One Year Ago (December 12 – December 18, 2009)
The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good If you’re trying to be “perfect” when adopting a new habit, you’ll soon find that you can never really be “perfect.” Instead, shoot for being “good.”

Investing without Goals Is Like Golfing without a Putter… Goals help you figure out what the right kind of investment is. Without goals, it’s like shooting in the dark.

How I Wrap Gifts, Christmas and Otherwise I didn’t do this this year because we picked up a lot of wrapping paper at a steep discount late last December.

Two Years Ago (December 12 – December 18, 2008)
Planning Ahead for Next Year’s Garden Our garden is a major part of our food planning for the year. Garden planning plays a big role in that.

Are You Insuring the Irreplaceable? Look around your house and ask yourself what items would actually be replaced if your home burnt down. Now, are you insuring those things (at an extra cost to you)?

The Two-Career Assumption Do you and your spouse both have to have a career? For different families, different arrangements work better.

Three Years Ago (December 12 – December 18, 2007)
A Talk With My Niece My niece is now a wonderful eighteen year old woman, a college student who seems to have a better grasp of her life than almost any younger person I know.

The Real Value of Stay At Home Parenting Not everything in life is measured purely with dollars and cents.

Maximizing That Hourly Rate: Figuring Out How to Best Utilize My Working Time The more efficiently you work, the more you earn per hour over the long run.

Four Years Ago (December 12 – December 18, 2006)
Shakespeare Has Insights On Everything – Why Not Money? Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets have something of value for every element of life.

The Talk: Tips For Difficult Financial Discussions I find that when I’m about to have a difficult financial discussion, the time I spend thinking about it and planning ahead is very well served.

What Exactly Is A Certified Financial Planner, And Why Should I Care? It’s worth knowing about because it helps you to determine on at least a basic level how competent the person across the table from you really is.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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 130,000 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: December 18, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (December 5 – December 11, 2009)
Personal Finance 101: What Does FDIC Insurance Really Mean? In a nutshell, it means that if your bank fails, your account is insured up to $250,000 and, likely, it’ll appear as an account at another bank within a week or so.

Brand Preferences and Frugality Can a frugal person have brand preferences? Certainly, as long as they’re based on something tangible about the product.

Most of Us Have Never Experienced a True Economic Meltdown This is not the 1930s. It is not the Weimar Republic.

Two Years Ago (December 5 – December 11, 2008)
If You Don’t Need It, It’s Not a Deal! Bargain shopping for the sake of finding bargains on stuff you don’t need isn’t really bargain shopping at all.

Family Traditions: What Children Really Want for Christmas They want traditions. They want family. They want time with people that love them. Christmas memories aren’t created from an expensive gift from an absent parent.

The Best Moment of Your Day If you keep track of these, you’ll begin to find that most of them have very little to do with any form of spending money.

Three Years Ago (December 5 – December 11, 2007)
Building a Foundation: Ten Things To Do First If You’re Looking At Starting Your Own Business Most of the things you need to do to get ready involve planning and thinking about what you’re doing. Things like filing paperwork are just icing on the cake.

Does Peer Pressure Keep Us From Succeeding? We are often very similar to the average of our five closest friends. Your peers somewhat define who you are.

Facing A Difficult Personal Finance Decision (Or Other Major Decision)? Try These Seven Techniques I often use the “pros and cons” list idea to help me with difficult decisions.

Four Years Ago (December 5 – December 11, 2006)
Battling The Convenience and Costs of Fast Food I freely admit that I like an order of French fries when I’m on the road.

Lauren’s Problem: Overdrafts Mixed With Solid Planning Quite often, personal finance problems are resolved by being better organized.

Figuring Out What Money Really Is Money is a representation of the time you spent doing something for someone else – typically some form of work. When you spend money, you’re essentially trading away your time and energy.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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 130,000 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: December 11, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (November 28 – December 4, 2009)
Some Thoughts on the Prosperity Gospel I have mixed feelings about the “prosperity gospel.” I don’t agree with the theology, but I do like it as a self-improvement tool.

Putting the “Important but Not Urgent” Tasks Above the “Urgent but Not Important” Tasks Mastering this, in my opinion, is a big key to personal success in every dimension of life. There are so many “urgent but not important” things in our lives and when we put them atop the “important but not urgent” things, we lose.

Why Are Oranges Always on Sale in December? Seasonal Food Sales and How to Take Advantage of Them I am always keeping an eye out for fresh produce on sale.

Two Years Ago (November 28 – December 4, 2008)
A Long December A long December and I’ve reason to believe that the next one will be better than the last.

Cutting Down on the “Hidden” Costs of After-School Activities Eating out, mall stops, buying beverages at the game – these were all part of after-school activities for me and they were all expensive. How can you cut that down?

Internal and External Signals If you can get a grip on all of those external signals, you can get a grip on some of the poor spending choices you make in your life.

Three Years Ago (November 28 – December 4, 2007)
Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on the Back of Five Business Cards This is very concise summary of my perspective on personal finance.

An Inheritance of Collectibles What do you do if you inherit a collection of stuff that you don’t know much about? Here’s how I would handle it.

Simple Frugality By The Hourly Rate I often look at frugal decisions in terms of the value per hour that they provide. For example, if I can spend five seconds going across the room to flip a switch that controls four 60 watt bulbs and the lights then stay off for eight hours, that switch flip saved me about twenty cents. Figuring that for an hourly rate makes the value of that five seconds very high.

Four Years Ago (November 28 – December 4, 2006)
Money as a Social Barrier I think that if you’re finding money to be your social barrier, it may only be a proxy for something else.

Building a Better Blog for 2007 Here’s a compilation of my advice on getting a blog going. I put everything I ever learned about blogging to work here on The Simple Dollar and it seems to have worked out.

Is Living Cheap Really Worth It? Ask Alan and Bob If you can shave just a few percent off of your spending, it can have life-altering effects.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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 130,000 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: December 4, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (November 21 – November 27, 2009)
How to Start a Meal Exchange Exchanging meals with friends and family is not only convenient, but it can also save a lot of money, too.

It’s Not the School, It’s the Student It’s easy to blame schools when something is wrong with your child, but quite often the solution is found at home, not by railing against the school district.

