A few weeks ago, I had to buy a new belt. My old one was simply on the verge of falling apart and belts are fairly rare items to come across in used clothing shops.

I sometimes will buy a belt from a local department store, but I usually find that something goes wrong with a cheap belt before very long. It will start wearing very quickly, the buckle will bend or break (and bending it back just causes it to repeat again). A belt is one of the few clothing items (along with shoes) that I’m willing to pay more for to get a good, reliable one that will last for years.

Anyway, my path leads me to a few different chain clothing stores that sell men’s belts. They were all fairly near each other, so I went to each store and examined the belts, looking for one that I liked. I eventually found one that suited me at J.C. Penney, so I take it up to the customer service desk to buy it.

The lady behind the counter was pleasant and chatty. She told me how much she liked Nancy Sinatra, whose music was playing over the loudspeaker, and made sure I had found just what I was looking for.

Then she dropped the question. “If you sign up for a store credit card, you can get 10% off this purchase.”

Now, at best, this option would have saved me a couple dollars on the belt (I don’t remember the exact purchase price, but it wasn’t an excessively overpriced belt or anything). Of course, I could have used it as an excuse to buy more items, but that would have meant spending money I didn’t really need to spend. Even worse, owning such a store credit card has its own drawbacks.

I quickly told her “no” and went on my merry way.

So, why didn’t I jump on this “great” opportunity?

Lots of stores will encourage you to sign up for their store credit card. Often, they’ll give you some sort of bonus for doing so, usually in the form of a discount on your current purchase. As I hinted at above, there are several reasons why I don’t do this.

One, the discount usually isn’t that much. If you’re spending $100, a 10% discount only saves you $10. You’ll save more by talking yourself out of just one or two of the items you’re buying.

Two, the discount can often encourage you to spend more. Let’s say I’m spending $200 and that 10% discount is netting me $20. If I look at that as free money, it might convince me to go back to the racks and pick out another item. If I pick out a $22 item, my total goes right back to $200. I’m not saving anything. All I’m doing is getting a free item I didn’t really want – if I truly wanted it, I would have bought it.

Three, signing up for such a card almost always puts you on a mailing list. You’ll start receiving catalogs and other materials in the mail, as well as potential phone calls from that company.

Four, most such cards do not offer much of a reward after that initial bonus. Programs do vary from store to store, but many stores don’t offer a significant reward after the sign-up. There’s not much reason to ever use the card again other than to overspend.

Finally, every card you sign up for is an identity theft risk. It’s another balance you need to watch and another avenue for disturbing the peace of your credit report.

All of this for a small savings? I’ll pass, and you should, too.

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.

In the last few days, I’ve attended and coached multiple youth soccer games, taken a group of children to the zoo, entertained a much-loved houseguest, assisted in constructing a building, and organized a complicated trip.

I’m sunburnt and tired and my feet hurt.

Yet, somehow, I feel pretty good, too.

Broken Open to Greatness: Transforming Tragedy into Triumph I don’t think people are really interested in the “perfect” person. They either want to see someone who failed overcoming that failure, or to see someone who succeed fail in some fashion. (@ jonathan fields)

How to Live Well “Want little, and you are not poor.” Indeed. (@ zen habits)

Avoiding Student Loans Gave Me A Head Start in Life The more I study the realities of student loans, the more I think that immediately jumping into college after high school graduation might not be the best idea for a lot of people. (@ get rich slowly)

Financial Rules That Work – And Don’t Work A lot of those financial “rules” are based in reality – but they’re not necessarily based in your reality. (@ free money finance)

Why Do the Rich Get Richer? I think the best answer to that question is that people who are able to build a strong net worth don’t take things for granted. I find that the more things you assume, the harder it is to really get ahead. Never assume that your future self will take care of things, for example. (@ watson inc.)

It’s very easy to get into a routine with a credit card. Perhaps you signed up for one in college or took the first offer that comes along when you need a card and that’s the one you stick with for your primary use.

