What do you want right now?

I’m not just talking about the big things or your goals in life. I’m talking about everything. What are your greatest desires right now?

It might be very short term. You might want to go to the restroom. You might be hungry or thirsty and want food or drink.

It might be something material. Maybe it’s a gadget that you want. Perhaps you want a new article of clothing.

It might be something personal. Perhaps you wish to spend some time with your girlfriend or your husband or your children. You might be looking forward to a particular event.

You might desire a professional improvement, such as better hours or something else like that.

It could be anything. We all have desires.

What’s interesting, though, is that those top desires really steer the choices and actions we take in our lives. Those top desires fill our thoughts. They guide our actions. They eventually lead us to fulfilling that desire in some fashion.

I see this over and over and over again in my life. If I’m really filled with desire to crank out some writing during a given workday, I can buckle down and produce a lot of first drafts. If my desire is elsewhere, though, then writing can be like pulling teeth and I realize I’m usually better off scratching that other itch, whatever it might be (today, it’s baking a pound cake for a friend who could use a lift, for one, as my reaction to a friend in need that I don’t know how to help is to bake).

So, what does this have to do with personal finance?

There was a time in my life where an awful lot of my desires revolved around spending money. I desired gadgets. I desired books. I desired DVDs. I desired video games. These desires would fill my thoughts. I’d read reviews. My mind would wander to them. Unsurprisingly, I’d eventually fulfill those desires, costing me money and sacrificing a bit of my future.

Why did I feel that way? There were a lot of reasons for it, of course, but I think the biggest part of it was that I had never really dug deep into who I was and what I wanted as a person. Because I’d never done that kind of self-exploration, I was easily swayed by the suggestions of others. I didn’t have roots in the ground, so the breeze blew me in all sorts of directions.

Part of going through my personal finance crisis was simply rethinking the things I wanted out of life. What was really important to me? I found, after a lot of reflection, that the things I valued most were either experiences shared with others or time spent learning something new.

Today, my desires usually revolve around those things, not material items. If I had to name the top things I want on the top of my head, it would be to bake something for a friend of mine, play a board game I already have with my wife and a few other friends, curl up somewhere and read a book, or practice on the piano.

Those are the things I want. Those are the things that fill my mind. None of them, save the ingredients from baking, cost any money at all.

I see the same issues with readers that I have. Often, I’ll see emails from readers who will say things along the lines of “I’m trying to get my finances in order, but I want stuff.”

It is very difficult to get your finances in order if your strongest desires directly cause you to spend significant amounts of money.

If you’re in that situation, personal finance advice won’t really help you. What will help is self-analysis and introspection.

What do you want out of life?
What moments in your life fill you with the most happiness?
Why do those moments fill you with happiness?
From what source do the things that you desire appear in your life? Who or what influences you? Is that an influence you really want?

These questions don’t have easy answers. However, the answers you find by following up on those questions might just lead you to a different set of desires, which in turn will lead you to the successes you’ve dreamed of in life.

In September 2004, I was about to leave my first post-college job. My boss at that time – who happens to be one of the people I respect the most in this world, even now after my radical career shift – observed that I had a pile of unused vacation time that was basically going to disappear when I left that job in mid-October. He sat down with me and, once he was sure that the things I was working on were in good shape and that I’d be easily available if anything else needed to be finished up, he suggested that I use that remaining use-it-or-lose-it vacation time in order to transition to my new job.

In other words, I had about two weeks of vacation coming to me. I wasn’t really sure what to do with that time, though. I didn’t have children. My wife didn’t have any vacation time coming. So I asked him what I should do with the time. He looked at me thoughtfully and simply said, “Why don’t you just take a sabbatical?”

A sabbatical means a period in which you choose not to work in order to achieve something else that will improve your life. If you take a week off of work in order to re-pave your driveway, that’s a sabbatical. If you take two weeks off in order to take a class, that’s a sabbatical.

So what did I do during that week? I drafted a novel. It was the second novel-length work of fiction that I’ve completed in my life (and, like the first one, I now think it’s pretty awful). It was also a great learning experience for me. It taught me how to organize the threads of a complex story. It showed me that I had the capacity to write such a lengthy thing. It gave me the experience that I can build on with better stories later on.

