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.

Most of us, at some point or another in our lives, end up having to make a fundamental choice between more money or doing something that’s deeply personally important to us.

The choice to be a stay-at-home parent.

The decision to continue to live in an area where you’re unhappy living just to chase good pay.

The impact of an expensive hobby or habit that we don’t want to give up.

Does money win? Or does life win? These types of decisions are the focus of Carmen Wong Ulrich’s The Real Cost of Living. The book is broken into sections focusing on specific areas of decisions that we have to make in our lives.

The Real Cost of Home
The opening section establishes the format of the book. Each of the larger sections is broken down into smaller sections that address one major decision that people have to make between financial costs and personal costs. For example, Ulrich takes a serious look at walking away from a home mortgage. It might be a good personal choice, but is it a good financial choice? If you don’t care about borrowing a dime for the next several years, it might be. Otherwise, you’re probably better off finding another route than just walking away from a painful mortgage.

The Real Cost of Marriage and Divorce
If a marriage is in a rough situation, is it better for all involved to just get a divorce and start over? Depending on the marriage, it might be, but many contested divorces wind up with only one real winner: the lawyers. The best way to avoid this is to have a strongly-written prenupital agreement so that if the marriage goes on the rocks, you have a plan to follow that doesn’t destroy either one of you financially.

The Real Cost of Family
While there were many sections on the cost of having children, the section that really resonated with me was the challenge of dealing with parents as they age. How much financial burden should the children take on in this situation? How much is fair and right? So much of this hinges on the personal side of the equation: your values, your relationship with your parents, and so on. It is an intensely personal choice, one that Ulrich offers some good advice on if you’re thinking through it.

The Real Cost of College
Ulrich’s suggestion here is that if you don’t clearly have a career plan that doesn’t involve higher education, you should dive into some form of higher education in an area that interests you. She evaluates the ins and outs of going to college immediately versus waiting and seems to come down on the side of education.

The Real Cost of Bad Habits
Simply put, few “bad habits” are worth the net cost they introduce to your lives. We’re not just talking about the initial costs of the purchases. We’re talking about the long-term health costs and personal costs that come from a bad habit. Many people think that this all falls under substance abuse, but anything you’re involved with that eats up too much attention and money is a danger to the balance of your life.

The Real Cost of Being Your Own Boss
I can speak from experience here. It’s stressful in a completely different way than an ordinary job. I once believed that it really wouldn’t be stressful at all – after all, I’m picking my own hours and own tasks, right? However, I’m also responsible for my entire method of income, which means hard work and dedication in areas I never anticipated. Being your own boss means creating your own revenue stream, too.

The Real Cost of Credit Cards
Unless you’re paying off the balance in full each month, the costs of credit cards almost always exceeds the rewards. The interest rate on most credit cards is simply financially punishing. For the slight benefit of getting something now rather than later, you’re accepting a bill with a frighteningly high interest rate that will just siphon more and more money out of your pocket the longer it goes unpaid.

The Real Cost of Saving
The cost of saving money is that you don’t have the ability to spend it now. Instead, you have to have the willpower and the desire to hold onto it for a later date. Of course, you’ll often find that when that later date comes, you’re incredibly glad you have that money.

The Real Cost of Investing
The costs of investing are similar, except that you’re often also taking on investment risk. What’s the benefit? It’s probably the only way many young people will have adequate savings for retirement. Without a healthy set of retirement investments, you’re going to be banking on Social Security, and that’s something I’d never bank on.

Is The Real Cost of Living Worth Reading?
The Real Cost of Living does a great job of reviewing some of the challenging balances people have to make between personal needs and financial needs.

It’s not a book that provides a “system” for you to follow or an overarching method for getting yourself into great financial shape. Instead, it’s more of a problem solving book, one that can help you think through a specific dilemma you might have in your life and your finances.

Check out additional reviews and notes of The Real Cost of Living on Amazon.com.

A few weeks ago, I was reading a yet-to-be-released personal finance book. At one point in the book, the author suggested that I make an actual list of my priorities. What is the most important thing in my life? What are the key things that follow it, and in what order?

An aside: sometimes I receive prerelease copies of books from authors who hope I’ll say something kind about their book so that they can put the quote on the back cover as a selling point, and I don’t give a good quote unless I’ve actually read the book and liked the book, so my quotes are fairly rare.

After thinking about and editing the list a few times, my list looked something like this:

1. My marriage
2. My children
3. My spirituality and faith
4. My extended family and close friends
5. My health
6. Writing
7. Reading / learning new things
8. My community / politics
9. Other hobbies

I could keep going for a long time after this, but this is roughly what my list looked like.

