On Sunday, I reviewed the worthwhile book Getting Organized in the Google Era by Douglas C. Merrill, during which I mentioned that most of the productivity software I use for my work is free. A few people emailed me and asked about them, including this one (which made me smile) from Dot:

As much writing as you do I can’t believe you don’t use lots of expensive software! Good for you! (What do you use?)

Although I’ve mentioned my free software list a few times before, I figured there was no time better than the present to update this list.

Here are fourteen pieces of free software I use pretty much every single day for the work I do. Some of these come in free and paid versions – in each case, I’ve become such a loyal user of the software that I’m now a paid user, as I’m a big believer in paying for what I use.

Mozilla Firefox
http://www.firefox.com/
I use my web browser far more than any other application – and Firefox has been my web browser of choice for a long time. Why Firefox? Identity theft protection. Popup blocking. Tons and tons of useful add-ons. That’s a start, anyway.

Xmarks
http://www.xmarks.com/
I use multiple computers. Xmarks enables me to access all of my bookmarks (and I have quite a lot of them) on all of the computers. It works with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Google Chrome, so it’s not just tied to Firefox. Even my iPod Touch has all of my bookmarks on it, and I can get to them on other people’s computers, too, though it’s not as seamless.

Picasa
http://picasa.google.com/
I’m starting to build up an image archive of photos taken with my own camera for various projects. Picasa has become my organizing tool, as it keeps them all organized and easy to find, enables me to do simple touch-ups (I bust out Photoshop for major changes), tagging, and easy web sharing, though I still use Flickr for most sharing purposes.

Skype
http://www.skype.com/
I use Skype for my business-related calls. Most of the features are free, but I pay $2.95 a month to have my own phone number and the ability to dial any phone number in the United States – very, very helpful. I use a headset with this to minimize echo, so I’m sometimes sitting at my computer with headphones and a little mic, talking to someone using Skype.

Dropbox
http://www.dropbox.com/
I often use this for sharing files between various computers, as well as sometimes making files available to others that I want to share with. While I have home networking set up, it isn’t seamless and it doesn’t allow retrieval from anywhere, so Dropbox fills in that gap incredibly well.

Remember the Milk
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
Remember the Milk handles my to-do lists for me. I usually use RtM hand-in-hand with processing my “inbox” (mail, notes to myself, and so forth). If there’s a task I need to do, I put it into RtM, and when I need to get down to business, RtM simply has my to-do list ready to go for me. I’ve used it for years.

Gmail
http://gmail.google.com/
The best thing I ever did was consolidate my email inside of Gmail. It enables me to effortlessly search through all of my email from any web browser, which is incredibly useful for both personal and professional things. I often just email things I need to remember to myself so I can search for them and find them later on within Gmail.

Gcal
http://www.google.com/calendar
This serves as an incredibly effective personal schedule for me, enabling me to quickly see (from almost anywhere) what’s going on today, tomorrow, this week, this month, and so on. Recurring appointments, the ability to color-label different kinds of things, and the plethora of different views just a mouse-click away makes this an essential tool for me.

Evernote
http://www.evernote.com/
Whenever I’m brainstorming, I usually use Evernote to keep those notes. The same is true if I’m taking notes in a meeting or anything like that. Evernote allows me to take notes on one computer (or my iPod Touch) and the notes are easily accessible on any computer, allowing me to retrieve my notes and thoughts anywhere.

Digsby
http://www.digsby.com/
I use Digsby on any Windows-based computer I’m on to keep up to date with Twitter, Facebook, and the instant messaging programs I use all at once. Whenever something new comes along, it pops up in the corner and I can click on it to reply if I so choose. It’s great to have on if I’m just searching for ideas and it turns off with just a click when I need to focus.

Notepad++
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/
Notepad++ is what I use when I’m writing posts (this article was typed out in Notepad++), writing code, or trying to organize ideas. It does so many little things better than the default Notepad that I consider it essential. I even type out long emails in it, copying and pasting when I’m finished.

Google Docs
http://docs.google.com/
When I’m assembling longer documents, doing basic spreadsheet work, or assembling presentations, I usually use Google Docs. Doing this allows me to work on those documents no matter where I am. Even better, you can effortlessly share these documents for collaborative purposes, allowing other people access to the document and allowing them to make changes and keep track of them.

