As I mentioned in the mailbag this morning, my father had emergency surgery due to a massive infection brought about by a dirty fish hook that got embedded in his arm. He’s going to be in the hospital for another day or two.

We have a house full of people coming to visit us this weekend – we have to plan meals, make sure that we have everything we need for sleeping arrangements, and do plenty of housecleaning first.

I have a big pile of work projects that I’m desperately trying to find the time and energy to tackle.

I’m trying to clean up multiple disasters (I mentioned one over the weekend) and I have to give a presentation this evening describing how one of them is going.

We’ve had a nearly constant run of thunderstorms here for the past week, waking us all up at night. Not only that, we also have a one month old who isn’t anywhere close to sleeping through the night.

This morning, I found myself kneeling in the bathroom cleaning up a disastrous toilet accident from my two year old daughter who is still struggling with potty training.

All of the above things were floating through my mind and for a moment, I just sat back with my head against the wall, feeling a bit overwhelmed.

What do you do when you find yourself here? I’ve found that a few tricks manage to keep me sane and keep me moving forward on all of the stuff I need to do.

First, I focus as hard as I can on the immediate task at hand. My job was to clean up the bathroom, period, so I focused on that task. Once that was done, I focused on lunch. Once that was done, I focused on a work project. One task at a time, with focus on just that task, makes it go much easier.

Second, I channel my frustrations into that task. Instead of being enraged or crying or anything like that, I focus very hard on using that emotional energy to get the task done. I often use that emotion as a factor in choosing what task to do next. So, for example, if I’m feeling a lot of emotion at my current situation, it’s usually a good time for me to do a physical task. I tend to burn a lot of that feeling off by doing dishes or moving furniture or mowing the yard.

Third, I aim to get a good night of sleep. The best method for doing this – which I do about once a week – is to sleep in the guest bedroom in the basement. It’s in the quietest part of the house and enables whoever sleeps there to get a great night of sleep and be ready to deal with the activities of the day.

(Unfortunately, this is a more difficult option for my wife. While she’s on maternity leave (through at least August), she has chosen to breastfeed, and part of that means that during the night, she has to wake up for nighttime feedings – I can’t help with that. Thankfully, we do have a bassinet right next to our bed from which the baby can easily be retrieved.)

Finally, I keep in mind that it’s okay to not be perfect. Sometimes, you simply can’t do everything, no matter how hard you try and no matter how much you want to do everything just right. You’re far better off relieving the pressure and just simply accepting that you won’t be able to complete some things than trying to do everything right and fail at the truly important stuff.

Yesterday, my father had emergency surgery to relieve a big infection that started when he got a fish hook embedded in his hand and he didn’t clean the wound properly immediately. I spent most of the day distracted and worried about him (he seems to be doing okay).

I mostly wandered around in a daze. I did some work, but I had a hard time staying focused. I played with my kids. I took a long walk. Mostly, I wished I was there at the hospital.

We all go through things like this. The best thing you can do to prepare is to make sure you always have breathing room in your work and in your life.

I’m confused about how to calculate what I need in an emergency fund – it is 6 months expenses for normal life or 6 months expenses minus what you wouldn’t spend if you weren’t working (like extra debt payments, commuting costs)? Should you count potential unemployment earnings in your plan? Is the emergency fund for dealing with unemployment or dealing with an accident?
- Michele

I usually use six months of minimal expenses – what you would need to keep food on the table and keep the bills paid. I do assume work costs because such emergencies might not necessarily be a job loss – there are lots of different kinds of emergencies that might happen. Similarly, I don’t include unemployment earnings in that number.

If you feel that six months’ worth of that is somehow too much, then don’t save it. However, I’ve moved to the idea of the “bottomless” emergency fund, simply because I just don’t know what the future holds and I want to be prepared for anything.

I do that by simply saving a small amount each week in my emergency fund and I simply don’t worry about the balance. If it grows beyond some arbitrary level, all that means is that I’ll be extra relieved when an emergency does happen.

I was reading your article on preparing your information for disaster http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/05/26/preparing-your-information-for-disaster/ and was wondering what your thoughts are on dead mans switches? I assume you’ve heard of them, basically all the information you highlighted in your article would be kept encrypted on an e-mail server and if you don’t press an electronic button once a week or so to let the server know you are alive it will send out your information to your beneficiaries (usually after 3 failed attempts or so). Do you like this idea? I am a little hesitant about having a binder laying around with all my personal & financial information in it in case it gets misplaced or fell into the wrong hands.
- Chris

I don’t like “dead man’s switches” simply because there are times in everyday life when you won’t necessarily be able to get to that switch in time. Not only do you always have to remember it, you have to be in a place to be able to push it when you think of it.

My solution is to keep the information in a safe box at the bank. I keep an unmarked key in a safe place and I’ve told the small handful of people I deeply trust where the key is and what it’s for. In my will, I state who has access to the document and encourage the executor to contact them. That’s really, truly good enough for me.

My husband and I have decided that it’s probably time to refinance. We think we can get a rate about 2 points lower than what we currently have, which would really help our monthly expenses, particularly since we’re expecting a baby in September. We’re not having any trouble making the mortgage now (and frequently pay extra), but that bit of extra flexibility will be helpful since we don’t know exactly what my work situation is going to be, post-baby (but I’ll probably be making less money than I am now).

The problem is, we don’t QUITE know what we’re doing. I was wondering if you could do an article on how to refinance your home without getting screwed. When we did our mortgage initially, even though we had done some research, we really felt like we were at the mercy of the brokers and real estate people and everyone. We got jerked around a lot, and it was super stressful. The crowning moment was when they called to tell us our official, finalized closing costs–the evening before we were supposed to close–and the number was around $2000 more than the “good faith estimate.” It wasn’t until then that we understood that there was nothing “good faith” about that estimate, and no legal requirement that it be even in the same ballpark as what they would actually charge us. We asked around and found out that this had happened to a number of our friends–I wish we had asked those questions earlier! I don’t want any similar unpleasant surprises, so I’m asking anyone I can think of to give me a talk-through of what to expect, and what warning signs to look out for.
- Alisha

There’s really no need for a full article on refinancing your home. The process is incredibly similar to shopping around for a mortgage, except it’s even easier because you already have the collateral in hand – your home.