In my own case, I stuck with a card that earned rewards that went to a charity for a very long time. It made me feel good in the sense that my spending was actually contributing to that charity, though it was only earning about 0.5% of my purchases for the charity.

Eventually, I wised up and replaced the card with a Mastercard that offered rewards for a particular book store chain, thinking I’d earn some free books through using it. This time, I found that most of my purchases weren’t earning me much at all in terms of rewards.

Now, I use three credit cards for all of my purchases. One is associated with the gas station that I use exclusively, another is associated with my primary online retailer, and the other earns solid rewards as a generic grocery store card. Together, they earn me almost exactly a 3% return on my spending.

How does this work? It’s really pretty straightforward.

For starters, don’t carry a balance on any of your credit cards. Carrying a balance trumps any rewards that you might be earning. If you are planning on making a big purchase on credit and consider scooping up some rewards to be a “perk,” it’s not. Unless you’re on a special 0% interest introductory program, you’ll never earn as much in rewards as you’ll lose carrying a balance on the card.

It’s important to keep in mind that if you’re not carrying a balance on your card, the interest rate on the card really donesn’t matter much at all. If you never carry a balance, a 7.9% interest rate means the same thing as a 31.9% interest rate. In both cases, you’ll never pay a dime in interest.

The key is to only sign up for cards that line up with the purchases you’re already making. If you don’t, you’ll either find yourself buying things you don’t need to get rewards or not earning solid rewards on the purchases you make.

My suggestion is to look at the credit card offerings at the retailers you already use. What card is offered by your regular gas station? What card is offered by the grocery store you regularly use? What card is offered by your preferred online retailer?

Most of the time, these cards will offer very strong rewards for using the card at the retailer in question, with very moderate rewards for spending at other places. For example, the Target Visa gives you 5% off all of your purchases at Target, but nothing at all for purchases elsewhere.

Because of this, I have a default card I use for purchases outside of those places (one that gives me a moderate reward for all purchases), but when I’m shopping at my preferred grocery store or at my preferred gas station, I use the card associated with those places (because those cards earn me virtually nothing at places outside of those retailers). Since the vast majority of my normal purchases are covered here, I have no reason to sign up for other cards.

The goal here is to make sure that the healthy financial choices you already make are earning you as much as possible. If you’re in a situation where you use a credit card safely and without carrying a balance, it can be a useful tool, and you should choose the tool that earns you the best return. For that search, the best route is to start with the retailers you already use.

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.

When I was in high school, my parents wound up with a bunch of cases of Dial soap that they got for free. They filled part of a room with all of the soap and we used it for years. I actually took one of the last multi-packs of it to college with me three years later.

A couple years ago, a neighbor bought an entire cow (that had been packaged at a local meat locker) for an insanely low price. It was more meat than the family had anticipated, so they were actually selling packages of meat out of their freezer so that they could fit everything they had in there before it went bad.

Last year, I was able to get some free toilet paper, but only if I was willing to take 288 jumbo rolls at once.

Over the last week, we’ve been harvesting oregano by the pound from our lower garden. Something about the current climate has made it thrive and we have far more oregano than we can ever use ourselves.

Sometimes, when you live frugally and chase bargains, you wind up with an enormous quantity of some item, more than you can ever use in a reasonable time frame. You find a deal where you can buy bottles of shampoo for a nickel each if you buy 300 at once, or you have something go haywire in your garden and deliver far more food than you eat.

I don’t like to see such opportunities go to waste. I keep my ears open and whenever such an opportunity comes along, I jump on board.

Of course, these kinds of opportunities can present storage difficulties, of course, and you often have to do a bit of extra planning to figure out how to handle them.

Pass on the savings to friends and family. If you’re able to get a large quantity of an item at a very low cost, prorate that cost and sell it to your friends and family to recoup some of your own expense.

