Lately, I’ve been working on my Christmas shopping list, trying to get (way) ahead of the curve. I have a lot of great ideas in mind for the people around me, but I know that unless I’m diligent, the gifts will either wind up being too expensive or will simply slip through my fingers. Add to that the fact that there’s usually an item or two that I’m looking for on heavy discount, and it’s unsurprising that I often spend my time eyeing flyers and other places for huge markdowns on specific items.

Until recently, I’ve been doing the drudgework of visiting Amazon on a daily basis to check for some of these items. But, after doing a bit of careful thinking and some clever hacking, I’ve found an easy way to get Amazon to automatically report those deals to me. Here’s the trick in its step-by-step glory.

Step 1: Get the Feed!
Amazon has a feature called Gold Box, where they collect a bunch of hugely discounted items from across their site each day. The deals are a mixed bag of stuff - one might be a software sale, another might be a watch, another one might be glass tumblers, and so on.

The point of the page is to attract people who are “bargain” hunters - the people who will buy anything provided it has a pretty good discount. It also entices people who are actual bargain hunters in the hopes that once they have an item or two in their cart, they’ll add a few more items. Plus, there’s the “temptation” folks - the people who randomly find the page and buy something they really don’t need. Add it all together and you get a lot of additional sales (and happy customers) for Amazon.

The only problem is that if you’re living cheap, this is just a giant temptation to spend money you shouldn’t. If only there were a way to filter all these deals just for the relevant ones…

There is.

Amazon makes the vast majority of these deals available via their Gold Box RSS feed. It’s basically a single page view of most of the available Gold Box deals, all on one page:

http://rssfeeds.s3.amazonaws.com/goldbox

This makes it convenient to stop at one page for a giant list. Or if you have a feed reader, you can subscribe to that feed to get the deals. But that’s just the start of it.

Step 2: Filter the Feed!
Now, head over to FeedSifter.com, a brilliant little tool if I’ve ever seen one. It lets you put in a RSS feed URL (like the one above), then filter it for any list of terms you put in, then gives you an output feed that contains only the items that match the terms you listed.

Let’s see this in play. Let’s say I’m trying to find a couple of older games for my Wii on a huge discount, plus I’m looking for a cheap Nintendo DS or Playstation Portable for Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews. While I’m at it, I’m also interested in any bargain cookbooks they might put up, plus any grocery deals or deals related to my Mac computer.

I’d fill out Feed Sifter like this:

A quick note: search terms fewer than three characters match everything, so use ones longer than that.

The actual list I’m using is much longer than this one - I’d share it with you, but I’m worried I’d reveal a good chunk of the Christmas gifts I’m looking for.

Anyway, when you click on the “Filter my Feed” button, you’ll get an option to subscribe to that new feed. Click on that and you’ll find that the Amazon feed is now filtered for those search terms. For my list, I found that it had only left one item - and I actually went ahead and purchased that single item, as a Christmas gift! Hooray - one down, a big bundle to go!

Step 3: Remember the Filtered Feed!
Obviously, with most of these sales having an extremely limited time frame, you’ll need to check it regularly. Since many people have Google as their home page, it’s very easy to integrate this filtered Amazon sales search right into the home page on their browser.

Just pop over to http://www.google.com/ig and click on the “Add stuff” link over on the right hand side of the page…

… then click on the “Add feed or gadget” link on the right.

Then, paste in the URL of the feed you created in step two.

Wham! Your filtered feed is now on your Google homepage. Whenever you fire up your browser and visit Google, you’ll see a list of the sales over at Amazon that match the terms you put in. Click on the link to an interesting one, and you’ll go right over to Amazon.

Whenever you want to create a new search, just follow all these steps again - easy as pie.

Bonus tip: If you’ve found your item and are ready to check out, but have found yourself a few dollars short of getting free Super Saver Shipping (Wait! Add $4.32 to your order to qualify for FREE Super Saver Shipping), use FillerItem.com to find a cheap item to just barely push you over the top. I used to regularly get a pack of AA batteries here, but since moving to rechargeables, I often usually get a “stocking stuffer” type item and hold onto it for later.

This technique has saved me quite a bit of money on gifts I intended to purchase anyway with almost no effort after the initial setup. Give it a try today.

Each Monday, The Simple Dollar opens up the reader mailbags and answers ten to twenty simple questions offered up by the readers on personal finance topics and many other things. Got a question? Ask it in the comments. You might also enjoy the archive of earlier reader mailbags.

As usual, we’ll start things off with a few links to older articles that directly answer questions I’ve heard recently.
How to avoid boredom during a financial turnaround
The McDonald’s $1 double cheeseburger really isn’t all that cheap
Fifteen things you can do right now to help your career

And now for some great reader questions!

Generally speaking, how old do you think is too old to rely on your parents for financial support? How do you plan on easing your children into the ‘real world’ as far as managing their finances go? Are you going to ‘force’ them to get a job (specifically when they’re in high school)?
- Dave

I don’t think there’s any set age where a person is clearly too old to be living at home. Most of that has to do with the specific situation that person finds themselves in. How were they raised? How permissive and inviting have the parents been in terms of keeping the young one at home? What’s their exact economic experience?

As for my own children, my expectation for them in high school is that they wrap their arms around some sort of significant project in their spare time. What it is is up to them. It might be a regular job, it might be a specific extracurricular activity, or it might be something else entirely. But I won’t consider it acceptable for them to spend their summers not doing anything, and even their evenings during the school year to some extent.

Also, once they leave for college, with the exception of holidays, they’re not moving back in unless they’re paying rent or doing something to earn their keep, period.

How do you read so many books? It sounds like your schedule is packed, and for you to not only read at least two or three books a week AND process the information so thoroughly, is almost beyond belief. Beyond the “How to Read a Book” post you did a few months back, do you speedread? If so, can you recommend a good speedreading course?
- trev

I spend two to three hours a day reading personal finance and personal productivity books on this site. I’m also trying to spend an hour or so each day reading other books when my schedule affords it.

That means each book review usually has four or five hours of reading behind it, and that’s my normal reading speed (with a bit of note taking). I don’t do any speed reading or anything like that - I just read at roughly this speed all the time. I tend to read some types of books slower than others (literature goes slowly for me, while very fact-laden nonfiction goes pretty quickly).