The author offered up several thoughts about this priority list, but one thought kept running through my mind as I looked at this list of priorities that I’d made.

Every single significant problem in my life comes from situations in which I violate this list of priorities.

What do I mean by “violate”? I simply mean that I make a choice in which I take something of importance away from a higher priority and give it to a lower priority.

For example, if I were to stay up too late with some old friends and this causes me to sleep in too late the next day, missing something that my children wanted me to attend, I feel horrible.

Another example: if I spend too much money on my hobbies, it can impact something that I want to do in the future with my wife and children.

Yet another example: if I eat out (notice how this isn’t even on the list) too often, I won’t be able to afford a book I really want to read.

Now, one could take this to extremes and state that every action, by default, must support one’s highest priority. I don’t think that’s necessarily true at all.

Instead, it’s simply a call that I need to make sure that my higher priorities are covered before I do something involving a lower priority.

Is spending this evening with my friends going to keep me from doing something I need to do tomorrow with my wife, my children, or my spiritual life?

Is spending two hours kicked back and reading going to cause me to skip the exercise I need for my health?

Will this hobby purchase really provide enough for me to reduce the amount I can save toward our next family vacation or for the house my wife and I have always dreamed about?

Again, it comes back to a basic truth: every single significant problem in my life comes from situations in which I violate this list of priorities.

When I violate it with my money choices. With my time choices. With my attention choices.

What are your priorities? How do you handle things when something with a higher priority comes into conflict with something of a lower priority? What really wins? What’s really the priority in your life?

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. Ninite
I spent some significant time setting up a computer for someone this week. This tool made that task drastically easier by giving me a single installation package to put a bunch of basic programs on this computer. Firefox, iTunes, AVG, SpyBot, AdAware, Picasa, Flash, PDF Creator, and several others – all in one installation.

I actually made a customized install program to keep on a thumb drive for future use using Ninite. Incredibly useful idea and great execution.

2. Lauren Zalaznick on the conscience of television
The interesting argument here is that television (and other forms of media consumption) directly reflects the moral, political, and social needs of the audience. Of course, when you stare at your own reflection, you begin to see certain things more deeply and your view of it shifts.

It’s a really interesting idea.

3. Gandhi’s seven deadly sins
These seven statements made me think about my life and the choices I’ve made.

“Seven Deadly Sins:
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Science without humanity
Knowledge without character
Politics without principle
Commerce without morality
Worship without sacrifice.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Thoughtful stuff.

4. Martin Lindstrom on how Whole Foods (and other grocers) prime you to shop
This is an excellent and well-written article that sums up beautifully the different tactics that grocers use to convince people to buy more than they need to.

The use of Whole Foods specifically here is a great choice, revealing how they’re not really very different from any other grocery chain.

5. Alfred Montapert on the ramifications of choices
Every single time we make a choice, there is some consequence from it. When we spend fifty cents on one thing, we now don’t have that fifty cents to spend on another thing.

“Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.” – Alfred A. Montapert

Our success relies on making a lot of tough choices that lead us down a path to something greater.

6. Steven Johnson on the source of good ideas
Good ideas come from collaboration and community. People interacting with one another and sharing ideas pushes everyone there further forward than they would have gone on their own.

With my closest friends, I usually try to talk about the things that challenge me the most – issues of politics and religion and parenting. We push each other to a better understanding of all of it.

7. Orchard in Bloom, Louveeciennes (1872) by Camille Pissarro
Last week, I mentioned how much I enjoyed Pissarro’s paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago. I spent some time looking at a large number of his paintings online (with my daughter on my lap) this week, and this was my favorite.

Great paintings make me yearn to be in that place, even if that place is ordinary. This certainly fulfills that criteria.

Thanks to cliff1066 for the image.

8. Anne Herbert on libraries and money
A great book will get you through the most uncertain of times.

“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” – Anne Herbert

I wouldn’t want to imagine a world with no libraries.

9. I Loved My Friend by Langston Hughes
It speaks for itself.

“I loved my friend
He went away from me
There’s nothing more to say
The poem ends,
Soft as it began-
I loved my friend.”
- Langston Hughes

10. Peanuts dancing to Linus and Lucy
After mentioning that I’m learning how to play “Linus and Lucy,” several people wanted to know why the song sounded familar to them.

It’s from the 1962 special A Charlie Brown Christmas, which I’ve seen more times than I can count.

Sarah and I love to experiment when it comes to food. We’re constantly trying new things in the kitchen using new and different ingredients.

However, the reality of our lives dictates that we often don’t have time to look for ideas and experiment creatively with food.

