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 financed an unnecesary lifestyle in college with extra student loans.

My first few years in college were supported by a collection of scholarships that covered my tuition, room, and board. However, it was up to me to come up with the means of supporting myself over my final two years in school. As is the case for a lot of college students, that meant student loans.

Up to the start of that first “loan year,” I was very conservative with my money in college (for the most part). I had lived in the dorms most of the time and also spent a year living in an apartment with several other people, which reduced the rent for each of us down to a pittance.

So, when it came time to take out student loans for that first year, I took the advice of my financial aid adviser and did the calculations to see how much money I would need to live for that coming year. The number I came up with was pleasantly small and so I felt confident that I would be able to survive on the tiny living stipend I expected from my loan.

What surprised me was that one could easily take out a much larger stipend than I could ever possibly need. The financial aid office allowed me to apply for a loan that gave me a living stipend somewhere around five times what I actually needed to live on, which escalated the total of my student loan for that year by more than $10,000.

I thought about all the stuff I had done without over my years in college. I’d lived in some awful places. I’d held back on buying a lot of things that I wanted. And here, I thought, the college was practically giving me a bunch of money to do with what I pleased. I could have that stuff – I didn’t need to live hand-to-mouth any more.

So I took it all. I took out the maximum possible loan both years, adding somewhere around $25,000 to my total student loan bill.

The consequences of that were painful. My repayment period was ten years and the interest rate on the debt was around 7%, so my extra money alone caused me to have an extra $300 month payment every single month for the next ten years.

When you’re freshly out of college with your first post-college job (meaning that it’s fairly low salary) and considering marriage, an extra $300 per month out of your monthly cash flow quite simply hurts.

The long-term effects of this debt were painful. That unnecessary $300 a month coming out of my take-home pay meant that I was trying to do all of the things I wanted to do with even less money to work with. I was left with a choice of living fairly lean or to make a financial mistake that would compound this one, take out more debt to continue an expensive lifestyle (and I’ll discuss this mistake later on).

I really was offered two great solutions to fix this problem – and I failed to take on either of them.

First, I could have kept my spending within what I was used to in college. I could have taken out a much smaller living stipend when I was there and gotten by doing all of my shopping at Goodwill and Fareway. This would have worked just fine, as it took care of all of my actual needs as a college student.

Later, I could have kept my post-graduation spending in check and paid down that student loan debt. Again, this would not have impacted taking care of my needs or even many of my wants – after all, I did have a good full-time job. I could have easily become more picky about my clothes and my food and bought many other things that clearly fall under “want” instead of “need.”

In both cases, I chose to spend that money with reckless abandon, which eventually brought me to the brink of financial ruin.

What can you do to avoid this trap?

If you’re a student, take out the minimum amount you’ll possibly need on your student loans. Don’t be afraid to shop for clothes at Goodwill or buy your groceries at the low-end grocery store. Get your entertainment fix by participating in on-campus events and community events. Focus on the relationships you build, not the specific things you do or the stuff you accumulate.

If you’re out of school, focus on debt freedom as a very early goal in your life. Cash flow is so important with regards to achieving your goals and having a big monthly debt payment just clogs up opportunities. Pay it down as quickly as you can, even if it means delaying some of your goals. Your ability to easily achieve those goals will be amped up incredibly high through freedom from debt.

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. What is a callable CD?
2. Frugal laptop questions
3. Reducing budgeting stress
4. Adequate insurance for single folks
5. Minimizing post-college debt
6. Rent or sell old house?
7. Retirement calculations
8. Drawing the line
9. Splitting the rent
10. Netflix streaming movie recommendations

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” I agree deeply with that sentiment. It’s all about what you choose to focus on in life – the bad or the good.

I am wondering if you can explain what a “callable CD” is. Merrill Lynch has begun offering a “15 year callable CD” at 4.50% interest; I tried doing some research online but what I could find was in such business-ese (a language I don’t really speak) that I couldn’t figure it out. I don’t see bank interest rates approaching almost 5% for a long time, if ever again, so would not have a problem tying up my money for that long, if only I knew exactly what I would be getting myself into. Can you explain?
- Lisa

A callable CD is basically no different than a regular CD except for one key thing: the bank can close the CD at any time. So, in six months, they might decide that paying out 4.50% annually to you is paying too much, so they just close the CD, paying you what you’ve earned and dropping all of it into a savings account.

On the other hand, if you close the CD, you’re going to be facing the usual fairly steep penalties for early closure, which usually means forfeiting a decent chunk of your earnings.

If interest rates were to stay this low forever, this would be a great deal. If they rebound in a year and return to 2007 levels, this will be a much less positive move. Still, it’s a 4.5% return guaranteed, so it isn’t too bad no matter what happens.

