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

This is one of those books I found digging through the personal finance section at the library. The subtitle, A Handbook for the Young Investor, intrigued me.

How would this book particularly tackle the issues of the young investor? Would it take the almost-too-simplistic approach of the still worthwhile How to Invest $50-$5,000? Or would it take the opposite approach by almost overwhelming the reader with good information, like The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing?

The author, James Lowell, seems to ride down an area in the middle with this book. It makes a few assumptions of the reader (that they want to know what things are, not just where to stick their money), but it also sticks to the strong basics of investing advice.

A Primer on Your Future Well-Being
Investing from Scratch opens with what I consider to be a big reality check. Lowell is pretty clear to readers that if you’re young, you should not count on Social Security as part of your retirement planning and that you have to start doing it yourself. Furthermore, if you start doing it now, it’ll be far easier on you than if you put off doing it until later.

Lowell couples this with a number of short but powerful pieces. One is an essay setting goals for yourself, not only in the long term, but in the short term as well. Another focuses on the value of having your own filing system, as well as how to get started on doing that.

Selecting the Best Markets Is Essential to Your Overall Investment Success
At first, I expected this section of the book to focus heavily on speculative investing, but that’s not what was covered at all. Instead, the chapter focused on selecting a good bank and a lengthy discussion of the idea of risk (including what I consider to be the biggest investment risk of all: you).

This is counterbalanced by explaining what exactly a market is no matter what the investment type is. Simply put, you can’t sell something without someone wanting to buy it at that price, and you can’t buy it at your price unless someone is willing to sell it at that price.

Know the Basics Before You Invest
Here, Lowell focuses on actually explaining what various types of investments are rather than just saying “invest in X” or “invest in Y.” He covers what a stock really is, and similarly covers what exactly a treasury note is and what a bond is.

What value does that have? All of this material ties into the overall theme of risk and reward. Almost always, you have to take on more risk to have the potential for more reward over the long term. Each investment type is placed against that context, with low-risk and low-reward investments (like a savings account) compared to high-risk and high-reward investments (like international stocks).

Smart Investing Moves You Can Make
How exactly do you invest? Lowell spends the next section explaining what exactly a broker is – someone who helps buyers find sellers and vice-versa, for a fee, of course – and how exactly you can maximize the value you get from a broker. He also talks about other methods for learning more about investing, such as investment clubs.

Lowell also offers up a few specific investment strategies, such as dollar cost averaging. His tactic is usually to write just enough so that you get the basic idea, but you’re encouraged to look elsewhere to find deep details on specific tactics.

Your Future Is in Your Hands
The remainder of the book focuses on the future, mostly on retirement, but a bit on family investing, too. Lowell spends quite a lot of time comparing and contrasting various retirement accounts without directly concluding what the “best path” is, although he seems to acknowledge the general plan that many personal finance books and websites suggest: put money in your 401(k) up to the match, then max out your Roth IRA.

Is Investing from Scratch Worth Reading?
As with many personal finance books, it offers the perfect advice to a pretty narrow audience. I would describe the perfect reader of this book as being someone who is less than fifteen years out of college and is actually aware enough of the need to spend less than they earn that they’re actually practicing it in their life. They should also be in a stable enough financial situation that they actually have the financial capacity to invest in a meaningful way beyond 401(k) contributions.

If that sounds like you, then you’ll find a great deal of value in Investing from Scratch. If that doesn’t sound like you, much of this book will miss the mark.

For example, if you’re in the right age range but are having difficulty getting your spending under control, a great book to read instead of this one would be You’re So Money by Farnoosh Torabi. Or, if you’re particularly focused on building a career above all else, Automatic Wealth for Grads by Michael Masterson might be a better choice. There are lots of options – go for this book only if you match that description above.

It’s Saturday evening. The kids are in bed. Sarah and Trent want to stay up late watching a movie. What’s the least expensive option?

