Prayers and condolences don’t go very far, though, if they’re not followed with action. You can give to the American Red Cross either out of your pocket or with your time or with a blood donation. If you really want to help, there’s a simple step to take.

How to Simplify Your Life to Make It Better Simplification is only useful if it brings about a net positive in your life. Often, simplification achieves that, but not always. (@ prairie eco thrifter)

The Seduction of Spending The pattern of pleasure can be a tough one to escape from. Spending without care can put us into that pattern. (@ the canadian personal finance blog)

Advertising Tricks: How Being Afraid Is Profitable Fear sells. It sells very well, in fact. (@ cents and sensibility)

The Obstacle Is the Path The best path forward in your life usually involves removing whatever the biggest obstacle is in your life. (@ zen habits)

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I don’t care what it is – the smell of cooking food is tremendously invigorating, at least for me. Nothing makes the mouth water quite like the smell of food approaching a finished state on a grill.

Teach Your Children Financial Independence to Preserve Your Retirement Retirement is so much easier if you’re not dumping thousands of dollars a year into the financial support of your adult children. When they’re young, the best thing you can do to avoid that future is to teach them well. (@ bible money matters)

Since When Is Paying Off Your Debts a Good Thing? This is a risky approach. Taking on personal debt in an effort to grow wealth is fraught with risk. (@ the financial blogger)

How Five Daily Habits Rocked My Financial World It’s all about establishing positive routines that work for you and don’t end up making you miserable. Routines need to make you feel empowered, not despondent. (@ get rich slowly)

Laundry Gadgets That Save Money I’ll personally vouch for the dryer balls. I can usually shave ten minutes off of a dryer load by sticking one of those balls in there, and that’s pure energy savings. (@ saving advice)

The certain shortcut Take the long way. (@ seth godin)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Grilling Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

It felt wonderful – except for the sunburn. Even though I used sunscreen, you can tell at an immediate glance which spots I missed.

So goes the first nice day of the year, I suppose.

5 Ways to Save Money and Energy Without Even Trying I really like tips like these because they usually involve one single effort up front, which is followed by residual savings for a long time. If I could do something once for an hour that would save me a quarter on every energy bill for the next ten years, I’d do it immediately (that adds up to $30, by the way). (@ free money wisdom)

Keep Your “Someday” List from Being Cluttered For me, the two techniques that really work the best are to consistently set aside time for “someday” things and to constantly re-think my “someday” list and cross off the things that are no longer of interest to me. This keeps the list manageably small. (@ unclutterer)

How Limitations Can Be Positive I think this is the biggest misunderstanding about frugality. People see it solely as a restriction on what they can do. I see it as quite liberating – it opens the door to doing and trying lots of things I would have otherwise skipped. (@ pick the brain)

Avoiding fear by indulging in our fear of fear I think this is a really big key to procrastination. (@ seth godin)

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There is truly nothing that sounds more enjoyable to me in that situation than curl up in a comfortable chair with a great book. I’ll throw a blanket over me, get lost in a book, and lose an hour or two while the rain patters against the window.

It happens so rarely. Usually, I’ll find myself filling hours like that with other tasks. Still, those rare afternoons when I can get lost in a book are ones that I deeply value and enjoy.

Changing My Mind About Money For me, the big thing that caused my mental shift was becoming a parent. It forced me to re-evaluate things in my life. (@ kns financial)

Never Get Emotionally Attached to a Desired Property when Buying a Home If you get attached to a specific home when going through the home-buying process, the owners of that home can really jerk you around and you’ll end up paying far more than you should. (@ darwin’s money)

Does Announcing a Resolution Make You More or Less Likely To Keep It? It probably has more to do with the person making the resolution than the announcement, but for some people, announcing it will make it feel more vital and something they’re less willing to break. (@ happiness project)

But I don’t want to do that, I want to do this Make the most out of whatever opportunity is available to you. If you sit around and wait for only the most perfect opportunity, chances are you’ll wait forever. (@ seth godin)

Why the Rich Keep Getting Richer The biggest reason is accumulation of wealth. Once you have significant wealth, it is much easier to grow that wealth through investing than if you don’t have any to begin with. (@ darwin’s finance)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Rainy Afternoon Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

I simply want to say that I’m genuinely impressed with the advancements in flood prevention technology over the last twenty years. Towns are now able to hold back flood waters with surprisingly little effort compared to the floods of 1993. Much of the responsibility for those advancements comes from the Army Corps of Engineers, and my hat is off to them.

