A long while back (was it really 2008), I wrote an overview of the web-based personal finance tools available at that time. I didn’t really give a strong recommendation to any of them, though I did end up serving as an advisor for a time with Wesabe.

Today, Mint.com is clearly the frontrunner in this field, but there are many other services that offer similar financial tools via the web. Many banks have incorporated similar tools into their online services, and other similar services such as TurboTax can be done fully via the web.

Personally, I don’t use any of them.

Why not? Mostly, it comes down to information security, as I briefly touched on in the article linked to above.

It’s not that I doubt the security policies of any of the sites. I think Mint, TurboTax, and other such web-based tools have stellar security policies, and I genuinely believe that they’re all doing the best they can to preserve the sanctity of your personal information. I’ve reviewed a lot of security policies and a lot of security histories over the years and I know that when you’re dealing with financial data, you’re not only buried behind a lot of regulation, you’re also dealing with an absolute requirement for your customers. This is not something any of them want to mess up in any way, and they’ve all taken powerful steps to keep you safe.

That’s not the point.

The reason I avoid using such tools is that all it takes is one mistake from one person for your information to be stolen. For one bright, shining example of this, take the loss of 100 million credit card numbers by a card processor in 2009. Even though the business had incredibly strong security policies, a hacker still managed to scrape off up to 100 million credit card numbers and related information from that company’s database. How did it happen? Most likely, one information security professional didn’t set up one security protocol correctly, and that was enough.

So, how does that affect whether I use such tools? The more places where you use your personal information, the greater the chance you have of getting your information or even your identity stolen.

Let’s say Alice has her personal information available to only one business in the country, her bank. She’s very careful about letting out any of her data anywhere else.

Let’s say Bob, on the other hand, has accounts at ten different financial institutions and uses several different tools to access those accounts. As many as twenty different companies with twenty different security policies have access to Bob’s data.

Let’s now say that personal data is lost by some company in America. Because Bob has his information with so many different institutions, Bob is twenty times more likely to be affected by this loss of data. By having so many accounts, Bob is putting himself at additional risk.

With every account you open where your personal information is used, you increase your risk of falling prey to a random act of information loss, whether it be someone breaking into a computer network or someone losing a backup tape.

Because of that, I’m very wary of the number of businesses that I share my information with. Unless there is a strongly compelling reason to share my personal data, I don’t share it.

For me, none of the online tools offer enough value to be worth increasing that risk, at least in my eyes. Mint might be awesome, but it’s not worth that additional risk to me. Neither is TurboTax Online or any of the other similar services.

It’s for this same reason that I use a single credit card with identity theft protection for most of my purchases.

I just want to minimize my risk of having my information out there when something goes wrong with information security somewhere, and my general recommendation to others is that they do the same.

As November rolls forward, one end-of-year task that starts floating in my mind is holiday cards. This is usually a fairly time-consuming project for us, but I consider it to be a very worthwhile one. Here’s how we do it.

Send it early.
With a large project like this one, it’s incredibly easy to keep postponing working on it until you’re throwing something together quickly and tossing it in the mail – or not even bothering at all.

My approach is to simply set a goal of mailing them out very early. Ideally, I try to get them in the mail before Thanksgiving. Seriously. This way, if I absolutely must slip a week, I don’t panic about it.

Send them all at once.
It can be tempting to send them out in drips and drops, but that can be a mistake. If someone notices that you’ve sent a card to someone else but not to them (even though you’ve intended to do it), you’ve opened yourself up unnecessarily to a negative opinion. It’s not worth it.

I usually work on mine gradually, keeping all of the finished ones together in a box. Then, when they’re all done, I ship them off all at once.

Send one to everyone of personal or professional importance to you.
The first step in the process is to update my “master list” of people I intend to send cards to. I keep this as a Word document. It contains the most current addresses of everyone I would ever want to send a card to – personal contacts, professional ones, and so on.

I then go through and make a card individually for each one. I start off with a template of my own design, usually incorporating a family picture.

Write a handwritten paragraph inside each one.
With each one, I write a handwritten paragraph on the inside, usually something directly for that person, touching on something we have in common. I make sure to wish them well in whatever they’re working on, particularly if there’s something new in their life.

