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.

Whether the date on the calendar says so or not, winter has started where I live. Snow, freezing rain, the whole nine yards. Winter’s on my mind and that’s reflected in these inspirational pieces.

1. Winter Wonderland
I always look forward to the first snowfall of the winter. It’s usually a wet snowfall that clings to everything, creating a beautiful world to explore.

Many thanks to stashabella for this wonderful picture.

2. Snow-Flakes. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Second) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This beautifully captures the sentiment I often feel when I see snow falling.

Out of the bosom of the Air
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

3. Making your own Boxee
I have an old computer. I’d like to be able to stream video from the internet really easily on our main television. If only there were a simple way to do this…

This does exactly that, for free. It takes about half an hour or so to set up. I picked up a wireless “remote” for about $20 that works perfectly with this.

This is just a great solution.

4. Don’t regret regret
We all regret things in our lives and we’re often told to forget them. The truth, though, is that regrets are often valuable things to have, as they can help guide us to greater things in our lives.

This is a great story by Kathryn Schulz, well worth listening to.

5. Winston Churchill on making a living versus making a life
What you do to earn money does not define you unless you choose to let it define you.

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill

You’re defined instead by the person you are and the things you share with others.

6. Napoleon Hill on the right time to do something
Right now is the best time to do whatever it is you’re thinking about doing.

“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” – Napoleon Hill

There’s always a reason to put something off. Always. The people who succeed are the ones who do it anyway.

7. Paper snowflakes
One thing that our family does, usually on the first weekend of December, is make a bunch of paper snowflakes that we then use to decorate virtually every window in the house. We each make several in different sizes and, because of their nature, they’re all as unique as real snowflakes.

It’s just a fun way to decorate our house in the spirit of the season.

8. How to make paper snowflakes
I really like this set of instructions for creating your own paper snowflakes. It’s visual, pretty clearly written, and has a lot of images of paper snowflakes to inspire you.

If only all written instructions were put together well…

9. Emerson on today
Today is the only day that really matters.

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

If there’s something important you need to do that you keep putting off, today is the day to do it. There is no better day.

10. A Long December by Counting Crows
When I was a teenager, Counting Crows were my favorite band. I still often play them when I’m working and I can sing along to most of their songs.

I can’t even guess how many times I’ve listened to this song.

For most of 2011, I’ve been posting a regular series entitled “Dinner With My Family” on Friday afternoons. In those posts, I’ve discussed inexpensive homemade meals that my family has enjoyed for dinner. Some of these meals were also incredibly quick to prepare, and I made an effort to try a variety of meals to appeal to everyone.

I plan on continuing the series on an irregular basis, but doing the series each week has taught me some worthwhile lessons about food, frugality, and time management.

Experimentation has rewards
One of the big reasons for us to start doing this series was that we both enjoy experimenting with our cooking. We love trying new meals and, believe it or not, our food adventurousness has rubbed off on our children as well. I’m amazed when we have friends with children over (or visit them) and their children refuse to eat most of the items on the table. Our children try them with relish.

The biggest reason why I love experimenting is that I am constantly discovering new ingredients. For example, I would have never even thought of getting fresh tarragon, chopping it up, and putting it into scrambled eggs. I tried it on a whim due to a suggestion of how to use tarragon – and I found that it made the eggs wonderful. Now, whenever I can find some fresh tarragon, I make some amazing scrambled eggs.

Try a new vegetable or a new fruit or a new herb or spice or a new type of cheese. You might find something that you really enjoy that you never expected. Even better, you now have something new to look for during food sales as well as a broader repertoire of ingredients you feel good using in your kitchen.

At the same time, there’s always another meal
Of course, the immediate drawback that many people point to with such experimentation is that you might wind up with a meal that you don’t like at all.

My philosophy on that is this: I usually try new ingredients when I can get a good discount on them. That way, if it turns out that I don’t like it, I’m not out very much money. Most of the time, though, I find that I do like this new ingredient. Even during the worst case scenario, where I find the meal inedible, I can always find something else to eat if I’m hungry.