Alternative Ways to Calculate Your Net Worth I’ve always stuck with “value of all non-mortgaged assets minus value of all debts” myself, but there are a lot of good ideas in this article. I think the “cash flow valuation” is a very good approach. (@ squirrelers)

There Are Always Savings Opportunities No matter how tight your financial life might seem, there are always opportunities for saving money. Keep your chin up and your eye on the ball. (@ money beagle)

Turn Your Spring Cleaning Into Extra Cash Cleaning out your closets in the spring and offloading all of that stuff that you never use can put some cash in your hand – and that cash can really help in terms of stabilizing your financial situation. (@ my dollar plan)

Love and Money – An Internal Debate Should you take over your spouse’s debt? I think that your spouse’s debt affects you one way or another, so the faster you get that debt paid off, the better off you’ll both be. (@ debt roundup)

Frequency, repetition, and the power of saying it more than once If an idea is truly powerful and useful and if there are people out there who haven’t heard it, then an idea is well worth repeating. It’s even worth repeating to the same people so that they can embed the idea in their head. Why do you think people remember so many corporate logos? Repetition and frequency. (@ seth’s blog)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Flood Waters Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

My wife and I had already chosen Boston as our place to visit for our tenth anniversary, and we’re more adamant about those plans than ever. The small amount we can contribute to the local economy in Boston won’t mean much, but it will surely help. (Does anyone have any frugal travel advice for the Boston area?)

Sometimes, We Want Prices to Fool Us This is mostly an article about Ron Johnson’s stint as the head of JC Penney, but it actually includes a lot of interesting perspectives on shopping, including how many people psychologically treat it as a game in which they have to “win” – and that “winning” provides an emotional boost. I think any time a customer ties any sort of positive emotion to spending, they’re entering a potentially dangerous area. (@ nytimes)

Willing to Play “The Dating Game” with Your Food? Try a Grocery Auction This is an older story from NPR’s “All Things Considered” that I intended to share when it aired, but I bookmarked it and just recently rediscovered it. The idea of a “food auction,” where grocers auction off unsold food products that would otherwise be returned to the manufacturer, is a really interesting one. I think bargains could be found, but it would take a savvy shopper. (@ )

Ever Taken Advantage of a Satisfaction Guarantee Offer? I don’t think a lot of people do this, which is why companies offer it. I’ve actually done this once (with a hotel visit) and I was promptly refunded. (@ your pf pro)

Proposal to Limit Retirement Account Balances – Good or Bad? This is a great discussion of the pros and cons of a recent proposal to limit total retirement account balances to $3 million. (@ money life and more)

Conservation of energy in conversation If you want to have a positive interaction with someone, try adding positive energy to the conversation, not negative energy. (@ seth godin)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Boston Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Do I think they have deep meaning or have some supernatural connection? No. I do think that dreams are one way that our subconscious throws out the mental trash, though, and sometimes in the trash you can find treasure.

Reflecting on dreams has spurred me to write. Dreams have also convinced me to approach some life problems in a new way. That’s about the most you can expect from them, I think.

Retire Before 40? Some Folks Say It Can Be Done Retiring that early involves extreme expense management. There’s really no other way to consistently pull off that kind of outcome. (@ cnbc via pf digest)

Use Visualization to Improve Your Financial Future For me, visualizing my goal helps me to see aspects of it that I might not otherwise notice. It also helps me keep that goal in mind through my day-to-day choices. (@ bible money matters)

This Is Why You Can’t Get Your Finances Under Control The big reason, according to this article, is that we allow ourselves to make excuses for why we can’t pull off the success we see in others. (@ dqydj)

Thomas Keller on Why Passion Shouldn’t Drive You Keller (a very well-known chef) does a great job of describing the difference between passion and desire: “It’s not about passion. Passion is something that we tend to overemphasize, that we certainly place too much importance on. Passion ebbs and flows. To me, it’s about desire. If you have constant, unwavering desire to be a cook, then you’ll be a great cook. If it’s only about passion, sometimes you’ll be good and sometimes you won’t. You’ve got to come in every day with a strong desire. With passion, if you see the first asparagus of the springtime and you become passionate about it, so much the better, but three weeks later, when you’ve seen that asparagus every day now, passions have subsided. What’s going to make you treat the asparagus the same? It’s the desire.” This is an idea worth thinking about for both your career and your own self-improvement. What’s passion? What’s desire? (@ co.design)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Meaning of Dreams Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

My single least favorite element of the late fall and winter is the short days. I can deal with the cold and the snow, but when you have days that are over in just seven or eight hours, I’m ready for something different.

