Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a non-personal finance book of interest to Simple Dollar readers.

One of the biggest underlying themes of The Simple Dollar is that personal finance is merely a tool to improve the quality of your life. Of course, it’s an unwieldy and dangerous tool, one that, if used without care and forethought, can add quite a lot of difficulty and pain to your life. Take credit cards, for example.

In connection with that theme, I often read intriguing books about personal happiness – take my reviews of Stumbling on Happiness and Happier, for example, both of which were excellent reads.

Perhaps the most enjoyable book on happiness I’ve yet read, though, is The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. A quick note: I know Gretchen professionally, have exchanged several messages with her over the years, and enjoy reading her excellent blog on happiness topics. Of course, if I didn’t like her writing already, I might never have read the book – which I suppose means I already knew I would like the book before I opened the cover. But enough with that…

The Happiness Project largely focuses on Gretchen’s own experience applying mountains of classic advice on happiness (from Thoreau to Epicurus to the Dalai Lama to Oprah) to see what actually worked – and what didn’t. It’s mostly written in a memoir form covering a single year in which she applied these ideas, which works really well for the material covered (and makes it engaging to read).

Although I’ve had this book for a while, I decided to save this review until the start of the new year because it relates so well to the resolutions that people make for themselves.

January – Boost Energy
It’s often hard to tackle all the things we want to do in life if we don’t have a high level of energy. If your energy is sapped, it becomes all that much easier to simply take the path of least resistance and simply not work on the important things in life, which of course contributes greatly to a sense of unhappiness. Thus, there’s a great deal of sense in beginning a happiness journey by lifting one’s energy.

The two techniques that really stood out in this chapter – and in my own life – were to get more sleep and to simply move around more and get a bit of exercise. I’ll speak for myself in saying that when I don’t get adequate sleep for a few nights in a row, I feel tired and lethargic and unable to do much of anything productive. Similarly, when I fall off the “exercise wagon,” my energy level drops like a rock after about a week.

February – Remember Love
Marriages aren’t easy. Add kids and they become even more difficult. At times, marriages can seem like an emotional negative on the whole. What works? First, don’t expect appreciation for the things you do – and don’t feel a need to point them out and lord them over your partner. It does nothing more than instigate fighting and resentment over something you chose to do. If you want something done, do it and don’t use it as a psychological weapon.

Second, don’t just use your partner as someone to dump your problems on. Don’t blame them for problems. Don’t nag them over things left undone – if it’s undone, it must not occupy a high level of importance for them. Instead, focus on ways to accentuate your partner’s positives. What do they do well? Encourage that in a positive way instead of browbeating over the things they don’t do well. You’ll both wind up happier.

March – Aim Higher
There are few things that feel better than success, particularly when that success occurs at something you never expected to be successful at. When you think to yourself, “I could never do that,” then after investing work you find that you can do that, you’ll find yourself at a big emotional peak.

The best way to aim higher and go beyond what you think you’re capable of is to simply give it a shot. You should expect to fail at first. The first ten times. The first fifty times. That’s fine – you’re learning what it takes to succeed each time you fail. The key is to not give up, to not beat yourself up over the failure, and to get up and try again. Eventually, you will succeed – and that success will lift you high.

April – Lighten Up
People are often happiest when they’re doing something. Gretchen refers to this as “fog happiness” – a sense of happiness, or at least contentment, that comes from working towards a goal. Often, that happiness is borne of a sense that what you’re doing will make others happy.

Another big piece of the puzzle is to simply act happy. Act lighthearted. One effective way to do that is to simply sing on a regular basis – Gretchen suggests doing it in the morning. Play some simple pranks on other people. Do things that make you laugh. It’ll lift everything else.

May – Be Serious About Play
Happiness is often found when you seek out sources of happiness – things you do that bring you joy, no matter what they are. Those things are different for each of us, but when you find those things, devote some serious time to them. Block out time for fishing or for playing the piano. Those times will become powerful personal refreshers for you.

If you don’t have a hobby or activity that brings you such joy, find one. Set aside time to explore potential new interests – and block that time off. Make time for it. When you find something that brings joy into your life, it often works like a “happiness battery,” charging your entire day.

