Matthew is the newest addition to our family, having just recently arrived in the world.

He has long toes, soft skin, and a deep enjoyment of warm blankets.

If you wander by the personal finance section at your local bookstore, one of the first things you’ll notice is that a lot of books use the word “Rich” in the title. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. How to Get Rich. Smart Couples Finish Rich. I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Heck, one of the most popular personal finance blogs out there is named Get Rich Slowly.

Rich. What does it even mean?

I’ve said before that my idea of richness is merely financial independence and a full life. I truly don’t want to have mountains of money – if I did find some way to earn a lot of money, I’d likely give most of it away once I’ve established long-term financial independence for my immediate family. (Trust me, writing isn’t it unless you’re Dan Brown or Stephen King.)

But I’ve put a lot of thought into that question. What does it mean for people who are simply trying to make ends meet?

I asked a big handful of people on Facebook this very question. “How much money does it take to be rich? What would you do with that much money if someone just handed it to you?”

Most of the responses were very consistent with each other.

The amount of money it takes to be “rich” usually equals somewhere around one hundred times what a person has made in the last year (at least, based on what I could estimate that people make). So, someone that makes $20,000 a year would say that two million would make them rich. Someone making $100,000 a year would answer that ten million would make them rich.

What was interesting is the consistency in how they would spend it. Almost all of them mentioned buying material things. Out of the twenty people I asked, only two of them mentioned investing the money at all, although quite a few did mention paying off all of their existing debt. There were lots of mentions of ridiculously expensive cars and several mentions of new houses. A few people said they would quit their jobs.

Mostly, though, they would just spend their riches on a higher grade of the same stuff they already have. They’d buy a better car and a better television and a better house.

Obviously, many of the people I wrote to are perfectly happy with their lives and upgrading material elements of that life would just put icing on the cake.

But if you’re not happy with some aspect of your life, simply doing more of the same thing won’t help. You’ve got to do something different, and that often means completely changing the routine of your life.

If you’re happy with what you have in life, more money is just icing on the cake – a means to secure what you have and buff up certain parts of it.

If you’re unhappy with what you have in life, more money to buy more of the same stuff won’t help at all. Money helps in that it buys you the freedom to make the changes you want.

Having the money to buy that nice item you’re dreaming about won’t bring you happiness. Either you’re already happy with your life or you’re not. Money can, however, put a bit of sugar on the cookie if you’re already happy and allow you to find a new path if you’re not.

In the end, being rich has nothing to do with money. It has to do with being happy with what you have and not desiring more. Being rich is having enough. Some people working minimum wage jobs are rich and some people with millions in the bank are not.

The people that succeed at any job are the people who get the job done effectively, even if the work happens to be incredibly boring.

At one of my (many) college jobs, I would spend hours upon hours sifting dirt. I’d scoop a big pile of dirt onto a box with a screen on the bottom, pick up that screen box, and shake it back and forth, allowing the fine dirt to come out and the rocks and large clumps to stay behind. I’d discard the lumps and rocks and repeat. Some days, I would go through more than a thousand pounds of dirt in this way, as I would fill up a hundred pound tub with the dirt, then haul it elsewhere.

I usually worked in tandem with a guy who was constantly horsing around. He’d work in spurts, then start fidgeting and finding ways to goof off. He’d try to get me involved with it, but I usually wouldn’t. In fact, most of the time, I didn’t hear him. I would simply “zone out” during the work, not really being aware of anything at all. The time would seem to pass very quickly and I’d be finished with my dirt while he had barely filled up a bin.

It wasn’t long before I got a raise and he was fired.

Later on, I noticed the same phenomena when I was a computer programmer. For several months, I was involved in writing a giant database API. Some of the code was interesting and required me to think. Most of it was not – it was just very simple stuff that had to be done. I would often find myself “zoning out” while writing this simple code.

Again, there were ample opportunities here to hit the water cooler. One of my other coworkers did pretty much everything possible to distract and interrupt my focus.

Six months later, the project shipped, she had contributed only a small fraction of what had been accomplished, and she was out looking for another job.

The same exact phenomenon happens today, with my writing job. Some of my tasks – researching topics, writing posts – requires focus. Some other tasks – sifting through comments, separating spam emails from real ones – require very little focus.

