Over the past week, the fast food restaurant chain Taco Bell was sued for claiming that the taco mixture used in their products was actually beef. According to USDA standards, a beef mixture served by businesses must contain at least 40% beef in ordered to be labeled as such, and the lawsuit alleges (with some evidence) that their taco mixture only contains 36% beef., not the 88% beef that they claim.

Taco Bell themselves list ingredients in their “meat filling products” that include “water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, maltodrextrin, soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch, sodium phosphate and silicon dioxide.”

Silicon dioxide?

Our homemade grilled chicken-salsa burritos, costing $0.30 apiece

Here’s the thing: the lawsuit itself isn’t really all that important. It’s the broader issue that scares me. Consider that the USDA only requires that something contain 40% meat to be called “meat,” whether at Taco Bell or anywhere else you might buy a “meat product.”

If you start digging into the standards for what can be labeled as particular foods, the issues get quite disturbing. Check out this article in which it’s revealed that the standards for meat in school lunches are lower than the standards for meat in fast food.

The point of all of this is that whenever we buy a product, we’re relying on both the company being honest with us about its contents as well as government regulations that do not always have the best interest of the consumer in mind. This goes for not just food, but for all manner of things from toothpaste to makeup to even product placements in television and film.

Our homemade bean burritos, costing about $0.20 apiece

The most common arguments in favor of such products revolve around convenience and cost. All right, let’s look at those.

For comparison’s sake, I took a look at Taco Bell’s value menu. An $0.89 value menu five layer burrito there – which you’ll also have to pay tax on – weighs 248 grams.

In the picture above, you can see my homemade bean burritos. I weighed one of these out of the freezer (because I have several frozen). The weight? 340 grams. It costs $0.20, while you’re dropping $0.95 at Taco Bell.

What about something “better”? I compared Taco Bell’s Chicken Ranch Taco Salad with our own burrito bowls, pictured below. The Taco Bell salad weighs 420 grams, while my homemade one weighs about 470 grams (excluding the bowl). The homemade one costs $2.25, while the Taco Bell version costs $5.69 plus tax, carrying the price up to $6.

And think of the “meat” you’re getting in that “bargain”!

(Yes, I’ve made similar comparisons in the past with McDonalds in my sights.)

The best solution for this problem is to stick with the most basic ingredients possible and exert the most control you can over those ingredients. Be picky about the ingredients you buy for your food – don’t just settle for whatever prepackaged meal has a tasty picture on the box. Be picky about what you watch on television – don’t just settle for channel surfing (or, better yet, read a book from the library).

Our huge vegetarian burrito bowls, costing $2.25 apiece

I think it’s fairly clear at this point that there are huge cost savings that can be found from being more involved in the things you consume.

The biggest challenge facing everyone is the issue of time and convenience. People eat at fast food restaurants because it’s convenient and it takes time to prepare your own food. People channel surf because it’s convenient and it takes time to prepare other entertainments.

The phenomenon of convenience, from my experience, comes down to time and energy bottlenecks. I see this in my own life. Weekdays are often very tight, with both Sarah and I needing to get professional work done, three young children to attend to, and regular household upkeep as well. The convenience of simply eating a premade meal or watching whatever television program happens to be on is very tempting simply because it allows us to conserve energy and time for other purposes.

At other times, though, we have large windows of time – and it’s in those time windows that there’s a lot of value in improving the options during those time bottlenecks.

I’ll find good programming to watch and add it to the Netflix queue so I don’t have to think when I’m bottlenecked – just click and go.

I’ll prepare healthy food with good ingredients in advance so I don’t have to exert a ton of energy or thought when we need a meal – just toss it in the oven and go.

Such actions enable me to enjoy convenience without losing quality. I can have food quickly without having to eat “meat.” I can watch something worthwhile without having to surf.

This spreads throughout life. The same philosophy explains why it’s worthwhile to install a programmable thermostat (it saves you money whether you’re pinched for time and energy or not) or air seal your home.

Our homemade breakfast burritos, costing $0.72 apiece

In the end, if everything else evens out, the long term factors win out. If you consistently consume healthier food, you increase your chances for good health throughout life. If you consistently entertain yourself with things that challenge your mind (at least gently), you increase your ability to think through situations as well as having a warehouse of knowledge that can help in many situations.

You’re rewarded with lower health care costs and greater long term earning opportunities.

Convenience can be a very good thing. It can help us survive some of the time and energy bottlenecks that modern life foists upon us. The problem with convenience, though, is that it can often lead us into overcosted and questionable choices like Taco Bell’s “meat product” featuring silicon dioxide. Yum.

We can combat this by simply planning ahead a little bit. Turn on some music this Saturday and make a batch of burritos for the freezer so you’re not left with a fast food stop this week. Install a programmable thermostat so you don’t have to remember to adjust the thermostat every time you go to bed, get up, or leave for work (and you’re not paying for it if you forget in a bottlenecked period). Seek out some documentaries or other programming on topics that really excite you and record them so that the next time you flop on the couch, you can just hit a buttion and watch something fulfilling instead of channel surfing through a wasteland.

