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

Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half is the follow-up to America’s Cheapest Family, a very solid book on frugality by Steve and Annette Economides from 2007 that I quite liked.

Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half seems to be a detailed expansion of the second chapter of their first book. The focus here is on groceries – mostly food shopping, but a little bit of overlap on buying other household products.

Is there really enough juice in that topic to fill up an entire book?

1. Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half (or More)
The book opens by making clear the fact that changing your grocery shopping habits isn’t a magic wand that will instantly reduce the costs. Instead, it’s a combination of techniques, most of which become both easier and more effective with practice and repeated use. In other words, saving money on groceries will seem like a ton of work for less savings than you expect at first, but as the tactics become more familiar and natural, they’ll take less time and effort and earn more savings. I’ve certainly found this to be true in my own life.

2. The Power of the Plan
A grocery list. A meal plan. A pantry inventory. These are all tools that make it a lot easier to maximize your grocery dollar, but they all required advance work and planning before you go anywhere near a grocery store. Successful grocery shopping – at least in terms of bang for the buck – relies a lot on doing advance work. Of course, this advance work also saves you a lot of time when you’re actually in the store.

3. Shopping to Win
Here, the authors list a big collection of specific grocery saving strategies, devoting a page or two of text to each one. They’re quite varied, which means that some will be useless to you and some will be home runs but the two groups will be different for each person. The one I like is the one about aged beef – beef is often better with some aging, provided that you prepare it well when it’s actually ready in your kitchen.

4. Couponing – One of Many Ways to Save
Some people swear by it. Others find it useless. My take? Couponing works to a small extent as a component of a lot of other strategies. My opinion is that people often refer to couponing when they’re referring to a big pile of interacting strategies, of which actual coupon use is just one part. The authors address the big complaint that many people use against coupons, which is that they encourage unhealthy eating habits. They make a very good point countering that – coupons don’t cause bad eating habits, people do. Just because a coupon exists for an unhealthy food doesn’t mean you have to use it.

5. Cooking That Will Save You Time, Mone, and Sanity
This chapter is another big list of specific saving ideas (devoting about a page to each one), this time focused on cooking. Buy in bulk. Cook once a month and freeze. Spice, spice, spice. Cook with your spouse. Start a “meal swap” club (something we’re trying to get started… and something I’ll discuss in a future post).

6. Stocking Up and Organizing – Store It, Find It, Use It
If you buy lots of stuff in bulk, how do you find it when you need it? A big key to all of this is keeping the stuff you have on hand organized so you know what you have and can find it when you need it. The best way to do this is to simply keep an ongoing pantry list, where you list all of the food items you have stored along with notes on where to find them. You can also use this list when making a meal plan or a grocery list so you know what you have on hand without digging in the cupboard. Microsoft Excel is a great tool for this.

7. Economizing Equipment – Powerful Money-Saving Tools
It’s good to have some basic tools on hand to make cooking easier. The Economides list a lot of different items here, most of which I agree with. Surprisingly, one of the best things we’ve ever purchased is our KitchenAid stand mixer, which we use for all kinds of things from making homemade bread to preparing mashed potatoes and cookie batter. I’m also a big believer in eventually getting very good, very durable kitchen equipment. A Teflon-coated pan hits the trash in a few years, but a cast iron pot is forever.

8. Family Dinnertime – Building a Stronger Family at the Dinner Table
It’s statistically proven: families that eat dinner together have lower incidence rates of teenage pregancy and juvenile delinquency. If you have children – or even if you’re married without children – strive to eat dinner together and, ideally, prepare it together. Meals can be a very social event that goes far beyond the direct nutrition you put into your body.

9. Feeding Your Kids for Less
What do you do when you have a family full of mouths to feed? Have lots of low-cost snacks (what fruits are on sale this week?) and involve your children in the whole process of meals, from planning to shopping to preparation to setting the table, so they gain an appreciation for the whole process. Our oldest kids are four and three and we’re already integrating them into this process.

10. Where and How to Eat Out for Less
The easiest solution for saving while eating out is to not eat out. However, that’s not the ultimate answer for many, so how do you do it? This chapter offers a lot of advice – don’t be afraid to use coupons, take home a doggy bag, go simple with the beverages (I recommend water), don’t get “upsold” to more expensive versions of what you ordered, and so on. The best solution really is to just not eat out, even at a very “cheap” place (where you’re getting really dodgy food quality).

11. Gardening – Grow It Yourself and Be Healthy
Gardening can also save a lot of money, not just in the produced vegetables, but in the extremely low cost entertainment it can provide for many hours during the summer. The trick is to grow a variety of vegetables and, when you have excess, to store them properly by freezing them and/or canning them. There’s nothing better in January than having many pounds of garden-fresh tomatoes canned or frozen, just ready for use.

