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.

Homemade pizza is a big hit at our house (here’s a picture-filled post about our homemade pizzas). We all love our every-other-week-or-so homemade pizzas where we often experiment with ingredients and enjoy from-scratch crusts.

The problem with pizza, though, is that it’s not very portable. It doesn’t make the best picnic food (unless, I suppose, you order from Pizza Hut and take it to the park with you, but then you lose control over the ingredients and the cost).

Our family’s solution is to sometimes make calzones instead of pizzas. For us, a calzone is essentially an inside-out pizza – we just take the ingredients of a pizza we want to make, wrap it in pizza dough, and bake it. It comes out much like a sandwich, which is very portable, indeed.

This time, we made enormous calzones! (You don’t have to make them this big, of course.)

My intent was to show us eating these at the park, but the weather unfortunately didn’t cooperate at the last minute. We served the calzones with apple slices.

We ended up making six calzones that were approximately that size (two of them were somewhat smaller, about 60-70% of that size). I was only able to eat roughly half of that calzone for dinner. My wife, who is currently breastfeeding and who hadn’t eaten since a very small lunch, ate about 3/4 of one and gave up. Our children split the smallest one and that was about all they could handle.

In other words, this batch of calzones I’m about to describe fed two adults and two children for dinner, two adults and two children for lunch, and two adults for lunch again. Ten meals, in other words. Calzones are great meals to make in larger batches because they’re very good when reheated.

So how did we make them? The first step, of course, is to make the dough.

If you wish, you can always buy pre-made dough at the store. However, making your own homemade pizza dough is so easy, you shouldn’t waste the money on it – homemade dough tastes better, costs a pittance, and is healthier, too, because you don’t have the oils and extra ingredients and preservatives that large food manufacturers toss into the dough.

Here’s how I make the dough:

Four ingredients, plus some water.

4 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 to 2 cups water (depending on air moisture in your area)

Heat up the water until it feels warm to the touch, then mix in the yeast, stir, and let it sit for fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Add the liquid to the solid and mix them thoroughly with your hands (or with a mixer) until it’s all consistent. Then put the dough ball in a bowl, cover it, and put it in a warm place for two hours or so to let it rise (or, if you’re doing it in advance, freeze the dough ball or let it rise in the refrigerator for about 24 hours).

That’s it. Here’s my dough ball.

It hasn’t risen much – it will roughly double in size before I need to use it.

Next, we mix the stuffing. You really can use pretty much anything you can imagine as a calzone stuffing. Here, we’re using cooked broccoli (about a pound), 3 cups shredded mozzarella (we grated ours, you can see the cheese grater in the picture below on the right), 2 cups shredded chicken, and about 1/2 cup pesto.

We actually have much more shredded chicken than we’ll actually use – about two cups’ extra. If you want to get a good amount, you’ll just want to cook one large breast and shred it. We cooked three medium breasts and shredded it all. Why? The breasts were on sale and shredded chicken breast goes good with tons of different recipes and in salads, too.

What happens next is complicated. Take those four ingredients, put them in a bowl, and mix them together. Your mixture is done.

I then took our big ball of freshly-risen dough and split it into six pieces, with two of them being a bit smaller than the others (for a variety of calzone sizes).

After flouring down the table, I got to work. I took one of the dough balls and rolled it out on the table until it was pretty thin and wasn’t rolling well any more. The circle was about the diameter of a fork (or a bit more) and between 1/4″ and 1/8″ thick (half a centimeter or so).

It does not have to be anywhere near a perfect circle. Just get it something that roughly approximates a circle and you’re good.

Next, just take a healthy spoonful of the mixture and put it on one half of the rolled-out dough, leaving a good lip around the edge of it. I also sprinkled a bit more cheese on top.

I put just a bit of water around the entire lip of the calzone, then folded it over to create a pouch with the stuffing inside of it. I then pressed down on the edges of the calzone so that the wet dough would stick together (and spread out a bit), then I rolled up that edge. This keeps the contents from spilling out in the oven.

Like I said, the ingredients above made six of these. Once they were done, I took two baking sheets, put about a teaspoon of olive oil on each one, and spread the oil all over the sheets (to prevent the calzones from sticking). I put the calzones on the sheets…

… made a few diagonal slices on top of each one, brushed the tops with a bit of olive oil, then stuck them in the oven at 450 F (230 C) for 18 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through.

And you have calzones!

Our total cost for materials for this recipe was $9.30, with roughly a third coming from the chicken alone and most of the rest from the pesto and the cheese. The broccoli cost about $1 and everything else was fractions of a dollar.

This recipe made ten delicious meals for my family, which averaged out to $0.93 per meal. That’s a great price for a delicious calzone!

Not only that, this meal is really, really flexible. You can pretty much put in any ingredients that you wish. You can put in all of the traditional pizza ingredients. You can put in nothing but vegetables. You can put in whatever produce is on sale at the grocery store. It almost all works.

