When we set big, lofty goals for ourselves, it’s really easy to find ourselves at a plateau of sorts, where it feels like we’re spinning our wheels but not really heading upward towards our end target.

I’ll share two examples of this from my own life.

I’ve been working on a novel pretty consistently for the past three years. It’s basically the story of two married couples where the husband in one couple and the wife in another couple were in love much earlier in life but circumstances took them apart. It’s set in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I have been tossing around pieces of this for years in my mind and in Microsoft Word. I spend a lot of time doing background research to make sure the setting is right and so on. Some particular scenes from it are simply wonderful (I have an opening scene set on a rainy day that I just dearly love), but it is a very, very slow process figuring out how they all go together in a way that’s real to the characters. I’m simply at a plateau with this.

My wife and I are marching slowly towards paying off our home mortgage. We’re making our payments as big as we reasonably can, but it’s still painful to look at our account balances and see that the balance is falling ever so slowly. It’s a long, slow march without any strong sense of forward progress, no matter how hard we push.

It’s much like travelling toward a mountain far in the distance. We’re making progress, but the progress is so slow that we feel as though we’ve been running forever with nothing to show for it.

There are times when it’s tempting to just abandon the journey, to throw that novel-in-making in the trash, to stop focusing on paying off our mortgage and enjoy things now.

Here are fourteen things we do to keep going on our long journeys. Perhaps they’ll help you to keep going on your own journeys.

1. Take a breather.
If a long term goal is no longer a positive burden for you, take a step back from that goal for a short while and substitute it with a short term goal that can give you the taste of success fairly quickly. Then, return to your large goal with a fresh “I can do it” mindset.

I can put aside that novel for a few weeks to work on a short story. I can stop the overpayment of our mortgage for six months and save up for a future replacement car (which we may need in five or so years). These smaller goals are important, plus our focus on them gives us the ability to re-energize for that big goal that we’ve plateaued on.

2. Reaffirm the destination.
Once upon a time, you may have been supremely confident in your decision to chase a particular goal. Over time, though, our life priorities change, and a goal that seemed to hit the bullseye of where we thought we were going in life no longer hits that target. Spend some time asking yourself whether this big goal really takes you to a place that you want to go. If it does, visualize that destination that you want so much; if it doesn’t, rethink your directions.

Whenever I hit a writing block, I usually ask myself if I still know what I want the long piece I’m working on to be. If I feel like the destination is no longer in sight, I’m not afraid to put that work aside if I need to.

3. Set milestones.
Milestones are simply smaller goals that serve as intermediate steps between where you are now and your final destination. For example, if you have a $100,000 mortgage, you might have milestones at each $10,000 payoff level, giving you ten milestones to your overall goal.

A milestone of my book might be the drafting of a complete chapter or the connection of one significant element to another element. Setting such a milestone narrows my focus and keeps my eyes off of the large scope of the entire book.

4. Use a metric.
A big goal is awfully hard to reach if you don’t have a clear way of measuring your progress towards your goal. A good goal can be represented by a number by which you can track your progress towards that goal, reaffirming your forward progress.

I might use word count as a metric for a long piece of writing. I might simply use dollars and cents as a metric for paying off a debt or saving for a goal. Neither one is perfect (especially the word count), but it does enable me to constantly see that I am moving forward, even if it looks like the mountaintop is still very far off.

5. Mark progress only to your next milestone.
Combining the above two tips, focus yourself (and your metric) on only the race to the next milestone. This reduces an enormous goal to a manageable one, one that you can clearly track along that shortened journey.

For example, I might focus entirely on the completion of a single chapter of 6,000 words, or I might focus just on knocking $10,000 off of our mortgage. My goal is to reach that milestone, and that’s where I channel my energy.

6. Collaborate.
Seek out others who are shooting for the same goal – or similar goals – as you are. Twitter. Messageboards. Local meetings and groups. Facebook. Seek them out, listen to their advice and stories, and share your own concerns. It’s much easier to climb over a mountain when you’re not doing it all yourself.

This site is itself such a collaboration. Countless readers email me and comment with their ideas and thoughts, constantly encouraging good financial behavior and life choices.

7. Burst it.
Every goal can feel more real if you occasionally give it a “burst” instead of treating it like a never-ending slog. A “burst” simply means a short period of deeply concentrated effort towards a big goal, like a week focused on intense frugality and clearing out and selling of unwanted household items, with all proceeds going to a financial goal.

I use “bursts” all the time. About once a year, we have an ultra-frugal month where we buy nothing but the essentials, calculate how much we’ve saved because of it, and channel that extra money into some larger goal. I do the same thing with writing, having participated in events like National Novel Writing Month, which force me into “burst writing” scenarios.

8. Use visual reminders of your destination.
This is one technique I’ve used for personal finance and professional success for a long time. I simply clip and use pictures that personify the goal I have in mind – and I put them everywhere. They become a constant visual reminder of where I want to go. I change the pictures regularly so that they remain fresh and in my face.

For example, I keep a picture of my children wrapped around my credit cards. It keeps me focused on my family-oriented goals and reminds me that the money I spend needlessly takes away from those goals. For a long while, I kept the first paragraph of a novel I was working on taped to the bottom of my rear view mirror in my old truck, causing me to think about it whenever I drove.

9. Use a visualization of your metric.
If you have a numerical metric for your goal, you really have three numbers: where you started, where you want to go, and where you’re at now. Those three numbers can make up a really valuable visual reminder – a “thermometer” that fills up as you make more progress towards your goal.

I’ve long used one for my own writing purposes, mostly in an effort to mark my word count and motivate myself to try to contribute to the book regularly. We also have one that represents progress on our home mortgage.

