Whenever there’s a significant vote or election, I find myself tuning into the results the evening after the vote. I’ll visit tons of websites, looking for the latest results and different perspectives on what they mean.

The funny thing is that it’s usually impossible to really say what the impact of a vote really is until a long while after the vote.

So, why do I tune in? I guess I just like politics from a “fan’s” perspective. It often seems to me like a complicated high-stakes game.

What If I Lost My Career? Envision, then Act This is spectacular advice for people facing a rocky path in their career. At some point, you have to consider restarting your career, and this is really good food for thought if you’re in that situation. (@ free money finance)

Career Fairs, Part One and Part Two Career fairs can be completely useless or incredibly valuable for a potential job seeker. It all depends on the preparation you put into it and how seriously you approach it. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t approach career fairs with enough seriousness when in college. (@ penny pinching professional)

Unfinished Business I think that anyone who has a successful career or is running a successful small business is going to eventually face the “black hole inbox” where there’s simply more stuff there to do than there’s time and energy to do it. If you’re doing something of value, people are going to want your attention and effort. I think this is some great advice on dealing with it. (@ unclutterer)

“How Can I Stop Being Overwhelmed by Big Projects?” My solution is to not take on too many of them and focus as intensely as I can at the next step in the project. (@ happiness project)

Clearing Your Life for a New Year This is a good process to do regularly, not just when a new year occurs. (@ zen habits)

A few days ago, a technical problem with The Simple Dollar cropped up involving the front page not refreshing for some users of the site. A reader emailed me about it.

A few months ago, I would have then spent several hours reading documentation and trying to figure out what was wrong. There would have been a decent chance that I would have broken the site in the process. I would have been stressed out, lost the chance to write multiple posts, and walked away wishing I could be doing something else with my time.

Now? I shot an email to my technical contact at Cut Media. They did some stuff. It seems to have been fixed. It took me about two minutes, without stress about breaking the site or anything else.

This is why I made the choice that I did to join forces with Cut Media. They’re good at handling the things that I’m bad at and don’t enjoy. I might not have the financial options I had before, but I have a lot more freedom and a lot less stress.

Terry Gilliam on Ideas, Unlearning, and Avoiding Debt Terry Gilliam is a former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe (he usually did the animation work) and moved on to directing films. I really enjoyed this interview from him about finances and creative careers. (@ the 99 percent)

I’m Investing 100% of my 2012 Income One member of this couple is investing her entire 2012 salary into building a small business with multiple employees. That’s a pretty strong move. (@ afford anything)

College Kids Need Skills, Not Good Grades The problem, of course, is finding ways to evaluate skill sets. Theoretically, that’s what classes are supposed to do, but my experience has been that many of the “A” students in classes aren’t the ones I would want as employees. (@ thousandaire)

The chance of a lifetime The current economic conditions aren’t bad. They’re the chance of a lifetime. (@ seth godin)

Over the last few weeks, I spent a lot of time thinking about resolutions. During that process, I did a lot of digging for articles on resolutions and goals from people whose thoughts I greatly value. Here are some of the useful articles I found in that search.

Solving problems Leaning away from problems rarely pays off. (@ seth godin)

Getting Out of Debt: Make That New Year’s Resolution Work These tactics are geared towards financial resolutions, but they really work for almost any goal you throw at them. (@ consumerism commentary)

Keeping new year’s resolutions from NPR’s Science Friday This post summarizes a great episode of NPR’s Science Friday that discusses the psychology behind resolutions. (@ unclutterer)

Should You Have GOALS or RESOLUTIONS? The words often mean similar things, but can have very different connotations that put you in different mindsets. (@ happiness project)

Resolve This! “Resolutions are about want, but they are useless without will and action.” Indeed. (@ jonathan fields)

My family and I often load up the few days before and the week after Christmas with a lot of visits with extended family, either at our home or theirs. This often means some careful choreography.

Part of the challenge is that we like to celebrate a full Christmas day with just the five of us, but actually doing that on Christmas Day doesn’t always work out.

Our solution is that our immediate family celebrates Christmas on a day that’s convenient in relation to the travel. We exchange all of our gifts for each other, play games, and often watch a Christmas movie (or a new movie received as a gift).

This way, if we need to travel on Christmas Day or have a bunch of family over, we still get to enjoy that family Christmas morning, with the children running into our rooms at five in the morning waking us up and so on, at our own house.

For us, that day is tomorrow.

(And, yes, Santa finds our children wherever they’re at on Christmas Day and fills their stockings with goodies.)

Five Ways to Save Money in Your First Job This is a great collection of tactics for any new graduate. (@ humble savers)

25 Ways to Make This the Best Christmas Season Ever We already incorporate a lot of these into our family traditions. (@ pick the brain)

Recovering from Divorce A divorce can be a real mess. Marriage is something to enter into with care, because if you do it without really knowing who you’re marrying, you’ve got a good chance of entering into an unhappy arrangement. (@ get rich slowly)

Are You Celebrating Christmas with Your Kids in January? This reminds me of my mother-in-law’s extended family. They celebrated their extended family Christmas in mid-November, which meant that it was out of the way before Christmas madness. (@ money ning)

The Economics of Christmas Lights I posted this last year, but few articles have made me re-think where I live more than this one. (@ seth godin)

My daughter got incredibly ill on Monday evening. She was completely lethargic and was losing liquid as fast as we could give it to her. We were considering taking her to the emergency room.

Tuesday morning, she’s completely fine. She spends the entire day jumping on Dad’s lap and singing songs and jumping on Dad’s lap and playing dress-up and jumping on Dad’s lap and doing puzzles.

Her resilience is beautiful.

Survival of the Fittest in the Workplace and Myths about Fairness I’m a believer that you should always view yourself as a freelancer at work. You should give value to the organization you work for, but you shouldn’t be controlled by them, either. (@ squirrelers)

Quashing the Self-Improvement Urge My counter-argument to this interesting argument is that if you don’t focus on improving, you will eventually be replaced by someone who will. If you’ve reached a place of security and comfort, then that’s no big deal, but a lot of people aren’t in that place. For me, I enjoy getting better at a skill, which is icing on top of the cake. (@ zen habits)

Avoiding Competitive Shopping for Fun and Profit Even if you got a bigger deal than the other person, you still spent money for something. Businesses don’t exist if they’re losing money on such transactions. (@ get rich slowly)

“I Am Here” Sometimes, those are the most valuable three words you can say. (@ seth godin)

Whenever there’s a challenge going on in my life, I find it much harder to write. I find my thoughts drifting away from the words and onto other things.

For me, the best solution is to simply spend some time reflecting on that challenge. I put aside feeble attempts to work and focus on that which is bothering me.

If I do that, I tend to find resolution much sooner, and once I find resolution, the words and the focus return.

10 Reasons Your Freelance Career Is Failing I’d advise people who are considering freelance work to read this before making the leap. It’s even more important then because you can shore up these things before you even get started. (@ freelance switch)

Ten Easy to Plan, Cheap, and Fun At-Home Date Ideas When my wife and I have a date night, we usually wind up playing a board game together. It gets us face to face and talking at the table. Board games are a great conversation starter. (@ money help for christians)

Why I Still Read The Tightwad Gazette The Tightwad Gazette was a popular printed newsletter in the 1990s focusing on frugality issues. I actually still leaf through it, too. (@ saving advice)

The economics of Christmas lights Most of the houses in my neighborhood have Christmas lights. It makes for a beautiful sight on a December evening. (@ seth godin)

Sarah and I take turns handling the bedtime routine of our three children. One of us will make sure the kids get their teeth brushed and take their vitamins, read them their bedtime stories, sing songs for them, then hang out near their bedroom to handle the inevitable post-bedtime requests.

The other parent essentially has free time. Sometimes, we just relax. Other times, we work on household tasks. Often, I write – in fact, I’m drafting this post while Sarah is handling the bedtime routine.

Finish What You Start I’m far more impressed by someone who does one thing and finishes it than the person who does ten things but never really finishes anything. (@ get rich slowly)

7 Mental Mistakes That Stop You From Living a Life of Freedom and Peace I think we all find ourselves slipping into these traps at some time or another. The key is minimizing, not eliminating. (@ dumb little man)

Shifting Expectations: How to Adapt to New Job Responsibilities My experience has been that the best way to handle shifting responsibilities is communication. If you’re not sure what you should be taking on and what should take priority, talk it over with your boss. Be open about it. (@ the 99 percent)

4 Things That Keep You From Your Goals For me, the biggest thing that holds me back is inertia – the pattern of established habits. If I can make myself break a routine and establish a new one, I usually find success. That’s the really hard part, though. (@ pick the brain)

One of the most enjoyable parts of parenting a toddler is watching words and then eventually phrases and sentences start to emerge out of a verbal muck of sounds and noises. One day, your toddler is making nonsense sounds. The next, it seems that they’re making coherent words, and then pretty quickly after that, the kid is saying things like “Dad, throw ball!”

Our youngest is putting words together in new ways every day now and he’s just reveling in this ability to express himself. It’s a joy to watch.

Golden Handcuffs – Why Can’t I Leave My Job? Golden handcuffs are a real problem, particularly for younger professionals who set themselves up in a lifestyle that’s unsustainable without their job. (@ your life, their life)

How to Tell Your Children Santa Is Broke This is really good advice for people who find themselves in a tough situation like this. (@ money q and a)

The Need to Save Money is Life and Death This is an incredibly painful story, but it makes a good point: if you’re not saving, you’re giving into pure magical thinking. (@ free money finance)

Can You Tell Your Spouse They Don’t Make Enough Money? It depends a lot on what you’ve clearly established as the values in your marriage. If you’re both career-oriented people who are shooting for huge incomes so you can live a particular lifestyle, this could be brought up, I would think. If you convinced your spouse to be a stay-at-home parent and aren’t happy with their salary after they return to work after a five year layoff, I’d suggest not bringing it up. (@ dinks finance)