Is Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half Worth Reading?
If you’ve never even thought about your grocery bill and your dining out bill as ways to really save money, this book will be a home run for you. Many of the techniques you can use to trim your grocery bill are quite easy and this is a spectacular collection of such tips.

On the other hand, if you’re an experienced frugal grocery shopper and food preparer, you’ll find a lot of tips that make you say “No kidding?!” with a few tips here or there that will be of use to you mixed throughout the book. If you’re willing to search for some treasure, this one will still be a worthwile read.

I found several interesting ideas in the book that we’re going to try, even if many of the tips felt like repetition of the things we already do. Does that make for a good book? I say yes, because it has ideas for beginners and old hands alike.

Last night, my oldest son and my daughter and I played an hour-long game of tag. By the end of it, we were all worn out. Both kids had collapsed on my lap and we were sitting there, giggling and cooling off from all of the running around. My daughter then gave me a big hug and just laid her head on my shoulder, as she was getting tired. Before long, I had to carry her up to bed, with my son following along retelling some of the great things we had done today.

It was a great evening, an evening that I was able to have because of the choices I’ve made in my life over the past few years. There was no career-related stress running through my life. There was no money-related stress running through it, either. Our children don’t hear their mother and I arguing about money or getting stressed out over it. They know that when they want to play with their mother or their father, we’re pretty much always able to play with them – there’s no “Daddy is too tired tonight” or “Mommy has to work late so we can afford the cell phone bill.”

A few years ago, I sat down and simply asked myself what I wanted from my life. I threw out the lip service I gave to a lot of things that I wanted to tell myself were important, but really weren’t. I also threw out the frivolous things, the stuff that really didn’t matter.

What was left for me was having a low-stress life, having lots of time to spend with my children and my wife, and having an opportunity to write every day.

Those three things became the centerpiece of my life. Because of that, I drove my rusty truck until it was literally falling apart. Because of that, I do things like make my own laundry detergent and clip coupons. I gave up expensive hobbies (like golf) and stopped worrying about acquiring expensive things (like that BMW I thought I always wanted) and I focused instead on paying off debt and creating a career foundation so that I could do what I wanted with my time.

For the last several years, little else has really mattered to me beyond those three things: a low-stress life, a good relationship with my children, and the opportunity to write every day.

Together, they’ve created a life I’m very happy with. I don’t have some of the other things I might have once really wanted, like a nicer house. I had to leave a job that in many ways I cared for very much – but there were elements of it that caused me deep personal stress and it kept me from my dreams of writing.

What things do you want more than anything else in your life? Be honest – don’t pay lip service to the things you think you ought to care about. Ask yourself what you really want out of life, particularly at the end of the day when you’re reflecting on the hours you’ve spent.

(Keep in mind, of course, that you also do have at least a few responsibilities that you’re not going to be able to avoid, but if you study them carefully, those responsibilities are probably less than you think.)

When those answers start to bubble to the surface, ask yourself why you are spending time and energy on anything else in your life. In the end, everything else is really just a distraction from the main things you want in life. Those other things distract your time, your money, your energy, your available stress, your focus.

Throw them out. Take charge of your wallet and your schedule. Pare back to the core things that really matter and build them as strongly as you can.

You’ll never look back. I certainly never have, even though I would have never imagined my life as it is now even five short years ago.

Today is the four year anniversary of The Simple Dollar. Rather than just lauding myself by posting a big pile of my favorite articles from the past, I decided to just cut straight to the heart of the matter and offer up specific useful tactics that have helped me to save money over the past four years.

What follows are the ten specific things that have had the biggest positive impact on our day-to-day finances over the past four years (in no particular order).

PaperBackSwap
I have, quite literally, received hundreds of nearly free books in the mail thanks to this service. Considering that I’m an avid book reader, devouring three books a week when I’m really rolling, that’s a tremendous savings compared to my earlier habit of buying piles of books at Borders and from Amazon.

PaperBackSwap is really simple. You sign up, list ten books you own that you don’t want, and pledge to send them out to any member that requests them. This earns you two “credits” on the site. For a credit, you can request that any book on the site be sent to you (and there are millions of them). You can earn more credits by fulfilling the requests of others who ask you to mail them a book that you’ve listed – it costs about $2 to send one via Media Mail. That’s it – you’re basically getting access to an enormous used book library for $2.

The library
I love my local library. It’s that simple.

Most people see the word “library” and think “books.” Books merely scratch the surface of the free stuff available there: magazines, audiobooks, CDs, DVDs, children’s programs, adult discussion groups, community messageboards, meeting rooms … the list goes on and on. All of this stuff is just sitting there waiting for you to use it.

Learning to cook well at home
Once upon a time, my wife and I ate out several times a week. Why? In our minds, it gave us an opportunity to talk while someone was making a meal for us.

