It’s mid-June, so there’s no better time to write about Christmas. Right? Right?!

The truth of the matter is that just a little bit of forethought right now can save you a ton of time, effort, cost, and heartache this December. While it might feel really out of place to think about Christmas on a warm June day, right now is the perfect time to give these five things a quick thought.

Kill off unwanted gift exchanges
If you’re a member of a gift exchange or two with family that you just don’t want to participate in, right now is the time to put an axe in it. Just send out an email or a Facebook message to the other members of the exchange stating the truth of the matter: you enjoy seeing the people, but you don’t think a gift exchange is a great idea.

If completely bowing out seems potentially damaging, suggest that this year be a “secret Santa” drawing instead of everyone buying everyone else gifts or put a strong cap on how much can be spent.

Doing this now is much better than doing it in late November or the middle of December when people are already financially and emotionally involved in their holiday purchasing. The solution to too many Christmas gifts purchased is just an email away.

Get the important people on your radar
For most of us, there are a handful of people that we’re going to buy Christmas gifts for this year. Since these people are truly important enough to us to be an automatic gift recipient, we often desire to find the “perfect” gift for them.

That’s why I start my list now, so I have plenty of time and space to listen to what they’re saying, think about what they’d value, and come up with great gift ideas (and bargains on those ideas) well in advance of the big day rather than stumbling through Target on December 20th, pushing aside the hordes and scavenging whatever overlooked items remain on the shelves in hopes of finding something they won’t find too repugnant.

Just start a list of the people you want to buy for, then pay attention to them in the coming months. Most people will reveal deep interests and passions and sometimes even specific ideas over the course of the year. For example, maybe your sister will mention a type of sweater she finds particularly flattering, or maybe your father will lament not having grow lights so he can start seedlings in the basement in January instead of having to buy starts for his garden in April. Write these down, as they can be the source of great gifts.

Start automatic bargain hunting
If you’re certain of a particular purchased gift for someone already, there’s no better time than now to start bargain hunting.

Already?

Well, it doesn’t have to be as painful as it sounds. Let’s say, for example, that you have decided to buy your sister’s oldest son a Playstation 3 for Christmas this year – but you don’t want to spend a mint on it. Right now is the best time to start automatically bargain hunting for it.

You can use tools like FeedSifter to sift through the internet feeds of websites that list bargains related to what you’re looking for – like, for example, Amazon Gold Box. Then, put that FeedSifter feed into a service like FeedMailer so that whenever a deal pops up, you receive an email telling you about it.

Then sit back and wait. The exact deals you want will pop into your email inbox as they come up. Easy as pie.

I already have six of these running related to two different potential Christmas gifts.

Plan ahead for homemade gifts
Some of us (myself included) love to receive homemade gifts – and we love to make them, too.

The problem is that some of them take a lot of advance planning. In order to age well, you need to be considering making things like homemade beer and homemade soaps now rather than in November. If you’re going to knit some sweaters, now’s the time to bust out the yarn and the needles, for example.

If you’d like to save a lot of money and come up with some really memorable gifts, go homemade. The catch? You probably should start now on whatever that project is, because you’ll likely need some time between then and now to cause that gift idea to become reality.

Make it easier on last-minute gift hunters for you
In my family, a lot of people wait until the last minute to do gift shopping. They wait until December 15, then call around in a panic and search internet wish lists (like Amazon’s) for some sort of an indication as to what people want for a gift. Yes, each year, I get calls where people directly ask me what I want for Christmas.

Of course, the typical response to this is to try to think of stuff quickly off of the top of your head – items that usually end up not being items you really want or could actually use, but are items that just seem to randomly float in your head.

Take that challenge head on. Spend some time thinking of a handful of items you could genuinely use in your life. Once you discover them, put them on an Amazon wish list (or something similar), then if last-minute panicked calls come in, you don’t have to rack your brain coming up with half-baked ideas. You can actually point out items that you have thought about in advance and can genuinely put to good use in your home.

There’s no need to promote this list, of course – just create it as something of a protection against last-minute gifts that turn out to be items that you don’t want and they grasp at straws to buy. With just a bit of effort now, you can turn a situation where no one wins into something useful for yourself and something gratifying for the last minute gift buyer.

What’s inside? Many readers have written to me asking for me to summarize the questions in the mailbag right at the top so that they know what’s inside. So, I’m going to try this out for this mailbag and see how it goes. Here are summaries of the included questions in five words or less.

1. Ethics of item return strategy
2. Budgeting after debt freedom
3. Lesser pay for more sanity
4. SmartyPig changes
5. Debt counseling and rate changes
6. Getting started on debt repayment
7. Budgeting software needs
8. Life is too difficult
9. 529s and income taxes
10. How to protest BP

Also, many of you have written to me (or Tweeted at me or sent me a note on Facebook) asking about my father’s health. He’s doing fine. He was released from the hospital over the weekend, but he has to have daily treatments at the hospital for a while and will likely have to have some physical therapy on his hand, which is going to drive him crazy because he’s a “hands-on” kind of guy. I think, for the fourth time in his life (at least), he dodged a pretty big medical bullet.

A friend of mine uses a particular strategy to get big discounts on video games. He waits until one of the new releases goes on a big sale at a particular store – like, say, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is on sale for $29.99 at one store but is still $49.99 at the rest – then he buys the discounted new release, takes it to another store with a large selection, and asks at customer service if he can trade this title in for another title. Many stores, seeing the item is completely unopened and that the customer is simply asking to swap it, will simply allow him to do this. He then gets his choice of any of the new releases on sale at this store.