June – Make Time for Friends
Friendship is an easy thing to neglect in our busy lives. We often think to ourselves that our friends will always be around, but when we look again, we find that the friendship has drifted away. Even more importantly, we get joy from time spent with friends, but because we define such interactions as “important but not urgent,” we often replace them with the “urgent but not important” things in our lives.

One powerful way to maintain friendships is to schedule regular events with them. Start a weekly potluck dinner at your house and invite several friends (something we’re in the process of setting up). Another effective tool is to avoid gossip – don’t talk negatively about people behind their backs.

July – Buy Some Happiness
This chapter more or less focuses on one of the major themes of The Simple Dollar – the connection between money and happiness. Without directly touching on it, Gretchen touches on the idea of the fulfillment curve – that everyone has some point that maximizes the enjoyment they get from their spending. Spend too much and you’re not happy. Spend too little and you’re not happy, either.

How do you find that balance? Focus on just buying things you know will bring value into your life, but don’t chide yourself constantly for doing so. Look at your true passions and focus on things that complement those passions and don’t spend as much on the rest.

August – Contemplate the Heavens
Spirituality is another interesting beast in the stable of happiness. For many, there is a lot of solace in contemplating the mysteries of life. If you find peace in seeking these answers, seek them. Gretchen suggests reading about the lives – and beliefs – of spiritual leaders of all stripes (like the Dalai Lama or the Pope or any of a huge number of historical figures).

I find a lot of power in keeping a gratitude notebook. Simply by writing down five things I’m grateful for each day, I keep in mind how many gifts and blessings have found their way into my life. It also often opens a window into religious exploration for me as well.

September – Pursue a Passion
In a way, pursuing a passion builds upon many of the themes already in this book. If you discover you’re passionate about something, chase it. Dig in deep.

For me (and for many others), one great way to build upon a passion is to embark on a big, ambitious project that requires us to dig deep. Write a novel. Build a new deck. Master a particular technology. Start an ambitious blog. To do these things, you have to set aside time – but the projects themselves provide a lot of spiritual happiness and personal reward.

October – Pay Attention
Quite often in life, it’s easy to feel as though we’re swept along by currents largely out of our control. Yet, just as often, if we study our lives, those currents make sense. We have a surprising amount of control over them as well. Most importantly, that awareness can be a real source of happiness.

One effective way to do this is to meditate a bit each day. Spend some time doing nothing more than emptying your mind of all of the mental junk you’ve picked up and clear out that space. Looking at the world with fresher eyes makes all the difference.

November – Keep a Contented Heart
If you’re finding more happiness in your life, how do you maintain it? To put it simply, just pass it on.

It’s very easy to do this. Laugh when others are around. Help others out. Use good manners and be polite. Be positive when you talk about things. Surround yourself with people who do the same thing. This will all add up to a lot of reflected happiness in your life.

December – Boot Camp Perfect
If all of these changes seem overwhelming or impossible, remember one thing: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Take small steps and do them when you think of them or when you can do them. Put these ideas into your calendar and mark off some boundaries for your happiness – but don’t despair if something happens to take one of them out.

The key is to put little positive steps into your life and let the aggregate of those steps help you reach a higher level of personal joy.

Is The Happiness Project Worth Reading?
Regardless of any value you might get out of the advice, I think The Happiness Project is worth reading for the pure entertainment factor. I was sucked into the narrative and wound up reading it much more like a novel than like the nonfiction books I typically read for The Simple Dollar. In fact, this book has found its way into my “to-be-read” pile for purely personal re-reading, a rarity for the books I review for The Simple Dollar.

The advice itself throughout the book overlaps well with many of the books I’ve read on happiness. I think the real key comes through here: listen to yourself carefully and act on what you hear. Your mind is often telling you what you need to be happy, but we often overrule it because of what we’ve consciously decided makes us happy. We buy stuff when we don’t need it and get ourselves into financial pinches. We hang onto relationships too long. We stick with old tired patterns. Quite often, we know these are choices that will make us unhappy, but we don’t listen.