10. Use microrewards.
If you’ve got a series of milestones, there’s no reason not to reward yourself in some reasonable way for reaching those milestones. Use those milestones as a pledge – if I accomplish X, I get to do Y.

For example, whenever we reach a big number on our mortgage countdown, we usually “celebrate” by replacing or updating something that needs replacing in our home. For example, our dishwasher really needs replacing (did you know that a three year old shouldn’t belly flop on the open door of your dishwasher?), so we’ve decided that we’ll replace it when we reach our next mortgage milestone. You can use any perk you like, as long as it’s reasonable and in line with your overall goal.

11. Make yourself publicly accountable – and share your successes.
I think Facebook can be a brilliant place for this. You have a group of people – your friends – that care about you and want to see you succeed. What better environment to put yourself out there, challenge yourself, and be able to celebrate your victories with people that matter?

Whenever I take on a new goal, I often share it on Facebook (and sometimes on Twitter, too). This way, the people I care about most are aware of my goals and my progress, too. Sometimes, they’ll ask about my progress and keep me moving forward, whether I want to or not.

12. Make it competitive.
Most of us have a competitive streak inside of us. We want to win. Use that to your advantage and challenge others around you in a competition that pushes you towards your big goal. Who can lose the most weight this month? Who can log the most miles walked? Who can have the most profitable yard sale? Who can make the largest multiple of a mortgage payment this month? There are lots of possibilities!

My wife and I love to compete with each other, so we’ll sometimes use that as a tool for individual success. Weight loss comes to mind, as does saving money. Our competitive natures and desire to “top” the other one can push us onward to great success.

13. Read inspirational stories.
Sometimes, simply reading the stories of others that have travelled down this road and have found success can be enough to keep you going. There are many inspirational stories out there for almost every journey a person takes, from debt recovery and athletic training to weight loss and cancer survival.

I often just read blogs of people who are going on the same path I am for inspiration. For me, simply knowing that other people are struggling with the same problems I am is a real boost, even if they don’t have the same conclusions or the same successes or the same setbacks that I do. We’re all in this together, after all.

14. Eliminate counterproductive temptations.
Life is full of temptation, and many of them are counterproductive to the things we want most. We want to lose weight, but there’s a pint of Guinness out there or a chocolate bar in the cupboard. We want to save money, but there’s a book we really, really want. Take steps to eliminate such temptations. Don’t read blogs, websites, books, or magazines that tempt you with such things. Clean out your cupboards and your fridge and don’t bring new temptations into your house. Turn off the television – or at least avoid advertising-laden programming.

The easier it is to give into your temptations, the easier it is to fall behind in your goals and make that slog seem even longer. My biggest temptation is the ease with which I can spend in certain situations. I solve that by often just leaving all of my credit cards at home and just keeping a small amount of cash in my wallet.

Good luck on your long-term goals!

The only television programming I have watched in the last three weeks is Doctor Who. I’m not sure what exactly that says about me.

Anyway, here are a few articles of interest, starting with a few freelance pieces by me that have appeared at OPENForum.com.

Askers, Guessers, and the Art of Negotiation This is a further discussion of an issue I’ve talked about on The Simple Dollar before. People negotiate with each other in very different ways, and being aware of those differences can make all the difference. (@ open forum)

Does Your Community Know You? One of my favorite small businesses is going out of business! Why? They made one simple mistake – but it was a pretty big one. (@ open forum)

The Hard Choices Sometimes, we’re stuck in a corner and can’t find an easy way out of it. Which of several bad choices do we make? (@ open forum)

A Minimalist’s Guide to eBay: The Least You Need to Know to Get Started Good information here. I have sold quite a few things on eBay over the years, mostly liquidating things I no longer wanted. (@ zen habits)

Do you know your ABC’s? How to Control Negative Self-Talk It is very hard to overcome beating yourself up internally. I still struggle with it all the time. (@ pick the brain)

The “lost decade” you should really be afraid of Shocker: it’s the past decade, because real wages have actually dropped 5% since the end of the Clinton years. (@ pop economics)

Inflation and Your Mortgage With interest rates as low as they are, it’s conceivable that inflation could actually exceed the interest rate of your mortgage in future years. That creates some weird projections for real dollars spent on your mortgage over the next decade or two. (@ all financial matters)

Improved Probabilistic Inference as a General Learning Mechanism with Action Video Games A new paper in Current Biology backs up something I’ve believed to be true for years – video games help with improving one’s decision-making and information processing abilities. Yes, they make you smarter. (@ cell via the 99 percent)

You, too, can have an exceptional life!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read or heard the above phrase (or something very similar) over the past few years. It pops up on countless books, television shows, seminar series, DVDs, and countless other things that propose to tell you the secret to living some sort of exceptional life.

That phrase has always struck a very bad chord with me. There’s something inherently off about that message and I think I’ve finally figured out what it is.

Those of you who have read The Simple Dollar for a while know that I deeply value certain core principles when it comes to personal finance and building a life that you want. Spend less than you earn. Stop trying to impress other people. Find and work toward your true passions. Do it yourself.

Almost all of these ideas have one thing in common: you. You are the one, in the end, that’s responsible for what you make of your life. You’re the one that has to make the day-to-day choices. You’re the one that decides where your future will lead.

Which leads us back to the idea of an exceptional life – and why I think it’s a myth.

An exceptional life is inherently based on judging your own life by what others are doing. After all, you can only be an exception if there are lots of other lives that are not exceptional around you.

For the longest time, I was fueled by the desire to have an exceptional life as compared to what I grew up with. I wanted a life that would inspire envy in others and pride in my parents. I wanted a life that made other people say, “Wow.”

