Now, if you do a bit of “back of the envelope” math on those DVDs, you’ll quickly figure out the cost involved. If you assume an average of $10 per DVD, that’s $10,000 in discs sitting there. That’s expensive, no matter how you slice it.

You could make a similar case about my video game collection. Once upon a time, I had almost 100 games for my Playstation 2 and Gamecube. Again, if you assume they average out to $40 a pop, that’s $4,000 in video games.

That’s a lot of money tied up in hobby/entertainment spending.

Obviously, I was spending beyond my means here, but there is a happy balance to be found when it comes to hobby and entertainment spending. It just took some time to really figure it out.

Here’s the solution we worked out for our hobby and entertainment spending.

Each month, Sarah and I have a total dollar amount we can each spend on our hobbies and entertainment choices. Everything comes out of that money, from movie tickets to games, from books to painting supplies. If we’re doing something for entertainment’s sake, then it comes out of that budget.

What should that amount be? It really depends on your financial situation. However, I believe that everyone should have some small amount budgeted toward this kind of free spending, even if money is really tight. Having a bit of money to spend on whatever you wish really takes the pressure off of financial change. The simple idea that you have money in your pocket that you can spend without worry often makes the challenge of getting in good financial shape much easier.

The challenge that many people have is that they have their toes in a lot of different hobbies and types of entertainment. They watch movies. They read books. They play golf. They buy designer clothes. They buy lots of personal appearance products. They play video games or board games. They read magazines. They watch cable television.

All of these options cost money, and if you dabble in a lot of options at once, your costs are really going to add up. How do you choose among them?

For me, my spending almost exactly matches how much time I spend engaging in and thinking about a particular hobby, at least to a certain extent.

I tend to think of this more in terms of the time I don’t spend rather than the time I do spend.

So, for example, let’s say I just watched one movie in the last month (which is actually true). Given that I don’t have a big interest in movies based on my own behavior, why would it make sense to spend much money on movies in the coming month? (In fact, I can only think of two films coming out in the near future that I have any interest in at all, and those are both adaptations of books that I loved.) So, for now, I won’t spend money on DVDs or going out to the movies.

Instead, I focus my time – and thus my money – on the small number of hobbies that really matter to me. I enjoy reading, so I’ll probably buy a book or two this month and maintain a magazine subscription, which, combined with the library’s resources, will give me plenty to read for the entire month (or more). I play a lot of games, both computer games and board games, so I might buy one new game this month since they take up such a significant portion of my time and attention. That leaves me with a bit more to spend on unexpected opportunities.

I feed the things I care about and cut back sharply on the things that I don’t. I determine what I care about based on the amount of time and attention I give it.

The one thing I ignore is the sense that I “should” pay more attention to a hobby. In the past, when I would feel like I hadn’t spent much time on a particular hobby lately, I’d “cure” it by spending more money on that hobby. The problem with that was that by having a lot of hobbies that I was trying to maintain, there were a lot of hobbies that needed “curing,” and that was expensive.

The better solution is to let those unattended hobbies wither on the vine for now. If you’re not passionate enough about it to give it quite a bit of your time and focus during your spare time, then you’re not passionate about it to funnel your money into it.

If you’re not passionate enough about a magazine to keep up with the issues, cancel the subscription. If you’re not passionate enough about films to watch quite a lot of them consistently, stop buying DVDs or paying for Netflix. If you’re not passionate enough about a premium movie channel to watch it several times a month, cancel that subscription. If you’re not passionate enough about video games to play all the way through the ones you have, then don’t buy new ones.

Another challenge is figuring out whether you’re going to get adequate enjoyment out of unknown purchases. How do you know whether a book you buy will be worth the cost?

I’ve found two solutions for this.

First, I try very hard to really understand what I like. I save my money for things I’m sure that I will like, such as board games with some strategic choices that play in 45 minutes or so, computer games that aren’t highly reliant on reaction speed but reward thought and have lots of replay potential, and books from authors I’m familiar with or come recommended to me from sources that I deeply trust (mostly friends).

Second, I use freebies and samples. If something is really outside of the bounds of what I like, I find a free or nearly-free way to try it. I download a sample chapter on my Kindle or start reading it at the bookstore. I download a game demo on Steam. I read lots and lots and lots of reviews. I check the item – a book, an audiobook, a DVD – out from the library.

When I put all of these tactics together, it actually becomes very easy to stay within my hobby and entertainment budget. There’s really no reason to overspend.

The post Keeping Hobby and Entertainment Spending in Check appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Connie writes in: I trade books by mail. It costs me about $2 to send out a book via media mail and I have to also spend the materials to wrap it. If I just swap page turners at my local used book store, I can get them at $2.50 a pop if I buy a bunch at once. Am I really saving anything trading by mail?

This sounds like you use PaperBackSwap, a service I love and have been using for years. Much like you, I’ve been curious at times whether or not it’s worth it and I’ve ran the numbers several times. Each time, I’m pretty sure I’ve decided it’s a good deal.

For starters, my estimate of the cost of my supplies is about ten cents. I use a sheet or two of printer paper, a single printed page with black and white ink on it, and some packing tape. Media mail varies by weight, but the typical range for me is $2.41 for a paperback in the mail. So, my total cost for shipping out a book is $2.51.

Now, let’s compare that to the used bookstore. At my local used bookstore, they will take most books in trade for anywhere from $0.25 to $1. They also sell used books at varying prices, anywhere from $1 (for Harlequin romances and the like) to $5 (mostly hardbacks). There’s also sales tax on your purchases, so that tacks on another 7%.

If I were just swapping for Harlequin romances, the local used bookstore would probably be cheaper. I could trade in one for $0.25, buy a new one for $1 (minus the $0.25 credit), and walk out of there having paid about $0.80 for a novel.

However, most of the books I want to read there are on the $3 or $4 shelves. I tend to read a lot of nonfiction, some science fiction and fantasy, and some general fiction, too. I might get $0.50 in trade for the books I bring in, but my net cost is either $2.50 or $3.50 for a book I want to read, plus the sales tax. That means either $2.68 or $3.75 for a new (to me) book after paying the sales tax.

If you add on top of that the fact that I can do PaperBackSwap at home whenever I want and there’s a much more extensive selection there, it starts to become a no-brainer.

In Connie’s case, she’s shipping out books for $2.51 via media mail, or she’s buying them for $2.68 at her local used bookstore. For her, the cost is pretty close, so it really comes down to other values. Would she rather support the local business? Or would she rather enjoy a larger selection online?

As for me, I’ll just keep using PaperBackSwap. It’s a service I’ve used for many years to recycle my read books because it’s convenient and the selection is pretty good.

There’s also another take-home point here. If you’re an avid reader, trading used books is really a bargain. Let’s say I spend eight hours reading a book that I swapped for $2.51. That means I was entertained for a cost of about $0.30 per hour.

While that’s not as cheap as the library, it’s pretty cheap, and there’s no danger of late fees or other such things if you don’t get your book finished or if your son drops a library book behind his bed.

Not only that, if you read something at least a little challenging, you’re growing your mind, too. You’re learning something new and improving your literacy. That’s what I call a real value.

The post Saving Pennies or Dollars? Used Books appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One problem-within-a-blessing with Netflix streaming, though, is that there is a mountain of content on there – and a fair amount of it is awful. You have to dig around to find good stuff on there, but if you can dig a bit, there’s a lot of good stuff.

Which brings us to a reader email. Tom writes in:

You’ve mentioned great finds on Netflix streaming several times on The Simple Dollar. Why don’t you collect all of them into one place, so we can book mark it?

Your wish is my command.

Below are 75 things I’ve found on Netflix streaming that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, from television series to documentaries, from comedies to dramas. I’m positive that somewhere on this list, there are a few things that you haven’t seen that you’ll love. Some of these you’ve seen me mention before. Others are new.

I’ve broken the list down into some arbitrary categories. Also, all television series are linked to the first season of the series – many series have multiple seasons on Netflix streaming. I’m also going to challenge myself to describe each entry in the length of a tweet – 140 characters or less. (You can, of course, click through to read more information.)

It’s also worth noting that this list is current as of early April 2011. Netflix constantly makes small adjustments to the programs they offer on streaming, so inevitably a few of these will disappear over time, while other interesting stuff is added.

Films – Animation
Ponyo: A wonderful coming-of-age story that my two older children absolutely love.
The Iron Giant: This is my all-around favorite animated movie of all time.
Up: If the first five minutes of this Pixar movie doesn’t tear you up, you haven’t experienced deep love yet.

Films – Comedy
Bill Hicks Live: Bill Hicks is my favorite stand-up comedian of all. This provides four vintage stand-up sets from him.
Chicago: A comedy-musical-drama that won the Best Picture Oscar several years ago.
Duck Soup: This is, in my opinion, the vintage black and white comedy.
Fargo: Extremely dark humor all throughout this film.
Groundhog Day: One classic debate I’ve had with my wife is figuring out how many years pass during this film.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: If you’ve ever enjoyed Shakespeare, this is absolutely hilarious. It turns Hamlet on its ear.

Films – Documentary
Capturing the Friedmans: An utterly gripping picture of a family in crisis.
Down on the Mountain: A wonderful summary of bluegrass and Americana music. I’ll turn it on and just listen to the music.
Exit Through the Gift Shop: An amazing (and often hilarious) documentary on the commercialization of art.
Hoop Dreams: A great perspective on the challenges and exploitation in youth sports.
In Debt We Trust: A deep look at the challenge of personal debt in America.
Jesus Camp: Incredibly insightful and polarizing look at the practices at a church camp.
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery: Beautiful coverage of the discoveries that Lewis and Clark made on their journey.
Man on Wire: A look at how a high-wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 was pulled off.
Maxed Out: Much like “In Debt We Trust” (above), a great look at personal debt in America.
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan: A musically and artistically rich look at the impact of Bob Dylan on American music and art.
Restrepo: A documentary about life on the ground for a platoon in Afghanistan.
Super Size Me: An insightful and very entertaining look at the impact of fast food on health.
The One Percent: What does the increasing gap between the rich and poor in America really look like?
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price: A look at how Wal-Mart keeps their prices low and profit high through pushing the costs off onto other aspects of business.

Films – Drama
Amadeus: A very entertaining look at the sometimes seedy life of Mozart.
Barton Fink: A very dark look at the life of a writer with an extreme case of writer’s block.
Bonnie and Clyde: A spectacular classic film about the escapades of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.
Charade: One of the best thrillers of all time. The less I tell you, the better.
Everything Is Illuminated: A quirky look at someone coming to terms with their ethnic heritage.
Following: Christopher Nolan’s (Inception) first movie, a dark look at the challenges of writer’s block.
Gangs of New York: A powerful movie about the early days of gangsterism in America.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Jack Nicholson’s performance as a psychiatric ward patient is one of the best things ever put to film.
Precious: A heartbreaking story about personal redemption.
Sling Blade: Billy Bob Thornton is amazing as a developmentally-challenged man in a small town.
The Graduate: One of the small handful of movies I’d call essential viewing.