Since that first experience in 2004, I’ve tried to take a sabbatical once a year or so. I’ll take a week off of work in order to work on some project or increase some personal skill of mine. One year, I used the sabbatical to take a Photoshop course. Another year, I spent the sabbatical working on my finances and, eventually, laying the foundations for The Simple Dollar. I plan to use a sabbatical in the fall of this year to “woodshed” on the piano, focusing squarely on mastering a couple of piano pieces.

What can you do on your sabbatical? Complete a personal project that needs a lot of focused time. Teach yourself a new skill that you know will be valuable in the future. Take a compressed course to pick up a skill.

The specifics depend entirely on you and what things you wish to accomplish and learn in your own life. Building a skill that you can use professionally is almost always a strong idea, as is a class that leads directly to a professionally useful skill. Completing a large personal project is also quite valuable, as is setting up the infrastructure for a side business or a larger personal project.

I could write a very long list of such ideas. Learn how to use a particular computer program like Photoshop. Learn a computer programming language like Scheme. Start an online business. Write a novel. Clean out every closet and nook and cranny in your home. Re-shingle your roof. Give a number of speeches and presentations to improve your public speaking skills. Take a compressed course on a topic valuable to your career at the local college. The list goes on and on.

The key is to make sure that you’re either doing something to improve your skill set or doing something that improves the value of the things in your life, particularly something that you can’t quite accomplish while working.

Why not just take a vacation? For starters, sabbaticals are easier to propose to supervisors. My experience – and the shared experience of others – is that it’s much easier to sell a supervisor on using vacation time for a skill-building exercise than it is for an actual vacation. Why? When you take normal vacation time, you’re not really increasing your value to the company during that time spent. If you’re building skills during that time, then you typically do increase your value. Even if you don’t build a skill that’s of value to the workplace, knowing that you’re local in case of an emergency can again make vacation time easier to sell to a tough supervisor.

For another, after a sabbatical, you have a genuine accomplishment. You learned a new skill or you took care of something significant that needed finishing. That sense of accomplishment is incredibly valuable, as it fills you with confidence as well as the rewards of whatever it is that you’ve accomplished.

After a sabbatical, you’re in a better place. That in itself is a tremendous reward and a strong source of good feeling which you can use to fuel your return to work. Good luck.

During the past month, I’ve been having some very casual discussions with an organization that handles the infrastructure of seminar programs for people who wish to run them. They handle things like booking locations, printing materials, planning prices, and things like that, while the person running the seminar plans out the material to be presented, and the two sides work together for promotion. They approached me because, in the past, they’ve had tremendous success with financial-related seminar programs.

So, how does it work? In general, during these seminars, an organization charges some rate for a session of some length with some financial presenter (or presenters).

The attendees get a day with this presenter and a bunch of take-home materials (usually a binder and sometimes a book, too). Once the expenses are paid (for renting the room at a hotel, printed materials, the meal, etc.), the company and the presenter split the profit according to some negotiated rate.

Some presenters have their own organizations that set up such promotions for them, so that the presenter (and his/her organization) keeps all the money.

A great example of this type of seminar is Dave Ramsey’s series of “live events”. These largely take the form of a lecture with tickets selling for various prices. There aren’t any materials provided outside of access to some websites, but the price is fairly low for a financial seminar, with the “cheap seats” coming in at about $40. (There are sometimes promotional seats available for less, but they’re usually sold out.)

If you can fill a room of 1,000 people to hear you speak at $40 a pop, that’s $40,000 for one day of speaking. Not bad at all.

Other seminars try to get a smaller number – say, 100 – at $400 each and give them supplemental materials. Again, $40,000 for one or two days of speaking. Not bad.

I could certainly use that kind of money.

The truth is a little more complicated, though. When I read about personal finance, think about it in my own life, and share it with others, one thing that keeps coming to mind is the idea of “enough.” What is “enough”?

For me, my life right now is enough. I get to spend a lot of my time doing something I enjoy, which is the pure act of writing. The thought of spending large chunks of my time doing things like sitting on conference calls to plan seminars, doing self-promotion everywhere, and gearing up for hours of presentation doesn’t sound like a lot of fun for me at this point in my life.

