A few days ago, Kenia left a very interesting comment on my earlier post What You Are – and What You’re Not:

Great post, Trent. Very inspiring. I have to disagree slightly though…

“There’s still nothing keeping you from having a life filled with doing the things you love. Focus instead on who you are, what skills you can build, and what you can do.”

I agree with you, 100%, that you can definitely involve yourself in some other way (i.e. sports blogger) even if some goals are unrealistic for you (i.e. be an NBA player). But there can still be things keeping you from what you love. There can still be things keeping you from becoming an avid basketball blogger: Family. Responsibilities. I am a firm believer that you don’t necessarily have to be rich to succeed in life: with enough **time** and commitment you can succeed at almost anything…but the key is to have the *time.* Many people, for example, would have to take extra time on top of their day jobs to make a career transition – but with family obligations, and making sure you are prioritizing time nurturing relationships that matter (family, great friends), this is just not possible for most. Lucky is the person who (if in a loving relationship that you’re not about to compromise for a career) has a partner who fully supports them in their pursuits & passions – because it takes time, and that time is usually time taken from the relationship.

In late 2006, I had a full time job that often bled into more than full time work. I had a marriage that required time and attention and love. I also had an infant son that required time and attention and love.

It was in that situation that I launched and built up The Simple Dollar. I did it without sacrificing my work, without damaging my marriage, and without disrupting my relationship with my son.

How did I do that? I made some fundamental decisions about how I was going to spend my time and energy. Instead of staying up late websurfing or watching television, I researched articles or focused on my writing. Whenever I had an evening where my wife was at a conference or something like that, I chose to spend that time building the site. If I was the first one awake in our home, I would spend some time writing until everyone else woke up.

When my wife became pregnant with our second child, I found myself with a great deal of time to write. Our oldest child would sleep eleven or so hours a night and her sleep cycles matched the baby’s sleep. That left me with four or five hours a day without family members around, so I devoted that largely to building my side business.

In short, building The Simple Dollar became my main hobby. Not only did I want it to be a success, I deeply enjoyed the work. It was fun for me to write a great article (and it still is). It was fun for me to learn all about search engine optimization, site design, and other such things.

I’m not stating that my experience is a model for starting any side business. What I am saying is that passion is your driver.

Simply put, if you don’t have the passion for something that will convince you to spend your hour or two of evening free time chasing that dream, then it’s most likely never going to happen.

Many people have passions like this, but they’re told over and over again that they “can’t” do it, either directly or indirectly. I spent most of the previous decade (1996 through 2006) believing that I “couldn’t” be a writer. It shaped my college choice. It shaped my major choice. It shaped my job selection after college.

Through all of that, though, I didn’t abandon the dream. Writing is what I’ve been passionate about since I was a school boy, writing short stories in my Ninja Turtles notebook in fourth grade. I kept writing in my spare time, attempting to sell novels and short stories, starting blogs of various kinds, and so on.

None of them were successful. I kept writing.

The Simple Dollar was my first real glimmer of success and when I saw that, I gave it everything I had. Opportunities like this don’t come along too often.

It was the passion for writing that made me reach that point, and it was that passion that carried it through.

There are always limits. There are always easier things to do. There are always people telling you you can’t do things. There are always overstuffed schedules and a seeming lack of free time.

If you are truly drawn to doing something, though, you’ll find time and energy for it. You’ll cut back on other things to make time and energy for it.

Eventually, you’ll succeed. Why? The one thing that can’t be manufactured is passion. It makes you better and it makes you strive for something great. Passion is real, and it’s something people are always looking for. You just have to find your way in the door.

During this coming summer, I’m departing on a ten day trip to the West Coast, as well as a few other long weekends at various locations around the Midwest.

This happens during most summers for me, so spring is usually filled with writing posts in advance to cover the periods when I am traveling. Travel with three young children makes things particularly challenging, so I often don’t even look at the site or my email for days during these periods.

Anyway, this does also include reader mailbags. So, I am in the process of selecting some of the questions I get for reader mailbags over the next week or two and putting some of the more timeless (or less urgent) questions in mailbags that will appear at various points during the summer.

Just thought I’d let you know. I do receive roughly 250 reader mailbag questions per week, so I have to trim them down as best I can (removing similar questions, removing excessively long ones, removing ones that are heavily negative, etc.).

Surround Yourself with Passionate People You reflect your friends. If your friends are passionate people who are excited about life and are always wanting to get out there and achieve something, you’ll quickly feel the same way. (@ zen habits)

Do Programmable Thermostats Really Save Money? They absolutely do if you don’t fuss with them. The problem is, people seem to fuss with them a lot. If a programmable thermostat doesn’t save you money, it’s not the thermostat’s fault. (@ get rich slowly)

Does Education Matter for Freelancers? I think it matters a bit, but the person involved matters more. (@ freelance switch)

The Gift of Zero Just a fantastic story, from start to finish. (@ minting nickels)

15 Things People Forget to Budget For Many of the items on this list boil down to irregular bills. I know that, among many people I know, irregular bills (like insurance) can be really painful if they don’t have their ducks in a row. (@ accumulating money)

After my article a few days ago on putting food on the table when you can’t make ends meet, a reader sent me an email that left me thinking.