What I realized is that by chasing a goal that’s heavily based on comparing my life to others, I’d never get there. I would never feel like my life was exceptional. I would always have peers, and I would always have people that made me think, “Wow. Their life is much more awesome than mine.”

Instead, I needed to work solely from a metric inside of me. A great life comes not from comparing my life to the people around me, but from having a life that brings me happiness whether I’m by myself or around other people.

What brings me happiness? The opportunity to write every day. The ability to spend a ton of time with my children and my wife without the fear of being on call. A home in the country, with a barn out back, a big vegetable garden, and perhaps some chickens. Someday, the ability to write and publish a few novels. Spending time helping others in my local community and in the global community, too, whether it’s doing accounting work or building pipelines in the Congo.

Those are the things that make me happy. I know, from previous comments, that quite a few vocal commenters think that such things aren’t exceptional at all. They consider them boring, parochial, and so on. Frankly, I don’t care. I don’t judge my life and my goals by the standards they have for their life. I judge my life by the goals and standards I have for my life.

I recommend exactly the same thing for you. What do you want? Where do you want to be in five years?

Maybe it’s something “exceptional,” like traveling the world. Or maybe it’s something as “boring” as getting up at six in the morning and harvesting chicken eggs. We’re all wired differently inside.

What matters is that you constantly aim for the things that are important to you, not the things that are important to others.

Keep that philosophy in mind every time you buy an item at the store. Remember it when you’re trying to decide how you’re going to spend a spare hour this evening. Think about it when you’re evaluating and setting your goals for the future.

I’ll make you a deal. I’ll keep talking about how I’m working towards my own goals. You pull out the elements of that story that are useful to you and apply them to your own goals. In the end, we’ll both be where we want to be.

I vastly prefer to buy items at secondhand and consignment shops if I can.

There, I said it. I love going to secondhand shops and consignment shops. My wife and I stop by such shops all the time in our area, particularly for a few specific items that we go through at an amazing rate. There are many, many non-consumable items that we prefer to buy secondhand because, frankly, buying new doesn’t add much to the product other than the “new,” and that’s something we don’t want to pay for.

Here are twenty things we usually look for used before we even consider buying new, along with some reasons for doing so.

Children’s clothes Do I really need to say more? Children can be very hard on clothes at times, plus they outgrow their clothes very quickly. The end result? We don’t want to invest much in individual items. Luckily, children with plenty of clothes will often wear specific items only a time or two, so you can often stumble upon used children’s clothes at very good prices. We are (very) regular customers at the excellent Duck Worth Wearing in Ames, Iowa, a store we recommend to any parents of younger children in central Iowa.

Holiday attire As with the children’s clothes, any items that are rarely worn are good candidates for purchase at consignment shops, and the figurative “Christmas sweater” is a great example of this. There are certain colors that we tend to only wear during the week or two before Christmas and I can usually find great clothing in those colors at consignment shops.

Maternity clothes Another example of clothes that are only worn for short periods are maternity clothes, something we’ve learned a lot about over the past five years. My wife has used Me N’ Mommy to Be in Ankeny, Iowa in the past, with good results.

Costumes I don’t directly mean full-fledged costumes, but instead elements for more creative costumes. Rather than going out there and buying a prefab “zombie” costume, for example, just head to the used clothes shop and pick up some worn items that you’re fine with ruining. We’re doing this very thing for our children’s Halloween costumes this year.

Silverware It’s often easy to come across complete (or nearly complete) silverware sets at secondhand shops. Take it home, clean it thoroughly, and you’ll find yourself with all of the dining utensils you need without much of a bill.

Plates Similar to silverware, dinner plates, saucers, and cups are often easily located at secondhand stores. The set I used in college and before my wedding came from such a secondhand store (we received a really nice set as a gift, so we started using those because we only had about five plates left from the old set).

Kitchenware Small appliances like hand mixers and blenders, plus common tools like spatulas, pots, pans, and rolling pins are often easily found at such shops, particularly items left over from an estate. If you hunt around, you can stock a kitchen quite well from secondhand stores and consignment shops.

Sports equipment The Play It Again Sports in Clive, IA is my first stop for most sports equipment. In fact, I plan to take my son there next spring to look for his first “real” baseball glove and first “real” bat for backyard use. In the past, I’ve found soccer balls and other such material there (and at similar stores).

Exercise equipment Such stores aren’t just a good source for sports equipment. Exercise and training equipment, like free weights and exercise bands and pedometers, can often be found at secondhand shops. Even bigger items, like treadmills and ellipticals, can easily be found secondhand if you search a bit (they’re equipment that people buy and sometimes never use).

Bicycles I’m including this separately from exercise equipment because, quite often, there are stores devoted solely to secondhand and refurbished bicycles, particularly in college towns where they buy abandoned or forgotten bicycles from the college, repair them, and sell them at very reasonable rates. BicycleSurplus in Ames, IA is a great example of this, but they themselves have quite a bit of competition.

Video games I’m almost exclusively a used video game buyer. I shop at both GameStop and Gamers, both of which buy and sell used video games with a strong return policy, and I’m in the trading club at each store, which gets me a 10% bonus on trade-ins and/or a 10% discount on purchases. Careful trading gets me new games to play for just a few bucks.

Books Used bookstores abound, providing a great place to pick up books at a very low price and also trade off your already-read books for new reading material. Aside from moments of weakness, the only books I acquire at this point are used ones.

Toys We often pick up toys for our children used, either at consignment shops or at yard sales and the like. A used toy is just as good as an old toy – a toy’s value comes in whether a child plays imaginatively with it. Just take such toys home and wash them carefully before using them (but that’s true of any item bought used).

Hand tools Everything from screwdrivers to hammers and drills can be found secondhand if you’re patient and shop around for it. My screwdriver set is a mismatched lot, with many of them coming straight from secondhand shops over the years.