Films – Foreign
Amelie: A quirky French romantic comedy. If I weren’t married, I’d fall in love with the main character.
Blind Shaft: A bleak but powerful Chinese film about life in the Chinese coal mines.
Oldboy: An amazing South Korean action film that is best if unspoiled at all.
Seven Samurai: A classic Japanese Kurosawa film upon which the American film “The Magnificent Seven” was based.
The 400 Blows: A French film with a very memorable main character about the challenges that juvenile offenders face in their lives.
Yojimbo: A classic Japanese samurai film about a lone warrior caught between two gang bosses.

Films – Sci-Fi/Fantasy
District 9: A powerful film about loss of identity through the eyes of humans and alien refugees.
Escape from New York: One of my favorite films as a teenager, this is a classic sci-fi action film.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: A gorgeous epic film about the harrowing journey of an individual with a great burden to bear and those who help him.

Series – Comedy
30 Rock: A quirky comedy about the production of a television show.
Archer: An animated humorous take on James Bond style spy movies.
Arrested Development: A wonderfully self-referential comedy about a clueless rich family.
Better Off Ted: A comedy about the challenges of working for a soulless corporation.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog: A short musical series about the emotional conflicts of a supervillain.
Futurama: What will the year 3,000 look like?
Scrubs: A great series about hospital workers… for the first five or six seasons or so.
The Guild: A warped look at the lives of obsessive players of online RPGs (a thinly-disguised World of Warcraft).
The IT Crowd: A darkly comical look at how IT workers deal with life.
The League: An amusing but sometimes serious look at the members of a fantasy football league.
The Office: A great series about professional life at a “typical” office environment.
The Office (UK): The superior (in my opinion) British predecessor of the above series.

Series – Documentary
Cosmos: The best documentary I’ve ever seen. Carl Sagan looks at the universe.
Frontline: Not a single series, but a large collection of short documentaries on various subjects.
God in America: How Religious Liberty Shaped America: A great look at the ties between religion and the history of America.
Ken Burns’ The Civil War: Moving coverage of America’s Civil War, and surprisingly effective at humanizing it.
Ken Burns’ The War: An emotionally (and factually) powerful look at the second world war.
Ken Burns: Baseball: A deep look at the history of baseball and how it’s intrinsically tied to American history.
Ken Burns: Jazz: A look at the history of jazz music and the deep ties it holds to the twentieth century in America.

Series – Drama
Bones: A great series about forensic anthropology and human relationships.
Damages: The single best legal drama I’ve ever seen.
Friday Night Lights: If you think this show is about football, you haven’t watched it.
Sons of Anarchy: A harrowing look at an anarchist motorcycle gang and the conflicts they create.

Series – Sci-Fi
Battlestar Galactica: The single best sci-fi television series I’ve ever seen. If you’ve ever even considered watching one, watch this one.
Doctor Who: A quirky British series about a time traveller who pops up at different points and locations.
Firefly: The second best sci-fi series I’ve ever seen, and a bit more tongue-in-cheek than the first.
Flashforward: A great series about the consequences of being able to see six months into the future.
Lost: A wonderful (and deep) series about isolation, life, death, and hope.
Stargate SG-1: A very fun and light series about humans who visit other planets and cultures.
The X-Files: You couldn’t pay me enough to miss this series throughout the 1990s. This is the grandaddy of modern sci-fi on TV.
Torchwood: A great series about a team that investigates abnormal events.
Twin Peaks: A very quirky series about a strange small town and a murder investigation.

Grab some friends (or your honey), pop some popcorn, and settle in for some low-cost entertainment!

The post 75 Things Worth Watching on Netflix Streaming appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Taco Bell themselves list ingredients in their “meat filling products” that include “water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, maltodrextrin, soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch, sodium phosphate and silicon dioxide.”

Silicon dioxide?

Our homemade grilled chicken-salsa burritos, costing $0.30 apiece

Here’s the thing: the lawsuit itself isn’t really all that important. It’s the broader issue that scares me. Consider that the USDA only requires that something contain 40% meat to be called “meat,” whether at Taco Bell or anywhere else you might buy a “meat product.”

If you start digging into the standards for what can be labeled as particular foods, the issues get quite disturbing. Check out this article in which it’s revealed that the standards for meat in school lunches are lower than the standards for meat in fast food.

The point of all of this is that whenever we buy a product, we’re relying on both the company being honest with us about its contents as well as government regulations that do not always have the best interest of the consumer in mind. This goes for not just food, but for all manner of things from toothpaste to makeup to even product placements in television and film.

Our homemade bean burritos, costing about $0.20 apiece

The most common arguments in favor of such products revolve around convenience and cost. All right, let’s look at those.

For comparison’s sake, I took a look at Taco Bell’s value menu. An $0.89 value menu five layer burrito there – which you’ll also have to pay tax on – weighs 248 grams.

In the picture above, you can see my homemade bean burritos. I weighed one of these out of the freezer (because I have several frozen). The weight? 340 grams. It costs $0.20, while you’re dropping $0.95 at Taco Bell.

What about something “better”? I compared Taco Bell’s Chicken Ranch Taco Salad with our own burrito bowls, pictured below. The Taco Bell salad weighs 420 grams, while my homemade one weighs about 470 grams (excluding the bowl). The homemade one costs $2.25, while the Taco Bell version costs $5.69 plus tax, carrying the price up to $6.

And think of the “meat” you’re getting in that “bargain”!

(Yes, I’ve made similar comparisons in the past with McDonalds in my sights.)

The best solution for this problem is to stick with the most basic ingredients possible and exert the most control you can over those ingredients. Be picky about the ingredients you buy for your food – don’t just settle for whatever prepackaged meal has a tasty picture on the box. Be picky about what you watch on television – don’t just settle for channel surfing (or, better yet, read a book from the library).

Our huge vegetarian burrito bowls, costing $2.25 apiece

I think it’s fairly clear at this point that there are huge cost savings that can be found from being more involved in the things you consume.

The biggest challenge facing everyone is the issue of time and convenience. People eat at fast food restaurants because it’s convenient and it takes time to prepare your own food. People channel surf because it’s convenient and it takes time to prepare other entertainments.

The phenomenon of convenience, from my experience, comes down to time and energy bottlenecks. I see this in my own life. Weekdays are often very tight, with both Sarah and I needing to get professional work done, three young children to attend to, and regular household upkeep as well. The convenience of simply eating a premade meal or watching whatever television program happens to be on is very tempting simply because it allows us to conserve energy and time for other purposes.

At other times, though, we have large windows of time – and it’s in those time windows that there’s a lot of value in improving the options during those time bottlenecks.

I’ll find good programming to watch and add it to the Netflix queue so I don’t have to think when I’m bottlenecked – just click and go.

I’ll prepare healthy food with good ingredients in advance so I don’t have to exert a ton of energy or thought when we need a meal – just toss it in the oven and go.

Such actions enable me to enjoy convenience without losing quality. I can have food quickly without having to eat “meat.” I can watch something worthwhile without having to surf.

This spreads throughout life. The same philosophy explains why it’s worthwhile to install a programmable thermostat (it saves you money whether you’re pinched for time and energy or not) or air seal your home.

Our homemade breakfast burritos, costing $0.72 apiece

In the end, if everything else evens out, the long term factors win out. If you consistently consume healthier food, you increase your chances for good health throughout life. If you consistently entertain yourself with things that challenge your mind (at least gently), you increase your ability to think through situations as well as having a warehouse of knowledge that can help in many situations.

You’re rewarded with lower health care costs and greater long term earning opportunities.

Convenience can be a very good thing. It can help us survive some of the time and energy bottlenecks that modern life foists upon us. The problem with convenience, though, is that it can often lead us into overcosted and questionable choices like Taco Bell’s “meat product” featuring silicon dioxide. Yum.

We can combat this by simply planning ahead a little bit. Turn on some music this Saturday and make a batch of burritos for the freezer so you’re not left with a fast food stop this week. Install a programmable thermostat so you don’t have to remember to adjust the thermostat every time you go to bed, get up, or leave for work (and you’re not paying for it if you forget in a bottlenecked period). Seek out some documentaries or other programming on topics that really excite you and record them so that the next time you flop on the couch, you can just hit a buttion and watch something fulfilling instead of channel surfing through a wasteland.

You save money. You eat healthier. You don’t lose convenience. And you’re not left eating “meat product.” It’s a win all around.

The post Taco Bell’s Beef Problem: Convenience and the Value of Knowing What You’re Consuming appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

So, what do we use it for? In the evenings, we certainly do use it for a bit of entertainment to unwind a couple nights a week (we’re watching Doctor Who seasons right now), but my wife and I often dig deep into the documentaries in order to learn about a new topic and give us some food for thought on a particular subject.

Two big caveats. First, documentaries can definitely be as biased as anything else. I watch a documentary not because I believe it’s hard fact, but because it can often be a very compelling way of introducing an idea or making a case for another idea. A good documentary shouldn’t leave you thinking you now have all the answers, but should encourage you to follow up by finding more facts and different viewpoints.

Second, a good documentary should do just two things: it should make a particular idea or perspective clear to you and it should entertain you along the way. If it fails at either, it’s not a good documentary.

Over the past decade, I’ve watched a lot of documentaries. Some of them have been awful and failed on both the entertaining and clear perspective counts. Some of them have succeeded on one side or the other – they entertain but don’t have a point, or they have a point but are dreadfully boring.

Below are fifteen that succeed on both sides of the matter – and every one of them is available on Netflix streaming. If you have such an account (and I’m basically encouraging people to ditch their cable bill in exchange for it), then you’ll be able to just click any of the links below and either start watching immediately or add it to your instant queue to watch later.

Consider this an encouragement to cancel your expensive cable or satellite bill.

Cosmos
This is, hands down, the best documentary I’ve ever seen. It’s far and away the best science-related documentary I’ve ever seen, but for me, the take-away message was the fragile nature of human life. We are not invincible and the universe around us is very, very large, indeed. There are scenes from this that have stuck in my mind for many years.

Maxed Out
Maxed Out covers the nature of overspending in America during the buildup to the 2008 financial crisis incredibly well, digging into the specifics of why it happened and the roles both individual choice and companies played into it. If you want more on this topic, In Debt We Trust is solid but nowhere near as good.

Food Inc.
If you’ve ever wondered what the process of moving food from the fields to your local grocery store and onto your dinner plate looks like, this is the show for you. I came out of this with two notable ideas: first, I wanted desperately to change my dietary habits, and second, my opinion of Wal-Mart went up significantly.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
For the flip side on Wal-Mart, this makes the case that Wal-Mart’s business practices in bringing low-priced goods to many towns is often harmful in multiple dimensions. It reduces the quality of work and customer service available in the towns and also forces larger companies into some very shady practices in order to provide the goods at the very low prices that Wal-Mart demands.