Take our current Tuesday evenings. Our daughter has a dance class from 5 until 5:45 in the evening, immediately followed by our son’s soccer game from 5:45 to 6:30. Since we start our bedtime routine at 7:30, there really isn’t a lot of time to experiment and carefully consider a meal in that one hour gap in there.

For evenings like this, we end up relying on a rotation of reasonably healthy and inexpensive meals that we’re sure our family all likes and that we can prepare quite easily.

Examples of meals in our rotation include spaghetti with marinara sauce, stir fry (rice and whatever vegetables we can easily find), tuna and noodles, vegetable noodle soup, “breakfast for supper” (usually scrambled eggs, toast, and waffles), homemade pizza (with pre-made crusts from the freezer), and fajitas.

Sarah and I both know how to throw these meals together quite quickly so that we can have a fresh meal on the table very quickly. Best of all, we never work from a recipe on these meals because we know them so well – it’s all in our heads.

This “meal library” of ours comes with several advantages.

We’re not simply stuck with whatever’s frozen. Yes, we make and freeze meals in advance, but sometimes they’re just not convenient in a pinch and at other times we just don’t want one of those meals. Having a rotation of meals on hand makes it easy to always have something else.

Having a good meal at home that you know you can put together quickly reduces the desire to eat out. We could go to a family restuarant, eat there, spend $40, and burn an hour. Otherwise, we could just go home, toss together one of these meals, and be done in forty five minutes. Not only that, we’re only spending $5 instead of $40. This is a huge imperative when we’re out grocery shopping or doing something else out and about as a family.

We buy the ingredients for these meals in bulk, saving us money. Things like whole grain pasta, sauces, flour, tuna, egg noodles, and other such things are always purchased in bulk by us because they’re part of these meals that we eat so frequently. This reduces our food costs even further.

By having quite a few meals in rotation, we don’t get tired of having the same old thing over and over again. Often when people have busy lives and fall into a routine of making just a few meals at home, they get tired of those meals and this encourages them to eat out more. By having a wide variety of meals in our rotation, we don’t get tired of them very often.

If you’re considering having this kind of “meal library” in your own home, I offer a few suggestions.

Keep it to meals you can easily prep in less than thirty minutes and have on the table in less than an hour. You might have a meal that you know how to prepare easily that takes longer than that, but I find that meals with that kind of time commitment rarely get made.

Test the meals with your family multiple times. This is to make sure you fully know how to prepare it and that your family likes it. There are some meals that I know our family likes that I can prepare blindfolded at this point (I actually, seriously think I could make homemade pizza blindfolded).

Make sure all adults have at least a few meals they can prepare. This takes care of evenings when one adult is busy due to some task and the meal preparation is up to the other parent. This situation shouldn’t be an excuse for expensive take-out.

I highly recommend a “meal library” for a busy frugal family. It’s certainly saved us a lot of time and money over the last several years.

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.

Right now, our garden is providing us with a small mountain of butternut squash. We have more of it than we know what to do with.

As a result, we’ve been eating a lot of it lately and experimenting with it in different ways. Of the things we’ve tried, this was the most enjoyable result for the time and extra money invested.

What You Need
The ingredients are pretty basic. All you need are these things (half of which came straight out of our garden):

You merely need bread crumbs (3/4 cup, separated into 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup), a small yellow onion, one butternut squash (roughly 3-4 lbs. in size), 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, six ounces of crumbled blue cheese (the only remotely expensive part of this meal), and a tablespoon of minced fresh thyme (you can use dried if you have it). You will also want some sea salt and crushed black pepper to taste.

The Night Before (or Early That Day)
You can prepare the entire dish ahead of the time and keep it in the refrigerator, just adding perhaps five minutes to the total baking time below.

Barring that, there are two things I would do in advance. First, I would peel and cube the butternut squash into relatively small cubes, like these.

I would also chop the thyme if you’re using fresh thyme in the recipe.

Preparing the Meal
First, preheat the oven to 425 F. The prep won’t take long here, folks.

Toss together everything but the spare 1/4 cup of bread crumbs in a large mixing bowl until the squash is fully coated.

Spread the mixture into a 9″ by 13″ baking dish, spread the remaining 1/4 cup bread crumbs on top, then bake for 40 minutes. Pull it out and you’re ready to eat!

We served the meal with a small spinach salad and a simple pressed sandwich.

Optional Ingredients
The easiest thing to substitute here is the cheese. If you’re not a fan of blue cheese, you can use other similar soft cheeses such as feta. You can even experiment and use other cheeses like mozzarella if you so choose. As always, use what you have on hand instead of buying stuff.