Unsurprisingly, this is another big hit at our house, since it’s essentially an inside-out pizza. Everyone loved it and all leftovers were happily consumed.

Along my financial journey in life, I made a great number of mistakes. In this ten part series which runs from July 19 to July 30, I’m going to focus on ten of my worst mistakes and the difficulties and successes I’ve had in overcoming those mistakes.

I focused entirely too much on what other people thought of me.

Throughout my teen years and adult life, I bought many, many things with an eye almost exclusively on what others thought of me. My clothes. My education and career choices. My gadgets. My housing. My automobile. My golf clubs. My meals.

I believed that somehow I could create a more positive image of me through others by buying things or doing things that they approved of. If I lived in the right home, I thought others might think of me as successful or as a family-oriented person. If I owned the right gadgets, people might see me as tech savvy and affluent. If I spend money in front of people from my home town, they might see me as some sort of great success.

All of it was a gigantic waste of money.

The only people that put any stock in such frivolous things are the people that know you only in the most tenuous of fashions because that’s all they know about you. If you’re going to build any sort of relationship with someone, it’s going to be based on who you are, not what kind of stuff you own. If there are people out there who genuinely believe things like, “I won’t be friends with someone who doesn’t have a $3,000 golf club or a $750,000 home,” then their values are so warped and misplaced that you will never be able to please them. Don’t bother.

That’s not to say it isn’t worthwhile to think about others, but most people make up their mind about you based on other things. Are you kind to others? Do you engage them politely? Do you listen to what they say? Are you clean and not offensive to others? If you want to build a strong social network, those are the things to focus on, and those things don’t require an outlay of money.

This isn’t a call to ultra-frugality, either. Spend money on what you value, not what other people value. I buy automobiles based on reliability and gas mileage and safety, not how they look in our driveway or whether the neighbor will be impressed. If I want to build an actual relationship with my neighbor, I’ll go over there and say hello, not buy a car to impress. If I don’t want to build a relationship with my neighbor, why would I possibly care at all what he or she thinks of my car? Now, if I really got a lot of very personal value out of a luxury car purchase, I might choose to purchase one, but that’s not where my values lie. Neither side of that decision has anything to do with my neighbor.

“But what about your reputation?” Most of the things that can be said about you that can really hurt you or build a positive reputation about you are based on the actions you take, not on the stuff you own. You can own all of the nice cars and homes and boats you want, but if you hit your spouse, people won’t like you. You can live in a shack, but if you spend countless hours building a great community softball league (and keep yourself clean and somewhat presentable), people will love you. You can own a BMW and wear a $3,000 suit, but if you’re rude to your neighbors, they’ll help you build a bad reputation. You can drive a used Toyota and wear $2 Goodwill pants, but if you’re willing to lend a hand to help your neighbor re-shingle their roof, they’ll speak positively about you in the community.

What can you do to avoid this trap?

To put it simply, don’t waste a single, solitary dime on a purchase meant to impress others. Such purchases don’t pay off because they don’t improve who you are. Focus instead on building you into a great, friendly, happy person – and most of the methods of doing that don’t cost a dime.

Instead, spend your energies actually building real relationships with people. Instead of spending two hours picking the “perfect” handbag to drive the other women crazy with envy or spending three hours at the golf store trying to pick out the driver that will let you dominate the boys, spend that time helping out a neighbor, connecting deeply with someone important to you, or working on some project that will make your life less stressful or improve your life quality (which will make further interactions much easier and much more positive).

Stuff doesn’t make a person.

Along my financial journey in life, I made a great number of mistakes. In this ten part series which runs from July 19 to July 30, I’m going to focus on ten of my worst mistakes and the difficulties and successes I’ve had in overcoming those mistakes.

I blamed others for the challenges in my life.

If you want to find scapegoats in your life, almost everyone can find a lot of them.

I was born with legal blindness in my right eye, deafness in my left ear, and a nonfunctional thyroid. I spent much of my childhood with various sorts of surgeries, surgical recoveries, and illnesses, leading me to less cultural and social exposure than I might have otherwise had. I spent much of that illness time reading, so I skated through most of secondary school without learning any study habits, which made college rather challenging at times. I chose not to follow my dream career path in order to earn more money.

All of these things would be extremely easy to change into an excuse for not doing the best that I could do. For example: My childhood doctors exacerbated my health problems. My parents didn’t expose me to any sort of culture. My advisors in high school pointed me down a career path I should not have followed. My teachers didn’t teach me any study skills. My bosses created a work situation that I was unhappy with and ate up my time and energy so that I couldn’t follow my dreams or ideas.

Guess what? In every single case above, I was the key to solving the problem.

I spent an awful lot of time in my life blaming others for the fact that my good life wasn’t better than it already was. All that did was give me an easy excuse to not work my tail off to overcome the obstacles in front of me.