All you do is simply go get quotes from various home lenders, do your own research into their reliability and customer service (trust me, it’s much better to work with a local credit union with a great reputation for customer service than MegaBankCorp where you’re just a number when you’re having problems with your mortgage), and select one based on those factors. Usually, lenders that overshoot their “good faith estimate” have a pretty poor reputation online, so just research your lender before you ever sign.

If you feel you need more detailed guidance, there are tons of books at the library that can walk you through this more carefully.

One final tip: don’t deal with a “broker.” Go get the quotes yourself directly from institutions that you’re willing to work with. Yes, it takes time, but it helps you figure out the deal that’s best for you.

I was wondering about your thoughts on the morality of short sales when a person can afford their payments but want to sell and are underwater. I know you agree with me that walking away and foreclosing is wrong.

Here’s our situation: I’ve been offered a job across the country that would include a 30 percent raise an would be a good career move. The problem is that we are underwater on our house and would need to do a short sale to sell. We can easily afford our mortgage and I wonder if it’s right to make this move and leave the bank shortchanged.
- Nate

I don’t think that’s “walking away from a mortgage” at all. You’re moving for a legitimate reason – a different career path – as opposed to merely trying to make someone else hold the bag on a bad investment you made.

Is it the right thing to do? That’s really up to you and your bank. If your bank is willing to accept a short sale in this situation, I’d go for it. Sometimes banks will do that and sometimes they won’t.

This is the normal type of risk that banks account for when they create mortgages, so I wouldn’t worry about it.

Hi Trent: I have long followed many of the principals of your Forum but now find one coming back to haunt me. I loathe debt and have been debt free since the year 2000. I use a debit card or cash to pay for everything. I purchased my condo and car both for cash. I live and work abroad. I recently thought of purchasing a home in California. Was going to put 75% down and thought to borrow the balance. The loan broker said I would not qualify for a normal loan as I had no credit history despite owning a home in the USA in the 90’s! I have a net worth of 1.7m/ annual income of 200k but that was not good enough. Needless to say I was shocked.

So I find mind myself now having to use credit to gain “credit worthiness”. I signed up a for Fidelity Amex credit card. Can you suggest any other way I might establish a credit history? I don’t want to take out a mortgage but you never know. I want the option of access to credit. I would appreciate your comment.
- Matthew

You absolutely need to go to a home lender that does manual underwriting instead of this automated nonsense that gives a pretty poor picture of one’s true credit worthiness. A credit score is a great quick check for simple things (like figuring out insurance rates), but for big things like a home mortgage – especially in your case – manual underwriting is best.

When someone does manual underwriting, they actually investigate you instead of scanning a credit report. You’re obviously a person worth lending to – your credit report, on the other hand, is a blank slate.

If you’re looking to build a positive credit rating (just because it can be generally useful, like for insurance rates), a credit card is a good way to do it, particularly if you have self control when it comes to using it (which you obviously do).

Any recommendations for baby carriers? We have a six-week-old baby boy and so far we have our eyes on both the Ergo and the Baby Bjorn (leaning towards the Ergo since I have back pain and don’t want to exacerbate it). I figure you’ve probably done your research on this.
- Justin

My wife and I chose the Baby Bjorn in 2005 for our son and we’re still using it for child #3. It has worked extremely well as a hands-free child carrier.

It doesn’t appear that the exact model we purchased is still for sale (or maybe it’s been redesigned). After looking at dozens of such carriers on Amazon, it looks like this one is the most similar to the one we have.

The biggest problem we have is that I’m more than a foot taller than my wife, which means that for us to switch users, we have to make a ton of adjustments to it. If you vary greatly in size from your wife, two of them wouldn’t be a bad idea.

I was interested to see your recipe for chicken fingers the other day, and I hope you post more food-related articles in the future. I am curious, since you have two preschool kids, are they picky eaters? Are there any foods they won’t eat or that are hard to get them to eat? How do you and Sarah get them to eat fruits and veggies, or meat? Try new foods, or exotic/ethnic/”weird looking” foods? I hope they aren’t stuck in the chicken fingers/mac n’ cheese/pbj rut too many kids their age are in. I myself was a very picky eater and can recall many heated fights for many years. I am sorry for now as my stubbornness resulted in bad habits and a limited palate on my part. Thank you.
- Lorraine

They have preferences, without question. There are some foods they really like and some foods they do not.

Our goal as parents is usually to just expose them to a lot of different things – and, most importantly, demonstrate an interest in and enjoyment of a wide variety of foods.

For the most part, this has worked well. Among my son’s favorite foods are crab legs and black olives – fairly unusual for a four year old. My daughter has a passion for “spicy” salsa – and the funny part is that her definition of “spicy” is pretty intensely hot.

Whenever we have a meal with an unusual dish, all we require is that they try one bite of it – that’s all. If we have three courses (which is typical), we usually fill their plate with a small amount of each item, then tell them they have to clean up two of the three items and take one bite of the third. That usually takes care of the “ewww…. I don’t like it” problem pretty well.

I have a question that I bet many of your readers may be interested but I am unsure where to post it where it may generate further comments and input from you as well. I will give you the basics and if you can point me to the correct area of your site I will be happy to place my question there.

I have a feeling there are many my age who may be in the same boat I am – starting a retirement plan at a less than optimal age. I see many letters in the mailbag regarding 20-somethings’ wanting advise on how to start their financial lives (smart folks) but I have not seen older individuals or families writing in for opinions on this kind of situation. I certainly believe that getting my emergency fund up to a 6-month cushion is paramount but what would you recommend after that?
- Allen

There’s no easy way out here – you simply have to double down on your savings.

If you start retirement savings when you’re 25 years old, you can get away with contributing a lot less per year over your lifetime. This is not only true because you have more years to contribute, but because the earlier contributions have a lot more time to add value.

You’re 39. The numbers are a lot different, but they are doable.

Spend some time looking at a good retirement calculator, like this one at MSN. You’ll find that if you start plugging in numbers, there are ways to get yourself to the retirement level you need at age 65. However, it’ll either take a lot more savings each year or some extremely lucky years on the stock market to make it.

To be on the safe side, bet on the “more savings each year” side of the equation. You most likely need to be socking away 20% of your pretax income starting now in order to be ready for retirement when it rolls around.

