organizations that interest you? Many such groups would love to have a CPA as a treasurer for the group and it would allow you to keep busy, meet interesting people, and so on. If this doesn’t fit, seek out groups that revolve around your personal interests. Or, if nothing else, pencil in a weekly dinner party and invite friends to it.

Develop – and accomplish – month-long projects. What would you like to accomplish in the next thirty days? Pick something audacious but not back breaking, yet something that will genuinely improve some aspect of your life. Recently, a friend of mine read the entire Bible in one month and is now following it with the Qu’ran in one month so that she could better comprehend some of the social conflicts between Christianity and Islam. Another friend worked towards being able to do 100 pushups in one straight stretch at the end of the month.

Michael, sit down and make a list of five or so things that, if you accomplished them in the next month, you’d really be proud of and happy with yourself. Choose one or perhaps two of them and focus on them intently. Keep that goal central in your mind throughout the month and put continual effort towards it. At the end of the month, you’ll find you’ve improved your life in some regard. Then do it again. In a larger context, such “thirty day projects” really serve to improve a person over time, albeit in a piecewise fashion. (I’ve got a great post on this coming up soon.)

Seek out smaller projects (one to three months) that fit in the context of your larger goals. For people in Michael’s shoes, they have long term goals in place but the stepping stones to reach them are sometimes unclear. They might know what kinds of things they need to do to get there (spend less! network more!), but making that into something tangible is tricky.

This is a perfect time to stop and ask yourself what sort of building blocks you could have in place that would make reaching that big goal easier. For example, if you’re trying to get a promotion at work, a new certification might be useful – or a serious upgrade in your presentation skills. If you’re trying to save for a big, long term goal, a major project that results in something that will save you significant money can be really worthwhile.

Michael has a long term goal of debt freedom and he likely has a “number” he wants to hit each month in terms of extra debt payments, but that’s not really a project per se.

Instead, he should try something else big and audacious. Michael, why not start a three month project to make your home as energy efficient as possible? Air seal your entire home. Install a programmable thermostat. Check the insulation and install more if it’s recommended. Put all of your home electronics on smart energy strips. Switch all of your light bulbs to CFLs and LEDs. Perhaps even replace your windows, doing them yourself, of course. This is a huge project that involves a lot of work – it’ll eat up a lot of your spare time – but at the end of it, your energy bill will drop by half or more and you’ll likely increase the resale value of your home.

Another project: learn exactly how your car works. Teach yourself how to do every single maintenance task that needs to be done for your car yourself. Not only is it less expensive, but once you know how to do these things, you can do them for pretty much any car you come across. It’s another skill in your belt that’s a direct money saver for you and might be a skill that you can utilize to help friends.

These are just a few examples. There are many more floating around out there.

Find a personal passion or hobby to channel yourself into. What do you enjoy doing in your spare time? Most people can name some things. The lucky among us names one or two big things with a huge smile on their face – those are the people that have found their passions.

Seek out your passion by trying lots of new things. Go to single meetings of lots of different community groups. Try out activities you’ve always wanted to try but never seemed to find the time. Learn how to play a musical instrument. Teach yourself a foreign language and travel to that country. Take up golf – or competitive Scrabble. Learn woodworking. Whatever it is that itches inside of you, give it a shot and see where it takes you. If it fizzles, try something else. But always seek your passions – and when you find them, you’ll know. They’ll flip you upside down and change your life.

Good luck.