A key part of the email:

When you write about such things on your website, they sound realistic and doable. But when I actually think about going to the food pantry or using food stamps or asking a pastor for help, I don’t want to. I feel like a loser using such things. I feel like all I am is a drain on the system and that I’m a better person than this. So I don’t use them. I don’t want to be a person that just lives off the system.

As this email stewed in my mind, I got another email from a reader on a similar topic:

I’m 25 years old. I graduated from college in 2008 with a bachelors degree in communication. Since then, I have found no work in my field. I read your suggestions about taking any job, but I don’t want just any job and if I spent my time working at Burger King I would miss out on other opportunities.

Both of these emails are talking about the same thing: pride.

In both cases – and for different reasons – an intrinsic belief that the person is above some financially beneficial behavior is holding them back from improving their financial situation.

In the first example, pride is keeping him from using food pantries or food stamps or pastoral help to reduce the financial pressure brought on by his food bill. His pride revolves around not wanting to feel poor.

In the second example, pride is keeping her from working at a entry-level service position to reduce financial pressures in her life. Her pride revolves around not wanting to take “just any job.”

In both cases, the best financial move they could make is to swallow their pride and take the step that improves their finances, but pride can be a very tricky thing to overcome.

I often see pride popping up in the emails and comments I get.

“I would never shop at Goodwill.” Why not?

“I’ve worked at this job for twenty five years, so I’ll accept the benefit cuts.” Why?

“I don’t really think a state school is a good fit for me, so I’m applying to some Ivy League schools.” Why is that, exactly?

Pride, again and again.

It took a lot of swallowing of pride and dismantling of the pride-based ideas I had in my head in order to change my life around and get the things in life that I wanted.

Shopping for clothes at Goodwill? It used to seem odd. Now it seems normal.

Using an old, slow computer with a slowly-failing video card? This would have been beneath me a few years ago. Now, I’ll wait until the video card fails and then do my best to just replace the video card before considering a whole computer upgrade.

Using homemade laundry detergent? Making homemade Christmas gifts? Using cloth diapers and a towel for a changing table? These things once seemed to be the things that poor people did. Now I recognize them for what they are – good moves by people who value their dollars.

This is not to say that pride can’t be good. Pride can certainly help you get a better deal when negotiating with others and it can keep you from making many other poor decisions.

However, when pride keeps you from making economically beneficial choices, it’s nothing more than an obstacle to your success.

Don’t let pride keep you from taking a job that’s “beneath” you when you’re unemployed. Get some money coming in and build up a work record that shows you’re willing to work hard.

Don’t let pride keep you from accepting aid that’s been put aside specifically for people in your situation. If you need it or could sorely use it, don’t hesitate to stop at the food pantry or sign up for SNAP.

Don’t let pride keep you from shopping at the discount grocery store. It’s the same jar of peanut butter, just a dollar less expensive.

Don’t let pride cause you to make a foolish choice.

“I don’t really care what you have to say because you don’t have the same political beliefs as I do.”

“This idea just doesn’t match my life at all, so it’s worthless.”

Several years ago, my immediate circle of friends were full of people who would go out for drinks after work and spend an hour or two being as snarky as possible. We would spend our time making fun of others and often criticizing them for stupid reasons.

I would often see that negative sentiment sneaking into other aspects of my life. I would feel more negative about the things I used to feel very positive about. Rather than looking at the big good things in my life, I would focus instead on the little negatives.

Even worse, I would often use these little negatives as an excuse to be apathetic. I could ignore good advice because the person giving it didn’t appear to be affluent. I’d disregard a report with a lot of good ideas in it because of a spelling error.

Eventually, I reached a point where I realized that I was just drifting in life, finding easy reasons not to do anything. It was much easier to sit back and be snarky than to actually do anything, so I just fell into that trap.

It was at that point that many aspects of my life began to turn around. I basically decided to stop being negative about anything in my life with the exception of my own behavior. Sure, there might be a spelling error, but this report has a lot of good ideas in it, so what can I absorb? Yeah, the person across the hall might dress in worn-out clothes, but so what? He makes a lot of sense.

In the years following that shift, I took charge of my own choices. I started The Simple Dollar. I made a lot of changes to my personal, financial, and professional life. I paid off every bit of the debt I owed.

No more blame. No more negativity. No more excuses. Instead, I look at each situation and ask myself what real value I can get from this. If I can’t see anything, I move on without wasting a drop of energy on it – no negative thoughts, comments, or anything else.