The handwritten paragraph doesn’t have to be long. It’s usually just a few sentences.

I don’t turn it into a family newsletter.
I’m sending them a card because I care about them, not because I want to brag about my family. I can talk about my family through other communication by following up on questions that they might ask on the phone, by email, on Facebook, or some other form.

The purpose of the card is to simply say “I care about you.” To me, a family newsletter doesn’t say that at all.

Remember who the recipient is.
I usually make my own cards, mostly because it makes it easy to make variations on the cards. For some, a Christmas card is the best thing to send. For others, a more generic “season’s greetings” card is much more appropriate. I don’t view such a card as an opportunity for evangelism of what I believe.

Why put in all this effort?
When it all comes together, it’s a powerful way of making sure that a lot of people I care about all have a clear message telling them, in a very personal way, how much they mean to me and how much I value them. A handwritten note really hammers that idea home.

For me, this is an incredibly enriching November project, one that helps me to maintain connections and relationships with a lot of people I care about.

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. Joyce Lock on strengths and weaknesses
I’ve become a big believer in the idea that you should work to make your strengths as strong as possible so that they overshadow your weaknesses and eventually overtake them. Lock explains this idea very eloquently.

“Build upon strengths, and weaknesses will gradually take care of themselves.” – Joyce Lock

Keep this in mind as you think about what to improve in yourself.

2. Halloween
My children went trick-or-treating this year. That night is one of the highlights of the fall for me, as I love seeing all of the children of our neighborhood out having fun.

Thanks to Teo for the wonderful picture.

3. Spellboy
This is an online spell checker. All you have to do is paste in your text and it finds and corrects misspellings for you.

Why do I like it? It’s really easy to use. Plus, I wish that people would use it when posting online. I catch the vast majority of my own mistakes, but I often see postings online where people seem to not care about their spelling, not realizing that multiple spelling errors start to undermine the credibility of what the person is saying. This tool makes that go away.

If you want to make a point, spell well. This great tool will help with that.

4. Churchill on putting worry to work
Worrying doesn’t accomplish a thing.

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.” – Winston Churchill

When you find yourself worrying, instead ask yourself what you can do about it.

5. Sarah Kaminsky on her father the forger
The thing that stuck with me here is that everyone has some skill that’s valuable and useful. We just need to look for situations where our skill works for something great.

I really enjoyed this story and presentation.

6. The Grant Wood murals at the Iowa State University library
If you live anywhere in central Iowa and haven’t seen these, you’re missing out. They’re an absolute art treasure hidden away on the Iowa State campus.

Wood, well known for his painting “American Gothic,” painted these on the library walls in the 1930s, employing assistants who had presented work at the Iowa State Fair in the early 1930s. The result is some fantastic art that’s quite impressive in scope, yet it’s almost hidden away. It’s a treasure worth finding.

7. Cecile Springer on challenging yourself
If you don’t challenge yourself, you’ll never really get anywhere.

“Above all, challenge yourself. You may well surprise yourself at what strengths you have, what you can accomplish.” – Cecile Springer

I’ve come to not like situations that come easy to me. I’d rather have a situation where I fail over and over, but sense that I’m improving a little over time.

8. Julian Treasure on five ways to listen better
If I’ve learned one lesson lately, it’s that listening is incredibly valuable. It’s more valuable than talking, I think.

The simplicity and practicality of this talk was quite worthwhile.

9. Tom’s custom art
An old friend of mine has taken the first step towards turning a hobby into a side business. Tom has always liked to sketch things and make wonderful drawings, but lately he’s started drawing fantasy art on play mats, which are essentially large mousepads that you can use for various purposes.

I’m absolutely ecstatic that Tom has taken this step and I wanted to share his work with all of you.

10. Jim Carrey on visualization
I don’t believe in The Secret. I don’t believe that if you just visualize something, it will come true. This is much closer to what I believe.

“I would visualize things coming to me. It would just make me feel better. Visualization works if you work hard. That’s the thing. You can’t just visualize and go eat a sandwich.” – Jim Carrey

If I think about good outcomes for my hard work, I feel better, but I know it won’t happen if I don’t put in the hard work.

