I had a very interesting conversation with my wife yesterday. Most of the time we talk, the topic doesn’t involve money, or at least, not the more technical details of things like monetary supply and money related politics. Sondra just doesn’t have an interest in most of those subjects, and the last thing I would want to do is try to impose anything like that on her.

But yesterday, we started talking about an issue about which I was surprised she cared so deeply, and on which she had very strong opinions. Pennies. Yes, those small, copper-colored (and containing) coins that are nearly worthless in modern day society. (And which are sometimes used as a means of protesting an undesired bill.)

Yup, these things, which even in a pile this big represent about $1.54

Specifically, we talked about getting rid of pennies, given the current state of our economy, and simply relying on other types of coins instead. (We also discussed the idea of eliminating nickels and dimes, as well, and simply using quarters (the smallest unit of money accepted most places anyway), although I don’t think that would work too well, as it raises even more problems than those for the pennies with fewer potential benefits.) We ended up spending more than half an hour discussing the issue, in some depth, which made my wonky heart flutter. So now, buckle up for a Sondra-inspired penny discussion.

Why Ban the Penny?

Why is getting rid of the penny even an option? Well, there are a few reasons it’s being considered. The first, and perhaps most damning, is that it costs more than a penny to make a penny. It’s sometimes tough to get an exact figure on such things, but Snopes puts the cost at 2.41 cents per penny in 2012. Which means, for every 2012 penny that entered the market, the cost was over twice as much. With all the discussion of the government wasting money, the last thing we need as a nation is the government wasting money to make more money.

Still, if that was the only reason, there might not be any discussion; there are some things the government is expected to do, regardless of the cost, and providing a medium of exchange is one of them. (Things like provide for national defense and provide an impartial justice system to handle disputes being some of the others, although that’s a story for another blog entry.) But pennies aren’t exactly a vital part of our monetary system; when was the last time you could get anything for a single penny (or less than a quarter, for that matter)? It’s not the first time a low level coin was eliminated in our country; the half-penny was retired in 1858, back when the penny had more purchasing power than a dime has now. It was the equivalent of eliminating the nickel nowadays (which some people are proposing, as well, as nickels are also costlier to make than they are worth); while it would require time to get used to the changes, it’s far from a horrible disaster to no longer use the penny.

There’s also the issue of time. We spend a good amount of every year handling money, even in these times of debit cards and online banking. Eliminating pennies means hours each year would be saved that would otherwise be spent receiving pennies as change, counting pennies, wrapping pennies in those penny roll papers, and getting more usable types of coins in exchange. While not something that eats up too much time for most of us, it does add up over the years.

Let’s Keep the Penny

Of course, if it were that simple, the penny would have been eliminated a while ago, possibly when it still cost less than a cent to make. There are still arguments in the penny’s favor, the most obvious one being that prices would need to be rounded to the nearest five cents in order to accommodate our new monetary system. Between the time and effort needed to change all our prices and the likely increased costs for most goods as a result (when stores need to ensure that all their sales end in a multiple of five cents, the easiest (and most profitable) way to do so would be to round all their prices up the nearest nickel), it will take a while before any of those time savings come to light. (Let’s not even talk about the numerous issues that arise when we look at how state sales taxes will be affected.)

There’s also the matter that some groups benefit from the low consideration most Americans have for pennies. Charities get plenty of pennies from people who’d never consider parting with dimes (to say nothing of quarters). Coinstar and similar operations benefit from people not sorting through their coins on their own time, a tendency that would decrease with only three major types of coins to go through. (Yes, I know there are half dollars and dollar coins on top of nickels, dimes, and quarters, but how often do you see those first two types around anywhere?) Any place with a wishing fountain or similar structure is likely to see a pretty hefty drop in coins thrown in should the minimal cost of such throwing suddenly increase five-fold.

Lastly, there’s the sentimental issue. Pennies have been around since the start of the country, have been our lowest unit of currency since 1858, and have had Lincoln on them for over a century (since 1909). Getting rid of pennies requires the country to part with something that is pretty well ingrained in our cultural history; suddenly sayings like ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’ would be much more nonsensical. (Although, let’s be honest, it’s not the most inspiring saying nowadays, given just how much a penny is actually worth.)

My Thoughts

So, where do I stand on the penny issue? What position did I take when talking with Sondra? Well, while I argued against eliminating the nickel and dime (at least in the near future), I do think we can do without the penny. There’s simply not much that can be done with pennies, and given the increasing move to payment forms like checks, credit cards, and debit cards anyway, it doesn’t make much sense to continue making most forms of physical cash, particularly the smallest ones.

I’m not saying we should stop using pennies immediately; it does take time to adjust to this sort of change, and the last thing we want to do is to rush people into a new situation, currency wise. Still, I think a policy of retiring pennies over the next few years, encouraging them to be cashed in for larger types of currencies as stores shift their prices and banks start giving interest payments in denominations rounded to the nearest five cents, would help to enable a smooth transition by, say 2015. Of course, given the numerous bigger monetary policy fish there are for the government to fry, I doubt something like eliminating the penny will get on the agenda anytime soon.

What do you think about eliminating the penny? Does the nostalgia many people feel for the coin justify its continued existence, even if its usefulness has all but disappeared? Would sayings like ‘Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck’ have more meaning if pennies became much, much rarer?

Well, my finals are complete, my grades have been submitted, and my lodging situation for the summer has been arranged.  It’s been a pretty busy (and not as filled with blog writing as I had hoped) week, but things have been resolved.  (At least, I hope they’ve been resolved; I was informed yesterday that I needed to pay for all my summer lodging ahead of time, throwing my plans for my money flow over the summer completely out of whack.  Lucky, my wife had enough money available from her two jobs to cover my apartment costs, but it’s a reminder that unexpected things can happen in this crazy world of ours.)

Now that my last semester of Master’s level grad school has come to an end, all I need to do to graduate is finish my research, write a thesis, and defend it in front of several professors (easier said than done on all counts, but still, it’s down to research related issues).  It’s not quite that easy, though, as now that I am nearly done with school, that means it is time for the job hunt to get even more intense!  Yes, the days of spending eight or more hours a day, every day, seeking, reading, and applying to jobs are about to resume.  It’s not the most fun way to spend your time, but when I have a good job and can support my wife and child, I’ll be very happy to have gone through the less fun parts of the task.

While I’m job hunting (and finishing off that thesis, since I can’t forget about that), though, there’s plenty to keep me busy, as I read through great blog entries and share them with you, my wonderful readers.  Enjoy all the great stuff there is out there, including:

Good Yakezie Posts

Can You Really Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps? – It’s a cliché  in the personal finance area, where the answer to almost any problem you have with money is to work harder and change your financial situation through your own efforts.  But as 20s Finances wonders in this Yakezie post, is it actually possible?  Personally, I think it can be in most situations, although there are some things out of your control.

“I Want to Start a Blog But Don’t Know How” – There’s an awful lot of learning that you need to do to blog well, particularly if you want to earn a decent side (or full-time) income in the process.  I’m certainly still learning myself, hence my interest in this interview between Neal Frankle and Bob Lotich, two much more experienced bloggers.  Definitely some interesting facts shared.

My Story on How to Successfully Take Courses While Working Full Time – Since we’re on the subject of combining schoolwork with work, here we have some truly inspiring words from Miss T of Prairie Eco-Thrifter.  There’s also some advice on how to mix the two successfully, which can always prove to be tough.

How Long Does It Take to Refinance a Mortgage Loan Nowadays?  Prepare for Battle! – I’m not in a position to refinance a mortgage at the moment, seeing as I don’t have one, but there is apparently quite a bit of time and paperwork required to refinance a mortgage nowadays, at least if the Financial Samurai’s experience is anything to go on.

Getting Screwed Out of Your Hard Earned Capital: How CDs and GICs are Rip-Offs For Long-term Investing – Ah, inflation, the bane of every investor.  If you were still puzzled why putting your money in a ‘safe’ CD (or a guaranteed investment certificate (GIC), the Canadian equivalent) is bad idea for the long term, here Kevin of Invest It Wisely spells out some of the downsides for aiming for safety.

An Example of Why I am Not Sure I Believe in The Efficient Market Hypothesis – Evan of My Journey to Millions shares an example of a company showing steady growth dropping nearly fifty percent in one day.  It does show you that while the market might be largely efficient, there are areas of inefficiency to exploit.

How to Become an Online Freelancer – Appropriately written by a staff writer over at Young and Thrifty, here you have a discussion of how to make money by writing, without all the other issues that we bloggers have to handle.  Honestly, if I had it to do over, I’d likely go into something more like this, rather than trying to build up a blog (and might try to do more work in that area, now that I have more time).

A Really Dumb Financial Move – We all make financial mistakes, although it’s hard to compete with one like this one from Squirrelers.  Here’s hoping everyone reading this avoids using a non-network ATM when one from their bank is right there.

Lesson I Hope to Teach My Son – There’s a lot I hope to teach my upcoming child (and any more that come after that), and it’s nice to get some thoughts from other parents.  This article from Bucksome Boomer shares a few suggestions on what money lessons to pass along.

Why Knowing Your Net Worth Matters – As someone who avidly tracks his net worth (and is trying to share more of it with my wife), it’s nice to see others who agree.  Elle of Couple Money shares why she and her husband track their net worth, and lays out a few limits to what such tracking can accomplish.

Where the Amateur Financier Was Featured

As part of my attempt to catch up on the older carnivals and other places my articles were featured, here’s the Yakezie Challenge Mid-Week from Young and Thrifty that included my Net Worth Update: March 2010 (Yup, just a little bit delayed…)

The Cavalcade of Risk #156: Short and Sweet Edition included my article on How Much Information Should You Share?  Good to know I can be included even in a tightly organized carnival like that.

My article on Celebrating the End of Tax Season was included in Tax Carnival #102: May Tax Flowers, a nice image to put in your head after the April Taxes showers of last month.

Alright, that’s it for now; for me, it’s now time to resume my thesis writing and job hunting.  Wish me luck, and for you, I hope you have great luck in all that you do!

It’s getting near the middle of May, and in an election year, that means the already heated election cycle is only going to get hotter. You can see it already, as the Obama campaign takes firmer aim at Mitt Romney, and Romney’s supporters in turn attack Barack Obama all the more fiercely. This is not going to be a discussion of politicians, as I’m not very good in that arena, and would prefer a less argumentative way to get people to leave comments. (If you want some of the best advice I’ve seen on most politic coverage in a long time, try this article from Cracked (yes, the comedy site) telling you how to determine if a political story is B.S.) I’m just going to ask, wouldn’t you like to see something that both the Left and the Right in this country can agree on?

Well, there is at least one thing: both sides acknowledge that the tax code has gotten too complex. Both the left-leaning Brookings Institute and the right-oriented Heritage Foundation make that point pretty clearly, illustrating how complex our system has currently gotten. Admittedly, they quickly disagree on how to handle the issue (Brookings recommends a progressive tax system, Heritage supports a flat tax), but still, it’s nice to see some agreement amongst those encouraging political action from different sides.

How Complex Is It

Before we can look at possible ways to simplify the tax code, we need to understand just how complex it currently is. It’s a bit tough to say for certain, as almost nobody has actually read the entire thing. The tax code currently stands at over 3.8 million words, over three million more than the King James Bible (not known for being an quick evening read). So, very long, check.

Unlike the Bible, you can’t even count on it being it the same over time. You could get a King James Bible made for King James himself, and not notice much difference from what is being currently published under the King James name. The US tax code, on the other hand, enjoyed over 4400 changes over the last decade, not exactly the sort of thing the average person (or even the avid tax code fan, if such a person exists) could keep track of without an extreme amount of time devoted to the task. Constantly changing, that’s another big check in the too complex column.

Ideally, you should be able to calculate your taxes using this calculator

As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also the lack of common English in the tax code that would definitely imply more than a little complexity. When an entire industry has sprung up to help the typical citizen follow the tax code and submit the proper amount of tax money (and the IRS has become THE most threatening agency at the federal government), that’s definitely a bad sign. When the IRS commissioner needs help filing his taxes, you know things have gotten pretty complicated.

My Plans to Simplify the Tax System

At this point, you’re probably wondering what I would do with taxes if I were in charge. (Alright, that’s not quite true; you’re probably thinking of how you would change the tax system, and more than a few of you might be thinking that you’d just end taxes, and the federal government, and be done with it.) Well, I’ve shared some thoughts on how to change the tax system before, most of which I still stand by. (If you want the Cliff’s Notes version: gradually progressive, not much difference (if any) in how different types of income are taxed, and easy enough to understand that anyone would be able to tell if tax rates are being increased.)

Recently, though, Fareed Zakaria has come forward with a tax system (taking Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan as a starting point), where taxes would be taken as follows:

-9% on personal income up to $150,000
-18% on personal income between $150,000 and $500,000
-27% on personal income over $500,000
-18% on corporate income
-9% in a VAT (value-added tax)
-50% Inheritance Tax

While I haven’t run the numbers to see if this tax plan would provide us enough money to match our current tax intake, or better yet, close the deficit gap (and if Zakaria has run the numbers, he isn’t sharing), it does seem pretty solid to my mind. If I were proposing this plan, I’d just make a few modifications and clarifications before putting it forward, including:

-On the personal income: Just a clarification that this includes all (non-inherited) types of income, from earned income to investment income (excepting municipal bonds) to profits from real estate sales income, so we’re clear on how this works. Also, I’d add retirement account investments and a child income tax credit (for at least the first child or two) to the short list of deductions Zakaria laid out (state and local income and charitable donations).

