A little over five years ago, I set a tremendous goal for myself. I wanted to completely overhaul my financial life. I was in a pile of debt. I was working at a job that I enjoyed, but it often felt like it was pulling me both from my family and from my dream career. My goal was to eliminate my debts and put my finances in a position so that I could switch careers.

I achieved that goal, and in achieving it, I transformed my life.

Since that experience discovering the power of goals, I’ve set many different goals in my life. I’ve achieved some of them, while others have been complete failures.

Through this repeated experience of setting goals followed by success or failure, I’ve come to notice that there are a few specific traits that my successful goals have in common that are often lacking from my unsuccessful goals. I thought I’d share these with you so that you may find greater success with your own goals.

1. Extract a goal from your most painful experiences.
When I reached my “financial bottom” and realized that something had to change financially in my life, I felt very deeply ashamed. I spent a long night sitting in the baby room, rocking my son and just feeling horrible. I had this strong sense that I was wrecking this baby’s life through my own childishness and inability to manage my own finances and behavior.

It was through that strong sense of failure that I was able to push my goals forward. Whenever I was tempted to backslide, I could draw on the pain of that moment to keep me on the right path.

This is a big reason why exercise-related goals have been difficult for me. I have not had a strong emotionally resonant experience that involves my physical shape to this point, so I’ve not had that emotional pool to draw from for physical fitness goals.

2. Bury yourself in reading about the goal.
In truth, what I mean here is that I’m filling my leisure time with learning more about the goal. In my life, that means reading a big pile of books on the subject.

When I first decided to turn my financial life around, I didn’t know the first thing about good personal finance practice. So, I went to Amazon, made up a list of some of the highest rated personal finance books, and headed to the library. I came home with a pile of them: The Total Money Makeover, Your Money or Your Life, The Millionaire Next Door, and so on. At that point, I spent all of my free time focused on these books for a good two weeks.

During that period, I got a good grasp of the things that worked and the things that didn’t. I also received a huge pile of motivation to go out there and actually do this thing. Perhaps most importantly, I got a sense of what makes a good personal finance goal and what types of realistic steps I need to take to get there from an informed standpoint.

Every time I want to succeed at a goal, I’ve found that the best first move is to learn as much as I can about it.

3. Develop a plan that includes a series of very simple actions that will take you to that goal.
All plans revolve around a goal and steps taken to achieve that goal. However, I’ve found that the more abstract and complicated the plan, the less likely I am to follow it. If it’s difficult at all to understand and articulate the next step in my plan, I’m much more likely to blow it off.

My early steps in my personal finance plan were easy. “Spend nothing today” or “Spend nothing that’s not related to a need today.” Those were the steps I took on most of my early days of financial recovery.

Getting in physical shape, for one, often involves more convoluted steps. “Spend an hour at the gym,” huh? Doing what? Often, the exercise plans would become needlessly complicated and that in itself would push me away. The simpler I make my exercise plans, the easier it is to stick with them.

When improving my diet, the “simple step” issue came up again. “Don’t eat meat today.”

Simplicity is better than perfection, I’ve found.

4. Take your first action within a day of coming up with the plan.
It’s easy to think up an excuse or to postpone the start of a plan. “I’ll start next week because this week is really stressful.” “I’ll start on the first so that the calendar can guide me.”

Those moves are silly and often self-defeating. Why? During that period between now and whenever you think you should start your goal, you burn off a lot of the fervor and motivation you have for getting started. That rush of excitement you get when you’re really into an idea is something that you should capitalize on by starting immediately.

Don’t wait for doubts to catch up. Don’t wait for the “perfect” time to start. There is no more perfect time than right this moment.

5. Keep a very visible record of your actions and share that record with others.
This, right here, is why I started The Simple Dollar. I wanted a venue for tracking my own progress, sharing it with others, and talking about finances with my friends in an indirect fashion.

It was the process of journaling it that kept it so front and center in my mind. Creating articles every day for The Simple Dollar kept finances in the forefront of my mind (and it still does), which encourages my own good financial behavior.

It wash the process of sharing it that added social pressure to the equation. My friends could see what I was doing. Some of them even started doing it themselves. The Simple Dollar comes up quite often in conversations with my friends and family, and that’s a real social force keeping me on the right track.

I share some of my other goals with my friends and family even now, but in a less public fashion (I don’t want millions of people to hear my fumbling at the piano, for example).

These five tactics play into every successful goal I’ve had over the last several years. The more of these tactics I’ve put into play, the more likely the goal has been to be successful.

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 buying question
2. Food business
3. Student loan question
4. Difficult car choice
5. Moving from Mint to spreadsheet
6. Savings or down payment?
7. Homeschooling
8. Overwhelmed by mortgage
9. Investing versus loan repayment
10. Hidden messages?

Yesterday’s review of The Total Money Makeover Workbook left several people asking me about other workbooks. While I may eventually review a few of them, I’ll say that most of the ones I’ve seen on the market are exactly like TMMW: they’re just rewrites of other personal finance books with some detail removed and some spaces for writing inserted in their place.

