Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, two years ago this week, and three years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (November 8-14, 2008)
The Readers Speak Out: Their 25 Best Actions for Saving Money I asked the readers for their single best action for saving money. They responded – big time. Here are the twenty-five top ones, all of which received multiple responses.

Accountability For a lot of people, accountability is a four-letter word.

Taking Dramatic Change One Day at a Time Whenever I want to make a major change in my own life, I find it works far better if I take that change one day at a time instead of committing to big, long-term things that may be impossible for me to reach.

Paying Others to Provide a Service: When Is It Frugal? I think it is if you’re directly replacing the time you’d spend engaged in that service with something truly more valuable to you. This requires a keen sense of how valuable one’s time is, something a lot of people don’t have.

Some Thoughts on the Small House Movement: Is It Something Worth Considering? I think the size of our house is about right (perhaps with slightly bigger bedrooms and perhaps one more bedroom to accomodate our next child), but I know couples without children that have substantially larger homes than we do.

Two Years Ago (November 8-14, 2007)
Should I Report Ethical Misconduct At Work? I don’t think it’s always as cut-and-dried as people want to make it out to be. If I see my boss taking some extra coffee, I’m not going to try to get him fired. But where’s the line?

Should You Report Sexual Harassment in the Workplace? Similarly, I don’t think it’s as black-and-white as many would like to think it is. Sexual harassment is wrong, but I’ve seen threats and blackmail involving sexual harassment for calling someone “dear.”

Toy Catalogs and Children: Are They a Good Match? As of yet, we have never plopped our kids in front of a toy catalog near the holidays. Here’s why.

Fun I must be a real bore if I talk about money all the time.

Melancholy and Spending I believe there’s a huge connection between low self-esteem, sadness, and a lack of control over your spending. A positive attitude makes it harder for advertising to work its magic.

Three Years Ago (November 8-14, 2006)
Review: The Millionaire Next Door The first book I ever reviewed on The Simple Dollar is still one of my favorites.

The Road to Financial Armageddon #8: Meltdown Here’s the story of how I hit financial bottom. It’s painful.

Building a Financial (and Personal) Idea Diary I use one of these every day. I keep a little spiral notebook in my front pocket.

Setting and Meeting Daily Personal Finance Goals Microgoals are a big part of personal finance success. In fact, The Simple Dollar would fail without daily goals.

Applying the Peak-End Rule to Personal Finance The peak-end rule pops up over and over again in life. If you can figure out how to use it to your advantage, it can really help you save money.

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter – or other social networks. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, two years ago this week, and three years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (November 1-7, 2008)
Lessons from that Old Coffee Can over the Kitchen Sink This post makes me feel good because it conjures up one of my few very vivid memories of my paternal grandmother, who passed away when I was seven. Almost all of my memories of her make me feel as though she loved me very much.

A Guide to Winterizing Your House Winterizing your home can be a very powerful way to cut down on your winter season expenditures.

Excuses, Excuses It’s incredibly easy to make excuses. It’s incredibly hard to look past them and realize that often you have only yourself to blame.

The Suitcase Test: The Things You Really Need For me, this was a really powerful thought experiment. I do it every once in a while and it gives me great insight into what’s important and what’s not important in my life.

How to Focus in a Heavily Distracting Time These are the tactics I use when I have to work near the holiday season. For example, it’s two days before Christmas, I’m trying to get some work done, and there’s nothing but chaos around me.

Two Years Ago (November 1-7, 2007)
Revisiting The Happiness Scale This is a pretty interesting revelation about the things that bring us happiness in a given day and how it relates to how we spend monney.

Review: Born to Buy While it doesn’t offer personal finance advice per se, I found that Born to Buy had more impact on my decisions as a parent than any book I’ve read so far (except for perhaps Mindset).

Should I Eliminate Financial Support For My Child After High School? This one really fired up some debate. I’m in favor of eliminating such support, by the way.

Should I Go Without Health Insurance For A Better Career Situation? I really hope that this question becomes a non-factor in the near future. The lack of opportunity to buy health insurance shouldn’t restrict anyone from making a good career choice.

How to Construct a Killer Resume, From Start to Finish The advice here still generally holds. I’ve long thought about making an updated version of this article with a real-world example in it.