Consumption Smoothing and Why It Doesn’t Work To put it simply, consumption smoothing (on an individual basis) doesn’t work because we don’t know the future, and if we do everything based on some assumption of the future, we end up making bad moves because the future almost always won’t match that assumption.

Two Years Ago (November 21 – November 27, 2008)
Ten Fundamental Steps for Online Career Networking Reaching out to others online is often seen as being merely signing up for Facebook and LinkedIn, but such efforts just scratch the surface of the potential opportunities out there.

When a Treat Stops Being a Treat – and How to Get It Back I find that if something used to be a treat and is now routine, it often improves my enjoyment of that treat to take a long break from it. When I return, it really feels like a treat.

5 Simple Water Conservation Methods: Do They Save Real Money? Most obvious water conservation methods save some water, but they don’t add up to enormous savings.

Three Years Ago (November 21 – November 27, 2007)
The Expenses of a Soda Pop Addiction – And How to Defeat It Soda addiction, like any substance addiction, not only has an ongoing cost, but also has long term health costs. Cracking that addiction is well worth it.

Twelve Important Things To Talk About When Your Relationship Gets Serious Sitting down with your potential life partner and figuring out what your financial future looks like can really help to bond you together – and can also give you signs of potential problems.

Six Ways to Fight Back When You Lose Financial Focus It’s easy to lose focus. It’s a lot harder to regain that focus.

Four Years Ago (November 21 – November 27, 2006)
PayPerPost, Paris Hilton, and Violating the Trust Between You and Me I still stand by this post, even though I’ve been offered impressive sums for selling out.

Money For Nothing: Five Ways To Put Money In Your Pocket With Zero Effort Yes, even lazy people can save money.

What Can A Dollar A Day Get You? And An Inspirational Idea A dollar a day can get you quite a lot if you’re willing to be patient with it.

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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 130,000 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: November 27, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (November 14 – November 20, 2009)
The 40/30/30 Rule The idea here is that you spend 40% of your income on basic bills, 30% on saving for the future, and 30% on enjoying life. This split actually works, but it’s very difficult for many people to actually execute.

Personal Finance 101: How Averages Lie There are three types of untruths: lies, big lies, and statistics. The trick is knowing which is which.

My Garage Sale and Thrifting Toolkit I keep a few things on hand whenever I go to thrift stores or yard sales or any situation where I’ll be perusing used stuff at a high discount. Be prepared and you will find value.

Two Years Ago (November 14 – November 20, 2008)
Some Thoughts on Personal Finance Coaching I think coaching can be a good thing, but I think people can often overpay drastically for such coaching.

Personal Finance 101: Deflation and You What happens to your pocketbook when deflation occurs? It’s not really a pretty thing, even if it sounds good on the surface.

Seven Tactics for Turning Short-Term Intensity Into Long-Term Intensity It’s easy to get excited about something in the short term, but how do you transform that into long-term intensity that will really take you places?

Three Years Ago (November 14 – November 20, 2007)
How to Maintain Friendships With Non-Frugal People If you’re very frugal and you have a friend who likes to spend wildly, it can be difficult to maintain a relationship with them. Here are some tactics for doing just that.

Seven Ways To Get Books For Free (Or Close To It) I love to read. Tactics for acquiring free books are always a good thing.

Finding Motivation and Meaning in the Drudgery of Personal Finance It can be very difficult at times to keep moving forward with one’s financial progress. How do you find meaning in all of it?

Four Years Ago (November 14 – November 20, 2006)
A Christmas List: Before and After Financial Armageddon This was one of the first times I realized that my internal desires had really shifted in the wake of our financial meltdown. That felt really good.

The Value of Personal Appearance Our personal appearance is surprisingly important. There are many basic steps people can take to maintain a very good level of personal appearance.

Minimizing the Personal Cost of Business Travel When I used to travel frequently for work, there were often lots of incidental costs as I went along. After a while, I learned how to minimize those incidental costs.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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 130,000 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: November 20, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (November 7 – November 13, 2009)
Giving Experiences, Not Things, This Holiday Season For most people, the experience of Christmas is the best part, not the stuff that they receive. Keep that in mind this holiday season.

The Five Whys and the Power of Analyzing Your Life I find that the more often you use the “five whys” in your life, the more often you find yourself reaching conclusions, spending money, and doing things that are more in line with what’s really important to you.

Is the Dollar Store Really a Bargain? I’ve come to find that there is no store on Earth that has the cheapest prices on everything. Because of that, I usually end up suggesting that people focus on the store that offers the overall best prices on the specific things they regularly buy.

Two Years Ago (November 7 – November 13, 2008)
Walking Away to be a Stay-At-Home Parent This is an incredibly tough decision, and I think it’s one that every professional who has a child considers, at least a bit.

Taking Dramatic Change One Day at a Time Rather than focusing on the huge impact a major change you choose to make will have on your life, try focusing on just achieving that change one day at a time. What will you do today to achieve that goal?

On Good Debt and Bad Debt I don’t think there is a strict line between good and bad debt. I think all debt is bad, but some types of debt (like your first home’s mortgage) can be justified to an extent.

Three Years Ago (November 7 – November 13, 2007)
Lying to Yourself About Money (and Anything Else) When you fall into the habit of lying to yourself about your life, you reach a point where you can no longer trust yourself and rely on external forces to guide you, forces that you can’t really trust, either. You’re like a boat without sail or anchor, wandering the seas aimlessly.

Parental Enthusiasm and Childhood Branding It is utterly amazing to see how much impact the little actions of a parent can have on a child. If you’re excited about something they can comprehend, they often get excited about it, too.

Six Things I Look For At Yard Sales – And How I Get Them Even Cheaper There are certain things I always look for at yard sales, simply because I know they’ll always be a bargain.

Four Years Ago (November 7 – November 13, 2006)
Money Magazine’s 25 Rules to Grow Rich By – Reevaluated Money Magazine does a great job of promoting basic personal finance, but sometimes they promote specific things that are a bit sketchy, like the mutual fund du jour.

Remembering A Painful Childhood Experience – And Trying To Apply What It Means This still shakes me every time I think about it. It caused me to distrust a lot of things in life.

