When my wife and I first got our Prius, we had a very difficult time getting the car to turn on.

Now, this seems like a completely simple issue. Put in the key, right?

Well, our Prius has a button on the dash that says “Power” instead of a key. Unfortunately, if you push that button without having a little keychain in your pocket, it won’t work.

Even stranger, if you push it with that keychain in your pocket and haven’t pressed down on the brake, you’ll just get the auxiliary power.

It took Sarah a while to figure it out. Then, a few days later, I spent more than an hour figuring out how exactly this worked. (It seems simple, but when you’re in the car with no idea how to do it, it’s a bit trickier – trust me.)

How did I figure it out? I read the manual.

Those of us who have owned a car for a while generally feel pretty confident about how the thing works. Put in the key, put it into drive, and go, right? Who needs the manual for that?

In truth, a car manual is loaded with useful things, particularly if you’re new to that model of car. It tells you how exactly each feature works on the car, for starters. After my experience with the Prius, I spent about an hour sitting in our Pilot after we purchased it, trying out all of the features just to see how they worked. Let’s just say I never found myself wondering how the emergency brake or the windshield wipers worked during the moments when I needed them.

The manual tells you lots of little useful facts, like the recommended tire pressure (invaluable for when you air up your tires) and the details of your warranty. It tells you the maintenance schedule (something I’ll talk more about in the next few days), where the tools for changing a flat tire are, and how exactly to turn on your flashers. It describes how to change the oil yourself, how to replace the windshield washing fluid, and how to change the transmission fluid.

Every single one of those things will save you time and money. Often, that time and money will be saved during a key moment when time and money are of the essence. All it takes is some time spent right now reading the manual and trying out the things described in it.

Your car manual is a giant recipe for relieving car-related headaches. Take advantage of it.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. – Thomas Jefferson

Thanks to William Grootonk for the image.

Yesterday, I was stunned to read a news report about how Freddie Mac denied people the ability to refinance, then made investments that earn them more money if people are unable to refinance. “Freddie Mac has invested billions of dollars betting that U.S. homeowners won’t be able to refinance their mortgages at today’s lower rates, according to an investigation by NPR and ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom. [...] Millions of homeowners wish they could refinance, but their lenders tell them they can’t qualify for today’s low rates because of tight rules. Freddie Mac is one of the gatekeepers with the power to set those rules, and lately, it has been saying no more often to homeowners.”

In other words, the investment arm of the institution is making investments that will profit if people can’t refinance while their lending arm is telling people that they can’t refinance.

They are not your friends.

Do we even need to go into detail about how banks, insurance companies, and lending institutions consistently work against the customer?

Citigroup’s main brokerage subsidiary, its predecessors or its parent company were considered by the SEC to have violated the law against purposeful or negligent fraud of customers under interstate commerce five times: in 2000, 2005, 2006, 2010 and 2011. In each instance, the firm undertook “never to breach the law again”.

Bank of America, which now includes Merrill Lynch, was found by the SEC to have violated security laws some sixteen times and made similar pledges on each occasion.

JPMorganChase, which now includes Bear Stearns, was found by the SEC to have violated security laws some twelve times and made similar pledges on each occasion.

The scorecard for other big financial institutions is: UBS —seven times; Goldman Sachs —three times; Wachovia —three times; AIG —twice. The list goes on.

These businesses are not out to make your financial lives easier. They are out for profit. Sometimes, profit might be in line with what your financial needs are. At other times, the profit of the bank is opposed to what your financial needs are – and profit will win.

These banks are doing exactly what they were designed to do, which was make money for the shareholders. That does not include making money for you unless doing so happens to coincide with making money for the shareholders.

My point is simple. Do not rely on these institutions for your financial future. If you already do, make it a serious focus to reduce your reliance on them.

Every day you’re in debt, you’re handing money to these financial institutions because they loaned you some money in the past. If you put $1,000 on a credit card and wait a year to pay it off, you’re not only paying back the $1,000, you’re giving them $200 more for the privilege. Mortgages are even more painful. A 30 year mortgage for $200,000 at, say, 6% often has several thousand in closing costs right off the bat. Then, over the lifetime of that mortgage, you’ll not only pay back the $200,000, you’ll also pay back $231,676.38 more in interest just for the privilege.

Got a credit card? The terms will likely change on that card on a fairly regular basis as the companies find new ways to earn a profit from you holding that card. Often, that means you’re going to be paying fees on it or high interest rates on it or interest that starts accumulating very quickly or bonus programs that are difficult to use.