“You have to be braindead to like that.”

“I didn’t bother to read the rest of the article because the first sentence included a misplaced apostrophe.”

If you default to a negative perspective on things, you’re bringing on several immediate costs that don’t have to be present.

First, negativity leads a person to never really challenge themselves. If something is challenging or different, it’s often hit with negativity and that negative response is used as a reason to not actually challenge yourself or grow. Negativity causes you to get stuck in a rut.

Second, negativity often undermines your own argument. It’s important to remember that people with a positive perspective on life have learned the powerful lesson to simply walk away from strong negativity. If you bring negativity to the table, many people are going to simply ignore what you’re saying and what you’re doing.

Also, negativity is often viewed as a sign of problems to come. Over and over again, my experience in the workplace has shown me that the person with the most negative attitude in the workplace is the person that is keeping projects from moving forward and is reducing the morale of everyone in the workplace. This isn’t a factor that’s unknown to supervisors and people who hire. They know that

“The author of this article once made a mistake in some other aspect of his life. Don’t read it.”

“If you listen to Buffett’s advice, you must be in favor of the destruction of the American dollar.”

Beyond that, negativity breeds negativity. Once you’ve reached a point where you find it okay to stew in negativity about one thing, it’s very easy to just add another thing to the pile. Once you’ve reached a point where you’re finding it healthy to openly share your negative feelings, it becomes easy to make many of your shared thoughts negative.

The more you do this, the more you drive away positive people in your life. I certainly don’t enjoy spending time involved with people who constantly look for the worst in others. I try as best I can to avoid them, not interact with them, and not give them my business.

On the flip side, you also tend to attract other folks who stew in negativity. In this situation, you’re embedding yourself in a constant stream of often-unfounded criticism and a focus on elements that are outside of a person’s core competencies (like criticizing a person’s ideas because of who the person is or discrediting a written argument because of a mis-spelled word or ignoring a speaker because of the color of trousers they chose). In other words, you’re focusing on things that don’t matter and applying negative perspectives to those that do.

“That professional woman is just dressed horribly. I won’t take my business there.”

“Who are you to even suggest that I might not be doing the best possible thing? What do you know, idiot?”

Every ounce of energy or thought you waste on being needlessly negative towards someone or something is an ounce of energy or thought not spent making your life better. The time and energy you spend whispering a caustic comment to someone else, writing a negative comment on a website, getting in a rage about an inconsequential detail, or thinking about how much you dislike someone or something is time and energy not spent putting your life in a better place.

If you think something isn’t useful for you, walk away from it and minimize the time and energy you spend on it. You’ll find yourself with a lot more time and energy available during your day to do positive things and absorb ideas that can help you in a positive way.

The next time you don’t like some pop culture phenomenon or have a strong sense of dislike for someone or find a minor error in someone’s work (when you’re not hired to proof it) or find yourself getting angry about something you can’t directly impact, take a deep breath and walk away. Look instead for the things that can actually help you or the ways in which you can actually help that situation.

The vast majority of the time, you’ll find yourself getting a lot more out of life – financially, professionally, emotionally, personally, and otherwise.

Good luck.

I stumbled across the above quote (which I’ve been unable to source) a few weeks ago. Since then, the idea has been running through my mind as I realized how often the idea behind the quote comes up in our day-to-day lives, personally, professionally, financially, and otherwise.

Simply put, none of us live in a bubble. We’re constantly interacting with others – our friends, our spouse, our children, our boss, our coworkers, our pharmacist, our doctor – the list goes on and on.

Most of those interactions are one-on-one. Yes, sometimes we are in a group environment, but many of the interactions people have are one-on-one with other individuals. It’s just you and your doctor. It’s just you and your spouse. It’s just you and your boss. It’s just you and your child.

Most of those interactions, if they go well, benefit both of you. If you can communicate clearly with your doctor, (s)he can offer a good treatment plan for you. You get better and your doctor is successful in their career’s mission. If you can communicate a societal standard to your child, then your child will adapt to society better and you’ll have an easier time managing that child’s public behavior. If you can suggest a great alternate plan to your boss, you both succeed. If you can relate good personal finance concepts to your partner, you’ll both end up in a better financial state.

In essence, these interactions are pieces of partnerships, particularly if they are with individuals that you’ll interact with again and again. A partnership is just that – a series of interactions with someone else. Ideally, most of these interactions are beneficial for both of you, and the overall pattern certainly should be one of benefit for both parties.

The best thing you can do to make sure that any partnership in your life goes well is to simply focus on being the best partner you can be.

Here are just a few pointers on being a good partner in every aspect of your life.

Being a good partner doesn’t mean being a doormat. If you are a doormat, then every partnership you’re involved with is not ending with the best possible outcome. It’s ending with the outcome where the other person gets what they want, but it doesn’t end with you getting anything that you want. That’s never the best outcome for a partnership, especially over a longer period.

