One of the biggest personal and professional frustrations that I have (and that a lot of others seem to share) is that there’s never enough time to get to the important things we want to do.

We want to do things like…
+ visit an old relative
+ create a master information document
+ work on a big project
+ make out a will
+ get involved in a community organization
+ get our masters degree in the evenings and weekends

Instead, we fill our time…
+ catching that can’t-miss show on television
+ surfing the web for some obscure piece of trivia
+ answering the phone and chatting with whoever answers
+ dealing with email
+ doing dishes
+ stopping at the grocery store for the third time this week

The first group of tasks are things that I would call “important but not urgent.” These are things that don’t have to be addressed immediately, but still have serious importance and value in our lives.

The second group of tasks are things that I would call “urgent but not important.” These are things that try to grab our attention and focus now but have no real impact on our long-term lives.

It’s easy to let our lives be run by the things that are “urgent but not important.” Most large bureaucracies function in this way. I know that my previous job certainly did at times. We often manage our lives this way – we’ll look around, ask ourselves what needs to be addressed right now, and then focus on dealing with that task just because it’s due today, even if it’s trivial compared to a much more important thing.

We’ll answer the phone several times in an hour even though it means constantly stepping away from a big project.
We’ll watch the big game tonight and call our elderly mother in a few days.
We’ll surf the web for trivia but let our dreams of a masters degree sit idle.

I do this myself, more often than I would like. Since I have two articles “due” on a given day for The Simple Dollar, it’s often easiest to focus wholly on the task that needs to be done today (those two articles) instead of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture of writing really long-lasting useful information. It’s easier to look around the house, see a big mess, and tackle it, even though my kids are quietly clamoring for more attention.

I find that four little things help me keep the “important but not urgent” in the forefront and let the “urgent but not important” things slide.

I’m unafraid to turn off my phone and email. Closing off channels through which the “urgent but not important” tasks can interrupt the “important but not urgent” tasks goes a long way towards maintaining my focus in the right areas. If it’s not important, it can wait. If it truly is important, I’ll know about it as soon as I’m available since I’ll check my messages.

I block off time for long-term projects. I spend part of every day focused on projects with a long-term payoff. For example, for much of July, August, September, and October, I focused heavily on the manuscript of my book. This didn’t help me at all in my day-to-day work, but it did build something with much greater long-term value. (Yes, I’m working on a long-term project now related to The Simple Dollar – no, I’m not ready to announce it.)

I sometimes will utterly drop the unimportant but urgent things if they’re getting in the way. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with little requests. If I focused on nothing but those requests, I’d never get anything done. So, sometimes, I just have to drop those requests. I’ll put off responding to an email – or not even respond at all if there’s not an obvious answer needed. I’ll skip watching the “big game” and catch the highlights later. I’ll actively choose to put my communications devices away.

I’m acutely aware of what’s truly important to me – and what isn’t. One final trick is understanding what’s actually important to me – and how relatively important various things are. Quite often, it’s easy to substitute urgency for importance – but that often leaves you putting out fires and not really accomplishing anything. Sometimes, it’s best to ignore the fires and focus on the important things.

As I often say to my wife, “Don’t worry about it. I’d rather have dirty floors and well-adjusted children than a spotless house and sullen kids.”

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

I’m 30 years old and my wife and I are in the market for a new car. Combined, we earn roughly $150K a year and have about the same in savings. Both of our current cars are paid off, worth about $15K each, and we would be selling one of them. We are also completely debt free other than a mortgage on a rental property. A friend of mine recently starting talking about the Time Value of Money and says that it is better in the long run to take out a loan for the ~$30K car instead of paying cash for it up front. What is best in my situation? Pay cash or take out a loan?
- Jon

Let’s back up a minute to clarify what Jon is talking about. The “time value of money” idea is an argument that money today is worth an equal amount to a higher sum of money tomorrow. So, for example, let’s say you have an account that earns a 5% return. $1,000 in that account today is exactly the same as $1,050 in that account tomorrow.