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.

Kathy said, My husband takes his lunch almost every day to work. If my son and I go out we’ll take our lunch as well. This equates to big meal cost savings but now that we’re using TONS of tupperware to cart our bag lunches I have to run the dishwasher constantly. With water, electricity, soap, etc. Are we still coming out ahead? Is this saving us big dollars or just cents?

Let’s do the math, shall we?

To test out Kathy’s question, I took out a bunch of our own reusable containers that we use for our lunches and filled up the dishwasher with them. I wanted to see exactly how many it would take to fill up our rather typically sized dishwasher.

What I found is that I was easily able to get eighteen containers with lids into our dishwasher pretty easily. Some of these were pretty large containers, while others were pretty small, so I think eighteen is a pretty good average.

Energy Your mileage may vary somewhat, but this data indicates that the typical dishwasher uses 2 to 5 kilowatt hours per load (including heating the water). We’ll use a 3.5 kWh average. A kWh of energy costs roughly $0.11, so the energy cost is about $0.38.

Soap You can find soap or detergent at a lot of different prices. I was able to quickly find dish detergents and soaps that varied from $0.10 per load to $0.35 per load. Let’s figure $0.20 per load.

Water The average dishwasher load uses about 15 gallons of water. Water is usually sold by the acre-foot – 325,851 gallons for $120 (or so). You’ll end up spending a cent or two on the water depending on how your municipality taxes it.

Your cost per load of dishes is about sixty cents, all told. This means that your cost per container for running them through the dishwasher is just a hair over three cents.

Remember, each time you use a container, you’re eating inexpensive leftovers for a meal instead of eating out. You should easily be saving multiple dollars each time you use a container.

What about the cost of the containers? Unless you’re drastically overpaying for such containers, you shouldn’t have spent more than a few dollars per container. It only takes a leftover meal or two to recover the initial cost of the container.

Thus, the math pretty clearly shows that washing your own containers and using them for leftovers saves dollars, not pennies.

Of course, there is a small time investment of loading and unloading the dishwasher, but the savings for that small amount of time makes it quite worthwhile.

Whenever we think about doing something different with our lives, a little resistance fighter starts preparing for battle inside of us.

He tells us why we can’t do it. He comes up with lots of plausible excuses. He talks about things that would be a lot more fun to do.

Often, he convinces us to do the wrong thing. We abandon that change we’ve been thinking about and go on with our lives as normal.

In short, he’s a real jerk.

We need to defeat him.

Once upon a time, that resistance fighter would convince me to be reckless with my money. As I began to turn my finances around, he would fight me every step of the way. He’d convince me to spend my money in ways that I knew I shouldn’t be spending it. He told me again and again that I shouldn’t take the leap into writing full time.

Each time, there was a series of battles against this resistance fighter. Sometimes, I lost. Eventually, though, I won the war and found great value in that victory.

Lately, the resistance fighter inside of me has been yelling at me to not get adequate exercise. He tries to tell me that I don’t have time or that I won’t really see any results from doing it.

He’s wrong.

Every day, we have a battle. Some days, he wins. That does not mean the war is over. It means that we’re going to battle again tomorrow.

More and more, though, I find myself winning the battles. I go on a walk and the resistance fighter retreats.

That resistance fighter is inside of all of us. He encourages us to keep doing the thing we’re doing that we know we should be changing. He resists change.

It is hard to battle him, particularly at first. Take it one battle at a time. Choose, just once, to do the right thing instead of the easy thing. Overcome the pleas of that resistance fighter.

What you’ll find is that the more you push yourself to overcome that resistance, the easier it becomes to win future battles. The resistance fighter gets quieter and quieter.

Before you know it, you have a new routine and a new life.

You’ve won the war.

Today is your first battle in this war. Are you up to the challenge?

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. Second computer needs
2. Getting unstuck
3. Career choice
4. Setting up a trust
5. Moving on
6. Print and play games?
7. Buy or not buy?
8. Roth or 401(k)?
9. Store credit cards
10. Investing in collectibles

My hobbies are the biggest challenge I have for adequate sleep.

Let me explain what I mean. By 9 or so in the evening, the children are in bed and the needed household tasks are done. I usually have an hour or so for hobbies, and I usually take advantage of it.

I’ll read a good book. I’ll paint something. I’ll read the rules for a board game or card game. I’ll play a computer game. I’ll go for a walk.

What I often find is that I’ll get engrossed in that hobby and find myself going to bed way too late. Then, the next day, I’m exhausted because of completely inadequate sleep.

It’s a balancing act. The key for me is to simply say, “It’s time to go to bed,” and stick with it.

