Now that my book is finished, I’ve decided to embark on another big time-consuming project, but this one is a little different.

I’m a big fan of online banks. I think they’re an incredibly powerful tool for helping you with your personal savings. For a long time, I’ve wanted to talk about a slew of online banks, just to review all of the different options out there.

There’s been a problem with this, though. I don’t like to talk about products that I don’t actually use myself. I won’t review a book unless I’ve read it and thought about it. I won’t review a financial tool unless I’ve used it extensively myself. And I won’t talk about a bank unless I’ve used it myself.

I use ING Direct as my primary bank. I talk about it often. But I don’t mention other banks for the reason above, and I want that to change. There is a huge diversity in online banks, offering different features, different interest rates, different offerings, and different tools for managing your money.

Here’s my solution. Over the next several months, I’m going to open accounts at a bevy of online banks. I’m going to try them out, see in detail what services they offer, transfer some money in out, test their customer service, and close the accounts (if I don’t intend to replace an account I’m already using).

Then, once a week, I’m going to post a detailed review of that bank in an effort to outline clearly what distinguishes it from other banks. What do they do differently? Who is this bank most appropriate for?

So I’m going to open this up to you a little bit. What would you like to see in a review of an online bank? What features really matter to you and would cause you to make the move to switch to a new bank?

While you chew on that, here are some interesting personal finance articles that might interest you.

“Natural Inclinations…Are Hardly Ever Altered or Overcome.” Over the last few days, I’ve been enormously inspired by this little quote. (@ the happiness project)

Do you do your most important work first? I used to have a very organized morning routine, where I would do most of my “routine” tasks before starting the day. What I found is that I got my “routine” tasks done, but most of the real meat of my work – the creative tasks – didn’t go nearly as well. (@ unclutterer)

How to Change Your Motor Oil Changing one’s own motor oil is a tremendous way to save money – when you pay someone else to do it, you’re essentially paying someone $20 so you can sit in a waiting room while some guy unscrews a nut, collects some oil in a bucket, screws the nut back in place, then dumps some clean oil in the top. Why not do that at home where you can do something worthwhile while the oil drains and save yourself $20? (@ art of manliness)

What To Do With A Financial Windfall This is a great step-by-step guide to handling a windfall. If you don’t have a plan, windfalls can actually be a large negative disruption in your life, as we talked about a bit last week. (@ moolanomy)

Results of a Week Without Spending Can you go an entire week without spending any money? As an experiment, this family attempted to have a week without any spending and managed to get by only spending $3. Fairly insightful stuff. (@ pt money)

I’m pleased to announce that we’re expecting our third child. The baby is due in late April. And, of course, when the child is born, you can expect pictures.

This is the “news” I alluded to on Monday that was affecting my wife’s health – she’s had a big case of the first trimester “tiredness” which has made our home even more hectic lately.

Here are some personal finance articles of interest to keep you busy.

Even Good Debt Can Be Bad All debt can be bad. I don’t necessarily believe in the “good debt versus bad debt” dichotomy, which is basically the argument of this article. (@ moolanomy)

Be Your Own Part-Time Boss: The Pros & Cons This is one of the best guides I’ve read on starting your own small side business. My favorite point: start now and work out the kinks along the way. (@ man vs. debt)

Paradox Of Financial Choices: Maximizing vs. Satisficing Some people seek to maximize – to squeeze every nickel out of a situation that they can. Other people seek satisfaction – a level of completeness that balances their time and happiness. I think I’m more of the latter. (@ my money blog)

What is Simple Living and Why Should I Care? I think the real value of living simple is that it gives you the time to explore the things you’re interested in and passionate about. (@ wise bread)

Which Comes First: The House or the Nest Egg? The nest egg, in my opinion. Given that renting is often the better financial position as compared to home ownership, I think many people over-fetishize owning a home (myself included) and push themselves into a financially sub-optimal situation. (@ get rich slowly)

Dunbar’s Number isn’t just a number, it’s the law Dunbar’s Number – 150 – is the number of meaningful friendships/relationships that a person can actually sustain. Although some argue that that number is growing due to internet technologies, I argue that it’s just allowing us to keep tabs on a larger group of people more easily, not to build meaningful relationships with them. (@ seth godin)

Separation This is a fascinating story of a divorce. It does seem like a better outcome than the typical “I’m calling a lawyer” breakdown in marriage, though. (@ steve pavlina)

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have much of a desire to collect books. I keep a small pile of reference books around for information and inspiration, and I have a handful of books I’m sure I’ll re-read in the future. Other than that, the only books I retain are unread books.