Take my medical conditions, for example. My lack of hearing in my left ear is the result of having a completely destroyed inner ear – there’s literally no bone structure in there. Sometimes, in social situations, I simply cannot hear people sitting on my left. For the longest time, I would dole out blame for that – it’s their fault for not talking louder, it’s my doctor’s fault for not diagnosing my ear problems.

All those excuses are is a crutch to excuse me from solving the problem myself.

Today, if I want to participate in a conversation, I make a point to try to sit on the left side of that person. If I can’t hear what’s being said, I don’t blame the other person for speaking softly – I ask them to repeat it. If it’s in a noisy room, I apologize and simply say, “I’m sorry I can’t hear you. My hearing isn’t so good. Could we go over here where it’s quieter? I’m interested in hearing what you’re saying.” Guess what? Almost everyone I’ve ever met will happily accomodate these things.

Even more important, it’s not their responsibility to know that I can’t hear them. It’s my responsibility to make sure that I can hear them.

Let’s look at my teachers, for another example. In high school, I rarely had to put forth any effort at all. When I reached college and faced some of the more difficult classes, I was in trouble. I had no real idea how to study.

At that time, rather than simply saying, “I’ve got to learn how to study,” I would mostly just say things like, “No one ever taught me how to study.” I’d beg for grades and try to make an excuse out of my situation. Sometimes it would work – usually, it did not. I struggled mightily during my second and third years in college, permanently damaging my collegiate GPA. During my final years in college, especially my final one, I actually learned how to study and made dean’s list with a very difficult courseload. Yet, I still wanted to blame others for my poor GPA. It must have been the fault of my teachers.

Over and over again, my willingness to blame others for the challenges in my life delayed creating solutions to those problems. That blaming enabled me to keep on making the same mistakes as before and keep on repeating the actions that led to the things I was unhappy about to begin with.

What can you do to avoid this trap?

Here’s the real truth of the matter. No matter how unfair the situation, you are the solution. Using the cause of the problem as an excuse not to solve the problem doesn’t cut it. In fact, it usually just prolongs the problem and makes it worse.

Whenever things are not going the way you want in your life, ask yourself what you can do to make the situation better or change the context of the situation so that the problem isn’t as devastating. If you’re overweight, don’t blame the food companies and keep eating unhealthy stuff. Take action to toss out the unhealthy stuff and replace it with vegetables and fruits.

Whenever you hear yourself blaming someone or something else for a problem, stop. Blaming others for your problems is an incredibly pernicious habit. Yes, there are bad things in life. There are bad things in everyone’s life. The people that succeed are the people that don’t waste their time looking for someone or something to blame, but instead look to themselves for a solution to the problem.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Handling house sale proceeds
2. Helping a declining parent
3. Chasing a dream
4. Moving forward with bad policy
5. Spending choices on children
6. Cashing out stock options
7. Who is Trent politically?
8. Soda
9. Handling a small windfall
10. Creepy emails

Remember my complaint about soda about a month ago? It turns out that there was a labeling error. Apparently some bottles that contained “lemon soda” were mislabeled “lemon sour.” I’ve yet to receive a written response from the company, which may contain vouchers or some similar material. I’ll keep you posted.

After following your thoughts and advice, I am proud to say that I have eliminated my personal debt. My partner has made great strides in her debt, and now has about $50,000 worth of debt (car loan, consolidation loan, and credit cards).

It’s a nice problem to have but we really are not sure where to go with this. Thanks for your reply and help.
- Kate

I’m not entirely sure I agree wholly with either idea.

The big question I would have is whether or not you have a cash emergency fund sitting there so that if something bad happens, you’re able to just deal with it. If you don’t, then go for the first option.

Now, another key question: how high interest is that debt she has? It seems like it would be fairly high interest. If it’s above even a few percent, I would put paying off that debt as a higher priority than flipping properties.

I like option one much better, with the caveat of an emergency fund.

I’m my mother’s health care proxy and executor of her estate. I finally was able to nail her feet to the ground and talk about what her wishes were, but also what her estate entails. Right now she is 56 years old, with an ok paying job. I figure she makes about $40,000 a year, give or take, and has health care through her job. My dad is passed, so it is just her. She told me she has about $20,000 in cash, about $5,000 (yeah, that’s five thousand) split between three retirement accounts, and her house. She has a small home improvement loan on the house, I believe it is $10,000. The house is not in good condition. Looking at other real estate in her area, I am guessing that it would sell for $70-$90k. That is it.

Do you know of anything that I can do to help my mother not have to move in with us? Taking on an extra job or doing more is beyond her. Do you think it is wise to plan that she is going to be moving in with us? How can I convince my husband of this, if it does indeed come to pass – which I give a much higher possibility to, after talking to her.
- Susan

This is the tough spot that parents put their children in if they don’t adequately save for retirement. I see people in my own life following this path – and what’s going to happen in fifteen or twenty years is that they’re going to become burdens on their children whether they want to be or not. Save for retirement, folks, so this doesn’t happen to you.