Babies
This documentary compares how babies are raised in four distinctly different cultures and economic levels. What can be concluded from this is that you don’t really need to give your baby everything – all it really takes to raise a happy and healthy baby is care from the parents. No mountain of stuff will really make a difference if the parents are involved to begin with.

Hoop Dreams
My feelings on college sports changed significantly after watching this film (and, in similar ways, after reading The Blind Side). Individuals from very broken backgrounds are trying very hard to take advantage of the germ of basketball talent that they have so that they can make a new life for themselves, because their background assures them that many other opportunities in life are going to be closed to them. This is why collegiate athletics are important, in my opinion.

Super Size Me
This is a good one to pair with Food Inc. It documents the effects of eating nothing but fast food for a month on a human body, and the results are fairly ugly. Again, it’ll make you question what you eat, which is a powerful question to ask both for your health and for your finances.

Jesus Camp
This one has provoked more discussion with other people that have watched it than anything else I’ve ever seen, hands down, so it certainly fits here. That being said, it’s going to cause a reaction in you, but that reaction is going to be different depending on who you are and your beliefs. It’s a surprisingly unbiased look at a very conservative Christian youth camp – it almost feels like they turn on the cameras and just let them roll. From my eyes, there are good things and bad things about what’s shown regarding the camp, but some people are going to be much more strongly inclined to see the “good” and others are going to be strongly inclined to see the “bad.” Be prepared for some… discussions if you watch it with others.

Man on Wire
This one stands out to me not just because of a compelling story, but because it shows what can happen if you bring enough passion and repeated effort to the table. It tells the story of a man who walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the 1970s without a rope, and how lots and lots of training and planning made such a seemingly impossible stunt possible.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
In many ways, this is similar to Man on Wire in that it documents the result of sustained effort and hard work, as two men compete and train to achieve the highest score in the world at the video game Donkey Kong. I genuinely watched this for a laugh, but it turned out to be incredibly compelling and rather thought-provoking. What drives people to be the best in the world at something? Can I harness that myself?

One last note: the Seven Up! series of documentaries is one of the best things I’ve ever seen, but the series isn’t wholly available on streaming, particularly the first one. However, you can get the disc if you so choose.

Now cut your cable and save yourself some money!

The post Netflix Streaming: Ten Thought-Provoking Things to Watch appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Redbox If we’re already thinking about this earlier in the day, there are several Redbox machines within ten miles of us that we could visit as part of our shopping trip. Renting a film there lets us choose what we want that day and the cost is only $1 per night. However, we also have to be sure we’re going to return it the next day or else we’re going to be spending $2 … or $3 or more on that rental. Good selection and potential low cost … if you can return it easily.

The local video store It has atrocious selection (the only new release they had in there the last time I visited was Marmaduke), but the price is fantastic – $1 for three days of rental. Plus, I can walk over there and return it whenever I like. Cheapest rental option overall, but the selection is abysmal

Online rentals In terms of giving us the most convenience combined with the best selection, this is the best option. We have several ways of renting a movie online, starting the download, and watching it starting in about fifteen minutes – Amazon Video on Demand, iTunes, and the Playstation Store all allow this. Unfortunately, most of the time, you’re going to be paying at least $2 for that movie, and often more for newer releases. The most expensive per hour of movie watching, but the most convenient.

Netflix It costs $9 a month, but you always have a disc of some sort sitting there that’s a movie that you at one time wanted to watch. On top of that, there’s streaming – but the selection on streaming is very random and loaded mostly with older releases and independent films and documentaries. The best option if you watch more than one or two films a month.

Watching a DVD we already have We have a shelf of DVDs – why not just watch one of those? It’s free, but you’re almost always just rewatching something you’ve already seen.

Given those options, here’s how things flush out for us.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, that alone takes care of the vast majority of your rental needs. We subscribe to Netflix because we watch a movie about once a week and watch some non-commercially interrupted TV shows on streaming, especially during the winter (like Doctor Who, for example). That takes care of almost all of our needs for about $9 a month, which brings our cost per hour of entertainment well under $1.

Without Netflix, Redbox is probably the best option – if it’s convenient. In other words, if you can rent the movie, watch it that night, and return it the next day, you’re paying about $0.50 per hour of entertainment – a very good price. On top of that, the selection is usually quite good at a kiosk. However, if it’s not convenient for you, the cost goes way up – if you can’t return it for a few days, it gets pricy quick.

Wait on renting online until you have a gift card to burn. The prices are so high compared to other rental venues that we’ll just find something on streaming rather than renting a new release for $4 or $5. The exception to this is if we have a gift card of some sort to use more or less for this specific purpose.

The post Doing the Math on Renting a Movie appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

This is certainly something that has challenged me over the past few years. I’ve got several hobbies that could seemingly be very expensive on their own but, with some footwork and forethought, I’ve found ways to trim their costs down to almost nothing while still retaining what I enjoy about each one.

Over the last week, I’ve also talked to several people I know who simultaneously have seemingly expensive hobbies yet enjoy them with minimal cost. I made a list of many of these hobbies and the methods used to reduce their costs. If you don’t see your hobby listed below but have a great idea for how to reduce the cost of it, mention the hobby and the cost-cutting method in the comments.

Antiquing Focus on really mastering how to value particular types of items – vintage toys, etc. Save your buying impulses until you’re absolutely sure you spy an underpriced item that you can turn over.

Board games Hit thrift stores regularly as you’ll often find great, complete games for almost nothing. Before you buy new games, attend sessions at your local game store where you can demo such games and try them out. Build friendships with other people who enjoy board games and play their games as often as they play yours.

Camping Buy equipment that will last and will work in lots of environments (so you don’t have to buy multiples). Don’t get too much equipment, as you can make a lot of things with what you find on hand – a tent, a sleeping bag, and a utility tool will work for many people. Don’t buy stuff because you think you might use it or need it.

Coin collecting Know your hobby. Know what rare coins have value, particularly ones that look similar to coins made today. Sift through change you get and find ways to accumulate more change without spending (like getting rolls of pennies or dimes at the bank). Understand what you really enjoy about coin collecting and focus on that.

Comics Check your local library if you enjoy reading comics – they often stock annuals and other collections. Start a “comic circle” where you each buy certain comics then swap them around the circle. For collectors, know the market cold and look in unusual places for bargains, like yard sales.

Cooking Minimize your equipment – you don’t need dozens pots and pans. Cook for yourself, not just to impress others (this improves your skill and saves money on meals). Master the use of ingredients you can easily grow (like our chive patch and our asparagus patch, which require no maintenance at all and just produce free food for us).

Gardening Compost as much as you can as it will reduce your fertilizing costs. Build friendships with other gardeners and share equipment. Harvest seeds and save them for spring.

Golfing Try golfing at the community courses near you instead of at the country club, as municipal courses are often far less expensive and yet still a lot of fun. Once you have a set of clubs, stick with it and only “upgrade” when there are liquidation sales or something else that’s completely exceptional. Don’t be afraid to use “lost” balls – balls hit out in the middle of nowhere and considered “lost” by other golfers – pick them up and toss them in your bag. Get a golf bag with wheels or a pull cart and get some exercise instead of renting a golf cart.

Hunting Handle the meat packing and processing yourself. Don’t buy “special clothes” for hunting beyond what’s required to keep you safe – just add layers in the winter. Focus on specific types of hunting instead of buying a weapon for everything.

Magic: the Gathering Instead of playing in the expensive competitive Standard environment, play Limited instead. Build a “draft cube” (basically, a big, diverse pile of cards) and play using that, particularly when you attend events. Ask to borrow full decks from players that have lots of cards.

Movies Eat a snack and drink a big glass of water before hitting the theater. Don’t buy a DVD unless you’ve already watched a movie multiple times in a theater or as a rental. Swap DVDs (temporarily) with friends. Go to discount theaters instead of “first-run” theaters and you’ll save most of the cost of a ticket.

Pets Volunteer your time at a pet shelter, as it will allow you to bond with lots of pets, help to make sure those most in need are cared for, and also help you to find the perfect match. Learn what an animal’s true dietary needs are and focus on meeting that instead of just buying a big bag of Ol’ Roy – not only is it better for them, it’s often cheaper.

Reading Join your local library – or even volunteer there. Swap books with your friends. Join a service like PaperBackSwap and swap online.

Scrapbooking Keep in mind why you’re scrapbooking – it’s to preserve memories. Don’t spend your money on expensive decorating elements that don’t really mean anything at all. Use highly inexpensive or throwaway items for your decorative elements instead – let that be another channel for your creativity.

Video games Trade games with friends. Play through games all the way before picking up a new one. Buy used games – and trade in any games you have that you won’t likely play again. Never buy new releases – wait until the price starts to drop and you save money while still enjoying the same game.

There are a few themes that run through many of these tips that bear repeating, because they help save money with any hobby.

Build friendships with people who have the same hobby. You can share ideas and equipment with them.
Minimize your equipment. Don’t buy stuff just because you think it might have a use. Go minimal, then expand if you have a true need.
Avoid the “cult of the new.” Never buy a new release. If you wait a little while, you can usually get the same item for less.
Understand what aspects of the hobby you truly enjoy. Maybe it’s just the collecting nature. Maybe it’s just the act of what you’re doing. Whatever it is, spend some time figuring it out, as it will often lead you to savings.

The post 15 Examples of Finding Ways to Enjoy Your Hobbies with Minimal Spending appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Entertainment – $2,698

Clocking in at an average of $225 a month in a family’s budget is entertainment – and that excludes reading. Going out to shows, watching movies, listening to music, playing games, participating in sports – they’re all incorporated under this banner.

The breadth of this category means that what one person considers “entertainment” spending doesn’t overlap much at all with what others consider “entertainment” spending. Take me, for example – roughly half of my entertainment spending in 2009 was spent on board games, something which likely doesn’t overlap with a ton of other people.

So what universal tips can be offered to reduce entertainment spending and actually be useful? Here are some suggestions, no matter how you spend your entertainment dollar.

Focus on what you enjoy. What do you enjoy the most? Don’t pay any attention to what your friends find enjoyable – what do you find enjoyable? Don’t burn up your entertainment dollars in some sort of race to “keep up with the Joneses.” Instead, focus on accentuating the hobbies you personally find enjoyable. You don’t have to buy a giant flat-screen television just because your pals insist on watching in high definition. If they do, let them host the football parties.

Join a club. Joining an interest-based club is often a surprising money saver. Why? If you join a club, it will draw you more into a specific hobby because you’re spending social time with other afficionados. Quite often, time spent in such social activities is relatively inexpensive, plus such clubs are usually powerful sources for bargains and great suggestions when it comes to a particular interest.

