So, let’s say you bought a product nine months ago. It’s under warranty (you think), but you can’t find a copy of the receipt or a copy of the warranty. You call up the company anyway and try to get your issue resolved.

Unless that company is going far beyond what one might expect from customer service, you’re not getting anything. Most companies will just politely tell you “no” on their customer service line and no matter how much you escalate the call, you won’t get anything.

If you ever expect to utilize your warranty, you need to have documentation proving that your warranty is valid. Without it, the company has no reason to honor it.

Of course, as I noted above, there are a few companies that will still work with you, but these are generally companies that pride themselves on customer service and often are charging a premium price for their products in the store. They operate on a somewhat different business model than most companies.

Don’t expect that. Protect yourself.

So, how do you handle this effectively?

My approach for handling receipts and warranties is pretty straightforward. I simply have a drawer in our filing cabinet that’s about half-full of warranties and receipts. I put the needed information for each product in an envelope.

On the outside of each envelope, I indicate what the product actually is and simply add it to the drawer. I also write the date that the warranty expires.

These two pieces of information help greatly when it comes to filing these items and finding them. I use the name of the item (starting with the company name) to sort them in the drawer. I use the date on the envelope to determine when envelopes can safely be shredded and tossed.

What about warranties that require you to send in a receipt? Send in a copy of your receipt. Keep the original for your own records. That way, you have proof of the purchase in your hand.

Most of the time, the warranty will expire without you even noticing, which is a good thing because it means the product worked fine. However, getting into the routine of keeping your warranties and receipts straight will pay enormous dividends for you when a product fails. You know where the receipt and warranty are, so you just go retrieve them and follow the directions.

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

Whenever I read the news, I usually find that most of it is of little interest to me. I don’t care what’s happening in the life of an entertainer or an athlete. I just don’t. Wow me with your performance, but I don’t care what you do off of the screen. I don’t care about petty political squabbles. I don’t care about the latest and greatest product some company wants me to buy.

Amazingly, that eliminates the vast majority of what qualifies as news.

Q1: The downsides to cash
I am very frugal and great with my money but I absolutely do not like using cash because I fritter it away. If it’s in my wallet I will spend it. If my wallet is empty nothing gets spent. I am 48 so grew up with cash but I truly feel using plastic is much better when you know how to use it properly. I used to use a debit card only, which is the same as cash, but won’t pay fees so switched to using a credit card. When I use my credit card (which I pay off every day and earn cash back) I can easily see exactly what I’ve spent. I also don’t overspend. When using cash many people spend ‘up’ so they’re not carrying around a lot of change. When using a debit or credit card if an item is $1.79 that is exactly what I pay. I don’t throw in a pack of gum to make it an even $2.00 which I know I used to do and many people still do. I see it all the time.

Of course banking online is the key to all this..at least for me. I have to be able to ‘see’ where I spend my money which I can’t when I use cash. Also, the world is changing and we are going to a cashless society so younger people need to learn how to manage their money using plastic, online banking, and even phones. For me, paper in my hand is like monopoly money and a credit card is a responsible tool. The whole ‘you’ll spend less if you use cash’ just doesn’t work for everybody – especially me!
- Lena

This is a perfect example of the differences in money psychology between people.

For me, cash is something to be preserved carefully. If I see cash, I’m really hesitant to spend it. On the other hand, plastic can be really dangerous for me because it’s not cash.

A lot of it, I’m sure, has to do with how you were raised and what many of your early money experiences were like. My conclusion? No matter what you’re doing, if you don’t like the outcome, try something different. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome.

Q2: Math tools
When you “run the numbers” on something, what tools do you use to do the math?
- Jared

I usually use Microsoft Excel.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive (read: free) alternative to Excel, I strongly suggest checking out Google Spreadsheets, which has most of the common features of Excel that people would use in running numbers on various financial questions.

Of course, for this to work you have to understand what you’re doing with the numbers. Understanding the underlying math is key. Excel and other spreadsheets are just a tool to save you the effort of lots of addition, subtraction, and multiplication. You’ve got to know how and why you’re doing those things.

Q3: Mortgage questions
With the mortgage rates so low I would like to buy a place within 2-3 years, however, I can’t seem to find answers to several questions.

I was told as a single person I could apply and get better rates on mortgages. How does it work when one applies for a mortgage loan as a single person versus a married couple? Other than basing it two incomes, is there any other differences between applying as a single person versus a married couple?

When you factor buying a place as a couple, do you take into consideration what happens if your spouse passes away or is unable to work? Should I take on mortgage that I can afford with my salary alone? If I do take on a mortgage with my spouse, is this when life insurance is needed?

I always read that home buyers should get the 20% down so you don’t have to pay for the PMI. What if I’m close to the 20% down but not quite there? If I have about 15% already saved, would it make sense to try secure a mortgage with the low rates that are currently available and pay the PMI? Is it better to wait until I have the 20% and possibly risk having the mortgage rates go up?

Also, if I manage to save up more than 20% for a down payment, is it a good idea to pay more that 20%? Or is it best to only pay the 20% down and save the extra money in a savings account? I thought it would be good to have more than 20% down so my monthly payments would be more affordable. Is there a disadvantage to paying more than 20%?
- Janna

When applying for a loan, the lenders are going to consider the income level of the applicants as well as their credit. Most of the time, a couple applying together is going to be able to present a better case for a loan than a single person simply because of raw numbers. You’re not out of luck as a single person, though, especially if you have a good job and solid credit.

If one of the people in a couple were to suddenly pass away or be unable to contribute to the mortgage, the most common response would be to downgrade one’s housing. You’d sell and move into something less expensive, in other words. A healthy emergency fund makes this transition possible. Emotionally, you might not want to even stay in the same home if a partner were to die.

The PMI issue is a risk either way. If rates stay low, you’ll wish you’d waited and avoided the PMI. If rates go up, you’ll wish you had signed up for a mortgage earlier. There is no right answer. I will say, though, that even with PMI wrapped in, mortgage rates are still very, very low right now, so I’d probably lean toward going ahead with things if I was close to 20%.

If you have more than 20%, it’s not a bad thing to have a larger down payment as long as you still have a healthy emergency fund outside of the down payment. It’s a bad idea to empty out every drop of savings just to put down a slightly bigger down payment.

Q4: Hobbies by the hour?
My main hobby in my life has been building sculptures out of Legos. Over the last several years, I’ve moved on to building more interactive sculptures using Mindstorms and Nxt Legos. I probably invest $100 a month into this hobby for various pieces. I do some traveling shows with them and I’ve actually made some money back via a tip jar.

This is pretty much my only hobby. I fill weekends in my garage/workshop building things along these lines.

So why am I writing? A few weeks ago, my wife began to have a big money epiphany. She decided that my Lego hobby is a big waste of money and has to go. I said that’s fine and agreed to drastically reduce my Lego spending if she agreed to cut her own hobby spending (DVDs and knitting supplies). She said that she spends far less than I do per hour on her hobbies.

Do you think the money spent per hour on a hobby is a good metric?
- Jeff

If you’re choosing among your own hobbies, money per hour is a pretty good metric to consider when trying to pare down some of your activities. I certainly used it in my own process of deciding which hobbies to give up.

However, it’s not necessarily a good metric to use when comparing with your spouse. The disagreement here is deeper than just the cost per hour of a hobby. You’re going through a process of rethinking what each of you value in terms of both money use and time use.

My suggestion isn’t to bust out a spreadsheet and start counting hours. Instead, sit down with your wife and talk about all of this carefully. Set some goals and look at how you can achieve them. Are you each spending too much time with your respective hobbies? How about money? Are those commitments keeping you both from other things you might want?

Q5: Bank consolidation worries
I have three credit cards, targeted ING savings accounts, and checking and savings accounts at my local credit union. (I also have investment & retirement accounts with Edward Jones.)

My very first credit card was a Capital One card. It’s my oldest credit account, with the best interest rate, but has an annual fee and only a $500.00 limit, which Cap One has repeatedly refused to raise. I never use it except for my Hulu subscription, which I charge to the card and pay off monthly just to keep it active so that I don’t lose my oldest account on my credit history.

My second card is an HSBC card. $1000.00 limit, 19% interest, no fees, no rewards, and I only use it (and then pay it off) occasionally.

My third card is also Capital One, $2000.00 limit, 22% interest (though I’m in the last month of the intro 0% rate), no fees, and decent cash rewards. This is the card that I use for plane tickets, research expenses, car repairs, etc. I currently have an $360.00 balance.

I just got a notice in the mail that Capital One has acquired my HSBC account. Captial One has also acquired ING, so now everything except my local credit union and investment accounts are all at Capital One. I know many people don’t like the company, but I’ve never had any customer service problems with them of any kind. But I do wonder if there are any pitfalls I should be aware of that come from having all of my credit cards and a substantial chunk of my cash savings at a single company (be it Cap One or any other company). Would you be comfortable with that situation for yourself? What should I be thinking about here?
- Justine

There are advantages and disadvantages of having so much business at one company. One big advantage is that your identity theft risk is lower. If you have accounts at lots of banks, you have more routes to identity theft. Another advantage is (potentially) the convenience of centralized account management, where you can handle everything at once pretty easily.

However, I’m not sure I would want all of my assets and lines of credit with one bank, simply because it would make your life difficult for some period of time (hopefully a short one) if that bank found itself in trouble. Banks do fail (yes, even ones that are “too big to fail”) and there is real advantage in diversification.

If you rely on your credit card for day-to-day use, I would probably open one with another banking institution and move the transactions to that one from at least one of the Capital One cards, just for diversity’s sake.

Q6: Politics and house sales
My wife and I have always been pretty vocal about supporting political candidates. We put several signs in our yard for the candidates we like.

Anyway, we’re about to put our house on the market and we’re wondering whether having the signs up will do anything to our property values. What do you think?
- Andrew

While I think it’s great that you’re willing to step up and express your support for candidates you care about, the issue is really about the value of your home and what you can do to maximize it.

As soon as that “For Sale” sign hits your yard, you want to minimize anything that might drive away potential customers, and political issues are sure to do that. If someone disagrees with your views, they might visit your home with the wrong mindset and have incorrect assumptions about your neighborhood, causing them to have a much more negative impression of your house.

You’re better off without the yard signs (or anything else potentially controversial) if you’re trying to sell. Ask your realtor if you’re still unsure.

Q7: Online bank thoughts
It seems that the interest rates on any type of savings account is not going to change in the near future. A couple of online banks have rates that are slightly better than our our local banks but I’m kind of nervous about putting monies in an account that that is not readily available to me. Do you have an opinion about online banks or can you recommend a favorite?
- John

I have been a user of ING Direct for many years and I’ve never had any sort of problem with them. I do also maintain an account with a local bank.

Having both allows me the best of both worlds. There are certain things online banks do better than my local bank (online banking, interest rates, ATM networks) and there are other things my local bank does better (teller services, handling of unusual banking situations).

I just make sure to have an adequate buffer in both accounts to ensure that I’m fine in case of a forgotten check or ATM withdrawal. It all works just fine.

Q8: Fast breakfasts
What kind of morning routine do you have that enables you to fix breakfast for three children and get yourself ready in the morning? There seems to be almost no time for a decent breakfast in the morning! Most mornings, I just give them some fruit and a cup of milk. What do you guys do?
- Chandra

My personal favorite tactic is to start a crock pot with steel cut oatmeal before I go to bed. I season it and leave it on low all night and we wake up to wonderful steel cut oatmeal that can be spooned right into a bowl for a quick breakfast.

Another thing my children often have along with some fruit is a piece of toast with peanut butter on it, which provides some protein to start the day. To make that convenient, I get everything as ready as I can before I go to bed – saucers out, peanut butter out, butterknife out, bread right by the toaster. This makes the prep very quick in the morning.

We also pre-make things like breakfast sandwiches and breakfast burritos and freeze them. We then just wrap them in a paper towel and microwave them in the morning as we’re getting ready. These also work really well for getting breakfast on the table quickly with minimal time investment that morning.

Q9: Student loans and kids
I’m 28 and married. My husband is 24 and just finishing his bachelor’s degree. I have a bachelors and a Masters degree. Nearly all of our degrees were paid with student loans, and total we will owe about $85,000. I have had my loans in deferment while I paid off my credit card debt ($10,000) and got settled in my career as an academic librarian. The credit card debt is paid off now, we share 1 car that is paid off, and we rent our house. We have emergency savings of $2000, and I have retirement savings of about $10,000. Our annual income between my low-paying entry level job and my husband’s part-time job is $35,000/yr. We are ready to start a family- can we do that now financially? I expect our income to go up somewhat in the next year, as my husband will finish college and (hopefully) get a full time job. So our projected income for the next few years is $35k – $50k each year. To put a further twist on this, we would really like one of us to be able to stay home with our children while they are young, and if we do that our annual income will be back to around $25k. Can a family of 3 or 4 live on $25k/year and also pay off $85k in student loans? Somewhere in the next few years I would like to buy a house, but it is not a requirement. I consider myself to be pretty frugal at this point, having learned my lesson on the $10,000 of credit card debt I paid off, but even to me this sounds impossible.

Also, another possibility for the student loans is that since I am a librarian, after 10 years of employment in a library and minimum payments the rest of the loan will be forgiven. Should I just pay the minimum for those 10 years? However if I am the stay at home parent, those years will not count towards the 10 required for the loans to be forgiven.
- Juliette

Whether or not you can pull this off depends on where you live. This would work in a rural town. This would not work in New York City or Washington D.C. or San Francisco.

The reason is cost of living. If you can get a decent place to live for a few hundred a month in rent or several hundred a month in house payments, you can make this work. If there’s nothing available for housing that doesn’t eat the majority of your income, it’s not going to work.

You need to look at your real expenses. How much are you paying for housing? Food? Automobiles? Loan repayments? Could you realistically pay for all of this stuff – with some breathing room – on just one salary? The answer depends heavily on where you live, but it does also depend on your own personal choices, too.

Q10: First time selling on eBay
I’ll be moving from a medium sized house to a much, much smaller apartment next year. I am excited for the (forced) opportunity to go through all of my possessions and significantly pare down my accumulation of stuff. I already have several items that I know would sell well on eBay, but every time I’ve looked in to getting set up to sell items it seems complicated and intimidating. Do you have any advice or a resource you would recommend to someone selling items on eBay for the first time?
- Monica

I’d visit your local library. There are a lot of great books on how to start selling items on eBay, and most libraries have a lot of them. Almost all of them cover the same materials, so I’d just go there, look at a few of them, and pick the one that seems the easiest for you to understand.

Start slow. Don’t list fifty items at once or you’ll be overloaded. List one or two items and see how the process works, then ramp up from there.

