My cell phone doesn’t let me watch streaming internet video.
I don’t own a pair of pants that cost more than $40 – and most cost less than $10.
We don’t have a flat panel television – we’re still using my old CRT one from my college years.
The back bumper of my truck has rust on it.
I don’t throw out socks until they have holes in them.
We use old t-shirts for rags.
There’s a juice stain on our couch that won’t come out, but we’re not going to replace it any time soon.
I make my own laundry detergent because the store stuff is overpriced.

Some people might look down their noses at us for these things. I don’t mind.

I’ll wave to them as they leave for their high-stress job while I sit in my office in my pajamas and write.
I’ll think about them for a moment as I load up the kids for a day trip to the science center.
I’ll thoroughly enjoy the time I spend working – and when I don’t enjoy it, I’ll get up and do something else.
I’ll talk to my wife and tell her that if she wants to spend a few years being a stay-at-home parent, we can make it work.
I’ll spend the late afternoon playing soccer in the backyard with my son instead of de-stressing in front of the television.

Those are trades I’ll always make.

It took me a long time to let go of the need to keep up some sort of false appearance of perfection in my life. The towels had to be perfect. I had to have the latest, shiniest gadgets. I worried constantly about the appearance of success.

Yet, in the end, the people I was really jealous of were the ones doing interesting things with their lives. I might admire the gadgets and the beautiful house (and I’m still envious of them in a lot of ways), but I was truly envious of the people doing exactly what they wanted to be doing. I envied the people who could make their own hours and follow their own muse. I was jealous of stay-at-home parents, too.

Those were the things I most valued – and most wanted.

What I learned along the way was that I had to make a choice between keeping up some sort of pretense of material success or going after the things I most wanted in life. I realized that there’s always something else material to want, some way to feel inadequate because someone else has better stuff, and some way to puff myself up because I have a shinier thing than someone else.

Once I framed things in that context, the choices became easier. Instead of making sure all of our linens matched, we just used them until they were worn. Instead of insisting on the latest and greatest gadgets, I would just get a freebie cell phone and use my gadgets until they didn’t work any more. I didn’t worry about the rusty bumper too much and I didn’t panic and start throwing money around when my kids spilled a bit of juice on the couch.

My stress level went down. Plus, I found that suddenly I had more financial and time resources than I ever imagined. I used both of those resources to my advantage, applying them both to the things I most wanted in life.

Yes, my truck has a rusty bumper and some people might raise their noses at it while they drive by in their Lexus. I’ll watch them go by, off to their stressful job, then I’ll go inside and do the things I’ve wanted to do all of my life.

Sounds like a good trade to me.

I don’t believe in the idea of a “minimum tip.”

There, I said it. It’s a big change from my previous beliefs on tipping.

A few weeks ago, my family and I ate at a restaurant where the service was extremely poor. We sat for twenty five minutes waiting for our server (my wife was literally getting on her coat). Then, we spied our server sitting at a table with other restaurant employees after we had ordered (where the server had also been while we were waiting). We did not get drinks at all until after our meal arrived and we requested them again (to our server’s annoyance). When the plates were being served, mine was bumped on the edge of the table, knocking a portion of my food off of the plate onto the ground. Not only was my plate left there with some of the food missing, the server didn’t bother to clean up any of the dumped food on the floor. At one point, my wife attempted to get the server’s attention, and the server looked at her then pretended that she didn’t see my wife at all and continued to sit at the table with her friends.

Needless to say, we were not impressed. I gave a zero tip.

Afterwards, one of my friends chided me for not at least giving a 10-15% tip. “That money is part of her salary,” he argued. My argument? You deserved to get paid if you actually do your job.

For many years, I did believe that you should give a minimal tip to the service staff at restaurants because, in many cases, that tip is part of their expected salary from the restaurant. However, a few things soured me on this.

First, it seems really unfair to give a 15% tip to someone who isn’t even providing minimal service and then giving a 20 or 25% tip to someone busting it and doing five times the work to make your meal enjoyable. I don’t think it’s reasonable to hand out 40-50% tips to people who are really striving to do a good job so you can amply reward them in comparison to people not doing their job at all.

Second, some businesses collect the tips from the waitstaff, skim some percentage off the top, then redistribute the tips to all employees. A small tip to an individual person doesn’t matter in this situation, as it will all be redistributed equally to everyone there. In fact, if I have received great service, I actually ask my server what the restaurant’s tipping policy is – who gets to keep the tip? (In this situation, I’ll usually tip at the very low end of normal, then hand a small amount of cash directly to the server if the service was good.)

