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. The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
I spent part of this week assembling a handmade book of poetry to read to our children in the evenings and on road trips, so this inspiration list will include several of these. I’ll share the first stanza of each

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding, riding, riding,
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes tells the tale of a dashing thief on the run. It’s perhaps the most enjoyable poem I’ve ever run across for reading aloud, as it just magically flows off your tongue.

2. Sarah
My wife is my tag team partner in every aspect of life.

When I sit down and think about the week just past, I’m often stunned when I realize how often the two of us are simply in sync on all kinds of things.

3. Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

This poem makes me reflect on the power of the human spirit and what we can accomplish if we put our minds to it.

4. The Art Institute of Chicago
Once a year, we go to Chicago to visit family. During that trip, we try to do something in the Chicago area that we can’t really do around here.

Over the past few months, our two oldest children have really taken an interest in art, particularly impressionist and post-impressionist painting.

Lo and behold, The Art Institute of Chicago has an amazing gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist works. Looks like we’ve got something on our schedule for this summer.

(Yes, I have a three year old girl who sat on my lap as we looked at thumbnails of impressionist art for the time it took to get through the whole online gallery. I think she’ll do just fine at the museum.)

5. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

More than any other poem, Where the Sidewalk Ends makes me want to go explore.

6. A walk in the woods
We spent much of last weekend walking in the woods. We found several mushrooms, but more importantly, we found wonderful forests alive with the new growth of spring.

7. There is another sky by Emily Dickinson

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

Where is our private place? Where can we go where we can feel some separation from the world, some deep solace?

8. Max
The faithful companion of two of my closest friends passed away this week. He was a wonderful dog. I’ll miss him.

9. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Make your life something worth living for. What mark are you putting on this world?

10. Hurt
This song makes me think of some of the people I’ve lost in my life. I would give anything to take back some of the mistakes I’ve made.

For the better part of the last decade, the biggest worry I had in my life was personal finance and the foundation (or lack thereof) that I was building for my future.

My approach to this worry was, for the most part, to ignore it. I’d just make minimum payments and pretend that everything was fine, only to find myself pretty stressed out every time I was forced to look at it or when I’d sit up at night thinking about the future.

In short, I didn’t really address my big worry. I avoided it.

If I had only known the amount of peace that would have come into my life if I had just addressed the problem head on as soon as I identified it, I would have done it immediately.

In other words, the solution to the fixable problems in your life isn’t to avoid them, it’s to face them head on.

How did I address the personal finance problems in my life? Once I decided to face up to the situation, I took an immediate action to take some of the pressure off (selling off some things), then I engrossed myself in reading so that I could learn more, after which I developed a plan for myself that was reasonably in line with my life. Carrying through that plan brought me to success.

Since then, I’ve used the same approach to get my weight gain under control and tackle other health issues in my life, with success.

Now, I’m left with tackling other challenges in my life. What’s my biggest worry at the moment? Honestly, it’s probably my parenting skills.

What can I do about it?

First, I start off with a burst of doing what I know how to do. Simply put, that means spend plenty of time with my children. I already do this, of course, but I’m going through a period right now where I’m spending some serious one-on-one time with each child with the focus of strengthening my relationship with them.

Second, I read. I have a big stack of parenting books on my Kindle and my library reserve list, from NurtureShock by Po Bronson to Bringing Up Geeks by Marybeth Hicks. This will provide me with the foundation I need for the next step.

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.

One common thing I like to do on weekdays when I don’t have enough leftovers for lunch is to prepare something that will make a casserole dinner for my family that I can easily pull a lunch’s worth of food from for myself right then. I prefer meals of this type that are simple to make so that I don’t invest a lot of time in it, either.

This dish, which I actually prepared today for lunch and intend to have for dinner with the family on either Saturday or Monday evening, is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. I made a healthy bowl of this for myself and also filled up a casserole for baking for my family’s dinner in a few nights.

It’s hearty, delicious, cheap, and incredibly simple.

