If you go home tonight and devote two hours to a big project at home, you’ve got a start.

Go home every night this week and spend two more hours and you’ve poured ten hours into that project. Spend four hours on Saturday and four hours on Sunday and you’ve got eighteen hours of project time.

You can do something that you didn’t really think you could ever get done. In one week.

The rest of this post consists of twenty two projects you can do this week if you put some elbow grease and some time into it. Each one of them will save you either money or time over the long haul.

I encourage you to spend two hours each night – just flip off the television – and a few hours over the weekend completing one of these projects or one of your own devising. You’ll feel great on the other end of it – and you’ll be set up to save a lot of money or a lot of time in the future.

Make your home more energy efficient. The big part of doing this is air sealing your home, but it also includes things like installing a programmable thermostat and replacing your furnace filters and adjusting your ceiling fans for the right season.

Get a GTD system up and running. I thoroughly covered GTD earlier this year. A GTD system in place is really awesome, but setting one up takes a lot of time. Invest the time this week to corraling all your stuff and processing all of it.

Go through a full home and auto maintenance checklist. There are so many things around a typical American home (and garage) that will last much, much longer with a bit of maintenance. Why not spend this week maintaining all of the stuff you have so that it’ll stay working well for much longer, saving you money and time over the long haul? Use this home and auto maintenance checklist to get started.

Start a real filing system and get all of your papers into it. A good filing system makes it much easier to find things when you need them and also gives you clear places to put the papers you accumulate. Here’s some guidance for starting your own filing system. At the same time, you might want to consider making a master information document to leave behind.

Clean out all of your closets, decide what you actually ought to keep, and sell the rest. If you’re like most of us, your closets are full of clothes and other items that you’ve stuck into storage with the good intention of using them at a later date, only to find that that later date will probably never come. Clean out those closets and sell off the stuff jammed in the back that you haven’t seen in years, because if you haven’t seen it in years, you probably don’t need it.

Reorganize your pantry, fridge, and cupboards with real staples and prepare all your meals at home. A good pantry and fridge isn’t full of convenience foods that taste okay but are pretty unhealthy. Instead, they’re full of staples – items that can easily be combined with whatever fresh ingredients you have on hand to make tasty and healthy (and very cheap) meals. Clean out your pantry and give some of those convenience foods away to the food pantry – and replace them with real food staples. Then spend this week devoted to actually learning how to get around in the kitchen, preparing real dishes out of real ingredients.

Identify a great bank and transfer your accounts to them. ATM fees, overdraft fees, and maintenance fees got you down? There are a lot of banks out there that don’t push you around and are glad to have your business. Think about the features you want a bank to have and look at a wide variety of them (including online banks) using services like BankRate. When you find a bank that matches your needs, move your accounts there, making sure all of your automatic transfers and payments move as well.

Open up a Roth IRA and figure out your investment plan. I use a Roth IRA at Vanguard for my retirement savings. My belief is that if you’re making less than six figures and aren’t receiving an employer match on your retirement at work, your best retirement choice is a Roth IRA. Look for the right investment house for you (Vanguard is the one I use, but there are many solid ones out there, like Fidelity and Charles Schwab), then open an account and study the investment options carefully. Do some reading on retirement choices, but start your investments immediately in something very broadly based – you can always update this later.

Go through your media collections, pare them down, then sell or trade the excess items online. A media collection purge can go a long way towards reducing the clutter in your home and also reducing the cost of future books, games, movies, and so on. The best way to do this is to simply go through your collections, determine ones that you don’t mind no longer having, then listing them on sites like PaperBackSwap or SwapADVD.

Start teaching yourself a new skill related to your career. Almost all of us bring some sort of specific skill to the table in the workplace. At the same time, almost all of us can benefit by showing off newly learned skills at work – they’ll help us get ahead at our current job and improve our resume for the next. Start using your spare time to learn a new language, learn a new piece of software, learn some new programming skills, take an evening class, or study up on an emerging topic in your field. You’ll suddenly have that edge that you haven’t had before.

What are you going to do this week to make your life better? It’s up to you to turn off the television or the computer each evening this week and doing something that will really improve your situation.

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. GTD for stay-at-home moms
2. Loaning money to parents
3. Prepaying property taxes
4. Emergency fund or debt repayment
5. Starting a Roth IRA
6. Small business encouragement
7. Thinking ahead for college
8. Out of college, no job
9. Apprehensive about mortgage prepayment
10. CFPA thoughts

As I’ve mentioned before, my wife and I have strongly considered moving to be closer to various family members. What keeps us from doing it? Friends. We have a very wonderful circle of people here and, frankly, neither one of us wants to leave them behind. It really is all about the people for us – we want to move to be near certain people, and we don’t want to move because we’d be far from other people.