Google Reader
http://reader.google.com/
I try to keep track of (literally) hundreds of different blogs. I use Google Reader to do this – it simply shows me the latest posts from all of these sites at once. I can group these sites into whatever collections I like and it keeps track of which ones I’ve read and which ones I haven’t.

iTunes
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
For my uses, this is the best media manager software, but that’s partially because I use an iPod Touch. Without that, I would recommend Songbird (http://getsongbird.com/). In either case, the software simply makes it easy to organize and sort through my music collection (which I listen to as I work), create playlists, track my preferences, and so on.

This list pretty much sums up the software I use on a daily basis – and it’s all free.

I had forgotten the rewards and challenges of having a newborn. In some ways, both the challenges and the rewards are amplified by also having a four year old and a two year old at home.

My son is 20, and is a straight A student at college but doesn’t feel that he knows what he really wants to do. Everything, academically, comes easy to him. (I know he doesn’t like manual labor. LOL.) How can he decide what he really wants to do with his future when he’s got a ‘surplus’ of brains but a lack of motivation? (He actually asks me these questions, and wants to find a “passion” but hasn’t found one at this point of life yet.) We’re not wealthy, just conservatively ‘comfortable.’ I try to expose him to a variety of opportunities to explore, but he’s so ‘frugal’ (from us) that he doesn’t want to explore options as much as I would like. Do you have any suggestions??
- Carolyn

What does he talk about? What does he spend his free time reading about or learning about when there’s no requirement to do so?

Whatever that is, it’s your first clue as to where he should be headed. If he’s constantly following politics, for example, then he should delve into politics. If he’s constantly writing, then he should be a writer. If he’s constantly tinkering with things, then he might want to consider engineering.

One of the biggest shames of our culture is that we send kids to college who have no idea what they want to do with their lives, so they go and spin their wheels for years, racking up expenses and debts.

I live in a low-income urban environement and am looking for Personal Finance material that is directed at low-income folks. As I have begun to do some one hour classes I am realizing that the issues are very different. If you can point me in a direction that would be awesome.
- Andrew

Most of the resources designed for low-income people aren’t centralized at all. There is no “one stop shop” for such resources, as most resources are either created by small groups that don’t market themselves well or are written for a very broad audience.

One place worth looking at is MyMoney.gov. Again, some of the material there isn’t written explicitly for low-income people, but there’s a lot of good content there.

Also, CNN Money’s Money 101 has a lot of good resources, but you definitely have to pick and choose among them.

wondering how much you spend a week on groceries – prior to the new addition (congrats by the way.) And what you include as groceries (ie. would you include baby stuff like wipes).
We’re a family of 4 – 3 yr old girl and 1 yr old boy.
- Jordan

I calculated this a while back and found that our spending is roughly on par with the national average for a family of four. However, I think what we spend that money on is atypical.

We do a ton of things to reduce our spending – grocery lists, meal plans, and so forth – but we also buy things like fresh saffron, fresh morels, Maytag blue cheese, organic milk, grass-fed beef, and so on. I’ll do things like buy a bottle of brandy to aid in making coq au vin and include the cost of that bottle in our monthly food accounting.

Our “food” spending does include a few non-food items. I don’t go through grocery receipts and excise the three or four non-food items purchase, like a tube of toothpaste or something like that. So our true food expenditure is probably lower.

I have two almost maxed out credit cards with interest rates of 14.4% and 11.4%. I would like to get a credit card with a 0% balance transfer option so I can transfer/ close out one of them. I have applied for two so far and keep getting denied. Am I hurting my credit (which is good despite my amount of debt) by continuing to apply for different 0% cards? Should I just bite the bullet and try to pay them down at their current interest rates? I have been trying to pay them down (paying more than minimums) It just doesn’t seem like I am getting anywhere.
- Kay

Applying for a credit card lowers your credit rating by about 5 points for 6 months – here’s the details on a hard credit pull versus a soft credit pull.

I do find it a bit odd that you haven’t had any success at all applying for a 0% balance transfer option, though.

If I were you, I’d check my credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com (the one that’s actually run by the FTC and is actually free) and make sure there isn’t anything you don’t know about on that report.

I am a soon to be college graduate (2 weeks away!). I am on an active job search, but I haven’t had any offers yet. Right now, my plan is to live with my parents for a few months while I work an hourly job at a restaurant, save money, and keep searching for a job. My family has started to ask me what I’d like as a graduation gift, and I’m at a loss as to what to tell them. I used to be a gadget freak, and I still have a weak spot for those things but right now I’m doing fine with what I have currently.

