I’m not talking about basketball. I’m talking about the weather.

We’ve had six days in a row where the temperature peaked above 80 F in central Iowa in March. The grass is rapidly turning green and everything is blooming. All of this is happening a month or so earlier than normal.

I am so tempted to start planting our garden (in fact, Sarah’s been out there already, poking around and turning the soil), but I remember many, many Aprils that included a lot of freezing and some big snowstorms.

Is It Better to Be Frugal or Earn More? I don’t think this is really an either/or choice. For one, frugality can start saving you money immediately, but it has a cap. Earning more can’t just be flipped on like a switch, but it has no ceiling. (@ watson inc.)

Do You Know Your Monthly Nut? A person’s “monthly nut” is the amount they have to spend each month on required bills or basic essentials of life. It’s the amount that’s going to be spent each month, no matter what. If you can lower this, that’s a big success. (@ my journey to millions)

You Are Already the 1% 95% of the population of developing countries gets by on $10 a day or less. Simply being born in the United States is an enormous income opportunity. (@ i am one percent)

5 Ways You Can Pay Back Your Student Loans Faster The last tip, volunteerism, is particularly interesting. I know of several people who have done just that with great success. (@ scott on money)

The Dangerous Terrain of Unnecessary Dream Shrinkage Overwork will not get you to your dream. If you’re burnt out, you’re not producing too much of value, anyway, so scale back a little. (@ danielle la porte)

I consider the switches to and from Daylight Savings Time to be largely useless in the modern era. It disrupts sleep patterns, causes people who forget to adjust clocks to miss appointments, and adds something else to worry about to our hectic lives.

I understood the need for it in the past, but as the economy changes, the case for the switch gets worse and worse. I look forward to the day when the time change completely goes away.

(Of course, I may be grumpy because it really threw off the sleep cycle of our children, causing a few long nights with overly tired children and bad dreams.)

Recapturing Wasted Time We all waste time. The question is how can we still get value out of that waste. (@ saving advice)

The Cost of Living off the Grid This article matches up well with most of my calculations. Living off the grid ends up more or less paying for itself over the long run and it can be very psychically envigorating. (@ pt money)

What Losing Weight Taught Me About Saving Money They actually function in the same way: small sacrifices lead to a life change. (@ well heeled)

Hyperbolic Discounting: Why your decisions are already made before you make them Most people would choose to have a lesser reward today than a greater reward tomorrow. Marketers know this and exploit it all the time. (@ money cactus)

Conflicted Virtually everything we do is the result of a conflict on some level. Piecing together the nature of that conflict and resolving it can make a huge difference in how we act. (@ seth godin)

On Sunday, we had a snowstorm that deposited several inches on the ground and left me shoveling the driveway.

On Tuesday, the temperature reached 70 F and I went on a long walk in short sleeves.

Spring springs suddenly.

Marginal Tax Rate VS Effective Tax Rate – What are They and How do They Affect You? I see mistakes made all the time when people publicly discuss income tax rates. Here you’ll find out how they really work. (@ free from broke)

How To Use Freecycle: Save Money, Reduce Clutter I constantly watch Craigslist and Freecycle for items, both to give away and sell as well as to post them myself. (@ christian pf)

How to choose your retirement investments in your portfolio What makes this post strong is how it explains in clear terms what a lot of the common terms used in investment writing actually mean. (@ sense to save)

How A Boring, Unfulfilling Job Accidentally Revealed My Passions And A Meaningful Direction For My Life A dead-end job doesn’t have to deaden you. (@ pick the brain)

How Much Should You Pay the Babysitter? (Well, That Depends.) We haven’t paid our last three babysitters. How? We participate in babysitting exchanges, plus our parents practically demand to watch our children sometimes. (@ len penzo)

A few nights ago, I stayed up until 1 AM working on a project. The following night, I stayed up until 12:30 AM talking to friends. Both of those days, I had to get up at 6 AM. The second night, my oldest son woke up twice in the night from bad dreams.

That next day, I walked through life like a zombie and, in the evening, I experienced one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had.

Moral of the story? I can’t go on as little sleep as I once did.

Myths About Working from Home I found myself nodding repeatedly while reading this article. I hear some version of these stereotypes all the time. (@ freelance switch)

Home Haircuts Can Save Time and Money As I rub my hand over my head, I’m touching a haircut that I did myself while looking in the mirror. You can do this, it does look good, and it’s mighty cheap. (@ get rich slowly)

An Autodidact’s Schedule A successful person is a person who is constantly learning and teaching themselves new things. That’s often difficult to do with a busy life. (@ zen habits)

The map has been replaced by the compass This is one of the best analogies I’ve ever heard regarding the changes in the modern workplace. You no longer follow a “map” of a set career path. Instead, you are your own “compass,” guiding you down whatever path you might follow. (@ seth godin)

For some reason, three people have contacted me within the last day or two asking me for suggestions on how to deal with drinks and snacks when playing board or card games with friends. They do make a mess.