The biggest thing to watch out for is payment. Make sure that when you ship anything, you have delivery confirmation and/or tracking on it so you can prove that you shipped it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congress Can Agree: Rewarding U.S. Veteran Employment

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

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

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

Quick Tips for a Civilian Job-Hunt

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

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

The Serious Job Still Ahead: Getting Veterans Back to Work

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

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

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

However, registration cards are one of those “not urgent” tasks that tend to get lost in the shuffle. Nothing’s demanding that you take care of it immediately, so it’s easy to put it aside and forget about it.

Don’t. You’ll be very glad you did when you’re able to turn in a faulty product under warranty or receive a key item in the mail.

Registration forms are a double-edged sword.

On the good side is that registration is often the necessary piece to validate your warranty on the product (check your product documentation to make sure). Also, some companies that are customer-service focused will sometimes send you key things. One company (I think it was Black and Decker, but I’m not 100% sure) once sent me a replacement part and explanations on how to fix it out of the blue, for example. Other companies will send you additional material related to your product, like a pack of drill bits for a high-end drill.

On the bad side is the fact that marketers will use the information you send in to sign you up for marketing materials. This can be rather annoying, as it often comes in the form of junk mail.

Of course, with a bit of effort, you can completely mitigate the bad side while leaving the benefits unaffected, making the registration card well worth filling out.

The first step is to create an email address that’s specifically for promotions. I have a separate email account that I use solely for including with product registrations, signing up for customer rewards programs, and other such things that marketers often use. Whenever I’m about to make a purchase, I search the email in this account to see if there are any coupons or offers I should know about.

If I use this address for the registration, then I know I won’t be receiving this “junk” mail in my normal email account. I don’t have to deal with it at all unless I choose to.

Another useful tactic is to not answer any questions on the form other than what is minimally needed to register your product. Many registration forms ask a lot of questions about other products you’re interested in and so forth. Don’t answer them at all. Instead, just focus on what you need to fill in to register the product – your name, your address, and the receipt is usually all that’s needed.

These extra questions usually only exist to provide more material to marketers. The questions help marketers figure out what mailings will work best to get your attention and convince you to buy stuff you don’t need. Not filling out the questions makes it much harder for them to hook you.

Take these steps, fill out the form, and get it in the mail as soon as you can. You’ll be glad you did.

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

Some variation on each of these questions has popped out of the mouth of one of my children in the last two weeks. Each one has been met with the best answer I could give to a six year old and/or a four year old, trying to maintain accuracy while still trying to keep things on a reasonable level of complexity. Each one has led to a running discussion that’s lasted days (with gaps in the middle for them to stew on the questions).

If you actually focus on trying to answer the questions your children ask you as well as you possibly can instead of giving trite answers, you can learn a lot of things yourself.

Money Tips for New Grads There are so many giant money mistakes that people freshly out of school will make. For many of them (myself included), the experience is a necessary one. For the wise student, it’s not. (@ narrow bridge)

Why You Need to Stop Wasting Your Time Chasing Passive Income I get emails from people all the time who want me to write about passive income, which they seem to believe is a route to making money without working. Passive income doesn’t work that way. You have to do a lot of work up front for pretty much nothing in order to make passive income. (@ studenomics)

Bike Your Way to a Healthier, Richer, Happier You I absolutely love my bicycle. Riding it around town is a highlight of almost any day that involves my bike. (@ prairie eco thrifter)

Brown-Bagging Without Boredom My biggest challenge with leftovers is remembering them. I had to work to establish a routine of using leftovers. (@ get rich slowly)

Is Amazon Prime Worth the Cost? If you find yourself ordering something from Amazon once a month and with each order you find yourself adding something you don’t really need or want to your cart just to get free shipping, then Prime is probably worth it. You’ll spend less over the long haul. (@ one frugal girl)

Let’s spell that out in a real world example.

The last time I traded in my cell phone, the store was loaded with phones. Many of them had prices you might expect – $199 without a new contract, $49 with a new contract, $0 after a $50 mail-in rebate. Unsurprisingly, it was the $0 that was marked in bold with enormous lettering.

If you were to fill fill out the rebate form and return it in time, you’ll get a $50 check back in the mail. That’s a good thing.

However, the reality is that most rebates are never mailed in. Redemption rate statistics vary, but some redemption statistics indicate the return rate may be as low as 5%. My speculation is that it’s higher than that, but it’s still well below 50%.

On top of that, there’s also slippage, where people receive rebate checks but forget to cash them. This accounts for an additional small percentage of rebates that the company gets to keep. Adding these together, it’s no wonder that companies love to offer rebates because it provides the illusion of lower prices while not actually costing the company nearly that much.

The easiest method of protecting yourself is if you get a rebate form, fill it out and mail it immediately when you get home. Don’t put it off for even a moment. This should be the first thing you do when you return home after receiving a rebate form.

This mostly just comes down to task management. I’m a big believer in the idea that almost all tasks are easily sorted into one of four groups: important and urgent, important and not urgent, not important and urgent, and not important and not urgent. This is a useful idea that comes from Stephen Covey’s books.

For example, an urgent but not important task might be a phone call. It’s urgent because your phone is ringing and demanding attention, but it’s not really important.

On the other hand, returning a large rebate form is important but not urgent. You don’t have to do it today, so it’s easy to put it off.

One of the big challenges in time management is that people substitute urgent for important. They’re more likely to pick up the phone than to fill out the rebate form, even though the rebate form is more important in the long run. That phone call happens to be urgent, and urgent wins the prize.

The thing is, urgency is really only useful in comparing things of the same importance. If you have a rebate form due in sixty days and one due in thirty days, the one due in thirty days is more urgent and should be filled out first. If you compare most tasks to a random phone call, though, most tasks should win.

Rebate forms are a perfect example of this. Because they’re not urgent, people often put them aside to deal with urgent things, even if the urgent things are far less important.

Don’t make that mistake. It will cost you money with the rebate forms, and it will cost you in other aspects of life as well.

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

One of the items I was left with after cleaning out this closet was a box full of older financial papers. There were statements, insurance policies, old contracts, and other things. These had been stuck in the closet at various times, usually in well-marked boxes or envelopes.

Over the following few days, I went through this box and sorted things out based on what I felt we needed to keep in hard copy form (insurance policies, for example), what needed to be scanned onto our computer and then disposed of (bank statements, for oen), and what could just be tossed immediately (junk mail).

As I went along, I separated the documents to be disposed of into two groups: ones with key personal identification on them and ones without such identification.

The documents without identifying information were easy to dispose of. They went the same route as any other paper recycling.

The trickier problem was with the large pile of material with identifying information on it. I don’t want to put papers with our full credit card information, our Social Security numbers, or other such key identifying data out there where anyone could grab them.

Tossing papers with such identifying material on them is a route to identity theft. If someone digs through your trash and finds your Social Security number or your credit card number, they’ve got what they need to trash your identity, taking out loans in your name and causing you endless problems.

The chances of someone digging through your trash for such info is relatively slim, of course, but it’s one of those things that can really mess with your life if it happens.

So, what do you do with these papers?

The frontline solution is to shred those documents. Doing this will pretty much ensure no one steals your identity. If you shred, their chance of stealing is dead.

The problem with shredding is that home shredders are generally very low throughput. Feeding paper through a typical home shredder – a page or two at a time – takes a very long time. It’s also noisy, so it’s not really something that’s convenient to do while you’re watching a television program, for example.

The best route is to simply keep up with your shredding so you only have a few documents to shred at once, of course. However, that doesn’t solve the common problem of dealing with a big pile of papers.

Another option is to look for a “shred-a-thon.” Many cities hold these somewhat regularly under various names (such as “document destruction day”). They just rent a giant industrial paper shredder and have people in the community bring in their documents to get shredded in bulk. This service is usually free. Many universities offer this service, too.