Is this ethical? I’m kind of stuck on this one. If it were a used item, I would find it wrong, but I’m not sure he’s doing anything wrong here.
- Kevin

Buying a game on sale is fine, as is exchanging a sealed game for another one. The issue comes in with the taking of an item from one store to another simply to trade it in.

In essence, this is strongly abusing the return policy of the second store. They have a strong return policy that’s intended to provide greater value to their customers, which is a great thing for customers. The problem comes in when people who aren’t regular customers exploit it. It costs the store because they have to deal with that returned game – even if they “break even” on the cost of the game they brought in and the game they gave out, they’re still in the hole because of the employee time spent dealing with the transactions.

That’s a cost that adds up, and that’s a cost that will eventually be returned to the customers either in terms of higher prices or in terms of worse service.

Your friend is basically exploiting a store’s great return policy. The people that wind up paying for that exploit are the other customers of the store. Make up your own mind whether that’s cool or not.

I am getting ready to switch over to an online checking account with a 3.5 % interest. It will be easy enough to make the 12 debit card transactions a month, just using it for gas for our 2 cars. The linked savings earns 2.5 %, but I wanted to use the checking primarily for my savings account. I track my funds for emergency, vacation, next car, etc. in a notebook, but all of those savings items would go into the high yielding account.

So these are the issues I wanted to resolve before I switch to the new account, so I don’t accidentally miss getting my interest or submarine my savings by taking too much out with those 12 debit transactions. I just need a plan. (weekly savings now: $60 next car, $50 taxes, $50 insurance for cars and house). Any suggestions?
- Cheryl

With the first concern, the real question I would ask is how long you have to hold the company’s stock after it is issued by that match. If you have to hold it for years or until retirement, then you’re better off diversifying immediately. If you can trade it off immediately, then consider the 7% match, because you can then just trade it in on a diversified investment immediately.

As for the second part of your question, you should have a savings account strictly for such expenses. Transfer some amount into that account each month (or even each week) from your checking account and then when such an “unexpected” but known expense comes up, just take money out of that account (if you need to) to cover it. See if your bank will allow you to have a second savings account, or sign up for an online savings account.

You seem to be spending less than you earn right now, which is good. As long as you keep a reasonable gap between what you spend and what you earn, you should enjoy yourself. Don’t make yourself feel guilty about doing things you enjoy as long as you keep living within your means.

I’m 24 years old and have a steady job working for a bank. For my age, I’m told it’s a great job. 401K plan with great matching percentage, full health care, pre-tax savings accounts and health spending accounts, and they are reimbursing me for 50% of my tuition for me to finish a degree. I’m doing financially well with this job and just finished paying off all my debts, except student loans. I have a small emergency fund, but only about a month’s worth so far. The problem is the job is torture and I am absolutely miserable. With the economy, working for a bank is stressful and I am being yelled at on a daily basis by everyone; customers and management alike. I’d love to quit and work in the animal industry, at a dog daycare or as a dog trainer, but after a thorough search I realize that move would drop me into Financial Doom. The scant positions available are part time and minimum wage with zero benefits, 401k, or anything like what I have now. Even cutting back immensely my budget would be in the red each month and I know I’d be back in debt before I know it. Everyone says I’d be sure to grow in that industry and would be back to making what I am now in 5 or so years, but there’s no way to truly tell and I’m worried I’ll end up penniless and homeless all for trying to follow my dreams. I’m growing more and more miserable at my current job and not sure what to do. Do I take a lesser paying job to make myself happy or try to deal with it until the economy improves and perhaps something will appear?
- Erica

If you’re single and you’re the only person that relies on you, why not go for it?

My suggestion is simple. For the time being, don’t worry about the retirement and the other benefits so much. Quit, get the job that you want to be doing, and live a different lifestyle. Live without all of the stuff you’ve becomed accustomed to. Live in the cheapest housing you can find, possibly with a roommate or two. Get a second hourly job to supplement it, one where you’re not going to be berated by people. Ditch most of your stuff and live instead of accumulating. Make your own meals. Throw your heart and passion into what you want to do.

If you find that it didn’t work out a few years down the road, go back to your old career path and pick it up.

No pile of money is worth anything if it’s making you miserable and dragging you away from what you should be doing in life. That road leads to a wall of material stuff between your heart and your soul.

I think I first read about Smarty Pig from one of your blog writings. Could you please comment either through your blog or to me individually regarding your thoughts on their changing to BBVA compass as it’s bank? I’d like to know your thoughts, and I suspect that other readers TSD would as well.
- Shelley

I think it was the best solution for SmartyPig given where they were stuck. Over the last few years, they were one of the few success stories in the banking world and they (unsurprisingly) outgrew the smaller West Bank. West Bank wanted to remain a small regional bank and as the proportion of their bank that was SmartyPig kept growing, they eventually wanted out of the picture. I think there’s been growing pains for a while, as SmartyPig has been jammed into a shirt far too small for them.

Of course, this happened at a time where the national banking picture (remember 2008, the bank failures, the bailout, etc.) is pretty awful. Most of the really large banks simply aren’t very interested in taking on different projects right now, even if there appears to be growth potential. So SmartyPig found the best available partner.

It’s basically like having a growing child that just hit a growth spurt. You realize that the child’s pants aren’t fitting them any more. You head down to the store, only to find that there are only a few kinds of pants currently available there but there might be more in a few weeks. SmartyPig chose to buy the best pants available to them.

From a customer perspective, I think the eyeballs just need to be on what the SmartyPig service provides. Honestly, the bank behind them doesn’t make that much of a difference. What matters is what SmartyPig does. Are the account terms changing in ways you don’t like? If nothing changes from that end, then keep using SmartyPig (I am). If it does change, then walk.

