Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal development, personal productivity, or other book of interest.

The New Global Student by Maya Frost is one of those books that takes what you think you know about a subject and flips it on its ear. This time around, it’s the standard route that most high schoolers take towards their education: take lots of AP classes, sweat about the ACT and SAT, apply to hyper-competitive colleges and hope you get in, apply for piles of scholarships, sweat out the FAFSA, then go on to college, where you’ll likely be buried in mountains of student loans.

This process is seen as so standard that many people don’t even question whether or not it makes sense to start pushing our fourteen and fifteen year olds through this woodchipper. The New Global Student argues that this path is not the only path - in fact, Frost argues that there is a much better way to help your children transition into the latter stages of their education. Hence the eye-catching subtitle: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education.

I fully expect that many people will immediately reject the central premise of this book - that the “traditional hypercompetitive SAT/AP/GPA path” can be easily dumped and a new path to educational success can be found. All I can say is this: time and time again, throughout my college career, the people that seemed to have the best grasp of what they needed to do to succeed and the value they could get out of college were people who came in from outside that treadmill.

Ready to dig in? Here are my impressions of and thoughts on The New Global Student.

One: Creative, Not Crazy - Our Family’s Story
In the summer of 2005, the Frost family sold everything and moved to Mexico for a year, then to Argentina. The family had four teenage daughters, including a high school freshman, a junior, and a senior, and they were unable to speak Spanish when they left. Not only that, the girls also spent years in other countries on yearlong exchanges. They did not worry too much about the perfect GPA and they also didn’t take the SAT. You might think that this would blow up all of the girls’ chances of getting into a good school, but instead it did the opposite - it painted very compelling pictures of young women who were experiencing the world, not just pumping up their numbers. Compelling enough to get them piles of scholarships and admissions to good schools.

Two: Beyond Math and Mandarin
Frost’s argument about why all of this works really boils down to two big factors. First, the diversity of experiences forced the children to learn how to be collaborative. They were constantly being put into cultural and intellectual situations where they had to learn to work well with others in order to get through it. In contrast, high school in America - with the SAT/GPA/AP milestones - are highly competitive without much focus on collaboration. The collaborative nature of their high school experience, in other words, was a huge advantage.

Second, the children were heavily ingrained throughout their lives with five key principles: flexibility (independent thinking, eagerness to explore new ideas and places), awareness (ability to intelligently discuss a wide variety of topics, compassion and respect for others), curiosity (an interest in a variety of areas and the ability to ask questions and investigate those areas), trustworthiness (realization of the vitality of being dependable, strong communication skills, complete things on time), and self-direction (establish and move towards goals, internalized work ethic and motivation).

These aspects combine together to make young people who are ready to tackle anything. In my eyes, it’s a great recipe for parenting in the modern world - I strive for all of these things with my own children, even at their young age.

Three: Fego: You’re Soaking in It!
What keeps our children from having these attributes? Frost points at two huge factors.

First, fear. We fear letting go of our kids. We fear not doing enough. We fear taking charge. We fear slowing down. We fear unstructured time and unstructured activities. We fear falling behind. These fears all lead us towards pushing our children hard down that typical path. Instead, we’re better off hammering in the big principles of independent thought and self-responsibility when they’re young and letting go as much as we can when they’re older.

Second, ego. We want to believe that we’re vital to the process of our children’s final steps towards adulthood. We’re not. Once puberty hits, we’re a support staff - we’re no longer absolutely vital to the process. Similarly, we tie our own sense of self-worth to the accomplishments of our children - if our kids get a high score on the SAT or get an A in an AP class, that’s proof that we’re great and something we can brag about to others, right? Wrong. It’s just ego fuel that actually hurts our kids.

Another interesting argument: our children have huge advantages with the advent of computers, the internet age, and the easy access to information. Shouldn’t this mean that they blow us away in terms of intellectual growth at a young age? The problem is that instead of focusing on actually raising intellectually curious and self-reliant kids, we focus on them getting A’s in classes that likely aren’t pushing them very hard at all. So why should they grow if all that matters is that A? Instead, the book suggests using local community colleges to put your child in genuinely challenging classes that really push them - a “B” in a class that really pushes their work ethic and intellect is much more valuable than a cruise-control “A” in every aspect other than the almighty GPA.

Four: AP, IB, & SAT - OMG!
So many students today stress themselves out over taking tons of AP classes and getting a great SAT score. Frost argues that both of these have less value in terms of getting into college than you might think.

First of all, she argues that so many students are taking AP courses that they’re becoming watered down. With B- students taking the courses and sometimes passing, the material may be at a somewhat lower level than before. On top of that, students are now taking three or four AP courses at once. As a result, many colleges are eliminating the credits they offer in exchange for AP courses. In the end, the value of an AP course is lower than it once was, both in terms of what’s learned and in terms of how colleges value it.

A similar phenomenon is happening with the SAT and ACT. High schools are now beginning to require the exams; meanwhile, community colleges don’t require the test at all and most colleges and universities are de-emphasizing the test in terms of admission criteria. In other words, instead of becoming a useful prep tool for college, it’s become so universalized that it no longer matters as much as it once did.

What does matter, then? How can a student stand out? Frost points towards the IB, which provides a rigorous plan of study available in many different nations that, upon completion, is accepted (and often considered quite valuable) for college admission. Plus, the IB de-emphasizes the pressure of AP classes and the SAT, instead focusing on teaching how to learn and how to collaborate, skills invaluable in a person’s career. Another approach: taking the GED as early as possible, skipping the high school “experience,” and moving on to college early.