The upside to discovering something new that I like is far greater than the downside of a dollar or two lost and the potential prospect of remaking a single meal.

A regular repertoire of meals is invaluable
We’re a two income family with three children, two of which are in multiple activities. The simple reality of things is that we don’t have the time in the evening that we would often like to have. Quite often, one of the parents is on autopilot when it comes to dinner preparation. We simply want to be able to prepare something easily, something that we know how to do, and something that will please everyone while being reasonably healthy.

When we try new meals, we’re often asking ourselves whether this meal should become part of our regular meal repertoire. However, most nights, particularly during the school year, we just pull a meal from that repertoire and assemble it for dinner.

Adventuresome meals are fun, but they often don’t work in the context of a typical day at our house. The vast majority of the time, we rely on things we know how to make or variations on those themes.

Preparing meals in advance is invaluable, too
Along with that tactic is the incredibly useful tactic of preparing meals in advance. We’ll often prepare a full meal, store it in a sealed container in the freezer, and pull it out the night before or in the morning of a day when we know that dinner plans are going to be tight. Sometimes, we actually just pull out a kit we’ve assembled from the freezer and just add it to the crock pot. Other times, we put out a frozen casserole dish with a note saying “put this in the oven at 350 degrees at 4:30.”

These meals prepared in advance also make being adventurous a bit more difficult, as you don’t want to prepare a quadruple batch of something before you’ve tried it out with the family. Thus, our premade meals are invariably old standbys, like tuna casserole or vegetarian lasagna.

Having these meals on hand makes it possible to get one kid to soccer, another kid to dance, and still have a good meal on the table when everyone converges at home.

Let what you have on hand lead you
People often get stressed out about following recipes and finding a bunch of obscure ingredients. You really don’t have to do that. Just use what you have on hand and you’ll almost always come up with something good.

What really works well is when you have a “framework” recipe, like the flexible casserole recipe or ratatouille. These are recipes where you can basically plug in whatever ingredients you happen to have and make something that works. At least a couple of the “Dinner with My Family” posts resulted from this type of experimentation.

Instead of panicking about what to have, just throw open your cupboard door and try to assemble something. Keep an open mind and you’ll be surprised at what you can come up with.

Let what’s on sale in the grocery flyer lead you, too
We love using fresh ingredients in our meals, but they can often be expensive at the store. So, often, we just buy whatever produce is on sale and use that as the backbone for our meals for the week.

If cabbage is on sale, we’ll make some sort of cabbage rolls or cabbage-based soup. If eggplant is on sale, we’ll make eggplant lasagna. If spinach is on sale, we’ll make a spinach alfredo and have spinach salads with other meals. If bananas are on sale, we’ll eat one bunch and use another to make a loaf or two of banana bread.

Again, many of our “Dinner with My Family” recipes have resulted from just this type of purchase. We buy some vegetables that are on sale and make a dish based on them. It’s cheap, tasty, and fun.

A few months ago, I wrote a post called “Two Paths to Financial Success.” In it, I outlined how there are two distinct ways to succeed financially.

One, which I called “success in the margins,” refers to things like frugality, cutting costs, saving diligently, and so forth. The other, which I called “success in the mainstream,” referred to things like entrepreneurship and career building.

Success in the margins, I pointed out, is a sure way to success, but there is something of a cap to that success. You’re limited in how much you can save by your income and your fundamental living expenses. On the other hand, success in the mainstream doesn’t have a cap, but it is far from a guarantee. Entrepreneurship and career pursuit are risky enterprises that often don’t turn out.

Anyway, a reader recently took me to task for referring to frugality and saving as “success in the margins.” In his words, “There is nothing marginal whatsoever about the money you can save by living sensibly and putting some money into investments. It’s practical, anyone can do it, and the positive results can be repeated over and over again. That’s far from marginal.”

I agree completely with his statement. The reason I named it such was not because it is a marginal method, but because it is inherently capped by your income and lifestyle. Frugality, by its very nature, is about shaving away a little bit from the edges and saving what you’ve trimmed. That money comes about from the margins of your life.