After my financial meltdown, we started making more and more food at home. At first, it was a money saving tactic, but at some point, we realized that we were making some really good meals at home. Plus, we weren’t really missing out on the conversation, since we were often making the meals together and talking while we were doing it.

Keeping a pocket notebook
How can this be a big money saver? Easy. I use it to jot down prices on items for comparison shopping. I use it to note sales. I use it to note gift ideas that people mention. I use it for shopping lists.

I also use such a notebook to earn more money, too. I use it to record ideas. I use it to make very rough outlines of posts. I use it to make note of important things I need to get done in my own life.

I use it for so many things that have a positive effect on my finances (and my broader life) that I could scarcely live without it.

Netflix
On Tuesday, we’re losing our cable box. The biggest reason, honestly, is Netflix.

Why? For $9 a month (way cheaper than our cable bill), we get a giant mountain of commercial-free entertainment that we can watch on our television. We choose what we want, wait three seconds, and it’s showing. Plus, we get new movie releases in the mail.

It’s drastically cheaper than the $60 a month or so that our cable bill is and we don’t feel like we’re missing out on much, especially in conjunction with over-the-air signals.

Used video game trading
My late-night-when-everyone-else-is-asleep hobby is usually video games. Once upon a time, I had accumulated a massive video game collection. What I’d usually do is buy (or be gifted) lots of new games over the course of a console generation, then sell all of it off to buy a console and a few games for the next generation.

What I’ve started doing instead is simply trading my already-defeated games for new titles that I haven’t played. This has pretty much killed my new game purchasing habits. Now, when I defeat a game or two, I go down to the local used game shop, trade them for something I’ve not played before, head home, and enjoy something new.

Craigslist and thrift stores
We bought our wonderful 2004 Honda Pilot off of Craigslist, paying cash and getting a tremendous deal. That alone saved us a big fist full of money.

Beyond that, though, I’ve picked up quite a few items off of Craigslist, including a recent acquisition of a big pile of barely-used high quality kitchen implements.

Beyond that, I go thrifting fairly regularly and am constantly finding things like nearly-new great board games for $0.50, nearly new shirts for a buck, and countless other things like that.

Forcing myself to be more social
When I force myself to be more social, I find my social calendar filling up. My wife and I have things to do pretty much every evening. Here’s the interesting thing, though – most of those evenings are free activities, and sometimes they’re free meals, too.

Being really social goes against my basic nature. I like being a quiet homebody. However, I’ve found that evenings at home often add up to more spending. I’ll rent a movie. I’ll finish reading a book and desire to pick up a new one. However, if I have an exchange of dinners with a friend, I’ve spent two evenings without spending a dime – I make one larger meal one night, but then get a free meal another night, and the entertainment is usually free or close to it.

Not only that, this expanding social network also gives me lots of opportunity to save money in other ways. I hear about good deals that are out there. I have more sources of advice and suggestions when I’m making a purchase, which can often lead to big savings. I also have people to rely on during my moments of need.

Board games
Five years ago, a social evening would have involved a night out on the town – eating out, seeing a movie, maybe getting some drinks. That can get expensive if you do it regularly.

Instead, my wife and I often just play board games, either with each other or with a small handful of other regular friends. We meet at someone’s house, often have dinner together, and just play whatever games we have on hand. If a game isn’t getting play, I find someone online to swap it with, giving us something new to try.

Board games have become a part of many of our social events, offering us something to do while actually conversing with each other (instead of just ignoring each other while watching a movie or attending a concert). Even better, they also offer my wife and I something to do together in the evenings while we talk about our day or the ongoing issues in our lives, cementing our own relationship.

Volunteerism
I volunteer as a secretary for one community group, as financial chairman for another group, and as a basketball and soccer coach. I’ve volunteered for political committees, charities, and civic groups.

What do these things have in common? For one, they’re all fulfilling ways to spend time without any cost – and they better the community. For another, they’re a great opportunity to meet like-minded people.

The time I spend volunteering not only helps me to grow as a person, it keeps money in my wallet instead of finding ways to spend it.

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 (October 24 – October 30, 2009)
The Ten Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Money and Life Since Starting The Simple Dollar This article really sums up the valuable things I’ve learned over the past several years.

Ethical Frugality Week: Regifting I don’t think regifting is necessarily a bad thing. If you can put an item into the hands of someone who will genuinely enjoy it more than you, I’m fine with it.

Stress and Overspending When I’m stressed, I simply spend too much. There’s a deep connection between the comfort level in your psyche and your ability to make good choices in the moment.

14 Ways a Notebook in Your Pocket Can Save You Money Quite seriously, my life would be far less productive without a note-taking device of some kind in my pocket.