Being a good partner does mean being a good communicator. If you want something out of a partnership or an interaction, be up front about it. Make it clear what you want out of this set of interactions and what you think you can both get out of it. At the very least, do this as a thought exercise: what’s the best possible outcome for all involved from this partnership?

Being a good partner doesn’t mean assigning blame. Sometimes things go wrong in partnerships. It’s very easy to just blame your partner for the problems. The doctor didn’t diagnose me correctly. My wife doesn’t listen to me. My boss doesn’t care about any of us. Instead, ask yourself what you can do to improve this situation.

I do this quite a lot, particularly with Sarah. It is very easy for me to blame her for things like the dishes not being done or something. When I step back, though, and ask myself why the dishes haven’t been done, I see that the real reason is that we’ve both been really busy with lots of things. Maybe I’m the one that has more free time to actually do the dishes right now.

Being a good partner does mean figuring out what you can bring to the table. What can you do to make the partnership succeed as a whole? Don’t focus on what your partner needs to do or should do. What can you do?

In the example above with the dishes, I might just do them myself. Alternately, I might take a serious look at my own schedule and see if there’s a way for me to fit in the time to take charge of the dishwashing.

If my wife and I are having money problems, perhaps I can look at what I can change or implement to reduce the impact of our spending issues. Maybe I can go ahead and implement some automatic transfers to a savings account.

Yet another example: if I’m feeling like my boss doesn’t understand my situation and I’m prone to ranting about it, I could just spend some time writing out the details of the situation myself and look for what aspects of a solution to the work problem I can implement myself.

Being a good partner doesn’t mean focusing only on what you get out of things. Every good partnership has outcomes that are beneficial to both sides. The best outcome is almost always the one that generates the most positives for everyone involved, not just yourself. One good way to address a partnership challenge is to simply look at the options you have before you, then look at all of the benefits each choice provides for the partnership as a whole.

What are you doing to be a good partner today? Almost every professional, personal, financial, and social element of your life is inherently tied to the partnerships you have with people around you. Your success hinges on good outcomes from all of these partnerships – or as many as you can possibly generate.

What are you doing right now to be a good partner with your spouse? Your boss? Your kids? Your coworkers?

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. Switching credit cards
2. Accepting pay for articles
3. Building credit
4. USPS refund on principle
5. Marriage and alcoholism
6. Roth 403(b) contributions
7. Reaching a teenager financially
8. Student loan repayment
9. Victim versus doing it yourself
10. Meatie versus veggie

From Thursday through Sunday, we had two houseguests who traveled nearly 2,000 miles to see us. From Friday through Sunday, we had two more guests. On Saturday evening, we had three additional people over for a dinner party.

Not once did we eat out, although we did have to make an extra grocery store trip. Our cost per meal per person over the entire weekend was about $1.50, and virtually every guest seemed to be happy with everything we served.

We’re getting good at this. Are we ready to host an extended family Christmas event? Maybe not.

Q1: Switching credit cards
My husband and I are in our mid-twenties with no debt. No student loans, no CC debt or car loans. We each have a small retirement account through our respective jobs although we plan on moving in the next couple years so I can go back to grad school. I have a credit card through a certain large bank that I’ve had since I graduated from high school, approximately seven years ago. I use it occasionally, about 6-10x/month as a way to add to my credit history. Problem is, my number has either been hacked or stolen three times in the past year so I’ve had to get a new card each time. It’s a very big pain and the bank’s customer service is terrible and I’ve gotten the run around each time having to dispute the charges.

Would it be worth canceling this card and getting a new one through our credit union? I don’t have a problem with interest (it’s lower through the CU though) since we pay it off each month. My husband and I each have a credit card through Wells Fargo that we opened when we were in college but haven’t used in about two years since we no longer bank with WF. I’m worried since we’re young (and the husband doesn’t use any CCs) canceling would hurt our credit score when we start looking for a home in the next five years. We only use a debit card for all our other purchases. What do you think?
- Carla

If I were you, I’d simply stop using the card for now and delete the card number from every online service where it appears. Then, I’d apply for a different card (while leaving the old one open), probably one from a different financial institution (like your credit union). In a few years, you can cancel the old card with minimal impact on your credit.

There seems to be some identity theft issues going on here. Usually, such issues occur when someone uses the card at a bogus or disreputable website. You might want to also consider carefully monitoring how both cards are and will be used.

I’d also keep a careful eye on the old card, even if you’re not actively using it. Just because it’s not in active use doesn’t mean the number’s not out there somewhere.

Q2: Accepting pay for articles
Do you accept payments for writing articles on certain topics on The Simple Dollar?
- Bill

I never have. I won’t say I never will, but I have yet to see an offer that would make me happy doing that and I don’t imagine that I ever will.