-On corporate income: I’m torn on corporate income taxes; on one hand, it does make sense as a source of government income, as well as encouragement for corporations to spend their money in tax deductible ways rather than passing it all along to the owners and stockholders. (Not that the current tax deduction system is perfect, of course; the idea of CEOs getting houses, planes, and parties on the corporation dime is practically cliché.) On the other hand, the argument that the money is taxed twice (once when it is earned by the corporation, again when it is paid out to shareholders) does make sense as well. How about this: once we get rid of this whole idea that corporations are ‘people’, and return them to the place of legal constructs to limit the financial liability of investors to only the money they put into the company, we’ll get rid of the corporate income tax and only tax the income when it is paid out to investors. Speaking of double taxation:

-On the VAT: I’ve heard more than a few arguments that VAT systems or other spending taxes tend to be regressive, although there are also some that maintain that a tax on spending would help us as a country to trim our overspending. Make sure that most of the essentials of life (food, housing, medical care) aren’t included, and you’ll have more of my support, although I’m still a bit leery.

-On the inheritance tax: There are plenty of arguments out there against an inheritance tax (some mentioned in the comments on Zakaria’s piece), many focusing on issues like what happens when a small business is passed down or a family house is inherited and the inheritors have to sell it in order to pay the taxes on the inheritance. (As well as arguments that this is another form of double taxation, but I’ll be honest, I see it as, well, your children earning money from being born to a well-off family.) A few simple exemptions, like for privately owned businesses when you receive at least 30% of the business (to enable up to a three-way split in inherited control, more than enough for most situations) and a primary residence, as well as any inherited amount beneath a given limit ($100,000, perhaps) should work to keep this tax focused where it belongs.

-On the whole package: A limited number of years before the whole thing is scrapped and a new set of tax laws have to be put into place. Part of why we’re in this current tax mess is that it is easy to simply add more layers to the current tax system, allowing politicians in power to point out their additions to their contributors while maintaining that they aren’t responsible for the rest of the massive tax tangle. Instead, let’s make sure that anyone who votes for changes to the tax system has to vote for the WHOLE tax system, preferably during an election (preferably Presidential) year. (A four-year period would give us a chance to see what works and what doesn’t, so we can make educated changes to the system, while still providing more stability in the tax code than we currently seem to have.)

Whew, I got a bit wonky at the end there. Still, I think this could make a pretty solid system (and I’ll have to run the numbers myself at some point to make sure we won’t end up even deeper in debt). Plus, let’s be honest, almost by definition it would have to be simpler than our current system.

How would you change the tax system? Are there any types of taxes we should include (or avoid)? Do you think anyone has actually made it through all 3.8 million pages of the taxes code?

There are very few financial advisers who are known throughout the entire personal finance community, who are so famous that they can be mentioned by their last name and you, if you have any financial knowledge, will instantly know who I am referring to. Bach, Orman, and Kiyosaki are such advisers, but perhaps even more famous (at least among the personal finance community) is Ramsey.

The Total Money Makeover, written by Dave Ramsey, is perhaps one of the most followed and celebrated personal finance books around. As the title implies, the goal is not to simply help you with one aspect of your monetary life, but to completely remake your monetary life. So, do all the Ramsey adherents have the right idea, or are they all headed in the wrong direction, money-wise? As always, let’s find out!

Summary

The Total Money Makeover (3rd Edition, just to be clear) opens with an Introduction in which Ramsey shares the history that led to the creation of the book, as well as his current position as a financial adviser. There is a section on what the book is not (including not being sophisticated, complicated, or wrong). The opening portion finishes with a discussion of what has gone wrong with the economy lately, and a few stories of those who followed the Total Money Makeover and have been in a position to succeed in life as a result.

The first chapter introduces the idea of the Total Money Makeover. It shares Ramsey’s history and how he ended up making the changes in his life that he currently promotes. It also shares the first story of those people who have successfully followed Ramsey’s plan (many others are shared throughout the book), and points out the ‘If You Live Like No One Else, Later You Can Live Like No One Else’ motto on the bottom of every page. Chapter two covers the issue of denial, pointing out that you can’t make any improvements in your life until you admit there are areas in need of improvement.

Chapter three looks at one of the myths about debt, that is serves as a tool to accomplish important things in life. It examines numerous different types of debt, from lending to family members to leasing a car to credit cards, expressing the problems with each of them. The fourth chapter looks at other money myths, from myths about bad types of investments to the need to have various types of insurance (the myth being that you don’t need insurance, that is). Chapter five looks at how to fight two more money problems: ignorance (by trying to expand your level of financial knowledge) and trying to keep up with the Joneses (by realizing that it’s more important to get your finances in shape than to get approval from others).

The next seven chapters cover the ‘Baby Steps’ Ramsey is famous for recommending to manage your money. Chapter six covers the first one, setting aside a $1000 emergency fund, after stressing the importance of creating a financial plan and budget in the first place. The seventh chapter covers Ramsey’s recommended way to get out of debt, the Debt Snowball. It works by focusing on paying off the lowest amount debt first, then the next lowest (now using the extra money from the first, paid off debt), then the next lowest, and so on. The goal is to pay off all the debts over (a hopefully short) time, with only a few exceptions (business loans, home and rental mortgages, which are covered later).

The eighth chapter covers Step Three, building up your emergency fund to three to six months’ worth of expenses. It suggests places to keep the money and reasons to alter the order of the steps (if you know there is an emergency coming up soon in your life, such as losing your job, the emergency fund becomes more important). Chapter nine looks at how to invest once you have a solid emergency fund and no debt (except  for possibly a mortgage), building up a retirement fund. It recommends putting 15% of your gross income aside, mainly in growth mutual funds, preferably in any retirement type accounts available to you.

Chapter ten discusses saving for your child(ren)’s education, setting aside a fund to help him or her (or them) cover their college costs. Ramsey highly disapproves of student loans, providing numerous suggestions on how to get a higher education without taking them on. The eleventh chapter looks at home mortgages, stressing the goal, now that everything else has been taken care of, to pay it down as effectively as possible. Chapter twelve looks at the final Baby Step, building up wealth, sharing advice on how to further invest your money, have fun with it, and give plenty away, preferably doing all three.

Chapter thirteen rounds out the book by advising the reader to take the steps suggested to heart and apply them as so many others have been able to do. The third edition then shares the winner of The Total Money Makeover Challenge, and ends with a series of forms that can be used to help follow the steps in the book.

Pros

The Total Money Makeover presents a very helpful, generally easy to follow method of money management. The steps are clearly laid out, and the advice given is pretty solid. The nature of Ramsey’s writing, as well as all the stories shared about people successfully applying the Baby Steps, is very encouraging.

Cons

There’s been almost as much written about where the Baby Steps go wrong as about how they go right (including by me). Many of the suggestions are rather optimistic, particularly the idea that you can live off 8% of your retirement savings (when most other financial experts suggest 4%, and even that is sometimes cited as too high). The repeated Bible references are likely to be a turn-off for any non-Christian.

Overall

The Total Money Makeover provides a pretty solid guide to getting your financial house in order, breaking the process down into simple steps. While these steps might not always be THE best method to take in order to get your finances in order, they are a pretty solid approach. I’d definitely recommend following this approach (or something very similar) to getting your finances in order, as I intend to do myself.

Ah, my fellow students. Nice to get to speak with you once again. By the time you read this, I might be taking (or have already taken) my last final on my journey to get a Master’s degree (possibly my last final ever, depending on whether I go back at some point to get a Ph.D. on top of all my current education). It’s going to feel good to be done with that (even if that primarily means I have to focus on grading students’ lab reports and getting through my research as swiftly as humanly possible).

But I’m not going to be talking about taking finals today; I’ve already shared advice on doing well on your finals, both by preparing throughout the semester and what to do at the last minute, and won’t go through that again (besides, I don’t know about you, but after taking my last final, I’m more than ready to forget about finals). Instead, this time around we’re going to be discussing what happens after the finals; yup, we’re talking about what you can do over the summer to expand your knowledge, your skills, and yes, possibly even your job prospects.

Summer Life Improvement Activities

There’s no reason that the summer has to be a lazy time where you simply relax, watch the TV, hit the beach, and generally veg out. Not that I imagine too many college students would complain about that, but hear me out: There’s a lot of possibilities for you to expand your mind, and in many cases to increase your chances of getting a good job (or being accepted into a graduate program) at the same time. Some of the things you can do over the summer include:

1. Take an Internship: Is there a company you’d love to work for, but you don’t know how to get your foot in the door? Then see if they have an internship program to which you could apply. As an intern, you’d work for free (or possibly at a low wage) at the company, generally assisting with basic jobs, as you learn how the company functions and get to know the people there.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why should I spend my summer working FOR FREE, when I could be making money at the local burger place?” Well, unlike the local burger place, most places that offer internships are the sort of places where you can start a career. Besides being an opportunity to ‘test drive’ a company, to see if it’s genuinely somewhere you’d enjoy working, you also get a chance to meet with people who’ll have a say in whether you are hired down the line. Three months as coffee bringer and paperwork sorter might not seem like any fun, but if it means getting a decent job right out of college a year or two from now at a company you’d love to call your boss, it’s definitely worth considering.

2. Try Working Abroad: If you’re still intent on being paid this summer (and I can’t say that I’d blame you), there’s still no need to limit yourself to working a minimum wage job at the nearest Wal-Mart. You can instead look into working abroad, giving yourself an opportunity to experience a foreign country while still earning at least some money in the process. One possibility to consider (although far from the only one) is working as an English instructor; there are more than a few foreign companies and governments who’d love to have a native speaker come to help teach their employees how to speak English. (Bonus points if you are at least semi-conversant in the native tongue.)

If you're better than me at recognizing what some of these multi-lingual words mean, you're already doing pretty well.

Now, finding a position might be a little tricky; it will take some work and time (which might mean having to save this goal for next summer), but when you do find it, it can provide you with a chance to see more of the world while still drawing in that helpful paycheck (even if happens to be denominated in Euros, pounds, or yen). Barring finding a job, you could potentially simply visit some foreign countries over your break; ‘backpacking through Europe’ is practically a cliché for college students, after all. That will cost money, though, so perhaps you’d be better served by:

3. Starting a Business: A few decades ago, the idea of a college student (or group of college students) starting a business in between semesters might have sounded ludicrous, or at least incredibly rare. Now, with stories of successful businesses started by college students all over the news (just look at Facebook), the understanding that you can run a decent business (if not necessarily the next Facebook) from your dorm room or bedroom back at your mom’s home should be nearly universal. There are plenty of options to consider, from tutoring upcoming students to blogging, and it’d definitely be nice to go back to school as one of the few students with more money, particularly if you can keep that income incoming during the school year.

4. Take Summer Classes: If you’re looking for something a bit more academic, you could take some classes over the summer. It will cost money to take those courses, but if you plan things right, you might be able to cut a semester (or even entire year) off the time it takes you to get your degree, ultimately saving yourself money in the process. Beware, though: summer courses at many universities tend to be brutal, cramming three to four months’ worth of material into a four to six week period. Expect to go to class for several hours each weekday, and get a test every week. (Don’t even get me started on what your lab schedule will look like if you are taking a physical science course like Organic Chemistry; let’s just say you can kiss your weekdays goodbye.) If you go this path, stick with the easier courses on your curriculum, and take only one or at VERY most two at a time (trust me, even one course can do you in, if you aren’t prepared). On the subject of learning:

5. Learn On Your Own: I’m hoping you’d do this, even if you are also doing one (or more) of the items listed above, but it’s worth mentioning on its own. Not all of your education has to be in a classroom, and not all of your learning has to be planned out by a professor. With the power of the Internet (to say nothing of that fun place you probably avoided like the plague all semester, the library), it’s possible to learn almost anything you could want, and plenty of things you might never have even thought to learn. Some of the things I’d suggest:

-Money Management/Investing (Hardly surprising, given that I’m a personal finance blogger; still, you will need to be able to handle money in your life, and getting a start on it now will only help you.)
-Computer Programming/Website Design (The Internet is not going anywhere, and the better you are at creating content for it, the easier things like blogging or simply functioning online will be for you.)
-Foreign Language Speaking/Reading (I’ve mentioned this before, but here it is again: speaking more than one language will only help you in the future, to say nothing of aiding you in that whole ‘working abroad’ area.)
-Speed Reading (In a world where there are billions of sources of information, mostly in printed text form, whether it takes you six minutes or sixty minutes to read through something can have a big impact on your ability to succeed.)

These are hardly the only options; a little online searching will yield dozens of possibilities. You could easily spend your whole summer learning, as there’s really no limit to human knowledge, at least not any you need to worry about hitting by spending your summer trying to learn.

There’s plenty that you can do this summer, plenty that will leave you smarter, better informed, and possibly even richer come fall. You’ve got great potential; be sure to take advantage of it.

Speaking of which, how would YOU spend a summer off? If you’re a current college student, what are your plans? If you’re already out in the real world, what would you tell the upcoming students to do with their free time?

If you’ve done much reading in the personal finance blogosphere this past week, you’ve probably heard about the latest Only72 sale. It was promoted, sometimes extensively, by any number of personal finance bloggers (including myself, although perhaps not as strongly as I should have). One of the major perks of this particular deal was the chance to obtain the newest publication by Chris Guillebeau, a popular writer in the lifestyle design field. How did he get so popular, you ask?

The Art of Non-Conformity, his earlier book, holds a great many answers. With a subtitle like ‘Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World’, it’s easy to see the appeal. Does it actually provide such a life changing experience, of does it come up short? Let’s read on to find out!

Summary

The Art of Non-Conformity opens with a short Prologue, explaining the author’s view on life (and the importance of not simply following the crowd as you move through it) with comparisons to the old parental expression, ‘If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?’ The first section of the book looks at setting your own rules in order to live ‘The Remarkable Life’. Chapter one discusses how most people see the world, and provides a list of things to do to break out of that view. It shares some of Guillebeau’s experiences that have led him to this point in life, and provides a view of what sort of issues will be addressed in future chapters.

The second chapter looks at how to start figuring out what you want in your non-conformist life. It provides a few pieces of advice on how to set the terms for your ideal world, creating lists of lifetime goals for the next year, five years from now, and throughout the rest of your life. As with most chapters from here on, it has plenty of encouraging quotations along the side of each page, and a few points of particular importance spelled out at the end of the chapter.