Third, a “standardized” tipping policy ignores how the real world workds. If you tip identically no matter how good the service, the people who provide poor service will believe such service is acceptable and the people who provide good service have no incentive (beyond internal drive) to keep up the great work. A “standard” policy rewards the bad equally with the good – and that’s a situation that doesn’t benefit either side.

In fact, I’d argue that over the long term, a “standardized” tipping policy makes overall service in restaurants worse over time. It tells the self-motivated people who are really good at their job that they won’t be rewarded for their self-motivation, so they’ll seek a new channel for it. Meanwhile, the people who do a poor job are quite happy to collect nice tips for their minimal effort and will stay put.

My current tipping policy is pretty simple. When I go into a restaurant, I don’t plan on giving any tip at all. Waiters earn the tip through good service. If I don’t notice the service at all, that means it was good and I tip a solid amount – 15% to 20%. If I notice outstanding service, I go higher – I tipped almost 40% recently. If the service is poor enough that it begins to detract from the experience, I’m simply not going to tip the waitstaff well at all – 5% to 10%. If the service is poor enough that it makes the meal miserable, I will not give a penny. Obviously, I’ll make some exceptions to this, particularly if the server is new.

Honestly, I don’t care whether the tip is part of the person’s salary or not. In fact, if it is a part of that person’s salary, I view it as a strong argument for my tipping policy, as it rewards extra effort and doesn’t reward poor effort at all.

Just like real life.

What’s your tipping policy? Why?

Right now, there’s a personal matter going on in my life that’s been bothering me – it’s been on my mind heavily all day today. (Don’t worry, there’s nothing directly affecting me, my wife, or children.)

I had to go out and take care of a birthday gift for a friend and a Valentine’s Day item for my wife, and while I was out, I found myself strongly considering two unnecessary impulse buys. My mind and heart weren’t really into it – I was distracted.

I had to fill out some paperwork. As I was filling out the form, I made a significant mistake, one I didn’t notice until I printed it out. I had to print out another copy. I was distracted.

My children were doing Valentine’s card exchanges with their friends. I sent the Valentines for my daughter’s friends with my son and the ones for my son with my daughter. Luckily, I noticed before things were disastrous. I was distracted.

Over and over again, both in the mistakes I make as well as the mistakes I see others make, distractions seem to be the culprit. We make mistakes and bad choices when we’re not completely focused on the task at hand.

Three times today, I was on the verge of making a significant mistake because I was distracted. Three times, a few simple techniques saved me.

First of all, I double-check almost everything I do. Sometimes mistakes still slip through this (yes, even on Simple Dollar posts), but a simple double check before I commit something often saves me quite a bit of cost and trouble.

Take the paperwork, for example. It would have been easy for me to just assume the paperwork was correct once I printed it. Instead, I took a second to look it over and found the mistake then and there instead of having to deal with the ramifications of the mistake later on.

Second, I try to do things as early in advance as I can. Taking care of a lot of the task in advance makes the actual completion of the task go a lot easier.

Take the valentines, for example. Last night, all of the valentines were made out and sorted into separate bags for each child to take with them. Then, this morning, all that had to be done was to give each child their bag. There was only a couple little things for me to mess up at the last minute (and, yes, I managed to mess one of them up).

Third, I take advantage of any pauses to re-evaluate. If I have a moment to stop – waiting in line, for example, or stopping at a stoplight – I’ll take inventory of the situation around me and see if I’ve missed anything.

Take the shopping, for example. Before I went to buy any items, I double-checked what I had chosen to buy and simply asked myself if I actually had a reason for buying the item. On at least two items, I didn’t have a real reason when I thought about it.

Even though I strive to be focused in the moment at all times, real life doesn’t always allow that to happen. In each of these cases, the layer of precautions I had in place kept me from making mistakes because of my distraction.

Those mistakes each had a cost. For the paperwork, it would have cost me the time it took to make several phone calls to have the error fixed when I eventually noticed it. For the valentines, it would have cost my children some anxiety. For the shopping, it would have cost me money on purchases of things I didn’t really need.

Having a simple system in place helps me to overcome the distractions and not make (as many) little mistakes like that. Since these checks are usually instantaneous or take just a few seconds at most, they’re not really inconvenient, either. They just work – and they help me to maximize my time and money.

