Until last night.

I was digging through one of our closets and came up with a few tapes depicting the day our son was born, his first Christmas, and some other moments from early in his life. We watched them together and he really enjoyed them. He had tons and tons of questions about what was going on and we had to pause it several times to talk about things.

Home movies seem pretty useless when you take them, but they can sure create a magical evening a few years later.

The Science of Success Science is beginning to show beyond a doubt that genes have a huge effect on positive traits in people. Even more interesting, it benefits us to interact with people who are wired differently than us. (@ the atlantic)

11 Steps in Becoming Educated for Your Dream Job These steps can really be boiled down to one thing: push yourself in your education every chance you get. Choose the hard classes. Choose the hard school. A hard-earned C teaches you far more than an easy A. (@ productivity 501)

Slow and Steady Wins the Race The biggest challenge of personal finance is the battle with patience. Patience is hugely rewarded when it comes to personal money management, but many people simply don’t have it. (@ get rich slowly)

Some Counterintuitive Facts about Loneliness If you work in a job where you’re alone much of the time, these are some very important facts to keep in mind. (@ the happiness project)

The Cost of Money People often make some very unusual sacrifices in the name of a bit more money. (@ free money finance)

At first, I didn’t think this was true, as early last week, I got a lot of writing done. Now, though, I know what they mean. In some ways, it feels like the well is dry.

I’m not saying I have no ideas – I have plenty of those. It’s just that when I sit down with an idea right now, the words don’t flow as quickly as they once did. It’s almost as if I pumped too much water out of the well for a while and now I have to pump really hard to get even a slow flow of water.

So, I’ve been using the time to read, write down ideas, and follow up on other pursuits until the flow gets back to normal – which, according to some of my friends, it will in a few weeks.

For now, here are some interesting articles from other sites.

Do What Works For You I agree with this idea to an extent, but I can also see how it can be detrimental. If you always do it your way and ignore what others have done successfully with the same task, you might find that you’re doing it pretty poorly. Do what works for you – but never stop learning new things. (@ get rich slowly)

Saying farewell to a hobby, part two I’ve had to let go of hobbies several times in my own past and it’s always been difficult. Part of me has wanted to hold onto the items from that neglected hobby as some sort of nostalgia – but that’s a really bad idea unless you have acres of storage space. (@ unclutterer)

Act the Way You Want to Feel For a large part of my life, I thought this kind of thing was complete foolishness. Until I tried it. It works almost all of the time. If you consciously act happy over and over again, you begin to feel happier about your life. (@ happiness project)

How Do I Make My Resume Stick? This article describes the “keyword test” – figure out what words the person hiring is looking for and make sure those words get noticed on your resume. (@ fast company via behance)

Secrets of Telemarketing From an Industry Insider My sister-in-law was a telemarketer for a while. She was quite good at it, but she loathed the work. Perhaps I should convince her to write a bit of a “tell-all” about it. (@ wise bread)

How to Make Money as a Soccer Referee This is an excellent, detailed guide on how to turn a passion into a nice side income. I know some people who do such refereeing in different sports for a living and they love it. (@ free money finance)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

What I’ve realized while making the list is that so many of the things involve other people. “Do X with Y” is an extremely common entry. “Play Agricola with Joe.” “Read ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’ to my kids.” And so on.

In the end, it reveals how important the people around me really are in my life. At most, 10% of the items on the list are solitary ones, and even some of those could easily become social.

Here are my ten favorite personal finance articles I read in the past week.

Brand Loyalty and the Financial Crisis – Will We Return When Things Get Better? I think that trusted brands have actually increased in value, but the loyalty of a customer is much shorter than it once was. People have been bitten by so many brands that have produced a poor product or given poor customer support that they’re much less likely to trust a new brand. Instead, they tend to lean even more on the “old reliables” – ones that consistently treat them well. A few brands are gold – but there’s little loyalty to the rest. (@ wsj wallet)

Are You a Success Junkie? Is success addictive? If you achieve one thing and feel that rush of success, I do think it pushes you even harder to repeat it and feel that rush again. When people say that success breeds success, that may be what they’re talking about, at least in part. (@ brip blap)

What Is Your Curiosity Quotient? If I had to name one essential personality trait that I would want for a new worker in the information economy, I would point towards curiosity. The more curiosity a person has, the more likely they are to dig in deep on a particular subject or problem and perhaps come up with a really exciting solution. (@ pick the brain)