I have a question for you about valuable property insurance. My husband and I purchased a very expensive rug at a bankruptcy liquidation sale (original price ~$4,500, but we got it for 10% of that or $450). It was simply a deal we could not pass up and I have been looking for a quality rug for about 7 months now. With the exception of some family jewelery and our house, this is most valuable piece of property we own. We currently have insurance on the jewelry and the house, but we’re unsure if we should insure the rug as well. My husband feels at a certain point we can’t keep paying a separate policy for each valuable item we acquire. I think that we probably will acquire more items that will need to be insured, but since we have so few items right now, it’s not appropriate to adjust our full homeowners policy to cover just a few valuable items. I’d be interested on your opinion on this issue.
- Elaine

You need to read over your homeowners insurance policy very carefully. Almost every homeowners insurance policy has an item included in it that covers loss of contents of the home, so in the event of a fire or other disaster, your rug is most likely covered.

For most people, the default amount of the value of the contents exceeds the value of the contents by quite a lot. This is usually done so that the “value” of the insurance is higher and thus the insurance companies can charge you a higher rate for your insurance.

If you wish to insure the rug separately against other events (like a stain), you can probably do this, but you will likely be paying pretty high premiums for it. If I were you, I’d just bank those premiums instead as a “replacement fund” for the rug so that if something did happen, you’d be ready to replace it on your own without giving money away.

I’ve enjoyed reading your blog and have gained a lot of insight from them.For some reason I always thought that you were not a Christian from the little I could gather about your spirituality from The Simple Dollar.But having read your article today about you being in the committee of your church,I believe that you are.Is that true?If so,why would you comment that a certain book that you reviewed had heavy ‘Christian overtones.’When I read that, I felt you were not endorsing that book because it was “Christian.” If you don’t mind me asking,please tell me more about your spiritual life.
- Preethy

I’ve mentioned quite a few times on The Simple Dollar that I’m a Christian. I am heavily involved in my local church, particularly in terms of helping to organize their money and direct it towards the needy in the local community by giving to the local food pantry and so on.

I don’t waste my time judging other people and I certainly can’t tell them what to believe nor will I berate them for not believing what I do. All I can do is try to help them improve their lives and solve their financial and professional problems so that with a clearer mind and greater opportunities, they are open to finding whatever answers life has in store for them.

If someone writes to me asking for help, I don’t care whether they’re a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu or an atheist or a Zoroastrian. They’re a person and that, to me, is more than enough to offer my help in whatever way I can. Unless they’re seeking spiritual guidance, talking about religion does not help them – it just likely alienates them from whatever help I might be able to offer.

Most people don’t care what I believe or what you believe, but they don’t like it when someone uses that belief like a weapon of judgment. When a person comes to a point in their life when they’re looking for spiritual answers, they’ll ask the people they trust. That’s a private conversation that doesn’t need to be in a forum like this, so I keep it out of here.

Whats your suggestions on explaining frugal living to friends that don’t want to hear it but are clearly living beyond their means? Or they give excuses why it wont or cant work for them.
- Marvin

My answer to this question is actually pretty similar to the one above. Don’t waste your time preaching the “gospel of frugality” to someone who doesn’t want to hear it. When their life hits bottom and they’re ready, you can talk all you want about it.

What can you do, then? Take action. Invite them over to your home quite often so that they can see how many frugal things are simply a part of your daily routine (without making any show of it). Talk happily about the frugal stuff you do and invite them along to things like community concerts. Offer to help them fix a minor plumbing or electrical problem themselves so they don’t have to call a plumber. When an emergency happens, don’t go into panic mode – simply say, “Wow, glad I’ve got an emergency fund!” and just take care of it with cold, hard cash.

In other words, don’t waste your time talking the talk – people don’t want to hear it. Walk the walk. People see that and when they’ve reached a point in their life when they’re open to hearing more, then you can talk the talk all you want.

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.

Those who have followed this blog for a long time know that I don’t have many personal heroes. There are a lot of people who have valuable things to say, but there are very few people who have reached such a trusted level with me that I tend to put extra value on the things they say just because that person said them.

One of those few people was John Wooden, who passed away this past week (I mentioned it briefly in my reader mailbag on Monday). A few years ago, I wrote about how John Wooden had taught me a lot about personal finance and over the years, I’ve read his books and a big pile of interviews he’d given.

Of all of the things I’ve taken away from the things he’s said, one stands out above all others.

Make each day your masterpiece.

In other words, how would you spend today if it were the one day by which your entire life would be judged?

This is something I make a genuine effort to keep in mind every single day of my life.

What would I write if I knew I only had one shot at making a difference in someone’s life?

How would I spend the next hour with my four year old son if I knew it was the only hour he’d remember from his childhood when he was an adult?

How would I spend this evening with my wife if it were the last evening we would spend together?

How would I spend my money today if I knew that today spoke financially for the rest of my days?

Would I hold my temper? Would I stop being such a slob? Would I set a good example? Would I not worry what the neighbors thought and just run through the sprinkler in my clothes, laughing with my children? Would I make a perfectly delicious, tasty meal and smile at my daughter across the dinner table – or would I just throw a box of Tuna Helper out there?

Every single day, we’re making an impact on the people around us. The people we love. The people we merely like. The people we will never directly know. Even on ourselves – our future health and happiness and relationships and skills and finances.

Every single day, we have a chance to really make all of those things shine – or we can buy a sack full of double cheeseburgers and sit in the basement all evening watching Seinfeld reruns.

Today is really the only day that matters. You can’t make your past self do anything. You can’t make your future self do anything, either. Your only freedom of choice is right now, and thus today is your one chance to paint your masterpiece.

What are you going to do today to make it your masterpiece?

With all the road trips scheduled this summer, I’ve been thinking about a song collection that both my wife and I would enjoy on the trip. So, we’ve started co-curating one, where we each add 100 songs to a playlist, then we are each allowed to delete anything we don’t like from the list.

My wife doesn’t like to do this, so I’ve essentially been doing it vocally with her, asking her what she thinks of song X and song Y and she lets me know whether they fit or not.

The end result? The list is loaded with early-to-mid-90s “alternative” stuff. Soundgarden. Oasis. Pearl Jam. Jeff Buckley. Blind Melon. Collective Soul. Counting Crows. That’s the flavor of almost the entire list.

Guess our 2010 road trips will be like a road trip into 1995.

