Of all of the parenting tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better at facilitating good behavior and a trusting bond like floor time. Simply getting down on the floor and playing with your children builds trust and good relationships like nothing else.

Of all of the dieting tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better than portion control (coupled with not keeping “junk” snacks in the house). The “saucer” strategy, in which you eat nothing at a meal except what will fit on a saucer, works like an absolute charm.

Of all of the saving tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better than simply automating it. Ordering the bank to simply scrape a small amount from my checking each month and put it in a savings account means I don’t have to think about it, and that means I won’t forget about it or talk myself out of it. The money is just there when I need it.

Of all of the time management tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better for me than the “inbox.” I keep a pocket notebook with me and whenever I think of something I need to do, I fill a whole page describing it (big words over several lines). I toss these pages in my “inbox” at home and go through them once or twice a day, making sure each one is dealt with.

When I stick to these singular tactics, I usually succeed. When I go away from them, I fail.

In fact, I’d say that finding tactics for success in life and money that actually work is well worth investing quite a bit of time.

Why? Because the ones that work make your life flow so much smoother that you quickly make the time and money back.

It’s worth the time to read through a list of 100 money saving tactics and try out fifteen of them just to find one tactic that genuinely and consistently saves significant money for me.

It’s worth the time to try every kind of easily-available fresh produce because the more fresh produce I actually like, the easier it is to have a very varied diet while still eating really healthy.

It’s worth the time to try all sorts of time management tactics because when I find one that shaves ten minutes off of an average day, I’ll make that time back over the long run.

The key to success is investing the time to figure out what really works for you. They might not be the same things that work for me – in fact, they probably won’t be.

I’ll close this message with a few challenges.

If you’re looking to spend less money, spend some time going through this list of 100 money saving tactics. Identify twenty that might just fit in your life and give them each a genuine shot. You’ll probably find that fifteen of them don’t fit you. The other five? They’ll be valuable enough that the entire time will be worth it.

If you’re looking to spend less time, use the same approach with my upcoming series on Getting Things Done, which will be loaded with time management ideas. Read the series carefully. Pick the elements that you think might work for you and give them a genuine shot. The ones that do work will stick and they’ll end up saving you so much time / making you so much more productive that you’ll flip.

Whatever that area in your life is that you want to work on, start trying some tactics. Go on a daily walk. Eat only the food that fits on a saucer. Read a challenging book for an hour a day.

Just try something instead of sitting there wishing it could be better.

A few days ago, I was reading an article in ESPN Magazine (I started getting a subscription to it a while back after I signed up to play fantasy baseball at ESPN.com) by Vivian Chum that talked about what you would need to do to get a job as an NFL coach (you can read the article online if you’re a subscriber). After reading the article and letting it ruminate in my mind for a while, I began to realize that the article actually had pretty good advice for any “dream job” a person might have. In fact, I used most of the advice in the article on my own path to becoming a full-time writer (a “dream job” for me that seemed totally unrealistic five years ago).

The ESPN article had six tips, but while thinking about them and remixing them a bit, I stretched them into seven distinct steps. Here they are, along with my own application of them while moving from office work to a stay-at-home writer and dad.

1. Work for free.
Internships. Taking on projects without pay. Volunteer work. What do these all have in common? They’re great ways to gain experience in competitive fields, but you’re trading pay for a deeper level of experience than you might get otherwise. Almost every field under the sun has some avenue to build experience through internships and volunteerism, from coaching and computer programming to office work and trades. Such situations allow you to gain incredibly valuable experience, the kind of experience that will launch you into real work in that field.

Of course, you’ll need to put food on the table while doing this, so I usually suggest working at another job first and saving every possible dime so you can live off of your savings while doing the internship or volunteer job.

As a writer, “working for free” largely meant blogging, especially at first when I didn’t have many readers. I spent a lot of time writing articles for The Simple Dollar (and for earlier blogs of mine, including a parenting blog) and not earning anything from them aside for perhaps enough pocket change to buy a cup of coffee. I kept plugging away. What happened? I became a better writer. I learned what my audience wanted to read. And, gradually, readers started coming.

2. Have some unusual resume elements.
What experiences or knowledge can you bring to the table that differentiates you from the others? You’d be surprised how often something “outside of the box” can get the attention of others, even if some of the other candidates have better “ordinary” resumes. This often goes hand-in-hand with the internship/volunteer suggestion above – if you’re plying your trade in an unusual and challenging situation, you’re going to immediately win some respect from potential employers or clients.

Always seek out the unusual and challenging in your life experiences, whether directly tied to your dreams or not. Such life experiences build both character and adaptability, which are invaluable at almost any career.