You asked for it, you got it. Until further notice, there will be a second Reader Mailbag on Thursday mornings.

I’m a 23 year old single male student planning to move out of my University’s dorms. Yeah, I’m a bit too old for the dorm scene, and it’s ludicrously expensive (the only reason I’m still living here is that I took my mother’s misguided financial advice – “keep living on campus and you can get financial aid and loans to pay for it!”). Well, now I’m deep in student loan debt, extremely unhappy with where I live, and not sure where to turn next.

The problem is that I only make about $1000 a month. So nearly three quarters of my income would be going towards simply living, which is why I’m a bit hesitant. I have a clean credit history, and to the best of my knowledge, a high credit score. I have two more years of school left to claim the Bachelor’s I’m after, so I’ll be accruing more loan debt in the meantime. What would you do in my situation? Should I look for a cheaper, albeit not as pleasing, apartment? I’ll note that my parents live 150 miles away from my campus, so moving back in with them isn’t really an option — I’d rather not make 300 mile round trips every single day of the week. Should I be on the lookout for a second job? Or should I do something completely different?
- Mike

I’d say that only spending $250 a month to cover cable, internet, renter’s insurance, car insurance, gas, electricity, water, and food combined is incredibly conservative. To put it simply, I don’t think you’ll be doing that with any sort of regularity. After all, you mentioned that rent alone is $495 a month and that all of the expenses combined were $745 a month, leaving you $250 a month for the rest of it.

I wouldn’t bank on that.

Most people that get by with that little monthly income either live in a very low income area (where rents are very low) or own an inexpensive home with low property taxes. In either case, their housing expense is well below $500 a month, and even then, they struggle with it. My grandmother had housing expenses of $100 a month, lived in a very low income area, and struggled to get by on over $1,000 a month.

You’ve pretty clearly got your mind set on moving out of the dorm, so I would suggest finding the absolute cheapest housing I could find. This might involve roommates – I certainly had them when I was in college. At one point, I lived with three other people in a tiny, tiny apartment – but the rent was certainly cheap.

All I can say for certain is that your current apartment choice won’t work with only $1,000 a month in extra money. You’re either going to have to find a less expensive apartment, give up some “extra essentials,” or get another source of income. I would probably choose a different apartment.

Currently have $190,000 left on a $211,000 mortgage. It is a fixed 30 year mortgage @ 5.875 % . Payment is $1248 per month, we are paying $1300. I ‘m turning 50 in a few weeks and would like to retire in 12 to 15 years. I read about getting 2 loans 15 year and 30 year. The reason being is when I retire, the 15 year loan would be paid off and then the 30 year loan would continue but of course at a lower monthly amount. I would of course pay the monthly amount on each plus more to get to a total of $1300. I’m just trying to get my mind around this to see if it is worthwhile.
- Ed

That plan works. I’m going to assume that your $211,000 mortgage was 80% or less than the value of your home, so you’re not worrying about PMI or other concerns that might set off a red light to a lender.

If you split the loan in half right down the middle – $95,000 in a 15 year loan and $95,000 in a 30 year loan – and locked the 30 year in at 5.5% and the 15 year at 5.0% (I’m using these numbers as an example), you would be paying $539.40 a month on the 30 year and $751.25 on the 15 year mortgage. That adds up to $1,291.65 a month for the first fifteen years and $539.40 a month for the last fifteen years.

Obviously, in this example, the total monthly payment is still under $1,300. That’s because interest rates are a bit lower now, which is another little advantage of refinancing. Your payment today would only go up about $50 a month for the first 15 years (in that example) and down drastically for the last fifteen years.

Given that, you may want to consider an even stronger split. The more money you can handle in the 15 year mortgage with ease, the better off you’ll be at the end of those fifteen years.

I took a look at funagain. Very nice site. I have been unemployed for quite a while and have a slight disability. I have some money saved and thought of a retail web business my own web business. I have gone through the steps, domain name, resale number, wholesale research, market research. Thats a tough one. I have not invested in a web site as yet or purchased inventory. Why?
I’m afraid. Your thoughts?
- Bill

It sounds like fear is the one thing holding you back.

I like the advice that one of my friends who is involved with a small business once gave me. He said, “Do you want to spend your time doing this? The answer has to be yes. Are you willing to completely lose your investment in the business? The answer has to be yes. If you have two yes’s, go for it. If you don’t, then you shouldn’t take the plunge as there’s too much risk on the table.”