Five: Meet the New A Student: Artful, Advanced, Atypical, and Adventurous
Frost argues (quite well, with a pile of anecdotes) that a well-balanced student is incredibly well served by spending time abroad during their high school experience. Such an experience provides a huge deal of personal growth, vastly improves personal awareness, and demonstrates on college applications that a student is committed to outside-the-box exploration.

Here’s the thing: people at this age are passionate and that passion floods in surprising directions. If you stifle that passion and attempt to channel it in a way you see fit, you’re likely to see the dam break and see passion flow in a terrible direction. Instead, offer your child as many positive channels as possible and see where their passion takes them. Putting a study abroad experience on the table certainly does that.

Six: The Boldest Advantage: A Yearlong High School Exchange
Almost all parents feel some strong reticence at the idea of sending their child abroad for a year to study. That’s the “fear and ego” mentioned earlier raising its head.

Instead, a study abroad program - if done with thought and planning - is probably the best move you could make for your child. It’ll help you deal with the “empty nest” problem in a cold turkey way, keeping you from being a helicopter parent when your child moves on. It’ll show your child in the clearest way possible that you respect their independence. Most importantly, though, it’ll give your child a huge dose of personal and intellectual growth as they learn about a different culture and different way of life while also continuing their education. Few things set up a student better for college than such an adventure.

How can you make the most of this? Go early (sophomore year is a good target), go long (a full year instead of a semester), and go challenging (a place with a different language and a different culture).

Seven: How to Save Thousands on College: Study Abroad
A similar philosophy applies in college - go early (sophomore year is a good target), go long (a full year instead of a semester), and go challenging (a place with a different language and a different culture). A study abroad program while in college also has an additional benefit: it’s cheap.

Many people scoff at this, pointing toward expensive study abroad packages offered by schools. The truth, though, is that those packages are often glorified travel packages - instead of immersing the student in another culture, it actually isolates them in a vacation-like bubble, housing them with other native English speakers and providing every possible accommodation. Very little actual value is gained.

Instead, consider applying directly to the university you desire to attend as an independent international student. You’ll live in the same housing as students there and will be fully immersed in the culture instead of isolated in a “submarine” of your own culture. Plus, the price is reasonable - often very reasonable. In many cases, it’s far less expensive than the price you’re paying for university at home.

Eight: The Full Family Deal: Sabbatical or Sell-It-All?
A third option - one that works well if you have multiple high-schoolers at once - is to simply spend a year abroad, enrolling your kids in school in that country for a year. This will be something we consider circa 2019, for example, when we have two children in early high school.

Obviously, this doesn’t work for everyone, but it does have certain advantages. If you can find a job in your career in another country, it’s a huge resume booster. If you’re engaged in a creative career, immersing yourself in a different culture can pay real dividends.

This is something that’s at least on the radar for us in several years. If my wife can get a job teaching English in another country for a year, we would be quite interested in pursuing this. I can in theory write from anywhere, too, so that also helps.

One good compromise - a summer-long sabbatical. Rent an apartment in a foreign nation for three months and see how things go. Engage in every activity you can while there - not tourist stops, but the way of life that people have there. Shop at their stores. Eat their food. Learn their language.

Nine: The Get-Real Guide for Bold Parents
The final chapter is something of a clean-up of the many issues brought up by this book. How do you handle the criticism from others who say you’re sinking your child’s chances because you’re not following the “normal” path? What about their safety?

Each of these questions has a very reasonable answer. As for the criticism, such study abroad programs actually vastly improve chances of college acceptance and of growing a student to the point where they can really take advantage of college. With the safety issue, high school students are often more safe abroad than at home - no drivers under the age of eighteen, students are protected from anti-American sentiments by their youth, and students are naturally more cautious because they’re in unfamiliar territory.

Is The New Global Student Worth Reading?
I’ll be honest with you: I’ve been questioning the absoluteness of the high school/SAT/college application/expensive college pipeline for a long time. I’m actually in favor of delaying college for a year or two after high school, allowing other life experiences to fill in the gap. Why not let a student spend a year working hard at a job or for a non-profit in between high school and college, learning what it actually means to earn a paycheck and make ends meet and what the value of a college education actually is. I know I certainly would have benefited from such a sojourn. I’ve also been thinking a lot about traveling abroad for an extended period when my children are older, perhaps spending a year in another country and allowing them to attend school there (Great Britain, perhaps, or maybe a nation where we don’t speak the language natively).

Reading The New Global Student actually knocked down the idea of the standard pipeline even more. It’s loaded with food for thought for any person with children school-aged or younger. Even if you consider the general idea to be nonsensical, there’s enough material in here about how to set the path for your child to excel in their educational and professional career and save money along the way that it’s at least worth a read for specific tips.

For us, it’s opened the door to a lot of discussion about what we can do as parents to prepare our children for this ever-shrinking world.

If you have kids, you owe it to yourself to read this one. It’ll really make you think about their education and how simply connecting the dots might not be the best route.

Go here to read the rest:
Review: The New Global Student

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

Breathe.

Breathing can transform your life.

If you feel stressed out and overwhelmed, breathe. It will calm you and release the tensions.

If you are worried about something coming up, or caught up in something that already happened, breathe. It will bring you back to the present.

If you are discouraged and have forgotten your purpose in life, breathe. It will remind you about how precious life is, and that each breath in this life is a gift you need to appreciate. Make the most of this gift.

If you have too many tasks to do, or are scattered during your workday, breathe. It will help bring you into focus, to concentrate on the most important task you need to be focusing on right now.

If you are spending time with someone you love, breathe. It will allow you to be present with that person, rather than thinking about work or other things you need to do.