You save money. You eat healthier. You don’t lose convenience. And you’re not left eating “meat product.” It’s a win all around.

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. Bank ignores me!
2. Gold digging or thinking ahead?
3. Encouraging others to think frugally
4. Why saving, not investing?
5. Budgeting software
6. Finding my loans
7. Reordering checks
8. Interest-only loan problems
9. How early for retirement savings?
10. Gaming site

A great deal of the work that goes into The Simple Dollar is simply figuring out topics for posts.

My usual procedure is to sit down and just brainstorm. I’ll go through my notes for post ideas, brainstorm my own ideas, read through my personal journal, read through whatever books are inspiring me at the moment, and just generate a long list of ideas.

After that, I cull them. I go through each one and ask myself if there’s really a post in there. Is this something that might help someone? Is this something that’s potentially entertaining? Is there enough meat here to really make a full post?

It’s a surprisingly long process for each of these posts to go from nothing to what you read each day.

Q1: Bank ignores me!
I went through a divorce which was final this past November. My husband applied for and received a [specific mega bank] card during the marriage, and asked for a subordinate, not joint, card for me. When he started missing payments, [specific mega bank] reported this to my credit report – and yet didn’t come after me for the $$. They’re still reporting his debt on MY credit report. I’ve tried calling them and writing them to no avail. I followed their employees’ instructions to send them a letter asking for proof of signature card. I sent it certified nearly a year ago. Someone signed for it. They never responded to me. And yet they keep reporting his debt on my credit report, but not hassling me to pay it.

Any pointers on what to do? They trashed my credit rating last year over this, which caused my three cards to cut my credit lines and raise rates. I’d like to know my recourse against their actions. My ex-husband is responsible per court order for the account, but that doesn’t protect my credit report.
- Anna

I excised the name of the bank for potential libel reasons.

I would try two things at this point. The first is a call to customer service, where I keep escalating the call until I get some sort of resolution. Document the call thoroughly, including recording the names of each person you speak to and a general summary of the conversation. Keep escalating the call until you get somewhere.

Failing that, I would clearly document all interactions with the bank, then directly request the credit agencies, asking them to remove this information from your credit reports. Provide as much documentation of the situation as possible and make it clear that you’ve done everything you can to resolve this.

Q2: Gold digging or thinking ahead?
You often mention the importance of making sure your significant other shares the same financial discipline and goals as you when it comes to dating and eventually marriage. I was married but one of the reasons we divorced was due to his poor financial decisions which left our family in ruins and, sad to say, I deal with it still since he is often late with child support and has trouble keeping a job (the recession is not to blame here). As far as dating, all the guys I meet have no concern for their personal finances. Based on their present choices and future plans for their money, I run in the other direction. When is someone’s personal finances too superficial or reminiscent of golddigging in choosing a mate?
- Chely

I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with avoiding someone who does not have control over their own finances as a specific trait. Where you might get into golddigging, though, is when you pair it with other traits, particularly a high income. If you’re looking at income as a minimum requirement to date you, that’s a completely different subject.

There isn’t all that much correlation between income level and financial sensibility. Some of the best financial people I know have a very low income, while at the same time I know several high income earners that are flaky when it comes to managing that income.

If you find yourself continually walking away from the people you met, though, you might want to consider a change of scenery when it comes to looking for people to date. Obviously, something isn’t adding up in the area you’re currently looking in.

Q3: Encouraging others to think frugally
I am a Human Resources Manager for a Fortune 500 company in Southern California. As you know, SoCal is a very expensive place to live. My company had to make a difficult decision to require employees to take some mandatory time off over the next few months. Although they were offered the choice to use vacation time or file for partial unemployment, I know that if the mandatory time goes on for more than a couple of months, many of my employees will suffer. Some have already depleted all of their vacation and unemployment benefits are not paid to 100% reimburse for lost wages.

I know that I cannot “save” anyone who doesn’t want to be saved. But, I do believe that for those who are ready to open their minds to a different frugal life-style, the information I provide might help them get through this time, as well as allow them to enjoy less debt in the future.
- Gary

Well, besides my own book? I think it would actually be a good fit for people in your case, since I focused heavily on telling my own story of recovering from, well, living paycheck-to-paycheck while in a two income household with children, which is exactly how you describe the people you’re trying to reach.

Aside from that, I’d probably point to the book that helped me the most when it came to recovering from that very situation: Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin, and Monique Tilford.

My suggestion for your meetings is to start off confessionally. Tell them, flat out, what your worst financial moment was and then talk about exactly what you did to bounce back from that. Then make the point that many of the people in that room are probably somewhere near their own financial low point. You’ve got to tie it to their own lives or they’re not going to care.

