A few days ago, I was standing by the bus stop waiting for my oldest child to arrive home from one of his first days in kindergarten. There were a few other parents of kindergarteners there and I struck up a conversation with one of them. We shared what we do for a living, what our spouses do for a living, and where we live in the area.

The person I was talking to sighed and said, “You know, if you had told me I’d be here in ten years, being a stay-at-home mom waiting for my kid at the bus stop with these two little ones, I would have laughed at you.”

I agreed with that. Ten years ago, I was still in college, single, and without a career path. Five years ago, I was fully embedded with a career path that was totally different than the one I’m on.

I then asked her a question that had been floating in my mind a lot lately. “Where do you think you’ll be in five years?”

She stood there for a second. “You know, I’ve really enjoyed making a lot of my children’s clothes. I would love to figure out a way to make that into a business.”

Ten years ago, she was a single college student. Seven years ago, she was a married career woman. Today, she’s a stay-at-home mom. In five years, might she be starting a clothes business?

The truth of it all is simple. Our lives don’t always follow an orderly path. For an awful lot of people, you’ll be doing something with your life in five years that you completely don’t anticipate today.

Another interesting element of this is that I can see, both in my own path and in the path of the person I was talking to, that we were constantly training ourselves, either directly or indirectly, for what came next.

As a student, I trained myself for what would become my first career path. While working in that career path (and before), I spent a lot of my spare time writing.

As a student, she trained for her career path. As a professional, she started planning for a family. As a stay-at-home mom, she’s spending some of her spare time prepping for a potential clothing business.

Right now, what am I preparing myself for?

It’s an interesting question. If I had to guess, I would think I’m preparing myself to be a fantasy writer, but honestly, my fingers and actions seem to be in a lot of different pies. I’m working on presentation skills and making presentations. I’m involved with creating e-books. I’m always working on The Simple Dollar.

Just as importantly, I’m building and maintaining savings. When a change in my life direction comes along, I have the cash on hand to do with the flow of whatever it is that comes along. Why? Because, quite frankly, I know something is going to eventually happen and change my direction in life.

What are you doing in your life right now that might prepare you for the next stage?

Do you have a healthy emergency fund? Do you have cash in hand for an unexpected move because of a career shift, seed money for a business, or living money because of a job loss?

Do you have little or no debt? If your debt isn’t under control, you’re tied to your current job pretty tightly. It’s hard to take a risk if your bills are eating up the vast majority of your income.

Are you building new skills? Time management? Information management? Communication skills? Photography? I can name thousands of potential skills you might be building in your spare time. The key thing is that you’re building something that’s exciting to you.

Are you building new relationships? Do you hide from your professional peers, your neighbors, and the people in your community? Or do you head out and meet these people and embrace them?

All of these things (and much more) are key parts of building whatever it is that comes next for you. It could be anything and it’s worth your while to be ready for it.

I just received an email from a concerned friend of mine who had never read The Simple Dollar before. I asked for permission to share this part of the email with you (with just a touch of editing).

I can’t believe you’re actually using your life and your energy and your mind talking about money and encouraging other people to accumulate money. Money is the root of all evil. It provides a path to greed and gluttony and cruelty. Why are you devoting your wonderful life to teaching people how to walk that path? What are you doing to yourself? What are you teaching your children?

I originally intended to respond to this email privately, but I realized that the answer was something really worth sharing on here, so I generalized it a bit and turned it into the article you’re about to read.

First of all, your comment that “money is the root of all evil” is a misquote. You’re referencing 1 Timothy 6:10 from the Bible, which is usually translated as “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” or simply “for the love of money is the root of all evil.” Not money itself, but the love of money.

That’s a key distinction. Money itself is neither good nor evil. It’s simply a medium of exchange. It’s a way for people to trade one thing – say, their money or their time or their energy – for other things, like food or housing.

What you choose to use your money for may be good and it may be evil and it may just be a big missed opportunity. You could use it to make sure your children eat very nutritionally balanced meals or you could use it to hire a hit man to take out your rivals. You could use it to help improve orphanages for extremely impoverished children or burn a million British pounds just for the fun of it.

How you use that money is a reflection of who you are and what you value. Whether it’s “good” or “evil” is as much your own judgment on how you spend money as it is a judgment passed on you by others who observe how you use it.

The entire purpose of this site is to help people become more efficient in their exchanges: to earn more money, to spend less on the things that they need, to avoid wasting their money on interest payments to lenders, and so on. Again, that’s neither good nor evil. It simply widens the door to the good and evil choices that people have with their money.

What that scripture is talking about is the love of money being the root of all evil. The argument is that when you begin to focus on the accumulation of wealth as the highest purpose in your life, you put a lot of other virtues below it. You value wealth accumulation over the welfare of others, in simple terms.