The Inspiration For The Simple Dollar This is still the inspiration for The Simple Dollar, though it’s grown over the years.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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 130,000 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: November 13, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (October 31 – November 6, 2009)
The Stumble What do you do when you “stumble” on your financial journey? Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, reflect, and recognize that you’ve just taken a couple steps backward on a journey of a thousand miles and you’ve not undone all of your progress.

Teaching Money Management Through Self-Responsibility We’re utilizing self-responsibility as we teach our children money lessons. Here’s a big taste of how we’re doing it.

A Reflection of Your Closest Friends Much of who you are is a reflection of your five closest friends. What does that mean for your career and finances?

Two Years Ago (October 31 – November 6, 2008)
Dealing with Personal Disappointment and Tragedy Life isn’t always a wonderful path filled with roses and happiness. How do you deal with the unwelcome moments in a financially sensible fashion?

Reading This Article Won’t Make You Rich There’s no article that, just by reading it, will make you rich. No book will make you rich. Only your actions will do that.

Excuses, Excuses There’s always a reason not to do the hard thing.

Three Years Ago (October 31 – November 6, 2007)
Seven Tips For Avoiding Boredom During A Financial Turnaround Cutting back on living the big life can be “boring” for some. Here are some ways to deal with it.

How to Create A Nifty Visual Savings Goal Reminder These can really help when you’re saving towards a big goal. It turns the goal into something visual that you can constantly connect with.

Homemade Bread: Cheap, Delicious, Healthy, and Easier Than You Think I love love love making homemade bread.

Four Years Ago (October 31 – November 6, 2006)
The Road To Financial Armageddon #1: The Earliest Mistakes This is the first entry in a ten part series that will give you a very clear picture into my financial background. I hope to someday write #11.

Turning Off The Financially Irresponsible Mindset For me, it was akin to finding a light switch in a dark room. I stumbled around a lot to find it, but once I did, it was much like flipping a switch.

How Your Local “Alternative” Newspapers Can Save You Money I am a big fan of CityView, a free alternative newspaper that you can grab in the grocery stores in our area. I read it each week. Toons is another excellent one – a collection of political cartoons of the past week.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: November 6, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (October 24 – October 30, 2009)
The Ten Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Money and Life Since Starting The Simple Dollar This article really sums up the valuable things I’ve learned over the past several years.

Ethical Frugality Week: Regifting I don’t think regifting is necessarily a bad thing. If you can put an item into the hands of someone who will genuinely enjoy it more than you, I’m fine with it.

Stress and Overspending When I’m stressed, I simply spend too much. There’s a deep connection between the comfort level in your psyche and your ability to make good choices in the moment.

14 Ways a Notebook in Your Pocket Can Save You Money Quite seriously, my life would be far less productive without a note-taking device of some kind in my pocket.

Why Windfalls Make Many People Unhappy We’ve all heard stories about the lottery winner who discovered that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Two Years Ago (October 24 – October 30, 2008)
Brand Preferences and the Two Year Old Child What can make a very young child prefer some brands over other brands? I was mystified by this when my first child was two, so I dug into the question.

Some Follow-Up Thoughts on Fruity Cheerios and Branding Our Kids My investigation into marketing to very young children continued a few days later. I was really stunned by this.

Should an Entrepreneurial High Schooler Go to College? My answer was yes, but part of that is fueled by a sense that college is often wasted on people straight out of high school.

Eleven Tactics for a Cheaper Christmas It’s so easy to overspend during the holiday season. Here are seven ways my family commonly reduces holiday spending.

Exploring the Connection Between Time and Money I think that money is simply a representation of time spent, and the more money you get for your time, the more effective that time was.

Three Years Ago (October 24 – October 30, 2007)
Spam Emails About Individual Stocks: What’s The Scam? The scam is “pump and dump” – they want you to escalate the price so they can sell the stock at a profit.

A Deeper Look At Dave Ramsey’s Seven Baby Steps To Financial Freedom – And How They Apply To Us I have a strong respect for Dave Ramsey’s straightforward debt management tactics (even if I’m not a big fan of the product upselling).

Preserving The Things That Money Can’t Buy Relationships are the big one here. A relationship with a loved one or a close friend can’t be represented in dollars.

The Eternal Question: Am I Doing The Right Thing? I find myself pondering this question quite a lot, actually. I’m never quite sure.

The Ten Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Money and Life In The Last Year This summarizes many of my revelations during the first year of The Simple Dollar’s existence.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: October 30, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (October 17 – October 23, 2009)
Ethical Frugality Week: Hidden Replacements Is it an honest thing to substitute a lower cost item into the package of a higher cost item in your home?

Ethical Frugality Week: Hotel Visits What items in a hotel room should you feel okay putting into your luggage?

Ethical Frugality Week: Haggling When is it okay to start negotiating for price? What should you expect from haggling?

Ethical Frugality Week: Free Samples How “greedy” should you be when you have the opportunity to pick up some free samples? Is it cool to grab fifteen packets of ketchup and then go home and fill your ketchup bottle?

Ethical Frugality Week: Lifetime Guarantees How long should a lifetime guarantee last? How “abusable” is it?

Two Years Ago (October 17 – October 23, 2008)
18 Things a New Homeowner Should Do Immediately to Save Money I’d give this checklist to any new homeowner. There are lots of great things a homeowner can do to maximize the value of their new home purchase.

When Networking Doesn’t Work: There’s No Value in Just “Touching Base” I think if you’re not giving value to someone or getting value from them, why are you communicating with them?

That First Taste of Financial Success It’s so easy to fall back into bad habits when you begin to feel financial success. Here’s how to not fall into that trap.

Stop Wasting Money on Disposable Things Disposable things mean that you’re going to eventually chuck them and it’s a net loss for you. Look instead for non-disposable items that will last for a very long time, even if you have to pay a bit more up front. You’ll use them forever and they’ll still have value in ten years.

Giving Outside the Box: Generosity on a Limited Budget Give your time. Give your talents. Give your unused or unwanted possessions. There are so many ways to give that don’t involve you busting open your wallet.

Three Years Ago (October 17 – October 23, 2007)
Stumbling on the Simple Things I do this, actually. My biggest stumble? Keeping up with my inbox.

Five Reasons Why Having A Child Isn’t As Expensive As You Might Think Most of the huge costs for raising a child don’t include the areas in which you save by having a child, and some of those can be a tremendous help.