Redbox If we’re already thinking about this earlier in the day, there are several Redbox machines within ten miles of us that we could visit as part of our shopping trip. Renting a film there lets us choose what we want that day and the cost is only $1 per night. However, we also have to be sure we’re going to return it the next day or else we’re going to be spending $2 … or $3 or more on that rental. Good selection and potential low cost … if you can return it easily.

The local video store It has atrocious selection (the only new release they had in there the last time I visited was Marmaduke), but the price is fantastic – $1 for three days of rental. Plus, I can walk over there and return it whenever I like. Cheapest rental option overall, but the selection is abysmal

Online rentals In terms of giving us the most convenience combined with the best selection, this is the best option. We have several ways of renting a movie online, starting the download, and watching it starting in about fifteen minutes – Amazon Video on Demand, iTunes, and the Playstation Store all allow this. Unfortunately, most of the time, you’re going to be paying at least $2 for that movie, and often more for newer releases. The most expensive per hour of movie watching, but the most convenient.

Netflix It costs $9 a month, but you always have a disc of some sort sitting there that’s a movie that you at one time wanted to watch. On top of that, there’s streaming – but the selection on streaming is very random and loaded mostly with older releases and independent films and documentaries. The best option if you watch more than one or two films a month.

Watching a DVD we already have We have a shelf of DVDs – why not just watch one of those? It’s free, but you’re almost always just rewatching something you’ve already seen.

Given those options, here’s how things flush out for us.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, that alone takes care of the vast majority of your rental needs. We subscribe to Netflix because we watch a movie about once a week and watch some non-commercially interrupted TV shows on streaming, especially during the winter (like Doctor Who, for example). That takes care of almost all of our needs for about $9 a month, which brings our cost per hour of entertainment well under $1.

Without Netflix, Redbox is probably the best option – if it’s convenient. In other words, if you can rent the movie, watch it that night, and return it the next day, you’re paying about $0.50 per hour of entertainment – a very good price. On top of that, the selection is usually quite good at a kiosk. However, if it’s not convenient for you, the cost goes way up – if you can’t return it for a few days, it gets pricy quick.

Wait on renting online until you have a gift card to burn. The prices are so high compared to other rental venues that we’ll just find something on streaming rather than renting a new release for $4 or $5. The exception to this is if we have a gift card of some sort to use more or less for this specific purpose.

As I’ve mentioned before, my wife and I subscribe to a handful of magazines of various kinds.

What I’ve found is that these magazines (aside from a couple of freebies that we won’t pay to renew) fall into one of two categories. Our magazines either are a source of long-form essays that are hard to read in an online context (like The New Yorker or The Atlantic) or they’re what I like to call “project” magazines.

Simply put, “project” magazines are publications that directly instruct you or encourage you to do something in your own life. Cooking magazines fall directly into this category, as does any sort of do-it-yourself home improvement magazines. Ones we subscribe to include Make, Cooks Illustrated, and Bon Appetit.

For our dollar, these magazines have made a tremendous positive impact in our lives. They’ve encouraged us to cook at home instead of going out (saving us money and also increasing our kitchen skills), take on home improvement projects, and experiment with countless other little things, too.

Along the way, though, we’ve learned a few things about how to really put such “project” magazines to good use.

Use them as a resource, not as an archive. It isn’t long before a new issue of a cooking magazine is splotched with stains from our kitchen. Rather than worrying about perfect archival condition, we often take them right out in the kitchen with us to use them for ideas while cooking.

Be willing to not follow the instructions to the letter. Most of the time, the ideas and projects in such magazines don’t perfectly match what we’re doing at home. A home improvement project doesn’t quite match up with what’s in our home. A recipe doesn’t line up well with our tastes or with what assets we have in our pantry. Use such ideas as a starting point and a reference and do your own thing – it’s incredibly rewarding and builds up your ability to improvise.