Do you mind telling me what model laptop your using for the frugal laptop. I know its a Dell Inspiron but I wanted to know the model because I’m interested in purchasing one from craigslist or ebay as a secondary laptop. Also how as it worked for you up till this point?
- Marvin

The frugal laptop was a Dell Inspiron E1505. It worked very well for several years. The only problem I had with it until near the end of its lifespan was that the battery stopped holding charge – a $40 replacement battery took care of that.

After about four and a half years or so of heavy use, though, the machine began to experience hardware problems that I was unable to diagnose. A friend attempted to fix it, but reported to me that the costs to repair it (unless I did it all myself) weren’t worth it compared to just getting a new laptop.

Still, during its lifespan (aside from a nine month idle period), it got a ton of use.

How can I reduce the stress I feel from budgeting all my money around, and feeling like I have none left? Or perhaps you have a suggestion for a better way to manage my money or how I should be saving/spending!
- Chris

I actually find budgeting – or at least how I do things – to be stress reducing on the whole.

My technique is pretty simple. Almost everything I do for budgeting is automatic with my bank. I have most of my bills set up to be paid automatically. I have automatic transfers set up that move money into various savings pots. I also have an automatic transfer set up into an account that I can safely spend freely from.

Most of the time, I don’t have to worry about any of it. It just works. I build up savings, have a bit of money to spend as I please, and move on with life. It’s pretty low stress.

If you’re still stressing out over it, spend some time focusing on your goals. Why are you budgeting so fiercely so as to cause yourself stress? What is the big dream you’re aiming for?

I’m 28, single, no kids, rent, only debt is a $4,000 car loan which will be paid off by the end of the year. I have about 20K invested for retirement and a small emergency fund. I earn 50K/year. I have full coverage insurance on my car, renter’s insurance, and health/dental/optical insurance through work. My employer covers some insurance for me: Life = 50K and Disability (Short & Long Term) = 60% of salary.

As long as I’m working for this company is it necessary for me to carry any additional insurance? I feel pretty well covered.
- Abby

If you’re single, without kids, healthy, working for that employer, and young, that’s adequate insurance.

The reason to buy additional insurance is if you see any sign of any of those factors changing. If you’re going to get married, you’ll need more insurance. If you’re going to have kids, you’ll need more. If you get older, you may want to up the disability insurance. If you change jobs, you may end up needing to get your own policy. If you suspect an illness, you may want to ramp things up.

You’re better off being proactive here. If you see any of those changes happening, supplement that insurance sooner rather than later.

I am a soon-to-be-20 Spanish major and religion minor who will be a sophomore in the fall at a private college. My family’s finances are such that I qualify only for an Unsubsidized Stafford Loan, which I am paying the interest on during college. I try to pursue scholarships, but since I can’t demonstrate “financial need,” I often do not get them. I do have about $21k in scholarship, but tuition is $32k, necessitating loans.

My current financial strategy is “Don’t spend money; put it all in the bank.” This is all well and good, but the interest rate is so low at my bank that I only make about 50 cents per interest period. I know that investing while I am young is a good idea, and so I’d like some advice on what to invest in. I am currently thinking of putting some of my funds into a Roth IRA for later in life, but I’d also like to invest in the short-term to help pay off my student loans/prevent having to take out as large of a loan. My loan for last year is $5000, and I expect the loan for the rest of college to be approximately the same amount per year, so I will have about $20,000 in loans to pay off. I plan to get married to my boyfriend right after college, and I want to bring as minimal an amount of debt into the marriage as possible. We want to start off in a good place.
- Anna

Your “filing taxes in two states” set off an alarm bell. Are you taking a credit for taxes paid to the nonresident state on your resident state taxes so you’re not double taxed? Here’s some more info on that.

Aside from that, I think you’re doing exactly what you should be doing right now: building up your cash reserves while keeping your expenses low. When you get married right after college, you’re going to be hitching your life’s financial plans to someone else and the best way to make sure that gets off on the right foot and you stay secure is by having a good liquid reserve.

You absolutely need to talk with your boyfriend about how you’re going to manage money together when you’re married and make sure you’re on the same path when it comes to money.

We will be moving to Virginia, and wonder what to do about our house. We bought it in 2005 for $258,000, and realtors are suggesting that we could expect to get about $140,000 for it now. Our mortgage is $97,000, so we could sell it for that and still come away with cash in hand. However, it’s crushing to think that we put $150,000 down, and have lost so much of that.

Our concern is long term. What would you suggest? Better off to rent it, put in the extra money, and deal with the hassle? Or sell it, take the hit, and be done with it?
- Charity

So, you’d make $750 a month from the house if you rented it, but you’d have to put $400 a month back in (I’m assuming taxes) and that doesn’t include repairs and upkeep? What about the remaining mortgage payments? This doesn’t spell a big money winner here.

If I were you, I’d sell that house, pay off the mortgage, and sock the difference away somewhere else, whether it’s in the bank or some investment or into a down payment on another house.

You can’t let the loss of value of your home distort your choices now. That loss is water under the bridge – you can’t do anything about it now. You have to make the best choice based on your current situation.