Seven Lessons Learned From The First Issue of Money Magazine I really enjoyed making this article, because it enabled me to read this classic issue of Money.

Twelve Tactics For Defeating the Starbucks Habit I used to have a bad “Starbucks habit.” Breaking it not only saves a lot of money, it can also help your health.

Handling A Child’s Material Wants and Impulses This is pretty much a daily challenge for us, given we have a four year old and a three year old at home. They need different lessons because there’s an 18 month gap between them.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: October 23, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (October 10 – October 16, 2009)
Hidden Treasures from Thrift Shops I love shopping at thrift stores for staples like clothes and spare tools. Sometimes, I discover a treasure.

Extracting the Child Who Stayed in the Nest Too Long This is an issue that many parents find themselves dealing with as their child grows up. When do you boot the large baby bird out of the nest?

Mirror Neurons: Why Watching Others Succeed Won’t Help You Succeed This is why I’ve essentially stopped watching Food Network.

The Forgetful Mind More and more, I find my tendency to write down every spare thought or thing to do saves me.

When One Partner Is Self-Employed These are issues that my wife and I have worked through over the past few years.

Two Years Ago (October 10 – October 16, 2008)
Stop Trying to Impress Other People This is one of the biggest single keys out there for improving your financial situation. People are going to make up their mind about you anyway, so stop wasting your time and money trying to be something you’re not.

Talking to a Child About Home Foreclosure This is a money conversation I hope I never have to have with my children.

How Much Extra Should You Pay for Fuel Efficiency? Here’s How We’re Calculating It Fuel efficiency is a major criteria for us because we do quite a lot of road tripping to visit family.

Ten Steps for Remaining Calm in a Financially Turbulent Time So many media sources were calling for financial apocalypse in late 2008. My philosophy? Calm down.

How to Plan Ahead for Next Week’s Meals (And Save Significant Money): A Step-By-Step Guide This is pretty much exactly how we shop for groceries.

Three Years Ago (October 10 – October 16, 2007)
The Feeling You Get From A Coca-Cola Classic: How Advertising Tickles Your Wallet – And Five Ways To Fight It Advertising is far more clever and influential than people give it credit for. You might fast forward through the commercials – but what about all the ads in the program?

Adventures in Frugality: Preparing Food in Advance for a House Full of People We find ourselves doing this surprisingly often. In fact, we did it at least three times so far this year.

Selling My Future, One Dollar At A Time Every time you spend a dollar on something pointless, it’s a dollar you don’t have down the road when you really need them.

Dealing With Professional Exhaustion In A Financially Sensible Way Just walking away from your job is never a good solution – not without some careful planning, anyway.

Children’s Gifts: Don’t Spend A Lot On What They Don’t Want It’s so easy to just imagine the stuff you think your children want and buy them. In truth, most kids don’t really want very much.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: October 16, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (October 3 – October 9, 2009)
15 Ways to Be a Leader Today – or Any Day The best way to build social connections is to step up and be a leader of a group. Here’s how to do just that.

A Weekend at Our House A typical weekend at our house is family-oriented and it rarely involves spending much money.

The “Local Store Premium” – How Much Is It Worth to You? It’s worth quite a bit, actually, when you start calculating the costs of shopping elsewhere.

Frugal Soups and Stews: Great Solutions for Busy Weekends We often make soups and stews in our slow cooker on weekends. We put the ingredients in in the morning, then eat it for dinner whenever we happen to come in from the park.

Is This All There Is? If you feel that your life is empty, it’s time to step back and re-evaluate how you’re spending your time and who you’re spending it with.

Two Years Ago (October 3 – October 9, 2008)
Some Thoughts on the Fulfillment Curve Once you reach a certain point in a particular area in your life, there’s diminishing returns from adding more to your life in that area.

The Entrepreneurial Drive (Or Lack Thereof) I think some people have an entrepreneurial fire – and some do not.

A Do-It-Yourself Guide to a Romantic and Highly Frugal Date Night My wife and I do something along these lines as often as we can, usually involving a grandparent or two who asks to babysit.

Opening the Door to Helping Your Parents The transition from your parents taking care of you to you taking care of your parents can be a tough one.

Ten Things I Wish I’d Done Differently While Buying a House The best reason to look back at the past is to find out what you can do better in the future.

Three Years Ago (October 3 – October 9, 2007)
Five Lessons My Friend’s Passing Taught Me About Money, Life, And Everything Else The person that I’m writing about here passed away three years ago. I still miss him. He was a great guy.

Frugality Campaigning: How To Support Your Favorite Candidate Or Cause With Frugal Living It’s more than putting your money where your mouth is. It’s putting your behavior where your mouth is.

How To Minimize The Cost (And Maximize The Benefit) Of Eating Out For Business Is it worth the cost of eating out? It can be, as long as you’re sensible about it.

Ten Steps To Financial Success For A Minimum Wage Earner I wrote this in response to a commenter who lamented how difficult it was to live on minimum wage.

The $21 Food Week: Is It Possible? Is It Healthy? I don’t think it’s healthy over the long term. $1 per meal for every meal in the week is really pushing it.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: October 9, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (September 26 – October 2, 2009)
Do You Want to Appear Rich? Or Do You Want to Be Rich? I think different sides of this coin appeal to different people. I also think the desire to appear rich hijacks the ability to be rich, causing people to go deep into debt.

Some Thoughts on a Cultural Shift Towards Frugality In short, I don’t think it’s sustainable, because people will rebound their spending when the economy eventually rebounds.

How the Traditional “Rules” of Frugal Living Often Vastly Undervalue Time There are a lot of frugality tips that seem to assume that you have a mountain of time with which to apply them. That’s simply not a reality for many of us.

How Does The Simple Dollar Earn Money? Some Notes on Do-It-Yourself Self-Employment Mostly, this article provides insight as to how I got the ball rolling on The Simple Dollar.

Modular Meals We make a lot of our meals with an eye towards our ability to remix the leftovers into some sort of completely new dish.

Two Years Ago (September 26 – October 2, 2008)
Looking at Your Career as an Investment Your career isn’t just an exchange of time for money. It’s an exchange of your effort for future opportunities as well. Simply put, it’s an investment.