Why Windfalls Make Many People Unhappy We’ve all heard stories about the lottery winner who discovered that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Two Years Ago (October 24 – October 30, 2008)
Brand Preferences and the Two Year Old Child What can make a very young child prefer some brands over other brands? I was mystified by this when my first child was two, so I dug into the question.

Some Follow-Up Thoughts on Fruity Cheerios and Branding Our Kids My investigation into marketing to very young children continued a few days later. I was really stunned by this.

Should an Entrepreneurial High Schooler Go to College? My answer was yes, but part of that is fueled by a sense that college is often wasted on people straight out of high school.

Eleven Tactics for a Cheaper Christmas It’s so easy to overspend during the holiday season. Here are seven ways my family commonly reduces holiday spending.

Exploring the Connection Between Time and Money I think that money is simply a representation of time spent, and the more money you get for your time, the more effective that time was.

Three Years Ago (October 24 – October 30, 2007)
Spam Emails About Individual Stocks: What’s The Scam? The scam is “pump and dump” – they want you to escalate the price so they can sell the stock at a profit.

A Deeper Look At Dave Ramsey’s Seven Baby Steps To Financial Freedom – And How They Apply To Us I have a strong respect for Dave Ramsey’s straightforward debt management tactics (even if I’m not a big fan of the product upselling).

Preserving The Things That Money Can’t Buy Relationships are the big one here. A relationship with a loved one or a close friend can’t be represented in dollars.

The Eternal Question: Am I Doing The Right Thing? I find myself pondering this question quite a lot, actually. I’m never quite sure.

The Ten Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Money and Life In The Last Year This summarizes many of my revelations during the first year of The Simple Dollar’s existence.

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!

My wife, Sarah, loves to make homemade functional items, particularly ones that give her hands busywork when she’s doing something like watching a movie or rocking a baby. Thus, it’s not surprising that crocheting is a natural match for her.

This year, she elected to make a crocheted hat and scarf set for one particular relative (and is considering making a second set). Below, you can see our daughter modeling the output of this work, which took Sarah about eight hours to complete.

Obviously, you don’t need too much in terms of material to crochet – just a needle and a big pile of yarn. According to Sarah, it’s not too difficult to learn how to do it, either; you just need to know five or six simple techniques, then you just repeat them over and over again.

She recommends Lion Brand Yarn’s crocheting tutorial website for those who are interested in learning how to get started.

Another element that’s necessary when crocheting is to have a pattern to work from. As you can see in the picture above, Sarah made the hat based on a free pattern printed from a website (here’s the exact pattern she used).

One particularly great source for crochet patterns is Crochet Pattern Central, which offers a small mountain of patterns. Of particular note in relation to this post is the hat pattern list and the scarf pattern list.

Sarah did not use a scarf pattern and instead did it solely from memory, as she’s made scarves in the past for gifts (like the one I often wear in the winter).

The finished pair will make a nice gift for someone this Christmas.

Sarah is considering making at least one more hat-and-scarf set for the Christmas season. She estimates that each item took about four hours of nonstop work, but it’s work that can easily be done while watching a movie and can be set aside at almost any point so you can engage in other activities.

This is a gift that turns something very inexpensive and ordinary (yarn) into something beautiful (crocheted garments), with just a little time and care added by the gift giver.

This is the eighth entry in a twenty part series discussing the wonderful time and priority management book Making It All Work by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings through December 10.

For me, the single most important part of keeping my life on track and headed in the direction I want is the time I spend reviewing what I’ve done, what I need to do, and whether I still want to reach that destination. It takes time – time that’s seemingly not productive – but it adds so much value to everything else I choose to do that without it, I would simply feel aimless and lost.

Because of this, I regularly allude to the power of review, as I did yesterday when discussing procrastination. I do small reviews at least twice a day and at least one big review a week, where I look at every goal and aim I have in my life and ask myself whether this is really of value to me and, if it is, what I can be doing right now to move forward with it.

What do I mean by “review”? It parallels quite closely with what David Allen talks about in this portion of Making It All Work.

Allen argues that there are dual functions to reflection and review, on page 163:

Reviewing your system serves two distinct but equally critical purposes: (a) to update its contents and (b) to provide trusted perspective.

Let’s look at these two roles that a review can provide.

Updating
On page 163, Allen offers further insight into the value of updating:

Invariably, the world comes at us faster than we can keep up with its details. By the very nature of work, when you are doing one task, you’re not thinking about others – nor should you. You may be capturing along the way, but you won’t be clarifying and organizing everything as it happens.

During a given day, tons of little things blip across my mind and my computer screen and the phone and the mail and from the lips of my wife that I need to take care of. Most of this stuff gets jotted down quickly so I can return to the task at hand, and most of those jottings get dealt with in some way later in the day. I either take care of the task or add it to my to-do list.