For example, one of the first moves I made when I started my financial recovery is to reboot my work commute. Before the change, I would drive by a coffee shop on my way to work and many days I would be tempted to stop in there, have a cup of coffee, and often follow it with a bagel. On my way home, I would drive by an electronics store and a bookstore, and I would visit both of them a few times a week. Naturally, each week, I found myself spending a lot of unnecessary money.

When I changed my commute, I no longer went by the coffee shop, the electronics store, or the bookstore. I decided that it was just fine if I happened to go to them, but with my new route, I had to make the willful choice to go there. The big sign wasn’t hanging out there along my route tempting me.

So, every once in a while, I’d decide to splurge and go to one of the places, but most of the time, I barely even thought about them on my way home from work.

Those coffee shop and bookstore visits were in the margins of my life. They were things that I did, but they weren’t deeply important to me or to who I was. They just filled up some of my time and attention. I barely noticed when I cut them away.

That, to me, is “success in the margins.”

Frugality does not work if it’s removing something you value more than the money you’re saving. If you’re making yourself miserable to save a few dollars, it’s not worth it.

Quite often, when people think about frugality, they don’t think about the margins. Instead, they think about the things they value deeply. They don’t want to lose that valuable thing, so they just toss aside the idea of cutting back.

Frugality works well in the margins. It works when you’re trying a different kind of dishwashing soap. It works when you cut out a routine shopping trip that’s become boring. It works when you give up on and get rid of the pieces of a hobby that you’re no longer passionate about. It works when you make a bunch of meals ahead of time, buying the ingredients in bulk, so you can store the made-ahead meals in the freezer and always have something convenient to make for supper.

So often, these kinds of changes are really easy to make. You pretty much forget about the change once you’ve started doing it, and the only impact it has is the savings that appear in your checking account.

Success in the margins does not mean marginal success. It means finding success in the areas of your life that don’t deeply matter to you.

A reader writes in: “It seems like so many people who write in are caught up in our consumer-driven society, and I think we all struggle sometimes with having “nothing better to do” than shop. Besides contributing to rampant debt, shopping is like an addiction that satisfies boredom, and leads to fake fulfilment and non-productivity. But it has to be enjoyable – “extreme” anti-consumerism can go too far. We need to talk more about the world of options of hobbies and activities to replace shopping.”

This reader went on to mention several activities that they enjoy, some of which overlap with the ones I mention below.

While I see where this reader is coming from, I don’t fully agree. I think there are a lot of activities that people engage in besides shopping that are regular money drains, such as playing golf, going out to eat, going to coffee shops, going to the movies, and so on.

Whenever an experience requires you to spend money, requires you to spend additional money beyond what you would normally spend, or heavily involves spending money, you should rethink whether or not you want to engage in that activity. Instead, it’s really worth your time to find things you enjoy doing that don’t involve spending money.

It would be easy for me to just start listing outdoor activities. I love spending time outdoors. I love taking walks in parks, playing soccer with my children, coaching youth sports, going swimming at one of the many lakes here in Iowa, going camping… the list goes on and on.

However, if you live in a winter climate like I do, you’re finding yourself stuck with indoor activities right now, so I’m going to name ten things I enjoy doing for little or no cost in the winter. These are all things that I fill my time with indoors, and each of them has little or no cost.

I don’t expect you’ll enjoy all of these. Instead, I suggest reading all of these and trying one or two of them (or more, if you like). Everyone is different and everyone has different passions.

Play a board or card game
First of all, if you associate board games and card games with endless, boring games of Monopoly from your youth, you’re missing out. Monopoly was first published in an early version in 1910. Comparing Monopoly to a modern board game is like comparing a Model T to a Lexus.

Try playing a more modern board game, like Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride. Look for a local hobby shop in your area and ask for a demonstration of the game if you don’t have access to a copy, just to see if you enjoy it. Board games can make for a great holiday gift.

If nothing else, a standard $1 deck of playing cards can provide lots and lots of gaming. You can play poker, euchre, pitch, bridge, rummy… the list goes on and on. There are also many, many solitaire games to play.

Read (or re-read) a book
My shelves have quite a few great unread books sitting on them, right next to a big pile of some of the greatest books I’ve ever read. There are few better ways to burn a few hours than to read a great book.