By default, I always would recommend grabbing a notebook and a pen and just working through a regular book instead of a workbook. You’ll get more out of the experience – and you’ll be able to work through the book again in the future or easily pass it along to friends.

Q1: Car buying question
My husband and I are moving from New York City to the Midwest and we need to buy a car fairly quickly. We both have jobs (he’s started his, mine starts in three weeks), and will gross about $75,000 a year combined. We have $33,000 in combined student loans (currently paying minimums) but no other debt, and $45,000 in savings earmarked for the move ($4,000 for the movers), emergency fund (no set amount really), and eventual house downpayment or student loan repayment. While we’d hoped to be able to rely on public transit, the job I found is not actually in the city center and we will need to purchase a car for me to get to work. We can borrow a car for a week or two, but that’s it.

I’ve lived in NYC and have been car-free for nearly a decade – and my college car I bought from a kid in my dorm for $1000 in cash on the hood, no negotiation, no mechanic’s visit, nothing (which worked out fine, but it’s not something I want to do this time). My husband bought his last car five years ago by walking into a dealership and walking out with a brand-new lease, which he ended up returning less than a year later when he was transferred to New York. We are both rusty and kind of intimidated by the used-car buying process.

Our biggest priorities are safety, reliability, and gas mileage; we plan to buy used and pay cash, but every time I look on Craigslist I am overwhelmed, mostly because I am not there in person yet and don’t feel like I will have the time to shop around. I will arrive in our new city five days before I start my new job, and as I will be the one driving the car 90% of the time, we feel that I should be the one to test-drive and pick it out. Ten years of ignoring what’s going on in the car market because it didn’t apply to my life has made me feel like I’m in over my head.

How much would you spend on a car in our situation, and how would you shop for it?
- Rachel

I would buy a low-end inexpensive car to start with, one that will allow me to commute easily for a while but won’t financially break me. I would not compress shopping for a $15K or a $20K vehicle into such a short timeframe. Focus on something very low end with the understanding that you’ll upgrade later on.

I would pay cash for this vehicle. I would also expect that within a year or two, you’d be shopping for a better replacement car, but at that point you’ll have the time and energy and focus to do it slowly and with adequate research.

Don’t overthink this purchase. You’re going to have a lot of other things to worry about when you move, so just go low end and don’t stress about it too much.

Q2: Food business
I made excellent deviled eggs. In fact I always make deviled eggs for every office birthday party or office pot lucks. I have been given so many wonderful compliments and people always request that I make and bring my creation at every office event.

I have often thought about starting my own business making deviled eggs. Here is where it gets sticky, eggs aren’t like cookies or other baked goods that can be left out for hours. Any suggestions or ideas how I could in fact get my business off the ground?
- Debbie

Getting into a food-oriented business is almost always difficult, since there are always a lot of laws and regulations dealing with food handling and food serving.

My best suggestion for you would be to find someone who is in a food-oriented business in your area that you wouldn’t be competing with and might be cooperating with. For example, are there any caterers in your area who might subcontract deviled egg preparation to you?

Meet with these people. Find out what kind of regulations they have in your area. Get an idea of what you’d need to do to start your own deviled egg business. You might find, though, that it would be easier to just work with an already-existing catering or food preparation business.

Q3: Student loan question
I graduated in November and they absorbed all of my loans which were prior to this they were about 25% subsidized and 75% private. This was done as a function of our health care bill. In the process of being switched to all federal loans my interest rate was increased. Upon completion of my degree I consolidated and this is where it gets ugly. First I was lied to about the due dates/terms of my loan – consolidated in March still do not have a loan packet with full disclosure of all terms. Now I have found out that on my loans consolidated and handled by the US department of education that I am not allowed to make additional loan payments towards my principal balance all payments scheduled or not will go towards interest which is at 6%. My loans of $57,000.00 approx are set to I believe (recalling from memory) be at total cost of $154,000.00 and the US department of education is not giving any option to cut that down. Interest is compounded daily.

What do I do to get out of this situation?
- Courtney

Something is very wrong here, and I would probably contact legal help. You should not have ever been involved in a loan consolidation that didn’t provide documentation of the consolidation. That, right there, is a giant red flag. Another giant red flag is a federal loan consolidation that doesn’t allow you to pre-pay.

I do not know the specifics of your situation, but I see several very confusing and borderline suspicious elements in what you describe. It sounds like you may have consolidated through a shady business.

If you have a family lawyer, I would gather up your documentation and get an appointment to see if there’s anything awry here.