I was thinking about opening an account with Sharebuilder.com (ING) to get started in some simple investing. I already invest heavily in my TSP (401K) and Roth, and wanted to dump some extra cash into some stocks now that my vehicle is paid off. I plan on holding onto any stocks I buy long term. Any thoughts on Sharebuilder? Do you recommend any alternatives? Anybody else have any thoughts on Sharebuilder?
- Tony

I very recently started using Sharebuilder.com to start slowly accumulating a small handful of specific stocks and ETFs. If you’re not planning on actively trading and instead plan to just buy and hold, Sharebuilder is great. If you’re looking to actively trade stocks, Sharebuilder isn’t so great. If you’re intending to just buy index funds, go straight with Vanguard where you can invest in index funds without any fees whatsoever.

In my view, one should only use Sharebuilder if you’re planning to just buy stock in a few individual companies and hold them over the long haul. My usual philosophy is that you should only buy a stock if you have a very clear and specific reason for buying it, and you should only sell it if you have a very clear and specific reason for selling it. I’m also more of a “long haul” thinker and I put a lot of value in companies that make products that I strongly trust - that’s one of my specific criterion for buying an individual stock. Because of that, Sharebuilder holds a lot of oppeal to me. It’s designed for buy and hold strategies.

What about other alternatives? If you have more than $25,000 to invest, you can get the same service for free from Bank of America. And if you’re willing to jump through a lot of hoops in the setup process, you can get a similar service free from Zecco.com - I have had a lot of difficulty with their signup process in the past.

J.D. wrote an excellent article a while back on the pros and cons of Sharebuilder, but my take is that if you’re a buy-and-hold kind of guy and don’t want to invest a lot of time in the mechanics of it, Sharebuilder is a great way to go up to $25K.

Trent, did your self-discipline (e.g. your schedule) come about after your financial meltdown, or have you always lived — at least partially — with that degree of self-discipline? Obviously you didn’t always financially, but I’m curious how much of your discipline was already in place and ready to be “deployed” for the purposes of financial et al. growth.
- Chris

I think I’ve always been fairly self-disciplined, but it had to be drawn out of me by situations that I faced. My first job forced me to organize many of my work habits. My first child forced me to gain some discipline with my personal habits and how I spent my free time. My financial meltdown forced me to get organized about my money. The success of The Simple Dollar finally forced me to get serious about my writing habits.

I think the basic character traits for organization were there, but I never had any impetus for using them. When events in my life forced them to come out, they did, and after they came out, they were hard to put back in the box.

Hey Trent, I had a math-related question for you about how you figure your net worth and your debt changes. Do you figure those out starting with a the statements from the previous month, or did you pick an arbitrary starting point and are using those for your percent gains and loses?
- Tom

I started all of my net worth calculations with a baseline - the first month after my financial meltdown. After that, my focus was on positive changes month to month. I like looking at long-term changes for fun, but my big motivation is usually just the next month. How can I maximize the gap between earning and spending that month? The better I do with that, the more financially ahead I get over the long haul.

So, just start with a baseline - this month, or a previous month where you have data. Then compare everything to that. Are you improving over time? Are you improving at the rate you want? Hopefully, the answer to both is yes.

Do you think America is losing its family values fabric (I mean, family life, marital life, care for elders, togetherness getting thoroughly messed up) because of too much focus on moneymaking? If yes, what are the primary reasons for such a degradation in family happiness?
- WhirlMind

I think the real problem is that America (and much of the Western world) is moving from a community and family perspective to an individual perspective. I think culture in general has moved towards glorifying the individual instead of focusing on the community. It’s more important to be a “star” than it is to be a member of a group who makes a positive contribution to society.

Take music, for example. A hundred years ago, music was enjoyed communally, with musicians in public environments. After the advent of radio, that communal sense went away, as people moved from the community to listen into their own homes with their family. A few more technological progressions and we’re in the era of the iPod, where people listen in private to the exclusion of others.

I used to live fairly near an Amish community, and I once watched them all get together on a Friday and raise a barn in a day. A community of people got together and did something to help one individual but in actuality helped the community as a whole.

Can you imagine a whole neighborhood getting together to help the new guy on the block build his house?

Why do the names on your blog roll always rotate? I usually start my daily blog reviews with your site and use your links to go to my other favorites. I get annoyed when sometimes they are there, and sometimes they are not.
- Sarah

I have about 50 blogs total that I want to link to, but I’ve discovered that each blog gets more clicks overall if each page shows just twenty of those blogs at random because the list is shorter and more accessible, plus it changes all the time. Blogs are shown only on 40% of pages, but the click count went up a huge amount when I made this change.

So, I do it because I like the sites on my blogroll and I’ll do whatever it takes to get them the most clicks.

You’ve said before you started dating your future wife in college. What did you do for cheap, frugal dates with your wife when you were in college?
- Nicole

Our dates were usually extremely simple. We went on long walks. We went to the “dollar theatre” almost every weekend, where older films were shown on the big screen for a dollar a pop. We ate out in ethnic areas where there were cheap, delicious meals. We hit student group meetings all the time, particularly ones with free food. But we also spent a lot of money, too.

There are so many possibilities on a large college campus for inexpensive or free entertainment that you can engage in together that you’d be a fool not to take it. Look around for lists of on-campus activities - start at your student union.

Besides writing and reading and playing with your kids, what do you do for fun?
- Annie

I really enjoy playing board games - I’d play Ticket to Ride every day if I could. I love card games, too. I enjoy playing basketball. I love to cook - I’ll happily invest two or three hours into a meal just to produce something sublime, like a “low and slow” all day barbecue or from-scratch pasta. I play video games some - I have a Wii and will play a bunch for a few days, then not touch it for a month. I like tinkering with simple electronics, like the stuff you’ll find in Make magazine.

That stuff pretty much fills up any spare time that I have.

Got any questions? Ask them in the comments and I’ll use them in future mailbags.

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest.

When I was in college, I switched majors three different times, bouncing around the hard sciences and the humanities like a rubber ball and finally settling on multiple majors that balanced my interests. I started down the path of a hard science career, then quit to become a writer, and someday I dream of following other passions, too. I read voraciously, tackling complex books on everything from nature to history and philosophy, with lots of literature mixed inside. One day, you might find me digging in the garden - the next, I’ll be tinkering with something electronic.

When I picked up The Renaissance Soul and read the subtitle Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One, I knew I had to pick it up. The phrase “Too Many Passions to Pick Just One” struck a real chord with me, as it’s something I’ve felt throughout my life. I’ll bury myself deep into a project - what one of my friends calls “woodshedding” - and emerge feeling as though I’ve accomplished something interesting and real. But then I’ll feel wanderlust and I’ll want to move onto something else - a new passion.