If you don’t have any books available to you, visit your local library. There are thousands upon thousands of books available there for free borrowing.

I could list hundreds of books that I’ve enjoyed over the years. The key, though, is to find something you enjoy, whether it’s something challenging or a complete page-turner.

Thoroughly clean a room in your house
Whenever I thoroughly clean a room in my home, I feel really good. Not just because of the exercise I got from cleaning the room with a good tempo, but from the enjoyment of having an uncluttered and very clean area in my home.

By cleaning, I don’t just mean dusting and vacuuming. I also mean getting rid of items that you don’t want or don’t use any more. A cleaned room generally has far less stuff in it compared to when you started.

This is just a great way to spend an afternoon. It makes your living quarters that much better and it can give you a good workout, too.

Make a great meal using what’s in your pantry
It’s easy to go out to eat… but that’s going to eat up money. It’s also easy to just go to the store and pick up a premade meal… but, again, that’s going to eat up money. Not only that, both of these options don’t help you learn how to prepare food or use up the multitude of things you have in your cupboard.

Making a meal from the items you have on hand can be a bit of a challenge, but it can be very rewarding, too. It gets some of the unused items out of your pantry and results in a delicious meal for you and your family.

Quite often, this ends up being close to a “free” meal because the items you use are things that would have otherwise never been used.

Make some homemade gifts
Homemade gifts are a great way to cut back on your budget while also producing something that the recipient will actually want and value. Instead of throwing your money at a person, you’re throwing some of your time, which often means a lot more.

There are a lot of great homemade gifts you can make, from jars filled with soup mix to original examples of any art that you’re skilled at.

The key is to invest the time to make it well, and to make something that the recipient will value. Do both of those and you’ll create something memorable out of your spare time.

Learn about a topic you’ve always been curious about
Most of us have some degree of curiosity and find ourselves wondering about some topic or another. There are few better ways to spend an idle hour or two than learning more about that topic.

The easiest way to do this is to start at Wikipedia, type in your topic, and start reading. Remember that this is a starting point – if you begin to dig deep into a topic, it’s often a good idea to move on to books on the topic.

I actually do this quite often. Recently, I’ve been learning about specific philosophers, using the entry on Wikipedia as a starting point and moving on to their writings.

Host a potluck dinner
A potluck dinner simply means that you invite friends over and have them each bring a dish. Together, you have a varied and delicious meal.

This is actually a great way to spend an evening socially without spending much money at all. Generally, you’re only in charge of one or two items which you can prepare or buy in bulk. In exchange for that, you get a great meal and an evening with friends.

We host potluck dinners about once a month. They’re always quite fun, and they often end up with a bunch of us sitting around a table playing a game, laughing and joking with each other.

Do volunteer work for a political campaign
If there’s a candidate or cause you believe in, donate your time from home to work for this campaign. There are always tasks that political campaigns would love to have volunteers for.

In the past, volunteers have written letters on behalf of candidates or issues, made phone calls, stuffed envelopes, maintained social media tools, and countless other little tasks that campaigns need fulfilled.

Most of these tasks can be done from home. I know one person who used to stuff envelopes for her preferred candidates. They would drop off reams of papers and envelopes and she’d prepare the documents and mail them for the campaign. She loved doing it.

Make a yearly calendar
This is a project that I do each year. We still rely on a wall calendar, so one afternoon, I’ll sit down and transfer all of the birthdays and other events from the previous year’s calendar to the new one. I’ll also incorporate things from my own personal Google calendar.

It can be quite a task when you fill in birthdays, anniversaries, and other such events. I like to write in reminders of those events a week in advance so that I remember to pick up a card or a gift if needed. I also like to note other important things, like key dates on our children’s academic calendars and the like.

This can take several hours, but a calendar with all of your important dates on it can be a godsend. You’ll find yourself relying on it so much that the time you invested up front will repay itself in a smoother life and better relationships throughout the year.

Get rid of your unwanted stuff
Virtually all of us have unwanted stuff in our home – old stuff filling up the closet, items that we might use “someday” but really won’t, items from abandoned hobbies that might have value.