What did I do that was unusual? In terms of the obvious, I think I did two things differently. First, I openly admit that I flunked (badly) the early personal finance tests in my life (and still fail some) and, second and more importantly, I was willing to admit that while also writing about personal finance. I have never, ever tried to create a sense that I am some sort of personal finance guru or expert. That’s different, and I think that’s why the most popular personal finance blogs have succeeded – they’re not afraid to admit failure in a field where everyone seems to constantly talk about the “big win” and how much money they’re making.

3. Keep those unusual elements to yourself.
You don’t need to go around bragging about your great experiences. Keep them quiet and under the vest and just let your walking do the talking. You’re almost always better off to understate what you’ve experienced and what your skills are than to brag about them or overstate them. Yes, bring them out when you’re shipping a resume, but don’t bring them up when you’re working. Keep them in your back pocket until you can bring those great elements to actual use.

It’s a lot more impressive (and demand-creating) if you can slap together a computer network quickly out of whatever equipment is lying around out of the blue than if you spend some time each week bragging about how you set up networking in an African village.

There are some elements of my own life that I don’t discuss that somewhat shape my perspective on here and make it “unique” in some ways. I occasionally mention them, but I don’t use them as a red badge of courage. I don’t need to. The end result is that when such an issue comes up and I do actaully mention some of those issues, it makes much more of an impact. Here’s an example of this, when I talked about the deep value of $4 prescriptions for me personally.

4. Ask your biggest doubter to be your mentor.
The person you should be asking for help and for mentoring is the person whose skill set is far beyond yours. Tell that person flat-out that you are woefully inexperienced, but that you want to learn from them because of the respect you have for their work. Ask them what it takes to make it.

There’s no reason not to swing for the fences here. It’s only rarely that a person gets a sincere face-to-face request to be a mentor from a person humble enough to admit their faults but ambitious enough to actually ask for help and smart enough to actually seek that help. The traits of a person willing to do this are the traits that most people recognize as ones needed for success in any field.

I’ve had three major mentors in my life. When I first met each of them, I was barely on their radar screen. Each time, I found an opportunity to talk with them, explain where I was, explain the respect I had for their work, and simply ask for help. Each time, they happily offered it, for my own benefit. What did they get in return? There are three people out there who will always have my help if they ask for it, period.

5. Learn some tricks, practice them, and keep them to yourself.
Every career path has skills and tactics that are the basis for impressive work. It can be anything from incredibly fast collation or some great programming or writing techniques to mad skills with Photoshop or playing the piano.

Even some skills that aren’t necessarily related to one’s career path can be a huge virtue, as they can often be the tie-breaker between similar candidates. Which candidate would you hire – the ordinary one or the one who is such a good piano player that they’ve made money doing it in their past?

Learning such skills teaches you discipline and patience. Even better, these skills can often burst out at incredibly fortunate times – I witnessed someone open up to a colleague due to a piano duet before.

The more skills and tricks you have – particularly well-practiced ones you can pick up at any time – the better off you are.

My “secret skills” include some strong programming experience and the ability to write very good first drafts, which minimizes the amount of time I have to spend revising (at least for blog postings). My programming experience came from a previous career, while my solid first drafts came from my high school English teacher.

6. Be a nerd.
The more you enjoy obsessing about the minutiae of your work, the better off you’ll be in the long run. Revel in learning more about your work. Dig deep into the details, even the trivial ones. Hang out with other people who similarly love the details.

Great politicians (think Bill Clinton) obsess about politics and congregate with other political nerds. Great computer programmers (think Richard Stallman) obsess about programming and congregate with other programming nerds. The list goes on and on – the top people obsess over and practice the details and love congregating with other nerds about the same topic.

I love to read and write. I participate in a lot of different writer’s forums, particularly those that focus on a lot of the “nerd” details of writing. It’s not about just throwing down words on a page, after all. I often “practice” this nerdery by trying writing experiments and digging into specific skills (like better metaphors, etc.).

7. Read. Read more. Read even more.
Whatever you want to be doing, you should be reading about. Spend at least an hour reading about your topic of focus every day. Read technical books on your area. Read books that connect your area to others. Read books that round out your learning in other areas.

Read. Reading is learning. Reading makes you grow not only in your field, but as a person.

I read three books a week, minimum. One of them is usually related to The Simple Dollar. Once a month or so, I read a book strictly related to writing.

You can do this. It takes time and passion, but almost everyone on Earth can have a job they dream about if they’re willing to invest the time and make the sacrifices needed to get there. Just throwing your resume out there will just mean rejections – you have to go beyond that.