I am getting serious about debt repayment. I looked closely at the statement for one of my credit cards (I admit, I don’t usually look at them because I just get online, make a payment, and log off.) and I noticed my interest rate was raised a year ago to 24%!!!! I called the company (Bank of America) and asked for an interest rate reduction. They said I didn’t qualify, but they suggested that I call a non-profit debt management organization for assistance. What are your thoughts on doing this?

I really want to get out of debt. I am motivated and exploring all options. I never really considered going to a non-profit debt management organization for help, and I never really see this discussed on any of the money blogs I read. Is it better to just go it alone?
- Kay

Non-profit debt management companies usually do exactly what they claim. They help you figure out your debt situation and come up with a plan for repaying it. The problem is that you have to pay them for the service (nonprofit doesn’t mean free).

The real reason most personal finance bloggers (including myself) don’t recommend them is that most of the services they provide are things that pretty much any competent person can do for themselves for free. Trust me, you can set up your own debt repayment plan.

Companies like BoA usually suggest such services because they don’t want to bother with this type of service themselves and they assume that if you can’t handle a credit card then you can’t handle getting control over your own finances. Usually, the issue isn’t knowing how to do it, the issue is learning control over your own impulses, and a nonprofit debt management organization can’t do that, either.

The key step there is up to you either way you go.

I have some friends who are in a difficult situation and they asked me for advice, so I’m wondering your opinion.

My question is, where would you start first to develop a plan for this couple to address those issues (debt, retirment, emergency fund). They would obviously benefit from the wife getting another job and cracking down on spending, but where do they go from there? Any help would be much appreciated.
- Jamie

The best solution, of course, involves more income. Would the wife in this situation consider working more hours? I don’t see any children mentioned, so I’d assume this is possible.

Regardless of the debt, if they’re at age 45 with only $18K saved for retirement, they need to seriously bump up their game. The 401(k) needs to be getting every possible drop of matching money from their employer and they should both have a Roth IRA that’s at least partially funded.

This couple has a history of living beyond their means. If they don’t make the active choice of living well below their income for a while, they’re going to wind up at retirement age with a huge pile of debt and nothing to show for it, and that’s not a fun place to be.

My wife and I have had a budget since we got married. We put together an Excel doc which takes our income (employment for both and self-employment for both) and splits it up according to the percentages we’ve setup. It’s complicated because of taxes being taken out of one (employment) but not the other (self-employment). And don’t forget tithe which we take out before taxes! :) This makes for a very variable income to say the least so it’s not like we can budget the same dollar amounts every month.

We’ve recently found youneedabudget.com ($60) but it doesn’t allow for #1 and #2 (to our knowledge). We’d have to continue breaking the money apart with Excel and then transfer those into YNAB.
- Jason

The obvious solution here is Quicken. I don’t know of another piece of software that simply does all of this stuff. As you mentioned, YNAB is fairly close as well, but Quicken simply does all of this stuff.

The challenge with Quicken, of course, is that it has a bit of a learning curve, though it does pay rewards if you’re diligent with it. If you go that route, be willing to spend the time to actually learn the software instead of just trying to jam stuff in and complaining that it doesn’t immediately do what you want it to do. Be patient and learn.

Honestly, I still use Excel for most things. It’s just the tool that works best for me.

My life is too difficult and I’m getting exhausted. Starting to wonder if the effort is worth the end results. Can you help set me straight?
- Mel

Usually, people making statements like Mel are either depressed (which means they need to seek a doctor) or they are living a life full of elements that bring them unhappiness that, if removed, would remove that sense of unhappiness.

First of all, what are the “end results” you’re seeking? The end results that are most worth seeking are ones that lead to genuine happiness – usually, they’re personal accomplishments. Very rarely is money alone something that is an “end result” that brings happiness – it often comes about as a result of chasing something that is more of a personal accomplishment that others happen to find value in.

Second, what do you spend your time doing that you hate? Is it your specific career path? If it is, try finding another job. Is it your personal life? If it is, seek out new friendships and different avenues for spending your personal time. Is it your health or personal appearance? Finding new people to associate with helps, as does taking control over your diet and your exercise (which also helps with the feelings of negativity).

Whatever it is that you don’t like in your life, change it. If you feel like you simply can’t change it, then you’re much more likely to be suffering from some form of depression and you should seek medical assistance (and you should start exercising more and eating lots of straight-up vegetables and fruits, too).

I recently opened a 529 college plan (not prepaid) for my grand-daughter. We live in Florida. My question is regarding income taxes. Am I able to deduct the monies I put into the 529 yearly, on my yearly income tax, as I do itemize each year. Thanks for your time.
- June

There is no immediate federal income tax benefit for 529 contributions (though, obviously, there are big benefits when the money in the account is used for educational purposes and the growth within the account is tax deferred). You happen to be living in Florida where there is no state income tax, either.

Many states offer a state income tax benefit for 529 contributors – Iowa is one of those states. Up to a certain cap, contributions to a 529 in those states can be deducted from your state income tax.

You’ve said many times that the best way to protest things you don’t like is with your dollar. Right now, I’m protesting BP by not using BP gas stations, but what else can I do beyond that to affect BP’s business?
- Olivia

Here’s the thing, though. Even if you boycott BP, you’re going to be giving your money to some sort of environmental or human rights violator wherever you buy gas. Plus, you’re not even hurting BP’s bottom line by driving on past a BP gas station because BP is no longer in the direct gasoline sales business – they sold all of their stations to local businesspeople with a stipulation that they had to use the BP name for a certain number of years. The only people you’re hurting are people in the local community.

So how can you vent your rage at BP and the rest of the oil companies? Don’t buy gas. Drive less. When you buy another vehicle, buy one that uses the least possible amount of fossil fuels. Buy an electric car, even.

