A few weeks ago, I put out a call on Twitter and on Facebook for detailed posts that people would like to see. I got enough great responses that I’m going to fill the entire month of July – one post per day – addressing these ideas.

On Facebook, Kimberly asked about “Online daily deals (groupon, living social, restaurant.com) vs. Being frugal and saving all your pennies. Sometimes its 50% off discount but sometimes you end up spending more.”

I’ve only made offhand references to Groupon and such sites in the past, but this is as good a time as any to discuss such “daily deal” sites in detail. In fact, most of the remarks below apply to any form of coupon, but I’ll focus on the “daily deal” phenomenon.

Coupons – In Your Face!
So, how do sites like Groupon and Living Social function? Each day (or so), an offer is delivered to your email inbox. Typically, this offer is in the form of a coupon for a local business or an online business.

Examples of offers include buying a gift card at a local business for 50% of the face value, buying a service (or a package of services) from a local business for a significantly reduced amount, or something similar.

In each case, in order to participate in the deal, you have to buy that item. The email will include a link that allows you to hop onto a website from which you can purchase the gift certificate or package.

So, let’s say that one of my favorite local bookstores participates in Groupon. Groupon sends out a deal one day offering a coupon for a $50 gift card to that bookstore for only $25. I’m a frequent reader, so it sounds like a good deal, right?

Actually, it’s not. Here’s why.

You Don’t Save Money at a Sale
If I buy that certificate for $25, I’ve just committed myself to spending $25 on books. Yes, maybe I’m getting $50 worth of books in terms of their face value, but I’m still down $25.

It doesn’t matter how good the deal is. I’m still sinking some of my money into that deal.

I’ve just spent $25. What I will get out of it is books that I most likely don’t need.

Now that I have this coupon, I have to go use it. This means I have to travel to that bookstore sometime and use the certificate. Unless I’m extremely lucky, I’m not going to be able to hit exactly $50 on my purchase, which means I’m going to have to spend some additional amount or carry around a mostly-used gift certificate in my wallet forever.

So, in reality, I’m spending about $30 for about $55 (MSRP) in books. I also spent the gas to drive over there.

I’m spending $30 on something I don’t really need that I would have never been aware of without that offer appearing in my inbox.

That’s simply not a good deal.

“Well, I Wait for the Good Deals!”
I’ve been a subscriber to two different Groupon areas for the last six months and I’ve yet to see a single offer that actually matched something I needed.

On the other hand, I saw a lot of offers for things I wanted: reduced (but still high) prices on meals and massages and amusement park passes and the like.

Here’s the thing, though. None of these wants were really strong wants. They were things that I might do on a whim with friends, but they aren’t things that I’m planning for in my budget. Often, they aren’t even excellent examples of that type of experience – the restaurants have been a decided mixed bag, for example.

It could be that others have a completely different set of desires than I do and Groupon regularly hits upon experiences that they deeply want to have. For me, they’re just idle temptations, the kind that would easily drain my wallet without thinking about it.

I’d far rather go out once a month for a truly memorable experience than go out once or twice a week for a blah experience – and that memorable experience will (a) still cost less than several average experiences and (b) will never appear as a Groupon temptation.

Why Frugality Wins
The basic idea of frugality is that you’re trying to find the maximum value in the experiences you have in life. It means spending money when it’s something you truly want, but it also means understanding what you truly want and separating that from the idle day-to-day desires we all have.

Simply finding a discount on an experience that you didn’t really want before you heard about that discount is far from finding the maximum value in life. Groupon and Living Social and such services provide a never-ending line of those kinds of minor temptations, and those kinds of temptations are never a bargain at any price.

I’d far rather pay full price on a single experience or purchase that was really important to me than saving $20 on two different purchases that I didn’t really care about all that much. That important purchase was something that I thought about a great deal, enjoyed the anticipation for, and was quite sure that I would really enjoy when the time came. The other was just an email in my inbox alerting me to yet another thing that I might find a bit interesting but didn’t really need.

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. Handling expensive schooling
2. Handling a closed credit account
3. Lowering high housing costs
4. Investing while in college
5. Solid credit, no credit cards
6. Planning for after debt elimination
7. Jealousy of the rich
8. Executor advice
9. Investing now or later?
10. Planning ahead for side business

When I get myself in the flow of writing, I usually lock myself in my office (or go somewhere else where I’m completely alone), turn on some podcasts (think of it as talk radio that I control), surround myself with the needed research materials, and just start writing. I try as hard as I can to stay in that state until the words just don’t come any more.

Sometimes, I never quite get there. At other times, I can get in there all day, completely lose track of time, and be interrupted by my wife wanting me to help with supper when it’s not even lunch time yet. Those days enable me to have lots of other days where I can just spend time with my wife and kids.

Q1: Handling expensive schooling
I am nearing the completion of my bachelors degree and am looking into continuing straight into a masters. I am 27, work in the public safety sector and need to go to a school that offers an online experience due to my work schedule. I believe I have found the perfect school with the exact degree I want, but of course there is a major road block. Money. The school costs a significant amount of money, more than a lot of other masters programs out there, but it is a well known school and this particular program is highly regarded. In addition, it is one of the only schools that offers this degree online.

My employer has a reimbursement program, but it is capped at a level that will just cover 40% of my tuition costs, which leaves me with around $18,000 to find somewhere. Scholarships are nearly nonexistent in the area I wish to study, and I already have $9,000 in student loans from a failed experience at college during my youth. Needless to say, I am reluctant to take out more loans and am having a hard time deciding if I should still go for it. This degree will help my career, but it will not pay off for me for years to come, and will never pay off like other graduate degrees due to the nature of my career field. It is more about maximizing my potential and educating myself to benefit my employer, fellow employees and my profession as a whole. There is a possibility I could leverage the degree into a consulting gig, or public speaking, but those aren’t rock solid.