My primary-breadwinner husband (age 32) and I are expecting a baby in Dec. and re-evaluating his disability insurance policies. Currently, he has three policies: one through work, and two individual policies. On the last policy, there is a “rider” for a service called Retire Guard. According to their website, they will make 401k contributions on his behalf should he become totally disabled. My husband pays about $26/month for just over $1200/month coverage. They say that they will make the contributions on your behalf into a trust in your name, and they offer you some different investment options. They do not actually put that money into your 401k. The Retire Guard option is with a policy through Mass Mutual, which I know is a reputable insurance company. Can you offer some guidelines for disability insurance? I don’t understand the total/partial disability, “riders”, or how to calculate how much you need.
- Leigh Ann

From what I was able to learn about RetireGuard, it sounds like they just put money into a trust for you instead of directly into your 401(k), likely because they can’t directly contribute to your 401(k).

Riders are simply modifcations to the basic policy. For example, some policies have a COLA rider what adjusts your benefits based on increases in cost of living. Riders usually affect the amount you pay and then affect the benefits you get.

Total disability refers to the inability of a person to perform the functions of their job. Partial disability refers to the inability of a person to perform some of the functions of their job, but are able to perform others.

As for how much you need, this worksheet from SmartMoney is the best tool I’ve seen.

You’ve mentioned before that there are aspects of your life that you don’t discuss on The Simple Dollar. How do you decide where to draw that line?
- Emma

In terms of my own thoughts and issues that only directly impact me, I’m pretty open. My only restrictions are on elements about my own life that, if revealed, would inherently affect the lives of others I know and care about.

When you extend the same issue to my immediate family, though, things get less clear. I do mention them, obviously, because they’re important in my life, but this is not their blog. Sarah and I have had many discussions on what exactly is the limit of what should be discussed on The Simple Dollar about specific aspects of our family. It’s mostly a matter of protecting the privacy of someone who is a non-public figure while also recognizing that the domain of what I talk about does inherently involve them at times.

When you start looking at people I’m connected to less directly, things get much vaguer. I have no interest in “outing” people in my extended family or my friends on The Simple Dollar without their explicit permission. When I do talk about them, I usually “blur” some aspects of their identity to protect their privacy (altering names and relationships in insignificant but privacy-protecting ways), sometimes with their help and sometimes just based on my own judgment.

Basically, I want to talk about financial and career and life issues here. I don’t want to destroy reputations or hurt feelings or reveal personal data.

Me and my girlfriend of 2.5 years are moving in to our first apartment together since we graduate from college in less than a week. We are both really excited and are in the right mindset. I have a job at a local corporation making a hefty salary, more than some of my peers. She will be attending graduate school in the fall and so cannot get a job directly related to her major just yet, so she landed one at a local department store for $8.25/hr. Our apartment is pretty nice, one of the more expensive ones around here. We liked the quality, convenience, and space it provided and it fit within our budget.

I was just wondering if you’ve had any experience with this or know of a common method people use to account for differences in income that is fair for everyone involved.
- Kam

If there is a deep inequality, you might want to consider paying portions of your monthly bills in proportion with your monthly take-home checks.

So, let’s say your girlfriend takes home $1,000 a month and you take home $3,000 a month. That means you’d pay 3/4 or 75% of the bills. If your girlfriend suddenly started making $2,000 a month, you’d shift the percentages with you now paying just 3/5 or 60% of the bills.

That would be my recommendation to you two, but there may be some pride at stake here. If your girlfriend doesn’t like that arrangement and wants to pay her half, she may be operating on a sense of personal pride. If that’s the case, go along with whatever arrangement works for her. The above is just a suggestion.

OK, I signed up for Netflix mostly so we could use the streaming service for free on my Wii. We were renting about $15 worth of movies each month, so this is actually a money saver.

Got any suggestions for good movies to add to my streaming queue? I’ve liked the movies you’ve mentioned in the past.
- Kevin

There’s more great stuff to stream than I could possibly recount. Here are some things worth looking at that I’ve enjoyed.

Man on Wire. Moon. Jesus Camp. Firefly. Arrested Development. Lost. Hoop Dreams.

The piece that’s got me intrigued right now is that all of Ken Burns’ documentaries are available (save Baseball). They’re pretty much all great – Civil War got all of the press, but I learned more about the world and enjoyed other entries much more (like Huey Long). Here’s a full list.

If you can’t find something in those to watch, I’m not sure I can help. However, I do think it makes a pretty good case for considering ditching cable or satellite television.

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag. However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

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

One of the most powerful things you can do in the path towards building the career you want, the social connections you want, and the financial path you want is simply work on improving your ability to build and sustain relationships with other people. Time and time again, people who have a connection with you are there to help you along on your path, from job opportunities to social engagements and from romantic possibilities to solving home improvement problems.