If you haven’t used an item or really thought about it in a year, it’s probably safe to get rid of it. Once you make that decision, you have several options. You can sell it, you can donate it to Goodwill, or you can simply toss it in the trash.

Even with the options that don’t involve receiving money for the item, you’re still improving your life because you’re decreasing clutter. If you’re making money from it, too, all the better.

There are countless things to do with your time without spending money. The key is to just find things that you enjoy and do them.

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. Splitting up retirement contributions
2. Surveys at retail shops
3. Investment or debt?
4. Gum as impulse buy
5. Outsized medical bill
6. Breadmaking tip
7. Avoiding Christmas
8. Savings bonds and student loans
9. Mortgage ballon payment difficulty
10. Investing in class

I get what I call “winter hands” when the temperatures during the day drop into the thirties or below. Basically, my fingertips and palms get a bit puffy and raw simply because of the weather. I know I’m not alone in this.

If I don’t nip this in the bud, my hands are in bad shape by February or so, so I splurge on something each December: hand cream. I’ve tried tons of different things, but this is the only thing that does anything to stop my “winter hands.”

Just thought I’d share for the sake of others who find their hands getting raw in the winter.

Q1: Splitting up retirement contributions
Let me start by saying I started at an engineering job coming right out of school 3 years ago, I was used to living on almost nothing as I did in college so I kept it that way when I started my job and put a large chuck of my salary towards retirement. I recently received a promotion and put it all towards my retirement so now I am to the limit of what the government allows you to contribute to a 401k (I put it all towards a Roth 401k if that makes a difference). Also, because of some other circumstances I cannot currently contribute to a Roth IRA.

So my question: Is it smart to put all 16,500 in my company 401k plan or would I be better off only putting only part of it in my company plan and investing part of it myself where I could pick individual stocks etc. My company matches 75 cents of each dollar up to 6% (basically 4%). I am 25 years old and don’t have any future need for the money (until retirement) that i know of and have a good emergency fund already. Thanks for your help!!
- Mark

You should put enough into the 401(k) to get the match, then after that you should contribute to a Roth IRA up to the contribution limit.

Why? Having money in both a 401(k) and a Roth IRA hedges your bets when it comes to taxes in retirement, plus a Roth gives you far more investment freedom (as you get to choose your investment house and your specific investments).

If you still have money to save, go back and contribute more to your 401(k). It should be noted, though, that you’re almost assuredly in splendid shape for retirement, so if you have other life priorities that come up in the future, don’t be afraid to cut back a little on the retirement savings.

Q2: Surveys at retail shops
I have noticed that many of the fast-food restaurants, office supply stores, and other businesses are urging the consumer to go to their website and fill out surveys. Some of them promise the customer a rebate or a coupon or an entry into a drawing for some cash as a reward for doing the survey. What do you think about these surveys? Are they just a means to getting your email address or do they really ever award those cash prizes? Are they worth bothering about? Have you ever heard about anyone actually benefitting from completing these surveys?
- Jennifer

They’re probably not worth the time invested in filling out the survey. Let’s say that the company is giving out one $5,000 gift card a month. During that month, 50,000 people fill out that survey that takes 5 minutes to fill out. You’re essentially burning 5 minutes in exchange for a 1 in 50,000 shot at a $5,000 gift card. There really are better uses of your time.

If you read the fine print of those offers, they usually have a method by which you can contact the company and receive a list of the winners of the survey contest. Such contests are pretty heavily regulated and it would not be worth it for the company to commit fraud.

In the end, I think they’re legit, but they’re just not a good use of one’s time.

Q3: Investment or debt?
A little over a year ago I got married (we’re in our mid-20s) with my wife’s graduate school student loans just coming out of deferment. We have been making the full payments for the past year, and have thrown several thousand extra when we’ve had the chance, like my annual bonus and our tax return. She had been working full-time though quit her job 4 months ago due to the terrible working conditions…14-16 hour days, spending additional time working on the weekends from home, etc. She has since been seeking out new employment, but with obvious obstacles at this time.