So now to my question, should I pursue the dream school and dream degree, risking debt/not being able to pay. Or should I choose a less fulfilling program because I can get scholarships and save a dime? I have been excited about the prospects of this program for a year now, and the hard reality of the money situation is bearing on me now. I am having a difficult time deciding the correct course of action.
- Trey

Education is one thing in life that I don’t begrudge going into debt over. The investment almost always pays for itself over time.

It seems as though you’re pretty confident as to what field you should be going into. If you know that, then you should do everything you can to prepare for entry into that field, even if it costs you money in the short term. You are going to be far better off with an education and a degree in a field you’re passionate about, even with a little debt, than you are with an education and a degree in a field you don’t care about.

Go to school in the field of your choice. You’re going to get more value out of it, even considering the debt.

Q2: Handling a closed credit account
I last wrote to you inquiring about debt management organizations and I have decided not to go that route. However, when I called one of my credit card companies and asked them to lower my interest rate (they said no, and were actually the ones to suggest a debt management organization to me) said that they could “work with me” and lower my rate/monthly payment but part of the deal would be that they would close my account.

This is actually fine with me – I don’t want to pay it down and charge it up again (hopefully, I won’t!!!). I want it to be gone for good, but I don’t want to hurt my credit score (which is good).

So, do I suck it up and keep plugging away at this card with an over 20% interest rate (not the first debt I am attacking – but maybe it should be??) OR take their offer, get my interest rate lowered and close the account?
- Kay

Lowering the interest rate and closing the account will have a slight negative impact on your credit score (at first), but the impact of that will most likely be overcome by the reduced interest rates on that debt.

How big is the negative impact? It depends on the balances on your other cards and their credit limits. One significant part of your credit score is your debt-to-credit ratio, which is the sum total of your credit card debts (and certain other types of debts) compared to the sum total of your credit limits. The closer your debt total is to your credit total, the worse it is.

If you have all of your other cards maxed out while this card had a low balance compared to the limit, closing the account will have a fairly bad impact. If that’s not the case, I’d close it and enjoy the lower interest rate.

Q3: Lowering high housing costs
I see stories all the time about people who paid off their mortgages in 10 years, 5 years, even 2 years, which is a fantastic achievement. But I also noticed that a lot of them were able to do that because they purchased the property for $200K, $100K, or maybe even $80K. In the Los Angeles area, you couldn’t find a decent property for less than $300K. (I’m talking about apartments/condos only, since the threshold for a house is even higher at $400K.) Sure, there are cheaper properties in gang-infested neighborhoods, but most people there are trying to get out, so why would you want to buy in? The other option is to buy something way out in the boonies, but then you’ll have to deal with a 2-hour daily commute (yes, each way).

For people like me who make less than $100K per year, it would be very tough to make the monthly payments on a $300K loan if the term were only 15 years. Yet the prospect of paying a mortgage for 30 years is rather daunting (and depressing).

Renting is an option, but the $1200 monthly rent on a 2-bedroom apartment is almost the same as the $1300 monthly mortgage payment for an equivalent property. We would move to a cheaper area, but my husband works in the entertainment industry, so the only other place for us would be New York, which is even more expensive.

What can people do if they live in an area with high housing costs?
- Kathryn

Usually, they rent until they have either a large down payment or they have an opportunity to move to a lower-cost area in the United States.

If they don’t take one of those two options, they often end up in foreclosure. An awful lot of the people who took on adjustable rate mortgages during the housing bubble watched them adjust, found they couldn’t make the new payments, and watched the bank take their house from them.

Don’t fall into that trap. Rent and save as much as you can, then see where your path leads. It might lead right out of your expensive housing area.

Q4: Investing while in college
I currently hold $12,500 in student debt, with another year, and that much to go before I’m finished. So, at the time I graduate, I will have about $25,000 in student debt at about 6.8% interest. I am still undecided about going to graduate school. My financial situation is fairly stable, with a steady income leaving me with about $400/month which I currently place in a 1.4% savings account which has a balance of about $10K at the moment. My dilemma is whether I should keep saving, invest, begin paying off the loan early, or I have the option of paying off the interest early. If I do invest, I’ll need to keep in mind that some of my savings are my emergency fund. What do you think, Trent?
- Darin

I would figure out how much you need for an emergency fund and then apply the rest to knocking down that debt.

So, how much of an emergency fund should you have? If I were you, I’d keep two months worth of living expenses of a level you would reasonably expect to have once you leave school. What is rent like in the area where you’re at? What about transportation and food? Make some estimates for a month, add them up, double it, and that’s how big my emergency fund would be.

I would apply the remaining savings toward that student loan and channel the income toward the loan, too. If an emergency does come up, I’d focus on rebuilding the emergency fund, then re-focus on the loan.

Q5: Solid credit, no credit cards
The Situation: I find myself in a strange situation. I have good credit scores (762-789 in Experian, Equifax and TransUnion). My credit reports say my credit score is affected negatively because I only have 1 credit card (limit $3,500, use 30% or less, paid off every single cycle). I applied for a standard card and was denied…because I have only 1 credit card and have not exhibited that I can carry more. Hello, Catch 22! I live in NYC so I don’t have a mortgage or car payment or even student loans that create other credit avenues to be listed on my credit reports.