Personal Energy and Frugality As with the time factor mentioned above, many frugality tips seem to assume that the person carrying out the tip has an infinite amount of energy. The solution? Don’t be afraid to filter a big pile of tips for the ones that are actually doable.

A Visual Guide to Saving Money with a Baby I took these pictures to describe how we saved money with our daughter. We’re now doing the exact same things with our son.

How to Find and Utilize a Mentor, No Matter What You’re Doing I think a mentor is the most valuable thing you can get during your career. A mentor can help your career develop in countless ways.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself This was my response to the complete doom and gloom being shouted from the rooftops at the start of the economic downturn.

Three Years Ago (September 26 – October 2, 2007)
The City Versus Rural Debate: Which Is The Better Place To Live? I think it depends on the person more than anything. What do they value? What’s more important to you: a small forest behind your house or easy access to cultural events? There’s no black-and-white answer there.

The Backlash Against Frugality Why do people sometimes treat frugal tactics in a negative fashion, as though it’s an affront to their personal sensibilities?

Five Personal Finance Lessons That Rocked Me Like A Hurricane When I Figured Them Out The things I’ve learned about personal finance since I started The Simple Dollar have completely changed how I view the world, from day-to-day life to global perspectives.

Should You Give Yourself Material Rewards For Meeting Certain Milestones? I think it works if you keep those rewards reasonable and decide on them in advance.

Thirteen Ways To Reduce The Effect Of “Bad Luck” In Your Financial Life The essential core of these tips boils down to simply making sure you’re removing burdens from your future self, because the more burdens you’re carrying then, the more likely it is that bad luck will find you.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: October 2, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (September 19 – September 25, 2009)
Business Card Doodles I had so much fun making this post because it was so far outside of what I normally do. Truly, though, I usually start my presentations on the back of business cards because I don’t think a slide should contain more info than you can fit on the back of a card.

Is Overmaintenance Costing You? Yes, most people run into trouble by undermaintaining their things, but the flip side can be costly, too. I’ve become an adamant follower of the manufacturer’s recommendations.

What Is a “Good Job”? I think there is no standard “good job.” The elements that define a “good job” vary greatly from individual to individual.

“Eighteen and Out” – Good Parenting or Bad Parenting? My parents more or less espoused this with me. I never lived under their roof again after I was eighteen years old, and I think it was very good for me.

Seven Things I’ve Learned from Doing It Myself More than anything else, though, doing things myself gives me the self-confidence to try doing more things myself. It builds on itself and gives you the self-motivation to gain a lot of useful little skills.

Two Years Ago (September 19 – September 25, 2008)
Overcoming a Routine of Bounced Check Fees, Overdraft Fees, and Payday Loans This is a rough routine to fall into, but people fall into it all the time. Here’s some advice on getting out.

The Twelve Biggest Personal Finance Mistakes People Make Over and Over Again They happen over and over again because they become so ingrained in people’s personal routines. That makes the ability to escape them very difficult and causes people to just repeat the same mistakes over and over.

Managing the Natural Ups and Downs of Your Workweek My peak writing days are Tuesday and Wednesday, like clockwork. I’ve learned that over time, so I often plan my week with that idea in mind.

How to Safely Build Your Credit History A good credit history can be very useful even if you never take out a dime of debt. Here’s how to build it if you have no credit at all.

The Psychological and Emotional Attachment to What We Have and What We Want It’s easy to get attached to the things that are ours, but there is great value in getting that attachment under control.

Three Years Ago (September 19 – September 25, 2007)
Making A Major Life Change: Is It Time For Kathy To Abandon The City? This post sponsored a lot of discussion. I often think people know what they want to do in their heart, but they allow others to convince them otherwise.

Why Does Everyone Preach About Index Funds? What They Are And Why They’re Good – From The Very Beginning Want to know what an index fund is? This is the place to start, from the very beginning.

Is The Value Menu Really A Value? Comparing The Homemade Double Cheeseburger To The McDonald’s $1 Version This story is still true – except that now the double cheesburger costs $1.29, moving the marker ever closer to the homemade version.

When A Frugal Life And Social Gift-Giving Come Into Conflict Like many of you, I feel very uncomfortable when I’m socially “required” to give a gift to someone. It feels cheap.

The Simple Dollar Guide To Eating Out For us, the real cost in eating out isn’t in the meal out, it’s in doing it in an overly spontaneous fashion. You pay for pure spontaneity – hard.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: September 25, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (September 12 – September 18, 2009)
Addition by Subtraction: The Benefits of a “Fall Cleaning” I absolutely love big cleaning projects where we get rid of collected stuff that we just don’t really need. I don’t do it often enough.

The Sleeping Fox Catches No Poultry You’ve got to be alert and aware of what’s going on around you if you really want to succeed financially. Blinders don’t really work outside of very specific, narrow tasks.

Nostalgia The happiness of the past is a very powerful emotional tool, one that marketers are absolutely unafraid to manipulate as much as they can. Don’t let ‘em.

A Beginner’s Guide to The Simple Dollar This post outlines some of the elements of what makes up The Simple Dollar and how it works.

Frugality as a “Spending Transfer” This is exactly how I’ve come to view frugality. When you cut back spending in one area that you don’t care about very much, you’re transferring that spending to another area that you do care about.

Two Years Ago (September 12 – September 18, 2008)
Using TreasuryDirect for Conservative Investing TreasuryDirect is a great resource. Now, if we could only roll back such investments to their 1982 rates…

Friends and Goals I am an enormous believer in the power of friends and family to help you achieve goals. In fact, it’s something I’m going to touch on again this afternoon.

What a Frugality Expert Is – And Why I’m Not One I don’t want to be an “expert.” I’d rather just be a real person.

If You’re Not Using It, Get Rid of It: Ten Ways to Declutter and Put Cash in Your Pocket I’m constantly looking for ways to cut down on my possession count. The best part? Quite often, cutting down on your possession count results in money in the pocket.

Eight Tactics for Handling Greeting Card Occasions I really don’t like pre-written cards from Hallmark. I’d far rather see a handwritten note with a personal sentiment, even if the words aren’t perfect (in fact, it’s better if the words aren’t perfect, but real).

Three Years Ago (September 12 – September 18, 2007)
Patience Personal finance success doesn’t come overnight. It comes with time, and to make it there requires patience.