Right now, your mother needs to budget starkly regardless of what she winds up doing. She needs to shore up every dime she can for retirement coming down the road, period.

Most likely, one of two things will happen anyway. Either she’ll keep working until she starts sliding downhill with her health (in which case, you’ll probably have to jump in to care for her) or she’ll retire before that and need a place to live.

It really, really depends on your mother’s character. Is she going to continually hint that she should take care of you? Or will she have a stiff upper lip and attempt to find her own solutions (low income housing, etc.)? If it’s the former, you’re going to have to make a tough call.

I’m a 25 year old IT consultant living in Chicago. I’m a computer science graduate, and I have a job where I make great money, live frugally (as much as you can in a high-cost city), save heavily and invest smart (automated, low-cost index funds). I’ve maxed out my Roth IRA for the last 3 years since being in the work force, and have maxed out my Simple IRA contributions last year and this year. I’ve already got about $50k in retirement accounts, and about $25k in more liquid savings. So, financially, I’m doing very well, and I’d like to thank you for getting me off on the right foot.

My question for you and your readers is this — am I crazy for doing this? My close friends and family are concerned about my safety and the impact this could have on my career, whereas I think that it will give me enough experiences to be a much better person and employee in the future.
- Stephen

You are absolutely not crazy for doing this. If this is a dream you have and you have the financial ability to do this for a while without any other life responsibilities, go for it.

It sounds like you know what you need to do to prepare so I’ll trust your preparations for the trip.

As for whether you’ll regret it later, my guess is that you won’t. This is the type of thing that will cause you to grow as a person. It will lead you down a completely different path in life.

What do you think you’ll regret more in twenty years: not doing this motorcycle journey or not working at an IT job that you hate? If you have the financial means right now to choose either path, the choice is probably pretty clear.

I’m 28, my husband is 33 and we’re expecting our first child. I’m trying to figure out how to invest our money, so would like your input on this.

Also, what do we do with the $33K in savings? It’s in a savings account – really really small APR – but it is our emergency fund. Is there a better way to keep it liquid but in a higher investment?
- Kris

I would get out of that policy. You shouldn’t be putting $500 a month into a policy that’s only returning 2%. Replace it with a term policy (because you’re going to be parents), take what you get from cashing the policy in, and invest it.

Where should you invest it? In that mortgage, if nothing else. That’s going to be earning you a lot more than 2%.

I have more to say on where you could invest it, but Kris had a second question that focused more generally on parenting issues.

As an addendum, the biggest thing we are saving for is private school tuition for our unborn child. We’re approximating $20K per year for tuition alone, not including if we have another one. We’d stop at two kids, which would be $40K per year. Private school is not an option for us – we need to figure out how to save for that. We managed to save $20K last year, which would be tuition for one, but two? Yikes.

What other advice do you have for impending parenthood?
- Kris

Something else to consider: why not just keep the money from the insurance as cash in a savings account and then sock it away in your child’s 529 when he/she is born, as a great way to start the child’s college savings? That way, you’d have a heads-up on the private school expenses right away, if that’s the route you’re choosing.

I’m not sure what you mean by saying that private school is not an option for you – I’m guessing you meant that public is not an option. I would suggest that you research that very carefully before you make a $20,000 a year decision. Depending on the region of the country where you live, the gap between educational results in public and private schools isn’t very large at all (virtually nil in some areas). Public school quality varies incredibly from state to state and municipality to municipality in the United States. There are many public schools that are far better than private schools (particularly some magnet and charter schools). Of course, you may be making that choice for religious or cultural reasons, which is a different story entirely.

The best thing you can do for your child is encourage them to have a strong work ethic and give them enough of a mix of independence and guidance so that they have a sense that they can do anything for themselves. They’ll make something of themselves if they have that.

My fiance has some stock options with his company that we will likely be cashing out soon, in two installments. The first, which we’ll have in a couple of months, will be about $250k (about $150k in pocket after the cost of the stocks and taxes). The second installment is a bit of a mystery at the moment, and could range from $162k to $480k (and we won’t really know where on that spectrum it will be for probably a year, maybe longer). I have $100k in student loans, as well as a $20k car loan, and about $10k in credit card debt. He has about $6k in credit cards, $37k on his two cars, and a $170k mortgage. Altogether we’ve got about $343k in debt (YIKES!). Our household income is around $200k, and our savings is virtually nonexistent ($16k in his 401k but that’s about it). We’re youngish (late twenties, early thirties).