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.

My wife loves this recipe and finds reasons to make it often. It’s helped by the fact that we had a giant harvest of squash this year, so we had to find lots of ways to use it. I like curried soups and stews, so that definitely contributed to my desire to share this one with you.

Most of the cost here is going to be the vegetables, so the more of these you have access to outside of the grocery store, the less expensive this recipe will be.

What You Need
Here’s what you need for this meal…

You’ll need:
a diced bell pepper
half of a diced onion
one minced garlic clove
a cubed and peeled eggplant
a cubed and peeled butternut or acorn squash
1 cup cooked chickpeas (canned is fine)
1 cup water or vegetable broth (we used stock)
1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
one teaspoon of olive oil (or other vegetable oil)
salt and pepper to taste

The Night Before (or Early That Day)
The best thing to do in advance is to chop up all of the vegetables and store them in bowls in your refrigerator. You can store the bell pepper and onion together, and you can store the eggplant and squash together, too.

Preparing the Meal
Preparing the meal is really simple. Just put the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat until it’s shimmering. Then, add the bell pepper and onion and stir for five minutes.

It’ll smell really good at this point!

Next, add the garlic, curry powder, and a dash of salt and pepper and stir for a minute more, then add the remaining ingredients. Wait until the liquid is at a low boil, then reduce heat until the liquid is barely simmering.

Let it sit for twenty five minutes, then serve. We accompanied it with a simple sandwich.

Optional Ingredients
You can make all kinds of vegetable substitutions in this meal and still have a great soup. You can use any kind of bell pepper, replace the chickpeas with other kinds of beans, use pumpkin instead of the squash, and so on. As always, use what you’ve got on hand or have inexpensive access to.

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.

Jeff writes in: How much money do you ACTUALLY save in time and money by making your own coffee at home? I would appreciate the assumption that the user is using non-generic, non-Folgers or Maxwell House coffee.

For some standardized data on this, I visited the website of the SCAA – the Specialty Coffee Association of America. In one of their protocol documents, I found this information, which I’ll use to analyze how a great cup of coffee is constructed at home:

The optimum ratio is 8.25 grams of coffee per 150 ml of water, as this conforms to the mid-point of the optimum balance recipes for the Golden Cup.

Let’s say we’re looking at a 16 ounce cup of coffee – what you might fill a to-go cup with from a coffee shop, for example. A 16 ounce cup of coffee is approximately 473 mL, which, using the ratio above, would require 26 grams of coffee to make it yourself. An ounce is 28.3 grams, just for measurement’s sake.

So, how much does “good” coffee cost? I asked my wife to select what she considered to be a very good coffee for the price and she chose Eight O’Clock Coffee’s original ground, which can be obtained at a rate of $0.39 per ounce.

Simply put, you’d need about $0.38 of decent ground coffee to make a good 16 ounce cup of coffee at home. There’s also the negligible cost of water and electricity (say, one cent per cup), plus the ongoing cost of filters (say, two cents per cup), plus the cost of the cup (say, one cent per drink prorated out over time), plus the startup cost of purchasing an inexpensive pot to brew the coffee with (say, another two cents per cup, prorated out over time). That’s a cost of about $0.44 for a 16 ounce standard coffee.

Now, if you add cream or other ingredients to that, you’re increasing the cost, but not significantly. For example, International Delight French Vanilla liquid creamer costs $0.08 per cup. Other options might ding you as much as a quarter per cup for flavoring, which is still leaving you below $0.70 per cup.

Depending on what exactly you order at your typical coffee chain, a 16 ounce coffee will set you back somewhere between $2 and $5. The variation here is pretty impressive, but even if you’re comparing the low end of a purchased coffee with the high end of a homemade cup, you’re still talking about a savings of a dollar per 16 ounce cup. It’s quite likely you’re saving even more than that.

What about the time? I’m not a coffee drinker, but Sarah usually sets up the coffee pot the night before. It takes her about a minute. When she gets up, she flips a switch, and then she drinks a cup a little while later, then fills her to-go cup on her way out the door, taking her maybe another minute or two. She usually cleans the pot up when she gets home from work, taking another couple of minutes.

