While negative stereotypes and fears are very real obstacles for veterans and employers both to overcome, they are by no means insurmountable. For one, the “Vow to Hire Veterans” government act provides businesses tax incentives for hiring veterans. Having such a visible incentive to the bottom line is one clear way that businesses benefit from hiring veterans. However, businesses benefit from hiring veterans in much deeper ways than simply their taxes.

Veterans returning to civilian life often do have a difficult time transitioning from their military experiences. However, with support and the right opportunities in the workforce, they often thrive and provide invaluable contributions wherever they apply their skills after their service. While obstacles and stereotypes remain for veterans to overcome, the good news is that now many of the leading companies in the US have begun recognizing the value that veterans can add to their workforce.

Some companies have begun to demonstrate a commitment to hiring veterans through programs like the 100,000 Jobs Mission. Led by JP Morgan Chase, the 100,000 Jobs Mission is a coalition of leading US companies committed to finding jobs for veterans. Their goal is to have assisted in the hiring of 100,000 veterans by 2020. As of June 30, 2012, over 18,000 veterans had found jobs through this program.

Helping find good opportunities in the workforce for veterans is not only a way to honor veterans for their service to our country, it’s an excellent economic decision as well—one that benefits businesses and veterans alike.

This post is sponsored by Chase — a strong supporter of the 100,000 Jobs Mission, a program that helps find jobs for veterans of the US armed forces. Learn more here

The post Hiring Veterans is Good For Business and Families appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

They got rid of a few old bookshelves, cleaned out a closet or two, and tossed most of the items, but some of them were saved in a small tub and handed to me.

Going through that tub has been an interesting experience. My high school yearbooks were in there, as was a trophy from the regional spelling bee I won in eighth grade. There were a couple small boxes full of trading cards from my pre-teen and early teen years that my parents thought might be valuable. There were some belongings from my uncle that I was very close to during my childhood (and who passed away when I was in my early twenties).

My parents really did a very good job of compressing the remaining belongings of my life down to a small box. I’m glad to have all of the things that were in there.

The reality, though, is that when I left home at the end of my teen years, my possessions that I took with me only filled up a large bag and a large tub. That included all of the clothes I wore and my other miscellaneous possesions.

Everything I owned during the entire first eighteen years of my life was easily compressed down to two small tubs and a bag. The amazing part is that I didn’t really miss anything, either.

The lesson here? You don’t need the stuff from your past.

You don’t have time for it, for one. Your interests have moved on. You end up chucking it into desk drawers or closets and forgetting about it. If you’re not careful, your space fills up and you become convinced that it’s time to move to a bigger house.

You don’t need to keep housing all of the stuff that belonged to the person you were five or ten years ago, because you’re not that same person any more.

You don’t need a bigger house. So often, I hear stories from people that “outgrew” the apartment they were living in due to the accumulation of stuff. In other words, one of their biggest motivators for spending the enormous amount of money it takes to buy a house is simply to hold more stuff, much of which they’re not actively using.

That’s a big financial mistake.

Instead, take all that stuff in your closet, put it in a number of sensibly organized boxes, and label each one with a date that’s exactly one year from now. In one year, when that date arrives, get rid of the stuff left in those boxes. Have a yard sale, take it to Goodwill, give it to friends. If you haven’t touched it in a year, you don’t need it around. It’s something that your past self wanted that your present self doesn’t really have any use for.

What about the memories? Take your old photographs and scan them. If you don’t want to do it yourself, use a photo service. Scan in old documents as well. That way, they’ll exist forever instead of slowly degrading over time. Sure, keep a few mementos around, but don’t devote a lot of space to them. Memories exist in your heart and mind, not in objects.

Don’t let the stuff from your past overwhelm your present.

The post The Remnants of a Past Life appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Insulation is beneficial in the summer when you want the heat to remain outside, and it’s also beneficial in the winter when you want to keep the heat inside.

Now, if you built your own home, you probably have some idea what kind of insulation you’ll find inside your walls and your attic. However, if you’re the second (or later) owner of your home, you may have no idea what’s inside your walls or your attic.

So, what can you do? How can you check it out?

The simplest step you can take is to examine your attic. In many cases, your home’s attic will look something like the picture above, with a significant amount of insulation all over the floor of the attic.

Your attic is where you’re going to want a lot of insulation, particularly during the winter. Heat rises in your home and escapes through the top of your home when the exterior temperature is lower than the interior temperature, so an attic with plenty of insulation will keep that heat inside instead of letting it escape through your roof.

You want to make sure that there is plenty of insulation in there and, if you can identify it, determine the R-value of the insulation present in there. Insulation with a higher R-value will block heat more effectively than insulation with a low R-value. However, you don’t always want the highest possible R-value – it depends heavily on your location. There are a lot of online charts that will give you a rough approximation of what R-value you should have in your area, but your best bet is to ask at your local hardware store.

You’re also going to want to ensure that the entrance to your attic is well-sealed without any gaps. The edges of your attic hatch are a great place to put weather-stripping. You’ll also want to make sure that the inside of the attic door or hatch is well-insulated, too, as heat will flow right through it if it’s not.

While you’re up there, look carefully for any holes, such as ones around duct work, and make sure they’re well sealed.

Now, what about the insulation in your walls? Your best bet here is to call a home insulation expert and get an assessment. However, it’s probably not worth the effort unless you notice significant problems with your home retaining heat in the winter.

