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.

How about combining your frugality and kitchen skills by giving us some recipes and tips on cooking Beans and Rice and Rice and Beans?
- Marcia

A long time ago, I wrote an ode to the bean, which may be my favorite item to use in cooking. It’s inexpensive and it’s a protein-rich backbone to countless different kinds of meals, from tacos and chili to curries and soups.

What I usually tell people to do is very simple. Just take whatever staple ingredient leftovers you have – vegetables, meats, and so on. Add some rice or some beans to it. Season appropriately. There, you have a killer meal.

You almost can’t mess it up.

For giggles, I’ll reprint five of my favorite bean-oriented recipes here.

Beans and Eggs
Easy as pie. Just crack four eggs, add half a teaspoon of milk and some pepper, and beat them rapidly until they’re consistent in texture. Pour the egg mixture into a skillet and add half a cup of cooked black beans (or a bean mix, if you prefer). Scramble the eggs by repeatedly moving the eggs around in the skillet as it cooks until it’s nice and fluffy and full of beans. Put some cheese and salsa on top and you have one of my favorite breakfasts in the world – plus it’s an ovo-vegetarian dish.

Balsamic Vinaigrette Bean Salad
Take two pounds of cooked beans, any variety you’d like, and add in a diced medium red onion. To this, add two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, four finely chopped garlic cloves, a quarter of a cup of extra virgin olive oil, and mix everything together. Add some ground black pepper to taste. This makes a very big batch of the salad, which is a great thing to take to a potluck dinner – for home use, you should probably halve the entire recipe (one pound of beans, a small diced onion, one tablespoon of vinegar, two garlic cloves, and an eighth of a cup of olive oil).

Beef and Bean Burritos
Cook a pound of ground beef. As the meat is cooking, add half a cup of chopped onion and a minced garlic clove. Stir the meat often to break it up, then when it’s well cooked, drain it, and add to it two teaspoons of chili powder, one teaspoon of oregano, half a teaspoon of cumin, half a teaspoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of brown pepper. Mix it all together and you have the beef part of the recipe. Just fill a large tortilla with this meat, some lettuce, and whatever beans you like – I prefer black beans or pinto beans or even refried beans.

Sixteen Bean Soup
Just follow the cooking directions above with your favorite multi-bean mix, except add half a pound of leftover meat to the soup as it’s cooking. I like to add cubed ham myself, but you can add other meats. Also, add a small minced onion to the soup, too, just as it begins to boil, and also add salt and pepper to taste.

Bean, Ham, and Tomato Casserole
Basically, take the soup you made with the sixteen bean soup recipe and drain off all but a cup of the liquid. Mix into the soup two diced tomatoes, put a bit more pepper on top, and (optionally) put a thin layer of finely ground Cheddar cheese on top (the cheese is highly optional). Bake it at 350 F (160 C) for about ten minutes and it turns out surprisingly well and often very distinct in flavor from the sixteen bean soup.

I recently got a flyer for ING’s Orange Mortgage. They offer incredibly low interest rates. But the structure looks surprisingly like a ARM. What am I missing here?
- Pankaj

It is an adjustable rate mortgage – you’re not missing anything.

An ARM worth its salt starts off with an unbelievably good rate – often 2% below what a comparable fixed rate would be. That gets your attention, of course.

The catch is that in so many years, the rate adjusts upwards, and it often has a ceiling higher than a comparable fixed rate mortgage.

Many people got ARMs because they were seduced by that low rate and they believed their future situation would easily be able to handle the adjustment. Quite often, they were wrong.

Avoid adjustable rate loans. Never believe your future self will be able to handle it.

I find it ironic that a guy who writes a blog that (probably) reaches millions thinks having kids is the best way to advance their cause.
- Kevin

If no one had children, we would all be candles in the wind. In one hundred years, there would be no human race. We would pass nothing on to the future, any of us.

Thus, anyone that chooses not to take on the burden of raising a child is themselves a candle in the wind. They’re relying on others to continue the flame by making the candles. Any flame that they can pass on is passed on to a candle made by someone else, a candle that’s already formed and given flame by the parents of that child (most of the time, of course). Sure, they might make the flame stronger, but they didn’t start the fire. (Yes, I’m using Billy Joel and Elton John metaphors to illustrate the point).