My question is, keeping in mind that we’re not sure what the total amount will end up being, what’s the smartest thing to do with that money? I think we should put it all towards debts, and invest whatever is left over from the second payment, if any, as part of our retirement fund/nest egg. Being debt free would put about $4500 extra in our pockets each month, most of which would go straight into savings. My fiance thinks we should pay off just the credit card debt and one or two of the cars, and then invest everything else, with the intention of paying off our debt in 10 years with the interest we accrue on the investments.
- Stacy

I agree with your plan. If you don’t have any burning goals in the near-term future, shoot for complete debt freedom.

The reason is simple: cash flow. With no debt, you don’t have the payments hanging around your neck. If one of you lost your job, you wouldn’t have to make bone-crushing choices. If one of you chose a different career path, it wouldn’t be devastating to your life. If you had a child and one of you decided to be a stay at home parent, you wouldn’t be gripped by debt.

Investing that money (probably in stocks) wouldn’t help your monthly cash flow and would put that balance at risk in whatever investment you chose. If you chose a very low risk one (like cash or bonds), it’d earn a much lower rate than it would if you paid off debts.

Get rid of the debt. Enjoy the freedom.

I know you don’t like to talk about politics, but I can’t figure out for the life of me where you stand politically.
- Carmen

I don’t care much for national politics. Rather than solving problems, both sides are mostly focused on grabbing pork for their constituencies and blaming everyone else for everything in a nonstop rush to re-election. You can’t even try to do something different because the tide is completely against you. Raise an issue no one wants to talk about (because it might scare some voters) and you get ignored with the idea never getting out of committee. Points are scored and ratings are grabbed not by making good points, but in painting the “other guy” as some sort of demon. Until there is serious electoral reform and very strong term limits, this will never change, and good luck to the politician who stands up for term limits in Congress.

I vastly prefer local politics, where people actually sit down and discuss things. Real problems are solved. Roads are built. Schools are built. Fire and police protection is organized and provided.

I care about solving people’s problems. I care about respecting other viewpoints than my own. I care about spending serious time thinking about the best way to solve a given problem. I don’t care for having to be in lockstep with someone’s philosophy. I don’t care for insulting people you don’t agree with when they’re merely trying to solve problems in a different way than you are.

Those things only happen on a local – and sometimes a state – stage these days. That’s where my heart lies. Sometimes I like solutions that would brand me a “conservative.” Sometimes I like solutions that would brand me a “liberal.” To be honest, I could care less about either one of those labels as long as people are sitting down together and honestly trying to solve people’s problems and are willing to listen to one another.

What are your thoughts on Soda? I know that in addition to personal finance you are also a fan of eating well, and healthy. I was wondering if you own or have considered a Sodastream type device to make your own carbonated beverages? The cost justification seems like it could work out over a period of time. I am wondering if it is worth the initial investment or if I should forgo this type of device altogether. Your insight is greatly appreciated.
- Del

I enjoy an occasional soda – and sometimes use it as an ingredient in a mixed drink. I don’t drink it daily or even weekly, however.

I think if you drink a significant amount of soda, you might be able to save money with a SodaStream type of machine. The best way to do that is with a simple cost analysis – what would the annual cost of each option be based on your soda habits? Will you continue that habit in the future?

There is potential there to save money. There’s also potential in saving money by simply drinking less soda and keeping it in the “treat” area rather than the “major expense” area.

My husband and I bought our first house back in 2009 and recently received our $8,000 check, which has been sitting in savings while we debate what the wisest way is to spend it. We’re both fairly conservative with our money so our first instinct is to use it to either pay off his student loans (~$16K at 8%) or pay off my car loan ($12K at 5%). We’re leaning towards paying my car loan because it wouldn’t take as long to pay it off entirely and, despite having a lower interest rate, it’s the higher monthly payment (I believe this would be the snowball method). However the other consideration is we really only have a couple thousand in savings, which is less than the emergency 6 month supply everyone advises. Is it better to pay off debt then build up savings, or should we keep it in savings and just pay our loans as normal? Is there a wiser course of action we haven’t considered? We both work very good jobs and otherwise have a modest amount more income than needed to cover our needs, so we’re hoping to knock down our debt quickly and build savings before working towards more fun goals of improving the new house.
- Amanda

I usually encourage people to have about two months’ worth of living expenses in savings for every dependent in their household. I’m assuming you don’t have kids, so I would keep four months’ worth of living expenses (your family’s take home minus whatever you save each month) in a savings account.

Compared to the importance of having that, your interest rates are fairly low. I would put the priority on the emergency fund. I know that it can be tempting to put it towards debt rather than having it sit there, but it’s that very moment when you use it for something else that you find you really need it.

As for which debt to pay off first, you’re really fine going either way. There are good reasons for paying off each of them first, so go with the one that feels right to you.

You’ve said that you’ve received some really creepy emails in the past. What’s the creepiest thing ever sent to you by a reader?
- Carl

Photoshopped pictures of my children and my wife take the cake.