Another approach is to look for spots in your home where there is exposed insulation and check it for an R-rating, then check with your local hardware store to make sure that this is the right type of insulation for your area. If you find that it’s inadequate, there are spray-in insulation solutions that work well.

Your best tactic, though, is to check out your attic. That’s where you’ll have the most impact on the insulation of your home with the littlest effort.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

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For service men and women returning from active-duty, a period of unemployment is next to unavoidable. Most veterans make a non-negotiable trade in coming home: the sureties of military assignment in exchange for an uncertain spell of civilian unemployment. For many, landing a job signals full return home. But, for the 220,000 U.S. veterans still struggling to find work, civilian life is caught in limbo.

Unemployment numbers from the BLS indicate the job market facing these veterans is the toughest in generations. While U.S. unemployment hovered at 8.6% last winter, a full 12.1% of the 2.4 million Americans that served some form active duty since September 2001 were unemployed. For the first time in years, Americans with no military service background are more likely to have jobs than those that do

With an unemployment rate of 30% in 2011, U.S. veterans between the ages of 18-24 years were twice as likely to face joblessness than their non-veteran peers. This discrepancy sent an unlikely shock through our civic, corporate and congressional leaders. Today, as a result of this shock, the case for hiring veterans is buoyed by two new congressional bills and a dozen major corporate pledges to hiring veterans.

JP Morgan Chase Leads Corporate to Commit “100,000 Jobs”

In response to these disheartening unemployment numbers, business leaders have gotten busy launching programs to get U.S. veterans back to work. One project, led by JPMorgan Chase and a number of others, unites employers in a pledge to collectively hire, by 2020, 100,000 veterans. On March 31st, the “100,000 Jobs” coalition ended its first month already logging well over 12,000 new veteran hires.

The “100,000 Jobs” website provides job-seeking veterans access to local communities, career charts, expert resumes and employer advice. As a corporate initiative, “charity” is the wrong term for the “100,000 jobs” pledge and others like it. These efforts to get veterans back to work are more than gestures of due regard for the sacrifices of military personnel. Corporate hiring pledges point out something more obvious: U.S. employers believe in the qualifications of former U.S. service members.

Congress Can Agree: Rewarding U.S. Veteran Employment

Last fall Congress passed two pieces of legislation to improve veteran access to jobs. In November, Obama signed the “VOW to Hire Heroes Act” into law. The bill provides tax credits to employers that hire veterans:

• $2,400 for hiring veterans out of work at least 4 weeks
• $5,600 for hiring veterans out of work longer than 6 months
• $9,600 for hiring veterans out of work longer than 6 months and suffering with a service-related disabilities

Within the month of the “Heroes Act”, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed The Veterans Opportunity to Work Act. And the provision that proves VOWA a milestone bill: specialized job-retraining programs for older veterans that have been out of work for 26 weeks. And with a little luck, these changed policies and attitudes may reverse the troubling trends of veteran disengagement.

Quick Tips for a Civilian Job-Hunt

Service members and their families know the civilian job hunt is one of the major trials of coming home. The stress of looking for a job (or failing to) can easily push a mind into the first stages of disengaging with civilian life. One therapy technique is to focus on accomplishing minor tasks. Today, I’ll read expert resumes online rather than finding and applying to 5 individual jobs. Begin a job search with minor but deliberate steps forward:

• Consider nearly everything: Hundreds of new job titles show up in online postings every year. It’s not a good age to disregard a position because it isn’t immediately familiar. There’s a line somewhere, but it’s good to keep in mind that ‘Social Media Rockstar’ is just ‘internet’ for ‘Online Marketer’.
• Hunt for non-traditional opportunities in the right places: Career fairs have gone virtual. One particularly active career-sourcing site is Milicruit. In one event last fall, Milicruit hosted representatives from 70 industry-leading employers to advertise their openings. Within 5 hours 23,000 veterans and spouses had browsed the listings.
• Leverage specific skills to unrelated industries: Military training, particularly technical expertise, can set a veteran apart from other candidates. Preparing the reasoning of why it’s impressive and how the skill can be applied in new, unrelated contexts.

The Serious Job Still Ahead: Getting Veterans Back to Work

Lately, fewer military personnel are making long-term careers of their service. As a result, the capstone of most active-duty combat experiences is only an abrupt reentry into civilian life. By the end of 2014, 130,000 troops, many rounding off 3rd, 4th, and 5th tours, are due home for the semi-permanent future. If Army research gathered from recently returned troops is any indication, Americans can expect 31% of these service men and women to come home suffering from symptoms of PTSD or depression. As always, the ease of each transition home will hinge on the readiness of the communities and careers that receive them.

J.P. Morgan Chase, Congress and others are doing the logical work of matching veterans with the challenges they’ve already proven themselves willing and capable of overcoming.

This post is sponsored by Chase — a strong supporter of the 100,000 Jobs Mission, a program that helps find jobs for veterans of the US armed forces. Learn more here

The post Transitioning Home: Supporting Service Men and Women Looking for Work appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

It isn’t a particularly romantic conversation, but talking about your credit history and how to manage your new financial life together is something couples can do to avoid disappointment or embarrassment once the honeymoon is over. It’s something to take seriously, considering divorce lawyers and therapists say one of the most prevalent causes of a destroyed marriage is financial troubles.