My wife and I use coupons for many of our household products, from toothpaste and garbage bags to toilet paper and Tones spices (yes, I had a coupon for this once upon a time). While we don’t use many for actual food products (since most of the advertised food is more or less junk food), we still do accumulate quite a few of them over time.

This, of course, means that an organizational system is helpful.

Of course, not every scheme works equally well for everyone, so I went around the web and found out how different people organize their coupons. I was inspired to do this by Carrie (an old friend who introduced us to cloth diapering), who lamented on Facebook recently that she was having a hard time keeping her coupons organized.

So, without further ado, here’s a collection of various coupon organization schemes from around the web, starting off with our own.

I use a coupon binder – a repurposed photo album – where all of the coupons fill up various slots in the album. This is often taken along on grocery store trips along with a grocery list that has an * by each item for which we have a coupon. See full details of my scheme.

Here’s what our binder looks like on the inside – actually, this was our old binder, which eventually got put in the ol’ “circular file” after years of wear and tear:

Crystal from Money Saving Mom (http://moneysavingmom.com/) uses a “coupon box” to keep her coupons organized. Inside of that box, she has a series of envelopes for various product groupings. When it comes time to make her grocery lists, she pulls out coupons only for the items she needs and puts them into an envelope for each store. See full details of her scheme.

A Thrifty Mom (http://athriftymom.com/) uses a zippable binder to organize her coupons. It becomes something of a traveling “grocery shopping kit,” as the grocery list, a pen, and other useful items can be stored in it. It’s pretty self-contained and very portable. See full details of her scheme.

Stacey Doyle from The Digerati Life (http://www.thedigeratilife.com/) uses a very similar zippable coupon binder and has a nifty YouTube video showing off how her binder works.

Debbie from Destroy Debt (http://www.destroydebt.com/blogs/debbie) actually finds that the Dayrunner coupon organizer works best for her needs. It has an $8 up-front cost, but it’s small enough to fit easily in her purse, so she just always carries it with her. See full details of her scheme.

Finally, Becky Robbins and Michael Greenley have a great debate at Helium about whether or not it’s even worthwhile to clip coupons at all. I think that it is, but I think you quickly reach a point of diminishing returns where further time investment isn’t worth it any more. The coupons we clip are mostly just the ones that basically fall into our laps or out of the Sunday newspaper.

One final note: remember that everything has a price. There are a lot of coupon and sale combinations that will get you stuff for free, but even free has a cost. It takes time to get the item and, more importantly, it takes space to store the item. If it’s not something you’re ever going to use, it’s too high of a cost to pay. You never want to find yourself in a situation where your pantry is full of “free” stuff that you’re never going to use and you’re trying to figure out ways to jam more stuff in there. Coupon organization (and a moderate, reasonable time investment in it) can save you some money on stuff you already use – don’t go wasting time chasing “free” stuff that will just end up cluttering up your home.

Over the years, I’ve received literally hundreds of requests for a detailed review and discussion of the well-known productivity and time management book Getting Things Done by David Allen, which was a truly life-changing book for me. Without the techniques in the book, I would have never found the time management skills or the information management skills to make The Simple Dollar work.

So, in a few weeks, I’m doing just that. I’m going to be running a twice-weekly series in June and July (and maybe into August) that discusses Getting Things Done in detail, along with a lot of specifics on how exactly I use the information in the book (think: pictures).

Time is money, after all, and perhaps the discussion will help you to figure out how exactly you can maximize the value of your time and perhaps find the space to start a big new adventure in your life.

I currently rent an apartment, my employer will be having me travel over the next year spending a few months in various locations. I’m trying to figure out if it’s in my best benefit to not renew my lease and live off of my travel expenses and save the money that I would have paid in rent. Of course I would have to pay for storage and moving my belongings to storage. My concern, which I need to talk to my supervisor about, is that I may come back to my office here for a week or so over the year and would need to stay in a hotel if I had no place, that would be at my own cost since this is my home office. Also I know moving into and out of storage would cost money. Looking for a new apartment when I return would also take time (i.e. money). Do you have any suggestions?
- Mike

You’ve got the right first step. Talk to your employer about temporary housing while you’re in town during this extremely travel-heavy year. I would think that would be a completely reasonable “perk.” I’d also ask for some short-term housing when you return from all of the traveling. After all, you’re agreeing to a year of traveling and life instability; I think these requests are pretty reasonable.

If you can get this, then I wouldn’t renew the lease. I’d probably try to get rid of as much of my stuff as I possibly could (ideally by selling it), stripping things down to the bare minimum to set up an apartment in a year or so, then put that stuff in the smallest storage space possible.