Margaret Lobenstine’s book seems to address this head on, and I was eager to dive in and see if it had any advice directly applicable to me. Does it? Let’s find out.

Examining The Renaissance Soul

One - Renaissance Souls: Who You Are - and Who You’re Not
The Renaissance Soul opens by clearly defining what a “renaissance soul” is: a person who thrives on a variety of interests and redefines the accepted meaning of success. That’s a pretty broad definition of the term, but it makes sense - if you’re a person who is deeply engaged in a wide variety of subjects all at once, you’re probably a renaissance soul. If you’re skillful in one area, but you have a lot of other interests and resent being pigeonholed by your one known skill, you’re probably a renaissance soul. Take me, for instance: I’m passionate about writing, literature, politics, history, food, the sciences, economics, and mathematics, just to name a few things, and I could see myself following any of them for a career path if I saw a strong potential to support my family in that area. They all burn inside me, some more brightly than others on occasion.

Two - Yes, but …: Common Doubts of the Renaissance Soul
But it’s too late to start something new! But I really want to be an expert at something! But I can’t earn a living unless I stick to one thing! But I don’t want to be a renaissance soul! Lobenstine addresses all of these concerns here, mostly reflecting on the idea that a diversified skill set is often a useful thing in an increasingly complex economy, focused passion can make up a lot of ground against expertise especially when combined with diverse skills, and stressing something vital that I’ve come to discover over the last few years: you can make big career leaps if you prepare yourself financially. Frugal living pays off again and again… I love it.

Three - Panning for Golden Values
Lobenstine argues that many renaissance souls are made to feel guilty because of the choices they make, because the choices of a person with many interests and passions would seem to indicate a lack of commitment to a central goal. In truth, most renaissance souls are deeply committed - but not to specific goals. Instead, their commitments are all about values - aspects of life that they find important. Their passions flow through these values like water through a channel. For example, a person who values spirituality might be seen as “flaky” and uncommitted if they bounce from church to church and religious experience to religious experience, but in fact the person is deeply committed to finding their spiritual path.

Four - The Power of Renaissance Focal Points
Most renaissance souls tend to have a flood of things they want to be working on, and thus it’s easy to simply feel overwhelmed by interests. This can make it particularly difficult to focus in on any one thing and do it well, so quite often renaissance souls either make jittery jumps from thing to thing, slide through life unenthusiastic about anything, or bury themselves in one thing and lament the things they’re missing (I was the latter for a long time). Lebenstine’s solution? Pick a set of four focal points (for now) and focus on them to the exclusion of others. In other words, list out all of the things that interest you and keep four of them for focus right now, with the recognition that at a later date, you can change to other focal points. This can often give you the push you need to dig into something that excites you without feeling overwhelmed by choices and options.

Five - Your J-O-B: No More Day Jobs
Lobenstine tackles the difficult issue of a need for income balanced with a need to focus on your focal points - in other words, how does a renaissance soul balance the need for income with the driving desire to follow one’s passions? Ideally, a renaissance soul seeks to find opportunities where their passions actually pay the bills, but many people aren’t in that situation. She suggests re-evaluating what a job actually is. From Lowenstine’s perspective, a job can provide five things: income or benefits, energy (meaning it leaves you with the kind of energy you need to focus on your passions elsewhere), time (meaning it’s not a giant time vacuum and that there’s some flexibility in terms of schedule), training and equipment, and networking and publicity opportunities. Your full time job should be providing as many of these as possible - if they’re only providing income, your job is likely stifling any opportunity you have to dig into your passions. I know that for me, I had a job that provided good income and benefits and ample time, but it left me completely drained in terms of energy and there were little resources to utilize or opportunities to network in the other areas I was passionate in, so I chose to use my spare time to focus on one other passion (writing) until it became profitable enough to allow me to walk away and explore many other passions to a deeper extent (my family, politics, cooking, etc.).

Six - Getting Paid for Your Passions
As hinted at in the previous chapter, the real goal is to find a way to translate your myriad of passions into income sources. Lobenstine suggests spending your free time building real, demonstrable skills in the areas you’re passionate about, then hunting for jobs that incorporate both skills from your current career along with the demonstrable skills from your area of passion. For example, let’s say you have a job as a researcher, but you’re passionate about writing. You could spend your spare time honing your writing skills, working on getting published in a few places, and creating a writing portfolio. Then you could fuse the two - start writing on the topics you’re researching, using your leverage from both areas to get pieces into print. Perhaps you could even grow into being a staff writer on a publication that focused on your research area.

Seven - But I Don’t Want to Go Back to School!: Alternative Resources for Renaissance Souls
Instead of going back to school for your passion, use the fact that you already have financial security (that steady job of yours) to open up opportunities to get the experience you need for free. You can do this by volunteering, for example - if you’re passionate about design, you could try to get an unpaid part-time position at a design firm just to get some real-world experience under your belt. Another option is to find a mentor in your area of interest and let that mentor guide you towards opportunities where you can really grow in your passion - good volunteer slots, low-end jobs, and methods to grow specific useful skills for your area of interest. In other words, let experience be your guide, not schooling.

Eight - What If I’ve Got My Whole Life Ahead of Me?: Renaissance Soul Strategies for Young People
The biggest step you can take as a young person with diverse interests is to major in a field that intensely works to develop your critical thinking and reasoning skills - fields such as philosophy and mathematics. You can also double major in another area and add some minors in specific areas. Learn skills that can translate to any career - for example, a strong minor in a foreign language can open a wide variety of doors for you. Also, when you’re in college, get involved in a number of organizations that touch on your various interests and dig in to your heart’s content. When you do move on to a real job, don’t start living to match your paycheck - live cheap and sock away as much as you possibly can so that you have the freedom to follow other passions, and don’t let your job become all-consuming - give yourself plenty of free time to follow interesting pursuits.

Nine - Committing Yourself to Action the Renaissance Soul Way
This chapter is a primer on goal setting. Lobenstine breaks it down into a nice mnemonic: PRISM, which stands for Price, Reality, Integrity, Specificity, and Measurability. What sort of expense does your goal have? Is it actually realistic, or are you hoping for something out of the realm of reasonable possibility? Is your goal something that’s in line with our most deeply-held values? What exactly is your goal - what markers are there to tell you when you’ve achieved it? What’s your timeline for approaching this goal, and when will you have achieved what you want to achieve? Asking these questions honestly can help mold a nebulous goal into something you can start taking realistic action on immediately.