Stay Open and Transparent: Share Scores

As mundane as it sounds, looking at your intended’s credit report could be the best way to determine if they can handle money issues in a responsible manner. If your fiancé does not want to show you his or her credit report, that may give you pause. If they are willing, set a date to look over each other’s histories and discuss any red flags. Your fiancé did have a life before meeting you. There could be very legitimate reasons for past problems, and your fiancé may not appreciate feeling like they are on trial when you are both trying to map out a financial management strategy. Identify problem issues and come up with a plan to address them. But do it cooperatively.

Pay It Off Before Getting Hitched

You should consider paying off large credit card balances or past due items showing up on a credit report prior to your wedding. Doing so allows the two of you to have a fresh start before any financial squabbles come up in your marriage. Sometimes it seems like marital spats are all about money or kids. But considering you’ll have new financial issues to hammer out, bringing old ones into the mix could hamper things.

Separate Bank Accounts

You may share a life together but you probably don’t have to sever all of your independent financial ties. If your partner has a significantly lower credit score going in to your marriage, you may want to consider keeping your financial lives separate until that score goes up. Again, this is a decision you would make with the understanding that, down the road, it will be a beneficial choice for a married unit. Marriage transactions, like buying a home, purchasing the minivan when junior arrives and taking family vacation, can require good and sustained credit to consistently enjoy. With a separate bank account, the spouse with credit challenges can still have some monetary independence so they can make purchases without impacting your financial status.

Joint Goals

Even when the two of you are maintaining separate bank accounts, that does not necessarily mean you aren’t working toward goals as a couple. In fact, maintaining a separate bank account for the partner with poor credit history may help keep the better credit score high enough to make financial plans a reality. Remember, if you make a plan, try and stick to it, even if it means your funds come from two different sources.

Spending Habits

Let’s be honest: What matters to one spouse may not be all that important to the other. If your partner is spending money on things you don’t appreciate, there can be resentment. It may help to determine how much of your total incomes each spouse can have for disposable and impulse purchases. If you both agree ahead of time on a set amount each month, this arrangement allows for individualized spending habits without compromising the overall financial health of the marriage.

Be the Responsible One

If you are more capable of properly handling the finances, logic says you should be the one doing it. Your partner has other strengths that he or she can bring to the relationship. But, whatever the case, keep each other informed on the finances. Respecting the fact that one partner is better at managing money will help make this arrangement work.

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Here are some sobering statistics that might spur parents on to take action regarding their children’s financial education:

According to the U.S. Federal as of December 2011, the average U.S. household carried just less than $16,000 of credit card debt.

According to the Federal Reserve Board, only approximately 30 percent of all American households pay their monthly credit card charges in full each month.

According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, 36 percent of credit card holders do not know the interest rate of the credit card they use most frequently.

You Can Remind Them

Our kids can have short memories. They often are quickly on to the next latest and greatest thing. But when you have “loaned” them the money to pay for yesterday’s fascination and tomorrow brings yet another “must have,” standing firm can be one of the best teaching tools a parent has.

This may mean reminding your child that they have not paid back the loan for the first item. Yes, there may be some disappointment. However, the extra work it might require to teach a child about expectations of living within one’s means, not necessarily their desires, could one day help prevent more destructive behaviors like borrowing too heavily or spending too much on non-essentials.

Play a Credit Game

One kind of learning tool that potentially can be useful for children and young adults is simulators and games designed with the intent to teach good habits.

The nationwide student news network, Channel One News website (no affiliation) offers an interactive credit card simulator program at no charge on its Life section landing pages. Children can select a credit card that they want to apply for and go through a similar process they would as an adult applying for credit.

The simulated credit card offers typically have varying limits and interest rates. As children begin to play, they have the option of making simulated purchases and payments. Each time they make a choice, a “statement” is available detailing how this impacted the status of their credit card.

These statements can be printed out for display on the refrigerator door at on a family activity center. By playing once a day or every other day or once a week, children may continue to print their new statements detailing their status and more importantly, providing them with a visual depiction of how their actions are affecting their simulated finances.

It is a good idea to keep this game light-hearted. However, to drive home the point of choosing not to pay their bill, one option could be leaving one neglected statement in view longer just to demonstrated that bills don’t go away simply because they are not paid.

Bring In a Coach

Parents sometimes wait for hours in line to sign their kids up for sports where they are coached by another adult or take their children to weekly music lessons to learn how to play piano, trumpet or guitar from a specialist. Why not take the same approach with finance and enlist the help of a financial coach to teach your kids about money and credit card debt management?

A growing number of financial planners such as Brett S. Ellen, the founder and president of the American Financial Network (no affiliation), are branching out beyond helping their adult clients plan for retirement by holding specialized seminars for children and teens.

In these workshops, the kid’s financial coaches explain complicated financial terms and concepts in language children understand. They also relate financial expenses through scenarios teens can understand. For instance, a financial planner explains that paying a credit card late fee of $30 can require four to five hours working the type of minimum wage jobs many teens may be familiar with, such as working a fast food drive-thru line or bagging groceries.

As many parents painfully know, children – especially teens – sometimes are more apt to hear and heed life advice from someone other than their parents. To learn more about this new trend, go to the CreditCards.com (no affiliation) website and search for the article, “Does your kid need a financial coach?”

Compute Compound Interest

While many historians have come to refute the idea that Albert Einstein dubbed compound interest to be one of the most powerful forces in the universe, computations of credit card interest charges at financial institutions across the United States and worldwide daily prove that if the famous scientist had said it, he wouldn’t have been far off base.