The Art of Changing Easily and Gracefully Changing an ingrained part of your nature (like shyness or a propensity to spend without thinking) is very difficult. While I don’t believe that anything can make ground-breaking change easy, these ideas certainly help people move in the right direction. (@ dumb little man)

Labor Day and the American Dream It’s an absolute falsehood that you need a college education to get a good paying job. There are LOTS of good jobs out there that pay well without a college degree, but those programs aren’t funded by marketing budgets fueled with $10,000 tuition bills. Electricians and plumbers of the world unite! (@ wsj)

12 Critical Things Your Family Needs to Know If your family can’t easily find this information about you, then you’re not doing your duty for them. They’ll HAVE to be able to find this when you pass on. If not, they’re going to be put in a bad situation. (@ free money finance)

The Paradox of Empty Storefronts Whenever I’m in a dying small town and I see lots of empty store fronts, I often wonder why the owners of those stores don’t just drop the rent through the floor to get businesses in there, make the town appear to be thriving, and at least make a LITTLE money. This is a great discussion of the pros and cons of that idea. (@ megan mcardle)

Who Gets to Decide What You Want? “Once again, it seems to come down to a personal decision. If you decide what you want (instead of letting someone else decide for you) perhaps you could choose the things that would actually bring you and your loved ones the satisfaction you can live with.” Indeed. (@ seth godin)

How to Set Priorities Do FIRST what you want to do LEAST. This is why I usually start my days by doing email and approving comments, which are the two regular tasks I have to do that I enjoy the least. Once they’re done, I feel good, like I’ve already been productive, and it helps me to get started on my other, more enjoyable, and more intellectually challenging tasks with a more fulfilled nature. (@ soul shelter)

Working Vacations Rule? I sometimes work on vacation in much the same way Jonathan does. If I have an idea, even if I’m on vacation, I’ll pull out that notepad and write it down. Why? If I DON’T, it sticks in my head and distracts my thoughts. My mind gets entangled in the idea. If I just stop, pull out that pad for ten minutes, and get a framework of my thoughts down on paper, it’s easier for me to just let it go. (@ jonathan fields)

For once, the hype was right on. The only problem now is that season 3 is airing on television and I’ve yet to see season 2. I’ve watched a couple season 3 episodes, but there are clearly some pieces of the puzzle missing.

Guess I know what I’ll be spending my “mad money” on next month!

Work to Live or Live to Work? What are you working so hard to achieve? Are you sure you don’t already have it? For me, I worked very hard to build a great career so that my children could be secure, but I found that my children were actually LESS secure because of all the time I was investing in that career. So I walked away. (@ bargaineering)

Get Less Done: Stop Being Productive and Enjoy Yourself This article points to the same place that many such articles on doing less point: IGNORE the urgent but not important tasks in your life. I’ve been doing this by strongly applying email filters so that I don’t have to even look at a lot of emails. Doing this means you have time for the “important but not urgent” things in your life, like true leisure. (@ zen habits)

A Cheapskate’s Guide to Eating Out There are several good tips here for reducing the cost of a meal out, but a few of them wind up in something of an ethical gray area. I agreed highly with seven of them, but felt the other three ideas really merited some further thought and discussion (but that’s what comments are for, right?). (@ wisebread)

Rethinking the ideology of carrots and sticks Rarely do traditional motivators work over the long run. Instead, the best motivator is freedom. If you want someone to excel, give them the freedom to do so. I think this works for a lot of people, but some people simply function better in an organized hierarchy with clearly defined tasks. (@ presentation zen)

Cooking from Scratch: Where’s the Work? The “work” for me cooking at home is the chopping. I’m just not very good at it and as a result I usually dread recipes like ratatouille, where there’s a lot of chopping (even though I love the finished dish). My solution is usually to look for “cheats” for chopping (like overusing the food processor) or to try to offload it to someone else, like my wife who’s better at it and doesn’t mind it as much. (@ wisebread)

You have an income crisis, not a spending problem Some people truly have cut all they can, but they’re in a living situation where their baseline cost of living approaches their income. That’s an income crisis, not a spending problem. In that case, you need to focus on earning more – get a second job, try to jump-start a side business, or even do odd jobs. (@ gather little by little)