Our balances on the 10-year plan are: Stafford $20,470 @ 6.05% ($245 per month) / Stafford $19,804 @ 6.55% ($245 per month) / PLUS $34,800 @ 7.75% ($446 per month) / PLUS $30,900 @ 8.25% ($457 per month)…for a grand total of $1,393 per month. I make $70,000 per year, we completely own our apartment and our monthly expenses for maintenance, utilites and the like are around $1,000. We have $85,000 in cash/savings in the bank and my wife also has $35,000 in stock that she inherited from a relative. I currently contribute 7% – my company matches a full 6% – to my 401k which is worth around $30,000; I also have a small pension worth around $20,000.

I want to use the $35,000 in stock to knock off one of the large PLUS loans. We’re paying over $200 a month in interest per PLUS loan, so at 12 months x 9 more years, it seems like there is a significant amount of real savings to be had by doing this. My wife strongly believes that we’re better off having that stock available in case we ever have a serious need for it, but with how much we already have in the bank, it seems ridiculous to me that we also need the stocks at this time in our life. Is there really any good reason not to use the stock money and get rid of a big chunk of loan? I think we’re better off putting that money towards retirement, starting a 529 for a future child, and getting to enjoy ourselves more (we haven’t taken a real vacation besides visiting family in over 2 years). If you don’t recommend using that stock money, is there anything else you would suggest to help make our loan payment more bearable?
- Sam

I think that your savings (both stock and cash) are outsized when compared to the debts you’re holding.

If I were in your shoes, I would calculate your shared cost of living for four months, keep that much in savings, and put the rest – both saved cash and stocks – toward getting rid of as much of that debt as possible. I’d hit the highest interest debts first (the one above 8%, for starters).

There are almost no emergencies in life that will be helped by having more than four months of living expenses in an emergency fund. If one of those extremely unlikely emergencies did come along, the cost would likely be far more than what you have in the fund right now anyway. You’re better off putting that money to better use. Remember, you’re getting an 8.25% return paying off that largest debt early versus a 1% return in your savings account.

Q4: Gum as impulse buy
I like to keep gum in my car as a breath freshener, as I’m often worried that my breath smells badly. Thus, whenever I’m in the checkout, I tend to pick up a pack of gum. I’m trying to figure out how much this adds up to and whether there’s a cheaper way to go about it.
- Evan

If you chew gum on a daily basis, a bulk purchase is probably the best option for you.

I would figure out which brand you like the best, then buy it at a warehouse club in bulk (or have a friend buy it for you there). That’s probably the least expensive way to get the gum in significant quantities.

Then, just leave a few packs in your car at all times. If you know the gum is in your car, you won’t need to buy it at the checkout. You’ll save money just from the cheaper gum, but don’t be surprised if you’re actually chewing less, too.

Q5: Outsized medical bill
For the past 3 years, my husband and I have been working very hard to be financially responsible. We have paid off 39k in student loan debt (12k to go), put a good down payment on a modest house, drive paid-for cars, taken extra jobs and never incurred any other debt.

Last month my husband ended up in the ER with a partially collapsed lung. A month later it relapsed, and he had to have surgery. We went to our in-network hospital which was supposed to be covered 100% by insurance (except for our 75$ deductible). We tried to asked if the surgeon was in-network and found out he wasn’t, but the doctors assured us that in emergencies our insurance pays 100% of usual and customary. It turns out that there is a very large difference between what our insurance deems usual and customary and what the surgeon billed.

We now owe the surgeon $14,000. There were a few charges the insurance denied that we are appealing, but even if those are approved our bill will still be over $10,000. I was tempted to be mad at the insurance company, but when I looked up the procedure codes on the American Medical Association’s web site, it turns out they have already paid 4-5x the medicare reimbursement rate for these procedures. I feel like we are being extorted by the surgeon. Basically, he could bill ANY amount he wanted!

What kind of recourse do I have? Should I go to the insurance company? The provider? The state health insurance regulator? My employer (self-insured large company)? Do you think I could settle this with the provider for a couple thousand dollars (we have our first child on the way, so we can’t afford to empty our emergency fund)?
- Linda

Your best bet is probably to negotiate with the provider for a settlement.