That’s the entire focus of this book, Power of 2 by Rodd Wagner and Gale Muller. Subtitled How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life, the book focuses intensely on how individual positive interpersonal relationships can help you achieve everything you want in life while also helping that other person to succeed, too.

It’s a theme that I strongly believe in, mostly because I’ve witnessed it in my own life. Interpersonal relationships led me to my marriage, my children, and every job I’ve ever held.

Let’s dig in.

One | Complementary Strengths
People often tend to gravitate towards people that are similar to them in skill level, ambition, career choice, and so forth. A much better strategy is to mix oxygen and acetylene – in other words, mix it up with people that have skills that complement your own, not replicate them. Wagner and Muller name many, many successful pairings made up of people with complementary skills, from John Stockton and Karl Malone to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

Two | A Common Mission
Those pairings aren’t just mixings of opposites, though. Successful pairings usually work because both members have a common mission, even if their skill sets are complementary. Stockton and Malone wanted to be successful basketball players, but a scorer can’t score without someone passing him the ball, and a passer can’t pass without someone to pass the ball to. Munger and Buffett both dreamed of being great investors, but Munger was an intense skeptic and Buffett was an intense enthusiast. In both cases, the respective traits brought to the table complement each other, but it’s the common goal that made the pairing really work.

Three | Fairness
One of the key elements of a working relationship between two people is fairness – a realization that both members are needed for success. The rewards of such a relationship must be split in an equitable way, as should be the work in such a relationship. Many, many relationships run aground when one person does an outsized portion of the work as compared to the amount of credit given for that work. The best way to solve this is to clearly communicate about outcomes that are important to either person. In other words, if an outcome is important to you, speak up. You also have to be constantly willing to appreciate that you’re both bringing skills and work to the table and that you both deserve some proportionate amount of the reward.

Four | Trust
Another element of a successful professional or personal relationship is trust. Can you trust that the other person in the relationship is acting in an appropriate fashion? Without that trust, a relationship can’t function successfully because both of the members are unable to completely rely on the other to hold up their end of the bargain. The interesting conclusion drawn by the authors is that the degree to which you succeed in forming trusting relationships is more a matter of how much you trust the other people, not how much they trust you. In other words, unless you know of a reason not to extend trust, you’re usually better off extending it, because the rewards almost always outweight the risks.

Five | Acceptance
Everyone has flaws and preferences and comfort zones. In personal life – and especially in professional life – you’re going to regularly interact with people who don’t match your preferences and don’t match your comfort zone, either. One big avenue to success is to become more accepting of people who aren’t a perfect match for you. Accept their differences and focus on the strengths that those people bring to the table.

Six | Forgiveness
Inevitably, your partner is going to make a mistake (as will you). No one is perfect and no relationship is perfect. You have to forgive the mistakes of others if you expect them to forgive your mistakes. Rather than getting bent out of shape at a mistake, look calmly for a solution for the short-term problem, then look for long-term solutions so that the same mistake does not happen again. On top of that, forgive the person for their mistakes and imperfections.

Seven | Communicating
If you see a problem or have a concern, you have to communicate that concern or the other person in the relationship may never even be aware of it. At the same time, you need to communicate that concern in a way that does not cause further problems. In other words, control your emotions and strive to share your thoughts as eloquently and gracefully as you can. Bring up potential solutions that can help alleviate the problem. Most importantly, listen to the response – and listening doesn’t mean standing there formulating your next point while waiting for the other person to finish flapping their gums. You have to incorporate your partner’s ideas and perspectives into any solution that you come up with; otherwise, it’s not a functional relationship.

Eight | Unselfishness
When it comes down to brass tacks, you have to be willing to put the needs of the relationship ahead of your own individual needs at times if you want to succeed. The authors retell the wonderful story of Ernest Shackleton and Frank Wild, which I’ve quoted from Shackleford’s Wikipedia entry:

Their return journey to McMurdo Sound was a race against starvation, on half-rations for much of the way. At one point Shackleton gave his one biscuit allotted for the day to the ailing Frank Wild, who wrote in his diary: “All the money that was ever minted would not have bought that biscuit and the remembrance of that sacrifice will never leave me”. They arrived at Hut Point just in time to catch the ship.

Undoubtedly, Shackleton wanted that biscuit. He was half-starving. However, he stepped back and realized that in order to succeed, he had to have a functional team around him. That meant helping his partner, who was further along the path to starvation than he was. He gave him his biscuit, and that helped the men to succeed.

In other words, if you have something extra to give of yourself that you don’t need that others on the team do need, don’t hold back on it out of a sense of greed. Recognize that it’s just another thing you can do to ensure that the relationship succeeds in whatever it is you’re moving towards.

In Closing: Looking Within
What’s the conclusion from all of this? To put it simply, a relationship has a much greater chance for success if you look at yourself as the key to that success. You cannot control the choices and motivations of your partner, but you can control your own. Look inside and seek the best answers you can find.