If you don’t have such a service available to you, look for a business that specializes in document disposal. They’ll shred large quantities of documents for a few dollars, often while you watch. Many large businesses have such services within their own organization, so you could just mix your paper in with those.

If these options don’t work, burn them. Use all of your documents as the starting fuel for a large bonfire. However, it’s not a great idea to just take all of your documents and just burn them. Instead, make a giant burnable cube out of them.

One better way to do that is to rip the documents into smaller pieces and fill up a tub about halfway with the documents. Then, add water to the documents until the bin is mostly full. Let it sit for twelve hours or so, then drain off as much water as you can (and squeeze out even more water). You’ll be left with a giant ball of mushy pulp. Put this ball somewhere dry for a few weeks and you’ll have a very large chunk of very flammable paper that will burn quite well. (If you want to get it really dry, stick the mostly-dry chunk in your oven at about 250 F for a while, which will cause the water to evaporate out of it while leaving the dry paper behind.) This is wonderful firestarter for a large bonfire.

The point of these tactics is to make sure your personal identity is as safe as possible. A home shredder is a great solution for a small quantity of papers, but for larger quantities, these measures will really help.

Floor models give you a great idea of how something works, but they can also provide a great discount for you if you’re shopping at the right time.

When a model is either replaced with an upgraded version or moved to a less-featured area of the store, the store is often left with that floor model that you once played with. It’s now slightly used, so it usually can’t be sent back to the factory and it can’t be repackaged as new.

Many stores will just slap a big discount on the item and try to sell it. That’s where you can net yourself a great discount – if you happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Digital cameras are a wonderful example of how you can save money with floor models and discontinued models. Digital camera models rotate pretty regularly and many stores end up putting the floor models of the older cameras out there for sale at a pittance.

However, buying floor models can be risky. You don’t know what has been done to them in the past. They’ve often been out for display for months, meaning people have done all sorts of things to them.

Because of that, there are a few simple rules I use when evaluating whether to buy a floor model.

First, is the discount steep enough that it’s worth some minor potential hassles? For example, if a floor model is $30 and a new version is $40, I’m not going to bother with the discounted one because $10 is not worth the potential effort in having to deal with a return. I want to see a discount that’s at least 50% off, and if it’s a major item, I want to be saving hundreds.

Why? You’re essentially buying a used item here. The chances of discovering a problem are much higher with a floor model, and if you do find a problem you have to deal with returning it.

Speaking of returns, make absolutely sure you understand what the store’s policy is in terms of returning it. Some stores won’t let you return them at all. Others offer a very short period for returns.

I would never buy a floor model that I couldn’t return unless the thing was nearly free. If you can’t return the item, you’re very likely going to be stuck with a complete lemon.

You should also ask if they’ve done any cleanup on the item before selling it. Did they reformat the hard drive on the computer? Did they clean the item? Or did they just chuck it into a box and slap a price tag on it? A bit of effort in checking out the item goes a long way.

One final tip: ask if you can try out the item before you buy it. Do they have a place you can plug it in? Can you take it out of the box (if it’s got one) and see if it works?

This last one is pretty close to a deal-breaker for me. If they want me to buy a used item without any way to verify that it actually works, I’m walking away. If they won’t let me try it and they don’t have a return policy, I’m not taking it with me unless it is absolutely free.

Even with these policies, I’ve still found and purchased quite a few floor models, including my current digital camera. All of them had huge discounts and only one had any significant problems (which the store took care of, actually). If the store has decent policies and you have a chance to try the item, consider a floor model. It can save you some cash.

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

Most weekdays, I go for a long walk around the neighborhood where I live. I usually do it to work through ideas, improve my physical shape a bit, and get a bit of fresh air.

Anyway, if you walk the same area enough, you begin to notice patterns, such as when people are typically home and what vehicles to notice in people’s driveways and the like.

Whenever I see a vehicle that isn’t familiar, I often wonder whether or not I should say anything to anyone. Should I stop by their house later and let them know? Should I call the police? Or should I just ignore it?

Unless I see something really out of place, I typically ignore it, but the thought of the out-of-place vehicle often sticks in my head.

Q1: Loans, repayments, and rates
I have two student loans. I have about $15000 in federal loans which are at a fixed rate of 3.375. I have $13000 in private loans at a variable rate, which has been 2.5% ever since interest rates dropped to their historic lows. The loan at the variable rate was at one point as high as 8.5%.

Currently I am not paying anything beyond the minimum monthly payments for each figuring that I can get a better return on my money elsewhere. Do you agree with this logic? If so, at what point do you think I should start throwing extra money toward these loans? I had reckoned somewhere between four and five percent but am curious to hear your thoughts.
- Jeff

Right now, there isn’t an investment where you can get a guaranteed return of 3.375%. When interest rates shift, there will be such opportunities. Of course, there are opportunties that one can reasonably expect to get that return, but they involve risk, meaning you’re not going to necessarily get that return over a given period of time.

In other words, unless you’re investing for something way down the road, like retirement, or you don’t have a decent emergency fund, you might as well pay down this debt.

It is never a bad choice to eliminate debt, even at 0%. If nothing else, it minimizes your monthly bills, which makes it easier to survive job losses and other unexpected events.

Q2: Finding cheap Kindle books
You’ve mentioned before how you view your Kindle as a money saver, but I just don’t get it. All of the books on there seem really expensive to me. Where do you find cheap books?
- Joan

I keep an eye on the Kindle Daily Deal and the monthly Kindle discount list, for starters.

I read a lot of public domain books, though, which you can download for free at Project Gutenberg. I use it to read philosophy and classic novels.

Between those two sources, there’s a ton to read. If you must read the latest releases, use your public library and use their reservation system.

Q3: Incompetent landlord issues
My problem is that I have the landlord for H-E-Double hockey sticks. I have lived in my apartment for 3 years and only started experiencing problems around the 2 and a half year mark. My landlord frequently doesn’t cash my rent checks (I have about $4,200 in my bank account right now from 4 months worth of rent she hasn’t cashed). I started sending out the rent check via my bank (through the “Pay Bills” section) so that I have a record of payment. I have contacted her in the past about this and her explanation was that “the secretary was out sick”. The only problem is…She doesn’t have a secretary…The other issue is that I’m not technically on a lease. According to her, she never received my lease renewal and when I asked her to send me a new one – she never did.

So what should I do? This woman is old (maybe mid-60s) and I live in a large building so sometimes I wonder if she just gets overwhelmed. My lease expires in 4 months and am I DEFINITELY planning on moving but what should I do with that rent money? I realize that it’s rent and should be paid to her but she isn’t cashing the check.
- Shaun

I’d get out of this apartment, of course, but I really wouldn’t sweat the missed checks. Just make sure that you’re leaving enough in your checking to cover the uncashed checks.

You might want to call your bank and ask about their policy on stale checks. Many banks don’t accept checks that are older than six months as a policy (though they often slip through).

For now, though, make sure you can cover every single check you’ve written. It might be annoying, but it’s the safe route.

Q4: Eliminating fast food
I finally get it: fast food isn’t as cheap as I thought it was. I spent some time tallying my overall spending and it would actually be cheaper for me to go to a decent restaurant and take a doggie bag than it is to eat fast food, and making meals at home is cheaper than that!

The problem is that the convenience of fast food is just such a part of my life. Between grabbing kids from school activities and dropping them off places, keeping up with my meetings and other things, and my crazy job, most days fast food is just what I rely on to make it work. I grab some food and eat in the car on my way to my next thing.