Every day, I receive emails from readers that have piles of credit card debt, piles of student loan debt, a big mortgage, car loans, and other forms of consumer debt. Others are thinking of getting deeper into debt because they want that house or that car now.

When you walk in the door of a financial institution, you play by their rules. They do not give you money because they want your dreams to come true. They give you money because they’re going to make far more money from you over the long run.

Your mortgage may be life-changing for you, but it’s just another profit-making revenue stream for your bank. The same goes for your car loan or any other debt you may hold.

What’s the solution, then? Debt freedom. It’s a very simple goal, but it’s a powerful one, and until you achieve it, you’re going to be simply handing money to financial institutions.

What’s the biggest part of debt freedom? Self-control. You don’t need everything, and you certainly don’t need it today. Your life will not be made whole or complete by having a big house or a shiny new car. Focus on having just the things you actually need and stand on your own two feet with them.

The best thing you can do if you want better behavior from the banks is to make yourself far less reliant on them and stand on your own two feet financially.

The last two weeks have focused on appliances. Now, we’re going to shift directions and take a deeper look at automobiles.

Let’s take a look at two hypothetical cars.

You’re looking at a class of cars that, according to the data you’ve researched, get to 150,000 miles pretty reliably before significant problems set in. You drive 25,000 miles per year, so you’re hoping to get six years out of the car. Gas costs $3.25 a gallon. We’re going to assume that insurance among the models is equal and that maintenance costs are equal, too.

Let’s call one Model A. Model A costs $25,000. It gets 35 miles to the gallon. Based on the data you’ve seen, Model A is about 10% more reliable than the average car in the class you’re looking at.

The other one, Model B, costs $18,000. It gets 22 miles to the galoon. Based on the data you’ve seen, Model B is about 10% less reliable than the average car in the class you’re looking at.

(I’m using “Model A” and “Model B” because I’m not advocating a particular car make or model here, but simply trying to demonstrate how much of an impact on your wallet that fuel economy and reliability make.)

Both cars will sell for about $1,500 used.

Which one is the better bargain?

The one figure I care about above everything else is the cost per mile while you own this car. Usually, you’d figure things like insurance and maintenance into this cost per mile number, but since we’re assuming they’re equal, we’re only going to worry about the cost of fuel and depreciation.

So, with Model A, you’re going to lose $23,500 due to depreciation. Given that it’s 10% more reliable than the average car of that class, you’re going to get 165,000 miles out of it. You’ll have to put 4,714 gallons of gas in it over that timeframe, totaling a cost of $15,321.43, for a total investment of $38,821.43. Per mile, over those 165,000 miles, you’ll be putting 23.5 cents per mile into the car.

With Model B, you’re going to lose $16,500 due to depreciation. Given that it’s 10% less reliable than the average car of that class, you’re going to get 135,000 miles out of it. You’ll have to put 6,136 gallons of gas in it over that timeframe, making for a fuel cost of $19,943.18, for a total investment of $36,443.18. Per mile, over those 135,000 miles, you’ll be putting 26.9 cents per mile into the car.

To put it simply, reliability and fuel efficiency are worth a lot when buying a car. You would need Model B to cost about $13,000 to compete on cost with the Model A (with a sticker price of $25,000). Yes, reliability and fuel efficiency are making up for about half of the price of the car in this example. The difference is enormous.

Not only that, the more reliable your car is, the greater the time between car purchases. That means less time spent looking at and buying a car and more time spent enjoying life. In the above comparison, Model A is going to last the owner more than a year longer than Model B even though the owner is putting 25,000 miles per year on the car. Not only is Model A cheaper per mile, it’s going to last longer, too.

So, how do you find out about reliability and fuel efficiency numbers? My first destination for such research is Consumer Reports, which usually has solid information on a wide variety of car models in terms of both fuel economy and reliability. Your library likely has several years worth of Consumer Reports car issues. Beyond reliability and fuel economy, I also look seriously at safety information, which Consumer Reports also helps with.

FuelEconomy.gov is a great online resource for fuel economy data. It gives all kinds of details on the fuel economy of various makes and models of automobile.

ReliabilityIndex.com is another tool that can really help you identify which models have a history of reliability and which do not. I use their reliability index as one significant factor when deciding on what car to buy.