Go even further and write a handwritten letter to your congressperson and the two senators from your state expressing your outrage at the environmental destruction and ask for legislation not merely to punish BP, but to wean us from fossil fuel use altogether. It’s an environmental issue, a national security issue, and an economic concern all rolled up into one tight package.

On the surface, it seems like the elimination of fossil fuel use would be something that people of all political stripes would be behind. It’s clearly an environmental issue. It’s clearly a national security issue. It’s clearly a trade issue. But why can’t Democrats and Republicans get together on it?

Oil company lobbyists. They’re the real enemy.

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.

The title of this book hooked me from the start. What am I writing about at The Simple Dollar if I’m not writing about “the new frugality”?

Chris Farrell, the author of the book, is a name I’m familiar with having been a long-time faithful listener of Marketplace Money (and it’s other Marketplace brethren) on NPR. I expected a well-written book that offered lots of insightful thoughts on the “new frugality” along with some practical tips.

That’s precisely what I got. Let’s dig in.

1 | The Rise of the New Frugality
Farrell opens the book by making a strong effort at defining what “new frugality” means. I think it’s best summed up as “seeking the best value, not the lowest price.” Quite often, frugality has meant the same thing as cheap, but the “new frugality” means something different entirely. It means finding ways to preserve exactly what’s important to you while minimizing the costs, with costs going far beyond just dollars and cents. The cost is about the environmental impact. It’s about the time impact. It’s about even the emotional impact. Really, the new frugality is simply being mindful of the many ramifications of the purchasing decisions we make.

2 | The Great Transformation
How did we get here? This chapter is basically a history of modern consumerism, particularly focusing on the housing bubble of 2008 and the rise in environmental and social awareness of people over the past decade. Farrell’s argument seems to be that the current economic stagnation along with a growing sense that our actions have ramifications far beyond ourselves add up to a new attraction to frugal, simple living for people. I can’t argue – I largely feel the same way.

3 | A Margin of Safety
What’s the result of all of that uncertain feeling? People have begun to desire a margin of safety – something many of us felt naturally until the events of the past decade have shaken that sense of a margin of safety right to our core. How do we get back that sense of a margin of safety? By living within our means and preserving the resources we have – but without abandoning many of the enjoyable perks of today’s life. We seek a balance that wasn’t there in the Depression and wasn’t there in the spend-spend-spend 80s and 90s.

4 | The New Frugality Rules
Keep it simple. Pay yourself first. Invest in yourself. Worry about the downside. Borrow rarely and wisely. Give back. These are the new frugality rules that Farrell proposes – and they pretty much describe a financially stable way of life that maintains that balance we all strive to have. I think the first one is key – keep it simple. The best way to do that is to make all of your saving as automated and straightforward as you possibly can, making it easy for you to make do with what’s left.

5 | Make Frugality a Habit
One big way to make all of this work is to simply make frugality a part of your everyday life. The best way to do that is to simply start being mindful of every dollar you spend. It’s fine if you want to splurge on yourself sometimes – that’s not the point. The point is to think about it first. At the same time, think about what you’re buying at the grocery store or when you go out to eat or anywhere else. Farrell offers tons of ideas on reducing your spending in sensible ways, but they all boil down to this one basic idea: think about what you’re spending and why every time a dollar leaves your account. The more you think about it, the more you’ll likely realize there are better ways of doing it that achieve the same result for lower cost. When you find those routes, that’s nothing but a big victory for you.

6 | Borrow Wisely
The best debt is no debt, of course. When you do borrow, however, make sure you’re borrowing to pay for something that will generate value (like an education) or will at least retain it (a sensible home purchase – meaning not a McMansion in a large metro area). Also, always borrow only when you have a margin of safety – in other words, don’t borrow money when you’re already hurting to pay your own bills and you don’t have any savings in the bank. There’s also a discussion about setting up your own debt repayment plan if you’re already under a heap of debt.

7 | Investing the Simple Way
The investment advice here is pretty straightforward. If you have a 401(k) available to you that offers a company match, jump onto that and get every drop of that match. If you don’t, get a Roth IRA. Put at least some of your money into something safe, like CDs or possibly treasury notes. If you want to take on more risk, buy some index funds – they’re low cost and help you to diversify your money very widely. Use dollar cost averaging – in other words, set up a regular automated investment plan that puts a certain amount into your investment every month.

8 | Live Long and Prosper
This chapter has the most honest answers about retirement I’ve ever read in a personal finance book. Farrell simply says that there’s no way to know if you have enough set back for retirement – and you don’t. No one knows when or how their number will be up. How can you save, then? Your best bet is to save as much as you possibly can. Then, when you retire, rediscover the simple pleasures in life. It’s a lot easier to cook yourself an inexpensive but amazingly delicious meal at home if you’re not running back and forth to an all-encompassing career.

9 | Home, Sweet Home
Should you rent or buy? Much of this chapter focuses on this question. Farrell seems to point people towards the P/R ratio, which is the price of a home you would buy versus the cost to rent similar housing for a year. That ratio should be somewhere around 16 – if it’s higher, you’re probably better off renting. Most of the actual advice on mortgages is very solid – only buy when you have 20% down (unless you want to be hammered on the mortgage(s)), make a “thirteenth” payment each year by making half of a monthly payment every two weeks, and don’t worry about the myth of maintaining a mortgage for a tax writeoff.