Q1: Second computer needs
I work at home as a freelance graphic artist, and am fortunate to have lots of work lately. I have one computer which I use all the time. I need to have maintenance done on it occasionally, and have to be without for several days. This happens at least once a year, and I think it’s a necessity to keep it in top form for my job.

The question…what is the best way to handle those several days without a computer? I can’t depend on it being done on a weekend, and meanwhile I miss a lot of work time. I easily work full time or more, and generally that includes weekends if I have the work. Also, I feel like I need a way to stay in contact with people via email at the very least.

I am very frugal, and can normally do without things like an iPhone, since I’m mostly at home a lot anyway, but it is hard on the rare occasions when I need to travel or in situations like this. The options as I see it are:
1. Just deal with being out of email contact and not working for a few days, and not having internet access
2. Buy something like an iPad so even if I can’t work, I can at least explain the situation to people and stay in contact, and have web access (my husband will oppose this because he’s even more frugal than me, and doesn’t even use a computer at all)
3. Get a second computer.
(a) After talking to my computer guru, my options for this are a cheaper Macbook Air for around $1500 that could be used to work on a limited basis
(b) or spring for a full-on second computer like the one I normally work on, which would end up costing closer to $5000 (that seems really crazy and hard for us to swing right now, but I don’t want to be frugal in an area where I shouldn’t be for business, if that makes sense.)
- Ellen

I think (2) is the worst option if you’re actually considering an iPad for this purpose. If you’re just looking at something to email someone and have web access, a netbook provides these services at $300-400 less expensive than an iPad. An iPad does certain things very well, but for the services you mention, it’s not the thing you’re looking for.

I think (1) is a poor idea if this is a thriving business with significant contact with clients.

This leaves us with (3). I’m not sure if a full-on second workstation is the right choice here, either. If I were to have a backup system, I would not drop thousands to have it match what I already have. I would get something lower-end that could do some minimal things that I might need to do. It doesn’t necessarily have to do everything, just enough so that I can get by for a week.

If I were you, I’d probably go for a netbook or a low-end PC laptop. It can do the minimal things you need to do (email, web access) and perhaps a few lower-end things for your work at a very good price.

Q2: Getting unstuck
My husband and I are stuck. We live near DC and want to move away. We are a single car family with the car paid off. We commute together and we are gone from our house a minimum of 12 hours a day (longer if it’s a day where we have to go to the grocery store or library). We both dislike our clerical type jobs… they are just jobs to pay the bills. We have Liberal Arts BAs.

We have basic internet and cell phone plans (no home phone, no cable, no credit cards). We are in the least expensive rental (at roughly 26% of our income) that I could find that would accept our two cats AND where I felt safe to be by myself (I think this is more than reasonable). Our only debt is student loans at around $29,000. We have roughly $10,000 in savings.

Our issue is that we are DESPERATE to leave this area as our current lifestyle makes us both miserable (and unhealthy as there is not much time to exercise). Additionally, we want to start a family soon (within the next 4 years) and it would be impossible in this area at our current salaries (additionally, I would like to KNOW my kids…. I feel bad enough for my CATS after we’re gone 12 hours). We want to move to a much quieter (and less expensive) area where hopefully we will be able to live close to work.

On weekends, we have been looking at towns from Southern VA to New England. Do you know anyone who has just got up and moved or have advice for attempting it? We have been working on this project from over a year and it feels just as far away now as it did in the beginning. We are scared to leave these jobs though because we know the job market is shaky and we are afraid we won’t be able to find anything when we move…. and if we don’t have jobs… we won’t be able to pay our bills or find any place to rent. We really can’t figure out how to solve this problem.
- Casey

My suggestion is to secure a job first. Simply look for jobs in areas where you’re willing to move.

You seem to be attracted to the New England area. I would probably include the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, most of Iowa) in that search as the culture and climate (particularly in the cities) is not too different than New England and the cost of living is substantially lower.

Once one of you secures a job in an area that looks promising for the other to secure a job, move. Go there, rent a small apartment for six months or so, and give the other one time to find a job.

I don’t think there’s anything in your financial situation that precludes you from doing exactly that.

Q3: Career choice
I am 25 years old, graduated with one degree almost 3 years ago, and now going to school at a Tech College full-time in a similar but different field. I work part-time as an intern in my field, and I am set to graduate next May, and if things go well, my internship will be upgraded to a permanent career in programming. I live with my boyfriend of 3 years as well and we have 2 pets together. As an independent full-time student, I am given a set amount of financial aid in the form of student loans every semester. This semester I received about $5k to cover my education costs. After tuition, I get about $3k leftover, which I use for textbooks and other education costs, but primarily to pay my larger bills like rent and utilities. At my part-time job I make enough to cover gas and groceries; the rest are paid for by financial aid.