My feeling towards anyone who calls a parent a “breeder” is that they’re completely comfortable with the complete extinguishment of the human race. And that, frankly, makes me personally uncomfortable. If they were not comfortable with this, they would not denigrate those who take on the often thankless work of raising that next generation of people.

For all the good I’ve done in this blog, it does not compare to the impact I have by raising a child to adulthood. I have the unique position to mold that candle so that the flame burns bright, an opportunity I simply don’t have in other avenues in life. No matter how great of a writer I am, it simply pales in comparison to the continued impact and influence I have on the mental, emotional, spiritual, and psychological growth of the two little children in my home. I gave them their genes and now, perhaps more importantly, I’m responsible for the nurture side of the coin.

If I do it right, I can turn out a child that has the potential to cure cancer or breed a better crop that can feed starving children or create art that can truly uplift the human race or, perhaps best of all, find authentic joy in the world and find ways to share it with others. If I do it wrong, I turn out a sociopath.

I’m not saying that others do not have influence. But no matter how enormous that influence, it doesn’t compare to the thousands of hours parents spend with their children, passing on language, beliefs, customs, personality traits, perspectives on the world, personal skills, and countless other little things.

Everyone thinks of Mr. Holland lighting a child’s flame, but forgotten in that shuffle are the parents that drove kids to countless band contests, urged them to practice at night, provided feedback on their play, bought new reeds and dropped them in the instrument case without being asked, showed up for all of the recitals, bought sheet music and audio CDs to help fuel the passion, and all without a dime of compensation. Mr. Holland showed up for work and waved a baton – yes, it was important and it caused a child to change their direction a bit, but that flame rarely takes off without quite a lot of prep work from a good parent.

And, remember, Mr. Holland was a parent, too. One can do both.

What benefit is a child going to get out of having a tutor?
- Johanna

It depends on the child. Some children thrive on individual one-on-one teaching, where they’re much less afraid to ask the “stupid” questions that are plaguing them. I know several kids like this – they didn’t understand the topic in the classroom because they were afraid, for various reasons, to ask, so it was up to a tutor (in this case, me) to help them out.

For other children, it may be that they just have little interest in learning and a tutor is a waste of time and resources.

Often, for a parent, it’s hard to tell which one is the case, especially if they have little confidence in their ability to teach classroom-type lessons. So they’ll hire a tutor or a tutoring service and let them figure it out.

For me, I’d prefer to give my own child my best crack at tutoring so I could at least understand where he or she is coming from.

Would you share with us your recipe for that wonderful sounding au gratin?
- Mike

Take four russet potatoes and slice them into 1/4 inch slices. Slice one onion into rings. Then, preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and lightly butter a one and a half to two quart casserole dish.

Put half of the potato slices into the casserole, then the sliced onions, then the rest of the potatoes. Put some salt and pepper on top.

After that, melt three tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add three tablespoons of all purpose flour and stir until it’s a very thick paste, about one minute. Then, stir in two cups of milk. Cook it for about two minutes until it just begins to thicken, stirring regularly. Then, add one and a half cups of grated cheese to the hot milk mixture quickly, stirring it in until you have about four cups of a thick, delicious liquid cheese mixture.

Pour that cheese mixture over the potatoes, breathe in the wonderful aroma deeply, then cover it with aluminum foil and pop it in the oven for one and a half hours. Yum!

What do you think about bankruptcy? While I realize there are sometimes extraordinary circumstances, it seems like many people who declare bankruptcy could handle their debt like you did: by scaling back their lifestyles, living within their means, and committing to debt reduction. Would you ever recommend that someone declare bankruptcy instead of trying to repay their debt?
- Sara

While I understand society’s need for some sort of resolution to a person who is in far too much debt, I feel like society’s penalty for this is actually too lenient today.

Do I advocate a return to debtor’s prisons? No. However, if you’ve mismanaged your finances to the point that you need a court to straighten everything out – and in the process, you escape some of your debt – there needs to be a steeper penalty than just a court-enforced payment plan and a bad credit history.

I’m not sure what that balance is, but I do feel that bankruptcy, even with the recent tougher changes, is still too easy.

You’ve said you’ve used iTunes for years to listen to music. What’s your most listened-to song? Album?
- Kate

My most listened to song since somewhere in mid 2004 is Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley – a cover of the classic Leonard Cohen song for all of you older folks like my friend Heidi, who was slackjawed recently when I identified Hallelujah as a Jeff Buckley song.