Sometimes, I’ll dread doing those mindless tasks and I’ll find anything else to do.

Other days, I’ll turn off Skype, turn off the phone ringer, put my favorite iTunes playlist on repeat, and dig in. Three or four hours later, I’ll find that the slog work is done – and my situation is much better off because of it.

There are two lessons here.

First, for most of us, it’s the successful, repeated completion of the slog work that makes the difference. In each of those cases above, the boring, grinding work felt like the last thing on Earth I wanted to be doing. Yet, by just bucking down and heading right for the boring, repetitive work, I got through it.

Even more important, it was the completion of that slog work – often over and over again – that laid the groundwork for success in other areas. It built trust in those around me. It built the foundation for further work. It enabled a greater array of communications. Each of these things enabled me to succeed in areas that were much more personally valuable to me.

Second, if you just throw yourself at that work and let your mind go, slog work is often completed more quickly and more easily than you expect. Just turn off the distractions and stop with the excuses. Sit down and get to work on those mindless tasks you’ve been avoiding. Turn off all of your potential distractions, hit the boring task hard, and just let your mind go with it.

What you’ll find is that if you’re not distracted away, time passes quickly and you’re done with the task surprisingly fast. Even better, the task is now done and it’s likely created the foundation for much greater success – building the respect of your coworkers, enabling you to move forward on a project, or something else.

As you’re reading this, you probably have a few hours left in your day. Why not spend that time taking care of some mindless task that, if you completed it, would make tomorrow a lot easier? Turn off the distractions, hunker down, and complete something – it’ll do wonders for your career.

One of the interesting things in my own life as of late has been the tricky balancing act between my professional work and my personal life. Right now, I’m in a big crunch time with my professional work, as my second book is coming out in late June. There’s a lot of book finalizing, a lot of promotional work, a lot of legwork in other areas… just lots of details to cover. I also have the normal stuff to do for The Simple Dollar website and email newsletter.

At the same time, my wife is past due with our third child. I’m spending an awful lot of the rest of my time helping to prepare for the baby’s arrival. Again, this is on top of the time I set aside for my children each day.

Add these all up and what do you get? Someone who needs sleep and is really looking forward to how life will be about two or three months down the road.

My husband and I are both unemployed and job prospects don’t look too great for either of us any time soon. Part of that reason is we both have been around long enough to know what we like, and what we’re good at, and working at jobs that don’t suit us just isn’t worth it. We don’t have any debt.

I don’t see either of us ever going back to working long hours with long commutes — that chapter in life is closed for sure. What I’m saying is that time is more important to us than money, we don’t have a lot of expenses to start with, have a decent amount saved for retirement and just need to figure out where to go from here since staying in our present home doesn’t really meet my my objectives of being able to downsize more (getting rid of the high cost of winter would be nice too), have less to take care of, less need for money, and more time to spend on nurturing friendships and working for causes we care about.
- Maria

I think it somewhat depends on the kind of work you’re wanting to do. Is it possible to do that work in a smaller community? Most jobs are possible, of course, but some are simply too tied to location or other factors. There’s also the cultural change – a city of 50,000 is different than a city of 5 million.

If you could work there, I’d strongly consider moving. I don’t see any drawbacks to it, in your case.

I’m not entirely sure where your current income comes from – I’m guessing from savings or a benefactor. In either case, the money you save by downsizing and relocating will help you wait until you find the right position for you.

I really liked the idea of creating a CD ladder, which I learned about here on the Simple Dollar, and have put $1000 in a 6-month CD for each of the past 6 months. Now that the first one is about to mature, I was checking out rates, and realized that I would make more by just keeping my money in my savings account (currently, 1.10% APY) rather than reinvesting it in another 6 month CD (0.75%). Should I just hold off on creating a ladder until interest rates get better? Are shorter-term CDs always money losers, or is the current interest rate situation really unusual?

I think that for the time being I’m going to put my ladder-creating on hold. Making a new savings account called “CD” will net me more money.
- Kristin

The entire purpose of a CD ladder is to take advantage of the higher rates offered by CDs while keeping at least some of your money liquid. If you’ve found a savings account that beats the prevailing CD rates, then you should keep your money in the savings account and not in the CDs.