The friend is basically arguing that your $30,000 in savings will earn more over the next few years than the interest on your car loan. Now, if you can get a 0% interest loan or an extremely low interest loan, that’s probably true. We did this on our own car loan for our Prius and chose to keep the money in the bank because, after four years, we would have more money by just sitting on our savings than we would by paying the entire bill up front.

The problems with this are twofold. One, savings accounts aren’t earning much interest right now, nor are freshly-bought CDs. We were able to do well because we had a lot of our money in longer-term CDs that did carry a higher interest rate. Two, even if it’s close, there’s a psychological risk in keeping the cash because you become tempted to spend it. When you’re in debt without the money in hand to pay it off, that’s a risk (one that a lot of people underestimate).

Unless you can get full 0% financing, I would pay cash for the car. If you can get full 0% financing, it makes sense to me to hold onto the money and just make payments out of that savings account, because you’ll likely earn $100 in interest (or so) for your efforts.

Have you ever felt like just walking away from everything in your life and starting over? The cover story in the December issue of Wired is really making me think about doing it.
- Sarah

I can fully understand the temptation for doing this. Once a person’s life hits a certain threshold of trouble (particularly when it seems that the positives outweigh the negatives), it’s often very tempting to walk away from it.

What I’ve found, though, is that often the negative things are temporary, while the positive things last much longer. Bad jobs, bad relationships, bad debts, and so on can be eliminated with time and effort. Loved ones, on the other hand, are often there for the very long haul.

Instead of running away, try to tackle some of the negative things in your life head-on. You might be surprised at what you can solve.

I am trying to decide which is the better option in terms of what to do with $200 extra dollars a month that I have. Currently, I am putting that extra money towards my mortgage to work on getting it paid off. However, I don’t currently have any type of retirement plan. Would I be better off starting an IRA and putting the extra money towards that? As a note, I am 24 years old.
- jtenman

I would definitely put that extra $200 a month towards retirement. As young as you are, a dollar put away for retirement today will have an enormous value later on.

I would probably encourage you to open a Roth IRA. A Roth IRA lets you put in post-tax money (the money in your paycheck), but if you wait until you’re 59 1/2 to touch the interest, you can withdraw the interest tax-free. Not only that, you can take your contributions back out at any time without penalty.

Thus, if you do make the decision to do something differently in the future, you can access your contributions without penalty, but you don’t lose the interest you’ve accumulated in any way.

I would like to know how you are able to sit in on a class at the university? Do you just go to the class you’d like visit or do you make arrangements with the professor?
- Maranda

For the large lectures (100+ people), I’ve just gone in, sat down, and listened to the lecture. No one has ever said a word to me.

For smaller ones, I have asked the professor whether he/she minded if I sat in on their class. None of them minded in the least, though a few asked that I give up my seat to actual students if there was an overflow.

I think most college professors believe that students are mostly paying the fees to earn the credits and the feedback on their work, but that their lectures are essentially free to everyone. This may not be universally true, but it has been true in my own experience.

Have you ever tried to make your own lotion and chapstick? I find I go through a ton of the stuff during the winter, and good lotion is kind of expensive.
- Chelsea

I’ve never had any success making either one of these items with any level of quality.

There are just simply some things that are difficult to make in a home environment. Truly moisturizing hand lotion is one of them (I believe). I think lip moisturizer would be possible to make, but compared to the cost of just buying a tube of it, I don’t believe it’s worth it.

If I actually use something a lot and it provides a lot of value to my life (as hand lotion seems to add to yours), I don’t mind paying for the good stuff.

I know you keep notes on lots of different areas of your life, but I’m interested in a particular area: Work-related ideas. I take so many notes at work (in meetings, requests from my boss, things to follow up on, etc.) and sometimes, I have ideas for things to pursue that I can’t necessarily work on right now, but want to keep in mind for the future.

Do you keep notes on “big ideas” for your blog, and if so, how do you keep those ideas from getting lost in the day-to-day shuffle? Do you have any suggestions on how to budget “big idea cultivation” into work time?
- Jenny

I keep a “work notebook” in Microsoft OneNote 2007. In that, I have a lot of different things and, yes, one of them is a “big ideas” list. Mostly, these are the large-scale projects that I want to accomplish with The Simple Dollar.