A big part of me would enjoy moving to the southern hemisphere in September, then moving back to the northern hemisphere in March.

Spend Money to Make Money – Invest in Your Career Investing in your career is well worth it, provided you do it in a sensible fashion. There are definitely good career investments and bad ones. (@ planting our pennies)

Is the Costco Membership Fee a Bargain or a Scam? I think it heavily depends on your buying habits. You need to have a firm grasp on whether or not you’re actually saving money by shopping there as opposed to a discount grocer and, if you are saving money, how much you’re saving. (@ wealthy turtle)

How to Find a Company with Great Work-Life Balance I think the key thing for many professionals is to think of job interviews as not just the company interviewing you, but you interviewing the company. Ask questions like this when you’re being interviewed. (@ pt money)

Goodbye Supermarkets This person lived for a year without entering the local supermarket, living instead off of wholesalers and farmers’ markets and slashing about a third of her food budget. (@ guardian uk)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Longer Days Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

For those unaware, Google Glass is essentially a pair of glasses that allows you to “overlay” data on top of what you’re seeing around you.

Anyway, the person using it was talking to himself and almost walked out in front of traffic. The technology seems cool, but that’s a bit worrisome for both him and the people around him.

The Many College-Related Decisions Post-secondary education involves making a lot of choices. Many of those choices have powerful personal finance impact. Choose wisely. (@ free money finance)

Does Cohabitation Make Financial Sense? Cohabitation saves money while the relationship is strong, but if the relationship weakens, it can end up being quite messy. (@ your personal finance pro)

Why the Local Bag Lady Is Financially Savvier Than Many Celebrities Earning more money isn’t the automatic solution to financial success that some make it out to be. You have to make sensible decisions on spending no matter how much income you earn. (@ len penzo)

Unequal Financial Handouts: Bitterness Gets You Nowhere There is nothing gained by being bitter toward others because they get handouts from parents or grandparents or some other source. All bitterness does is take away from your mission. (@ one frugal girl)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Google Glass Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Usually, they spend some time during this week visiting grandparents, then we usually plan some sort of fun family excursion for a portion of the break.

Still, I find “spring break” frustrating. I’d either see our children on a year-round “ten week on, three week off” schedule than this. I know that it wouldn’t accomodate the schedules of some parents very well, but it would give our kids more days in the classroom over the course of a year, plus it wouldn’t include the long summer gap where kids regress on their skills.

Sheer Willpower Won’t Work. Here’s Why. If you don’t understand in detail why you’re making the bad choices that you’re making, it’s incredibly hard to break a negative habit. (@ afford anything)

Creating an “In Case of Death” File I highly suggest that everyone reading this take up this advice. Your spouse, parents, and/or children will find this invaluable at a moment of deep need. (@ tie the money knot)

Habit #7 Every habit you have was one that rewarded you in the short term at some point. The only way to make a habit work is if it has some sort of tangible and reachable reward. (@ seth godin)

A Lesson from Roger Federer Every one of us faces setbacks in our life. Here are some tips for how to handle it, even when you’re otherwise used to success. (@ unclutterer)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Spring Break Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

The best solution, in my opinion, is to simply pick one time or the other and stick with it. No more silly clock shifting that leaves people feeling a bit out of whack for several days and missing appointments because you forgot to shift one clock or another. Just stay with one time setting or the other one.

Will You Still Need an Emergency Fund When You Retire? Yes. It’s never a good idea to take unplanned withdrawals from a retirement account, and an emergency fund helps to keep you from doing that. (@ investor junkie)

Investment Books Every Investor Should Read These are all worthwhile reads. The more you read about investing, the more likely it is that you’ll feel confident about your choices and know what you’re doing. (@ novel investor)

Check for Money Leaks Even the tightest budget can still have money leaks. The fewer of these you have, the easier it is to get ahead financially. (@ squirrelers)

What’s an Appropriate Level of Stockpiling? As long as you have adequate storage space and are able to actually use all of the stuff you’re stockpiling before it goes bad, it’s really up to you. (@ planting our pennies)

The Worst Attack Is Indifference A negative attack means people have enough interest and passion about what you’re doing to bother with an attack, which means you’re having an impact. (@ seth’s blog)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Daylight Savings Time Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

The thing is, the snowfall here has been fast and frequent enough that I’ve been out there what seems like every day or every other day for a week. It’s been enough that this morning, as I woke up to go shovel, I noticed that my shoulders were still a bit sore from the previous shoveling.