The Background: I have $0 debt for 3-4 years now, have an emergency fund for 5 months worth of expenses and am currently employed at a decent salary (have been steadily employed for life, save one 2-week stint in 2001). Back in 2001 I had $14k of debt (which I paid off) and *no* credit score to speak of since all my cards had been withdrawn by the lenders and thusly I had no credit scores since I had no active credit. When I had credit scores show up most of them were awful because of so many past late payments. They are all past statute of limitations now and no longer appear on my reports. 3 years ago I started with a $250 secured card, after 1 year was offered an unsecured $900 limit card and the limit’s been raised a few times. I don’t really think I *need* the extra credit but I’m trying to raise my credit scores in the event I want to buy an apartment one day, so they can see that I can hold multiple lines of credit (and higher limits of credit) responsibly.

The Question: Do I get a secondary secured credit card since I can’t seem to get an unsecured card? If so, should I put a few thousand in so I am working with a card that’s immediately got a higher limit (easier to use it for the 30% or under costs and will show I can be responsible with higher credit limits)? Any other ideas? I applied for a fairly reasonable card so I’m not sure I want to apply for others as I’m assuming I’ll get turned down again and I will have that many more hard inquiries on my credit report.
- John

A secured credit card should be a last resort in your situation. You should be able to get some sort of unsecured card.

If I were you, I’d apply for a card from a different card issuer than the one that denied you. Your situation as described seems like a situation that a credit card issuer would be happy to issue a card to.

If you can’t get such a card, I really wouldn’t worry about it. Your credit scores are very strong and I don’t think you have a strong need to reinforce it – at least not one strong enough to pay the cost of a secured card.

Q6: Planning for after debt elimination
I do have a specific question for you. The background info: I’m 25 and single. I earn $3,000 per month (net). I have one student loan ($11,000 remaining principal balance, at 6.75% interest) and $1,000 in an emergency fund. I also contribute 5% of my gross pay to a 401(k), which my employer matches.

Currently, I take 30% of my take-home pay and use it to pay off my student loan. I try to make a payment of $1,000 per month.

First question: am I saving enough money? I agonize over my budget, and I suppose I’m looking for assurance from you that I’m being aggressive enough about becoming debt-free (major goal #1).

Second question: once my loan is paid off (goal date: next June), what do I do with the money that I was formally using to pay off my debt? My ultimate dream is home ownership (major goal #2).
- Rebekah

For your age and financial state, your money choices are strong. You’re contributing a total of 10% to your retirement and you’re hammering away hard at your student loans, both of which are going to set you up with a brighter future.

When your loan is eliminated, I would start socking that $1,000 per month into a savings account. At that rate, you’ll have a down payment on a modest home in a couple of years, so I would not put that money into other forms of investment that may carry some risk to the balance. Keep an eye on properties in your area and when you start to get close to a 20% down payment, start looking.

I think you’re in great shape. Keep it up!

Q7: Jealousy of the rich
You’ve written many times about abundance versus scarcity. I understand that, but I still feel very jealous of people who have more money than sense. How can it possibly be fair that idiots have so much money?
- Connie

For one, the people you decry as “idiots” are often putting on a public act, one that their audience will consume. The audience will watch their “stupid” television specials and other media appearances to laugh at their idiocy, not realizing that these “idiots” are laughing their way to the bank. Most public figures that you perceive as “dumb” are often at least somewhat smart – they’re smart enough, at the very least, to find skilled promoters and backers.

The real crux of your question boils down to a desire for wealth. For me, eliminating the desire for excess riches came about from thinking about what I would have to give up to have that kind of wealth. The last thing I want is paparazzi – in fact, I’ve turned down some great opportunities related to The Simple Dollar out of fear that it would bring a level of fame that I do not want. I also don’t want friends and family turning to me as their financial spigot.

Sure, I’d have lots of material things, but without a happy life with lots of great relationships, it’d be a stretch for me to enjoy them.

Q8: Executor advice
My mother in law wants my husband (and I) to be the executors of her estate. We have politely refused, saying we simply can’t handle the responsibility and workload of such a task (or the emotional toll, since my husband’s siblings are being cut out of the will). Unfortunately, each time we see her she broaches the subject again, as if we haven’t already refused, stating that she’s counting on us to take care of things and pretending not to hear our concerns.

My question is, if she were to die suddenly and we found that my husband was named executor, what are the implications if he then refused the job? I think the court appoints someone to do it, but I don’t know what that entails–or how much it would cost her modest estate. Any thoughts?
- Kelly

Typically, the courts do appoint someone as executor. That person (or the state, depending on the arrangement) takes the executor’s fee and attempts to execute the will to the best of their ability.

An executor’s fee is usually around 3% of the total value of the estate. This fee can vary in some situations. It’s often larger in the case of small estates, and it’s often a bit larger when someone needs to be cajoled into being executor. This is all at the discretion of the judge, but the judge is usually following some strict guidelines from the state.

If you refuse to be executor, someone else will be. The executor fee that would have gone to you will instead go to this other executor and it may be enlarged a bit. For the most part, the actual work of an executor is really straightforward, so they most likely wouldn’t do much differently than you would do as executor. That’s really all that would happen.