I have also received a very sincere invitation for an affair from a woman that I believe lived pretty close to where I do. I didn’t follow up, so I don’t know specifically.

I receive all sorts of crazy on a daily basis, though. Those are the ones that stand out in my mind.

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.

Along my financial journey in life, I made a great number of mistakes. In this ten part series which runs from July 19 to July 30, I’m going to focus on ten of my worst mistakes and the difficulties and successes I’ve had in overcoming those mistakes.

I spent more than I earned and made up for the difference with credit cards.

It started in college. The bookstore offered a discount on textbooks if you signed up for a card. I signed up. Later, I used that card to buy video games, starting with The Ocarina of Time.

When I graduated from college, I had a small amount of credit card debt – nothing unmanageable.

Next came our honeymoon, a year later. I financed most of our honeymoon to London, Edinburgh, and Inverness on a credit card, nearly reaching the credit limit on that card.

When we returned, we furnished our new apartment with a new card. I bought some golf clubs and a bunch of electronics. I began to settle into a routine of buying books every week.

I remember buying a $500 crib for my son on credit in late 2005, going home, and attempting to pay bills. There was less than $500 in my checking account then and I really didn’t think anything of it until later on. I just kept rolling on.

The end result? By April 2006, I had accumulated around $20,000 in credit card debt. The monthly payments on that debt were actually higher than our rent. When you add car payments and student loan payments on top of that (as well as all the regular bills), we simply did not have enough money to continue to make ends meet.

The tricky part about this mistake is that it was actually just a series of small mistakes that I didn’t bother to fix. Every time I used credit to pay for something I couldn’t afford, I could have just said no. Every time I went through with buying something unnecessary, I could have been more frugal in other areas of my life and just paid for that indiscretion.

I didn’t do either one. Instead, I kept buying things that I couldn’t really afford. As the debt built up, I found that I could actually afford less and less because of the growing monthly bills, but it didn’t keep me from racking up more debt.

Why did I buy? There was a mix of things going on. Poor impulse control. Career-related anxieties. Lots of stress. All of these things were solvable on their own and buying things I couldn’t afford was merely a short-term salve for them. It was easy to forget that pain if I could go home and read a new book or play a new game for a while.

What can you do to avoid this trap?

The solution is simple: never, ever put a balance on a credit card that you can’t already afford to pay at the end of the month. The moment you do that is the moment you’re financing a lifestyle that’s beyond your means.

If you’re already in a situation where you’ve built up a large deal of consumer debt, start getting rid of it now. Yes, this means you’ll have to live quite a bit below your means for a while. The first place to start is by selling off all of the stuff in your closets and on your shelves that you never look at or use. If you have a CD or a DVD or a video game or another item that you’ve not looked at in more than a year, sell it. Use that money to hammer the debt. When you’ve done that, focus on minimizing your monthly spending – here are 100 such tactics – and roll the money you’re saving into a debt repayment plan.

Finally, deal with the other problems of your life head-on. Start wiping away the stress and the concerns. Focus on fixing broken relationships and moving on from ones that can’t be repaired. Deal directly with the things that are bothering you. Seek professional help if you cannot. Eliminate the stress and clear your mind to make better decisions with the resources you have.

Just remember that you can do this – and don’t beat yourself up over every mistake. Success isn’t perfect and it doesn’t come in an afternoon.

It’s raining outside. My children want to go to the park.

That means it’s time to come up with an indoor solution. That means, of course, that it’s time for an elaborate blanket-and-chairs fort in the living room.

Live Within My Means? How? It’s not too hard to live within your means if you just follow one rule: spend less than you earn. The hard decisions of what to cut are up to you. (@ studenomics)

With perspective, it’s normal to feel an emotional attachment to your possessions For me, perspective was the real key to this. I’ve reached a point where, if I have too much stuff, I recognize that I don’t have the time to adequately spend with any of it. That’s a problem – it takes up money and space and gives me no positive value in return. I focus on keeping my stuff down to the items I have time for and actually bring positive value into my life. (@ unclutterer)

Future Proofing Your Passion The message here is that the way to keep your passion alive is to keep your life simple so your passion isn’t strangled by the life clutter. Good message. (@ 43 folders)

Cheap Wedding Ideas On A Small Budget My wife’s family has something of a tradition of having all of the closer family members (siblings, parents, and often aunts and uncles) pitching in to help with catering, decorating, and so on so that the wedding can be done at a low cost. I think this is a brilliant idea. (@ the digerati life)

Worth More Than Money: Taking A Detour on the Road to Riches Everyone’s path to where they want to be is different. (@ get rich slowly)

Are Your Financial Habits Just Bad? I think this article hints at the real truth: bad financial habits often arise from a life that’s got other concerns – too many activities balanced with exhaustion, for example. (@ wise bread)

What To Do With a Pile of Change? I liked that the answers here didn’t just immediately revolve around the typical responses of what to do with a small windfall. (@ frugal dad)

The Clean-Slate Guide to Simplicity I think that sometimes a clean slate is the best solution to fixing the problems in your life. (@ zen habits)

This past weekend, my family and I travelled to Chicago to visit one of my first cousins and her two children. We stayed at their house and enjoyed a few activities in the Chicagoland area.