What You Need
For the amount I made, which makes enough for a three quart casserole and an extra meal, you’ll need:

16 oz. dried penne pasta – it looks like little tubes
4 cups vegetable stock – we make our own, but you can buy it if you want or you can substitute water and sacrifice some significant flavor
1 pint cherry tomatoes
2 cans cooked cannelini beans – or 1 1/2 cups dried beans, cooked
A small amount of fresh or dried basil and oregano

I also used some mozzarella cheese – about two cups, shredded – for the casserole.

The Night Before (or Early That Day)
There’s nothing to do in advance preparation for this dish. It’s really easy.

Preparing the Meal
Get out a large pot. Add the stock to the pot, then add the dried penne.

Let the penne cook according to the package directions. Three minutes before the penne is finished, add the tomatoes, the basil and oregano, and the beans. In my case, I had this (which had boiled up a bit)…

… and when I added the beans and tomatoes, it looked like this…

Cook for another three minutes until the penne is done, then serve. I made myself a bowl of this mix…

… and then I put the rest into a small casserole for later serving. As a top layer on the casserole, I added two cups of shredded mozzarella and a few dashes of dried basil and oregano.

When I’m ready to bake, I’ll allow it to adjust to room temperature for an hour or so, then I’ll bake it at 350 F for about thirty minutes, with the lid on for all but the last ten minutes or so. The longer you leave the lid on, the more moist the meal will be.

Optional Ingredients
You can all sorts of things to the mix. A sliced Italian sausage would be good, as would chicken, if you’re looking for protein. Other options include sliced button mushrooms or sliced (or even whole) olives, as well as a bit of olive oil. Add the things you like and you’re sure to be happy.

Andrea writes in with a heartbreaking story.

In your post about helping others, you made several suggestions for helping someone that appears to be in trouble. The item that most struck home for me was:

“Wait for their “bottom,” then gently offer help. Although a low point can often be incredibly painful, it can also be an incredibly valuable learning experience for people. It is at that point that a person realizes, for the first time, that they’re following a path that doesn’t work. It’s at that time when they look around them and see who their true friends are, as they are the ones who are willing to help them at this low point. That’s when your help will really matter. That’s when a helping hand won’t cause resentment, but will be appreciated. That’s when it’ll build into something more than just a quick fix.”

I thought that my sibling WAS at bottom. Had been out of work for 3 years, had not been eating properly for 6 months, was not able to feed their pet of 16 years, AND they were becoming homeless due to not being able to pay rent. Another sibling of ours was helping them to make rent for 6 months.

I offered (w/ my spouses approval) room and board while they continued their job search.

It lasted 6 weeks. Not that they found a job and were back on their feet – no. They couldn’t stand to live in our home with our house rules. What we considered to be simple, they found to be onerous.

example: Turn out lights when you leave a room. After weeks of “please turn out the lights when you not in a room”. I came home from work one day and found 5 rooms of lights turned on upstairs while the person was downstairs in the TV room, with lights on, watching a movie. It was the middle of the day. I was not happy.

example: Their pet of 16 years is old, kidneys were failing, & has lost bladder control. To them it was OK to keep the pet confined to the house and leave to mess inside the house. We live on a large lot that is securely fenced. We keep multiple pets that welcomed the old dog with no problems. The dog could have stayed outside for hours at a time and not bothered anyone. I asked that they clean up the dogs messes. This was inconceivable to them. What did they do in their previous home?? They lived on the 2nd floor of a walk up. Did they never walk or clean up after the dog??

Sometimes, what an outsider may think is bottom, isn’t.

I had very carefully let them know I was there for them. Where I believe that I messed up was that, when approached for help I OFFERED a room and meals. I should have waited to find out what they were looking for. And if I could not accomodate that request (say, cash), then wait for the follow up request.

Andrea’s point here is incredibly valuable. A situation you might consider to be “the bottom” might not be a bottoming-out for someone else.

When we “bottomed out,” we had a pretty large stack of debt – around $20,000 in credit card debt, two car loans, and several student loans. Yet I still receive emails every single day from people who are in comparable situations, if not worse. Sometimes I shudder at the situations people find themselves in.

It gets even worse when you start mixing in other factors. Depression. Drug abuse. Self-loathing. Poor influences from the people around you. You can be convinced that you can never really fix your situation, so why not just keep behaving like you already are?