Don’t be afraid of used items. You don’t need the latest and greatest items to thoroughly enjoy your hobby. There are quite a few board games I love to play that are beat-up old copies from the 1960s. I play golf with piles of old golf balls, many of which were actually fetched by my previous boss’s dog (seriously). For a long time, my wife used a homemade golf bag she made herself. Yet, in each case, we still thoroughly enjoyed the activity we were involved in.

Let others foot the bill when you dabble. Interested in trying a new sport? Before you go invest in a bunch of equipment, see what’s offered at your city’s parks and recreation service. Want to learn a new hobby? Visit stores that specialize in that activity and see what classes and groups are offered there. If you’re just dabbling in something to see if you like it, don’t immediately start shelling out the cash. Find opportunities to sink your teeth in a bit first to find out if it’s right for you.

Trade instead of buying. If you’re a movie buff and have friends that also are movie buffs, trade with them instead of buying new DVDs. Have a “swap meet” where you go through each other’s collections and borrow a big pile of DVDs from each other, returning them when you’re finished. You can essentially do the same thing with any sort of collectible form of entertainment, from video games to CDs to books. Similarly, there may be stores in your area that allow you to swap your used copies of items for other used copies.

Don’t go high-end immediately. Often, when people begin to engage in a new hobby, they invest in high-end equipment and materials with which to enjoy the hobby. They’ll buy shiny new clubs, loads of new balls, an entire kitchen full of new cooking supplies, and so on. Don’t. Start off using low-end equipment. Only move up to the high end when you’ve used the low end equipment enough that you can actually articulate and understand exactly how the higher-end equipment will help you go beyond where you are now. One should absolutely invest in higher-end equipment if they find themselves truly enjoying a hobby and can actually articulate real reasons why a high quality piece of equipment will improve their hobby. Until then, go with the entry-level stuff.

Master what you have. This simple technique went a long way towards trimming my video game hobby from one new game a week to roughly one game a quarter (and that one’s often used). If I buy a new game, I commit to finishing it before buying another one. The same rule can be applied to many hobbies – if I buy a book, I’ll read it before buying another one. If I buy a DVD, I’ll watch it at least twice before buying another one.

Maintain what you have. If you enjoy bicycling, take the time to maintain your bicycle. If you enjoy woodworking, take the time to maintain your woodworking equipment. If you enjoy playing on your computer, maintain it by running software updates and occasionally cleaning the dust out of the case. Investing a little bit of time and money now to keep your equipment in good shape means that the life span of the equipment will be greatly extended, saving you a lot of money over the long run.

If you’re a frequent consumer, look to renting. If you’ve already honed in on the fact that you deeply enjoy video games or watching movies or something similar, look for rental solutions instead of buying new ones constantly. Services such as Netflix and GameFly allow you to rent media for as long as you want with one low monthly fee which, if you’re heavily into those hobbies, is much less expensive than buying new items constantly.

I want your help! In the comments, please let me know which of the tips you find most useful for trimming these costs. I’ll include the top choices in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of the series.

The post Trimming the Average Budget: Entertaiment appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

My husband and I have been talking about signing up for Netflix, but we’re just not sure if it’s worth the extra monthly bill. Do you have any thoughts or pointers?

Sarah and I have been on-again off-again Netflix users for most of the past decade. Our experience taught us a few things about Netflix – and about some broader money and personal issues related to watching DVDs.

First of all, Netflix really does what it says that it does. You get DVDs in the mail along with a return prepaid envelope. You can keep the DVDs as long as you want and watch them at your convenience. When you’re done, drop them in the envelope and stick it in the mail. It takes between one and two days for you to get a DVD in the mail. Plus, you can watch many of the items Netflix has available directly on your computer via internet streaming.

In all my years as a Netflix customer, the only issues I ever had were a few scratched DVDs, which were handled easily on the Netflix website. As a service, it does exactly what it claims to with very nice customer service.

The question really is do you actually need this service?

One reason that many people subscribe to Netflix is that they believe they’ll use the service a lot. They think of all of the movies and other media they’d like to watch, imagine receiving it in the mail (meaning no hassle at the video store), and they sign up.

But that’s not the reality of the situation.

Before we ever tried Netflix, we would watch about three movies at home per month. When we first signed up, we blew through a big pile of DVDs in the first month or two – a honeymoon period.

After that, we watched about three movies at home per month. And, to put it quite frankly, that wasn’t enough to warrant paying a monthly subscription fee to Netflix, not when we have quite a few friends who are happy to swap DVDs with us all the time and Redbox is easily available to us if we want to watch a new release.

Having Netflix doesn’t change your movie viewing habits beyond the honeymoon period unless there are other adjustments in your life. If you enjoy watching films or watching television series on DVD – and you do this quite often already – then Netflix will probably be a service that you get your money’s worth from.

However, if you don’t watch many movies now and you’re only considering subscribing because you imagine you’ll watch a whole lot more because it’s more convenient, you probably won’t, at least not after the honeymoon period (where you watch a flood of them at first).

That’s not to say no one who subscribes to Netflix doesn’t begin to watch more movies – I know of at least one person who unquestionably does. However, Netflix wasn’t the root cause of that change. That change in how he spent his time was a personal choice to spend more time watching films than to engage in other activities, such as World of Warcraft. This could have been done without Netflix at all – Netflix merely made his new hobby substantially less expensive.

If you watch less than a movie a week at home, Netflix probably won’t be worth it to you. If you watch a movie or more a week at home, Netflix probably will be worth it to you. What matters is your already-existing film watching habits – Netflix alone won’t change them.

The post Is Netflix Worth It? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

It looks like a lot of free things are boring and/or require you to actually have friends. Aren’t there any fun things I can do by myself?

This comment really spurred my thinking. I’m a proud introvert – most of the activities I enjoy are either done alone or with a very tight group of friends. I don’t feel comfortable in large social situations, though I’ve learned how to cope well with them and not come off as a deeply antisocial jerk.

The only problem is that a lot of activities that you can do yourself require some money to enjoy. Renting a video costs money. Playing a video game? Very expensive.

Here are fifty suggestions for free or extremely cheap ways to spend your time. Some of these have appeared on other lists of free stuff to do before – others are new to this one. Similarly, some of these may appeal to you – others may not.

If you’re an introvert, have fun and save some money!

1. Make a collage postcard for PostSecret. For those unaware, PostSecret is a website to which people send postcards telling their deepest, darkest secret anonymously; the blog creator then posts images of some of those postcards on the blog. All you need is a blank postcard, some imagination, and a secret to tell. Look around your house for the materials you’ll need – old magazines are always a great place to start harvesting materials from. Look for images that reflect the secret you want to tell, then make a collage out of them on the card. Whether you mail it or not is up to you, but it’s a wonderful way to get creative and get some release on a secret you’ve been hiding.

2. Try out parkour. Parkour is essentially an athletic activity where you simply try to find the quickest path from point A to point B. You can do this pretty much anywhere – your yard, the park, anywhere in a city – and it’s always a lot of fun and good exercise. Plus, it’s an incredibly effective way to improve your mind-body coordination, as practicing this regularly will improve your balance and also your quick-decision skills.

3. Master a Rubik’s Cube. There are few parlor tricks that are more entertaining (for me, at least) than watching someone solve a Rubik’s Cube quickly. You can easily get ahold of one of these (ask on freecycle or Craigslist) – the trick is figuring out how to solve it on your own, then how to solve it quickly. Here’s a great guide for solving a Rubik’s Cube.

4. Make a list of all of the people who were a positive influence on your life and write them all a letter thanking them. Think for a bit about all of the people who have inspired you and helped you along in your current life path. Make a list of all of these people – mine, for example, includes my high school English teacher, some relatives and friends, and a few college professors. Then pull out some paper and a pen and write each of them a handwritten letter, reminding them of how they helped you out and thanking them for doing so. It’s a great way to get in touch with the people who helped shape your life, and it’s something you’ll feel genuinely good about for a long time.

5. Learn how to make string figures. I love making string figures. All you really need is a big loop of string and some imagination. Figuring out how to loop string around your fingers to make visual compositions of all sorts of things is a lot of fun. You can easily make spider webs, bridges, and other interesting things. Even better, learn about some of the cultural heritage of these string figures and try to relate the stories yourself as you make the figures. Here’s a guide to the basics.

6. Learn some basic yoga poses. Yoga is a great way to relax and meditate while stretching the muscles of your body and getting a surprisingly intense workout at the same time. Basic yoga is extremely simple and feels really good – a stretching routine once a day feels really good to me. Here’s a great introductory video to the very basics of yoga.

7. Take a free online class to learn the basics of a new topic. MIT’s OpenCourseWare offers complete downloadable lectures on a ton of different topics, starting from the most introductory areas to rather advanced topics. Want a starting point? Try microeconomics, macroeconomics, western philosophy, introductory physics, or, my personal favorite, video lectures on differential equations (though that one may not be for everyone).

8. Teach yourself how to cook. Not only is cooking the most cost-effective way to provide sustenance for yourself, it’s also an art form that rewards experimentation and practice. Challenge yourself to assemble an interesting meal out of the materials you have on hand. You might just find that it’s fun, that you’ve learned something new, and you’ve created something tasty to eat for just pennies.

9. Take a walk in the park. Likely, there’s either a park or a secluded rural area within walking distance of where you live. Set out on foot to go there, then just wander around enjoying what you can observe and take in. Enjoy the natural beauty around you. Even better, find a nice secluded place and engage in another of the activities on this list in a wonderful natural environment.

10. Listen to a podcast. Podcasts are wonderful snippets of intelligent (mostly) and engaging talk radio, where people pour out their hearts and ideas for you to hear – for free. All you have to do is find them and download them. To get started, try downloading a podcast receiving program to collect them for you – I quite like Juice. Here are ten podcasts I quite enjoy to get you started: The Splendid Table (on food topics), Marketplace (on economics and business), Speaking of Faith (on religion), Fresh Air (interviews of general interest), This American Life (quirky general interest stuff), This Week in Tech (technology news), Car Talk (automotive news and tips), Keith and the Girl (pop culture), Free Talk Live (non-partisan politics), and Nobody Likes Onions (comedy).

11. Learn a simple papercraft. Papercraft includes everything from origami (and neat things like paper snowflakes) to full paper models of … well, anything. The excellent OrigamiVideo.net has a huge collection of videos on how to get started making almost anything origami (and many other papercraft projects, too).

12. Do a crossword or a sudoku puzzle. Paper-and-pencil puzzles are a great way to stretch your mind in new directions. You can easily get them for free – the New York Times gives out a free crossword each day, an excellent free British-style cryptic crossword from The Herald, and a huge number of free sudoku puzzles at WebSudoku should provide you with more than enough puzzle-solving pleasure for a long time.

13. Teach yourself solitaire (or a solitaire variant). All you need is a deck of cards, a logical mind, and plenty of spare time. Klondike is the most well known one, but there are a lot of fun solitaire games out there: Freecell, Golf, Patience, and Beleaguered Castle. There are many others – here’s a sampling of ones to try.