Right now, with interest rates as low as they are across the board on savings, CD ladders don’t offer the nice benefits that they once did. In fact, it’s quite possible to find higher savings rates (say, with SmartyPig) than with CDs.

If that’s the case, keep your money in savings and wait for the CD rates to go up to a level that’s notably higher than what you can get in savings.

i am 50+, considering divorce and of course have no money. but i do have a regular job, no benefits, that doesnt really pay very well but i know will last at least a few more years. depending if the company can survive all the worlds financial probs. what ideas would you have for a female in my soon to be situation?
- Cindy

First, start stockpiling your own cash reserves independent of your current marital situation. You do not want to be in a cashless situation if you’re over fifty and working at a job with no benefits.

Second, work on improving your skills with an eye towards finding work that does offer benefits.

This will be a challenging leap. You need to build a destination for yourself on the other side that protects you in case of a medical crisis, job loss, and so forth. The best way to do that is to conserve every dime you can and build your skills with the goal of finding more stable work.

I’m 21 and my wife is 20. I work full time and she works some out of our home and filling in at jobs she’s worked at in the past. My wife has one class left to finish her associate’s degree where she plans on stopping since she wants to be a stay-at-home mom. I have about year’s worth of school done and had planned on quitting my job in the fall (which I can’t wait to do) and going back to school to be a teacher while working at another job part time. The only debt we have is about $20,000 combined school loans.

Any thoughts on what to do or at least how to stay sane and keep our heads above water?
- Adam

If you do not have health insurance, the cost of having the baby will be back-breakingly tremendous. I don’t think it’s realistic at this stage to walk away from health insurance because adequate prenatal care plus birthing care and infant care will be almost insurmountable for you if you pay out of pocket.

Your best bet is to stick with the job you have now and actively search for another one (since you’re dissatisfied with the current one). Going back to school right now, unless you can find other sources for medical care, isn’t a reasonable choice.

You’ll likely need to keep working until your wife is ready to return to the workplace in some capacity.

Yes, babies certainly cause some difficulty when it comes to life planning.

I have a auto loan with a 4.25 interest rate. My CD will be paying 1.25% when I renew it in May.

What is your opinion on this?
- Dale

I think that’s a pretty good move.

I’m assuming, of course, that you have money socked away besites your CD for emergency purposes. If you don’t have such an emergency fund, you’d be better off socking some of that money away in an ordinary savings account so that you have access to it in the case of an emergency – job loss, truck breakdown, and so on.

It sounds like your CD is large enough to enable you to do both, however.

I’m in my late 20s and having a “mid-20s crisis” a few years too late. When I was a teenager right out of high school money was tight and I was left by myself to care for a severely disabled mother (no other family). I sort of wanted to get into science, biology was always my favorite, but for reasons I will explain in a minute, lost out to computer science/ web programming. But I didn’t even get time to study that until 4 years ago, when I finally put my mother in a nursing home and concentrated on bettering myself. So for these last 4 years I’ve just blindly been studying computers and doing IT work. I’m finally going to get my associates degree (a 2 year takes a while 2 classes at a time..) and I’m scheduled to go start work on my bachelors in comp sci with a minor in biology. The school I’ve picked out is almost completely online but they only offer minors in biology, not majors.

I’d just go to the biology dept. at my community college or ask an adviser at my comm. coll, but the advising dept is not very good at my comm college and I don’t know the biology faculty. Any links, advice, anything you could provide would be so appreciated.
- Kat

There are a lot of well-paying jobs in the life sciences. The problem is that many of those jobs require a Ph. D. for entry. The jobs that people often get with just a bachelor’s degree in life science often have low salaries at the start.

It is more important, though, to pick a major that you’re actually passionate about and want to be involved in deeply for a very long time than it is to choose a major that seems on the surface more likely to earn you money after graduating. If you just choose a major for the money, you’ll never be among the leaders in your field – the people with passion will be doing that. The big earnings come to those who are truly passionate about their field, whatever it is. They get the best jobs and the opportunity to grow an amazing career.

Sit down and figure out what you’re most passionate about and follow that path. Don’t worry about what you’ve already spent – that’s a sunk cost. Look instead at the path ahead and the benefits and drawbacks of each option.