Since I’ll be living at home and putting my current apartment stuff in storage, I don’t have an immediate need for anything apartment related. I’m having a hard time thinking of something practical that would help me in this transitional period of my life. Do you have any thoughts?
- Phil

Don’t go for stuff, go for experiences.

Instead of asking for a material item, ask for a ticket to De Gaulle Airport and a pass on Eurorail. Get your passport and backpack around Europe for a few weeks after graduation, just seeing things. It might very well change your ideas about the future.

Similarly, you could turn this into a volunteer project. Work at a Romanian orphanage for six months. Work in a small African village. These things are golden on a resume, plus they’ll give you a new perspective on the world.

This is probably one of your best windows in life to really grow as a person. Take advantage of it.

I am 41 and my wife is 27. I have no debt while she has over $100k – mostly student loans, a reasonable car loan ($5k) and no credit card debt. The loans range from 2% to 8% with monthly payments of $1050. We both earn $80k a year in secure jobs. I have about $200k in savings and she has none, but our 403b is quite generous: 12% of annual salary a year from our employer with nothing required from us.

Personality wise, she’s the spender and I’m the saver. She always assumes more money is around the corner, whereas I’ve been laid off and gone through the economic downturns both personal and global. She hasn’t given up on the doctorate either, just postponed it.
- Leigh

It sounds as though you don’t have merged finances at this point, which is fairly unusual for a marriage. It took my wife and I a year or two to get everything in line, but once we combined our finances, it was really a good thing.

If you’re truly committed to your marriage and your finances and life are bound together for good, then her debts are effectively your debts because they affect your household cash flow and savings potential. The sooner you get rid of them, the better.

If you don’t feel that confident, then there’s a marital issue involved that you should work through.

http://www.gulfbank.com/personal_checking_interest.html

A 4.01% checking account is amazing!
- Trish

This offer is just like many other promotional interest rate offers. They look great until you break down the specifics.

The big catch here is that “0.10% APY will be paid on the entire balance in any cycle where the requirements are not met.” That’s an awful APY.

What are the requirements? The big one is that you must have a “minimum of 12 check card purchases” each month. I very rarely reach that number in a given month. If I do, it usually means that I don’t have a good grip on my spending.

Of course, not having a grip on your spending means overdrafts. And if you don’t overdraft but don’t use the card enough, you get only a 0.10% APY. For me, that’s too many requirements on my spending just to earn a bit more interest on my checking account.

Twenty year son wants to move out and in with a friend. Advantages and disadvantages of this? Friend owes him money and son does not have full-time career or job yet nor does the friend.
- Chris

If neither one of them has a full time career or job, how are the bills at this apartment getting paid? Food? Electricity? Rent?

I’ve got to assume that someone external is writing the checks for these things, and I think that’s a very bad idea. It sets up a pattern of financial dependence that doesn’t really give the person who is dependent any motivation to break free from. Why should they? They’re not working and the bills are getting paid.

If he gets a full time job, there’s nothing wrong with him renting an apartment with a friend and you might even give him a bit of financial help when he leaves. But an ongoing financial dependence is not a good thing for either of you.

I don’t understand why people buy lottery tickets. Talk about an awful investment.
- Andrew

Why do people gamble at all? There’s usually two reasons. One, it’s an enjoyable pastime for them – they love the game. Second, the reward curve is uneven, giving the player the potential to multiply his money. Unfortunately, the multiplication is usually zero, but most people are a bit overconfident about such things.

The big issue is, from a societal standpoint, that people who are able to step back and carefully think through such decisions generally do not participate in lotteries and instead invest their money elsewhere. At the same time, that skill of analysis helps them to earn more money in their life.

Yes, lotteries are not a good way to spend your money if you look solely at costs and returns.

How’s the baby? We want updates!
- Kellie

He’s doing quite well. He’s home from the hospital – as is Mom – and he seems to be doing well.

He currently has his days and nights mixed up, meaning he’s up a lot during the night and sleeps a lot during the day. We’re trying to use light signals to help with this, keeping him in bright rooms during the day and dim rooms at night.

He’s already a surprisingly sound sleeper – when he’s asleep, he tends to stay asleep very strongly until he decides to wake up. Our oldest child is a very light sleeper, but our daughter sleeps similarly deeply.