Simply put, I don’t sell the content of The Simple Dollar. It’s a place where every editorial word is written by me (or, on very rare occasions, by someone I trust) and the content is not being decided by a corporate entity beholden to the owners or shareholders.

If I’ve learned anything about blogging, it’s that the one thing that makes it more vital and valuable than other media sources is the genuine connection with the writer, someone who is sharing what they honestly know and think and value. If that isn’t there, why not just go read CNN or the Wall Street Journal?

Q3: Building credit
I am a 24 year old, recent graduate from college and have a job in the non-profit sector making a salary in the low $30k’s. I have a question about building my credit score. I have had a credit card since I turned 18, had student loans that were deferred throughout college (and actually paid off before payments started), a cell phone bill in my name, and rent on an apartment in my name. My car is paid off, I’ve never been late with a payment, and I have no debt except for a credit card bill that I pay off each month. My parents keep warning me that if I don’t have some sort of debt, like a car loan, or other bill that I pay in monthly installments (along with the corresponding interest), my credit score will not improve and might even become prohibitive when seeking a home loan down the line. I’d like to think that financial prudence and paying off my credit card each month would look good in the eyes of creditors. Are my parents right?
- Eric

Your parents aren’t right in this case.

If you have a credit card that you’re paying off in full each month, your credit score is certainly going up. Each month that goes by, the length of your credit history grows longer (up to a seven year cap), and that credit history length is a key part of your credit score.

Will you have the maximum credit score? Probably not. Will you have a pretty good to great one, one that gets better each month? Absolutely.

Your parents are right in that many lenders will look at your credit score first and foremost to make a snap judgment about whether to lend to you. However, based on what’s publicly known about credit scores, I think you’re doing just fine.

Q4: USPS refund on principle
I recently mailed my tax return through USPS. I had the mail certified & requested an electronic delivery receipt and I was charged accordingly.

My question is – Should I ask USPS for a refund of the money they charged me for this service, although it is $1.10, for principle sake – especially if for 3 weeks I was pondering listing my SSN & other details under ID protetion as I assumed the tax return was lost.
- Sachim

The first thing I would do is check the product refunds page for the Postal Service. However, I’m pretty sure that service isn’t eligible for a refund.

I agree with you that this is an example of poor service. I can name lots of examples of poor postal service in my own life. However, I will say that at least 99% of the service I’ve been involved with using the USPS has been perfectly fine.

If you wanted it to be there more securely, the best way is to e-file.

Q5: Marriage and alcoholism
My husband and I married late last year. Since the marriage, he’s quit his job and now is drinking heavily. I am support us and his stepson (paying the child support).

My problem is … how is the best way to cover what will surely be the astronomical costs of detox/rehab? We have insurance, but our CYD is $2000. If he relapses, I plan to exit (of which he is aware). I’m already paying the mortgage and all household expenses (even though it’s all in his name).
- Jess

Your marriage desperately needs counseling right now. If issues like “I plan to exit” are on the table, there are some very deep issues going on that need to be resolved very quickly or else the marriage will spiral out of control.

I’m not sure what the best way is to cover the cost of the detox or rehab at this point. Is it even covered by your insurance?

Most likely, you’re going to simply have to come up with that $2,000 out of pocket. One route might be to negotiate a payment plan with your service provider.

Q6: Roth 403(b) contributions
Currently I have 10% of my pay going into it and 2% going into a Roth 403(b). My employer contributes 3% of my pay automatically and matches $0.25 for every $1.00 I contribute (up to 4% of my pay). What percentage is the best to take full advantage of my employers contributions? I will be honest math is not my strong suit and I want to contribute the most I can to my retirement.
- Winston

It depends on what you mean by “matches $0.25 for every $1.00 I contribute (up to 4% of my pay).” It can mean one of two things: either your employer only matches you on the first 4% of your pay that you contribute, or it means your employer will keep matching until they’re contributing an amount equal to 4% of your pay.

If it’s the first, then you’ll maximize your employer’s contributions by contributing 4% of your pay. That’s easy.

If it’s the second, you’ll maximize your employer’s contributions by contributing 16% of your pay. If your employer is contributing $0.25 for every $1 you contribute, then you have to contribute four times as much. 4% times four is 16%.

Q7: Reaching a teenager financially
I have been reading your blog for about 6 months and find it very informational. I was hoping you could suggest a book that my son, 14 years old, would/could read and one for my daughter, 9 years old. I looked in your archives but only found books that teach me how to teach them. I do plan to get the “Raising Financially Fit Kids”. I have tried to teach my kids to be financial good, but I do not believe I am very consistent, because they spend every dollar they get (usually the same day). I have discussed savings, credit cards, loans, but I do not seem to be getting through to them. In the past I have not been good and am still paying the price, will be for the next 25 years. I would like them to be better off and more informed then I was when I started college and working
- Crystal

It’s extremely hard to teach children at that age about the risks of personal finance because they truly don’t have the cognitive development in place to understand that kind of abstract risk, nor do they (usually) have the experience. They don’t connect spending everything they have on a new video game with potentially not being able to have food to eat. Adding a book to this equation further abstracts it.