Are you absolutely sure about both of those elements? Can you financially afford the risk? Is it something you truly want to do?

It sounds like I’m trying to talk you out of doing it – and maybe I am. Many people demand that others overcome their fears, but sometimes I think fear is a great indicator that we need to think about a choice more deeply than we are.

My situation, in a nutshell was like this (for many of the same reasons that you were in debt):
$17K in credit card debt, but regularly contributing to my 401k (not at a high rate, but I had about $40K saved up), some stock and options through my company, totaling about $5K give or take. No emergency fund at all. My wife and I were married in October, and we were very frugal with our plans. Including the honeymoon, ceremony and reception, we managed to pay for everything with cash from our 2008 tax return (with plenty left over). So I wanted to address the $17K and begin the turn-around to make our future a brighter and smoother one, and especially, to allow us to do some of the spontaneous things that she’d love to be able to do one day.

Whew. This is a longer email than I had hoped it would be, but I’d appreciate your opinion on my direction. Is there anything you’d suggest doing differently, or additionally?
- Nathan

Hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it?

Yes, the optimum move probably would have been to have a cash emergency fund in place. However, I wouldn’t necessarily say that a cash emergency fund was vital before your debt-fixing solution with the 401(k) loan. I’m assuming that your monthly required payments are higher now (somewhere in the ballpark of $500 a month for the 401(k) loan, by my envelope math) than they were before (somewhere around $300 for the minimum payment). However, you’re right in that over the long run, this will save you significant money.

Your best move right now is to get that cash emergency fund. You seem to be making moves to do that. As far as selling your company stock, I wouldn’t just sell it immediately to fill up your emergency fund unless you think it’s the right time to sell it for other reasons, though it’s useful to know how quickly you could get the money if you sold the stocks.

I wouldn’t sweat it too much, as long as you’re putting effort towards building an emergency fund.

Any ideas on what’s actually going on on this season of Lost so far?
- Kevin

The people off the island in 2004 are going to start “remembering” that they crashed on the island. I think virtually everyone that was on the island will show up off the island – that includes Ben and Juliet. I think the Dharma initiation photo from the ’70s, the one with Sawyer and Jack and Kate and Hurley and Jin in Dharma jumpsuits, is going to pop up again.

The people on the island confuse me more, but I’m beginning to think that the “man in black” is actually the good guy and Jacob is the main villain of the show. I know the implication has been the reverse, but I don’t think it’s going to turn out that way. For me, Claire shooting the people harassing Jin confirmed it. Of course, I could be completely wrong here.

And if you haven’t been watching Lost, neither of those paragraphs make any sense.

Currently I track my spending through an excel spreadsheet; i’m an accountant, so there are lots of tabs, tables, etc, but after years of doing it this way I’m ready to find something that will take all the work but still give me the same benefits. Do you have any recommendations for personal budget software to use? What do you use? I recently got married, so i’d like to find something that will be useful & adaptable as our life situation does (i.e. career changes, kids, buying a house, etc).

I know Microsoft Money & Quicken are both good ones that have been out there awhile, but figured you might have some insight that would help steer me in a direction i might not have thought of previously.
- Katie

For one, Microsoft Money is now defunct, so I wouldn’t consider that as an option.

I also use a spreadsheet for most of my calculations. I have a copy of Quicken, but I know that from my past history of using Money, it takes a fair amount of time to set up and I haven’t put aside that time (it’ll take me even longer, because I’ll be taking notes on it for a future Simple Dollar post).

If you were going to try such a package, I would try Quicken. Although the features of many of the online packages are impressive (Mint, et. al.), there’s an extra level of sharing your information with a third party that I don’t trust, no matter how good the features are. If I were to use one of those, I would use Wesabe, as it allows me to upload my data from my own computer without my personal information attached.

So… I’ll try Quicken if you do!

Though I’ve read many of the articles in your Retirement section, nothing I saw addresses the question of how to plan once retirement begins — that is, once the salaries stop and it becomes necessary to start drawing on retirement savings. My wife and I are now officially retired; we have pensions, I get Social Security and she will start getting it in a couple years, and we have been putting away money in retirement accounts all our working lives. Our financial advisor tells us we’ve saved enough for a comfortable (frugal!) retirement, but I’m finding it very uncomfortable to be spending that money we’ve worked so hard to save!