Q9: Investing now or later?
The recent post regarding paying off low interest loans has got me rethinking some things. Currently the only debt I have is a signature loan with a current balance of $1629.71 at a 5.9% interest rate. I’ve been saving as much as I can to put towards investing and currently have a balance of $1659.23. As you can see, I could pay off the loan today but then I’d have to start over saving for investments. My job situation is fairly stable, I believe. I work for a retailer/restaurant that has been been in business for over 30 years, has over 600 stores and I believe is fiscally conservative no matter what the current economy. Plus, I have been with them ten years now. I don’t have any real concern about losing my job. I would like to acquire disability insurance – not offered by my employer – and paying off the loan will allow me to do that without undoing all the bill reductions I’ve achieved in the last few months (replaced the land line with a pre-paid cell phone, for example). However, it will put back my plans for having enough investment income to quit working for money in five years. I originally planned to go on making monthly payments, figuring that it was better to invest ASAP and start making returns than to wait, if I indeed wanted to make this five year goal. So, which takes priority? Smaller investments sooner or larger amounts available (the money previously going to the debt payment) for investing later?
- Monica

It depends on how you invest. If we assume that you’re five years from retirement (as you mention), your retirement investing should be fairly conservative. Thus, over that five year period, the return on your money will most likely be less than 5.9% – but it will be a stable return.

My view is that if you’re saving for retirement aggressively at this point (meaning you’re heavily into stocks and the like), you’re committing a big investment mistake with consequences that will trump all of these decisions. You should be pretty conservative this close to retirement, with the largest portion of your retirement savings in bonds and cash.

Given that, the best return on your money is paying down that debt. As you mentioned, it frees up your cash flow so that you can make bigger retirement investments later.

Monica had another question as well

Q10: Planning ahead for side business
I’m forty-six years old, unmarried, no children. I live with my mother, so I don’t pay rent, a mortgage or utilities and I have access to a car. I can also use the city bus to get around. This year I went back and restarted the “Your Money or Life” FI program. So far so good. I got out of debt management 12 months ago. My monthly bills were never very big, aside from debt payments, but now I can easily live on as little as 25% of my income from an $8.06 an hour job of 25 to 30 hours a week. I also am an artist and plan on expanding my artwork considerably and making it into a true side business, before and after I quit my ‘day job’. That being the case, I do want to quit as soon as I have enough investment income to cover the basics – health insurance, disability insurance and regular monthly bills – as well as an emergency fund. As I said above, I’m currently aiming for that to be five years from now. I’m told my employer only offers 5 cents on the dollar for a Roth 401k and I don’t want to wait until I’m 59.5 anyway, so I’m currently reading “Bogleheads Guide to Investing” and looking really seriously at index funds. What do you think? Is it feasible? The five year goal is pretty arbitrary but fifteen years is enough to give any employer and it’s a nice round number.
- Monica

As I mentioned above, if your goal is to effectively retire in five years, it’s not a wise move to put your money heavily into stocks. The value of stock investments is pretty volatile over a five year period – you might gain 40% or lose 30%, it’s hard to tell.

If I were you, I would probably buy either a mix of index funds (with a bond fund being the biggest one) or I would just put it all into a target retirement account that’s just a few years out, like a Target Retirement 2015 or 2020 fund. This will keep you in a pretty safe place with regards to your investment.

I’d also try very hard to expand that artistic side business now. Try to build it while you still have a steady income so that when the time comes to make that leap, you can easily make it. Give as much of your spare time as possible to your art and to the business behind selling it.

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance or other book of interest. Also available is a complete list of the hundreds of book reviews that have appeared on The Simple Dollar over the years.

One of the most frequent issues that I’m asked about is how exactly to start a conversation about a delicate money topic with family members or friends. How do you tell your spouse that your debt problem is worse than they thought? How do you talk about estate planning with your elderly parents? How do you talk to your new significant other about getting your finances straight? These conversations can be difficult, even for the most extroverted among us.

At the same time, these difficult conversations can be very important. They can be among the most important conversations we have within our relationships, as money is a foundational concern. It defines what things we have the freedom and ability to do and to buy.

Thus, knowing how to handle difficult conversations is a key part of personal finance success, and Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen focuses directly on that topic. They offer a set of ideas that, although time-consuming, can make sure that the difficult conversations you need to have come off with success and without argument.

Sort Out the Three Conversations
The authors open the book by positing that there are essentially three conversations that people have: the “what happened” conversation, the feelings conversation, and the identity conversation. In each of these, people tend to lead with their own impressions and thoughts and undermine the impressions and thoughts of others. In each case, it’s almost always useful to instead think of them as a learning conversation, where you’re trying your best to figure out exactly what the other participant in the conversation thinks.

Stop Arguing About Who’s Right
Most conversations devolve into discomfort and argument because both people believe that they are right – and, thus, that the other person is wrong. Most of the time, both sides have a good point that comes about due to the perspective that person is bringing to the table. If you step back and simply take some time to try to understand where the other person is coming from and what experiences and thoughts make up their stance on the issue, you’ll often find a path to a resolution that makes you both happy.

Don’t Assume They Meant It
When we’re emotionally upset and angry, we all sometimes say things that we don’t really mean in the cool light of calmness. What’s more important is to recognize that something severely upset the other person, not so much what they explicitly said. You have to disentangle intent from impact by worrying less about what was actually said and focusing more on why that emotional outburst occurred.

Abandon Blame
In most disagreements, both parties are to blame to at least some extent. There are usually a lot of factors that caused a situation to devolve into disagreeement and the more of those elements you understand, the better. This is perfect ground for thought before you ever even have the conversation, as most of these elements can be pieced through long before you have the conversation. The more you know, the better it goes. The authors offer up some techniques for doing this that are pretty insightful here.