Q4: Why saving, not investing?
I have noticed that much of personal financial advice is focused on only half of the financial equation: saving and budgeting. While this is clearly the first step toward financial independence, it overlooks the second half: investing.

I am curious what your take is on this. Pennies saved are important, but pennies saved in a coffee can are pennies that decrease in value, which is another form of waste. I would be very interested in what investment books you recommend, etc. for those of us looking beyond saving.
- Arnold

The biggest reason for that is that the vast majority of Americans do not have the financial resources with which to invest. Many of them live paycheck to paycheck. The ones that don’t often only have some savings to account for the difference. Some have money in an employer-sponsored retirement plan, but a shockingly high percentage do not.

To put it simply, investing doesn’t matter to the vast majority of the American public. It’s a narrow topic that appeals mostly to people that are either earning so much they can’t spend it or have a big frugal streak inside of them (a la Warren Buffett). The people reading this blog, simply by the fact that they’re reading it and engaged in their finances, are the exception rather than the rule.

If you’re looking for a good “starter” investing book, try The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. I consider it the best one-shot investing book out there.

Q5: Budgeting software
Do you use a budgeting software like Quicken? If you do, would you mind sharing which one you use? What are your thoughts about them?
- Amy

I have a love-hate relationship with Quicken.

It does some things incredibly well, such as providing a good overall view of your finances, categorizing your expenses and so on.

My problem with it usually crops up when I want to do some sort of analysis of my financial situation and I find that I can’t do what I want to do. At that point, I wind up using a spreadsheet, which has always been my trusty tool for things like this.

Given the amount of time it takes to get everything set up and working well (which, in my experience, has been multiple hours each time I’ve set it up), I just don’t feel I get the bang for my buck that I should with Quicken. The money and time cost is too high for what I want from it.

Q6: Finding my loans
I’m 26 years old and have a ton of student loan debt. Since I graduated college I was never able to land a great job and I defaulted on my student loans. My credit score is shot. However I have recently landed a lucrative job and am trying to take the proper steps to restore my financial situation. Everything seems to be on track except for my student loans. The problem is I have no idea where to begin. I can’t even find them. I know they are in default and have been sold to a collections agency but I don’t know who to contact to start the process of paying them back. I dont have collection agencies calling my phone. Most of them are through citi but when i log into their website it wont list them as open loans because they are defaulted. I want to do the right thing but I need some help. Any advice is much appreciated.
- Kevin

Your first step should be to call Citi and figure out where the loans currently are.

Most likely, what has happened is that they’ve sold the account to someone else at cents on the dollar. At this point, your debt is now held by another company that may have purchased a lot of debts from Citi. This is pretty common practice.

At some point, that company will contact you – they’re going to want to recoup their investment.

Your only route to speed up this process is to track them down first, and Citi is the key to that. Call them up, get a customer service rep on the phone, and track the collection agency down.

Q7: Reordering checks
In this day and age, my wife and I rarely write checks– instead using automatic e-payments, debit, and doing most banking online. However, we do have one bill which we do need to write a physical check for, plus I understand the need to have a checkbook ready in case it’s needed. My wife’s checks recently ran out, and she had to order more from our bank. This was a one-time cost of $15! I can appreciate that it costs something to produce these checks, but even $15 is an annoyance in a world where we typically only use one check a month. I suppose there’s nothing that can be done about this, is there?
- Nate

That’s a little high for buying checks (assuming you bought several books of them), but it’s not exceptionally or ridiculously high.

Remember, when you’re buying a checkbook, you’re paying for a convenience. Those checks make the process of making certain payments much easier than before. Compare it to, say, taking out a money order – checks, in terms of both convenience and price, are a much better bargain.

Since you’ve already bought the checks, there’s likely nothing that can be done. However, there are check printing businesses out there that will undercut the banks and save you at least a little bit of money.

Q8: Interest-only loan problems
While we were dating, my husband and I–both teachers and 29 years old–each bought one-bedroom condos at the height of the real estate bubble, each with interest-only mortgages. (It seemed like a great idea at the time because everyone told us we’d be able to sell them when we were ready to move out and we had no reason not to believe them. We also qualified for mortgages well above what we could reasonably afford on a teacher’s salary. But that’s placing blame on someone else’s shoulders.) Eight months later, he proposed. We tried to sell one of the condos, but by that time, the market had slowed considerably and we were unable to sell, so we decided to rent mine. The rent we collected didn’t quite cover the mortgage payment, so each month we were losing about $600, but were still able to pay off our credit card debts and pay for our wedding and honeymoon with the rent money.

Right now we’re sticking with option two until we can figure out some sort of plan of attack. Any recommendations?
- Danielle

Without knowing all of the interest rates, I can’t tell quite how bad it is, but it looks like you might be approaching a bankruptcy type of position. Both you and your husband are young teachers, which means you’re fairly low on the teacher’s income scale, and you’ve not mentioned any other form of income. You also have two young children at home who likely require some form of child care when you’re at work. Unless all of the interest rates are extremely low, it’s not a pretty picture.