At the same time, I give away almost everything I write. Everything on this site is freely available. Even my books are easy to grab down at your local library. Even through that process of giving it all away, I’ve found ways to earn enough to make a comfortable living in the margins, earning enough to provide my family with the things that they need and some of the things they want.

Sure, the money I would earn from a seminar might be sweet, but it would, on the whole, reduce my quality of life. I don’t really need the extra money at this point and it would simply push me into spending my time on things I don’t want to spend my time on.

Perhaps most importantly – and this is true for almost every financial seminar – the information I would provide is already out there for free. All people pay for at such seminars is to listen to someone repeat the ideas that are already freely available in books and on the internet. My seminar would really be no different.

At the same time, I would feel somewhat hypocritical charging people in financial trouble for basic financial help. The people who could most use the help are the people who can least afford the cost of such a seminar. It feels like preying on the weak to me.

Given all that, I’ve still decided to launch my own seminar. And you’re invited! Here’s your invitation.

You are hereby invited to
The Simple Dollar’s One Day Online Seminar
The goal of this seminar is to inspire you to great success with your money, your career, and your life.

Seminar contents Spend some time reading the following articles and following some of the links on them.
1. My story – how I turned my financial ship around
2. Everything you ever really needed to know about personal finance on the back of five business cards
3. 100 specific money-saving tips
4. 25 great “single actions” for saving money
5. 100 fun things to do for free

The next step to success is up to you.

Seminar cost: $40
How do I pay? Take that $40 out of your checking account. Put it in your savings account. Designate that account as an emergency fund or, if you already have one, designate it as the start of savings for some life goal you have. If you find yourself in a better place down the road, send me an email and tell me about it.

There you go. I think this is a seminar I can feel good about – and the price is fair, too.

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. Car seats
2. Graduation and internship question
3. Condo financing questions
4. Roth IRA worries
5. End of the tunnel
6. Anxiety
7. PMI worries
8. Cost of living abroad
9. Second mortgage or renovation fund
10. Gencon?

I am eternally grateful for the friends I have in my life. They bring me so much and I often feel as though I give so little in return.

Q1: Car seats
We are thinking of moving to a one car family. Our best bet would be to keep our Prius and get rid of our Trailblazer. We have three small children, though, and can not fit all three seats that we have in the Prius. What kind of car seats do you have??We have a 4 month old still facing backward, a 2 year-old, and a 3 year-old.
- Carrie

We have a 11 month old in a rear facing seat, a three year old, and a five year old, yet we can get them all in the back of our Prius with a few inches to spaare.

They are all Gracos, though I am not sure of the model numbers on each one.

If you haven’t, try putting the rear facing one in the middle. This is the only way the arrangement works in our vehicle.

Even with five passengers, we still get about 44 miles per gallon on interstate driving, so this is a huge boon with gas prices as they are right now.

Q2: Graduation and internship question
I just graduated last month – I have about $10k saved up from my part-time job while I was in school. But I haven’t worked for about a month now. I just got an internship working for a sports team in the Chicago market which is a great opportunity doing what I love to do (media/television). However, its unpaid. They require me to work about 15 hours a week from May to Sept – not even for school credit because since I’m graduated but just for “industry experience”.

My question is: I don’t want to work for this internship all summer and burn myself out and not get a paid position. Would you recommend, after a few weeks or a month, negotiating and approaching them to give me a paid job? I’m not even concerned about making a lot of money right now, just need some cash flow.

I do freelance on the side but thats not enough. I’m trying to find a salary job that will help me with all my finances. I’m also going to have to start paying off about $40k+ in student loans in 6 months.

How would you handle this situation? Would you take the internship?
- Patrick

I’d handle this situation by doing the unpaid internship for the length of it and doing the best possible job I could. I’d also make sure I built a strong connection with people as high up the food chain as possible.

A bit of money isn’t what will be valuable for you right now. What is valuable is an entry on a resume and a stellar recommendation letter. Do everything you can to get those.

You’re going to get a lot more attention in your industry if you have a glowing letter from someone high-up in a top organization.