One approach you might want to take is to encourage their entrepreneurial spirit. A book like Conversations with Teen Entrepreneurs might fit the bill here.

Honestly, the best way you can get the message across is to sit down and show them how you budget. Treat those children like they’re adults and they’ll listen.

Q8: Student loan repayment
By July of this summer, I will have 6 months of expenses saved in my Emergency Fund. Since finishing school, I have been using financial hardship forbearances while I got my house in order but this September my loans come into repayment.

My employer offers $4k/calender year towards my professional degree which I am one semester into with 2 years remaining. My question: should I start paying down my student loan debt in September and resume classes later, if ever? Or, should I utilize the tuition reimbursement & take classes this Fall thus qualifying for in-school forbearance although the student loan interest accrues? I have no other debt besides this.
- Lacey

The real question is whether or not you’re absolutely sure you’re on the right career path now. If you’re chasing a professional degree for a profession you don’t really want, that’s not a good choice.

If you’re sure that you are, take advantage of the deal you’ve got on your education right now and take the classes. Don’t sweat the outstanding student loans.

If you’re not sure, get out of the situation and start paying down that debt sooner rather than later.

Q9: Victim versus doing it yourself
I’ve enjoyed your posts about the scarcity vs. abundance mentality, and it got me to thinking about my two sisters who are only one year apart in age. Up until recently, both had what I call a “victim” attitude toward life. Both had experienced some difficult situations and setbacks in life and were feeling rather sorry for themselves. I tried to help but not enable both financially, and provided them each with free financial training and counseling.

Do you have any recommendations for me regarding this one sister who refuses to take responsibility for her life?
- Gail

The difference is nature, not nurture. No two people are wired the same way inside their heads, regardless of how they’re raised.

The question you need to answer is whether or not you’re going to continue enabling her poor choices by giving her resources to sustain her current path or not. Handing her cash to get out of her latest jam doesn’t help, no matter how much you might want to.

Don’t be afraid to offer nonfinancial help to her and advice that encourages her to change her life, but turn off that financial tap that allows her to continue making poor choices unless you want her to continue using you as a support line to sustain things. Instead, be willing to help her if she does begin making different choices.

Q10: Meatie versus veggie
How can a veggie respect the non-veggie, i..e. meatie, partner with getting grossed out? I’m the veggie partner and when my meatie sidekick grills up a steak the house stinks for hours. The second issue is that I detest washing the dishes if there is a lot of gross, stinky grease. I think the meatie should always wash the pots and grills after cooking meat but he doesn’t see it that way. If it’s my turn to do the dishes then whatever was used gets included. We can keep working on that one but the smell is what really bothers me. And it isn’t fair to tell the meatie he has to eat out.
- Delores

My honest belief is that if you find that a simple single-person meat-based meal causes your residence to intolerably stink for hours, there’s not much room for compromise here. One of you is going to have to give in to what the other one wants, and I can’t tell you what that answer is.

I will say that such things are often roadblocks to a longer relationship. If one person engages in a behavior – even if it’s a minor one – that the other person can’t deal with and won’t voluntarily change, then you’re setting the stage for lots of problems down the road on both sides.

If your partner is unwilling to change, you’re going to have to decide for yourself what’s more important: your current relationship or the meat smell.

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.

168 hours?

That’s the number of hours in seven days – a typical week. The premise behind this book by Laura Vanderkam is that we misuse a lot of the time during that week, either through excuses or sacrifices or misplaced priorities. Because of that, we find ourselves not having time for the stuff that’s genuinely important to us, leaving us feeling as though our lives are out of whack.

Vanderkam’s approach is to simply wipe the slate entirely clean. Assume that all 168 hours of your week are free. From there, you start filling in stuff according to their true priority for you – and when that week is full, find ways to dump things that really aren’t a priority for you.

It’s an interesting process, one that I’ve attempted to do over the last few weeks.

The Myth of the Time Crunch
Vanderkam’s main argument is spelled out here. The idea that we’re under a “time crunch” is a myth. The real crisis all of us are under is more along the lines of misuse of time. We spend our time doing things that aren’t very high on our real personal priority list. It’s not just the time we waste doing unimportant stuff. It’s also the time we spend being productive towards ends that really don’t mean very much in our life.

I’ll use myself for an example. Quite often, when I hit a temporary roadblock in my writing, I’ll spend some time doing something else fairly idle at my desk, like surfing the web or visiting a few messageboards that I like to post on. That time spent is really ineffective. The entire point is to get my wheels turning, so why not do something that’s actually in line with something important in my life? I could go to the gym or take a walk (personal health). I could prepare a meal for later so I have more time this evening to spend with my kids. I could go read something completely unrelated for half an hour. I could go take a nap. I could write a letter to someone I care about.