Ten - Time-Management Magic for Renaissance Souls
Lobenstine’s approach to time management is basically the “rocks and sand” approach described by Stephen Covey in his worthwhile First Things First: basically, schedule blocks of time each week for the things truly important to you and don’t let the trivial things interrupt them - let them fill the leftover time like sand fills the space around rocks. She also offers up a litany of solid basic time management tactics: don’t multitask, block out interruptions when you need to focus, have a daily routine, and so forth.

Eleven - Staying the Course: Overcoming Momentum Blockers
Lobenstine covers several potential momentum blockers here, but the one that really stood out to me was perfectionism - a need to continually polish and make things better. Lowenstein’s solution is to limit yourself - agree to a certain timeframe that you’ll give yourself to polish the thing you’re working on and when that time is up, it’s good enough - turn it in and move on with life. This issue strikes at home for me and it’s something I constantly battle. I’d love to just sit around and polish my writing over and over again, but I’ve come to realize that it’s often more important to just get the thoughts out there than to worry about repeating the same words too often or perfectly polishing the grammar. This is particularly true when it comes to The Simple Dollar - this site thrives on ideas, not on exact use of the pluperfect. I’ve learned to put away my perfectionism when it comes to this site and instead use it to polish other things I work on - if I hadn’t done that, this site would be much more boring.

Twelve - If It’s Still Hard to Get Going…
Fear. Anxiety. Failed expectations. These things often hold us back, even when we’re ready to make a leap. We all fear the unknown. We’re all anxious about the potential for failure. We all worry sometimes about disappointing the ones we love. It’s very difficult to walk away from what’s safe and unknown, but allowing that fear to control your decision just means that you’re keeping yourself from living the life you’ve dreamed of. My philosophy is this: it’s your life, and you’re the one that will be left alone with the regret of having not taken the road less traveled. So take it and don’t look back.

Be a Role Model
The book closes with an avenue of thought that really inspired me: the idea that by having the courage to follow your passions, you might become a role model for others and convince them to do the same. I know at least one person who was simply amazed that I had the courage to walk away from a job and do something I dreamed about - and I used that opportunity to tell her that she could do that, too. In fact, I’ve already recommended this book to her.

Some Thoughts on The Renaissance Soul

I had a flood of thoughts when reading The Renaissance Soul. Here are a few of the more interesting ones.

This book captured my thought patterns very well. Lobenstine gets it, on a very deep level. I love reading literature because it gives me the opportunity to understand aspects of the human existence of others, but rarely do I read a book that seems to get a fundamental aspect of my own life. That’s a truly enjoyable experience - it allows me to directly, intimately relate with someone else and realize I’m not alone in some aspect of the way that I think and live.

You can be a role model by making the hard choice. When deciding to make the leap to become a writer, I mostly saw things through the lens of disappointment. Would others think I was making a foolish choice? I hadn’t really considered that making a hard choice could actually inspire others, and I think that’s important.

Good goals rest on top of good values. The goals you are most likely to achieve are ones that are tied into your core values and passions. They will drive you on to success. Figure out what really drives you on a fundamental level, establish some goals to reach related to that fundamental drive, and hold on tight - the results will probably amaze you.

Is The Renaissance Soul Worth Reading?

You should know right off the bat whether this book is compelling to you or not. Just look at the cover again:

Are you a person that has “too many passions to pick just one”? If you are, then you’ll get some intense value out of reading this book. More than anything, you’ll realize that you’re not alone in feeling this way at all. For me, at least, it felt quite good to see this - to realize that I wasn’t just a person who couldn’t commit to a single lifelong direction.

This was a very powerful book for me. For others, it might not be so powerful. You’ll probably quickly be able to figure out which group you’re in, and if you’re in the group that’s somehow seized by the concept, read this book right away. You’ll be very glad you did, even if you don’t get a single piece of actionable advice out of it. Why? Because so much of what’s being said will feel innately familiar to you in a way that few books really do.

As soon as people hear the word frugality, they often respond by saying “I don’t have time for that!” The perception is out there that frugality always demands hours of doing things like cutting coupons and mixing up batches of homemade laundry detergent. While those projects save money, they’re only one avenue towards trimming the financial fat in your life.

In fact, many of the best frugal tactics not only require no upkeep time, many of them actually save you time, adding hours back into a life that’s highly compressed. Try these three tactics on for size.

Tactic One: Better Choices
One efficient way to improve your financial situation is to simply make better snap decisions. We’re faced with hundreds of little choices every day - simply resetting your mind to make a few better ones each day can save you a bundle of money. Here are four approaches.

Don’t shop for entertainment’s sake Want to go have a good time with friends? Don’t choose to go shopping just for fun. Instead, think of something else - almost anything else - to do. Shopping for entertainment’s sake is just an excuse to spend money on stuff you don’t need. Don’t leave behind the social occasion, just sometimes choose to do something besides shop for fun.

Grab the generic option instead of the name brand when shopping When you’re strolling through the store, grab the generic option instead of the name brand option of the food item you’re buying. It’s usually almost identical in quality and will quickly add up to some serious savings if you do it regularly.

Reduce your time commitments instead of taking on more Got a schedule so packed full of things to do that you simply don’t have time to eat at home, bringing on the expense of eating out? Spend all your time burning gas flying from activity to activity? Cut out a few of the more peripheral things. You’ll save gas money and maybe be able to eat an inexpensive meal at home sometimes instead of eating out expensively.

Eat a better diet Instead of choosing unhealthy options at the grocery store, choose healthy ones. Buy skim milk to drink. Buy fresh vegetables to eat. While it won’t make a ton of difference at the checkout, it will improve your immune system (making you less likely to get a cold and thus less likely to spend money on cold medicine, doctor’s visits, lost income, etc.) and help with your long term health.

Tactic Two: One-Offs That Keep Saving Money
You have an hour to spare right now. How can you save some money over the long haul? Here are some ideas that you can set up once and they’ll keep slowly saving you money.

Install a programmable thermostat Stop by the hardware store, buy a programmable thermostat, and install it yourself. Then program it to not run the air conditioning or the heat during the hours you’re at work, only kicking on in the hour or so before you arrive home. Automatic energy savings - you can walk away and it’ll just work its magic, trimming your electricity and/or gas bill.

Air seal your home Use this useful guide from the Department of Energy to caulk and weatherstrip your home, preventing air leaks and drafts from causing you to lose cool air during the summer and warm air during the winter. Do it once and you’ll save money on every energy bill thereafter.