Musical instruments Many music stores sell more used instruments than new ones. In fact, they often act as brokers in a way. Go in, tell them what you’re looking for, and wait for a while, and they’ll often come up with a great used version of what you want at a very nice price. I’m waiting for some electronic piano models right now.

Home decor The best home decor isn’t stuff bought at the Pottery Barn or at IKEA. It’s used stuff, stuff with character and a bit of wear which reflects your own tastes. The best places to find such things are secondhand shops and consignment stores, where all sorts of interesting things pop up.

Gardening supplies Hedge trimmers? Weed trimmers? Hoes? Rakes? All of these things pop up secondhand on a regular basis. Sometimes you’ll find a shovel that needs a bit of work, but when you can pick it up for a buck and it does the job, that’s good enough for me!

Furniture Almost all of the furnishings in my home up until about 2003 were secondhand – and we still have several items of secondhand furniture in our home. It holds up well, looks good, and does what we ask of it, so why spend a mint on a “perfect” bed for the guest bedroom?

Art supplies I wouldn’t have believed this myself, but I’m constantly running into brushes, paint sets, and other such items at secondhand shops, perfect for picking up for my children’s art projects. I picked up a 128 count box of crayons that looked as if it had been used once for a quarter a while back, for example. I’ve also found easels and oil-based paint sets, plus countless magazines and such that are perfect for collage work.

Cars So many people are out there going from lease to lease or trading in their new car every four years that there’s always a big pile of late model used cars on the market, often very well maintained and at a strong price. Don’t overlook them when you’re car shopping. (And, yes, a used car dealership is a secondhand store if I’ve ever seen one.)

For every item on this list, the same idea holds true: shop used first, and be a little patient. If you really can’t find anything that meets your needs by buying used, then consider new items. Sticking to that policy will save you a mint.

Let’s say, hypothetically, I have $50,000 in cash just sitting in my savings account. I need to replace my car and I’ve decided on a model that costs $20,000. I can get a very low interest loan for that car from the dealership – 0.0% or 2.9% or something like that.

What do I do?

You can really make a compelling case for either just buying the car with cash or keeping the money in checking and using the low-interest loan. In fact, I often go back and forth on that very question, and you’ll see differing opinions on this from different personal finance folks, including answers that vary depending on the interest rate of the loan.

The issue comes down to one of personal finance philosophy: cash flow versus liquidity.

Cash flow simply means the amount of cash you have going in and coming out each month. Your income versus your expenses. The fewer expenses you have, the greater your cash flow and the easier it is to save for other goals or survive economic twists and turns.

Liquidity means that you have easy access to cash or the cash value of something. Your baseball card collection has really low liquidity. The home you’re living in has pretty low liquidity. On the other hand, the cash in your pocket is very liquid. Liquidity means you have flexibility because you have cash in hand.

The usual argument against improving your cash flow is that you have to sacrifice liquidity to get it. In other words, to buy that car, you have to sink $20,000 in cash into that car. Suddenly, you have a lot less liquidity. You have a smaller cash reserve to deal with emergencies that come your way.

The argument against liquidity is that it requires discipline to maintain it. If you had $50,000 in the bank, would you not be tempted to buy something that you wanted? If you did, you’ve lost that liquidity for something you don’t really need.

My belief is that liquidity is better if you assume that your future is full of positive opportunities. If tomorrow is going to bring opportunities to get ahead, investment opportunities, business opportunities, and the like, liquidity will open those doors for you.

On the other hand, cash flow is better if you see a future with significant risk. A future with significant risk translates into a future with reduced income or with increased expenses – in other words, a crunch on your monthly cash flow. A long illness. A job loss. A new child. An ill or dependent parent. Having collateralized debt – like a car loan or a mortgage – means that the item can be repossessed, leaving you not only with reduced cash flow, but without transportation or a roof over your head.

The problem? We can’t see the future. We do not know what’s coming in the future. Is it a future loaded with opportunity? Or is it a future with significant risk?

In the excellent book The Black Swan, the author, Nasim Nicholas Taleb, argues that we often use mental tricks to disguise the randomness of the past from ourselves, turning our very random lives into a coherent and understandable story. We often do the same thing with the future, imagining not the chaotic future we’ll likely have, but a smooth road leading to some destination.

Lately, I’ve found myself hedging my bets more and more. What if I become ill? What if my income level drops? The better my cash flow is right now, the more room I have in my cash flow to deal with these challenges.

My conclusion is this: once you have a certain size of emergency fund (I usually use two months’ of living expenses per dependent), your focus shouldn’t be on further liquidity. Your focus should be on improving your cash flow. Not only does this protect against longer-term problems, it also creates a future where you’re more able to tolerate the unexpected in your life.

In simpler terms, get an emergency fund, then shoot as hard as you can for debt freedom. That might sometimes involve additional savings (like saving up to pay cash for a replacement car), but the goal is to keep your cash flow as healthy as possible.

Coincidentally, just an hour before this article went live, I got into a Twitter discussion about this very topic.

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. Single mom, crazy life
2. Debt payoff or Roth IRA?
3. Pay cash for car?
4. 401(k) or IRA rollover?
5. Cut Roth contributions to travel?
6. Switch to HSA?
7. Watching sports without cable/satellite
8. Finding scholarships for adult students
9. An unexpected hit – and overanalysis
10. Music suggestions

A few months ago, I decided to grow my hair out to ten inches in order to donate all of it to charity. However, I’m running into a problem – it’s itchy. It’s driving me crazy over my ears and on the back of my neck. I don’t think I can stand it at this length, let alone any longer.