I have a bookshelf in my office and, aside from part of the top shelf, the only books on it are unread books – ones I’ve never read. I pick them up at yard sales, from PaperBackSwap, and so forth and just pop them on there.

Whenever I read a book, I usually put it in another box that I intend to give away in the near future. About every six months or so, I give away the contents of the box, usually on PaperBackSwap.

Why am I mentioning this? A few days ago, I spent a couple of hours reorganizing this bookshelf. Rather than feeling like I was just shuffling around stuff that I wouldn’t look at again, I was excited. It made me want to shout, “Clear my schedule! I’ve got some books to read!”

Those are the kinds of possessions I want in my life. That’s not clutter, that’s joy.

Remove a Limiting Belief in About 20 Minutes Beliefs are things that should be challenged. It either reinforces and strengthens a belief or it replaces that belief with something closer to the core of who you are. Either way, that’s a win. (@ steve pavlina)

How to Be Indispensable The best way to be indispensable is to create things useful to others and pack the ideas with intelligence, loyalty, kindness, respect, discipline, pride, passion, and compassion. (@ jonathan fields)

Pay Yourself First In other words, the first thing that should come out of your paycheck is some sort of savings for the future. This is a very powerful approach, as it ensures your long term future while also teaching you to live on less. (@ get rich slowly)

Overcompensating to Change Habits “When I was studying piano, I used to practice playing scales with each hand playing in a different key. This wasn’t something I was ever likely to do in real music, but it helped push the fingerings into my subconscious.” Brilliant. There’s no better way to reinforce a habit than to focus on mastering those little specifics. (@ productivity501)

How to Speed Read Like Theodore Roosevelt These are the techniques I use when I first read a document. Quite often, I’ll follow it up with more careful, slow reading when I’m trying to understand a specific point or topic. (@ art of manliness)

How to Defeat Burnout and Stay Motivated The best way I’ve found to defeat burnout is to use a lot of milestones. I find that big goals make it hard for me to stay on task – instead, I set goals for the next few days that are in line with the big goal. (@ zen habits)

Another Case from the Clueless Files I really don’t like the type of reporting highlighted in this article. Attempting to make me sympathetic for people who made stupid mistakes, realized they were stupid, then made them again is something of a turn-off. (@ free money finance)

Can a meal really get any easier than that? Cook up some rice, add some red beans, frozen okra, and cooked sausage (andouille, polska, whatever you like). Sprinkle in a lot of spices (sage, cayenne, garlic, thyme, paprika, even a bay leaf if you have one) as you’re cooking it all together. Yum – supper is prepared. Put a bottle of hot sauce on the table and you’re good to go. Make plenty and you can easily eat it for leftovers for a day or two.

Meals like this are common suppers at our house. Things that are easy to prepare and inexpensive yet quite tasty are always huge hits and wind up in our regular meal rotation. This meal is one of the common ones – we all like it.

The 5 Stages of Investing Enlightenment Investing is just like any other complex area that we study in life. We grow in our knowledge and understanding of it. Quite often, it seems, the more you know about something, the less it feels like you know about something because you’re aware of how deep the rabbit hole really goes. (@ free money finance)

Your Take: What Are Your Rules of Thumb? If I have a rule of thumb, it’s “there’s a better way of doing this.” I constantly try to figure out better and more cost-effective ways of doing the regular things in my life. (@ bargaineering)

Don’t Let the Children Dictate Your Finances! It’s very easy for people to allow children to dictate areas of your life. They’re demanding without understanding the ramifications and that often results in conflict – and sometimes, to avoid that conflict, parents try to find other ways to do things. That’s not a good idea when it comes to your money. (@ frugal dad)

No Costco Membership? Shopping At Costco Still Saves Money This is a calculation I’ve wanted to do for a long time: are warehouse clubs still cheaper even without the membership? Most warehouse clubs let you shop without a membership but you have to pay a 10% markup on what you buy. This article concludes that, for a lot of purchases, warehouse clubs are still cheaper per item. The question then becomes whether a membership is cost-effective. (@ the digerati life)