I would suggest sitting down with someone you trust and going through all of the numbers in specific, including your monthly budget. Let someone else get a full glimpse of the numbers and assess where you’re at.

It may be that cutting your retirement contributions for a while can make this work – it depends heavily on the interest rates. You really need to carefully run the numbers yourself, though.

Q9: How early for retirement savings?
I’m a recent college grad, married, age 23. My husband, who graduated last year, has an entry-level job in his chosen profession and makes around $30,000 a year. He has minimal benefits and no retirement plan. I will start a job next week for $14 an hour that isn’t specifically what I trained for, but could segue into my field. This job is considered full time temporary with no benefits. The job could become full time after 6 months but I’m trying very hard to find work in my field. Our health insurance is covered by our parents plans until age 26 (thankfully!).

If we can start some sort of retirement, which one would you recommend? How much should we put in every year? Would this change if we would get “real” jobs with benefits? Or should we just chill until our temporary jobs turn into something better and our lives are more stable? Thanks so much!
- Lindsay

I would open a Roth IRA with the investment house of your choice. For the investment within that Roth IRA account, I’d choose a target retirement fund that’s closest to the year when you turn 65 (2055, probably).

As for how much to invest, I’d just invest what you can. I’d set up an automatic investment plan and start putting in the same amount each week automatically, depending on what you can afford and what your other goals are.

The simple fact that you’re getting started this early will make things much easier as you actually approach your retirement age.

Q10: Gaming site
Last week you mentioned that you were collaborating with someone on a site about board gaming. Details?
- Erik

There really aren’t many details as of yet. A friend of mine who also enjoys board games and card games as a social activity has been long discussing getting such a site going and we’re slowly progressing from the planning stages to actually creating something.

Trust me – if it goes public, you’ll all know about 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 (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). 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 or other book of interest. Also available is a complete list of the hundreds of book reviews that have appeared on The Simple Dollar over the years.

One of my first book reviews on The Simple Dollar was of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. In that book, Ehrenreich took a number of minimum-wage jobs and reflected on the challenges of the work and the difficulty of surviving on such a low income.

My review took Ehrenreich to task. My biggest problem with the book is that she could simply exit that lifestyle any time she chose and by simply “playing poor,” she couldn’t really understand what it was like to be poor. It’s an idea that was perhaps most popularly expressed in the song Common People by the band Pulp: You will never understand / How it feels to live your life / With no meaning or control / And with nowhere left to go / You are amazed that they exist / And they burn so bright / Whilst you can only wonder why

So why would I review another book by her? Frankly, it took me a long time to even choose to pick up another book by Ehrenreich (she’s written several), but I could not deny that, at the very least, Nickel and Dimed was well-written and approached some good ideas, even if I didn’t agree with a large portion of the book.

This leads us to Bait and Switch, in which Ehrenreich approaches white collar work in much the same way that she approached blue collar work in Nickel and Dimed. What does it take to get a white collar job? At what price does the American dream come? The subtitle of the book, The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, somewhat spells it out.

From the subtitle, one might think that this book would simply paint a negative picture of white collar work as a whole. I don’t think the book really does that at all; in fact, I found there were many good ideas in this book, but that they didn’t come in the expected way.

The general premise of the book is that Ehrenreich is a “professional in transiton” and is seeking out a new career path.

Finding a Coach in the Land of Oz
Ehrenreich opens the book by seeking out a “career coach” – someone who will help her navigate the sea of job postings and opportunities out there. Mostly, it seems that these people mix together a brew of personality testing (think Meyers-Briggs tests) with some cheerleading and a bit of job searching that anyone with a personal computer could do. From Ehrenreich’s description, the biggest thing the coaches bring to the table is enthusiasm and support – they mostly just accentuate what you already have, often for a high price.

Stepping Out into the World of Networking
From there, Ehrenreich attends some “networking” events where she’s meeting people who are, frankly, in the same situation she is in: seeking better employment opportunities. The obvious question here is what the benefit of meeting other people who are desperately looking to switch careers really is. Networking events tend to attract similar people – people who are trying to blaze a different path than the one they’re on. Are these the people you want to attach to?

Surviving Boot Camp
Ehrenreich then attends a career “boot camp” in which people are trained in how to become more effective (and more employable) professionals. Most of this seems to quickly devolve into very generic stuff like one would expect to find in The Secret (absurdly over-the-top “power of positive thinking” material) mixed with some vague notions that career coaching and networking can really help, which were discussed in the previous chapter.

The Transformation
The “transformation” mentioned in the title of this chapter is largely about physical appearance, as yet another consultant (with a bit of a sexist bent) seems to encourage Ehrenreich to focus heavily on her personal appearance in order to improve her career prospects. There’s a bit of sexism at play throughout this chapter, which does give some insight as to the challenges that women can have trying to work in a male-dominated world (that’s thankfully becoming somewhat less male-dominated).