10 | The College Sheepskin
What about paying for college? Farrell argues that an education is very worthwhile, but the premium paid for a degree from a prestigious school rarely makes up for the huge difference in tuition costs. In other words, the huge additional cost for a typical student to go to Harvard versus their local four year state school will likely not be made up for after graduation. Your best strategy, actually, is to control costs (unless you get very lucky with a scholarship). He also recommends using a 529 savings plan if you’re saving for your child’s future education.

11 | Generosity and Gratitude
The book closes with a look at charity and the “keep it simple” mantra applies here. Identify charities that match your values. That takes time, because for many of us, a lot of charities sound good. What’s important is to figure out our true purpose in giving. What is our mission with the money we give? Let that specific mission lead your giving and you’ll find that you’re truly building a better world.

Is The New Frugality Worth Reading?
What makes The New Frugality stand out isn’t the advice. For the most part, the advice in this book is the standard personal finance stuff that you can find all over the place. What makes The New Frugality stand out is the broader awareness of the writing, which brings the book to life in a unique way.

I enjoyed reading this book for many of the same reasons that I enjoy listening to Marketplace on NPR. It takes information that I could get anywhere and places it in a social and cultural context that not only brings the ideas into a new light, but also makes clear the connections between our money and the broader world around us in ways that aren’t always obvious.

I enjoyed it if for no other reason than it cast some new lights and angles on a lot of the ideas I already knew. That type of book is always a refreshing read.

Karen writes in:

Over the last six months, my husband and I have paid off $11,000 in credit card debt. It feels great. But it’s also really, really hard. In order to do that, we’ve stopped going out and doing a lot of the things we used to do. I feel like I’m missing something from my life and overall I think I’m unhappier now than I was when I was juggling all of that debt.

Karen is going through something that a lot of readers go through – and I went through. At first, making radical financial change in your life feels great. You see tremendous changes in terms of the debt situation that scared you in the first place. Your retirement savings are in better shape, too. You get a thrill out of all of the opportunities to save money in your life. Everything is good.

At some point, though, the honeymoon is over and you find yourself in Karen’s place. The memories of the way you spent money before stick with you and you feel deprived.

There is one word that sums up the solution to all of this: balance.

I don’t know the specifics of Karen’s life, but based on her email, I’m guessing that she and her spouse used to dine out very regularly – probably several nights a week. Now, they’re not dining out at all and are preparing meals at home. They seemed to also engage in a lot of nightlife activities of some sort and have eliminated a lot of those.

My advice to Karen is to bring some of them back into your life.

If you get a lot of personal value out of eating out with your husband, eat out with your husband. The balance part of the equation comes in when you look at how often you eat out together. If you used to eat out together five nights a week, try eating out one or two nights a week instead. When you do go out, just choose the best places – the ones that will make for a great experience for you (keeping in mind that best does not equal expensive).

Don’t just sit at home, either. Go out and do some of the other activities you used to do – again, choosing the best ones. For the other nights, look for free stuff to do out and about. Community festivals. Free open air concerts. Volunteerism. Block parties. Dinner parties. There are many, many things that you can do in the evenings that don’t involve buying tickets or pouring out cash.

If you’re unhappy, eventually you’re going to rebound back to the very place where you were to begin with. The key is to make small steps that you’re genuinely happy with and keep them in place. Even if you just cut five dinners out a week down to four, that’s still an improvement. Three is even better. Two is great!

If you make a mistake, cut yourself some slack. Don’t get caught up in a sense of guilt over one bad choice, because that kind of guilt and self-resentment usually builds into throwing your goals and plans into the drink. We all mess up sometimes – I certainly do. The best thing to do is to simply move on with your plans and goals, treating your setback as mere water under the bridge.

Never forget that you do have a life to lead right now. Just keep in mind that the specifics of that life don’t have to be exorbitantly expensive or over the top to be really, really enjoyable. Fun things with people you love are the best parts of life and you don’t need to shell out the cash for them.

Here’s a number for you. Half of all babies born in the United States this year will live to age 104 or older. In other words, when a person from that generation hits the typical “retirement age” of 65, they’ll still have 40 years of life left.

Obviously, this represents a major change from where we’re at now.

At age 65, people will have 40% of their life yet to lead. In other words, 65 will become the new 40.

Social Security cannot support everyone having forty years of retirement. It will have to drastically change or go bankrupt. There is no other option. The only way to prepare for this is to assume that Social Security simply won’t be there when you reach retirement age.

Few people will want to “retire” at age sixty five. If 65 is the new 40, people aren’t going to want to retire then. They’re going to want to keep having active, productive lives for many, many years to come after 65.

Thus, the age range for retirement savings will become much longer. People will start targeting their retirement savings to age 80 or 85. Money put into such savings at age 25 will have 55 to 60 years to grow.

When I look at my children, I recognize that these are the facts that their lives are going to hold. How exactly will they plan for the future? What will their lifelong financial trajectory look like? Here are a few elements I see coming down the pike – and they’re certainly going be a part of the advice I give to my children.

First of all, their first career probably won’t be their only career. The idea of the “second career” is slowly becoming more and more mainstream as people reach “retirement” and realize they don’t want to retire. As people’s life spans continue to extend, the idea of a second career will become pretty normal. I expect that many people will work hard at a lucrative “first career” and then move on to a pesonal passion for a “second career” once their major life expenses (a home, children) are taken care of.

What does that mean? Don’t give up on your dreams just because you can’t do them right now. Master living on less than you make so that down the road you can do absolutely whatever you want with your time. Spend your time picking up lots of transferable skills – public speaking, communication skills, time management skills – that will help you in whatever direction your road goes.

Second, retirement planning will move to an even longer scale. Right now, many people calculate their retirement starting at 25 or 30 and ending at 65. The numbers become quite a bit different if you start at 25 or 30 and end at 80. The advantage of starting early becomes even more profound and people won’t have to put away as much each month to hit their numbers.