When you see other people as merely things that can be exploited to improve your wealth accumulation, that is evil, in my opinion. Companies that would knowingly sell toys to children that are covered in lead-based paint are evil. Companies that would sell known carcinogens for consumption and not label them are evil. Individuals who would exploit and steal from the defenseless are evil.

These are situations where, in that person’s mind, the love of money has trumped other virtues. I am explicitly opposed to these situations.

I regularly discuss ethical methods for accumulating money. I don’t even mention illegal acts or acts that would harm others and I encourage people to put human relationships first when it comes to things like borrowing money or hiring people. At the same time, I also look at ethical ways of spending money, highlighting charities that I personally know are doing good work and being selective on the things one buys for personal enjoyment.

In the end, it all comes back to your ethics and your character. It takes a bad person to intentionally exploit others. I also believe it takes a somewhat (although more debatable because of the various contexts) bad person to refuse to help anyone in need when they have the resources to do it easily without harming themselves in any real way.

Having money isn’t evil. Earning money isn’t evil. Exploiting people to acquire that money is, however, and spending it wantonly in ways that don’t bring value into anyone else’s life is probably also evil (though a bit more muddied).

Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Michelle said, “COUPONS!!!! you know.. like the ‘coupon queens’. Does it really save you? And is what you are buying really healthy for you? compared to raw foods, whole foods with no chemicals? I’m not knocking it, only saying really? to those that worship it– it’s an obsession for many people as opposed to being a money saver. I tried it for a while. I was spending more money while I was couponing, because most of the coupons for the best deals… well, it just doesn’t make sense…. logically.”

This topic has really been pushed to the forefront lately with the advent of the TLC “reality” series Extreme Couponing, which focuses on the ‘coupon queens’ that Michelle refers to above. These individuals use a wealth of tactics to demonstrate tremendous reductions in their overall grocery receipts.

From my perspective, as someone who has both obsessively couponed and not couponed at all, I think there is a varying degree of value in couponing depending on a lot of other factors in your life. Let’s walk through them.

First, how much do you value the nutritional content of what you eat? It is much harder to gain ground with coupons if many of your meals revolve around fresh ingredients. You typically don’t find coupons for a fresh head of broccoli, fresh fish, or things like that. On the other hand, if your meals frequently consist of things like Hamburger Helper or a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna, there is a tremendous amount of savings to be had from couponing for food purposes. After having children and becoming concerned about watching their diet, we tend to buy many more raw ingredients than we once did, which reduces the usefulness and value we get from digging through coupons for food items.

Second, do any stores in your area offer double coupon programs? I find that doubling the face value of a coupon is often essential in really making it worthwhile to use. Many coupons have a face value of far less than a dollar, which is a pretty small amount compared to the cost of many items on the shelf at your typical grocery or department store these days. $0.40 off of an item costing $4? $1 off an item costing $8? It’s not as high impact as it once was, especially when you consider the next factor.

Third, do you really need the name brand item over the generic item? Quite often, the generic version of the item is functionally identical to the name brand. This is true so often that I always try out the generic before deciding if there is a genuine product quality reason that I should stay with the name brand version.

Finally, are you willing to wait for store sales? A system that pairs coupons up with corresponding store sales requires organization, patience, and time, but can definitely reap some benefits. There are significant savings to be had here, but it’s hard to consistently quantify and it requires a significant time investment. If you do have some significant time, a coupon saving strategy can pay off. This is particularly true if you burn an hour watching television each night, as such coupon planning can easily be done on the couch.

In testing these theories, I took a coupon flyer from the Sunday newspaper to the grocery store late last week to do some price comparisons. I only included items I could find in my local Super Target (so chosen because they have both an extensive household product section and extensive groceries).

What I found was that I would save $21.40 if I used every single coupon in the booklet that had a matching item on the shelf. If the store offered double couponing, that would have been $42.80.

However, if I excluded all of the items that I can’t see myself ever realistically buying, the total went down to $8.40. Again, with double couponing, that total goes up to $16.80.

If I then compared the items in that $8.40 to their generic equivalents and bought the generics (or on-sale name brands of another type) when they were less expensive even after the coupon on the name brand item and only counted the savings over generic on the items I would have purchased, my savings went down to $0.73. With double couponing, that total is $7.11.

In other words, every single factor I mentioned – the presence of double couponing, your actual food purchasing habits, your willingness to use generics and competing items, pairing coupons with store sales – can have a huge effect on the usefulness of your couponing. At $42.80, couponing is well worth the time. At $0.73, not so much.

Couponing works well in some situations – people with sufficient time who value reducing their meal costs above all else and are in areas where double couponing is offered – and not as well in others – time-strapped people who value the nutritional contents of their meal more than the cost (to at least some degree) and don’t have double couponing available.