Just be absolutely sure this is what you want to do. Everyone is wired differently for this kind of thing. I can say from personal experience that this kind of year sounds incredibly difficult and unenjoyable to me.

I own a house (13 years now) w/ a mortgage in another state with a tenant that has a Lease, option to buy. This has been in place for 7 years now and working fine. The Lease has taken care of the payment, taxes, & insurance. In our agreement the Leasee is responsible for any & all repair & maintenance expenses. Recently the tenant has been coming up short of being able to make the payments (due to unemployment). We have talked and he recognizes that he is in danger of both of us loosing the house as I am in no position to make up his shortfall as I am also unemployed. The mortgage balance is ~85,000 and reasonable to the value of the place and for the neighborhood, however the market that is severely depressed where it is located. During the BOOM it was valued at over $250,000. If I go through proceedings to take the house back from the lease, and put it on the market to sell, it may still end up being a short sale, will be lucky if it covers the mortgage.

I don’t know that I would ever want to return there and live on the property… I am torn as to whether to fight to keep the property or to let it go. If I do let it go, should I just turn it over to the bank (letting the tenant know of course) or evict the tenant ($$) and then try to sell the house and hope for enough to cover the mortgage? All the while, trying to keep the bank from foreclosing anyway?
- Cheryl

The first step I would take would be to get an estimate on what the house might sell for. During the boom, your house was worth $250,000, but what is it worth now? Do the research and find out.

I’d also find out if the tenant actually has an interest in buying, as he has an option to buy. It doesn’t sound like he is, but it’s hard to tell for sure unless you ask.

If you can sell the house, pay off your mortgage, and end the lease while breaking even or winding up money ahead, I’d go that route. In your current situation, you need to maximize your cash flow, and a tenant that is unemployed is not helping with that.

I could really use some advice. I am 28 years old and I graduated from law school 2 years ago. Due to the tremendous slow down in the legal sector, I’ve spent the majority of the time since I graduated looking for work. Fortunately, I live with my boyfriend so my monthly expenses are pretty low, and about a year ago, I found a job that now pays around $59K. Now, I am trying to decide a plan of attack for the $183,000 I owe in student loans. I have two private loans: on the first, I owe roughly $59K with an interest rate of 9.25% (minimum payment $460), and on the second, I owe $16K is at 4.25% ($53). The remaining student loan debt is around $108K is federal government loans that are consolidated at 7% ($530). I also have some credit card debt – around $3,500 at 8.9%, and while my loans were in a 3 month forbearance period, I stashed away an emergency fund of roughly $6K and less than $1K in a Roth IRA (I don’t qualify for my employer’s retirement program).

I know that accumulating all of this student loan debt was probably a pretty terrible idea but I’m stuck with it now. And as I have made some very stupid financial decisions in the past because I was too foolish to ask for advice, I’d really appreciate any suggestions or recommendations you may have. I know that you may have other readers in shoes similar to mine who may also benefit from your analysis.
- Kristen

First thing: forget about the past. It’s water under the bridge. You can’t undo what happened, so don’t spend your time worrying about it at all.

Instead, focus entirely on your financial situation now.

Do you have an emergency fund that can help you get through a job loss, a car repair, or any major problem like that? If you don’t have at least two months’ take-home worth of cash sitting there for easy access, focus on your savings first. Your $6,000 is a very good start towards this, of course.

Once you have that, I would start putting at least some towards the Roth IRA each month. The annual cap on the Roth is $5,000, so I would contribute your monthly savings into that as long as your emergency fund is up.

If you have that cornered, focus on your debts, starting with the highest interest rate debt. Because student loan interest rate is tax-deductible, I’d pay off the 8.9% credit card before paying off the 9.25% student loan. After that, I’d just move down the line, throwing as much at each debt as possible.

My question is centered around our home ownership situation. Two months before I met my husband in summer of 2007, he purchased the condo we now live in for $251,000. We live near Microsoft headquarters in Washington state. Because of higher interest rates at that time and his 10% down payment, our mortgage payment is about $1,900 per month including PMI, HOA dues and water/sewage/garbage. Moving right along, assessments were conducted on our condo complex, and it was determined in fall of 2008 that the complex required a 4 million dollar renovation (replacement of siding, roofing, windows, balconies), with our part of the price tag being $39,000. We, and many other homeowners simply did not have the cash to pay that amount upfront. The HOA was able to secure a loan, and we now pay $367/mo. toward our $39,000 portion. The payments are bundled with our HOA dues, and the interest rate for our renovation loan is 7.5% for five years. That has bumped our basic housing cost including mortgage, dues and renovation up to $2,300/month. This doesn’t include any of our other regular monthly costs such as food, fuel, electric, etc.