Save what has value – toss the rest. We don’t keep archives of most of these magazines. Instead, when a new issue comes in, I go through the previous issue, pull out ideas I might actually use in the future, and toss the rest. I often scan these pages and keep them electronically for future use, but you can just as easily keep them in a folder or two. It’s a lot easier to browse through 50 intriguing recipes than a thousand uninteresting ones with a few needles in the haystack.

Don’t just read – do. I wrote about mirror neurons a while back, but the basic principle holds here, too. Just reading about something can often feel a bit fulfilling and subtly convince you to not do it. Don’t fall into that. When you see something intriguing, do it.

Pick “project” magazines that align with things you do already. We like to cook, so we subscribe to a few cooking magazines. I like to tinker with electronics, so I subscribe to Make. There are lots of hobbies that we don’t engage in (even if they seem interesting), so we don’t waste our money subscribing to “project” magazines in those areas.

Don’t believe that magazines will change your behavior – they won’t. Carrying on with that previous thought, simply subscribing to a hobby magazine won’t convince you to start actually doing it. The desire to actually start doing something comes from within – external motivators and ideas only channel it in an interesting way. If you’re not already doing something, a magazine won’t help you start.

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 (September 26 – October 2, 2009)
Do You Want to Appear Rich? Or Do You Want to Be Rich? I think different sides of this coin appeal to different people. I also think the desire to appear rich hijacks the ability to be rich, causing people to go deep into debt.

Some Thoughts on a Cultural Shift Towards Frugality In short, I don’t think it’s sustainable, because people will rebound their spending when the economy eventually rebounds.

How the Traditional “Rules” of Frugal Living Often Vastly Undervalue Time There are a lot of frugality tips that seem to assume that you have a mountain of time with which to apply them. That’s simply not a reality for many of us.

How Does The Simple Dollar Earn Money? Some Notes on Do-It-Yourself Self-Employment Mostly, this article provides insight as to how I got the ball rolling on The Simple Dollar.

Modular Meals We make a lot of our meals with an eye towards our ability to remix the leftovers into some sort of completely new dish.

Two Years Ago (September 26 – October 2, 2008)
Looking at Your Career as an Investment Your career isn’t just an exchange of time for money. It’s an exchange of your effort for future opportunities as well. Simply put, it’s an investment.

Personal Energy and Frugality As with the time factor mentioned above, many frugality tips seem to assume that the person carrying out the tip has an infinite amount of energy. The solution? Don’t be afraid to filter a big pile of tips for the ones that are actually doable.

A Visual Guide to Saving Money with a Baby I took these pictures to describe how we saved money with our daughter. We’re now doing the exact same things with our son.

How to Find and Utilize a Mentor, No Matter What You’re Doing I think a mentor is the most valuable thing you can get during your career. A mentor can help your career develop in countless ways.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself This was my response to the complete doom and gloom being shouted from the rooftops at the start of the economic downturn.

Three Years Ago (September 26 – October 2, 2007)
The City Versus Rural Debate: Which Is The Better Place To Live? I think it depends on the person more than anything. What do they value? What’s more important to you: a small forest behind your house or easy access to cultural events? There’s no black-and-white answer there.

The Backlash Against Frugality Why do people sometimes treat frugal tactics in a negative fashion, as though it’s an affront to their personal sensibilities?

Five Personal Finance Lessons That Rocked Me Like A Hurricane When I Figured Them Out The things I’ve learned about personal finance since I started The Simple Dollar have completely changed how I view the world, from day-to-day life to global perspectives.

Should You Give Yourself Material Rewards For Meeting Certain Milestones? I think it works if you keep those rewards reasonable and decide on them in advance.

Thirteen Ways To Reduce The Effect Of “Bad Luck” In Your Financial Life The essential core of these tips boils down to simply making sure you’re removing burdens from your future self, because the more burdens you’re carrying then, the more likely it is that bad luck will find you.

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!