For example, let’s say you were able to get 500 rolls of paper towels for $20 due to some crazy going out of business sale. This is going to fill up your storage areas, so you’re going to have to get rid of them. You paid four cents per paper towel roll, so start selling some to friends for four cents each. Soon, you’ll be down to a manageable amount.

You can even feel okay turning a bit of a profit on it. Sell the rolls for a dime each and after 200 of them are gone, you’ll have your $20 back. You essentially got 300 rolls for free, and any rolls you sell beyond that are profit. You’re certainly not scamming your friends and family selling rolls at a dime a piece, either.

Give some away. You don’t have to re-sell the items, either. Give a few items away to your friends and family and they’ll be appreciative. It’s a perfect way to get rid of the stuff you’re going to have to store while also cementing a friendship.

Most of the time, if you have a big bargain on a bulk buy, it’s still a pretty good bargain even after giving items away. With that bulk paper towel buy, for example, if you give away 100 of the rolls, you’re still only spending $0.05 per roll for the remaining 400 rolls.

Sell it. Put some of that abundance you’ve purchased out at your next yard sale. There’s nothing saying you can’t sell, say, a roll of paper towels for a quarter the next time you have a yard sale, and all you’d have to sell is about 80 rolls to make the initial money back on that paper towel example.

I have friends who actually buy things that they consider highly underpriced largely for the purpose of selling them again at their own yard sales and incurring a profit.

Preserve (and shrink) it. This is a great tactic if you have an abundance of things that can easily be preserved. Can it be dried? Can it be reduced in size in any way?

We are using this tactic with our abundance of oregano. We’re drying it, chopping it, and storing it in smaller bags for later use.

Have a party. When my father was younger, he caught several hundred pounds of fish in one day. His solution? Have a big party and invite everyone to bring a side dish.

All he did was invite a few close friends to come over earlier and they set up an assembly line to cook a large quantity of fish. A lot of people showed up bringing side dishes of all kinds and it ended up being an enormous dinner party with more than a hundred people having fun.

The cost for my parents was virtually nothing, but they were able to provide an evening of entertainment for a lot of people, which led to better friendships and lots of invites to other parties. That’s a wonderful return for very little cost.

If you find yourself lucky enough to acquire something in abundance at an amazingly low cost or little effort, don’t miss out on it. There are many things you can do to maximize the value you’re getting.

Credit cards are like sharp knives. They’re wonderful tools, but they can damage you badly if you use them incorrectly.

Whenever I hear from someone who is having trouble paying their credit card bills and is struggling to keep their head above water, I encourage them to lock down their credit cards. Cut them up. Freeze them in a block of ice.

But what about people who don’t have any credit card debt and want to use one to maintain a good credit history so that they can get good insurance rates and a good rate on an eventual mortgage?

For those people, a credit card can be a great option as long as they follow what I consider to be the golden rule of healthy credit card usage: pay off the whole balance each month.

Credit cards can be incredibly useful tools for convenience when doing many routine tasks, like buying gas or visiting a checkout. While most of these tasks also accept debit cards, I prefer using a credit card because if there’s an identity theft, the money is not drained from my checking account until I discover the issue.

As I’ve mentioned several times recently, the trick with credit cards is to not allow them to trick you into a false sense of financial confidence. When you buy something with a credit card, it is not immediately reflected in the balance of your checking account, and that fact can often lull people into a false sense of financial security, which can lead to overspending.

The trick is to understand what you’re spending and stick to a budget, whether it’s formal or not.

If you’ve decided to allow yourself $200 in discretionary spending a month in your budget, stick to that amount whether you’re using a credit card or you’re using cash. However you pay for it, stick with a total of $200 per month.

If you’ve budgeted $500 a month for your family’s food, stick to that amount regardless of how you pay for it. Just because you have a large credit limit on your card doesn’t mean it’s a good decision to go over your budgeted amount.