When You Try To Be Frugal And Hit The Wall If you “hit the wall,” you might not be doing frugality correctly. Similarly, if you “hit the wall” with a diet, you’re probably not dieting right. Frugality shouldn’t be like a crash diet, but should be a steady process of maximizing the value in your life. (@ queercents)

The Seven Enemies of Financial Success Lack of discipline, materialism, debt, taxes, inflation, investment mistakes, and emergencies are the seven enemies. I think some are much bigger than others – lack of discipline and materialism top the charts, in my opinion. (@ get rich slowly)

How to Respond to Criticism – Learning from Dr. King This is a great essay on how to deal with criticism, inspired by Martin Luther King’s “Letters from a Birmingham Jail.” One passage still gives me chills: “when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people.” (@ four hour work week)

Why you should outsource your chores I think, in some cases, it does make sense to outsource your chores. The real key to all of this is to get a firm grip on what your time is worth in AFTER TAX money and also how valuable you believe time spent doing things like Twitter etc. to build your business really is. (@ msn moneycentral)

The first game we tried was pretty miserable. Sarah felt lost and the game was slower than molasses. We weren’t even sure we were going to try it again.

So, a few days later, we did try it again. And something clicked. We started playing it all the time.

In fact, Sarah and I had a “weekend getaway” last weekend (while the grandparents watched our children) and what did we do? We took Agricola along and, one evening, we wound up in our hotel room, kicked back with a bottle of wine, moving sheep around, laughing together and telling jokes.

Romance? In its’ own way, it definitely was.

Nevertheless, Agricola is getting heavy play around these parts as of late. It’s pretty complicated – and you should expect the first game or two to be pretty dull – but after that, it gets better. Much better.

Here are some great personal finance articles of the last week.

I’m Losing 50 Bucks to Be Happy, and I’m not Crazy A person who used to spend a lot of time doing balance transfers and other such games to maximize every penny of interest realizes that it’s a losing game – you’re not making much for the time invested unless you have a HUGE bankroll – in which case, this isn’t the game you should be in. (@ money ning)

Outwardly Simple and Inwardly Rich How rich is your internal life? Many people focus on the wealth present in their external lives – their money, their career, their stuff, and so on – but it’s your internal wealth that you’re left with when you go to sleep at night. Why not focus on maximizing that internal wealth instead of always focusing on the bucks? (@ millionaire money next door)

12 Tricks for Optimizing Your Freelance Career Here’s the thing: we’re ALL freelancers today. This is great advice for ANYONE who is doing creative work, whether they’re employed or not. You’ve GOT to get yourself out there or else you’ll find it much more difficult to move on when your situation changes. (@ freelance switch)

How to Make a Decision Like Ben Franklin This is a VERY good way to make a difficult decision. Almost always, with a difficult decision, it pays to face it head-on with a clear decision-making process. This one, inspired heavily by Benjamin Franklin’s writing on the idea, is pretty close to the one I already use. (@ art of manliness)

Why the stock market is still unsafe for the small investor A great essay on the dangers of stock investing for the small investor by Eliot Spitzer. I still maintain that the only real solution for a small non-obsessed investor is a broadly based index fund with low costs. Anything else is a fool’s game, in my opinion. (@ slate)

My Grandmothers and the Cost of a Funeral The last thing I want to do is burden my descendants with the cost of a funeral. I don’t want to make them have to pay to put me in the ground. Is that an argument for life insurance? I think it is when you’re young, but if you’re older and have a healthy net worth, I don’t see the purpose. The whole thought process pushes me further down the road towards term life insurance. (@ consumerism commentary)

Timebanking: What Is It? Timebanking basically means giving an hour of your own time in exchange for someone else’s hour. Here’s how it works – you visit a local time bank and take on a task that someone has listed – let’s say it’s three hours of painting. You go do that, then you get three hours of credit to use on the site. You can then use that credit to post a job that you want done – three hours of, say, garden work. This seems like a good idea on one level, but you have to find people that are willing to say one hour of their specific type of work is worth an hour of another type of work. (@ christian pf)