It is a complicated concept that may make an enormous difference in financial matters. It can work in your favor if you are the one collecting the interest and it can work drastically against you if you are the one paying. So, how can a parent potentially communicate this concept to kids of all ages?

One possible way is to open a home-based Bank of Mom and Dad. Have your child deposit one penny per day. You, as the parent, deposit a penny every other day without telling your child. At the end of the week, have your child open the bank to count how many pennies it contains. There should be eleven pennies, not seven. The visual of the extra pennies can help demonstrate the concept in a manner that children understand. To drive the point home for older kids – especially teens – you might want to use quarters.

The preceding was a post by:

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Our first infographic provides an overview of the AT&T and Verizon’s 64% control the U.S. cellular market. The graphic provides one of many ways to consider the possible effects of concentrated market share on consumers.

There are several perspectives on the question of the utility and efficiency of concentrating the ownership of the U.S. cellular spectrum between just a few companies. One perspective that’s interesting to note is the point of view from Washington. Just last year, the Dept. of Justice blocked AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile noting the deal would result in diminished competition. And now, the D.O.J. is reviewing Verizon’s proposal to acquire $3.6 billion in additional spectrum from cable companies that would increase their control of and capacity for U.S. smartphone data traffic.

Ultimately, U.S. data traffic in the foreseeable future is set to multiply several times over each year. Only time will tell what spectrum ownership structure will best suit the standards, interests and aims of providers, subscribers and regulatory agencies.

The post The AT&T/Verizon Duopoly (Infographic) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Frankly, I agree with her conclusion. You can most certainly get into a lot of financial trouble if you operate entirely on intuition, instinct, and impulse.

When you’re shopping, if you make a purchase based on instinct without running the numbers, you’re probably wasting significant money.

When you’re investing, if you rely on a gut feeling for your investment choices, you’re probably going to lose money on that investment compared to what you could have made.

When you’re planning for the future, relying on intuition often means that you find it really difficult to set a goal and follow a plan to get there.

I speak from experience in each of these cases. I’ve found that, time and time again, your gut reaction can lead you down a very dangerous money path. Yes, sometimes it can result in good things, but the number of mediocre and poor things that can result from intuition overshadows this.

What can you do about it, though? It is often too tall of an order to simply tell someone to stop relying on their gut when they make decisions. You can’t completely alter how people think and how they make decisions.

Instead, what you can do is alter the basis upon which they make those decisions.

If you spend some time researching the products you buy in advance until you know about them and know how to evaluate their prices and relative quality, you’ll naturally incorporate that into your shopping decision.

If you spend some time researching various investments and understanding what the various risks and benefits are of different options, you’ll naturally incorporate that information into your investment decisions.

If you spend some time carefully planning for goals and setting up a very clear plan to get there that is obvious and clear to follow along the way, you’ll use that when making all kinds of time and money decisions along the way.

The key is preparation. If there is one real key to success in almost any area, it’s the preparation you put into it. The more you understand the options before you, the more likely it is that you’ll make a good decision when you’re faced with a choice. That decision will probably still be based on intuition, but that intuition is a flower grown from a rich topsoil of knowledge.

When you’re not pressed for a decision, spend some time investigating the decisions you make every day – or the big ones you know you’re going to be making soon.

Look up the products you regularly buy on the internet. Figure out where the least expensive place is to buy them, and compare the products to competitors. That way, you can make a better decision about not only which specific product to buy, but where to buy it.

Read a well-rounded book or two on investing topics, and take the time to actually understand what is being said in them. Take it slow, and look up terms you don’t know on the internet.

Plan out what you want from your future, then think about what you’ll specifically need to do to get there. What can you be doing each and every day to make that future come true?

For me, I find that the more I think about such things and the more I learn, the better my intuition and instinct becomes. They draw on the foundation of knowledge that I have and the time that I’ve invested thinking about these issues.

Simply put, learning and thinking helps your finances.

The post Personal Finance and Intuition appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

I really enjoy reading personal finance books that target young professionals – the one group that I believe could use the personal finance help the most. So many of them are really well-written, but they each take one of two routes: they either focus so generally on the issues that it doesn’t feel like it’s in touch with the lives of young professionals, or they focus exclusively on one small subgroup of young professionals (Farnoosh Torabi’s You’re So Money falls into this category, focusing on consumerism-oriented young female professionals).

Because of this, I usually either recommending one of the “narrow” books to young professionals or, if none of the ones I’m familiar with seem to fit, I just point them towards the personal finance book that changed my own life, Your Money or Your Life.

Generation Earn by Kimberly Palmer falls straight into this category – one only needs to glance at the subtitle, The Young Professional’s Guide to Spending, Investing, and Giving Back, to get the idea.

Does this book actually rise above the crowd of “average” books for young professionals? Does it particularly address the needs of a specific group of them?

Building Your Life
One thing that I particularly liked about this book is that it starts right off the bat with the one area that I find young professionals constantly struggling with: getting some control over their spending. Often, this is the first time in a young adult’s life that they’ve had full control over their money, and unless their parents have been very effective at conveying money ideas, these newly flush young adults (and I certainly was in this category seven years ago or so) make some awful spending decisions that they suffer for the rest of their lives.