The time invested is perhaps five minutes total per day, and she’s probably saving $2.50 or so per day, making for a pretty good hourly rate. Plus, she believes the coffee made at home tastes better.

If you drink coffee more than a time or two a week, you’re going to save money making it at home, and it’s probably going to be well worth the small amount of time invested, too.

I get a lot of emails from people in their forties and fifties who are suddenly panicking about their retirement savings. Often, they don’t have any or they have very little, yet they still want to retire at age 65.

At the same time, I also get emails from people in their twenties who are already saving diligently for retirement. What they want to know is how much they actually need to save so that they, too, can retire at age 65.

The people in the first group obviously spent a big chunk of their adult life not having to save for retirement. This gave them more flexibility with their money in their twenties and thirties than people who were already saving for retirement.

On the other hand, people who start saving early don’t have to save as much overall as people who start later on.

So, which approach is better? Let’s look at the two cases.

Let’s say you’re 20 years old right now. You want to have $2 million set aside for retirement at age 65 and, magically, there’s an index fund out there that will return 7% a year (I’m using this index fund as a convenience, basing the 7% on what Warren Buffett suggests is a good number to use for average stock market returns going forward).

If you start investing at age 20, you’ll need to put aside about $510 a month to reach this goal.

If you start at age 25, you’ll need to set aside about $725 a month to reach this goal, but you don’t have to save anything from ages 20 to 25.

If you start at age 30, you’ll need to set aside about $1,050 a month to reach this goal, but you don’t have to save anything from ages 20 to 30.

If you start at age 35, you’ll need to set aside about $1,530 a month to reach this goal, but you don’t have to save anything from ages 20 to 35.

If you start at age 40, you’ll need to set aside about $2,270 a month to reach this goal, but you don’t have to save anything from ages 20 to 40.

If you start at age 45, you’ll need to set aside about $3,480 a month to reach this goal, but you don’t have to save anything from ages 20 to 45.

If you start at age 50, you’ll need to set aside about $5,600 a month to reach this goal, but you don’t have to save anything from ages 20 to 50.

As you read through those previous sentences, you probably thought that the amounts early on were quite manageable, but when you got to age 50, you’re likely thinking that it’s bordering on impossible.

That’s the lesson here. You can forego the early retirement savings, but catching up later on can be incredibly punishing and the longer you wait, the more punishing it gets.

Thus, my advice is to start saving for retirement right now, no matter what age you are. Even if you can’t save very much, start by saving something. If you’re not saving, you need to be doing something else that’s financially urgent with your money.

For example, if you just save $100 per month starting at age 20 in the above retirement account, increase it to $200 a month at age 30, $300 a month at age 40, $400 a month at age 50, and $500 a month at age 60, you’ll have $720,000 saved for retirement. Double each of those numbers and you’re getting close to where you need to be.

Start saving now, even if it’s just a little bit. Don’t burden your future self with crippling amounts of retirement savings or employment until the very end of your life.

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. Charter school conundrum
2. Roth as college savings
3. Saving Legacy TreasuryDirect
4. Favorite board game
5. How I read
6. Education debt question
7. Community of church without religion
8. Introductory banking offers
9. Checking account conundrum
10. Creating online buzz

I like to think of November and December as family months. It’s during these two months (and the holidays contained within) that I get to see my extended family more than I do during the other ten months combined.

I’m usually apprehensive about it all as it approaches, but that apprehension gives way to relief once things actually happen, and then often the relief gives way to good times and good memories with good people.

Q1: Charter school conundrum
I have a 9 year old daughter, who is in 4th grade. Her school is consistently short of funds, and each year, tries to pass an operating levy that fails, leaving them hurting worse with each passing year. Currently, she has art once every 6 days, gym every 6 days, and computer lab every 6 days, and there has been talk of eliminating elementary art and music all together. My daughter has advanced reading and math skills, but because of large class sizes, the school is unable to challenge her much, and she has already begun to find school boring. There are no advanced placement programs.