I am trying to decide if I should use my money to pay off the house earlier or put more in my 403B account to augment my retirement. I get STRS and my husband gets federal retirement.

So, given those facts, would it be wiser to take that $1000 a month I am currently putting into my 403B and pay the house off earlier or continue to put it into the 403B? I make a guaranteed interest rate of 5% and more if the market goes up. The interest rate on our mortgage is 4.875%.
- Angie

I’m going to assume you’re fairly close to 60 years old. If that’s true, I would continue to put the money into the 403(b).

In a few years, you’re going to be able to start taking withdrawals from that 403(b) if you so choose (or you may delay it further – it’ll be up to you), so the 403(b) gives you a bit more freedom at this point.

Also, since you own two rentals, you’re likely filing long form for your taxes, meaning the interest rate on your mortgage is likely saving you money on your income tax – it’s actually less than 4.875% if you figure in the taxes.

All around, I would put the money into the 403(b) and forget about it.

I have my roth IRA and non-retirement investments with Vanguard. Is it wised to have all my investments with one company? Would/could it be another Enron? (Note: I practice asset allocation, diversification, and rebalancing…so my portfolio is quite balanced with my risk tolerance.) I am just scared that Vanguard might go under, and I’d lose everything. Thanks for your response ahead of time.
- Trinh

The only reason to diversify among companies is if you’re exceeding the amount insured by the SIPC, which is currently $500,000.

Most brokerages (Vanguard included) have SIPC insurance on their accounts, which basically means that if the brokerage fails, up to $500,000 of your account balance is insured – anything over that is not.

So, unless you’re nearly a millionaire and worried about the long term health of your brokerage, it’s not really a major concern.

Any other secret tricks to paying your mortgage off early other than taking the amount of one extra payment per year divided by 12 and paying that monthly?
- Laurel

The best method I know of for paying off a mortgage early is what is known as “snowflaking.”

Basically, snowflaking means that you actively look for ways to save money in your life. You choose to make dinner at home instead of going out as you regularly do, saving $20. You buy soap in bulk, saving $6. And so on.

You keep track of these “flakes” and, at the end of the month, you total them up and add them to your mortgage payment. Since these “flakes” are savings above and beyond your normal monthly budget, the money is free to be used in this way.

This works very well for turning what seems like little choices into bigger benefits. That $5 saved here directly makes for a bigger mortgage payment, which then reduces the interest in all subequent months a bit and pays off your mortgage sooner.

I know that you’re a big advocate of reusable diapers, but my wife (and, admittedly, I) will not go that far. At the same time, we do want to be frugal and we’re wondering what the cheapest place is to buy diapers – a Costco/BJs type place? a supermarket? Online? We’re expecting our first child in the summer, so we’re new to all this. Since we just moved into a house, we have plenty of storage space, so the idea of buying in bulk to save money doesn’t scare us. Any thoughts?
- Avi

I’m a big advocate of cloth diapering and I would have never believed I would have been when our children were born. We used disposables for the first year or two on our son before a friend of ours convinced us to get on board the cloth diapering train and we found out that it was much easier than we expected. We’re planning to fully cloth diaper our soon-to-arrive son, in fact.

When we were paper diapering, though, we found the best deals at the warehouse clubs. Per diaper, we couldn’t top the deals we found there. However, at least twice, we had discount codes for Amazon.com that actually enabled us to get a lot of diapers shipped to us very cheaply with Super Saver free shipping, so keep your eyes out for those.

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag. However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

I’m going to go a bit off the beaten path here…

Why Nerds Are Unpopular by Paul Graham is one of the most thought-provoking essays I’ve ever read. I’ve re-read the thing several times over the years, each time realizing how much it actually hit upon some of the fundamental truths of my teenage years. In short, I felt completely lost in most teenage social situations and I felt most useful and happy when I was involved in actually learning elements of a trade from an adult who would teach me (for example, my father integrating me into his fishing business). An excerpt:

Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren’t left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies.

Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they’ll do as adults.

And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years’ training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop.

Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.

What happened? We’re up against a hard one here. The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: specialization. As jobs become more specialized, we have to train longer for them. Kids in pre-industrial times started working at about 14 at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. Now kids who go to college don’t start working full-time till 21 or 22. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not finish your training till 30.