Teaching Yourself To Cook At Home: Ten Tips From My Kitchen To Yours It’s really not too hard to teach yourself how to prepare food at home. Once upon a time, I would completely mangle scrambled eggs, for example, but today I can pull off a good eggs benedict.

Your Stuff And You: Figuring Out What You Really Value – And Eliminating The Rest So much of personal finance is about self-discipline and cultivating a deep understanding of what you really value, much deeper than the marketing that’s out there.

There Are Two Guaranteed Ways To Improve Your Financial Situation … But Which Is Better? I think the question really boils down to short-term or long-term. If you’re looking for an immediate improvement, frugality wins. If you’re looking for a bigger return but are fine with more time until you see returns, improving your income is the best way to go.

What Should Your Net Worth Be? Why “The Millionaire Next Door” Equation Falls Short – And What A Better Thumbnail Calculation Might Look Like The biggest thing I didn’t like in the otherwise-excellent book “The Millionaire Next Door” was their net worth calculation. It’s absolutely absurd for anyone under 30 – and pretty dodgy for people in their thirties, too. Here, I propose some alternatives.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: September 18, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (September 5 – September 11, 2009)
Five Ways I Disagree With Dave Ramsey I agree with him in many, many other ways, so I thought it would be fun to find areas where I disagree with Dave.

Helicopter Parenting, Baby Boomers, and Financial Dependence I absolutely do not want to be a helicopter parent. I want my children to love me, but I want them to be their own persons, independent and strong and capable of dealing with the problems that life throws at them.

You Can’t Take It With You This argument, often used for wanton spending, has always seemed very strange to me. There are many, many good uses for one’s money.

The Path of Least Resistance Is the Path Without Opportunities The easiest path is the path that might get you to your destination the fastest, but it causes you to miss out on countless opportunities along the way. Every challenge life puts in front of us is an opportunity to grow.

Synergy The Simple Dollar is a great source of synergy. It encourages me to constantly think about my finances, much more than I might have done otherwise. As a result, I’m led to more financial success and opportunity – and thus the source for more posts.

Two Years Ago (September 5 – September 11, 2008)
Fifteen Ways to Have Cheap Fun With Your Kids Using a $1 End Roll of Paper We’re still frequently using a giant roll of paper purchased for $5 a year or so ago. It’s been a tool for countless art projects, paper hats, boats, and other such things.

The Aldi Question: Does One Bad Experience Spoil the Soup? It did for me. It’s amazing the associations that people build up in their heads.

Please, Recommend a Personal Finance Product to Me! This is the stuff I use and why I use it. I don’t usually talk about stuff that I won’t use.

Why One-Budget-Fits-All Doesn’t Work – And Why It’s Difficult to Compare Spending Between People and Families You can’t base your spending choices on what other people do.

Creation versus Consumption There’s always more money to be made in creation than in consumption. The work is a lot harder, though.

Three Years Ago (September 5 – September 11, 2007)
Personal Finance And Nostalgia One of the best tricks that marketers use in convincing us to spend money is to tap nostalgia – our positive feelings about the past.

Eight Simple Ways To Reduce Food Costs Food eats up a major part of most budgets. Thankfully, there are many ways to reduce one’s food costs, and here are eight simple ones.

Fifteen Ideas For A Deeply Fulfilling Money Free Weekend There are so many wonderful ways to enjoy life without busting out the wallet.

Is A Roommate Worth The Financial Benefit? There are a lot of factors here. I think the biggest one is your own personality – if you can see yourself easily with a roommate, you’ll probably make money doing this.

Financially Savvy Gifts For New Parents It’s often tempting to give gifts to new parents (especially when there’s a baby shower). Why not get them a gift that makes good financial sense instead of yet another cute baby outfit?

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: September 11, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (August 29 – September 4, 2009)
Revising My Money Goals – And Setting New Ones This isn’t just a one time thing. For me, it’s something to constantly revisit, think about, and reformulate.

Seven Tempting Places – And Eight Ways to Minimize Their Impact My best tactic is to simply avoid them. I rarely go to bookstores at all at this point, simply because I know they’re really tempting for me.

Some Thoughts on Building a Successful Friendship Relationships of any kind aren’t easy, especially if you aren’t blessed with a natural gift of social skills. Here are some thoughts on making friendships wirk.

21 Ways to Reduce Your Spending Without Making Your Life Miserable Many people associate cutting back with “lack of fun.” That doesn’t have to be true at all.

Your Mileage May Vary Not everyone has the same experiences with the same things in life. Something that works well for me might not work for you, and vice versa. That doesn’t mean that the ideas are bad, it just means you need to try lots of things and stick with what fits you.

Two Years Ago (August 29 – September 4, 2008)
Everything’s So Easy for Pauline: Thoughts on Luck, Fate, Money, and Life This is my single favorite post I’ve ever written on The Simple Dollar. I have felt like it was the pinnacle for two years now. It just clicks for me in a way that’s hard to describe.

The Personal Finance Secrets “They” Don’t Want You to Know About I just don’t think that paranoia and personal finance mix well. Making choices out of fear almost always results in more failure and fear.

How to Avoid the Trap of Splurging as a Reward for “Being Good” It’s tempting to splurge when you’re doing well, but when splurges undo all of your good work, it’s worthwhile to keep an eye on how far you’ve come and how much you can undo with just one choice.

Some Thoughts on Plasma Donation It works in a desperate pinch, but there are enough drawbacks that I don’t recommend it as a big money maker.

What’s An Appropriate Home Food Budget for a Family of Four? This post certainly stirred up some debate. It’s important to keep in mind that I only matched the USDA numbers buy buying expensive food items – organics, saffron, and so on.

Three Years Ago (August 29 – September 4, 2007)
Seven Nifty Tactics Credit Card Companies Use To Get Into Your Pocket – And How To See Right Through Them It’s all about the marketing – and big marketing firms, like the ones that represent credit card companies, are good at getting your attention and getting into your pocket.

Is An “Entertainment” Coupon Book Worth It? It really depends on your lifestyle and your willingness to really figure out the big values in the book.

The Real Scoop On Debt Elimination Programs Most of them repackage the advice you’ll find elsewhere and sell it to you as something fresh.