My life is just incompatible with sitting down for a normal meal at the dinner table. I don’t see how I can trim money from my food budget and retain any level of convenience.
- Alvin

My suggestion to you would be to make meals at home and pack a small cooler or something with plenty of food for lunch, dinner, and any snacks you might consume. Put an ice pack in there so that the food stays cool.

I’ve done this many times on busy weeknights. I’ll eat a sandwich and a side I’ve made myself for the fraction of the cost of eating a fast food meal and without the ten minutes burnt in the drive-thru.

There’s a lot of variety in this as well. Given that you’re not wasting time in a drive-thru, you can pack meals that don’t have to be eaten while driving, and if you have access to a microwave at work, you can cook it just before you leave. It really works, both in terms of delicious food and financial savings.

Q5: Health insurance for newborn
My wife and I are expecting a baby in September and we are trying to determine whose health insurance we should insure the baby under once it arrives. My wife has traditional open access healthcare (pay co-pays, etc. but everything else is covered). I have high-deductible health insurance with an HSA. We intend to remain on our separate health insurance plans because her employer pays 100% of her premiums (for her only) and my employer pays a portion of my HSA contributions. We don’t want to miss out on this free money (untaxed, not part of income, no way to receive it unless enrolled in the healthcare plan). Her premiums will increase $320 per month to add the child. My premiums would only increase $69 per month. However, with the HSA, you know that I pay 100% of everything out of pocket up to deductible then I would be co-insuring (10% in my case) everything after that.

I’ve determined that to compare apples-to-apples, I would increase my cash out of pocket HSA contribution to $251 per month so that my premiums and HSA in total are $320. This would mean that cash out on a monthly basis I am neutral between both options. That said my employer will kick in $108 additional to my HSA. Therefore, assuming the facts above, I would be contributing $359 to my HSA monthly, $4,308 annually.

That said, my deductible would be $6,150 and my annual co-insurance maximum would be $4,000. My total maximum annual out-of-pocket would be $10,150.

The dilemma is this, which plan do we insure our child under? If the child is healthy, the HSA seems to make plenty of sense because I can’t imagine spending more than $4,300 even in the first year on the healthcare for the child. My wife and I are healthy so we won’t use much of the HSA money on ourselves. The obvious concern is that an accident could happen at any time which would mean we could max out the $10k in one year. However, I have emergency fund money to cover that and I am risking that whether the child is on the HSA or not because I am on it. The real unknown is whether the child will be healthy. We don’t have a family history of anything but I worry that the child could have some medical complications and that would get expensive quickly.

Can you advise me on what to do here? Also, we would be free to change during the open enrollment periods each year. This enables us to change our mind down the road so really the first year is what is in question here.
- Roger

I would only go for the cheap option if I had an enormous emergency fund sitting there to cover situations that the cheaper insurance leaves up to you. In other words, I’d want to keep an emergency fund that covers the whole deductible and a few months of living expenses.

If you don’t have that, I would go for the more expensive insurance. This is about keeping your child safe, and that’s paramount.

It might be tempting to think you’ll be able to save enough to get there in a few months, but that’s the very point of insurance. Insurance is supposed to cover you in situations where you cannot, and if you can’t cover an unexpected expense and have access to decent insurance, get that insurance.

Q6: Waiting for divorce
My husband and I have mutually decided that we don’t love each other any more. We do love our children and have decided to continue to live together for their sake. We don’t hate each other, we just realize we don’t really love each other.

How do we go about separating our assets in a reasonable manner?
- Connie

It sounds like you have time to do this and mutual respect during this process, both of which are invaluable.

If I were you, the first step I’d take is to start separating all accounts. You should each have checking accounts, credit card accounts, and so on that are independent of the other. You should each own your own vehicle without the other on the title.

As for large assets like your home or other investments, talk about it together and determine what creates the best outcome for everyone involved. I can’t give you the answer to this, but I would suggest taking your time, talking about it together, and seeing if there is a good way of resolving such big issues without involving lawyers (who will eat up a lot of the value of the disagreement, anyway).

Q7: Changing spousal money habits
Here is my question – can you give some practical tips and suggestions for helping your spouse to change their money-spending ways as well as ways to encourage them to make and follow a budget? Our situation is this: I am a stay-at-home mom of two and my husband is the sole provider, bringing in around $2,800/month plus some additional benefits like a gas card, computer, business allowances, commissions, etc. We also have a rental property that brings in about $1,400/month.

My point in telling you all of this is that we make decent money and yet every single month we are scraping by. I feel that a lot (but of course not all) of it has to do with my husband’s spending habits (eating out, promising to not spend then doing it anyway) as well as his ability to coerce me into agreeing to purchase things (aka, the $200 above ground pool sitting in our backyard purchased last week) that I know we can’t afford it, since I am “in charge” of paying the bills each month. He will tell me, “Don’t worry, I’ll get the money…,” yet he’s always a day late and a dollar short, which has caused us to sink into some major debt. It hurts even more on a personal level because most of our bills and loans (minus his student loan) are in my name, because when we were first married, his credit was bad and was unable to qualify for anything. My credit has suffered SO much and I am desperate to fix it.

I do my part by shopping frugally, couponing, not really buying anything for myself, etc. I’m sure there are other areas I can cut and he certainly isn’t completely to blame, but I feel like I’m making an effort to pull my own weight. Slowly, we are creeping our way out of credit card debt, but we still have approximately $3,000 (out of $8,000) left, a car payment, and student loans on top of about $12,000 in collections for a hospital bill. I’m tired of nagging him, especially because I feel guilty for nagging him about money he is earning, yet I am SICK of being stressed out constantly, especially when bills are due. I need help convincing him that we need to reform our money-spending ways, work on a budget and then actually stick to it!
- Catelyn

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

Your best approach isn’t to feed him with tactics. If he doesn’t care, he’s not going to use them. He’s got to have a real reason for wanting to change, so that’s what you need to focus on.

Talk about long-term goals with him. What does he want to be doing in a few years? What’s possible if he makes changes? What will things look like without changes?

You’ve got to put the changes you want him to make into a context that he cares about. If he doesn’t internally care about changing, it’s just not going to happen.

Q8: Egg cartons
For the last few months, I’ve been on a diet where I eat three eggs for breakfast each morning. This means that every four days, I go through a carton of eggs. As I keep tossing them, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a great use for them I’m not seeing.
- Brad

We like to use egg cartons – the paper-based ones, anyway – as firestarters. It’s actually pretty easy.

All you need to do is get ahold of or save the stubs of candles as well as some sawdust (friends who do woodworking will be glad to hook you up; if you don’t have those, see if hardware stores have any suggestions). Just fill up each well with some sawdust until it’s mostly full, then melt some candle wax on top of it, filling up the well and holding the sawdust in place.

Take the carton with you if you go camping or build a bonfire. Tear off one or two of the wells and light those to get the fire going. It works really, really well. If you aren’t into camping, give them to friends who are into it – they’ll really appreciate it.

Q9: IRAs and tax rates
One thing’s been bugging me lately, as I sock away more and more money into a Roth IRA and Roth 401(k). By the time I hit retirement, if 100% of my retirement income is in post-tax accounts, my taxable income should be zero. If that’s the case, should I be saving significantly more into a pre-tax accounts, like IRAs and standard 401(k)s?