Set up automatic bill pay Use your bank’s online bill pay service (it does have that, doesn’t it? If not, consider switching) to set up automatic payments of the monthly bills you have with a fixed amount. Not only will this save you on stamps, it’ll also help you avoid late fees and also save you the time of writing out that check each month.

Prepare a bunch of meals at once Spend an hour preparing supper - but prepare three duplicate meals at the same time and pop them in the freezer. Later on, you’ll be able to just grab a meal out of the freezer and pop it in the oven (or in the microwave) - saving you time in food preparation and money because you’re now able to eat at home instead of going out.

Tactic Three: Toss Out Bills
Trimming the excess from your monthly bills means fewer bills to worry about - a time saver and a money saver! Here are four places to look.

Toss out the cable box and go with a digital TV receiver If most of the programs you watch are on the non-cable television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and PBS), toss out your expensive cable bill and instead just get a digital TV receiver. You’ll still have a bunch of channels, get all of your old favorites, and it’ll cost you nothing each month.

Toss out your land line and go with only a cell phone Have both a land line and a cell phone? Find yourself rarely using the land line at all? Get rid of it.

Toss out your unused club memberships Got a gym membership you never use? Haven’t been to the country club in years? Haven’t returned a Netflix movie in weeks? Just cancel your unused memberships and you’ll immediately save money each month.

Toss out unread magazines (and their subscriptions) If your table has a big pile of unread magazines sitting on it, that’s probably a clue that you’re not keeping up with your subscriptions. Toss them out and cancel those subscriptions, saving you more money and eliminating some clutter, too.

All pictures used under a Creative Commons license. Click on the pictures to see more from that photographer!

A while back, I wrote in detail about the longest night of my life, the night when I realized that I needed to change my financial situation. That night, the best answer didn’t come from me. It came from my infant son. When I looked at him, I knew I had to make some sort of change or else I wouldn’t be able to give him the wonderful future he deserved.

In short, he became my inspiration.

He’s two and a half years old now, and he’s still my inspiration. It’s more fun to walk across the hay field behind our house with him and touch hay bales than it is to do almost anything I could spend my money on. The greatest treasure I’ve found lately is finding his orange rubber ball, long believed to be lost, in the tall grass just to the east of our garden. Whenever I’m tempted to spend money, he’s who I think about, and I ask myself whether what I’m doing is in line with what’s best for him.

Not only is he my inspiration, he’s also a constant visual reminder of the financial direction I’ve chosen. For a very long time, I kept a picture of him literally wrapped around my credit cards, so I would see his face each time I pulled it out (it’s since worn into oblivion, but the memory is still very strong, enough to give me that same pause, even now). Whenever he’s with me in a bookstore or another place where I’m tempted to spend, his mere presence often reminds me to keep my impulses in check.

Do you need inspiration, and a way to remind yourself of that inspiration? Here are six places to look.

The vast reduction of stress and worries
Are you kept up at night stressing about debt? Is it causing you stress at work? Are you gaining weight, or have an ulcer? I’ve had readers write to me stating that their debt load is literally killing them because of the stress load it’s putting them under.

This, right here, can be a huge inspiration for a financial turnaround. When you’re up at night worried about debt, sit down and just write out what you’re feeling on a sheet of paper. Don’t worry about grammar or anything else, just try as best you can to express what you’re feeling right now. Are you scared? What are your fears right now? Write it all down, let it pour out.

Then take this sheet and wrap up your credit cards in them, or just keep it in your pocket where you’ll find it on a regular basis. Whenever you need help to make the right choice, look at that sheet and ask yourself if you ever want to feel that way again.

The ability to change careers
Do you utterly dread going to work, but you know you have to because you’re leashed to that paycheck like a pack mule? Are you terrifically afraid of the idea of losing your job, to the point where your boss uses that fear as leverage over you to get you to do more work than is appropriate? Do you dream about doing something else with your life, but know that you can’t possibly make that move right now?

Use your job as a motivation to right your financial ship. Take a picture of your desk/work area, print it out, and keep it in your pocket or wrap it around your credit cards. Every time you go to use the plastic, you can look at that little piece of paper and ask yourself whether that little purchase you’re about to make is worth chaining yourself to that desk for another day.

The dream you’ve always had
I spent most of my life dreaming of becoming a writer. I dabbled in serious writing for more than a decade, writing every day, trying out new things - and telling myself I couldn’t really do it. Why? Money. The almighty dollar ran the show for me and it kept saying, “You can’t do it!” Well, that was a lie.

Dream big. Dream about that thing that you want so badly it hurts. Keep it in mind all the time. Find a token that represents that dream and keep it in your pocket. A friend of mine dreams of becoming a professional poker player (and he’s closer than he thinks). He keeps a poker chip in his pocket, one that was initialed by Doyle Brunson. The signature has worn off but the dream is still there.

The child whose responsibilities you bear
The birth of a child is one of the most emotionally powerful things you will ever experience. The raw realization that you are now responsible for this child can be an overwhelming experience and, for some, an incredible burden.

You want to give them the world, but it’s not that easy. Or is it? Use your children as your inspiration to walk a stronger financial path. Keep their picture with you - or wrapped around your credit cards - and let them silently push you to do better. This is the inspiration that worked for me.

The things you notice and overhear
Have you ever seen the look of panic on a person’s face when they hear that their credit card is rejected? The worried sound in someone’s voice when they’re trying to talk someone out of a purchase that’s beyond the pale? Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Are they really happy with their situation? Better yet, would you rather be in that position, with all the trappings but with fear in your voice, or in a financially secure one?

I once witnessed a woman shout in a panicked voice at a waiter about her rejected credit card. She had no other way to pay for the meal, and it quickly became a spectacle. A person at my table said, “Sure glad it’s not me.” That memory has stuck in my head for years, and now, as I was then, I’m glad it wasn’t me.

Use images like that as a motivator in your head. Are you heading in the direction of security, or are you heading in the direction of the guy at the hotel desk, sweating nervously and having the person try every credit card in your wallet, hoping that one of them has just enough credit to pay the bill? Where would you rather be? Every little choice you make pushes you in one direction or another - remember where the path of overspending leads.

The love of your life
Perhaps, in the end, your spouse is your inspiration. Your financial lives are entwined, and every financial choice you make not only affects you over the long term, it also affects your wife. Sure, you want that nice new driver at the golf store, but wouldn’t it be better to sock away that thousand dollars for your earlier retirement?