I enjoyed your GTD review and am trying to implement it in my life. My problem as a stay-at-home mom is how to organize all the repetitive duties that end up taking up so much time that I can’t even get to look at my next steps action items.
Do you know of other stay-at-home people following GTD and how it works for them?
i.e. Do I have “clean house” as a project and then add “wash dishes” as a next step after every meal? I’m thinking it only makes sense to add special projects like cleaning out closets on project lists…but then I still don’t know how to organize my day to get things done. It seems that the GTD book is more geared toward office life and not home life.
Any ideas?
- Megan

GTD really works when your life is (a) filled with lots of little things that you need to keep track of, (b) appointments, and (c) longer-term projects that can’t be finished in one sit-down session.

I can’t speak for a stay-at-home mom, but my life is loaded with these things, and GTD really helps with them. The “lots of little things to keep track of” is dealt with by writing everything down that comes to mind, putting them all (and any other items I get, like mail) in an inbox, and processing all of it once a day or so. The “appointments” are handled with a calendar. The “projects” are handled by devoting a folder to each one, defining the steps I need to accomplish, and reviewing them regularly so that I’m always taking the next step on them.

I don’t use it for daily routines, though checklists can be helpful for that. The exception is if I’m trying to establish a new one, like practicing the piano or something like that.

It’s up to you, really, whether those things will help you – or help you enough to be worth the time.

Is it unethical to charge my parents interest on a loan? I’m 22 and have *very* robust finances, while my parents have been both unlucky and made some poor choices (though they’ve gotten better in the last few years). My dad recently suggested to me that instead of paying his credit card company interest (~20%, he thinks) on his balance (~$4000), I could lend them the money to pay it off in exchange for something like 10%. If it worked out we’d both be better off. This is money I can afford to lose, and would otherwise be sitting in a money market or bond index fund.

So my question, is it unethical to charge my parents interest, at least more than I’d earn otherwise? While 10% is much lower than their current payment, it’s much higher than I’d earn otherwise. If I’m willing to lend them the money at a lower rate, am I ethically obliged to? I’d value your thoughts.
- Mickey

It’s not unethical to do it. It’s just got a strong likelihood of damaging your relationship with your parents.

Think of it this way. You’re now going to have to enforce the regular repayments (likely to make them bristle). If they decide that they don’t need to repay you regularly, you’re going to bristle up. Neither one is going to be good for your relationship, particularly if the condition continues.

Now, imagine if they default. That’s going to strain the relationship for a very long time in both directions.

For me, it’s never worth it to loan money to people I care about. If I decide someone needs help, I’ll gift them something.

I’ve followed your blog closely but have not seen any info about getting a discount if we prepay property taxes. I read there is a 10% discount if we do this. Have you heard about this?
- Meena

I have never seen or heard of a discount for prepaying one’s property taxes. That’s not to say that there isn’t a municipality or state that offers such a discount.

Regardless, prepaying your property taxes is usually a good idea if you’re not saving ahead for them. That way, you’re not stuck with a huge surprise at the end of the year.

In our area, various payment plans are available without fees being charged on the monthly or quarterly plans. We use the monthly one and have it automatically deducted from our account.

I currently have a debt of $32k an overdraft charging around about 0.88% on my total balance. I have savings which are hard to get to – about $27k which i automatically pay $500/mth without fail.

I want to start saving for an emergency fund since between my hubby and myself I am the bread winner. However, I want to get rid of the debt as quickly as possible. Should I close and settle the overdraft using a loan which will charge me 5.5% per year or shud i just settle the debt using my savings?
- Aldie

I would settle most of the debt using your savings, retaining some of it for emergency fund use. I would probably retain two or three months’ worth of living expenses and put the rest towards reducing the debt.

Of course, once you’ve done that, you should channel that $500/month temporarily towards the debt until it’s gone. Make that in addition to your normal payment, so if you have a payment of $100, pay $600.

Debt freedom is truly great for one big reason: it vastly increases your monthly cash flow, making it possible for you to make a lot of choices you would have never made otherwise.

I recently changed jobs to one with significantly higher pay. I had a small amount of money (around $1100) in a Roth 401(k) at my old job, with the bulk of my retirement savings in a standard 401(k). I’m in the process of rolling that over, but my new company does not offer a Roth 401(k) option. At the moment, I’m having the Roth portion sent directly to me, and I’ll decide what to do with it when I get it.

I believe that this year will be the last year that I’m eligible, due to income limits, to participate in a Roth IRA. I don’t have any IRAs open currently. Do you think it would be worth opening one to deposit my Roth money, and then orphan it because I can’t contribute at all after this year? I’ve also considered maxing it out for this year, which I could do without affecting my emergency fund.
- Luke

I would absolutely take advantage of this one year of Roth IRA eligibility. If you’re going to be earning that much in future years, having as much of your retirement as possible in a tax-free retirement vehicle will be nice come retirement time, because that money will reduce your tax bill later on.

If you can max it out this year without affecting your emergency fund, I’d absolutely do that.

You’ll never wind up regretting having money socked away for retirement. You might, however, end up regretting not having enough socked away.