There are many financial goals that I have, the most important being to pay off my student loans, as I will have $60k in student debt by next May. Other ones include getting a newer car, saving money (along with my boyfriend) for a down payment on a house, getting married (possibly), and other things. Given these huge goals, I want to start putting money away for them. I want to start putting away an x amount of money from my paycheck from my internship, but since I make so little ($160 per week before taxes), I’m not entirely sure what amount I should start with. $5? $10? Really that’s all I can do after gas and groceries. I’ve questioned about whether using the leftover money from my financial aid at the end of the semester to save is feasible, but really it feels like I am just saving my loan money, not the money I worked hard for. Also, something always seems to come up and I end up using the financial aid for something, like extra bills. This was an issue when I worked only part-time between semesters, and I needed money to cover them.

I’ve been frugal for the last 3 years and I still have no money tucked away into a savings account for my goals to show for it. My boyfriend and I have about $1000 in a savings account for emergencies, but most of that money is his saving, and while I did put some of my money into it, I have roughly $200 of my money in there. It’s mainly for vet bills and car repairs. Should I stick to saving as much as I can from my part-time job, albeit slow saving? Should I start now, or does it not make sense to do this until after I have a stable and higher-paying career?
- Shelley

As long as you’re cohabitating with your boyfriend, your financial futures are intrinsically tied together. You have to make the rent together. You have to pay the other utilities together. If you’re not doing it together, then one of you is just covering the bills and thus reducing the money that he or she has left over to pay for debts and other such things.

The solution here is to sit down with your boyfriend and have a serious talk about your joined financial lives. The debts you each have are going to impact the freedom you both have as a couple, as is the relatively limited income.

Come up with a plan together. Not only will this cement your relationship, it will also help you figure out what you should be doing with your limited income.

Q4: Setting up a trust
I am 33, married, full time student (just started back). I work part-time to pay for school, my wife works and picks up all the rest of our expenses. We worked pretty hard to get here over the past five years that we’ve been married, saved up a lot of money and bought a house. We are proud of what we’ve done in so little time, and as a result we like to counter that pride by being supportive and giving when possible. This starts with our immediate family, and here’s the breakdown:

Both our parents are middle to upper middle class, they own their homes or are very close to paying them off. They have decent retirement savings and are all in the age range of 61-64. Basically, I think they are fine, but we like to not rely on them financially at all because we worry about external drains ruining their retirement. My wife has two sisters who are very young but finding their way in post-undergrad world (they both have jobs, a great accomplishment in this economy). I also have two siblings; both older than me. One is 35, the other is 40. My 35 yr old brother is married and has a family, and they are very successful. However my sister still lives with my parents. She works in education, and I do not think she makes even 30K / yr. So you can see that this is our only real problem… my parents don’t have a lot of money (my father still works but wants to retire in 2-3 years) and in addition to supporting my sister, all three are in poor health due to weight. I’m really worried my father will keep working until he’s 70 or older because of my sister, and that he’ll work himself into an early grave. My mother is retired, and keeps the house in order and babysits my brother’s children (and she is paid for it). All of us live in the same city.

My sister has a small amount of debt and obviously, relies heavily on my parents for everything. She has absolutely no savings (I do not think she has any retirement at all, or if she does it isn’t even 10K). I have gotten my mother to the point where they are eating healthier, but I would still not say healthy. Assuming though, that one or both of my parents pass by the time they are 80 (a little morbid but realistic), I do not know what we can possibly do with my sister. She requires transportation to her job (she has tried learning how to drive, but it was just too expensive and she never quite got the hang of it) and there’s no public transportation. She has very expensive health costs that nearly 100% of her salary go to (this is after her work insurance of course) and she has absolutely no concept of money… she can’t balance a checkbook or understand how credit (interest) works. She is very sweet but naive, and has a boyfriend who, like her- works paltry jobs for very little income. I cannot count on him to take care of her.

My brother and I have already spoken to my mother and made her understand that she needs to create a will where all of their estate would be in a trust for my sister, and we’d use that. However I’m still concerned that this might not be enough… what if my sister outlives this trust? Can you possibly think of what else we can do to prepare? Do you have any ideas of what we can do right now to ease the burden on my parents? Any idea how to get my sister a little more self-sufficient? They won’t take money of course, so I need something more subtle. I appreciate anything you can come up with- we want to help we just don’t know how.
- Jeff

You can’t make a person be who you want them to be. Your sister is who she is and if a significant change is going to come in her life, it’s going to come from within her. You can’t make it happen.