Chapter three is about conquering your fear of this alternate view on life, and getting the courage to take the first step in claiming a new life. It shares several stories about others attempting to take the leap (some successful, some not) and provides a list of ways to help get yourself through your fear. The fourth chapter looks at how to fight the authorities who seek to hold you down (and do so successfully), by looking at unconventional tactics that you can employ in the process. It discusses gatekeepers, those people who seek to limit your options, and various ways to get past them.

A brief interlude shares the things you don’t need in your non-conformist life (paperwork, years of preparation, and experience, among others) and the things you do need (passion, a vision, commitment, and the answers to what you want and how you can help others) in order to succeed. The second section of the book then looks at reclaiming work and making it better, starting with chapter five, discussing how to make competence your security. It includes several methods of doing so, from starting your own business to becoming a rockstar at your current job to redefining where you work with a different approach to getting a job.

Chapter six covers a subject after my own heart, comparing going to graduate school (or any form of higher education really) to going out into the world and building your education that way. As you might guess from the book so far, Guillebeau mainly comes out in favor of getting experiences rather than a degree, sharing a one-year alternative to graduate school (with a hefty dose of sociology, current events and life skills in the mix).

The seventh chapter looks at building a small army of followers, those who will support you and help you achieve your goals. It provides advice on how to build your army, strengthen their support for you and your goal, and then ask them for helping you achieve your goals. It provides some ways to use your army to achieve your goals, and some possible things you might do to defeat your own process.

Chapter eight covers the personal finance end of building your own life, sharing some basic financial principles and stressing how it is better to focus on building a strong income to achieve financial independence, rather than focusing on creating a nest egg large enough to live off in retirement. The chapter finishes with a section on the importance of investing in people, by giving to charities.

Another interlude follows, looking at some of the criticism that winners have suffered in their lifetime (and sometimes beyond). Part three of the book covers the power of convergence, looking at how to put everything together. The ninth chapter looks at ways of adding abundance to your life, by excluding all the unnecessary things and information in your life. It also looks at how to build abundance in your life.

Chapter ten looks at contrarian adventures, finding ways to do things that are against the normal flow of life. Mostly it focuses on foreign travel, sharing experiences, advice, and recommendations to make the travel process smoother. The eleventh and final chapter focuses on building a legacy, a major, positive impact you had on the world. There is advice on both planning your legacy and working towards it included.

The book ends with a few small sections, starting with a Conclusion that presents some Dangerous Ideas, stressing the importance of handling critics and presenting a few ‘dangerous ideas’ Guillebeau would like to see implemented. There is list of gratitude, a discussion of his favorite charity (Charity: Water, if you were curious), an FAQ, and a list of resources available online.

Pros

The Art of Non-Conformity definitely takes a distinct look at life, providing a new way of viewing most things. It shares numerous tales of how both Guillebeau and others have successfully taken on a non-conformist life, and provides tips for others to reach that point as well. It’s quite entertaining and inspiring, providing definite food for thought regarding your life as you currently live it.

Cons

As you might guess from a book with ‘Non-Conformity’ in the title, it’s not for everyone. Some of the information contained is limited in usefulness, particularly if you aren’t planning to start your own business or travel the world. Depending on what you are currently doing with your life and how happy you are, some of the comments about the ‘conformist’ lifestyle (including terms like conformist) can prove a bit irritating.

Overall

The Art of Non-Conformity is definitely a very interesting and eye-opening read. While not for everyone (as the author himself notes several times), it definitely provides a different way to look at life. If you (or possibly someone you care about) has been searching for a way to approach life that’s not the typical style, this book is definitely worth a read (for you, or a recent graduate in your life who doesn’t know what to do with his or her life).

With my time as a graduate student very rapidly coming to an end (not rapidly enough, perhaps, as it appears my research work simply refuses to cooperate, which I know I’ve mentioned several dozen times already), it’s been a bit disappointing to see how hard it’s been so far to gain any job offers.  Before too long, after all, my education process will be complete, one way or another, and I’ll need to have a position that enables me to help my wife and our future child (and possibly children) as we prepare for our future together.  With no signs that anyone was interested in hiring, me, though, it was coming off as a rather disappointed situation forty-eight hours ago.

In the past few days, though, I’ve had a much different situation arise.  I was called by not one, but two different people trying to find positions on Monday, less than an hour apart from each other.  (Although they were from different placement agencies, which were located in different parts of the world if my ability to discern accents is accurate, they were trying to fill two positions at the same place.)  Neither position is absolutely fantastic in either responsibility or pay scale; I can probably do better if I keep looking for another job, to say nothing of finding a closer job (this one is currently over two hours from my home).

Still, it provides me with a great deal more confidence to have people show their interest in me and my efforts like this.  I’ve gone from worried that I won’t have any luck finding a job to thinking that, ‘Hey, I’m pretty well qualified for chemistry jobs; all I need is for people to see it.’  It’s a nice feeling, and one that will help keep me motivated as I finish my graduate school work and start a more devoted job search.

Speaking of nice feelings, it is pleasurable, as always, to read through some of the great articles shared by my fellow bloggers, including:

Good Yakezie Posts

Ask the Readers-Pareto Principle – The Pareto Principle (that 80% of the results are produced by 20% of the causes) is always a popular topic for personal finance writers.  Eric of Narrow Bridge Finance looks at how it can be applied to email, among other topics, to cut your efforts down to the most productive 20%.

The Top Five Favors You Can Do For Your Body – If you want a good, healthy, and enjoyable life (to say nothing of long enough to savor that retirement thing), you need to stay healthy.  Here, Junior Boomer of Consumer Boomer shares five suggestions to keep your body as healthy and happy as possible.

Help a 23-Year Old Reader Move Out & Set a Budget – Well Heeled Blog presents the situation of a reader who is a recent college grad and wonders how to get his financial footing in life.  It’s always interesting to see just what a variety of people have to say in advice in such a situation.

Applying for a Small Business Loan – There are plenty of possibilities for why, as you try to build a business, you might need a small business loan.  For a guide to some of them and advice on how to get such a loan, check out 20s money’s view on the subject.

Environmental Reward Program Update – I’ll admit that this is something of a new one on me; I knew that there were some programs trying to encourage environmentally friendly behavior through rewards, but I didn’t realize there were so many.  Good thing Amanda of Frugal Confessions shared them with us.

8 Great Ways to Save Money Socially – I’ll admit to not being the most social of people, but even I like to spend time with my friends every now and then.  As Kelly of The Centsible Life notes, it’s possible to save your money AND be social, too.

 The Rich and the Rest of Us – I know it sounds like the opening cries of a class warfare battle, but these thoughts from Flexo of Consumerism Commentary about the new book from Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley raises some interesting questions I’d like to have answered, as well.

Dealing With Debt Collectors – Debt is unfortunately a part of life for most of us, making knowing how to handle it increasingly important.  Mike of Saving Money Today details some of the regulations laid out in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, letting you know what debt collectors can (and cannot) do while trying to get the money owed to them.

What the NFL Draft Can Teach Us About Our Own Job Searches – I just had to read an article with a topic like this, and Daniel of Sweating the Big Stuff did not disappoint.  There are some surprising lessons you can learn for your own job hunting from looking at the draft (although, being the subject of nation-wide speculation and attention is probably not one of them.

Avoid Information Overload and Be More Productive – Alright, calling this a ‘Good Yakezie Post’ might be cheating, at least a hair; I wrote this post for Yakezie.com, as part of my effort to spread my wings a bit more.  So, read, enjoy, and learn how to keep yourself from being overloaded with all the information that’s out there nowadays.

Contests and Giveaways

Elle over at Couple Money is holding a Fuel King/Queen Contest to attempt to increase fuel consumption.  I don’t know how well I’d do at that; I no longer drive myself, but since my wife lives 75 miles away, every time we meet involves a 150 mile round trip…

May doesn’t look to be a very big month for contests, giveaways, and other such events, although perhaps I’m just spending too much time with my nose buried in my chemistry books…

Where the Amateur Financier was Featured

My Amateur Financier Value Proposition was included in The Big Bang Theory Birthdays Edition of The Totally Money Blog Carnival, hosted by Debt Black Hole.  Being a fan of The Big Bang Theory (and sadly, proof that their view of nerd culture is surprisingly accurate), I’m particularly honored.

My post on Building Up Your Financial Literacy (always a good goal to have) was featured in the 17th Edition of the Carnival of Retirement, hosted by Young Cheap Living.  It was also included in the Carnival of Wealth May Flowers edition hosted by Control Your Cash, who shared some largely depressing facts about the Mayflower’s voyage.

How Much Information Should You Share? was included in the Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #31: Lending a Helping Hand (excellent name, by the way) hosted by 101 Centavos.

Alright, that’s all for this week.  Here’s hoping you found plenty of interesting articles listed here (I know I always do), and here’s to another week of great blog articles!

I try not to promote things in this blog that I won’t take advantage of myself.  There’s a lot of things in the personal finance world that represent good ideas, and even more that aren’t so good.  Although I’m approached by dozens of would-be article writers and advertisers each week, I do what I am able to allow only the best of information to get through to you, my readers.

So, when I tell you that the Only 72 fellows have another great group of personal finance eBooks (and this time around, a physical book, as well) available, a group and deal that I’d highly recommend, I hope you take me at my word.  I will be the first to admit, the link included in the previous sentence is an affiliate link, which if you follow it to order your copy of the eBooks, will give me a portion of your spending (50%, if you were wondering).  That said, I genuinely believe that these books are going to be quite helpful to most bloggers (enough to have bought my own set already), and if you’re interested in purchasing them as well, I’d appreciate if you buy through me.  Thanks very much.

Now, on with the discussion of where my finances stand this month:

Honestly, there’s not too much to report, overall.  My investments took a minor hit during the month (as sometimes happens when you’re invested in stock mutual funds), my bank accounts are a bit lower, and I owe a great deal more on my credit cards.  That last point is due primarily to paying back various charges accumulated during my time in the hospital, so it’s not terribly surprising.  Most every other account is pretty much where it was last week, and my Alexa Ranking is still rising (hopefully it’ll be under 100,000 before too long), which is always nice to see.  So overall, not too horrible (although all the costs associated with my illness are certainly starting to catch up).

Let’s see how my attempts at meeting my goals for the year are going:

Sort of a mixed bag, altogether.  My alternative income wasn’t too shabby (although, I still need to do a lot more to get my monthly blogging income up above $1000 per month, and then beyond).  My credit cards are, alas, only getting more debt added to them (although, when I finished getting all the medical issues under control, that should decrease sharply).  My charitable donations are pretty solid, although I’m slowly accumulating enough of an ‘Additional Donation Needed’ sum that I’ll need to do something about it.  April’s not going to go down in history as one of my best months, but it wasn’t too bad, either, particularly coming as it does on the heels of a major medical situation.

So, that’s where my finances stand at the moment.  Here’s hoping that your financial situation is going pretty well, to boot.  If you’re still considering it, a reminder that the Only72 eBooks would make some good reading, and that I’d appreciate it if you purchase this set of eBooks through my links.  Thanks, and have a great month!

When you’ve been working for something long enough, sometimes it can seem to be nearly impossible when you reach the end of your work and are about to enjoy your rewards.  Whether it’s working to reach retirement, building your website into a financial giant, or having a baby, sometimes it seems you spend so much time waiting for it to happen that when you finally reach the end of your wait, it doesn’t seem possible.

Such is the case with my coming graduation.  Admittedly, I’ve only been going to grad school for the past two years (and not even that, as I started in August of 2010), but it’s still been a reasonably long time.  And now I can start to see how things will finish for me; my last final is a week from today, I will teach my last lab this Thursday, and within the next two weeks, I will have my final grades turned in.

It's been a fairly long race, but the finish line is in sight.

This is not the end of my Master’s Degree journey, though, as I need to finish my research, write up a thesis (which I have started, but which still needs much fleshing out), and then defend said thesis.  (And as the race to finish my Master’s Degree winds down, my race to find a good job to support my family is only getting started.)  Still, most of the graduate school responsibilities that are not directly related to my thesis will be disappearing in the next two weeks, leaving me with much more time (and flexibility).  Expect to see a lot more of me, on this blog and throughout the blogosphere.

Still, the next two weeks will be pretty busy, to say the least.  Apologies in advance if I miss an update or take longer than usual to respond to a comment.  Thanks for the understanding, and wish me luck!

Winning the lottery. Most of us have contemplated the possibility (and a depressing number of people are counting on it to fund their retirement). But while we may imagine an endless party where we can spend thousands of dollars each day and never run out of money, what is winning the lottery really like?

How Winning the Lottery Changed My Life attempts to answer that question, looking at how the life of one winner of the April 2006 Missouri Powerball drawing, Sandra Hayes, has changed since winning. As the subtitle, ‘Windfall: A Blessing or a Curse?’ might indicate, it’s not all champagne and luxury cars. Is the book a worthwhile read next time you’re ready to head out to buy some lottery tickets? Let’s read on and find out!

Summary

How Winning the Lottery Changed My Life opens with a short chapter (all the chapters are fairly short) discussing how Hayes and her fiancee were sharing an evening watching a television program about her life since being part of a group that won the Missouri Powerball lottery. The second chapter then flashes back to shortly before the winning occurred, discussing how the author felt overwhelmed by her chronic disease and the need to get a second job to cover her bills, particularly her second Master’s degree student loans. She discusses how she made some deep prayers, looking to God for guidance.

The next few chapters then describe how she entered into the lottery with her coworkers (as is fairly common in some offices, at least when the amount of prize money to be awarded gets particularly large), discovered that they had won, and then went through the process of collecting their money. There is discussion of the process of verifying their winnings, as well as deciding how to receive their payments.

The next section covers the actual receipt of the money, as well as some of the problems that can arise with with such a large (and well-publicized) windfall. From having to hire a whole team of money managers to help her handle her new wealth, to quitting her job to help cut down on the number of people calling for a hand-out, there are numerous issues discussed that might not be apparent to the typical lottery player. This section does end on a positive note, discussing how Hayes was able to set up college funds for her grandchildren and donate to a charities, particularly one that had helped her in the past.

The book then covers how Hayes was approached by a television station that wanted to film a reality show about her and several of the other lottery winners called Million Dollar Christmas, documenting their first Christmas as millionaires. She agreed, although as result of some of the ways in which she was portrayed (and some of the responses some of her friends and family gave to the television show questions), she expresses some regret in having gone through with the show.

The final portion of the book covers how Hayes’ life has changed, and what her life is currently like. It discusses how the Missouri Lottery Association holds a three-day event called ‘The Millionaires’ Reunion’, where past winners are given a chance to mingle, work to support charities, and learn how to manage their money. There is the discussion of how she met (or re-met, as they had known each other when they were younger) her current husband. The book closes with a discussion of how winning the lottery has been largely a blessing, but there are a few negative elements that have come with it.

Pros

How Winning the Lottery Changed My Life provides an interesting behind the scenes look at the life of a lottery winner. Both the good and the bad aspects of having won are included in the course of the book, helping to provide a more balanced view on what winning is like.

Cons

The book is very, very short (under fifty pages, and maybe a half hour read or so). There’s not much advice that would be of use to a new lottery winner. Even as strictly a bibliographic account, it’s shy on the details of how things have changed for Hayes after her win, sticking to generalities and not getting into much detail of her personal life.  (The discussion of her husband, for example, was limited to one chapter, itself only two pages long.)

Overall

How Winning the Lottery Changed My Life provides an interesting look at a lottery winner’s life. That said, there’s not much included in this book that isn’t mentioned in most magazine or newspaper stories about lottery winners. Add in the very short length, and it’s probably better to just read about lottery winners’ lives online.

What are your values?

It’s one of those questions that sounds like it should be easy to answer. Your values are one of the most central parts of your being, one of the things that makes you most uniquely you. You live by your values every day, after all; how hard can it be to put names on them and write them down?

But it’s not that simple. There are many things we hope to do, but not all of them are easy to qualify. Even the ones that are clear in our minds can be hard to express in words.  It’s not just a matter of tangible things like money, but also the goals we hope to achieve and obstacles we want to overcome.

Although, the tangible items do have their pluses...(See below for my thoughts on humor and having fun)

I’ve put quite a lot of thought into the following Value Statement, which expresses why I think that The Amateur Financier represents a value site even with the millions of other sites out there on the internet.

The Amateur Financier’s Values Are:

To Educate: I love to help people learn. Whether it’s teaching freshmen the basics of chemical processes in my graduate student career, or sharing information about a type of investment, I love to teach. As long as I write in The Amateur Financier, I will try to make my posts informative, spreading knowledge of money management and investment.

To Learn: The opposite side of the coin, though, is just as valuable; I learn as much from my blogging efforts as I could possibly teach. Between my research for my posts, reading through other blogger’s posting efforts, and reading and responding to the comments left on my blog entries, I’ve learned so much about personal finance that I would never have learned otherwise. It’s wonderful just how much information there is out there.

To Make Money (Ethically): Let me be honest: a major reason I started to blog was in the hopes of making a decent side income. (There were, at various points in my blogging career, also thoughts of being able to make blogging my main income, but that seems increasingly unlikely.) You’ll notice the ads on the sides and at the top of each page, and I also occasionally publish sponsored posts. I do NOT, however, allow advertisements or other forms of money-making attempts that would be unethical. My desire to make money does NOT overshadow my desire for this site to be seen as an intelligent, ethical source of information and discussion. For more thoughts on such ethics:

Not To Sell Questionable Products: I do promote some products and services here on The Amateur Financier, both in my own posts (particularly my book reviews), in my advertisements, and in my guest posts (most of which are really ‘sponsored’ posts that seek to promote a product or service themselves). I do everything possible, though, to make sure that the products and goods being promoted are useful and financially sound. I have turned down more than a few offers that presented products

Not To Cajole Or Force: One of the biggest issues I have with many of the articles out there is they are written for the sole purpose of selling something. While I have no objection to selling things per se (salesman- and saleswomanship is what makes the business world (and the world in general) run, after all), I think it is important to have sources of information available on which you can rely without feeling as if the sole purpose is to make a sale.

To Present All Sides Of An Issue: There are a lot of issues in the world of finance; not surprisingly, as that’s where all the money is. Too often, people attempt to present only their own point of view, often trying to maintain that it is the only (or the only logical) point of view, and that anyone who disagrees with them is at best uninformed, and at worst trying to manipulate their readers, listeners, or watchers. (Although it often seems that those people who make such arguments are the worst practitioners of such manipulation, but that’s getting off the subject.) I try my best not to do that here on The Amateur Financier, instead trying to show all sides of an issue and present the usually logical reasons that people have for taking each side, even if one side makes no sense to me, personally. I will sometimes slip up in this respect, stressing one side of an issue at the expense of the other (I’m human, after all, and do have my own opinions), but I do try to keep this blog more focused on the plain and simple truth, rather than my opinion of the matter.

To Have Fun (And Help Others Have Fun): I saved this one for the end, but it’s far from the least important (and I would argue it is likely the most important, in fact). I write because I enjoy writing, I share on this blog because I enjoy sharing, and I read others’ blogs and responses to my entries because I enjoy doing so. I love being able to share and have a lot of fun doing so, and I hope that all my readers have enjoyment when they read my blog, as well. If you aren’t having fun, after all, is it really worth doing?

There you go, the values behind the writing here at The Amateur Financier. I hope they help you to better understand what goes on in my head as I write these posts. Thanks to Sam (the Financial Samurai) for inspiring me to write this; as you said, it’s a great help to be able to reflect on all of this in writing.

What Is Your Value Proposition?

I’ve been doing much thinking, about my life, about this blog, and about the world in general.  I suppose this is what you do when you reach a turning point in your life, much like I have; in just over the past month and a half, I have gotten married, found out my wife is pregnant, had a seizure that will greatly affect my life from this point on, and gotten within one month of my last day of classes to complete my Master’s degree.  By the time this year is over, I will be a father, a graduate school graduate, a (hopefully) gainfully employed chemist, and loving husband.  In short, nothing will be the same for me (not that things ever really stay the same, I suppose, but you get my point).

With all of this going on, I’ve barely had a chance to stop and think., as I’ve tried to figure out how to spend the rest of my life.  I realize that I’m not going to be able to plot out the rest of my life right this moment, but there are some things I’ve been meaning to change for a long time, and these events could be just what I need to get up and actually do them.

More than a few of these changes are going to occur right on this very blog.  With how much time and effort I put into making things flow around here, if I’m going to change my life for the better, my blog will have to change with me.

If you’re a regular reader and are starting to think I’m planning to quit, or at least severely cut down how many articles I publish, don’t worry, I have no intention of stopping my blogging work; I have too much fun sharing these posts with everyone, after all.  But over the next month or two, there will likely be more than a few changes, from the strictly cosmetic to the functional (one thing I’ve been meaning to do is speed up how quickly my blog loads for everyone, myself included).  You might even see a few new staff members, as I try to put some of the effort required to keep this blog running (and build it into a substantial site) onto other, more experienced shoulders.  Still, if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that I’ll keep spending all the time I am able writing these posts, and sharing some of the other great posts from around the web, such as:

Good Yakezie Posts

 The Act of Writing and Saying What We Don’t Understand – Given that I’m a biochemist, not an economist or financial adviser, I sometimes wonder if I’ve picked the right area to cover with my blog.  In this Yakezie.com post, the Financial Samurai discusses whether those people who aren’t experts  in the areas they’re discussing should, well, actually discuss it.  There’s lots of interesting discussion (check it out; my response is long enough to be a post itself).

My Cola Taste Test: Is Coke Really Better Than Pepsi? – Len Penzo is always an entertaining writer, and never more so than when he puts common products to the test.  Here, he and some family members test cola products to see which one is deserving of the title ‘best cola’.  (Hint: It’s not Coke…)

Baby Proofing the House – With a baby of my own on the way, Sondra and I will need to get the house in appropriate baby shape sooner rather than later.  Elle of Couple Money shares some of the things she and her hubby are doing to get their place in order.

How Reading My Mail Saved Me $1,566.87 – Joe Plemon of Personal Finance By The Book shares an incident where his insurance company tried to raise his rates using a plain envelope letter of notification.  A good reminder to always open your letters, even the seemingly innocuous ones.

Why Car Loans Are Making You Poor – While ‘poor’ is probably an overstatement, car loans definitely don’t help your bottom line, and as Derek of Life And My Finances points out, taking out car loans (or worse yet, leases) can end up hurting your finances more than you know.

Is Annual Credit Report a Scam? – Short version: no, you’re thinking of FREECreditReport.com (Yes, I know their jingles are catchy, that doesn’t make them any more trustworthy).  For the longer version, check out this article from Tim of Faith and Finance.

Cut Out That Middleman!  Buying Local Saves You Money – Probably not too much of a surprise to most of my readers, but the fewer people who take possession of a good between its initial production and your final use, the less you will end up paying.  Here, 101 Centavos shares an example of this from Greece, involving potatoes and people trying to avoid a 450% markup.

Where the Amateur Financier Was Featured

The always fun and increasingly large Yakezie Carnival, hosted this week by Khaleef of Faithful with a Few, hosted my article discussing how much information you should share.

My post on Celebrating the End of Tax Season (which I’m sure most people spent much of last week doing) was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival hosted by My Personal Finance Journey.

My review of The Psychology of Wealth was included in the Carnival of Wealth: Adopt-A-Pet Edition hosted by Control Your Cash, who also attempted to summarize my summary (with interesting results).

Speaking of book reviews, the Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #30, hosted by My University Money, included my review of Eat That Frog! (still one of the oddest titled books I’ve ever read).

My discussion of whether you should set some money aside for your children’s education was included in the Carnival of Financial Simplicity – The Journey, which is a very impressive title, that was hosted by Kim of Money and Risk.

As part of my attempt to catch up on all the carnivals I missed in the past several months, here is the Yakezie Carnival – Mighty Ducks Edition hosted by 20′s Finances, featuring my article Mixed Bag Monday – Reaching Retirement

Alright, that’s it for this week; here’s hoping everyone has a wonderful week, and if you make any big changes yourself, that they are all for the good.

How has your Financial Literacy Month been so far? I realize that I haven’t said too much about it, this year at least. But it’s never too late to try to increase your level of knowledge, particularly when the knowledge in question is something as important as handling money properly and building your wealth.

(Besides, some of you may properly argue that you should work to build up your financial literacy throughout the entire year. While this is certainly true (and goodness knows, I write these blog entries throughout the year with the expectation that they are read and help to educate my readers), it’s still good to occasionally set aside time to specially focus on the important things in life. Much the same way that it’s currently Administrative Professionals Week (a.k.a. Secretary’s Week), when we remember the people who REALLY run the office.)

Consider this a timely warning to get your secretary something nice.

Building up your financial literacy is invaluable to success in the world. The more you know about money, including how to save, manage, and invest it, the easier it will be to function in life, and build up a sizable fortune in the process. Who doesn’t want that?

How to Build Up Your Financial Literacy

To build up your level of financial literacy, there are numerous steps that you need to take. Follow them, and you’ll be sure to function much better when it comes to earning, investing, and managing your money.

1. Read Lots of Financial Information…: As with building up your regular literacy, the more you read, the better you’ll get at it. In this case, though, the ‘it’ in question is your understanding of financial terms. Even if you can’t tell your Forex from your 401(k) now, spending your time reading about personal finance and investing will boost your knowledge of money and related issues slowly but surely. As they say, Knowledge is Power!

2. …But Keep the Source in Mind: Not every source of information is written with the sole purpose of expanding your knowledge. There are more than a few sources of information out there designed instead to con you into spending or investing your money in a way that makes the writers rich, even as it decreases your funds. As you read through your information, be sure to keep track of the source, and make sure that you don’t put too much faith in any single source.

3. Double-, Triple-, and Quadruple-Check Everything You Read (or Watch): In the same vein, it’s important for you to make sure that you don’t simply rely on a single source of information before you make any major money decisions. As already mentioned, not every source of information has your best fiscal interests at heart. Before relying on a single source when making a decision, be sure to find other sources to check to ensure that you are getting good, unbiased, non-devious advice. (Be sure that your follow up sources of advice are unaffiliated with the first one; it does little good in the double-checking column to get multiple sources from the same group of people.)

4. Don’t Let Your Biases Prevail: As you seek out these follow up sources of information, it’s going to be tempting to find ones that agree with the decision you’ve already made. Resist this urge; with how many sources of information there are currently in existence, you can find numerous ones that fit any bias you might have. Instead, search for the broadest range of material you can find, look for sources with as little bias as possible, and be sure to expose yourself to disagreeing perspectives. If you can do all that, you’ll be much better prepared to use your money wisely.

5. Never Stop Learning: I shouldn’t need to say this, but here we go: at no point in the financial arena (or the world in general) can you put aside the books, webpages, and television shows and say ‘Yup, I know it all; I can stop learning now’. Even if you ignore the daily fluctuations of the market that much of the financial media focuses on, there’s still much that needs to be learned, and no way to do so without lots of learning. While you don’t need to spend every moment of the day with your nose locked in a personal finance magazine or browsing a blog (although, I won’t be mad if you want to stay a while), you do need to keep an eye out for information you haven’t learned yet, and be sure to follow any leads you encounter until you have a thorough understanding of the subject.

What are you learning this Financial Literacy Month? How has having a knowledge of financial terms helped you with investing or other money tasks? What are your favorite sources of financial information?