Q4: Difficult car choice
After losing a high paying job and readjusting to a salary that is lower, I am still looking for ways to reduce my expenses so that I will stop living in a way that does not allow me to save because I don’t have enough income to cover all of my expenses. One of these expenses is the vehicle I drive, a truck. It was a good deal when I bought it 2+ years ago, but now the gas mileage creates a big expense. It is paid low enough to have a positive difference between what I owe and what Kelly Blue Book says it is worth. Should I try to sell it (can you sell a car you owe money on?) and buy a car that gets better gas mileage? Maybe a used car, but I will have to finance because I don’t have money saved to buy another vehicle. My fear is that even if I sold it, used the difference to put down on a car that gets better mileage, I might not be in a much different position with another car payment. What do you think?
- Ann

You can sell a car that you owe money on, but you have to handle the transaction with your bank involved in the process. The easiest way to do this is to execute the transaction at a branch of that bank when you’ve informed them ahead of time of what the situation is so that they can have the title on hand when you actually make the sale and pay off your loan with the proceeds from that sale, all in one meeting. This is how we purchased our most recent vehicle.

If you’re just moving from one car payment to another, I’m not sure you’re going to be much money ahead on this after all of the taxes, transfer fees, and so on. It’s going to depend on what exactly you get as a replacement, how good of a deal you make on both the sale of this car and the buying of the next car, how much in debt you actually have to go on your next car, and so on.

Are you sure there aren’t merely lifestyle options that could reduce your usage, such as carpooling? Bicycling? Walking? Civic transport? These would all reduce the miles you put on your vehicle, likely saving you significant money.

Q5: Moving from Mint to spreadsheet
I have been using Mint.com primarily as an aggregate. I like it because it pulls all my financial accounts into one easy reference to see how everything is doing. I don’t really use it for budgeting or expense tracking (I have my own custom spreadsheets for these purposes).

I keep having problems with Mint.com not interfacing with various accounts, so I’m ready to dump it. Also, like you have stated about Mint in the past, I am beginning to mistrust a 3rd party app with access to so much of my financial data. I have a vague recollection of you discussing this in a blog post, and that you mentioned you have your own method of pulling an aggregate of financial data. Do you use a spreadsheet and do a monthly (or other regular) update manually?
- Hillary

I pull information into my own primary spreadsheet manually. It’s pretty straightforward. I just have a column for each month and a row for each different account, with debts separated from assets. This allows me to easily add up my assets, subtract my debts, and get a good estimation of my net worth.

Here’s how to build such a net worth calculator in your own spreadsheet tool.

I prefer such tools for privacy purposes and flexibility purposes. They might not be as “slick” as something like Mint, but I don’t have to worry about syncing errors and I don’t have to worry about identity theft, either.

Q6: Savings or down payment?
My wife and I are currently saving up for a house. We already own two rental homes we have owned for approximately 5-6 years. I bought both of these prior to meeting her and getting married, so both loans are in my name only. I owe a total of about $180,000 between the two of them. We have limited equity in both due to the decline in real estate prices. I am in no hurry to sell either. One is rented out so we break even every month and we are living in the other home for now although it’s not a house I would like to live in 3-5 years from now.

We also have $18,000 we owe on a new car we bought last year and right around $20,000 in savings. We share one credit card for most expenses that is paid full at the end of each month. My car is owned free and clear, the only debts we have our the two mortgages (both in my name) and the car payment. We would like to move into a new home in the next year or two. Mortgage rates should still be low and home prices should be about bottomed out (in my opinion). My fear is that my wife will have to carry most of the loan since the other two mortgages are in my name. Should I keep the $20,000 in savings (we plan to have $30,000) for a down payment next year or should I pay off the car in full now and still have time to save up for a smaller down payment?
- Matt

In my eyes, it depends on the interest rate on the car loan. Is it substantially higher than what you’d expect to get on your mortgage if you didn’t have your 20% down payment?

What number would that be? If your car loan is 6% or over, I’d pay off the car loan. Otherwise, I’d hold onto the car loan, make minimum payments, and then make a full down payment on the house loan.

What you’re trying to do is minimize your interest over the course of both loans.

Q7: Homeschooling
What are your feelings on homeschooling? I’m considering homeschooling our children and I’d love another levelheaded opinion on it.
- Dana

It depends on why you’re homeschooling. In short, your educational goal should always be to expand the horizons of your children.

If you’re homeschooling because you believe the education provided in your public school is too limiting and you believe you can provide more well-rounded education to your child, it’s a good idea. If you’re homeschooling because the school district isn’t teaching exactly what you believe and you want to shield your child from those ideas, then it’s not a good idea.

The best gift any parent can give their child is the ability to process information sensibly on their own and deal with a variety of life situations and issues using those skills. If this is absolutely your goal for homeschooling and you have real reason to believe you can provide it while other school situations cannot, then it’s a good idea. If your goal for homeschooling is to reinforce in your children the values you hold dear and to undermine other values that you do not hold dear, homeschooling will have some awkward results.

Q8: Overwhelmed by mortgage
My husband and I bought our current home in 2003 at the height of the housing market in our area with the intent of renting it out as an investment. Through a series of events we are now living in this small home and are upside down in our mortgage by about $80,000. We have learned some hard lessons along this path, and our family continues to grow. To put it simply we need more space and I see no way out of our current home. Are there any options for homeowners like us other than renting out our current home and moving to another home? Is there anything I could be missing here?