Three Years Ago (November 1-7, 2006)
Turning Off The Financially Irresponsible Mindset This article includes five really simple and straightforward tactics for changing your financial mindset. I really like how some of the earliest articles on The Simple Dollar reveal nascent versions of many of the values I’ve come to rely on in my life.

Liquid Laptop Accident? 9 Steps To Save Your Laptop I still remember this horrible, gooey mess like it was yesterday.

14 Ways Your Computer Can Put Money In Your Pocket I believe a home computer can be one of the greatest resources for saving money in a home.

The Road To Financial Armageddon #5: Love and Marriage This is a partcularly painful entry for me to read now, because I see that our shared love didn’t have to be signified with a spending orgy.

The Road to Financial Armageddon #7: Here Comes Baby That baby wound up being the inspiration for our financial turnaround.

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter – or other social networks. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, as well as the five best posts from two years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (October 25 – 31, 2008)
Should an Entrepreneurial High Schooler Go to College? This discussion resulted in a lot of interesting back and forth on the question of whether or not a high schooler who starts a strong business in his spare time should immediately go to college or should focus on building that business that’s already successful.

Brand Preferences and the Two Year Old Child I wrote this as I began to notice the effect that brand recognition was having on my two year old son. Was he being unduly influenced by branding and packaging? What could I do about it?

Eight Things You Should Do Immediately to Save Money When You Buy a Car If you buy a car, there are several things worth doing immediately to maximize fuel efficiency and minimize maintenance costs. These all work no matter what kind of car you buy.

Exploring the Connection Between Time and Money I’m a big believer that time is money, at least in the sense that money is just a representation of invested time. Thus, time is an enormous consideration when choosing which option is actually the cheapest.

Two Years of The Simple Dollar: My 25 Favorite Articles of the Past Year Here’s my celebration of the second full year of The Simple Dollar. I just collected my top twenty five articles from the second year of The Simple Dollar in one place.

Two Years Ago (October 25 – 31, 2007)
Seven Tips For Avoiding Boredom During A Financial Turnaround Isn’t living cheap boring? Not at all. It’s all about just choosing the less expensive things that you enjoy doing. Take a look at the many, many inexpensive things available for you to do. The wider your horizons, the more fun you’ll have.

A Deeper Look At Dave Ramsey’s Seven Baby Steps To Financial Freedom – And How They Apply To Us Dave Ramsey’s debt recovery advice is popular because it’s so straightforward and simple. However, they’re not always a perfect match for everyone. Here, I dig deeper into his “baby steps” and see how they match my own life.

The Eternal Question: Am I Doing The Right Thing? With the complexity of life around us, it’s easy to not be entirely sure if your choice is the right thing. Is it better to spend more now or save this money? Is it better to invest in a 401(k) or a Roth IRA? How can you ever know if you’re doing the right thing?

The Ten Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Money and Life In The Last Year Here, I summarize the ten most important things I learned about money during the first year of The Simple Dollar. This article really does contain the cream of the crop of what I learned during that crucial period of my life.

One Year of The Simple Dollar: My 25 Favorite Articles As with the article above, this is merely a collection of what I consider to be the twenty five best articles I wrote during the first year of The Simple Dollar.

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter – or other social networks. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, as well as the five best posts from two years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (October 18 – 24, 2008)
When Networking Doesn’t Work: There’s No Value in Just “Touching Base” This article actually sums up much of the thinking that is running through the recent discussions about Never Eat Alone. To put it simply, just making small talk and “touching base” doesn’t amount to much of anything at all unless it’s merely a bridge into something more meaty.

Stop Wasting Money on Disposable Things Whenever you spend money on something disposable and use it, that money is now gone – no future value can be obtained from it. Instead, focus on reusable things which don’t have a replacement cost. Over the long haul, you’ll almost always save money – and you’ll benefit the environment as well.

Giving Outside the Box: Generosity on a Limited Budget How do you give if you don’t have a lot of money? Much of the most powerful giving happens in other ways: giving your skills and giving your time, for starters. Here are some ways to turn your other assets into generosity.

Eleven Tactics for a Cheaper Christmas The Christmas season is often overloaded with little expenses of all kinds that really add up. As always, keeping your eyes on the little things means that the big things will take care of themselves. Here’s how to trim some of those little things without putting a damper on your holiday season.