Have Your Feelings
If you want to have a successful conversation, you’ve got to keep your emotions in check. If you do not, you’re going to destroy any positive progress from this conversation. One great technique for managing emotions is to work through them before ever having the conversation. Think through responses that would make you upset and allow yourself to be upset when it doesn’t impact the conversation. Also, simply knowing that it’s vital that you not lose control of your emotions can make a significant difference.

Ground Your Identity
The most important part of any difficult conversation is the stakes. What’s at stake here? What do the participants have to gain from a good outcome? What do they have to lose from a poor outcome? What’s at stake for you? What do you have to gain from a good outcome and lose from a bad one? This is motivation to prepare for your conversation properly as well as potential information for steering the conversation in a healthy direction.

What’s Your Purpose?
What is your purpose in even engaging in this conversation? It’s important to know why you’re engaging in this conversation. At the same time, it’s also important to know how vital that purpose is compared to other factors in your life. This way, you can know beforehand when it’s a good idea to go for your purpose – and when it’s a good idea to let it go (for now, or perhaps forever). Your purpose (and the relative place it holds in your life) is the most important thing, not winning or your pride.

Getting Started
The best way to engage in any important discussion is to essentially function like a reasonable mediator. During such a conversation, you’re going to hear your story and you’re going to hear the other person’s story. Look for the “third story” – in other words, the difference between your story and the other person’s story. Navigating that difference in stories is the key to success.

Learning
Listening is absolutely essential. So often in a conversation, people, rather than listening, spend the time when the other person is speaking merely planning out how they will articulate their next point. Very rarely will a conversation end well when both participants are doing this. Do not fall into this trap. Instead, make it your point to extract as much information as possible from every sentence uttered by the other person. This helps you figure out their story in more detail and thus helps you figure out more clearly the difference between the two stories that has to be navigated.

Expression
When you do speak for yourself, there are some key elements you must have for success. First, speak with clarity. You should be unequivocably clear in everything you say in a discussion. Don’t be vague or mysterious or passive-aggressive with your statements. Be clear and state what you mean. Second, say it with power. Say it with action words that make it clear that you mean what you say and that you aren’t to be just tossed aside by the other person. Finally, speak without anger. Anger never solves anything in conversation.

Problem-Solving
As you begin to resolve the two stories that are brought to the table, take the lead in coming up with a solution to the problem. Don’t be afraid to articulate exactly how you see the middle point between the two stories and why. State the solution to the problem as you see it with clarity and power and without anger, but while also listening to the input of the other person and a respect for the true middle point between your stories.

Is Difficult Conversations Worth Reading?
If it’s truly important to you to get the big conversations in your life right and you’re willing to invest some time and thought into making those conversations work out right, Difficult Conversations will be a valuable book for you to read.

It pretty much provides exactly what it describes on the cover: methods for handling difficult conversations, like money conversations and other major concerns. The methods inside are thorough, but they can be time-consuming and they require you to be willing to conduct some serious introspection and draw some conclusions about your own end of these conversations that you may not like.

If you’re comfortable with that, Difficult Conversations absolutely gets the job done. It gives you such a great set of tools for conversations that you’ll feel able to handle any discussion life might throw at you.

Check out additional reviews and notes of Difficult Conversations on Amazon.com.

A few weeks ago, I put out a call on Twitter and on Facebook for detailed posts that people would like to see. I got enough great responses that I’m going to fill the entire month of July – one post per day – addressing these ideas.

On Facebook, Emily requested to know more about “Meals from the garden, and ways of buying up food when it’s in season and preserving it.”

I’m going to focus on the second half of her request with this post, but I’ll just first mention that there are a lot of recipes out there that utilize the produce from a garden if you just look a bit. A great place to start is a vegetarian cookbook, like Mark Bittman’s wonderful How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, which occupies a spot on our “frequently used” cookbook shelf right in our kitchen (with the requisite stains and spots that such heavily-used cookbooks acquire). I often write about dishes in my weekly food posts that use ingredients right from our garden. If you’re looking for recipes that are almost entirely from the garden, take a look at my favorite all-fresh-vegetable dish, ratatouille.

In the second half of her suggestion, Emily hits upon a very good frugal idea: “buying up food when it’s in season and preserving it.” This strategy can work very, very well if you’re willing to invest a little time into it or, even better, have some freezer space to devote to the task.

Finding Produce to Preserve
There really are only three ways in which I acquire enough produce in abundance to wish to preserve it. I either hit a fresh produce sale, I plant a particular vegetable in abundance in my garden, or I enter into some sort of barter with a friend or neighbor.

Produce sales that I hit hard enough to come up with enough produce to preserve are fairly rare – and I very rarely find them at the grocery store. Instead, I tend to find them privately, buying the produce from people who are selling them from the back of their truck along the side of the road. If I think the price on their sign is low, I’ll stop and lowball them even further with an offer for a lot of their produce at a very low unit price. Very rarely am I turned down, particularly on a hot day when the person would rather not be sitting out there in the heat. I’ve purchased 20 pounds of tomatoes for $4 and several dozen ears of sweet corn for $5 this way in the past year alone. You simply have to be selective and patient. Many roadside stands are run by professional operators who won’t bargain. What you’re looking for are people who have a garden that ended up turning out too many vegetables for them to deal with, where they’re almost happy to get rid of the excess.

Bartering is a great method among neighbors. Several of our neighbors garden and, often, they wind up with a big abundance of some crop or another. We’ll often enter into arrangements such as a “summer vacation swap,” where we allow each other to pick our gardens clean while we’re gone on vacation (as long as they leave the unripe stuff behind). We’ll also often indirectly swap our excess as we pick it, often in the form of just handing extra produce to the neighbor as we’re picking it if we happen to see them nearby.