If you are exercising, breathe. It will help you enjoy the exercise, and therefore stick with it for longer.

If you are moving too fast, breathe. It will remind you to slow down, and enjoy life more.

So breathe. And enjoy each moment of this life. They’re too fleeting and few to waste.

—

Tip: Put the word “Breathe” as a screensaver or desktop pic, or put it up as a note on your wall or fridge or on your desk. Then do it every time you see the word.

View original here:
Breathe.

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.

Over the last month, tons of readers have written to me asking me about Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service. Can you actually earn reasonable money with it, or is it a scam?

What is it? For those unaware, Mechanical Turk is a service from Amazon where you can complete simple tasks in exchange for a tiny payment. For example, you might look at an image and describe it in ten words for $0.08. You might fill out a multiple-choice survey for $0.10. You might be asked to write a product review for $2.50. For the most part, the tasks available through Mechanical Turk are quick and very simple. The problem is that, individually, they’re not big earners. You have to do quite a few in an hour in order to earn anything of significance.

Well, can you? I decided to try it out for myself. I browsed around the Mechanical Turk website, signed up, and set aside an hour to try to earn some money there. Here’s a detailed log of my experience.

8:46 AM - Signed up for Mechanical Turk. It took roughly a minute to open an account there - no problem.
8:47 AM - Chose my first task - write a 350-500 word article on “email autoresponder marketing” for $4. I’m just going to churn it out off the top of my head.
9:02 AM - Done - if that type of “off the cuff” writing is accepted, maybe Mechanical Turk is a decent way to earn money. I basically just wrote in a nearly train-of-thought style, something I would consider a weak first draft for The Simple Dollar, but still readable. I’m going to try categorizing some images at a penny a pop for a bit.
9:08 AM - I managed to do six images in six minutes for a whopping six cents. Not a good use of time. Note to future self: stay away from the single-penny tasks.
9:09 AM - After browsing some tasks, I decided to try a series of really short questionnaires from MasterCard for $0.10 a pop.
9:18 AM - I was able to do five of the dime surveys in eight minutes - totaling out to just under $4 an hour. Not good, but it could definitely be worse.
9:19 AM - I decided to try some simple product categorization for a nickel a pop. It seems easy - just look at a picture of an item and come up with some short tags to describe it.
9:25 AM - I managed to complete two of them in six minutes. I actually completed three, but one was lost to the Turk’s horrible page design, which eliminated everything I had filled in because I hadn’t clicked on the “Accept HIT” button. Ten cents in six minutes is not a win.
9:26 AM - I take on a task that involves looking up addresses for wineries at $0.40 a pop.
9:32 AM - Should have read more carefully, as it requires entering a bunch of wines from each winery as well. Six minutes work for $0.40 is NOT a good deal.
9:36 AM - I notice that if I sort by dollar value, some higher-dollar entries will pop up and then disappear before I can accept them - $6 to $10 a pop. Chasing them might pay off, but it seems to be a time waster.
9:37 AM - I take a short test to “qualify” me to do some higher-value HITs. Apparently, they don’t want just anyone writing service reviews. You have to at least be aware of the company.
9:41 AM - I finish the test - but the ones I would be “qualified” to do are now gone.
9:45 AM - I spent five minutes looking at really awful HITs. If they pay a penny a piece, if you can’t do them FAST, they’re not worth it.
9:46 AM - A moment later, I found a service review, enabling me to describe a service I received for $2.55.
9:50 AM - I finished the review, earning $2.55 for four minutes’ work. That task was actually the one I was “qualified” for because of the earlier test, meaning I invested eight minutes to earn $2.55 - or $19.13 an hour. Not bad at all!

And here’s the outcome of that adventure. I spent a total of one hour and four minutes there and earned a total of $7.61 (assuming everything I did was accepted), giving an hourly wage of $7.11 for my effort. I probably could have done better than that if I weren’t logging what I was doing as I went along.

Some tips Here are several things I learned that can help someone interested in Mechanical Turk earn more for their time.

First, it pays to be able to write comprehensible stuff quickly. If you can be given a topic and immediately begin to write something readable on that topic, you can probably do pretty well at Mechanical Turk. The two biggest earners during that hour - the service review and the piece about email marketing - mostly involved me writing off the top of my head. Of course, if you were to focus that ability towards a passion, you could build a great blog on your own that would provide your own steady revenue stream.

Second, the extremely low-cost Turk tasks aren’t worth it. If it pays less than fifty cents and takes more than a couple mouse clicks to complete, it’s not worth it. If you can’t finish a fifty cent task in less than four minutes and move on to the next one, you’re earning less than minimum wage at this.

Third, most of the tasks fit well into short breaks. I can see someone who mans a customer support line or something similar actually using Mechanical Turk to earn a bit of cash during the delays between calls. If you work at a job that has lots of short periods of downtime throughout the day, Mechanical Turk might fit well into those gaps, since the tasks mostly just take a moment or two.

Fourth, tasks that require “tests” seem to pay off. Go ahead and take that test - it seemed to unlock quite a few tasks that paid well. Obviously, they were just trying to filter out people who just wanted to throw themselves at the next available task, enter junk, and move on as fast as possible.

Another big tip: if you do take on a task in the lower price range, look at it first. Are you really going to be able to do this in a time frame short enough that you’ll actually make a reasonable wage for your time? Take my experience with the winery - it seemed, at first glance, that I would just be looking up contact information for wineries - easy enough. What they wanted, though, was a ton of data entry about wines sold at that winery - not worth the forty cents they were paying.