Networking with the Lord
Here, Ehrenrech attends a Christian career event, where most of the ideas stated above are remixed with a Christian theme and often co-sponsored by a church hoping to gain members (apparently). In the end, much of this chapter turns into a discussion of the problems with the “prosperity Gospel,” which I found quite interesting. In short, this chapter gave a distinct impression that many Christian money seminars tend to be trying to merge two contradictory messages.

Aiming Higher
Ehrenreich chooses at this point (with no job success) to inflate her resume with some bogus jobs and other materials, which gets her foot in a few more doors but never really materializes. The one thing that seems to click, though, is a situation in which she gets an opportunity to show off her nascent management skills, taking charge of a team. This seemingly energizes her and attracts a bit of attention, but doesn’t really coalesce into anything. The lesson? Showing your skills to people is a very good thing.

In Which I Am Offered a “Job”
Ehrenreich gives multi-level marketing and network marketing a shot here, moving into areas where she’s essentially an independent salesman as part of a larger hierarchy. What she finds is that she’s dumping far more time and money and energy in than she’ll ever get out of it, despite all of the positive talk and rhetoric.

Downward Mobility
At this point, she starts to lower her job expectations quite a bit. She attends a job fair with no success, then gradually moves down the employment scale until she’s looking at entry level service positions (which are easy to come across, by the way). She muses for a bit on the idea that perhaps people are disappointed with their ability to get jobs because they are overinflating the type of position they should be looking for.

Is Bait and Switch Worth Reading?
This book is not a perfect career guide, nor is it a criticism of capitalism. Instead, it does something else – and does it very well. It shows you what not to do if you’re seeking the American dream.

You shouldn’t try to get a job you’re not really qualified for; instead, build up your own qualifications.

You shouldn’t believe that career coaches and workshops will really put you where you want to go. It comes down to you.

You shouldn’t believe that networking dinners will immediately connect you to the right person. Networking is something you do, not something someone else sets up and does for you.

You should recognize that success often comes with a long climb up a ladder, not an immediate leap to the top.

In short, this book makes a strong case that the people who are rewarded with success in America are the self-reliant and the self-directed. Coaches and such can help, but they only help in that they help mold a bit of what is already there. If you expect others to hand success to you on a silver platter, then, indeed, the American dream is a futile pursuit.

Bait and Switch is a good read that hammers home a vital point, and for that I definitely recommend it for some bedside table reading.

A few weeks ago, I gave a somewhat negative opinion of P2P lending sites such as Lending Club and Prosper. Here’s what I said about them:

Quite honestly, if I were going to invest my nickels and dimes into peer-to-peer lending, I’d probably do it with Kiva and not worry that much about a return.

From what I’ve seen, on such peer-to-peer sites, the returns on the few good loans they offer are really low, while the failure rate on the higher risk loans are so high that you’re going to have a challenge making a good return through all that noise. From my eyes, it becomes akin to gambling at that point, since you really have limited information on who or what you’re investing in.

If you like the idea socially and conceptually, go ahead and use them, but view it as a very speculative part of your portfolio.

Since then, I’ve received a deluge of emails from readers who have experienced different flavors of success with peer-to-peer lending, and these emails have encourged me to re-evaluate my response a little bit.

Let’s back up. P2P lending means that a website or organization, such as Lending Club or Prosper or Kiva, facilitates an arrangement where you directly lend money to another person who needs money. They do a lot of the footwork for you in terms of evaluating the risk of that person, but you’re the one that puts the money forward.

First of all, I will say that in terms of dollars and cents, I would not invest my whole portfolio into such lending sites. They are unquestionably risky and you simply don’t have the loan support structure that lending companies have. While the sites, by all accounts, do a good job of keeping the sharks out of the water, it still doesn’t stop a specific individual from deciding not to pay the debt back, much like some people charge their credit card to the limit and walk away from it.

Investments such as these inherently come with significant risk. Most people are honest. Some people are not. In the end, what you’re really betting on is that another person, given a debt repayment structure, will repay that debt. Most of the time, that will happen. Some of the time, it won’t.

Any good portfolio will not have all of their money in one single risky investment. Even those heavy on risk will typically have their money spread across different types of risk (the exception being someone who intimately knows every detail of a specific investment, like someone going heavy on a specific stock because they know the company).

Second, generally the lower risk investments on such sites have a lower rate of return and the higher risk investments have a higher rate of return. Such investments have a pretty clear balance of risk and reward. If you’re seeking a lower risk investment, you’re going to have to settle for a lower rate of return. The same is true for high risk and high return. There isn’t much to exploit here – you can’t get a high rate of return for low risk. That’s due to the evaluation that such lending sites put potential borrowers through.

The biggest reason that many people invest is not the return, but the sense that this type of investment is a socially beneficial thing. Rather than making money off of large corporations or governments, such loans help out individual people – the little guy. For many, this is an enormous social benefit that outweighs some of the uncertainty of the investment.