Of course, a big key to that type of bartering is having your own vegetable garden. I wrote a low-cost food garden guide earlier this month which should start you off nicely. There’s nothing wrong with just planting one or two vegetables that you really love in the garden with the intent of saving the excess for the future.

Produce – For the Future!
You have an abundance of cheap produce. Now what? Now come options for preserving the produce.

The first thing many people think of when it comes to preserving food is canning. It can work very well, but it can also be very labor-intensive. Canning simply refers to the process of saving the produce you wish to save inside sealed glass jars until you’re ready to eat them. Canned produce can usually keep for a few years, though it’s usually best to eat it in the first nine months or so.

However, that’s only one option among many.

Dehydration can be an option. This works very well for things such as herbs, as dried herbs will last for up to a year, take up little space, and are very convenient for cooking use. The process is usually quite simple and is easily found for whatever herb you wish to dry. I’ve also had success drying tomatoes for future use, preserving them in oil for a few months.

My preferred method of produce preservation, however, is freezing. Not only do we freeze whole produce (if you soak a tomato in water and then freeze it, you can have pretty good fresh tomatoes in the middle of the winter), we also freeze nearly-prepared produce as well, such as corn already trimmed from the cob. We also freeze processed produce, such as tomato juice and salsa.

For whole produce, we typically trim the vegetables a bit, soak them in water for a while, then freeze them on cookie sheets in our freezer. Once frozen solid, we remove any obvious frost from the outside, put the items into labeled containers (such as Ziploc bags or reusable freezer containers), and pop them back in the freezer until use. For other items, we often just cool it down to just below freezing, put it in a freezer-safe container, and store it until we’re ready to use it.

In our freezer, you’ll find lots of frozen vegetables (even now, in summer, we have a few things left from last summer), frozen vegetable stock, and a few containers of frozen pasta sauce made from the products of last fall’s harvest. In each case, we simply prepared what we wanted, soaked the whole vegetables we wanted to save in water, froze any large non-liquid pieces first, then just put the items we wanted to freeze into freezer-safe labeled containers.

Whenever we want to use them, we just pull them out of the freezer and leave them in the refrigerator for 24 hours or use a microwave’s defrosting mode. It’s as easy as can be.

I can speak from personal experience having tremendous success freezing whole tomatoes, sweet corn cut from the cob, sweet corn still on the cob, asparagus, tomato sauce, vegetable stock, broccoli, and radishes, all within the last few years and all coming out of the freezer quite delicious.

A few weeks ago, I put out a call on Twitter and on Facebook for detailed posts that people would like to see. I got enough great responses that I’m going to fill the entire month of July – one post per day – addressing these ideas.

On Facebook, Rebecca requested a post on “ways to live more frugally, and ‘beat’ inflation. ie: garden, raise own animals? (is it cost effective?) buying used/bartering/trading, public transportation vs driving pros/cons, saving in an economic nightmare (is it possible?)”

Here’s the real truth of the matter: frugality does beat inflation. Some methods of frugality, however, are much more effective at fighting inflation than others. Let’s look at what I mean.

Removing yourself from the cash economy (in bits)
Any move you can make to remove yourself from directly using money to buy things is a strong blow against inflation. Gardening, for example, is a great inflation fighter, particularly when it’s self-sustaining year over year using non-hybridized seeds. Bartering with your neighbors for tools and services is another great inflation fighter.

In each of these cases, your means of exchange are not related to money. When you’re gardening, your primary exchange is your time for your food. When you’re bartering with your neighbors, you’re offering the tools you already have and the services you can provide for the tools and services they can provide.

These exchanges do not involve cash in any direct way, so they’re not affected by inflation in any direct way. The more you can do things like this instead of spending money, the less impact that inflation will have on you, no matter what comes down the pike.

How can you increase your value set here without spending money? Build your skill set. Learn skills like plumbing and carpentry and home repair, the types of things that people always find useful.

Reducing the impact
Most frugality, however, falls under the realm of simply reducing the quantity of items that you need to buy regularly. The less you have to buy, the less impact inflation has on you directly.

For example, if you spend a weekend air sealing your home, you’re going to directly reduce the amount of energy that you have to buy from the electrical grid each month. If you install a wind turbine, you’re going to drastically reduce that amount. If you install a geothermal heating and cooling system, you’re also going to drastically reduce that amount.

If you are able to use mass transit regularly and buy a long-term pass on it, you’re again shielding yourself from the inflation of gas prices and, possibly, from other auto-related costs (if you’re able to sell your car). This does not shield you from future inflation of mass transit passes, but if this cost is much lower than the cost of upkeep on a car, then it’s a major victory.

Lifestyles
Some of the things Rebecca alludes to in her article are what I would call “lifestyle” choices. An example of this is raising livestock for food production. Certainly, such moves can be a way to reduce (or even eliminate) your reliance on outside sources of food (thus drastically reducing inflation’s impact on your life), but they often require a severe lifestyle change and commitment that few people are willing to do.

For example, raising livestock is a severe time commitment on a daily basis. Animals need to be fed and watered and checked for health concerns constantly.

They also need room in which to roam safely, which largely restricts you to living rurally if you have any significant amount of livestock. I’ve known people who have raised a goat in a suburban environment, but a single goat makes only a small dent in your food needs (via milk).

This amounts to a lifestyle choice, not just a frugal tactic. For some, it may be a great lifestyle choice that’s very life-affirming with the added bonus of drastically reducing or eliminating the connection between their food costs and inflation. However, they pay for that with their time and their energy. It is not a choice that everyone will want to make. In fact, few will make it.