I had a harder time actually figuring out which album was the most listened to, but from the best I can determine, that album is Bachelor #2 by Aimee Mann.

If I were guessing without looking, I would have guessed the album right, but I would have guessed the #3 song for most listened – Rangers by A Fine Frenzy.

When you and Ramit had a big “debate” a while back about frugality, was that whole thing a set up or do you guys actually have a personal issue?
- Fred Mac

My father spends $5 every week on lottery tickets. I tell him all the time that it’s a waste of money, but he shrugs it off. What do you think? How should I get him to stop this stupid behavior?
- Carlos

Do you feel that other bloggers are rivals of yours? Do you compete with them?
- Amanda

Not at all. My only rival in blogging – seriously – is myself. My own laziness and willingness to go off the tracks following my own whims and muses is my biggest obstacle.

Almost every blogger out there is not a rival, but a peer. Those people know better than anyone else how difficult – and how rewarding – it can be to blog for a living. They share ideas and thoughts. They link to each other. They support each other. They help each other.

If we were rivals, we would stab each other in the back, not encourage our readers to read those other sites.

The only exception to this are bloggers who never seem to link out or ever mention others. However, I don’t view them as rivals – they’re just loners.

To put it simply, I simply don’t have rivals. I have peers and friends.

Except for J.D., of course. He’s going down.

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 development, career, or entrepreneurship book.

Knowing how to be a leader – and using that skill from time to time – opens doors for you no matter what you’re doing in life. It helps your career. It helps your social standing. It creates a positive reputation for you, one that often precedes you. It can even help your family life and personal friendships. In short, leadership can be truly rewarding.

The problem with leadership, though, is that the vast majority of people don’t know how to actually be a leader. For a small number of us, leadership comes easy – a natural extension of who we are. For the rest, though, it’s not obvious at all. We’re held back by our own seeming desire for simplicity (though, sometimes, it’s simpler to lead) and our own lack of self-confidence or sense that we’re not leaders at all.

A long time ago, I was forced into a leadership position on a project that I felt completely unprepared for. A very kind friend in a high place mailed me a copy of this book – Warren Bennis’s On Becoming a Leader – and encouraged me to give it a read. The ideas in this book helped me to step up and actually make the most of the situation as it was handed to me and, since then, I’ve recommended it to several others (as I did in a recent Reader Mailbag, actually).

What makes this book so compelling? Let’s dig in and take a look.

Mastering the Context
Every situation in which one is called to be a leader has some sort of context. The people involved are part of the context, as are the specifics of the situation. Quite often, leaders become too tied to the context of the situation and, as a result, come up with pretty poor leadership decisions. Bennis offers several good and bad examples of how leadership can be destroyed by context. For me, the most potent example was the presidency of George W. Bush – in the context of his political ideology and of the disaster of 9/11, he made choices that were perhaps not the best leadership choices for the United States (I don’t think anyone would argue, whether they be liberal or conservative, that mistakes were made during the Bush years). A positive example of stepping outside of context is Norman Lear – the creator of the seminal sitcom All in the Family. He took the context – sitcoms of the 1960s – and looked not at a situation full of rules, but instead a situation where many of the rules could be broken. That’s what a leader does – he finds ways to break away some of the context, opening up new areas for success. (Incidentally, I think this is why great leaders also have a big dash of creativity.)

Understanding the Basics
Here, Bennis identifies a pretty large handful of traits one will find in a leader: a guiding vision, passion, self-knowledge, candor, maturity, trust, curiosity, and daring. Bennis argues that most of these traits are not ones people are simply born with – they’re usually self-made by a person who pushes themselves and wants to excel at leading others. He goes on to distinguish that there’s a big difference between merely being a manager and being a leader – in fact, he argues that, quite often, an MBA makes a person a good manager but a pretty poor leader. A manager manages and maintains the status quo – a leader leads people somewhere great.

Knowing Yourself
In order to lead, you must know yourself intimately. You have to know what you’re truly capable of and what you must ask others to help you with. Without such intimate self-knowledge, you can never effectively lead because you’re incapable of understanding how to select people to fill the roles you most need filled. Bennis points towards four key lessons one must learn in terms of knowing oneself:

You are your own best teacher. Pay attention to the things that work for you and don’t work for you. Don’t listen to what everyone else says – try things for yourself and see if they fly.