If we’re just playing a game with an ordinary deck of playing cards, I don’t sweat it. However, what we often do if we’re playing a board game or a card game with special cards is simply set up a side table or two adjacent to the main one. We simply ask that beverages and snacks stay on that table. In fact, with close friends, we’ll sometimes use a chair or something else more convenient for this.

It’s a great little step to prevent someone from saying “Oops…” and ruining a $30 game.

The Generation Gap I’ll completely agree with the idea that many people in their fifties, sixties, and seventies have a vastly different perspective on pensions and retirements than I do. I simply do not have confidence that they’ll exist when I’m old enough to use them. The numbers just don’t add up. (@ canadian finance blog)

How Much Do You Spend on Food? We’re somewhere between the middle 20% and the next higher 20%. A big reason for that is we tend to pay a little more to buy local foods and organic foods, and our shopping cart tends to have a pretty high proportion of fresh produce. (@ your life, their life)

It’s Not Too Late to Change Your Habits It’s never too late to change their habits. It just gets harder to change them over time. (@ zen habits)

Simple Ways to Wake Up Ready to Face the Day Most of these actually work. I tend to be a morning person, truthfully. My focus is much better in the morning hours. (@ dumb little man)

The “No Spend Day” Challenge I found that doing this regularly made it feel more and more routine and normal, (@ frugal dad)

You would think, with the Iowa caucus ending a month and a half ago, that the automated political calls would stop for our family.

You’d be wrong.

I’m still getting calls from candidates I don’t support asking me to donate to them. I’m getting weird calls from all sorts of action groups wanting me to support their missions, most of which I don’t agree with.

There is way too much money being spent this election cycle. It’s only February. What is October going to be like?

5 Ways to Become More Self-Confident Every Day This Week These are some great tactics. I sometimes have a hard time showing any sort of confidence in public. My natural tendency is to turtle up in situations with people I don’t know well. (@ pick the brain)

50 Ways to Save Money on Food This is simply a great list of food saving tips. Many are familiar, but all are useful. (@ )

Bank Switch Kit and Checklist If you’re considering switching banks, this list will make it incredibly easy to do so. (@ consumerism commentary)

Meeting versus making Every single conflict in my marriage can be boiled down to one thing. I tend to be a maker, my wife tends to be a meeter. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be a meeter, just a different mindset. (@ seth’s blog)

If I had to give someone advice on how to keep a marriage in good shape, here’s what it would be.

Every day, do two things. One, tell your spouse that you love them and tell them something specific about them that you love. Two, spend half an hour doing something that helps them in some way and expect no compliments or comment from it – do it just because you care about that person. This works better if you focus on something that you know will really matter to your partner. For instance, if your partner loathes doing the dishes, just do them without comment once or twice a week.

Do these two things every day and you’ll be surprised how much better your relationship goes.

Money Lessons Learned from Traveling Well For me, money is better spent on experiences than stuff. (@ saving advice)

Can Money Buy Freedom? It can do that only in a limited sense. On some level, you have to choose to be free from the things that worry you. You can be rich and still be depely worried (and controlled by) lots of things. (@ get rich slowly)

Beware the Entrepreneur’s Recoil If you succeed at something, you tend to become more risk-averse and that often leads to undoing what made you succeed in the first place. (@ jonathan fields)

How to Get the Most from Your Gym Membership & Avoid Burning Out I usually have two things that keep me from really hitting a home run at a gym. The first is the soreness that comes from a period of not exercising. It goes away in a few weeks, but it’s hard to get through. The second is injury and convincing myself to return to the routine after recovering from a minor injury. (@ len penzo)

Recently, I found out that one of my favorite writers has cancer. That person will announce it in due time if it turns out to be untreatable, but that’s her (or is it his?) decision.

When you’re a fan of someone’s work and read it faithfully, it’s easy to get caught up in that person’s work. You want a new book. You want a new blog post. You want a new photograph. You want some detail to be corrected. I do this all the time. I can’t tell you how long I’ve pined for the next book in fantasy series that I’ve loved or waited for the next album from the artist I enjoy.

Sometimes, though, the curtain is lifted. There are human beings back there, trying hard to create useful things, handle the feedback they get, and still live some semblance of a normal life. They make mistakes. They have pain and regrets.

For every singer, artist, writer, or other creative person whose work you love, there’s at least one real person back there trying to deal with this complicated mess we call life. They deal with sick children, past regrets, relationships that aren’t going well, and illnesses of their own.

We are all human.

How to Choose a Good Bank as a Freelancer This is a really interesting perspective on choosing a bank, as not every bank account is perfect for everyone. (@ freelance switch)

Finding the Courage to Stay the Course Sticking to a long-term goal can be really hard, especially when you’ve reached a point where there’s a lot of work to do before the next milestone. This is some great advice for sticking to it. (@ dumb little man)

Seven Easy Menu Planning Ideas We do most of these things. These tactics really help with food preparation. (@ living richly on a budget)

Five Free Gifts for Valentine’s Day Don’t sweat over a perfect gift or a box of chocolates or something when a bit of thoughtfulness will do. (@ million ways to save)