I have an opportunity to enroll her in a charter school next year, less than 20 miles from my home. There is no bus, so I would need to drive her. The school has an excellent reputation, and delivers a well rounded liberal arts education. They have small classes, and promote a family atmosphere. There are no tuition costs. The goal is to produce students who are well prepared for college in a safe and inclusive environment, and they try to make it fun and exciting to learn.

The problem is, in order to drive her, I would need to quit my recently aquired, well paying, full time office manager job, and take a part time job with hours that accommodate this commute (school is from 8am to 2 pm). No one would starve at my house if I did this, but we would be a bit pinched until we adapted to the drop in income. The other option is to try to start a carpool, and ask my boss to come in late(and stay late) a couple of times each week, but I have seen how these things fail, and one parent is left picking up the slack, or the boss is less than thrilled with ‘flexible scheduling’, so I am reluctant to go this route.

How do I decide what is the best way to help my child? How can I decide if I should scrape by now, to provide her a better education, or keep her where she is, knowing it is more convenient? If she stays in public school, I can put away enough money to help with college expenses, I probably can’t if I work part time.

I just can’t find a way to compare the situations, and pick the better one. Do you have any ideas?
- Annie

The first thing I’d do is make sure I’ve explored all of my options. Are there any other children in your area that are joining this charter school, for example? Could you arrange something with the family of that charter school involving one half of the daily commute coupled with a bit of pre-school or after-school care?

Is there an after-school care option near the school that your child could utilize via school busing? What about before school?

I don’t think this is an either-or choice quite yet. If it truly comes down to that, I’d probably not switch schools, since evidence shows little correlation between charter, private, and public schools and long-term academic performance.

Q2: Roth as college savings
What do you think of using a Roth IRA as a vehicle to save for our kids’ potential college costs?

I am an engineer and my husband is a stay-at-home dad, we are both 28 years old. We currently have 2 kids (ages 3 years and 3 months) and plan to have one more child within the next few years. We have a 529 plan for the 3 year old with a negligible amount of money in it, probably around $700. We have no college savings for the 3 month old (yet!).

Currently we contribute 5% of my pay into our TSP account (federal gov’t employees version of a 401k). We also have a Vanguard Roth IRA to which we contribute ~$200 per month. At this time we only have $25 per month to save for each of the kids college ($50 total). I had planned to open a separate 529 plan for the 3 month old, and send $25 bucks to each 529 plan per month (at least until we are in a position where we can contribute more). However, I recently ran across the idea of using a Roth IRA as a college savings vehicle. This seems like a great idea for us since we are nowhere near the maximum yearly contribution level for the Roth. I also like the idea because neither myself or my husband needed money for a college education. Our children could be like me and get a free ride to college or they might turn out like my husband for whom college was a terrible fit. The biggest challenge of this idea seems like keeping track of what portion of the Roth is meant for our retirement and what portion for college. Excel spreadsheet? Separate Roth accounts? Is there a reason this would be a terrible idea?
- Kevin

A Roth IRA is a solid way to save for educational expenses.

The problem with using a Roth IRA for educational expenses is that to do so, you’re foregoing a very powerful tool for saving for your own retirement. Regardless of what you’re using it for, annual contributions to a Roth IRA are capped pretty low.

You’ll be in far better shape if you use that Roth IRA fully for retirement and utilize a 529 college savings plan for educational savings. If you’re not fully using that Roth IRA, I’d make absolutely sure that you shouldn’t be, because I’d far rather save for retirement than save for my children’s education. They can always get an education, but I don’t want to be an economic burden to them in my dotage.

Q3: Saving Legacy TreasuryDirect
I want to become active in rescuing the Legacy Treasury Direct system which as you may know is being phased out.

The reasons are pretty obvious, I think. Do you have any suggestions on how I can get started?
- Susan

I did some research into this and, for the most part, it seems that it’s mostly just an unnecessary hassle for people who were using Legacy TreasuryDirect to manage their securities. The phasing out of Legacy TreasuryDirect is being done to move people to the newer TreasuryDirect system, which conducts transactions mostly via the website.

(TreasuryDirect, of course, is a tool for buying treasuries and savings bonds from the United States Treasury.)