The problem is that, frankly, some of that jotted-down stuff is junk – and it’s rarely completely obvious whether it’s junk or not junk. Reviewing those things a time or two goes a long way towards making that distinction, rather than just adding more junk to your to-do list.

An example: I got a letter from my bank informing me of their refinancing offers. I jot it down and add it to my to-do list, since refinancing to a much lower rate would be very valuable to us. This is one of those “important but not urgent” things that’s easy to leap over.

Without review, that kind of item would easily be left undone on my to-do list and probably discarded and forgotten. A quick review of my to-do list, though, reveals several little things that are essentially wastes of time. There’s no real importance to reshelving all of these books, since they’re mostly just going out via PaperBackSwap anyway, so I toss them in the PBS box. I don’t need to make a trip to Ames just for some new photo paper, so I just add that to-do to the grocery list. It’s not vital that I fertilize my lawn, especially since it’s late in the year and dry. Suddenly, my to-do list looks barren and I have room for that “important but not urgent” thing.

This is a simplification, of course, but that’s the kind of thought process that happens when I stop for a moment and review what needs to be done. I see through the “urgent but not important” stuff and toss it, leaving me time for the “important but not urgent” things that really matter in my life.

Similarly, as the activities in your life change, the priorities that you put on various things changes as well. On page 164, Allen expands on that:

Because projects are likely to change their meaning over time, your system also needs to reflect that fact. What was an active project last week may have turned into a “someday” one, given all the new demands that have arisen since then.

The things left undone on my to-do list are often just as important as the things that I’ve done, because they indicate how the priorities in my life are shifting over time.

For example, if I’m consistently not keeping up with some activity I’ve adopted in life, I know it’s time to sit down and ask myself whether it’s something I really value or not. If it’s not – and if I’ve adopted a pattern of avoiding it and mostly just thinking about it, it’s not something I value – then I make the hard decision to just move on as soon as I can, without regrets.

Otherwise, it hangs on like a cobweb in my mind and my to-do lists, slowing down my thoughts and popping up as something I ought to be doing. For a long time, my life was chock full of those things – things I thought I should be doing and were taking up space in my thoughts and often physically in my home. Systematically reviewing all of it and getting rid of the cobwebs makes it incredibly easier to do the things that actually are important with gusto, focus, and passion.

Getting Perspective
All of the above material comes from applying a bit of perspective to all of the things going on in your life. Just as important is reversing that paradigm to look at the big picture things in your life and seek out how they lead to the day-to-day things you’re doing.

Once a week, I sit down and go through every major goal and project I have in my life and simply ask myself if this is still important to me and, if it is, what am I going to do in the next week to move forward on it. This takes about two hours, believe it or not – I usually do it when the children are napping on Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

This seems like a lot of work, and I like how it’s addressed on page 167:

“Write everything down? Decide the actions you need to take on everything? Keep all that on… how many lists? Keep an index of all my projects? And … what? Take two hours every week to review all of that and get all these lists complete? You’ve got to be kidding! I’m too busy.”

That’s exactly how I felt about all of this when I first started. “I have too much to do to waste my time with this,” I thought. What I found, though, is that I was constantly making poor choices in my life that didn’t reflect on what I really valued. I would choose work projects over my kids. I’d burn time on pointless conference calls instead of getting useful projects done. I’d deal with piles of paperwork that really didn’t need to be done while big projects sat untouched. I’d run around doing household busywork while my children were out in the yard wishing Dad was there. I’d devote hours and hours to things I didn’t really want to do because I was convinced I was supposed to be doing them.

Having a weekly review and a consistent system ended all of that. I threw out mountains of busy work – it wasn’t really important. I started spending a lot more time with my kids and a lot less time on household projects or other things. I let go of some unrealistic projects and started focusing on hitting home runs on projects more in line with my life goals (like The Simple Dollar, for example).

The simple process of having a list of all of my goals and dreams in life and all of my ongoing projects and a to-do list and then sitting down once a week to go through all of them and ask myself whether they’re really important and how I’m moving forward on the important ones is the single most valuable part of my week. It keeps me from wasting my time on the less important things and redirects me to spend my time on the more important things.

That’s well worth two hours on a Saturday afternoon, if you ask me.

I just finished reading a wonderful article on procrastination by James Surowiecki in the October 11 issue of The New Yorker. The money quote:

[I]t might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination: the kind that is genuinely akratic and the kind that’s telling you that what you’re supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point. The procrastinator’s challenge, and perhaps the philosopher’s, too, is to figure out which is which.

“Akratic” is a term defined earlier in the article, a word taken from the works of early Greek philosophers that refers to doing something against one’s better judgment.