The Happiness Project is a very enjoyable read. It takes a topic – personal happiness – and runs with it, making it personally engaging and entertaining. Drier books fail to entertain at times and fictional narratives often fail to inform – this balances the two quite well. If you’re seeking your own happiness, read this one. You’ll enjoy it.

Marjorie writes in with a very interesting question:

I’m a single mom with a four year old daughter. Each weekday, I take my daughter to stay with one of my aunts so that I can work to earn a living and keep food on the table. After Christmas, my mom sat down with my aunt and I and gave us a bunch of information about a few great preschools in the area. My aunt told me later on that she’s supportive, no matter what I choose. So, for me, the real question is whether or not my daughter would get enough benefit from preschool compared to days with my aunt to make the extra costs worthwhile.

I live next door to a single mother and I see time and time again how she is forced into making difficult choices about the devoted time spent with her children. Does she make a nutritious home-cooked meal or does she spend an extra half an hour with her girls? Does she spend some time in the yard with them or does she get some of the never-ending household chores taken care of? This comes in on top of the prerequisite day of work for a single parent, after which they’re exhausted but also often wanting a strong connection with their children. On top of that, there’s the money concerns – a single income household in the modern world is never easy.

When it comes to a choice between preschool and other child care options, I don’t think there’s a simple cut-and-dried answer to this because there are so many factors involved.

The first one – and the most important one – is your child. Is your child outgoing around others her age? Is she intellectually on par with other children her age – meaning is she capable of holding a writing utensil? Can she count to twenty or so? Is she curious about the world around her? If these things are all true, preschool likely doesn’t have a great deal of value for your daughter.

When things get murkier – in my opinion – is when several of those questions have negative answers. This can indicate a lot of things, from something as simple as social anxiety to a learning disorder or simply more focused one-on-one time. If you’re witnessing these issues and you genuinely feel concern about your daughter’s intellectual growth, I would lean more towards preschool. If not, I would lean more towards maintaining the caregiving situation with your aunt.

What about the money, though? Is the extra cost of a good preschool worth it when compared to a normal daycare if your child is socially thriving and developmentally on pace?

In a word – in my opinion – it’s not, unless the difference in cost makes no difference in your life. Here’s why.

If you spend that extra money to send your child to a top preschool, you’re putting an extra financial burden on yourself. This has several effects on your life. You’re more tied to your job than ever before because you can no longer afford to lose it, which means your boss has more power than before and your job is more stresful. You also have less money to spread around in other areas of your life, like an emergency fund or on something as simple as a stop at the ice cream shop with your child. On some level, these things are given up to afford that high-quality preschool – and these things have a negative impact on your child’s home life.

This basic idea is true no matter what you’re looking at in life. When you bump up the financial cost for something of higher quality, you’re paying an additional price beyond the dollars and cents. You pay the personal costs that go along with maintaining that higher level of income. If you can’t see the benefit in doing so, don’t do it.

To me, that’s an exchange not worth making unless there’s a clear and dramatic benefit from the higher-cost preschool. Never forget that early on, you’re the biggest impact and influence on your child, and if sending your child to the higher-cost preschool will put stressful burdens on you to disrupt that in any way, there had better be a big reward. If your child is doing fine, then I don’t see the benefit there.

No matter what you choose, however, do not let others make you feel guilty about it. Simply by asking questions like this and seriously considering the answer, you’re looking at the unique situations, gifts, and opportunities in your life to make the right decision for your daughter. You obviously love her. You obviously want what’s best for her. Never let other people attempt to use guilt or shame or other tactics to guide your choice.

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 (December 27, 2008 – January 2, 2009)
New Year’s Resolution Workshop #2: Spend Less Money I really enjoyed the New Year’s Resolution Workshop series from last year. This was one of the best entries, in my opinion.

How We’re Frugally Celebrating the New Year We actually did something very similar this year, too.

Navigating the Hazards of Impulse Purchasing Impulse buys are almost always shots in the dark, but there are a few ways to improve your odds when it comes to impulse buys.

New Year’s Resolution Workshop #4: Protect My Family’s Future Another solid entry in the resolution series, this one did a great job (I thought) of talking about how you can make your family more secure.