Trent, it’s gut-wrenching to know that we’re paying such a high price on a home whose value is so much less than the inflated price my husband paid. We do well with savings, but it’s all going to go toward paying our renovation cost (because it’s got the highest interest rate and we’d like to pay it off before the interest rate goes up in 2014) rather than saving for a down payment on a house. We don’t want to walk away from what we owe, but given the circumstances, it may be about six years before we could afford a down payment on another home, and I am afraid that the value on our condo may not recuperate in that time. The depreciation in our condo of $50,000 plus our renovation cost of $39,000 puts us way underwater. (An important aside: the condo complex across the street had a structural renovation from apartments to condos 2.5 years ago, and the job was shoddy, and the contractor for the original project fled to Mexico,so now they need a $4 million renovation, too…those owners are staging a mass foreclosure, and I imagine the failure of those condos will further depreciate our condo’s value since it’s now on the local news.).
- Maria

You’re in a mess.

You’re right in that the value of your condo probably won’t recuperate in six years. It will likely recover some value over that period – after all, you do have a condo near the Microsoft HQ – but it’s hard to tell how much.

However, it’s hard to tell whether or not walking away from this will actually save you any money in the long run. It will devastate your credit, of course, which will bump up your insurance rates. It may also make it harder to sign a lease. There’s also the question of what you would do for housing over the next six years – not knowing the Seattle area rental market, you may or may not be able to find something that matches your current residence.

If I were you guys, I’d probably stick with my current situation and focus on paying down the debt on the condo. Keep your nose out in the job market and see what you can come up with.

I am a soon-to-be (5/8/10) college graduate, and I will be starting graduate school in the fall. Since I am pursuing a bioscience Ph.D., I am granted a full tuition waiver and a stipend of ~$26,000. Graduating from a private university, I have $40,000 in loans. This is a loan from my university at 1% simple interest, and I can have the interest deferred until January of 2014. There are no penalties for paying early, and the payments are calculated to be ~$350 per month to pay the loan back in 10 years. Since I have a steady stream of income from my graduate work, I would like to begin paying off the loan as soon as possible. Should I put money into the loan each month starting in September to pay down the principle, or should I put the money in a high-interest savings account and make a large payment with the first bill in 2014?
- Andrew

You should save money in a savings account. A 1% student loan should be an incredibly low priority for repayment. You can easily earn more than that with your own savings. I would pay that loan off as slowly as possible.

In fact, some people do this as a money-making venture, taking advantage of zero percent balance transfers on credit cards, putting the money in a savings account, and then paying the amount back after nine months, pocketing the interest.

Are you going to be doing a book tour of any kind for your upcoming book release? If you’re anywhere near me, I’d love to come!
- Shelley

Although I haven’t set anything up outside of central Iowa yet around the time of the book’s release, I am planning on visiting several Midwest cities throughout the summer.

If you know of a venue in Minneapolis, Chicago, Madison, or Indianapolis that would fit well for a book signing / presentation this summer, please let me know. I’m pretty flexible with the travel dates (for the most part), as I’ll be tying these trips in with visits to family members and friends in the area. In fact, if you have an opportunity anywhere in the Midwest, let me know, and I’d be willing to travel to the coasts for certain opportunities.

I am currently discussing joining a group that will represent me in setting up speaking engagements so that I don’t have to directly set them up myself.

If I hammer down any specific speaking dates or book signings this summer, I’ll let you all know.

I love reading your e-mails and find many of the ideas/thoughts intriguing. I too am a writer and have small children at home. Most days I am overwhelmed by the amount of things I have to do (maintain the house, pay bills, etc.), my work and the things I want to do (spend focused time with my children, pursue writing avenues outside of my current contract to do more of the kind of writing I would like to do, etc.), not to mention just taking some time for me to relax and recharge. At the end of the day, many times I feel as if I haven’t got a whole lot accomplished and what I did do wasn’t to the best of my ability. Would you mind sharing an example(s) of what your daily schedule looks like, so I have something to wrap my brain around?
- Wendi

I usually segment my day pretty strongly.

I usually have a morning segment, starting as soon as my immediate morning tasks are done, where I buckle down and focus on my work as tightly as I can. I have a set checklist of things that I need to do each day (write two posts, etc.) and I work through that list during a morning session.

I usually also have an afternoon session where I’m free to explore other things. Sometimes during that period, I’ll write more posts for The Simple Dollar. Sometimes, I’ll chase other writing opportunities. Other days, I might just walk away and take my kids to the park or something.