A few weeks ago, my wife stopped by a roadside stand where an individual was selling apples. A lot of apples. My wife asked if there were any deals, and the seller told her that he would sell her 8 1/2 pounds of “seconds” (apples that had been dropped and needed to be used quickly) for $8. My wife jumped on the bargain and arrived home with a lot of apples in tow.

So what exactly do you do with eight and a half pounds of apples? You make something with them, of course.

We pulled out a recipe for “Caramel Apple Jam” from The Taste of Home Cookbook and modified it a bit, adding a bit of additional cinnamon kick to it (because we love cinnamon). Of course, delicious homemade canned treats are wonderful to give away to your friends and family, so we decided to can most of the apples in the form of caramel apple jam.

What do you need if you want to cook up a batch of this jam?

The first thing you need is jars. We picked up two dozen jars for canning the apple jam (and perhaps a later project). I really strongly recommend using new jars if you’re going to be giving them away as gifts (which was our plan).

Sarah shopped around and was able to find a dozen jars with lids and rings for $5.99 – about $0.50 per jar, lid, and ring set.

You also need a few pieces of equipment – things that can be reused if you begin to can things regularly.

You need a stirring spoon, which you probably already have. You also need tongs (with which to move the jars around) – I recommend picking up tongs made for canning. We’re also using a funnel (which makes pouring liquids into the jars much easier) and a little tool that helps us to quickly see how much breathing room we have at the top of a jar so that we don’t overfill (it’s the blue notched thing).

You can pick up this equipment at many department stores – often, the equipment you need here comes in a kit.

You’ll also need a large pot. We use a four gallon stock pot. You can also get a canning rack to sit the jars in while dipping them into boiling water, but we don’t use one. Instead, we just put a towel in the bottom of the large pot before we add the water. This towel provides a soft bottom upon which we merely sit the jars, keeping them from cracking (which is the purpose of the rack).

Here are the ingredients for the jam we made. You can basically substitute whatever jam or jelly recipe you like (in fact, we’ll probably present a second recipe later in this homemade gift series).

6 cups apples, diced and peeled (1/8 inch cubes, roughly – this takes about three pounds of whole apples)
1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon butter
1 package (1.75 ounces) powdered fruit pectin
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Peeling and dicing the apples is really easy if you have an apple peeler/corer/slicer, something we found at a yard sale a few years ago for $1. You just stick the apple on it, turn the handle (easy enough my three year old daughter can do it), and the device peels the apple, removes the core, and puts a big spiral slice in that apple.

After that, you just have to chop the apple in the opposite direction to get the nice small pieces you need for the jam.

One thing you’ll need to do is boil the jars and lids to clean them. You can do this at any time in the process that’s convenient, as long as they’ve been boiled by the time you’re ready to put the jam in the jars.

In a pan, combine the apples with the 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 teaspoon butter. Cook this over low heat for an hour or so, stirring regularly, until the apples are soft.

At first, it will seem impossible that these dry-seeming apples and this little bit of water will ever combine with all of that sugar to make any kind of liquid jam. What will happen is that slowly, the apples will begin to give off liquid and, as the apples get soft, you’ll have about as much liquid as apple in the pan.

When the apples are getting soft, you should get the boiling pot going. Put a towel on the bottom, then add water until your jars would be covered by two inches. Turn on the heat and get the water boiling!

Once the apples are nice and soft (use your own judgment – you don’t want them to be really crisp in the jam, after all, but some soft chunks are delicious), add the pectin, stir it in, then bring the whole mix up to a rolling boil.

Then, add the sugar. This is a fun part, because it all becomes a very thick liquid as you stir it. Bring it back to a rolling boil (and be careful here, it can splatter). Stir it constantly and let it boil for one minute.

Remove the jam from the heat, then add the jam to the jars with a spoon until there’s a quarter of an inch between the top of the jam and the top of the jar. Clean off the rim of the jar, put a lid on it, then put a ring on top of that, turning the ring until you just begin to feel resistance. Repeat until you’re out of jam (we made six jars, with a bit left over to have immediately on toast).