New Year’s Resolution Workshop #3: Save for a Down Payment If this is the year to get a big start on a down payment, this is the article for you to read.

Two Years Ago (December 27, 2007 – January 2, 2008)
Six Invaluable Online Resources For Personal Finance Education Want to learn more about personal finance? These six resources will teach you more than you ever thought possible.

How to Define and Stick To a Successful New Year’s Resolution, Financial or Otherwise I often define resolutions for myself. Lately, I’ve become more and more successful at them.

Talking Myself Out Of Frivolous Purchases This is perhaps my biggest challenge when it comes to money management and it’s something I come back to time and time again.

Dealing With A Bad Day Without Spending Money It can be very easy to deal with a bad day by buying some stuff. Here are some ways to avoid that trap.

Life and Discipline: Using the Five Personal Finance Business Cards for Other Aspects of Life I really liked this follow-up to my original “five business cards” post, but I don’t think it was as big of a hit to the readers.

Three Years Ago (December 27, 2006 – January 2, 2007)
Review: Rule #1 This is a surprisingly good book on investing using the principles of value investing. Town does a great job of breaking down the details into readable and sensible chunks.

Give Your Future Self An Amazing Christmas Present Next Year – An Extra Mortgage Payment An extra mortgage payment means that your house will get paid off quite a bit faster than before, pushing you ever closer to debt freedom. Here’s how to make it work.

What Can I Do Today To Make Me Rich In The Future? Every day you carefully consider this question – and take real action on it – is a day you move toward financial success.

Finances 101: Are Stocks Really That Great Of An Investment? In the short term – anything less than ten years or so – the stock market is basically gambling. Over longer timeframes, though, stocks can provide a great return on your money.

How To Calculate Your Net Worth You can use something as simple as a piece of paper or as complex as a full-featured spreadsheet. Either way, calculating your net worth is a valuable personal finance exercise.

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!

Last Tuesday, I spent an afternoon shopping with my wife.

On the surface, it sounds like something we would have done five years ago, charging out to the stores, credit card in hand.

Things were a little different this time, though.

For one, we came home with fewer items than we left with. For two, we spent less than ten dollars all afternoon.

What did we wind up with? A newly refreshed living room, materials for another handmade toy for our child, and some adorable clothes for our rapidly-growing daughter.

Here’s the big shopping secret: we went thrifting.

That morning, my wife and I went through all of our children’s toys and reduced the total volume by about fifty percent, getting rid of items that the children simply didn’t play with that we felt wouldn’t have a ton of resale value at a yard sale. We filled up a large tub with the items and departed, dropping those items off as a donation.

Of course, while we were there, we also looked around the store for clothes for our daughter, as she’s rapidly jumping up in sizes. We found several very nice items for her – including a few that still had tags on them, including items from Baby Gap and similar places.

We also went through their true bargain basement items and salvaged a few sweaters. Why? We utilize old sweaters to make Silly Snakes for our kids (and for other kids, too).

We came home with two small bags of items, having spent less than $10. We also came home to a much emptier family room, one that has more than adequate space for the new toys our children received for Christmas. We also got to spend a (rare) afternoon together, just the two of us.

This is how frugal people live their lives. It’s not weird or uncomfortable or un-fun. We do the same things everyone else does. We update our children’s wardrobes. We work on craft projects. We spend time together shopping.

The only difference is that we start our children’s clothes shopping at the secondhand store instead of at the Baby Gap – and we often wind up with the same exact items of clothing. We focus on projects that utilize materials that are extremely inexpensive to begin with. And when we go shopping, we consider it a virtue to get a lot of bang for every dollar we spend – and the most important part is the time we spend together.

The real trick with frugality in modern life often isn’t figuring out ways to spend less. It’s getting past the mountains of marketing messages and cultural norms that revolve around spending.

There’s almost always an inexpensive way to do the thing you want to do. The question is whether or not you can see it through all of the mixed messages.

Luckily, on a day with my wife, we work together on it.

I’m spending the first day of this new year sleeping off a long New Year’s Eve night and spending some quality time with my kids and my wife before the spring semester gets rolling. I hope your 2010 gets off to a wonderful start!

Tomorrow, we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming!