I’m extremely proud of this book, as I conceived of the entire idea myself, spent literally hundreds of hours researching materials and interviewing dozens of people, and spent the last three months tying together the manuscript.

Since I’m so excited to talk about it (and I know a lot of you are interested in what’s coming based on the emails and Twitter comments and instant messages I’ve received), I thought I’d offer up a little “question and answer” session about the book to whet your appetites.

What is the book called?
The book is tentatively titled “Making Change.” We hope to settle on the final title of the book within the next week or two. In fact, earlier today I submitted a revised title, subtitle, and very basic cover mock-up to my publisher, based on a brilliant suggestion from Sarah (my wife) a few days ago.

What is “Making Change” about?
The world is changing at a rapid pace. Twenty years ago, the web was nonexistent – today, virtually all of us use it as a key information gathering tool. Fifteen years ago, cell phones were a novelty at best – now, they keep us connected with each other in ways inconceivable a generation ago. Ten years ago, Asian economies were in ruins – today, products made in China and jobs outsourced to Bangalore are the norm. Five years ago, Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist – today, hundreds of millions of people use these services to maintain social connections.

My own story is a perfect example of this rapid change. Four years ago, I was buried in consumer debt, working in a straightforward career in a monolithic organization, missing out on the work I was most passionate about. Today, we’re free of consumer debt and working in a freelancing career doing exactly what I love the most.

These rapid changes make our lives more unpredictable than ever. They’re changing some of the most fundamental ways the world works – things move faster with far less predictability. Many of the old rules – the old ways of doing things – simply no longer work.

“Making Change” is about navigating these changes – and all of the countless other ones coming our way in the near future. What can we do to protect our hard-earned money – and earn even more? How can we maximize our career opportunities? And whatever happened to the promises of economic and personal freedom that the future was supposed to hold? My own story of making change plays a central role in the story, as does many of the stories shared to me by readers of The Simple Dollar over the years.

Intrigued? I hope so.

When is “Making Change” coming out?
We’re hoping for an April 2010 release date, though nothing is set in stone. The enormous amount of research I did for this book (and an unexpected illness in September) caused me to slip a little in submitting the final manuscript, so this may cause the final release date to slip a little more.

What made you decide to write a book like this?
I originally started out writing a memoir – it was very humorous and self-deprecating in places. As I kept writing, I kept noticing a theme in what I was writing – everything was going along, then something fairly unexpected happened, leaving me gobsmacked.

Why were all of these radical changes always happening in my life?

The most fascinating part was that many of the things that happened to me were things that happened to many others over the last ten years or so. We fell into terrible debt. We had a child when we didn’t expect it at all. We found our career path twist in an wholly unexpected (and undesired) direction. We found large organizations being increasingly disloyal to us as individuals. We found communication tools that put us in touch with countless other people who shared the same seemingly obscure interests that we have. We lost the power of isolation, carrying cell phones that follow us wherever and whenever we are.

At first, I thought this might be a source of a few interesting posts on The Simple Dollar, but the more I began to study these disruptive changes – and how they’re becoming more frequent, not less – I realized that many of the rules of personal finance and career management didn’t really apply any more. They assumed a long period of stability – and those long periods of stability don’t exist any more.

I followed that rabbit hole and out came “Making Change.”

What happened to the memoir book?
Right now, it’s sitting in hibernation. While I did include some pieces of it in “Making Change,” the memoir has such a different tone to it that it’s really hard to compare the two.

In theory, if I ever got desperate for articles for The Simple Dollar, it would work well for that. The “memoir book” as it sits right now is a collection of about twenty essays, chronologically ordered, and about 3,000 words apiece. Each one relates – in a somewhat humorous and self-deprecating way – some personal finance principle that I discovered the hard way.

I’m honestly unsure what I’m going to do with it, but I know one thing – I need a “book break” for a while. It’s going to rest for a while. In a few months, I’ll dig it out, read it again, and decide what I want to do with it. I might ship it around to other publishers, self-publish it (using Lulu.com or something like that), or simply turn it into a long series of posts. I just don’t quite know.

What’s the most surprising thing about the book?
There are two things that I think will really stand out. One, I think I make a very good case for the large amount of unpredictability in our lives – far more than most people think there is. This area drew a lot of my research for the book, actually.

One of my biggest conclusions for solving that challenge is pretty surprising, too. Yes, I talk about all of the usual techniques – emergency funds and so on – but perhaps the best way to protect yourself against such uncertainty comes from a word that our grandparents would find more familiar than we do (but we have surprising ways to access it ourselves). That one word? Community.

When can I read some of it?
In a few months, I intend to start posting excerpts here on The Simple Dollar so you can make up your own mind about the book and discuss a few of the bits in detail with other readers.

People who have signed up in the past to be “Friends of The Simple Dollar” will get a few extra treats as the book release day approaches.

When can I preorder it?
It’s not listed on Amazon.com yet. As soon as it’s listed, I’ll let you know.

I do ask that if you discover a way to preorder it before I announce it here on The Simple Dollar, that you wait until I announce it. The reason is simple – a large “spike” of preorders all at once helps me out greatly in the promotion of the book and makes it that much more likely that it will be a widely-read success.

Along the way, quite a few principles for personal and financial success began to appear. These same features pop up again and again in people’s stories and comments – and I find them to be deeply true in my own life as well.

The single most important part of personal finance is truly knowing yourself.
Why do you buy the things that you do? Why are you worried about this situation? Why do you feel this way about this product? Why do you respond to guilt in this way?

The answer to all of these questions lies with introspection. The answer to all of these questions is also a tremendous boost when it comes to personal finance. If you understand fully the internal reasons why you desire something, you can work through those reasons, validate them or throw them aside, and then make a clear, enlightened, and rational decision about whether to acquire it.

The more introspection you do, the more naturally the true answers to those questions become and the easier it becomes to recognize your more dangerous and frivolous impulses for what they are. This leads not only to tremendous financial success, but great personal success as well.

The second most important part of personal finance is setting clear, concrete goals.
This covers everything from daily to-do lists to a lifetime plan – and everything in between.

You can’t go anywhere if you don’t know where you are headed. The more specific and clear your goal, the easier it is to head in that direction. The more concrete your goal – in other words, a goal that has clear and realistic steps to get there and has a clear definition of achievement – the easier it is to achieve it.

I spend some time every week defining and re-defining my own goals. Doing this helps me keep in mind where I want to go and what I need to be doing today to get to that point. Over the last few years, this process really has served me very well.

The most valuable resource in the world isn’t money, it’s time.
Money is an infinite resource – you can always acquire more money. Time is a finite resource – you can never acquire more time.

We earn money through how we use our time. The more money we can earn in a given amount of time, the better off we are. Of course, the contrary is true – we spend our money making the remaining time we have more pleasurable.

The question that often entangles people is defining what exactly pleasurable time is. The definition is different for everyone, but I can say for certain that one thing is true: there are many people and marketers out there attempting to muddy the water for you. Advertising tries to make it seem as though using their product will make the time you have more pleasurable, even when it often won’t.

Again, it comes back to knowing yourself. What is your idea of pleasurable time? For me, my time isn’t made more enjoyable by having a name-brand household product. My time is made more enjoyable by having a product that gets the job done well at the lowest possible cost, freeing up my money to create more pleasure in other areas that matter to me.

Money is just a mechanism to improve the quality of our time. The question is whether or not we understand ourselves well enough to do that.

The more supportive people you have in your life, the better off you are.
Supportive people in your life make countless good things possible. They provide connections. They open doors. They provide advice. They provide help for your challenges. They support you in whatever you choose to do. They help build your self-esteem. They’re not necessarily just yes-men, though – a good supportive person can provide fierce criticism when it’s warranted.

The more you migrate towards supportive people in your life, the better you’ll feel about yourself and the more capable you will be to handle the challenges that life throws at you.

The fewer unsupportive people you have in your life, the better off you are.
On the flip side of that coin, removing unsupportive people from your life also improves the quality of your life.

Unsupportive people criticize you and damage your self-esteem. They take from you without replenishing. They aren’t there for you when you need them, but they expect you to be there for them when they need you.

These relationships devour the energy and passion and resources from your life without providing anything of value in return. Ending such relationships – and, ideally, replacing them with more positive ones – is a net positive in your life.

Blaming others for your problems is a dead-end road.
It’s incredibly easy to blame others when something goes wrong. It’s someone else’s fault that you lost your job. It’s the fault of the marketers that you’re in debt. It’s the fault of the lender that you can’t make your mortgage payment.

In each case, though, the blame often falls much closer to home. The willingness to accept that you’re often at fault when things go wrong is a major step towards being in control of your finances and your life. Analyzing those faults and figuring out what you can do differently so you’re not susceptible to such problems is vital.