I watched someone very dear to me spend more than a decade of his life simply not caring very much about the world. He sunk very deep into a mix of mistakes, depression, and drug abuse and got very low before he decided to start fixing things. His bottom was far different than mine.

So, what can you do? In the story above, Andrea quoted me a bit, and I want to repeat one sentence here.

It is at that point that a person realizes, for the first time, that they’re following a path that doesn’t work.

In other words, bottoming out is a matter of self-realization. You personally might find someone’s situation to be unbelievably bad, but if they don’t see it, they’re not going to change the course they’re on. If they see more value in continuing down their current path than changing to a new one, all of your care in the world won’t add up to too much.

They have to bottom out for themselves. It’s an internal thing, where you finally accept that there’s something wrong in your life that needs to be fixed. Some people will reach that point much more easily than others.

Until then, any help you give someone on a downward trajectory will just prolong that downward trajectory. If you think a drug addict has bottomed out and you give them some help, but they haven’t bottomed out yet in their own mind, they’re very likely to use your help to further their downward spiral. The same thing happens for anyone on a downward spiral of any kind. If you help someone that hasn’t reached their bottom yet, your help will mostly just prolong their downward slide.

The help you should offer to someone before they reach the bottom is non-financial help. Talk to them. Lend them an ear. However, offering them material and financial assistance usually doesn’t help until they’ve really reached bottom and have made the internal choice to follow a different path. The best way to judge that is through their actions and choices, not their words.

Since my tongue-in-cheek post on Monday about my “seminar series,” I’ve been stunned at the outpouring of emails and notes from people who wanted to pay me anyway for that “seminar.”

I really appreciate it. I deeply appreciate it.

Right now, though, I’m in a financial situation where, for the time being and for the near term, I don’t need that money. I actually live the things I write about on this site. My financial situation is relatively secure (nothing is absolutely secure, but I’m happy with where I’m at).

Yet, at the same time, I deeply understand the desire to give. I often donate to websites and web tools that I use or find valuable or find inspiration, just because I know how much work and passion goes into putting that out there.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how to handle this. I thought about my life and the people in it. Pretty quickly, the right answer came to me.

Three members of my close family all work for the same charity. This charity does tremendous life-chaning work here in the United States on what’s often a shoestring budget.

This charity is L’arche Tahoma Hope in Tacoma, Washington.

L’arche Tahoma Hope is a charity that runs a series of homes in the Tacoma area. These homes – mostly just ordinary houses, but one is a small farm – are places where small groups of developmentally disabled adults live along with L’arche volunteers and workers. These developmentally disabled individuals are not able to live on their own and often come from families who are extremely challenged to care for them.

What L’arche does is provide a community situation for these individuals to live in. The people who work for L’arche live in these homes right alongside the developmentally disabled members of L’arche, helping the people there live the most full life possible in a community of their peers, where everyone is valued regardless of their disability.

When I’ve visited there, I’ve been amazed to see how developmentally disabled people have had the opportunity to live a full, social, happy life where they have friends who view them as valuable equals, something that would be very difficult for them to have in almost any other situation.

You don’t have to spend much time there to see the enormous positive impact on the lives of the people who live there. At the same time, I’d be the first to admit that it takes someone with special skills and a special heart to do the work that needs to be done to make this possible.

Even a cursory look at their annual report – they leave their books pretty wide open for anyone to look – reveals that they manage to pull this off with a surprising lack of funds, considering they run four fully-staffed homes. They don’t waste money there, and they make use of every single dime they can get.

Please, if you’ve even considered giving a dollar to me or to The Simple Dollar in the past, channel that giving to L’arche Tahoma Hope. If you’ve ever wanted a small charity to champion, consider L’arche. Every dollar helps.

You can visit the L’arche Tahoma Hope website or jump directly to donations through JustGive.org.

Thank you.

(I not only wrote this for today’s post, but for the ability to share this link in the future with people who write to me asking to donate money.)

As I write this, I’m enjoying my first ice-cold glass of sun tea of 2011. Delicious.