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. Following other blogs
2. Unrealized losses and 401(k) rollovers
3. Multiple rewards cards
4. Spouses and frugality
5. Inheritance and financial aid
6. Handling a non-paying roommate
7. Cost-effectiveness of Gamefly
8. Money market account basics
9. Over 50 with retirement worries
10. Self-publishing

This past weekend, I tried out a new hobby. A friend of mine gave me a set of acrylic paints, some paint-on primer, some paintbrushes, and spray-on varnish as a gift, so I decided to put them to work painting a handful of my son’s plastic soldiers and cowboys.

While they turned out okay in the end (and the experience was fun enough that I intend to paint other things in the future), the memorable part was how involved everyone in the family got in the project. It turned into something of a family “arts and crafts” day, with me painting figures, the children drawing, and Sarah crocheting.

Q1: Following other blogs
How many blogs do you follow? How much time do you spend reading them every day? Do you use any method of filtering out what is worth a read?
- Sudhir

I follow about 100 blogs, about half of which are directly connected to personal finance or personal growth. I spend perhaps an hour a day just reading blog postings.

About half of those blogs are permanent fixtures. I follow them even if they don’t post for a while or if the posting quality goes up and down a bit. I’ve read many of them for a while and I have a bit of a relationship of sorts with the blog where I want to know what happens next.

I filter them using Google Reader.

Q2:
Today our company informed us that we would all be losing our jobs by November 1st.

I have a small emergency fund and should be eligible for unemployment, so my most pressing concern is what to do with my 401k.

I’ve been there for less than a year at this point, and when my employment comes to an end my total contributions will be ~$1200 (assuming I continue to contribute at the same rate). However, with the market what it’s been, I’m currently sitting at 28.8% in unrealized losses.

If I rollover my 401k, how do those losses factor in? Effectively, the assets in my 401k are being sold, but if I it were in a non-401k investment, I could use those losses to minimize my tax obligation, right? But, if I rollover my 401k, it won’t trigger a similar tax event, will it?

At this rate, it’s very likely that the taxes which would be owed if I were to cash out my 401k (including the early withdrawal penalty) will actually be less than my losses. If that’s the case, would it make sense to cash out my 401k, taking the penalties, and then re-invest the monies? (Would I need to hang on to the money for 60+ days to keep it from being treated like a rollover for tax purposes?) It seems to make sense, but I don’t trust my back of the envelope math. If my losses are greater than the taxes I pay for cashing out my 401k, wouldn’t it make more sense to cash out than to rollover?

I’m practically being forced to sell low after I’ve bought high, which isn’t an awesome feeling, especially when I’m young and could wait out the market. I want to make sure I’m handling my 401k in the way that makes the most sense financially.
- Mark

For starters, I don’t see any reason at all why you would need to clear out your 401(k) account. Even if your employer closes up shop, this shouldn’t impact your 401(k) at the least.

If you do want to move it, the best move for you by far would be to simply do a direct rollover from this 401(k) account to your new 401(k) account at your old job. This would keep you from having any sort of tax burden and would allow you to manage that money in a single place.

I would only do that rollover if you think that, at the very least, the investment choices at your new place of employment match those at the old place of employment.

Q3: Multiple rewards cards
I recently graduated college and moved out on my own. I have job were I make around 65K a year. I currently have no debt other then monthly credit card bills that I always pay in full at the end of the month. I currently have 3 personal cards (1 I got in high school that I never use anymore but keep it just because its the one I’ve had the longest, a chase freedom that I have had for around 2 and half years and has been my main card, and finally I just got a Amex Cash Blue prefered card that I use for grocery store, gas, and dept. store purchases) and 1 corporate card.

So far I have been very pleased with my new Amex card and have been looking into getting a charge card because it captures some things I spend on but don’t get rewards with currently. My general phylosopy with all my cards is to use them as much as I can to make sure I get at lest 1% or better on everything I buy (I basically view using cash as loosing money), and because of this I never get in trouble with spending beyond my means because I always watch my account like a hawk.

My question to you is would it be a bad idea to get another card to get some more rewards if it will cost me some credit score point?
- Angel

If you got a new card that you intended to use for most purchases, I would probably just close one of the old cards (but not your oldest one).

The net impact from this switch on your credit should be minimal, as you’re not really changing your debt-to-credit ratio and you’re not altering the length of your credit history, either.

My only concern would involve “card-hopping” in search of ever-beter rewards programs, which oftentimes are scarcely better than what you already have. This often gets users into situations where their personal data is spread across lots of companies, widening the door for their identity to be stolen.

Q4: Spouses and frugality
My wife took a while to come around on the frugality thing, but after several months, she started doing a pretty good job and has been for about a year now. She hasn’t gone all out like I would have hoped, but I’ve concluded that we’ve reached a good balance between our budget and our sanity.