I agree that the best thing you can do is to make sure that the trust is actually put in place to take care of your sister. I would talk to a lawyer and make sure it’s set up in the best possible way with the laws and rules in your state.

As for her outliving the trust: you’re just going to have to accept that it’s a possibility. Hopefully, her jobs are earning her Social Security credits, so she will eventually have something.

Remember, you can’t make someone be who you think they should be. Trying to do that eventually ends in failure.

Q5: Moving on
I am about to turn 26 and have recently ended an 8 year relationship with my boyfriend ( it was his choice to end it) I have an Associated degree in LIberal Arts & Sciences from a community college. My dream is to be a writer/screenwriter and I have been working on a novel for a couple of years and recently two screenplays. It is truly what I see myself doing, most of the time the other times I am paralyzed thinking that I will never have something good enough that people will want to read, that I am not a good enough writer and I have no talent.

Knowing how hard it is to break into the business sometimes makes me want to turn my back and run but another part of me crazily believes that I will make it. I have been ‘babied’ over the years, have 2 good friends and have lost all contact with my high school friends, I basically have lived with my boyfriend and he is my best friend. I have had very few financial obligations over the years since my boyfriend paid for the apartment and house we now live in. I have never had to learn about paying bills or credit scores, he takes cares of those things for me. I am soo confused and upset about everything, I cannot imagine being on my own. RIght now I am working for a temp agency and have minimal savings, about 300.00 I have no cc or student loan debt but do have a monthly car payment of 210.00 and cell phone bill of 45.00 which I will soon be getting rid of for a pay by minute phone.

I am looking into moving in with a friend into a two bedroom apartment but feel so overwhlemed about the future, I don’t know if I can handle the stress and emotional turmoil, he is my first boyfriend and I am so terrified of making it on my own. I have never felt very smart and my family is not well-off and basically live paycheck to paycheck, I was homeless for awhile as a child and sincerely wish that I will never be homeless again because it is the scariest thing in the world. I don’t know what to do because I have never been around successful people other than my boyfriend. I see myself as a loser, following in my parents footsteps. I don’t know whether or not I should go back to school. I have been tossing and turning about that decision for a couple of years, my boyfriend tells me that I am a writer and writers don’t need to go to college. I read a ton of library books and I have learned a lot from them, they taught me how to think, and in all honesty college did not provide me with lasting knowledge than books do. I am worried about my future, should i point my dream of being a writer on hold and go back to school to get a degree in the medical field? Something I know will make a lot more money than I have right now or stick it up and work minimum wage jobs while writing away? Sometimes i Just don’t feel like I have it to make it.
- Kelly

You can do this. A lot of people make a great go of it from your very position.

You’re going to have to make a fundamental choice, though. You can either continue to chase the writing dream by, as you mention, working at a minimum wage job and focusing your energies on writing and living in near-poverty or going back to school to chase a higher-earning career.

I can’t tell you what the right path is for you. It depends a lot on who you are. My rule of thumb would be that I would look at the path I dream about (the one involving writing) and ask yourself whether that path fills you more with excitement or with fear. If it’s fear, then I’d choose the safer path.

Q6: Print-and-play games
When I was in college, we used to play this weird little game that someone printed off the internet. It involved playing squares with four colors on them and trying to make groups of the colors.

I was wondering if you knew what game this was and if you knew of any other free games that can be printed off of the internet.
- Eric

I think you’re talking about micropul, which is indeed a game you can print off the internet that involves playing squares and trying to group the colors. It’s a very fun game that’s wonderful to pack in a spare pocket on a camping trip.

There are a lot of print-and-play games out there that are quite fun. If you add in a few basic components, such as a deck of playing cards and a chess/checkers set, there are more great games out there than you can ever play.

Here are six worth looking at in addition to micropul: Merchant of Venus, Zombie in My Pocket, Rat Hot, Decathlon, Richelieu, and Cronberg. If you have a deck of cards as well, the possibilities are endless.

Q7: Buy or not buy?
I’m 23 and I just got married (he’s 28). He’s an E-6 in the Navy, so a good steady income while I’m an artist (starving artist at the moment, but I’ve gotten into a lot of shows in my area so hopefully that’ll get better soon). We live in Virginia Beach, so rent/housing prices are pretty high here. We’ve been in this apartment for 3 years already and dislike not having enough space for my business or a yard to grow a garden in. He already works 12+ hour days, so we don’t really want to move farther away from the city and increase his commute. A woman I used to work with is trying to sell her deceased parents’ house and she’s asking $180k for it, though I’m sure she’d come down a bit.