Q3: Condo financing questions
My mother is planning to purchase a condo in a nearby 55+ community. The condo would be for my mother (60) and my grandmother (85). The purchase price is $225,000 and the monthly fees are $320/month. Taxes will be about $3,500/year. Closing costs will be around $7,000. Moving expenses will be around $1,000. The condo comes with all appliances and my mother plans to use her current furniture so there won’t be any major purchases associated with the move. She is approved for a 30 year mortgage with a rate of 4.875% or a 15 year mortgage with a rate of 4.1% and is required to put a minimum of 25% down. She plans to stay in the condo until she can no longer live there on her own.

Both my mother and grandmother are retired. My mother receives a pension of $58,344/year before taxes or $4,862/month before taxes ($3,570/month after taxes). She also has ~$70,000 in cash that earns ~1% interest and $175,000 (worth $140,000 after taxes at withdrawal) in a Thrift Savings Plan (similar to 401K) that earns ~3% interest at this point in time. My grandmother pays her own expenses out of her social security income, but does not have much savings and does not contribute to the household. My mother and grandmother do not have any debts or credit card balances.

With consideration for the interest she is earning, interest she would pay on a mortgage, and the value of the mortgage interest tax deduction, would she be better to:
A. Wipe out all of her savings and buy the condo without a bank mortgage? I could lend her the remainder she would need to do this.
B. Pay the minimum 25% down payment and take out a mortgage on the balance to take advantage of the mortgage interest tax deduction and maintain her savings? 15 year or 30 year? With 25% down, the monthly payment on the 15 year mortgage would be $1,256.70 and on the 30 year mortgage would be $893.04.
C. Pay an intermediate down payment amount between 25-100%. 15 year or 30 year?
D. Other suggestions?
- Kelly

I would not encourage your mother to empty out her savings to pay for this place in cash. That leaves her without any sort of emergency fund, which leaves her open to all sorts of emergencies. It also maximizes her tax bill for withdrawing from the TSP all at once.

For her purposes, I’m not sure there’s a huge advantage of a 15 year mortgage over a 30 year. With a 30 year mortgage, she’ll be 90 (!) by the time it finishes up, so the likelihood is that she’ll either have passed on or not be able to live there at that time. Because of that, this is more of a personal choice. If she pays more now (a 15 year), she’s more likely to own it before she needs to tap the value for care and she also is more likely to have an asset to pass on to any children. If she pays less now, it’ll be easier to make ends meet but it’ll likely have a bit less value when it comes time for care and she’ll probably pass on less value.

My only recommendation is to not tap out her retirement savings for this. She may need that emergency fund.

Q4: Roth IRA worries
I am a young professional who just set up a Roth IRA account but now have to go about investing that money — most likely in a target fund (for 2045 or 2050). However, with all the talk on the need to raise tax revenues and the current debate over the debt ceiling, what is the likelihood this IRA is and will remain a good investment for me as a young professional? If the roth is still a good option, should I consider going for a lower target fund (like 2030 or something) to ensure a bit more stability until some of this uncertainty plays out?
- Ashley

An IRA itself isn’t an investment. It’s merely a way to move taxes around. The investment is what you choose to do with it within an IRA.

Within that IRA, you can make all sorts of hedges against the dollar if you wish, but I recommend lots of diversification. Domestic stocks, international stocks, bonds, commodities, you name it. Your specific target retirement fund might be a good choice. It depends on what it’s made up of. I’d inspect the actual contents of the target fund before investing.

I don’t think an IRA is a bad choice regardless of the future of the dollar. How you invest within that IRA is another question.

Q5: End of the tunnel?
I am a college graduate (1995) with a computer degree. I have worked odd jobs to be home with my kids… 6 kids… Half the time I have been single. I am currently working a minimum wage job. This has been my first office job, and although I don’t make much money, I love the job itself and it definitely offers me the flexibility to be able to be a “momma” and work. Three of my kids are in daycare, which SRS helps me pay, along with enough help with food stamps that I can pretty much feed the family. It seems to me, that the harder I work, the further I get behind. I have started saving change to help at least save some kind of an emergency fund. I guess the main problem is that the more I work at the moment, the less assistance I get which sets me further behind in the long run. I have read your articles for a couple of years now, but I have never seen an article about this type of situation. I have done a lot of things you have suggested and I have made things better, it just seems no matter what I do, I’m trapped, especially until my boys are out of daycare. and considering they are 8, 8 and 7 years old, it won’t be for a couple of years. My income has been reduced by $500 a month, because the boys’ dad lost his job and isn’t paying child support. I have long come to terms with the fact that I need to be able to make myself financially stable without child support for this very reason. I’ve been thinking about going back to school and get my masters in therapy… but i’m more scared of just accumulating debt that will make my situation worse. Not sure what to do, or which way to turn… any suggestions?
- Amy