I wanted to solicit some advice from you directly. I’ve been working in the real estate industry for a few years now (in the apartment leasing sector), and I really think I’m ready to start my own independent agency. I’ve done extensive planning, market analysis, and budgeting for the whole endeavor, keeping my costs as low as I can while planning for real explosions in costs in the event of an early-onset catastrophe. After accounting for my own savings to contribute to the start-up costs (and leaving enough padding in my emergency fund), I still need to borrow about $10,000 to really launch. I have a family member from whom I can reliably borrow the money. My question is this: do you think it’s a smart idea to be borrowing money for a start-up company in this economic climate? Fortunately everyone needs an apartment (even moreso when the house market is bad), and between my experience and my plan, I’m pretty confident than this will be a success, but I don’t want to be missing some obvious consideration that I had overlooked. I know the Simple Dollar philosophy is debt-averse, but the alternative is to wait on this for another year or more to accumulate savings, and doing that could mean missing a current window of opportunity (Illinois real estate agency regulations will be cranked up early next year). So what is your take on starting up a small business? Is it OK to do in a recession?
- Chris

I don’t see any problem with launching right now. Many, many successful businesses are launched during economic downturns and take advantage of the full elevator ride of a rebounding economy.

I’d be less sure about borrowing that $10,000 from a family member. Borrowing money means you eventually have to repay it, and if you have difficulty meeting their expectations on repayment, it can create a family problem that you just don’t want to have floating around.

Could you sell this person a small portion of the business instead with some sort of buyout arrangement at a future date? Or could you borrow the money from another source?

I am a high school student with no debt. In the preceding years when I go to college, I need a way to pay for my education other than my job, not that I am lazy, but that I cannot pay 4 years of school even with tons of financial aid. Scholarships, even though they are an option, will not pay for enough, seeing as I am not from a minority background, nor any other real attributes that set me apart from the general student population, and where I live, the only jobs available to me are minimum wage. In the long run of my high school career, I may only be able to make a couple thousand dollars to put in a college savings account. I My mother and I live on a very set income, barely enough to pay for bills and food, much less college. I don’t want to put her into more debt than she already has. I was considering investing in small stocks in brands such as Coca-Cola or Starbucks, letting it all grow in the next few years, living very cheaply, and then using my stocks to graduate on the plus side of debt. I know that the stock market is ever fluctuating, however, the economy is coming out the recession, and I hope that by the time I graduate, I might be sitting on enough that I won’t have to be in debt. I would like to know what your thoughts are.
- Danielle

I would absolutely not bet on the stock market over the short term, and the six or so years you’re describing is short term in terms of the stock market.

It’s simply too volatile over that timeframe. You’re going to probably have one upswing and one downswing in that timeframe, and it’s hard to tell how good the upswing will be and how bad the downswing will be. A small downswing and a big upswing means you’d be in good shape. A small upswing and a big downswing means you’ll be in the hurt locker. Plus, the brokerage fees for small amounts will eat a lot of your earnings before you even have the chance.

Your best bet would be to sit on cash, honestly, or to open up a 529 college savings plan. Don’t invest in individual stocks over the short term with small amounts of money.

I’m a recent college graduate and not even retail jobs will hire me or even give me an interview. It’s not like I’ve never had a job before but it’s impossible to find work anywhere in this economy. If it weren’t for my tiny savings I’d be out on the street (I’ll likely be there in 2 months if I don’t find work soon). I’ve been applying to any and all jobs I can find–retail, food service, lab assistant jobs related to my major, human resources, etc. but no one will even look at my painstakingly assembled resumes. Furthermore, my parents have expressed that once my college bills are paid, they’re not willing to help me. What do I do?
- Michelle

Keep searching. Build skills. Try hard to network with people in your field.

For one, you’re probably looking grossly overqualified for many retail positions. They look at your painstakingly assembled resume, see someone who views the job as a temporary thing while they find something better or, alternately, a person who will have too many “ideas” that aren’t worth dealing with, and pass you over. If you’re applying for minimum wage service and retail, you’re better off not handing in the four page detailed resume. Keep it one page and very simple.

You may also want to look in a different area of the country. Here in Iowa, there are definitely people hiring at the retail level – I’ve seen plenty of “now hiring” signs here and there in the greater Des Moines area.

I have a question regarding mortgage prepayment. Hopefully, you and the readers could offer some advice. Little background: I stumbled upon your blog when mired in debt and utterly careless with money/ future despite having decent jobs. Your blog and book has been immense help for us. Since then, we have paid off all our debt except for the mortgage. All the retirement vehicles are fully funded. We also have a decent emergency fund. We live frugally and save as much as we can. We still have around $1000 left every month. Currently, I’m sending it to ING. Afraid of investing in stocks and bonds beyond the retirement accounts. Now, I understand both the sides of the mortgage prepayment argument- guaranteed return, peace of mind and better cash flow Vs losing opportunity to grow money further by investing in even simplest of mutual fund. My question is what are your thoughts on prepaying during this period of falling home prices especially when your time frame to move/ sell could be anywhere between 1-5 years. By the way, we owe 260K on our home and have a 30-yr FRM @ 4.8%
- Sam

If you’re planning to sell that soon, it really doesn’t have an impact on prepaying because if you sell, you’ll either be making up the shortfall then or making it up in pieces now – or, if the market is going up, you’ll either have a big gain then or a little gain then.