Each day, I set aside two hours to work on such projects. Sometimes, if I’m well ahead on my writing, I’ll set aside full days to work on such projects.

The big challenge for me is separating the “urgent but not important” and putting them aside, something I’m going to write about in detail soon.

One of the problems I’m facing these days in trying to restart my own career is reading overload. This is made worse because my reading speed has decreased over the years, due to a couple of medical issues.

And if you ever feel overwhelmed by the reading load, how do you triage for selecting which things to read?
- Kate

I read at different speeds depending on my purpose. I can read extremely quickly, but it doesn’t provide a whole lot of enjoyment for me. Such speedreading feels like work, not pleasure. So, when I need to absorb something quickly, I can. I can blow through a 300 page book in a couple hours.

When I read for enjoyment, I tend to read much more slowly. It can take me several hours to get through a 300 page book if I’m reading it for personal enrichment.

I never feel overwhelmed by reading. I enjoy reading quite a bit and I take time for it. Sometimes, my allowance for reading time makes me feel overloaded in other areas, though.

Trent does have some trolls as well as some others who verge on trollish behavior. But I’m pretty sure he can tell the difference between a troll and someone who disagrees with him.
- Shevy

Actually, I often can’t tell the difference between a well-meaning person with a somewhat aggressive tone and a clever troll.

The big problem is that many trolls do what is called “concern trolling.” They go onto comment fields or messageboards, try to find some area where they can possibly stir up disagreement, then make an effort to write something that seems like a legitimate concern but is there to do nothing more than to stir people up because they enjoy conflict and disharmony. It happens a lot. Several regular commenters on The Simple Dollar are concern trolls – they only post “concerns” about what I’m writing, then they sit back and try to encourage a feeding frenzy.

The problem with concern trolls is that sometimes their concerns are legitimate – but quite often they’re not. It’s often impossible for me to tell which is which, and I’ve guessed wrong in the past. It’s one of many reasons where I don’t like participating in comments, because I’ll see a concern troll at work and I know it’s a “no win” battle to get involved. Of course, clever concern trolls often demand that I get involved in the discussion and use my non-involvement as “proof” that I’m not paying attention – but why would I want to be involved?

I usually filter out the blatant trolling – the people who issue very personal and specific threats towards me and my children (yes, I get these kinds of things regularly), the foul language, obvious hate speech, name-calling, and so on. It gets much more difficult to filter it out in the grey areas – “concern trolling” and the like.

Hopefully, now you see one of the very un-fun parts of doing The Simple Dollar.

Do you and your wife have any differences of opionion on finances/frugality/etc. where you’ve had to compromise? I know my husband and I both have different things we wish the other was more and less frugal about.
- Chelsea

Yes, we often disagree on some areas. My wife tends to be a big “saver” of things, because she sees that items often have a potential second use and it’s wasteful to throw them out. On the other hand, I’d prefer to be a minimalist and get rid of lots of stuff. We often clash over this and the end result has been days where I do nothing but get rid of things while my wife is at work (with her knowing fully that I’m going to spend the day doing it, of course).

Most of the time, though, we’re in agreement on frugal choices. We both like to eat at home. We both are willing to try generics, but abandon them if they don’t do the job well enough. We both like making homemade solutions – like laundry detergent.

If there’s something we disagree on – for example, if one of us thinks the generic is “good enough” while the other is frustrated – we usually talk it out and reach some sort of compromise. Often, with such situations above, we’ll either buy a higher quality brand or leave one of us responsible for “incidents” with the generics (like a ripped bag).

I have about $5k in self employed income for 2009. Through income earned from my regular job I have already maxed out my Roth IRA and will max out my 401k by the end of the year. Am I eligible to contribute a portion of my self-employed income to a SEP IRA?
- Jo

Yes. The only requirements are that you’re at least 21 years old, that you’ve been involved in that type of self-employment for three years or more, and that you’ve earned more than $500. I’d contact Vanguard (they’re who I use) and get one set up.