The next thing I would like to tackle is getting rid of unnecessary stuff. In the grand scheme of things, we don’t have that much stuff, but we’re at a point where we’re going to be renters for a while and are likely going to move around a bit exploring different areas of the country. With frequent moves, I think it makes a lot of sense to purge a large percentage of our infrequently used stuff. We’ve had a yard sale each of the last two years and gotten rid of a lot of stuff, but it seems to have hardly made a dent. I look in our basement where we keep all of our infrequently used things and I’d like to get rid of literally half of it. I don’t think this is unreasonable either. The problem is that very little of it is “my” stuff. I’ve purged nearly everything that is exclusively mine and am down to one box of keepsakes and another box of out of season clothes that I swap out every fall and spring.

I look at the amount of stuff that is my wife’s and a cringe. Two large tables covered with scrapbooking and sewing stuff that rarely gets used, boxes of goofy old clothes for theme parties (she hasn’t been to one in the 6+ years that we’ve known each other), old papers and books from college, etc. I don’t want her to get rid of everything, but I think she could easily get rid of 75% of this stuff without really even noticing it. Not to mention all of the clothes and toys for the kids, which she basically refuses to even touch. I’m grateful that she’s agreed to the yard sales and the stuff that we have gotten rid of, but there’s so much more that is really completely unecessary to keep.

Any ideas on how to get her on board? I’m tempted to just purge things without asking when she’s gone for a week to visit family next month, but that’s not really a good idea.
- Nathan

Propose a “one year” or “two year” rule. Put everything in the basement in boxes and tape the top of them. Put a note on the box identifying the contents and the date when the box is sealed.

In one or two years (depending on what you’ve agreed on), go down there and get rid of everything that’s got a date more than one or two years old (again, depending on what you’ve agreed on) that hasn’t been opened.

Stuff that just sits around for that long is no longer any sort of active part of your life. It’s fine to keep a small memento or two, but when your life has clearly moved on, keeping large quantities of items from that era is a move that costs you over and over again in terms of living space, storage space, and so on.

Q5: Inheritance and financial aid
I’m going into my sophomore year at an elite liberal arts school that costs $50,000+ a year. Although I’m getting a generous $20,000/year honors scholarship, my family was denied financial aid that we desperately need. From the college’s perspective, we should easily be able to pay for my education because my mom received around $1,000,000 inheritance a few years ago. The problem is: that’s basically all my parents have for retirement. My mom was starting to put it into her 401k…but then she got laid off in 2009. Currently we’re living almost entirely off of my dad’s salary of $60,000….which means half of our annual income is going to my tuition. We’re still drawing from my mom’s inheritance quite frequently in order to continue living the lifestyle we’re used to (when my mom was working we made ~ $120,000+/year), although we’re obviously trying to cut back. My parents have considered putting their money into life savings in order to qualify for more aid…do you think this is a good idea? How would you suggest getting around our significant inheritance money so that I can qualify for financial aid?
- Liz

There’s no “getting around” that type of inheritance money. You can’t hide it.

If I were in your shoes, I would probably suggest that your parents loan you the money from the inheritance to pay for your schooling, then you repay it when you start working. I would have this legally drawn up if you go this route, because if it’s just a handshake arrangement, then you open the door to the possibility of hard feelings and broken relationships.

Even more than that, you might want to consider going to a different school. More than $50,000 a year? Unless you’re getting an education that will guarantee you a far higher salary than someone going to a state school, go to a state school. If it costs you $200,000 more to attend that expensive school over the course of your schooling than it does to attend a state school, you have to be making more than $10,000 per year more for the rest of your life to recoup that extra cost with inflation and interest taken into account.

School doesn’t make the person. The person makes the person. I’ve met people who never graduated high school that are running impressive businesses today and I know one person who never went to college who has a great career in the arts. At the same time, I once met a homeless person who went to the Wharton School of Business.

Q6: Handling a non-paying roommate
A few months ago, I moved in with my boyfriend and his brother into their one-bedroom apartment, figuring that this would be a way for us all to save money. The rent for the apartment is $1050, and I rented a large storage unit for $120 for my overflow items (I’d been living by myself, so I had a lot of stuff, even after the yard sale!). We decided the breakdown would be that I pay $300 in rent and the $120 for the storage unit, and they pay the remaining $375 each.

The day before I moved in, Brother lost his job. He did not qualify for unemployment, and has not yet found another job. We covered Brother’s first six weeks of rent by taking over his deposit, but he still has not paid us half of his rent from last month or anything this month (he hasn’t had the means to).

We have no interest in kicking Brother out, but we are living in cramped quarters and paying more than we would if it were just Boyfriend and me (since I wouldn’t need the storage unit). Because we are covering his rent, I can’t afford to put as much away for retirement or have special treats like eating out… But I *can* afford to cover his rent, as I make about $2400/month (Boyfriend is on disability, and receives $1200/month). I do have some debt, which makes my income look more significant than it actually is.