14. Put some positive affirmations around you. On a series of Post-It notes, write down ten or so positive things about yourself (I find writing down positive memories is a great way to go, ones that put a smile on my face), then put them in places where you go irregularly and post them, like a rarely-used supply closet or the inside of your car’s trunk. Then, when you find them, they’ll lift you in a positive way. You could also do the same thing for someone you care about, posting some little reminders of their qualities in places where they’ll discover them.

15. Start a blog on a topic that fascinates you. If there’s a topic that fills you with passion, consider starting a blog on that topic. It’s easy (and free) to get started at Blogger or WordPress. Whenever you have an interesting idea about your topic or just get a strong desire to explain the basics, write it all out and post it there. It’s a great way to organize your thoughts and channel your passion on a particular topic.

16. Watch an old movie from your collection. Almost everyone has some old movies lying around. Dig some out and watch them. I find it particularly enjoyable to watch old home movies – videos of when my son was a newborn, for example, are particularly fun to pull out. I also enjoy watching movies that I dearly loved ten years ago but haven’t watched in years – I now see many of them as goofy fun for a rainy afternoon.

17. Teach yourself a card trick. Card tricks are a particularly fun way to entertain people in almost any situation, and there are as many different card tricks as there are grains of sand on the beach. Pick up a deck of cards and invest the time to learn one cold so that if the opportunity ever offers itself, you can easily show off that trick. For starters, here’s how to do a clever and simple trick called Quick as a Wink.

18. Tour your neighborhood on foot. Most neighborhoods have many interesting secrets and things to enjoy and observe on foot. Just head out of your front door and wander wherever your spirit takes you. You’ll likely find all sorts of interesting things on your journey – places you didn’t know about before, interesting landmarks, beautiful sights, and perhaps an interesting free thing to pick up along the way.

19. Go stargazing. The stars in the night sky are one of the biggest reasons I love living in rural Iowa. I can look skyward any non-cloudy evening and see a sky full of stars. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area with a clear sky. spend an evening or two gazing at the stars. In particular, try to go outside on nights where a meteor shower is in progress, as that just adds to the beauty of the Milky Way. Also, look for a guide to the night sky for your local area – Weather Underground offers a great one.

20. Get your finances in order. While this might not seem like fun at first glance, having a financial plan can greatly reduce the stress of day-to-day life and also greatly increase the peace of mind. Spend some time reading up on personal finance, working through activities like 31 Days to Fix Your Finances, setting goals, understanding your current financial state, doing estate planning, defining a budget, and so on. It’s all worthwhile, all free, and all of it will add to your peace of mind.

21. Make a time capsule. Find an old shoebox, then go around your home and find items that clearly mark the reality of your day to day life – a newspaper, receipts, magazines, pictures, and so on. Put them in the box and when it’s got plenty of items in it, tape it up very securely and write a date in the future when you can open it – say, in ten or fifteen years. Not only is it fun to collect the items now, it can be really interesting to look through those items in the future, when not only your life has changed, but cultural touchstones have changed as well.

22. Find (and read) some free, alternative newspapers in your area. Most urban areas have a handful of free newspapers, supported entirely by advertising or by sponsorship, that often provide insightful and interesting reading. Look for ones in your area in the lobby of the local library, in the lobby of grocery stores, and at city hall. Collect them, then take them home for a nice reading. In my area, I have easy access to Toons (a collection of political cartoons), The Sun (community events), Cityview (an independent public affairs paper for Des Moines), and Juice (a twentysomething paper in Des Moines published by the Des Moines Register). All of these can provide worthwhile reading – and they’re all free.

23. Learn a musical instrument. This might not strike you as a free thing to do, but it’s actually surprisingly easy to learn how to play an instrument for free. You can often get basic instruments (keyboards, acoustic guitars, and sometimes other things) on Freecycle or Craigslist, plus there are countless opportunities online for basic lessons on how to play any number of instruments, as well as how to read music. All it takes to get started is some time and some interest.

24. Listen to your favorite music up loud (and let yourself dance to it). I love to turn the music up loud on occasion and bounce around to it (all in complete privacy, of course). Few things get me more pumped up than a really lively song and a bunch of moving around in rhythm to the music. For me personally, few songs get me bouncing around energetically more than AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock. But that’s just me – I’m sure you have your own favorites.

25. Visit the library. This one’s right in the middle of the list, but it’s one of the best free things for an introvert to do on the cheap. The library is a gigantic collection of free books, movies, music, magazines, and countless other things – all there for the borrowing. Plus, there’s usually a lot of activities there for the introvert, from film showings to recommended reading lists and community calendars. Stop by and see what things a library really has to offer.

26. Do a jigsaw puzzle. A jigsaw puzzle is a wonderful engrossing activity. My family used to traditionally cover the kitchen table with jigsaw puzzles for much of the winter, with everyone sharing in the puzzle-solving process. You can usually find them for free on Freecycle without any effort at all and they’ll give you many hours of solitary enjoyment.

27. Build a detailed family tree. Most people are aware of at least a couple generations of their lineage, but things often get confused when you get further back than that. Spend some time building a detailed family tree, starting with what you know and eventually adding your own research to the mix. Contact older relatives for assistance, then use resources like Ancestry.com to fill in more blanks. Add as much detail as you’d like or, even better, make it into a multimedia project on your computer, with pictures and other materials.

28. Teach yourself to meditate. For stress relief and aid for overcoming tiredness, few things work better for me than a short period of meditation. The easiest technique is to just sit in a comfortable chair, close your eyes, and focus on nothing but breathing slowly for a while. Breathe in slowly, hold it for a bit, breathe out slowly. Over and over. If you want to dig deeper, here’s a great introduction to meditation with some strong mental aspects to work on.

29. Read a book you’ve got on your shelf that’s unread. Most of us have a book or two around our home that’s unread – something that we’ll read “someday.” Let today be that someday. Dig out that book and give it a serious, long reading. Let yourself get lost in the book, no matter what it is, and see if you can get through it (or at least a significant portion of it) in one sitting. Getting lost in a book is one of my favorite experiences – and it can easily be a free one.

30. Start a workout program at home. A basic workout program doesn’t need to involve an expensive gym membership – it just needs to involve personal initiative. After all, many of the most effective exercises (running/jogging/walking, sit ups, prone lifts, push ups, jumping jacks) don’t involve any exercise equipment at all. Before you get started, make sure you’re in good health with a doctor’s visit. Then, I recommend trying something like the lifetime fitness ladder, which takes those “do it at home” exercises and makes a nice, defined system of exercises to follow out of it, all of which you can do at home in privacy.

31. Do a “Wikipedia walk.” I often burn a good hour doing a “Wikipedia walk” as I investigate a particular topic and find interesting connections to other areas of personal interest. All you have to do is think of a very broad topic you’re interested in – say, philosophy – and read through that entry, following any and all links that are of interest. What I usually do is open up a bunch of new browser tabs from links on that first entry, then read each tab, opening new ones, until I’ve had my fill. It’s a great way to learn the details of any topic, from knitting to the Eastern Orthodox Church.

32. Start a natural collection or sketchbook. All that’s required to start a natural collection – or a notebook that collects observations – is an interest and a willingness to investigate. Like rocks? Start collecting and identifying particular samples. Birds? Make some sketches or take some photographs. There’s no limit to what you can observe and record in the natural world. You can observe people, too, or automobiles – the possibilities are endless. Here are some tips for getting started with a natural collection.

33. Organize your collection(s). Speaking of collections, one wonderful solitary activity is organizing your currently-existing collections. Go through your collection of CDs, DVDs, trading cards, books, political buttons, or whatever item you collect and put them in a reasonable order. Along the way, you’ll find all sorts of little things to do to pique your interest, simply from your personal enjoyment of the things you’ve collected.

34. Learn how to juggle. Juggling is a really enjoyable pastime: it teaches hand-eye coordination and dexterity while simultaneously being quite soothing. It’s also quite simple – you just need three balls to learn how to do it. Here’s an excellent tutorial video on how to juggle.

35. Play a free online game. There are countless sources of excellent online games – try Kongregate and Yahoo! Games, for starters. Lately, I’ve been playing Ticket to Ride: Europe a bit online using the free trial – it’s one of my favorite board games and it’s a blast to play whenever I like.

36. Seek out a solitary place on foot. One activity I particularly enjoyed doing during my college days was exploring seemingly crowded places but searching for nooks and crannies that were completely isolated from the hubbub. I used to find small back rooms of the large university library and just curl up in there and read. I also used to climb the large trees on campus to get up above the crowds below. The search for solitude was enjoyable and finding it was sublime.

37. Start (and maintain) a journal. This is an activity that my wife has recently started and she’s thoroughly enjoying it. Just start on any old spare notebook you have lying around your house. Just jot down the most interesting things you did that day – even if they don’t seem interesting right now. Eventually, you’ll start to build up a nice catalogue of entries and it’ll become quite fun to read earlier writings.

38. Go to a free movie. If you look around a bit, you can often find free movie showings in your community. Start by visiting the libraries available to you – many have open movie nights, where you can go sit in the library auditorium and enjoy a free film. If you live near a university, there’s often a film group there showing a weekly movie as well. Often, other community groups will put on regular film nights as well – just check around.

39. Take up walking, jogging, or running. There are almost no solitary activities that combine physical exertion, rhythm, and peace of mind like sustained walking, jogging, or running, and all you really need to get started is a pair of decent shoes. Define a regular, sensible jogging routine (three times a week for thirty minutes is a good way to get started) and dig in on the paths around you. The key isn’t to kill yourself, but to just exert yourself a little and figure out how to get into a good, healthy rhythm along the way.

40. Take a long, hot bath. Just fill up your bathtub with some nice, warm water, get yourself in there, and kick back. Enjoy the long soak and just let the little worries drift away for a while. To me, this is almost as good as a professional massage but the cost is just right – plus it’s just as convenient as the bathroom down the hall.

41. Rearrange (and thoroughly clean) a room. Sometimes all it really takes to make a place seem fresh and new is a thorough cleaning and a rearrangement of the decorations and furniture. Put some elbow grease to work in your favorite room in your home that’s just a bit tired and see what you can do to make it smell and look fresh again. If it’s a regular place where you spend time, just that little bit of change can make a world’s worth of difference.

42. Write a poem. This is an activity that forces almost everyone to think a bit differently about the world around them, but from that experience can come much wisdom and growth. Try to express whatever you’re feeling in your heart in words, in whatever form seems the most natural and appropriate. Then tease the words around a little – find ones that seem to click with how you feel. The entire process will leave you feeling interesting things – and often feeling deeply fulfilled.

43. Get politically informed. Find out what candidates are going to appear on your ballot in the upcoming election (as well as any ballot initiatives) and find out more about each one of them. Compare the candidates running for the same office and make a rational decision about each campaign. You can do most of this research online today – if you can’t, call the local offices of each political party to find out about local candidates. Doing this will make you an informed voter and likely an influential one, since you can state clear reasons why you’re supporting the candidates you’re supporting and this can often sway others.