I’m wondering, though, why you would want to contribute more toward retirement if you’ve already maxed out a Roth IRA and a 401(k). I guess this would be okay if you’re trying to make up for a lot of lost time, but if you’re in a solid place with your retirement savings, you might want to take that money and use it elsewhere in your life – paying off debts and so on.

One way I would strongly consider investing that $5,000 is in energy efficiency improvements for your home. Installing better windows, improving your insulation, installing a programmable thermostat, and maybe even putting solar panels on your roof are all well within the $5,000 you have. That investment reduces your energy bills, improves the resale value of your home, and might even make you eligible for tax breaks.

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

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

This is a book I wish I had my hands on about two years ago.

I was working at a job I liked, but I also felt that there were several directions in which I was unable to spread my wings. The work I was doing was slowly moving in a less creative direction over time. Plus, I wanted to spend a lot more time with my children and limit my work-related travel to perhaps one trip a year at most.

For me, “the leap” was into a freelance writing career and it seems to have worked out. The Leap, by Rick Smith, is a guide to this very kind of move. You’re in a job that’s stifling you in some way and you want to move in a different direction with your career and/or your life. What can you do without sacrificing the income you need?

Before we get started, I found the advice in this book often paralleled my own experience, but in more than a few places, it dropped some insights that I didn’t think of or didn’t expect. In other words, I would have loved to have this book in my hand about two years ago.

1. “Great Work, You’re Fired”
Sometimes, when you think you’re in an incredibly secure position in a successful job with a great company, it’s all swept out from under you. You’re walloped with a new passion (like writing, for example). Your life context changes – you fall in love or you have children. The economy changes and your job is “downsized.” Your company’s CEO makes some really stupid moves and you’re “downsized.”

These types of changes happen more and more often and yet people are still often gobsmacked by them. Yet we all have the opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade. We just have to start now.

2. The Now Trap: Stuck in the Status Quo
One of the biggest traps we fall into in the workplace is the urgency of now. Most of the time, we’re chasing the things that need to be done immediately, but all of these little “putting out the fire” actions do nothing to actually establish a great career. We’re trapped by the moment in our jobs. Instead, it’s the less urgent things that tend to establish us: completing projects, improving ourselves, and so forth.

Sometimes we need to set aside the “now” and work on the truly important things that are a little less urgent. Commit to some projects or some educational opportunities. Don’t just worry about the “now” – devote some of your time to building your value for the future.

3. Breaking Away: The Three Rules
Smith proposes three “rules” for getting you from where you are to a position where your job doesn’t control your life or your career future. For the most part, these rules revolve around figuring out where your skills and passions overlap and maximizing that area, which he calls your “primary color.”

Of course, these three rules are discussed in detail over the following three chapters.

4. Primary Colors: Tapping the Energy Within
We each have a distinct set of strengths and weaknesses. We also each have areas we’re passionate about and areas we’re less passionate about. Quite often in life, we spend time trying to patch up our weaknesses and trying to improve ourselves in areas we’re not really passionate about. Smith argues that this is a giant mistake.

Instead, we should focus on the areas where our strengths and our passions overlap. So, for example, if we’re awful at public speaking but good at writing, and we’re passionate about fiction but don’t like science, we should avoid public speaking on science topics and instead focus on writing fiction.

5. What Is My Primary Color?
The trick, of course, is figuring out where our skills and passions lie. Smith refers to this as our “primary color.” In essence, this “primary color” is essentially a description of our core personality – what we’re naturally geared toward and skilled at.

Smith offers such an assessment for free at www.primarycolorassessment.com. I took the test myself and came up with 85% curiosity, 35% execution, and 33% leadership, which sounds about right. I prefer to come up with ideas, but will lead or be involved in execution if need be.

Is it useful? I think it is if you spend some time really contemplating the results and asking yourself how they match – or don’t match – what you’re doing.