The Absolute Beginner’s Guide To Starting A Small Online Business Just a note: without a lot of hard work up front with no guarantee of compensation at the end, a small online business will never work. If you put in the footwork, though, you can actually build something that thrives. (@ zen habits)

The Incredible Shrinking Emergency Fund I think this makes sense, given the continuing high unemployment rate and the fact that emergency funds are there for emergencies – like joblessness, for example. (@ get rich slowly)

Thinking Small without Guilt: Setting Your Minimum Goal Standards The number one reason I fail at my goals is that I set them too high. Don’t try to lose fifty pounds. Try to lose five instead. Don’t try to completely reverse your spending – instead, shoot for saving $50 a month. (@ dumb little man)

11 things to do (and not do) when you’re burned out For me, the best thing to do when burnout occurs is something completely different than what it was that caused the burnout. (@ white hot truth)

Money Myth 1: “I Can’t Afford It!” “I can’t afford it!” is much different than “I choose not to buy it!” The former implies that you’re not taking a strong role in increasing your income, while the latter just implies strong spending sense. (@ pick the brain)

This is the third 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 looked at the five stages of a healthy task and information management workflow (collect, process, organize, review, do). Of course, one of the big revelations is that while this works really well for short, individual, discrete tasks, it doesn’t immediately seem to work all that well for larger multi-step tasks, i.e. projects.

Without these larger tasks, the whole system is easy. Toss stuff in your inbox, go through them regularly, take care of them, done. The challenge comes about when you have something that can’t simply be done in a session or two – particularly things that require feedback and input from others. How do you handle these?

The key, of course, is to break down these larger projects into bite-sized pieces that you can take action on right away. In order to do this effectively, Allen argues (on page 56) that we need five elements, which we often already use in a very informal way:

You’re already familiar with the most brilliant and creative planner in the world: your brain. You yourself are actually a planning machine. You’re planning when you get dressed, eat lunch, go to the store, or simply talk. Although the process may seem somewhat random, a quite complex series of steps in fact has to occur before your brain can make anything happen physically. Your mind goes through five steps to accomplish virtually any task:

1 | Defining purpose and principles
2 | Outcome visioning
3 | Brainstorming
4 | Organizing
5 | Identifying next actions

A great way to demonstrate this process is to look at how I think about preparing supper.

First, I decide on my purpose and principles. My family needs supper. I have about three hours between now and suppertime.

Next, I imagine the outcome. I want to cook something fairly healthy but also tasty.

Then, I brainstorm. What meals might fit that bill? A taco salad. A vegetarian pizza.

After that, I organize. I look in the refrigerator and the cupboards to identify what ingredients we have on hand, which quickly narrows down the brainstorming. I eventually settle on vegetarian pizza – I’m going to make vegetarian pizza for supper. What steps go into that? First, I make the dough. I then bake the crust, put toppings on it, and bake the pizza.

Finally, I proceed to the next action: I make the dough. Making pizza dough is a simple enough standalone action that it would be just fine in my inbox.

Here’s the thing: for simple things like dinner, most of us just shoot through this process without even thinking about it. It’s incredibly automatic for simple tasks like dinner.

Where people get stymied is when they have to apply the same process to a much bigger project.

Here’s an example of that. I had a great idea for a huge ebook project a while back. The thing is, every time I would think about it, I would get almost overwhelmed at the sheer size of the project. What’s the general concept of it? What are the specific things that would go into it? How would it be designed and laid out? Where would all of the content come from? How would I distribute or sell it? Every time I sat down and looked at this idea, I was stymied.

Another, more personal example would be our shed installation project. We have a perfect spot in our backyard for a shed – and having such a place would be very helpful, as it’d be a great spot to store a lot of the larger equipment that eats up space in our garage. How would I build it? Should I build it myself or hire someone to do it? What options are out there? Do we want a small one or a bigger one? How will it affect property values? Again, I’m stymied without some sort of process to work through this stuff.

That is, until I spent some serious time applying those natural five steps to these ideas.

Purpose and Principles
The purpose part of the equation is easy. Why are you doing this? Asking yourself why has a lot of benefits (p. 63):

It defines success.
It creates decision-making criteria.
It aligns resources.
It motivates.
It clarifies focus.
It expands options.

In other words, it helps you to figure out exactly what you want to do. A clear goal, then, makes it easier to plan everything it takes to get there.

So, with my ebook project: I’m doing it because I think there’s a great deal of value in the idea. I also would like to eventually reach a point where I’m financially independent from advertisements for income on The Simple Dollar, and a really high-quality ebook would be one way to open that channel.

What about the shed? My reason for doing that is to increase the property value of our home as well as provide a place to store tools and equipment (like our snowblower, for example).

The other half of the equation is the principles of the matter. In other words (p. 66):

A great way to think about what your principles are is to complete this sentence: “I would give others totally free rein to do this as long as they…”

With the ebook project, my biggest “as long as” would be that the quality of the material produced remains high. With the shed, my biggest “as long as” would be that the cost is kept under control. Of course, each one has a few more minor “as long as” statements attached to them, which is useful to think about and know before continuing.

Outcome visioning
From there, you can start adding some attributes to the project that specifies exactly what you want in the end. From page 67:

In order most productively to access the conscious and unconscious resources available to you, you must have a clear picture in your mind of what success would look, sound, and feel like. [...] This is the “what?” instead of the “why?”

In other words, you’re focused entirely on what the end product will look like, not what steps are required to get there.

So, for my ebook project, my end product would be a beautifully designed document that includes a lot of valuable content based around the central theme. It’d be available at a special site created just for it that provides extensive previewing of the content included in the document.

For the shed, the end result is simple: a shed in the yard. How big? 10′ by 15′, according to my measurements and some additional thought. I’m already sure of the location, but I also know I’d rather build it well rather than cheaply so that it stands for a very long time without leaks or maintenance.

Brainstorming
Here’s where the meat of the business can be found. On page 70:

Once you know what you want to have happen, and why, the “how” mechanism is brought into play. When you identify with some picture in your head that is different than your current reality, you automatically start filling in the gaps, or brainstorming.

In other words, once you know your goal clearly, you start assembling the steps to get there. Obviously, a full-fledged plan isn’t going to pop right out. Instead, you have to sit down and start breaking down the process.

There are a lot of ways to do this. Many people use a “mind map,” in which they just write down ideas as they come into their head and connect those ideas together with lines and sometimes additional notes. I tend to write my ideas down in a double-spaced list, just dumping them out as fast as I can, and I connect any related ideas together with a thick line.