All of the luxury features you might want in a car should be completely secondary in your search. Most of those features can be installed later if you decide you can’t live without them, so don’t pay for them at the dealership. Focus instead on getting the best bang for your buck that you can get in terms of fuel efficiency and reliability, and you’ll find yourself happy at the lighter load that car puts on your wallet.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

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. Paying off low interest debt
2. Refinancing question
3. Coaching youth sports
4. Building credit from scratch
5. Buying home without down payment
6. Breakfast question
7. What happened to WaMu?
8. Handling my first large paycheck
9. Collectible toys for kids
10. Retirement fund on low income

About three times a week, one of our children wakes up really early. It’s often due to a bad dream, but sometimes it’s due to a noise in the night or simply stirring to wakefulness.

Usually, the kids come into our bed for a while, but I don’t get any more sleep once they arrive due to their moving around and restlessness, so I’ll get up with them sometimes.

I’m writing this early in the morning. There are Legos all around me. One of our children has fallen back asleep on the carpet.

Welcome to parenthood.

Q1: Paying off low interest debt
Two sentence summary of question: What should I do with my money when I already have a significant amount of money saved and my only debt has a very low interest rate? Is it a bad decision to pay off low interest debt?

I am 30 and married. My wife and I hope to start a family this year. We are both lawyers and we currently make approximately $350k a year (combined). Once we have a child (God willing), my wife will attempt to work part time and we expect our combined income to drop to approximately $250k. We currently rent ($2200 a month) and we are looking to purchase a home in the next 12-18 months. We have $116k in student loan debt ($66k at 2.625%, 36k at 1.63%, 13k at 2.25%). We were fortunate to have low interest rates on this debt. We also owe 11k on one vehicle (.9% financing). So, we owe $1,110 a month for our debts (education and car). We have approximately 350k saved for a house in our ING account and I have 30k in a Vanguard account (investing in index funds). We both max our our 401k contributions.

For the past year, I have been making minimum payments on our debt. For this year, I am thinking about paying off one of my wife’s two remaining loans (the 13k one) in order to free up our cash flow when she no longer works full time.

We currently save $6k a month. Would you continue to make minimum payments on these student loans or would you start to aggressive pay them off. I know that I have a lot of money saved up for a house etc. I just do not know whether I should save more or get out of debt (even though the interest rate on the debt is low).
- Vince

It is never a bad decision to pay off debt, even debt at a low interest rate.

The best way to think about paying off low interest debt is to think of it as an investment that’s guaranteed to return that interest rate through the original length of the debt.

So, let’s say you have a car loan that is at 4.5% and it has three years left to go. If you pay it off now, you’re essentially doing the same thing as buying a three year CD that returns 4.5%, with the advantage that the returns aren’t taxable but with the disadvantage that it’s a bit less liquid than a CD.

Is that a good choice for your money? I think that most of the time, the positives outweigh the negatives.

Q2: Refinancing question
I currently have a mortgage with a rate of 6%, but I have seen rates offered as low as 3.5% to some of my friends when they refinanced. Because I was curious, I called up my current bank and they offered me two options:
1.) 4.25% on a 30 year loan. This would reduce my mortgage by about $60-$80 a month. But, I would lose the $12,000 that I already paid off on the house, which I don’t like.
2.) 4.00% on a 20 year loan. This would save me approximately $35,000 over the life of the loan, although my mortgage payment would go up about $25 a month.

The numbers above include the $3000 I would pay for closing costs and another $3000 I would have to pay off (from a grant i rec’d when I purchased the house). Both these would be wrapped up in the refinancing loan above.

SO, now the big question…should I choose #1, knowing that the extra money would help in paying off my $27,000 in credit card debt (which we are trying to dig out of now) and about $25,000 in student loans. OR, do I choose #2, even though I would like to move within the next 5-7 years (so I don’t know how much of a real savings I would get). My husband and I think #2 may be the better option but it will just take us that much longer to pay off our debt. Our budget is a bit tight at the moment – we have enough to live month to month, but extra spending like presents for Birthdays or Christmas, do put quite a burden on the finances. And, we have no savings or emergency fund to speak of – aside from taking a loan against our 401K.

What do you think?
- Eve

You should look at the results of a detailed mortgage calculator, like the one over at Bankrate.

I don’t know what your balance you’re hoping to get a mortgage on is, but let’s say it’s $200,000. At the seven year mark (the point at which you think you might sell), your balance would be $172,726.96 on the 30 year loan. At that same seven year mark, your balance would be $146,519.38. Simply put, at the seven year mark, you’ll have $26,000 more in equity in your house if you choose the 20 year loan over the 30 year loan now. The point is that taking the shorter-term mortgage will result in a lot more equity in your house in a few years when you choose to sell.