If you stick steadfastly to your budget, you will be spending less than you earn and you’ll always have enough to pay your credit card bill in full at the end of the month.

This affords you the convenience and consumer protection of a credit card and the natural bolstering of your credit report and credit scores that come with it, and you’ll achieve that without any danger of falling into debt.

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.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Junk mail and postal employees
2. Defaulting on national debt?
3. Tax liens
4. Coffee frugality tip
5. Charity calling list removal
6. Worried about retirement
7. Car shop ramps up quote!
8. Smarter Bank?
9. Graduate without job; what’s next?
10. Telemarketing tips

Over the next month, we are having six different houseguests staying at our house over eleven different nights, with gaps in between and different people coming and going.

When you add in the fact that this is happening during Sarah’s most stressful work period, you end up with what feels like a very fully packed month, teeming with events of all kinds.

The key is planning and preparation, of course. If you keep on top of things, you can handle anything.

Q1: Junk mail and postal employees
I retired from the Post Office. The “junk” mail is what pays the salary of the Postal Workers mostly. You can do a lot of frugal things with the ones you dont want. First of all I take the pages and make decorate envelopes. Just get an old envelope like you mail a birthday card in gently pull apart and you have your template.

Give you catalog to kids to cut out and have Paper Dolls or play with.

You can tear out the pages and put around your plants and then mulch over them. It works as a weedblocker and eventually will go back to the ground.

I dont like getting them anymore than others but when I think it pays my former employees salaries or helps a big majority and they are in trouble (USPS) as it is with email and online bill paying I wish there was a list I could get on to get MORE coming to my home than not.
- John

There are a lot of uses for unwanted junk mail, and you mention some of them. If you do wind up with junk mail, it’s a great idea to find alternative uses for it.

However, the policies of the postal service have created this situation. They’ve kept the price of a postage stamp artificially low for a very long time. It has not nearly kept up with the growth in the price of fuel or of postal employee wages. They’ve chosen to subsidize that by appealing to companies who produce junk mail, because they need to keep the mail volume up.

The biggest mistake the postal service ever made is not matching the services of private companies like FedEx and UPS. They already have a strong infrastructure in place that could easily handle those services, but they chose not to do it. FedEx and UPS make a profit, so why couldn’t the postal service? They chose to stay out of the lucrative parcel business to their own detriment.

Shipping out lots of junk mail is the postal service’s business choice, but I don’t feel obligated to receive it.

Q2: Defaulting on national debt?
When I read about the consequences of defaulting on your debt, most of the consequences seem like they’re quite survivable. Sure, there’s some financial pain, but you come out the other side with a fresh start. If our national debt is that bad, what keeps us from doing the same?
- Jeff

It wouldn’t be good.

The way the U.S. government finances its debts is through treasury notes. These are considered the rock-solid investment for global investing. If you want a guaranteed return on your money over a long period, buy a treasury note. Defaulting on our debt means that the government has chosen to not pay back the money people have invested in treasury notes.

Pretty much every economic market in the world would choke. Other countries would abandon the dollar and many would begin to refuse to accept it when trading with them. The cost of everything made outside of this country – all of the goods from China, all of the imported oil – would skyrocket extremely quickly. A tripling in price (or worse) is completely realistic.

The easiest way to imagine this is by thinking of a person who has quite a lot of credit card debt but has a HUGE credit limit. They’ve become accustomed to being able to live on credit and right now they cannot pay their normal bills with their normal income. They have to use credit to cover the bills. Now, what happens to that person if all of the banks suddenly cut their credit limit? Well, they’d be eating beans and living in a shack for a while, and that’s what would happen to the U.S. if we defaulted.