As for what you can do about it, the best route is to contact your congressperson. Sadly, contacting your congressperson in hand with a donation usually works the best. The best approach for change is to simply request that the features you want from Legacy TreasuryDirect be folded into the newer TreasuryDirect system.

Q4: Favorite board game
You’re often recommending games to people but you’ve never really talked about what games you like. What are your favorite board games?
- Alan

These change all the time. I’ll name one short game, one medium-length game, and one long game.

The Resistance is a very short deduction card game for five to ten players. In it, each player receives a “resistance” card or a “spy” card which secretly indicates which team they’re on. Then, over a series of five rounds, small teams of the players go on missions (done by playing a card) which can be sabotaged by the spies. If three missions go by successfully without sabotage, then the “resistance” players win. If three missions get sabotaged, then the “spy” players win.

Eminent Doman is a card game that takes forty five minutes or so for two to four players. In it, players are effectively exploring and conquering an unexplored region of the galaxy. Each turn, a player plays a card from their hand and follows the action written on it, then chooses a role card from one of the available stacks of role cards (there are five stacks available to all players) and follows that role. Each other player also has the option to follow that role, too. It ends up being a game of careful calculation as all players are trying to squeeze out victory points near the end, as the game ends when one or two (depending on which variation you choose) of the role stacks are emptied.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a board game that can take two to four hours in the basic version and can go on over many, many continued sessions with the Road to Legend expansion. It’s largely a game of dungeon exploration (think Dungeons and Dragons, but little roleplaying and more strategic thought) where one player controls a horde of villains trying to prevent you from exploring the dungeon and the other players each playing a hero (or two) trying to get through the dungeon. I’ve been playing the Road to Legend expansion with a few friends for a few months now and we’ve been having a lot of fun with it.

Q5: How I read
You’ve talked before about how you go reading; taking an hour at the end of the day to sit down and read. But I’m wondering, is it really that you just take one hour at the end of the day and that’s it? You seem to get through books quickly. Can you elaborate on how you read (do you usually try the speed-reading tricks?), where you read (in bed, favorite chair, etc), and any other information you think would be interesting.
- Will

I make it a point to read for an hour or so at the end of any given day. However, that does not preclude reading when I can throughout the day.

I tend to take a book with me every time I leave the house, as there are often times to read when I’m out and about. I’ll often take short breaks from work during the day to do something else and refresh my mind, and at least once a day those breaks involve reading for personal enrichment.

I find all sorts of little spaces during the day to get a few pages in, because it’s something I value.

I do read pretty fast, but it’s more of a matter of many many years of practice reading every single day. I have never taken a speedreading class, nor do I really want to.

Q6: Education debt question
I’ve been living in China for 6 years and am pretty good at Chinese! Would love to go back to school, get an MA in Chinese and a one year degree in Education so that I would be qualified to teach Chinese in the USA. I’ve been a teacher here at a prestigious university and love it.

My problem is: Education in America is robbery. The programs I see cost 20,000$ tuition plus room/board for each year. It’s so hard for me to make the choice for massive debt to teach (at a low salary).

I have been spending most of my adult life here studying Chinese and traveling all over East Asia, and would love to use it this knowledge. –OR– I could stop studying and save $20,000 a year or more by working full time teaching English (though I don’t enjoy it that much at the private schools).

I’m 30 and have a BA in History, enjoy my life now, but think I ought to do something “more”. Is it saving money, buying a house cash in a 4 years in Western MI (where I’m from) and doing anything really (free rent and maybe even a roommate?). Or should I follow a passion, something I love and be up to my eyeballs in debt? What do you think?

I have 10,000 in student debt. 20,000 in cash. If I give this money to my parents and do my FAFSA alone (without parents info) I would probably get some help from grants, but not sure how much. I get paid in cash and when I file taxes my income has been very low.
- Chloe

Education in America is expensive, but there are some ways to reduce the debt load.

If you’re going for graduate work, one way to reduce the load is to teach. Most large schools will employ graduate students to do teaching assistant work for undergraduate classes and will even allow you to fully teach some smaller classes in some cases. They compensate for this either directly or through reduced tuition.