The evenings – usually starting at 5 PM – I focus directly on my family until my two older children are in bed. Nothing interrupts this – nothing.

After that, I’ll sometimes (if I have enough energy) get a jump on tomorrow’s morning checklist.

I was married for 31 years, and lost my husband to a heart attack. He was an only child, and his parents made investments in his name when he was young. For 31 years, I lived in a fairy tale world (although I didn’t realize it). My husband always told me that we would be taken care of in our old age. I purchased a print shop with money his mother loaned me (his father is deceased), with the unspoken rule of “pay me back when you are able. The loan was set up so that, when his mother died, the loan would transfer to my husband, so it would be “my” shop paying “us” back the loan.

I would appreciate your thoughts.
- Susan

Obviously, in this situation, you’re going to need to work for quite a few years from here on out.

What skills do you have? You own a print shop – what transferable skills did you pick up from the print shop? How can they be employed at the print shop or in someone else’s employ?

What is the value of the print shop if you were to sell the business – or if you would liquidate it? You should consider this part of your retirement.

If you’re unsure about the print shop business, I’d sell it, sock away that money for your old age, and then look for work that employs your skill set.

If you feel guilty about the money situation, talk it over with your mother-in-law. It’s likely she lost a son too early and is completely understanding of your situation, especially given the conditions under which she loaned you the money. She may have viewed the entire thing as a gift.

I have a close cousin that is having serious money struggles right now. He’s barely able to make his bills, and even then only with his parent’s help usually. His wife is a spender and refuses to grasp the reality that they just don’t have money to spend right now. His marriage seems to be falling apart as a result. He doesn’t know a lot about personal finance, and aside from referring him to your site, which I plan to do, do you know of any good “one-stop-shopping” personal finance books that would be good to pass his way? Maybe something about basic personal finance with emphasis on saving when there’s not a lot of money to save? He’s 38 years old with no health insurance (self-employed), no retirement and no savings and I’m worried about his future.
- Erin

I don’t think the “nuts and bolts” personal finance books help much at all unless you’ve decided in your mind that you’re going to take control of your money. That’s a very personal decision and it can be a very difficult one.

Honestly, the book I would give him would either be Your Money or Your Life or my own upcoming book, The Simple Dollar. Both books, I think, make a strong case for why you should take control of your finances, which is what I think a lot of people struggle with.

You’ve given some great music recommendations in the past – you turned me on to Aimee Mann, after all. Who have you been listening to lately?
- Shanya

I looked at my iTunes library and extracted all of my played songs over the last year. I then sorted these by artist to find out who my top-played artists were over the past year. They were, in order (with links to YouTube so you can hear the song):

1. Kate Bush (most played song: Wuthering Heights – Kate is officially my “writing muse”)
2. Blind Melon (most played song: No Rain)
3. M. Ward (most played song: Absolute Beginners)
4. She & Him (most played song: Sentimental Heart)
5. Vampire Weekend (most played song: Mansard Roof)
6. Cat Power (most played song: I Don’t Blame You)
7. Jeff Buckley (most played song: Hallelujah)
8. Gillian Welch (most played song: Revelator)
9. A Fine Frenzy (most played song: Rangers)
10. Regina Spektor (most played song: Fidelity)

Interesting list. I don’t know if I would have guessed these artists as my top ten, but it makes at least some sense to me.

In any case, head over to Pandora – you’ve got some listening to do!

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.

Today, Seth Godin (one of my favorite bloggers who usually talks about marketing) posted a great piece about consumer debt. Two great excerpts:

Here’s a simple MBA lesson: borrow money to buy things that go up in value. Borrow money if it improves your productivity and makes you more money. Leverage multiplies the power of your business because with leverage, every dollar you make in profit is multiplied.

That’s very different from the consumer version of this lesson: borrow money to buy things that go down in value. This is wrongheaded, short-term and irrational.

It takes discipline to forego pleasure now to avoid a lifetime of pain and fees. Many people, especially when confronted with a blizzard of debt marketing, can’t resist.

Resist. Smart people work at keeping their monthly consumer debt burden to zero. Borrow only for things that go up in value. Easy to say, hard to do. Worth it.

The general point of the article is that any time you go into debt for something that decreases in value, you’re making a bad move. This is a pretty clear take on “good debt versus bad debt” philosophy and using that perspective as a central rule of thumb helps you to make much better choices about your money.

Virtually anything you put on a credit card is bad debt. The stuff you buy with a credit card is either consumed (like food, for example) or decreases rapidly in value after you buy it (like a DVD, for example). Once you own food, you eat it and it no longer has any value. Once you own a DVD, you open the shrink wrap, turning it into a used DVD, which has much less value.