I have some interest in raising chickens and perhaps a cow or two if we were to live in the country, but the big reason for me wouldn’t be to reduce the impact that inflation has in my life. It’s more of an issue that such a relationship with one’s food and with the animals that supply it is a valuable one to me.

Simply put, major lifestyle changes – the kind that shift how you spend a large portion of your time and where you live – shouldn’t be taken on solely for frugality purposes. There needs to be more of a reason than just saving money or reducing your connection to inflationary pressures if you’re going to radically alter your day-to-day life.

Being self-sustaining
Another point worth noting is that the more self-sustaining you are – meaning the more free you are from inflationary pressures – the more you’re free from many other types of modern pressures. You have less need to have a high-paying and stressful job. You have less drive to own material possessions that mostly serve to impress others, as others have less of an impact on your economic future.

Being more self-sustaining is quite rewarding beyond merely protecting you from inflation. It protects you from countless other concerns as well.

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. Cooking with my youngest child
Lately, when we’ve been working on making meals, our youngest son has insisted on being put in his high chair and pulled as close to the counter as possible. From there, he smiles and watches and occasionally receives little samples of the meal to come.

Part of what I like about this picture is that you can see part of the ongoing art project that his two older siblings are working on over at the other table. There are crayons and art supplies and mixing bowls all over the place!

2. Publius Syrus on multitasking
The only time I can ever multitask successfully is when none of the tasks really require my focus. If I multitask with things that require focus, I end up failing at all of them.

To do two things at once is to do neither. – Publius Syrus

If you want to get something great done, multitasking has to go out the window.

3. Etsy
I’m not so much inspired by Etsy itself, but inspired that the presence of such a marketplace has convinced a few of my friends to attempt selling their artwork.

For example, one old friend of mine sells his custom fantasy art on Etsy. He’s drawn elaborate things in his notebooks for years, but now he’s actually doing it and making a bit of a profit from it.

I’m inspired when people take the gifts they have and actually do something with them.

4. James Bryce on the value of a book
Over the last few years, I’ve tried to stick to books that leave me with something of lasting value when I’m finished reading with it. I’ve learned something. I’ve grown in some way as a person.

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it. – James Bryce

The best book, in my eyes, is one that simultaneously entertains you enough to keep you coming back for more while causing you to think and see the world in a different way.

5. The corn field
There is a large corn field behind our house. I love to go exploring in it, and at times I’ll take my two older children over there as well. It’s just quiet and peaceful and when the corn is particularly high, it feels intensely private, too.

I took a bunch of pictures of the field, but none of them came out particularly well. Instead, this image by Fish Hawk captures it quite well, the green and the yellow and the seemingly endless rows.

6. The Moth
The Moth is a podcast dedicated to storytelling, and most of the episodes of the podcast are tremendous. A good storyteller can pull you in, no matter what the topic, and that’s really the focus here. The content of the stories themselves are less important than the fact that there’s a good storyteller telling them.

With that as a criteria, every episode is strong. Some are surprising, others are humorous, all leave you entertained at the end. Start off at the story page on the site and listen to some of them.

7. Les Brown on the uselessness of negativity
Negativity without genuine reason just takes you down.

Don’t let the negativity given to you by the world disempower you. Instead give to yourself that which empowers you. – Les Brown

If you don’t have a thick skin, you let others have the power.

8. Wednesday
This is a short film, written and directed by Rob Sorrenti, about a boy and a girl born in the same hospital at the same time who meet again later in life.

I liked so many things about this film. The little touches really made it for me.

9. The Great Figure by William Carlos Williams
What often amazes me about the written word is how few it takes to paint a detailed picture in your mind.

“Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.”

Those words painted a very detailed picture in my mind, and I’m willing to bet that they painted a similarly detailed picture in yours. Some details might not be the same, but our pictures have a lot of similarities. That’s powerful.

10. Sammy Davis, Jr. performing “I Can’t Get Started“
He was just a fantastic performer and entertainer.

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 food blogs out there is Peas and Thank You, which focuses on healthy cooking with children in mind. I often find myself browsing it when trying to think of interesting food ideas that my children might really enjoy.

Recently, I came across a wonderful recipe for zucchini and quinoa lasagna there, one that I immediately wanted to try. After a few little modifications, that’s exactly what we did – and it was a big hit with my family.

What You Need
Here’s what you need to pull off this recipe.

2 large zucchini, cut into 12 thin, 1/4 in. thick slices
salt
1 cup dry quinoa
2 cups vegetable stock or broth or water (you really can make your own stock)
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/3 cup onion, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons cream cheese (we usually use a non-dairy type)
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups marinara sauce
1/2 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese (we often use non-dairy Daiya)

The Night Before (or Early That Day)
As always, cutting up the vegetables in advance is a great tactic. You can also prepare the entire lasagna in advance if you’d like, preparing it to the point that it’s ready to pop in the oven. Keep it in the refrigerator until you’re ready or freeze it for future use.

Preparing the Meal
Preparing this dish is really simple.

Preheat the oven to 400F. Spreat out the zucchini slices on paper towels and sprinkle them with a bit of salt and pepper and let them sit while you prepare the quinoa.

In a saucepan, bring the stock (or broth or water), the quinoa, the tomato sauce, the onion, and the oregano to a boil. Cover the pot and let it simmer for 25 minutes until the liquid is mostly absorbed by the quinoa.

Take the mixture off the heat, then add the cream cheese, the basil, and the parsley and stir thoroughly until it’s consistent.