Is Power of 2 Worth Reading?
This book, in very eloquent language and through dozens of wonderful anecdotes and examples, spells out clearly what many of the key elements are for making a relationship succeed. I feel this is a worthwhile read for virtually everyone, as almost everyone who reads it will find some value in its pages.

I particularly recommend Power of 2 to the loners out there who have a lot of difficulty working in teams or building relationships with others.

Success often comes about from relationships, and the time you invest understanding how those relationsips work and how you can improve your ways of handling relationships is valuable time, indeed. Power of 2 fits right into that statement.

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Our adult lives are a long journey, and as with all journies, those who prepare adequately for that journey will see the most success.

The preparations you make when you are a child will serve you the longest, but they are also the most expected ones.

The preparations that really set you apart are the choices made when you become an adult. Do you choose to prepare for the journey ahead by spending recklessly, becoming tethered to debt and to a job? Or do you choose to prepare by spending less than you earn, saving the difference for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead?

Do you have your tools for success? Or do you have your burdens for failure?

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

This journey will happen. You will march forward in your life. Many of you will end up taking on responsibility on this road – responsibility for ailing parents, responsibility for children, responsibility for subordinates, responsibility for the tasks you’re paid to accomplish, responsibility for the upkeep of your dwelling … and of yourself, your health, and your mind.

Again, it comes back to preparation. Did you prepare in advance for these responsibilities? When the responsibilities fall on you, are you making the right choices to live up to them?

The choices are hard and the traps are many. But part of adulthood is that others depend on you. You are in the prime of your life and that means that others look to you for leadership and for help and for assistance. Your spouse. Your children. Your parents. Your coworkers. Your employees. Your friends.

Are you ready for that? Every day is an opportunity to prepare – and to see the rewards of that preparation.

An emergency fund.

A set of short term and long term goals.

A savings plan for retirement – and for college – and for the major purchases in your life, like homes and automobiles.

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

The truth is that many of us don’t prepare adequately. We charge forward into the wilderness of adult life without our figurative sharp-edged axes.

I certainly did. I discovered that the responsiblities of adulthood are very rarely trampled. Without that preparation and without that diligence, the responsibilities of being an adult often curl around your feet like vines, holding you in a place you might very well not want to be.

We charge off impatient and full of action. We’re already carrying the burden of student loans. We buy a home and take on a mortgage. We buy a car and take on a car loan. We furnish that home and our lives and we wind up with credit card debt. And the vines curl around our feet.

Instead of focusing on trampling forward through these vines, take the time to slash through them.

Pay off your debts and save for those big expenses.

Spend less than you earn, and put a clear but strict cap on your nonessential spending.

Don’t let those things that trip you up and tie you down hold you in place. Slash through and keep walking forward.

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Many of us find ourselves taking on the burdens of the previous generation as they move on to new ones. At my age, I’m taking on the burdens of parenthood as my parents set their burdens aside. I’m taking on the burdens of being a leader in my community as others retire, step back, and pass on.

Humanity is constantly building a road to the future, and every day people walk off that job, leaving behind their tools and materials. We step in to those roles and take on those jobs and do our part to build that road.

We are adults. No one pays our bills for us. No one does our work for us. No one budgets for us. No one sets goals for us.

It is up to us to take on these responsibilities and do it ourselves.

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We don’t have to follow the paths of the past, either.

We don’t have to strive to have a lifetime job at the same company. We can be self-employed. We can jump from job to job and career to career until we find the right match.

We don’t have to own a home immediately after college. We don’t have to have a car when there’s a bus stop just down the street. We don’t have to get married and have children right away.

We build our own path to the future, as long as we have the tools to do it.

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call–hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!–swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
- Walt Whitman, Pioneers! O Pioneers!

We currently have five people living at our home. Let’s say, hypothetically, we all change clothes twice a day (it’s often more than that due to the nonstop accidents, spills, and other things that go on in such a household). That’s ten outfits’ worth of clothes to wash each and every day. We also cloth diaper our youngest child, so that piles on an extra burden of laundry.

Needless to say, our washer seems to run all the time. Every time the washer runs, a little money goes straight down the tubes. Because it runs so often, it’s always useful to find little ways to reduce that cost per load. Here are eleven tactics we’ve found that work for us.

Make your own detergent. We often make our own laundry detergent (here’s how we do it with pictures and I also made a video of how I made a later batch). According to our calculations, it reduced the cost of detergent per load from $0.20 to about $0.02 – an $0.18 saving per load. Considering we average multiple loads daily, that savings adds up pretty quick. The best part is this detergent has no perfumes or other such allergens in it.

Use vinegar as your softener. We basically don’t buy fabric softener unless we literally find a sale that makes it virtually free (or at least less than a jumbo jug of vinegar). Yes, a cap full of vinegar in the softener spot does the trick. Not only that, it also helps greatly with any lingering odor that might be in the washing machine or in the clothes themselves.