Yes, sometimes it really isn’t your fault. Yet you did put yourself in the position so that you could be damaged by the ineptitude of others. Was there not actions you could have taken to prevent such things from happening? What can you learn from that the next time you try?

The more time you spend improving and educating yourself, the better your personal and financial life will be.
Virtually every successful person I know has a hobby that improves them in some way. They’re either passionate about reading and learning or some other area of specific interest. Quite often, they have a variety of interests, each of which leads to some degree of personal improvement.

What do you do in your spare time that also improves you? Are you exercising your body? Are you exercising your mind? Are you exercising your soul? Are you exercising your skills and talents?

Time spent engaged in activities that don’t push us to grow leads to one thing: atrophy. Falling behind.

Karma always comes around.
People who act in negative ways have negative things happen to them. People who act in positive ways have positive things happen to them.

It happens over and over again. Why? I think it’s because humans are better at reading each other than many people think. On a very basic level, people can sense what kind of person you are. Are you the kind of person who is constructive and seeks to help and support others? Or are you destructive – one who seeks to attack and bring down others? Which side of the coin do you enjoy – the success story or the failure story?

Your actions define you, even the ones that you think are hidden from everyone around you. Those choices affect your personality – they alter who you are. Choose good acts and you become a better person, one others are more likely to help. Choose negative acts and you become a worse person, one that drives others away. It’s up to you, with every little action you take.

There are very few aspects of your life that cannot be changed.
Most aspects of who you are – your financial situation, your skill set, your appearance, your social circle, even your personality – can change and improve with focused work in those areas. Don’t accept the things about yourself that you don’t like – work to change them.

Yes, some aspects cannot be changed. Some people have medical conditions that are difficult to overcome. Others may struggle with psychological issues. However, these are often burdens to fight through that can make you stronger as you overcome them, like ankle weights on a figure skater.

You don’t have to be content with your lot in life. Recognize that the place you’re at can merely be a stepping stone, and strive to step above it.

Reliability and functionality worth a premium.
Whenever I choose to make a purchase, I expect that the item I buy will be able to do the job I want it to do with minimum effort and fuss. I purchase items with a particular task in mind – chopping vegetables, keeping my food cold, keeping track of my exercise routine. When I use the item, I expect that it will accomplish that task as easily as possible – or else I wasted my hard-earned money on it.

Thus, I tend to gravitate towards spending more on well-made items that are reliable and do the job I want them to do. I want a trash bag that I can fill to the brim without worrying about breakage, so I don’t buy the cheap ones – I buy the ones recommended in Consumer Reports. I want a knife that will stay sharp through all of the chopping needed for vegetarian chili, so I invest in a high-quality chef’s knife that will last forever.

Time is the one truly finite resource we have and I don’t want to waste it trying to make do with a poorly-made product. I’m far better off owning fewer things, but being sure that the things I do own work well and do what they’re supposed to do.

Each year, on the anniversary of the launch, I’ve highlighted my 25 favorite articles from the previous twelve months of entries. These aren’t necessarily the best articles, just the ones I enjoyed writing the most. Here’s the list from the first year and the list from the second year.

Without further ado, here are my twenty five favorite articles from the third year of The Simple Dollar. (I also have some extra thoughts that will be appearing later today.)

Christmas Inspiration from a Stick and a Cardboard Box When writing this, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the many wonderful Christmases I had when I was a child. Christmas isn’t about things at all – it’s about experiences and people.

Seven Tactics for Turning Short-Term Intensity Into Long-Term Intensity You can’t start a fire without a spark, but unless you tend to that fire carefully, it can burn itself out and you’re left with nothing at all.

Fifteen Tactics for Maximizing Your Investment in Reading for Personal Growth Reading is one of the best ways to make yourself grow as a person, but often that growth isn’t found in speed-reading the latest Stephen King novel. Here are some tactics to make an enjoyable, lazy afternoon curled up with a book into something that can genuinely help you to grow as a person. I think my love of reading really comes through here.

The Limits of Frugality: What’s Next When You Can’t Cut Any More? I usually find that people haven’t cut very much at all when they believe they’ve cut to the bone, but sometimes people really have trimmed away all the fat they can. When you’re living off ramen, beans, and rice and still need a boost, here are some things to try.

When Your Financial State Improves, Do Your Frugal Standards Change? I think they do. What actually seems to happen is that the value of your time goes up. Instead of filling your spare time with something that earns a return of $5 an hour, you’re more likely to want to spend that time with family, doing something fulfilling like a family game night.

How I Look at Economic News: Beyond the Talking Heads I felt that the apocalyptic economic paranoia of late 2008 and early 2009 was completely overblown and I took the entire idea to task several times. This was perhaps my favorite article about the situation because of how it ties to the real world so directly.

The Bills Your Parents Didn’t Have When you compare the financial situation of a recent college graduate today to one from thirty years ago, things look vastly different. That new graduate is often buried in debt and is facing a big pile of monthly bills, neither of which were faced by a college graduate thirty years ago. I riff on that idea here.

The Giving Pocket Quite often, while stumbling through life, we’ll find a situation where immediate charity can really make a difference. I have a giving pocket for just those situations. The story I tell here, about the poor boy and the dumpster and the food, really tears me up.

Some Thoughts on Building a Successful Marriage A successful marriage requires a few key ingredients. Without them, marital success will be incredibly difficult. I find that I often rely on my wife almost as though she were a part of me. Without a lot of trust and a well-built relationship, that would be impossible.

Personal Finance and 1,000 True Fans I went down an interesting philosophical road here, one that has been on my mind a lot as of late. What does it really mean to give of yourself to others? What do we really have of value to give? What can we fairly and reasonably expect in return – or should we expect anything at all?

A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Big, Healthy Emergency Fund For many people, the idea of having several months’ worth of cash in a savings account seems like an impossible and unrealistic goal. It doesn’t have to be. Here, I walk through how to build one, focusing more on the psychology than offering just another how-to list.

A Guide to Making Inexpensive and Delicious Homemade Pizza This is one of my favorite food posts. Pizza night is a tradition at our house (often on Friday nights, but not always) and it’s something we all enjoy and treasure.

Is Suze Right? Do Emergency Funds Now Trump Debt Repayment? Suze Orman made a seemingly sensible argument that people should focus on their emergency funds during a down economy. However, I felt the opposite case needed addressing – that by the time we recognize that the economy is down, it’s too late to build any sort of large emergency fund.

A Tour of My Messenger Bag My messenger bag is my mobile office (in fact, I’m using the laptop I carry in that bag to compose this very post). Here’s a guided tour through it, exposing every little nook and cranny. I think such things are a very intimate way to look at a person’s life.

A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating a Deal-Finding Homepage I don’t like deals for the sake of deals. Instead, I prefer to quickly sift them, looking only at offers that will directly be useful to me. To do this, I’ve set up a deal-finding homepage that enables me to automatically find just the deals I want from all over the ‘net by just loading a single web page.

The Reliability Bell Curve: What Does “More Reliability” Actually Mean? Buying something that’s more reliable than something else isn’t a guarantee that it will last longer. Instead, you’re merely playing the odds – the more reliable item has better odds of living a long life. Thus, when you hear of cases of typically-reliable items not lasting long or of typically-unreliable items lasting forever, they’re usually just the outliers.

12 Ways My Wife Quietly Makes Our Life Work Without Sarah, The Simple Dollar simply wouldn’t be sustainable. She might not contribute directly, but her indirect contributions are constant and bountiful.

Personal Finance 101: Why Do I Need Credit At All? Dave Ramsey often preaches a credit-free lifestyle. What he leaves out is that one’s credit report is often automatically scanned by all kinds of places to get a quick thumbnail sketch of your reliability. If you don’t have that, it can result in higher insurance rates, among other things.

Ten Great Ways to Make Powerful Visual Reminders of Your Personal Finance (and Other) Goals Writing down and specifying your goals is a powerful way to get started on a better path, but how do you prolong the magic? Here are ten really good ways to keep those goals in mind all the time as you work towards something better.

Can You Actually Earn Reasonable Money from Mechanical Turk? This was just a very fun post to write, from beginning to end. Playing around with Mechanical Turk and then trying to determine if it was actually worthwhile was a great exercise.

Are You a Money Victim? Victimhood is an incredibly dangerous trap to fall into. When you blame others for your problems, you’re avoiding looking within to find solutions.

How Low Can You Go? Vegetarian Burrito Bowls This was my favorite entry in the summer “How Low Can You Go?” food series, mostly because I thought it provided the most intimate view of how we live our life.

Helicopter Parenting, Baby Boomers, and Financial Dependence Here, I make the case for why “helicopter parenting” puts both parent and child on an extremely dangerous personal finance track. I would rather my child be independent and need nothing from me than friendship and occasional advice when they reach adulthood. And maybe a helping hand with the grandchildren, of course.

The Essential Bookshelf 2009: The Eleven Books That Rise Above the Rest These are the books that influence my personal finance thinking more than any others. In other words, if you are looking for some books to read, this is probably a great list to start with.

Mirror Neurons: Why Watching Others Succeed Won’t Help You Succeed I find areas where other fields of science and human knowledge border on personal finance and personal behavior to be endlessly fascinating. Plus, this is as good an argument as any to turn off the television and do something.

Quite often, when I tell people that I’m a full time writer, they’re surprised. They expect that by saying that I’m a writer, I write books (I have written two of them, with one in print and one forthcoming) and articles and that’s it – if I do anything online, it’s just promotional work for those books and articles.

That’s not the case at all. In fact, the majority of my income comes from The Simple Dollar – the books and articles I write are just continuations and further explorations of ideas I first touch on here.

How exactly does that work? Here’s the scoop on how I actually earn my income and how it all works.

How I Got Started
I didn’t start The Simple Dollar under the belief that it would earn me any sort of significant income. Instead, I started it because I love to write and I felt like the personal finance journey I was on – recovering from a nightmarish level of debt – was something other people were going through and could relate to.

Money was – and still is – something that’s difficult to talk about in the evenings when hanging out with my friends. People are generally uncomfortable revealing anything about their financial situation in social situations. I knew that, when I was going through my financial recovery, I did want to talk about it – but I knew that it was something of a conversational taboo.

At the same time, I love to write. I’ve written for my own enjoyment almost every day for more than a decade (and nearly approaching two decades at this point).

The two meshed naturally – I’ll just write about my money situation and share it freely with others. The internet provides a great forum for that. I didn’t really worry about income – I just started writing every day because it was fun. I put a few simple ads on the site, figuring I would just earn a few pennies from them, and I just wrote.

I started off with just my friends reading the site. I would link to other websites when I’d see an interesting article there and they’d notice, come visit, and sometimes become readers. They’d link to me. The Simple Dollar started showing up in Google search results because of the existing links and readers. More readers came in, and the snowball built.

Eventually, I had hundreds of thousands of readers a month, along with tens of thousands of people subscribing by email and RSS readers. With those numbers of readers came more responsibility – and more time. I started spending lots of time doing things like answering emails and approving comments and handling interview requests. At some point, the time investment I was making in The Simple Dollar needed to return a worthwhile income or else something had to give.

How do you transform that time investment into income?

Earning Income
Each time a reader visits a page on The Simple Dollar, they see a few ads. I make an effort to make them fairly unintrusive – when you first load up the site, for instance, you only see one ad, the one in the upper right. As you scroll down, you see a few others.

On other websites – as I’m sure you’ve noticed – ads can be a lot more intrusive. In general, the more intrusive an ad is, the more a website owner gets paid.

Here’s how “getting paid” works. Some ad broker – for many sites, it’s Google, but I’m transitioning to using Federated Media – sells some enormous number of ad views to ad agencies for specific campaigns. So, for example, Federated Media might sell 200 million ad views to American Express all at once. Since American Express is a large company, they want lots of ad views and don’t want to deal with hunting down individual sites that might display the ads, so they buy from an ad broker that does just that.

Federated Media, in turn, splits those 200 million ads among a large handful of sites they represent. For example, they might assign one million of those views to The Simple Dollar.

That’s where I come in. I go about my business writing good stuff that people want to read – just simply talking about money in a frank way and offering the money advice that actually works for me – and people then visit the site. Every time a person visits a page on The Simple Dollar, it counts as an ad view.

Over the course of a month or a month and a half, I’ll rack up a million pages viewed on The Simple Dollar from readers who come here to read what I’ve written. Once that’s completed, I’ve fulfilled my obligation to Federated Media and they then pay me my portion of what American Express paid them – the appropriate fraction of their total ad purchase minus Federated Media’s commission for handling it.

To put it in simplest terms, I earn a small amount for each page viewed on The Simple Dollar. It’s a tiny amount – a fraction of a cent – but if, over the course of a day, thirty thousand pages are viewed, that adds up to nine hundred thousand views over the course of a month. Even if I just earn two-tenths of a cent for each of those views, that’s still $1,800 per month. (I can’t actually disclose the true amount I earn per page viewed because of the contracts I’ve signed, but the numbers here are fairly realistic per campaign.)

I also earn a bit more from my book reviews, which I’ve been doing since the start of The Simple Dollar. Each book review includes links to Amazon because the pages about books on Amazon are usually pretty informative and interesting. However, if a person chooses to buy that book at Amazon after following the link there – or buy anything else at Amazon – I earn a small percentage of that revenue.

These things only work because I have a substantial amount of readers. When someone starts a website, the audience at first is just going to consist of family and friends – maybe a thousand pages per month. At two tenths of a cent per page, that’s $5 for the whole month – not worth the effort of writing a lot of posts.

What happens over time, though, is that a site that writes consistently good stuff slowly picks up more readers. The second month might see 1,500 pages viewed, then the month after that might see 2,500 pages. The rate will grow over time, in fits and starts, and so will the income.

It takes patience. It also takes the ability to write consistently well (not perfectly, but good enough to interest people) so that they’ll come back in the future. It also takes a consistent focus on a topic that people are interested in – if you just write about whatever interests you each day, you’d better be an exceptional writer or you’ll never make it.

Why Not Load Up With Ads?
As some of you might have already figured out, a site earns more per page if it’s loaded up with intrusive ads. The more ads a site owner can put on a page, the more they’ll earn from each person that visits the site.

So why not load the site up with ads?

In the short term, that works well. It earns you a big boost of income. If you double the amount of ads on a page, you double the amount you earn from that page (roughly), and thus double the amount you earn over the course of a month.

The only problem is that if you load a site down with ads, it becomes harder to read. It becomes less enjoyable to read. It goes from being something exciting and interesting to something that seems to just be attacking you with ads. And readers begin to go away.

Soon, you’re displaying less than half the pages you were once displaying, so you’re actually earning less than you were before. On top of that, you have substantially less influence as well.

The Value of Influence
Influence itself has a lot of tangible value. Here’s an example of how that works in my case.

For many years, I tried to get the attention of book publishers with a fiction novel that I completed in 1999. The rejection letters piled up, and many publishers didn’t even bother to respond. Only one publisher even nibbled a little bit, and then they rejected it.

Once The Simple Dollar became popular, book publishers started contacting me. One of the first ones was Adams Media, who worked together with me to build the idea behind 365 Ways to Live Cheap, my first book. Once that one was successful, several publishers contacted me about a follow-up and I chose the one that gave me the most creative control.

Why did this happen? Book publishers have direct evidence now that the things I write have an audience – a large group of people will come around consistently to read what I write. That influence led them to believe that a book written by me was worth investing in, whereas before I wasn’t worth the time of day to them.

This same principle holds true for magazine and newspaper articles, speeches, and other opportunities. There is additional value – and income opportunities – simply from having a large audience on The Simple Dollar.

“I Can Write Better Than You… So I Should Be Doing This!”
Yes, you probably can write better than I can – and good for you. But making even a small income from an internet site is a lot different than other avenues for earning income.

First, you have to have tons of patience. Your first few months are going to be incredibly lean. You’re not going to earn much at all at the start, even though you’re putting tons of time into writing worthwhile stuff.

Second, you have to write good content every single day. Writer’s block doesn’t fly here – if you have writer’s block, you can’t just choose not to write for a while until it comes back. It’s much like being a beat reporter – if you don’t make the deadline almost without fail, people will stop turning to you for the information they want or the entertainment they desire.

Third, you have to be selfless. The only thing that matters is the readers, period. When they read an article of yours, are they actually getting some value out of it? Here’s an example: linking to sites that are better than yours, even though it risks readers leaving to those sites and never coming back. In truth, though, you’re making an effort to link to the best stuff – the stuff that resonates with you – and bringing it to your readers, even if it means some risk to you. Sure, a few readers might leave and never return – but others will respect and value what you do.

Fourth, you have to be writing about something people care about from a perspective that’s either interesting or that they can identify with. Dooce is popular because she writes about something many people care about (parenting) from a perspective that’s interesting or identifiable, depending on who you are (self-deprecating and snarky). You have to have both elements – a topic that’s interesting to a lot of people from a perspective that’s interesting to a lot of people. Add on top of that the requirement to constantly write good content and blogging at a high level can drain any writer.

I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from earning a living doing this. It’s just important to note that these are the realities of the situation.

In Conclusion…
Yes, you can earn money from blogging, but it’s not as easy as just logging onto the internet and voicing whatever is on your mind. It takes patience, focus, passion for your topic, and some “short order” writing skill.

The only problem is that when I ask for such help, it clutters up the site a bit. Instead of posting about something interesting and useful to everyone, I wind up filling up site space with such requests. Most people don’t mind, but for people new to the site, that’s not really interesting. They’ve come to The Simple Dollar to learn more about their finances and their life, not to fill out a survey or do some other little thing that I need help with.

So, I’ve come up with a solution. Friends of The Simple Dollar.

Here’s how it works. “Friends of The Simple Dollar” is an email list that I’ve set up privately – I won’t share a single email address with anyone else.. Roughly once a month or so (or maybe a bit more often when I release a book or something similar), I’ll send out an email to everyone who has signed up for that list asking for help on something small – filling out a survey, helping me a bit with book promotion, or sharing something of interest. It shouldn’t take someone more than five minutes or so to do the little things I might ask. On occasion, I might send out something special to the list to show my appreciation for your help, too.

So, if you’re willing to give up five or ten minutes once a month to help out The Simple Dollar with such simple things, please sign up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

If this isn’t your thing, no big deal – don’t sweat it. I won’t be sending out unique content to the list, just occasional requests for help. I’m just looking for people who enjoy the site, think it provides value, and are willing to offer a bit of a helping hand on occasion.

As always, thanks for your time and consideration!

I’ve been a reader of The Simple Dollar for two years. Sometimes it feels like you’re saying the same thing over and over.

Jamie writes:

You really should run more ads. With your audience, you could be making a mint with some well-placed advertisements or paid posts.

Kelly writes:

I used to subscribe to a bunch of finance blogs for a more well rounded perspective, but they got too commercial and too self-promoting, so only a few remain – including yours!

Shane writes:

When I first started reading The Simple Dollar, I found the money articles most useful. Now I find the time management and personal growth stuff more useful.

All of these comments (and several others) speak to a central problem when it comes to blogging about money: the basic principles of money management are surprisingly straightforward once you learn them.

Most of the money chatter out there – CNBC, Money Magazine, blogs, and so forth – is just that: chatter. They usually just cover the issue of the moment – what stock is hot? What investment is hot? – and move on from there.

Why do they do that? To put it simply, repeating the same principles over and over can be incredibly boring. If you just keep saying “spend less than you earn” over and over again, no one will listen or care.

Thus, if you start writing about money, you’ll usually start off covering the basics. You’ll talk about those basic principles – and quite enthusiastically.

But then, there comes a point where those basic ideas simply aren’t there any more – or they don’t come along with nearly as much frequency. At that point, writers have several options.

One, they can try to write about related topics. For me, I write sometimes about time management (because time is money), personal growth, and career matters. I view all of these as being pretty tightly tied to improving your financial life, so they feel like relevant topics to me – and apparently to Shane as well. The drawback here is that you can lose complete track of what you’re writing about – a money blog can turn into a GTD blog, for example. So, the solution here is to tie things back into financial issues.

Two, they can try to find new angles on the principles. For me, this usually comes from writing about my own life experiences, observing how these things continually pop up in my everyday life and in the lives of people around me. The only problem with this route is what Edward points out – for long-time readers, some of these articles can seem somewhat repetitive. So, the solution would be to mix in some of this type of writing, but don’t focus on it.

Three, they can simply chatter about the topic of the moment. This is an incredibly easy trap to fall into – and many writers do just that. They start writing about their preferred stock picks. They start talking about every little bump in the stock markets. They get obsessed with minutiae that really only helps people that are investing a lot of money. And, along the way, they stop talking about things that are of much value to others. I try really hard to avoid this – I focus on writing stuff that’s as timeless as possible, so that people who dig through the archives (and there are a lot of them) can find information that applies to their life.

Four, they can simply turn their writing into a running commercial. This is a big temptation for people who have built up a following and realize they no longer have anything to say. There are many, many groups out there who will happily pay bloggers – even those with limited followings – to write glowing reviews about their products. Similarly, there are many, many companies who will pay good money to have advertisements on a site, particularly one with a following already in place. This pretty much directly describes what Jamie and Kelly are writing about.

I choose to favor the first two and ignore the last two. Yes, it would be easy for me to turn The Simple Dollar into a giant cash cow – but doing that would destroy any credibility I have. Similarly, I could churn out dozens of “topic of the moment” posts – but if I wasn’t writing anything of lasting value, I wouldn’t want to continue writing and the site would inevitably go down hill.

So, what does that mean for the future?

One, I will never sell my content. Read this clearly, advertisers: if you want to pay me to write about your product, I will not do it. If you send me a prewritten post, I won’t post it. I only write about things I use (or have used) myself and find useful or otherwise noteworthy. 99.9% of the things companies email me about or want to pay me to write about are neither useful or noteworthy, in my opinion – so I won’t write about them.

The only exception to this might be if I found out I had a terminal illness, in which case I would try to maximize the immediate income from The Simple Dollar in order to provide more for my family after my passing.

Two, I only write about stuff I care about. If I find a topic boring, I won’t write about it unless I find some way to get engaged in it – usually through reading a question or a story from a reader. I only write about stuff that I care about – why would you ever want to read stuff written by someone who could care less about the topic?

Three, I find the basic principles endlessly interesting. I love nothing more than finding a new angle or twist on a basic money principle – and I will write about them. I use my life as a lab to explore these ideas, and I write about the results. I love to find new ways to break down the big ideas. That’s what I want to write about.

Four, I will branch out. I write about anything and everything that has any sort of connection to a healthy personal finance life. That might mean time management. That might mean entrepreneurship. That might mean anything that I can find that has some connection to a stable, healthy financial life.

Five, I only have enough ads to pay the bills and give us a bit of breathing room. When you visit the site, you only see one ad anywhere near the top of the page – that’s the prime real estate for sales. I could fit four or five ads up there and line my wallet.

I don’t. Why? I’m not writing to sell you products. If I were, you’d see ads all over the place and blatant shilling for various investments and so on. I’m writing because I enjoy writing and sharing ideas – for me, the ads are a way to make it possible for me to devote enough time to this that I can continually write worthwhile stuff.

In fact, that’s a big reason why I write books and have downloadables. Ideally, the site will reach a point where my book sales and downloadables will fund everything I do, enabling me to go ad free.

I am not in this for the money. I’m in this for the writing, the conversation, and the exchange of ideas.

If this sounds like a blog you want to read, stick around. If it doesn’t, I encourage you to find another site that matches your needs. I want nothing more than for every person who reads this site to grow a bit in their money and in their life – if The Simple Dollar isn’t doing that for you, I hope you’ll find something that will.

A long time ago, I wrote a very popular post entitled “Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on the Back of Five Business Cards“. After posting it, several people contacted me and suggested that I try to turn it into a book of some sort.

Over the following year, I tossed the idea around and eventually developed it into a fifty page short book, intending to use it to shop around to various book publishers. I incorporated a lot of original writing, pieces of various Simple Dollar posts, and lots of other interesting elements.

After reading through it a few times, though, I realized: why don’t I just go ahead and share this with my readers and anyone else who might enjoy it?

So, here it is. “Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on Just One Page” is a 49 page personal finance book that weaves together most of my favorite ideas on personal finance and a lot of other goodies into one document. I’m making it available for download under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, which means that this document is free – you can send it to your friends, put it up on your website, or print it out. You can also use if for commercial purposes – if you want to format it as a book and sell it, feel free. You can also modify the contents to your heart’s desire as long as it’s shared in the same way – any derivative works must also be shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

I only have two requests. One, if you write about this on your website, include a link back to the original source of the document – http://www.thesimpledollar.com/onepage/. Doing this enables new readers to always be able to retrieve the latest version of the document. Two, if you do something interesting with this document (creating something new and compelling with it, use it in a classroom, use it in a major media source), please let me know by dropping me an email.

So, enjoy! If you enjoy it, feel free to pass it along to your friends, print it off, use excerpts in whatever way you like – in short, have fun with it (and hopefully take a bit of the advice to heart).

Download it now – for free!

While there is a lot of good in that situation, I’ve found over the last several months that there’s a lot of bad in there as well. Over the last several months, I’ve spent far too much of my time dealing with ad contracts, talking with ad agencies, and so on.

This is frustrating for me for several reasons.

First of all, I don’t want to spend my working hours dealing with conference calls and detailed negotiations and the like, especially when many of these seemingly promising arrangements fall through. I want to spend my working hours researching, writing, and finding new ways to share my writing, and perhaps find a few more hours to spend with my family.

Second, I find such negotiations really, really boring. I’ll spend hours swapping emails with a representative from an advertising firm, only to find out that they’ve decided to do something else. I’ll spend an afternoon reading through the details of an ad placement contract. I wouldn’t mind investing the time if I found this work interesting at all – but, quite simply, it’s not.

Finally, I find that, time and time again, my location works against me. I live in rural Iowa. Advertising firms want to have a face to face meeting. They’re in New York or Los Angeles. It’s not worth it to me to fly there.

So what’s the solution? After much thought, I’ve hired Federated Media to represent The Simple Dollar for negotiating direct deals with advertisers. Federated Media basically does these things that I don’t want to do – they seek out advertisers, do the face-to-face meetings on my behalf, work out the details of the contract, and put things right at my doorstep for final approval. In exchange, they get a slice of the contract – much like any agent would. This leaves me to what I enjoy the most – writing and researching.

I Need Your Help
In order to get the ball rolling, though, I need to get a strong picture of you. Federated Media and I have developed a survey to get a clear picture of who exactly reads The Simple Dollar. Please, take a moment of your time to fill it out at the URL below. It will help me immensely.

The survey is now closed. Thank you for all your help!

The survey is completely confidential – it asks for no personal information about you. We’re just attempting to get a demographic picture of The Simple Dollar’s readership. Still, there may be questions you are uncomfortable answering – and if that’s the case, don’t fill out the survey.

I truly hope you’ll take a few moments to complete the survey. I’d really appreciate it. Thank you!

Prior to making that leap, I worked full time in a research lab with a small, rather tight-knit group of people and I spent my spare time (when I could find it) working on The Simple Dollar. After a year and a half of essentially managing two careers, I began to realize that it was creating a great deal of wear and tear on my family and on my relationships, so I made a difficult choice – and took a leap of faith on the writing.

I did a status report at the four month mark regarding how the transition was going. Among the highlights:

The huge amount of time that I didn’t have before has opened the door to countless projects
I feel genuinely fulfilled by my work
I miss my old job – at least the socialization aspects of it
I get stir crazy and often have to leave to go do something
Time management is a completely different challenge than before
My biggest frustration is the interruptions
The new money management stresses me out sometimes

That’s actually a great description of the situation as I saw it four months after changing my career. At this point, though, different things have moved to the forefront and other things have moved to the back burner. Here are the big things I’ve noticed after a full year of working from home.

My biggest challenge is often loneliness
This might seem like a strange complaint, but it’s true: the biggest frustration I regularly face is simple loneliness. I miss the ability to simply stroll across the hall and talk to people throughout the day. I miss social interaction, in short. This was made somewhat worse by a very rough Iowa winter, coupled by the fact that I live in a rather rural area, meaning there isn’t a local place I can visit for that interaction.

What’s the solution? One of the best tactics I’ve found is actually just calling people regularly. I call my parents quite often during the afternoon, mostly to hear what they’re up to and recharge my social batteries. Not only do such calls help keep the social circle going, it enables me to get past any loneliness I may be feeling, gives me a sounding board for ideas, and also helps me keep in touch with the concerns of others.

My biggest benefit is time flexibility
The single biggest benefit of working from home is the time flexibility. I can easily address any task that I need to focus on, whether it’s personal or work-related, as it comes up, provided I’ve built up enough of a “buffer” with my work tasks. Aside from a solid three hour block of time each day that I devote to my family (5 PM to 8 PM, roughly), my weekdays are basically filled with whatever task (in any aspect of my life) seems most urgent at the moment.

There are some big caveats here, though. First, I have to maintain a work buffer – that means I usually have quite a few articles already completed and ready to go before you read them. Second, I have to have a good sense of what’s a priority and what isn’t. Both of these attributes take a great deal of time to develop and maintain in order to gain flexibility. Things don’t become flexible just because you’re self-employed – you have to be able to make the situation flexible.

Meditation and prayer have grown in importance for me
When I was at my previous job, I rarely felt like I had time for things like meditation or prayer. They seemed like good ideas, but there was always something else to do. When I switched careers, I made it a goal to get more in touch with my spiritual side – and it’s the best thing I’ve done in terms of my personal growth.

Each day, I spend a bit of time in what I would describe as a mix of meditation and prayer. Most days, I do it twice – once early in the day and once in the late afternoon. These sessions are simple – I usually just attempt to relax myself, empty my mind of cluttered thoughts (I actually jot down everything I think I’ll need to deal with later), then sit still for a long while, clearing my mind of everything. Whatever comes, comes. Doing this twice a day has done wonders in terms of my clarity of thinking in all aspects of my life.

If I ever return to a “nine to five” career, I will take this aspect of my experience with me.

It’s easy to get overly introspective
It is very easy for me to start chasing windmills. I’ll get obsessed with some little detail of some project I’m working on or on some strange idea in my head or some little aspect of my health, and it will draw all of my focus if I’m not careful.

For me, good task management helps. I’ve become devoted to the use of task management tools to keep me going with my work. Whenever I finish a task, I try to move quickly to a new one. If I find a task is becoming overwhelmingly detailed, I stop, make an effort to break it down into smaller pieces, then work on those pieces. I also make an effort to eliminate distractions, and I’ve come to pride myself on days where I stick to my “to-do” list and accomplish as many items as I can on it. Without that kind of guidance, I’d get obsessed with all kinds of wasteful things.

Finding the right balance of not taking on too much is still a challenge
Sometimes, I feel like I can accomplish far more than I’m doing. Other days, I’m hit with a gigantic case of writer’s block and I can’t seem to accomplish anything. Given that I choose what I work on and what to commit to, I can put myself in great danger if I commit to too many things – but I’m also driven enough to want to commit to plenty of projects. There’s a balance there – and it’s still a tricky one.

My solution revolves around doing as much work up front as I can. If I’m going to start a series on The Simple Dollar, I usually have the whole series framed and quite a few of the articles already written. If I’m shopping a freelance article, that article is either done or close to it. My second book is already extensively outlined and half-written, but I still haven’t signed a contract for it.

Doing things this way gives me the maximum amount of freedom to work with my own personal ebb and flow. I can work hard when things are flowing well and not be panicked if I get a big dose of writer’s block.

Careful bookkeeping is essential
When you work for an employer, keeping track of taxes and other expenses is done for you – you just collect your paycheck and do your taxes at the end of the year. Once you’re working for yourself, you have to keep careful track not only of any income, but also of any spending that you do during the year that’s related to your work.

Take the time to develop a filing system that you understand. Mine tends towards the simple – I mostly just focus on making sure I have every receipt and invoice in a constant place. I also maintain a careful calendar of all financial due dates – quarterly tax dates, for example. Without it, things would get problematic very quickly.

You are a guy in your [thirties] who lists no credentials except the fact that you made it through a “complete financial meltdown” a few years ago. You have no professional training and don’t even mention where you went to college.

I don’t claim to be a guru, but I have had sufficient education to know that financial expertise is not something that can be learned through experience and introspection. Intuition in this area can be very misleading.

[...] People should not make financial decisions based on what their neighbor says, on the spoutings of someone on a website, or on what your gut is telling you. Seek out a qualified professional and get a second opinion.

This is just a blunt restatement of criticism that I hear on a daily basis. I hear time and time again that I’m not a financial expert, that what I write is of dubious benefit, and that I should just shut my mouth and let the “experts” do the talking.

So, let’s go through this step by step.

First of all, I’m not a financial guru, nor do I claim to be. All I can do is share my experiences and what I’ve learned along the way. I spend a lot of time educating myself on financial topics (see those weekly extremely detailed book reviews? I’ve been doing those every week for three years), trying new things, and asking questions. More importantly, I try to apply as much as I can to my life to see whether it actually works or not.

I choose to share all of that on The Simple Dollar and, more importantly, I include with it a lot of details of my own life. That’s an important distinction from the work of most financial “gurus” who offer up advice. Why? All advice comes from a perspective of some kind. Different people have different individual risk tolerances. They have different life experiences that have led them to different values.

The end result is that most financial “gurus” offer at least somewhat differing advice from one another. One easy example that comes to mind is the differing perspectives that Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman and David Bach have on repaying a list of debts. Ramsey advocates paying off the one with the smallest balance first. Bach recommends paying off the one with the highest interest rate first. Orman suggests a hybrid plan, where you focus on the highest interest rate debt but make more than the minimum payment on the other debts.

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? It’s not that simple. All three of the plans have advantages and disadvantages. Ramsey’s plan has the psychological benefit of a quick success – it’s easiest to eliminate your lowest balance debt. Orman’s plan also has a psychological perk – you’re making up ground against all of your debts. Bach’s plan is the best one from a pure mathematical perspective – over the long haul, it wins, but you may have to wait a long time to feel the success of removing a debt.

Ramsey and Bach and Orman came to these conclusions because of their life experiences, their own research and investigation, their own risk tolerance, and so on.

You can find many, many differences between financial “experts” along these lines. Most of the time, the differences are more a matter of perspective than a matter of fact. But here’s the catch – different solutions often work better for different people. Dave Ramsey’s solutions might work best for some of you. Suze Orman might give the right advice for others.

The catch is that you can’t know which one is “right” for you or “wrong” for you at first glance.

What’s the solution, then? Get your personal finance information from multiple viewpoints. Try to find answers that work well for you and follow them. Most importantly, don’t simply follow the advice of the first person you read.

So why do I write? I try to synthesize as many different viewpoints as I can find, figure out how they fit in my life, and share that experience with you. That’s the same package you’ll get from any personal finance blogger who is passionate about their audience and aren’t just trying to sell stuff.

Perhaps you gain value from that – if you’re a regular reader, you probably do gain some value from that.

That doesn’t mean, however, that The Simple Dollar is any sort of substitute for doing your own legwork and finding your own answers. Take my viewpoint as one of many – with mine, you might not have the value of a degree in finance, but you do know where I’m coming from in terms of background, life experiences, and perspective.

Good blogs bring something to the table that can’t be brought with a book and a television show – a synthesis of ideas, an interaction with readers, and a perspective that is nuanced and clear. After all, there are almost 3,000 articles at The Simple Dollar now, and readers who have been following over the long haul have a very strong, detailed picture of who I am and where I’m coming from. That’s an aspect no “guru” can give you from an infomercial.

Oh, and by the way, I went to Iowa State University.

To be honest, I didn’t ever expect you to be here. Sure, I had big dreams – who doesn’t have passing fancies about having their articles read by several hundred thousand unique readers a month? – but I was also realistic about things. My original goal was to attract a couple hundred semi-regular readers who might send some articles along to their friends and that maybe I’d help a handful of people with their personal finance problems. Instead of what I thought would happen with The Simple Dollar, I got what I dreamed about.

Right around the time I made the decision to write full time, I read an article that changed my perspective on everything. The article was called 1,000 True Fans, written by Kevin Kelly. The article makes an argument that a person who wants to make a living with a creative endeavor (which The Simple Dollar is) needs to cultivate a thousand true fans that are willing to support a writer/musician/etc.

Let me put that in a bit of a different perspective. Let’s say I was a skilled musician, but I wasn’t signed to a big record contract. All I had was a lot of concert dates around the country in small clubs and a contract with a small record company that really couldn’t afford to promote me at all. The 1,000 True Fans argument is that all I would have to do is strongly connect with just 1,000 truly loyal fans – those who will come to my shows no matter what, buy my albums, buy my t-shirts – and I’d be able to survive.

(Don’t worry, I am going somewhere useful with this. Just be patient.)

This led me to a big realization about The Simple Dollar: people might visit for the first time for personal finance advice, but that’s not why they’re sticking around. There are thousands of sources for personal finance advice out there – books, other blogs, professional magazines. There’s something inherently different about The Simple Dollar (and the same applies to Get Rich Slowly and Zen Habits and other blogs) that causes people to come back to this site specifically instead of other sources.

In effect, those people that keep coming back and keep reading the emails are my “thousand true fans.”

You guys don’t support me through financial contributions (though many have bought my book and have even picked up a few of the downloadables), but you find other ways to support The Simple Dollar. You comment. You send me emails. You send articles to your friends. You “friend” me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. And, I do believe that if I did need some sort of financial contribution, quite a lot of you would drop a few dollars my way.

So where’s the useful lesson in all of this?

I write articles for The Simple Dollar. I put them up here and share them as freely as I can. I communicate by email and IM with a lot of readers each day. Where this gets interesting is that many of those people return the favor in some way even though they’re not obligated to. They do the things I mentioned above – they send articles along to their friends, they talk about what they read here, they leave comments, and, yes, sometimes they buy my book and look at the ads.

All I did is start the ball rolling by writing – and giving my sincere effort in that writing, every single time. All of the value exchanges from there add up to enough to support me and my family. The interesting key, though, is that I started writing The Simple Dollar without thinking I would get a single thing in return for it.

There’s an exchange going on here, of course, but it’s an exchange that you can have in your own life as well. It’s easy to start: give what you know to others without expecting a thing in return. Do it regularly, consistently, and without reservation.

It’s easy to do. Help people. Share what skills and talents and ideas and gifts you have at every opportunity. Be generous with your time and your love. Help your friends, your neighbors, and even strangers. Most importantly, though, expect nothing in return.

After some time, you’ll come to realize that there is a bedrock of people in your life that are willing to help you out whenever you need it. These people might be your close friends or your family, or they might be people you see only a few times a year at community events. It might be the guy down the block that you’ve helped a few times when his car didn’t start. It might be the mailman. It might be the single mother that lives next door with two young girls.

These are the “thousand true fans” in your own life. You give of yourself to them as much as you can – and when you need it, they reciprocate in kind. What’s most amazing of all is that this builds up over time with hundreds of little exchanges – and before you know it, you’re receiving far more back than you’ve ever given.

Thank you.

So, here goes.

In the comment field under this post, please take a minute to leave a comment answering the following questions (you can answer some of them, all of them, or just one of them – whatever you’d like):

What is your geographic location?
How did you find The Simple Dollar?
Are you male or female?
How old are you? (Feel free to say “30s” or “40s” if you don’t want to leave your exact age)
Are you married?
Why do you keep coming back to The Simple Dollar?

You do not have to leave your real name in the “name” field below – feel free to make up whatever name you wish. I fully understand the desire for privacy and I don’t want this to be an intrusion on your privacy at all, just an attempt to get a feel for the people out there reading The Simple Dollar.

If you’re reading this by email and wish to participate, just click on the headline of this article.

Thanks for your time!

January
The Basics: Eight Tactics To Use When You’re Just Starting To Turn Things Around
The One Month Coupon Strategy: A Really Clever Way to Make Coupons Worthwhile
Online Personal Finance Analysis Tools: Some Thoughts on Quicken Online, Mint, and Wesabe
Wallet Hacking: Six Tactics for Modifying Your Wallet to Minimize Your Spending and Maximize Your Time
Video Games and Frugality

February
Little Steps: 100 Great Tips For Saving Money For Those Just Getting Started
The Changing of the Guard: $4 Generic Presciptions at Wal-Mart and Target
Defeating Superman Syndrome: How to Progress Beyond the “Need” to Be the Financial Hero
Training Wheels: Why I’m Spending Less and Less Time Managing my Personal Finances
25 Questions to Think About Before Your Next Job Interview

March
“Freegans,” Dumpster Diving, and the Limits of Frugality
The Financial Recovery Toolkit: Ten Tools I Used In My Financial Turnaround
Ten Ways to Translate Your Passion Into Additional Income
Is Success a Choice?
Is Jim Cramer a Positive or a Negative Influence on the Average Investor?

April
The First Money Talk: The When and How of a Conversation Every Couple Needs to Have
Making Your Own Laundry Detergent: A Detailed Visual Guide
8 Ways to Easily Reduce the Energy Consumption of Your Computer – and Save Big Money
Budgeting 101: How a Simple Budget Helped Me – And Can Help You, Too
Are Rechargeable Batteries Really Cost Effective?

May
Making and Maintaining a Master Information Document
Making Your Own Homemade Oatmeal Packets: A Visual Guide and Cost Analysis
An Interview With Amy Dacyczyn, The Author of The Tightwad Gazette
The Monthly Grind: Sixteen Hardcore Tactics for Minimizing Your Monthly Bills
The Essential Bookshelf: The Only Eight Books I’ve Kept (After Hundreds of Reviews)

June
Review: You’re So Money
How to Budget Using ING Direct (Or Another Full-Service Online Bank)
How We Organize Our Coupons and Execute Our Coupon Strategy
No Time for Frugality: Cutting Financial Corners with No Time Investment
A Clever Trick for Automatically Finding Deals You Want at Amazon

July
The Minimalist Kitchen: What You Need (and Don’t Need) to Set Up Your First Workable Home Kitchen
Should You “Debt Snowball” Directly into a Savings Account Instead of a Debt Payment?
Ten Tactics for Improving Your Luck
100 Things to Do During a Money Free Weekend
Some Thoughts on Being Broke and Being Poor

August
The Frugal Introvert: Fifty Ways to Have Fun By Yourself on the Cheap
A Frugal Guide to the Iowa State Fair (or Any Similar County or State Fair)
This Is the Right Personal Finance Book for You!
Everything’s So Easy for Pauline: Thoughts on Luck, Fate, Money, and Life (my favorite of the year)
How to Avoid the Trap of Splurging as a Reward for “Being Good”

September
Twelve Tactics to Prepare For and Minimize Winter Heating Bills (Besides Woodstoves)
Why One-Budget-Fits-All Doesn’t Work – And Why It’s Difficult to Compare Spending Between People and Families
Fifteen Ways to Have Cheap Fun With Your Kids Using a $1 End Roll of Paper
The Aldi Question: Does One Bad Experience Spoil the Soup?
The Twelve Biggest Personal Finance Mistakes People Make Over and Over Again

October
The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself
Some Thoughts on the Fulfillment Curve
Stop Trying to Impress Other People
Giving Outside the Box: Generosity on a Limited Budget
Eight Things You Should Do Immediately to Save Money When You Buy a Car

November
A Guide to Winterizing Your House
The Readers Speak Out: Their 25 Best Actions for Saving Money
What’s It All About?
A Long December
When a Treat Stops Being a Treat – and How to Get It Back

December
Announcing My First Book, “365 Ways to Live Cheap” (a major moment for me)
Gas Price Deflation: Should It Affect What Automobiles We Purchase?
Eighteen Tips for a Frugal (Not Cheap) Wedding
Synergizing Hobbies and Career for Greater Personal Success
Planning Ahead for Next Year’s Garden

So, below, I’ve listed six ideas I’ve had for future posting directions for The Simple Dollar. Please let me know in the comments which directions you like and which ones you have no interest in. I’ll likely dabble in all of the areas that show little opposition, but I’ll likely avoid anything that most people seem to dislike and I’ll focus on areas with a lot of interest.