Potential Pitfalls For Paying Off Someone Else’s Debt The pitfall is that it adds a lender-borrower element to a personal relationship. Do you have a deep, unabiding love for your bank? I don’t either, and I don’t want to inject that feeling into my relationships.

What Constitutes An “Emergency” Where One Should Use An Emergency Fund? The answer varies for everyone, but I think it mostly comes down to the things you can’t handle in your monthly money cycle.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: September 4, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (August 22 – August 28, 2009)
Eating What You Have On Hand My wife and I do these kinds of “pantry dives” every once in a while. We do it to go through the stuff we’ve bought in bulk before it gets too old – things like dry pasta and the like.

Are Poor People Lazy? First of all, let’s distinguish between “poor” (people who don’t have money because of external influences) and “broke” (people who don’t have money because of personal choices). I have a lot of sympathy and desire to help the poor – not so much with the broke, because they can help themselves (though I will give them advice because lack of knowledge can be at work there).

That’s Just the Way It Is? Very few things are “just the way it is.” You can make choices to impact almost everything in your life. It’s really up to you and what you make of it.

Eleven Things You Can Do Today to Fall Behind Financially Yes, fall behind. These are common things that people do all the time.

Cultural Divides There are so many cultural concerns that change the choices we make as adults. The more we can learn from other cultures and adapt our own choices, the better off we are.

Two Years Ago (August 22 – August 28, 2008)
Starting a Bulk-Buying Co-op with Your Friends, Family, and Neighbors You’re never going to use those 36 rolls of toilet paper at Costco? Why not split the cost of the jumbo pack with three friends – each of you paying 25% – and keep nine rolls each at a much lower cost than you’d get elsewhere?

Personal Finance 101: Money Market Accounts Versus Normal Savings Accounts There are some differences – they’re subtle differences, but worth knowing.

Is a Positive Attitude Enough? A positive attitude alone won’t change the world, but a positive attitude is often the difference between success and failure.

Buying Things Because They’re on Sale Is an Awful Way to Save Money This is a big reason why I don’t use general coupon sites. I don’t want to wind up buying stuff I don’t really need or don’t really want just because it’s a “sale.”

Nine Things to Do When the Going Gets Tough There comes a time for everyone where tightening the screws makes all the difference.

Three Years Ago (August 22 – August 28, 2007)
Evaluating My Magazine Subscriptions: Which Ones Are Worth It And Which Ones Aren’t? I do this on a regular basis – and over time, my subscriptions have changed. When I “retire,” they’ll change again (because there are several periodicals I love to read, but I simply don’t have the time to keep up with).

Having A Second Child? Seven Frugal Tips For Getting Ready I remember these days fondly, when we just had our oldest child.

Getting Over The “Taboo” Of Generics And Store Brands I really like the idea of just taking the labels off of stuff. It helps a lot with resisting brand imprinting.

The Real Scoop On Rewards Credit Cards They work … if you’re careful with them.

The Lawn Care Dilemma: How Much Time And Effort Should You Spend? I don’t think there’s an absolute formula for everyone. However, I also think it’s one of those things that’s worth thinking about, because lawn care has both a time and a money cost.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: August 28, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (August 15 – August 21, 2009)
The Danger of Selling to Your Friends and Family When you try to sell to your friends or your family, you’re taking advantage of your relationship with them. They feel obligated to buy from you because of your relationship, but there’s often a sense that the relationship has been undermined.

The Real Lessons of “How Low Can You Go?” Last summer, I did a series of posts paralleling NPR’s “How Low Can You Go” series of low-cost recipes. Here are some of the things I learned from the series as a whole.

Why My Net Worth Is Now Negative Again Did I go into debt? No. I just recalculated my net worth with the realization that some of the things I own aren’t really liquid.

Are You a Money Victim? Whenever you blame others for your money problems, you’re a money victim. Don’t look for ways to blame others. Instead, look for ways to create a situation for yourself where other people’s inevitable problems don’t affect you.

Rule #10: Plan Ahead Every Time You Spend. The more I plan ahead for my expenses, the more financial success I seem to have. Every dollar should only be spent with some forethought.

Two Years Ago (August 15 – August 21, 2008)
The Big Debate #5: Chasing the Dreams or Chasing the Money? I lean hard towards chasing the dreams because passion is the one thing people will always pay money for.

This Is the Right Personal Finance Book for You! Obviously (tongue in cheek), the best personal finance book is this one, but here are some others to look at.

Fourteen Techniques for Improving Your Work-Life Balance Finding the right balance between the work you do and the things you work for is key to a happy life. When those two things get out of balance, it’s a very hard road.

What Features Are Most Important For Your Primary Bank? My Thoughts and Recommendations For me, great online banking, strong customer service, and minimal fees are key for any good bank. I really don’t care much about 1.5% interest versus 1.25% interest.

Winning the Battle Against Low Quality Generics While Still Saving Money I’ve had many great experiences with generics. I’ve also had some disastrous experiences as well – experiences that have taught me that I need to be careful with generics.

Three Years Ago (August 15 – August 21, 2007)
Tackling Breakfast: Healthy, Inexpensive, And Easy Meals To Get Me Started In The Morning Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but it’s often easy to do it in a costly and (healthwise) disastrous way. Here’s how I tackle it instead.

A Frugal Dilemma: Inheriting Stuff You Wouldn’t Normally Use My advice? Sell it as soon as you possibly can unless you truly can find a use for it.

Should You Vote For A Politician That Promises Lower Taxes? Politicians often can’t connect what they promise on the campaign trail with what they can actually do once in office.

Losing A Friend Over Money If your spending goals start to diverge from your friends, you’ll find yourself in a difficult spot sooner or later. You’re better off handling it with maturity and sincerity.

30 Year Versus 15 Year Mortgages Continued: What About Income Tax? Income tax deductions shouldn’t be a major concern when you’re thinking about which mortgage to choose. Given how few people can actually deduct their home mortgage interest, you’re better off focusing on getting the best interest rate.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: August 21, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (August 8 – August 14, 2009)
Freezer and Fridge Hacks: Seven Ways to Maximize the Value of Your Refrigerator and Freezer There are lots of little things you can do to make your refrigerator and freezer run more efficiently. The end result? They kick on less often, reducing the wear-and-tear on the unit and reducing your energy bill, too.