Accept responsibility. Blame no one. If something goes wrong under your watch, it’s your fault, period. Don’t blame others for it – step up and take responsibility. Yes, you can make moves to make sure that this doesn’t happen again, but the failure is your responsibility if you’re the leader.

You can learn anything you want to learn. Knowledge can be acquired by anyone if they’re persistent. Don’t use ignorance as a crutch. Instead, accept that you are ignorant about some things and step up to educate yourself.

True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience. Look back at what you’ve accomplished and try to figure out how you accomplished it. Similarly, look back on your failures and determine what you did wrong to cause that bad result.

Knowing the World
Almost all of the worthwhile learning that people do comes outside the classroom. It comes from losing yourself in an experience, reading books because you want to read them, trying new things because you want to try them, and reflecting on all of this stuff, adding it to your tool belt. People who choose not to do this are actively choosing not to be leaders – they’re happy being managers.

Read a book. Travel. Meet new people. Build a friendship. Find a mentor. Mess something up. You learn from these things, not from rote memorization in a classroom.

Operating on Instinct
Every decision we make in life is based on incomplete information. At some point, we have to decide that it’s good enough and go ahead with whatever decision we have at hand. Our ability to still make good decisions even with incomplete information relies on instinct – a sense of what the right decision is that comes from inside. Often, that voice inside of us is built out of a lot of learning about the world, a lot of experience of both success and failure. Learning trains our instincts so that we can make better decisions with less information.

A leader, in the end, is a person others rely on to make the difficult decisions and set the direction for everyone. A well-honed instinct is key to being that kind of leader, and a good leader relies on and trusts that voice inside of himself.

Deploying Yourself: Strike Hard, Try Everything
Every single one of us fails in life. The difference between leaders and others is whether or not they pick themselves up and try again. Do you face your fears? Do you again try the things you failed at in the past, or do you avoid them like the plague? If you try something and it goes badly, do you avoid it in the future or do you relish the challenge of improving in that area?

To put it simply, a leader does not back down from a challenge. They don’t allow fear to control what they do. Instead, if something is scary or deeply challenging, it’s something they focus even harder on achieving.

One particular quote at the end of this chapter really struck me.

The means of expression are the steps to leadership:

1. Reflection leading to resolution.
2. Resolution leading to perspective.
3. Perspective leading to point of view.
4. Point of view leading to tests and measures.
5. Tests and measures leading to desire.
6. Desire leading to mastery.
7. Mastery leading to strategic thinking.
8. Strategic thinking leading to full self-expression.
9. The synthesis of full self-expression = leadership.

In other words, it all begins with reflecting on your successes and failures and building from there.

Moving Through Chaos
It’s often thought that leaders don’t have the same crises that we do. We think they don’t have to deal with office politics, layoffs, demotions, fighting for promotions, and so on. We think they view the world as a set of chess pieces to play with as they wish, that “strategic vision” means playing games with people.

In truth, most leaders had to overcome a great deal of career adversity to get where they’re at today. The only difference is that, at every opportunity, they took the opportunity to try to grow as a person and improve their instincts instead of complaining and commiserating about their hard luck. A trial by fire can either burn you or forge you – leaders are forged.

Getting People on Your Side
The key to getting people on your side is to be trustworthy and to constantly show that their trust is well-founded. Bennis identifies four key elements of such trust.

1. Constancy. You stay the course for the people that rely on you. When problems come, you handle them, but through it all, you maintain a steady direction and don’t descend into chaotic behavior.

2. Congruity. If you say something, you mean it, and it shows in your actions. If you expect something of your followers, you expect it of yourself first and you follow through with it.

3. Reliability. When it really counts, you’re there for the people who need you.

4. Integrity. When you make a promise or a commitment to someone else, you follow through with it.

Organization Can Help – or Hinder
There are times in which the group you’re intending to lead simply will not be led. If the people involved don’t care or they have a completely different direction in mind than the one you’re providing or the bureaucracy in the system is so intense that no amount of bushwhacking will clear it, no leadership can help the situation.

Instead, a leader should attempt to learn from this situation. What can be done to end the situation as painlessly as possible? What can be done to avoid such situations in the future? Every failure is a lesson.

Is On Becoming a Leader Worth Reading?
On Becoming a Leader pretty much delivers what the title promises. It’s the best discussion I’ve ever read on things a person can tangibly do to improve their leadership skills. If you’re interested in improving them, this one’s pretty much a must-read.