The big advantage of prepaying is that it reduces the total amount of interest you pay and it reduces the time until you’re fully paid off, which will increase your monthly cash flow significantly. Since you’re going to be selling soon and your interest rate is low, it’s reasonable to look at other investments. The trick, though, is that over the short term you have, the stock market isn’t a reliable investment.

Given everything involved, I would probably just sit on cash because of how liquid it is. Put it in the highest interest savings account you can find and see what happens in the next few years. That way, you can easily deal with whatever may happen in that period (and probably make your next purchase easier).

I was wondering who you think should head the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and if you’d be willing to mention it in a reader mailbag? I know you don’t normally blog about politics, but this is something that will directly affect personal finance for all of your readers, and I’m sure you’ve got an interesting viewpoint on it that we’d all like to hear.

I tend to favor Elizabeth Warren (whose name is the only one I’ve heard for the job so far) because she seems to genuinely care about protecting consumers, and she’s from Oklahoma
- Joe

First, a background: the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is a new government agency signed into law in July as part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which has a lot of things going on in it.

Wikipedia’s summary:

Established within the Fed, the Bureau is tasked with regulating consumer financial products and services in compliance with federal law.[29] The Bureau is headed by a director who is appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, for a term of five years.[29] The Bureau is subject to financial audit by the GAO, and must report to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee bi-annually. The Financial Stability Oversight Council may issue a “stay” to the Bureau with an appealable 2/3 vote. Even though the Bureau is placed within the Fed, it operates independently.[146] The Fed is prohibited from interfering with matters before the Director, directing any employee of the Bureau, modifying the functions and responsibilities of the Bureau or impeding an order of the Bureau.[29]

The Bureau is separated into five units:[29]

* Research
* Community Affairs
* Complaint Tracking and Collection
* Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity – ensuring equitable access to credit
* Office of Financial Literacy – promoting financial literacy among consumers

Within the Bureau, a new Consumer Advisory Board assists the Bureau and informs it of emerging market trends.[29] This Board is appointed by the Director of the Bureau, with at least six members recommended by regional Fed Presidents.[29]

To me, this sounds like something that’s going to be heavily defined by the first group of people running it. Elizabeth Warren (see her Wikipedia entry) seems like a perfectly good choice. She at least has a solid idea of the realities of personal finance and consumer issues, which puts her ahead of many other people who might be competing for such a position.

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.

A while back, I wrote a post called “Askers, Guessers, and Personal Finance” that proposed that bartering and negotiation are much easier for some people than for others, depending on their personality and the culture in which they were raised. I’m very much in the “guesser” camp, which means that I often have difficulty negotiating with others, asking for things, and bartering.

After that realization, I’ve spent some significant time focusing on improving my willingness to ask for and trade for things, and thus when I spotted The Art of Barter by Karen Hoffman and Shera Dalin on the shelf at my local library, I snatched it right up.

The book basically makes the case for bartering – in other words, offering one good or service in direct exchange for another good or service without cash in the middle – and discusses how exactly to go about it in many different situations. I myself have found bartering to be very useful and often do it with people I know – but will this book offer enough advice for me to attempt it in other situations?

1 | What Barter Can Do for You
The big advantage of bartering is (obviously) saving cash, because you can then conserve your cash resources for the things you can’t acquire through bartering. The authors go on to argue, however, that bartering can also save you time or improve the quality of your time through swapping skills, as well as open the door to building friendships and other long-term relationships because of the intimate nature of bartering. Bartering also teaches patience, which is an absolute necessity for bartering and for successful living in other areas.

2 | The Barter Lurking Around Your House
What do you have to barter with? Your home is filled with things, from the unused stuff in your closet to the space itself. Quite often, I encourage people to clean out their closets and sell off unused stuff when they find themselves in a financially challenging place. Hoffman and Dalin carry it further, suggesting you constantly look at the stuff around you as a source of bartering and lending in order to maximize the value of your time and possessions and energy.

3 | Trading Like a Pro
Where can you go to start bartering? The authors offer a handful of suggestions, but the easiest place to start is online, starting with sites like Craigslist and PaperBackSwap that facilitate bartering over the internet and allow you to do the bartering from home. One key point: use photos and as much (honest) documentation as you can for the things you trade – and expect the same from the people you trade with, so it’s clear exactly what you’re giving and receiving in a trade.

4 | Trading in the Fast Lane
Here, Hoffman and Dalin suggest joining a bartering exchange, something I’m unfamiliar with (aside from some co-ops, there’s nothing like this in my area that I’ve been able to find). The authors discuss many varieties of these, from swap meets to “time banks” (where people essentially trade their skilled time with others). How do you find such things? Start Googling, looking for bartering in your specific area.