Psychology is always a tricky matter. Everyone’s mind is different, and trying to make sweeping generalizations about how people think is tough, to say the least. Trying to figure out common thought trends for any group is tricky, particularly if you are looking at such a broad and varied group as the wealthy in our country.

The Psychology of Wealth attempts to do just that, looking at the perspectives that the wealthy take on money and success. The author, in between his work as a clinical psychologist, claims to help you ‘understand your relationship with money and achieve prosperity’. Does he succeed in his work, or does the book still leave you confused and not at all prosperous? Let’s read on and find out!

Summary

The Psychology of Wealth opens with comment from how the author about how he wanted to investigate what personality traits and mental aspects lead some people to have a ‘wealth psychology’, a mental outlook that enables them to build up their financial standing and achieve monetary success. The first chapter looks at how we define wealth, examining both successful people and those who have had trouble managing money (the example given is a man who won the lottery and ended up losing it all). It encourages the reader to take a closer look at their own relationship with money.

Chapter two covers the evolution of wealth, discussing how the standards of what was considered monetary success have changed through American history. In particular, it notes that even a modest lifestyle in today’s society would be considered extraordinarily extravagant by the standards set just half a century ago. Chapter three looks at methods of finding your dream, looking at what you seek in life and how you can move toward that goal.

The fourth chapter looks at self-esteem and its link to wealth. It stresses the fact that money cannot solve your personal problems, and ends with a table listing traits of high and low self-esteem. Chapter five stresses the fact that for every situation, there are a number of ways in which we can choose to react, and looks at how the role of credit has changed over the years, particularly recently.

Chapter six covers the concept of value, describing some of the different ways to borrow money that exist, and stressing the importance of paying such loans back. Chapter seven looks at the different types of debts that people take on, both conscious debt that they enter into to meet their goals and unconscious debt that people take on without thinking it through. The need to be conscious of your debt (and your financial situation in general) is heavily stressed.

Chapter eight looks at giving to others, discussing the importance of being willing to give to others with no thought of getting anything in return. Numerous stories are included of how giving without expecting to get anything back can end up benefiting you anyway, and a few stories of non-generous people and the problems they experience are also shared. The ninth chapter looks at the phases we go through in life. It also discusses the importance of doing something you enjoy doing with your life if you hope to be successful.

Chapter ten shares the importance of finding your own path to prosperity. A major portion of the chapter shares the story of Dennis Gardin, who suffered serious burns as a teenager and used that experience to help and encourage other burn victims. It encourages people to find what will bring them fulfillment in life, and pursue that path. The final chapter of the book, chapter eleven, talks about where to plant your feet, stressing the importance of getting started towards meeting your goals even if it takes a while to get there. The book ends with a final note to step back and try to see the bigger picture when it comes to wealth.

Pros

The Psychology of Wealth has lots of interesting stories of various people who have managed to achieve success. It provides a rather interesting perspective on how to view wealth, mainly from a psychological stand point. There are quite a interesting facts that are included throughout the book, from historic points to current financial standings in the wake of the recent financial downturn.

Cons

The book is a bit sparse on helpful information for the reader to apply to their own lives. It also jumps around quite a bit, going from one area to another without much discernible flow. The descriptions of some of the people mentioned in the book seem overly complimentary, particularly with regards to wealthy individuals like Donald Trump. (That several of the people referenced also provided complimentary comments quoted by the book, including Mr. Trump, doesn’t help matters much.)

Overall

The Psychology of Wealth is a thought-provoking read, providing an interesting psychological perspective on how we view wealth (both now and in the past) than most books. It is not be the easiest book to apply to your own life, focusing as it does on those people who have already achieved wealth. It does provide some definite food for thought, though, as you work towards building up wealth for yourself in life.

There are different circles in all of our lives. We all have our coworkers, our friends, and our relatives, at the very least. That’s just the start, of course; most of us further break those groups into sub-divisions: the coworkers we like and hang out with vs. the ones we deal with only as much as necessary, the close friends and the friends we barely still keep in touch with, and those relatives we really like compared to the ones we nod politely at during the holidays and otherwise try to avoid.

With each of these groups of people in our lives, we share some amount of information about ourselves; with very few exceptions, typically the people who are closest to us, there’s nobody who knows EVERYTHING about us. Our coworkers know the details of our work and understand our frustration with our boss, our friends know about our romantic troubles (or romantic successes) and personal lives, and our relatives remember all the embarrassing stories about our youth (and if they are members of my family, are among the first to know when there is a new baby on the way, if only because they’d be highly upset with me if I didn’t share that information as soon as I knew). Each segment of our lives had its own set of rules and portion of knowledge about us that they were allowed to know, and that was all they had a chance to learn.

Enter the Internet

That is, until the arrival of the Internet. The Internet, and sites like Facebook (and before it, MySpace; although, perhaps I’m dating myself now), have enabled us to share information about ourselves with many more people at once, anyone who has decided to follow us can learn all about anything we decide to share. (And many of us, particularly the younger ones, lack discretion, shall we say, in what they decide to post.)

The Internet has shifted how we share information in other ways, as well. It’s now possible, for example, to remain completely or semi-anonymous even as you share more information about yourself than your best friends have ever learned. This leads to some unusual (or at least, unusual prior to the widespread use of the Internet) situations, where you can simultaneously know nearly everything about a person and yet still know nothing for certain. I’ve shared more about my financial standing on this very blog, for example, than my own wife knows (not that I try to keep anything from her, of course; but every time I start to discuss mutual funds and the difference between a traditional and a Roth IRA, her eyes glaze over and I realize she’s a step or two away from complete unconsciousness). Yet, I could pass most of my readers on the street and they wouldn’t recognize me. They couldn’t even say with absolute certainty that the writer of this blog is a 29 year old male with a degree in biochemistry and an interest in personal finance; it’s entirely possible, as far as anyone reading this knows, that ‘Roger’ is really a team of trained monkeys typing on computers in between their work on re-writing Hamlet.

My point is not to make you question who (and what) I am, as I do try to be honest when I’m writing, but merely to point out some of the facts of modern life. Information has become THE most important commodity, with sites from Facebook to Google making much of their profits by gathering, organizing, analyzing, and yes, selling the information provided to them. It wouldn’t take too much effort on the part of a data miner to link this blog with my personal Facebook account with any number of other sources of information about me, from my high school debate team performance to my dating profiles from my single days, building a more complete set of information about me than anyone, save myself and possibly Sondra, knows about currently.

How Much Information Should You Share?

All of which leads me back to the main point of this article: how much information should you share? And how should you share it to minimize the chance that you could suffer from identity theft or other ill results from personal information falling into the wrong hands? I’ve already shared some tips on how to avoid identity theft, and most of what I’ve said applies here as well. For a few more tips on sharing information, make sure that you:

Keep Damaging Information Private: We’re all done things in our past we don’t want the world to know about. (If by chance you haven’t, well, just know that there’s a reason college students have gotten a reputation for being wild and crazy outside the classroom.) While it’s tempting to hop online and share that information, resist the urge and keep it to yourself. (Now, getting your friends to do the same, that’s a tougher challenge…)

Keep Your Social Accounts Separate: It’s tempting to link all your social media accounts together, to form one giant social web connecting everyone you know. Don’t. Remember back when we talked about the different social circles in everyone’s lives? There are some things your personal friends should know that your professional contacts shouldn’t, and vice versa. It shouldn’t be too hard to have separate accounts (or use separate sites altogether) to connect with your friends, family, and business contacts. (This won’t completely prevent someone with the time and desire from putting all the pieces together, but why make things easier on them?)

Keep Some Personal Information Personal: There’s much you can share on social networks, from your thoughts and feelings to your fantastic salsa recipe. But there’s just as much you shouldn’t share; from the obvious (passwords, security questions and answers, that time you and your friends went on a drinking spree and regained consciousness in Argentina) to the less obvious (as much as you might want to share what your company is doing, people can and have been fired for sharing corporate information). A good rule of thumb: If you have the slightest bit of doubt about whether you should share something, don’t.

The Information Age is a great time to be alive, and it’s wonderful to learn about others (and share information about yourself). Just keep an eye on what information you share, and you should be able to enjoy the internet without causing yourself problems.

Readers, what information do you avoid sharing? How do you keep your information safe? Does anyone else remember MySpace as something other than a defunct site? (And for that matter, does anyone remember the even earlier sites, like Friendster?)

I’m getting near the end of my educational journey (or at least, this current stage I’m in; I realize that you never really finish learning).  Yesterday, I took the second to last test in what is likely to be the last class I have to take in order to get my Master’s degree in Chemistry. (Unless I go on to get my Ph.D., it’s also likely to be the last formal chemistry class I take, period.)  In theory, by this time next month, I could be preparing to defend my thesis and receive my degree, ready to go out into the real world and make my way in life (to say nothing of providing for my lovely new wife (and an upcoming bundle of joy).

In practice…well, as with so many things in life, it’s not that easy.  Oh, I’ll get through the class well enough, I’m pretty confident on that point.  But my research keeps running into various roadblocks, most of which seem downright insurmountable.   I’ve already made plans to work into the summer, however long it takes, and hopefully I won’t need to spend too long in order to get things finished.

There’s still more than a little way to go to complete things, but I can see where things are heading, and as long as I keep working towards it, I should be able to reach that goal before too long.  And while I work to achieve that goal, I can keep working to build up my blog and improve my standing in the blogverse.  And what better way to do so by sharing some of the great posts from the past week?

Good Yakezie Blog Posts

What is Your Desired Lifestyle? – Quite fitting; it’s sometimes easy to lose track of what we are working to do if we don’t make sure to keep an eye on the bigger picture.  Jeff of Sustainable Life Blog shares a few thoughts on perspective on the Yakezie website, which can hopefully encourage you to design your lifestyle a bit better.

Responding to When Someone Calls You Cheap – If you try to live frugally, you run the risk that the less frugal people around you might call you ‘cheap’.  Luckily, Evan of My Journey to Millions has come up with a creed as a response, a pretty decent way to handle such criticism.

Ew Ew Ew – As frequent readers have probably learned, you can get me to read (and feature) your article if you give it a snappy title.  The one, from Mysti of Digging Out From Our Mess, definitely made me chuckle.  (It’s referring to her encounter with a snake, if you were curious.)

Things You Need to Know Before Becoming a Freelancer: How Much Do You Need to Earn? – Many of us want to be able to quite our day jobs.  But before you make that leap, you need to do some major research, and figure out how much you need to earn to match your current income.  Kevin of Invest It Wisely has run the numbers himself, and shares some advice on how to do so.

How to Start Making Passive Income – Ever wonder how to start earning more without having to work longer?  It’s a very popular topic, and if you want some advice on how to get started, Retire by 40 shares some good tips.

5 Examples of When a Good Deal Isn’t Worth the Bother – I suppose I shouldn’t admit this, being a personal finance blogger and all, but often times finding the store that is the least expensive isn’t my highest priority when choosing where to shop.  Money Beagle shares a few situations where he finds himself in the same situation.

Losing a Parent: Are You Ever Prepared? – The answer, without question, is no.  I’ve been lucky enough to not have lost a parent yet, but I can tell you it is something I could never imagine being prepared to face.  My condolences to Kay Lynn on her lose.

Contests and Giveaways

The Two-Year Blogging Celebration by Kevin of Invest It Wisely, where nearly $1200 of prizes are being given away, is still ongoing, with only two weeks left.  Definitely somewhere to apply before it’s too late.

Where the Amateur Financier Was Featured

My article asking Should You Leave Your Child an Inheritance was included in the Greaster Edition of the Financial Simplicity Carnival hosted by Modest Money.

The Carnival of Wealth, Tax Day Edition on Control Your Cash included my post asking Should You Help Pay for Your Child’s College Education, albeit with more discussion of the cost/benefit analysis of various types of degrees than I was expecting.

My thoughts on Thank Goodness for Health Insurance earned a place in the Top Personal Finance Posts – Easter Edition from Personal Finance Whiz .

My thought experiment, asking Just How Many People Need to Work, was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival #62 – Easter Edition (hey, it’s a popular holiday) hosted by the humorously named Stupid Cents blog

On the track of other carnivals I’ve missed in the past, I shared an article on Finding Ways to Build a Side Income, which was included in the Independence Day Edition of the Yakezie Carnival hosted by Eric of Narrow Bridge Finance last year.  Sorry for the much delayed backlink, Eric!

To quote the great statesman, Porky Pig, ‘Th-Th-Th-That’s All Folks!”  Come back next week for more great links, and I hope, more enjoyment in general.

Ah, so it’s April 16th. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and throughout the country, people are relieved and excited that April 15th has passed, and with it, Tax Day is now officially over. Time to celebrate!

Alright, not quite; with the 15th falling on a Sunday this year, taxes aren’t officially due until April 17th, and with many people waiting for the last possible minute to file (either because they want to put off paying their taxes as long as they are able, or simply due to procrastination), there’s likely to be some people still working on getting everything finalized, even as we speak.

Yup, you can put aside the tax books (assuming you've filed them, of course...)

Picture by David Reber

Whether you filed as soon as the last of your forms came in around February, waited for a few months like me (I finished my taxes on April 1st; Happy April Fool’s Day, IRS!), or are still waiting for the absolute last possible moment to get your taxes filed, chances are you’re ready to treat finishing the sometimes tricky task of tax filing as a time for great celebration and enjoyment. So, in that spirit, here are some ways to celebrate the end of tax season (at least until next year…):

Read Some Tax-Related Humor: I realize that with the possible exception of undertakers, tax collectors are considered some of the most humorless professionals in the country, but that doesn’t mean that isn’t some tax-related humor floating around out there. One of my favorite humor sites, Cracked.com, shared a list of people who have managed to take absurd tax deductions, from deducting the cost of your car (after crashing it while drunk) to deducting the cost of FF-sized breast implants (no, I am not exaggerating) to drugs (yes, the illegal kind; and no, you can’t do that anymore, as deducting anything related to trafficking illegal substances was made illegal itself back in 1982). Go on, have a read, have a laugh, and have a look at some of the things that the people reviewing your tax return have to go through.