Do you have any thoughts about how to determine a safe amount to withdraw each year? We can almost live on the pensions and my Social Security (and expect to have our day-to-day expenses fully covered when my wife starts Social Security), but it seems stupid just to let the money lie in savings accounts and not use it on something — travel? improving the home? How would you decide how to make use of the money?
- Michael

If you spend 4% of your balance each year, assuming no growth, the balance will last 25 years. If you put all of your money into something secure that can grow at a small rate per year – even 2% – it’ll last for much longer (in this case, 35 years). If it returns 3%, it’ll last fifty three years.

If you’re worried about your retirement savings and want to make sure it will last, I would put all of the money into something conservative – a mix of bonds and cash. Then, I’d cap my annual withdrawal to 4% of the balance today. So, if you have $500,000 in the account, you can withdraw $20,000 a year from the account.

During the year, strive to spend less and build up a cash balance in your savings account. If you do that, don’t withdraw up to the 4% cap the next year – take out a little less. Each time you do that, you extend the life of your savings.

I’ve been persuaded by your posts on cloth diapers that they might be worth the trouble, but I have one hesitation: we don’t have an in-unit washer and dryer.

Other factors: I hope to have three or four kids, I like the environmental benefits of the cloth diapers, and I don’t have more than a couple hundred dollars to spend on a portable-washer solution.
- Bethany

If you’re using a coin-operated laundry service for your cloth diapers, the cloth diapers won’t wind up being a savings at all over disposables. The savings comes in when you have a washing machine and the cost-per-load drops drastically. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it for the environmental reasons, but it won’t be a cost-saver in your current situation.

If you do wind up having three or four kids, eventually a two bedroom apartment won’t cut the mustard and you’ll have to move, ideally to a place with a washing machine and dryer. When you’re there and still intend to have multiple kids, then I would look into cloth diapering as a cost-saver.

Cloth diapering is a huge savings if you intend to have multiple children and you have washing and drying services that aren’t pay-per-use. Without them, cloth diapering doesn’t save much money at all, if any.

I have 2 debts in my life right now. 192k on my home mortgage (roughly $1600 per month at 6.8%), and 32k on my student loan (roughly $215 per month at 3%). My truck is paid off and I use my credit cards as debit cards for the points and pay them off each month. For the last year I have been paying an extra $300.00 into the college loan trying to knock it down as much as possible. After looking back now, maybe I should have been putting that money towards the mortgage due to the higher interest rate. I have an emergency fund of $9000.00 and another $5000.00 in savings. I heard somewhere (probably not true) but if you make an extra mortgage payment each year you can pay off a 30 year mortgage in about 20 years. Is there any truth to that rumor, should I be putting the extra money into the mortgage, or use it for a new deck and to finish the basement to increase the home’s value?
- Ryan

Yes, that “rumor” is absolutely true. A single extra payment a year, starting at the first year of a mortgage, knocks roughly nine years off of the total mortgage. However, if you’ve missed the first year or two, the benefit is substantially less, as it’s the early payments that are the biggest help in reducing the length.

As far as increasing the home’s value, it depends entirely on whether you intend to resell it any time in the near future. If you are, the improvements you mention will help the resale value. If you’re not going to sell it for a lot of years yet, the improvements don’t have quite as much benefit (as the improvements will “wear” over the subsequent years), but they do increase your quality of living in the home.

You’re absolutely right, though, that paying off the mortgage is more urgent than paying off the student loan. The rate on your mortgage is high enough that you might want to look at refinancing, as you should be able to knock more than a percent off of the rate.

I have several bad debts. The last time I made any payments on them was in 2003. I was not able to pay several credit cards then. I am still unable to pay them. I have had to endure seven years of constant collection calls. I have been served with court papers several times also. There are judgments filed against me. I have actually paid about three of the collections off. I live in Georgia
My question is how long can this go on? Isn’t there a statue of limitations on bill collecting? I know the credit bureaus keep the information on file for seven years. But can the judgments keep renewing indefinitely?
What can I do to make it stop? I can not pay them.
- Betty

First, I would check the debt collection statute of limitations for Georgia. It looks like the statute of limitations for legal concerns is six years since the last payment or four years from the date of default (whenever it was determined that you had defaulted on the loan).

However, that doesn’t mean that collection agencies will stop calling you at the six year mark. You have a debt to them and they want to collect on it, so they’ll keep calling you. I would use a debt collection script to minimize the harassment.