It seems that, in combination with that, if my retirement income is substantially less than my employed income (since I’m saving 20% or so right now), a standard IRA becomes a better investment since I ought to be at much lower tax rate than I currently am while employed.
- Charlie

If you use pre-tax investments for retirement, like a 401(k), you reduce your taxes now in exchange for paying income taxes later. If you use post-tax investments for retirement, like a Roth IRA, you don’t lower your taxes now, but you certainly lower them later on.

Which is better? It really comes down to whether your income tax will be higher now or in retirement. Much of that has to do with government policy over the next three or four decades, which is really hard to predict.

Our approach to this problem is to hedge our bets. We have some of our retirement savings in pre-tax investments and the rest in post-tax investments. Our taxes are a bit lower now – but they’re also going to be lower in retirement.

Q10: Home repair dilemma
I am 40 years old and single. I am currently employed in a good-paying job and have been employed with the same company for almost 18 years. My company is currently being sold and my future is somewhat uncertain (whose isn’t really?). I currently make about 4k a month in gross pay with occasional bonuses. I have about 27k in liquidity and about 250k in a 401k which I contribute to at the maximum rate and about 30k in an IRA. I also have about 100k in a pension that I will be able to roll into my IRA once the sale of my company closes. I also have a second vehicle that is worth about 10k that I would like to keep for recreational purposes since it’s a 4wd and it is paid for but would sell if needed. My only debt is a newer car with better gas mileage at 2% interest rate with payments at $350/month and my mortgage which is at 3.75% and is at $622/month. I have about 50% equity in my home. I purchased my home 10 years ago and the age of the roof at that time was 15 years so my roof is 25 years old and is showing signs of break down. A few years ago I had a rough estimate of about 8k to replace my roof and a friend just told me about someone that does re-roofs at a really good price and I just got that estimate at $4800 which I think is really good. My concern is that with the new ownership of my company that I could find myself in a position of being surplused and unemployed. So, I’m at a loss as to what to do with my roof. It needs replaced but I have recently started cutting out all unnecessary expenses anticipating the worst. But, I know I’m destined for roof failure at some point in the near future. Would you replace the roof now while employed or wait until there are roof leaks (my home is an older home that I have done quite a bit of upgrading to but does have plaster ceilings that I’d like to replace at some point but not until I have a new roof, so ceiling damage is not of much concern given the condition of the plaster). My mother says wait but I am thinking I should go ahead and replace. What would you do?
- Angela

The key is to make sure your roof doesn’t fail before your career is on steady ground. If I were in your shoes, I would look for a “patch it up” solution that would give you a few more years out of this roof until you’re in a better situation to replace it.

Are there any known leaks? Are there any weak spots that can be identified? I’m far from a roofing expert, but if you have someone that knows roofing and you trust this person, talk to that person about solutions that can buy you a little time.

If you’re up to it, many such repairs can be done yourself. Here’s a solid guide to minor roof repairs that can help you get through until things are in better shape professionally for you.

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

For example, I owned a digital camera a few years ago. After using it for a few weeks, I just kept getting annoyed by a few minor features on it, plus the buttons were really out of place for the size of my hand. Although there was nothing wrong with it, I just didn’t like using it, so I returned it and selected a different camera.

When I returned the camera, I was in line behind a grandmother who had purchased a video game controller for her grandson. She was returning it because she had purchased an Xbox controller and he had a Playstation. “I thought they were all Xboxes,” she said. The item was open, but it was within the return window.

Now, when the store receives such a return, they’ve got to do something with it. Most of the time, the most cost-effective solution is to simply put that item back out there on the shelf at a discount.

Now, if you’re looking for a particular item and you stumble upon a previously-opened item in the store, don’t hesitate to ask about it. Most of the time, you’re given the same warranty and return policy as a new item and, frankly, you are buying a new item, just one that someone else opened up already just to discover it wasn’t right for them.

If there’s an open-box item available to me, I’m almost always interested in it because there’s usually a decent discount attached to it. The first thing I do is head to the customer service desk and ask a few questions.

First, I ask about their full policy on open-box items. Are they treated the same as new items in the eyes of the store? If you find a problem with it, can it easily be returned with a receipt?

Second, I ask how the item appears on the receipt. Does it appear as some sort of special listing, or does it appear the same as a new purchase? This is important for manufacturer returns, when you’ve exceeded the return policy of the store but not the warranty from the manufacturer.

Finally, I ask about the item itself. Can I examine it for obvious defects? Can I try it before I buy it since it’s already open?

The more positive answers I get from these questions, the more likely I am to dive in and buy that open box item. It can save me quite a lot on my purchase, and if I’m receiving a perfectly good item in exchange for that reduced price, I’m happy.

In fact, on many purchases, I’ll ask about open box items for this model or a similar model, just to see if I can get a nice discount. If the policies that the store offers are good, then it’s well worth it to me.

When you shop, always consider open box returned items. They’ll often save you money while putting the same brand new item in your hands.

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

To put that in perspective, if you have a $200,000 home loan, your monthly mortgage payment for a thirty year loan would be $930.78, and on a 15 year loan, you’d only be paying $1,385.01.

That’s pretty low. For many people, these rates would be lower than what you might expect to pay on a similar rental.

When Sarah and I bought our home, interest rates were falling pretty quickly. We got a rate that was under 6% on a thirty year mortgage and were thrilled with how low it was. Today, we could have received a mortgage with the same monthly payments but for an amount tens of thousands of dollars higher. The pendulum really has shifted in favor of the buyer.

These low rates bring about a big question: how low do rates have to be before it’s a good idea to get a mortgage, even if you don’t have a 20% down payment?

This is really a tricky question to answer, because much of the answer has to do with one’s personal ideas about money. There is no good way to “run the numbers” over the long term, because the true answer to this question relies on the future of the housing market in the particular area where you’re buying the house, as well as things like the homeowner’s desire and ability to keep their house in good shape.

Given that we can’t know such things, my perspective is that you should buy when your total monthly cost for owning the home is less than the total monthly cost of renting. Right now, the interest rates are making the home ownership cost quite low.

For example, let’s say you’re looking at buying a townhouse that’s similar to the apartment you’re renting with your spouse. You’re currently renting for $1,200 a month and you pay, say, $25 a month in renters insurance.

If you buy a $200,000 home with nothing down, you’ll be paying $930 a month in mortgage payments, another $80 or so a month in PMI, another $80 a month in homeowners insurance, and another (say) $200 a month in property taxes. That adds up to $1,290, which means it’s a solid deal, but not a great one.

Now, if you buy a $150,000 home with nothing down, your total goes down to somewhere around $970 a month, which makes it a better deal.

In other words, if the total cost of your rental is more than the total cost of home ownership, then you should own. If it’s really close, I lean slightly toward renting, simply because there are usually extra costs in home ownership, such as home repairs and the like. You can no longer just call a landlord.

Right now, the pendulum is about as far toward home ownership as can be, but it’s still not all the way there for everyone. If you’re in an inexpensive apartment and don’t have a down payment saved up, you’re better off staying put.

What about the pendulum swinging back the other way in the future? The possibility of something becoming more expensive in the future is not a good reason to put yourself in a financially risky position today, particularly if your financial position isn’t strong enough for home ownership. If you don’t have a lot of money to spare, leave the risky investments to others and play it safe.

Refurbished models can save you a lot of money with minimal risk, but you have to be a bit careful when doing it.

If you’re shopping around for an item and come across a refurbished model at a nice discount, consider these questions.

First, is the item being sold by a retailer that sells new products of the same type? If they’re not, I’d avoid this. Don’t buy a refurbished Sony Blu-Ray player from a store that doesn’t sell other Sonys. That’s a flashing red light that something questionable is going on.