Apparent Risk and Actual Risk People’s perception of risk is often skewed and incorrect, but we generally behave according to the perceived risk, not the actual risk. It’s always beneficial to stop and figure out the actual risk of our situation. (@ seth godin)

Who Has the Time (or Money) for Deals? I agree – for the most part, sites that post tons of “deals” are usually a waste of time and money. My solution is simple – I filter them automatically using services like feedfilter.com. I just make up a list of the things I’m actually looking for, then use feedfilter.com to filter bargain sites for only those things. In the end, all I see are bargains for the specific items I care about. (@ wise bread)

Crush It! and The Best Books on Boosting Your Income Pretty good list, except for the Loral Langemeier book. I’ve read two books by her and they feel a lot like books by Robert Kiyosaki – cheerleading and anecdotes that lead to dangerous real-world conclusions. (@ get rich slowly)

Three little items of interest.

1. I will be attending the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX on March 12-16 (or some subset of those days). I hope to have copies of my upcoming book there to give to a few people. If you’re going to be there as well and want to meet up, let me know!

2. Starting next Friday (or possibly the Friday after that), I am going to be writing a series of weekly food posts on frugal meals and food preparation, ones that are kind of similar to the “How Low Can You Go” series from this summer. These will be heavy on the photography, but I do not want the typical over-the-top food photography – I want it to look like a realistic kitchen where real people prepare food and serve it to their families. Please, take extra effort in commenting on these posts, as these are “warm-ups” for an eventual blog that I hope to write dedicated to food and cooking.

3. Over the years, many readers have been kind enough to send me gifts of all kinds, and I really appreciate it. But after receiving some (very) awkward gifts in the mail, I’ve changed that policy. If you wish to send me a gift, please choose an item from my wishlist at Funagain Games. We play a lot of board games here as a family and with friends, and Funagain is a great game retailer with great prices and a very easy ordering system (you can even pay via PayPal). Alternately, please make a donation to Jump for Joel (my favorite charity) on my behalf. This change in attitude about such generosity was a difficult decision to come to and I puzzled over how to handle it (and write about it) for a long while.

Here are some interesting personal finance writings I found in the past week.

Little Known Secret to Buying Cookbooks at Insanely Cheap Prices Library book sales are a great way to find “timeless reference” books – like cookbooks. After all, recipes from the 1950s still work, don’t they? The cookbook section is the first place I hit during library sales, actually. (@ pay less for food)

5 Ways Self Storage Units Are More Sad Museums Than Savvy Solutions Before our financial meltdown, we had a self-storage unit to hold the stuff that wouldn’t fit in our apartment. It was an incredibly stupid mistake. Instead of throwing more money away storing stuff that we’re not using, we should have gotten rid of a lot of stuff. (@ wise bread)

Goals Are the Gateway to Financial Success This is the second in J.D.’s list of thirteen guiding principles. I’m a huge believer in personal goals for success, not only in finances, but in any area of life. (@ get rich slowly)

A Secret to Happiness? Don’t Get Organized. This seems counterintuitive at first, but it actually makes a lot of sense. If you have so much stuff that it’s difficult to keep it organized, you have too much stuff and should consider getting rid of some of it. A lack of organization is a sign of being overwhelmed – and that means it’s time to step back a little. (@ happiness project)

The Death of Multitasking and Rebirth of Unitasking If you do any sort of work that requires deep focus, multitasking won’t help you get it done. I find time and time again that I work better if I close off as many distractions as possible. (@ dumb little man)

The Neutral Fallacy: There is No Sideways in Life A thought-provoking article. I tend to agree, for the most part – everything you do in life is either a step forward or a step back. I don’t really think “sideways steps” exist – they’re usually steps back. (@ jonathan fields)

For her eighth birthday, I gave one of my nieces the book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It’s one of those books that, in my mind, is a masterpiece of children’s literature, one that I wish every child everywhere would have a chance to read. I actually have a (fairly long) list of such books that I intend to read to my own children as they get older and I’ve managed to cross off a few of them already (like Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak).

What books do you consider to be essential children’s literature? Give me a few titles – they can be anything from picture books to young adult books. I’m curious to what books you’d consider absolutely mandatory for your children to read.