Q3: Tax liens
Do you think tax liens are as good an investment as all of the ads say they are? It seems that we are in the middle of the property tax season. I have checked out my own county (Etowah Co., AL…12%) and find a lot of taxes were delinquent by the tax sale date. Also, even after the sale there are a lot of Business Personal Property taxes still due (about $40,000 worth). I just retired early (62)and figure that I have about $100 per month to invest in these liens. What do you think?
- Deborah

Most ads for tax lien investing neglect to mention that there is a ton of risk involved in such investments. There’s the underlying real estate risk, of course, but you also run the risk of municipal fines, condemnation of the property, government errors, legislative changes, court rulings, and personal bankruptcy.

You can get a great return on tax liens if everything works out (as you mention), but the risks are great as well and there’s a chance that you’ll wind up with nothing or only a partial return on your investment.

If you want to invest in these, I would not invest any money that I needed for retirement or other purposes. Use only money that you can afford to lose.

Q4: Coffee frugality tip
Sarah drinks coffee, right? If she does and uses any creamer in it, pass along this tip to her that I’ve been using for years. Instead of buying that expensive coffee creamer at the store, just take a small bottle, add some whole milk to it, and put a few drops of vanilla extract or peppermint extract with it. Mix it up and use that as creamer instead. It’s way cheaper than that creamer at the store.
- Nina

Sarah has actually done this quite a few times. She just takes a used creamer container and fills it up in much the way Nina describes.

There are a lot of different things you can add for flavor, like almond and peppermint and vanilla extract, or even a bit of chocolate syrup if you like a chocolate flavor.

For example, if she wants some almond-vanilla creamer, she just puts in three drops of almond extract and three drops of vanilla extract, stirs it well, and enjoys it with her coffee. It’s pretty cheap!

Q5: Charity calling list removal
How do I get removed from a calling list for a charity? The national do not call registry you mentioned didn’t work, nor did asking them nicely. Help!
- Chelsea

Charities generally don’t pay any attention to the national do not call registry. They aren’t required to.

Now, the charity should pay attention to your requests to be removed from their calling list. Make sure that they’re clear that they are talking to you, then politely ask to be removed from their calling list.

If you just pick up the phone and yell “Stop calling me!” and hang up, it won’t work. See the last question in this mailbag for more details.

Q6: Worried about retirement
I am 62 years old looking at retiring at 85 based on my status and what others say you need. Scared to death and running out of time. I am a teacher(11 years) as is my wife. I have a little savings less than 50K in IRA’s, myself a pension from the school system and penitence from a former employer, wife has a 401 with the private company she works for. Money is tight, we live check to check. Seems like we spend our money trying to still raise our children and not any additional money for savings let alone gas for our vehicles. 150 year old house we live requires maint Lawyers for a custody battle of grandson and bills from our son as he had a bad accident and getting himself established. We need to buy another car soon for my wife as hers has like 200K miles on it.

I didn’t plan earlier and I don’t really have a clear plan now. Late 30′s I had a little money, and some starting about 11 years ago. I was busy chasing carrots and didn’t catch any. I am thinking I will need to work past 66 a few years and file for SS to try help save a little more. Thinking I need to find a business but really fishing for ideas. I have some trade skills as a hearing aid specialist that could lead to some employment on the side. I am hoping to sell this house in about 7-10 years for bit of profit and downsize. We are tied to this area for awhile until our grandson gets older(15 more years)

I really go from positive to negative about my situation. I feel grateful for what I do have and where I am, but feel so frustrated that I didn’t do things different with regard to my career decisions but can’t go back so I have to work with where I am and what I have.
- Jim

There are a lot of people in your boat, Jim. I’m friends with or related to some of them.

The key is to focus on what you have and not on the opportunities you missed. You can’t do anything about the past, so stop worrying about it and regretting it. All you can do is affect what happens from here going forward.

Given your situation, your plans seem completely reasonable. I think you’re making the right moves now and that’s what matters. It does mean that you’ll be working until very late in your life, of course, but if you are doing something you love, that’s not a bad thing. I get quite a few emails from retirees who are struggling to find something to do in retirement. I don’t believe a full retirement is all it’s cracked up to be.