6. Big, Selfless, and Simple: How Ideas Become Contagious
The most valuable thing in the modern workplace is the idea. People who come up with ideas, share those ideas, and are involved in implementing those ideas are the people who get ahead. Of course, without other people buying into those ideas, it’s very difficult to get your ideas heard and implemented – which means that you need to work on the “stickiness” of your ideas.

Most of this chapter lines up perfectly with the excellent book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath (which I reviewed and loved a while back). In fact, I’d consider it reasonable to simply read the full book than read this chapter, since the ideas are similar and the general concepts are covered (in my opinion) in the book by the Heaths.

7. The Spark Sequence: Stacking the Deck
How can you know if this idea you think would match your passions and skills would actually work out? The best way to find out is by doing it – devoting as much of your time as possible to exploring that junction between your passions and your skills. Practice. Dive into opportunities. Back away from the optional things in your life that are less fulfilling and instead fill your hours with finding that crux between your passions and your skills.

One strong exercise that Smith suggests is simply writing down your idea, then making a list of five or ten questions that, if you knew the answer to them, would make your decisions about that idea much easier. Those questions then become your checklist – strive to answer as many as you can without giving up your current way of life.

8. Aristotle on a Lily Pad: A Perspective on Life-Work Design
Smith closes out the book by calling upon the philosophy of Aristotle to make a simple, yet central, point: the journey is what really matters. As you go along and figure out what you’re passionate about, you might have your eye on the destination, but the journey is where your true lessons will be learned. Your destination will likely change over and over again, but the lessons learned along your journey will stay with you.

Is The Leap Worth Reading?
The Leap is a very solid book for people who are struggling with finding the career they’re meant to have – a position I found myself in not too long ago. It’s incredibly straightforward, yet it provides plenty of food for thought and reflection.

I’ve been reading a lot of career books lately and many of them overlap on a lot of themes: finding your passionas and strengths, focusing on things that build value for you over the long term, building you and not your organization (remembering that a better you will help your organization more). The Leap presents all of these ideas very cohesively and clearly.

It’s a book I wish I had in my hands two years ago.

Quite often, I’m emailed about a subject so frequently that I decide that, instead of just writing the same answer again and again, I should just write an article about it so I can point new emailers to the article. That way, not only will they get my response, but they can get involved in the discussion.

One of the most frequent subjects I’m emailed about is from readers who are fervent believers in the prosperity gospel. To put it simply, the prosperity gospel focuses on the idea that God provides material prosperity for those he favors. The idea goes both ways: materially successful people achieve such success because they’re favored by God and, at the same time, people who are favored by God will eventually be materially successful. In other words, godliness causes material prosperity.

First of all, let me state I’m a Christian. I’m involved with a Lutheran church in my community which does a lot of local charitable good, I’m friends with the pastor there, and I’ve even served on committees there. Regardless of my personal religious beliefs, I’ve seen the very positive work that the church does in the community, providing food and resources for people who genuinely need them.

I also don’t believe in “pushiness” when it comes to people’s personal spiritual beliefs. I don’t expect you to become a Christian and I’m not going to browbeat you with the reasons – and I reasonably expect the same from you. Unless it’s entered into with an air of respect and civility, such debates never go anywhere and this isn’t the place for them.

Many of these readers who email me and argue on behalf of the prosperity gospel argue that, because The Simple Dollar is successful, I must be favored by God and that I should use this evidence as a platform upon which to repeat the prosperity gospel to my readers.

I completely and wholeheartedly disagree with this notion.

First of all, if the prosperity gospel were true, every single person of faith would be showered in material wealth. I know some well-off people of faith. I also know some very poor people of faith. At the same time, I know some very financially poor atheists and some very well-off atheists.

Second of all, it implies a nonsensical quid pro quo. The entire idea of a prosperity gospel is based on an idea of direct reciprocity – if you believe in God, you will directly be given material wealth. This implies that God is some kind of spiritual ATM – deposit some faith and you can withdraw some cash.