Spring officially starts in fifteen days. I think I’m ready now.

Memorable Gifts: Six Ways to Give Without Going Into Debt For me, the best gifts are ones made with time and thought, not with money. My wife made pickled cucumbers using all of the stuff I like in them and that meant more to me than any gift she bought last year. (@ pt money)

A Primer on Federal Income and Investment Taxes I generally rely on TurboTax for my tax calculations, but having a good understanding of what’s going on is incredibly valuable. (@ my financial journey)

How to Make More Friends: 5 Simple Strategies A thriving and reliable social circle is one of the most valuable things a person can have around them. Unfortunately, for introverts like myself, it can sometimes be challenging to build those circles. (@ pick the brain)

The “One Coin” Argument If I give you one coin, will that make you rich? Is there some point where I can give you a single coin where you will then be rich? It’s an interesting thing to think about. (@ happiness project)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Snow Shoulders Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

We got a total of two and a half inches.

Earlier this week, forecasts were projecting a 20% chance of snow for us and, if we did get any, it would be an inch or so.

We have six inches on the ground as I type this and it’s still snowing.

Sometimes, meterology seems like a very inexact science.

Is Mobile Banking Safe? Is your phone safe? Mobile banking is only as secure as the weakest link, and that weakest link is your phone. (@ one money design)

What Should You Do If You Don’t Like Your Engagement Ring? Whenever I read articles like this, I get the sense that my emotional wiring is different than some. The interactions described there would just make me uncomfortable from beginning to end. My solution was to look at rings regularly with my wife-to-be so that I had a great idea of what she liked. (@ tie the money knot)

Stay Productive and Organized While Working From Home If you ever work from home, whether it’s a “once in a while” thing or an everyday thing, you’ll find something useful here. (@ unclutterer)

Spend More To Save a Little? “If you spend $80, we’ll trim $20 off your bill” sales don’t appeal to me very much. I generally don’t buy anything I don’t need or want regardless of sales. If I do have something in mind that I’m planning on buying, I will wait for a sale, of course, but the only time a sale like that would matter to me is if it coincided with something that cost $80 or more that I was already going to buy. (@ one frugal girl)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Questionable Weather Forecasts Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

You get someone to help you edit it. They immediately point out a hundred problems with the novel, most of which are due to the things you just assume in your head about the characters without actually setting down on paper.

You feel like an idiot.

Welcome to my world.

The Subtle Art of Starting Over At some point in most of our lives, we have to start over on some major aspect of what we’re doing: our career, our personal life, our finances. This is some strong advice for when you have to start over. (@ dumb little man)

Rejection: What It Means and How You Can Handle It Rejection can be very difficult to handle, but handling it appropriately not only keeps you from burning bridges, it also builds personal strength that will become very valuable in the future. (@ pick the brain)

Food Fight: Waging a War Against Waste When we have excess food, we have several ways to reuse it: leftovers, vegetable stock, or compost. There’s really no reason to waste food, and I usually look at food thrown away as money lost. (@ get rich slowly)

The 7 Habits of Calmness It’s easy to have an emotional response to a challenging situation or a confrontation. Knowing how to calm yourself can make all the difference in the world. (@ zen habits)

From First Paycheck to Financial Security Some short and sweet advice for making this road easier to travel. (@ humble savers)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Novel Editing Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

It’s been enjoyable – and educational – to watch the house come together, piece by piece. They’ve moved primarily to indoor finishing now, but I can still see some of the ongoing work through the windows.

While I don’t like how the house sits right in the middle of my view out of the window, I do welcome the new neighbors, particularly because they have children close in age to my own children.