Odds Are for Suckers Whenever you try to do something exceptional, the odds are against you. If you let yourself be controlled by those odds, you’ve already decided not to succeed. Instead, ignore the odds. I agree wholeheartedly with the idea here – as long as you have a safety net when you fall, the odds of success should be the furthest thing from your mind. Instead, chase the dream. (@ awake at the wheel)

Uncluttering your personal time Time attracts clutter just as much as space does. In each case, it’s really the same problem – you find yourself gradually filling your time and space with things that are unimportant to you. To declutter, start cutting out the things that are unimportant! It takes some time and reflection, but the rewards are tremendous. (@ unclutterer)

Harnessing Your Competitve Spirit to Spur Your Goals Many people thrive on competition and a desire of “beating” other people. Pick the Brain offers some great advice on how to channel the need for competition into achieving one’s personal goals. I know that in my own life, this works well – I use Nike+ to “keep score” on my goals for getting into shape, for example. (@ pick the brain)

As a result, I’m going to follow it with another book club, starting on Wednesday, September 2. This time, I’ll be focusing on Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz, which was actually the most requested book when I asked for suggestions for the next book club. It focuses on how to build value-based relationships with others, mostly in a professional context, but the ideas really work in every avenue of life.

Given that Never Eat Alone is a bit longer book, the book club will likely be a bit longer, too, stretching to seven or eight weeks. As before, there will be entries twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Don’t be afraid to jump into the discussions of this one! I think it’ll be quite fun.

And now, for some interesting and relevant links. Please note that I usually post twenty or thirty interesting links a week to my del.icio.us site and I pick ten or so from that to post here, so if you’d like to see the links as I find them, check out that page.

A Message to Those Confused About Career Direction It’s normal NOT to know what you want. It took me most of a decade to figure it out and there’s still times I believe I don’t have it perfect. The biggest challenge is that we often want conflicting things – things that simply cannot coexist. Figuring this out can be a real challenge. (@ soul shelter)

How to Make a Million Dollars While Eating Lunch The idea is simple: if you take one simple action and repeat it over a very long timeframe, you’ll have huge success. Her example of the “million dollar lunch” involves trimming lunch down by about $6 per workday then socking that into a Roth IRA, netting you $1M over 41 years. (@ millionaire mommy next door)

Why I Stopped Being Paranoid and Started Using Mint I’m still paranoid. I still have not seen the reason to use Mint (and share my personal info) that isn’t met by personal software at home that doesn’t allow any of your info to pass through a third party. It feels like you’re just increasing your likelihood of identity theft (however slightly) without any real net benefit. What does Mint do that Quicken does not? (@ smarterware)

Top 5 Economy Based Board Games that Make You Think The board games are Agricola, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Caylus, and Le Havre. All of them are excellent games that mirror the nature of economics in various ways. If you’re playing just one that mirrors economics, I’d probably suggest Power Grid. My favorite game for playing of the five is either Puerto Rico or Agricola – I adore them both. (@ wisebread)

The Power of Resourcefulness This is one worth thinking about a little bit. Peeing in the shower seems unsanitary at first glance, then perhaps not really all that useful upon second thought. But if you’re able to do it while doing other things (such as washing your hair), you can actually save significant water – a toilet tank full. Baker expands the idea, carrying it forward into a general discussion about resourcefulness. (@ man vs. debt)

The False Lure of Multi-Level Marketing The biggest problem I have with MLM systems is that it basically encourages people to abuse their friendships by guilting their friends into buying stuff they don’t want. Ever been invited to a Tupperware party or a Pampered Chef party? They’re just painful – a person trying to cajole their friends into buying stuff that their friends don’t want. The friends do it, even though they don’t want to, but they resent it a little – they feel like they’re being used. Never mind the fact that the salesperson rarely makes very much money anyway. Sounds like a big lose to me. (@ free money finance)

The Five-Day Freeze: Batch Cooking for the Rest of Us Batch cooking simply means preparing meals or other foodstuffs in advance and freezing them in quantities such that they can be easily thawed and used. The article mentions eggs (in the form of quiche), cookies, zucchini, hamburger, and peppers, but those options just scratch the surface. If you have a lot of freezer space, techniques like this pay off left and right. (@ wisebread)