If your children are that old, you may want to consider looking for other families in your area that are in a similar situation that you can share afternoon child care with. If your work schedule is flexible, perhaps you can get off a couple afternoons a week to watch your children and a few others in exchange for having your kids covered a few afternoons a week. This might actually coincide well with going back to school.

If I were you, I’d keep on the father’s back about paying child support. He may be able to get some hardship protection now, but if he’s re-employed, he should be paying support.

As for going back to school, it really depends on employment options. Can you easily gain employment with the degree you will have? Will it immediately help you earn more money? I’m not talking about promises. What do real employment rates look like? Are there lots of job openings or are they rare? Don’t go back if it’s not going to put you in position for work.

Q6: Anxiety
I get really anxious in certain situations. Have you written about this on your blog and can you give me advice (blogs, books…) on how to overcome or work with this disability. I call it a disability, because I feel I have missed so many opportunities financial and personal. It has taken sometime to even write this email, but it is safer because it is email and not face to face. I believe it affects my job (advancement) and most important my marriage. My communication style is lacking at best.
- Oscar

If anxiety is crippling you to the point that it’s difficult to send an email, you should seek professional assistance with this problem immediately. This goes far beyond typical tactics for overcoming social nervousness and into an area that’s a significant life obstruction.

Bring this up with your primary care physician in a private meeting, just you and the doctor. Ask for a recommendation not for medication but for a referral to a professional who will help you through this.

Communication skills come with practice, but it’s hard to practice if you can’t bring yourself to begin.

Q7: PMI worries
I’m a naturally frugal person, so paying private mortgage insurance drives me nuts. I want to refinance and kick PMI to the curb, but I go back and forth on if this is the wise decision (or just me being persnickety).

I’m 24 with no debt besides a FHA loan (with 29 years remaining). With careful budgeting for retirement/tithing, I could set aside enough to have the 20% paid off in 2 years. Is this a smart savings goal? On one hand, this is a large sum of money used against a relatively low-interest (5.125%) loan. I could get a higher return on the money, at my age, with other long-term investments. On the other hand, I could take a 15 year loan and end up paying about the same amount as my current payments (by having a smaller loan, going down at least 1% interest, and not paying PMI). I’d love to hear your thoughts.
- Kyla

Paying off the PMI as early as possible is probably worth it. According to my back of the envelope math, you wouldn’t be in range to get rid of the PMI until about year eleven of your mortgage without accelerated payment, ten years from now.

Your accelerated payments would not only knock down the mortgage balance (and the interest paid, earning you a 5.125% return on your money from the mortgage alone), but it’d also earn eight years’ worth of PMI as well, which can really add up.

That becomes a pretty good investment. I’d make that my goal, assuming of course that you have a good emergency fund.

Q8: Costs of moving abroad
My son, a 25 yr old (single) PhD. student in San Francisco is studying biology. His grad work is primarily research project and science writing/publishing at this point, not classes. He learned that his lab director (and thus full lab) is relocating to Germany to a University there. He is being offered moving expenses and roughly the same salary as a grad student in Germany without benefits OR the chance to get his Masters from the US and get a 40% more in salary but not be a student in Germany.
How does one compare from US to abroad such things as:
cost of living?
taxes as an ex-pat?
access to health care while abroad? can you use German services?
cost or benefits (given US dollar’s weakness) of being paid in Euros and living in Euros for the next few years?