Is that the right choice to make? It’s really hard to tell. I think it depends on other factors such as job stability, the size of your emergency fund, and the career opportunities you have. The more stable you are, the more I’d lean toward the twenty year loan.

Q3: Coaching youth sports
Coaching youth sports seems like something really interesting to me. It’s a way to give back to the community and get myself outside, plus it’s a free form of entertainment. The only thing I’m unsure about is how to get started.
- Marvin

The first step is to contact your town’s parks and recreation department and find out if they have any openings for youth sports.

You’ll find, though, that if you’re not a parent, you’ll probably have significantly more luck serving in other roles, such as a referee. My experience in several communities has been that the coaches in many early youth sports are parents of some of the children involved and the coaches of more advanced youth sports are professionally trained to do so.

Regardless of what role you fill, there are few things better that you can do in the community. It means physical activity, lots of fresh air, and providing great opportunities for kids.

Q4: Building credit from scratch
My brother-in-law has recently turned 18, moved out of his home with his parents, and into a home with a school friend. He is finishing high school, and will graduate in May. At that time, he will be moving closer to us and attending one of the local junior colleges for at least a year. I am trying to give him some budgeting and credit advice but my own path in each of these areas was initially flawed at that age.

My question is this: being that his income is comprised of social security (until he graduates high school), and should have a job within a few weeks, what is the safest and smartest way for him to establish and then build his credit? His initial solution was to open a credit card, but I am afraid the allure of spending will be too much for him to control.
- Jenny

One option is to have him open a credit card, but give the card to you. Then, use that credit card for things like gas only when you’re with him, and have him give you the cash to cover it. This will build his credit without any risk.

Another option is to contact your card issuing company and ask about adding him as an authorized user on your own card. Make sure that such information is reported to the credit agencies and will benefit his credit before you do so.

A final key is to remember that he won’t be listening to a lot of the things that you tell him. The best thing you can do is make sure he knows you’ll be there for him whenever he needs you. While stuff about “credit” and “Equifax” will likely go in one ear and out the other, making it clear that you care and support him as he finds his own path will stick around.

Q5: Buying home without down payment
My husband and I would like to buy a house. This is our dream and we have been trying to buy but unfortunately prices were always too high for the places we wanted to buy. This time around I’ve finally convinced my husband to look in an area which he previously didn’t want to live in (no real reasons) and where prices are a bit more affordable. The houses are around $400,000 for something decent. This is a bit expensive for us, but I think we can do it.

The problem is he wants to put down a 20% deposit, which we don’t have. We only have about $50,000 and we can maybe reach $60,000. So he becomes stubborn and asks me to look for cheaper homes, which is impossible because for $300,000 we would get nothing or a house in a crime infested neighborhood. We have a 3 year old! My thinking is, let’s put down less. 10%. His thinking is let’s put down 20% or we don’t buy the house. Because of his thinking we still don’t own a house.

What do you think? If we both really want a house, how much is really PMI going to be in the long run and is it right to make PMI such an important factor. I understand that it would be nice to have the whole 20%, but if you don’t have it and if you know it would take at least another 5 years to get that money together, what would you do?

I have a toddler and I would like her to have her own backyard, her own home and such… Also, if this makes a difference, I am not planning on being in this new house for more than 4 years, so the PMI wouldn’t be as substantial as it would be in a 20 years home…
- Linda

I don’t think you should get a house at this point. Essentially, if you’re only going to stay in the house for four years, you’re basically going to be renting for that timeframe as you’re not going to build much equity given the current housing market.

That “rent” will include your mortgage principal, your PMI, your property taxes, your homeowners insurance, your lawn care costs, and increased energy bills, at the very least. That’s a lot of money each month for a home that your child will barely remember when they get older.

Rent as cheaply as you can for four years and sock every dime away for a down payment that you can. When you reach the four year mark, then you’ll be in a much better position to buy the house that you’ll be in for the long term.

Q6: Breakfast question
I need a breakfast of some kind in order to get going in the morning. However, most mornings, all I have time for is grabbing something through the drive-thru on the way to work and that adds up quickly (both in the wallet and around the waist). Any suggestions?
- Jill

Plan ahead for that breakfast.

My solution to this problem was to make giant batches of breakfast burritos on the weekend and store them in the freezer. Then, in the mornings as I got ready to go, I’d grab one from the freezer, wrap it in a paper towel, and microwave it. I’d grab this on my way out the door and eat it on my way to work.