We like him. He’s a keeper.

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.

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book or other book of interest.

I’m pretty passionate about organization – after all, I named David Allen’s book Getting Things Done as one of the ten books that changed my life. I’m also (obviously) passionate about how information technology and the internet can change people’s lives.

This book, Getting Organized in the Google Era by former CIO of Google Douglas C. Merrill, hits the joint between those two passions quite firmly. It looks at how people organize all of the information they need to maintain their life on a daily basis and talks about how recent advances in technology (particularly cloud computing – where you save your data on a web server, a la Gmail or Facebook) have potentially changed or improved how we organize ourselves.

Intriguing stuff, but is there enough meat there to fill up a whole book with ideas?

1 | Cocktail Parties & Cap’n Crunch
Our brain is a strange little machine. It’s pretty poor at retaining a large number of little pieces of information, but it is very good at taking lots of little pieces of information and making sense of them. That’s why, over time, successful humans have developed external aids to help with storing those little pieces of external information.

Think of our schedules. Most of us who have a lot of appointments to keep maintain some sort of written schedule – I sure do. Why? Because without it, you’ll have a lot of little pieces of information floating around in your brain (each appointment) and if you forget one, it’s a major problem. So we get into the routine of storing it all externally and just remembering to check the schedule all the time.

2 | Summer Vacations, Suburbia & Factory Shifts
An awful lot of societal structures are woefully inefficient. Many, many people work a nine-to-five schedule (or something close), so there are resultant traffic jams, causing long commutes and tons of lost productivity – I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to be working than sitting in traffic. School students have long summer vacations during which their learning and skills get rusty. The list goes on and on – the way things were always done might have been efficient in the past compared to the alternatives, but society has changed so much that these things have become inefficient.

Instead of just forcing yourself into these inefficient structures, why not see if you can change a rule or two. Do some homeschooling during the summer. Ask if you can shift your work schedule to two hours earlier – or two hours later – so you can avoid the morning and evening rushes. Look into telecommuting if your job allows it. If something seems inefficient – and every time you’re sitting idle, there’s probably an inefficiency – look for ways around it so you can actually fill your time with meaning.

3 | Racecars, Basketball Shorts & Opera
All of us have constraints in life. I work at home with three young children – that certainly introduces some constraints. The big challenge is to determine which constraints are real and which ones are imagined. If you can figure out that you’re just imagining a constraint, then it’s no longer a constraint.

Take naptime, for example. I used to view this as a pretty long constraint on other activities, as I’d stay near the kids until they were asleep (they’re good at going to sleep by themselves at night, but during naptime when the sun is shining outside, they can sometimes get antsy). What I eventually learned is that the constraint was much smaller than I imagined. Once a story is read and they’re laying down, the perfect time has arrived to open my laptop and get a few things done.

What constraints in your life are real constraints?

4 | Climb That Mountain or Chill in the Barcalounger?
What is it that I want to achieve above all else? Why do I want to achieve it? What happens if I don’t achieve it? What exactly do I have to do to make it happen? The more you ask yourself these questions and reflect on your answers, the more you begin to put the big things you want in life front and center.

What do I want to achieve above all else? I want to be a successful writer and a successful father. Those are my front-and-center goals – the other goals I have are almost always subordinate to those two things. Other things really don’t matter in comparison. What does success mean in those areas? That’s a much longer answer, but after a lot of reflection, I think I know what success is there, too.

5 | Beyond Taylorism & Trapper Keepers
Once upon a time, organizing information meant keeping it in hierarchical structures that made it easy to dig down and locate a specific piece of information – think of the Dewey Decimal System or a complex filing system.

Today, though, information technology allows us to have all of that data electronically and, more important, it’s all searchable. Instead of digging for a file in a huge filing cabinet, we can just search for it if we have it stored electronically.

This gets around a lot of differences: different filing methods, different constraints, different personal quirks. Everyone simply searches for what they want.

Think about Wikipedia versus an old printed set of World Book encyclopedias, for example.

6 | Paris, France or Paris, Vegas?
In fact, the best skill one can build for managing information in the future is the ability to know how to search effectively and accurately for a specific piece of information. This means learning the nuances of various search engines, knowing how they work, and knowing how to apply them.