Q7: Car shop ramps up quote!
Right now, my car is in the shop getting some engine work done on it. When I first took it there, they gave me a really good quote (about $1,100 for everything), but now they have my car in pieces and say it will cost at least $2,000. I feel scammed. What can I do here?
- Larry

Your first step should be to figure out what the parts actually cost. Get a complete list of the work they’re doing and the parts they’re talking about replacing and then shop around for those parts yourself.

You should also be shopping around for labor quotes from other shops. Tell them what work needs to be done and what parts you have and that you just need the labor.

Once you have the total cost of doing it elsewhere (parts plus labor), go back to the first shop and play a little hardball. Don’t be afraid to tow your car to another shop to get it worked on.

They can’t hold your car hostage from you. If they are, contact your local law enforcement.

Q8: Smarter Bank?
What do you think about the Smarter Bank to help pay back college loans?
- Juliet

For those unaware, SmarterBank is an online bank that offers a program that helps with student loan repayment as a “reward” for participating in offers with various retailers. It also enables others to easily contribute to your student loan repayment.

The problem with this (and other programs like it) is that you have to spend more money to “save.” In order to get anything out of the rewards program, you have to spend money. SmarterBank isn’t really clear on how your spending will create these student loan savings, either. Will it be with ordinary purchases? Do you have to just use their “deals”? They’re not really clear on their website.

I’d sit back and wait on this deal.

Q9: Graduate without job; what’s next?
I graduated from college in May 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in communications, specializing in television media. I had hoped to get a job at a local television station, but so far I haven’t found a thing. I’m living with my parents and my student loans are in forbearance so I’m surviving. My question is what should I be doing now? Should I try to go back to school for a masters degree? Should I keep searching?
- Darren

It depends on a lot of things. Are there are a lot of positions available or are they rare? Are you reaching the interview stage or are you never getting a callback? Is this a career path you’re really excited about following?

If you’re getting a lot of interviews and there are tons of positions available, I’d keep trying. If the positions are rare and you’re not getting interviews, I’d look at a different path.

If you’re not sure how to further your current path in terms of education, study what sort of education people have that have achieved the career goals you’re setting for yourself.

Q10: Telemarketing tips
Telemarketers and Fundraising Centers are annoying- but you can make them less annoying by doing one pretty simple thing- answer your phone. Most centers use automatic dialing so they can cycle through thousands of phone numbers every night. They will call you every day until they reach you. So- there is NO sense in getting angry and a Telemarketer for calling every day when all you would need to do is pick up the phone and talk to the person.

Now when I say “talk,” I mean something pretty specific. If you just pick up the phone and say “thanks but no thanks”– the calls may continue. This is because the caller was unable to confirm who they were speaking to. Make sure you allow the telemarketer to introduce themselves, tell you who they’re calling for, and then confirm that you are the person they’re trying to reach. Proceed to ambiguous statements like ” now isn’t a good time.” Then tell them to have a great day and get off the phone. If you are particularly wary of the group calling you, request to be placed on their “do not call list.”

This is important because the government “do not call list” that you suggested in your post only really blocks you from true telemarketers. The list has two big exceptions: Non-Profits (like my University call center) and Political Organizations. So if you’re tired of University Y calling you- make sure you request to be placed on their separate do not call list.

You have no idea how many people get angry with college students like myself about the multitude of calls they receive. Unfortunately, when someone calls you every day it probably signifies that they want to get a hold of you. So my advice is: if you pick up the phone the FIRST time, politely decline and hang up the phone, your phone will ring much less and you will be much less annoyed.
- Ronnie

This is good advice. Just yelling into the phone that they should stop calling you and hanging up won’t do a bit of good because the telemarketer doesn’t know who they’re talking to.

Make sure they know that they have the right person on the line, then politely request that they stop calling you. Without at least some verification that they have the right person on the line, they’re not going to remove you. Rage certainly isn’t going to help, either.