My husband is a teacher and I am a stay-at-home mom so we don’t really have extra money to apply to our already huge (to us) mortgage of $1360/month.
- Megan

Your options with just your current home are to continue paying your mortgage bill, to negotiate with your lender for some kind of short sale (where you sell the home and wipe out your whole mortgage at once), to refinance, or to walk away from the home while taking the huge credit hit in the process.

I would be amazed if you were able to get the credit to buy a second, larger home if you’re finding the payments on your current home to be a challenge. The lending isn’t quick and easy like it was five years ago.

None of these are great solutions, I know, but that’s the reality of the housing market right now. Millions of families are facing the same situation you are. It’s not easy. It’s not fun, either.

Q9: Investing versus loan repayment
My wife and I make about $100,000/yr. We have a substantial amount of debt which were are in the process of working off. The following is a rough summary of our debt:

Credit Cards $8,000 at 0% until 3/2012
Car Loan $16,000 at 2.95%
Mortgage 148,000 at 5.5%
Wife’s Student Loans $86,000 in multiple loans all with rates < 4%
My Student Loans ~ $250,000 in multiple loans; approximately $140,000 of which have rates about 8%; the remainder of which are about 3% (Medical School is very expensive)

Most of my loans – including all of the loans with the 8% interest rate – are in deferment and can stay that way for another two years.

My financial goals are as follows:
1. Pay off our credit card debt.
2. Raise our emergency fund to 3 months worth of expenses.

I anticipate that this will take about a year to accomplish. My question for you is what the best plan of attack afterwards? Because of some frugal maneuvering (including some moves inspired by your column) we have a substantial amount of wiggle room in our monthly budget after we’ve paid all our minimums. Is it worth investing our gap in retirement savings while making the minimum payments on our loans? I have seen you recommend investing when you don’t have consumer debt with interest rates greater than 10%. Where did you get that number from?

Alternatively, we could tackle more of our debt. We have minimal retirement savings (about $10,000) and we’re not spring chickens; I am 32 and my wife is 29. I will experience a significant jump in salary in the next 3-6 years. We would appreciate any advice you can provide.
- Adam

The 10% number is a good rule of thumb to use, simply because you’re not going to find any sort of reliable investment out there that returns at a rate of 10% or greater over a long period of time. Your best use of your money if you have debts with an interest rate of 10% or greater is to pay them off first.

Honestly, I’d probably put that percentage even lower, somewhere around the 8% mark. You’re just not going to find reliable investments that return more than 8% per year consistently. Extra debt payments offer that kind of return (in the form of lower interest payments) as compared to just making minimum payments on that debt.

In your situation, I’d tackle those high-interest student loans first. The longer you let them sit around accumulating more than 8% interest per year, the longer it’ll take to ever pay them off. 8% interest on $150,000 is $12,000 per year that’s just gone in the form of interest payments to the bank. That’s just not good over the long term.

Q10: Hidden messages
All of your posts reek of your particular values. Can’t you just write without trying to indoctrinate people to be just like you?
- John

I could certainly write to promote a value set that’s different than my own, but what would be the point of that? The only purpose I could see would be solely to earn money.

Now, if I were to write solely to earn money, I certainly wouldn’t be writing about frugality and ways for people to keep their money in their pocket. I’d be telling people to spend spend spend. Why? Advertiser dollars. Companies that make consumer goods are much more likely to put their ads on sites where the writers are whipping readers into a consumerist frenzy than on a site that encourages people to save their money for the important things.

I suppose I could also do things like try to run seminars and the like, but that would (in my eyes) run completely contrary to what I talk about on here. “You should spend less money… except for the $400 I want you to give me for my seminar!” That seems hypocritical to me.

The only possible reason I’d choose to write a site like this one – and eschew things like seminars and such – is because I believe what I’m writing. If I believe in what I’m writing, it’s naturally going to reflect my values.

If you don’t like those values, that’s great. I don’t think you’ll get a lot of use out of The Simple Dollar, though.

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.

Ronald writes in:

I really loved your series of posts on The Total Money Makeover. I decided to pick it up for myself but when I went to the store they had The Total Money Makeover and The Total Money Makeover Workbook. Which one should I get?

I think the best way to answer that is to review the workbook, since I’ve already thoroughly covered the original book.

The Total Money Makeover Workbook is essentially the content of The Total Money Makeover presented in a workbook format, with lots of blanks in the text for the reader to fill in with their own information as they go through the book.

The biggest difference I’ve found in the content of the two books is that the original book offers up more detail while still being readable.

Since Dave’s message is fairly simple and straightforward, does that really matter?

1 – The Total Money Makeover Challenge
The book opens with a section on evaluating your relationship with money and your knowledge of how it works. I find such sections to be most useful in a book like this one, where people are likely coming in the door with a poor understanding of money. If that weren’t the case, why would they be in a desperate debt situation? The exercises in the chapter focus heavily on self-evaluation, forcing people to look at why they got into the situation they’re in.