We have tried to think of ways that Brother could work off his rent– like house chores, etc– but we don’t have any needs like that since we are all clean and handy. We are already incredibly thrifty and do not pay for any services that he could perform for us. We don’t even have cars, or television, or internet.

How would you recommend that we handle this situation? Do you have any ideas?
- Chris

If he doesn’t have an income, your choices are simple. You either evict him or you let him live there without paying his portion of the rent. There isn’t going to be magical money falling from the sky here if he doesn’t have a job.

Also, I would probably seriously consider kicking him out if he’s not bothering to look for work. If he’s actively looking, I’d probably just let it go as long as the active job search continues.

If I were you guys, I’d probably propose some sort of arrangement where he takes on more than a third of the rent when he finally gets a job to pay you guys back for this time.

Q7: Cost-effectiveness of Gamefly
I was wondering if you might do an analysis on the cost-effectiveness of Gamefly for a casual gamer. Some background on my gaming habits: I’ve had my XBox 360 for just over a year now. During that time, I’ve played six games (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, and LA Noire. Included titles for cost purposes). I buy one game at a time, and trade it in at GameStop when I purchase the next game. Would Gamefly be a better value if I picked up the $15.95/month membership? Thanks for the help.
- Ryan

If that’s your gameplaying habits, Gamefly probably wouldn’t be worthwhile for you. You would drop $200 into Gamefly over the course of a year doing things this way.

I’m assuming that your cost for a “new” game at Gamestop minus the value of your trade-in is less than $33 a pop. Even if you’re buying new, if you’re trading in a fairly recent game for trade-in, you should get some additional value out of it. Given your list of games, I’m guessing that you’re trading for some older titles that they have already on their used rack, which means you’re shelling out far less than $33 on average per game swap.

Gamefly works if you’re a very heavy player of games – a person that shells out more than $30-40 a month on video games – and you’re willing to give up the desire to actually buy the games. If not, Gamefly’s not worth it.

Q8: Money market account basics
I used to have money in a Fidelity money market acct that had super great interest rates– way higher than my regular bank. Then it went waaay lower– now it is like .01!! Can you explain why it was so much higher, and now why it is so much lower? I guess I don’t understand money market accounts.
- Beth

Typically, money market accounts offer good returns when the economy is strong and poor returns when the economy is weak. Since the economy is very weak right now, money market accounts are returning very poorly.

Usually, money market accounts make their returns by buying treasury notes from the federal government. The bank takes the money that you and other depositors have put into the accounts and buy treasury notes. Notes usually return a few percentage points higher than the return you get on the money market account, but you have the freedom to withdraw money when you choose while the banks have to sit on those treasury notes.

(I’m simplifying economics here.) When the economy is good, the federal government has to offer a higher interest rate on the treasury notes they sell to get investors. If they don’t, investors will buy other things that are flying high, like stocks. When that happens, the treasury note returns something like 6%, the bank keeps about 3%, and the other 3% goes to the money market account holders.

When the economy is bad, the goverment drops rates on the treasury notes, meaning that the bank still makes their 2-3% but the people in the money market account make much less – often nothing, which is what you’re seeing now. The government offers a treasury note at 3%, the bank keeps their 3%, leaving you with almost nothing as a return.

Q9: Over 50 with retirement worries
I’m 52 years old, single, rent my apartment and have no investments. I live paycheck to paycheck and have now taken on a second job to increase my income just to keep my head above water. I support my mentally handicapped 28 year old son who cannot keep a job and who has 2 children that stay with us many times during the week.

I have tried to look to the future with regards to retirement. I don’t think I am going to have anything to live on besides social security.

Do you have any ideas of what to do for late lifers who are looking at retirement in 10 years with nothing to show for it?
- Judy

I would suggest that you not retire at 65.

For one thing, people tend to have longer lifespans today than their parents did. You’re likely to have good health into your seventies or eighties. If you’re healthy and trying to make ends meet on Social Security, you’re going to go stir crazy. I would expect to work for a while longer.

The added benefit is that you can wait to start your Social Security benefits until you can get the highest level of benefits. It will also give you more years to save for retirement, which will supplement that higher level of Social Security.

In other words, don’t retire at 62 and live on Alpo. Instead, bet on retiring at 70 and live pretty well.

Q10: Self-publishing
You offer your books for sale as e-books. Did you self publish? If so, what site(s) would you recommend? I’m in the process of writing a book, but I wanted your input.
- Daniel

I have never self-published original works. For the PDFs I sell on The Simple Dollar, I just repackaged and edited collections of older posts for convenient reading. I sell these through a service called e-junkie which handles all of the e-commerce for a small monthly fee.