One reader wrote to me a while back suggesting that you use your wedding ring as inspiration. He switches the ring around on different fingers every day, just so it always seems new, fresh, and important, and then whenever he makes a choice, that ring’s in an unexpected place, just enough to remind him of the great thing he has at home and the fact that he’s making choices that not only affect his future, but hers as well.

Inspiration can be an incredibly powerful thing. Get some today.

A couple of days ago, I finished my first book and turned it in to my publisher. You’ll be hearing a lot more about it in a few months, but this post is for the large number of readers who have sent me all kinds of questions about the book publishing process.

It was a tremendous feeling, to finally finish my book and know that it’s actually going to be published. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do - write a book of my own, see it published, then walk into a bookstore and find it on the shelf. The idea that it actually happened is almost unbelievable to me, even now.

Many readers have asked me over the last few months to talk about how I secured a book deal and managed to actually write a book. Did I get an agent? Did I write the book first and then shop it? What exactly was involved? What can I expect for income?

Here’s the real scoop on my book deal from beginning to end. This is not a “how-to” on getting a book deal. This is merely the path I followed from dreams of writing a book to writing one.

Before the Deal
Ever since The Simple Dollar became successful, I’ve been thinking about publishing a book. I tossed around a lot of different ideas about what it could be, but for a long time, I never really did anything about it. It just seemed like a neat idea, but my time was so tightly packed that I never really went forward with any plan.

Last September (2007), I decided to get serious about the book publishing idea. It was about this time that I was beginning to think about writing as my primary career and walking away from my job at the time, and I decided that getting a book written and published might be a good way to do that.

I hit my social network pretty hard and found two people who were in the publishing industry and another who had published five (or so) books, and asked them what I should do to get my foot in the door. They all told me that the first thing I should do is put together a book package, describing exactly what I wanted to do.

The Book Package
Basically, the book package that I assembled had four pieces.

A cover letter This was basically just a letter introducing myself, giving a one paragraph pitch of who I was, a two paragraph pitch of the book, and a one paragraph pitch of why I was perfectly positioned to write the book.

A justification In other words, why am I an appropriate author for this book? I described my personal story and the success of The Simple Dollar (450K monthly visitors, 35K subscribers, built within two years with no promotion). At the time, I had very few other writing credits, so I felt that was the biggest hole in my package.

An outline of the entire book This was basically a four page document outlining my full idea for the book I was proposing. I described the full idea, then broke it down chapter by chapter.

A rough sample chapter I also included a sample of one of the chapters. I spent about a week writing a rough draft of one of the easiest chapters in the book, intending it to be a sample of what I was working on.

Trying to Find an Agent
I then attempted to find an agent for my book. I basically spent five months doing this without actually finding an agent to represent me. I had several strong bites, but the biggest thing that seemed to turn most of the agents away was the realization that I had almost no print publishing history. If you can’t point to stuff you’ve done before, you have to rely entirely on your other successes, and a lot of literary agents don’t get the internet. Yes, there are some that understand what’s going on online, but they’re few and far between and they’re usually out there cutting their own deals.

I almost acquired an agent twice, but both times they seemed to completely drop off the face of the earth. They simply stopped responding to emails, so I gave up.

Trying Another Path
Given this failing, I was pretty disheartened in February. I talked to some of my friends and they encouraged me to just send out the package to publishing houses that seemed appropriate. I basically made a list of the publishing houses of many of my favorite personal finance books and I simply sent a copy of my package to all of them.

No responses at all for a month and a half.

I had basically given up, when out of the blue I was contacted by Adams Media. They weren’t interested (yet) in my proposal, but they were interested in my story and they offered me an interesting deal. They had a general concept of a book project that they were interested in publishing and they thought that I was almost perfect for the idea. Would I develop a proposal for that book and send it their way?

The idea they had in mind was just about perfect for what I wanted to do. It gave me a ton of latitude to take things in my own direction and focused heavily on useful information for a broad audience. I really can’t talk about the specifics of the book quite yet (be patient, I will before very long!), but there were many aspects of the project that I loved.

I put together a proposal centered around the idea they had in mind. They loved it and accepted it almost immediately. Three weeks later, I had signed a book deal. No agent, no anything. The advance (which are book royalties paid in advance of writing the book, usually to help support the author while the book is written) was reasonable for a first time unpublished author who’s not riding a tidal wave of publicity (between $5K and $10K).

As the project developed, Adams informed me that they were very happy to hear a proposal on a second book project from me, perhaps an updated version of my original one. This is something I’m going to mull over in the future, but I’m already thinking about it on the back burner.

Writing the Book
My first attempt at tackling the book was a failure. I tried just starting at the beginning and plowing through the whole thing based on the very brief outline I’d included in my proposal. Bad, bad idea. I got about 20% of the way in and hated it. It was disorganized and nonsensical.

So I trashed the whole thing.

I started over again, using the methods for writing that have worked well for me for The Simple Dollar. Basically, that means doing an enormous outline. Each time I write a post for The Simple Dollar, I first come up with an idea and toss some fragmented ideas down on paper. I then do any necessary research, figure out the ideas I want to communicate, then develop an informal outline down to the individual paragraph.

So that’s what I did. I wrote an outline for an entire book down to the individual paragraph. The outline itself took up almost fifty pages in Word, and it was what I spent about 50% of my total writing time on. I finished this outline in early May.

After that, I wrote between 1,500 and 2,000 words a day on average for the book, fitting paragraphs onto the outline that I’d developed. I promised the publisher I would be able to deliver a strong draft of the manuscript on July 1, and I was pretty confident about making it.

But another problem developed. There was a lengthy period in early June where I was distracted by a lot of real-world events. This left me focusing intently on the book for most of the second half of June, writing as many as 5,000 words a day on the manuscript over the last two weeks. I used a common time management trick to do this - I basically ignored everything that was not vital in order to get it done. This means I currently have 1,300 email messages in my inbox that I need to read and respond to.

I finished the manuscript on June 24, turned it into my publisher, and now I’m waiting. Next comes the editing process and some design choices, then it will be made ready to publish, with promotion and other such things. Adams Media seems pretty committed to get the book out the door by the end of the year - in fact, the editing process has already begun and I’ve already been involved with some of the promotional issues related to the book.

This is where things sit right now. The last month or so has been incredibly intense, so I intend to take things a bit easier in July. At this point, just keeping up with The Simple Dollar seems like taking things quite a bit easier.