Obviously there are non monetary issues such as distance but this seems like a great chance for him – we just want to be aware of what issues, especially as he negotiates his salary/package, what factors matter.
He is in neuroscience as a student but very tech savvy and the lab director could hire him to be their programmer/tech support as he unofficially does that now. He would be still working on his PhD but as a side job, not a full-time – a flip of how it is now for him as full time student who assists as specialized lab techie.
Aside from the actual cost of going or not right now, there is the future (ie career) costs or benefits, which are much harder to determine.
- Connie

Most of the questions you ask should be addressed to the university to which your son is considering transferring. They have ready access to such information, as I’m sure that they often accept expat students.

My suggestion, honestly, would be that he step back and take a serious evaluation of where he wants his career to go beyond this job choice. Don’t worry so much about the dollars and cents of today, but about which option opens the most doors over the long run. His PI should be able to help with this, if he/she is worth his/her salt.

The big question is if this is really a path he wants to follow.

Q9: Second mortgage or renovation fund?
I have been working on my finances using the Dave Ramsey system for the past few years. I now have cars paid off, 20k in an emergency fund (about 5 months), save ~16% in retirement, save towards the kids college (though not enough, I’m sure) and now I am at the “pay down your mortgage step”. We have a primary mortgage that is 232k that we are in the process of using the HARP program to decrease our rate from 6.125 to 5.125% which will save us ~$200 a month. We also have a second mortgage that is $36k at 7.325% (payment is $313, but I have been paying $400/month for a while). The second mortgage was done to avoid PMI when we bought. My husband and I save $1300 a month that was going into our emergency fund, but now that is funded, we have it going into our “renovation fund”. Eventually we would like to put an addition on to the house, unless at that point we have saved so much money that we may be better off trading up vs. renovating. (If it would cost more to renovate then trade up). Our house is worth $255k according to the recent appraisal we had done- so we are underwater (we bought for $305k in 2006). So my dilemma is this. Do we try to pay off the second mortgage- which if we put in the extra $ from the refi ($200) plus the $ that we are putting into the renovation fund ($1300), plus the $ we are currently paying on the loan ($400) for a total of $1900- which would get the second loan paid off in less than 2 years. Or should I use the $200 refi $, plus the $400 regular payment, plus maybe $300 of the $1300 savings money towards the second loan (total of $900/month) and then $1000 towards the “renovation account”. I am not sure if there is a benefit to paying off the second mortgage or not. If we were dead set on just renovating then I would think to pour it all into renovation. But, because we would consider moving, that’s why I am not sure if we should tackle the mortgage. We both have steady jobs, making about $80k each, and I started a home party business that is doing well and helps supplement the income for spending money and extras.
- Karen

If you’re considering trading up in the short term, I would maximize your cash on hand. You’ll need it for the expenses of that move, both in the paperwork and otherwise.

If you’re leaning toward trading up longer down the road, I’d get rid of that second mortgage so that you’re not underwater on the house and won’t have a shortfall to make up when you sell.

If you’re leaning toward staying put, I’d put at least some of the cash into a renovation fund and make the most of what you have.

In other words, the best choice depends on what you want. None of the decisions are strictly economically better than the other one, especially when considering what your other priorities in life are.

Q10: Gencon
You’ve mentioned before that you attend Gencon. I assume you’ve already signed up this year. What events are you attending?
- Rob

I mostly wander, to tell the truth. I try out a lot of demos of board games I’ve never tried in the demo room. I’ll play in a few specific events with people I already know, but we usually fill up all of the tickets for those sessions.

Much of the time, though, I’m in the open boardgaming room. In there, the organizers stand you in a queue and fit you into all kinds of board games. Someone wants to play, say, Carcassonne, so they ask people in the queue if they want to play. Once they have enough, the game starts. Since I usually go there to play a wide variety of games with a wide variety of people, this is a great place for me to be.

Although I’m not organizing any events there or anything, I’d be happy to chat and sign my books if you bump into me there.

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.

I like reading frugality tips from lots of different authors. Not only do I learn some new tips, but I often find that the specifics of implementing an idea vary from person to person.

Take coupons, for instance. There are as many ways to deal with coupons as there are people who clip them. I’ve tried many different methods over the years before finally settling on patterns that work well for me.

Be CentsAble by Chrissy Pate and Kristin McKee fits right in line with this idea. It’s a nice little collection of frugality and money saving tips. Some of the ideas are ones I’m familiar with. Others are rather new to me. Still others are new angles on old ideas. They’re all written in a friendly tone that makes the book enjoyable to read.