Second, is there a return policy for this item? If you take it home and discover an issue with the item, can you return it to the store within a reasonable length of time (30 days or so) for a refund? “No questions asked” return policies are the best. I consider a return policy on a refurbished item to be a requirement.

Third, is there a warranty on this refurbished unit? There should be a warranty attached to it. Sometimes, this warranty is equal to that of a brand new item, which is a very good sign. If you don’t see a warranty, back away.

Fourth, can you see any obvious defects in usage at the store? Can you try the item out before you buy it? The success of this really depends on the item. Not being allowed to do this isn’t a deal-breaker, but being allowed to do it is a strong positive.

Fifth, is this a certified refurbished model? Some companies offer a certification program for refurbished models which often includes a full warranty. While this isn’t a deal-breaker, it is certainly a big positive.

Finally, can you get an extended warranty for the item? This doesn’t mean you take the extended warranty, but if the business won’t offer one, that’s a sign that they don’t believe in the product they’re selling you.

I use these items as a checklist whenever I’m considering a refurbished model. If it passes through these questions, then I’ll consider it a bargain and pick it up. However, if these questions start throwing up some red lights, I’ll pass.

Don’t overlook refurbished models in your shopping. They can often provide very nice discount opportunities.

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

This past week, I’ve spent some significant time working on my public speaking skills due to some upcoming situations where I will be called on to speak before a crowd and either inspire them or keep them entertained. I’ve watched a bunch of speeches on YouTube, looking for ones that inspired me so that I could study the techniques. This week, I’m going to share ten of them. (A few may be repeated from earlier entries in this series.)

1. Jim Valvano’s “never give up” speech
Valvano was seriously ill with cancer when he delivered this speech, but he hit an absolute home run with it, managing to be charming, funny, and yet incredibly serious as well. The Jimmy V Foundation has gone on to do wonderful work in cancer research and they use this speech constantly, and for good reason.

2. Barack Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech
You can make up your own mind as to whether Obama has lived up to this speech, but you’d be hard pressed to deny the strength of this speech.

3. Oprah Winfrey’s 2008 Stanford commencement address
Regardless of my own mixed feelings about the content of her shows and her public persona, I have an immense amount of respect for Oprah’s ability to pull herself up by her bootstraps. Life is what you make of it.

4. Winston Churchill’s “we shall fight them on the beaches” speech (excerpt)
Perfectly sober and powerful at an incredibly sober and powerful moment in history. He doesn’t go for the fist-pounding oratory, but keeps it more subdued – but, somehow, that makes it even more powerful.

5. Randy Pausch on time management
This is perhaps the best speech on time mangement I’ve ever seen. The importance of the topic, the speaker’s enthusiasm for it, and the simplicity of his plan all come together here.

Pausch turns out to be the only person to appear twice on this list, and for good reason. He was a great speaker.

6. Ronald Reagan’s address following the Challenger disaster
The Challenger disaster really shook me as a child. I vividly remember watching this speech the evening after that disaster, after watching the coverage of the disaster that day at school. This is a beautiful eulogy.

7. Atticus Finch’s courtroom speech from To Kill a Mockingbird
This was my favorite book during my high school years. Gregory Peck is wonderful in the film version, and this speech is a major highlight.

8. The St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V
I have a big soft spot in my heart for Shakespeare, and this is probably my favorite scene from all of it. If you’re not into Shakespeare, you might balk at the language, but if you have any appreciation for the Bard, this is just wonderful.

“We happy few, we band of brothers…”

9. Randy Pausch’s last lecture
Entitled “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” this presentation takes on new meaning because of the illness threatening Pausch at the time. It went on to become a bestselling book.

10. Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech
I have watched a ton of commencement speeches in the last few weeks, and this one is simply the high water mark.

If you have a reasonable feature list (meaning one that doesn’t lock you into an expensive item), you’ll find that quite a few items will match up with the features you’re looking for.

Don’t settle on one just yet. Find several models you’d be willing to buy, then shop around.

For starters, if you decide that you’re only going to buy this one specific model of what you’re looking for, you’re almost always going to overpay for it. Just by that decision alone, you’ve closed yourself off to a lot of potential bargains that you might find on similar models.

In other words, it pays to have a nice list of models you’d be willing to buy, along with a feature list so that you can figure out if other models match your needs.

The best way to do this is research. For many items, one really effective way of doing this is simply browsing versions of the item at amazon.com. While you shouldn’t necessarily buy there, it can be a very useful tool for identifying models that match your needs.

For unbiased comparisons of items with similar features, use Consumer Reports. Whenever I’m about to make a significant purchase, I stop at the library for a look at some back issues of CR.

In the end, I usually wind up with a list of quite a few models that will suit my needs quite well. Usually, this list is somewhat ranked, with ones that have better numbers in Consumer Reports ranked above others, but I don’t necessarily rule any out. I do this for “tiebreaking.”

Once I have that list of models, I start shopping. Online shopping is easy with a bunch of places at your fingertips, but it’s worth looking around brick and mortar stores as well. You’ll often find sales you didn’t expect.

I usually give myself a timeframe for the purchase – say, a month or two. During that period, I do some comparison shopping for the item when I have a free moment or two. I’ll look at the selection in brick and mortar stores if I happen to be there, or I’ll look at websites during idle moments in the evening.

I usually get a pretty good idea of what a good price is for the item after just a bit of searching. I use that as my benchmark, and if I find an opportunity to beat that benchmark by 20% or so, I go ahead and make the purchase. Sometimes you’ll stumble on better sales, but I’ve also seen good discounts disappear while I’ve looked for something better. When my timeframe is up, I go with the option that is the best bargain for me.

Shop around, but know what you’re shopping for. You’ll end up with a good buy on something that actually suits your needs.

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

The last time I saw her, I was struck by her frailness. My grandmother had worked at a maximum security prison for many years. She was a tough woman, the type of person who wouldn’t take any nonsense from anyone. She was stubborn as a mule when it came to taking care of herself.

To see that strength slipping away from her slowly over the final years of her life was a bit painful. I would visit her and see her putter around her kitchen slowly, preparing herself very simple meals. That spark of stubborn independence was still there, but it was softened.

When I think of my grandmother, I recall this period in her life, but it stands in stark contrast to the vibrant woman I knew throughout my childhood.

One thing I will remember about my grandmother’s final years, though, is how my mother stepped up to the plate to take care of her. She called her multiple times a day as she got weaker and stopped in daily to visit her. My uncle even moved in with my grandmother near the end of her life.

My mother and grandmother together showed me that the most valuable thing to have in the final years of your life is people who care about you.

This, of course, brings me around to my own parents.

I’ve seen them quite a lot lately, and the little signs of their decline have been difficult to ignore. They’re getting older. They’re nowhere near as fast as they once were and simple things that used to be normal to them wear them out.

My father used to have boundless energy for his various hobbies and side businesses. Over the past several years, his garden has become smaller and smaller and his commercial fishing exploits have come to rely on people he’s hired to assist him with it.

My mother is hobbled a bit with a knee that needs some surgical repair. She does an amazing job keeping up with her grandchildren, but it doesn’t take much observation to see a wince of pain here and there from her.

During my early adulthood, I was fully confident that my parents were fine. They had always been like rocks to me, completely able to take care of themselves.

Now, I’m beginning to see that changing, and I’m now realizing that my parents are going to need me in new and different ways in the coming years.

The thing is, it’s not money they really need. It’s time and attention and love.

They need someone who will call them up regularly and visit them.

They need someone who will help them connect with their grandchildren.

They need someone who will help them get their affairs in order.