2 – I’m Not That Out of Shape: DENIAL
The theme of looking at the current situation continues here, but the focus is on how bad the situation really is. People who hit some sort of financial bottom are often coming out of a big state of denial about how bad things are, and the best recipe for curing that state of denial is to simply look at all of the numbers in black and white, which is the guidance that this chapter provides.

3 – Debt Is (Not) a Tool: DEBT MYTHS
So many people are used to the treadmill of buying cars with a loan, buying homes with a loan, buying furniture with a loan, and so on. That treadmill does not help you get ahead. It only helps the banks in the long run. To succeed financially, you have to break out of that treadmill running.

4 – The (Non)Secrets of the Rich: MONEY MYTHS
Getting into a financially secure position doesn’t involve being a genius and it doesn’t involve a bunch of secrets. It involves following some pretty simple principles all the time. Spend less than you earn. Pay yourself first. Don’t put all of your money in one place. The principles are really simple, but it’s hard for many people to follow them.

5 – Ignorance and Keeping Up with the Joneses: TWO MORE HURDLES
People fall for the pictures they see in advertisements and believe products will make their lives better. All it does is hurt their financial future. People see their neighbors buying things (often bought on credit) and think they deserve these items for themselves. Again, all that’s happening is damage to their financial future. Don’t fall into these traps.

6 – Walk Before You Run: SAVE $1,000 FAST
The first step is a small emergency fund. You can get there several different ways. One effective way is to “clean out your closet” and sell off a lot of the items that you don’t often use, like rarely-watched DVDs and unused exercise equipment. Another big step is to buckle down tightly on your unnecessary spending.

7 – Lose Weight Fast, Really: THE DEBT SNOWBALL
A while back, I wrote a detailed article about creating a debt repayment plan. The basics of this plan and the one presented in this book are very similar, with the biggest difference being that Dave encourages people to order their debts by size so that you get the “psychological win” of paying off a debt quickly, while I usually encourage the mathematically superior method of ordering debts by interest rate (highest to lowest). Focus on paying off the worst debts first – the really high interest ones are usually credit card debts, which often have manageable balances.

8 – Kick Murphy Out: FINISH THE EMERGENCY FUND
Dave encourages people to build an emergency fund that equals six months’ worth of living expenses. This money should sit in a savings account and be left untouched until a genuine emergency comes along, and if you use it for such an emergency, your focus should immediately be on replenishing that debt.

9 – Be Financially Healthy for Life: MAXIMIZE RETIREMENT INVESTING
Dave suggests putting 15% of your annual income into retirement savings. Doing this will help secure a very healthy retirement for you, particularly if you start before the age of 35 or so. The younger you start, the healthier your retirement will be and the younger you can be when you walk away from your current job. Remember, retirement doesn’t have to mean sitting around doing nothing. It can be a chance to start a second career.

10 – Make Sure the Kids Are Fit Too: COLLEGE FUNDING
The best gift you can give your child is help with the costs of their college education. So many students leave college with a big hole of student loan debt already dug out for them. If you have children, start saving something for their college education as early as possible. It’s vital, though, that you not look at your emergency fund as college savings or vice versa. College is not an emergency. It’s something you plan for.

11 – Be Ultrafit: PAY OFF THE HOME MORTGAGE
If everything else is taken care of, start hammering away at your home mortgage with extra payments (this happens to be where we’re at with regards to the future). The sooner you get your home paid off, the better. Having a paid-off home lowers your monthly living expenses substantially, giving you a lot more room to breathe.

12 – Arnold Schwarzedollar, Mr. Universe of Money: BUILD WEALTH LIKE CRAZY
Once you’re debt-free, your focus should be on wealth building. Here’s where I diverge from Dave a bit, as I think his views on investment returns are a bit inflated. However, we both agree that the best thing you can do is diversify and not fall back into spending unnecessarily. You want to build a future without worry, right?

13 – Live Like No One Else: REACH THE PINNACLE POINT
The “pinnacle point” that Dave describes comes when you’re able to live off your investments and do whatever you’d like. Dave describes it as being possible when you can live off 8% of your investments each year, but that again assumes a very healthy annual investment return. I’d shoot for being able to live off of about 4% of your investments each year. For example, if you can actually live off of $40,000 a year, you need $1 million in investments locked up.

Is The Total Money Makeover Workbook Worth Reading?
The Total Money Makeover Workbook covers the exact same ground as The Total Money Makeover. They’re both fantastic books for dealing with a mountain of debt. They both have some Christian undertones, but not overwhelmingly so. They both present an extremely straightforward plan for getting out of a debt situation.

So, what’s the difference? The original book, The Total Money Makeover, is more detailed. This workbook, in many places, felt as though content was ripped from the original book in order to make space for fill-in-the-blank spots.

If you really desire a one-single-book journal of your money recovery, The Total Money Makeover Workbook will do that for you. However, I’d strongly recommend going through The Total Money Makeover along with a notebook and a pen. Virtually all of the ideas from the workbook are found in the original book along with a lot more detail, motivation, and useful information.

In my eyes, The Total Money Makeover Workbook is trumped by simply reading The Total Money Makeover with a notebook and a pen at your side. I’d only pick up the workbook if having all of it in a single book really appeals to you.