10 Things Warehouse Clubs Won’t Tell You I’m linking to this one because I’ve never seen such a blatant hatchet job. Among the reasons: it’s dangerous because twice in twenty years objects have fallen off shelves and hit customers, and it might take “several minutes” for them to inspect your receipt before you leave (I’ve never had this process take more than a minute, not even the weekend before Christmas). The author of this article has an axe to grind, to the point of undermining what might be a good point or two. This is, quite simply, an example of over-the-top borderline slander that anyone should be able to see through, and it discredits SmartMoney and Yahoo! Shopping for posting it. (@ yahoo via free money finance)

Ten Things I Will Teach My Children About Money This is the type of thinking that’s worthwhile for every parent to embark on. Even if the lessons that each parent considers important and worth teaching aren’t the same, the fact that a parent puts importance on such lessons is vital. Plus, sharing such thoughts gives other parents food for thought. (@ consumerism commentary)

Is the Key to Wealth Found in a Book? The answer is simple – knowledge is only one piece of the puzzle. Taking action on that knowledge is substantially harder. Most people have some semblance of an idea as to how to become a distance runner, yet most people aren’t distance runners. (@ millionaire mommy next door)

Why Good Writing Matters – And How You Can Improve Your writing ability is often the first thing people have to judge you on – and if you don’t bother to write well, that creates a negative first impression. (@ dumb little man)

Determining the Perfect Amount How much is too little? How much is too much? Getting a good sense of both helps you to regularly use the perfect amount, which can save you a lot of money and time. (@ unclutterer)

When Is It Okay to Finance Fun? I’m much more in favor of saving up for fun than financing fun. Financing fun means that, after the fun is over, you undo the joy you gained by having to face down the debt. By delaying gratification, you don’t have the downside of debt, just the upside of the fun. (@ get rich slowly)

If Craigslist Cost $1 If Craigslist cost $1, I would actually use it. As it is now, with free postings, it’s a cesspool of nonsense. This model really does work – see Ask Metafilter for proof. (@ seth godin)

Want to Hear More About the Business Side? Given the number of times I’ve been asked about how I earn money doing The Simple Dollar, I’ve considered writing a complete article along these lines to explain it. Is this of interest to you guys? (@ i will teach you to be rich)

Over the past weekend, our water heater finally gave up the ghost.

It’s been ailing for a while and we knew that it was on its last legs. During the several month period when our house was unoccupied before we moved in, the tank was left full of water, which caused some sediment to build up in the bottom. This meant that the heater was pretty slow to heat up (wasting energy) and incredibly noisy from the percolating sediment. Many of the pieces of sediment were too large to drain out, even if you removed the spigot.

To make matters worse, the pilot light would occasionally just go out on it. I knew there was something wrong – I could re-light it, but the light would go out again once a week or so.

Finally, last weekend, it just stopped working. The pilot light wouldn’t re-light. The water heater sat there.

I called in a repairman I trust and he started slowly stepping through the diagnostics on it. Once the faulty pieces were discovered by process of elimination, he offered me a quote (which I checked out) on both the replacement parts (which would have to be ordered) and labor or an entirely new hot water heater. After doing some math and estimating the energy savings, we went with an entirely new water heater.

Tanked or tankless? After doing the math, we had already concluded that, for our normal use, there wasn’t much savings with a tankless water heater – but there certainly was a larger up-front cost and some concerns with simultaneous use (like the dishwasher running while other people are taking showers). So, we chose a new tank heater.

So far, it works like a charm. The best part? No loud percolating – it was loud enough that it could be heard on the top floor while the water heater was in the basement.