Using Google means more than just going to the search field and typing in what you want, for example. There’s quite a lot of syntax that goes into really narrowing down what you want, from using the “site:” prefix to narrow down searches within a particular site to using “-” as a prefix to exclude terms. There’s even more useful syntax within specific programs like Gmail when you’re searching through old emails.

7 | Colored Markers & Filters
There is so much information out there that it’s impossible to process it all. So where do we begin?

Merrill suggests starting with your goals. For example, you’re probably reading The Simple Dollar because you have personal financial or personal success goals: paying off debt, building up some savings, getting a better job, or so on. This means that some posts apply to you and your situation and some do not. If it doesn’t apply, filter it out immediately. Use your energy to read something else.

This is also true when it comes down to the information you save – old emails and the like. Why are you saving it? What’s your goal with that information if you retain it? This often helps you figure out how to retain it.

8 | Day-Timer or Digital?
Should you have a document in digital form or in paper form? To put it bluntly, you should always have it in the form that takes the least amount of time for you to manage it once you’ve climbed the learning curve.

For example, I keep my schedule electronically because it takes far less time to enter repeated appointments or to share my schedule with others than it does with a written schedule. On the other hand, it’s often easier to receive statements in the mail because electronic distribution of paper statements is still sometimes very poor. Paper is still also superior when it comes to jotting down quick notes, though that may change in the near future.

9 | Beyond Send & Receive
Merrill is a huge fan of Gmail for organizing email and contact information and I have to agree with him. The ability to search through mountains of email effortlessly, tag key emails easily, sort them as I wish, and retrieve email from any web browser makes Gmail an indispensable tool for me (and for others).

Much of this chapter focuses on Gmail power tips. In fact, Merrill often argues in favor of just emailing information that you need to retain to your own Gmail account because of the ease of searching it in the future.

10 | Thanks for Sharing
Similarly, Merrill makes an argument for using GCal here, for similar reasons as Gmail – accessibility and ease of searching. He rails quite a bit against the “locked system” of Outlook/Exchange and Domino, mostly because of the barrier they put between work appointments and personal appointments.

I find Gmail and Gcal to be essential tools for my work and for my personal life thanks to things like integrating weather forecasts into my personal schedule (so my calendar alone can indicate whether today is a good day for an outdoor activity).

11 | A Browser, an Operating System & Some Cool Stickers
Here, Merrill proposes moving collaborative documents online to Google Docs, enabling you to easily work together with others that have access to a web browser, as well as store all of your documents at a place easily accessible via the web and, of course, searchable. I also use this for some documents, while keeping others offline for my own privacy.

While Merrill does focus pretty heavily on the Google apps, he’s right on in terms of two key points. First, the more searchable all of your emails, documents, schedules, and other information is, the more useful it is. Second, no one is putting this all together as smoothly as the Google apps do – and they’re free.

12 | Avoiding Brain Strain
The best technique for avoiding brain strain is to focus on one activity at a time, because every time you switch activities, some focus and some information is lost in the process. If you’re about to switch activities, take the time to note your current train of thought on your current activity so that you can pick it up easier when you return.

If your job and life seem to constantly push you to switch focus with frightening regularity, seek out spaces in which you can minimize those focus switches. Turn off your distractions (like your phone) and shut your door so you can bear down on a task.

13 | Checking Email from the Beach
It’s all about “work-life balance.” In other words, the more efficient you are at your required work tasks and life tasks, the more time you have free for genuine relaxation and enjoyment of life. That’s why, if you have pockets of down time that don’t allow for sustained relaxation, you should try to find ways to fill those pockets with some sort of useful activity.

Yes, that does mean you should do things like check your email during a fifteen minute downtime on a Saturday. Doing that, however, frees you up to spend more sustained time involved in activities you care about later. The more efficient your tools are, the easier it is to do these microbursts of tasks.

14 | Dealing with the Unexpected
You’re going to make mistakes along the way – no one is perfect. The key is to learn from those mistakes and look for solutions so that these mistakes don’t repeat themselves.

The book closes with one of the best parts – a long list of “stuff we love,” web applications that solve particular personal information management concerns.

Is Getting Organized in the Google Era Worth Reading?
This is a really useful read if you are already fairly organized as it does a good job of outlining a large number of ways that you can use many recent advances in information technology to organize your personal and professional information. I fall into that category, so I found lots of interesting things in this book.