That being said, I am considering self-publishing some other things I’m working on. There are a multitude of options I’m exploring for this, but I will definitely publish electronic versions of the book for e-readers such as the Kindle and the Nook. I will probably publish digitally first and then look for interest in print versions later on.

If you’re self-publishing, though, don’t invest a lot of your money in printing lots of copies in advance. Instead, make sure that there’s actually demand for what you’re doing. Do you see lots of situations where you could sell your book right now? If not, self-publishing will be a trick. I’m lucky in that I have The Simple Dollar as something of a platform. If I were to self-publish something, I would have an audience that would be interested in the book. If you don’t have an audience, be careful especially in terms of investing money up front.

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 powerful books I’ve read since starting The Simple Dollar is Juliet Schor’s Born to Buy. The book discusses the tactics and impact of marketing consumer goods to young children, turning them into buyers at a very young age. I found the book so compelling that I eventually wrote a nineteen part series discussing the book in detail.

Recently, I came across Buy, Buy Baby by Susan Gregory Thomas, which seems to focus on a similar topic. How pervasive is marketing to small children? How much of an impact does it have on them as a budding consumer? What kind of long term effect does it have?

Even more so than Born to Buy, Buy, Buy Baby focuses specifically on marketing targeting infants and toddlers.

Learn Something New Every Day
The book opens by examining the marketing of “learning” toys, such as the products of LeapFrog. Many parents tend to happily buy such products because they believe that they foster children into learning something new every day. However, the evidence that such products actually bring about learning beyond a level that children would get from an ordinary environment is very thin. Many learning toys merely package together things that can be found inexpensively or for free elsewhere, promote them with a heavy dollop of parental guilt and desire for their children to be intelligent, and sell the items at an elevated price.

“There’s a New Mom in Town”
Another tactic that often attracts parents – particularly mothers – to particular products is the promotion of motherhood and other “relatable” mothers as product salespeople. Simply by showing a mother who “has it all” in the product pitch (usually meaning cute children and a happy family with a few relatable minor foibles), the product becomes simultaneously relatable and aspirational, which makes mothers like this powerful salespeople. This is a big reason for the huge connection between “mommy blogs” and marketing promotions. If you read many “mommy blogs,” you’ve probably noticed the huge number of products given away on them. That’s why – “mommy bloggers” make great spokespeople.

“It’s Like Preschool on TV”
The idea that school is a good thing is a deep cultural value in America. Not only does it provide the children with education, it also gives the parents the free time with which to work and create income for the family. Turning that very thing into a product makes great sense for marketers, and the television provides a great medium for this through videos like Baby Einstein and shows like Sesame Street. It gives the parents some time to do household tasks and “educates” the children. The problem with this is that much of the value of preschool comes from interaction with peers and with the teacher, something that’s impossible to do with a video. Even with interactive toys, the “interaction” is scripted and limited. It’s not really preschool on TV, no matter how it’s pitched.

A Vast and Uncontrolled Experiment
Even more disconcerting is the deep connection such programs tend to build with the onscreen characters and children, which is followed by the characters becoming pitchmen for everything from toys to toothbrushes. Children tend to relate with onscreen characters during the learning programs and build a positive relationship with that character, who seems to be heroic and/or loving and/or caring and/or funny. Then, when they interact with that character again, it tends to be in a commercial environment that’s tightly controlled, such as seeing Big Bird toothpaste on the grocery store shelf or Pokemon toys in their fast food restaurant. They want to continue that emotional connection – heroic and/or loving and/or caring and/or funny – but now the emotional connection they desire requires a purchase. Is it any wonder, really, that young children get very upset when their parents say “no” to buying an item depicting their favorite character? Often, it’s not the item they want. They want heroism, love, care, or laughter.

Elmo’s World
Continuing with that train of thought is the idea that a child’s interaction with a particular character (which represents some set of deep emotional connection) is becoming present in more and more forms. It’s not just the show and a toy. There’s clothing. There are ordinary products with the character on it (toothpaste or snacks, for example). There are games. There are books and magazines. There are live shows. The connection is available in many different facets of the child’s life, enabling that emotional connection to continue and, to some degree, deepen. If Elmo represents the fulfillment of some emotional need that your child has, then that same emotional connection (and need for fulfillment) will pop up again and again and again in more and more situations, usually connected to products. It’s not just true for Elmo, either – there are countlesss characters that show up in a diversity of media and consumer products.

The Princess Lifestyle
Such characters are sometimes even tuned to specific “lifestyles” that often have deep connections to product lines from other companies. In this chapter, Thomas focuses on Disney Princesses (which create an impression of a particular type of glamorous lifestyle) and Barbie (another particular flavor of glamorous lifestyle) and how these lines not only connect themselves to many other products that reinforce that lifestyle (princess shampoo!) but also help set the stage for products that the children will want as teenagers (jewelry, makeup, etc.) and even as adults.