At this point, you’re going to make a series of layers. Starting from the bottom of an 8 inch square baking dish, you’ll want 1/2 cup marinara sauce, spread evenly. Going up from that, you’ll want four zucchini slices (spread evenly), then half of the quinoa mix, then 1/2 cup marinara sauce, then four more zucchini slices, then the rest of the quinoa mix, then 1/2 cup marinara sauce, then the remaining zucchini slices, then the remaining marinara sauce, then the shredded cheese.

Bake this in the oven for 30 minutes and you’re ready to serve! We served it with a salad and some bruschetta.

Optional Ingredients
As always, this recipe is quite flexible. One spectacular ingredient to add is mushrooms, which you can add directly to the quinoa mix. Many other vegetables work as well, as do Italian sausage, ground beef, or chopped poultry of your choice. Just add things to the quinoa mix and see what you get!

A few weeks ago, I put out a call on Twitter and on Facebook for detailed posts that people would like to see. I got enough great responses that I’m going to fill the entire month of July – one post per day – addressing these ideas.

On Facebook, Vicki asked “what impacts going organic vegan has on your food budget—do you end up spending more or less than you did when you ate a more typical diet?”

I’ll start off by giving you a simple answer and then elaborate on it: eating organic foods caused the food budget to go up, while eating vegan foods caused it to drop a bit.

First, let’s back up and define what we’re talking about here, for those who might not be familiar.

Organic foods refer to “foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives.” (source) Our biggest reason for deciding to eat a large proportion of organic foods were articles relating various food additives and hormonal injections in animals to such effects as early onset puberty in children. We decided, on the whole, that we preferred to minimize the additives in the foods we feed our children (as much as we reasonably can) and one simple way to do that is to just watch for the USDA Organic label on foods.

Vegan foods are ones that do not involve the use of non-human animal products. In other words, vegan foods exclude meat, eggs, and dairy products, along with a few other minor ingredients. We chose to go this route because of personal health concerns and a recommendation from a dietitian to try a “vegan plus fish” diet for a while. I am not vegan for political reasons, I am following a “vegan plus fish” diet for now, while my family often eats much the same food, sometimes supplemented with meat and dairy products. For example, if we make a pizza, they’ll often have regular cheese as a topping while I’ll either have no cheese or soy cheese. At the grocery store, we tend to spend a lot of time in the produce section these days.

So, what impacts have these choices had on our food budget?

Organic foods and our food budget
We started eating a slowly-growing proportion of organic foods at about the time our first child was moving to table foods in late 2006. This choice caused a decided increase in our monthly food budget.

Why? Usually, organic foods are strictly more expensive than non-organic foods of the exact same type. Organic milk costs more than non-organic milk. Organic vegetables cost more than non-organic vegetables.

Of course, while this increase was a real one, the increase was somewhat mitigated by other gradual changes in our diet that came hand-in-hand with having young mouths at home.

First, our gradual move toward preparing more food at home reduced our monthly food costs. We started eating less take-out and making our own meals right at the same time as we were switching to organic foods, and for the same reason. We wanted more control over what our children were eating.

For similar reasons, we gradually moved away from prepackaged meals and toward meals from scratch, which similarly reduced our food costs. Believe it or not, it’s cheaper to actually plan out your meals and understand how to use herbs and spices than it is to throw a boxed meal or a frozen meal into your cart. I can make a far better tasting pan of lasagna than a frozen lasagna at about 60% of the price.

These changes happened gradually over roughly the same period of time and resulted in a net slight reduction in our food budget. It’s pretty easy to see that there was one cost-increasing factor (organics) and two cost-decreasing factors (preparing more food at home, preparing more food from scratch).

Vegan foods and our food budget
Last October, I made a switch to a vegan “plus fish” diet, for reasons described above. This meant our food purchasing changed a bit. We began to purchase less meat, milk, and cheese, and we began to purchase more fruits, vegetables, and grains.

The net impact on our food budget of this change was a reduction in food costs. On the whole, the increase in fruits, vegetables, beans, grains, and so on had less of an impact than the decrease in meats, milk, cheese, and so on.

The interesting part is that this dietary change pushed us to really start using a lot of new things. For example, we discovered how tasty and versatile quinoa is – that was really our top discovery here. Quinoa itself can be a bit expensive if you don’t look very hard for it, so we started really shopping around for it. Even given the relative expense, though, it didn’t compare to the ongoing cost of meats and cheeses and milk, which can really add up.

One example of a cost reduction that’s clear cut is the fact that our usual dinner beverages shifted, too. I always drink water with dinner now (sometimes with wine, depending on the meal), whereas before I often drank milk. My wife now often drinks water, too, though our kids typically still drink (organic) milk. That’s less milk purchased each week, which is a direct savings.

So, what saves money?
If your primary aim is to reduce your food budget, what can you learn from the above items to save money?

First, prepare your own food at home. Simply switching from eating out is a big cost saver. Virtually every meal you can eat at a restaurant is far cheaper to eat at home.

Second, make your own food from scratch as much as possible. The key here is simply learning how to cook things from scratch. Many people fall into the trap of using prepared meals at home because it’s easier than learning how to prepare them yourself, even though there’s often not much of a time savings from using a packaged meal.

Finally, use more fruits, vegetables, beans, and grains whenever and wherever you can, and drink water as your main beverage. Fruits, vegetables, beans, and grains are all usually bargains in your store, especially compared to the costs of meats and cheeses. Similarly, water from your tap is the biggest bargain there is for beverages, so take advantage of it.