This, in fact, is the big reason I tend to encourage people to try Kiva, which encourages microlending to potential entrepreneurs in highly impoverished places, rather than loaning $500 to someone who just totaled their car. This is more a reflection of my own perspective, which is an acceptance that a global economy is simply a fact and the greatest good for both preserving an American standard of living is to raise the global standard of living as quickly as possible.

In short, there are a lot of good things about peer-to-peer lending. The weakest aspect of it comes purely from the perspective of “dollars in, dollars out,” where you could argue that it’s not the best investment opportunity in the world. However, it does offer social benefits that go far beyond the simple dollars and cents.

Earlier this month, Sarah returned to her work after an eight month unpaid maternity leave. Her return changed the flow of things around our house. Suddenly, I was back in the position of spending a lot of one-on-three time with the children, particularly during the workweek. This obviously has altered how and when I’m able to get work done and it’s made me crack down on being efficient with my work.

(An aside: every time I mention that Sarah returned to work, someone pipes in that she “had” to and that she is “supporting” me in being able to do The Simple Dollar. The actual truth of the matter is that during her sabbatical, my work was providing the only income source for our family and my work was also paying for health insurance for us all out of pocket. Not only that, such an arrangement would have been sustainable for at least a few years, so she had the option to just walk away from her job and be a stay-at-home mom for as long as she wanted. She wanted to return to work because she loves her work very much – it brings her a deep level of fulfillment. It was her choice to return and I left that choice entirely up to her. Money is secondary to personal fulfillment here because of our commitment to sound financial principles.)

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been studying my professional and our financial situation very carefully, looking for ways to make things more efficient. So far, a few things have really stood out and proved to be quite useful, so I thought I’d share them with you.

The bedside notebook
Having a bedside notebook is transformative. So often, a great idea for saving money or for a Simple Dollar article will pop into my head as I lay there going to sleep or when I’m up in the middle of the night consoling a child after a bad dream.

Usually, when I’m in a tired stupor, I would just tell myself to remember the idea in the morning and then go back to sleep because the effort to go somewhere to jot down the idea seemed overwhelming.

However, if you know there’s a notebook beside your bed, it becomes much easier to just roll over, jot down enough of the idea so that you’ll actually remember, then fall asleep. It doesn’t take much at all to just shift in bed a bit, write down that thing that’s in your head, and then drift off.

The amazing thing is that those ideas I’ve written down usually turn out to be great. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because my conscious mind usually gets in the way of great subconscious ideas when I’m more awake.

Inbox zero
If you have so many emails in your inbox that you’ll just never get to them, trash them all and start from scratch, then focus on keeping your inbox at zero. Otherwise, you’ll never catch up and it’ll become easy to just let yourself get further behind on your email.

Often, I’ll “inbox zero” after a trip. I’ll go very quickly through the thousands (yes, I do mean thousands) of emails built up during the week I’m gone, pick out the ones that seem important very quickly, then archive the rest. My belief is that if it’s truly important, someone will email me again about it.

Because of this, I’m not loaded down with a sense of “too much to do” when I check my email. I just blow through what’s in my inbox and move on with life instead of staring at the mountain, feeling guilty, and avoiding it.

Automate every possible bill
In the past, I’ve automated the bills that I knew were going to have the same balance every month, like my mortgage. You may have several of these: your car payment, your student loan payment, and so on.

The irregular bills were still handled manually, and framkly, they took time. I would log onto online banking at least once a week just to pay the bills.

Recently, I moved to a much simpler system. I started carrying a large buffer in my checking account and simply automated all of the rest of my bills. Now, I just check my online banking once a week simply to keep an eye on the balance and on the transactions. It’s much easier and less fraught with worry that I’m forgetting some bill because it got misplaced.

An energetic morning routine
A good night’s sleep. Breakfast. Kid time. Exercise. Shower. Every morning, like clockwork.

If I follow that routine each morning, I almost always feel quite energetic starting my day, giving me a big burst at the start of the day that often carries through most of the tasks I need to complete.

Breakfast is a key part of this. I’ve got to have some fruit and some sort of protein. I usually eat a piece of fruit and some sort of bean-based or tofu-based item, like a burrito.

Block tempting websites
I literally block tempting websites during the day, only unblocking them during a lunch break or some other sort of break. This strongly encourages a “tunnel vision” of sorts, making me bear down when it comes to work.

Similarly, I keep certain commercial websites constantly blocked so I’m never tempted to go look at a “daily deal” or search for “bargains.” If I can never get there to look, how can I buy anything I really don’t need?

How do I do this? This webpage clearly explains the steps you need to take to block websites on your computer. You don’t need any additional software if you’re running a Windows machine, and there’s a similar procedure for Macs and Linux computers.

Each week, I highlight ten things each week that inspired me to greater financial, personal, and professional success. Hopefully, they will inspire you as well.