Check out additional reviews and notes of The Total Money Makeover Workbook on Amazon.com.

My sister-in-law is a florist. She can take a few hands full of ditch weeds and dandelions and make them look amazing in about five seconds.

On the flip side of that coin, many department stores sell centerpieces stuffed with plastic flowers consisting of perfectly-arranged imitations of beautiful blossoms.

Sit them side by side and the arrangement of ditch weeds and dandelions looks far more impressive.

The same is true with people. I find a person whose life is full of genuine dandelions and ditch weeds to be far more compelling than the person whose life is full of plastic roses, and I’m far from alone in that conclusion.

In other words, you’re better off being proud of being a ditchweed than trying to be a rose and merely being a plastic imitation of one. Stop caring what other people think. Be passionate and proud of who you are and what you enjoy and stop spending a dime of your money or an ounce of your energy trying to be something you’re not.

You’ll find that, if you do it, there are an awful lot of people who will be right along with you for the ride.

Dress in clean clothes that appeal to you. They will make you feel more comfortable in public and more confident in who you are, making it easier for you to build the relationships that you’re in public to build (and make you feel more comfortable when you’re doing your own thing as well).

Decorate your home with the things you’re passionate about, not the things you think your guests will like. It becomes less expensive that way, you’ll enjoy the experience more, and your guests will feel that passion. I’ve been in some wonderful homes that were decorated with album covers, with D&D art, and with their own photographs, and all were amazing because the people in the homes were so clearly happy and content.

Spend your time (and money) engaged in whatever hobbies and activities fulfill you the most, no matter what the neighbors might be doing or thinking. If you’re happy and engaged and feel alive, their thoughts on the matter really have little consequence.

Be who you are. Chase your own passions. Stop spending time or money impressing others (unless it’s purely necessary for career gain, as in building a resume or dressing for an interview). You’ll find happiness down this road, as well as a lot less unnecessary spending and a lot less time spent doing things that don’t make your spirit sing.

Are you a plastic flower or a vibrant dandelion? Do you sink your money into appearances alone or into the actual content of your character?

The choice is yours.

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned about life over the past several years is that your good hours are the only valuable ones.

You know exactly what I’m talking about. There are a few hours during the day where you’re revved up. Your mind is clicking. You’re efficient at solving problems. You’re able to produce great things.

At other points in the day, though, you’re nowhere near as able to produce good work. You sit there staring at the computer screen or at your desk, not really achieving anything. You feel tired and muddled.

Once upon a time, I believed that a good worker would push through those hours and still accomplish stuff. I’m “on the clock,” so I should be achieving something, right?

Working outside of an office environment, though, I’ve learned that I usually accomplish very little outside of those key productive hours. If I feel that I’m off of the peak and I’m not writing as well, I’m largely wasting my time continuing to make myself write.

Instead, I do something else, usually something mindless. I go for a walk. I file some papers. I clean the house. It could be anything. If I feel an urge to write, I return to writing, but if it’s not there, it’s just not there.

The result of this has been that my life has simply become far more productive than it used to be. Instead of burning eight hours writing (with only, say, three of them involved in effective wordsmithing), I quit after the first two hours of good writing, go do something else for a few hours, then come back and (possibly) ride another burst of writing. I still get those three hours in, but I also get five hours of other tasks in. (These numbers are approximate, of course.)

The amazing part is that I could have easily applied this at almost every job I ever worked at. For example, I used to work on some fairly brain-burning data analysis projects in the office. I’d work on them all day long, but for much of the day, I’d be grinding. I’d stare at the problem and hope a solution would reveal itself – and, often, that solution would pop into my head on the commute or in the shower that night or playing in the yard with my kids that following weekend.

At the same time, there would be five forms that need to be filled out sitting on my desk, a big pile of stuff that needed to be filed, and a bunch of mindless data entry that needed to be handled. Instead of just banging my head against a problem, the best solution would have been to just stop when I felt myself banging my head and then work on the other less-intense tasks I needed to accomplish.

Yes, sometimes there are menial tasks that you just have to grind away at, but thankfully most of those tasks are ones where you can almost shut off your mind and do on autopilot. For me, those menial tasks are the “escape” tasks and I often do shut off my mind while doing them. Amazingly, good ideas often appear when my mind is “shut off.”

This entire post boils down to two principles.

First, if you feel yourself “grinding” against a problem at work, you’re not being very productive with it and would probably be more productive doing something else. If you possibly can, put the problem down for a while, shut off that part of your brain, and do something productive that doesn’t require you to think too much. That way, you’ll get the “boring” stuff out of the way during the hours where your mind isn’t working at top speed.

Second, and this is why I’m mentioning it on The Simple Dollar, the more productive you are at work, the better your job stability, chances of promotion, and potential for recruitment are. This stabilizes and improves your personal income, making your financial life that much easier.

It’s about good hours, not more hours.