What suggestions does the book offer? First, set some goals. Spend some time thinking about where you want to be in ten years, what it will actually take to get there, and what steps you need to take now to make that happen. Second, apply some thought to your purchases. The big one: carefully research any purchase over $100 to make sure you actually need it, that it meets your requirements, and that you’re getting the best price on it.

This portion of the book covers a lot of topics: jobs, credit cards, all of that basic personal finance stuff that a lot of books offer. How does this book handle it differently? What stuck with me is that it didn’t spend time demonizing bad practices – instead, it spent space lauding positive practices. I like that perspective, as it does a great job of creating a sense that these things are doable and they will result in something positive rather than making the reader feel self-conscious about the mistakes they’ve made.

Creating A Home
The middle third of the book is focused strongly on setting up a full household for the first time. When you first leave college and have your own apartment or you’re thinking about buying a home, it’s very easy to fall into some huge traps – buying more house than you can afford, decorating and stocking the apartment with expensive stuff (bought on credit), and so on.

Palmer focuses on tactics for drastically reducing the costs of each of these aspects. The biggest part of all of this is an honest evaluation of the question “what do you need?” versus “what do you want?”

From there, the section moves onto simple frugality – steps people can take without disrupting their life to reduce bills and required expenses once they’ve set up house. In many ways, Palmer focuses on doing this through simplicity (things that save both money and time) and meaningfulness (worthwhile uses for that money and time, such as thoughtful gift-giving – and even homemade gift-giving).

Changing the World
These topics bridge the gap into the third section of the book, which focuses on how a young professional can use the resources in their life to actually promote positive change in the world, often while achieving the other ideas in this book at the same time.

Volunteerism opportunities are discussed at length, both in the sense that they give someone an opportunity to facilitate positive change and as a way to quickly make social connections in a new area. There’s also a focus on how the frugal tactics that can save you money and time also have a positive environmental impact as well.

What’s the purpose of this section, really? It does a great job of casting the day-to-day choices of what people do with their time and money in the light of how better choices with those resources can have a lot of positive impact, both on yourself and on the broader world.

Is Generation Earn Worth Reading?
This is a great book for a thoughtful college graduate. In fact, without knowing anything more than that about a graduate, this would be my first pick as a gift for graduation (perhaps coupled with Your Money or Your Life).

As with many such books, the subtitle should make it clear whether this book will have any value for you personally. Are you a young professional? If the answer is yes, this book is probably worth a look.

The post Review: Generation Earn appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

I was fairly nervous during the whole thing – I’m not exactly comfortable in front of a camera yet. My wife thinks it will turn out well, though.

If I can find a video of the appearance online at a later time, I’ll add it to this post.

If you happen to catch it, feel free to leave your thoughts (positive or negative).

The post If You Live in Central Iowa… appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Throughout the year, I keep my eye open for good Christmas gift ideas for my family and friends. I’ll glance through flyers, look at sales, and stop in at exceptional events like “going out of business” sales with the idea in mind that I’ll find an amazing gift for someone at a stellar price – and I usually do find one or two.

As the end of the year approaches, this ramps up. My wife and I make long lists of all of our Christmas obligations and we dig deep into the process of buying presents for everyone. We spend hours upon hours thinking about the perfect gift for everyone in our family. We usually make a bunch of homemade gifts – homemade beer, homemade cookies, and so on. During this period, we usually do find a few great gifts for people, and we happily wrap these up and stow them away under our tree.

As the final week or so approaches, we’re usually getting very nervous about the remaining holes on our list – and we start to panic a bit. We wind up searching madly for gifts for those last few people, rushing around with a ton of pre-holiday nervousness.

A few days before Christmas, we look under the tree – usually as we’re packing up for a long winter trek to visit family – and we’re aghast at the sheer quantity of gifts. “Did we really buy all this stuff?” we’ll ask each other. And, sure enough, we did.

For those last few days, we usually feel some guilt. We think about all of the money we’ve spent on gifts, even if we did find some spectacular bargains along the way. Usually, when we actually do make a tally, it’s not as bad as it seems, adding some relief to our misery.

As Christmas approaches, though, our feelings about the gifts begin to change. We settle in with our family, warm and comfortable and together. We watch old home movies together and play games together. We relax and nap and tell each other stories about the year that’s past.

And on Christmas morning, we all get up together and open those gifts that we’ve been stowing away each year. All of the people we love, together, in one room, opening the gifts we’ve thought so carefully about and purchased for each other.

I get to watch my niece try to look serious as she opens her gifts, but her simple joy at receiving something she’s wanted for a long time still comes through on her stern face.

I get to watch my sister-in-law sit there with the dazed smile she gets every year on Christmas morning.

I get to watch my mother’s eyes glow with happiness as she watches her grandchildren dive into a pile of presents.

And I realize that it really doesn’t matter what gifts are actually wrapped up under the tree. I’ve already received the perfect Christmas gift – those moments with my family, creating memories of togetherness and happiness that will stick in my mind for the rest of my life.

The post The Perfect Christmas Gift appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

I know this from experience. I used many excuses to continue my poor spending habits and I still use them sometimes to talk myself out of exercise or other tasks that I know I need to do.

Excuses are the epitome of failure. Every time you come up with a weak or unjustifiable reason for not doing something you know you should be doing, you’re choosing failure over success. You’re choosing to be broke instead of financial healthiness.