1. George Bernard Shaw on playing
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
–George Bernard Shaw

I try very hard to live by this idea and include some play in my life every day. I play with my children. I play games with my friends and, sometimes, by myself. It keeps me conscious of the fact that life doesn’t have to always be deadly serious and refreshes me to take on the things that life throws at me.

2. A certain expression
Every time I look at this picture of my oldest son, I get a big smile.

There is something about his facial expression that just gets me every time I look at it. This picture has probably cheered me up more than any other over the past few years.

3. Atul Gawande’s New Yorker article on health care targeting
Few articles as of late have made me think as much as this one, in which Atul Gawande argues that the people with the highest medical care costs are the people receiving the worst care. There are a lot of thought-provoking things in this article, but the image that really stuck with me is the idea that a city can have multiple hospitals where one has almost no one waiting in the emergency room and another has more people than can fit in there. Something’s wrong and inefficient in that picture.

4. Thomas Jefferson on trends and values
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
- Thomas Jefferson

The specifics of society change all the time. Things unimaginable fifty years ago are commonplace today. Societal behaviors of eighty years ago would be completely out of place today, as would the behaviors of today if dropped back in the 1930s.

What matters is the central values we hold. Love. Frugality. Human relationships. Respecting others and their freedoms. Those are things that I value now and will always value, regardless of what happens with society and technology.

5. Georges-Pierre Seurat’s Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte
Since I’ve been assembling a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of this painting, I’ve had more than adequate time to study it in great detail.

Many thanks to Bert Kaufmann for taking this photo of the original painting at the Art Institute of Chicago.

6. Laura Cantrell’s “When the Roses Bloom Again”
I’ve been listening to a lot of music by Laura Cantrell this week. This is the best one I’ve heard, in my opinion. Her voice just tears me up.

7. David Shields on memory
“Anything processed by memory is fiction.”
— David Shields

I find this so completely true in my own life that it’s thrilling to see someone else put it so succinctly. So often, I juxtapose my own memories and more than once that juxtaposition has gotten me in trouble. I tend to rely on my memory with too much confidence and, as I get older, I’m beginning to understand that no one’s memories are perfect.

8. Grooveshark
I can’t believe this service is free. Grooveshark may have supplanted Pandora as my single favorite way to listen to music for free online.

9. FoodWishes videos on YouTube
I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube cooking videos recently for a potential post idea, but for me the real joy of this has been discovring the videos of Chef John on the FoodWishes channel. Who needs Food Network?

Here’s one of my favorites.

This is just solid food instruction, combined with a healthy dose of entertainment. I liked these videos because it all looked like it came from a real kitchen.

10. Cervantes on friendship
“Tell me what company thou keepst, and I’ll tell thee what thou art.”
- Miguel de Cervantes

You are very much a synthesis of your closest friends. Think about the people you surround yourself with. When you look at them and think of yourself as a mix of their attributes, is that something that fills you with a positive feeling? If it doesn’t, you might want to think about a change in your social circle.

Cervantes wrote the wonderful novel Don Quixote. I love the antiquated words of his expression of this idea.

Each week, I’ll present a low-cost meal (or a meal that demonstrates a lot of options for cutting costs) that my family eats for dinner and enjoys. Many of the recipes will be vegan or vegetarian, with options to add other ingredients for non-vegetarians.

Here’s what I’ve had for a lunch and for a supper over the past few days:

Bean burritos. Very simple. Very inexpensive. Very tasty. Freshly sliced apples on the side are a nice sweet accompaniment.

What You Need
You’ll need cooked beans, roughly two heaping tablespoons worth for each small burrito. You’ll need small tortilla shells. You’ll also need whatever toppings you’re going to want on it – salsa, onions, tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, guacamole, whatever it is that you love.

I like to keep them very simple so I can taste the beans, so I just use lettuce, onion, and a bit of salsa. That’s it – pretty plain jane, in the end.

The Night Before
If you’re using dried beans – which I highly recommend – put them in a tub of cold water the night before and leave them standing until you’re ready to start preparing your food the next day. The exact type of bean isn’t important, but I highly recommend using black beans. I suggest using 1/4 cup dried beans for each person who will be eating.

Often, I’ll make a batch of beans using black beans as a baseline and adding a small amount of a few additional bean types, such as red beans or garbanzo beans (chickpeas).

I also often make a large batch of these beans at once, using them for multiple recipes and storing them in the fridge between meals, as you can see below.

Next week, I’ll be using these beans as part of another recipe.

Preparing the Meal
Your first step, if you’re using dried beans that have soaked overnight, is to cook them. Drain the beans, then place them in a pot of water that has about an inch and a half of clear water on top of the beans. Boil them for 75 minutes, keeping the boil relatively low the whole time but never letting the boiling stop.

Once you have cooked beans, the process for making these is simple. Take a few spoonfuls of cooked beans and place them on a tortilla, then add whatever additional ingredients you prefer. Salsa, onions, cheese, whatever makes you happy. Wrap it up and enjoy.