The point here makes sense. Most teenagers have no idea what their parents actually do for a living (at least beyond anything but a vague sense) and they have no idea how the things they learn in the classroom will relate to anything they will ever do.

The solution to that, of course, is right at the start of this: apprenticeship. Instead of loading teenagers up with extracurricular activities or menial jobs after school, why not pair them with actual professionals in meaningful relationships that benefit both of them?

Here’s an example of what I mean. Let’s say there’s a teenager out there who dreams of being a writer. The school puts out a notice in the community looking for a writer who would take on an apprentice ten hours a week. The apprenticeship would pay something around minimum wage, but would also involve the apprentice building something of value on their own with at least some of that time. So, for example, I might have the apprentice spend five hours a week doing grunt work for me, then I would spend five hours each week with that person helping them to build a blog to share their writing, polish their writing skills, and so forth.

The student gets real experience in a field they’re interested in. I get to trade five hours of grunt work a week into five hours of meaningful mentoring a week.

You could do this at almost any job. Ten hours of apprenticeship a week. Five hours is spent handling grunt work for the master and five hours is spent doing meaningful work that builds into something more. Even better, in many cases, that meaningful work could be open-ended (like writing), enabling the apprentice to take the bull by the horns in their spare time and go even further.

Here are five additional examples of how this might work.

A computer programming apprentice might spend five hours doing very basic system support and cleaning of equipment and five hours getting mentored as a contributor to a high-profile open source software project.

A park ranger apprentice might spend five hours doing park cleanup and an additional five hours getting intense mentoring, going out on patrols, and setting up and running a large-scale project for park improvement.

A basketball coaching apprentice might spend five hours handling managerial grunt work for the team and five hours watching game film and receiving lessons on how to motivate others, culminating with actually coaching lower-level sports.

An administrative assistant apprentice might spend five hours collating and five hours involved in actual preparation of documents for the business.

A graphic design apprentice might deal with correspondence for five hours and then spend five hours getting mentored on how to create great designs for real-world projects, culminating in handling a few smaller projects all on their own.

From there, it’s not hard to see how apprenticeship could work well in many career paths.

An apprenticeship, done well, can give a purpose and direction to a teenager that didn’t exist before. It can directly tie their classroom lessons to real-world work and initiate them into the true adult world that they often seek.

With that in mind, I am considering doing this very thing with the local high school, seeking out a student who is interested in writing to serve as an “apprentice” starting in the fall.

As I write this, Sarah is actually well past her due date without a baby arriving. She’s pretty uncomfortable at this point, but is keeping up good spirits with a healthy daily dose of naps, reading, and relaxation. As for me? I’m trying to keep the ball halfway rolling until the baby arrives.

Ask the Readers: How to Talk About Money with Teenagers? This is a topic that has been heavily on my mind lately (as you’ll find out later today). I think teenagers learn a lot of very poor lessons about money and careers during high school and college. (@ get rich slowly)

The Price of Using Self-Storage Self-storage is a double whammy. Not only are you retaining more stuff than you have room for or have time for which could be liquidated and turned into cash, you’re also paying for the privilege of storing it. Not good, all around. (@ unclutterer)

Air Conditioner Spring Cleaning One big thing that people often forget in the process of spring cleaning is cleaning up their outdoor air conditioning unit. It can use a bit of the ol’ maintenance to keep running well and run as efficiently as possible. (@ no credit needed)

Cheap Ways to Display Your Art We have an original painting in our living room that’s currently unframed, mostly because we’re completely unsure what to do in terms of framing and we’re largely convinced whatever framing we got for it would be grossly overpriced. This article has given us ideas. (@ wise bread)

Is It Really More Expensive To Eat Healthy Foods? It doesn’t have to be, but I think to do so, you have to be very careful with your meal planning, centering your meals around the produce that you can get on sale this week. If you’re not much of a planner, then convenience foods are going to be far cheaper. (@ being frugal)

At the start of 2010, I decided to start an ongoing list of websites that directly saved me money with the intent of sharing that list (and my money-saving experiences with each entry) when the list hit fifteen sites in length (perfect for a good post – not too few and not too many). I fired up OneNote (my default note-taking app) and just started jotting down any experiences I had where a website directly saved me money.

It only took until mid-April to reach that count.