Here are eight common excuses that people use – and I used many of them myself – to avoid taking charge of their money, and some thoughts on why each one is nothing more than a crutch used to avoid actually taking charge of one’s situation.

I was born poor.
I was born poor, too. I grew up in a house where the walls of the stairwell were falling in and eventually were covered up with plywood sheets. There were many times where supper came from what we caught or what we picked from the garden that day.

I carried that concept into adulthood, believing that there was no real need to plan for the long term future because I could quite easily return to those “born poor” roots if I needed to. So I spent. And spent. And spent.

What I was spending wasn’t just fun money, but it was protection against ever having to return to poverty. Instead of spending wildly on fun things, if I had merely paid off all my debts, socked money into retirement, and spent less than I earned, I would have lived a very happy and comfortable life while also creating some protection against ever having to return to a low income level.

Spending money under the badge of having been born poor ensures just one thing: you’re walking a tightrope that, if you slip just a bit, will take you right back to that situation you worked hard to escape from.

You only live once / you’re only young once.
This excuse is absolutely correct, but it’s often used to excuse frivolous behavior when it actually should teach the opposite lesson.

You’re only young once, right? Well, let’s say Carl is 22 and he has a choice over the next eight years to put $1,000 away in his retirement account at an 8% annual return. He does that, but when he’s 30, he gets married and has kids, so he stops saving. Alexandra, on the other hand, spends her twenties blowing that extra $1,000 – she’s only young once, right? But then, at age 30, she realizes the mistake she’s made and starts saving $1,000 a year.

At age 50, Carl has only put away $8,000 of his own money, while Alexandra has put away $20,000 of her own money. But guess what their account balances are? Carl has $61,808.09 in the bank, while Alexandra only has $51,160.12 in the bank.

That’s right – Carl put away $12,000 less than Alexandra and has $10,000 more than Alexandra at age 50. The difference? Carl did it when he was young.

You’re absolutely right – you’re only young once. Don’t waste it.

The lenders tricked me.
You made a mistake signing up for a loan you couldn’t really afford – and now you’re stuck. You’re facing payments bigger than you can handle and things seem scary.

You have two choices here. You can either stick your fingers in your ears and go “lalalalalala…” using your situation as an excuse for poor behavior or you can face your problems and try to fix them.

Call up your lender. See what you can negotiate. Look into owning less expensive vehicles. Sell off some of your extra stuff. Look for a second job. Try to sell your property and go with something cheaper, even if you have to take a loss.

You have options. Ignoring those options and using the situation as an excuse to spend does nothing more than dig the hole deeper.

I have no idea how to manage money.
I can’t do math. I don’t understand investing. I don’t know how to balance a checkbook. So I just won’t do any of it and hope things turn out well.

Ignorance is fine – it’s something that can be fixed. If you don’t know something but are open to learning it, you can find books and help for learning almost anything. Hit your local library and check out some books on the subject. Look for classes offered in the community on these topics. Search the internet for assistance (especially The Simple Dollar, using that handy-dandy search form on the upper right of each page). You can even ask smart people you know for help.

What’s not fine is choosing to be ignorant. No one knows everything – what separates those that succeed from those that fail is whether or not you seek out answers for the questions you have and seek out help for the things you don’t know how to do.

I work hard and I deserve some reward for it.
This is a crutch I used all the time. Books, CDs, DVDs, video games, golf equipment, expensive trips – all of these were my “reward” for my hard work. And I deserved it, right? I worked my tail off and that should mean I get to taste the good life.

There’s a few big problems with that, though. My desire to have the “good life” often meant that I didn’t have adequate time to actually fully enjoy the elements of that good life. DVDs would sit unwatched (or only watched once). CDs would sit unheard. Video games unplayed. Books unread. Golf equipment in storage for months. Trips hastily planned and not fully enjoyed.

Sure, I lived the “high life” with all the stuff I wanted, but I didn’t actually get to enjoy a lot of it.

Here’s a simple antidote to this crutch: scale back a little on what you’re spending. Instead of shopping for more things, spend some time enjoying the things you already have. Master that video game instead of buying a new one. Watch the DVD, then watch it again with the director’s commentary, and dig through the special features before buying a new one. Wear a new item of clothing a few times before adding another to your wardrobe. In short, thoroughly enjoy those things that you’re purchasing.

God will protect me.
Many people have a deep faith through which they find answers to many of their deepest questions. Some people, though, come to rely on this faith for everything, acquiring a deep belief that they will always be protected from everything because of their faith.

Most faiths agree, however, that one of the gifts God has given us is that of free will. We have the power to make choices for ourselves – we are not automatons.

God has already protected you. God has given you every single tool you need to protect yourself. You have the free will to choose whether or not to use them.

I’m so far behind that there’s really no hope.
Undoubtedly, there are some financial situations that are simply disastrous, without any easily clear road out of the hole. It’s understandable how such situations can lead one to despair and a sense of hopelessness, and from that an adoption of dangerous behaviors and habits.

However, the truth is that no situation is hopeless. There is no situation that you can’t fix with proper focus and appropriate assistance from others. Perhaps bankruptcy is the right situation for you – contact a bankruptcy lawyer. Maybe the situation isn’t as bad as you think and can be solved through careful diligence and a strong plan.

The first step here is to talk to someone about it. Reveal everything and ask for their help in getting out of the situation. A true friend – someone you really trust – can be a lifeline in this situation.

But it is not hopeless. It is never hopeless.