This book isn’t a useful read if you’re not already pretty organized. If you’re in that group, the stuff in this book won’t necessarily help you get organized – it’s not an organization system in itself, but a bunch of tactics to help improve what it is you already do. If you’re starting from scratch, I really recommend David Allen’s excellent book Getting Things Done (which I’m planning to cover in detail in an upcoming series).

I got a lot of good ideas from this book. You might, too.

Anne writes in:

After searching for most of a year after getting my degree, I finally found a great job which I’m starting just after Memorial Day. The problem is that I don’t know what to wear. I don’t want to stand out as being poorly dressed but I don’t want to dump thousands into a work wardrobe. What should I do?

Here’s my game plan for this situation.

First, contact your new co-workers, particularly your soon-to-be-boss. If you don’t have this information yet, contact the company and request it. You may be able to find more of them using tools like LinkedIn.

Contact them individually, asking what normal attire is in the workplace that you’ll be joining. Ask what they wear – brands, level of attire, and so on.

You should pay particular attention to what your boss-to-be actually wears. Don’t be afraid to ask this.

Your best bet would be to dress at a level similarly to your boss, but not in a way that’s miles beyond the workers at your level. In most workplaces, you’re better off overdressing a bit than underdressing. The problem is that each workplace has something of a different definition of what “overdressing” and “underdressing” is and by finding out what your coworkers wear, you can get a bead on that right off the bat.

Once you’ve figured this out, go shopping. In my experience of buying clothes that work for professional use at good prices, I’ve found that the best place to shop first is at consignment shops. It’s often amazing how many very nice clothes can be found there. That’s where you’ll find business attire – often barely-worn stuff – from people whose life situation has changed direction, and it’s often available at great prices.

Rather than buying a lot of clothes right off the bat, you should stock your work wardrobe with fewer items that can easily be mixed-and-matched. Don’t go for the flamboyant – go for the presentable items that you can rearrange easily to create the appearance of a fresh outfit. For example, you’re a lot better off with six shirts and six ties than ten shirts and two ties – not only is the former set of clothes cheaper, it’s also easier to create the appearance of a more diverse wardrobe.

You should also be patient and be picky. You don’t have to buy everything right off the bat. Look at lots of consignment shops. Don’t be afraid to buy a few new items to mix in with the consignment items.

If you’re unsure what looks good, identify a consignment shop or two with a number of items you’re interested in and then take a friend. I usually let my wife be involved in the selection of such clothes because she has much better taste and a better eye than I do – I tend to often fall in the “if you’re clothed, then you’re good” path. Take someone along who can identify what is well-made, what items go together well, and what items simply look better than other ones.

If you’re uncomfortable dressing up for work – as I have been – do what I used to do. Put on comfortable clothes – like a t-shirt that you like to wear – and dress well over the top of that. I would often wear my favorite t-shirts and shorts under my dress clothes for work and sometimes I would literally take the dress clothes off on my way out of the workplace at the end of the day.

A final tip – it’s almost always a large net savings if you read the instructions on the tag and follow them for cleaning purposes. If you’ve got a nice wardrobe, it might seem cheaper to just wash them with minimal cost and effort, but you can drastically extend the useful life of good clothes by following the garment instructions.

Good luck.

One of my favorite personal finance tactics is “snowflaking.” For those unaware, “snowflaking” refers to the idea that if you make little frugal steps throughout the month, you simply add the amount you saved with that method and include the total as an extra payment at the end of the month. So, for example, if you used coupons to save $5 on your normal purchases, you would then add $5 to an extra debt payment at the end of the month. This knocks $5 off of the total amount you owe, reducing your interest owed in future months and getting rid of the total debt that much faster.

“Snowflaking” is almost always used in a debt-related context – the name itself comes from the popular “debt snowball” – but I’ve actually found that snowflaking is incredibly powerful for almost any goal in life. In fact, I use snowflaking all the time in my own life for bigger goals.

Here are some examples for how I use snowflaking for some of my personal goals.

Bigger savings goals The biggest savings goal that Sarah and I have right now is for our next home. We intend to buy a piece of land in the country with some wooded area on it (expensive) and then build a house to spec on that land (even more expensive), along with a barn (whew!).

That’s an expensive goal.

So I keep that big goal in my mind as often as I can. I have a picture of a home with a barn and some woods in the back that I look at all the time to keep myself reminded of it. When I make a choice to save a few bucks – buying something in bulk or some similar little effect – I log onto my online banking and transfer that amount to a separate savings account, never to be touched until we’re ready.