Punting Your Cable TV Bill If you have a $50 a month cable or satellite bill, that bill will add up to $6,000 over the next decade. You could buy a car with that money – and you’d have a lot more free time, too. (@ wallet blog)

3 Simple Steps to Take Charge of Your Financial Life Execute these three steps well and your financial life will be in better shape. (@ bible money matters)

Throwing Away an Old Rule Perhaps “spend less than you earn” should become “earn more than you spend.” It puts the goal of the statement on earning more than on frugality. (@ get rich slowly)

Have You Ever Been Stuck Between Two Options and Unable To Decide? When playing games, this is often called “analysis paralysis.” The solution in games – and in life – is to institute some sort of hard artificial limit – a timer of some sort. (@ the happiness project)

Simple Steps You Can Take to Reduce Food Waste There are a lot of good ideas here. One big step for us is to save all pure vegetable scraps so we can make vegetable stock out of them later. It turns what would otherwise be garbage into something delicious. (@ unclutterer)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Construction Progress Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

I love looking at peoples’ bookshelves. It often opens the door to a great connection with someone. Today, I’m sharing some of those glimpses from people who have made share-able photos of their shelves.

1. David Goehring’s bookshelf

The House of the Seven Gables is a wonderful book, and freely available, too. Bellow, Updike… this person loves literary fiction.

2. Pericles on politics

“Just because you don’t take an interest in politics, doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” – Pericles

The actions of politicians might seem far-removed from your everyday life, but so many of the results of the actions of politicians have an enormous impact on us. Politics might seem boring, but it splices into our life over and over again.

3. Johannes Gilger’s shelves

This person loves T. C. Boyle and Michael Connelly. I’ve read nearly everything by T. C. Boyle over the years.

4. Lao Tzu on traveling

“A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

My favorite kind of trip is one where you get in the car and drive and then figure out what to do when you arrive somewhere beautiful or interesting.

5. Dennis Matheson’s bookshelf

This person is a programmer whose work pushes him from language to language to solve the problems he’s faced with.

6. John Wooden on the details

“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” – John Wooden

I’ve also found that if you get lots of details right, the “big thing” just kind of springs into existence with a life of its own.

7. Bree Bailey’s bookshelf

The intermingling of the books with the family photograph – plus the diversity of ideas in that handful of written works – likely means I’d feel right at home with this person.

8. Abraham Maslow on failure

“We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill to godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities.” – Abraham Maslow

We fear the events that create our greatest moments.

9. Tony Unruh’s bookshelf

The diversity of fiction and nonfiction, along with the toy, opens many doors to conversation.

10. Socrates on reading

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.” – Socrates

That’s a brilliant statement of the value of reading for self-improvement.

The post Ten Pieces of Inspiration #112 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

During the summer, this isn’t a problem. If I want to go work outside, I just go outside barefoot.

This doesn’t quite work in the winter, of course, so I’ll often literally put on socks and shoes just to go outside. Then, when I come back in, as soon as I feel warm, off go the socks.

I have tried barefoot running, but I’ve found that on very hot days, my feet still get really, really hot. I have enough callouses on my feet that I don’t mind the road impact in the spring. Also, I can’t wear those extremely thin-soled shoes with individual toes because I broke a toe on my right foot when I was young and it healed at a bizarre angle, making those shoes pretty much impossible to wear.

I like being barefoot. It feels free.

Stop Talking. Start Doing. Most of the things we think of as “important” in a given day are really not all that important. They are urgent, though, so we often let them get in the way of the things that are genuinely important (that happen to not be urgent). For example, we read through piles of relatively unimportant email in the process of (@ jonathan fields)

The Daily Checklist I’ve started to adopt a daily checklist for some of the very basic things I want to make sure I get done each day. Nothing on that checklist takes very long, but each item moves me forward on something that I view as a personal priority. I’ve really found it handy. (@ zen habits)

Finding Money to Invest Finding money to actually start investing when your budget is already tight is always a challenge. This article offers some good advice. (@ get rich slowly)

How to listen So often, people view “listening” as “pausing while the other person says something I’m ignoring while formulating the next thing I want to say.” That’s a pretty bad idea, actually. (@ seth godin)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Barefoot Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Over the past week, the weather here has been brutal: a small blizzard, a batch of freezing rain, a very rapid thaw, a very hard freeze, frigid wind chills, and so on.

In my efforts to improve my own photography skills, I tried taking photos of these winter events, but I found myself dissatisfied with the results, so, as I often do, I went looking for interesting examples of winter weather photography. Many of these are included below.

1. A blizzard in Steamboat Springs, Colorado

When the temperature is just right, snow coats everything in this beautiful covering of whiteness, often also filling the air with what almost amounts to a haze. It looks like the world is sleeping under a thick blanket.

Thanks to Greg Younger for the picture.

2. C. S. Lewis on humility

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” – CS Lewis

When you make something, think not of yourself for completing it, but instead think of those who will benefit from it. Not only will it make the quality of your work better, it will help you to keep from falling into pride.