My life has exploded with craziness. I am 26, a single mom (again) going through a dissolution of marriage from my husband (not my son’s father). My husband kept everything, the house (currently in foreclosure) and furniture, his paid off car, the pets, etc. I kept my son and his belongings, my second hand dresser (older than me) my bed and books and my new car with a slightly hefty car payment (just under $300/mo). Everything else I own is second hand. I’m happy with this decision. I miss my house (I made it a home) but I’m happy with my 2 bedroom apartment. I removed myself from a very unhappy situation and with the support of my friends and family I’ve found independence and happiness. My mother is disabled (brings home $800 a month after her medicare cost) I help her out as much as I can and in exchange she gives me free babysitting for various times. My son is 7, is very active (soccer, baseball, cub scouts, etc) has many friends and is the love of my life. I give him an allowance of $10 a month which is split between spending, saving (for college), charity, and saving for a long term goal (currently a vacation next year). He also receives spare change and sometimes dollar bills from my wonderful family which he is awesome about saving for his long term goal or giving to charity. I’ve taught my son what my parents did not, money management. I’m still trying to teach myself. This year was especially crazy as my sister is getting married. I spent about $1,000 on the wedding (I’m a bridesmaid).

I guess my question is how do I priortize my life? How would a normal (i.e. an individual who doesn’t feel like they are drowning) put their priorities? I’ve always put everyone else first, mostly I had to because I was a young single mom and relied on others to help me out so I felt like I owed them everything. Do I tell my mother (who helped me immensely when I was 17 and pregnant) I can no longer give her a stipend and pay for her cell phone so I can pay off my debts faster? Do I break my promise to my son and not go on vacation? Do I put everything on the back burner except my therapy and see if going back helps me feel better? Do I throw my budget out of whack and get a personal trainer so I can feel better (no self discipline which is a HUGE problem)? I’ve cut a lot out of my spending except cable tv. Do I give up this last thing and hope for the best? I don’t want to put so much of my life and myself first that I forget my son or my boyfriend. Am I being stupid by not wanting help? I do accept help for certain things that I feel guilty about (my dad pays my car insurance, I don’t pay my dad for babysitting but I pay my mom, etc). I’m intelligent, I’m better off now than I’ve ever been in my life and I’m happy even under all this feeling of helplessness and feeling overwhelmed. Between both jobs and my child support I gross about $36,000 but I can’t really identify where about $8,000 a year goes. I’m currently tracking my spending in Excel to figure it out. What advice can you offer me? What books or websites might you suggest? I need to hear the truth from an objective party, no matter how gruesome it is.
- Kymm

Financially, I think you’re on the right path, particularly with tracking expenses so you know where all of your money goes. You’ll be shocked at how much you actually spend frivolously, I bet.

I think you’re at a difficult crossroads where you’re trying to fill a lot of responsibilities and roles at once. You’re a girlfriend. You’re a mother. You’re a daughter. You’re an employee. You’re also yourself with your own personal needs. Each of those roles come with a lot of obligations and promises.

It is impossible to be perfect at everything, and with each role you take on, you reduce your ability to excel at the other roles.

What you have to decide is what parts of all of this are actually most important to you? Ignore what other people want from you for a moment (aside from what you need to provide for your children). What is actually most important for you? What fulfills you each day?

Is being a parent your top priority? Then be your own version of a “soccer mom” and focus on that until your child is older and can manage more of his own responsibilities.

Is your relationship your top priority? Then focus on making that relationship work with every spare ounce of energy you’ve got.

Whatever is your priority, focus on that and chop the other things out of your life. The more you slice up your energy and attention, the less you have for each thing in your life and the more likely you are to completely burn out and not be able to do anything.

If that means breaking up with your boyfriend, so be it. If that means relying on babysitters and friends for child-related errands, so be it. If that means cutting off your mother’s allowance, so be it.

If you try to be all things to all people, everyone loses, especially yourself.

I graduated from Iowa State in 2008 and immediately found a ~60k/year job in IT for a large corporation. Through the jobs in college i graduated debt free and have spent the last two years building up a net worth (401k, roth IRA, emergency fund) of about 65k. I beat the match of my 401k and fully fund my Roth IRA and emergency fund. I’m about to become engaged and she has about 90k in student loan debt at 4.96% from 4 years at a private college and now has a ~30k a year job. We’ve done a lot of budget work but she can barely afford the minimums and at this point is basically paying all interest and no principal.

Once married, do you think it’s wise to pull down the 401k to just the match and basically stop the Roth IRA in favor of paying down that 90k in debt? Or would it be better to keep the Roth going fully funded and pay about $1300 a month, paying down the debt in 7 years and paying 5k more in interest.
- Scott

It really comes down to how much the match is. If the match plus your contributions adds up to more than ten percent, then I’d recommend that move.

Clearly, you have your financial house in order if you’re freshly out of college, debt free, and willing and able to pull out $1,700 a month to put toward debt.

One thing I would make sure of, though, is that she’s financially sensible. If she’s seeing that debt disappearing and then feels that it’s okay to rack up other forms of debt (as people sometimes do), then you’re not going to get ahead. Your plan here works if it’s flanked with lots of conversation between the two of you and a commitment from both of you to live within the money left over after these debt payments.

My husband and I are a one-car family, and unfortunately, our car is on its last legs with 240,000 miles on it. We’ve been saving up for a replacement with the intention of paying cash. We have about $10,000 in cash, which is pretty close to what we’d like to spend. With interest rates as low as they are, though, we are rethinking our strategy. We have excellent credit, and could likely get a very low-interest car loan. I have about $22,000 in federal student loans with a 6.25% interest rate. So, here’s the idea we have: put $0 down on the car, and buy the whole thing with a low-interest loan. Simultaneously, withdraw our $10,000 in cash and put it towards my student loan, which has a much higher interest rate. I’m sure there are dangers or disadvantages to this approach, but am having difficulty identifying them. The biggest concern would be decreased cash flow, since the car loan would be higher than the minimum payment on the student loan, but we’re already putting at least that much aside every month. Additionally, we both have secure if not spectacularly lucrative jobs (total combined salary of $60k annually). What’s your advice?
- Rhiannon

One danger to this approach is that you’ve moved from a loan without collateral (your student loan) to one with collateral (your car loan). Another danger is, as you mentioned, decreased cash flow due to the higher car loan payments.