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. Des Moines Family Music Festival
This past weekend, the five of us went to Every Family Rocks in Des Moines, Iowa. It was a concert of various children’s music acts, accompanied by a wide variety of art projects and similar fun things for families.

Both of our children were really into the event, particularly my oldest son (the girl was getting very tired by the end of it). His enthusiasm for the entire event was infectious, particularly when the headlining act took the stage…

2. They Might Be Giants
The show was headlined by They Might Be Giants. An example of a song they played:

My son (who loves the four children’s albums the band has done) and my wife (who loved the band’s earlier music during her teen years) were having an incredible amount of fun. The enthusiasm for music was infectious.

(What was I doing? I was in the back holding one sleeping child and one exhausted and nearly-sleeping child.)

3. Ann Radcliffe on what money can’t buy
Our opinions are formed without money. Our love occurs without money. The people we look up to have nothing to do with money.

Poverty cannot deprive us of many consolations. It cannot rob us of the affection we have for each other, or degrade us in our own opinion, of in that of any person, whose opinion we ought to value. – Ann Radcliffe

So many of the things we value in life have almost nothing to do with money.

4. Sand castle building
This is one of my favorite art forms, seriously. You can do amazing things with sand, but in a moment, your hard work returns to the beach with scarcely a sign that you’ve done anything at all.

This video shows some of the highlights of a national sand sculpting competition. I spent about twelve hours on a sand castle once, using putty knives and other materials, and it was a drop in the bucket compared to these.

5. Plato on wealth and poverty
Discontent comes from both wealth and poverty?

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent. – Plato

I tend to think that discontent comes from neither wealth nor poverty. Instead, discontent comes from the person who is discontented, the person who cannot find happiness in what they have.

6. Henri Matisse – Fruit and Coffeepot (1898)
My children and I have been looking at a lot of impressionist and post-impressionist art, going so far as to look at brushstrokes and the like. We’ve all found that we really like the work of Henri Matisse, and this is a great example of it.

This feels like a memory of a pleasant morning.

7. Henry Taylor on standard of living
If you want to live well, you already have the solution.

The art of living easily as to money is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means. – Sir Henry Taylor

Live on less than what you bring in. If you do that consistently, your life will go much easier than it will if you ignore it.

8. Amazing violin performance
A reader who is studying the violin in school sent this to me, stating flatly that this is beyond her skill level. I was just stunned by this.

Stunning performance. I don’t care that the person playing is twelve or fifty, that’s impressive.

9. Themistocles on rich people and trustworthy people
Would you rather have a rich person near you or a reliable person near you?

I choose the likely man in preference to the rich man; I want a man without money rather than money without a man. – Themistocles

I tend to think that a reliable person will eventually become rich, whereas a rich person has no guarantee of being reliable in any way. I’ll take the person with characteristics I value over the person with a wallet full of money.

10. The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale
I heard this short speech on a radio station a long time ago. I really liked it, but I was never able to find it again. Until this week.

A reader sent this along to me and I thought I should share it with you. This really isn’t much of a video – just start playing it and just listen.

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 of my favorite things to do in the kitchen is to cook an excellent meal with minimal dishes to do afterwards. If I can make something delicious with only the silverware, plates, and perhaps two more items in the sink, then it’s a big win for me.

This leads us to baked salmon and asparagus, which I make on two cookie sheets (and a single person or a couple could make on one cookie sheet). You really don’t need anything else to prepare this meal. Even better, you only need about fifteen minutes of cooking time!

What You Need
You’ll need a small filet of whatever kind of fish you wish to prepare for each person. I suggest waiting for a sale. You’ll also need perhaps four ounces of asparagus per person eating, a few teaspoons of olive oil, and perhaps some seasoning for the fish (black pepper, white pepper, salt, cayenne pepper, etc. – whatever you like). I would also pair this with a fresh fruit, using whatever fruit is on sale at the store. I almost always pair fish with citrus fruits.

The Night Before (or Early That Day)
You can cut the asparagus in advance of the meal. When you buy asparagus at the store, it’s often sold with the bottom portion of the stem being fairly bitter. I generally take each asparagus stem and cut it roughly in half, discarding the other part to the compost bin. The top half is the truly tasty part.

Other than that, the meal is incredibly simple to prepare.

Preparing the Meal
Pre-heat the oven to 500 F. You’ll want the oven nice and hot for this dish.

Spread out the fish and the asparagus on one or two cookie sheets. You can do this on one sheet fairly easily if you’re cooking for two, but if you’re cooking for a family, you’ll need two sheets.

Drizzle some olive oil over the asparagus, rotate them a bit, then drizzle some more olive oil on top of them. Sprinkle on some salt and black pepper.

For the fish, season both sides in whatever way you like. I season almost all fish I eat with cayenne pepper, but this may not be your preferred flavor. A bit of salt and black pepper works well for almost any fish.

When the oven is heated, put the cookie sheet(s) in for six minutes. Pull out the sheet, flip the fish, rotate the asparagus, and put it back in for four minutes.