How to Keep Important Stuff from Slipping Through the Cracks With our busy lives, it’s really easy to find that important matters have simply slipped through the cracks – a bill left unpaid, a piece of correspondence left unread, an idea forgotten. Here are some tactics to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.

Two Years Ago (October 18 – 24, 2007)
Spam Emails About Individual Stocks: What’s The Scam? I get tons of emails, both personal and otherwise, about great stock deals. They usually tout some very low priced stock and argue that I can make a killing by buying that stock right now. How does this scam work if these are publicly traded stocks? Here’s how.

My Five Greatest Financial Fears – And How They’ve Changed Over The Last Year A big part of my reason for starting The Simple Dollar was to face down my financial fears and conquer them. Here are five of my biggest fears – and how I tackled them.

Organic Foods and Frugality Is it really a frugal choice to buy organic foods and vegetables? It really depends on your values – how valuable is it to you to eat a diet free of preservatives and other elements?

Increasing Your 401(k) Contributions: Benefits and Drawbacks Many personal finance guides argue that it’s always good to increase 401(k) contributions. But is it? I dig into that question here and find that in some cases, simply increasing 401(k) contributions is not the smartest choice.

Your Money or Your Life: The Stunning Implications of Redefining Work This is another segment of the Your Money or Your Life book club, with this portion discussing what happens when you begin to look at work as something different than just a way to make money.

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter – or other social networks. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, as well as the five best posts from two years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (October 11 – 17, 2008)
Minimizing the Impact of Job Loss: Short Term Tactics and Long Term Career Pillars The more “career pillars” you have, the more stable your career is. What are “career pillars” and how do you build them? This article explains it all.

18 Things a New Homeowner Should Do Immediately to Save Money Whenever you move into a new home, there are several little home maintenance tweaks that, if you do them right off the bat before you start moving stuff in, can be really easy to do and can save you quite a bit of money. Well worth reading if you’re about to move!

How to Plan Ahead for Next Week’s Meals (And Save Significant Money): A Step-By-Step Guide The more care we put into planning our meals in advance, the more money we save without reducing the quality of our meals. Naturally, there’s a balancing act between money and time, but our techniques balance things in a way that we’re happy with.

Money Podcasts: How to Listen to Personal Finance Commentary and Advice at Your Convenience These are the money podcasts I listened to about a year ago – the list slowly changes over time. All of these podcasts seem to still be going and all are excellent, however.

How Much Extra Should You Pay for Fuel Efficiency? Here’s How We’re Calculating It I’m a big believer that, if you own a car for a long time, fuel efficiency can greatly affect how much you should pay for the car. Here’s how we made that calculation when we were first shopping for a car.

Two Years Ago (October 11 – 17, 2007)
10 Simple Ways to Beat Impulse Buying Impulse buying is perhaps my greatest financial enemy. Here are ten techniques I use to avoid my worst financial impulses.

Dealing With Professional Exhaustion In A Financially Sensible Way Any time a person engages in a mentally or physically challenging career path, exhaustion eventually becomes a real danger. How can one deal with professional burnout without changing careers or going on a long sabbatical? Here are some approaches that seem to work.

Building A Personal Productivity And Development Library: What’s Essential, What Isn’t Here are some of the best personal development and productivity books I’ve read. Each of these books provided some sort of deep personal insight for me, helping me to improve my life in some fashion.

The Feeling You Get From A Coca-Cola Classic: How Advertising Tickles Your Wallet – And Five Ways To Fight It Advertisers use many, many tricks to convince you to buy their product. Here are some of the best techniques that they use and some ways to recognize the effect of advertising and not allow it to affect your spending.

Some Notes on the Environment: Why I Care And Why An Inconvenient Truth Doesn’t Matter Frugality and “going green” have a lot of overlap. While I do practice some environmentalism, I don’t worry about it in global terms. Instead, this is my argument for focusing on environmentalism locally – and how it can also benefit your wallet.

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter – or other social networks. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, as well as the five best posts from two years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (October 4 – 10, 2008)
How to Read a Stock Chart in Just Five Seconds Looking at a stock chart on a site like Google Finance can be information overload for a person just getting started. This article breaks down the details into a few simple pieces so that you can quickly find the key information that’s actually useful to an individual investor or stock researcher.