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. Student loan consolidation question
2. Tabletop or electronic games?
3. Retirement worries
4. Groceries and kids
5. Quality of life versus money
6. 401(k) or mortgage
7. How to handle second mortgage
8. Balancing gas prices
9. Real Prius numbers
10. Refinance or pay more?

Q1: Student loan consolidation question
Our youngest child graduates from college soon. I have five Parents Plus loans that total approx $45,000 in debt. Four of loans are at 7.65%, one is at 4%. I could consolidate all to a “Weighted Average“ interest rate of just over 7%, which would reduce the total payment by $80.00/ month. I could consolidate the 4 high interest ones, and reduce the total net payment of all by $65.00/month. I would use the difference in the payments to snowball all of this. Or I could leave them alone and just snowball the whole works.
- Sandy

Based on the information here, it sounds like consolidation would not actually help you reduce your interest rates. However, it would extend the term of your loans, which means that although your monthly payment would go down a bit, the term of your loan would grow longer at the same time.

Over a long period of time, this is somewhat a bad thing, as it means you’ll be paying more interest over the lifetime of the loan. Over the short term – the next month, for one – it’s a good thing, as your monthly payment will be lower.

I tend to take the long term view. I’d leave things as they are now and snowball the debts.

Q2: Tabletop or electronic games?
I know you play many strategy boardgames and I have been been interested in starting to play one/some with my boyfriend who plays tons of tabletop warhammer and other computer army strategy type games. We recently saw that the online downloadable section of xbox live has many of the starter games you have suggested over time like carsconne, ticket to ride, and one other I can’t recall right now. They are priced around $10 to download. I thought the prices for buying the table top board games new you mentioned was a around the $20-25 range. What do you think about this option? Would it diminish the experience at all in your opinion if we were playing each other through the xbox?

We downloaded the trial of carsconne and liked that it showed us the legal tile placement and kept track of the scoring. That said, I have never played the real version so I don’t have anything to compare it to.
- Kristin

Electronic games and tabletop board games are such a vastly different experience that I can barely compare the two.

The biggest difference is the face-to-face interactions. Actually seeing the other players, watching their body language, and hearing their vocal inflections paired with mannerisms adds a rich dimension to board games that video games can’t match. There’s also the tactile experience of the pieces and lots of other little factors that come from sitting at a table with real live people versus playing a video game.

Board games also have the advantage of not requiring electricity for use. I can play a board game when the power is off provided I have a flashlight. In fact, I often do play such games when the power is off. The same is true for camping trips, etc.

Video games are a good substitute for game types that board games can’t capture. For example, I can’t see how something like Portal could be re-created successfully as a board game.

Q3: Retirement worries
I am afraid that i dont have enough money by the time i grow old. Or i do not know how much is sufficient to grow old with. I am aged 35, earning about RM 36,000 per year. So, about 3k per mth. I know the standard of living in US and Malaysia is different, lets presuming cost of living is equivalent as in 1usd to buy 1 usd goods, 1 rm to buy 1 rm goods.

Presuming a reasonable condo, cost about rm 200k to 300k. A macdonald value meal with french fries, a burger and a drink, cost about rm 9. I have no debt, own a car (year 1996). I am living with parents, but if they are no longer here, i have to move out as the house is belonged to my brother. I am not able to move out right now, as parents are old, need to take care of them.

I am thinking to buy a house or change a new car, but yet i am not sure, my salary is enough for all these. I like the way you plan for yr life, therefore would want to seek yr advice. I have 100k in stock investment. Everytime i got money, i just dump in. As you know, stock goes up and come down, so it is very hard to say what kind of dividen i am earning that with. But if i sell all those right now, i have 100k for it. Emegency fund around 3k. I save about rm 500 every mth. I have 2 life insurance policies which one of them include medical (very low), i know should have bought short term or medical only, but that was long ago when i purchased it so cant change much about it.

My friend told me that we need at least 1 to 3 million when we retired, as we are not able to generate income when we retired at age 55 and if living up to 90 years old. You have yr 401k , we also have employee fund, currently i have around 70k in those fund about dividen 5%.

Do you think i am in a bad financial position? Any suggestion to improve my situation? I would be gladly appreciate it.
- Nata

For starters, I would abandon the notion of retiring when you’re 55.