I don’t make enough money to make ends meet.
A final excuse that people use to keep themselves from taking action is the excuse that they don’t earn enough to make ends meet. They’ve cut away everything and it still seems impossible. A low income is certainly a big obstacle to overcome – and the solution to it is obvious. Earn more. Look for a higher-paying job. Start a side business. Do something to earn more income.

Many people will then claim that they don’t have the skills or knowledge to do that. Well, if that’s the case, what’s keeping you from building those skills? Take some evening classes. Teach yourself as much as you can. Be an attentive and serious student. You can learn the skills you need to succeed at a higher level.

Don’t let excuses tell you what you can and can’t do. “Rules” like those are made to be broken.

The post Excuses, Excuses appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

if being happy is a matter of attitude [...] then shouldn’t people be able to make anything work [...] by simply changing their attitude?

Carrie’s question strikes right at the heart of a key question about personal development and success: is a positive attitude enough to succeed?

My answer? No, it’s not. It’s a piece of the puzzle, and quite often it can be the piece that turns failure into success, but alone, a positive attitude isn’t enough to make you succeed.

The Elements of Success
I don’t believe that there is any one recipe for success. Instead, I believe success is the result of a combination of a lot of different factors – and not all of them are needed for success. The more factors you have on your side, the more likely you are to succeed, and positive attitude is just one of those factors. Here are seven additional factors that are also important.

Knowledge A strong body of knowledge about the area in which you wish to succeed is often one of the key building blocks of success. You can build this by pushing yourself – read and try out the foundational materials and push yourself into challenging areas to build your knowledge.

Natural talent Some people are born with a predisposition to succeed in certain areas. Find this out for yourself by trying a lot of different activities and seeing what comes easy to you. The things you do with little or no effort that genuinely impress others are likely very near your natural talent, and natural talent combined with a lot of hard work leads to greatness.

Clear goals and planning Much like a trip, it’s a lot easier to get where you want to go if you know where you’re going and spend the time to plan the route you’ll take to get there. Think about what your definition of success exactly is, then identify some of the things that need to be done to help you move towards it.

Passion An intense, burning desire to dig deep into a particular area is often a sign that you’ll find success there. Much as with your natural talent, the way to find your passion is to touch on a lot of different areas and see what resonates for you.

Focus/consistent effort Hard work is another key to finding success. You don’t become a champion without practicing every day. If you want to succeed in a certain area, work hard in that area and go beyond what others are doing – deliberate practice is one big key.

Luck/opportunity Luck and opportunity also play an important role in success – sometimes things just click due to forces outside your control. You can improve your luck by making as many strong personal contacts as you can and sharing what you have to increase their “luck” and “opportunities.”

Cooperation/support Along with luck comes cooperation – the fact that others are working in small ways to help you succeed rather than hinder you. A spouse telling you that you can do this is going to go a lot further than a spouse telling you you’ll never make it.

The Value of a Positive Attitude
That’s not to say that a positive attitude isn’t a key part of the picture – it is. Believing you can succeed and treating the people around you with a positive attitude as well are both important to helping you find the success you want. However, you’ll be hard pressed to find success even if you have the most sunny optimism if you don’t focus in with some hard work, build your knowledge, plan for what you want, and build other foundational pieces of success.

Here are seven ways to build up your positive attitude.

Make lists of your own positive attributes. Better yet, see if you can get a friend to help you by making a list for you – I made a list like this for a friend once upon a time. Then, keep this list somewhere and look at it regularly. Remind yourself that you have a lot of positive attributes, and think about how you can do things so these attributes are accentuated.

Don’t dwell on your failures. We’re all going to fail sometimes. While it’s useful to reflect on them a bit, it’s not healthy to dwell on them. Identify mistakes made, figure out how to correct them, and then move on. You’re not defined by your failures.

Make lists of the successes and positive attributes of those around you – and remind them of those successes when you can. Make a list of all of your regular coworkers and contacts and list a few positive attributes about each one – their knowledge, their insight, their communication skills, their logical skills, and so on. Then, be sure to focus on those skills – the good things they bring to the table – with every interaction.

Avoid thinking negatively about others – if you find yourself going negative, look for their positive attributes. No one’s perfect. Sometimes people are going to rub you the wrong way. Other times, they’ll do something not up to snuff, or they’ll engage in behavior you don’t agree with. Don’t focus on that. Instead, think about their positive attributes – and let them know you see them in a positive way. Knowing that others see you as positive and look up to you is often a big push to get people to act in a positive fashion.

Never speak negatively of others. It’s often tempting in the lunchroom to engage in snarky talk and office politics. Avoid it at all costs if you can. You’re a lot better off interjecting with a “Hey, they’re not all that bad…” and a positive comment than to pile on the negativity. If you can’t say anything positive, don’t say anything at all.

Surround yourself with positive people. If the people around you are constantly negative in their comments and actions towards others, it’s time to look for a different circle. Focus on building friendships with people that engage you (and others) in positive ways.

Reduce your time spent in activities that make you feel bad about yourself. Then, fill that time with activities that are positive. For example, if you spend hours each night watching television programs that make you feel bad about yourself at night when you climb into bed, look for other forms of entertainment – uplifting and educational programming. Or, turn off the television entirely and engage in exercise or other activities that increase a positive feeling about yourself.