Student loan debt is (usually) good debt. Provided that you finish a degree program, student loans are usually good debts because the value of the degree you bought with that loan is much more than the face value of the loan. As we discussed yesterday, an education has such a huge positive impact on your lifetime earning potential that it blows away the value of your student loan. Of course, this requires that you take schooling seriously and complete what you start.

A car loan is bad debt. An automobile decreases in value with every mile you drive it – it will never reclaim the original price that you paid for it. Yes, it does provide transportation which can help you earn more money, but in that case, you’re talking about absolute minimal transportation – a mid-’70s Honda Civic bought for a few hundred dollars from a junkyard will get you from point A to point B.

Mortgage debt is (sometimes) good debt. A home will usually hold its value over time and perhaps increase a bit, but a home mortgage still isn’t always a good debt if you’re paying more in interest than you would be paying in rent living elsewhere. You should always strive to minimize the amount that you “lose” each month to housing, whether it’s in the form of rent or in the form of mortgage interest.

Financing any consumer purchase is bad debt. Furniture? A television? A riding lawn mower? All of these things are often bought with a financing plan – and all of them are bad things to go into debt for because they drop steeply in value as soon as you buy them.

But I need all of this stuff that depreciates! If you need a lawnmower and can’t afford it, buy a very low-end push mower and start saving for a better one. You need only to mow your yard, so get the item that covers what you need, not what you want.

If you need a car, head to the used car dealership and look at the $1,000 section. You need only to get from point A to point B, so get the car that covers this basic need, not the shiny features you want.

If you need a new couch, head down to Goodwill. You need a place to sit, but you only want something shiny and expensive from the furniture store.

I don’t begrudge anyone a nice shiny car or a great riding lawn mower or some new furniture or a flat-panel HDTV. But those things cover your wants, not your needs. Don’t go into debt for them. Cover your needs, then save up for your wants.

The most interesting thing? Once you start separating your needs from your wants, you discover that you don’t actually want a lot of that stuff too much after all. If you have a working lawn mower, after all, the desire for a replacement is quite a bit lower.

One of the best little things about having this baby is that my wife is home every day. I get to eat lunch with her every day. My morning and afternoon breaks usually involve chatting with her instead of just stretching and wasting time for a while. I get to hold the baby for a while, too, during the breaks.

The Oracle of Silicon Valley A worthwhile read, but one quote really stood out at me. “Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn’t be about the money.” (@ inc via kottke)

Get Your Garage Ready for Summer This was high on my to-do list recently, but a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. When our child was born last week, my parents and in-laws came to visit, and my father and father-in-law cannot sit still. So, out of boredom, they did this out in our garage, getting rid of a lot of obvious junk, rearranging some stuff, and leaving some questionable items out for me to look through. (@ unclutterer)

Is Putting in a Swimming Pool Worth It? After working through the calculations, Darwin concludes that the pool will cost him $67 per use over a fifteen year lifespan. Ouch. However, one thing to consider is that a good pool installation will increase his property value substantially, meaning the potential is there to make at least some of that money back. (@ darwin’s finance)

44 Ways to Ruin Your Financial Life By Age 30 The astounding thing (for me, anyway) is how many of these things I actually did along the way. Early adulthood is just filled with potholes that we’re just not mature or experienced enough to see. (@ frugal dad)

When to Quit Traveling The challenge of balancing all of the various things we want in life is a tricky one. At some point, you eventually have to decide that a specific element or two is most important to you and chase it. (@ man vs. debt)

Customer Service: Politeness vs. Demands You always have more success with honey than with vinegar when it comes to customer service interactions. Never, ever lose your temper at the poor representative on the phone with you, who is often a hired person trained to read a script. Be patient and kind and work through things slowly. (@ consumerism commentary)

Comcast, Round #3 There’s not an amount that I could be saving that would be worth this kind of non-stop hassle. I’m quite happy to jump ship and even pay more if companies treat me like this, and I avoid companies that do things like this like the plague. (@ free money finance)

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to reduce my hobby and entertainment spending by 50%. Each month, I budget a certain amount to spend on my hobbies and other entertainment sources, with any “leftovers” rolling over into the next month. My goal for 2010 was to spend an annual amount that equaled half of what I spent in 2009.

I knew this would be a bit difficult, mostly because I like to buy books (that’s where the majority of my “entertainment” money goes). So, I decided to make the change a bit progressive to see how it worked.

The first thing I did was calculate the amount I could spend each month in 2010, which was easy enough – take my total from 2009 (somewhere around $3,000), divide it in half, then divide it by twelve, leaving me to shoot at an average of $125 a month.