The cost per burrito was much lower (helping with the wallet), the ingredients were healthier (helping with the waist), it was pretty tasty, and it actually cut five or ten minutes off of my commute time because I wasn’t stopping at a drive-thru.

Q7: What happened to WaMu?
I’m a college student that’s starting to look around at banks to see which one might be best for me. In reading some old articles, I discovered a bank by the name of WaMu that was very popular and apparently a fierce competitor to ING. However, when I went snooping to their website, I discovered that they were now becoming a part of Chase. Do you know if this has changed much about the experience of using WaMu?
- Mark

WaMu is short for Washington Mutual. Washington Mutual was a bank chain that failed during the banking crisis of 2008. It’s now out of business. JP Morgan Chase wound up with most of the assets and accounts of Washington Mutual.

Most of the features that made WaMu distinct – good rates, a very unique floor plan in the branches, aggressive and quirky marketing – have not really continued under the new ownership. It’s just a part of Chase.

WaMu made a lot of poor business decisions, but it made some good ones, too. More competition is always better for customers, so I’m kind of sad to no longer see WaMu in the mix.

Q8: Handling my first large paycheck
Taking advice from your blog and several others, I’ve recently quit a low-paying job in the education field (about $19K a year, September to June) to take on a position as an office admin assistant (for about $30K a year). I feel good about the move: while I’m not using the degree that put me into such debt, I enjoy office work, I’m good at it, and it both pays better and is far, far closer to home (hour commute compared to fifteen minute commute!). I’m looking forward to no longer living paycheck to paycheck within the next two months, and have a plan in place for getting rid of my debt a bit faster and creating a more solid emergency fund (it’s currently about $1,000).

While I know I’ll still be living on a tight budget for some time, I’m looking forward to having a bit of “breathing room” – no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck, having an emergency fund, etc. Talking with friends has raised what I think is a good question, even though it might not apply to me for several years. I’ve witnessed (and even succumbed to) the “first paycheck” trap: the “hey, look, I’m making a ton more money than I’m used to – that means I can splurge and treat myself to xyz!” Obviously, until I’ve paid down my student loans in the coming years, I won’t be able to fall into this trap, and I’m hoping that after my loans are gone I can begin saving for a house.

But I was wondering: what, if anything, do you consider worth splurging on once you’re comfortably making more money than you’re used to? Assuming debts are paid off, emergency funds are more than adequate, retirement is funded, and you’re already saving towards whatever goals you have in mind, etc. Obviously, the trap of just splurging on instant-gratification items isn’t the way to go, nor is pitching out everything you’ve “made do” with until this point to buy bigger, better, brand-new whatevers. But once you’ve achieved that leeway, what do you think would be worth spending that extra in your paycheck on?
- Ben

If I were you, I would focus your “splurging” on replacing items you already use with very well made and reliable replacements.

There’s not really an exact answer here, as it depends a lot on what you do with your time and the lifestyle choices you make. If you spend a lot of time preparing high-quality meals, for example, you may want to focus on upgrading your kitchen tools slowly. If you have a lot of guests, you may want to slowly upgrade your flatware and dishes.

Don’t buy “new” things – or, if you do, be wary. Instead, slowly upgrade the stuff you actually use to high quality and reliable versions.

Q9: Collectible toys for kids
How do you handle it when your children get into some sort of collectible toy that never seems to end, like Pokemon or Pokemon cards?
- Andy

They buy such things out of their allowance. Because of that, it somewhat limits itself.

My son got heavily into Pokemon cards for a while, as it was heavily spurred by a cousin who gave him several hundred cards and some older kids at school who played with the cards in the cafeteria. He received a few packs as stocking stuffers and bought some more with his allowance, but eventually the fad passed.

This isn’t really a problem if you don’t give into your children and constantly buy them things.

Q10: Retirement fund on low income
I am 24 years old and renting in NYC. I have roughly $11,000 in student loan debt, and only $1000 in an emergency fund. I don’t have any credit card debt because I hate the idea of spending money I don’t have. I am aggressively paying off the loans (5 separate loans, averaging a 5.5% interest rate) paying close to 3x the minimum payment. I hope to have it all paid off in 3 years. Even though I have a masters in social work, the field doesn’t pay too well. Luckily I do LOVE what I do. My job offers a 403b but I am afraid to invest my contribution because I know nothing about investing, however there is a savings account type option. Then I hear all about IRAs and other retirement fund options, which, again, I know little about. I feel like I don’t have too much disposable income to even begin to put towards retirement. I still feel like I’m so young, but I don’t want to struggle to catch up later in life. What type of retirement fund is appropriate for someone who potentially can only contribute $100 or so a month?
- Fred

Your best option is probably a Roth IRA, as you can set it up yourself quite easily, keep control of it yourself, and it’s pretty simple when it comes to taxes.