“Try Something Eight Times Before You Give Up.” So many people try something once or twice, decide it’s not for them, and give it up. What I’ve often found is that if you try something a good number of times – like eight – the value often only becomes apparent after multiple tries, and then it becomes a very valuable tradition. The two big examples I can think of are cooking at home – you have to try it a lot of times before you start producing something worthwhile – and strategic board games like Agricola and Puerto Rico, which don’t really shine until you’ve played them many times and everyone knows the rules well. Established traditions and skills can be beautiful parts of one’s life. (@ happiness project)

Overweight And In Debt: The Correlation Between Weight Gain And Pocket Drain Clearly, there’s some overlap between overspending and overeating. We need to spend and eat to survive in the world, but without some self-control, one can easily overeat and overspend, both of which are dangerous. I think it’s a stretch to say that all overweight people are in debt, which is what the title might lead you to believe, but I agree there are some similar psychological principles at work here. (@ frugal dad)

For the Self-Employed, It’s an Endless Workweek The “endless workweek” is a real danger for anyone who’s self-employed. Self-employment can really blur the boundaries between work and personal life, and quite often that means that work can dominate everything. I often feel like I’m in this position; my solution is to put up some strong barriers in time/life that work cannot cross, no matter what. (@ wall street journal)

If you’d like to keep tabs on what books I’m reading and have read and reviewed (outside of the PF stuff I’m reviewing here), check my GoodReads profile (a reader pointed out that I mentioned this one in a reader mailbag last week).

If you’d like to see what computer software I use and like, check my Wakoopa profile.

I also have started sharing the links I use when building my weekly roundup, comments and all. See my del.icio.us profile if you like the weekly roundup stuff, since I usually share 20-30 of these types of links a week there (and then filter it down to a handful for the weekly roundup).

Finally, if you’d like to keep up with ALL of my stuff in one place (Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and so on), check out my FriendFeed profile.

If you use those services, feel free to friend me on them. If you’re just curious, don’t hesitate to take a peek whenever you like.

The Frog in Boiling Water: Don’t Complain, Do Something I think the entire “frog in boiling water” analogy is perfect for the personal finance situation many people find themselves in. The environment is getting dangerous, but they’re completely oblivious to it. (@ saving advice)

The Best Book I’ve Ever Read About Making Change Stick I love to highlight posts that introduce me to new books I’ve never even heard of before. This certainly sounds like a good one. (@ wise bread)

The Serenity Prayer, and How It Applies to Your Finances The message behind the serenity prayer is powerful, even if you don’t believe in God. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. (@ saving for serenity)

You Don’t Have to Be the Best I know some people who are driven to be “the best” in every aspect of their life. Usually, they’re either incredibly stressed or things eventually fall completely apart. Instead of being “the best” at everything, choose one or two things and be “good enough” at the rest. (@ unclutterer)

Your Home Never Was an Investment I will never get as much out of my house as I put into it. The best I can hope for is that the time and money aren’t too much of a loss. (@ free money finance)

Their reward? As August rolls around, they’re right in the mix in their division.

What’s the lesson? Never give up on anything you do. You might be in better shape than you expect.

How to Quit a Job My general rule of thumb: the less drama, the better. The more drama you create on the way out the door, the harder it will be to maintain any connections to that job or the people there, connections that will be valuable in the future. (@ frugal dad)

How to Disaster-Proof Your Home and Finances This is really sound advice for pretty much everyone. (@ the wallet)

Supermarket Psychology (and a Few Insider Tricks) Supermarket psychology refers to the use of psychological tricks to coerce you subtly into buying more than you intend to. (@ bargaineering)

Don’t Depend on Your Job A successful life is one that minimizes risk – and anything you rely on is risk. Your job is a big one – if your life won’t fall apart if you lost your job, you’re in very good shape. (@ productivity501)

Walk, Walk, Walk, Walk, Walk Walking is a free activity that cuts down on transportation costs and health costs. Why not find ways to incorporate more walking in your life? (@ wisebread)

How to Budget for an Irregular Income I actually plan even tighter than J.D. for my irregular income, but I tend to worry more because of my kids. They sometimes drive me almost to paranoia about making sure there’s a steady income. (@ get rich slowly)

$22,000 per Year and a 2 Hour Commute for a Bit of Security At this point, I would hire a nanny. Seriously. (@ clever dude)

Frugality vs. “Big Wins”: Why You Shouldn’t Care About Either I couldn’t help but thinking about “gazelle-like intensity” with this article. (@ man vs. debt)

Killing Email: How and Why I Ditched My Inbox I wish I could do this. The big reason why I don’t is that people are constantly communicating things to me that are extremely private – that they wouldn’t share in a more public fashion. (@ zen habits)

So I’ve started doing that. As I work on my book, there are certain phrases and sentences that I work on carefully – the ones that really need to express a single idea very well. If I get one that I like, I often share it on Twitter, whether or not I think it’ll wind up in a book or in a post or something else entirely.