How Much Do Taxes Matter To You? I think that if you’re letting taxes drive every financial decision you make, you’re probably making some questionable financial decisions.

Buying Experiences in Your Twenties I believe the best thing that a person can spend money on early in life is experiences, not things.

The Source of Frugal Misery I think it comes down to people cutting back on things that are genuinely important to them. Frugality really works when you find creative ways to eliminate costs on things that aren’t important to you.

The Danger of Selling to Your Friends and Family Selling to your friends and family can damage relationships and cause hard feelings. There’s no amount of pocket money that can make that better.

Two Years Ago (August 8 – August 14, 2008)
A Frugal Guide to the Iowa State Fair (or Any Similar County or State Fair) The Iowa State Fair has already started and, as in previous years, my wife and children and I will be attending it at some point. I’d guess it’d be some weekday in the coming week, and we’ll probably be at the Iowa Public Television booth at some point (a place we always hit).

Learning About Money “The Hard Way” I learned about it the “hard way.” I think it was necessary because I had little grasp on how to properly spend money when I was young.

The Big Debate #4: Pay Off Debt or Save for Retirement? There is no ready-made answer for this. I tend to encourage people to save for retirement, because debt is often merely a sign of personal finance out of control.

The Big Debate #2: Leasing, Buying New, or Buying Used? I generally find that leasing cars ends up being a net loss unless you absolutely must be driving a new car at all times.

The Big Debate #1: 401(k) or Roth IRA? It really comes down to how much income you’re bringing in. To put it simply, get a Roth if you’re eligible and you’re not getting any employee matching.

Three Years Ago (August 8 – August 14, 2007)
A Few Notes About Private Mortgage Insurance And Other Debts If you’re paying PMI, treat it as more interest on your mortgage and recognize that when you get it paid off, your interest rate will effectively drop.

Six Habits I’ve Given Up In Order To Save Money – And How Much It’s Saved Me This Year For me, my routines are constantly worth reflection and re-evaluation for the purposes of improving them and optimizing them.

Six Ways Planning Ahead Saved Money This Weekend Unexpected spending can be fun, but a little bit of planning can make a huge difference when it comes to your wallet dent.

Entrepreneurship In Your Spare Time: The Rocks And Sand Philosophy I look at much of my life now with the “rocks and sand” philosophy. The more “sand” I have and the fewer “rocks” I have, the happier I am (even if I have a lot of sand).

How To Balance Your Checkbook In The Era Of The Debit Card I mostly use my bank’s online banking services to manage this.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: August 14, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One Year Ago (August 1 – August 7, 2009)
Putting the Strength of Weak Ties to Work Our lives are loaded with “weak ties” – people we know, but not well. There is a ton of value in maintaining those ties, strengthening them a bit when you can, and

Thoughts on a Low Grocery Bill You know, if you spend a bit of extra time and can trim $30 off of your weekly grocery bill thanks to coupons and meal planning and flyer watching, that’s $120 a month. That’s almost $2,000 a year. That can be a game changer if you do something worthwhile with that money.

Faith as a Guiding Financial Principle If your faith holds deep meaning for you, it can be a powerful tool for helping you make better choices. When you see someone talking about their faith and relating it to personal finance or personal growth, just remember that the faith is a powerful tool for some, but if it’s not a powerful tool for you, that doesn’t discredit the advice at all. You just need to seek the things that are important to you.

The Short Term and the Long Term Choice Quite often, we are faced with choices where one side is beneficial in the short term and the other is beneficial in the long term. A balance is healthy, but the more often you’re able to make the long term choice, the better life you’ll build for yourself.

The Netflix Culture of Excellence – and How to Capture It In Your Own Life I was utterly inspired by this article about how Netflix encourages the best from their employees.

Two Years Ago (August 1 – August 7, 2008)
The Status Quo Bias and Switching Jobs or Careers So often, we are afraid of making what would be a very good career change for us because our minds are wired to be afraid of such change. Overcoming the status quo bias in our careers

Balancing Personal Principles and the Bottom Dollar: The Cost of Healthier Food Choices One of the most challenging aspects of frugality and food is that the cheapest food is often the least healthy. It’s produced in factory settings with chemically-treated ingredients that have been stripped of most of their nutrients and combined with other ingredients to make it taste good. Raw foods are almost always substantially more expensive. How can you balance these facts?

The Frugal Introvert: Fifty Ways to Have Fun By Yourself on the Cheap I’m an introvert and I find a great deal of value in activities that I can do alone. Here are fifty things that can be done alone without shelling out the cash.

Is College Really Necessary For All High School Graduates? Whenever I think about this topic, I think of the pile of friends I have that have struggled finding work with their college degree. Then I think of a family member who is making a very good living plying a trade without any sort of college degree.

Looking at Debt Repayment as an Investment In my eyes, debt repayment is an investment. You can’t change the past, after all, so if you’re facing a debt, an extra payment against that debt is an investment because it reduces your repayment amount.

Three Years Ago (August 1 – August 7, 2007)
A Guide To Setting And Reaching A Net Worth Goal Net worth is an incredibly powerful personal finance metric. Here’s how to set a realistic goal and some tactics for reaching that goal.

The Debt Entrapment: When Your Debt Forces You To Stay At An Untenable Job Debt isn’t just money you owe. It’s freedom you’ve lost.

Freshly Graduated And About To Get A New Job? Here Are Seven Things To Do To Get Started On The Right Financial Path The choices you make right out of college can set the financial tone for your whole life. Making the right first step can be absolutely invaluable.

Seven Ways To Save Money While Cooperating With Your Neighbors – And How To Get Started Our neighbors have been an invaluable resource since we moved in. Getting to know your neighbors is well worth your time.

The New Person At Work Is Getting Paid More Than I Am! How Can I Handle It? Remember, jealousy almost always kills any good thing. The grass is always greener on the other side.

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

Ten Ways to Get More out of The Simple DollarUpdated!
This is kind of a FAQ for new readers and is posted each week along with the Time Machine. Here are ten 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. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

4. Follow me on Twitter. I post 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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!

9. 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”.

10. 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!

The post The Simple Dollar Time Machine: August 7, 2010 appeared first on The Simple Dollar.