In essence, Surowiecki is making the statement that we procrastinate in two ways: we either do something truly against our better judgment or we are simply acting on our deep impulse that we’re merely avoiding something that’s a waste of time. Either we’re procrastinating something worthwhile (a mistake) or something wasteful (a good move).

How do you distinguish between the two, though? How do you know, when you realize that you’ve been procrastinating, whether you’re sensibly discarding something useless or you’re really undermining your larger goals in life?

This is something I often find challenging in my own life. Yes, sometimes in the evenings, I don’t want to do the things on my to-do list. I want to play a game with my wife or make faces at my six month old son or just watch a movie. How do I know if my procrastination is really undermining things or if it’s just my subconscious making a good choice between the things I need to do?

Here’s how.

I do regular reviews of my to-do list. As I mentioned before, I keep an ongoing to-do list that just includes all of the stuff I need to get done in the next several days. As the days go by, I constantly add stuff to it (usually at the top) and make an effort to reduce the number of things on that list.

The problem is that I often end up with a bunch of junk on the list, urgent tasks that aren’t really important at all. So, I’ll wind up skipping many of the things at the top of the list and dig through the ones lower down.

This ends up completely confusing my own sense of what things are actually important and, without some work, renders my list of things to do completely useless. I have no sense of whether there really are important things to be done or whether my to-do list is a pile of junk.

The solution? Review the list. Kick off the unimportant stuff, even when you’re making difficult calls. I find more and more that if I have any doubt that something is important, I should just kick it off.

This way, when I have a window of opportunity to procrastinate, I can just look at my real to-do list. Is there something that needs done? If not, then I can do what I want to do.

I have a good grip on my personal and professional responsibilities and how they rate. How do I decide if something on my to-do list is actually important? I usually think of it in terms of what I actually want to accomplish in life – my bigger goals.

Here’s an example: we are not neurotic housecleaners. We don’t have a big mess all over the place, but we also don’t spend hours cleaning out the nooks and crannies of our garage. It would be very easy for us to constantly add cleaning tasks to our to-do list, but most of the time, we don’t. We might take care of one deep cleaning task a week, but aside from that, we have other things that are more important to us.

Another example comes from my college days. I used to keep a to-do list of all of my college assignments and then find that I never had time to complete them all. I’d have a list loaded with reading assignments that I hadn’t completed, so I’d skip by them to find the actual items that were due. A better method would have been to actually ask myself if this reading was important at all – for some classes, yes; for others, no – and then just never add the unimportant ones to the list.

It’s all about understanding what’s important and not clogging yourself up with the unimportant. For me, it’s that confusion that leads to a sense of being overwhelmed and then procrastinating on things that are actually important in my life. That kind of procrastination is costly, sometimes dangerous, and definitely worth avoiding.

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. Sharing too much information online
2. How do ARMs work?
3. World Series prediction
4. First time apartment hunting
5. Saving for a wedding
6. Workbook for missions/goals
7. In-person insurance agent?
8. Moving up at difficult workplace
9. Trying board games
10. Roth IRA as emergency fund

In our neighborhood, trick-or-treat night is a pretty significant event. We receive approximately 300 trick-or-treaters to our door each year, which means that we have almost a nonstop stream for about two and a half hours. Add onto that the presence of friends of our own children who tend to stick around for a bit and you have a busy evening.

Our technique for handing out treats is to hit a warehouse store beforehand, buying them in bulk. Fruit Roll-Ups tend to be a pretty big hit, actually, and they’re better than a chunk o’ chocolate.

Q1: Sharing too much information online
(How) would you tell an acquaintance or distant relative that they (or even worse yet, their children) are giving away too much information about themselves openly in the Internet (and especially in Facebook)?

I’ve got a tendency of sounding like Miss Know-it-all and smacking the facts on peoples faces, and being afraid of looking like a stalker or scaremonger I’ve not yet said anything to friends-of-a-friend in Facebook about how they are compromising their own or their immediate family’s privacy. I’ve not asked why do they allow their children to be on Facebook (sometimes the kids are under 13, which is under TOS of FB!) nor why their profiles are so unprotected. I’ve considered different ways of asking, but every time I end up thinking I sound like outside meddler that noses other people’s business, while I like to think of myself only meaning good. Should I continue my silence and if not, what would seem to you as the best way of conveying my genuine concern?
- Mia

I agree with you that privacy is a real concern with sites like Facebook. There is quite clearly a greatly exaggerated sense of privacy on the site, causing people to say and post things that are not exactly the types of things that they want future employers or polite acquaintances to know about them.

The best approach, I think, is to simply show them some of the tools and techniques people use to see other people’s “private” information. Like this one, for example. Your information on Facebook is only as secure as the most gullible of your friends, in other words.