Wash only (very) full loads. With the exception of the cloth diapers (which we wash separately and which we don’t have enough of to fill an entire load), we strive to have very full loads of laundry. Yes, we mix together colored and whites from all family members, washing a little boy’s t-shirt together with my jeans, for example. A very full load means less water used and less energy used per item of clothing.

Dry your clothes by hanging them. If you can, hang your clothes to dry instead of sucking down energy in the dryer. An average dryer run eats about $0.25 worth of electricity. Hanging them up accomplishes the same thing for free. We would hang up an awful lot of our clothes if we had a great place to put a clothesline – unfortunately, our only location that works for a clothesline would sit right in the middle of the space where our children (and the neighbor’s children) usually play in the yard. Thus, for now, most of our hanging takes the form of a temporary line hung up in our basement sometimes (it helps when we’re doing a bunch of loads of laundry at once, as clothes wash faster than they dry).

Wash your clothes in cold water. Hot water has to be heated and you’re paying for that service. Unless your clothes are exceptionally dirty, cold water does the trick just fine. The only time I run anything besides cold/cold on our washing machine is if I see caked-on stuff on a kid’s shirt or something.

Use the shortest cycle. Our washer, like many out there, offers a ton of options for the wash. I choose the shortest one, again, unless the clothes are awfully dirty. This saves wear and tear on the clothes (reducing replacement costs) and also reduces energy use and some water use.

Be diligent about removing dryer lint. We empty the lint trap on the dryer before every single load. It is simply part of the required routine. If you don’t do this, you reduce the warm air flow around the clothes, increasing the time the dryer has to run to get your clothes to the same level of dryness. That’s energy used, and that’s money lost.

Remove obstructions from the external dryer vent. You should also know where your dryer vent goes. It empties out somewhere on the outside of your building or home. Look for the external vent and make sure it’s not obstructed. Lift up the vent and make sure there’s no lint or anything else built up inside that vent. Again, you’re trying to improve the air flow, because that external vent blows out very moist air (the moisture that’s being removed from the clothes). If it can’t get out, that very moist air stays in with your clothes, increasing drying time and increasing your expenses.

Shake out clothes before you put them in the dryer. As you take clothes from the washer to the dryer, shake them out completely. This is basic science – you’re increasing the surface area of the clothes so that more warm air comes in contact with the clothes in the dryer, making them dry faster, reducing the time and the amount of energy used when your dryer is running. Money is energy – shaking out your clothes saves both.

Pull clothes out of the dryer before they’re completely dry. This is particularly true if you intend to iron the item, because you already want the clothes to be a little damp before you bust out the iron. This, again, means the dryer runs less, which is a win for your pocket book.

Save for your own washer and dryer. If you’re in a situation where you’re using a coin-operated laundry machine, you will save significantly over the long run if you get your own washer and dryer hooked up. The cost per load when you own your own washer and dryer is far, far less than it is at a coin-operated laundry facility. Yes, the washer and dryer can be major expenses, but the savings are tremendous over even the course of a year or two.

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

One Year Ago (July 11 – July 17, 2009)
Nine Ways I Use Google Calendar to Keep My Money Straight Since I wrote this post, Google Calendar has become one of the single most essential tools in my life. I almost completely rely on my calendar.

Rule #5: Talk About Money (and Be Honest). So many financial issues could easily be resolved with a little bit of serious, honest conversation.

Frugality’s Sacred Cows There are no absolute rules to follow when you’re trying to maximize every dollar. Some things seem to consistently work – but nothing always works. You’re rewarded for having an agile mind.

How Low Can You Go? Cheesy Corkscrews with Crunchy Bacon Topping This is one of my favorite food posts – mostly because it ends in unmitigated disaster.

How Much Is Your Time Worth? Thoughts on Speeding Speeding isn’t really worth it unless you argue that you’re essentially never going to get pulled over for speeding – ever.

Two Years Ago (July 11 – July 17, 2008)
Is Money All There Is? Why Chasing the Big Dollars Isn’t the Answer for Everyone I decided long ago that it’s not the answer for me. I don’t want to be a millionaire tomorrow.

Ten Tip-Offs That You’re Getting Bogus Financial Information – And Five Antidotes Pay attention to the details. If they won’t reveal them, it’s probably bogus. (And that’s just one of them.)

100 Things to Do During a Money Free Weekend We do “money free weekends” all the time at home. It’s usually a family weekend at home and usually involves walking to the park and doing things along those lines.

Preparing a Budget? Ten Tips for Making That Budget Successful The real key to a successful budget is time and careful thought. That trumps everything else.

Making Expensive Hobbies More Financially Manageable You have to break down what you really love about the hobby. Isolate that moment that brings you joy. Often, you’ll find that you’re overpaying for that moment.

Three Years Ago (July 11 – July 17, 2007)
Ten Financial Bulls: Moving From Desperation To Financial Enlightenment Using A Zen Parable I really enjoyed putting together this post. It allowed me to draw on a passion of mine (religious exploration) and connect it to financial advantage.