This implies a very direct connection between our spiritual choices and the material world. Yet, if that direct connection were true, people of faith would have all the material wealth and people without faith would have none of the material wealth. As I pointed out above, a cursory examination of the world shows this not to be true.

One’s religion can play a very valuable role in helping a person choose to make positive choices that help themselves and help the world. If you use that guidance to genuinely become a better person, to give up negative habits and choose positive ones, you undoubtedly are increasing your opportunties for material wealth. However, it requires positive choices and positive actions from you, and there are many sources that people draw from beyond faith to make those positive choices.

All of the goodness that the world has to offer comes from you and your actions and choices. I do believe that positive rewards come from making choices that are positive not only for you, but for other people. Those are generally the types of actions recommended by the major religions of the world – helping others in need, being honest in your dealings with others, respecting others, and so on. Those will result in positive outcomes over the long haul, but it’s not a direct relationship at all.

Spirituality is never a direct quid pro quo. It provides its own rewards, ones that aren’t of the sparkly kind.

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, two years ago this week, and three years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (November 22-28, 2008)
When a Treat Stops Being a Treat – and How to Get It Back For me, a lot of treats stopped being treats during the later part of my years of overspending. Things that were really great just became routine and boring.

Clutter Is Money Wherever you see clutter, you see money lost, because clutter is the result of having more items than you can practically manage or use.

Ten Fundamental Steps for Online Career Networking Careers are now being built on the internet. Here’s how to harness the tools for yourself.

Is Debt Necessary For Generating Income? Many people – Robert Kiyosaki included – seem to argue that it is. I disagree, and here’s why.

Is It Time to Drop Your Land Line? For me, Skype is more than good enoughh for home telephony.

Two Years Ago (November 22-28, 2007)
Should You Help People Who Won’t Help Themselves? I don’t think that you should. I’m quite willing to offer all the help in the world to people who show initiative to help themselves, but if you’re not willing to bother, neither am I.

How Checklists Help Me With My Personal Finance – And How I Trick Myself Into Making Them Work I use checklists on a daily basis to help me keep track of the things I need to know and the things I need to do.

You Can Become A Millionaire In Just Five Minutes A Day! Here’s exactly how to do it – genuinely use the “ten second rule” thirty times a day. Soon, you’ll be on the fast track to riches!

Twelve Important Things To Talk About When Your Relationship Gets Serious Conversations like this are vital in a relationship. Without it, you’re setting yourself up for strong disagreements when you discover you have different assumptions and goals and are working in opposite directions.

The Tug of War Between Frugality, Hobbies, and an Emergency Fund It’s often amazing how out of whack things can get when we don’t spend the time to figure out what our priorities in life really are. The games people play…

Three Years Ago (November 22-28, 2006)
Money For Nothing: Five Ways To Put Money In Your Pocket With Zero Effort I love methods for saving money that involve little or no upkeep work but constantly provide savings to you.

What Can A Dollar A Day Get You? And An Inspirational Idea This is a brilliant look at the power of compound interest. Plus, I like the idea of spelling it out for someone in this way inside of a birthday card.

Review: Nickel and Dimed My review of this book ticked off some people. I wasn’t particularly seeking personal finance advice when reading it, though. I think it exposes a lot of class biases in America which do directly impact the financial futures of many of us.

PayPerPost, Paris Hilton, and Violating the Trust Between You and Me The Paris Hilton reference somewhat dates this post, but the idea behind it is still 100% true.

Explaining Simple Interest, Compound Interest, APR, and APY This is a succinct overview of different types of interest, which I see confused all the time in even respected personal finance publications.

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!

Yesterday, my four year old son was watching a television program at his grandparents’ home. At our own home, we don’t watch much non-PBS programming at all, so this was one of my son’s first real exposures to advertising.

I came into the room after he had been watching for about forty minutes and started to get his coat on and get him ready to go. He asked to finish watching the show he was watching, so I sat down with him for a few minutes.

At the end of the show, a commercial came on for some toy – I think it was some sort of mechanized hamster. A couple seemingly happy children were playing with them. After about ten seconds, Joe turns to me and says, “Dad, I want one of those” while pointing at the screen.