This kind of move is one of those “future self” moves that I discourage people from making. Your future self just isn’t bankable because you just don’t know what’s coming down the road. Illness? Job loss? An unexpected family change? All of those things can completely train wreck your plans.

If I were you, I’d pay cash for your next car, then go back into savings mode. Save $150-200 a month for the next car after that, then use any extra you accumulate to build up an emergency fund and/or pay down the student loan with extra payments.

I am 28 years old. I have about $6k in a Vanguard 401k from an old employer, and my new employer uses John Hancock, I am putting $400/month in that (there is no matching at this new job) and have chosen the conservative portfolio. I think the old 401k has maintainance fees now that i no longer work there, so I am trying to decide whether to roll the money into an IRA with vangaurd or into my current employers 401k. I know that an IRA allows distributions to buy a first home, and I think I might really like that flexibility, even though I am close to being on track for a down payment in savings around the time I expect to move out of the Bay Area (there is no way I could afford a home here). But the simplicity of only dealing with one retirement account appeals to me as well. What is the best choice?
- Deborah

You should definitely roll over the old 401(k) if you’re getting dinged with maintenance fees – those can be really steep.

As for which one you should roll over into, it really comes down to the investment options available. Take a look at the fees for the investments you would want in each fund. Also, look at the performance history of those investments.

My guess is that Vanguard will top a John Hancock 401(k), but I’m not certain. You need to check the numbers to be sure.

I’m 24 and thinking of an extended overseas trip (a quit-your-job-and-backpack-for-months kind of trip). I have a vague notion of grad school in my future, but I’d like to go on this trip before I commit to that (or to a career). I’m hoping for some advice on financing the trip.

Considering my age, is it financially acceptable to cut my Roth contributions for the coming year (and the time I’m traveling) to help finance the trip? (Again, the goal is a once-in-a-lifetime/while-I’m-still-young experience) If not, what alternative would you recommend? If so, should I contribute 100% for the first 4-5 months and then cut the contributions to zero, or just save a lesser amount over the whole year?
- Ben

If you’re committed to this trip, do it right. Don’t leave yourself in a situation where you’re in southeast Asia without access to any money at all.

There’s also a factor of what your financial needs will be when you return from the trip. Are you going to completely rely on mom and dad when you get back or will you have some resources for your own use?

If I were in your shoes, I’d cut the Roth contributions (for now) and start socking all of that away for the trip. If you find at a later time that you have more than enough money for the trip, your Roth contribution window is still open and you can still contribute later.

My wife and I have five children. My employer’s health insurance plan is so expensive ($800+ per month) that we currently have an HSA/HDHP alternative (employer refuses to chip in on this by the way) that costs us $222 per month (up from $170 per month last year). Our deductible is $7500 per year. We have very few medical expenses each year; the only items that would normally be submitted as an insurance claim are small outpatient visits (such as chiropractor). Well-child visits are covered 100% with the HDHP (deductible not applicable); we generally have 1-2 sick child visits per year.

Is this a good idea? If we were to somehow have significant medical expenses that caused us to reach the $7500 deductible after-all, we would be able to submit “already paid” bills.
- Andrew

Your question seems to be whether or not it makes sense to pay for things out of the HSA instead of submitting to insurance and getting closer to that $7,500 deductible.

If that’s the question, and you’re able to submit already-paid bills to your insurance to inch closer to the deductible anyway, it seems like a very good choice to use the HSA for such expenses.

Even if you’re not able to use already-paid bills, I’d still use the HSA, provided I had a healthy emergency fund in place that could cover the full $7,500 deductible if need be. The HSA simply makes it very easy to pay for healthcare expenses with pre-tax dollars.

I have a question concerning alternatives to cable TV. I know you have addressed aspects of this before but the one component I haven’t found a good answer for is sports. My wife and I have cable TV and internet bundle from Comcast. Right now we pay about $60/month but this is an introductory rate that will increase substantially in a couple of months. This is for the most basic digital cable package available plus the cheapest cable internet they offer. The shows we watch (Glee, Top Chef, 30 Rock) we can get online in some way, either Hulu or renting from iTunes. It would be cheaper to drop the cable and pay for the shows we watch regularly, but there are two issues. One, when we drop the cable the price of internet increases from $24.99 to $40 since we are no longer bundling. Two, we are both college football fans and not being able to watch our team in the fall is really not an option (more so for me than my wife, I admit, but she does watch with me). Do you have any suggestions for ways to watch sports without cable? What about canceling the cable after football season and restarting it every fall? Often the games are only available on ESPN so an antenna isn’t an option (plus we live in an apartment).
- Ryan

A few suggestions:

First, get a digital converter box and see what channels you can get over the air. You can get a surprising number of channels over the air, many of which air sports programming on the weekends.

Second, look for places where you can go to watch the games. Find a place with a nice television where your wife and you can go to watch particular games.

Third, just get cable installed during football season and have it removed after the season is over. Yes, you won’t get any great introductory rates, but you’ll save a ton by not having to pay for it over the full year.

Finally, keep an eye online and make sure that you can’t get good feeds of the games you want from various websites like ESPN3 or the website of your favorite athletic conference. I watch 99% of my baseball online, for example.