Take these closed jars and put them in the big pot of boiling water. Keep the water boiling and leave the jars in there for ten minutes, then pull them out. Put the jars on a towel with a couple inches free space around each jar. Let the jars sit for 24 hours to cool and make sure after the cooling that the lids are depressed (meaning if you push down in the middle, it doesn’t “click” – if it does, the jar needs to go).

And there you have it – wonderful jars of delicious apple jam!

I recommend writing the contents and the date on the top of the jar after they’re sealed, for future reference.

When exactly do you know when you’ve crossed the line from a problem you can handle yourself to a problem you need assistance with?

That question comes up over and over again in so many avenues of life.

When is a plumbing problem severe enough that it’s time to call in a plumber?
When is a medical situation bad enough that we go to a doctor?
When is an investment situation complex enough that we seek out a financial advisor?
When is a psychological condition problematic enough that we seek professional help?

Whenever you ask questions like these, you’re going to get answers that vary all over the spectrum. Some people go to the doctor for a cough, while others won’t go until they’re calling an ambulance. Some people call the plumber when their toilet handle doesn’t work right, while others won’t call until the basement is flooded. Some people get ahold of a psychologist when they feel a bit nervous, while others won’t go until they’re unable to function in their daily lives.

I tend to lean towards the self-sufficient side of the spectrum. This means I usually try to solve problems myself, even when the solutions go a bit beyond what I’m currently capable of, until I’m convinced that the solution is truly outside of my grasp. Doing this – and sometimes succeeding – gives me the self-confidence to regularly do things for myself, which helps during those times when seeking help from others is not an option. For example, I believe I’ll be fine if I break my leg in a forest alone and out of cell phone range because I know I can overcome obstacles.

I usually follow an intuitive series of steps before making my decision to call for help.

First, is the problem urgent? If I don’t get it solved right now, will this problem lead to significant other problems? Severe pain is urgent; mild discomfort is not. A flooded basement is urgent; a leaky faucet or a broken handle is not. The inability to get out of bed due to fear is urgent; a nervousness talking to others is not. An urgent problem usually results in a call for help; a non-urgent problem might eventually result in a call, but not without proceeding forward. I rarely call for help quickly on a non-urgent problem.

Next, can I clearly describe the problem? Where is the ache? What situations cause the ache? What situations lead me to be nervous talking to others? What happens when I jiggle the handle? Is anything out of place when I peek under the lid that I can notice? The more details I have about a problem, the more I can learn about what it actually is and what solutions I can use to solve it.

After that, what can I learn about a solution to the problem? This means research. I try to stick to references from sources that I trust, such as widely-respected home maintenance handbooks, nurse hotlines, and other sources that are peer-reviewed and have a strong reputation. In a non-urgent situation, a person has time to do a bit of research to find out what kind of solutions are out there.

Once I’ve found a potential solution, what are the possible negative outcomes for that solution? More importantly, are those negative outcomes fixable if they occur? The worst outcome from a toilet repair, for example, is that call to the plumber that you’d be making anyway. The worst outcome from treating some ailments, though, can be even worse damage to yourself.

If the outcome from my own attempts has little chance of making the situation significantly worse, I’ll usually try to fix it myself. Almost always, I’ll learn something useful from the process, even if I don’t explicitly solve the problem.

Because of this, if people ask me for a solution to a non-urgent problem, I usually suggest that they seek safe solutions themselves first. I apply that basic principle to everything, from public nervousness to investment choices. If you seek a solution yourself, you will always learn something useful from that process, even if you didn’t directly solve the problem.

The time to turn to professional help comes when a problem is urgent or if the consequences from trying a potential solution are severe.

If you walk yourself through those questions when you’re facing a choice between asking for help and solving it yourself, you’re more likely to find yourself at a resolution that works well for you, protecting your safety and interests while also helping you to develop a healthy level of self-sufficiency.