My favorite example of this? I was working on a freelance article about, well, freelance writing. I wanted a visually expressive and very playful lead-in sentence. I worked through several iterations, then finally tossed it out there:

Writing is like eating mashed potatoes: you need to finish up while it’s hot, but you’re tempted to spend your time sculpting.

It was a hit. Multiple people wrote to me asking what my source for that “quote” was.

I think the challenge of fitting an interesting idea into 140 characters or less forces you to be a better writer.

Anyway, on with some personal finance links.

Top Ten Disaster Preparedness Tips for Families We live in an area that has tornadoes, so our family has a very clear tornado procedure – even my three year old knows what room we go to if the siren goes off. Having such procedures in place makes it easier for the entire family to be safe in such a situation. (@ dumb little man)

Learning to (Un)Love Leverage Why is the “conventional wisdom” in business practice completely disastrous in day to day life? I think it’s disastrous in business, too – look at the myriad of failures in 2008. (@ megan mccardle)

Will Forced Frugality Last? I don’t think it will. Many, many people have their behavior steered by popular culture, and I think (to a certain extent) popular culture is promoting frugality. It’ll go away, like any other fad. Sadly enough. (@ wisebread)

Winning on the Uphills Challenges are what make you. You don’t get better when things are easy – you get better when you’re pushed hard. This applies to pretty much everything in life, from personal finance to exercise. (@ seth godin)

Emergency Fund Is For Emergencies ONLY – 6 Ways To Leave It Alone We tend to go to the opposite extreme. I try as hard as I can to avoid touching even a dime of our emergency funds. In fact, I probably go too far. (@ debt free adventure)

This book is complicated. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever written in my life by far. If you had been able to peek at me over the last few weeks during my work day, you would see me surrounded by books filled with bookmarks in them and some of the titles would have probably shocked you (without the context). I have about 2,000 notes that I’m mostly trying to organize in a coherent fashion. I know the big theme of the book – it revolves around the connection between money and happiness and has a tentative one-word title – but getting the specifics in order is a real challenge.

Right now, I’m focused on interviews in an effort to clarify how some more vague ideas directly connect to how we live our modern lives. Some by email, some by phone, a few by video – they’re coming together.

I’ve written (in a strong first draft) some big sections of it and I’m now stitching a lot of those pieces together, often using those interviews as the glue.

If you thought my first book was lightweight, I think this book has some danger of falling on the opposite end of the spectrum. I think my second draft will focus on making some of this stuff much more tangible to daily life than it seems right now.

I think you’ll like it. It’s easily the most profound thing I’ve ever done in my life. When I finally have a draft that I’m happy with, I’m going to be incredibly impatient to see it in print.

Now … *ahem* … here are some interesting personal finance articles.

Back to the Basics: Menu Planning Menu planning is part of our weekly routine here. This is a very nice description of how to put one together, along with a lot of tasty food photography. (@ simple mom)

The Killer and the Poet: How to Get Rich as a Copywriter Ogilvy on Advertising is a great book for any writer to read because, in the end, a writer is a salesman. You’re trying to “sell” your idea, and the better you do it, the more successful you’ll be at spreading ideas. (@ copyblogger)

Overcome the Fear of Failure The fear of failure holds a lot of people back from leaping into something they’re passionate about. Overcome it. (@ christian pf)

Is Materialism As Prevalent As People Say? I think one’s perspective depends heavily on who they communicate with on a daily basis. If you surround yourself by genuinely non-material people, you’ll think that everyone’s less material. That’s why it’s valuable to expose yourself to a wide cross-section of society. (@ the happiness project)

Mommy, I’m Bored! 25 Frugal Ways to Beat Summer Boredom I have two young children at home and on long summer days it can be a challenge to keep them engaged. The real problem is that their attention span is relatively short. You can’t do many activities that last for a long time, which means you have to think up lots of activities. (@ wise bread)