I included Betty’s question because her situation is a very clear reminder of why it’s not a good idea to default on your debts. You will be harassed, have your credit nuked, and possibly have judgments against you for quite a few years after you decide to walk away. Clearly, this is reducing Betty’s quality of life significantly.

Got any questions? Ask them in the comments and I may address them in a future reader mailbag.

Recently, I had a long conversation with an old friend of mine whose opinions and ideas I value greatly.

He asked me what personal finance mistake I see people asking me about the most often on The Simple Dollar and, after a bit of thought, I told him that the most frequent mistake I see is that people are constantly blindsided by unexpected events. They plan for their lives to go incredibly smoothly, but when something disrupts that smoothness, they’re often in panic mode. Even small things, like a car repair issue, can upset all of their plans and send them back into debt.

“Well, how do you solve that?” he asked.

The answer is fairly straightforward. Have a nice cash emergency fund in place. Make sure you have the insurance that you need – life insurance and so on. Keep working on your skills, particularly ones that transfer well from job to job.

When you don’t do these things, the unexpected events in our lives catch us blindsided and unprepared.

He thought for a bit and then said something quite thought-provoking. “Most people spend an awful lot of their time running around putting out fires in their life. Your argument is that a bit of time spent now to prevent those fires ends up saving a ton of time and money over the long run.”

Bingo. Most of the unexpected expense in adult life comes from running to the fire, not putting the fire out.

We know that eventually our car is going to break down. We know that there’s always a chance that we could lose our jobs. We know that our appliances are going to fail in our home sometime in the next few years.

Yet many of us never think about it. Instead, we enjoy our lives under the assumption that these bad things will never happen.

And when they do, they hit like an atom bomb. We start living off of credit cards, racking up debt like there’s no tomorrow. We finance the repairs and find ourselves giving more money in interest than we give for the actual purchase. We waste time shuffling our money around, robbing Peter to pay Paul.

It’s stressful. It’s time consuming. It’s a guaranteed waste of money. And sometimes it catches up to you and bites you hard.

What’s the alternative? Spending less than you earn – even if only by a little bit – and simply socking away the rest. The exact method of “socking it away” can be argued and analyzed until the cow comes home, but the person putting $5 a week into a 0.5% savings account will always beat the person saving nothing at all.

Many people push back against this because they’re already spending everything they bring in and they simply feel there’s no room for such savings and planning.

Here’s a very simple solution for all of you who are finding that you’re putting out way too many fires each day.

Find five simple things to change in your life. Maybe you can skip a morning coffee two days a week. Maybe you can install a programmable thermostat in your home. Maybe you can start a carpool. Maybe you can cook at home one more night a week. Maybe you can switch to a generic product from the name brand.

Find five little routine things to change in your life. Just little things – nothing big or life altering.

Once you’ve switched, figure out how much each of these things is saving you per week. The coffee routine change saves you $5 a week. The meal at home saves your family $12 a week. The generic product saves about $1 a week. The programmable thermostat saves about $11 a week.

Total those amounts up. Then open an online savings account and set up a weekly automatic withdrawal for that total amount. Maybe it’s $100. Maybe it’s $11. Whatever it is, have that much transferred out of your checking account each week. Then forget about it. After all, that money is already accounted for.

When the next crisis that you can’t possibly solve comes along, check that account. Suddenly, instead of panicking and running around trying to put out the fire, you find that the fire is already taken care of. A few mouse clicks and the bill is paid.

Today’s the day to stop putting out fires and start preventing them.

This has been the worst winter I have seen in my adult life. We have had several snowfalls of more than six inches over the last two months and the snow has always been at least several inches deep on the ground constantly since early December (starting with the amazing December 8 blizzard).

This winter has finally pushed my wife and I to purchase a snowblower, something we’d managed to avoid for the past two winters in our home. I had been able to keep up with a shovel (and occasional generosity from a very kind neighbor), but after the third or fourth significant snowfall, it didn’t cut the mustard any more. I researched the snow blowers available near here, purchased one, and have used it seven times already to blow snow from our driveway and sidewalks.

Even worse: the long term forecasts have at least five (!) more significant snowfalls by the end of the month.

It’s deep enough that I’m going to clear off my deck today (by hand) because I’m worried about the sheer weight of the snow sitting on it.

I am really looking forward to spring at this point.