44. Take some digital photographs and share them online. If you’re building a natural collection or observing anything interesting at all, take along your digital camera and snap some photographs of it (if you don’t have a digital camera, borrow one). Then, take these images and share them with others on a photo-sharing site like Flickr. Be sure to put in the effort to add detailed notes about each picture so that others may enjoy them as well.

45. Discover new music you might like. There are countless online tools available to you that can help you find new music that matches your tastes. My favorite is Last.fm, which allows you to type in the name of a musical artist you like. Based on that information (and the listening habits of millions of iTunes users), the program will create a radio station of nothing but similar artists, virtually ensuring you’ll find at least something compelling.

46. Create an interesting video and share it on YouTube. All this takes is a digital camera capable of capturing video, some basic video editing software (like the free iMovie for Macs or Windows Movie Maker for PCs), and some creativity. Think of something interesting that you could make a compelling video about, create a tight script for that video, then go around collecting the shots you need. Once you’re done, edit the video into a slick presentation and upload it to YouTube for the world to see.

47. Enter a short story competition. Short stories are a lot of fun to write – in fact, writing them is my secret passion. Whenever I have spare time, I like to seek out short story competitions, write out stories for them, and then … fail to actually enter because I’m too self conscious about my short stories. But I still gain something big from it – the process of writing a short story is a lot of fun.

48. Dig deep into a blog. Got a blog you enjoy reading (like, say, this one)? Go way back into the site’s archives and read some of the older stuff. You’ll often find that the writing has changed drastically since the early days and that you’ve missed out on a ton of interesting and compelling ideas. Look for an “archives” page – for The Simple Dollar, you can start with the chronology.

49. Attend a free concert. Many communities offer free weekly municipal concerts in the park and larger cities often have multiple free concerts each day in various places. Pay attention to the community calendar and other resources and go by yourself to a concert. Live music can be a very compelling and exciting thing – don’t miss out on an opportunity to enjoy it.

50. Watch a sunrise or sunset, from beginning to end.
This really says it all:

That picture depicts sunset over the Grand Canyon in July 2005 when I visited there with my wife. The amazing part of that scene is that you can enjoy much the same beauty anywhere you are, early in the day or late. Just watch the sun rise and take on brightness, or watch her set and shed her colors. Beauty, indeed.

The post The Frugal Introvert: Fifty Ways to Have Fun By Yourself on the Cheap appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Since then, I’ve given up most of my hobbies and channeled the remainder into paths that are much more financially stable. In order to channel my hobbies into more financially sensible paths, I had to adopt a handful of useful tactics. If you have a hobby that’s a constant money drain, try some of these to see if you can make it more financially sensible.

Tone down your competitiveness
I played Magic: the Gathering in a very competitive environment, constantly attempting to qualify for $25K tournaments and the like. In order to keep up with the other players attempting to do the same, I had to throw quite a bit of money into the hobby at the start, then as I grew sufficiently skilled, I didn’t spend as much on the hobby as I spent on long car trips going to tournaments, hotel rooms, and the like. My competitiveness was in full swing, even if I didn’t have nearly the time to devote to it as others did. I still spent far too many weekends burning money on more cards, tournaments, and so on.

The solution for me was simply toning down my competitiveness. I still play on occasion, but it’s usually just to meet up with friends. I tend to just borrow whatever cards they have extra and play with those, and I don’t travel to tournaments – I just play locally on occasion. This enables me to still get much of the joy and social connection I had during the days when I played heavily, but it doesn’t require me to constantly dump cash down a sinkhole.

Focus on low-end equipment
When I was avidly golfing, there was always a push to have the latest and greatest equipment – massive drivers, well-crafted irons, and balls that flew a mile. It was almost like an arm’s race – who would pull the most impressive weapon out of their bag?

Fortunately, I saw the light here as well. Golfing can be just as much fun with a dirt cheap four iron and a used golf ball as it is with the latest Titleist equipment. Sure, your shot might not fly as far through the air, but that just means you yank out the three iron instead of the four iron. Problem solved – and golf becomes much cheaper to enjoy.

If you have equipment that does the job, stick with that equipment. Don’t worry about blowing money on a barely-better piece of equipment if the old one does the job just fine.

Learn the craftsmanship
Whenever I’d go out to eat at restaurants, I’d simply marvel at the amazing foods put out before me. The amazing breads, the delicious cheeses, the fine beers and wines, the tender entrees – I was always impressed by the amazing quality and craftsmanship.

What I found, though, is that I had much the same joy in my own kitchen preparing my own foods. I got to enjoy the craftsmanship of making foods for myself – the joy of homebrewing, the pleasure of baking my own bread and making my own pasta, and so on. I moved from spending $30 on a restaurant meal to spending $10 in ingredients and a passionate hour in the kitchen creating something amazing for myself. I found that spending an hour making homemade fettuccine was well worth the time invested, as I began to intimately understand the elements of good food that made me love it.

You can apply this to almost anything you’re passionate about, from soaps to clothes. Instead of spending tons of money in the stores or shops on this stuff, channel that passion into learning about the craftsmanship behind the item. You can make almost anything (aside from some electronics) at home with some basic equipment, some time, and some passion. Instead of just enjoying buying what others make, channel that interest into making it yourself.

Understand what you’re actually collecting
I used to collect reams of DVDs – they nearly overwhelmed our old apartment. I’d buy huge piles of DVDs so that I could have all of Johnny Depp’s films on hand, or every one directed by Akira Kurosawa. Thankfully, I got that desire under control, because I realized that I was spending $20 a pop collecting something that I rarely actually looked at after the first experience. It turned out that what I was actually collecting was the experience of a great film with great actors, great scripts, great directors, and great cinematography.

Instead, I made it a point just to watch every Kurosawa film and every film with Depp in it. I’d check them out at the library and enjoy them. Some I’d check out time and time again, and if that happened, I’d usually put them on my Amazon wish list. I also made a concerted effort to purge all of the unwatched stuff from my DVD collection, narrowing it down to stuff I wanted to watch again and again or stuff that I intended to share with my children later on.

Now, I use a number of tools to enjoy movies – the library, trading with friends, and SwapADVD chief among them. I still get that rush of the experience of watching a great movie, and I’m still collecting Johnny Depp films – but now I just collect the experience of watching them.

Hopefully, some of these tactics will help you get some of your own expensive hobbies in line.

The post Making Expensive Hobbies More Financially Manageable appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Collections are incredibly enjoyable hobbies to have. When you’re caught in the passionate fire of collecting, you can burn whole days organizing what you have, determining the holes you need to fill, and simply enjoying the items.

The only problem is that most collections cost a lot to get started and have a significant maintenance cost, too. Sports cards require a constant outflow of money for items that might never retain their value. Books? Once they’re bought, the best you can hope for is to sell them used (or trade them) at a huge loss – the same goes for almost any media collection. Most collectibles, like Beanie Babies, fall under the same conclusion – you’re often sinking a lot of value into something with very little financial return, just personal enjoyment.

If you have that collector itch, one approach to solving this problem is to switch your focus towards collecting things that have minimal acquisition cost – or better yet, no cost at all. The best place to start is to look at the nature around you and find the things you find beautiful. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Collecting Nature Samples

The most obvious way to begin a natural collection is to identify items in nature that you can easily collect. Some things to think about if you’re pondering such a collection.

What do you find beautiful? Think about the elements of nature that you genuinely find beautiful. Birds? Trees? Plants? Rocks? Don’t limit your mind to what’s easy and obvious – spend some time thinking about it. For example, I find geodes to be stunningly beautiful, and there’s also a family tradition to them as well – my aunt was one of the most avid geode collectors I’ve ever met, spending most of her spare time in her adult life wandering around in the woods and in creek bottoms finding them. I myself love collecting leaves – as diverse and as colorful as I possibly can find. I take a lot of pleasure in attempting to identify trees based on their leaves.

What is reasonably accessible to you on a regular basis? For example, geode collectors pretty much have to live in the Midwest, as geodes are somewhat common in this area but rare elsewhere. Many collections, such as tree leaf collections, can be started anywhere and expanded upon regularly when the opportunity strikes, but don’t start a collection that you’ll have difficulty expanding near your home.

What doesn’t take up much room? You’ll also want to start a collection that won’t overwhelm your living quarters with clutter. For example, bird feather collections, if done carefully, can be stored in a binder, but collecting tons of large rocks will quickly create a problem (and make moving a nightmare, too). My aunt’s geode collection dominated their front porch, standing on every rail, and at times spilled over onto an adjacent table or two.

Can I get the family involved? If you’ve got a family, find something to collect that everyone can get involved with. Talk to everyone about it, and come up with something that everyone can get involved with. One good idea is to collect rocks of a certain color that match your external decor, bird feathers, or distinctive leaves. This can be a great opportunity to have your entire family get more in touch with nature.

Collecting Natural Observations

Another way to enjoy collecting nature without having to store anything at all is to collect natural observations. If you decide to collect observations, the sky’s the limit – you can basically collect anything. Identify trees and native plants, view constellations, watch birds, identify rocks you find in nature, identify cloud formations – anything you can imagine.

Take careful notes when you observe things. Note where you were when you identified it, the date and time, and as many specifics as you can about the observation. Doing this will help you recall what you observed in the future – a nice collection of observations can be a real treat to go through on a day when you’re itching to go outside but the weather is an obstacle.

Get a good notebook to record your observations. Take notes on what you observed and when you observed it. If you have even minimal artistic skill, try sketching what you see. My wife and I each have sketchbooks – mine is a Moleskine reporter’s sketchbook, which works absolutely great for taking notes and making sketches of all kinds.

Consider a field guide, as well. Another useful tool if you get into natural observation is a field guide for your specific area of interest. For example, if you’re into night sky observations, try the National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to the Night Sky (my wife has that one – it’s stellar) or, if you’re into rock hunting, look into the Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals. We own several National Audubon Society guides and have found them all to be excellent.

Nature Photography

Another option, if you have a digital camera, is to augment your natural observations with nature photography. Go out in the world and start taking pictures of the things that interest you – and build a nice collection of natural snapshots.

If you have a digital camera, take lots of shots. A large memory card can hold tons of pictures, so don’t hold off for the “perfect” shot. Start taking images right away. You can always toss the imperfect ones later on.

Record some notes, too. Note anything important about the pictures in your sketchbook for later reference, so that if you go back and look at the pictures, you’ll know what was depicted, where you took it, and when. Write down anything else of note as well.

Share your best nature photography with others. Join Flickr and share your best images. Add information about where the picture was taken and what’s depicted and tag it appropriately so others can easily find the pictures. Even better, allow them to be used widely via a Creative Commons license so that your images can be shared all over the place – you never know where your image might show up.