5 | The Upsides and Downsides of Barter
The authors discuss some of the downsides of bartering here, and they mostly focus on patience (you’ve got to have it), taxes (you’re going to have to pay them), and some inconvenience (everything you want won’t always be available or convenient). Obviously, the impact of these things vary depending on your specific situation (for example, exchanges usually handle any tax issues for you – and I’ll mention them more below), but the benefits of bartering almost always outweigh the drawbacks.

6 | There’s No Place Like (Someone Else’s) Home
Your home itself is often a great thing to barter. For example, you can barter a stay in your home for a stay in someone else’s home, saving a great deal of money on family vacations. Another example: you can literally swap real estate with other people, saving a great deal on costs if you’re willing to – or need to – move. The convenience of doing this can make up for a bit of inequity in property value, after all.

7 | Barter, Taxes, and You
First, the good news: you don’t have to pay taxes on bartering if the barter was the incidental sale of personal property and the trades are not part of the way you earn an income. This covers most bartering that people will do. However, some people will try to trade items in such a way that they make a profit from it – buy an item for $20, trade it, trade that item, and then sell the item for $60. That’s a net gain of $40, and you are required to pay taxes on that. The chapter outlines how you go about doing that – it’s pretty straightforward.

8 | Charity Expands with Barter
The idea here is that you don’t have to just donate cash to a charity – you can also donate your time, your talents, and specific items that you own that may be of use to the charity. Rather than just writing a check, find out what the charities you care about actually need and see if you can give that, instead. Think of charity on a broader scale, too – are there individual people you can help with your skills and time and energy and possessions?

9 | Child’s Play: Barter for Kids
Get your children involved with trading as early as possible. In fact, my own children are starting to do this – they’re about to sign up for their own PaperBackSwap account where they’ll trade some of their books that they no longer read for other children’s books that they might read, now or in the future. You can also encourage them to trade with family and friends – just be sure that all guardians and parents are aware of the specifics of the trade so there are no issues later on.

10 | Barter and Your New Small Business
There’s no reason you can’t barter to help your small business. Perhaps you can trade your rent for some services provided by your business, or accept some bartered items in exchange for items your business sells. In the end, the focus should be on maximizing your return at the end of the year – just don’t forget that bartering can be a big part of increasing the value of your business without directly disrupting your cash flow.

11 | Barter as a Career
Bartering as a career? The authors discuss many niche careers for people who are very good at the social nuances of bartering, such as brokering or running a barter exchange. I can definitely see a role for this as a side business – for example, you set up a swap meet where people pay a dollar to get in and you do all the work of getting the space reserved and the tables ready.

12 | Barter to Your Health!
The final chapter discusses the sticky issue of bartering for health care, something that is fairly controversial in the medical community. Should doctors accept a barter for the medical care they provide? I think it’s very much up to the individual doctor and should not ever be expected. Many doctors seem to accept limited amounts of bartering as a form of charitable work.

Is The Art of Barter Worth Reading?
More than anything, The Art of Barter felt like an encouragement to get out there and barter with others rather than a directly useful guide. Many of the topics seemed directed towards people who are constantly out there bartering and trying to make a profit from trading, which is a group that doesn’t really include me.

However, if you’re really into bartering and need a big dollop of good advice – or you’re like me, just getting started and needing a little encouragement, The Art of Barter is a worthwhile and entertaining read.

Tomorrow, several people that matter a lot to me are starting their college experience. Here are fifteen things I’d like to suggest to them that they’re probably not hearing from anyone else who has been giving them advice on college over the past three months.

You don’t have to know what you want to do right now. You’ve probably heard countless people asking what you’re majoring in and so on and you’ve likely built the decision up into something monumental in your head. It isn’t. For starters, most of the time when a person asks a college student what their major is, they’re mostly just looking for some sort of information about who you are. They’re not trying to judge you, they’re trying to understand you.

As for the vitality of that major, I majored in life sciences and computer science in college and today I’m a writer on personal finance topics.

In short, you end up finding your own path in life and it’s not a path dictated by your college major. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a major that actually lines up with what you’re passionate about. If you’re not lucky, your college degree will mostly wind up being proof that you went to college for some number of years and were able to complete a degree.

Instead, the biggest value you’ll earn in college is the relationships with other people. The friendships I built over the course of my college career form many of my friendships now. I have friends sprinkled throughout tons of businesses and organizations and walks of life now. A relationship I built with my academic advisor got me my first real college job. A relationship I built with an awesome staff member got me a research job related to my area of study. A relationship built with a professor helped me to get my first post-college job – and, indirectly, my second one. I fell in love with my wife-to-be in college. At my wedding, my best man and one of my groomspeople were my two closest college friends.