Rather than radically re-shift my spending right off the bath, I decided to try incremental change to push my spending habits in the right direction.

So, in January, for example, I set a target of 75% of a typical month from 2009, capping my spending at $180. In February, I dropped it to 70% – $165. Each month thereafter, I’ve dropped it another 5%, leaving May at 55% of my spending from an average month in 2009. In June, I’ll be at 50% and I’ll stay there for a couple of months, then start dropping further, ending with November and December at 35%. For the year, the total adds up to 50% of my spending for 2009.

Making the changes small and incremental has, at least so far, made it much easier. Each month, I’m pushed just a little more to use the library instead of the bookstore. I’m pushed just a bit more to eat out less. I’m pushed just a smidge more to hold off on buying a new board game, holding off a month or two. I’m pushed to conserve money for things later in the year that I intend to do.

This idea of “incremental change” works well for other personal goals.

For example, I’m slowly increasing the amount I walk each day (on average). One week, for example, I’ll set an average of two miles a day. The next week, I’ll raise that average to 2.1 miles.

Now, how do I work through that average? Some days, I’ll walk three and a half miles. Other days, I won’t take a walk or I’ll take a walk for just a mile (sometimes with my son and daughter over at the park).

The key, though, is that I meet my average for the week and that the average is slowly going up. I keep track of the data carefully using a pedometer so that I’m sure I’m meeting my goals.

Another example is moving my diet towards a vegetarian diet. To do this, I’m including meat in fewer and fewer of my meals gradually over time, replacing the meat with protein-heavy vegetables like beans.

This type of “gradual change” can be used for almost any personal finance goal.

Paying off debt matches this tactic very well. Slowly ratchet up your debt repayment over time, adding a little bit more to your payment each month and figuring out how to live on what’s left.

Saving for a goal works in a very similar way. Ratchet up your savings a little bit at a time by changing your automatic savings plan to transfer a little bit more each time.

Working through your financial to-do list can be handled by doing one thing today, then two things tomorrow, then three the day after that… and the next thing you know, it’s done.

The next time you’re trying to adopt a new habit in your life or make a significant change to how you do things, consider working to it gradually instead of cold turkey. It can really work.

Recently, I was browsing through some data from the U.S. Census when I stumbled upon a great table in the 2007 census data. On page 9 of this report, entitled Educational Attainment in the United States, one can find a very interesting table that describes the median earnings for workers aged 25 and over, sorted out by education.

For full time, year-round workers, here are the findings:

Workers without a high school diploma earn $24,964 a year on average.
Workers with just a high school diploma earn $32,862 a year on average.
Workers with some college and/or an associate’s degree earn $40,769 a year on average.
Workers with a bachelor’s degree earn $56,118 a year on average.
Workers with a higher degree earn $75,140 a year on average.

Note that these numbers include all types of degrees and also include all workers aged 25 and over, which means that the number includes a huge range of career paths and stages on those career paths.

But the numbers themselves are impressive.

Simply completing a high school diploma earns you $8,000 more a year (on average) for the rest of your life.
Getting an associate’s degree or completing trade school gets you $8,000 more a year (on average) for life beyond a high school diploma.
Getting a bachelor’s degree gets you $23,000 a year more (on average) for life beyond a high school diploma.
Getting a higher degree gets you $19,000 a year more (on average) beyond a bachelor’s degree and $42,000 a year more (on average) beyond a high school diploma.

Simply put, education is one of the best investments you can make for yourself. It drastically increases your earnings.

Hand in hand with that, however, is finding the right area of study for you.

Every job field is competitive and the people who have the most skills end up earning the best salary in their fields. The best way to build skills is to work with great passion doing something over and over again because you simply enjoy doing it.

Let’s take a look at a few specific careers for examples of this, using data from Payscale.com.

The average computer programmer earns between $38,764 and $62,916 – a $24,000 spread.
The average accountant earns between $35,574 and $51,518 – a $16,000 spread.
The average physical therapist earns between $57,983 and $76,298 – an $18,000 spread.

Those are just a few examples, but the pattern is clear – there’s a huge gap between the low end and the high end. Some of this is location based, but a great deal of the spread is competition-based – the best candidates get the best jobs. Even more important, it doesn’t include people who prepared for a career and didn’t make it, winding up in another field, often with lower pay.

Education is vital in terms of lifetime earnings. Knowing what to study – a field that matches your interests and talents – is just as vital. You’re far better off getting a degree and excelling in an area you’re passionate about than struggling to get a degree in an area that seems to earn more on paper but doesn’t fill you with passion at all.