All of these things are more in line with my core values than the time I spend there idling. If I start looking at my whole life in that way, it’s pretty easy to start identifying things I spend my time on that are less important to me and replacing them with things that are more important to me that I sometimes feel I don’t have time for.

Vanderkam suggests starting this process by keeping a time diary of your week, listing what you’re doing every fifteen minutes throughout the week. It’s actually easier than it seems and it can be really useful if you’re honest with it.

Your Core Competencies
What things do you do that others consider you to be very good at? What things do you recognize that others do better than you do? Spend some time on those questions, because those questions point you towards your core competencies.

Vanderkam argues that one of the best time management tactics you can use is to find ways to maximize the first group of things and offload the second group of things onto others. Let’s say, for example, that you’re really good dealing with groups of children and not so good dealing with laundry, consider offering a Saturday night babysitting service for several families and then use that money to pay for laundry service. You’ve suddenly turned a block of time spent on something you hate (laundry) into a block of time spent on something you find fulfilling (child care).

The Right Job
You spend an awful lot of your 168 hours per week working. Vanderkam offers up these questions to start applying these ideas to your work, on page 79:

Does my job tap into my intrinsic motivations (things I loved as a kid or would do for free)?
Does my job give me a reasonable amount of autonomy?
Am I challenged regularly to the extent of my abilities?
Do my work environment, organization, and coworkers encourage my best work?
If the answer is “no” to any of these four questions, what can I change? In the next week? In the next year?
Can I create the right job within my organization? Another organization? Or will I need to go out on my own?

The key argument behind all of this is in order to do a job well, it needs to match up well with your core competencies and your own interests and it needs to have people involved that encourage you to do well. If these elements are present, it’s easy for anyone to do well, earn raises, earn promotions, and so on. If these elements aren’t present, it quickly becomes much harder to achieve success.

I’ve worked at jobs that have succeeded in some of these areas and utterly failed in others. When more of these things were in line (as my work environment was in about 2002 to 2003 and as it has been for the last few years), I’ve been able to do very well. When fewer of these things were in line, it was harder to succeed in any way.

Controlling Your Calendar
The obvious conclusion from the previous section of the book is that doing work you want to be doing will make you more efficient, while doing work you don’t want to be doing makes you less efficient.

If you keep drawing out that idea, it begins to make sense that any time and effort you can put into reorienting your work towards the things you’re good at and the things you enjoy will make you a better worker.

I’ll use an example of a person I know who is a manager of a convenience store. She got that job because she’s worked there a long time and has a reputation of being very friendly with the customers and other employees. Instead of following the standard practices of managing there (which seemed to involve a lot of report writing), she basically cut out the vast majority of the reports, trimming them down to the bare minimum, and decided she could do her job most effectively (minimizing turnover, maximizing profits) by spending her time out on the floor, sharpening up the little things, talking to customers, keeping the employees happy and feeling well-liked, and sometimes doing things like stepping in for an employee who needed to leave to take care of a sick child.

That place is now so busy that you can barely find a spot at the pumps or in the parking lot. Why? The interior is sparkling. Everyone in there seems happy and having fun. There is always an extra person around if you need them (often the manager herself).

She’s doing a killer job. Best of all, she’s really happy doing it.

Anatomy of a Breakthrough
Where do you want your career to go next? What do you think of as the “next level” for your career that you actually want?

Spend some time talking to people who have actually done it and achieved what you’re thinking about and ask them how they got there. Then, spend your time following their advice and also polishing your core competencies. Spend a focused hour or two per day doing those things instead of engaging in idle workplace activity.

The New Home Economics
Most of the ideas stated above that pertain to the workplace can also be achieved at home. At home, the biggest, most important blocks are the high-impact times you spend with your spouse, your children, and your closest friends. After that is high-value leisure – things you get a great deal of personal value from doing.

Most of us, though, spend an awful lot of our time at home in low-value activities – channel surfing, flipping through magazines, staring in a daze out the window, surfing the internet for “funny” things, and so on.

Often, we do that because we’re tired. Almost always, the best exchange you can do is to turn an hour of that low-value stuff into a half an hour of additional sleep and a half an hour of high-value stuff. So, instead of watching an hour of a late night television program, go to bed half an hour earlier and spend half an hour with your kid or your spouse each day doing something that you’ll both get a lot of value out of.

Don’t Do Your Own Laundry
If there are household tasks that you loathe that eat up your time, don’t do them. Don’t be afraid to ship out the tasks that you hate so that others can do them, provided you then fill that time with something high-value. You don’t have to replace things you get personal value from – just focus on the things that are less important to you.