However, where you save your retirement money is less important than the fact that you’re saving it. You are better off saving $100 a month in a sock drawer for retirement than you are saving $0 a month in the perfect retirement account with the best possible choices.

Just save. That one right decision dominates any small wrong decisions you’re likely to make.

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.

Just a few days ago, Connie wrote in:

It’s been a real challenge turning our financial situation around. My husband seems supportive but he’s having a really hard time breaking his old spending habits and with our reduced income it is really a challenge every month.

I finally was able to get about $300 together for an emergency fund and I was really happy with my progress when our hot water heater died. We had to replace it and it not only ate all of our emergency fund but put us a few hundred deeper in debt.

It feels like every time we start to get ahead we end up further behind.

Connie nailed it. One of the most common reasons for the failure of short term financial plans is a key appliance failure. I’ve seen it happen in my own life, when our own hot water heater failed a couple of years ago and our washing machine failed about three years ago.

The appliances in your house are not infinitely reliable. An appliance failure is going to happen in the future.

There’s never a good time for an appliance to fail. It will always cause difficulties that eat up our time and energy and add to our stress level. However, it doesn’t have to add to our financial stress.

Our solution to this challenge is really simple. We simply automatically save $10 a week for appliance replacement.

That $10 a week turns into roughly $525 per year. That’s enough to replace a washing machine or a dryer with an economical model. Over multiple years, that money will grow to enough to replace even major appliances, like a central air conditioning unit or a furnace.

We started this fund after our hot water heater failure depleted a piece of our emergency fund. We’ve put in $10 a week as well as a bit of extra “found money” along the way. It has just shy of $1,000 in it.

What will happen the next time an appliance fails? We just go replace it, then take the money out of that account to cover it. It’s as easy as pie – no financial stress, no mess.

Appliances will fail. It may be an emergency, but it’s not something you don’t know about in advance and can’t plan for. You can plan for this, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of money each week to plan for it.

$10 a week is a few beers or a few morning coffees. It’s one dinner you make yourself instead of getting a pizza.

What does it transform into? It becomes not having to stress out if an appliance fails. It becomes not having a sick feeling in your gut if your washing machine begins to make a bad noise. It becomes not having to go into debt if your air conditioning unit bites the dust.

It becomes freedom, in other words.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

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.

I’ve had the blog Money Saving Mom bookmarked for years. In fact, it’s been a permanent mainstay on the list of 25 blogs I recommend that appears on every page of The Simple Dollar. The blog has a nice mix of couponing content paired with other articles on frugal living.

Unsurprisingly, I was glad when I heard that Crystal Paine (the woman behind Money Saving Mom) had written a personal finance book. Her tone is incredibly friendly and down-to-earth, an approach that appeals to many people and is really welcome among the personal finance books you’d find at the library and at the bookstore.

I knew the book was off to the right start as soon as I flipped past the table of contents. Immediately following that is a feature that should appear in most advice-oriented books: a single page summary of the advice within. Here, it’s a series of seven short paragraphs outlining “Money Saving Mom’s 7 Rules for Financial Success”:

1. Set big goals and break them down into bite-sized pieces
2. Streamline your life and cut the clutter
3. Set up a realistic, workable budget
4. Take the cash-only challenge
5. Use coupons
6. Never pay retail
7. Choose contentment

Each one of those is followed by a paragraph discussing that particular tactic, making it a great way to start the book.

If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, Any Train Will Get You There
There are a lot of paths we can follow from where we’re at right now. We can spend like crazy. We can put all of our money into Zynga stock. We can invest very conservatively. We can pay off debt, or we can accumulate it. We can work hard to build a career, or we can count the minutes until “Schlitz o’clock” every day. The real question is where we want to be down the road. A few paths lead to that destination. Most do not. Knowing your destination will help you pick the right path.

Are the Chaos and Clutter in Your Life Keeping You from Financial Success?
It’s hard to be financially successful if you live a cluttered existence. Chaos and clutter make it hard to find the things you need when you need them. This results in things like late bills, missed opportunities, buying things out of convenience, and other financial mistakes. Over time, this adds up to a significant amount of money – and it also adds up to a pattern of living that makes it difficult to succeed.