Yes, such approaches have dodgy ethics, but isn’t it the people with dodgy ethics that we don’t want seeing our private information?

Q2: How do ARMs work?
How do ARMs work? The reason I ask is that they seem to have very low interest rates, for a limited time, i.e., 5 or 7 years. If you were planning on paying off your house in 5 or 7 years, and paid extra each month (or sat the extra aside for a lump sum payment before the balloon)…would that work? On ING’s website I couldn’t figure out what penalty (if any) there is for doing this. Is the APR calculated differently than a fixed mortgage?
- Melissa

An ARM is an adjustable rate mortgage. As you state, such mortgages offer great rates for the first few years of the mortgage, then the rate adjusts upwards according to the specific guidelines set forth in the mortgage agreement.

For example, an 5/1 ARM might offer a 1.99% interest rate for the first five years, then adjust upwards annually by 1% a year until it reaches a specified cap, such as the prime lending rate plus 4% (currently, that rate is 3.25%, so that would put a cap at 7.25% right now). So, assuming the prime lending rate doesn’t change, you’d pay 1.99% the first five years, 2.99% the sixth year, 3.99% the seventh year, and so on.

The reason people take out mortgages like this is that they believe they will sell the home before the rate begins to adjust.

As for early payment, it entirely depends on the specific mortgage as well as the state you’re in. Some states and companies allow penalty-free prepayment; others have other rules for early payment. Get this specified before you sign anything.

I generally think ARMs are very risky and not worth taking out. You might have the best intentions of paying off the ARM early, but you’re banking on your future self to pull off a major financial accomplishment. If you get sick, you’re in deep trouble.

Q3: World Series prediction
I know you’re a fantasy baseball player. What’s your pick for the World Series?
- Kevin

Rangers in 7.

If you had asked me without having watched any of the American League Championship Series, I would have picked the Giants. However, the Rangers spent that series dismantling the Yankees in stunning fashion. I just don’t think they will be denied.

I wouldn’t be biased by the fact that I have family in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and I’ve been to the Rangers’ ballpark last year, of course.

Q4: First time apartment hunting
A new job prospect could possibly have me moving out of my family’s house for the first time. I’ll almost certainly be getting an apartment, preferably one I can live in alone.

If it’s relevant in any way, I live in Alabama.
- Pete

Listing such advice here would be pretty redundant, so I went around the internet and looked for good checklists of such advice. This is the best one I’ve found.

My experience has been that the quality of the landlord is the most important factor in apartment rental. A good landlord will be there when you need them and help you with resolving the inevitable problems that will crop up. A bad landlord? If something bad happens, you’re pretty much on your own. That makes a huge difference in my book.

I would suggest, if at all possible, asking around your more extended social network for suggestions for landlords and people to avoid. The best advice you’re going to get is from people in your area who are actually renting.

Q5: Saving for a wedding
I have a son that is nearly two, and I have been putting $50/month in a 529 account since he was born. I would like to do something similar for my daughter (who is arriving in the next week or so!). However, in the case that she may not want to pursue college – taking the family route and becoming a stay-at-home mom instead (as my wife and mother have done), I would like to have the money that I saved for her to be available for something else, particularly a wedding. Is there a savings vehicle that is similar to the 529 that would serve as a multi-purpose investing option? Ideally, it would be age-based (similar to the 529, with risk going down as she gets older) and yield dividends similar to the 529. Obviously, I would be missing out on the tax benefits, but that would be the price to pay for flexibility. Please understand that I am not trying to make these big decisions (college, marriage, etc.) for my daughter, I just want to plan ahead and put her in the best place no matter what she chooses to do. Any advice would be much appreciated!
- Drew

It sounds like you’re just looking for a simple brokerage account where you can invest and withdraw money as you please and owe taxes only on the dividends earned and the amount gained when you sell.

I use Vanguard for this purpose. Right now, I’m using it to save for our next home, as we would eventually like to pay cash for a piece of land in the country and eventually build on it. Since this is a long way off and it’s not relying on having a certain balance at any certain point, the money is heavily invested in stocks.

Given you want such flexibility with the money, this is probably where I would go with it. Almost every other option has some sort of drawback that takes away from what you’re trying to do.

Q6: Workbook for missions/goals
Throughout school and in my professional development, I’ve been required to write a personal mission statement, vision statement, set goals, etc. many times. I don’t feel like I got a lot out of these activities because of the place I was at in my life. Now I’m really ready to work on this and set some personal and professional goals for myself. Can you recommend a workbook (in print or ebook) that someone like me could use as a guide? I’ve read a lot about personal development lately, but I’m looking for something very interactive and activity-driven.
- Alex

I agree – activities like this are useless if you’re not open to them. I really don’t understand why such activities are pushed on people when the vast majority of them are going to get nothing out of such activities.