The Ten Biggest Money Mistakes I’ve Made Since My Financial Meltdown This just scratches the surface of my mistakes.

Why I Lean Towards Repaying Debts Above All – And Why You Might Not Feel The Same I think there’s a case for investing instead of repaying debts, but as time goes on, I move more and more towards telling people to simply repay their debts first and foremost.

Procrastination, Money, And Me Procrastination used to be a major problem in my life. Over the years, I’ve come up with many ways to fix it.

Fighting Despair And Keeping Focus On Being Debt Free You’ve got to focus on the real goals. Being debt free can be ho-hum, but what does that mean in your life? Will you be able to move? Will you be able to switch jobs? Think of it in terms of your life.

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

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

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

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

3. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love tuna. It’s a wonderfully light fish with a distinctive flavor that works well in summer meals. It’s also a component of a tuna noodle casserole that my mother used to make that remains one of my comfort foods.

Sarah and I wanted to build on that “comfort” tuna noodle casserole, making it a bit healthier and a bit lighter. After riffing on some recipes from various cookbooks, we came up with tuna-stuffed manicotti with a cheese sauce, served with a spinach salad and a really simple fruity side dish that goes great with a summer meal (which I’ll mention at the end):

This meal used what looks like a small mountain of ingredients, but they actually came together pretty well:

Here’s what we used:

16 manicotti shells
2/3 cup finely chopped green pepper (about a bell pepper’s worth)
1/2 cup finely chopped onion (about a third or so of a medium onion)
5 tablespoons butter or margarine
4 eggs, beaten
2 cups cottage cheese
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese (I usually like to grate this myself, but we didn’t have a chunk of Parmesan on hand)
1 teaspoon marjoram
2 cups cooked vegetables (peas, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower – any of those will work)
2 small cans of tuna (about 12 ounces total)
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups shredded cheese (your choice – we used American because of how well it melts)

Our total cost for all of these ingredients was $9.62. Our end product served the four of us for dinner and for lunch the next day, bringing the cost per meal down to $1.20.

The first step is to cook the manicotti according to package directions, leaving you with some big pasta tubes to stuff. While that’s boiling, put two tablespoons of butter or margarine in a skillet over medium heat until it’s melted, then cook the green pepper and onion until it’s a little tender (but not brown).

Next, get out a big bowl and mix together the eggs, cottage cheese, half of the Parmesan cheese, marjoram, the peppers and onions, the tuna, and the vegetables you choose to use (we used peas).

Stir this up until it’s consistent. It’ll be moist but not watery.

Then, just stuff the manicotti shells with this mixture and lay them in a lightly greased 9″ by 13″ pan. You’ll have plenty to fill up each manicotti tube.

When we finished stuffing, our pan looked like this:

Now, for the cheese sauce on top.

We just melted three tablespoons of butter or margarine over medium heat, then mixed in the flour, salt, and a dash of pepper until it became thick and almost doughy. We then poured in all of the milk and stirred it until it was evenly thick, like a thick soup. We then added the cheese and kept stirring the sauce until it was all melted, looking something like this:

Once it’s melted, we just poured it over the manicotti, sprinkled the remaining Parmesan on top, covered the pan with aluminum foil, and stuck it in the oven for about 40 minutes at 350 F (180 C).

Our pan looked wonderful when we pulled it out of the oven:

We chose to serve it with a spinach salad and with a simple frozen fruit salad on the side. The fruit salad was really easy – we just mixed together some miscellaneous fruits we had laying around (quartered grapes, coconut, and some celery were the key ones) along with some peach-flavored yogurt. We poured this mixture into cupcake shells and froze them, popping them out just before the meal. It was a wonderful summery side.

Our family loved this. My four year old son actually ate more manicotti than I did (he ate one and a half pieces to my single one). When we pulled it out again to have for leftovers the next day, the kids actually started cheering (and I did, too – it was delicious).

This is just all-around a wonderful dish – it’s priced right, is quite flavorful, and is easy to make (you can do all of it the night before, stick it in the fridge, and just bake it the next day if you want).

This is the final 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.

Before I start digging in to what I think are the five key take-home messages from this book, I’ll link back to the thirteen previous entries, in order, for people who want to read them in order.

1. A New Practice for a New Reality
2. The Five Stages of Mastering Workflow
3. The Five Phases of Project Planning
4. Setting Up the Time, Space, and Tools
5. Corraling Your Stuff
6. Getting “In” to Empty
7. Setting Up the Right Buckets
8. Keeping Your System Functional
9. Making the Best Action Choices
10. Getting Projects Under Control
11. The Power of the Collection Habit
12. The Power of the Next-Action Decision
13. The Power of Outcome Focusing

Here are the five key messages (from my perspective, anyway) contained in Getting Things Done.