Anything to Get Them to Read
Some people advocate using these types of deep emotional connections that the young foster with these characters as a tool to get them to read and to engage in other learning opportunities. If a book about your child’s favorite character convinces them to read, isn’t that a good thing? The problem is that the children often see such books as mere continuations of their relationship with the character, not as a compelling experience on its own. Thomas digs into this phenomenon and shows that such character-specific books often focus little on the literary or educational content and instead focus on protecting and furthering the brand, with hundred-page documents outlining every little detail about the marketed character and almost no attention paid to the plot or values in the book itself.

Developing Character in Preschool
Corporations have even taken this to the point by supplying large amounts of the type of reading and educational material described earlier in the book for free to preschools that are often starved for materials. The packages often include videos, books, and other materials for the kids that do include some degree of educational value but often strive to reinforce or build the connection to a particular character.

A Defense of “Nothing”
So, what can you do? The author’s general recommendations revolve around minimizing or eliminating emotional connections to characters. Minimize television watching – or eliminate it. Buy toys that are open-ended and not based on specific characters. Avoid products that depict such characters. You can’t do these things absolutely without being a hermit, but each choice you make is a step in the right direction.

Is Buy, Buy Baby Worth Reading?
For me, this book really differentiates itself from Born to Buy is that Buy, Buy Baby focuses on an even younger age group than Born to Buy. They’re both very thorough in their research and frightening in their implications and conclusions of how the emotions of young children are tinkered with for the purpose of altering the buying patterns of both them and their parents.

They’re both tremendous books that cover some similar ground. However, I think I’d recommend Born to Buy to parents of children that are already three or four years old (or older), while I’d probably suggest Buy, Buy Baby to the parents of younger children (or parents-to-be). Honestly, I’d probably give either one of them to thoughtful parents as a baby shower gift depending on which one I was able to easily find. They’re both tremendous books that happen to cover a similar topic area.

Check out additional reviews and notes of Buy, Buy Baby on Amazon.com.

Earlier this week, Sarah and I stopped by one of the Borders “Going Out of Business” sales and browsed through the decidedly picked-over book selections there. At the one we visited, roughly half of the store’s stock had been sold, which meant that you had to really look around for deals in the remaining books on the shelves.

We left the store with four books. Two of them were children’s books that we intend to give to our daughter for her upcoming birthday, another one was a gift for someone else that we’re saving for the future (a really nice hardcover book), and the final one was a book that I’ll review at some point in the future on The Simple Dollar.

Of course, while we were wandering around, I found several books that interested me, including God Created the Integers by Stephen Hawking, Cowboys Full by James McManus, and The Man Who Invented the Computer by Jane Smiley. I leafed through these books and read the first few pages of all of them, but eventually I found myself putting each one back on the shelf.

Mind you, these books were selling at 50% off of their cover price and most of the ones I looked at were paperbacks. We’re talking expenditures of between $5 and $10 here, not particularly backbreaking for us.

Yet, still, I put the books back on the shelf and eventually left without buying any for personal enrichment or enjoyment.

When I went home, I felt a mix of feelings about this choice. I didn’t really regret not buying them, but I couldn’t help but ask myself if I wasn’t going too far in choosing not to buy myself things.

Part of my hesitation is that the bookstore visit came just a couple of weeks after my largest annual splurge, Gencon, which I save up for throughout the year. Of course, this year, I mostly just traded games and spent the small amount of money that Sarah gave to me with the insistence that I spend on games.

I think the truth of it is that finally, after years of consciously adjusting my buying habits, I’ve really reached a new normal when it comes to spending money.

Rather than seeing something I want on a shelf and seeking out a plan for buying it, I see something on a shelf and by default come up with reasons not to buy it.

That’s not to say I don’t splurge. I was certainly quite active in the auction room at Gencon, waving my auction card around during several bidding sessions.

However, I don’t wantonly splurge. I decide in advance, when my mind is on an even keel, when I’ll allow myself to splurge. An impromptu stop at a bookstore, for example, doesn’t cut the mustard unless I find a book there that I was already intending to pick up at some point.

It was not an immediate transformation and it certainly hit some bumps along the way, but that book store visit was the first time where I genuinely felt as though I was no longer convincing myself to buy things on a whim, but instead I was reinforcing my stance not to buy things.

Letting yourself make these decisions beforehand, long before you find yourself in the heat of the buying moment, makes it much easier to simply say “no” when you find yourself in that situation. Simply knowing that you’re not buying anything you weren’t already intending to buy makes it so much easier to not lose money to the temptation of impulse purchases.

It takes practice to get there – at least for me. Today, though, I feel incredibly confident that my money isn’t slipping away from me on unplanned and impulsive purchases.