The traditional retirement age – 65 – was set at a time when life expectancy was barely beyond that. In fact, when it was mandated originally in the 1930s, the average life expectancy was below that.

If I were you, I’d investigate the life expectancy of someone your age and perhaps subtract a few years from it. That’s a more realistic estimate of your retirement age.

Using that as a guideline, retirement savings becomes much less pressurized. Do some calculation using those adjusted expectations.

If you still want to retire at 55, expect some challenges. It’s not an easy path to get there.

Q4: Groceries and kids
Looking at my budget, I know I need to cut my grocery bill but I have 2 young boys who already eat like teenagers. My 5 year old is still rather picky while my 10 year old will eat almost anything and in large quantities. Your family usually cook meals using little if any meat. I assume your kids aren’t picky eaters, true? Utilizing more veggies and less meat is cost effective but only successful if the boys eat it. Any suggestions?
- Denise

We make a wide variety of meals. If our kids don’t like what’s for supper some night, we just make them try a few bites of it. We don’t allow them to dictate an alternate supper and we don’t give them snacks afterward to make up for it.

They’re used to this, so they’re pretty willing to try everything. Like anyone, they have foods that they like and they don’t like, but they’re pretty well-rounded eaters.

We just don’t let them get away with protesting every meal until they get hot dogs and macaroni and cheese or something like that. If they don’t like what we have, they don’t have to eat much of it, but they’re not rewarded with other kid-friendly food later on. They always have the option to eat more of whatever we have for dinner.

Q5: Quality of life versus money
When I was younger I was extremely liberal with my spending on credit cards. With my wedding and the time my wife has spent off having my two children we have managed to accrue 24k in consumer(cc) debt. As well as a 96k mortgage. After a lot of soul-searching I was able to break my bad habits. I have lived mostly on cash for the last one and a half years. My debt has remained mostly unchanged during that time. Recently, I lost my primary source of income for a few months and took a job that provided regular paychecks instead of my quarterly windfalls that I counted on to keep current on my debt. I fell behind on payments and have basically given up on caring about due dates. I am floundering with a lack of direction. I want to pay off my debt and regain control of my life but I also want to maintain a normal life for my children. We have cut spending to the bone, but, I wonder if bankruptcy would help me achieve these goals faster than conventional debt repayment techniques. I am only 25 and have a good prospective working career at my feet. Any tips for someone in my position? Any help is good help.
- Jeff

Whether or not you’re able to handle that debt depends on a lot of things: your actual family income level, the cost of living in your area, the extra costs of your employment, and so on.

It may be that bankruptcy is your best option here, but unless the rest of the picture is really awful, this is a recoverable situation without bankruptcy. Bankruptcy usually doesn’t make your debts go away. It usually just means the courts create a debt repayment plan for you.

Managing weekly paychecks is far different than managing windfalls. It takes practice.

Q6: 401(k) or mortgage
Would you stop your 401-k to if you could pay off your mortgage by the end of this year? I am 44. Husband is 42. His contribution would not stop. Our mortgage balance is 32k.
- Sheila

Unless there was some sort of major life change occurring in the next couple of years that would involve a severe drop in income, I wouldn’t change a thing.

That is, unless you’re way ahead of where you should be on your retirement contributions. Use a retirement calculator and figure out where you’re at for your age. If you’re ahead of where you should be and you’d like to get that mortgage finished off, make the short term switch.

However, it is never a good idea to take your retirement savings off the rails for a while just to gently accelerate a debt repayment.

Q7: How to handle second mortgage
We’ve recently had to take out a government (FHA Title 1 Loan) loan to do some necessary repairs on our house, which we’ve only been in since late 2008. We purchased it from a family member and now we have some unexpected repairs to make. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough equity at the time to take out a loan to cover the repairs (which have cost in the neighborhood of $25,000 to be done), so we had to find an alternate route for funding. Luckily I found a bank that offered a loan that was specifically set up for this purpose and was government sponsored, which turned out to be our ONLY option. The down side is that the interest rate is a little high (It’s ~8%) and we had to borrow the maximum amount ($25,000).