Finally, be patient. If you don’t see anything worthwhile available - meaning nothing that earns more than $0.50 - just hit refresh a few times. Good opportunities seem to pop up all the time, but are devoured quickly. Hitting refresh helps you get your foot in the door with better Turk tasks.

Is it worthwhile? I was genuinely surprised by the experience. If you have the ability to throw down readable writing very quickly, you can earn minimum wage with the Turk - more than I ever expected. Given the short timeframe and the wide variety of tasks available, it’s something that you can sit down and do in short little bits when it’s convenient for you.

Having said that, you can do better than minimum wage with your time. Turk earns well enough that you might be able to fill in spare moments with it - or use it as a stopgap when you’re job hunting - but approximating minimum wage isn’t a good reason to just sit at your computer and click all day. If you have the abilities to earn minimum wage at Turk over an eight hour period, you’d be much better served using that mental energy building something for yourself - a blog on a topic you’re passionate about, a healthy network of people in your field, or something similar.

For me, at least, I don’t think I’ll be returning in the future, but I could see myself using it in the right situation - for example, if I did wind up doing customer service-type work or if I was really in a serious financial pinch. I also might use it if I was bored while watching a television program with my wife - but even then, I’d much more likely spend my time on Twitter or something like that. I value my mental energy at a rate higher than minimum wage.

See the rest here:
Can You Actually Earn Reasonable Money from Mechanical Turk?

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.

Did you know that London’s Tower Bridge is on Twitter? What does it say? When it opens and closes. Fun example of an object in physical space using Twitter to communicate to the world. That reminds me of the Canadian border crossing that uses Twitter to tell the world how long waits are at the border. I wonder what other physical objects use Twitter?

I’ll be on that bridge with Rocky Barbanica (Building43 producer) and Rachel Clarke (she works for a web agency building websites) later today to kick off our Traveling Geeks week. We’re here meeting a ton of geeks and getting a look at all sorts of interesting tech companies and events.

Tonight, if you’re in London, please come by the Tweetup and say hi. Everyone is invited and tickets are still available.

The rest of our schedule this week is fairly packed. But I will try to sneak people into our schedule. Give me a call at +1-425-205-1921 and let’s talk.

Go here to see the original:
London’s Tower Bridge is on Twitter, I’ll be on the bridge later today

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.

Ahh, the New York Times has an interesting article on PR in the tech industry. Funny that Brooke Hammerling doesn’t even live in Silicon Valley. But Silicon Valley is no longer a location, it’s a state of mind (I’m writing this in London where I am hanging out with a bunch of geeks and last night we met a bunch of local geeks who are doing some interesting things).

One quote, that caught my eye (it caught TechCrunch’s founder, Mike Arrington’s, too) is this one from Roger McNamee, after Brooke suggested a company’s founder talk to tech bloggers, like TechCrunch, All Things Digital, and GigaOm.

“Why shouldn’t we avoid them? They’re cynical,”

He didn’t like that advice, saying those blogs are cynical.

Whoa? GigaOm cynical? That’s your first mistake, Roger.

But that quote belies other mistakes in thinking as well.

First of all, it’s not the right reason to avoid TechCrunch or GigaOm.

The right reason?

Because people who will use your product don’t read those tech blogs and they don’t read the influentials who read those sites.

The influential part is very important. How do things get into the New York Times? Or on Oprah? Or on CNN?

Journalists from those sites and media properties read tech blogs like TechCrunch. How do I know that? Because I have dinner with journalists often and they tell me where they get their information.

They read Techmeme. They read TechCrunch. They read GigaOm.

How did Twitter get onto the front page of USA Today? Because they read TechMeme and know when something is getting hot.

So, the right answer is “are they (the tech blogs) the best way to build a story?”

When we launched Building43 at TechCrunch’s offices we didn’t just rely on TechCrunch for coverage.

I worked with people from the A list and people from the Z list (and continue to do that). I talked with tons of reporters from local media in Virginia to reporters from bigger publications.

One thing I’ve learned is that 15 “nobodies” can get the story out there.

Remember when I quit Microsoft? I told 15 people at a videoblogging conference. None of whom were on the “A list.”

Who broke the story? A guy I didn’t even know. A guy who wasn’t famous, well known, or at the top of ANYONE’s lists.

Within three days Waggener Edstrom (Microsoft’s PR firm) told me we had tens of millions of media impressions. 15 conversations led to that.

Anyway, how do I get my news? Some of it comes from PR firms. But most of the time if the PR firm does its job it will get EVERYONE talking about something. I watch Twitter and Facebook and FriendFeed for just that. My friends filter stuff for me and tell me what’s important.

The fact that no one is talking about Wordnik tells me that they both had a product that didn’t hit with anyone but also that their PR strategy is screwed up.

But why don’t you study how Twitter reached “normal users?”

Hint: Twitter got Leo Laporte and tons of tech influencers hot and bothered. I remember when Eddie Codel showed it to me and got me on it. Who is Eddie? He’s one of San Francisco’s most tied in people. You want a story to get out? Show it to Eddie (or people like him, he doesn’t even work in PR, he’s just someone I trust to bring me cool stuff). He’ll show it to me and to tons of other people who will push it along.

That’s what we did to Twitter. We kept telling our journalist friends about it. They kept saying “that’s lame” but sooner or later they started paying attention and talking about it to their audiences. And the ball kept going from there.

Today Twitter forgets that it’s Leo Laporte who really made Twitter’s day. He talked about it on TWiT and a week later it was the hit of SXSW 2007 (ironic that he’s not even on Twitter’s Suggested User List). See, after the story is built you don’t need influencers anymore, but they sure are nice at the beginning.