I control my money and my desires. They don’t control me.

No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Simple Dollar, like any worthwhile internet resource, is about knowledge. The entire purpose of the site is to get your mind thinking about your money, your time, and your career. Even if you don’t agree with every idea or conclusion presented (and, frankly, you shouldn’t unless you’re in your early thirties and living in Iowa in a house with a spouse and three children and with a very similar personality to mine), you’re at least pushing yourself forward by thinking about those ideas.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter how many great ideas you have floating around in your head if you never take action on any of those ideas.

You can think about frugality all day long, but if you don’t actively make choices to save money or engage in projects that result in lowered expenditures, those thoughts don’t add up to too much.

You can think about your career all day long, but if you’re not volunteering for hard tasks, taking classes to improve your skill set, or putting your nose to the grindstone on the dull tasks, you’re going to remain one of those middle-of-the-road workers no matter how many great thoughts you have.

You can think about your health all day long, but if you still stop for fast food on the way home, pick up a super-sweetened coffee each morning, and sit on the couch instead of exercising, you’re not going to get into better shape no matter how powerful your ideas are.

Changing your life comes from action, not from just thinking about it. You might know exactly what you need to do. You might even think of those actions as common sense. Still, if you’re not actually doing those things, nothing is ever going to really change in your life.

Every day, you have a choice. You can either sit back and let your life continue in the way that it always has, or you can stand up and push your life in a different direction.

You can twiddle your thumbs and watch the clock at work, or you can try to fill those hours by learning a new task or implementing a new workflow.

You can stop at the grocery store and wander about as you toss things in your cart, or you can plan meals ahead of time, design a grocery list that takes advantage of sales, and greatly reduce that bill you’ll be facing at the checkout line.

You can kick back on the couch and watch Sportscenter or TMZ (or fire up your laptop to check the scores or see some celebrity pics), or you can read a challenging book or stop at the gym for an hour.

Positive change in your life doesn’t come from having powerful ideas. It comes from putting those powerful ideas to work. Most people don’t have what it takes to really do that, but the people who do are the people who get ahead and have all of the things they want in life.

Are you going to sit around and think about it? Or are you going to do it?

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. Randy Pausch on time management
An awful lot of people have seen Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture,” but I actually found his talk on time management to be at least as compelling.

Every moment is a choice. Are you making a worthwhile choice with that moment?

2. Song of the Open Road (last section) by Walt Whitman
This is a rather long poem, so I’ll just quote the final section here.

Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe–I have tried it–my own feet have tried it well–be not detain’d!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the
court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourselp. will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

What’s holding you back from taking that journey?

3. Romance isn’t just for teenagers… taken by Ed Yourdon
I love watching old couples. Quite often, you’re seeing two people who have spent the vast majority of their lives together. They rely on each other in so many little ways that just come so naturally to the two of them.

I see Sarah and I slowly slipping into this pattern. We anticipate each other more and more as time goes on. I’ve learned to just do little things automatically because it will make her path easier, and she does those things for me.

4. Henryk Szeryng plays Brahms Violin Concerto (3rd Mov.)
This is just brilliant.

When I find videos like this on YouTube, I don’t even watch. I usually just close my eyes and listen.

5. Steve Jobs on life direction
This is from his wonderful 2005 Stanford commencement address:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

This way of thinking led me to make an awful lot of hard choices. If I go more than seven days or so without saying “yes,” then I know something needs to change in my life.

6. Agesilaus on liberty and frugality
This quote made me think quite a lot about the connections between freedom and frugality.

“By sowing frugality we reap liberty, a golden harvest.” – Agesilaus

If we are frugal, then we accumulate the resources we need to be free. Free of managers, free of want, free of time constraints. We build these freedoms through being frugal.

7. Ric Elias talks about surviving a plane crash
This is a really thoughtful look at a life-or-death moment, told with a healthy bit of humor, too.

I would like to think I wouldn’t lock up in such a situation.

8. Sliderocket
If your job or business or career path requires you to make presentations, you might want to give Sliderocket a shot.

This tool solves many of the issues that traditional PowerPoint slides have when it comes to the new era of online sharing. It makes sharing slides really really easy and it also makes it easy for people to comment on your slides, too.

I find it an invaluable tool for presenting today.

9. Aristotle on greatness and habits
The great people practice the things that make them great until they become natural.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

What do you want to be? Practice doing that every day and you’ll eventually be there.

10. Tim Minchin’s Storm
This is an animated YouTube video about a thought-provoking dinner conversation. Be aware that there is some adult language involved.

This video was passed back and forth among a circle of my friends all week and resulted in one of the most civil discussions about faith and religion that I’ve yet seen. Hopefully, it’ll inspire the same type of talk with your friends.