One of the best parts of gardening is that you get to watch the tiny seeds you plant in the early spring grow gradually into beautiful, blooming plants that provide food all throughout the harvest season. The smallest thing, with a bit of love and care and attention, turns into something incredible. One of the

At Christmas, each of our children received a small amount of money as a gift, along with encouragement for them to spend it on whatever their little hearts desired. Over the next week, the subject of spending that money came up several times. Rather than just taking them to a store and letting them go

Lately, I’ve seen many emails from readers asking me whether or not I think a particular debt is “okay” now that interest rates are so low. It’s true – collateralized debt for people with good credit histories has a very low interest rate right now. You can get car loans and home loans for stupendously

During the month of February, I committed myself to writing one long note each day to someone who I used to be highly connected with but have drifted apart from for some reason or another. Old friends. Old co-workers. Old clubmates. Old business partners. Old classmates. Once upon a time, I shared something valuable with

You’d be surprised how often I’m asked this simple question. It’s something on a lot of people’s minds, apparently. How much do I have to save up to be able to live off of my own savings? It’s impossible to come up with an exact number, but we can come up with an estimate. Figuring

Every once in a while, I’ll find myself in an airport or somewhere else where a personal finance or investment program is on television. I’ll watch it for a bit and usually find myself frustrated because, every time I watch, I see a bunch of red flags that indicate that I should take what’s being

Spend a minute and think about the last several non-essential purchases you made. Maybe you bought a magazine at the grocery store. Maybe you stopped at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. Maybe you downloaded a new album. Now, ask yourself this: In light of all of the things you already have in your life,

When Sarah and I were seriously dating and, eventually, engaged to be married, we set something of a precedent of celebrating certain events in our lives. When one of us got an A in a difficult college class, we celebrated by going out for dinner and a movie. When one of us got a post-graduation

I’ve been self-employed for almost five years now. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot of things about self-employment. Originally, this article was going to be much longer, but as I found myself writing tip after tip, I discovered that most of them were either simply restating the same thing or they were very narrow,

This morning, we talked about the burden of caring for parents and the “sandwich generation.” This afternoon, let’s look at the burdens of younger people. Yesterday evening, I heard a fascinating story on Marketplace about how millennials are likely to be in debt their entire lives, and take some debts to their grave. There are

Recently, I read a fascinating study by the Pew Research Center indicating that somewhere around one in seven adults have simultaneously provided financial assistance to a parent aged 65 and older and to one of their own children of any age in the past year. A quick overview of this study: With an aging population

Recently, I read a fascinating interview of the film director Steven Soderberg on why he’s giving up on directing as a career path (thanks to kottke for the link). One particular piece stood out at me, though (my emphasis in bold): On the few occasions where I’ve talked to film students, one of the things

For most of us, the desire to replace our computer comes about due to one of two things. Either there’s a hardware failure or there’s a need to run some application that doesn’t run well on our older computer. In either case, I’ve found myself in a position to replace my computer twice since I’ve

Mel writes in: For the past six months, I’ve been getting letters from creditors in the mail. I don’t want to read them because the thought of facing them makes me sick to my stomach with worry and I don’t sleep well for days, so I just throw them in the trash as soon as

“Financial independence” is a term that I often use on The Simple Dollar to describe my primary long-term goal when it comes to my finances. The catch with a phrase like “financial independence” is that it can have such drastically different meanings to different people. For example, some people consider themselves financially independent if they’re

My children spent Friday afternoon and Saturday morning designing their own boardgame. The supplies they used for the game design were simple – several pieces of paper, a bit of glue, and a box of crayons. With each iteration, the game became more compelling. It started off as a Candyland variant, except using dice for

A few days ago, I had a long conversation with an old friend about a difficult career decision he was facing. He needed to decide whether or not to take a sizeable career risk, but he also had a family at home. I essentially advocated for him not to take the risk, mostly because I

When Sarah and I first started our financial recovery, we tried out several different budgeting tactics. We made up a very detailed budget in a spreadsheet. We split up our expenses into several different specific categories and then, whenever there was an expense, we noted which category it came from. We tried an “envelope” system.

Most of the time, when I have to make a decision, I rely on my instincts to make a good choice. I don’t spend time agonizing over every little choice in my life and, even though I’m careful about every significant decision, when I end up making it, I usually rely in large part on