I turned off the television (since we needed to leave) and asked him why he wanted that toy. He said “Uhhh…” and looked at the screen for a while. Then he said, “I don’t know, daddy.”

A half an hour later, I asked him about it again, just to see what he’d say. He told me flat out that he didn’t want that thing any more. Of course, this was aided by the fact that we had arrived at our destination and were playing with a big box of building blocks.

Immediately after seeing the ad, my son badly wanted that toy. The urgency in his voice was quite impressive. Yet, even a half an hour later, his interest in the toy was nonexistent. (In fact, I just asked him about the toy and he seemed to have no idea what I was talking about.)

His interest in the item was spurred on by the situation of the moment, not by any attribute of the toy. The commercial triggered an emotional wave brought on by the children that were obviously having fun with the toy. Yet, when that emotional wave was gone, he didn’t really want the toy at all.

That’s really the point of marketing, isn’t it? It creates emotional waves. It makes you want something very strongly in the short term. Repeating those emotional waves over and over again can create long term desire out of thin air – the kind of thing that makes you wish you had a Escalade.

If you find yourself wanting something for no real reason – but you can’t shake that desire – do what my son did. Take yourself out of the situation. Turn off the television. Close the magazine. Shut the web browser. Do something that doesn’t have a lot of advertising involved in it. Get in touch with who you are.

You’ll find the desire melting away.

It works for me. It works for my son, too. I’m willing to bet it’ll work for you.

Over the last few months, I’ve given a small pile of presentations related to The Simple Dollar, my upcoming book, and other topics. Along the way, I’ve learned several things about what constitutes a good presentation and what constitutes a failure. Here are the seven key things I’ve learned, which you can take away to make your own presentations better.

1. Lots of words on the screen is bad. If you have a lot of words on the screen, people stop paying attention to what you’re saying and start reading the words on the screen. I suppose this is fine if you don’t want people to pay any attention to you at all, but that’s usually the opposite of the effect you want.

I had this problem with my early presentations, where I loaded down slides with words. As I spoke and looked out over the crowd, I could see a large number of them quite obviously tuning me out and reading the words on the screen. Then, when they were finished and tried to tune back into what I was saying, they had lost the thread and many of them became bored.

Try to stick to at most ten words on the screen per slide.

2. Instead, choose pictures that complement what you want to say. Instead of thinking of the information your slides can present, think of how the slides can complement what you’re saying.

For example, if I mention my children in a presentation, I’ll often include a slide that’s just a large picture of my children at play. No words, no anything. It doesn’t detract at all from what I’m saying, it merely complements and illustrates it and brings my words to life.

When you make an outline of what you want to say, consider what sort of visual image will match each idea. Then, find an image that matches that idea and actually show that image to the crowd, bringing the idea to life in their mind much as it is in your own.

3. Speaking of outlines… never forget you’re telling a story. A presentation is storytelling, pure and simple. If you look at your presentation as simply a way to convey lots of information, you’re missing out on why you’re doing it.

For me, the story is obvious – I just tell my life story. I talk about my many mistakes and how I recovered from them. It’s largely a chronological story – and it’s a visual story because I use picture-heavy slides.

Sit down for a moment and ask yourself what the story you’re telling is. Where did you start? Where did you go with it? What’s really interesting along the way?

If you need to convey lots of information, have a handout. The purpose of a presentation is to stick your big message in their mind.

4. Have lots of slides. Since you don’t have many words on your slides, you don’t need to stick with each slide for a long time. Since the slides are picture heavy, they provide a great visual complement for your points. So, have a lot of slides.

On average for my more recent talks, I stay on a slide for about ten seconds. Yes, ten seconds on average. That’s six slides a minute or, in terms of pure slide count, 180 slides in a half an hour.

For me, this serves two purposes. One, each picture accents a point I’m making and carries the story I’m telling forward. Two, it also serves as a visual outline for me, as each slide points to just one very specific idea I want to convey. The pictures themselves clue me into what I want to talk about.