Of course, this hinges on having good personal finances. If you’re barely managing to break even with what you have, you won’t have this option on the table. This is yet another valuable reason to get your spending under control. Quite often, rampant spending is the result of trying to take the edge off of stress in your life. If you reduce that spending for a bit and keep your eye on the ball, you can start seeking out ways to directly minimize that stress.

A Full Life
A full life doesn’t mean one that’s packed to the brim with scheduled activities and plans. A full life is one where each moment simply has some sort of actual meaning and purpose. If you feel tired, don’t just do something idle – sleep. If you feel like a relationship in your life isn’t what you want it to be, spend some idle time communicating with that person. If there’s something you’ve always wanted to learn how to do, start learning how to do it.

Time spent in that fashion is always valuable and always leads to a full life. If you fill as many moments as possible with something with genuine meaning (or doing something that prepares for those moments), you’ll always feel like you have a life chock full of meaning.

Is 168 Hours Worth Reading?
168 Hours does a great job of forcing you to think deeply about how you spend your time and whether that choice actually adds value to your overall life. It’s very powerful in terms of thought exercise.

To me, 168 Hours works best if it’s paired with a book that’s strong on the actual mechanics of reorganizing your time, like Getting Things Done. While 168 Hours may be a bit mechanically short, it’s philosophically rich.

While I didn’t come up with any great system for reorganizing my time after reading this book, I did find myself thinking deeply about how I utilize my time and energy and it pushed me into making some interesting and challenging decisions. If a book makes you look at your life in such a fashion, it’s a success.

Check out additional reviews and notes of 168 Hours on Amazon.com.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon this blog post by Caterina Fake in which she discusses the phenomenon of FOMO at conferences (in this case, the SXSW conference in Austin, TX). Bear with me a bit as I go down a little bit of a side journey here. Trust me, it’ll come back around to something useful.

FOMO, of course, refers to the fear of missing out – a sense that you’re at the wrong conference session, attending the wrong after-party, or talking with the wrong people. “This session/party/meeting isn’t great – maybe there’s something better I should be at,” goes the thought, and it’s often followed by anxiety and second-guessing.

I used to attend conferences regularly with my previous work and I certainly felt that way at times. I would often second-guess the conference session I was attending. I would second-guess who I was eating dinner with. I would second-guess the choice to go to bed early one night so I could make some key events the next day. I always felt that maybe there was something more valuable I should be doing with my time.

I once expressed it to one of the wise old men in the field that I was involved in, a person I’ll call Mike. Mike told me, in no uncertain terms, that there was absolutely nothing better going on at any conference than whatever you happened to be doing at that moment. If there was something better, you’d be doing it.

Instead, he argued, a conference becomes much better if you just focus on whatever you’re doing now and basically act as if there’s nothing else going on at the conference. “Even if something really great was happening around that corner, it’s not going to matter as much as getting everything you can out of the good thing that’s happening right now. There’s always someone to talk to and learn from. Even if you’re holed up in your hotel room, that’s still good, because you’re there because you’re tired and thus the best use you can get from your time is to rest and sleep.” (I’m paraphrasing a bit, based on a five or six year old memory from a mind that can be notoriously leaky when it comes to specific memories.)

After that, I watched how Mike handled himself at conferences. Most of the time, he was involved in one-on-one conversations with people and he usually seemed really focused on the other person. Sometimes, he’d wander into sessions, even in the middle of them. At other times, he’d wander out of sessions. I also saw him wandering through the open displays quite often, taking notes.

I soon realized that Mike spent the entire conference maximizing the value out of every moment he was there. He was either learning something, establishing a relationship with someone, or enjoying the current moment as much as he could.

In other words, he enjoyed and focused on what he had at the moment rather than pining after what he might have if he went elsewhere.

Here’s the thing: our life is like a conference. The more time we spend pining for the great thing that might be around that next corner, the less time we spend getting as much value as we can from what’s going on in front of us.

It’s true for spending. I have this gadget that does a lot of things that I want, but there’s this better gadget at the store. I have a great closet full of clothes, but there’s this stunning new outfit at the store that I want.

It’s true for time spent. I could spend time with my kids, but there might be a great show on television. I could spend time reading this book, but there might be something interesting going on over at the club.

It’s true over and over again in life. We are constantly sacrificing the good for the potential of slightly better. Frankly, that’s a mistake.

I’m a big fan of living in the moment, but living in the moment doesn’t mean tossing aside the good thing you have in front of you for the great thing that might be around the corner. In fact, it means just the opposite. It means finding value from eating a home-cooked dinner with your family. It means seeing the greatness in remixing the wardrobe you already have. It means spending a half an hour chasing your kids around the yard instead of shopping for yet another new gadget.

The perfect is the enemy of the good, and the good often becomes great if you spend your energy focusing on it.