The people made the impact. Focus on building friendships with good people – students, staff members, professors, deans, everyone. Look for people who are focused at what they’re doing, have some interest overlap with you, and are also seeming like they’re having fun doing it, because those are the people that are going to be great to spend time with and are also going to be doing something great with their life. They’re the kind of people that will make your path better.

The biggest value you can get from your classes is transferable skills. Knowing the ins and outs of organic chemistry might help you if you happen to wind up in one of those rare jobs that utilizes it. The skills you’ve built in the process of actually getting through organic chemistry – those are ones you’ll utilize time and time again.

The value isn’t so much in the actual subject you learn in your classes. The value comes from the ability to absorb lots of information, to process that information, and to think about that information. The value of college is in the ability to manage your time effectively enough so you can do all of that, get strong grades, hold down a job, build relationships, and grow as a person. The value of college is learning how to communicate with people from vastly different backgrounds than you – in other words, try making a friend that lived on another continent.

Time management skills. Information management skills. Communication skills (speaking, writing, presenting). Critical thinking. Those are the things that college gives you a great opportunity to really, really learn, and those are the things that will help you no matter what your path is.

Almost everyone will get as much or more value out of learning how to learn a particular challenging topic or class than they will get out of that specific topic.

Try things you would have never tried before. The social constructs of a typical high school make it very hard for people to dive into and discover what they’re passionate about. Those constructs are largely gone in college. This is the time in your life to try stuff you would have never tried before.

As Robert Heinlein put it, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

College is the best opportunity in your life for trying all of these things, learning how to do them, and stumbling upon that thing or two that really, really lights up your passion.

The only way to fail at college is to sit around your dorm room a lot of evenings watching reruns of Bones or taunting someone on Xbox Live. Do something new, preferably something you would have never done before (and preferably not anything that has a likelihood of killing or seriously harming you).

Keep your eyes wide open for free stuff. The average college campus is teeming with free things to do and food to eat. Look at your school’s event calendar and start hitting as much of that stuff as possible – anything and everything that looks vaguely interesting. It usually is interesting (or at least exposure to something new), it’s almost always free, and there’s almost always free food there.

If the people around you won’t engage in the tons of things going on every evening, it’s a great time to expand your horizons a bit more. Look for the faces you see repeating at these events. It’s a great way to meet interesting people who are actively involved in the world around them.

Plus, most of this stuff is free, which enables you to keep your cash right in your pocket, take out fewer student loans, and get out of college with a smaller debt burden than you otherwise would have.

These are the elements of a life-changing college experience. It’s not about chasing a perfect 4.0 or partying hard all the time. It’s about finding who you are, building the actual skills you’ll need over and over again in life, and finding the people and things that actually matter to you. Good luck.

Monique writes in with a heartfelt observation:

The biggest reason I can’t bring myself to actually buy generics when I’m in the store is that I feel cheap and poor when I buy the white labeled knockoffs. I don’t like feeling like that. I like saving money, but when it leaves me feeling like a loser I’d rather spend a little more and get the name brand.

It’s marketing at work.

Take a look at this Tide commercial.

The entire point of that commercial is to create warm fuzzy feelings and associate them with the Tide logo. Look, there’s a loving father and a cute baby and sparkling white clothes and… Tide! Tide! Tide!

If you repeat that kind of association enough, you begin to, on an unconscious level, begin to associate good feelings with a brand. Those good feelings come out when you’re at the grocery store and trying to decide between a generic brand (no feelings because no advertising) and a name brand (good feelings built up by lots of advertising over the years).

“But I don’t watch television commercials,” some will say. Do you read magazines? Do you drive anywhere near billboards? Do you see the sides of buses? Do you listen to the radio?

The same effect is always in play.

That’s the purpose of at least one flavor of advertising. It’s all about building the brand. You’re not actually being encouraged to go buy a specific product. Instead, the entire point of the ad is to create an emotional imbalance in favor of a particular product versus another product.

Of course, you pay for that emotional imbalance when you’re at the checkout. Almost always (outside of a sale or some sort of great coupon stacking), the name brand item comes at a premium.

One of the biggest themes of The Simple Dollar is to avoid buying things based on emotional impulses. If you’re buying a name brand because buying it makes you feel good or because buying generic makes you feel bad, you’re making a buying decision based on emotion.

That’s not to say there isn’t a reason to buy name brand items. As I discussed in an earlier article, The Cheap Garbage Bag Dilemma, you do need a product to perform well for you. That’s why I often base my purchases on my own personal history with the item, as well as reports from unbiased sources like Consumer Reports.

If an item makes you feel a certain way that you can’t quantify with hard facts, marketing is probably at work. Ignore it. Make your purchasing decisions based on facts and come away with the best buy you can.

That’s something you can always feel good about.

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 (August 15 – August 21, 2009)
The Danger of Selling to Your Friends and Family When you try to sell to your friends or your family, you’re taking advantage of your relationship with them. They feel obligated to buy from you because of your relationship, but there’s often a sense that the relationship has been undermined.