That being said, David Kinard has a great free workbook for coming up with your personal mission statement and developing goals for yourself.

I think once you get the ball rolling on a process like this, it’s much easier to lead yourself than to follow a workbook. That workbook, though, should provide all the start that you need.

Q7: In-person insurance agent?
Do I really need an actual person with a name and a face as my insurance (car & home) agent? I’ve been very happy with GEICO for 15+ years, though I have never had any major claims. Maybe it is because I’m an introvert, but I rather enjoy the convenience of calling at 2am to talk to a faceless voice or doing everything online. I’m under the assumption that a real face to face meeting in someone’s office is where I will get swindled into coverage I don’t need. I recently started meeting with a financial planner and she hooked me up with an independent agent for car & home. Over the phone, the agent gabbed on and on about a personal relationship. I wanted to gag over all that cheesy “relationship” talk. Are claims with the big faceless national companies really all that horrid?
- Lisa

I think it’s just a different approach for different people. Some people value that kind of personal relationship with their agent – others can easily do without it.

I’m basically in the “without” camp like you are. I actually prefer to just call a national number and get quickly through any business with the agent on the other end. I don’t want to spend time being “buddies” with a person I view largely as being a mix of salesperson and service person.

Having said that, I do understand why some people want someone that they feel comfortable calling with their own situation, someone that they have an established relationship with.

I think it has more to do with the customer than anything else. Some customers just want different things.

Q8: Moving up at difficult workplace
My husband hates his job, and I really just don’t know how to help him. We moved here to LA and he got an entry level job at a entertainment company in 2007, a typical way to break into the industry for an aspiring writer or producer. The problem is that the firm he works for is run by a bunch of old has-beens on the verge of retirement who sit back and count their money and don’t care about the people under them. Now, three years in, he really hates his job, and the people he works for, and I’m scared he’s either going to quit, or get so pissed off that he’ll say something to get him fired (and this town is NOT about burning bridges…). My salary combined with his is enough for us to live well enough, but we’re just finally starting to climb out of debt and build an emergency fund. We don’t have enough for one of us to be jobless, but I feel so much compassion for his frustration. Still, the job market is still tough, and I’m running out of ways to encourage him to stick in there. I want to help him but I really just don’t know how. I’m really sick of his complaining as well as the fact that his talent as a writer is being squandered by spending his days making dry cleaning deliveries. Do you have any advice for me/him/us?
- Michelle

I know exactly where he’s at because I was in more or less the same place once upon a time.

He has to make two changes in his mindset. First, the day job is just a day job. It’s a way to make cash, nothing else. Pick up your deliveries, drop them off, and spend your brain cells thinking about the writing, not about the grunt work. Yes, sometimes you’ll have to think, but when you’re driving around dropping off clothes, think instead about your writing.

Hand in hand with that is the fact that he’s going to have to spend his spare time writing and sharing that writing. He has to write, of course, because without actually doing it, one can’t be a writer and one can’t have content to sell. Once you have the content, you have to sell it in some way – a blog, selling short stories, and so on. He has to get it out there in front of people.

Spending your time being angry about your situation only ensures that you’re going to be in that same situation tomorrow. Channel that passion into something else.

Q9: Trying board games
You’ve mentioned many times that one of your favorite social events is an evening playing board games with a circle of your friends. I’m interested in giving this a try with my friends but I don’t have any idea what games are good or bad or whether any of them would be enjoyed by my friends. Any ideas?
- Kellie

My suggestion is to just visit any game shops in your area and ask if they have demos or “demo days” to help you find a game that might fit what you’re looking for.

Many game shops have a selection of opened copies of their most popular games and will often have times where they will happily demonstrate those games to customers, often playing the games with interested customers. One local shop in my area will pretty much try out any game with you at any time, provided they have a store copy of it.

Such demos will make it clear pretty quickly which games will click with your group. I would suggest starting on the simpler end of the spectrum – if they try to teach you something like Arkham Horror, you’ll probably be in way over your head.

Q10: Roth IRA as emergency fund?
Would it be prudent to put household emergency reserves in a Roth IRA?

Have you heard of this strategy and what’s your opinion?
- Doug

It can work in that regard if that’s how you want it. The only problem with that is that the Roth is a great vehicle for retirement and this will eat up your eligibility.

Each year, you’re only allowed to invest $5,000 in a Roth IRA. If you withdraw money, you don’t get to put that money back into the account later. You get $5,000 a year, period, regardless of whether you take out money. That means that if you’re viewing this as family savings and intend to withdraw from it later, you won’t have that money around for retirement. It’s gone.

If you have no interest in actually using a Roth for retirement, this is certainly another way to use it.

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. Please keep your questions short, as long questions are very difficult to break down and answer in a reasonable format.