The natural world is amazingly beautiful, complex, and interesting, and it’s just sitting outside our doors, free to examine and explore. Take advantage of it to fuel your collecting urges and get in touch with the world around you.

I used Creative Commons images licensed for free commercial use in this post. Click on the images to view the beautiful originals at Flickr.

The post Starting a Natural Collection appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

That’s why I was shocked recently to find out that they’re actually in a frightening debt situation. Why? They take that money that they save from frugal choices (and more) and then spend it on incredibly expensive toys. They have several ATVs, a huge array of hunting equipment, a taste for nice clothes, and their children have virtually everything they ask for.

The end result? Frugality isn’t helping them with their financial situation. They’re already doing it in some avenues of their life, but in other ones, the spending is so overblown that it undoes the buckling down. Often, the argument offered by people in this situation – including my cousin – is that the nice stuff they have is what they work so hard for, but if you ask them what happens if they were to lose their job, a deep look of fear pops up in their eye.

What can you do if you’re in this situation, where your basic needs are actually well below what you’re making, but you find yourself spending everything you bring in – and more? Here are some suggestions for putting yourself in a safer financial situation.

First, don’t give up your expensive hobbies. This might seem like shocking advice, but I’ve found that if you give up something you’re really passionate about, it works about as well as an “all-salad” diet – you do it great for a while, then relapse with crazy splurging.

Look at my cousin’s situation. He spends almost all of his free time with his family doing outdoor activities: riding around on their ATVs, hunting, fishing, and so on. It makes natural sense that he wants to spend his entertainment money on these things – and he should. Life is boring if you don’t have an outlet for your passions.

For me, my hobbies are reading and writing and some video game playing (and a little bit of music). My biggest expense is games for my Wii and DS and occasionally a computer upgrade. While I’m tempted to buy every interesting Wii or DS game I see, I’m pretty careful to not do this.

Instead of spending extra money on hobbies and entertainment, though, set up an automatic savings plan that takes some of the money out of your reach. That way, there’s no money sitting there to tempt you to spend. Take, say, $100 a month out of your checking and into your savings, and don’t touch it until you desperately need it.

You’ll find that your spending adapts to this new available amount. Maybe you’ll move from two new outfits a month to three every two months, or maybe you’ll hold off a few months on your next ATV upgrade. You still get to enjoy your hobbies and have those things that really drive you, but you also get to start putting away money for the future.

What I’ve found for me is that buying one video game, making a very earnest effort to master that game, and then move on to another one is a great way to keep my video game hobby alive with a lot of enjoyment but without much spending. Similarly, I hit the library and PaperBackSwap when I have a desire to read a new book (right now, for instance, I’m reading through most of John Steinbeck’s novels, all of which I could get through PBS or the library).

Over time, slowly increase the amount you’re withdrawing into savings. This works very well in conjunction with discovering new avenues of frugality or increases in salary, or if your interests begin to change.

You may also want to start making extra payments on outstanding debts. Now that our emergency fund is built up well, we have started making extra payments on our student loan debts, and it feels very good to watch them melting away. Once that’s done, we’re going to tackle our home loan with extra payments. This is a good move to make once you have plenty of money socked away to cover any emergency.

Soon, you’ll find yourself in a safer financial situation, and that’s exactly where you want to be.

The post The Tug of War Between Frugality, Hobbies, and an Emergency Fund appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Most of my friends have huge shelves full of DVDs and CDs that they rarely listen to or look at. Not long ago, I suffered from the same condition – I had this huge array of DVDs that I watched once, shelved away, and didn’t touch for years. In other words, it wasn’t long before they became just something else to dust.

What most people don’t think about is that there is cash just sitting there on those shelves, just waiting to be collected. You might not get a great return on each one, but in just an hour, you can liquidate the collection and put some cash in your pocket – hopefully for the purpose of eliminating some debt or investing in something that will actually generate wealth over time.

First, go through your DVD or CD collection and select a portion of them to liquidate. In the past, I found that choosing a certain percentage to keep is a great tactic to use. Try going through the first time with the goal of keeping 40% of the collection while eliminating 60%. I usually count each “box” as a single DVD for the purposes of this, but you can do it a different way if you like. The goal is to separate the wheat from the chaff – which ones will you potentially watch again and which ones will just sit there on your shelf?

Next, sell them off. For the most part, it’s not worth the additional effort to sell single DVDs on eBay or Amazon auctions, but boxed sets are often worth that extra effort. For the individual DVDs, even though your rate of return isn’t as good, I usually found the best method to be to just take them to a reseller of used DVDs. You might be able to get more per DVD online, but the effort per sale would eat up that gain very quickly (unless you made this into a hobby for a while).

After that, make an effort to enjoy the stuff you kept. If you kept this DVD because you intend to watch it again, watch it again! Go through your DVD collection and watch all of these movies and television shows that you chose to keep around. If you’re thinking, “Nah, I don’t think I want to,” it might be a good time to ask yourself whether you really want to keep any of them at all – you may want to do another round of purging.

The real key here is to use this money to actually pay down some debt or add to an investment. Some people may be tempted to just blow this money – don’t. Find something truly useful to do with it, something that will benefit you over the long haul instead of just sitting on a shelf gathering dust.

The post The One Hour Project: Clean Out Your Media Collection appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Where did you buy it?
First of all, Wiis appear to still be very difficult to find. I bought mine at a local Target that just happened to have two of them left after a shipment came in. I have only seen a Wii actually on a shelf in a store twice and I’ve seen an empty shelf many, many times. I paid the typical $249.99 plus tax price, but I had a 10% off your entire purchase card for Target at the time, so I used it then.

How much have you played it?
I bought the Wii just before I moved (around July 1) and between the moving, a death in the family, and many, many relatives coming to visit, I haven’t had as much time to play as I’d like. I have probably averaged about twenty minutes a day, with the actual reality being about an hour every three days. My wife has played a similar amount, but our play has only overlapped in part. Also, many of my visiting family members played as well.

What are the essential purchases you need?
The system comes with Wii Sports (a truly great game for everyone – it’s just amazing), a single remote, and a single nunchuk controller. The remote is the primary controller for the system – the only time that you use the nunchuk controller (it plugs into the remote to make a nunchuk-like controller with a cable connecting the two pieces for two-handed gameplay) is with the boxing part of Wii Sports and with some of the additional games for the Wii that you might buy.

If you expect to primarily play it with one or two players and don’t know what games you might be playing (the situation I was in), I would also buy Wii Play. It’s a collection of nine more simple games (simpler than the Wii Sports ones, but along those lines) that also includes another remote in the box. That ups you to two remotes, which will enable you and your closest friend (in my case, my spouse) to play all of the Wii Sports games and all of the Wii Play games together.

Does Wii Sports actually get you moving around?
Without a doubt, yes. I’ve worked up a sweat many times playing the games, especially the boxing and tennis games on the included Wii Sports.

What’s the best value for the system?
The Wii also lets you download “classic” video games for a varying cost of $5 to $10 a pop (they’re saved on the Wii itself, so you can just keep replaying them as if you had the old cartridges), and I’ll be the first to confess that this has drawn most of my Wii play time – and perhaps most of my wife’s, too, as she has played Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 extensively. While I’m not sure they would wow the kids, I grew up playing games like Metroid and Super Mario World, and to be able to have them again on a console hooked up to the television is not only steeped in nostalgia, but a ton of fun as well.

If you played video games as a kid, download a few of your old favorites and play through them again on here. You’ll need to buy the Classic Controller, but after that the games cost between $5 and $10 and you keep them permanently. I’ve found that a few haven’t aged all that well (Punch Out comes to mind), but some have just completely drawn me in again. For my gaming dollar, nothing is as worthwhile as downloading an old console game on the Wii and trying to play through it again.

What’s the best game you’ve played?
Wii Sports, without a doubt. It’s an incredibly well-designed game. Even better – it’s in the box, no extra purchase required. Aside from that, I’ve invested the most time beating Super Mario Bros. 2 again (a downloaded game that cost me $5) and also playing the Wii game Mario Strikers Charged (a very strange soccer game given to me as a birthday gift).

Isn’t it a waste of time?
I mean this as honestly as I possibly can: with the exception of watching two television programs to catch appearances by friends and family members, I have not watched television in six weeks. The only time I’m in front of the television is to play a game on the Wii. It helps me unwind, brings up nostalgic feelings, is a lot of fun to play, and I can put it down with ease and go on to other things. Even better, my wife and I both play it quite a bit – together. Plus, it’s the first console I’ve ever owned where other family members have gotten involved with playing – I haven’t seen my oldest brother touch a video game since his days on the Atari, but he was mixing it up playing baseball and bowling.

If there are more questions, please drop them in the comments.

The post A Frugal Man And His Wii: Answering A Plethora Of Reader Questions About The Purchase appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

I have been doing NCAA tournament office pools for as long as I can remember, and each year I do the same exact thing, time and again. Time and again, I’m near the top of the office pool. The best part about this strategy is that you don’t have to know a single thing about college basketball to do well with it.

So, if you’re in an office pool but know nothing at all about college basketball, here’s what you do.

For the first two rounds, pick nothing but the favorites in every single game. You’ll get the vast majority of your picks right and you also won’t fall flat on your face because you spent your time picking upsets. This means your Sweet Sixteen should be nothing but one, two, three, and four seeds.

For the rest of the tournament, ignore the seeds and pick the team that had the most wins over the last fifteen games of the season. You can get this information at ESPN.com fairly easily by looking at the full season schedules. If you use this strategy in 2007, that means you’ll have Georgetown as your tournament winner, playing Kansas in the title game, and Florida and Ohio State being your other Final Four entrants.

This is exactly how I picked my bracket each of the last five years, and I have been in the top half of the finishers every year, with two years of actually winning the pool. The strategy is this: I just assume that the top seeded schools really are the best ones until they start facing each other, at which point the hottest team will win.

This strategy won’t win any major online bracket-picking challenges, but it will ensure you a good finish in a small pool.

The post The Simple Dollar Extra Edition: Your Local NCAA Tournament Pool appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

All of my hobbies are really expensive and so I’m trying to find something cheaper to fill my time. Could you write a post listing some interesting free hobbies?

As per request, here are ten great hobbies that are basically free (a few require internet access, but if you’re reading this, you already have that). I personally know someone who is involved in each of these as a hobby and in almost every case they’re quite happy filling hours doing these things.

Head outdoors. If you’re bored, walk out your front door and just start wandering. It doesn’t take much effort at all to simply wander and see what’s interesting out there.

Collect something natural. My aunt spent most of her adult life collecting geodes; an uncle of mine used to collect rocks and seashells to line the shelves of his home. In both cases, the hobby cost nothing but time, and it gave them the opportunity to wander around outside in the fresh air. If you don’t know how or where to look for a particular thing, dig around on the ‘net and you’ll find tons of help. Myself, I love hunting in the woods for mushrooms in the spring, something I plan on posting a photo diary about in April or so.