While we’re still waiting for the necessary permits and everything to be approved so that we can begin the work, my wife and I have both been working hard to build up as much of a savings account as possible so that we can pay off as much of the loan in one lump sum as soon as the work is completed. We don’t want to drain our entire savings, but we have about $10,000 in “extra” savings that we can put towards the loan.

My question is, what do we do about the remaining $15,000 part of the loan?

My concern, first of all, is having such a big loan that uses our house as collateral. It’s got a fairly high interest rate, and although we’re working hard to pay off the loan, I’m not comfortable with maintaining such a high balance with something so important. I’m also not fully comfortable with the company that we’re dealing with to pay off the loan (I’m guessing the bank sold the loan as soon as it was made), because they don’t offer an online overview of your account, or any real communicative statements, and they just seem to be a little behind the times in terms.

We both have credit cards with a $0 balance (inspired in part by your blog!) with interest rates LOWER than the interest rate on the loan. My credit card is at 7.6%, and my wife’s is about the same. Unfortunately hers is based on a variable interest rate which is the prime rate + a certain percentage (right now it’s pretty low). Both of our cards offer 0% balance transfers for at least a year.

With this information, do you have any advice on whether or not it would it would make sense to pay our loan down to $15,000 and then split the remainder between our two credit cards with a 0% balance transfer? Is it any more “safe” to have a somewhat high credit card balance than having a second mortgage? Is it possible that if we transfer a large balance to my wife’s card that her interest rate will go up more than minimally because it’s based on the prime rate?
- Joe

I would get rid of this home loan first.

For one, it has a higher interest rate than your cards do. For another, it’s collateralized, while your cards are not.

Unless one of your cards suddenly spikes in terms of rate, I would focus entirely on paying down the second mortgage.

Q8: Balancing gas prices
I have a gas price question for you. Right now, we have two vehicles. Our Jeep Liberty is paid for, and has been for years. We are happy with it and have cared for it well, but it only gets 12.75 miles to the gallon. Horrible! It is due to the tow package on the truck. With gas prices as they are, is it better for my huband to continue to drive it (About 40 miles per day) or for us to purchase another car with better gas mileage? We would probably be looking at a used Prius or a used Volkswagon TDI for the gas mileage. Can you help me look at it from a financial standpoint?
- Marta

Although I can’t guarantee that it’ll be worth it (you’ve always got the “lemon” factor to worry about), I would think it’d be worth it to trade to a car with better fuel efficiency.

Let’s say you drive 40 miles a day for 300 days. That’s 12,000 miles a year. If you’re driving your Liberty, that’s going to eat up 941 gallons of gas a year. If you’re driving something that gets 30 miles per gallon instead, that’s going to eat 400 gallons, a difference of 541 gallons. With $4 per gallon gas, that’s $2,200 a year. It doesn’t take long for that to make a HUGE difference.

If you can trade without sacrificing anything else, do it.

Q9: Real Prius numbers
Since your wife has had a Prius for two years now, I’m wondering if you could share some real mileage numbers with us. I have been thinking about getting a highly fuel efficient car like a Prius but I’m trying to figure out if they’re really all that great in the real world.
- Ed

Over a very long period of time, the Prius has gotten 43 miles per gallon. Mostly, this is my wife’s commute and she tends to have a bit of a lead foot – if she kept it near 55, I’m sure it would be better than that.

This vehicle replaced one that got approximately 26 miles per gallon.

She’s putting about 15,000 miles per year on the car. That’s a savings of 228 gallons per year, which, at current prices, is about $1,000 per year in savings just from the gas mileage.

Over the lifetime we hope to own the car, that’s going to be about $10,000 in savings. We’re pleased with that.

Q10: Refinance or pay more?
We owe $95,000 on our home, mortgaged at 6% interest. We recently were approved for a 15 year re-fi at 4.37% interest. When we saw that the fees would increase our mortgage to $99,500 again, we balked. Thinking long-term, which would be best: to keep our current (30 year) mortgage at 6% and just pay extra principle each month, or to grab the new loan? I’m going to find out about early payment penalties or fees, should be make the progress we intend to make.

I realize you may need more information to go on, but I’m looking for a gut-instinct on this one.
- Debi

The real answer here depends heavily on your behavior, but if you’re not going completely crazy with the repayments, you’re better off refinancing.