Give Yourself an Instant Raise Without Increasing Your Take-Home Pay
How do you pull that off? Basically, Crystal Paine’s idea here is to build a basic budget, following more or less the same template that I described in this article about basic budget building. A budget doesn’t magically make you financially responsible, but going through the process of building a real budget often teaches you exactly how you can cut your spending without really altering your life.

Go Totally Plastic-Free – Temporarily
Paine advocates simply dropping all credit card use for a while – and even dropping debit cards for that time frame. Why? Doing that will force you to use cash, and making yourself use cash is a powerful way for you to get deeply in touch with exactly how your cash flows in and out of your life. When you actually see the dollars leaving instead of just swiping a card, each purchase becomes very tangible and very important. Do that enough and you’ve rebuilt (at least in part) your relationship with money.

Coupons Are Not Just For Junk Food
Paine splits the topic of couponing into two chapters (of the nine in the book), which seems to fit since her blog has a strong couponing focus. This chapter really focuses on the basics of couponing, addressing items such as where to find them (the internet, store flyers, etc.), how to organize them (binders, envelopes, etc.), and how to be selective about the coupons you find and use. Simply put, there are coupons for almost anything if you’re willing to look for them and organize what you find.

Beyond the Basics: Advanced Couponing Techniques
From there, Paine goes on to look at how to find a good store to use the coupons you’ve found at (does the store have double couponing? Does it have a customer rewards program?) and how to stack coupons to maximize your savings by finding store coupons, manufacturer coupons, and store sales all on the same item at once. I tend to find that the effort in seeking out such options isn’t worth it, but it’s well worth just keeping your eyes open for these types of bargains.

Twenty-Five Ways to Lower Your Grocery Bill Without Clipping Coupons
Don’t be married to your brands. Don’t be married to your store. Buy things in bulk. Make simple meals at home. Freeze meals that you make. Make your own household cleaners. The ideas in this chapter are great basic frugality tips that anyone can use to save money at home. They just simply work.

Going Out on the Town Without Going Broke
What you’re really looking at here is “bang for the buck.” For example, if you want to go out to eat with your family, try to look for restaurants that offer a “kids eat free” night. If you’re going out with just your partner or spouse, use programs like Restaurant.com to find steep discounts on a meal eaten out. Look for free or heavily discounted cultural events in your area, like family days or free days at local museums or free concerts in the park. There are a lot of things to do out and about that are quite fun but aren’t expensive if you’re willing to look for them.

Embrace Today
A lot of these tactics are filed away by people for “someday.” If you do that, then you’re just committing yourself to more and more of your life devoted to struggling with debt, tied to your job, and feeling that you’re never going to get ahead in life. Today is the day to start living life with more sensibility when it comes to your money.

Is The Money Saving Mom’s Budget Worth Reading?
The Money Saving Mom’s Budget is an absolutely spot-on introductory book to cutting your spending. It focuses much more on the “spend less” part of the equation than the “earn more” part, but that’s often the part of the equation that people find the most success with when they hit that realization that something needs to change in their life.

The title alone somewhat restricts the readership – I probably wouldn’t give a single guy a book called “The Money Saving Mom’s Budget,” after all. However, this would be the first book I’d give to a mother who is just starting to think about making financial changes – a realization that often comes to parents after having a child.

Great book, Crystal.

Check out additional reviews and notes of The Money Saving Mom’s Budget on Amazon.com.

One of the most critical appliances in our home when I was growing up was our chest deep freezer.

We kept it in the attached garage, just a few steps out of the garage door that opened onto the kitchen. That freezer would store bag after bag of frozen fish caught by my father, lots of venison and beef that my family would trade for (or, in the case of venison, occasionally hunt for as a food source), frozen vegetables, and countless other food items.

It was pretty much a daily routine to retrieve something out of the freezer in the morning to thaw for the evening’s dinner. Whether it was fish, vegetables, or meat, our meals were often acquired when they were cheap and thawed when we needed them.

My wife, Sarah, had a very similar experience growing up. Their deep freezer resided in their basement and contained the key ingredients of most of their meals.

In both cases, our families were not rich. They had to find creative ways to stretch a dollar. Given that food is a big part of any family’s budget, stockpiling food is definitely a strategy worth investigating. A deep freezer makes it easy to stockpile freezable food (in other words, most food) and keep it from going bad.

In other words, the presence of a large home freezer makes it possible to capitalize on discounts on perishable foods.