At this point, remove the asparagus to a separate container, then check the temperature of the fish. It should be around 140 F. The texture should be nice and flaky and it should not be transparent – cooked fish is opaque. If it needs a bit more cooking, flip the fish again and re-insert it into the oven for another five minutes.

You’re done! Serve the asparagus and fish with a side of fresh fruit. We almost always accompany fish with citrus fruits, so we served it with orange this time.

Optional Ingredients
You can vary the seasoning of the fish quite a lot. Black pepper, white pepper, lemon pepper, garlic, salt – season it in whatever way you like. You may want to look up seasoning suggestions for the particular type of fish you’re using (you can use pretty much any kind of fish for this meal, too), but I use those as a general guideline at best. I just like cayenne pepper on everything.

Fish can be accompanied by many different types of vegetables and fruits. We often use either whatever is coming from our garden or whatever is on sale at the store or in season at the farmers market.

A few days ago, I had a chat with a friend of mine who is struggling mightily with his job right now.

He took a high-paying job with a rather prestigious title at a well-known company. The biggest drawback of this job is that he carries around a company phone and receives calls on it at all hours of the night.

At first, this wasn’t a big deal for him. He actually only needs to be at the office a couple days a week. The rest of the time, he telecommutes or, on some days, he just deals with crises.

As time passed, though, he got married, then they had a child. This child is currently three months old.

The child wakes up multiple times during the night. Coupled with that are the calls that my friend gets from his job, often three or more per week in the middle of the night.

Simply put, he’s sleep deprived. He’s fallen pretty ill twice in the last month. He not only looks miserable, he is miserable. He’s drinking more than he ever has, mostly to take the edge off of the constant jumpiness in his life.

He’s growing to loathe the job he once loved. His life has changed while his job hasn’t, and the relationship isn’t harmonious any more.

What should he do?

I know this is a story that’s familiar to a lot of people. You have a great job on paper, but deep down inside, you hate that job. How do you get through it?

The solutions to the problem are different in the short term and in the long term. I’m going to suggest both short term and long term tactics for dealing with this type of situation.

(Yes, this is advice for a friend of mine, but it’s good general advice for anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation.)

Effective Short-Term Results
How can you make the pain of your job subside in the short term?

Figure out exactly what’s wrong. Why are you unhappy? Why are those things happening? Dig into the problem until you can figure out where the roots of your unhappiness really are.

Talk to your supervisor. If there are elements of your job that you are finding untenable, be completely up front about them with your supervisor. Explain what the core problem is and ask if you can find a solution.

For example, in the above picture, my friend might want to simply tell his supervisor that the constant nighttime calls are creating a disastrous home life.

Have a solid short-term fix in mind. Is there something simple that can be done to help with this situation? If you’ve evaluated what the problem really is, see if you can imagine some situation where the worst of that problem is resolved while causing minimal additional problems.

For example, my friend might suggest having someone who can take the “emergency” calls during some periods during the week. This person wouldn’t be the ultimate “go-to” guy most of the time. Instead, this person would serve to keep the edge off of my friend so he can get the basic rest he needs to function.

Lasting Long-Term Results
The solutions above can certainly take the edge off of a challenging situation, but they often don’t completely resolve the greater issue that led to the job discomfort to begin with. The real solution revolves around making sure you have a healthy exit plan.

Live on less than you earn. If you’re bringing home $50,000 a year, don’t spend $50,000 a year. Spend $30,000 or so and put the rest away for whatever might happen to you down the road – like a job turning sour. It’s never, ever too late to start doing this.

The easiest method for doing this is to automate it. Have your bank automatically take part of your paycheck and transfer it to a savings account so that it’s out of sight and out of mind. Let it build quietly in there and don’t think about it until the time comes. Eventually, that money will help you leave and transition on to the next step in your life when the job becomes untenable.

Have connections in your industry. Get as involved as you can with the business you’re in. Connect with people in your industry on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn. Go to conventions for the real purpose that conventions exist – building relationships.

These relationships will be there for you when you’re ready to move on to the next stage in your career. They’ll point out job opportunities to you. They might even feed job opportunities to you. This often happens whether you are actively looking or not – I know that I had several job offers that trickled in at my previous job.

Jump at every chance to do something that stands out. When there’s a chance to present – particularly to people outside your organization – do it. When there’s a chance to write something that people outside the organization will see, do it. Start a blog. Write a book. Do anything and everything you can to do exceptional things that will cause your name to stand out or, at the very least, provide some interesting resume fodder.

Not only are many of these things exceptional and intriguing, they also sharpen many of your transferable skills and demonstrate them directly to employers.

It is those “stand out” things that get your foot in the door with future jobs. When a job opens in a hot field, they’re often inundated with applications. The thing that stands out from the field are the exceptional steps that you’ve taken along the way. Everyone’s done a ho-hum job, and almost all of those resumes are thrown straight in the trash.

Your job is not your life. Your job is an exchange of your energy and time for your employer’s financial resources and other benefits, nothing more, nothing less. If that equation changes to the point where you feel like you’re giving far more than you’re receiving, you need to resolve the situation in both the short term and the long term.