The world’s easiest first step into growing your own local food This actually works really well. It’s one of those things you can do in your own kitchen and it’s easy enough that kids can really get into it and learn something about where food comes from as well. (@ no impact man)

The World Belongs to Those Who Hustle Not hustle in the “rip people off” sense, but in the “strive harder” sense. The person who goes home from work and pushes themselves to improve will always eventually come out on top. (@ art of manliness)

Who’s In Charge of Your Life? We all like to think that we are, but if we find ourselves saying “How high?” when someone else tells us to jump, who’s really in charge? Who’s in charge of your life? Who would you like to not have in charge of your life? (@ dumb little man)

Reader Story: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Moved in with Mom Moving back in with mom and dad doesn’t have to be a sign of failure if you come at it with the right plan and the right attitude. It can be the boost you need to move forward from where you are right now. (@ get rich slowly)

How to enlist Gmail to sell your Craigslist items for you I have an item (or maybe two) that I’m seriously considering putting up on Craigslist, but I was worried about how to handle another deluge of questions. This seems like a brilliant idea, one I’m going to use. (@ mighty bargain hunter)

When I look back at my overspending days, it’s easy for me to see the many, many mistakes I made. My life was littered with them. There are some old journal entries of mine that are absolutely cringe-inducing to read. I still have quite a few items in my closet that are just the result of blind conspicuous consumption. I didn’t save. I didn’t invest. I didn’t plan. I didn’t focus on building the career I truly wanted.

Looking back, I see all of those mistakes and missed opportunities and poor choices. I want to smack my 23 year old self on the head and yell, “Get a clue!”

Yet, I also know that hindsight is 20/20.

Back then, I had a sense of what I wanted – a nice home, a marriage to Sarah, kids, a job that gave me the flexibility to spend lots of time with them – but I didn’t have any idea how to get there. Today, though, I have the knowledge and time to reflect – and I now see all of the mistakes I made.

Here’s the real key, though: those mistakes are done and over with. I don’t have a chance to repeat those days and make better choices.

Instead, I have two things I can do today.

First, I can strive not to repeat those mistakes. I know now that my life is perfectly happy without having all of the latest and greatest stuff. I don’t need to go out to eat constantly or go golfing or buy nice clothes or own a new gadget or go on ridiculously expensive trips (like a week in a hotel room in London with a view of Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall like we had on our honeymoon, for example) to be happy. I know what I value and love and need in my life.

Second, I can share what I’ve learned. For some people who are eager to find a better path, it’s easy for me – that’s what The Simple Dollar is for. When I learn something new about personal finance and the great life sensible money management can build, I can share it here.

There’s also a need to share things with people who aren’t at that same stage in life. How exactly can I reach out to them without being overbearing? For me, it’s usually a matter of just dropping a book in their hands or just asking what they want to do in their lives and then asking them what things they’re doing today helps get them there.

Don’t waste your time beating yourself up over the mistakes of the past. Those choices have already been made – no amount of anger or disappointment at yourself can undo what’s already been done. Instead, focus on the choices you make today and revel in making good choices now.

You can never change the past, but you can certainly learn from it. Better yet, you can take what you’ve learned and apply it to improve the present – and drastically improve the future.

(And now for something a little different…)

There isn’t much that I feel I need
A solid soul and the blood I bleed
With a little girl, and by my spouse
I only want a proper house

When I was in college, I was obsessed with music of all kinds. There was music playing almost constantly in my dorm room and, later, in my apartment. There are so many songs out there that speak to the problems and angst of that age, and I reveled in them.

I’m now thirty one years old. My primary concern today is my family – but that’s not exactly a concern for most mainstream music. Although I still listen, it’s often mostly background music for the things I’m doing. The lyrics don’t speak to me much any more.

With a few exceptions of course.

My favorite song for the past year or so has been My Girls by Animal Collective. Here’s the video:

Few songs really match where I’m at now in life like this one does. Add on top of it the fact that it’s really catchy (listen to it three times and you’ll not be able to get it out of your head – there’s a reason it was the number one song of 2009 as noted by Pitchfork).

Here are my girls.

They (and that blurry boy) are the center of my life right now – not material things, not anything else. My spending and personal choices revolve around that simple fact, and this song captures that feeling almost perfectly.

If you like the song, I encourage you to give the whole album a listen. You can pick up the mp3 of My Girls for $0.99 from Amazon, too.

I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things
Like our social stats
I just want four walls and adobe slats
for my girls