Creating a CD Ladder for Your Emergency Fund or Other Savings to Earn a Better, Safe Return Having a large emergency fund can be really useful, but having a large amount of cash just sitting there means it’s not earning as well as it could be. A CD ladder is a way to get some of that money earning a little more without losing access to it. I use CD ladders myself.

The Entrepreneurial Drive (Or Lack Thereof) Some people have the initiative and the interest to dig into entrepreneurship, while others do not. What is the difference between the two, and is it crucial for personal finance success?

A Do-It-Yourself Guide to a Romantic and Highly Frugal Date Night You truly do not need to bust out your wallet while having a romantic date. You also don’t have to spend your time just doing the “same old thing,” either. Instead, follow up on these ideas and you might just find a great date for very little cost.

Ten Things I Wish I’d Done Differently While Buying a House One of the big themes of The Simple Dollar is mining my own failures and figuring out what went wrong, then transforming them into realistic suggestions for others so that they don’t waste their time and/or money making the same mistakes.

Two Years Ago (October 4 – 10, 2007)
How Can A Frugal Person Buy Expensive Items? A Deeper Look At Frugality For me, frugality often means not buying the cheapest item – and sometimes means buying an expensive one. For example, you’re better off buying one good kitchen knife than a whole set of cheap ones.

How To Minimize The Cost (And Maximize The Benefit) Of Eating Out For Business Sometimes, during the course of work, you’re required to eat out with coworkers, business guests, or other people. This can be a real money sink if you’re not careful. Here are some strategies for minimizing that impact without affecting your effectiveness during the meal.

Ten Steps To Financial Success For A Minimum Wage Earner How can you implement good financial planning if you’re earning minimum wage? Here are ten steps that anyone earning a low income can implement to get their financial life in a better place.

Your Money Or Your Life: How Much Is Enough? The Nature Of Fulfillment This is one of my favorite entries from our month-long discussion of the great personal finance book Your Money or Your Life. The idea of fulfillment fascinates me – it is often a lack of fulfillment that convinces people to spend needlessly.

The $21 Food Week: Is It Possible? Is It Healthy? Is it possible to actually eat well while only spending $1 per meal over the course of a week? How much nutrition can you really get for a dollar? And how does that knowledge affect how you actually eat?

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter – or other social networks. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, as well as the five best posts from two years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (September 27 – October 3, 2008)
A Visual Guide to Saving Money with a Baby This is a photographic journey through some of the specific things we did to trim our spending with our second child (our first was a baby long before The Simple Dollar got started). All of these tricks saved money, particularly if you consider having future children after the current baby.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself I wrote this during a period of great fear about the future of, well, the American economy as a whole. In short, I thought the fear was overblown, at least in terms of the average person. Turns out I was right on the money with this one.

How to Find and Utilize a Mentor, No Matter What You’re Doing Mentors are invaluable aids in helping you get started on a successful career or entrepreneurial path. I’ve had several mentors over the years and they’ve all had a huge impact on me.

Some Thoughts on the Fulfillment Curve The fulfillment curve underlines so much of what we choose to do in life. Most of the time, our financial mistakes come from being sorely out of touch with our fulfillment curve, often believing that more is better when, in truth, it’s not.

Thoughts on Children and Rewards for Normal Behavior In general, I oppose rewarding children for normal expected behavior. That behavior shouldn’t be met with a reward, but not exhibiting that behavior should be met with a punishment that’s non-financial. Allowances are great, but using money as a club to enforce standard behavior teaches really awkward money lessons, in my opinion.

Two Years Ago (September 27 – October 3, 2007)
The Backlash Against Frugality This is a topic I touch upon regularly on The Simple Dollar: the sense that culturally, frugality isn’t the normal method of behavior and that, after a while, people resist frugality. I generally think this comes from confusion between frugality (finding the maximum value in something) and cheapness (trimming every last cent from spending).

Review: The First National Bank of Dad This was the first really thought-provoking book I read about teaching children how to manage money. For me, this book was really the beginning of a journey towards discovering my philosophy on how to help my children learn about money and handle it responsibly.

Thirteen Ways To Reduce The Effect Of “Bad Luck” In Your Financial Life Some people seem to suffer from bad luck more than others, but quite often that bad luck is triggered by poor choices. Here are some of those choices. (Yes, the number thirteen was intentional here.)