For example, let’s say you need to have $8 million to retire. You start saving at age 25 for that and you’re putting it in an investment that earns 8% a year.

If you’re retiring at age 65, you need to put away $2,400 a month.

If you’re retiring at age 80, you need to put away only $725 a month.

A longer life span means that you can get away with saving a lot less per month for retirement. The power of compound interest is amazing.

Finally, don’t bank on the government to save you. I offer this advice to everyone out there still in the workforce. Social Security in its current form is unmaintainable. The numbers do not add up. At some point, it is going to have to be radically changed or it is going to have to disappear.

Account for your retirement without Social Security in the equation at all and you’ll find yourself much more secure and happy at retirement time.

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 (June 6 – June 12, 2009)
Buying Something to Force Yourself Into a New Behavior Doesn’t Work: New Rules for a New Routine Stuff doesn’t change behavior. Changes in behavior come from within. A $150 pair of running shoes won’t make you into a runner.

Some Thoughts on the Sunk Cost Fallacy If you’ve already spent $50 on a ticket, that money is gone. All it has done for you is open up the possibility of attending that concert on a given night. It doesn’t matter whether you go or don’t go, you won’t get that money back. So don’t make yourself attend things or use things just because you’ve sunk money into them.

15 Ways to Get Started on Snowflaking Snowflaking is an incredibly powerful personal finance strategy that really enables you to blow right through debt repayment and saving for big goals.

Prolonging the Inevitable Many of the personal finance tactics discussed out there – shifting around your debt and so on – just prolong the inevitable situation where you’re near a financial meltdown and panicking. You’re better off taking charge now than risk falling over the precipice.

Gift Registries: Tactics and Good Taste Gift registries can sometimes be seen as a demand for gifts. There are much better ways to handle this type of thing than printing “Gift registry at TARGET!” on your wedding invitation.

Two Years Ago (June 6 – June 12, 2008)
Making Frugality a Game Channeling your competitive spirit into frugality can make a huge difference in terms of how much you’re able to save and cut your spending. You can compete with anyone – your spouse, your friends, even yourself.

Is Your Career Really Your Most Valuable Asset? I Say No Your health is more valuable. Your skill set is more valuable. Your career is mostly a reputation with a company that views you as expendable.

My Entrepreneurial Inspiration My father is my entrepreneurial inspiration. He was constantly – and I mean constantly – coming up with side hustles of all kinds when I was a kid – and still does it now.

Sixteen Ways to Go Out on the Town on the Cheap A night out doesn’t have to be really expensive. If you apply some sensible tactics before you go and while you’re out, you can have as much fun as you want without the painful credit card bill later on.

How to Budget Using ING Direct (Or Another Full-Service Online Bank) The tool set provided by a bank that offers full-service online banking and bill pay is more than enough to enable you to do all of the budgeting you need to online using a close approximation of the “envelope” strategy.

Three Years Ago (June 6 – June 12, 2007)
Eight Free Things That My Family Uses In The Community We use all of this stuff even now – and more. My son is heavily involved in the free services offered by the parks and recreation department in our town, for example.

I’m Making All The Right Moves, But I’m Still Unhappy Happiness doesn’t come from making “all the right moves.” All the right moves simply give you a foundation from which to find the things in life that truly make you happy.

What Aspects Of Personal Finance Bring You Happiness? For me, it’s knowing that no matter what happens in the short term, my family will be just fine. Because I’m sensible, there will be food on the table and clothes on our backs and a roof over our head.

The Present Versus The Future Being a bit more sensible in the present (often in ways that don’t disrupt anything you want to do) means a much, much brighter future.

Eight Frugal Father’s Day Gift Ideas My vision of an ideal Father’s Day doesn’t involve gifts at all. Unfortunately, it does probably involve kids a bit older than the ones we have now.

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!

This summer, I’m going to be posting a series of fifteen low-cost, tasty, and easy-to-prepare meals that are literally straight from my own kitchen.

Our meals are usually pretty heavy on the vegetables and fruits by default. Often, our main course is a meat of some sort – fish, beef, pork, and chicken are all game – but those are almost always paired by at least one vegetable side and at least one fruit side.

Sometimes, though, we go all the way and prepare fully vegetarian meals. This is one of those times.

Grilled vegetable kabobs are a tremendous summer dish because they can be assembled out of whatever vegetables happen to be on sale in your area at the time. Dozens of different kinds of vegetables work, from zucchini and cherry tomatoes to peppers and mushrooms. From squash and onions to potatoes and sweet corn. Broccoli and cauliflower work, too. The key isn’t some perfect medley of vegetables – the key is what’s on sale.

This time, we used these vegetables for our kabobs:

An onion (red ones are a bit more tasty, but the yellows were on sale). Button mushrooms. Cherry tomatoes. Bell peppers in a variety of colors. And a zucchini. These were the kabob-appropriate vegetables that were either on sale or are already pretty low in price around here.

An exact cost breakdown and an ingredient list is difficult here because the meal is so variable. Just use whatever vegetables are on sale and you’re good to go.

The first step, obviously, is rinsing off all of the vegetables and brushing the mushrooms clean. Once that’s done, start slicing. I like to peel the zucchini, but that’s entirely up to you, and I also discarded the insides of the peppers and some parts of the onions.

The nice part about having a fully vegetarian meal is that any scraps that are left over from preparation can go straight in your composter. I wound up with a bowl full of scraps:

The contents of the bowl wound up straight in our composter. They’re now happily composting, turning slowly into perfect nutrients for future garden crops.

Anyway, back to the slicing. Sarah and I took turns slicing the vegetables for the kabobs. Here, Sarah is showing off her slicing technique on an orange bell pepper.