Everything You Didn’t Know About Coupons
Couponing is one of those things that tends to reward you for the time you put into it. If you spend a lot of time checking coupons and store flyers, you can save a lot of money – but is that money worth the time? It’s because of that dichotomy that I often look for “bang for the buck” coupon strategies, and this book certainly offers a good one. What they suggest is taking complete flyers from your Sunday newspaper and filing them in a binder with clear plastic sheets – the whole flyer in a single page, with the date written on it on a piece of masking tape. Then, when you’ve got your grocery list made, go to a couponing site and look up the items you’ve got on your list – they suggest Hot Coupon World – and see which flyers have coupons for those items. That way, you can just jump right to the correct flyer for the coupon you need. This is a very good method, in my opinion.

Store Types, Store Incentive Programs, and How to Use Both Effectively
The idea in this chapter is that you should be “filtering” the stores you shop at based not only on price, but on other factors such as a customer rewards program, coupon “doubling,” strong flyer sales, and other factors. I live in an area where coupon “doubling” is nonexistent, so I mostly base my shopping on flyers and regular prices on the shelves.

The Art of Stockpiling
It’s not efficient to stockpile everything you buy. It is efficient and cost-effective to buy in bulk and stockpile things that you use frequently, such as oft-used household items and the components of meals that your family eats often. For example, for my family, we’ll often stockpile elbow macaroni, spaghetti, cans of diced tomatoes, and so on. If we see a bulk sale on it, we’ll buy a lot.

Planning, Planning, Planning, and Planning to Plan
Another effective technique for cutting your shopping budget is to plan ahead via shopping lists. Never enter a store without a shopping list, and invest some time in constructing a sensible one utilizing sales and store flyers to get what you need. My process largely matches the one in the book, as it involves checking store flyers for sales, making a grocery list that matches the on-sale items, then checking for coupons on the items on my list.

Shopping Tips and Tricks
The section on shopping closes with a mixed bag of specific tactics for shopping, including knowing the ins and outs of a store’s rain check policy and, perhaps even more important, being conscious of impulse buying. Many areas of a grocery store (or any store, for that matter) are set up to encourage impulse buying – the checkout lanes, the junk food areas, the end caps, and so on. Avoid them if you can and be conscious of the tactics when you can’t.

Trimming the Excess from Your Food Budget
Food is expensive, but there are many ways to reduce the cost of it. Look for substitutes for expensive meals and ingredients. Eat out less. Make your own prepackaged meals instead of just buying them at the store. Simply learn to cook well at home, starting with simple things.

Cleaning Up Your Budget
Here, the focus is on cleaning products and how many of the most common ones people use can be easily replaced with homemade solutions. Most of these homemade solutions tend to revolve around baking soda or vinegar. Why? They work. We use baking soda and vinegar for a lot of household cleaning tasks around here.

Utilities
The focus in this chapter is on a number of household projects – replacing light bulbs with CFLs (or LEDs, because those are going to be a much better solution in the very near future if they’re not already), installing a programmable thermostat, air sealing your home – that will directly reduce your utility bills. Most of these projects are “one-offs,” which means that you do them once and your utility bill drops. They also recommend saving your utility bills starting now so that you can chart the progress and see how much you’re saving.

Budget Breakdowns and How to Avoid Them
Many families find it very difficult to stick to budgets, often because those budgets are based on unrealistic expectations. Pate and McKee suggest breaking down the budget into small bits and focusing on the problematic parts. Where is your money leaking? Don’t worry about the whole ship. Instead, focus on the biggest leaks and make sure that those areas are well under control. Once you fix those, the whole boat becomes more sturdy.

Discovering the Art of Resale
Here, Pate and McKee look at clothes shopping and (strongly) encourage people to think about secondhand clothes first. This is certainly a key component of our clothes shopping, as we’ll often look at places like consignment shops and Goodwill stores for secondhand clothing before shelling out for new things. It’s often amazing what you’ll find at such places in terms of quality for the price if you simply take the time to look.