Economics books Several people have wanted me to add an occasional review of an economics book – along with discussion as to how it applies to everyday life – to my weekly book review rotation. Some titles I’ve been considering reviewing include Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman and The Age of Uncertainty by John Kenneth Galbraith.

Detailed visual how-tos Articles on topics such as how to make your own laundry detergent and how to make homemade bread were really popular with some, but others have objected, saying they could go to Instructables if they wanted such things.

Interviews I’ve considered conducting interviews not only with personal finance writers, but also with entrepreneurs in my community as well as individuals who provide financial services in the area.

Do-it-yourself projects Would you like to see longer series about larger do-it-yourself projects, such as constructing and developing a kitchen box garden? I’ve got a few ideas for how to do these, but they go quite a bit beyond a single post.

Personal anecdotes I really enjoy writing personal anecdotes from my own life that illustrate some point about personal finance (like this one), but most of the time these seem to not attract much interest.

Tip lists Occasionally, I compile long lists of tips because I know lots of people like to download them and print them off for their own use, but again, these lists tend to draw some pretty strong negative backlash, too.

Please let me know in the comments which of these ideas appeal to you the most – and the least – as well as any other ideas you might have.

365 Ways to Live Cheap, that’s what.

It’s my first book, due to be released in bookstores everywhere on December 17, but already available for order on Amazon.com. What are some of the notable features of it?

It’s a great, easy to read guide for money-saving tactics. The title pretty much says it all – it’s a compilation of 365 of my best tips on personal finance and frugal living. Virtually all of the tips, if applied, can save you more than the price of the book itself.

It costs only $7.95. In an effort to release a budget-conscious book, 365 Ways to Live Cheap is available at a price point that anyone can afford. It’s available in a classy matte-finish paperback.

There’s a wide variety of advice inside. Although many of the tips are related to frugal living, a lot of the tips also apply to debt reduction, budgeting, and good money management tactics. And even the frugal tips are realistic – I don’t get into things like rewashing Ziploc bags.

It makes a great gift exchange or stocking stuffer gift. If you’re looking for an inexpensive gift for family members or gift exchanges, this is a great idea. It’s a way to share good personal finance ideas with your friends, family, and coworkers during an economic period where many people are searching for, well, ways to live cheap!

What’s inside? The book consists of a short, fun introductory quiz that highlights some of the most common personal finance foibles that people have, followed by twenty chapters that each focus on tips on a specific area of personal finance, from how to save money on automobiles and on housing to interesting choices, like a collection of tips on how reducing clutter can save you money.

Want some previews? Keep an eye on The Simple Dollar throughout the month of December for previews of some of the tips in the book. They’ll appear at the top of the right hand sidebar and rotate each day, with a few hidden tips sprinkled throughout the site.

A note about the cover: there are multiple covers of the book, depending on what market you’re in. If you order from Amazon, the cover may look different – the Amazon-ordered copies I’ve seen have a classy green cover, rather than the “folksy” yellow cover depicted above.

One final thought: it has been a lifelong dream of mine to publish my own book, and when I had the opportunity to hold the final version in my hands a few weeks ago, it was one of the best moments of my life. If you decide to pick up this book, don’t just use it as a great collection of tips for saving money. You can also use it for inspiration, as an example that sometimes, if you keep at your dreams for a long time, things can happen for you.

Order now from Amazon.com!

O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon it,
Many dollars wasted. I cannot take it back,
though my inclination is as sharp as my will.

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And I am a man to his debt bound.

I stand in pause, realizing that I must start again
to recover this neglect. What if this cursed hand
that chooses to spend so easily were weighted down?

Is there not money enough in my coffers
to wash away the interest?

Is there no mercy for the spender,
to avoid confrontation with this offense?

Perhaps I can offer up a prayer
to forestall this great fall
or to pardon my failure?

If I can fix the problem, I may look up; my fault is past.

But, what form of penance shall serve my mistake?
Asking for forgiveness of the debt?
That cannot be, for I still possess
those debts which I earned myself.

My most splendid possessions, my own greed, and my earthly desires
Can I keep these and still wash away the debt?

Oh, the banks of this world are corrupt
Their interest-heavy, gilded hands often shove aside justice
And make it easy for us to fall into greed
By our own hands.

But it is not so in heaven, or in our own life.
There is no shuffling, only facing
the truth of our own nature, and we are compelled
even in the face of excuses and desires
to give into the evidence: debts, no savings, and years of mistakes.

Now it is time to try repentance: to begin to save and pay.

But in my heart, I often wish to be free of it!

O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.

Overcoming bad financial moves is a modern struggle of the soul, much like Claudius struggling with himself in Hamlet. Hope this inspired you as much as Shakespeare has inspired me.

Normal posting will resume tomorrow morning!

I truly enjoyed many aspects of my previous job. That job gave me some seriously stressful moments, but it also gave me a ton of room for exploration and personal growth, and the challenges were always diverse and interesting and the people I worked with were spectacular – I still talk to many of them.

Yet I walked away from it. Why?

On the surface, it’s easy to just point at my family and say that they were the reason I made this difficult choice. Undoubtedly, the ability to spend more time with my children played into that decision. During the period of time when I was maintaining The Simple Dollar and working full time at my previous job, I felt like I had very little time at all to spare.

But after several months, I’ve come to believe my reason for changing gears was something else entirely.

Ever since I was a very little boy, I’ve dreamed about being a writer. I loved the idea of putting words down on paper – constructing sentences and paragraphs and chapters – and having it mean something. My dearest dream for many, many years was to write a “Great American Novel” – one that genuinely touched the lives of many of the people that read it.

I spent much of my late childhood and early adulthood digging deep into those “books that changed the world” – titles like Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

But, after some flailing attempts at getting stories published and a few bouts of serious disillusionment, I came to accept that this dream of writing something profound was not going to happen. I chose a different career path – one that latched on to some of my other talents – and went with it.

All along the way, though, I kept feeling like there was something big missing from everything I was doing. I could never put my finger on it, but I could sense it at times. I’d feel it when I’d help out a friend. I’d feel it when I had an opportunity to explain something and then see that brightening in the other person’s face as they understood it.

Eventually, I came to believe that there was something I was supposed to be doing with my life. I just didn’t know what it was yet.

This is the important part of the story, I think. Whenever I have a conversation with friends or with readers, I often find that people have an innate sense that there is some purpose they have in life, but often they haven’t quite figured out what that purpose is yet. And they’re flailing. They’re following a path that they think they should be following, but often it’s not the path that leads them towards what they know they should be doing.

Eventually, this sense led me to trying many different things in my life. I started volunteering more, and now I serve on a community group that keeps me very busy with volunteer work. I had children, and they provide a constant opportunity for me to teach and interact.

And I turned back to writing. The internet provided me with plenty of opportunity to work on my writing, and I tried several different things over the years – contributing articles to a fledgling competitor to Wikipedia, starting a few different blogs, selling a few pieces of writing, and other things.

Eventually, the pieces fell together with The Simple Dollar. I’m compelled almost every day to write a hefty dose of words, for starters. More importantly, though, the words help people. I’m not merely writing for the sake of tossing out words – the words are sticking somewhere.

I don’t know if The Simple Dollar is what my “mission” in life is, but in many ways it feels far closer than anything else I’ve ever done in my life. I would have never found it, either, if I had given up the search and been content with my career path. I’m not done searching, either – there are new directions and new ideas and new things that I feel compelled to try.

I do know this much: I feel called to communicate and connect with people via writing, to use that writing to share what I’ve learned and encourage others to grow in what they know. I also believe that everyone has some sort of calling within them – some people find it, some people spend their life searching for it, and others simply give up the search and stay content with their lot in life.

Here’s another profound thought: I think that many people who have given up the search for what they’re meant to do are hurt by it, and they cover up that hurt through buying things. An upper middle class lifestyle offers enough material comfort to cover up for many, many little internal challenges, after all.

What can you take out of this story? Don’t give up on your dreams. If there’s something inside of you that pokes at you regularly, telling you that you should be doing something different in your life, don’t ignore it. Explore it. Use your spare time to find what that little voice is telling you and chase it hard. Don’t let your own doubts or the doubts of the people around you hold you back.