We usually slice the peppers into sixteen equally sized pieces. We chop it into quarters, clean out the insides, then chop each of those quarters into four equal parts.

We do something similar with the onions, except I usually chop the onion into six equal pieces, then slice each of those wedges three times. This gives plenty of pieces for the kabob.

After everything is sliced, assembly begins:

I simply pick up a bamboo skewer and push vegetables down on it, alternating vegetables as I go. Easy as can be.

This also makes it very easy to customize kabobs for specific people. Sarah doesn’t like mushrooms, for example, so it was easy to make two non-mushroom kabobs for her by just skipping that ingredient.

Also, if you want to include meat on the kabobs, you easily can – just slice up your beef or chicken into 3/4″ to 1″ cubes and mix them in with the vegetables.

Here’s what our seven vegetarian kabobs looked like when finished:

From here, they headed straight to the grill. After preheating the grill, I just put the kabobs over medium-to-low heat, then brushed the side facing up with olive oil. As soon as I brushed them, I flipped them over and brushed the other side. I then let them cook for about twenty minutes, flipping them about every four minutes or so.

What you’re looking for is just a bit of char on the edge of the vegetables and a bit of shrinking and wrinkling on the mushrooms and tomatoes. You don’t want everything burnt, but you do want everything cooked.

I intended to get some beautiful shots of the kabobs on the grill, but we had a sudden thunderstorm, so I wound up sprinting outside to flip the kabobs and running back into the house before getting too drenched. Photography wasn’t a big concern at that moment.

So what did we have with it?

I could give a long story about boiling beans overnight, baking them in the oven for hours with molasses and other ingredients, and producing some version of the “perfect” baked beans. And sometimes I do that, because freshly-boiled beans are just incredibly tasty.

But the truth is that most of us aren’t going to invest twenty four hours on beans as a side dish unless you’re hosting a fancy barbecue. Instead, I’m going to show you a very simple way to make barbecued beans on a grill.

All you need is one or two cans of beans, some barbecue sauce that you like, and some aluminum foil. If you happen to have some onions available (as we do), that’s good, too.

Take a can of beans, put the beans in a colander, and rinse them until the water runs clear through all of the beans – probably two minutes of rinsing per can. Put the beans in a bowl and put 1/4 cup barbecue sauce in with the beans. If you’d like, you can chop up a handful of onions and toss them in as well. Mix it up thoroughly, and add more sauce if you’d like.

Spread out a rectangle of aluminum foil – probably 50% longer than it is wide – and pour the mixture in the center. Wrap it up in a tight package, then wrap that package in a second rectangle of aluminum foil.

We made two packets – one with onions and one without:

Put these packets straight on the grill over medium-low heat (just like the kabobs) for about thirty minutes total, flipping them regularly. You’ll have steaming, delicious barbecued beans when you open the package.

In the interim, we also boiled some long grain rice to go along with the meal. Here’s what my dinner plate looked like:

A delicious vegetarian meal, indeed. Even our four year old and our two year old loved the kabobs – my son particularly went wild over the mushrooms.

Next week, we’ll look at how to make some cheap skillet fajitas that are to die for.

This is the fourth entry in a fourteen part series discussing the time management classic Getting Things Done by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday afternoons and Friday mornings through July 16.

Last time, we discussed how exactly to plan a project and fit it into the context of focusing entirely on the next specific action. Prior to that, we discussed the five stages of a task and information management workflow (collect, process, organize, review, do).

But how does all of this work in a coherent system? This chapter – and the five that follow – break it all down into incredibly simple steps. Along the way, I’ll show you (often visually) how exactly I implement all of this stuff.

Right off the bat, though, Allen makes the point that implementing such a system is a lot about “tricks.” On page 85:

If you’re not sure you’re committed to an all-out implementation of these methods, let me assure you that a lot of the value people get from this material is good “tricks.” Sometimes just one good trick can make it worthwhile to range through this information.

If it all sounds too overwhelming, just focus on picking out the specific bits that work for you.

I’ll say this from my own experience. Switching over to this system as a whole takes quite a bit of time, and it also takes some maintenance time as you go along. What I’ve found, though, is that the time it saves you every single day is tremendous.

Without this system, I would have never been able to launch The Simple Dollar. I just would have never had time for it. I wouldn’t have the time I have each day to spend with my family. I wouldn’t be able to juggle the fifty different activities I’m involved in and the fifty different interests I have. It just wouldn’t work – I wouldn’t have the time.

So, let’s walk through what you need to get started one step at a time.

Time
I’ll be blunt. If you want to set this up in your life, the best way to do it is to simply set aside a whole weekend – or two to three full weekdays – to do it. For many people, it’s tricky to find that kind of a block of time, but it’s really worth it. In Allen’s words (p. 87):

I recommend that you careate a block of time to initialize this process and prepare a workstation with the appropriate space, furniture, and tools. [...] An ideal time fram for most people is two whole days, back to back. (Don’t be put off by that if you don’t have that long to spend, though: doing any of the activities I suggest will be useful, no matter how much or how little time you devote to them. [...]).

For me, the time invested wasn’t spent just getting a “system” set up, it was getting a bunch of the mental backlog of things I had to do done so that the system wouldn’t immediately fall apart. I wound up spending maybe half a day getting the system itself ready, then the next day and a half mostly tackling tasks that had just built up over time: going through my accumulated papers and tossing the trash and filing the stuff that needed to be kept, taking care of lots of miscellaneous tasks in my life, coming up with plans for some of the big projects in my mind, and so on.