I guess I was just looking for the opinion of an outside party on the matter. The reason I’m hesitant is that we’ve no guarantee that we’re going to be here longer than 3 years and I’m worried about what we’d do with the house. We could stay here forever if he gets lucky, or we could move at the end of this tour. We -think- we’ll be here at least 6 more years. Our rent increases every year so that means we’d wind up paying in the neighborhood of $90k in rent over 6 years. We have about $200k that’s fairly liquid and quite a bit more in retirement accounts that we don’t intend to touch. We have no debt to speak of and enough savings dedicated to replace both our cars outright and have a healthy emergency fund (the figure I gave you does not include any of that as I view those all as essential).
- Emily

It sounds like you can write a check for the house right now. If that’s the case, I would probably buy it.

I probably would not buy the home if it involves taking out a mortgage. The advantage you have in this case is that you can buy the home without a mortgage, which means if you do move, you can easily move out and sell the house after you’ve moved to another area and still have enough for a down payment on another home if you decide to buy a home elsewhere.

Is it a good investment? It would make your monthly rent payment vanish. Instead of handing money to a landlord, you put it in your own pocket instead. I think that’s a very good move.

Q8: Roth or 401(k)?
I’m 22 years old, I graduated from college this past December, and I just started working at my current job as an Administrative Assistant at the beginning of March this year. I make $36,000/yr, I have a small emergency fund of $700 (will reach my goal of $1000 – per Dave Ramsey – in about a month), I have about $29K in student loans ($10K of which is 0% interest – borrowed from an aunt), and about $500 in credit card debt (down from $1000!). Every month I pay $800 for rent, I round my student loan payments up to the nearest $10 increment ($150/month) and I try to pay double the minimum on my credit cards (I’ve paid off two out of five cards so far using this method).

Following the advice of my mom and others, I immediately started contributing 10% of my income to my 401(k) provided by my employer as soon as I was fully contracted with the company (which was this past May). However, after reading some articles on the difference between Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, and other retirement accounts – especially your piece on it – I’ve come to realize that the only benefit a 401(k) has over a Roth is the employer match. That being said, I’m not quite sure if I should keep contributing to my 401(k) – my employer matches 3% of my salary REGARDLESS of how big my own contributions are or if I even choose to contribute at all. So far I have contributed about $1000 to my 401(k) (keep in mind I just started!).

So what do you think? Should I stop contributing to my 401(k) and open up a Roth IRA instead? Either way, there’s money being put into my 401(k) no matter what. Also, I’ve read a lot about Dave Ramsey and (from what I’ve read) he doesn’t even mention contributing to any retirement account until after all non-mortgage debt is gone. Does this mean I’m starting too early? Should I focus on eliminating my student loans at a faster rate?
- Angie

I would absolutely open up a Roth IRA and start contributing to that instead of the 401(k) in this situation.

I wouldn’t worry about starting too early. It is never too early to start saving for retirement. Your debt seems to largely be under control, though it might be fine if you spent a few months between stopping your 401(k) contributions and opening a Roth to pay off that remaining credit card debt. After that, I’d go right back to plugging away at retirement.

Angie has a follow-up question.

Q9: Store credit cards
Another question that I have is in regards to store credit cards. I’ve always regretted accumulating a lot of store credit cards while in college (Kohl’s, JCPenney, Target, etc.) but plenty of my friends have been telling me that these store credit cards do not count on your credit score. At first I didn’t believe them, but so many people were telling me this that I’m starting to think there’s some truth to it. Is it true – do store credit cards not count against you?
- Angie

It entirely depends on whether the cards are reported to the credit bureaus, and that’s entirely dependent on the policy of the company issuing them.

The best way to find out is to simply download your credit report and see what’s on there for you. The legitimate way to get your credit report is to use the FTC’s site (annualcreditreport.com).

My understanding is that some are reported and some are not.

Q10: Investing in collectibles
You’ve mentioned before that you have a pretty strong knowledge of some types of collectibles. I think you mentioned vintage baseball cards and some other kinds of trading cards.

Would you ever invest in them? I guess I’m asking a broader question. Would you invest in any collectible that you had quite a bit of knowledge about?
- Vincent

If I was absolutely sure I was getting a good deal on the collectible, I’d happily invest.

I have purchased many sports cards and trading cards over the years with the purpose of turning a profit on them by reselling them either on the internet or to other interested parties. It can be done if you know exactly what something is worth.

This becomes a very fun hobby when you’re looking at yard sales and estate auctions. I have stumbled upon a few really good buys in such situations.

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.