Me? I keep going back to the Corporate Weblog Manifesto I wrote in 2003. It is a good document for how to get PR. Even though I didn’t write it for that purpose (I was just about to start my job at Microsoft and wanted to remind myself how to stay on track with my blog).

What is rule #7 on the manifesto?

Talk to the grassroots first. Read the reason why. It still is important today.

Today I would rewrite rule #6 to be “don’t ignore TechCrunch and TechMeme.”

Rule #11 is important too. “Know the information gatekeepers.”

It’s amazing to me how bad most tech companies are at this stuff, even today.

It’s also amazing that PR companies haven’t figured out that using bloggers who use video is very important for building a story. More than one CEO told me they got to “normal users” by being on my show, even though my show isn’t very mainstream.

It’s doubly amazing that PR companies haven’t figured out yet that the traffic has moved onto social networks and that journalists and influencers are watching those like a hawk. Want to get on CNN? You better be on Twitter and you better get TONS of Twitterers to talk about your company to @ricksanchezcnn.

It’s amazing to me just how bad Roger’s advice was, not because it was wrong, but because of the reasoning behind it. If you are building a story you NEVER care if someone is cynical. In fact, the more cynical I am about a product the more I’ve helped them. Many people tell me they bought an Amazon Kindle because of how I bashed the product (they said I was right, it was poorly designed, but that the Kindle’s flaws didn’t matter to them).

Even cynical tech bloggers can help your company get its message out. But don’t call me, I’m not in the cynical news business anymore, I’m too busy exploring the 2010 web and looking for ways to be helpful to my community.

See the rest here:
Tech execs: how to reach “normal” users with PR and with TechCrunch/GigaOm et al

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.

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

One Year Ago (June 28-July 4, 2008)
The Minimalist Kitchen: What You Need (and Don’t Need) to Set Up Your First Workable Home Kitchen You don’t need tons of things to cook well at home. In fact, you just need a few items - and the desire to start preparing your own food. Here’s a guide.

No Time for Frugality: Cutting Financial Corners with No Time Investment Many people claim they don’t have time to do anything to save money. In truth, we already have the time, because the best ways to save money involve just slightly tweaking what we already do.

Finding Inspiration for Financial Change What’s your motivation for making good financial choices? For some people, it’s hard to dig up a central reason, but central reasons can be powerful. Here are some ways to find inspiration for real financial change in your own life.

A Clever Trick for Automatically Finding Deals You Want at Amazon Amazon has tons of bargains, but there are so many things going on that it’s easy to lose the deals you actually want in all the noise. Here’s how to filter through all of that and find the stuff you actually want.

The Net Worth Mentality: The Road Less Traveled I often don’t know exactly how much I make. Why? I don’t worry about my paycheck - I just worry about my net worth. Here’s exactly what I mean - and why such a shift in perspective can be life-altering.

Two Years Ago (June 28-July 4, 2007)
Musings On Spending $3 On A Candy Bar This was such a humble, little, simple post, relating an experience I had with my wife and son on a rainy day. Yet, somehow, this one really struck a chord with quite a few people - it probably got me more mainstream attention than anything I’d written up to that point.

SmartMoney Magazine’s “7 Money Mistakes” - And The Simple Dollar’s “7 More Money Mistakes” This was an excellent little article in SmartMoney that I thought deserved some expansion - so I stepped up to the plate and did it myself.

Defining Minimum Acceptable Housing - And How It Varies From Person To Person What might work for minimal housing for a 23 year old single male fresh out of college is going to be vastly different than what a family of four needs. Don’t substitute other’s needs for your own - if you’re 23 and single, you don’t need a four bedroom house.

When Frugality Is Fun I’m much more likely to dive into a frugal project if it looks fun for other reasons. Take my homemade laundry detergent, for example. My wife is a chemistry teacher, so the homemade detergent became a project that we were able to dive into with gusto.

How I Made Brown Bag Lunches Work For Me Eating leftovers for lunch is a great way to save money, but many people go “Ewww…. leftovers…” Here are some ways to get around that little problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

View original here:
The Simple Dollar Time Machine - July 4, 2009

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.

This is the second of twelve parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover, where this book on debt reduction is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the third chapter, finishing on page 51. The next entry, covering the fourth chapter, will appear on Wednesday.

Dave Ramsey is probably the loudest proponent out there of the “debt is bad” mantra and he makes the case for it loud and clear in this chapter. In his eyes, outside of a home mortgage (and that one should be paid off ASAP), all debt is bad.

I agree completely. The only problem comes in when this mantra is taken too far and overlooks the benefits of establishing a positive credit history. The positives of being debt free heavily outweigh the negatives of being heavily in debt, but being debt free doesn’t mean you should sacrifice a good credit history along the way. Let’s talk about this whole picture.

Not Using Debt Is Ridiculous?
The usage of debt for major purchases is definitely ingrained in the American psyche. At virtually every retailer you visit, there’s an offer to sign up for a credit card or finance the purchase you’re about to make. It seems so natural that many people assume it is natural. On page 19, Ramsey mentions this phenomenon:

[I]n the last several years, I have found that a major barrier to winning is our view of debt. Most people who have made the decision to stop borrowing money have experienced something weird: ridicule. Friends and family who are disciples of the myth that debt is good have ridiculed those on the path to freedom.

Given that financing usually means paying substantially more for the item over the long run, anyone who chides you for paying cash is actually chiding you for paying less - ludicrous, in other words.