The reason for this will be addressed in more detail in the next article, but one big portion of “starting up” is simply doing a brain dump. You just write down everything that’s on your mind – all of the stuff you’re thinking about doing – and then you process that big list of stuff. For many of those items, that simply means doing it.

So, in the end, a weekend spent getting GTD set up is a weekend getting a lot of the stuff built up over time finished.

Space
You have to have a bit of room to get started, too. You’ll need just a bit of space, but it’s space that you should devote to this. A small table with room to write and space for a basket will suffice. From page 89:

A functional work space is critical. If you don’t already have a dedicated work space and in-basket, get them now. That goes for students, homemakers, and retirees, too. Everyone must have a physical locus of control from which to deal with everything else.

If you have a desk at home that catches the mail, that’s a perfect place for this. Most of us have such a place in our home – a little corner table that serves as a desk or something like that. Often, it has a computer on it. All you need space for is a place to write and an inbox.

Stuff
Allen suggests a long (unnecessarily long, in my opinion) list of supplies you’ll need to pull off his full system. From page 92:

Let’s assume you’re starting from scratch. In addition to a desktop work space, you’ll need:
= Paper-holding trays (at least three)
= A stack of plain letter-size paper
= A pen/pencil
= Post-its
= Paper clips
= Binder clips
= A stapler and staples
= Scotch tape
= Rubber bands
= An automatic labeler
= File folders
= A calendar
= Wastebasket/recycling bin

That seems like quite a list – until you realize that most people already have at least some of this stuff lying around their home. Even better, you can often find a lot of this stuff on sale at various places if you look around – and, to tell the truth, you don’t really need at least some of it.

Here’s a walkthrough of the stuff on this list I actually use.

Paper-holding trays I actually have three of these, two of which you can see in the picture above. One is an “inbox,” one is a “stuff I’m currently working on” holder, and one is a “stuff to be filed” tray.

A stack of plain letter-size paper On the rare occasions I need a full sheet of paper, I steal it from the printer (which you can also see above). Usually, I just use some Mead Cambridge pocket notebooks, a stack of which you can see in that picture. These each have 70 sheets and I buy them in groups of twelve for $5 at Sam’s Club. I like these because they fit easily in my pocket along with a pen, so I can take it everywhere.

A pen/pencil Just something to write with. Anything works. I really love my space pen, but it’s pretty expensive for a pen that you just carry around in your pocket all day (and plus, I’m prone to losing them). I usually just keep one or two cheap ones in my pocket and a few more in a pen holder in my desk.

Post-its I usually get the 4×4 lined ones that you can see on my desk there, at Sam’s Club in bulk. At first, I didn’t really find these useful, but I find myself often sticking them to documents and other things as a reminder of what I intended to do with them.

Paper clips Again, I didn’t think I’d use these – and you might not ever need them – but I do find myself using them to keep small piles of loose paper together at times.

Binder clips Never bought them. Never used them. Don’t waste your money.

A stapler and staples I have been picky about my staples for a very long time. Currently, we have a Swingline high capacity stapler (this one) that we’ve used for years. Again, I don’t use one that often, but when I do (for taxes, for one example), it’s incredibly handy.

Scotch tape We have some in the kitchen for wrapping gifts. Never used it for anything organization related, though.

Rubber bands Nope.

An automatic labeler My technical term for such a device is a “pen.” Sometimes, I upgrade this with “masking tape.”

File folders I do have quite a few of these – again, bought in bulk and used regularly. In fact, we have a home filing cabinet which resides in the closet in my home office (which is a converted bedroom).

A calendar I abandoned using a paper one a few years ago. Instead, I now use Google Calendar and I keep an electronic copy of it on my iPod Touch for offline use. Even if I didn’t have a “portable” version of the calendar, I’d still use an electronic one and just print off any pages I needed to have with me on the road.

Wastebasket Of course!

Filing
One big part of this system is getting the stuff you want to keep but don’t need out of the way, but in a place where you can easily find it if you need it. In other words, get a filing system. From page 96:

A simple and highly functional personal reference system is critical to this process. The filing system at hand is the first thing I assess before beginning the workflow process in anyone’s office. As I noted in chapter 2, the lack of a good general-reference system can be one of the greatest obstacles to implementing a personal management system.

What does that mean? It simply means that when you have something you want to keep and look at later, it should go into some sort of system where it’s out of your way, but you can easily find it when you look for it.

I just use a simple A-Z filing system for everything. I just name folders with the most logical name I can think of at the time – Joe – Artwork is one, for example, that contains a few highlights of my son’s artistic output. That way, it’s out of the way, but I can retrieve it later on if I need it. Everything is simply A to Z based on the name at the top of the folder.

I try to keep all of the shelves in my filing cabinet balanced (except for the top shelf, which I handle differently – but I’ll talk about that later on). Right now, all of the files I have fit on two of the shelves – A to M and N to Z. If the shelves start to get out of balance, I move a letter to the other drawer to keep them in balance. If either one starts to get full, I’ll just annex another drawer (which is empty right now and, honestly, is my spot for hiding gifts).

Whenever an item comes in that I need to save, I file it away. If I don’t need to save it, I chuck it. If I need to retrieve it, I pull out the file, look it over, do whatever I need to do with it, and toss it back into my “to be filed” basket when I’m done.

I also keep plenty of fresh folders nearby so that I never feel bad about starting a new one. If I need a new folder, I usually know it right off the bat and it’s pretty poorly effective if I’m trying to hedge my bets over a simple folder.

One final note: the best time to do this is over a holiday weekend where you won’t be interrupted anyway. A holiday like the daytime portion of the Fourth of July is a great time to do this.

Next time, we’ll look at chapter five, which focuses on the “collect” portion of this system.