One of my readers recently alerted me to an interesting article at CNN.com entitled Why Sadness Can Blow Your Budget. The article discusses the “misery is not miserly” phenomenon, where people who are experiencing sadness tend to be much less in control of their personal spending, prone to splurges and poor consumer choices. Even more

Recently, I read an excellent discussion on why we don’t save money. I originally intended to include it in my weekly roundup this week, but as I began to write my thoughts on the topic, I realized that I had a lot to say on the issue. Erica argues that we spend primarily for emotional

A few days ago, I reviewed in detail the excellent book The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz. In that book, Fritz posits that most of the time, our lives take the path of least resistance around and through the obstacles of life, both those dealt to us by others and those within our

Quite often, I talk about the value of frugality and spending less than you earn. For many of us, that’s a valuable mantra to repeat, because our tendency is to spend more than we should. Our challenge is to avoid spending, and we have to carefully talk ourselves out of it. Yet there are those

Out of all of the challenging times since I began to turn my financial life around, I may be facing the most challenging of all right now. It’s not anything immediate or urgent. I have a nice healthy emergency fund to take care of that. It’s also not a temptation to buy anything, nor a

I’m currently on the west coast in the midst of a business trip. My hotel sits across the road from a shopping mall far nicer than any in the entire state of Iowa. Unsurprisingly, during a break in meetings, a group of us went over there to wander around. It didn’t take long before most

A reader, who I will call Jane, wrote in recently with the following: I do NOT overspend. I work with a monthly budget, live very carefully and frugally, etc. It’s the debt, and the underearning. I am working on both, but wow is it hard somedays, some weeks, some months, especially when this worry eats

I’ll start off this time by relating a few tales of recent shopping excursions where I talked myself out of making some seriously frivolous purchases. A week before Christmas, I was at an electronics store searching for a shower radio for my sister-in-law. While wandering around, I went through the flat panel television section. As

Many, many people write letters to their past selves, advising their earlier selves to avoid mistakes that they’ve made. I thought it might be interesting to take the opposite approach and write myself a letter today to read on my fortieth birthday. Dear Trent, Today is your fortieth birthday. Your son is twelve years old,

One of the biggest challenges I faced in my early adult life was the lack of a mentor or a role model for many aspects of my life, particularly the financial aspects. My life was completely different than what I had experienced growing up, thus I couldn’t draw on childhood examples. Most of my friends

I often talk about the “latte factor,” made famous by David Bach. In a nutshell, the “latte factor” refers to the fact that the raw repetition of a habit that costs money each time can drain you dry financially. For example, let’s say you have a latte each morning that costs $4, along with a

Once every couple months, I go through a period for about a week or so where I really wonder why I’m keeping my financial house in such tight order. I look around at what my friends and family are doing and I see them enjoying a lot of things with their money – and a

When I first started sinking into a mire of debt, I began to really feel ashamed of my actual financial state. I would avoid the topic and when I couldn’t avoid it, I’d bluster my way around it while feeling really guilty and ashamed inside. Of course, I’d put a balm on this by going

As passionate as I am about managing my own finances, I’ll be the first to admit that some of the tasks are rather dull to me. For example, filing away documents is about the last thing on earth I want to do, and I often put it off so long that there is a mountain

Quite often, I get suggestions from readers to review personal finance books that are promoted with a strong theme of fear. For example, just today a reader wrote to me with some eloquent questions from a book entitled The Coming Economic Collapse How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel. While I responded

I often dip into melancholy moods, triggered by any number of things. One of the most regular triggers is a sense of detachment from my family, or else a feeling that I’ve done something really wrong as a husband or as a father. From what I’ve seen, this is a fairly common human experience –

First, a confession. I often lie to myself about my weight. I’m not obese, just a bit heavier than I’d like to be and heavier than I was in college. I eat somewhat healthy – and drink plenty of water – but I tend to not exercise as much as I’d like to. Often, when

Perhaps my biggest personal fault (at least from my own perspective) is that I have a very hard time committing myself to an exercise routine. I know how to get into shape (I was actually in very good shape at about age nineteen), but that was actually fueled by other personal issues going on at

As I slowly save for a new vehicle (we’re planning on a Honda Odyssey or a Toyota Sienna), I’ve come to realize that saving for a specific goal like this often seems slow and a bit unrewarding. Sure, the bank account goes up over time, but it still seems as though the goal is a