The Real Lessons of “How Low Can You Go?” Last summer, I did a series of posts paralleling NPR’s “How Low Can You Go” series of low-cost recipes. Here are some of the things I learned from the series as a whole.

Why My Net Worth Is Now Negative Again Did I go into debt? No. I just recalculated my net worth with the realization that some of the things I own aren’t really liquid.

Are You a Money Victim? Whenever you blame others for your money problems, you’re a money victim. Don’t look for ways to blame others. Instead, look for ways to create a situation for yourself where other people’s inevitable problems don’t affect you.

Rule #10: Plan Ahead Every Time You Spend. The more I plan ahead for my expenses, the more financial success I seem to have. Every dollar should only be spent with some forethought.

Two Years Ago (August 15 – August 21, 2008)
The Big Debate #5: Chasing the Dreams or Chasing the Money? I lean hard towards chasing the dreams because passion is the one thing people will always pay money for.

This Is the Right Personal Finance Book for You! Obviously (tongue in cheek), the best personal finance book is this one, but here are some others to look at.

Fourteen Techniques for Improving Your Work-Life Balance Finding the right balance between the work you do and the things you work for is key to a happy life. When those two things get out of balance, it’s a very hard road.

What Features Are Most Important For Your Primary Bank? My Thoughts and Recommendations For me, great online banking, strong customer service, and minimal fees are key for any good bank. I really don’t care much about 1.5% interest versus 1.25% interest.

Winning the Battle Against Low Quality Generics While Still Saving Money I’ve had many great experiences with generics. I’ve also had some disastrous experiences as well – experiences that have taught me that I need to be careful with generics.

Three Years Ago (August 15 – August 21, 2007)
Tackling Breakfast: Healthy, Inexpensive, And Easy Meals To Get Me Started In The Morning Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but it’s often easy to do it in a costly and (healthwise) disastrous way. Here’s how I tackle it instead.

A Frugal Dilemma: Inheriting Stuff You Wouldn’t Normally Use My advice? Sell it as soon as you possibly can unless you truly can find a use for it.

Should You Vote For A Politician That Promises Lower Taxes? Politicians often can’t connect what they promise on the campaign trail with what they can actually do once in office.

Losing A Friend Over Money If your spending goals start to diverge from your friends, you’ll find yourself in a difficult spot sooner or later. You’re better off handling it with maturity and sincerity.

30 Year Versus 15 Year Mortgages Continued: What About Income Tax? Income tax deductions shouldn’t be a major concern when you’re thinking about which mortgage to choose. Given how few people can actually deduct their home mortgage interest, you’re better off focusing on getting the best interest rate.

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.

One of the biggest challenges I have with writing recipe posts is the fact that Sarah and I often “riff” on recipes. In other words, we’ll take a recipe we found somewhere – often written down by hand or ripped out of a magazine – and rather than making it word-for-word, we’ll improvise, often on the fly.

This was definitely the case with this spinach, pesto, and cheese lasagna. I had a nice picture with all of the ingredients on it, but as we started making the recipe (found in an old cookbook), we also began to modify it, resulting in different ingredients and a much different (but very tasty) end product. Even better, most of our modifications actually saved money on the dish.

Here’s our actual ingredient list (the cheese is the expensive part)…
3 cups ricotta cheese (alternately, you can use 3 cups cottage cheese here)
1 cup Parmesan cheese
2 cups grated Fontina cheese
1 large egg
16-20 ounces chopped spinach (2 10 oz. packages of frozen spinach, thawed, works here)
7 ounces pesto (you can make your own or buy it)
4 cups pasta sauce (like the pasta sauce we made a while back)
12 lasagna noodles (you can make your own or buy them)

… and here’s what we did with those ingredients.

First, mix the ricotta and Parmesan cheeses in a bowl together, as above.

Salt and pepper the cheese to your taste. For us, that usually means just adding a lot of pepper, as we usually only add salt once a dish has arrived at the table and have tasted it.

After that, crack the egg and mix it in until it’s all consistent and a bit gooey.

In another bowl, mix together the spinach and the pesto.

Then, bust out a 9″ by 13″ baking pan and lightly coat it with the oil of your choice (to prevent sticking – just put a dab of oil on a cloth or paper towel and rub it all over the inside of the pan). Put a cup of pasta sauce in the pan, then put three pasta noodles side by side on top of the sauce, then spread about a third of the ricotta mix over the top of that, then drop a third of the spinach-pesto mix on top of that in spoonfuls (you can’t spread it over the ricotta, so just put little dabs of it evenly.

Repeat the layers of sauce, noodles, ricotta mix, and spinach mix twice more, then top it with the remaining three noodles and the remaining sauce.

You’re pretty much ready to go (and you can do all of this in the morning before you go and keep it in the fridge – just add 10 minutes or so to the first baking time). Turn on your oven to 350 F, cover with foil, and bake for 35 minutes.

Take the lasagna out of the oven, uncover it, and sprinkle on the Fontina cheese. Then bake it again, uncovered, for about ten minutes or until it’s nice and warm all the way through.