It’s not in the interest of any business or organization to keep calling someone who is not going to buy from them or contribute to them.

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

First and foremost, ignore those ads from freecreditreport.com and freecreditscore.com and the like. Ignore them. All they do is require you to sign up for a service you don’t want in order to get something that you can already get for free through the federal government.

The federal government’s real site for getting your credit report is annualcreditreport.com. It doesn’t require signing up for any program or paying any fees. Instead, it just lets you get a free copy of your credit report every year from each of the three major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Transunion, and Experian).

The other sites will give you those reports as well, but they also require you to sign up for an additional credit monitoring service. Sure, you can get out of that service if you want, but there’s no reason to go through the hassle at all.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the question of what your credit report is and why you should care.

A credit report is a summary of a person’s (or company’s) history of borrowing and repaying money, generally covering the last seven years. Pretty much any business that lends you money will report this information to the major credit reporting agencies, along with updates as to whether you’re repaying those loans or not. This can even extend to other monthly bills, though the reporting of those is at the discretion of that utility company.

When someone wants to find out if you’re reliable – say, when you’re trying to get a home loan or trying to get a job – they can gain access to your credit report and use it to evaluate your reliability and trustworthiness. Have you been repaying your debts? They’ll know, for the most part.

Lots of businesses and organizations use credit reports to evaluate customers and potential employees. They make decisions such as the insurance rate to offer you and whether to offer you a job based (in part) on what they learn from your credit report.

The three credit reporting agencies are not perfect. It’s in their business interest to make sure that their reports are as accurate as they can be, but people report incorrect information sometimes and sometimes the wrong information ends up on reports. There’s also the issue of identity theft, where someone takes your information and does potentially nefarious things with it.

Thus, it’s important to make sure that the information on your credit report is accurate and represents a good picture of your financial history.

You’re allowed to get one free copy of your credit report from each credit reporting agency each calendar year. Thus, it’s a good idea to get one credit report every four months or so on a rotating basis. For example, you might get a report from Experian in May, one from Equifax in September, and one from TransUnion in January. This is something well worth adding to your calendar so you remember to do it.

A credit report is fairly easy to understand. It lists all of your creditors – the people you owe money to – and whether you’re up to date on your payments with them. It will include any creditors you’ve dealt with in the last seven years.

If you find something incorrect, be sure to let the credit reporting agency know about it. They have guidelines for handling incorrect information or potential identity theft.

Be proactive. Check your credit report. You’ll be glad you did, even if it’s just for peace of mind.

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.

When I was about fourteen, I watched a cancer-stricken Jim Valvano give an amazing speech at the 1993 ESPY Awards. That speech has stuck with me ever since. Here’s the speech in its entirety:

The part that always got to me was near the start of the speech:

When people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it’s the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.

Laugh. Think. Cry.

The Simple Dollar is a personal finance blog, so I write about money topics most of the time. Managing our money and maximizing what we get out of it is important.

Yet, for all the money we spend, all of the possessions we have, and all of the professional stress we put ourselves under, none of it touches the feeling of a good laugh. Few things elate me more than learning something new. Few things help take the pain away from an emotional fall and bring about understanding quite like a shed tear.

I have a marriage to keep up, three children to raise, countless professional projects to work on, many personal interests that desire attention, and many community responsibilities. Pretty much every single day involves running through a long to-do list.

One thing I’ve tried hard to do, every day, is make room for three more things on that list. Laugh. Think. Cry.

They make a day more complete. They leave me feeling more alive than when I woke up that morning. I feel more in touch with the world and more in touch with me if I make room for laughter, tears, and a new idea in my life.

Challenge yourself today to do those three things. Laugh. Think. Cry. See if it doesn’t leave you in a better place than when you started without even spending a penny.

At the end of the speech, Valvano says, “Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.”

Laugh. Think. Cry. Sounds like a good day to me.