5. Make the audience laugh on occasion. I find the easiest way to do this is with the pictures, since I’m not great at telling jokes myself.

I simply just choose a picture with a humorous bent that matches my point – a picture of my children making a mess, a picture of a funny street sign, a picture of a burnt casserole (when I’m talking about cooking at home). These things make people laugh (or at least chuckle) because they point to simple failures we have in common.

Humor is one of the best ways to connect with someon. Use it.

6. Use the “peak-end rule.” People will usually just take away two or three memories of your presentation, and one of them is how you finish. Keep that in mind.

I usually save something big for the finish. Usually, it’s a very explicit challenge for my audience, something simple and memorable for them to do when they leave: “go home, right now, and start an automatic savings plan.”

What can you save for the finish that will help your audience remember what you spoke about?

7. It’s you. Whenever you stand up in front of a crowd and present, the audience is informing an impression of you. If you stammer and look down and hide behind the information on your slides, it won’t be a good impression.

Don’t give yourself crutches when you’re out there, because you will lean hard on those crutches and create the impression of someone who can’t walk on their own. Throw away the note cards. Throw away the pieces of paper.

Most important of all, practice, practice, practice. Go through your slides until you’re numb, then go through them again. You should be able to know exactly what’s coming next and be intimately familiar with the story you want to tell.

When you walk out there, it’s as easy as pie. Just tell your story. Your slides will accent them beautifully. And the crowd will love you.

Recently, I picked up two Le Creuset 5 1/2 quart French ovens on a special deal. I’ve been slowly upgrading our kitchen implements and I’ve wanted to upgrade our cracked ceramic casseroles with enameled cast iron that can be used over a burner and also thrown in an oven for baking purposes.

They were expensive, far more than the ceramic items we originally purchased for casseroles. However, the casseroles were already slightly cracked, didn’t heat evenly, and weren’t to be used over an open flame. The new ones fulfilled the exact need we had and allows us to also reduce the number of items in our kitchen cupboard, as several items are now headed for a future yard sale.

Here’s the real thing, though. I don’t feel bad at all about spending the money on the French ovens.

First, I planned ahead for buying them. I’ve been studying and planning for this purchase for a few months. I knew that I wanted to replace our casseroles after a dish cooked in the ceramic casserole was very unevenly heated and was developing a large, ominous crack on the side. I spent some time studying the options and decided that these were the ones I wanted.

Second, they’ll last forever. They come with a 101 year warranty. My grandchildren will be using them (if they want to, of course). I’ll never have to buy another casserole again.

Third, the purchase is in line with something I’m deeply passionate about. I love to cook, preparing elaborate meals in our kitchen. I also tend to get frustrated by items that don’t work well and I also strive to maintain what I have – I’ll stand there honing knives and other such things when there’s not a meal to be prepared. In other words, food preparation is a real passion of mine.

Here’s the real truth of the entire story. If it’s something you’re passionate about, you plan for it, and you can afford it, don’t feel guilty about buying it. There’s absolutely nothing “wrong” with living your life and enjoying the things you truly care about.

It only becomes dangerous when you begin to extend that policy into purchases of items you don’t really care about that much or that you buy impulsively. That’s a slippery slope into the type of consumerism that leaves you buried under a pile of debt.

How do you always distinguish between these two? It’s easy – just be mindful of yourself and how you choose to spend money. Look at what you’re most passionate about and how you spend your time. The more time you spend (and the more deeply you enjoy that time), the more worthwhile a purchase often is in that area. Whenever you consider a purchase, back off and ask yourself if you really need it or if there isn’t another way to scratch that same itch for a lower price. I often use the “thirty day rule” for any major purchase – I just wait thirty days and see whether it’s something that’s genuinely important to me or if it’s just a fleeting impulse that was better off ignored.

And if you’re wondering, yes, we used these at our Thanksgiving dinner. We made dressing in them and the dressing turned out exquisitely, cooked very evenly throughout and not sticking at all to the French oven. In other words, it’s almost perfectly what we wanted.