It was unsurprising, then, that one of our first purchases when we owned a home of our own was our deep freezer, which, like the freezer at my parents’ house, resides right out in our attached garaged, near the garage door. It’s always got some food in it, and at times it has quite a lot of food in it. It all depends on the opportunity – and when opportunity strikes, we’re able to hit it hard.

I’ll give you an example of this. Recently, a local grocery store had a sale on bags of flash-frozen vegetables. I don’t remember the exact price, but it was very low, something on the order of $0.79 per bag or something, limited to ten per customer. Given that a bag of flash-frozen vegetables is often a key side dish for our family’s dinner as well as our lunches the following day, that’s an attractive sale for us.

If our only freezing capacity was the freezer atop our refrigerator, we would have had to stop at four or five bags. Simple space issues would have kept us from capitalizing. Instead, Sarah went to the store and bought the maximun number of bags, then I went to that same store and bought the maximum number of bags.

Another example: a friend of ours offered to sell us a quarter of a cow, processed and packaged, at cost a few years ago. This meant that our cost per pound for the meat was about 40% or so of what we would have to pay for it in the store, but we would be receiving a lot of it. On the order of 150 pounds of meat.

Thankfully, we had our deep freezer, so we were able to make it all fit. We were able to knock 60% or so off of approximately 150 pounds of beef. Not only did we enjoy it ourselves, we also traded packages with friends, family, and neighbors.

I can go on and on with these examples: fresh food from our garden (or from the gardens of friends), quadruple batches of casserole, frozen breakfast burritos, frozen vegetable stock – it’s an endless list. In each case, we’re taking advantage of the economy of scale by producing a lot of something (reducing the cost per item) and then saving the rest for later.

The only drawback of this plan is the cost of a deep freezer. You can get one for $300-500 or so, and the annual energy cost varies, but is usually somewhere around $50 a year. To break even, you’re going to need to be saving about $60-70 a year on your food costs.

For our family, we can sometimes save that much in a month due to our deep freezer. Between the flash-frozen vegetables bought at a discount, the frozen casseroles prepared ahead of time, the breakfast burritos made at an incredibly cheap rate per burrito, the produce from our garden socked away for later, and countless other little things, the deep freezer saves us money almost every single day. It’s a key element of our family’s food frugality.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

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. Rodin on what’s worth doing
Everything is worth doing if you approach it right.

“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.” – Auguste Rodin

The challenge always is figuring out ways to actually use the experience wisely. If you view the world from this perspective, life itself is a constant path toward self-improvement.

2. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon on female entrepreneurship
I have sent this video to a lot of people this week.

No one should ever be afraid to show the world what they can do.

3. Dale Carnegie on perseverance
The number one ingredient for succeeding at anything is simply sticking with it. That’s where the vast majority of people who try something fail.

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all.” – Dale Carnegie

The Simple Dollar would have never succeeded if I did not stick with blogging for years and years, through thick and thin.

4. The Yellow Flowers (1902) by Henri Matisse
I love how impressionist paintings are much like a faded memory. To me, they elicit something much deeper than a photograph.

It feels like the closest I’ll ever get to seeing the world through another’s eyes.

5. Criss Jami on passions
If you want to channel something you’re passionate about into something that can carry your whole life, the recipe is pretty simple.

“Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.” – Criss Jami

It takes a lot of time, a willingness to constantly improve, and a lot of focus. It brings joy, too.

6. CodeAcademy
Ever wanted to learn about computer programming? This is probably the best tool I’ve ever seen for learning about it completely from scratch, even if you know very little about computers.

I’d love to see the same approaches used for learning about other topics, too. The ideas they have for learning going on at CodeAcademy have wider applications than just code, I think.

7. Nelson Mandela on going home again
When I was younger, I used to wonder what had changed in my home town.

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” – Nelson Mandela

Now, I know that most of the change was me.

8. Mass Ascension
One thing I want to visit someday is a hot air balloon festival, like this one.

There is something deeply appealing to me about hot air balloons. I can’t put my finger quite on what it is, but whenever I see one, I want to stop and watch it.

9. Brian Goldman on experts and fallibility
Goldman focuses mostly on doctors, but this is true of everyone that you listen to and value their opinion. Humans are fallible. They make mistakes. That does not mean they’re evil or out to get you.

This is why multiple sources are always a good idea for anything you want to know. Generally, people aren’t trying to give you bad information, but humans are fallible and imperfect.

10. C.S. Lewis on childishness
This past week, I got an email from a reader chiding me for reading and writing fantasy and science fiction, calling them childish. This was my response, a simple quote from C.S. Lewis.

“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” – C.S. Lewis