Here they are – the fifteen websites that have directly saved me money so far in 2010, along with how exactly each one saved me money.

Craigslist (and its’ cousin, Freecycle)
http://www.craigslist.org and http://www.freecycle.org
This is definitely the big one, at least to this point in 2010. About a week ago, I posted an article talking about how we bought a 2004 Honda Pilot off of Craigslist, saving us quite a bit of coinage. Beyond that, we’ve also *almost* picked up three or four additional items off of Craigslist over the last few months but, as users know, stuff can sometimes go very fast on there. I usually just look for stuff that’s outrageously undervalued (a la yard sales on occasion) or free.

PaperBackSwap
http://www.paperbackswap.com
This has been my primary source of books for years. It’s simply online book swapping – mail out a book you’ve already read to someone who wants it and get a credit, then spend that credit to get a book from someone else. I get books in the mail for about $2 (the cost of sending out one of my old ones). Recent books to arrive in the mail include Foucault’s Pendulum by Unberto Eco, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, The Accidental by Ali Smith, and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Skype
http://www.skype.com
Skype allows you to use the internet as your telephone service, allowing you to call any number in the U.S., Canada, and a few other countries as well as have your own phone number for about $3 a month. I’ve been using Skype as my business number since last year and it’s worked like a charm. The best part? When I don’t want to deal with business calls, I just close the program. Problem solved.

FeedSifter
http://feedsifter.com
My biggest problem with online coupon sites is that they often convince me to go ahead and buy stuff I don’t actually need or really even want if I thought about it rationally. Feedsifter allows me to set up automated searches of coupon sites for the things I actually want, then pumps the results to me. I’ve saved $10 on Magna-Tiles and about $30 on some All-Clad pans to replace our peeling Teflon-covered pans.

RetailMeNot
http://www.retailmenot.com
Of course, sometimes – in a short-term pinch when you have an urgent need for something – such coupon sites can actually come in handy. You’re going there with a purpose and you just find what you need. In one case – when we ordered pizza from Papa John’s online – Retail Me Not came in handy. It showed us a pile of coupon codes, including one that fit what we intended to order quite well, shaving some cash right off of our total bill.

DealCatcher
http://www.dealcatcher.com/
Another time when a coupon site can be useful is when you go there for a specific purpose. Earlier this year, my wireless mouse failed and, after looking at a bunch of replacement options, I settled on several different models. One of them – the Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000 – had a very nice price listed on DealCatcher, so I went for it, saving myself about $15 off of Amazon’s price and about $25 off of just running to Best Buy to get it.

Kayak
http://www.kayak.com
As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve been planning a summer trip up to the northern reaches of Minnesota. Over the years, I’ve used lots of travel sites for planning, but this time I’m using Kayak to help us figure out exactly where we’re going to camp and what services are nearby – with a four year old, a two year old, and a baby, something will come up, I’m quite sure.

Travel Iowa
http://www.traveliowa.com
Thanks to this website, we’ve hit several community events over the past few months, including Toddlerfest (which our children loved) and a few events at Iowa State University. It lists all kinds of events taking place all over Iowa during the entire year, allowing you to narrow it down as much as you’d like. Many other states have similar services.

Healthy Grocery List
http://www.healthygrocerylist.com
Hand in hand with a grocery store flyer, I used this site to come up with a set of healthy recipes and a grocery list for those items a few different times. I’d take the flyer, find some recipes using a few of the fresh ingredients on sale, then generate a grocery list. I’d then cross a few items off the list (because they were already on hand) and add a few staples, then head out to the store. A day is coming when this type of interface is available for a home recipe collection and when that happens, I’ll be a happy man.

Gas Buddy
http://gasbuddy.com/
I’ve used this site several times while out and about, usually with my wife. We notice we need gas, so I fire up Gas Buddy on either her Kindle or my cell phone and we find the cheapest price on gas near us. More than once, we’ve driven right by a gas station to one a half mile further down the road with prices ten cents a gallon cheaper.

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/
I use YouTube all the time for do-it-yourself projects. Two recent examples include a toilet repair (here) where I replaced the flapper and some other parts, and a video on replacing a shower head (here), which went incredibly smoothly after watching the video. In both cases, watching the video saved me from hiring a repairman or botching something badly myself.