We served it with some garlic bread and some fresh cherry tomatoes from our garden.

Since this made such a large pan, we were able to eat this lasagna for twelve different individual meals – the four of us at dinner the first night, my wife and I at lunch the next day, the four of us at “leftover variety” dinner the night after that, and my wife and I again for lunch on the third day. This drove the cost per serving for the lasagna down to about $0.65.

Was it a hit? Absolutely. The children (and the adults) emptied their plates.

Several readers have written to me requesting information on saving seeds from their garden, which is an awesome frugal practice.

Fall is just starting to tiptoe into the picture here in Iowa, and for us that means that the gardening season is starting to wind up. This year was actually a very uneven year for us because of our baby arriving in late April, which made plantings and other garden prep a bit more challenging than before, so we had some vegetables go in very early and others go in too late.

The end result? We have some items that aren’t producing yet and other items that are already going to seed in our garden. It’s those “going to seed” items that I’m going to be focusing on today.

First of all, what I’m going to describe below isn’t guaranteed to work for many plants started from seeds that you buy at the hardware store or the local nursery. That’s because many of those plants are hybridized, which means that they’re a cross between two different plant varieties. This has the benefit of gaining the positive traits of both varieties but with a big drawback: the seeds don’t necessarily produce plants that match the parent. You might have sterile seeds, you might have seeds that produce a very unusual plant, or you might have something that does match the parent. You simply can’t tell for sure.

So what should you do if you have plants that came from seeds or starts purchased at your local nursery? First, you should still collect the seeds and try planting them next spring – you might end up with some really interesting varieties (or you might end up with complete duds).

Second, and perhaps the best option, you should try ordering seeds from Seed Savers for next spring. This way, you can begin to grow non-hybridized plants in your garden, plants that produce seeds that can be collected and saved until next spring, thus providing you with an unending supply of plants (and thus food).

So, we’ll assume that you’ve got a garden, it’s nearing the end of the harvesting period, and you’ve got some plants starting to go to seed. What’s next?

First, start collecting the seeds. You can use old envelopes for this – unused return envelopes, well labeled and kept in a shoebox, work great for this. Just remove the seeds from a plant, let them dry (on a towel on the table), store them in an envelope, label that envelope, and keep them until spring.

How do you collect the seeds, though? There’s usually a different method for each kind of plant in your garden. The best way is to simply fire up Google and search for “how to collect PLANT seeds” where PLANT is the particular type you’re looking for. For example, here’s a writeup on how to collect tomato seeds – you pretty much just need a single tomato to get plenty of seeds!

Make sure, as you’re collecting and drying the seeds, to mark what they are and especially mark the envelopes you save them in. This way, you can easily retrieve what you have. You should include the year, the type of plant, the variety (if I know it), and any growing information or hints you might want to remember next year.

If you stop right here, you’ll find that you’re saving some cash on next year’s seeds. However, there’s a very easy way to expand the value of this seed-saving process: start a seed exchange with your neighbors.

Basically, a seed exchange simply means that you’re swapping seeds with other gardeners in your area (or even with others through the mail). Since you’ve already got a source for seeds – your own garden – your supply is essentially free – and every person you find to trade with becomes a source for new variety in your garden.

How do you get a seed exchange started? The first step is to simply find other gardeners. Who has a garden in their back yard? Do you have any friends or relatives who are active gardeners? Introduce them to the idea of saving their seeds – or, better yet, give them a few types of seeds to start with to show them that it can be done and that it’s fairly easy. Encourage them to get seeds from Seed Savers (or other such sources) in the future.

Once you have other gardeners who are doing this, talk together when deciding what to plant each year. While you may all want to grow tomatoes, for example, it’s worthwhile to plan to use different tomato varieties. Then, when you figure out later in the year which variety is the best, you can trade for seeds from that variety for the next year.

The most important part of this is to recognize that “trading” here isn’t about getting the best deal. Sometimes, you’ll have a “dud” set of tomatoes and will have to receive tomato seeds from someone with little in return for it; at other times, you’ll have some kind of monster zucchini that produces fifty pounds of the green stuff and you find yourself giving away a lot of seeds. Do not make seed trading into a one-for-one trading system and don’t worry about who got the “better end” of the deal, because it’s very hard to make a trade 100% equitable. Just look at it as giving away your excess seeds and picking up some of the excess seeds of others.

My suggestion is to always get plenty of seeds from any variety that does well. You’ll want them for yourself for next year and you’ll also want to share or swap them with other gardeners – even sometimes ones who don’t save seeds. Friends who share good seeds are good friends, indeed.

There’s another enormous value in seed sharing: friendships and incredibly low cost social activities. Seed exchanging builds friendships because of the common interest in gardening, and the actual need of exchanging seeds often bring social interaction right to the front. A January potluck where people bring their seeds to swap is a great way to have a wonderful evening for next to no cost.

Good luck!