Get stuff out of your head and on paper (or in a reliable digital form).
We all daydream. We’re in the middle of doing something when a thought pops into our head – something we need to do, something we wish we were doing, etc. We think about it for a moment and suddenly, our focus on the task at hand is broken. It takes us time to get back on track on what we’re doing, plus we’re trying to remember that thing that we just thought about.

This is hugely counterproductive. It keeps us from doing the task at hand well, even if it’s just a short task or a “mindless” task. Your mind drifts when you’re writing an email and you forget an important detail, requiring additional communication and more work for you. Your mind drifts when you’re washing dishes and you cut yourself, requiring time to take care of the wound. Your mind drifts when you’re “focusing” on one task at work and you suddenly find yourself taking 50% longer to do it.

The big solution to this is to get “in the zone” with whatever task you’re doing, but that’s often hard to do. The single best way I’ve found to get myself in the zone with whatever task I’m working on is to simply get everything out of my head in advance and have it in a trusted system – and if something pops into my head mid-task, I can just jot it down quickly, knowing I’ll deal with it later. Daydreaming and mind-wandering almost disappear if you get all of that stuff out of your head and somewhere secure. Read the fifth entry in this series for more focus on corraling all of your stuff and thoughts.

When being productive, your focus should be exclusively on the next action.
We all have tons of things going on in our lives. Some of them are simple – “call the repairman about the dishwasher” or “be at the recital at 7 PM.” Others are quite complicated and nebulous – “improve my relationship with my mother” or “get a better career going.”

However, the basic principle for making all of these things happen is the same: focus on the very next action you can take to move it forward. No matter how big or how small of a project you’re looking at, it can’t move forward without you taking a single step.

That single step is the key. If there’s something you genuinely wish to accomplish, focus not on the enormity of the goal and the seeming complexities it holds (at least, not right now). Focus instead on the very next thing you need to do to achieve that goal. Nothing else matters right now. The twelfth entry riffs on this idea.

Processing the stuff that comes out of your head and into your life is a daily practice.
My inbox sits on a corner of the desk I use for almost everything. Into that inbox goes all kinds of stuff – currently, I see some mail, a poster I need to hang up in our children’s room, two magazines, a couple of receipts, and about five handwritten notes. That’s good. That means I’m collecting this stuff as soon as it appears in my mind or in front of my eyes.

There’s still a problem, though. In my rush to get things done, it can be easy to just let stuff pile up in your inbox. The problem with that is before you know it, you’re right back to where you started, with random thoughts penetrating your focus and slowing you down.

The key is to deal with the stuff you collect in its entirety every single day. Deal with it properly, too (as I discuss in the next point). Dealing with this stuff regularly means that all of your stuff – ideas, things, and so on – find their way to where they’re supposed to be – your filing cabinet, your trash can, your calendar, your to-do list, and so on. That way, when you need to know what appointments you have (for example), you only need to look at your calendar. You don’t need to rack your brain. The sixth deals with this.

Have coherent, known places to put all of your stuff.
Hand-in-hand with the processing is the idea of having rational places to put stuff.

You’ve got to have a calendar that stores all of the things you need to do at a certain time or date. You also need to have a “next action” list that tells you what stuff you need to get done. You also need a trash can and an attitude that’s not afraid to trash stuff. I think those three pieces are absolutely essential.

Beyond that, there’s some flexibility. I usually keep a master list and a series of folders for all of my larger ongoing projects. The list just lists all of the projects, and each project has a folder for specific ideas related to it. I also have a filing cabinet in which everything I think I should keep gets tossed. I don’t do anything complicated to file – I just give each folder a name and alphabetize them A-Z with the folders that start with numbers coming after them.

The seventh entry gives you all kinds of ideas and details about having the right places to put stuff.

A regular (preferably weekly) review is essential, where you reflect on things more broadly.
Each weekend, on whichever day of the two Sarah is on nap duty with the kids, I spend an hour or two reviewing my life.

Am I moving forward on all of my projects? How are they each doing? Are these projects in line with what I really want to be doing with my life? Did anything fall through the cracks this week? What does my calendar look like for the coming week? Is absolutely everything in my inbox processed?

These thoughts and tasks not only keep the day-to-day system running, but they also go a long way towards ensuring that I’m doing things that are in line with the big things I want in life and that the big things I’m shooting for are in line with what I want out of life now. That kind of reflection helps me to constantly connect the little stuff to my big dreams, which is key for keeping everything moving forward. You can read more about this in the eighth section of the discussion.

In closing, reading Getting Things Done and implementing the strategies has made a tremendous difference in my life. I would have never launched The Simple Dollar – or been able to sustain it – without the techniques in this book. If you have dreams – or simply have a hard time handling what’s on your plate right now – Getting Things Done might very well be the most useful book you’ve ever read. If you got even a glimmer of a good idea from this series, check out the full book – and don’t worry about Allen’s focus on business topics. The ideas he presents work in every context of life, from the stay-at-home parent to the self-employed to the programmer sitting in his or her cubicle.