My wife and I are currently debt free, except for our mortgage, which we owe about $100,000.00 with a 950.00 monthly payment. I am looking to go back to school to finish getting my bachelor’s degree. I have several credit hours accumulated and it looks like I can finish in a year using an accelerated program.

I was wondering if you had any ideas on how to find scholarships for an adult student. We don’t qualify for any financial aid except for student loans which will still leave us with a 700.00 monthly payment while I am in school. Although we are dept free, between utilities, daycare and other normal living expenses we don’t have that to spare. I have been looking on line for scholarship and grant information and many of the sites ask for a credit card or just leads you from one site to another without giving any usable information.
- Jess

You’ve simply got to beat the pavement for such scholarships, just like any other student. The best first step you can personally take is to contact the financial aid office at your school – they can help quite a lot. Apply for everything you can and see what comes up.

You have an advantage in that you’re a non-traditional student, a group that’s often helped by specific scholarships. However, your income level and assets aren’t completely clear and they may keep you from getting some scholarships.

If scholarships were easy to get, everyone would go to school for free. It takes a lot of effort to get them, but they can be worth it.

I am naturally very conscious of how much money I am saving and spending. I have always brought my lunch to work, I have always repaired broken items before paying to have them fixed or replaced, I have always taken care to save more than I make, I have always (ok, usually) invested modestly and wisely — in short, I feel like I have pretty good habits when it comes to money. Sure, there’s room for improvement, but I feel like I’m on a good financial and personal path.

Any tips for thinking about an unexpected hit like this differently? Maybe I’m just over-analyzing it. But it’s driving me crazy!
- Jeff

Things like that happen sometimes. You have to treat them as water under the bridge and just deal with your situation as it is now rather than lamenting the past.

What can you do to ensure this never happens again? One good way to do that is to simply make sure all of your bills are paid before you travel anywhere.

Did you try calling them and explaining your situation and asking if the late fee can be removed? It can’t hurt.

You mentioned on Twitter the other day that your most listened-to song according to your iTunes stats was “Margaret vs. Pauline” by Neko Case. I was going to ask you what your other top ones were but I didn’t want to have you tweeting a pile of them so I thought I’d suggest that you list your top ten or so in your next reader mailbag.
- Jennie

Here are my top ten most played songs in iTunes, with links to performances/videos/tributes of those songs on YouTube so you can listen if you want. I listen to music most of the time when I’m writing as it helps me to focus.

Margaret vs. Pauline – Neko Case
No Rain – Blind Melon
Mansard Roof – Vampire Weekend
Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? – She & Him
Better Man – Pearl Jam
Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley
Wuthering Heights – Kate Bush
Fidelity – Regina Spektor
Wagon Wheel – Old Crow Medicine Show
Revelator – Gillian Welch

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.

Every once in a while, a book I read for personal enjoyment becomes a book reviewed on The Simple Dollar. This is one of those times.

I thoroughly enjoyed Atul Gawande’s first two books, Better and Complications. Both offered great insight into the difficult professional choices of a surgeon while also offering a good handful of useful insights to anyone who works in a challenging field.

I expected more of those types of insights from this, Gawande’s third book. Instead, it went beyond that, becoming instead a strong personal productivity and personal excellence book. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right focuses on the power of using checklists to ensure that you bring complicated projects to fruition as well as constantly remind yourself of the many things you need to do as part of your routine.

The Problem of Extreme Complexity
First, it should be mentioned that Gawande spends most of his time in this book – and in his other books – using his surgical experiences as a metaphor for elements in the lives of most people: technically challenging careers, overstuffed personal lives, and so on. Here, Gawande’s focus is on the fact that many of us have many complicated routines in our lives – in his case, very complex ones. Because of the complexity of our lives and of those routines, it’s incredibly easy for us to sometimes miss a step, with disastrous consequences.

I’ll use myself for an example. I have a morning routine with a lot of steps in it, from my own personal hygiene to processing my inboxes to taking care of my children. On a typical morning, it can be easy to overlook a step. Did I take my synthroid? Did I remember to put the right kind of training pants on my daughter? Did I make sure that their teeth were brushed? Did I get my notes from last night into my inbox? Did I put on deodorant *sniff*?

The Checklist
Gawande’s solution is simple: a checklist for all such complicated routines. Interestingly, Gawande mostly focuses on the negative perceptions that checklists sometimes have, mostly in that you’re “dumb” if you need one and that technically competent people shouldn’t need one. Gawande’s argument is that people generally find themselves in challenging positions no matter their personal skill level and that checklists help anyone who finds themselves in such a challenging position (and frankly, that’s most of us). They’re a cognitive net that defends us against failure, to paraphrase Gawande.

The End of the Master Builder
Checklists don’t help us with every type of complicated problem, however. You can’t checklist creativity, nor can you checklist problems that crop up along the way. However, virtually none of us sit around and do purely creative work. Our creative work is merely one element of a larger routine, one that is often comprised of a lot of steps. Take writing an article, for example. Yes, there is a big creative burst (the idea for an article) and a lot of smaller ones (words and phrases) along the way, but the process is actually pretty structured – core idea, research, structuring of sub-ideas, first draft, revision, second draft, and so on. Not only is it not all that arcane, but that structure is sharable in that others can see and follow that same routine.