My big issue here is how to deal with people who make comments like this. Whenever I’ve faced situations like this, I’ve found that explaining the truth doesn’t work - I’m usually met with a vacant, wide-eyed look that clearly indicates that the other person has no idea what I’m talking about.

Instead, my approach is to simply smile, nod, and do my own thing. Over the long run, my bank account will prove me right in paying cash as often as possible.

Risky Debt
On page 21, Ramsey argues that simply possessing debt is a risk, let alone paying it late:

My contention is that debt brings on enough risk to offset any advantage that could be gained through leverage of debt. Given time, a lifetime, risk will destroy the perceived returns purported by the mythsayers.

This is one of the most powerful arguments against debt, in my opinion. Most of the time, when people make the case for taking on debt, they make assumptions that involve a perfect, trouble-free life.

Sure, it’s easy to make a $400 a month payment given your current life situation, but what happens if you lose your job tomorrow? Or in a year? What if you suffer a major illness? What if your marriage falls apart? What if you get married? What if an unexpected child arrives?

Forecasting payments into the future can be smooth but the realities of our lives are quite bumpy, indeed. Lives don’t follow the smooth lines and curves of a debt repayment schedule, and saddling our lives with such lines and curves might enable us to get a car a bit earlier, but it also adds a lot of stress and worry if our life zigs when we expect it to zag.

Respect your complex, beautiful life and avoid unnecessary debt.

Relatives Shouldn’t Be Lenders
One of my biggest personal standards for money is to not lend money to family. If I decide to give someone a helping hand, it’ll be in the form of a gift, not a loan. Ramsey makes the case on page 26:

Hundreds of times I’ve seen relationships strained and sometimes destroyed. We all have, but we continue to believe the myth that a loan to a loved one is a blessing. It isn’t; it is a curse. Don’t put that burden on any relationship you care about.

Do you love your mortgage lender? How about your credit card company - do you look forward to getting together with them at Christmastime? Ever felt like inviting your car salesman to your New Years’ party?

The reason is that the lending/borrowing relationship doesn’t mix well with great interpersonal relations. If you borrow money from someone, you suddenly have a financial obligation to that person. You have to pay them back or incur some sort of retribution.

Retribution? That’s not exactly a concept that mixes well with close relationships and family events. Nor should it. No one wants to spend time with a person that’s demanding money from them. Thus, after a loan between friends or loved ones, it’s natural to expect that relationship to decay in some way.

No relationship is worth that decay. If you’ve decided that you really must help someone out, make that help into a gift, not a loan.

Look Good or Be Good?
On page 33, Dave digs into the difference between putting up appearances and actually having something to back it up:

Having been a millionaire and gone broke, I dug my way out by making a decision about looking good versus being good. Looking good is when your broke friends are impressed by what you drive, and being good is having more money than they have.

Something has always troubled me about the phrase “fake it ’till you make it.” I can understand it in some situations, where you have to put up a very polished front in order to further your career.

The problem comes when “fake it ’till you make it” becomes a life philosophy. If you find yourself leasing a BMW so that you can “fake it” and put up an appearance of being financially affluent when you’re really not, you’re entering into a trap.

Sure, you might be able to put up an appearance of “making it” with that purchase, but your income will be devoured by that car instead of being able to take advantage of other opportunities. In three years, you’ll have nothing in the bank and a car that just went off lease.

Instead, if you “fake it” a little less, buy a low end car and make it look as nice as you can, you can build up that bankroll, build some security, and eventually purchase that car.

You might be able to “fake it” now, but if you want to “make it” sooner, you’ll tone down on the fakery and keep yourself out of debt.

On Buying a New Car
On page 37, Dave makes a case against buying a new car:

A good used car is as reliable or more reliable than a new car. A new $28,000 car will lose about $17,000 of value in the first four years you own it. That is almost $100 per week in lost value.

I understand where Ramsey is coming from, but it doesn’t take into account several factors.

First, the only cars that depreciate like that were junk to begin with. If you have a car that depreciates 70% in the first four years, that car has a very poor record for long-term reliability. Reliable cars simply do not depreciate that fast.

Second, the first four years are the most worry-free for a car. During that period, they’re under warranty, meaning if something goes wrong, it doesn’t come out of your pocket. Once that warranty ends, you’re on your own. It’s during that warranty period that you can figure out whether the car is actually reliable or it’s not without a cavalcade of big bills.

Third, in a down economy, there are huge incentives to buy new. Sales, rebates, and other offers pop up all over the place, some of them impressive. There are often tax breaks for new car purchases as well, passed by Congress in a short-term effort to boost spending.

I am not saying that buying new is better than buying used. Instead, I am merely saying that it is a mistake to automatically exclude a new purchase, particularly if you can afford it.

Ramsey overstates his case here, though I understand why he does it. A forceful case on behalf of a good principle is a great tactic for convincing people of the principle. I do agree that buying used is often the best deal when buying a car, but to ignore new cars does the buyer a disservice.

Mortgages and Credit Cards
On page 39, Ramsey talks about why you don’t need to build credit to get a mortgage:

You will need to find a mortgage company that does actual underwriting. That means they are professional enough to process the details of your life instead of using only a Beacon score (lending for dummies). You can get a mortgage if you lived right.

Ramsey’s absolutely right here - you don’t need credit to get a mortgage, as long as you have a good housing history and a good record of paying your bills on time. A manual underwriter will dig these things out. An aside: if you’re in this situation, visit your local credit union first. They’re more likely to do manual underwriting.

The problem here is that a mortgage is not the only avenue through which good credit can help you. One’s credit score is used in lots of ways: determining insurance rates, aiding in many job application processes, and so on.