The post Is a Positive Attitude Enough? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Over the years, we’ve found a bunch of little techniques to turn what could be an expensive day trip into something much cheaper. If you invest some time and forethought into it, you can easily make a day at the state fair into a very cheap and fun family activity for everyone. Here are eleven tactics to try.

Buy advance tickets …
Get tickets well in advance. If you don’t know where to buy advance tickets, check online at the website for the fair and find out. Around here, grocery stores sell the tickets, usually at half the price of what you would have to pay at the gate. That means our family of four is able to get in the door at the State Fair for $10 rather than $20.

… or consider going on a discount day
Another option to consider is attending the fair on a day where the price is reduced, usually in the middle of the week. For example, the 2008 Iowa State Fair was free on the first day until 8:30 AM, plus you got a free corn dog upon entry. This encouraged an enormous showing of people that day, of course, but you can’t argue with the price. Again, check out the website of the fair well in advance so you can be aware of any discounted admission periods.

Make a full day out of it
While this was difficult for us this year with two young children who needed naps, most years we make a full day out of the trip to the fair, intending to get in the door not long after sunrise and leaving at sunset. Doing this maximizes the value of your admission, as you get many hours of entertainment out of your ticket instead of just a few.

Eat a filling meal before you go
The best tactic for making the “full day” work is by eating a filling meal before you go, so you’re less tempted to buy overpriced food while actually inside the fair. That means a big breakfast – make some pancakes, for example, and have some eggs with them. The goal is to keep you full (and full of energy) through a long day that will be spent mostly outside during the summer.

Bring your own water bottle
Along those same lines, bring a water bottle for each member of your group. Almost all fairgrounds have water fountains where you can fill your bottles. This eliminates the need to spend money on beverages during the day, again drastically reducing the expense of a day at the fair.

Do some advance planning
If you do some advance planning, you can not only make sure you hit all of the most interesting stuff at the fair in a day. Look not only at a schedule of events for the day, but also find a list of all the continuing exhibits. That way, you can make a list of all the stuff you want to hit and even plan something of a route through the fairgrounds so you don’t have to backtrack much.

Not only that, you can also make sure to go on a day where a particularly interesting event occurs. My family attended the Iowa State Fair this past Friday, August 8, where we got to see John McCain giving a stump speech. Here’s a picture:

If you can’t spot him right off, he’s right next to the first blue banner, near the middle of the picture, wearing a navy colored hat. Since we had small children, we chose to stay at the back of the crowd.

Doing these things ensures you hit all the interesting stuff you want to see at the fair without missing things or backtracking, making the day more enjoyable (and likely making it possible to see more things).

Park where it’s free and take public transportation to get close
To attend the State Fair, my wife and I usually parked at a friends’ house in Des Moines, then use the free shuttle bus running through town to go to the fair. This meant we saved the cost of parking near the fair, which can often become very expensive. This little move might take a bit longer, but it shaves some extra cash off of the trip (and often makes it very easy to meet up with friends and attend the Fair together).

Focus on the free stuff
While there are exhibits and events that cost extra at the fair, there’s so much free stuff to see that you shouldn’t bother with those items and instead focus on the free stuff. We thoroughly enjoyed many of the free items at the Fair this year, including the butter cow:

(Yes, a cow made out of butter.) Our son also got heavily into the wildlife exhibits – here he is, enjoying an aquarium display:

Beyond that, we visited the Iowa Public Television booth (where my son had an awkward conversation with Clifford the Big Red Dog), the Republican Party and Democratic Party areas, a petting zoo, a demo station for the video game Rock Band (which I’m very bad at on the drums), and a bunch of other things I’m forgetting. All of this was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone (even our infant daughter) until nap time approached.

Share the treats widely
One of the big features of the Iowa State Fair is the plethora of … interesting food items for sale everywhere, tempting you to try them out. If you’ve eaten a big meal (as suggested above), fair foods are much less of a temptation, but if you must indulge, just buy one item and share it with everyone. Here’s an example:

Deep fried pineapple on a stick, indeed. We were intrigued, but passed that one up. Instead, we let our son pick out an item to share and he chose a very good hand-dipped ice cream cone that we all shared. That gave us all a tasty treat for a pretty low price.

Keep an open eye for freebies – but be sensible about what you take
At many state fairs and other such events, there are tons of opportunities to pick up free items of all kinds, but just because something is free doesn’t mean it’s worth taking. I attempted to count the number of giveaways I spotted and I lost count somewhere north of two hundred in just under three hours.

However, you can find worthwhile stuff if you look carefully. My wife and I got two free canvas bags for using at farmers markets, a free chamois for car washing (which will go in the rag box, but be a useful rag), and a free copy of the day’s Des Moines Register. My son picked up a few coloring books and, best of all, two different Clifford the Big Red Dog books, which have already been read several times. Nothing breathtaking, but worthwhile stuff and the price is right. Just be sensible about it and take only stuff you’ll actually use.

Always get stamped for readmission
A final tip: always get a readmission stamp when you leave. You never know why you might need to go back into the fairgrounds – and if a reason comes up, you don’t want to have to pay for another ticket. Follow this, even if you believe you’re leaving for the day. You may have accidentally left an item inside, or you may remember that you promised someone a picture of the Butter Cow, and you certainly don’t want to pay admission again, do you?

Fairs are a great way to have some family fun in the summer, and they don’t have to be very expensive at all. Have a good time!

The post A Frugal Guide to the Iowa State Fair (or Any Similar County or State Fair) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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