The best part about brainstorming is that it’s easy to utilize other people since you’re just gathering ideas. This is the stage where you look for advice from your social network, from websites, and so on.

Also, don’t waste your energy judging the relative merits of your ideas right now. Just focus on accumulating ideas and potential steps for how to move from where you’re at now to your goal.

Organizing
Once you’re satisfied with your collection of ideas, the next step is transforming that mess into some form of organized plan. On page 75, Allen suggests a simple way for doing that:

The key steps here are
+ Identify the significant pieces.
+ Sort by (one or more):
+ components
+ sequences
+ priorities
+ Detail to the required degree

You have this big collection of ideas from your brainstorming session. The first thing to do is to simply go through them and pull out the significant ones. You’re looking for the essential pieces that will take you from here or there. Don’t worry about lots of specifics yet – you just want a good framework to build on. Also, don’t worry about order yet.

Once you have the key pieces, you’re going to order them. Often, some steps rely on earlier steps to be accomplished, so they should be put into the obvious order. If two things can happen at the same time, you can make up your own mind which one has priority based on your own prerogatives. I like to list these in order with plenty of space between them.

Finally, add in details until the steps are comfortable for you. For me, “comfortable” means “small enough that they can be done in reasonable chunks, like an hour or two.” If a remaining piece is too big for me to accomplish in that short of a timeframe, I keep breaking it down into smaller details.

Next Actions
The final step is really to get started. Most projects have one or two (or several) pieces that you can get started on right away.

For example, with my ebook project, I can start gathering the written content, gathering the image content, and coming up with basic layout ideas in Adobe InDesign. With the shed project, I can gather lots of options and quotes for the assembly of the shed in preparation for a meeting with my wife to discuss exactly what we want to put up.

When I’ve got a project rolling, I usually have a few things I’ve added to my “next actions” pile. I’ve also started a folder that contains all of this material for the project, especially the list I made during the “organizing” part of setting up the project. This gives me something to look at each week during my “weekly review” so that I can keep tabs with the progress on that project.

The basic idea here – and how it fits into the previous chapter’s great workflow – is that whenever you’re faced with something too big to deal with in one swoop, you use this process to break it down. You start a folder for that project, keep that folder, and review it regularly to make sure you’re keeping up with the next actions.

Next time, we’ll look at chapter four, which focuses on how to get this entire system started in terms of the time, space, and tools needed.

The single biggest personal finance lesson that anyone can learn is that of delayed gratification.

Delayed gratification means that you hold off buying that new cell phone for a while so that you can pay cash for your car in a few years.

Delayed gratification means that you spend the evening reading a book or learning a new skill instead of merely watching television.

Delayed gratification means that you immediately save some of your paycheck instead of even giving yourself the possibility of spending it now.

The more often you practice delayed gratification, the sweeter the gratification becomes later and the more possibilities unfold in your life. Delayed gratification brings financial stability and with it, lower stress. It brings the realization of bigger dreams, too.

It’s one of the things that I most want to integrate into the lives of my children.

The question is obvious: how do you possibly teach delayed gratification to a four year old?

Over the last few years, I’ve been saving little tactics I’ve heard about here and there for just this purpose and, lately, I’ve been putting them to work on Joe. Here are some of the tactics – and how a four year old boy has responded to them.

The Treat Test
I often do this with both Joe and his two year old sister at the same time. I sit them both down and say, “Who wants an M&M?” (one of their favorite treats!)

I then say, “You have a choice. You can either have one M&M now – or you can have two M&Ms in three minutes. Which do you want?”

(I’ve altered the delay a few times.)

My daughter always chooses to have one right away, but she’s just two. My son, on the other hand, usually chooses to wait. Sometimes, if the timeframe is too long, he’ll ask for it now, but he’ll usually find something else to do to distract himself until he can have more M&Ms later on.

Mister Noodle
I essentially do a variation on the “Mister Noodle” sketch from Sesame Street, in which the children give “Mister Noodle” step-by-step instructions on how to complete a task.

Together, we come up with some sort of large project that we want to accomplish. For example, we might decide that we want to make a giant birthday card for Mom that includes a rainbow and pictures of all of the family members in it.

From there, we go through all of the steps we have to go through to complete the project. First, we need to get out the supplies, but we need to get all of the supplies out before we move on. Then, we think about what we’re going to draw – and perhaps even sketch it out lightly in pencil first. Once we have the design, we do all of the painting. Then, if we wish, we add collage elements by looking for the elements we want in old magazines and cutting them out. We then glue on the collage elements. We then leave the card out to dry and put all of the supplies away.

If we focused entirely on just our goal, Joe would turn out a lower-quality card than if we focused entirely on each step as we went along. If we spend some time now delaying the “gratification” of slapping paint on the card and instead think about what we want in the end, we wind up with a much better card.

Joe is just now beginning to see the benefits of this type of planning. I’ve seen it pop up in his thinking about other things recently, particularly in terms of buidling projects with the Magna-Tiles.

focus on the individual steps towards a long term goal

Visual Savings
One big thing we’ve done is focus strongly on what we call “visual savings.”

As I’ve mentioned before, we gave our son a translucent piggy bank for his fourth birthday and instituted a weekly allowance – a small amount of money given to him each week that’s not tied to any specific chore or action. He just receives it as a way of learning money management skills.

A portion of that allowance is “saved” for a known goal. He’ll identify a toy that he wants. Each week, he saves a portion of his allowance for that toy. Recently, for example, he had been saving for a particular Iron Man toy.

We identify how much it costs and tell him how much he’ll have to save up for it. He puts his allowance in each week and also sometimes adds some “found money” to it. He watches the money build up. We talk about the toy he’s saving for and how much it will take to reach that goal.

At first, he was very impatient and would change his goals all the time so that he was saving for a lower-cost toy. In the last few months, though, he’s really started to see the benefits of saving for a better toy. He saved for months for his current Iron Man toy and, for him, the patience really paid off.

Reward Hard Work Instead of Results
My son spent most of an hour picking weeds from our front garden over the weekend. He didn’t do a perfect job by any means – he missed some weeds and picked a few flowers in the process.

But rather than criticizing his results, I just complimented his efforts. “Wow, Joe! You spent a ton of time weeding and now, because of your hard work, the garden looks great!” I then bent down with him to help him finish and simply showed him which ones were flowers and where some of the missed weeds were, not in any sort of a scolding way, but in a “Hey, Joe, check this out!” kind of way.