BillShrink
http://www.billshrink.com
We’re currently shopping for a new cell phone provider as my wife’s contract just ended. We identified at least three providers that will save us significant money (according to BillShrink) – we haven’t quite pulled the trigger because we’ve asked people we know about service issues with the various companies and are still deciding which one to take. So, this is more in the form of savings in the bush, not quite in the hand yet.

Yard Sale Treasure Map
http://www.yardsaletreasuremap.com
I love going to yard sales. It’s a fun Saturday activity and every once in a while, you find a stupendous deal – I once found some trading cards worth hundreds of dollars in a box marked $1 and, several years ago, I found some rare Atari cartridges for $0.50 a piece. We’ve also picked up strollers and tricycles at yard sales. If nothing else, they’re quite entertaining and this site makes it easy to find ones near you.

Hulu
http://www.hulu.com
We’re about to disconnect our cable entirely, saving us about $40 a month. Although we don’t watch much television, some of the series we do watch can be found on Hulu for free.

Netflix
http://www.netflix.com
At the same time, we now subscribe to Netflix (a downgrade from $50 a month cable to $9 a month Netflix!). We watch streaming stuff on our Wii, including some children’s programming (like Follow That Bird and our son’s favorite show, Caillou) on rainy days. In fact, we’re likely going to shrink our DVD collection yet again because some of the disks are redundant with what’s available on Netflix.

Annie writes in with an interesting story worth talking about a bit:

I don’t like shopping for cars at all. I always get overly nervous and want to run away and feel like I’m just getting manipulated by the dealership. I knew I needed a replacement car soon and, like you and your Pilot, I knew what I wanted. I wanted a Toyota Corolla made between 2004 and 2006. I did my research and found out what I would expect to pay for this car. What I figured would happen is that I would go to the dealerships in my area, feel really uncomfortable and get pushed into paying at least that much, if not more, and then hate myself about it for a long time.

So I came up with a different plan.

I have two friends (a couple) who are very outgoing and are quite willing to negotiate and play hardball. So I called them up and made them an offer. I told them what I wanted to pay for the car and I said I would pay them the difference if they came up with a car like I wanted that had been checked out by a mechanic and had a good Carfax report. They ended up getting exactly what I wanted for about $1,200 less than what I asked, so they got to keep the $1,200 instead of the dealer. All I did was show up at the dealership, sign a paper, write a check, and walk out with the keys. Even better, they took me out to dinner at a nice restaurant to celebrate the new car.

I might not have gotten the best deal, but it wasn’t anything worse than I would have negotiated for myself. I didn’t feel awful about the purchase and the extra money went to my friends instead of to the dealership and I didn’t have to spend weeks hunting for the right model and I got a nice meal with friends out of it, too. Perhaps some of your more timid readers might find the idea useful.

I don’t see a thing wrong with this and, in fact, I applaud Annie for doing it.

Essentially, what she did was pay her friends for an incredibly useful service. She did not pay her friends $1,200 for the service, either, as she would have likely paid most of that to the dealership. She also has an experience that built a deeper bond with her friends.

Is this a good angle for many people? No. Is it a good angle for some people? Absolutely yes.

The real key to this entire story is that Annie knew herself. She knew what her strengths were (being good with money, since she saved up enough cash to buy the car she wanted, and having good friendships). She also knew what her weaknesses were (negotiating with dealers). She simply took her strengths and used them to overcome her weaknesses.

What are you good at?

Are you good at negotiating? Why not offer to accompany your more timid friends to dealerships when they go to buy a car?

Are you good at carpentry or plumbing? Are you good at preparing documents? Do you have a great deal of patience with children?

We all have virtues that make us stand out, at least a little bit. These virtues have value, whether you directly turn them into cash or not. They can be used to build up or cement close relationships with others. They can be used to barter. They can sometimes be used to earn a bit of extra money.

Here’s what it comes down to. If you have a special virtue, share it. If you’re good at negotiating, offer to negotiate for those you care about. If you’re good at carpentry, offer to help people you care about with their carpentry needs. Sometimes, as in the story above, it can even be lucrative, but usually it’s just a good step for cementing relationships.

Then, when you need something, don’t be afraid to ask for their help in return. Seek the skills of your closest friends and family members when you need them.