That’s why I think limited use of a credit card is actually a good thing. Leave the card at home most of the time. Only use it for specific purchases that you would otherwise make, like gas or groceries. Then, at the end of the month, pay off the balance in full, which should be trivial since you’re not buying more because of the card.

This accomplishes the big goal of improving your credit score without incurring debt. Having a good credit score improves your hiring chances and makes you eligible for better insurance rates, putting money directly in your pocket. Later, if you do get a home loan, you can simply trash that card if you so with.

If you’re already doing that, you might as well choose a card that helps you in other ways. For example, if you’re buying a card just to buy gas on to help your credit, get the Visa or MasterCard available from your gas station chain of choice (like BP). That way, you’ll get rebates on the gas you buy along the way - another way to save.

The trick is to simply leave the card at home. Don’t use it for any other purchases besides the ones you plan in advance, like gas purchases, and keep it somewhere safe outside of those opportunities.

Do you have any other thoughts on the third chapter of The Total Money Makeover? Please share them in the comments - and feel free to respond to any of my impressions as well. After all, a good book club is all about discussion!

On Wednesday, we’ll tackle the fourth chapter - Money Myths: The (Non)Secrets of the Rich.

See more here:
The Total Money Makeover: Debt Myths

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.” —Dale Carnegie

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead; follow him on twitter.

If we really want to be happy, why do we act like such babies?

We can claim to be proactive in our life by settings goals and going after what we want. But if we’re always whining and complaining all the time, are we really living effectively?

If you don’t believe me, count how many times you complain about something or other in one day. Whether it be being stuck in traffic, being bothered by the weather, not enough mustard on your sandwich, or whatever it is, there are endless instances where you can find a reason to complain.

But it’s not just outside circumstances that we complain about. We complain about about ourselves too. We complain that we don’t have enough time, we don’t have enough money (this one is huge because it’s often “true”), that we’re not smart enough, cool enough, or just enough.

I know I’ve experienced plenty of unpleasantness due to complaining about things I can’t control. I never really thought about it much until I found this website about “living in a complain free world.”

Imagine how much happier you would be if you simply stopped complaining? Much of what you complain about is outside of your control anyway. What’s the point of brooding about something you have no power to change? Not very intelligent, if you ask me.

Simply becoming conscious of how much you complain is the first step to stopping. When you recognize that you’re complaining, stop and take notice of it. Ask yourself if you would rather complain, or be happy.

Are you ready to live a complaint-free, happier life?

The two steps to stop whining so much:

1. Make it a priority to notice every time you complain or unnecessarily criticize. This includes judging others. Now, every time you catch yourself complaining, just stop and notice it.
2. After you’ve noticed yourself complaining, ask yourself this: Is there anything I can do about what I’m complaining about, or it outside of my control? If there is something you can do about it, do it. If there is nothing you can do, let it go.

Obviously, this is a little easier said than done. Complaining is an addiction and a hard habit to break. Like any other habit to break, it will take time.

Even though it may be a long time (or possibly never) before you’re living completely complaint-free, that’s still okay. The good news is this isn’t all-or-nothing. Even 10% less complaining will have an immediate positive impact on your life. Then, once you’ve decreased your whining by 10%, you can keep bootstrapping your way down to complaining less and less.

After complaints show up less and less, something awesome starts to happen. Once your mind realizes that you won’t tolerate its moaning, it will begin to give up its efforts. (Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of complaining that you’re complaining.)

So the question is: Would you rather complain or be happy?

(Oh and by the way, having gratitude is a great way to stop complaining.)

This article was written by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead of Illuminated Mind.  For more ways to stop whining so much, grab a copy of Reclaim Your Dreams.

See the rest here:
How to Stop Acting Like Such a Big Baby

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.

In April and May, National Public Radio featured a series on inexpensive gourmet dishes entitled “How Low Can You Go?” Although many of the dishes looked quite tasty, most of the dishes weren’t actually all that inexpensive, often narrowly getting below $10 to feed a family of four, and many involved arduous cooking processes. I decided to try out some of these recipes throughout the summer to see how I could take the recipes and reduce them down to a simple and very inexpensive form.

While digging through the submissions, I came across this interesting recipe by Wendy T., who states that she’s “writing a cookbook of economical meals for working people - this is one of my husband’s favorites.” Intriguing. Here’s what Wendy offers up:

1 lb ground beef
1 slice white bread, crumbled
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 small yellow onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 egg, beaten lightly
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley, minced
1/4 cup mint leaves, julienned
1 cup plain yogurt (preferably whole milk)
salt and black pepper

In a small bowl, mix the yogurt, a large pinch of salt, and the mint. Set aside.

Crumble white bread crumbs over ground beef and parsley in large bowl.

Place a large frying pan over medium low heat. Add the olive oil and sweat the onions and garlic until translucent. Add 3/4 tsp salt and the coriander and cumin, and saute a minute more. Cool a minute and then add to the meat-bread crumb mixture. Add the beaten egg and mix with hands lightly just to combine. Form a test meatball and fry - taste for seasoning and add additional salt if necessary.

Form into meatballs. Fry in batches in the pan on all sides until cooked through. Drain on paper towels if necessary.

Serve the meatballs with the yogurt-mint sauce. Delicious as sandwiches with pita or naan bread.

A few things popped out at me immediately that indicated this recipe would be a lot of work. First, the ground coriander - dried coriander in the store is not the same thing at all. Ground coriander needs to be freshly ground or it loses most of its flavor. Second, the julienned mint leaves - meaning you’re slicing the mint leaves into thin strips - will be significant work as well, and likely the most expensive aspect of the recipe if you don’t have a source of fresh mint.