Let me know if I’m way out in left field with this one. Do you sometimes feel a sense within you that you have a mission in life, too? Have you found that mission? Or am I just drawing conclusions without warrant? Let the discussion flow in the comments.

1. Utilize the search box.
In the upper right corner of each page, there’s a little search box that allows you to search through any article ever posted at The Simple Dollar. If you have a specific topic in mind that you’re interested in at the moment, type in that topic into the search form – you’ll likely find that I’ve written something about it or that someone’s posted a comment relating to your area of interest.

One particularly useful way to use the search field is to check for old book reviews. Almost every day, I get a request from someone to review a book that I’ve already written about – I’ve posted literally hundreds of book reviews here. If you’ve spied a personal finance or personal development book somewhere and you’d like to know more, use that search field and find out if I’ve written about it already – there’s a good chance that I have, particularly if it’s not a book that’s new in hardback.

2. Subscribe by email or RSS.
Roughly 15,000 readers are subscribed to The Simple Dollar by email. Each day, they receive the contents of the last day’s worth of posts in their email inbox – and on rare occasions, they receive something extra. If you’d like to receive The Simple Dollar in this way, fill out this form:

Another option is to receive the site’s contents via RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it refers to a very simple method that allows for people to read the latest articles at the blogs that they read all at once. The easiest way to get started with RSS feeds is by using Google Reader. I use Google Reader several times a day to keep tabs on about fifty different blogs that I follow closely.

3. If you have an article idea, tell me.
Readers seem to always have great ideas for articles for The Simple Dollar, but quite a lot of the time I simply don’t see them. To put it simply, I’m often overloaded with material coming in from readers and commenters and I simply miss some things in the hundreds and hundreds of daily comments on posts and daily emails that I receive. I do my best to keep up, but sometimes it’s just overwhelming.

If you have an idea for a post you’d like to see, the easiest way to let me know about it is to contact me with an email with the subject line “Article idea” or “Post idea.” If I see something like that, I always read it and jot down the idea – and fairly regularly those ideas become the articles you read here.

4. Use an article here to start a discussion with others.
An article on The Simple Dollar might spur you on to some positive internal thinking, but you can also use the articles to spur discussions with friends and family.

For example, if you read something that really resonates with the state of your marriage, you might print out an article and give it to your spouse to read, then bring it up at the dinner table the next night. It can open the door to the kind of meaty, valuable discussion that is the bedrock of a good marriage.

Another example: if you see a great list of tips on the site, you might print off a few copies and give them to your friends so they can utilize the advice as well.

5. Use the chronology.
The chronology is a single page that lists every article ever posted at The Simple Dollar in the order that they were posted. You can use that page to browse for articles that might interest you (just read through the article titles and click on ones that interest you) or to find a place to jump in and start reading consecutive articles.

Many readers have dug into The Simple Dollar and read from the beginning, often sending me messages to let me know that my opinions and thoughts on some matters have clearly grown and evolved over time (like coupons, for instance). It’s also a great way to get a grasp on the changes in my own life: since I’ve started The Simple Dollar, I’ve paid off several big debts, bought a house, had a second child, quit a very secure and steady job to write, and many other events. In a way, it’s something of an autobiography, too.

6. Distribute an article from The Simple Dollar to your friends, acquaintances, or clients.
This last one is a very useful tip if you’re responsible for creating newsletters and the like. I hereby give you blanket permission to redistribute the text of any article at The Simple Dollar as you see fit. I would request that you include a link back to The Simple Dollar along with it – a good snippet would be to say that “This article was written by Trent Hamm, author of The Simple Dollar <http://www.thesimpledollar.com>.” If you do something particularly interesting with the articles, please let me know – I know of at least one small-town weekly newspaper that is reprinting a column a week from The Simple Dollar in their paper, for example.

You can also feel completely free to copy and paste excerpts into emails to your friends if you’d like, or any similar activity. Again, a link back would be appreciated, but you’re not only welcome to copy in this fashion, but I encourage it. If you find something useful here, it’s likely useful to others, and I’d love for you to share it with them.

Homemade Bread: Cheap, Delicious, Healthy, and Easier Than You Think This is a handy visual guide to making homemade bread – I focused on making it seem as easy as possible. I tend to really enjoy these “photo diary” kind of posts because they let me step outside the box a little bit and do something different.

52 Books, 52 Weeks: The Top Ten Early on with The Simple Dollar, I made a concerted effort to read and review a personal finance each week for a year. Here’s the top ten of all of those books (along with a ranked list of the other 42 books I read).

Seven Ways To Get Books For Free (Or Close To It) These are the tactics I use to keep up with my reading. I rarely have any problem getting and reading any book I want when I use these tactics in concert with one another.

Organization 101: A Visual Guide to How I Manage the Information in My Life I did this visual guide because, for a time, I was not only managing The Simple Dollar, but also working a full-time job and focusing on being a good parent to two young children and a good husband to my wonderful wife. That took some juggling, indeed.

Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on the Back of Five Business Cards This is perhaps the slickest and most concise summary of sound, basic personal finance that I’ve assembled. In fact, it’s the backbone of the speech I give at speaking engagements – really, not much matters beyond those five business cards.

Does Peer Pressure Keep Us From Succeeding? It’s often surprising, when you step back and look at it, how much influence we allow the people around us to have in the choices of our day to day lives. Do many of those choices lead us to failure?

Heroes, Role Models, and Mentors: Finding People to Believe In My hero is Warren Buffett. He lives frugally, invests better than anyone, and has given most of his wealth to worthy causes.

When Is Frugality Stealing? I really liked the discussion generated here, mostly due to my comment that I consider it okay to take notes from books.

Wallet Hacking: Six Tactics for Modifying Your Wallet to Minimize Your Spending and Maximize Your Time I liked this one because it took a different look at something most of us think of as utterly commonplace.

Defeating Superman Syndrome: How to Progress Beyond the “Need” to Be the Financial Hero This was something that took me a long time to overcome. I used to have a very strong tendency to want to always pick up the tab. It took some serious self-evaluation to realize it was only hurting me.

“Freegans,” Dumpster Diving, and the Limits of Frugality There are certain lines I won’t cross when it comes to saving money. Dumpster diving for food for my kids? That’s well across that line.

Making Your Own Laundry Detergent: A Detailed Visual Guide This is another fun “picture diary” post. Interestingly, I need to make another batch of this stuff very soon, as my current batch just ran out.

Hyundai’s “Dollars and Sense” Ads: My Take If you’re attempting to palm yourself off as a “personal finance guru,” I’m not sure that this is really a good way to do that.

An Interview With Amy Dacyczyn, The Author of The Tightwad Gazette My telephone conversation with Amy was one of the best experiences I’ve had since starting The Simple Dollar. It was truly fun.

The Essential Bookshelf: The Only Eight Books I’ve Kept (After Hundreds of Reviews) I need to update this one a bit – I now have a few more books on my shelves that I’ve kept since writing this one. Most notably: I finally came across a free copy of Never Eat Alone.

Seven Ideas for Preparing Food at Home Cheaply with Minimal Space and Resources Food preparation need not be expensive, and this pretty much sums up how to do it on the cheap. You can do most of this stuff in a dorm room.

Ceiling Fan Hacks: Save Big on Energy Use Similar to the wallet post, I love looking at alternative ways to use things that seem intimately familiar and boring. The switch-flipping is just a great idea here.

A Clever Trick for Automatically Finding Deals You Want at Amazon This is a great way to use the Google homepage to automatically search Amazon for great deals on stuff of interest to you. I actually have this on my iGoogle homepage and utilize it every day.

Seven Websites That Saved Me Money in the Last Week I thought this to be a strong illustration of how the internet directly saves me money in an average week. I continue to use these sites (and several others).

Overcoming a Habit of Lying to Yourself About Money It’s often hard to create a personal economic turnaround if you’re continually feeding yourself a giant money myth about your current financial status. Here’s how to break through.

A Frugal Guide to the Iowa State Fair (or Any Similar County or State Fair) This is another fun photo diary. I truly love attending the Iowa State Fair each year – it’s one of the high points of the summer for me.

Everything’s So Easy for Pauline: Thoughts on Luck, Fate, Money, and Life This is my single favorite post I’ve ever written. Something about it just clicks with me.

The Aldi Question: Does One Bad Experience Spoil the Soup? This turned into one of my favorite discussions that has ever appeared on the site. I stick with my premise, though: a bad experience at a store can make you never want to shop there again at any price.

A Visual Guide to Saving Money with a Baby This is yet another photo diary, this time showing off some of the cost-saving measures we use with our own kids.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself Here’s a strong reasoning as to why panic in the face of a financial downturn (like the one we’re in) is foolish. Be patient and avoid the fear.