If you’re going for an undergraduate degree, one way to reduce the load is to get as many classes out of the way as possible at the community college level. Find a community college that transfers credits to the school you want, then take your general education requirements there at a much cheaper rate.

Another approach, if you’re a teacher, is to look for loan forgiveness opportunities, where you agree to teach in a disadvantaged district for some number of years in exchange for your remaining student loans to be wiped away.

Q7: Community of church without religion
When I was growing up, my parents and my sisters and I attended a church with a very tight-knit community. Everyone knew everyone and people were constantly helping each other out and inviting each other over for meals and the like.

As an adult, I no longer agree with that religion – or pretty much any religion. What I do miss is that sense of community, though. How can I go about finding that without joining a church that doesn’t share my beliefs?
- Shawn

I agree with you that a church community can be an awesome thing. To me, the community and fellowship is the biggest reason to be involved in a church.

If you’re looking for that with minimal religious doctrine, I would suggest looking at a unitarian church. I took some religious studies coursework in college and attended the services of several different faiths, and the Unitarian church I attended (which I attended twice) seemed to mostly be discussions about different issues with very little overriding doctrine. In fact, it seemed that everyone believed something different. Many of the discussions had little to do with actual religious doctrine at all.

Beyond that, though, the church seemed to have a strong community, with multiple weekly congregational dinners, volunteer activities, and other things. Their calendar was full of activities, plus I overheard several different families discussing smaller potlucks and other things that weren’t on the calendar.

I’d try this route if I were you.

Q8: Introductory banking offers
I sometimes see offers such as “Get $25 for opening a savings account at our bank.” Do you think opening multiple accounts to get these incentives, particularly if they do not require a large deposit, is a good idea? This also leads me into my next question.

I have four savings accounts, one with a few thousand and the others a few hundred each. I plan to use one as my emergency savings (the one with the most) and another for a scholarship fund. My problem is I sometimes feel that I’m not making progress in saving, but this may just be a result of having so many savings accounts. I split $400 each month into all four accounts, so $100 each. I do not have anything that I am saving for in particular, especially now that I have reached my goal for the scholarship fund account. I thought about rotating sending all of the money to one account each month, so instead of $100 to each account it would be $400. I guess I would be doing this so I could see a big jump. Any suggestions?
- Shelly

Introductory savings and checking account offers vary from instance to instance. Some have no strings attached. Many require that you do certain things like maintain a $1,000 balance in the account for one year or else pay back the value of the initial offer. Read any such offer very carefully before taking advantage of it.

As for the multiple accounts, if you have no reason to have extra accounts open (usually, this is done to help with multiple savings goals), feel free to close the extra ones and roll all of the money into a smaller number of accounts.

It sounds like you have one savings goal and one emergency fund. Keep those separate in two accounts and close the rest.

Q9: Checking account conundrum
A few months ago, the bank with which I was a customer for about 15 years started to assess what I felt were unreasonable fees for ATM card use. It was $2 per transaction at any ATM that was not their bank, something that I felt was egregious at the time.

The credit union we joined over a year ago has just announced a new structure to their checking accounts. If I do not respond to their letter I will automatically be put into their plus membership, which requires either a minimum checking balance of $1500 or minimum relationship balance of $10,000 (which I think includes savings accounts…is that what combined consumer deposits means? If it does then I qualify.) Interest is 0.10%, variable. There is a monthly maintenance fee of $10 and up to 10 free ATM transactions at star ATMs. Non-star ATMs are $1.50. Debit pin- based transactions, aka getting cash back when you buy groceries, is $0.25 per transaction.

For the basic plan I could have no minimum requirement, no monthly maintenance fee, no interest and no free ATM transactions at star ATMs.

Right now I have no minimum, no fees for ATM unless I go over 10 per month and no fees for getting cash back. I have interest as well but I have made 1.71 in the last 10 months. By my calculations, I use a pnc ATM that has no fees 3.3 times per month. I get cash at the store 2.1 times per month on average. Based on my current year, I would have been assessed $38 in fees already and be on track to have $45 in fees for the entire year. I suppose that compared to the $10 monthly maintenance fee then I am in better shape.