Enjoy Some Deals: With tax time considered such an unenjoyable time by so many, more than a few companies are offering savings over the next few days. From Arby’s to Cinnabon to Hooter’s, there are more than a few places you can visit to take some of the edge from having to spend hours gathering paperwork, filing out a tax return, and double-, triple, and quadruple-checking it. Be aware, though, that many of them nowadays require you to also do things like ‘Like’ them on Facebook. Fun, no?

Work to Simplify the Tax System: Alright, so this isn’t really ‘celebrating’, per se, but let’s be honest, if you aren’t ready to see quite a few simplifications of the tax system right after you last filed, you’re never going to be. There’s lots of ideas floating around out there, from making substantial modifications to the existing system (but leaving it more or less intact) to ending the income tax entirely. While a complete listing of all the options floating around could fill a blog (to say nothing of debating all the pros and cons of each), all have the benefit of simplifying our current muddle of a tax code into something that doesn’t require a substantial industry to exist simply to help us figure out how much we owe. It would definitely be a good idea to contact your Congressperson and/or Senator and let him or her know you’d be much more willing to support them if they spent more time trying to simplify the tax system, and less time adding new clauses to the tax code.

Prepare for Next Year’s Taxes: I know, I know, if there’s one thing even less celebratory than trying to affect changes in tax policy, it’s planning for next year’s taxes while assuming that the tax code will remain the same, or (as it often does) get even more complicated. Still, if you hope to benefit as much as possible from the many advantages found within the tax code as it currently exists, you should start arranging your finances now, if you haven’t already. I’ve already shared some tips on how to do so, but you’ll have even more success if you don’t wait until the end of the year to get started.

Plan What You’ll Do With Your Tax Refund: Alright, let’s get back to the fun stuff: what to do with that tax refund. Granted, if your refund was fairly sizable, you shouldn’t spend all of it on fun and games; there are plenty of ‘useful’ goals you can put a several hundred (or several thousand) dollar check towards, from retirement savings to paying down debts. But at least a portion of your refund money should be spent on something you enjoy; you’ve given the government an interest free loan for the bulk of the year, the least you can do is have some fun when they repay it. From going out to the movies to taking your sweetheart to dinner, there’s plenty of ways you can have a little fun, while still leaving most of your refund to sigh legitimate purposes. (And if you aren’t getting a refund, try to take some pleasure in the knowledge that you were able to enjoy that money throughout the year, and that if you have delayed paying your taxes to this point, you’re doing a pretty good job of managing your money.)

There you go, a few ways to enjoy yourself once your taxes are paid (and few ways to possibly make tax time more enjoyable in the future). How are you planning to spend Tax Day? Any celebrating planned?

There are a lot of reasons we choose one book over another. The genre the book is in, the author’s name, even the appearance of the cover. Sometimes, it’s the title of the book alone that manages to draw us in; occasionally a title will be so compelling, we just have to read.

Eat That Frog!was one such title for me. Rather than covering the finer points of fine amphibian dining, it’s actually about time managing your time and avoiding procrastination (which, I’ll confess, is one of my biggest bad habits). Does it actually help you to get motivated, or is the snappy title all it has going for it? Let’s find out!

Summary

Eat That Frog! starts with a Preface, introducing the author, sharing his success story, and stresses the importance of getting things done. The Introduction explains the general principles behind the book, as well as just how the name ‘Eat That Frog’ came to be. (It’s a reference to an old saying that if the first thing you do each day is eat a live frog, you can go through the day knowing that that will the worst thing to happen to you, just in case you were curious.)

The rest of the book consists of twenty-one methods of accomplishing more in your life. The first few chapters cover methods of planning your day so you can focus on the most important tasks, bringing up issues like the power of writing down your goals and applying the Pareto Principle (that 20% of your tasks will have as much (or more) value than the other 80%). Each of the chapters, here and throughout the book, ends with an ‘Eat That Frog!’ box that shows how to apply the lesson.

The next set of chapters start to cover the issue of prioritizing your tasks in more depth, providing suggestions on how to determine the most important tasks and separate them from those that are less important. There are also a few chapters that look into issues of focusing on the areas with the biggest impact on your life, and making sure that the most important tasks get done.

In the next two chapters (beginning with chapter 8, if you are keeping track), the focus is on getting yourself ready to succeed in your tasks, by preparing thoroughly for your tasks and making sure you’ve done your homework in your field. The next two chapters cover your special abilities, and unique restraints, that will affect your ability to make any progress, and tells how to handle both.

The next several chapters look at how to handle the tasks you are faced with, from taking large, seemingly impossible tasks one step at a time to maximizing your personal energy by modifying your sleep and work habits. There are also chapters on motivating yourself into action and putting pressure on yourself to succeed.

The pieces of advice the book are all about time management, from cutting down on the tasks that take up your time to doing your most difficult task first to breaking large tasks down into smaller portions. There are also suggestions on how to find large blocks of time in which you can get important work done, and how to keep focused on those important tasks. The book finishes with a review of the listed principles.

Pros

Eat That Frog! is quite interesting and very enthusiastic with its contents. The tips listed seem quite applicable, and the advice on applying them is sound. The writing overall is quite succinct, and the book makes for a fairly quick read.

Cons

The limited length of the book (I read it in under two hours, while typing the summary above) puts a cap on how much useful information can be contained. Many of the suggestions are things you’ve heard before. Also, let’s face it, the imagery of eating a frog, which is used throughout the book, isn’t terribly appealing.

Overall

Eat That Frog!provides a fairly decent amount of decent suggestions to keep yourself motivated and productive. More than a few are likely to be things you’ve heard before (take things one step at a time, prioritize your goals, take on the most important tasks first), but there are also going to some that you haven’t heard before. Overall, it’s a pretty solid guide to getting more done.

There are some thing on which the personal finance community agrees on (credit card debt = bad, investing = good, spending less than you earn is a necessary first step to financial success, etc.), but even more on which they disagree. From whether ‘leverage’ is a key to building up your wealth or just a fancy word for debt to exactly what sort of investments you should do, there’s a lot on which personal finance writers tend to disagree. This disagreement, in turn, leads to much of the writing, speaking, and other forms of media in the personal finance world.

That brings me to the inspiration for this article, when Len Penzo went through Dave Ramsey’s seven baby steps and shared his own opinion on each. Although I’d generally side with Len more than with Dave on most of the steps (the debt snowball method tends to be inefficient, for instance), one thing stood out: Len’s fairly hardline stance on not saving for your children’s education. With a child of my own on the way, and plans to help fund his or her college education, I started to wonder whether that was the right approach for me, or for anyone. So, should you help pay for your child’s education?

I might have to, if they go somewhere this fancy...

A note before we begin: We are talking about funding college for your children after your own financial goals are met. Dave was saying that funding kids’ college education should be step five in your process, after putting fifteen percent of your income aside for your own retirement, and neither Len nor I would argue that college for your children should take priority over your own retirement savings. This argument instead is basically this: once you’ve gotten yourself out of debt, built a substantial emergency fund, and started saving (more than) enough to retire at the age you want, if you still have extra money left each month, should you put it towards college education for your children, or use it to shave a few more years off the time until your retirement? Just so we’re clear on the discussion here.

Let’s Get the Children to My Alma Mater – Help Pay

-You’re helping them get a good start on adult life: It can be tough out there in the real world, and part of why we want our children to go to college in the first place. Giving them the opportunity to get their college education without having to take on an exceptional amount of student loan debt. With how much student loan debt most people have on graduation, it’s understandable why many parents would want to save their children some money.

-It can allow you to have more impact on their decisions: Alright, this one might be a bit more selfish, but that doesn’t make it any less of a possibility. If you are providing your children with money for their education, you can set conditions on what circumstances you’ll provide that money. From dictating which college your child would attend to steering them as they choose their major, there’s a decent amount of impact you can have on your child’s college education. (And should they opt to go in a different direction, perhaps majoring in English literature, you can opt to not give them anything, at least if you keep the college funds under your own name.)

-You’ve helped them get this far: So why not help them a little bit further?

It’s Time to Kick Them Out on Their Own – Don’t Pay

-They need to learn responsibility: Hopefully, you’ve been training your children to function on their own, providing for themselves and generally keeping themselves healthy, happy, and able to keep growing. If they know that their college education is being paid for by their parent(s), though, they may be that much less motivated to work hard to achieve their own goals; the simple knowledge that there is money available to fund their college education could decrease the amount of effort they put into achieving scholarships or finding a less expensive school.  If you keep spoiling them, you’re not doing anyone any favors.

-You should put yourself first financially: Remember how I said that this debate is really about whether you should put your extra money into your personal savings or your children’s college fund? Well, this argument simply states that you should be more focused on your own retirement. I can certainly understand this; your children may not enjoy having to pay their own way in college, but will appreciate not having to fund your retirement.  With $1 million considered too little to properly retire nowadays, you probably could stand to be putting more aside to achieve your goals.

-They need to grow up: Starting to pay their own way in life by funding their college education is definitely a good way to get started.

My Take

As with most debates like this, there’s reasonable points on both sides (there have to be; even as fond of arguing as our country tends to be, there needs to be some good points for an argument to be supported). I AM planning to save some money for my children’s education, as I do fear that this trend toward higher and higher education expenses is only going to get worse with time. (Case in point, I’ve had to take on more in student loans for two years of grad school than I did for four years of undergraduate college nearly a decade ago, even with regular, halfway decent income as a grad student; with that sort of growth in expenses, my children could end up owing decades worth of income, even with a good paying job.)

That said, I’m definitely going to to encourage my children to pay for their college. When they get into middle school, and definitely by high school, I intend to shift to a position of matching what they invest. If they put their own money (from allowances, work, or entrepreneurial endeavors) towards their education, I’ll definitely match it (and possibly put double as much as they do towards their savings), but it’ll primarily be on them to put money towards their goal. In that way, hopefully I’ll be able to help them get an education, while not decreasing the value of the education in their eyes.  (Plus, it’ll help instill in their mind the importance of contributing enough to meet any matches that their workplaces offer in the future.)

So, readers, how are you handling (or did you handle) the issue of college expenses? Will helping your child with college expenses lead to them being better off, or will it leave them unable to fend for themselves when they graduate? Inquiring minds with impending babies want to know!

It’s tough sometimes keeping your perspective when lots of things are happening to you.  Every problem, difficulty, or complication can seem like the end of the world, the point where everything goes to hell in a handbag and is lost forever, never to be recovered.  I know that it’s tempting sometimes to get down in the dumps and stay down there (believe me, I have definitely done so myself in the past; to be blunt, I was not a very happy child).  It’s easy to get overwhelmed sometimes when life throws one issue after another at you.

But it’s good to keep things in perspective.  From a historic perspective, you’re quite lucky; you were born in the period with the most advanced technology humans have ever had.  (Well, at least unless you believe the tales about Atlantis…)  You’re also living in an area where you have access to such technology, judging by the fact that you are reading this blog.  Furthermore, you have enough free time available to be browsing the internet and came across this rather small (for the time being…) blog and read through some of the entries included therein.  I’m stretching a little bit here, but I’m going to guess you’ve also got a place to live, plenty of food, and flowing water.

I’m not trying to say that there aren’t any difficulties in living in the modern world; living on a graduate student’s salary, I realize how tough the modern world can be without a decently high income.  But you aren’t tracking animals on the Serengeti to eat, nor working twelve hour shifts in the coal mines to pay your rent, and it’s worth keeping that in mind as you consider your own problems.  If you’re like me, being reminded of that should help you feel a little better about your own situation.  To further your good feeling, let’s check out some of the good posts from the last week:

Good Yakezie Posts

My First Time Father Thoughts – With my own first child on her or his way (albeit, numerous months from now), I’m more interested than ever in what other fathers have to say.  Seeing some of the troubles from Buck Inspire, though, I wonder (not for the first time) if I’m really ready for this…

How We Plan to Feed Our Family of 5 Healthy, Organic Food on a Budget – That’s certainly a mouthful of a title right there.  Melissa of Mom’s Plans details how she intends to keep her family healthy, happy, and full without harming her wallet or the planet.  Pretty impressive plans, overall.

Why Being Rich is Overrated – I’ll admit that Miss T. of Prairie Eco Thrifter raises some good points about the downsides of wealth.  Still, I’d be more than a little willing to give it a shot…

Debt Elimination: The Pros and Cons of Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps – Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps are a heavily discussed (and argued) method of paying down debt and getting your finances in order.  Len Penzo shares his own views on the Baby Steps, and where he would make some modifications.  Interesting if you want a second (or third) opinion on the matter.

Do I Need This Anymore? – Kay Lynn (the Bucksome Boomer, which is still a great blog name) looks back on some of the things in her life, asking if she needs them anymore.  The suggestion of ‘Quintuplets’ on the bottom of the list made me laugh out loud, because I’ve been teasing Sondra that we’re going to have quintuplets (and then she threatens to stab me…)

Contests and Giveaways

The big one remains the Two-Year Blogging Celebration by Kevin of Invest It Wisely, where nearly $1200 of prizes are being given away, and there remain only three weeks to enter (I need to get a move on, myself).

The Get Rich Slowly Video Contest is still going strong although not for much longer (it ends on April 15th).  For those of you with access to a decent video system, you certainly could make an attempt at it; I’m not sure I have access to the needed equipment.

Super Frugalette is still celebrating her Yakezie anniversary by giving away a $50 Amazon Gift Card to those who share good Yakezie articles on her blog.  You also have until April 15th for this one; with so many contests not ending until April 15, you might start thinking of that date as the time when contests end, not when you need to have your taxes submitted.