If you have any questions, I’d love to answer them. Ask away in the comments. I will probably assemble a “reader mailbag” just of questions about this process (at least answering the questions I can answer right now) and post it soon.

Each Friday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book of interest.

They’ve got vacation homes, backyard swimming pools, and three car garages. That’s what we see. What we don’t see is their secret shame: the unpaid bills, the desperate loans, and the sleepless nights.

That’s the blurb on the back of Shira Boss’s Green with Envy, and it strikes right to the heart of one of the big hidden truths about American consumerism. We’re all jealous of the stuff that other people have, but what we don’t see is their debt and their struggles to overcome it. I see the Lexus down the street, but I don’t see the $500 a month car payments, and seeing only one side of the coin makes it much easier to be envious of their good life.

It’s spelled out right on the cover in the subtitle: Why Keeping Up with the Joneses Is Keeping Us in Debt. What can we do to get past that idea? Let’s dig into the book and find out.

A Deeper Look at Green with Envy

Chapter One - Green with Envy
The book opens with a lengthy story about the author, her husband, and their new next door neighbors who seem to have everything. The frankness about the gossip that went on between her and her husband concerning the new neighbors and their seeming ability to spend money like water was refreshing, as was the admission that the fact that the neighbors had money to spend grayed her perspective on life. Of particular interest to me, though, was the glee the author and her husband felt when she discovered that in fact the neighbors were having financial problems, proving somehow that their lifestyle was a fraud.

There’s a lot of self-centeredness in that whole story, but it’s an identifiable self-centeredness. It’s something we see sometimes in ourselves, and it’s what we see in gossip hounds down the block who tell stories like, “Oh, did you SEE that car that Maggie just bought?” and the varying disgusting and petty jealous barbs that follow a question like that. It’s all familiar stuff, but depressing stuff, because you can see the hypocrisy and the logical failure behind it.

Chapter Two - The Money Next Door
The story of the neighbors continues here, focusing on the fact that one of them actually has a spending compulsion and they were racking up tens of thousands of dollars in home equity and credit card debt. They seemed to have everything - an amazing home decor, a car in the city, expensive haircuts and clothing, and so on, but it was all being fueled by credit cards. Viewing them from the outside, it would be incredibly easy to be jealous of their supposed largesse, but behind the walls it was a disaster, like a two by four internally ridden with termites. Even worse, one of them had developed a psychological addiction to spending, and she was adding thousands of dollars a month to her credit card balance. The spending was basically out of control, but she was in denial, using the rush of spending to quell the pain. In other words, those “perfect” next door neighbors had a disastrous life.

Sometimes, what seems up is actually down, and if you spend your time comparing yourself to what you see on the outside, you’ll end up breaking what’s on the inside. Don’t let your perceptions from afar about the people around you guide your decisions, especially your spending. The people next door with all the stuff might be hiding a nightmare behind those solid oak doors.

Chapter Three - Keeping Up with the Joneses
This chapter tells the story of a different couple, ones who moved into a neighborhood where they could just barely afford the mortgage and they were surrounded by people with a much higher standard of living than them. Instead of just keeping their eyes focused on their own situation, they began to constantly compare their own lifestyle and standard of living to those around them - and they began to adapt. Of course, when you have the lowest income in the neighborhood but you’re putting on the airs of a much higher income, it’s not surprising that you begin to turn to credit, and it’s no different for Dan and Tammy, the couple in this story. They eventually got dragged into bankruptcy, destroying their credit for a decade.

The lesson here is obvious: it’s far better to live in the best house on a low income street than the worst house on a high income street, because on the low income street there’s very little pressure to spend more than you’re already spending, whereas on the high income street there’s a ton of pressure to spend more than you have. Don’t fall into that trap. (Incidentally, we moved into what could best be described as an average house - the one to our north is comparable, the one to the south is nicer, and the one to the west is not quite as nice.)

Chapter Four - Capitol Secrets
Similarly, it can be an enormous financial problem to get into a job that has the appearance of earning far more than it does. Shira Boss uses the perfect example of congresspeople, which many people assume must be rich. After all, they make a strong salary and … they’re congresspeople. The truth, however, is that most congresspeople have difficulty making it financially. They’re almost required by their constituents to appear wealthy - wearing nice suits and the like - but many of them sleep on the couches in their office or share one bedroom apartments just to get by.

This is another valuable lesson: the general public often has vastly incorrect perceptions as to the earnings of particular job titles, and they often expect you to live up to those expectations. If you’re choosing a job that has the appearance of wealth without actually earning it, you’re going to be in for a challenging road.

Chapter Five - Baby Boomers Beware
Another area where people are often subtly pushed into living beyond their means is in terms of demographics. For example, as many Boomers approach retirement, there are some that are financially prepared and are living the high life, while others are not - and they try to emulate this high life without proper preparedness, leading to financial ruin and working until very near the end of their life. This is actually a situation I worry about for some of the members of my own family - I watch them inch closer to retirement age and stlll they lack appropriate financial planning.

The best way to avoid this is to keep your eye on your own ball and figure out what you actually want. Which is more important to you: living it up a little now and working until you fall down, or retiring a bit early and enjoying your final years without the pressures of work? It’s not an easy decision, but you should make it without the pressures of society mattering at all. It’s your life - do with it what you really want to do, not what the marketing suggests.

Chapter Six - Behind the Hedges
Another way that society can subtly encourage you to spend more is when you live in a neighborhood or town defined by the community (or the world) at large as a “wealthy” neighborhood or town. For example, merely hearing that a person lives in Palm Beach evokes an idea in the minds of many that the person must in fact be wealthy. Often, this isn’t true at all - people try hard to preserve that impression because it increases property value (on paper), but their day to day reality is often far from that one might associate with wealthy. It’s filled with the same challenges that we all face - not knowing how to act around others, misunderstanding how they appear to others, having to make hard choices.

It’s very easy to say, “Well, they’re rich,” as though that makes many of the societal challenges that humans face somehow easier. It doesn’t. In fact, in my own life I’ve sometimes seen the opposite to be true. My father has never been wealthy, but he is only socially uncomfortable in extremely rare situations. On the other hand, the wealthiest person I know is often completely unsure how to act in most situations, so he often just remains quiet - and thus many people treat him with disdain for being aloof in his richness. People are people, no matter what they have.

Chapter Seven - Conclusion
There are countless ways in which society influences the money we spend - or the perception of the money we spend. The best ways to fight it are easy: focus on your own values and constantly try to be yourself. In other words, don’t be judged by what you think others might think of you, and don’t judge yourself by the choices of the people around you. Just be yourself.