My question to you is, do I have any choice as a consumer to stay with my current checking account? Why do I have to be forced to choose one? They say in their letter that the previous options will no longer be available after January.

It sounds like the basic plan would work for me, but it really annoys me to have to deal with fees! I hoped a credit union would make me safer from these fees but it hasn’t. It’s the wave of the future!
- Jenny

This might be an opportunity to shop around for a new bank, one that doesn’t charge such fees. These seem a little over the top on the “better” account, especially just for getting a measly 0.10% interest.

When dealing with a bank, you essentially have to choose among the account types they offer. It sounds like they’re offering two to you, of which neither one is all that good.

If I were you, I’d complain there. If the complaint didn’t result in any changes, I’d switch financial institutions.

Q10: Creating online buzz
I spent some time researching emergency 72 hour kits. With all the disasters happening and peoples lack of being prepared I thought this was a good niche market. I was able to make the determination that buying a pre assembled kit was best. For example, People have thoughts on what knife they want or what type radio they want ect. I wanted to cover the basics and allow people to add the extras. It is important to note I was able to secure distribution rights for Canada. How can I create interest, buzz ect. I have researched google ad works, a variety of search placement sites, contacted insurance groups, auto clubs ect. Everybody has an opinion which seems to conflict with others. I hope this is clear and to the point. Please ask other questions as I may have missed a key important point.
- Rob

The tricky part is that there are a lot of ways to create this buzz that you seek.

Given that you seem to have a particular product that appeals to a particular group (Canadians who would be interested in such kits), I’d spend some time figuring out where that group congregates online. Are there messageboards that cater to such a group? I’m not familiar with the exact nature of this group, but I would assume that you do since you’re involved in the business.

Find that group and market to them. Buy ads specifically targeting the places where they congregate online. Join those sites and join in the conversation. This doesn’t mean talk about your product all the time. It means be a member of the messageboard. If you want, put your business in the signature, but if all you do is promote your business directly, you’ll probably wind up being banned or ignored.

This is the approach I’d start with for online buzz for your product.

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.

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.

Larry writes in: What so you think the value is in the saved time of a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner?

The difficulty in evaluating a device like the Roomba is in the sheer number of factors to consider…

How often do you actually need to vacuum? A single person who isn’t at home very much doesn’t need to vacuum nearly as often as a family of five with three children under the age of six.

What is your standard of home neatness? Some people feel the need to vacuum on a very regular basis. Others vacuum on occasion. Some rarely vacuum at all.

How big are your rooms? Roombas work much better in areas with significant open floorspace. They tend to work in a redundant fashion (meaning that they don’t clean as much floor space per charge) in smaller rooms, particularly with crowded floorspace.

How empty is the floorspace in your rooms? If you’re looking at rooms with just a couple of chairs and perhaps one table, a Roomba will do a very good job. If you’re looking at rooms with tons of obstacles (like a child’s play area), a Roomba won’t do as good of a job.

It was these factors in combination that caused us to not use the Roomba we were gifted very much. It worked really well in two rooms in our house. It was useless (or nearly so) on the stairs, in many of the bedrooms, and in the room where most of our children’s toys were.

In other words, unless you live in a residence with a single floor and a very open floor plan, a Roomba is only going to supplement a normal vacuum cleaner. This, of course, means that the reason you would buy a Roomba would be solely as a time saver, not as a money saver.

So, is it a time saver? As I mentioned above, it was very useful in specific rooms. We could set it to run in our living room and in our carpeted hallways and it did a great job. It would also do a “good enough” job in my office and in most of the family room.

The real advantage is that one person could multi-task with the vacuuming. I could set up the Roomba in the living room, then vacuum the stairs. This would directly reduce my vacuuming time to some extent. My estimate is that the entire house could be vacuumed in about 25% less time, saving about 30 minutes per vacuuming.

For me, that means a savings of about 12 hours per year, all told. Is that worth the $300 I’d have to invest in a Roomba, plus the energy cost of charging it (a few dollars a year)? This, of course, assumes that the Roomba works flawlessly and never has a problem, because any problems cut directly into that time saved.

I was glad to have it as a gift, but I would not spend the money on one as a time saver. It does save a little time, but not $300 worth of time.