The question comes down to whether or not you personally find it valuable to work on your leadership skills. My perspective is that most lives have avenues that can be improved through leadership – it helps you build better relationships with others in the workplace, in the community, and in one’s family if they’re able to step up and be a leader when the situation calls for it.

The Simple Dollar has reviewed hundreds of personal finance, personal growth, and career books. Please check out the full list of Simple Dollar book reviews, alphabetized for your convenience.

November is here. Winter is sneaking up on us, and with winter comes winter heating bills for most of the United States. I live in northern Iowa, where temperatures can get quite cold in the heart of the winter months and, since I work from home, I have to utilize lots of different tricks to ensure that we’re not burning too much energy just to keep the house warm.

Last winter, I catalogued several of the best tactics to share with you at the dawn of the next winter. Here they are.

Check your insulation.
Take a quick peek in your attic. What do you see? Do you see any bare spots not covered in insulation? Attempt to identify what type of insulation you have and make sure it’s up to the level of insulation you need for your area using this helpful insulation guide along with this tool for understanding insulation R-values. Proper insulation is key to keeping your house warm.

Make sure your home is air sealed.
Air leaks and drafts allow warm air to quickly escape your house, resulting in tremendous heating and cooling bills. The solution to this problem is to check your home for air leaks and properly air seal any leaks you discover. This useful guide from the Department of Energy will walk you through the entire process.

Close the vents in unused rooms (and seal them off, if possible).
If your home is well insulated and you have a room or two that’s not actively being used, turn off the air vent in that room and seal the room as best you can. The temperature in that room will drop significantly when you do this as you’ll no longer be heating it – and no longer paying the bill for heating it, either.

Invest in thick socks.
I work from home in Iowa, and I’ve learned that there’s no better way to stay warm in the winter at home than to wear thick socks. Thick socks keep my feet warm even if I keep the temperature in the house low, and feet are one of the primary thermal indicators for the body as well as being a relatively poorly circulated extremity. Keep the feet warm and the rest of you will be fine.

Test the lower levels of your thermostat.
Along with wearing warm socks, I often tend to turn the heating down during the day (raising it when my family is at home, which is basically just a manual version of the effect one would get from installing a programmable thermostat). I work on the upper level of my home where it’s warmest, so reducing the house temperature during the day rarely has any negative impact on my work – but it certainly saves on energy costs.

Use a hot water bottle. We also tend to dip our thermostat down a bit at night when we’re snuggled in our beds. Unfortunately, after a long winter day, a bed might not necessarily be cosy right at first. Thus, I often use a trick that my father used when he was a boy – a hot water bottle. We use a reusable microwaveable hot water bottle filled with a gel-like substance. A quick heating in the microwave just before bed means that the bed quickly gets cosy warm – a perfect resistance against the cold nights.

Open the blinds on the sunny side of the house – close them on the other side.
In the winter, I do this on the top two floors of our home (where most of the windows are). In the morning, I open all of the blinds and curtains on the east-facing side of the house and make sure everything is closed on the west side (usually done the night before). Then, when I eat lunch, I switch the two. Then, just before dinner, I close everything on the west side of the house. This goes a long way towards maximizing the benefits of direct sunlight and minimizing the heat lost to windows not facing the sun.

Stick together – share a blanket.
If you walked into our family room, you’d see that we already have several blankets out for the winter months. We love to cuddle up as a family under a blanket or two on the couch, sharing our natural body warmth with each other. It keeps us all close together and toasty warm.

Use the oven.
Who wants to go out to eat in the deepest part of winter anyway? Stay home and cook something in the oven. Not only will the food preparation save you money, you’ll also find that the oven is far more energy efficient in the winter. How so? It works with the warming of your house rather than against the summer cooling of your house.

Drink warm fluids.
For me, winter is filled with cup after cup of hot tea and hot chocolate. Drinking a warm fluid makes me feel much warmer (and likely does slightly raise my body temperature). For me, the effect lasts for about forty minutes, a time in which I can get away with a temperature a few degrees lower. During the day, I’ll often prepare myself a giant mug of hot tea and slowly sip it over the course of a few hours. The small energy expense of heating up the water is more than replaced by the energy savings of being able to lower the house temperature a bit more.