Start a blog. You can get a free blog at Blogger or WordPress. Just write about whatever interests you (your favorite television show, the books you read, your politics), but stick generally to that topic. If you have a lot of topics you think about, start a few of them. It’s a great way to find people with similar interests, dig deeper into your own interests, and practice your writing skills without the pressure of being judged (much). Even better, you can use a blog to record your growth in one of the other hobbies listed below. In fact, this is exactly how The Simple Dollar got started.

Clean up your area. Is your neighborhood sometimes trashier than you would like it to be? Spend some time walking around collecting trash on the street and making your neighborhood a cleaner place. Quite often, one person doing this on a regular basis will spur others to join you and you can really spruce up a neighborhood. You can also informally adopt a piece of highway and do the same thing.

Join a community group. There are tons of interesting civic groups out there, even in small towns. Start attending city council meetings and asking questions about what’s happening. Attend school board meetings. This is a great way to get started in local politics and start changing things at the neighborhood and town level – remember, all politics is local. If that’s not your cup of tea, look for other civic-minded groups, like the Lion’s Club.

Practice self-improvement. Find areas of yourself that are weak and look for ways to improve them. For example, if you’re weak on public speaking, look for a local Toastmasters group. If you’re weak on your reading skills or don’t know much about a particular topic, start reading more by visiting your local library and checking out simple books. If you’re out of shape, start a simple exercise plan.

Do puzzles. If you like to exercise your brain, try doing the hordes of free puzzles available online. Why ever buy a sudoku book when there’s WebSudoku.com, for example (it’s the only place I ever do sudoku, and I usually do one hard one a week or so). If you like crosswords, hit BestCrosswords.com. These are great ways to stretch your mind a bit and learn new things.

Start a garden. This has a tiny startup cost in seeds, but tending a garden can provide almost endless entertainment for the studious type. This is the preferred hobby of my retired father, who keeps an immaculate garden almost an acre in size.

Volunteer. Look for community organizations that you can volunteer for. Spend some time working in a soup kitchen or at an after-school program. Not only will you feel really good about the use of your time, it will probably change your perspectives on the world a little bit.

Master something interesting. Figure out something simple and interesting and master it. I know one person who is utterly amazing at solving a Rubik’s Cube. She can do it in about fifteen seconds (after examining it) and is working on mastering it blindfolded. It turns out that this is a great party trick. Another friend of mine is incredibly good at playing a guitar, but he can’t read sheet music to save his life; he just toyed with it until he mastered it.

Did none of these sound interesting? Here’s an enormous list of hobbies, most of which are free or nearly free.

The key thing is to find something that gets your juices flowing; if it doesn’t cost anything (or doesn’t cost much), that’s great. If you can produce things that earn money, that’s even better.

The post The Only Thing You’ll Need To Spend Is Time: Ten Great, Free Hobbies appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Basically, my interests at the time broke down into four main hobbies:

Magic: the Gathering For about two years, I played a game called Magic: the Gathering, in which people bought and collected their own cards and used them to play a game against each other. I was quite good, to the point that I didn’t have to buy a single card for better than a year (I won many, many tournaments), but I did travel around a substantial amount to nearby large tournaments. I spent $108.22 for the month on this hobby, mostly on traveling to tournaments.

Books I can go through books like a freight train. This is aided by the fact that I often am still awake at two in the morning reading, but I’m still able to function normally the next morning, even now. I spent $222.41 for the month on this hobby.

Video and computer games This hobby was seriously on the wane when my son was born, but I still bought two video games during that month and rented several others. I remember distinctly sitting on the floor with my son once as I played Katamari Damacy … anyway, I spent $84.11 for the month on this hobby.

Collecting political buttons I rarely spend more than a few dollars on this, and that’s usually in cash directly to individuals that have buttons. I especially love buttons from primaries and also the losers in general elections in the 1960s and 1970s. Does anyone out there have a Shirley Chisholm 1972 button they’d be willing to part with? Anyway, I spent nothing on this hobby for the month.

In other words, on the items I could definitely tie to hobbies, I spent $414.74 in a single month, an amount that had to drastically drop. Yet, at the same time, I didn’t really want to let go of any of my hobbies. So here’s what I did to fix this problem.

First, I listed every hobby I had now and every potential hobby I had an interest in. This turned out to be quite a long list of potential interests, including learning a foreign language, starting a blog (hmmm…), learning to knit, and so on. I included

Once I had this list, I ranked everything on each list by cost and by my interest in it. This took a while, as I had to make some educated guesses in both areas.

After that, I immediately axed the most expensive third of the hobbies and also the bottom two thirds of the interest list, then I combined what remained. This eliminated roughly half of the hobbies, leaving me with only the most interesting and the most cheap. Anything that showed up twice (as the political buttons did) was a hobby I kept.

I then spent some time thinking about each hobby and how I could minimize the cost. By cost, I primarily refer to financial cost, but I also included the cost of time and the flexibility of it. For example, Magic was fairly inflexible because I had to go to tournaments at certain times, but reading was very flexible because I could pick up a book anywhere at any time.

In the end, looking at things from a completely different perspective led me to make some serious changes. I dropped Magic and video games as hobbies and added a blog as a hobby, keeping the political buttons and the book reading. Blogging is very inexpensive in terms of cost and is actually turning a profit right now, while button collecting is nearly free as well.

But what about the books? Reading is and was my top hobby, so I was loath to drop it. Instead, I discovered my local library all over again and found out clever ways to cut down on the cost of books.

In short, the key is to simply consider your interests and try to choose ones that cost less. Even if your passion is expensive, there are always ways to reduce the costs.

The post Ever Looked At Your Credit Card Statement, Whistled, And Said “I Need To Find A Cheaper Hobby?” Here’s How. appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Host it yourself.
Don’t go out to a crowded sports bar – instead, invite people over to your place. This may make you think “expensive,” but when you calculate up how much you would spend at a sports bar during the big game, you’ll quickly find out that it isn’t. In future years, you could suggest that others host it and that you all rotate.

Have it “potluck” style.
Ask everyone to bring a snack and/or a six pack of their favorite beverage to share with others. Most people will show up with a bag of chips, but usually a person or two will bring something quite delicious (one year, I had a friend bring crab-stuffed mushrooms that were gone in roughly ten seconds).

Buy refreshments in bulk.
If you are stuck buying refreshments, this is a great day to check out your local warehouse club. These are almost always great places to get snacks in bulk, especially Sam’s Club. Plus, you may find other items that you can buy in bulk there that will save you some money.

Make inexpensive and simple snacks.
Simpler is almost always better at these events, allowing you to enjoy the party as well. Don’t prepare something complex – make simple, inexpensive snacks that can be brought out very quickly to the partygoers.

My personal favorite “cheap” snack for a large crowd is tortilla roll ups. Simply buy a ton of tortillas, spread them each with a thin layer of cream cheese, sprinkle some red pepper, diced onions, and a bit of diced tomato on them (and maybe some cheese or refried beans or lettuce or chicken, too, if you want), and roll them up. Put them in a fridge for a while to firm them, then pull them out, slice the rolls into one inch (or so) pieces, and serve with some salsa (buy a large container of this, too, if you have a lot of guests). These are really cheap to make and are always a huge hit.

Move all but one of your televisions into the party area.
This seems a bit strange, but if you fill your party area with televisions all broadcasting the big game, people can sit facing in different directions and congregate with others without having their view blocked while also keeping everyone in the same room to celebrate the big moments together (like when Peyton Manning throws his eighth touchdown pass).

Paint your face.
This is a great and cheap way to liven up a party. Paint your face in the colors of your preferred team. Two small containers of tempera paint from the art supply store will provide more than enough to paint your own face and that of your family. Of course, if you’re painting your face in dark blue and orange, be aware that tears make the paint streak.

Set aside another room for people who are uninterested in the Super Bowl and the loud cheering.
I usually have a bunch of chairs, a couple tables, a television, and a bunch of board games and decks of cards in this room.

Clean all of your handtowels and washcloths and keep them easily available.
Someone will spill something, so it’s best if you can just grab a couple towels and take care of the problem quickly. Using your own cloth wipes is much cheaper than using paper towels, so just have plenty of these on hand instead of paper towels. Even better, you can refer to them as “crying towels” for the Bears fans in the room.

Don’t waste money on decorations.
Most people could care less about decorations. If you happen to already be a superfan of one team or another, use the supplies you already have and wallpaper the party room in Peyton Manning jerseys. Otherwise, don’t invest anything in decorations; just clean the place well and have the televisions ready to go.

Bag up any leftover snacks and eat them as side dishes for the next day or two.
Don’t waste food unless there’s a reason for it. Save some of the leftover snack food and eat it in the coming days. Anything that should be refrigerated should be eaten quickly, but dry snacks can be used over time.

The post Ten Tips For A Cheap And Memorable Super Bowl Party appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Now, instead of going to a concert and spending a bunch of money on a ticket, we head to a park and listen to the community band. Instead of going out to eat, we can join up with a community potluck or drop a few dollars in the collection jar at a community fundraising dinner. Instead of burning an afternoon at a shopping mall buying junk we don’t need, we spend the day at a community festival. Instead of going to the theatre, we watch the high school class perform The Glass Menagerie. Not only is it cheaper, we get to know our locale in a much more personal fashion.

Now that we’re addicts of the community calendar, here are five great ways we’ve found to discover great community activities and entertainments in your town that are free or nearly so.

The local newspaper This is the most obvious place to look. Stop at a gas station and find the most local newspaper available. Almost all of them will have some sort of community calendar and at least an article or two about major upcoming community events. The articles are almost always of interest because they can describe an event in detail to you.

The visitor’s center Many towns (even some small ones) have a visitor’s center that can identify a lot of interesting activities and places to visit nearby. Even if you’ve lived in a place all of your life, a visitor’s center can still point out tons of interesting things to check out locally.

City hall Stop in at city hall and see what you can come up with. Many towns have a printed community calendar available in their city hall (or in another place that you can be directed to easily) with even more detail than what appears in the newspaper.

Chamber of commerce The local chamber of commerce can usually connect you to members of the community who can help you find all sorts of activities of interest. Before trying them, I expected that I would just be bombarded with commercial pitches, yet I have never found a chamber of commerce that wasn’t thrilled to point me towards community activities of all kinds.

The post office In small towns, believe it or not, the post office is the place to go for this kind of information. Not only is their bulletin board often jammed with notices of upcoming events, the postmaster almost always knows what’s going on – and if they don’t, they can point you right at someone to talk to. In my town, the postmaster was one of the most helpful people of all in terms of helping us discover the possibilities of the town.

The next time you’re tempted to go out on the town and drop some money on entertainment, take a bit of time and look around your town to see what sorts of free entertainments can be found. You may be surprised at the variety and depth of what’s available.

The post Five Sources For Great, Inexpensive (Often Free) Entertainment In Your Neighborhood appeared first on The Simple Dollar.