You can try to appeal through other means, but you’ve likely hit a limit on what your insurance will provide for this. If the insurance is going far above and beyond Medicare, your state health insurance regulator probably won’t be much help, either.

I would suggest trying to negotiate yourself. If you find that you make no headway, you can attempt to use a lawyer to help, but you’ll likely end up with legal fees that exceed the cost.

Q6: Breadmaking tip
I’ve been baking my own bread for the last few months thanks to your extremely helpful blog post. However, I’m having an issue and hope you might be able to help. When I follow your directions to use 1/4 c. milk, I find my dough doesn’t bind together and I need to add more. For example, today I added 3/4 c. of milk. Am I doing something wrong to have to add more liquid?
- Candace

My guess would be that it has to do with the humidity in your kitchen. I’ve noticed that when the air is damp in my area, I don’t need as much liquid for any dough I make. When things are dry, I need significantly more liquid (and the dough tends to dry out more).

Another factor might be your brand and type of flour. Some flours make a dough with relatively little liquid, while other flours require a lot of liquid.

I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong here, as you’re not using what I would consider to be extraordinary amounts of milk. Just remember variations like these can cause things to work out in unexpected ways.

Q7: Avoiding Christmas
Early this year, I hit my financial bottom and since then I have paid off a lot of my debt. I’ve also moved on to a lifestyle where I don’t buy many things that I don’t need and I find this lifestyle really fulfilling.

My family, though, is moving forward with the same consumerist Christmas they’ve always had and it just doesn’t appeal to me at all. I’m trying to avoid it altogether, but it’s pretty tough to do when it’s your family. Any suggestions?
- Nelson

Remember why you’re getting together with them at Christmas. The real reason for the season has nothing to do with the stuff at all. It has to do with the people.

Many people express how they feel about each other during this season through buying gifts. It’s a convenient way to say “I care” to others without having to let your emotional guard down too much.

You can do much the same thing with a handmade gift. Make a soup mix with a handwritten note attached to it. Bake everyone something delicious, like a Dutch letter. These things won’t cost you much in ingredients, but they do require time and are made better with a bit of love for the recipient. That last ingredient is really what it’s all about.

Q8: Savings bonds and student loans
My husband and I have about $74,000 in student loan debt combined ($8,000 from my undergrad and $66,000 from his undergrad.) We make about $75,000 combined and try to save the equivalent of his income every month which is about $2000. We own a home (a duplex) with a mortgage of 76,000, about half of the assessed value and two thirds of the appraised value. We have about $12,000 in an emergency fund. The $2,000/month in saving that we try to pit aside each month first went to buy two new furnaces and water heaters for the house, the we used it to build up our emergency fund, now we are thinking of splitting it and using 3/4 of the money to snowball our student loans and the other 1/4 to build our seam vacation fund. I also have about $3500 in a mutual fund that I have had since I was a kid and pretty much forget about it as its value jump around with the market. We also have about $3,000 combined from Savings Bonds. We would like to start snow balling the student loan debt but also want to start saving about $6000 to fund a european adventure next september before we start trying to have a baby. The interest rates on the student loan’s are $8,001.49 @ 4.00%, $30,490.56 @ 4.88%, $6,144.89 @ 4.19% and $29,659.26 @ 4.86%. We haven’t really done anything with the Savings Bonds before because they had a good interest rate at 4% and we liked the idea of having that money liquid. But now that we have a health emergency fund and realizing that three of our loans are incurring more interest that we are earning on the bonds, do you think we should just go ahead and cash them in to make a dent on the loans, or would the debt be miniscule enough not to really matter? Or alternatively, should we use them to put a big dent (half of our goal) in our European adventure fund?
- Sheila

If I were you, I’d consider the bonds to be part of your emergency fund. I would use them last, meaning I’d zero out the emergency fund before using the bonds, because they’re earning such a nice rate compared to the savings account.