Use Twitter to Find a Job Twitter has endless useful things you can do with it, but the real key is to just dive in and converse with people on things that interest you. You should follow me on Twitter here; I post lots of stuff, most of it pretty worthwhile (I think). (@ my life roi)

Saving for the Short Term I actually started writing an article in response to this, but I decided to actually use some of what I wrote for my book. In a nutshell, I think short term goals trump long term goals. (@ get rich slowly)

Learn to Celebrate the Small Victories I agree – celebrating the small victories is key. Just keep the celebration in line with the victory, and don’t let that celebration undermine the victory, either. Don’t spend to celebrate paying off a debt and don’t drink to celebrate a month of sobriety. (@ dumb little man)

So, if any of you are lurking out there and would like to get in touch, please drop me a line. I’d really love to hear from you!

First, I have a pair of new articles up at OPEN Forum.

The first is 8 Simple Rules for Practicing Frugality while Traveling for Your Business, which offers up several tips for saving money when you’re out and about on business travel.

The other one is Getting Maximum Value from Your Local Small Business Association, which talks about the value of building small business connections in your local community, even if your business is online-based and not connected to the community.

And now, for some personal finance articles of interest.

Not Much Convenience in Convenience Foods A powerful argument that convenience foods aren’t really convenient in terms of effort. They’re only convenient in that they just require almost no kitchen expertise. In other words, they don’t prey on time, they prey on ignorance, and people that pay more for the convenience foods are paying for that ignorance. Really interesting perspective. (@ grist via bitten)

How You Grow Your Income by 10% or More a Year I think the big factor is being missed here. The article describes how exactly to do this if you’re in a stable career – a typical office job. But one big way to get there is to try out a scalable career (perhaps as a side job). (@ free money finance)

Free Marriage Counseling: Do It Yourself Here’s the thing: most counseling boils down to just having a conversation where both people feel safe and some guidance is offered. Very rarely does a counselor actually make a decision – they just guide participants to their own decisions. So what’s keeping you from doing it yourself? (@ art of manliness)

6 Sure-Fire Ways to Stop Feeling Jealous Jealousy drives a huge number of workplace and personal problems. If you’re feeling jealous of someone, you need to deal with that jealousy. (@ pick the brain)

How Giving Changes Everything Giving of yourself comes back to you multiplied – I’ve found this to be true again and again and again. (@ zen habits)

Having It All This article by Erin Doland is fantastic, outlining in detail the life-changing value of minimizing clutter in all aspects of your life. (@ unclutterer)

1,100 notes, without any sort of structure at all.

What does it all mean? That’s what I’m really puzzling through right now. I definitely see some huge patterns in the notes, but what’s the big theme really tying all of these ideas together?

Lately, I’ve been taking long walks and puzzling through all of this. I’ll spend an hour reading through note after note after note, then I’ll get up, put on my shoes, and go walking/jogging for a while. Connections pop into my mind when I’m out there and by the time I’m back, I see things in a new light.

It’s coming together. The shapes are beginning to emerge.

Here are some interesting personal finance articles I found in the last week.

The Basics Behind a Budget that Works After reading tons of articles describing different versions of “a budget that works,” I’ve come to the conclusion that no budgeting technique really works for everyone. For me, a much simpler approach works well. (@ simple mom)

Things Wear Out I agree – the best value is an item that simply wears out. It’s worn, well-utilized, and useful until the very end. Like a good pair of shoes. (@ wise bread)

A New Era of Personal Finance The old advice isn’t working any more. (@ saving for serenity)

Why Pursue Financial Freedom? I think different people have different answers to this question. For example, my reason is simply so I can pursue some of my major life goals – writing a novel and having it published and well-promoted – without worrying about an income. (@ get rich slowly)

30 Days to a Better Man This is a set of truly great articles, but a better name for the series would probably be “30 Days to a Better Person” as most of these articles apply well to well-rounded women, too. (@ art of manliness)

Helpful Finance Tips, or Sneaky Payday Loan Ad? Proof positive that you need to be very careful about what you read online. I think the future of the internet is “trusted advisors” – people who build long-term relationships with readers and give them advice on any number of things. I would probably be in that category. (@ red tape chronicles)