I had originally planned on doing a Chicago-themed follow up to last year’s article, Frugal Vacation Notes: Great Free Things to Do in the Dallas/Fort Worth Area. However, as the long weekend rolled on, I realized that several other things popped into mind that were worth noting rather than just pointing out free or inexpensive things to do in the city.

Instead, here are six useful things I learned about an inexpensive and still very enjoyable vacation over the last several days.

It’s all about the people.
Most of the enjoyment you experience on a vacation will be generated by other people, regardless of whether you’re traveling in a large group or by yourself. It is those human interactions, whether with people you know and love exploring a new environment or with people you’ve newly met, that add the spice and enjoyment to almost anything you do while on vacation.

It is out of recognition of this that we often schedule our vacations so that we can visit friends and family that are spread across the United States and elsewhere. Yes, it’s enjoyable to see and experience things on our own, but the opportunity to see and experience those things with people you love and care about – as well as the people you just happen to meet during the trip – adds something incomparable to the trip.

Try scheduling vacations where you travel to visit others, even staying in their home. Similarly, offer your home to people you know who are traveling to your area. Doing this not only saves money on lodging, but adds some great additional flavor to your vacation.

Don’t overload your days.
It’s easy, when visiting an area, to come up with an enormous list of things to do and schedule each day tightly with tons of activities. Avoid that temptation at all costs.

Instead, try to underschedule days, giving activities plenty of time and room. This allows you to spend extra time at a museum if you wish, or enjoy extra innings at a particularly exciting baseball game without throwing your scheduling way off pace. This also saves you money because you’re not investing in the cost of extra activities and travel to get to them.

You can have a list of “floating” activities that you can get to if you happen to have time on one of the days. We usually schedule one or, at most, two events per day, giving them each plenty of overrun time. If it turns out that an event ends quickly or isn’t appealing, we have a few ideas already floating around to fill in the rest of the day.

Keep the “peak-end rule” in mind.
Whenever a person thinks about a significant event in their life, they usually first remember the “peak” event that occurred and generally reflect on the event based on how it ended. For example, my immediate memories of the trip to Chicago center on the day I took my son to his first major league baseball game (and the harrowing trip away from the ballpark) as well as the wonderful steak dinner at my cousin’s home the final night.

What’s amazing is that this same “peak-end rule” works with almost every vacation I’ve ever taken. Sure, I can remember more things about each vacation if I stop to think, but my first reaction to each vacation usually involves a single peak experience and a sense of how it ended. I could make a long list of these, actually.

Keep those principles in mind when you plan your vacation. Don’t try to fill every day with the best possible activities – you won’t savor or remember them. Instead, make sure you have a “peak” experience – the biggest and best thing you want to do – and a good “end” experience, meaning you close out the vacation with something very pleasant and memorable.

Most of your best memories will come from unplanned things.
My strongest single memory from almost every vacation I’ve ever had was from something completely unplanned – sticking my feet in some frigid water with my sister-in-law in Victoria BC, walking with Sarah along a desert path to look for petroglyphs in Arizona, climbing a tall hill overlooking the city in Edinburgh, and, this last time, getting lost on foot in Chicago and meeting some interesting people while doing it.

This is yet another reason not to overplan your vacations. Allow some time to simply wander in interesting areas to see what you find. Don’t use your GPS to find a specific location and just drive there – use it to just browse what’s nearby.

What you find is often far more interesting than the hyper-planned stuff.

Make one meal a day special.
In the past, I’ve vacationed with people who desire to eat exquisite meals three times a day. What I found was that at the end of the vacation, I had just gained a bunch of weight and I didn’t remember most of the meals we’ve eaten.

If you love a great meal on your vacation, that’s wonderful. Just don’t overstuff your days with them. Have one great meal a day, then eat healthy minimalist meals at other times during the day when you’re hungry. This will not only help you to feel better when you’re on vacation, but will allow you to more deeply enjoy the great meals you do have instead of merely having them be the ordinary thing.

On our vacation, we simply ate many meals at my cousin’s home, aiding her in preparation and some ingredient buying.

Take a backpack wherever you go.
Water bottles. Granola bars. Raisins. Sunscreen. We never left our cousin’s home without a backpack containing these items. Often, the pack included sandwiches and a GPS unit as well.

Why have these items? The biggest reason is that they simply save money, keeping you from hitting a vending machine or something similar to sate your thirst or hunger while out and about. It’s also convenient, as you can just sit on a bench and pull a sandwich and a bottle of water out of your pack at lunch time instead of having to locate a restaurant or some other service to provide you expensive items.