Some Thoughts on Green with Envy

After reading Green with Envy, my mind was filled with several different thoughts. Here are a few of the more compelling ones.

I experience the challenge of not knowing how to behave sometimes, too. When I tell people I’m a writer, they usually paint some sort of image in their head. I’ve come to find out that it’s usually an image of a frustrated writer, sitting at his keyboard hammering away, often boozing himself into a stupor to deal with his own personal demons. It’s been voiced enough as a stereotype to me that I’ve even joked to my wife about it, telling her that maybe I should take a bottle of gin to the office with me when I close the door and focus on writing. Stereotypes are rarely true.

You never know what your neighbor’s true financial situation is. A friend of mine recently bought a BMW, something he’s always dreamed of owning. I knew him well enough to know that he could barely afford the insurance, let alone the car. It turns out that he had been left the money by a relative who had told him that he should go buy that BMW with the money. It’s almost funny to see how people’s perspectives have changed about this fellow just because of his different car. It actually shows the shallowness and superficiality of others.

Whenever you look down the block, just imagine all of the different ways the people are actually paying for this stuff. Maybe it’s debt. Maybe it’s an inheritance. In either case, it’s not sustainable, and you shouldn’t jump on board to something unsustainable either.

Is Green with Envy Worth Reading?

I found the first three chapters of Green with Envy to be essential reading for anyone who feels a lot of jealousy about the luxury trappings of people living around them. It paints a real picture of the true reality of the situation - and it’s rarely the happy luxury you’re imagining in your head. The remainder of the book was interesting, but not as vital - it merely reinforced the points of the first three chapters in that appearances are often not what they seem and you’ll do well for yourself to try to look past the veneer and see the true picture before you get jealous.

Green with Envy was a very enjoyable quick read, the perfect book to check out of the library and read in the evenings before bed. While it doesn’t contain any profound personal finance insights, it does a magnificent job of exposing the realities of being jealous of what you think others have.

I recommend checking it out from the library for a light and insightful read, particularly if you’re feeling mighty jealous of that family down the block that has everything.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t like going to the doctor. I had a few terrible experiences with who I still call “the world’s scariest doctor” when I was a young child (”I’m going to clean it out now” in a frigid monotone, followed by the sound of a buzzsaw starting up and something cold and metallic jabbing me in the ear), and since then I’d rather do almost anything than visit a medical professional.

Thus, it’s not only in my personal best interest but my financial best interest to get the absolute maximum value that I can out of every doctor’s visit. Here are ten great tactics to maximize the value of any doctor’s visit.

Be on time, and don’t throw a fit about waiting - medical emergencies do happen
When you have an appointment, do your best to show up on time - don’t just fluff it off by saying, “Well, they’ll call me in late anyway.” That just means that someone else will get called in before you and you’ll be even later. Most medical professionals make a concerted effort to keep to their schedule - they want to go home, too - but medical emergencies do happen. You’d want your doctor to drop everything and help you in a medical emergency, would you not? So why not be understanding when he or she does the same for another patient?

Get any concerns you have off your chest
No matter what the purpose of your visit is for (unless it’s to a specialist), let your doctor know of any medical concerns you have right then. It’s better to deal with all of your concerns in one appointment than to “let it slide” and have to come back at a later time for another appointment. Not only that, there’s some chance that your ailments may be connected and may apply to the condition you’re suffering now.

Be fully honest, even if it means admitting some bad behavior
Doctors can only make a correct diagnosis if they’re given correct information, so that means telling the honest truth about your behavior. If you don’t exercise, don’t describe it as “light.” If you drink a six pack a day, don’t say you have “a beer or two once in a while.” If you smoke a pack a day, don’t say “I have a few a week.” Don’t say that you eat healthy when you just knocked back a few double cheeseburgers. If you use hard drugs, don’t deny it. If you’ve had a lot of unprotected sex, say so. Your doctor is there to heal you, not judge you, and you make it more difficult to get the treatment you need if you create falsifications about your situation.

Give as much detail as is reasonably possible
When describing your concerns or your condition, give details (within reason). Don’t just say “my chest hurts,” describe the pain. Is it a weight? Is it intense? Is it constant, or does it come and go? Does it occur after you do certain things? Let your doctor know all of this about any ailments you’re experiencing. Not doing this gives your doctor a false impression of the situation - a good doctor will ask questions to tease this out of you, but you’re better off just spilling it up front.

If something is unclear at all to you, ask
If your doctor describes something or makes a suggestion that you don’t fully understand, admit that you don’t understand and ask for more information. If you walk out of a doctor’s office confused about your condition and confused about what you’re supposed to do, your appointment just became a waste of your time and the doctor’s time. Don’t leave unless you understand your condition.

Ask about independent steps you can take to prevent recurrence
No matter what your condition is, ask the doctor what you can do on your own to help with the symptoms or prevent recurrence - and take the suggestions seriously. You’ll probably hear things you already knew about (eat better, exercise, stop smoking, cut back on the alcohol) and maybe a thing or two you didn’t expect (start taking a vitamin, eat more carrots, wash your hands). The key is to follow up on those things - actually make a real effort to do them so that you don’t get sick again.

Ask for prescription samples
If you’re given a prescription, ask for some samples of that prescription. This serves two purposes: it potentially reduces your overall cost for prescription, and it gives you enough of the medication that you can get out of the office and find a pharmacy with the lowest prices for your insurance or other payment situation.

Ask for a generic alternative prescription
Another option is to ask for a generic alternative prescription, especially since $4 prescriptions have become prevalent at many pharmacies. If there’s a generic alternative for your prescription, switching to that medication can save you a significant amount of money.

If you’re getting bloodwork done, ask for some general screenings (like cholesterol, etc.)
Almost always, your doctor will happily oblige, mark a few more spots on the bloodwork form, and your out of pocket cost will remain the same while you get more personal medical information. This is always a good thing to do, no matter what your perspective is on your general state of health, as it can flag problems that are coming down the road.

Thank your doctor and nurse
This seems trivial to some, but it can make a big difference to your doctor and nurse. Medical professionals have to deal with unimaginable stuff on a daily basis and it’s quite often a thankless job (even if the pay is solid). Many doctors are faced with belligerent patients, heart-wrenching (and sometimes stomach-wrenching) situations, and often go home to face a giant stack of medical school bills. Take a moment to sincerely thank your medical professionals for the work they do - it can make a big difference in their day.