Where the Amateur Financier Was Featured

My article where I opened up and shared my thoughts on My Future Work, and My Future Worries was included in the latest Yakezie Carnival – Easter Edition, hosted by Roshawn Watson on Watson Inc.

It’s a bit belated, but my article on Taking Advantage of Post-Valentine’s Day Sales was included in the Managing Your Personal Finances Blog Carnival #2 hosted on Household Budgeting Made Easy

That’s all for this week’s Round-Up.  Have a good week, everyone, and remember to keep everything in perspective as you go through life!

Alright, let’s start with the basics: Happy Easter, Everyone! Here’s hoping that anyone who celebrates the Easter holiday had a good one, filled with plenty of brightly colored hard boiled eggs, lots of chocolate, and more than a little bit of religious celebration. For those who don’t celebrate Easter, here’s hoping you had a nice, relaxing Sunday with most of the people off the road and otherwise occupied (at least here in the US).

Now, onto the amazing news part of the news, something I’ve been keeping from you for the past few weeks (for good reason, I hope you’ll agree). The news is that I and Sondra, we, we…

We Are Pregnant!

Yes, Sondra discovered that she was with child a few weeks ago, and we have confirmed that fact last week. It is great news, and in no more than nine months, we’ll have our new little bundle of joy.

Before too long, this with be me, a dad with a little baby

Picture by Doug 

That said, there’s more than a little bit of concern on my part. I had expected that our first child would come a bit later, and that when it did, I would have a good job and be able to provide for my family, allowing Sondra to stay home with our child, as I’ve shared before. This pregnancy speeds up the need to do so substantially, to say nothing of adding quite a few expenses carrying for a mother- and baby-to-be on a graduate student’s not-that-substantial salary. I won’t lie, it’s going to be a rough time, the rest of the year.

What about the Blog?

Given all this, you might wonder what will happen to The Amateur Financier. (Not really surprising, as you are reading it right now and only know anything about me as a result of what I say here, with the exception of the few readers who are also my family members.) I love blogging, and would love to keep this blog going in one form or another for years, if not decades, although issues like my personal schedule and the ever changing online landscape might make that impossible. In the long-term, it might not be possible to keep blogging as much as I’d like, although with luck, it’ll be years before I have to consider giving it up completely.

In the short-term, more foreseeable future, though, here’s what I do see: I will be finishing up my graduate school education by no later than August (barring further unforeseen problems). As I search for a job, both before and after that finishing mark, I have to deal with the fact that I’m barred from driving until October 13th or six months from my last seizure, whichever comes last, meaning that unless I find a well-paying, chemistry-related job within walking distance of my current living space (note: this is not very likely, given the dearth of jobs in general, and chemistry-related jobs in particular, where my wife Sondra and I currently live), I will need to move somewhere closer, and probably still need to find a carpool or other form of alternative transportation. The number one option I had for such alternative transportation, Sondra driving me, will become less and less possible as we get closer to her due date, and unless I go for six months without a seizure, I won’t be able to pick up the slack.

All of this means that blogging has the potential to be both a life saver and an even bigger part of my income in my life. The possibility exists that I might not be able to find a job outside my home, either chemistry-related or otherwise, given my condition.  In that case being able to work from home could be a lifesaver, at least if I am able to earn enough income via blogging (or similar work, which I am looking into as well) to give my family a halfway decent life. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to master some of the skills associated with blogging for money, like ‘publicizing your blog’ and ‘monetizing your blog’, which are necessary if you want to turn your blog into a sizable source of side income, let alone your main source of money.

All of this means that I need to do something I’ve been trying to fight for, well, most of the time I’ve had this blog. I need to get help running it on more of a day-to-day basis. I’ve got to find a virtual assistant or other source of help to get my blog more popular and profitable. Over the course of the next few weeks, there’s likely to be more than a few changes, as I attempt to turn this blog from a fun to do, but not very popular, side project, into major source of income, and possibly, my only one.

Thanks for reading, and here’s hoping you stay with me as I attempt to grow this blog even further.  If you have suggestions about where I should look for help or who I should approach for help building my blog, please feel free to share.

There’s much to be said about working for yourself. Being self-employed has plenty of advantages, from having more control over your time and efforts to potentially earning much more than possible if you work for someone else. It’s certainly a nice thought, but how do you get started working for yourself?

Weekend Entrepreneurseeks to help you in that respect. Coming from the publishers of Entrepreneurmagazine, it attempts to help give you plenty of ideas of how to get started as an entrepreneur yourself, working in your spare time to build up your wealth and possibly create a whole new job. Does it meet its goals and help you create an entrepreneurial lifestyle of your own? Let’s read on and find out!

Summary

The books starts with a Foreword by Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who shares her own experiences working part-time knitting and working on the radio when she first had her son. The Preface shares the authors’ desire to encourage entrepreneurs and help more of them to succeed as they start their own business.

The book proper opens with Part I, on getting started with your own business. Chapter one shares the concept of becoming a weekend entrepreneur and provides a few reasons why the reader should consider that route, from the need for extra money to having time on your hands and nothing to do. The second chapter covers the need to test your market, finding out whether your idea has potential and figuring out if it is possible to sell your product or service efficiently.

After the relatively short first part, Part II, the bulk of the book, shares numerous ideas for potential weekend entrepreneurs. The third chapter, called ‘Pick It Up’, covers physically intensive options, giving a total of thirty-one ideas that range from car detailing and custom gardening to manure salesmen and dog doo scoopers (which the authors do have some, uh, ‘fresh’ comments about).  Chapter four, ‘Make It Up’, continues the list of ideas, this time featuring thirty suggestions of ways to sell products you (or someone else) has made. The list includes such varied ideas as homemade beeswax candles, decorative car magnets, and women’s loungewear.

The fifth chapter gets into familiar territory, covering twenty-five online businesses, from virtual assistant to publishing eBooks to affiliate marketing to eBay auctioneer. Chapter six, entitled ‘Sign ‘Em Up’, provides examples of ways to profit by sharing your knowledge. From household repair skills to sewing to etiquette to cooking, if you know more than most people about a subject and can find a means to share that information, you should be able to profit from it. Chapter seven finishes off this part of the book by encouraging readers to stay fast and flexible while they run their businesses, sharing several stories to encourage such behavior.

Part III, the final portion of the book, ‘Success Strategies’, attempts to provide advice on how to get a business running and keep it running successfully. Chapter eight shares some strategies on building successful businesses, from using blogs to share information about your business to protecting your ideas with patents and licenses. The ninth and last chapter of the book provides advice on how to spread the word about your business, discussing television publicity, and coupons, and how to put each one (or all three) into practice. The end of the book includes an appendix with dozens of resources (mostly online) to aid in your entrepreneurial endeavor.

Pros

Weekend Entrepreneur provides plenty of good ideas for possible side jobs. The tone is encouraging and there is discussion of a few issues that might not occur to many would-be entrepreneurs. The list of resources at the end of the book, in particular, provides numerous sources for further information.

Cons

With so many potential jobs being covered (over 101), there’s not much detail provided about any given one. There’s also not much in the way of advice on how to actually get a business started, once you’ve settled on an idea for what you want to do. Advice on things like patents and other business issues is quite limited, and squeezed into the last few  short chapters.

Overall

Weekend Entrepreneurmakes a pretty good source of ideas for potential side work. You’ll need to rely on other sources (such as those in the long list of websites at the end of the book) to turn such ideas into an actual business, though, as there’s not much here besides a list of ideas. Still, if you’d like to start a side business and need some thoughts on what sort of business to choose, this book serves a pretty decent spark for that train of thought.

Sometimes, the oddest questions pop into my mind. I’m not entirely sure where they come from, much of the time; you spend enough time with your mind roaming randomly, and it’s amazing what comes to mind. Given that I run a personal finance blog, and it’s also not terribly surprising that more than a few such questions involve personal finance. Questions such as

What’s the smallest number of people who need to keep working in the United States to keep society functioning?

This question came to mind when I was thinking about early retirement, and how the goal of many personal finance books, from The 4-Hour Workweek to Laughing at Wall Street, is to give you the opportunity to retire early and spend most of your adult life relaxing and partying throughout the world. Yes, that’s definitely good for you, but it’s possible to go too far: if EVERYONE in the country retired, there would be nobody left to do all the needed work.

Including bulldozer related work, of course

My question is, how many people need to keep working in order to keep the country running, if the rest of us were to, say, develop passive income sources sufficient to allow us to spend all our time relaxing and traveling the world? There’s currently about 196,303,000 adults of working age in the United States (those between the ages of 18 and 65); how many of them really need to work to keep the economy working more or less as it currently? Currently, there’s only 128,279,000 adults listed as working by Bureau of Labor Statistics, or about 65%, so more than a third of the working age (18-65 years old) population can be unemployed or imprisoned (or sipping mimosas on the beach, let’s say) without collapsing the economy; how much further can we go?

(Note before we begin: There’s obviously likely to be some disagreement on what is, and what isn’t, an essential job to keep the economy running. These are my opinions; please feel free to share your own opinions on what needs to be included to keep things running in this country. Maybe you think I’m underestimating how important a particular class of job is, maybe you feel we could cut far more before the country as a whole starts to suffer; either way, let me know and we can debate the issue.)

Let’s go through the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Occupational Employment data, to see what sectors (or parts of sectors) we can do without, starting with:

Management Occupations: Well, here’s a good place to start making some cuts, and not just because this is the category that includes Legislators (all 62,180 of them). I think there’s not too many people, at least not too many non-managers, who’d argue that we can’t trim some of the the fat here at least a bit. If we cut a quarter of the 6,184,000 management occupations, we’d give 1,546,000 people a chance to join passive income earners of the world.

Total Jobs Cut: 1,546,000

Business and Financial Operations Occupations: Another area where we can probably cut a few positions without drawing too much ire, as this includes everything from HR personnel to auditors. If we can’t cut, say, at least a fifth of them (1,236,000) from various positions without the rest of the economy collapsing, I don’t know where we can look to make these cuts.

Total Jobs Cut: 2,782,000

Computer and Mathematical Occupations: Ah, now we’re getting to the good stuff. Given that most of us have reached the point where we all but need our computers in order to survive, I’d say that this is an area where we can make limited cuts. Given that ‘mathematical’ jobs make up just over one hundred thousand of the three point four million jobs listed, there’s probably not too many we can cut if we want to be able to keep surfing the web and raking in our passive income. So, no jobs cut from here.

Total Jobs Cut: 2,782,000

Architecture and Engineering Occupations: Another kind of tricky one. It’s hard to see too many places in this category where we could make cuts, as long as we want to keep growing as a country. Still, we could probably cut ten percent of these positions from various fields (231,000) and not adversely affect the economy too much.

Total Jobs Cut: 3,013,000

Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations: Speaking of areas where we should keep up employment levels to grow the country, the sciences probably should be one where we try to keep most of the people still working (and since it is my field, I am a little biased). On the other hand, it does include some fields of questionable value (like economists; just kidding, economists!), and we can probably trim ten percent (108,000) from here, as well.

Total Jobs Cut: 3,121,000

Community and Social Service Occupations: A pretty broad mix of occupations here, from counselors to clergy (alright, I suppose there is a common theme of, well, counseling). I’m sure this is an area where someone who doesn’t have much faith in the ability of counseling to help people could make a huge number of cuts, but I’ll stick with a relatively modest twenty percent (378,000) to make sure there’s counseling services still available to those who need it.

Total Jobs Cut: 3,499,000

Legal Occupations: I realize the first instinct you might have is to get rid of the entire field, or most of the more than half a million lawyers, at least. But they do serve some useful purposes. Let’s say that we can cut about 300,000 from the legal ranks, before we see too much of a downside.

Total Jobs Cut: 3,799,000

Education, Training, and Library Occupations: It’s hard to argue that we shouldn’t have teachers, and I’ll be far from the one to try to do that. Still, as with most of our groups so far, we can probably trim at least ten percent (841,000) without causing too much trouble, particularly if more people have the time to learn for themselves following high school/college.

Total Jobs Cut: 4,640,000

Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations: Another area where many people would say we could cut out the entire group and still have a pretty decent life. Of course, as this group covers everything from actors to athletes, musicians to media workers, it could be a pretty boring life. Still, we can probably cut out a third of this group (575,000) before our lives get too boring.

Total Jobs Cut: 5,215,000  (We’ve managed to cut over five million, and we still have plenty of job classes to go.)

Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations: Another area that’s pretty hard to argue could be easily dropped; nobody wants to find themselves in a world where there are no doctors, pharmacists, or vets around. On the other hand, it’s hard to argue that there’s no room for cuts at all when the first profession listed is ‘chiropractor’. (Sorry, chiropractors; I had a jerk of an uncle who was a chiropractor). So, let’s say that we can probably cut our usual 10% (751,000) without too many worries.

Total Jobs Cut: 5,966,000

Healthcare Support Occupations: Much as with the healthcare practitioners themselves, we don’t want to cut too many jobs here, at least until we find a way to transfer our consciousness into indestructible machines. Still, also as with the healthcare practitioners, we should be able to trim some fat, say 10% (395,000), without too much trouble.

Total Jobs Cut: 6,361,000

Protective Service Occupations: This includes everything from firefighters to lifeguards to police, so it’s a tough one to cut. Still, if we can decrease the number of people we need to imprison (say, by loosening rules related to drug use and other non-violent crimes), we should be able to cut at least 10% (320,000) from here.

Total Jobs Cut: 6,681,000

Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations: On one hand, with most of the country enjoying a life of rest and leisure funded by passive income, you’d think we need more, not less, people working in restaurants and bars. On the other hand, if you think that waiters, waitresses, and fast food workers aren’t going to be amongst the first to try to get out of their jobs if given the slightest opportunity, you’ve never had one of those types of positions. I’d expect at LEAST 2,000,000 (of the eleven million current workers) would take the first opportunity to call it a career and take advantage of passive income, if they had the chance.