This left us more time for exploring interesting things and more money was left over after the trip was finished.

Along my financial journey in life, I made a great number of mistakes. In this ten part series which runs from July 19 to July 30, I’m going to focus on ten of my worst mistakes and the difficulties and successes I’ve had in overcoming those mistakes.

I chose a career path for the money instead of one that matched my passions and skills.

During my high school years, I felt fairly certain what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be writer, preferably a science fiction writer. I was absolutely enamored with the novels of Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, and countless others who made a life out of meshing scientific progress with imagination. I dreamed of going to college, majoring in English literature, and minoring in mathematics and another science or two.

My high school English teacher encouraged this dream. Virtually everyone else looked at me as though I walked out of the insane asylum. They pointed to the low average income of an English teacher. They told me that was a waste of a perfectly good mind.

In short, I was convinced by everyone around me that the measure of a person’s worth and intelligence was how much they managed to earn.

By the time I actually went to college, I settled on a life sciences major, which led me to at least some lucrative opportunities. As time went on, I added computer science as well because I showed a knack for computer programming.

In short, because of the incessant drumbeat I heard for money, I chose an educational and career path that I knew directed me away from my passions. I did have some degree of talent, especially in the computer science classrooms, but I wouldn’t spend my odd hours writing code. I would spend my odd hours reading and writing, both fiction and non-fiction.

I did get a good-paying job out of college, but as that job became more and more consuming, I felt my life dreams of writing slipping further and further away. I slid into something of a personal malaise because I wasn’t chasing my big dreams any more. I tried very hard to put a bandage on that with material things.

Putting a bandage of material things on top of a personal wound doesn’t help in the long run.

What I wound up doing is spending an awful lot of my free time for years channeling my energy into what I felt was fruitless writing because the act of writing felt good to me. I’d share my writings, watch them fail, and become convinced that by my career choice – seeking the better paying job – I’d lost my chance to follow my real dream. That’d just make the malaise – and the spending – worse.

The long term effects of this showed up in my career and in my finances. I began to feel very burnt out on my actual career. At the same time, I would try to cure this feeling of failure and burning out by buying stuff that I didn’t really need or didn’t have time to really enjoy. This brought me deeper and deeper into credit card debt and deeper and deeper into a sense that I couldn’t escape.

The solutions were right in front of me, but I didn’t see them.

First of all, I could have just majored in what I wanted to in college. Yes, this might have meant foregoing income, but it would have also meant following my passions and dreams instead of walking away from them. Alternately, I could have double-majored in a way that allowed me to follow my dream and still follow a lucrative path, too, if the dream didn’t work out.

Later, I could have focused on actually trying to launch writing as a side career instead of just writing aimlessly and somehow stumbling onto the success of The Simple Dollar. I started The Simple Dollar not as some sort of aim of finding a new career, but because I loved to write and I knew I was going through the same financial issues that a lot of people my age were going through. My target audience at first was, quite literally, my friends who were also struggling financially. I stumbled into this, period, and it took me many years of wandering for it to happen. Putting some aim into that dream would have made all the difference.

I didn’t do either of these. The only reason I’m writing for a living right now is pure, simple luck, albeit luck that had a place to sprout because I actually was attempting to write in some fashion.

The real lesson here is that happiness doesn’t come from money. As long as your basic needs are met, additional money does not bring happiness. It brings some material luxuries, but it also usually brings additional problems, too. The only way additional money helps is if you use it wisely, enabling you to … well, frankly, chase those dreams and passions you have.

What can you do to avoid this trap?

If you have a dream so strong that you stay up all night involved with it, give chase to that dream. Passion like that makes up for a lot of ground in other areas, because so many people out there are just clocking their nine-to-five with little real passion at all. A lot of people get by on skill or on the fact that their job mostly just needs a warm body that can follow instructions. The people that succeed, though, are the ones that mix passion with a little natural talent – but the passion and the time are the biggest elements (just ask Malcolm Gladwell). This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to throw ambitions for a high-income career away – double major and balance the two, or get a degree in a profitable area, live lean for a while, then go back to school to focus on the less-profitable passion. Or, better yet, just try to get your foot in the door without the degree (if you can). Money will come to you because passion is one of the few things worth paying for in life.

If you’re already in a career that’s taking you away from your passion, spend your free time chasing that passion with all your… passsion! Toss off as many of your extra activities as you can and focus your energies in your free time on making a go of that passion. It might require taking classes or it might require just “woodshedding” for a while (in other words, practicing a skill you love until you’ve acquired a high degree of proficiency). Don’t abandon that dream just because the circumstances of your life aren’t helping you with it. Instead, create a flowerbed upon which it can grow, a flowerbed created out of the excess time and energy in your life when you’re not working at that job.