You may want to heat some of the ingredients – particularly the beans – but that’s at your discretion. This type of meal is incredibly flexible.

Optional Ingredients
Obviously, if you don’t wish to use beans for this, substitute cooked ground beef and follow the same instructions. Beans are a much healthier option, though.

The list of potential toppings is long: rice, guacamole, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, peppers – I’ve even tried sauerkraut before (seriously). Add stuff you like and you’ll never go wrong with a meal like this.

As some of you know, I spent a year or two in my past playing competitive Magic: the Gathering (a card game with organized tournaments), earning enough winnings for the hobby to pay for itself. I was never able to compete at the highest levels, mostly due to time constraints from my career and my marriage (which seriously limited how much time I could devote to gaming).

Near the end of that period in my life, I picked up a very interesting book by David Sirlin called Playing to Win. David was a competitive player of tournament-level Street Fighter (a video game) who went on to be involved in the production of several games, including Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. The book outlines psychological strategies that serve anyone well if they’re looking to compete seriously in any sort of gaming or sporting environment. If you’d like, you can read the book for free on Sirlin’s website.

So why would I mention such a book on The Simple Dollar?

A few days ago, I stumbled across this book again and sat down to read it, mostly as a nostalgic reminder of a certain period in my life. As I read through the pages, I began to realize that most of the ideas presented in the book actually apply very well towards successful personal finance.

Here are some ideas that match up that really intrigued me.

Some of the made-up rules you have in your head are holding you back. Every single person lives by some set of rules that they’ve made up in their head. These rules tell us how to behave in certain situations, what products to buy, who to associate with, what to do on a boring Friday evening, and so on.

Most of the time, these rules are worthwhile guides. They can keep you out of dangerous areas, help you to make sensible choices about who to associate with, and so on.

However, sometimes these rules guide us in a poor fashion. They encourage us to buy things we shouldn’t. They encourage us to waste time on unimportant things (mostly due to a poor definition of “important”). They encourage us to spend too much time on our careers – or not enough time. They encourage us to spend too much time on our families – or not enough time.

Breaking through these “rules” by getting rid of the ones that don’t work is a powerful step towards personal finance success. Question every action that you take, because each action takes time and energy and (often) money and it takes those things away from other elements of your life. Work to break the routines that are out of line with what you truly want in life.

You don’t get ahead by doing splashy things to stand out. You can have the best attention-getter in the world, but if there’s not something behind the curtain, an attention getter doesn’t matter. You can be the richest person in the room, the most well-dressed person in the room, the most attractive person in the room, or the most technology-laden person in the room, but in the end, it still all comes down to you.

In short, you can buy a little attention, but you can’t buy the respect of others. You have to earn it, and it’s not bought. It’s earned through who you are – your actions, your knowledge, your abilities, your friendship, and your reliability.

Buying stuff to impress others might work as an attention getter, but it won’t help you actually build friendships and relationships. On the other hand, focusing your energy on improving yourself will not only save you money, but it’ll help you build the right kind of reputation over the long run.

You’re rewarded by focusing only on the situation at hand. Imagine you’re at the grocery store. You’re walking down the aisle, but your mind is elsewhere. You’re thinking about a friend or a family member, or about what you’re going to watch on television tonight. After wandering around a bit on cloud nine, you add an item to your cart.

Now, imagine you’re at the store, but you’re focused on finding the best bargain among the bread options. You study the items available, compare the prices, peek at your notes to see what the competitor’s sale price is, and find that indeed, this loaf meets your needs and is about a dollar cheaper than the other options. You add it to your cart.

Both experiences took about the same amount of time, but one ends with a great purchase in the cart, while the other most likely ends with something overpriced and not particularly matching the needs and values of the customer.

Focus on the moment. If you’re shopping, shop. If you’re driving, drive. If you’re working, work. If you’re reading, read. You’ll find that the task at hand goes much more smoothly – with much better results – when you bear down and focus just on the task at hand.

You constantly have an opportunity to cultivate valuable, positive relationships with people around you. Every time you’re in a social situation – and that includes being online – you have opportunities to cultivate a positive relationship with people around you. The more positive relationships you’ve built, the more likely it is that something positive will echo back on you.

Be positive towards the people around you. Say positive things about others. Help other people when they need it. Volunteer for the tough jobs that no one else wants to do. Participate in groups.

You’ll build relationships. More relationships means a stronger community. Everyone in that community benefits. Those benefits are passed to everyone in the community, and since you’re a part of it, you benefit, too.

When observing others, things are often not what they seem. The person in the expensive car with the expensive clothes and the expensive house is often so buried in debt that they’re scared to sleep at night. The man in the rusty car often has a wad of money in his bank account.

Remember that the appearance of someone often completely obscures the truth. People often try to cover up the truth underneath or present a truth that matches up with some false expectations in your head. It is never, ever a bad move to spend some time looking a little deeper.