The interest rate reduction will make up for the difference in balance in just a couple years. Now, if you were going to be overpaying to the extent that you’d pay off the loan in two or three years, then it wouldn’t make sense to switch because the fees would be more than the extra interest accrued in just a couple years.

However, it sounds like you’re in for more than just a couple years. In that case, the refinanced loan is almost assuredly the better deal.

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.

When I first started writing The Simple Dollar, I was a big proponent of financial publications like Money Magazine, Kiplinger’s, SmartMoney, and so on. I read them. I referenced them in posts. I even suggested that people subscribe to them.

For a long time, though, I’ve scarcely mentioned them. What happened?

First of all, the articles on basic personal finance in those publications are solid. They do provide good advice on budgeting, frugality, and other such topics, though many of those articles are matched by good blog posts out there.

Where these publications run into trouble with me is when they start talking about specific investments.

Let me explain what I mean.

As The Simple Dollar has become more popular, I’ve been the recipient of more and more PR releases related to the finance industry. Every day, my inbox is filled with people wanting to tell me about their financial product that will solve everyone’s problems, their mutual fund that’s on a “stunning” run of success, and so on. They’re press releases, filled with the best possible picture of a particular item. I understand that.

What’s disturbing is that I sometimes see the same exact talking points in other publications. I can take the key words out of some of these press releases, Google for them, and find many sites that have the information from that press release posted as a story. Sometimes, it’s reworded a bit. At other times, it’s just a verbatim copy of the press release.

This isn’t just online, either. More than once, I’ve seen major publications do this exact thing. I’ll see a press release and then, a few months later, I’ll see that mutual fund or that financial product promoted in the text of a major publication.

Am I accusing these publications of being unethical? No, not really. I’m accusing them of being overworked, like many publications are. When you have a bunch of pages to fill and a limited amount of time to do so, it’s very easy to just re-fit some content from a press release into the body of a story. “I need a few paragraphs about a mutual fund and I have thirty minutes to do it. Let’s see what’s in the PR file…”

What have I learned from this?

I tend to trust the media less and less. Every time I see a positive article in the press, I now wonder how much of it was taken straight from a press release paid for by the person the article was written about.

I tend to trust individual people much more now than I trust publications. If a specific writer has a good track record, I’ll follow that writer to whatever medium they use. If a writer is just mailing it in with reshaped press releases, I just avoid that writer. The publication itself, whether it’s a personal blog or a major publication, just doesn’t matter to me that much, at least not compared to the value I place on the specific writer.

I do my own research whenever possible. Sure, someone might list a bunch of great index funds to invest in. I still won’t put a dime in them until I do my own research on those funds with real numbers. The same goes with things as mundane as frugality tips. Does this really work? I’ll try to run the numbers first before diving into any tip.

In the end, it is always best to find out information for yourself as best you can. The ability to research and track down information is a valuable one, and the better you are at it, the better your chances of making great choices for yourself and your family.

On Sunday, I twisted my back stepping out of the shower, pulling a muscle.

By Tuesday, my back felt mostly better. I’m my son’s soccer team coach and the boy was so excited to play, I went out and jogged all over the field with him and his team during the game, even though I knew I should rest.

Tuesday night, that muscle popped again. Ouch. I’m back to where I was Sunday morning.

It could be a long week. Thank you, Advil.

What’s the point of popular? I agree with him in the sense that “Popular is almost never a measure of impact, or genius, or art. Popular rarely correlates with guts, hard work or a willingness to lead (and be willing to be wrong along the way).” His point isn’t that human relationships aren’t valuable, though. His point is that unaffiliated relationships aren’t valuable enough to worry about. Stop caring what other people think. (@ seth godin)

How to Minimize Interruptions When You’re Working I find these types of tactics key to getting almost anything done. (@ dumb little man)

How I Became an Optimist Tempered optimism is a big key for succeeding at almost anything in life. (@ tony schwartz)

My $100,000 Bet on Chris Rock You’re almost always far better off being honest and shooting from the gut than saying the “correct” thing. (@ i will teach you to be rich)