The focus is on the effort, not on the results. I fully intend to do the same thing when he’s in school. If I see him studying his school materials, thinking about what he’s learning, and asking questions related to them, then I know he’s learning and that earns the praise. The report card? That’s not nearly as important to me.

But don’t we want our children to have great results? Of course we do, but great results are a reward unto themselves. Plus, great results are often the endgame of a lot of hard work. If you’ve worked hard, you will get great results as a matter of course. Our focus is in making sure our children learn the value in working hard, not just chase results.

Working hard builds great things. Chasing results ends up like Wall Street, circa October 2008.

Ellen writes in with a very difficult story:

I am a huge fan of yours and have used much of your advice to simplify the money matters in my family, but my family is currently in a crisis that I have never seen discussed on your site.

In early April, my family was in a severe car accident. We were driving my mother’s van at the time and we were t-boned by a hit & run driver. My children’s car seats protected them from any damage and I walked away with only some muscle strain, but my husband was not so lucky. He had to be transported to a local hospital via ambulance due to a severe flexion neck injury.

Let me take a minute to review our household’s current standings: My husband works 40-hours a week in a fairly physical job. I work 32-hours a week. We work alternating schedules so that we do not need daycare for our two children. All of our benefits come out of his pay check because he gets a better benefit rate as a full-time employee. We had 6 months worth of savings for living expenses.

My husband has been out on FMLA ever since and will be until at least early July, when the doctor will decide whether he can return to work or needs to find a new line of work. Our FMLA expires at that point and the hospital that he works for will probably help him find another position, but we are currently unsure what that might be or if he will be able to continue working the convenient hours he is working now.

In the meantime, because we were the victims of a hit & run, the vehicle insurance is going to pay out to the uninsured motorist limits. And that’s the part that’s difficult. See, since uninsured motorist is a “final pay” settlement, we can’t get any help financially until Aaron is back to work. Normally, under the rights of subrogation, your health care will pay out, then place a lien against the settlement.

Unfortunately, though we work for a health care provider, our insurance will not pay out. At the 30-day mark of his accident, I had to pay the hospital bill, which wiped out a good bit of savings. Since this bill was to our employer, we could not afford to let it languish. The same is true of the ambulance bill. Also, his doctor bills. I have to pay enough to keep them out of collections (I’ve worked too hard on our credit to let that happen) and enough to keep the office letting him see the doctor.

We’ve been scraping by, but it’s a close thing. My husband has now exhausted his sick leave, but the lion’s share of the bills are paid. We figured that with his short term disability (which we pay for with our benefits), we would get by. Unfortunately, his short term disability claim has been denied. Since there is no subrogation clause in our short term disability policy, they won’t pay out in the case of 3rd party causation of the time off work. This was not something that even our HR Benefits people were aware of. (Obviously, this is an employer subsidized plan with an outside company, unlike our health insurance.)

Now, we are a month away from my husband returning to work, and my income is not enough. The catastrophic string of events that are unfolding just keep rolling in at us. I have applied for a credit card (we currently don’t have any, except one very small emergency card) to start putting some living expenses on and I will unashamedly run it up and pay it off when the settlement comes. The only things we have to pay now are rent, gas, food, and our vehicle insurance.

So, the obvious question is, knowing that I had stocked a huge amount of savings in the past few months and couldn’t really cut any closer to the bone, what did we do wrong? Honestly, if my husband had simply lost his job or quit, we would be in much better financial shape than we are now. What would you have done differently? We thought we did everything right.

Here’s the thing – you did do everything right. You were more financially prepared for this than the vast majority of Americans are.

This episode teaches a hard truth: there is no social safety net for when things like this happens. The only safety net we have is the one we build for ourselves.

What Should Ellen Do?
Given their situation, the best short-term thing to do is probably to rack up some debt. However, I wouldn’t be sure that a credit card would be the best choice here. If I were you, I would visit a credit union and look at more options than just carrying a balance on a credit card, which will bleed you with interest.

In some situations (people with great credit, for example), credit unions will extend personal loans which usually carry a much lower interest rate than a credit card. Also, if you have any form of collateral on the loan, you might be able to get a significantly larger loan. None of this is a guarantee, but it is an avenue worth following.

The painful truth of the matter is that you’re sitting on the lip of a whirlpool. This whirlpool often drags people into a downward spiral towards medical bankruptcy. Sometimes, if things turn out well, you can escape the pool, but you’ve reached a point where most of the events necessary for that are out of your hands. Just keep your spending low, rack up as little debt as possible, and wait.

Some Thoughts on Preparation
Ellen’s story is a painful one, but stories like this happen constantly all over the world. People are happily living their normal lives, then they get into an auto accident or find out that they have a serious disease – and their happy normal life is derailed.

We don’t like to think about these things. It’s much more pleasant to think about a future that is brighter than our current life. In fact, it’s that bright future that often motivates us to work hard – it’s our psychological carrot. We work hard for that great new home. We work hard to make sure our kids can go to a wonderful college. We work hard for that great vacation in a few years.

The truth is that these things happen to everyone – and we rarely know in advance that they’re going to happen. The less prepared we are, the closer we are to the “whirlpool” that I mentioned above, and that downward spiral often leads to bankruptcy and effectively starting over.

What can you do to prepare yourself?

An emergency fund Cash is king. Yes, there are lots of guidelines for how big your emergency fund should be (I use the rule of thumb of two months of family living expenses for each dependent), but giant emergencies like these often eat through that like it’s nothing. As a family, we’ve moved to an “endless” emergency fund. I just contribute to it automatically each month and don’t even look at the balance. I know that there’s plenty there for a crisis of any kind.

Financial preparedness documents Know every account that you have and have the account information in a place where it can easily be found. Yes, I wrote about financial preparedness documents before, but having one ready is truly vital. Create one, put it in a safe place, and update it regularly.

Long term care and long term disability insurance What happens if you can no longer work at your current career? What if you need managed care for a long period of time? That’s what these types of insurance are for. Yes, not everyone can afford them, but if you can easily afford them, it’s a good place to put your money. It protects your family not from your death, but from your long-term incapacitance.

Assets that retain their value A flat panel television doesn’t retain its value. A PSA-certified Babe Ruth baseball card does. A video game console doesn’t retain its value. Gold bullion does. When you’re looking to buy something for personal enjoyment, ask yourself whether it retains value and put some premium on the things that do.