With every little choice, that account grows and we move a little closer to our dreams.

Motivational goals I’d like to get a better pair of walking shoes. Instead of just going out and buying a new pair, I simply pledge that if I reach the 250 mile mark with my walking this spring and summer, I’ll allow myself to buy the shoes.

Again, this is snowflaking, just in a little bit different form. If I don’t have the motivation to go on a really long walk, I’ll just talk myself into a short walk around the park near our house. I’ll kick out a mile and a half or two miles and be back at the house in less than a half an hour, but that little bit contributes to my larger goal.

Cash snowflaking can work well alongside this non-cash goal. If I talk myself into walking for an hour instead of renting a pay-per-view movie or something like that, I can contribute the savings to an account for that goal.

Splurges Let’s say, hypothetically, that I wanted an iPad. I might want that in the short term, but still want to save for the bigger goal in the long term. What do I do?

I could simply split the snowflakes, putting half of the money into the big goal account and the other half into the iPad account. I could also just go for the short term goal now, putting all of it towards the iPad and moving back to the other goal once I have my gadget.

My preferred way, though, is to snowflake in certain ways for one goal and snowflake in other ways for other goals. So, for example, if I save money by choosing free entertainment instead of something with a price tag (like I might normally do), I’d save that money for an entertainment splurge (like an iPad). On the other hand, if I save money with smart food buying, that would go towards the house instead.

Of course, this is a hypothetical assumption that I want an iPad instead of, say, a good paperback.

To put it all simply, snowflaking is a great tactic for any financial goal. It creates a powerful connection between big goals and the little choices we make each day, often in a very tangible fashion.

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, two years ago this week, and three years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (April 25 – May 1, 2009)
Thoughts on Work, Personal Life, and Frugality We all have a lot to balance in our lives. That’s a big part of the reason why I’m a fan of “one-shot” frugality, the kinds of things you can do once and enjoy the savings from over a long period. Like installing a programmable thermostat and setting it properly, for instance.

Eyes on the Prize You’ve got to keep your focus on your goals if you want to succeed at anything. Don’t let the stupid things in life distract you.

The Frugal Rainy Day Box We have a “rainy day” box for our children with a ton of art supplies and other materials in it. It’s so popular, in fact, that our kids often want to get it out on non-rainy days.

Five Frugal Lessons from My Parents My parents taught me a great deal about how to live frugal. I wish I had used it more often in my twenties.

Do Personal Goals Have a Dangerous Side? If you let a single-minded focus on a goal get in the way of better choices and opportunities in your own life, you’re making a mistake. Having focus on a goal is great – having such focus that your eyes are closed to other changes and opportunities is dangerous.

Two Years Ago (April 25 – May 1, 2008)
Are Rechargeable Batteries Really Cost Effective? They are if you use them consistently. It takes several charges for good rechargeables to be worth their money.

Dealing with the Things Left Undone It’s easy to get overtaken by a giant list of things to do. Don’t let yourself fall into a funk because of the things left undone.

The Recession Diet: Why Fears of Recession Might Trigger Poor Food Buying Decisions Buying the cheapest food might allow you to escape the supermarket with a lower bill, but it has other long-term costs.

The Five Ps: Breaking Down Big Dreams Into Little Steps If you’ve got a big dream but think it’s unreachable and don’t know where to start with it, this is a must-read article.

Hyundai’s “Dollars and Sense” Ads: My Take Should personal finance writers appear in ads that don’t reflect solid personal finance choices? It’s up to them, but I think it reflects on the value of what the people say.

Three Years Ago (April 25 – May 1, 2007)
Defining and Accomplishing Microgoals Microgoals – ones that can be accomplished in a week or less – can be incredibly valuable in terms of setting yourself up for success.

The Longest Night This is the story of the night when I hit financial bottom. It’s painful.

Don’t Fear The Higher Tax Bracket (Or Why A Reader Needs More Cowbell) Ever wondered how tax brackets really work? Here’s an explanation – and reasons why “avoiding a higher tax bracket” is usually a pretty dumb reason to avoid more income.

How To Start An Electronic Financial Document System For many documents, it’s well worthwhile to simply save electronic copies rather than keeping them all in paper form. Here’s how to get started.

How To Define A Tangible, Reachable Personal Finance Goal Specifying a goal is a good start, but here’s how to make one that will really help you succeed.

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter – or other social networks. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!