Buying New at Rock Bottom
The key is patience, really. Don’t buy stuff just because you want it or think you might have a use for it. Identify stuff you’re actually looking for that isn’t completely urgent, then wait. Watch for the big sales and the big opportunities and pick the items up then. I waited for years on a blender, for example, before finding the right one at the right price. The authors offer a lot of other suggestions, such as competitor price matching, in order to find the right price on the right item.

Family Entertainment
How do you entertain everyone without blowing your budget to smithereens? Most of the advice in this chapter centers around finding discounts on activities like water parks and museums, such as buying an Entertainment book. Our strategy mostly revolves around recognizing what it is we enjoy about those activities. Why do we go to a water park? To splash around in water and have fun with each other. A back yard sprinkler takes care of the vast majority of that for a penny or two (plus it waters the yard). Save the special events for special occasions.

Travel
The biggest tool for saving on travel is flexibility. The more flexible you can be with your travel plans, the more money you’ll save. Be willing to fly standby. Try to schedule the trip when the costs are low, particularly by flying on low cost days of the week (not Friday or Monday, mostly). Travel in unusual parts of the year, like October. You’ll save money if you plan this way.

Is Be CentsAble Worth Reading?
There are a lot of solid frugal ideas packed into this book. Some of them are familiar to anyone who’s ever had to rub their nickels together, while some are quite creative and useful.

The book is written in a readable and fun tone, making frugality seem like an enjoyable challenge or an adventure rather than drudgery. This really helps with topics like coupon organization.

If you’re already very frugal, you might not find too much in this book that helps. If you’re just starting your frugal journey, though, this one is a book worth your time.

Check out additional reviews and notes of Be CentsAble on Amazon.com.

As I’ve mentioned a few times on The Simple Dollar, one of the few heroes I have is John Wooden, the former basketball coach at UCLA in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. I could tell you many things about him, but

A few years ago, I wrote about how John Wooden had taught me a lot about personal finance and over the years, I’ve read his books and many of interviews he’d given. Last year, I wrote anothe article about Wooden entitled Make Each Day Your Masterpiece, in which I looked a bit more deeply at one of the big ideas that Wooden talked about.

Simply put, the idea of making each day your masterpiece means that you try to live each day in a way that I would be content having myself judged upon. In other words, would I be happy if, at the end of my life, my entire personhood was judged on the kind of person I was today? It’s a call to do your best each and every day.

A few days ago, I conducted a written interview with a small newspaper (I’m not even sure if the article will be online anywhere – it’s not as of yet). One of the questions the interviewer asked of me was about that “masterpiece” article. How exactly do I make each day my masterpiece?

I offered a few ideas, but this question resided in my head since then and I’ve had a chance to really flesh them out.

First of all, I don’t strive for perfection on any day. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and even the greatest masterpieces in the world aren’t perfect. I strive instead for a day that, on the whole, has much more good in it than bad in it.

I tell the people that I love the most that I do love them, and, if possible, I do something with them to express that love. I’ll kiss my wife and hold her close. I’ll play peek-a-boo with my infant son. I’ll play some variation of tag with my oldest child. I’ll run across the yard and sweep my daughter into my arms in a giant hug. I’ll give my parents a phone call and tell them something that will warm their hearts. It’s these little strokes, done over and over again in alignment with each other, that build a lasting relationship.

I laugh. Any day with laughter is a good day.

I read a book. Sometimes, I’ll read something very deep that makes me think. At other times, I’ll read the fluffiest page-turning science fiction or fantasy you’ll ever see. In either case, the process of turning the words on the page into things in my mind fills me in a way nothing else does.

I learn something new and practice something old. If my mind’s not working and growing, it’s getting old and stale.

I go out of my way for someone. Each day, I try to perform some “random act of kindness,” whether it’s known by a lot of people or by no one else at all. I’ll write a long response to a reader in need and send it to just them. I’ll help an old lady at the grocery store with her shopping. I’ll climb onto someone’s roof to retrieve a tree limb or a Frisbee.

I shoot for as many positive interactions as I can. I’ll talk to people who seem to feel out of place. I’ll raise my hand and get a conversation started. I’ll compliment random people on the street. The more good will I can add to the world, the better.

If I can do all of those things, then that day is a masterpiece. What else can I really ask for out of life?