Then, I’d make sure that I had the right amount in an emergency fund. I would try to target four months of living expenses across all of the emergency fund money. I don’t know what your total monthly budget looks like, but it may be that the cash you have right now (the $12,000) is pretty close to that.

Once you know how much four months of living expenses actually is, I’d add together the $12,000 in savings and the $3,000 in bonds, then subtract the living expense estimate from that. I’d then withdraw that calculated amount from the savings account and throw it at the debt. Leave the bonds where they’re at, earning 4%.

Q9: Mortgage balloon payment difficulty
My wife and I purchased a home in 2010. We were able to avoid having to pay PMI each month by putting a 10% down payment and taking out two mortgages, one main mortage that is a 30-year fixed at 4.75% and a second that has 15 year term at a 6% rate but is a balloon payment of $60,000. Yes, you read that correctly. It is a 15-year balloon payment with a maturity date of 15 years, making the lump sum balance due in 2025, which by my math (and if I just pay the amounts due each month would be a total of $20,500).

My question to you is how to appropriately factor for the lump sum balloon payment. The easy answer is to say that we’d be selling the place before then at a price that will cover the balance and no need to worry about it (which was the lender’s line of thinking). We do live in a great location (suburb of D.C.) and comparable properties have retained, if not increased their value since we purchased. However, I come from a more conservative mindset and am looking at this from a long-term standpoint so I want to make the assumption that we will stay at the place for the long-haul (which would make refinancing the balloon payment an option when we become eligible in about 5 years when we’ll have 20% in equity).

The balloon payment has a daily interest rate where the amount of interest owed is the daily rate times the days that have passed since last payment. Any amount paid in excess goes towards principal. Our current method is that we pay $100 extra a month to go towards principal, plus I save $350 in an combination of Roth IRA and ING Savings accounts so that by the 2024 date, we will have enough liquid cash to pay the lump-sum payment due. Is this the right approach?. One thought I have is to pay the $350 immediately each month to lower the principal (and thus decrease the overall interest paid throughout the lifetime of the loan) but we currently keep the savings in the Roth & ING account in the event of a financial emergency and need access to that cash (even though we do have a 3 month emergency fund so I don’t know if this is overly conservative). We also keep it in the Roth because then the earnings can grow/compound year over year and I can withdraw the contributions later. Right now we have about $5k in the Roth (contributions that can be deducted) and $1500 in the ‘Balloon Payment’ ING account.

Should I continue to pay an additional $100 in principal every month and save/accrue $350 in savings accounts, or should we just put all of the $450 into the balloon payment each month to reduce our future liability? Our current method will mean we’ll have enough cash to pay off the balloon payment by 2020, making a lump sum payment of $40,000.
- Ronald

If I were in your shoes, I’d probably make sure the Roth was fully funded for the year (meaning that you’re putting in about $420 a month) and then put the rest toward additional principal on the balloon payment. This will maximize the value of your Roth, which will return better for you over the long run than a savings account.

If things go well, your income will go up as time moves forward, which means you can slowly contribute more to the balloon payment. This is the best outcome, of course.

If things do not go well, you can use your Roth contributions when the time for the balloon payment arrives. You’re still in good shape and you’ll retain the Roth earnings.

Q10: Investing in class
I am a high school accounting teacher and want to teach my students about the how the stock market works and how to invest wisely (and cautiously). I thought about having them (with their parents approval, of course) set up an account at Sharebuilders because you can invest for as low as $25 a month. The downside is four dollars each monthly contribution goes towards commissions (almost 20%). Are there any other investment options (with low entry and monthly fees) that I should consider?
- Margie

If I were you, I’d have them all sign up for and play The Stock Market Game or something similar. This is essentially a stock market simulation that enables students to invest virtual money in stocks.

In order to build interest, I would make the thing laden with extra credit for your class. If they manage to beat the S&P 500, they get some bonus points, for example.

At the end of the year, I’d have each student (or team of students) present their investment strategy and how it did to the class.

I wouldn’t mix real money into this. You want to teach them how to do this, not have them start taking on real financial losses. The students that are interested will likely move into some level of investing on their own, and it’s probably a good idea for those not interested to not have actual money involved at this point.

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.