Should I Invest While Still In Debt? I basically agree with the conclusions drawn here – it’s a bad idea to invest if you have any high interest debt at all and don’t have any personal savings built up. I’d add a third criteria – don’t invest unless you can clearly articulate what your goal is, because without that, you’re investing nearly blindly. (@ debt free adventure)

Are All Your Goals Materialistic Ones? I can’t think of a single major goal I have in my life that’s materialistic aside from wanting a home in the country (and the reason for that isn’t an ostentatious home, but one more in line with how we live). Almost all of my goals revolve around experiences – spending time with people or engaging in activities. It seems so natural and normal to me now that I sometimes almost feel uncomfortable recalling a time when my goals were really materialistic. (@ pick the brain)

Efficient Market Hypothesis and Supermarket Lines It’s often advantageous to stay put, even if the grass seems a little greener on the other side. Why? There’s usually a cost to switch – time, and often, money as well, plus intellectual investment. (@ my money blog)

The Priority List Whenever you have a giant goal, there’s usually an enormous list of things to do to reach that goal. However, if you don’t spend some time prioritizing that enormous list, you’re going to make a ton of mis-steps along the way. Planning ahead for any goal – and figuring out which steps are the most important ones – turns an impossible goal into an achievable one. (@ seth godin)

Time for Everything In almost every aspect of our lives, we seek to maximize the time we have to spend on whatever we want to do. Since that’s such a common human goal, many, many people try to subvert others from doing just that, through marketing and other means. (@ soul shelter)

Why “Having a Mission” Can Make You Happier. This is actually something I’ve noticed a lot lately with my kids. We often get out a ton of paper and draw on it (thank you, end rolls of newspaper). If it’s “free form” drawing, the kids tend to get distracted pretty quickly (and so do I). Instead, I suggest that we all draw pictures of something simple, like trees. If I do that, everyone is way more engaged, trying to draw interesting trees. A simple mission often makes things a lot more enjoyable, and it’s a technique you can apply in a LOT of areas in your life. (@ happiness project)

Pouring Concrete This is a great story about making goals concrete. It’s actually kind of similar to a story I’m telling in my upcoming book – I made a goal of my own concrete in a somewhat similar way. (@ jonathan fields)

There is no such thing as a free lunch. From my experience, that’s completely true. Yet, I constantly advocate using free services all the time – the library, the parks, and so on.

Lately, a few readers have called me on this seeming contradiction, pointing out that, indeed, these things have costs. We pay those costs when we pay our taxes. And some people with a certain political perspective think it’s wholly unfair that we should pay for libraries and parks and the like.

Here’s the thing, though. It’s a sunk cost. We’ve already paid our taxes – and those taxes paid for those libraries. The money is already paid – so why not enjoy the fruits of those dollars? If you politically disagree with such services, act in a political fashion against them – but don’t eschew services. You’ve already paid for them. Use them.

Tyler Durden’s Guide To Personal Finance This is a humorous reworking of “Fight Club,” translating the themes of the movie into pretty sensible personal finance advice. I enjoyed reading it. (@ man vs. debt)

Thomas Carlyle’s Advice to Young Men This is brilliant advice for everyone today. Don’t follow advice to the letter – instead, explore and learn what works for you. A truly worthwhile person is able to find their own path and utilizes advice only in terms of trying to see things through another’s eyes. (@ art of manliness)

In Defense of Solitude (Part Two) I spend multiple workdays in solitude. For me, being alone is essential – a key part of being able to bear down and focus on tasks at hand. I find that interruptions make it much more challenging for me to complete anything well, so solitude is a key tool for my work. (@ soul shelter)

Banishing the No Momentum Monster Without some sort of crutch, I find it’s really hard to maintain the momentum of continuous work, like writing or exercising every day. For me, the “chain method” works well – I have a printed calendar on the wall in my office and each day I accomplish my specific goal, I put a big colored X on that date on the calendar. When I get a string of them going, I *really* don’t like breaking that chain, so it gives me motivation to do it. (@ unclutterer)

Off My Giving List I do the same thing – if a telemarketer from a charity interrupts me, I cease giving to them. I am a charitable person, but I value my family time and I don’t want it intruded on by some ham-fisted telemarketer. (@ free money finance)

Are Online Savings Accounts Worth It? We use an online savings account (ING) for most of our banking, but we also have a local bank for some specific teller services (cashing checks, mostly). We have the two accounts linked and everything just works like a charm. (@ bargaineering)

20 Cheap and Fun Date Ideas Most of these sound like a whole lot of fun to me! My wife and I already do several of these things, sometimes even with the kids in tow. (@ christian pf)

How to Destroy Your Investment Portfolio You can solve all five of these problems by simply buying a broadly based index fund and just sitting on it. Sure, you won’t hit a home run, but you will have consistently strong investment results over the long haul. (@ frugal dad)