The Idea
The entire purpose of a checklist is to reduce the number of uncertainties in a complex procedure. The more complex a procedure is, the more uncertainties it has because each element relies on a host of other elements being correct. Checklists serve as a way to make sure that the relied-upon elements are all in place. I particularly enjoyed one element of the chapter, which focused on the “rider” that the rock band Van Halen used when touring in the 1980s. A “rider” is more or less a checklist – it specifies the technical requirements that need to be in place for the band’s show (lighting, instruments, stage, etc.). One element their rider included was a requirement that a bowl of M&Ms be backstage in the dressing room – with all of the brown M&Ms removed. Why? When the group arrived, they could go backstage and look for the M&M bowl. If they found brown M&Ms in the bowl, they’d know that the checklist wasn’t being followed to the letter and they’d have to go through and check everything themselves because there was a lack of attention to detail. (Maybe sometimes over-the-top rock star behavior makes more sense than you think!)

The First Try
Here, Gawande outlines his first attempt at using checklists in his technical work, discovering that an overly-detailed checklist can result in uselessness. While developing a checklist for pre-surgical routines, Gawande kept adding details to the list until every base was covered. The only problem is that the checklist became simply too unwieldy to actually use and was discarded in less than a day. Why? The checklist was getting in the way of actually getting things done.

The Checklist Factory
What’s the solution to that problem? Gawande found the answer while visiting with members of the airline industry. Rather than having one or two mega-checklists, they had scores of smaller ones to handle specific situations. They kept them all in a well-organized book with tabs making them easy to find. When a particular situation came up, they had a short checklist in that book to tell them how to handle it, ensuring that key steps of key procedures weren’t forgotten.

The Test
What happened as Gawande attempted to apply this at work is that it moved a lot of the thinking for various specific routines up front. By having a usable checklist to apply to a certain task, the user’s brainspace was free in that moment to make sure that the little task was done correctly instead of having to store the “next steps” in their head. If this sounds like it ties in very well to Getting Things Done, you’re right.

The Hero in the Age of Checklists
What about the idea of the “hero” who swoops in and solves a problem, seemingly without effort? Today’s “hero” is smart enough to realize that success doesn’t always come from just repeating the same checklist over and over again. Instead, great success often comes from analyzing the checklist itself and occasionally revising the plan to meet new conditions. Review is well-rewarded in that it can result in more efficient and more fruitful checklists.

The Save
In the end, though, checklists succeed because they help you find big problems that you might have otherwise overlooked due to your own sense of familiarity with the situation. When we become intimately familiar with a routine, it’s very easy to overlook a certain step or two – and those steps can be critical ones in the process. I like to think of this in terms of preparing a meal. More than once, I’ve ruined a meal because I overlooked the usefulness of simply getting the ingredients out and ready beforehand. When something’s in the skillet and you’ve found that the vegetables you need to add aren’t prepped, you’re probably going to ruin that meal.

Is The Checklist Manifesto Worth Reading?
Gawande is an excellent writer, and all of his books – The Checklist Manifesto, Better, and Complications – are worthwhile reads that will challenge you to reflect on your own career and life.

The Checklist Manifesto stands out for the simple reason that the conclusions drawn in the book lead you to some actionable things in your life. There are many, many places where a checklist can be useful in your life, from your morning routine to the details of a complicated professional procedure to elements of Getting Things Done.

This book has already caused me to do some things differently in my own life, mostly in terms of making some checklists for a few routine things that I sometimes mess up. I don’t know of a higher compliment to pay a book than that.

Brian writes in:

I was at a local car dealership looking for a replacement for my truck. I only have about $8000 in savings so I knew I would have to take on some debt to buy. The dealer offered to sell me a new F150 for a good price and a 0% loan for 36 months for $589 a month car payments. This seems awesome and I am looking for any problems with it.

Over the last few months, I’ve received a few emails like Brian’s, where individuals were strongly enticed by 0% or other extreme low interest loans. Are they a good deal? Should they sign up for these loans before making a purchase?

The problem with such loans is that they don’t eliminate what I consider to be the chief problem with all debt. Yes, they have spectacular interest rates and, yes, they’re often sold as being “free money.”

However, all debt – including 0% debt – has a strong negative impact on your future cash flow. By signing up for this debt, Brian, you’re agreeing to pay $589 a month for the next thirty six months.

That means, for each of the next thirty six months, you’re going to have to come up with $589. It doesn’t matter whether money is tight that month. It doesn’t matter whether you have a job or not. None of that matters. Come up with the $589 per month or they’ll repossess your truck. Add on top of that the vehicle registration costs, the insurance costs, and the maintenance costs and you’re marking off at least $700 a month for this new vehicle each month.

That’s a pretty big responsibility to throw onto your future self. For the next three years, you’re making a commitment to $700 a month without knowing what the future may hold.

Does your future hold steady employment – or is a pink slip around the corner? Will your health be perfect in three years? In three years, will you find yourself in a situation where an F-150 doesn’t meet your needs?

Even if everything goes perfectly, there will still be months when $700 from your monthly budget will really hurt in the form of missed opportunities. Some will simply jump on board those opportunities anyway in the form of credit card debt, further mortgaging their future self.

If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that relying on your “future self” to do things you want right now is a quick route to failure. Our future selves are unreliable for the reasons I listed above: job loss, change of heart, illness, life changes, and so on.

Debt is always a challenging choice because it relies on that inherently unreliable “future self” to pay it off. The fewer commitments you put on your future self – and the more commitments you just take care of today – the easier you’ll find your life getting as time goes on. That means more freedom in the future, not less. That means a greater ability to go in whatever direction life leads you, not less.

I won’t say explicitly that a debt-free lifestyle is the best choice. There are times where debt is the preferred option or the only option. For example, if you’re living in a situation where the cost of renting housing is comparable to that of taking out a mortgage to purchase a home, the purchase may be the better choice.

In most situations, though, debt merely allows you to put big burdens on your future self in exchange for something you don’t need today. Brian, do you really need the shiny new 2011 F-150? Or would a used model work for now, putting less of a burden on your future self, while you save up the cash for the vehicle you really want down the road?