Transferable skills What happens if you’re no longer physically able to conduct your current career? You’ll have to move on to another one. Do you have any skills that might help you find another one – especially skills that help you with the career you have now? If you don’t, you might want to start working on them. Public speaking, information management skills, time management skills, communication skills – these are all vital in almost every field.

Remember, the more prepared you are for an accident, the better off you’ll be if/when it happens. Even better, seek out ways to prepare for that situation while improving your current one.

This past weekend, one of my heroes passed away. I’ll memorialize him with five of my favorite quotes from him.

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

“You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

and my personal favorite…

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

I applied for a credit card with a zero % introductory rate in order to transfer the balance of another credit card with a higher rate (14.4%). Now that I have the new card, I noticed the introductory rate is only for 7 months and then the interest rates goes up to over 20%! Plus, the new card doesn’t even have enough available credit to transfer the full amount of the old card. What should I do? I assume I should just keep the old card and plug away at it. (I also plan to call and see if I can get an interest rate reduction.) But what should I do with the new card? Cancel it? I haven’t activated it yet.
- Kay

If I were you, I’d transfer an amount that you’re absolutely sure you can pay off in seven months, cut up the card, and never actually use it – just pay off debt with it. Since you’ve already opened the line of credit, it’s not going to make much difference at all in terms of your credit rating.

So, let’s say your minimum payment on your first card is $80 a month and you’ve been paying $200 a month to pay it down. That means you’re paying $120 a month extra. Transfer $600 to the new card, then each month, make the $80 minimum payment to the old card and a $120 payment to the new one.

What does that save you? It’ll only save you about $20, but that’s better than nothing, especially if you can use your bank to automate the bill payment.

Your summer reading list is insane! How do you manage to read so much?
- Evan

Three simple things.

One, I make sure I have a book with me everywhere I go. I usually just keep the book I’m reading near me throughout the day, but I also have a “backup” or two laying around here or there. I have a novel in the car, for example, just for these opportunities.

Two, when I’m idling for a little bit (like when I’m trying to coax the baby to sleep), I read. I don’t watch television. I don’t surf the internet. I read a book.

Three, I actually read fairly slowly and at the end of each paragraph, I mentally ask myself if I’m sure what I needed to pick up from that paragraph. I used to read much “faster” before I started doing this, but I was constantly backtracking and I often missed big chunks of what the book was about. In the end, I would get through a book at about the same speed I do now, but I get a lot more out of them now – my enjoyment factor is way, way up.

I’m a 26 year-old computer developer and am looking for some advice from you and your readers on mid-term savings ideas. I’m going to be taking a 2-year international assignment to China and my wife and I are trying to figure out what to do with some of our mid-range savings. We renovated a house over the past 3 years and are about to sell it and make roughly $30k. We have no debt other than the house. I have a vehicle provided by my employer (and will once I get back also) and we’re probably going to just let our family borrow our other truck while we’re gone so no major changes there. We have worked pretty hard to save up another $25k in my 401(k) and a Roth IRA. We’ve also got another $10k in general savings. With my international assignment I’m expecting to save anywhere from $40-$100k while I’m overseas. We don’t have kids (although we’re planning on it at some point soon) and are kind of thinking we might just try to pay for our next house with mostly cash. My question is what should I do with this amount of money over the next 2-3 years. Savings rates and CDs have such low interest rates and in that short a time-frame, I’m not very confident in the stock market either. I would consider a rental property but we’ll have no good way to manage it while out of the country. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you and your readers may have.
- Joe

Keep it in a high-interest savings account, one that you’ll be able to access from over there, and wait. If interest rates start to go up, you might want to rate hop a bit.

You’re right, though, there’s nothing out there paying good interest without taking on some risk. That’s because the Federal Reserve wants investors to be dumping their money into stocks and things like this that can spur the economy along much more directly. When the economy is humming along, interest rates go up and such stable investments look much better.

Still, I don’t think it’s worth the risk of putting money in the stock market right now unless you’re okay losing a good portion of it in exchange for a good probability of turning a profit. If you’re banking on that cash, then it’s not a good move.

I am curious how you budget for periodic charges that happen throughout the year. For instance, once a year, I pay for my car tags. Twice a year my daughter has soccer registration. Once a year we have our furnace serviced. I am thinking of adding up all of the charges for a year, divide the number by 12, and that is how much I need to try and set aside each month. I would like you input about what you do in your situation.
- Robyn

That’s exactly how we do it

Well, almost exactly. I tend to “front load” the year. Think of it this way: divide that amount by 6 or so, then make that payment each month for the first six months of the year.

Why do it that way? Those extra payments don’t come in evenly throughout the year. Sometimes, they come in bunches, and if they come in bunches early in the year, you don’t have enough saved up.

Aside from that, you’ve got the right idea.

I’m an avid reader. and I came across this article today on yahoo. For some reason I immediatly thought of you! I was curious as to what you would think of it. Not just as a way to save money but also as a way to network and meet new people!
- Ruth

That’s an extremely good idea. It’s one of those things that demonstrates the power of a local community.

In the end, it’s just formalizing how a healthy neighborhood works. If I help my neighbor watch his kids a few times for an hour or two, he helps another neighbor mow their grass, and then that neighbor helps me with snowblowing in the winter, we all save money. A time bank just makes it more formal, which makes it easier for people to join.

I’m all in favor of stuff like this because it simply saves people money.

What would be your advice to new bloggers when it comes to finding their voice for their blog?
- Gina

Write a lot. Nothing else solves issues of writing voice like writing a lot.

When you do that, pay attention to what people react to. Read the comments. Read the emails readers send to you. You’ll begin to figure out what things you write that readers like – and which things they don’t like. Use those clues to figure out what you should emulate and what you shouldn’t.

Over time, what will happen is that you’ll find it natural to write in a way that appeals to whatever readers you happen to have collected – and then you’ll find it easy to collect more readers like them.

My fiance and I are due to be married next February. We’ve consolidated our checking accounts, I’m about to buy a house (a duplex), and I just paid off all of my consumer debt (today! yay!). However, my fiance has a sizeable amount of debt, we both have car loans. I’m currently in re-payment of my student loans while he won’t have to begin payment until he graduates. I plan on going to law school in the fall of 2011.

Any insight you could provide as to where I could invest it would be helpful!
- Melissa

As I mentioned above, interest rates are low right now across the board on savings accounts and CDs. There’s just nothing that can be done about it other than sit on cash and wait.