3. Arches under snow

The contrast between shelter and the outdoors in the winter is shocking. The shelter is often dark, while the snow is the brightest of white. The shelter is warm, while the outdoors is smothered in coldness.

Thanks to Alan Strakey for the picture.

4. Tim O’Reilly on chasing something important

“Pursue something so important that even if you fail, the world is better off with you having tried.” – Tim O’Reilly

Many of the people who shaped our modern world actually failed at their goals. It was the consequences of their effort that brought about actual change.

5. Desolation

There are moments in winter that are stark in their emptiness. The greenery has fallen away, leaving only the bare remainder.

Thanks to DWRose for the picture.

6. Blue Umbrella (Slight Return)

I love walking through snowstorms, seeing people hurrying about their business before the snow makes travel impassable. It’s one of those shared experiences that’s hard to replicate.

Thanks to Phil Dillon for the image.

7. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach on learning and understanding

“In youth we learn; in age we understand.” – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

I like to think of this as experience tempering knowledge into wisdom.

8. Colin Powell on why kids need structure

I think the real key to raising a successful and happy child is passion with structure. Your child is going to have passions. Find ways to channel that passion in a structured way.

9. Steinbeck on the power of sleep

“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.” – John Steinbeck

This seems to be a recurring phenomenon in my life right now. I’ll go to sleep with a problem that’s troubling me, wake up, and find that the solution to that problem is right there in front of me.

10. Andy Puddicombe on ten mindful minutes

When was the last time you spent ten minutes doing nothing and just seeing what the world and your mind brought to you?

The post Ten Pieces of Inspiration #111 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Pretty much every single day, our children clear off some of the dining room table and cut/paint/draw/build something.

The only tricky part with this is that they actually manage to run out of some of their supplies. Just yesterday, our son was digging for a red crayon (red being one of the colors he uses in a lot of his art, along with orange, green, and blue) and simply could not find one. The closest we could find was a purplish-red.

You know what, though? If there’s one thing I really don’t mind buying, it’s art supplies for kids so engaged in their art projects that they literally use up an entire color of crayons.

Want To Be Free From French Fries? Or, Why Abstaining May Be Easier Than You Think. When it comes to reducing my spending or consumption of something non-essential, I usually find abstaining from the temptation easier than just moderating it. I have a hard time keying in an appropriate level of moderation. (@ happiness project)

How To Save Money On Just About All Of Your Regular Monthly Bills This is a really good batch of cost-cutting tips. There’s something in here that applies to almost everyone. (@ bible money matters)

Admit Your Money Mistakes In Order To Learn and Improve Not just your money mistakes, mind you. Admission of all of your mistakes is the first step toward improving your situation. (@ my financial journey)

Life Insurance as a Retirement Savings Vehicle? It’s a bad idea. A very bad idea. It seems good on the surface, but the more you dig, the worse it becomes. (@ the chicago financial planner)

Owning Versus Renting You don’t own the trust or attention of others. You rent them. You earn them by being a good person and by being reliable. When you start acting like you own these things, they slip through your fingers. (@ seth godin)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Art Supply Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Over the last several years, the number of series we’ve watched has dwindled. Most of the television series we watch are older ones from Netflix which we can watch without commercial interruption.

Right now? Nothing. There are a couple that I will probably continue to watch if/when they return from hiatus, but that’s months away at the very least.

Right now, my evenings are mostly filled with reading and writing and board games. I fully expect that to continue. I tend to find greater adventure and humor on the written page.

The Five Key Steps to Increasing Concentration I find that the ability to deeply focus makes all the difference professionally for me. When I’m able to deeply concentrate and slip into a “zone,” I can just pump out the work for hours at a time, getting so much done that I can scarcely believe it. (@ dumb little man)

Balancing Saving and Splurging It’s a tough balance for everyone. What we do is have a line item for hobby spending and splurges in our budget as it gives us a sense of spending freedom while also having the peace of mind of sensible living. (@ dual income no kids)

Some Taxpayers Can’t File Until March We may be eligible for some of the energy efficiency credits, so we’re going to wait until late March or early April to file this year. (@ consumerism commentary)

Possession aggression Once we view something as “ours,” it can be very hard to have that thing taken away from us. This can often lock us into behaviors that aren’t necessarily good over the long haul. (@ seth godin)

The post The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: No Series Edition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.