Should You Give Yourself Material Rewards For Meeting Certain Milestones? It’s great to celebrate when you achieve things, but is it a good thing for that celebration to involve buying things? My suggestion is to celebrate, but find non-material ways to highlight your great accomplishment.

Five Personal Finance Lessons That Rocked Me Like A Hurricane When I Figured Them Out These lessons still rock me, especially when I consider how I lived my life before these realizations.

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter – or other social networks. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, as well as the five best posts from two years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (September 20-26, 2008)
Personal Energy and Frugality Quite often, you have to take some extra personal action in order to trim your spending. For some people who already have their schedule jammed to the gills, an extra fifteen minutes of relaxation has a very high value – and it’s easy to toss out frugality. So, why not focus on the less time- and energy-intense ways to cut spending?

Looking at Your Career as an Investment Your career is an investment. You rack up experience and connections, and those things pay dividends that help your career as a whole grow.

The Twelve Biggest Personal Finance Mistakes People Make Over and Over Again I see these things pop up over and over and over again, in emails from readers and conversations with people.

Managing the Natural Ups and Downs of Your Workweek Everyone’s workdays and workweeks have natural ups and downs. How can you manage those to maximize your productivity? For me, the biggest key was figuring out my own “energy valleys” and “energy peaks” and doing appropriate things in each area.

Why Many “Alternative Income” Ideas Aren’t Worth Your Time – And What You Might Do With It Instead Alternative income is (usually) a scam of some sort, best avoided. Instead, there are a lot of ways to actually legitimately increase your income.

Two Years Ago (September 20-26, 2007)
When A Frugal Life And Social Gift-Giving Come Into Conflict What do you do when you’re expected to give a gift – particularly an expensive one – when you wouldn’t possibly even want such a thing in return? It’s a real sticky wicket.

The Do-It-Yourself Dilemma: When Things Go Wrong Doing it yourself not only teaches you new skills, but it can also save you money. However, sometimes it can fail (and sometimes it can fail miserably). What do you do then?

Is The Value Menu Really A Value? Comparing The Homemade Double Cheeseburger To The McDonald’s $1 Version I followed up the hamburger post mentioned last week by making my own at home, discovering that I could make a truly awesome cheeseburger for about $1.40.

Why Does Everyone Preach About Index Funds? What They Are And Why They’re Good – From The Very Beginning Index funds are my preferred way to invest – they’re low cost and they diversify your investments without much effort. Here’s the complete case for them.

Making A Major Life Change: Is It Time For Kathy To Abandon The City? There are advantages and disadvantages to city and country living. Here, I contrast the two while trying to help reader Kathy figure out which avenue she should take with her life.

If you’d like to browse through more of the archives, visit the chronology, where all posts are listed in chronological order.

Nine Ways to Get More out of The Simple Dollar
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are nine great ways for new readers to dig deeper into The Simple Dollar.

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. Visiting The Simple Dollar’s website is great, but for many people, it’s more convenient to receive the articles in another form. It’s easy to join 60,000 other subscribers and get The Simple Dollar’s content by email or in your RSS feeder (if you’re unfamiliar with RSS, check out Google Reader.

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Read my story of financial meltdown and recovery. The Simple Dollar isn’t based on what I’ve read in books or learned in school. I’ve made a lifetime of financial mistakes – The Simple Dollar is a record of what works for me during the process of getting my life on a better track.

4. Download my free 49 page e-book. Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page is completely free. It summarizes all of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way about personal finance in one tidy package – in fact, all of the main principles can be found right on the cover.

5. Follow me on Twitter – or other social networks. I post tons of interesting articles, quotes, follow-up material, commentary, and other material on Twitter. Follow me! If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s essentially an open discussion forum for people to share ideas and thoughts with other like-minded folks – you just choose the people you want to listen to and their ideas and thoughts are all delivered to you on a single page.

I also participate on several other social networks. Feel free to check me out on del.icio.us (it’s where I collect links, from which I select the ones that appear in my weekly roundups), wakoopa (what software I use), GoodReads (what books I’m reading), Facebook, and FriendFeed (which aggregates everything). I also have an irregularly-updated personal site, TrentHamm.com.

6. Dig through “31 Days to Fix Your Finances.” 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is an article series that outlines how you can get a grip on your finances over the course of a month.

7. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

8. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

9. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!