Why are they so low? The banks have no incentive to make the rates any higher because they can pretty much get as much cash as they need for about 3% interest whenever they like, so they can’t afford to pay out anywhere close to that while also ponying up for FDIC insurance.

If I were you, I’d just sit on the cash for now. You’re better off having it for emergencies even just earning 1% or so than having it at risk or having it tied up to just earn 2% or so.

Ha! I loved the “Life’s too short to drive a used car.”

I concur and have never purchased anything but a new car for the last two decades. I keep them until they start to fall apart though! I don’t finance and always buy a cost effective car that I can pay cash for. I currently drive a 2009 Honda Fit. I love it. I am very good at living within my means and would never drive a status car. But I do have a hefty commute and having reliable transportation is not negotiable for me.
- Aaron

You listed two things that new car buyers rarely do.

One, they rarely keep them until they start to fall apart. Proof? Go to your local dealership and look at how many 2004 to 2008 used cars – perfectly drivable for a lot of miles – are just sitting out there on the lot.

Two, they rarely pay cash for them. 73% of all new car purchases are financed, according to this article.

You’re basically buying new because you’re willing to pay extra to get those early reliable miles – the first 80,000 are usually the most trouble-free. That’s worth a premium to many people.

Aside from that, you’re buying how a typical late model used buyer buys cars, and that’s the way to do it, in my opinion.

Things are very stable at our house as we at paying down the mortgage and watching our net worth grow. I try to keep up with whats going on financially but I recently had a suprise in the credit card/credit report world. During the last few years its been hard to keep up with what the credit card and banking industry is doing. There is more detail to the backstory but the simple story is that I have a personal credit card that has a $15K credit limit. I only charge a few hundred a month and pay it off but this is my main card. I recently pulled my credit report and noticed that the card had the date and highest usage listed but the credit limit was blank. This made my debt to credit ratio upside down even though its not (600/0 is different than 600/15,000). Talk about skewing my credit score! I assumed this was a reporting error and called the credit card company requesting that they report my credit limit. The customer service representative confirmed that I have a $15K credit limit and that she would put in a note to have my information reported to the credit agencies. The kicker is that a few days later I got a letter in the mail saying that my credit card does not have a credit limit but is actually an open credit access line and an actual value is not reported to the bureaus. Say what?!?! Since when is a national bank credit card (with mastercard logo) with a specified credit limit actually an open access line? What do I do about my credit report that shows 600/0? Luckily I’m not trying to get any loans asap but its very frustrating to see that my should be almost perfect credit report is mud. (the mortgage loan is in my husbands name so it doesn’t show up and just like Cindy today our ‘joint’ credit card doesn’t show up. I recently had another card (my oldest card) with a $18K credit line closed on me by the bank due to inactivity which messed everything up and made me a very grumpy customer). So have you heard about other cards making credit limits actually credit access and not reporting the information? Is there a way around this or something else I can do to beef up my credit report?
- Patty

I’ve heard of that, but it’s usually pretty rare and only happens to people with very good credit.

I wouldn’t worry about it affecting your credit score. Instead of showing up as a credit card, it now looks more like a very small home equity loan to the score calculators. If you don’t have any missed payments or anything, your credit score is probably very good.

If you really want to check, you certainly can get a peek at your credit score, but with a credit report like that, I wouldn’t worry a bit.

My family needs an intervention. I’m 24, live on my own in Boston and am doing okay about saving, paying off my student loans ($700+ a month) and adjusting to adult life. I am a marketing writer and make $53,000 annually before taxes. I contribute to 401k, have about $12,000 emergency fund and have great credit. I have no credit card debt. The problem is my dad. He constantly assured us in high school that we would be able to go to the college of our choice – finances would not be a problem, and refused to speak to us about the situation. Even now he won’t talk about it.

One sister is in college currently. I am advising her to move home and transfer to a local state school as a commuter student so she is able to work and still graduate with minimal bills. My other sister graduated 1 year ago and has a student balance of about $95k. My Dad told her this week that her payments will be a whopping $1,400 a month (she makes $40k a year in her job, lives with my parents, and has a $250/ monthly car payment, no credit card debt). Should she put her loans under her name? My dad has not been making payments on her PLUS loans so she has a lot of capitalized interest from the last 2-5 years.
- Anna

The absolute first thing you should do is check your credit report. Head over to the FTC’s website at http://www.annualcreditreport.com and find out for sure what loans are outstanding and in your name, because it isn’t clear to me which of the above loans you are liable for.

Any debts that you are responsible for currently repaying should appear on your credit report. If they do not, they’re probably debts that are in your father’s name and thus it is his responsibily to repay them, not yours, unless you choose to take on that debt for some other personal reason.

If you see a loan on there that you don’t have access to, then you need to seek out that loan and get full control over the maintenance and repayment of that loan. Do not leave such loans in someone else’s hands, no matter how much you trust them. Bad things can happen and you don’t need those bad events to have the secondary effect of wrecking your credit.

It sounds like – I’m not 100% sure on this – you have a personal arrangement with your father to pay him for the amount he owes each month on a loan he took out, the money from which was used to pay for your education. If that is the case, then your only obligation is the personal one to your father. The ethical and moral thing to do is to continue paying him, but it doesn’t appear that anything involving those loans will affect your credit.

Your sister is in the same boat. It appears as though she has a personal arrangement to pay your father each month for an amount equal to what he would be paying each month on that loan. With the amounts being discussed, however, you may want to consult a lawyer, because she would be giving him an amount each year that would exceed the gift tax (which means that taxes would have to be paid on that money).

Situations like this demonstrate why it’s very risky to mix familial and personal relationships and debt. It usually ends up poorly. If I choose to borrow money to pay for a child’s education, I’m going to borrow the money and then I’m going to give that money to my child for their education. There will be no lender-borrower relationship overshadowing our parent-child relationship.

Do you ever get depressed reading endless stories of people whose lives are in really deep trouble?
- Ellen

Not really, because I know that if someone has reached the point where they’re writing a question to me, they’re seeking a better answer for their situation.

I think society sends some pretty awful messages about money and completely distorts peoples’ senses of entitlement and wants versus needs. However, I already knew that before I started this site.

If anything, questions like that make me happier, because I see that people are trying to take control of their own situation instead of just blaming others and throwing their money at whatever’s new.

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.