In order to try out the recipe as is, though, I did both of these.

I also went through the cupboard and the freezer to see what we had on hand. The only ingredients that we didn’t already have in spice jars were the mint leaves ($2), the yogurt ($0.99), the onion ($0.30), and the ground beef ($2.49 for a pound of lean meat), for a total cost of $5.78. We did, of course, use lots of spices and other materials we had on hand.

Here are the ingredients as I used them.

(The horse statue in the picture is a Breyer version of Man o’ War, included at the encouragement of my three year old son.)

I made one major change. Instead of mincing the onions, I coarsely chopped them, because I love the caramelized flavor of onions and felt it would add to the meatballs.

Once the work of prepping the ingredients is done, the recipe itself is pretty easy. First, I made the yogurt-mint sauce by putting a pinch of salt, a cup of yogurt, and the mint leaves in a bowl and mixing them.

I then tossed the onions and garlic into a frying pan along with the olive oil and cooked them over medium heat until they were nicely caramelized - taking on a light brown color roughly the same as caramel. I then added a pinch of salt, the coriander, and the cumin, and cooked it for a minute more.

When that was finished, I let it cool for a bit. While doing that, I added the bread crumbs and the beaten egg to the pound of ground beef and mixed them together with my hands, then I added the onion mixture to the meat and mixed that in. The result was a large ball, ready to be shaped into smaller meatballs.

Making meatballs is easy. Just pinch off a bit of the meat - whatever size you like - and roll that bit around in between your hands until it forms a round ball. If you’re not sure what size to make, just divide the ball into equal halves, divide each of those halves into equal halves (four bits), divide each of those halves into equal halves (eight bits), then divide each of those halves into equal halves (sixteen bits). Each of those sixteen bits will make a nice meatball.

So, I rolled up the balls and tossed them into the frying pan.

Obviously, if you chose to mince the onion, you wouldn’t see the large pieces of onion in the meatballs.

I simply browned these in the pan over medium heat, rolling them around about every minute or so. When they became dark brown - the color of a cooked hamburger, roughly - I cut one in half and checked the insides to make sure it was no longer pink. Here they are, about halfway cooked (with some sides looking finished, others still pink, and yet others in the middle):

I chose to serve the meatballs with the mint sauce on the side, a long grain rice and vegetable medley, some steamed broccoli, and a glass of Wandering Grape 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz (a free trade wine). Here’s how it looked on the table:

And there you have it!

Did we like it? This meal was a big hit. The kids were not big fans of the mint sauce, but the meatballs were completely consumed with gusto - no leftovers at all. Both my wife and I liked everything - I wound up drowning the meatballs in the sauce after trying them together.

Our total cost for the main course and the mint sauce (ignoring fractional items we had on hand): $5.78. Our cost per meal: $1.45. Not bad. But we can do better - and we can certainly make it less involved.

Changes I Would Make to Save Cost and Time
First of all, I’d skip the coriander and use more cumin as a substitute. If you don’t have a grinder, smashing the coriander seeds will take forever and it doesn’t contribute substantially to the meal, especially when you can easily substitute a bit of cumin for nearly the same effect.

Second, if I was pinched for time, I’d substitute dried mint for the fresh mint leaves. I’d just add dried mint - probably two tablespoons full - to the yogurt to taste and skip the julienning of the mint leaves.

Third, I’d substitute garlic powder for the minced garlic cloves. Although you miss the caramelization of the cloves, you also save the work of peeling the cloves, cooking the cloves, and smashing the cloves.

Fourth - and I did this in my own version above - I’d skip the fresh parsley and use dried. I used 1/4 cup dried parsley and it was perfect.

These changes modify the recipe a bit, but it also reduces the cost and vastly reduces the time. Here’s the new recipe, as I’d do it:

1 lb ground beef
1 slice white bread, crumbled
2 tbsp ground cumin
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp olive oil
1 egg, beaten lightly
1/4 cup dried parsley
1/4 cup dried mint
1 cup plain yogurt (preferably whole milk)
salt and black pepper

In a small bowl, mix the yogurt, a large pinch of salt, and the mint. Set aside.

Crumble white bread crumbs over ground beef and parsley in large bowl.

Place a large frying pan over medium low heat. Add the olive oil and gently cook the onions until caramelized. Add 3/4 tsp salt and the cumin, and saute a minute more. Cool a minute and then add to the meat-bread crumb mixture. Add the beaten egg and mix with hands lightly just to combine. Form into meatballs. Fry in batches in the pan on all sides until cooked through. Drain on paper towels if necessary. Serve the meatballs with the yogurt-mint sauce.

View post:
How Low Can You Go? Coriander Meatballs with Yogurt-Mint Sauce

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.

A few weeks ago I attended a press event that the San Francisco Giants and Shoretel put on. The audio isn’t that great because we’re in the server room for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. Here SF Giants’ CIO, Bill Schlough, is showing off how the Giants saved a million bucks by upgrading its telecommunications equipment.

Remember that the ballpark that the Giants is in was originally named for PacBell, the local phone company. Interesting look at how phone systems have changed in just the past 10 years.

This is a nice win for Shoretel. How often do you get a customer to sing your praises like this? Especially one that so many people in the community like and appreciate?

The system will save the SF Giants about $1,000 a day. Not bad. Plus they got a ton of new features, which lets the Giants serve their customers better.

Excerpt from:
How the SF Giants saved a million bucks with telecommunications upgrades

If you use any of this work, please link back to - OpenSourceBlogging.org or the author’s original link as the source.