Total Jobs Cut: 8,681,000

Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations: Another area where we need people, if we want the country to stay tidy, but the workers themselves are likely more than willing to take their leave. Let’s say about 20% (838,000) can do so before the country gets too messy for us to stand.

Total Jobs Cut: 9,519,000

Personal Care and Service Occupations: This sounds, from the category name, like it should be people like nurses and other personal care workers, but it’s actually a mix of things like gambling supervisors, funeral directors, and bellhops. We can probably cut 20% (724,000) before we see much of a difference in our daily lives (or even in our funerals).

Total Jobs Cut: 10,243,000 (Look, we’ve cut more than ten million jobs, and we’re not done yet!)

Sales and Related Occupations: As with the lawyers, I’d expect many people would probably argue that we could cut a lot of sales people without too much damage. It’s hard to argue against that point; from online sales sites replacing many of the four million retail salesmen to automatic checkout lines cutting the need for the three million cashiers, we probably don’t need to do much cutting ourselves before it happens for us. Still, let’s say we can slice off an additional 5,000,000 (out of thirteen million) sales workers right now before we see too much of an ill effect.

Total Jobs Cut: 15,243,000

Office and Administrative Support Occupations: The category where most of our stereotypical white-collar workers fall. As with food service workers, we probably need more than we think; also as with food service workers, I’m sure more than a few would jump at the chance to no longer have to work a white-collar day job. Let’s say about a third (7,128,000) could be cut from the payroll without too much ill effect.

Total Jobs Cut: 22,371,000 (Now we’re really making some progress!)

Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations: This seems like an area where not many people would still be working, and we’d be right. Even our typical 10% cut (41,000) doesn’t make much of a difference in our overall employment numbers, but let’s assume that even here, there’s fat to trim.

Total Jobs Cut: 22,412,000

Construction and Extraction Occupations: There’s probably more than a few environmentalists who think we should cut the entire ‘extraction’ part of this set of occupations, but I think we should have some domestic energy production. Still, we should be able to safely cut 10% (496,000) of these jobs and still have more than enough people to build our houses and drill our oil.

Total Jobs Cut: 22,908,000

Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations: Another set of occupations that are, if anything, going to be even more necessary when everyone is enjoying an early retirement fueled by passive income. Still, there’s probably some fat to trim here, as everywhere, so let’s say we can cut another 10% (499,000).

Total Jobs Cut: 23,407,000

Production Occupations: Here’s where all those butchers and bakers and (probably) candlestick-makers  find themselves. As per usual, we can probably trim about 10% (837,000) without seeing much of an impact on the businesses themselves. (And probably will see that much of a decline as automated systems are able to replace many of these jobs.)

Total Jobs Cut: 24,244,000

Transportation and Material Moving Occupations: Once things have been produced, they need to be moved, and this is the group that moves them (and us!) around. It’s hard to argue that we no longer need to move things around, but between increases in efficiency, new types of transportation, and our general belief that we can trim a sizable portion of any job sector, I’d say we can drop at least 20% (1,728,000) without too much trouble.

Total Jobs Cut (Overall): 25,972,000

Remaining Job Total, Nationwide: 102,307,000

Percentage of Adults Employed: 52%

There you have it, we as a country could conceivably get by with just over half of the adult population employed. (Plus, I’m sure more aggressive job-cutters could probably double or even triple the number of jobs I think could be dropped, cutting that percentage down to 25% or less.) I hope you enjoyed this bit of speculation as much as I enjoyed writing it.

What do you think of my hypothetical job cuts? Was there anywhere I was too aggressive? Not aggressive enough? Any sectors that should have been cut completely, or any more that shouldn’t be touched?

There’s an old expression I’ve always considered quite true: ‘When It Rains, It Pours’.  It’s not talking about the weather, per se (or at least not entirely about the weather), but rather about life in general.  The general idea is that when something bad happens in your life, it’s almost always followed by further problems.  We rarely experience situations that are stressful or emotionally draining one at a time, with plenty of time in between allowing us to relax, recover, and regroup for the next issue to arise.

No, before we even get the chance to finish handling one issue, the next issue is already upon us.  Take my life over the past week, for example.  I spent most of last week studying for a make-up test in Advanced Organic Chemistry II (which, since I know you’re wondering, is just as hard as it sounds) to make up for when I missed the last test in the wake of my seizures, only to find that while I was studying, a new homework assignment was posted, one that’s due on Wednesday.  Furthermore, I’ve recently learned that not only do I need to have a thesis done by August if I hope to graduate in the Summer, but I need to turn it into the committee deciding whether I’m ready to graduate at least four weeks early, and my adviser wants to see it two weeks before that.  That means I need to have it done by mid-June, at the latest, if I want to graduate during the summer.  (And if I wanted to graduate in May, I should have had the thesis submitted by, well, March.)  Add in all the normal stresses of life, love, and the pursuit of a Master’s Degree, and I’m definitely under more than a little bit of stress.

One that does help to relax me, though, is reading through all the great personal finance articles that are out there (even though sometimes attempting to keep up can be a bit stressful, as well).  There’s just so much good stuff out there, including:

Good Yakezie Posts

This is a truly interesting idea; sharing a proposition explaining your values, much as the Financial Samurai has done with the Yakezie Value Proposition here on the Yakezie blog.  I’m definitely going to have to do something like this, possibly very soon…

Speaking of the Financial Samurai, he decided to look into the average audit rate by income rate from the IRS.  As is his tendency, he managed to spark a pretty interesting discussion about whether the IRS is engaging in income-based profiling.

It always make me think of Sesame Street when I see letter-based articles, including Krantcents’ ongoing series, but the 3 K’s of Success is an excellent addition to nicely done series.  (Even if I picture it being read by Big Bird…)

It’s nice to see when people question conventional wisdom, like Kevin of Invest It Wisely is doing by considering The Dangers of Over Diversification.  In truth, you don’t need to ensure that you have representatives of every type of stock in your portfolio; you can do quite well with just a few broad-based mutual funds.

If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them; you’ve probably heard it before, but never like this.  Evan of My Journey to Millions shares how the Forbes Billionaire Index attempts to follow the progress of 571 companies run by billionaires.  Apparently, it’s profitable, but volatile; not surprising, really.

Nobody likes to fail, but there are at least 7 reasons that failure is a good thing, as noted by Miss T. on Prairie Eco-Thrifter.  From making you stronger to helping you learn, there are some things you are only able to accomplish through failing and then recovering.

The Financial Blogger raises a pretty good question, wondering Would You Declare Your Income?  Given that I share my monthly financially standing, it’s pretty obvious what my answer is, but I can understand why he is taking a more cautious route.

I’m a pretty big fan of The Hunger Games (the books, at least; so far, I haven’t had a chance to see the movie), but hadn’t considered how they might have a relation to Game Theory.  Tim of Faith and Finance shares how The Hunger Games share a Lesson in Game Theory.  (And, just so you’re warned, potentially spoils the ending of the book/movie; so only read the article when you’ve read the book and/or seen the movie.)

Contests and Giveaways

The big news, contest-wise, is the Two-Year Blogging Celebration by Kevin of Invest It Wisely, where nearly $1200 of prizes are being given away.  Very, very nice.

The Get Rich Slowly Video Contest is still going strong, until April 15th.  You are a bit late for the Early Bird bonus, but still, the main contest sounds pretty impressive itself.

Super Frugalette is celebrating her Yakezie anniversary, and doing so by giving away a $50 Amazon Gift Card to those who share good Yakezie articles on her blog.  (Just a reminder, I am a Yakezie member, in case you were looking for a good source of blog entries to consider.)

Where The Amateur Financier Was Featured

My review of The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need was featured in The Daytona 500 Edition of the Yakezie Carnival, hosted by Mrs. and Mr. Not Made of Money (back in mid March; sorry that it slipped my attention until now).

Speaking of outdated article mentions, my article on Remembering 9/11 was including in Kevin of Invest It Wisely‘s article on Fighting Terrorism and Violence Through the Spread of Good Ideas: Remembering 9/11 back on, well, 9/11/2011.  I do appreciate it, even though I apparently missed it when it was first posted.

With tax time nearly upon us, it’s not too surprising that The Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #27, hosted by Step Up Away From the Mall (great blog name, by the way) hosted my article It’s Tax Time, Yet Again!  It’s apparently a pretty decent post after all, as it was also included in the Top Personal Finance Posts of the Week – Mega Millions Edition from Jeremy Waller on Personal Finance Whiz.

Apparently, it’s alright if I worry about my future a bit in my blog; my article on My Future Work, and My Future Worries was included in the Totally Money Carnival – Millionaire Teacher Edition hosted by Marissa of Thirty Six Months.

I do read quite a few books; my review of The Millionaire Next Door was included in the Weekly Chit-Chat and Good Reads post from Finance Product Reviews.

My post on Index Funds Beat Actively Managed; Now What? was included in the Self Directed Investing for Retirement Carnival – March Madness Edition, hosted by the Arbor Investment Planner.

Have you ever considered whether you should leave an inheritance for your children or other dependents? It’s one of those things you never really think of when planning your financial future. The question is always phrased as, ‘How much of an inheritance should you leave?’ or, since the answer to that question is usually considered to be ‘As much as possible’, the follow up is ‘How should you leave an inheritance?’, which discusses the advantages of using a trust vs. a simple will, or whether a Roth or traditional IRA is a better account to pass along money. At no point does the obvious preliminary question arise, ‘Should you give your children an inheritance in the first place?’

Well, almost no point; occasionally, a blogger or other financial writer will discuss the very concept of inheritance, and questions whether we should bother. One such case is John, of Married (With Debt), who considers the need to leave an inheritance as one of the ‘Money Myths’ that serve to keep you in debt, in this case causing you to focus on the future, saving up money you will never use, and requiring your children to care for you when you reach retirement. He raises some good points; it’s probably worthwhile to look closer at the very concept of retirement, to see if we can’t come up with better advice than the standard ‘Save as much as you can to pass on to your children’.

So, Who Should Leave an Inheritance?

Let’s start with the basics; there are times when it is appropriate to leave an inheritance. If your child(ren) is disabled or otherwise unable to work, for example, doing everything you are able to provide for them is definitely good. When we talk about not leaving an inheritance, we’re talking about doing so to able-bodied, fit-minded children who, if you have taught them well, would be able to function well in the wider world; that’s a very different situation than providing money for disabled child so he or she doesn’t have to rely on the charity of the state (which may or may not be willing to provide for him or her).

(Don’t take this the wrong way. This is not to say that all disabled people are unable to function in the world, of course; there are many different types of disabilities and many different people with disabilities, and while some are unable to survive independently, others can function as well (if not better) than the typical ‘able-bodied’ person.)

We can start with Special Olympics competitors, and go from there. Picture by Elpidoforos Papanikolopoulos

For a fully able-bodied and able-minded child, though, why is there such pressure to leave an inheritance? If you’ve given them a good education and plenty of opportunities throughout their lives, your children should be more than able to function in the world. You shouldn’t need to give them a six or seven figure sum just to help them out in world; they should be just fine on their own. (And in fact, knowledge of a pending, sizable inheritance can actually distort your children’s motivation; as noted in The Millionaire Next Door, such a pending inheritance can cause children to be less willing to work on their own.)

Why Skip the Inheritance?

There are several advantages to foregoing leaving an inheritance, both for you and for your offspring. For you, the major advantage is increased flexibility with how to use your money (and it’s worth remembering that it is YOUR money; there’s nothing in the law that requires you to leave a single cent to any children you may have). While trying to leave most or all of your net worth to your children, you naturally stick with investments that don’t allow you to use all your money, avoiding things like annuities that could provide you with a steady, higher-than-you-could-safely-withdraw-on-your-own income in your golden years. If you look at your nest egg as solely your money to have an enjoyable retirement, you’re able to do what’s best for you (and possibly your spouse, of course), rather than treating it like you’re borrowing from your children and need to spend as little as possible.

Don’t think that your children will suffer as a result; not getting an inheritance can be liberating for them, as well. They won’t feel an obligation to give their own children an inheritance, for starters, thus saving them the worry and sense of responsibility that sometimes accompanies large inheritances. If they know they’re not going to get an inheritance from you, it also prevents them from lapsing into the mindset of ‘My parents will provide for me, either when they’re alive or when they die.’ Knowing they have to earn money on their own means a whole different view on how to deal with their finances.

Lastly, it can save you, your children, and anyone else who might find their way into your will a great deal of worry and the playing emotional games. With no inheritance coming, you don’t need to worry that your children are being kind to you or taking care of you because they want a larger piece of the pie. Your children, in turn, don’t have to worry about their sibling(s) trying to maneuver their way to more cash, or that they need to do the same in order to get a decent chunk of your cash.

How I’m Going to Approach Inheritances

As you might guess from reading all this, I’m leaning toward not leaving an inheritance to my children. With my mother as a government Social Security worker and my father…out of the picture, I’m not expecting much of an inheritance, myself (and as my mother is a fairly lively fifty-something, it will probably be decades before I receive any inheritance, at all). For my children, I think that if I am able to provide them with a good childhood, ample opportunities to grow and learn on their own, and (possibly) some help in obtaining a higher education, that should be more than enough to get them off on the right foot in the world. There’s no need for me to leave them much, if anything, when it comes to an inheritance, particularly if I can use that money to provide for myself and not have to rely on their support and generosity. I’m not planning to, as the expression goes, for ‘My last check to be to the undertaker, and for it to bounce‘, as timing my death will be rather tricky and there’s always the possibility that SOMETHING will require more of my funds, but if I can increase the amount of money I have during retirement (or speed up the point where I can retire) without putting my financial health at risk, as with annuities mentioned above, I’m going to consider it, even if it decreases the amount I have left to pass on to my children.

What are your thoughts about inheritances? Do you plan on leaving money to your children? Did you receive a big inheritance, and if so, do you feel an obligation to pass more money along to your children?