More than anything, though, they need someone they can talk to who is actually listening to what they are saying and cares about it and takes action based on it instead of brushing them off as another duty to fulfill.

When I was a young child, my grandfather lived with us for a while near the end of his life. One evening after my grandfather had fallen asleep and I was working on a jigsaw puzzle with my father, he told me that when you’re young, the parent takes care of the child, but when you’re old, the child takes care of the parent.

That transition has been happening over the last several years. It’s been a slow one, but with every passing year, it becomes more and more real.

In a very real way, I am a part of my parents’ retirement plan. They invested so much in raising me, and now I can do a lot of things to help them in return.

If you know someone who is in the September or November of their years, give that person a visit or a call. Ask them if they need any help with anything. Drop by with a bag of groceries and make them a meal. You’ll be surprised at how much something relatively simple for you can mean a great deal to someone else.

If you’re worried about someone you know who is getting older, there is no better way to help them than with a little bit of time and attention and effort. You don’t have to give money to make an enormous difference.

I started off doing the most sensible thing a person can do when they’re considering buying a reasonably expensive item like a digital camera. I made a list of what I actually wanted to do with it.

I wanted reasonably high resolution pictures. I wanted a very short delay between pushing the button and actually taking the picture (my previous camera, a circa 2002 model, had a really long delay). I wanted support for a very large memory card so I could store lots of pictures. I wanted a battery with a fairly long life and easy availability of replacement batteries so I could swap them easily in a pinch (I’ve had bad experiences with dead batteries). I wanted the ability to take short videos at a reasonably high resolution.

When I began to shop around, though, the sheer abundance of features available on cameras became quite impressive. Is 7 megapixels enough, or do I really need 16? Do I need a carrying case? Do I need SLR? Do I need this? Do I need that?

A lot of the features seemed really tempting. It was easy to envision myself using them.

Several years ago, I would have talked myself into a much more expensive camera. Instead, I stuck to my list of needs and ended up with a pretty inexpensive one that does everything that I need.

“Feature creep” is a term applied to software and technology products to describe how they become more complicated as you add new features to them, often resulting in basic features becoming harder to use. I also use the term to describe the phenomenon where you talk yourself into buying a more expensive item with more features than you need.

In both cases, feature creep is something to avoid.

The best approach I’ve found for avoiding feature creep in most of your purchases is to do what I outlined above and simply make a list of your needs before you ever start shopping.

What do you want to use this item for? What features do you need to make that use a reality?

If you dive into shopping without such a list, it’s easy to visualize yourself using features that you only discover while shopping. It’s even easier to get sucked in if there’s a salesperson nearby telling you about all the great features. If you’re not careful, you end up buying an expensive item with a bunch of features you don’t really use.

Feature creep costs you money and rewards you very little for it. Focus on meeting your needs and avoid buying items that have features that you’ve never really thought about before, because most of the time you won’t actually use those features at all (even if they seem pretty cool in the store). Stick with your list of the features that you’ll actually use.

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

My son’s kindergarten teacher told me something a while back that’s stuck in my mind for months now. She simply said that the single biggest predictor for academic success for kids is the involvement of the parents. Are you discussing educational things at home? Are you aware of and involved with their education? Do you encourage them to do educational things at home?

It all starts at home. If you want to see certain traits in your children, it’s up to you to make sure they appear. Don’t expect the school district to magically turn your child into an academic success if you don’t do anything about it at home.

Q1: Buy or rent and commute?
My fiance and I are getting married this fall, and we’re deciding whether to rent or buy when we officially combine households in the summer when his current lease is up He currently commutes more than an hour each way to work, and I commute 30-45 mins each way, so we’d be moving much “closer in”. Ideally, we would prefer to purchase a home, since we would both rather that a monthly housing check go toward building equity in our own place rather than building wealth for someone else. However, we are income-rich, cash-poor at the moment (paying all cash for our fall wedding + sending his child from a previous marriage to college in the fall), so there’s no way we could put 20% down on even a very modest townhome in an area a reasonable distance from our two workplaces. He has a federal job in which, barring catastrophic failure of the federal government, he should be secure for the next 15-20 years, and that also means we won’t be moving from the general area any time before he retires – we’d just be looking to move to the most bikeable, walkable, enjoyable area within a 30-mile radius of our jobs (the closer, the better).

Normally, without at least a 10% down payment, I’d lean toward renting for at least a year so that we can build a down payment after the big savings hit of our wedding. Renting would also give us a chance to really narrow down the pros/cons of a specific neighborhood, since we’re hoping for a place that’s got good access to biking trails and public transportation and is not terribly congested for everyday errands. Problem is, foreclosures have driven the rental market here sky-high, so to rent an even smaller place, we’d be paying more in rent each month than we’d pay in mortgage + PMI + taxes on a bigger place…so there isn’t really that much chance to spend a year or two saving lots of money by renting unless we squeeze ourselves into a one-bedroom place, which is not ideal at our ages and wouldn’t allow his daughter to stay with us on vacations from college. I’m also concerned that the market is rebounding, so one or two years from now, the same homes might be much more expensive, and interest rates might not be as low, so any opportunity to save would be offset by the higher prices. However, I hate to throw away PMI each month, too….so in general, I’m really torn!

Can you suggest other pro/con factors that we should take into consideration before we decide to buy vs. rent?
- Lynn

Without knowing more details about your life, I think you’ve covered most of the important pros and cons.

The thing that would push me toward buying is the fact that your total monthly cost of owning a home is less than your total monthly cost of renting, as per your calculations above. I’m not sure that you’re including things like property taxes and utilities in those calculations, but if it’s close at all, I’d lean toward buying.

The reason for that is that if you’re essentially spending a certain amount of money to live somewhere each month, and one of those options builds equity while the other does not, you should choose the one that builds equity.

Q2: Advice to younger self
If you could go back in time and tell your younger self how to improve himself in terms of financial awareness and investing what would you tell him and why?
- Steve

The single piece of advice I’d give my younger self is to avoid all consumer debt. No credit cards, no loans to buy furniture, nothing.

I would tell him that student loans are okay to finish your education and a mortgage for your first home is okay, as is a loan for your first car. Other than that, personal debt is just far more of a negative than a positive.

Almost no investment you make will help you as much as freedom from debt will. If you’re far in debt and paying several percent interest, you have to invest and earn several percent interest on an equal amount of money just to break even. Live lean for a while instead, then start investing without that debt hanging over your head.

Q3: Handling angry coworker
I work for [a company that does creative work]. The work is highly collaborative. We spend a lot of time working in pairs or in groups of three on projects, constantly pushing each other to do better work.

One of the people in our office is jaw-droppingly talented. He sees things that none of us sees and puts out solutions so quickly and so accurately that the rest of us are just in awe sometimes.

There’s a problem, though. He has extreme anger issues. About twice a week, he’ll have a titanic meltdown where he just explodes at someone for not being good enough. He’ll say that he solves all of the issues at work and he’s tired of doing everything. He will usually end up berating a few people so intensely that they leave in tears. A few people have quit.

He does do more of the work, but that’s because his mind can come up with things and implement them in five minutes that some of us couldn’t do in two or three days. He’s just a genius.

Management puts up with his rages because of his talent, but it is really hard to deal with. I don’t like going into work because I don’t want to deal with these explosions. Other than that, I love my job. Is this something worth quitting over? How should I deal with it?
- Angela

Sit down with your immediate supervisor and talk about a plan for handling this. Obviously, the management team is going to be aware of the fact that their top performer has anger issues and that it may be driving away other solid performers. They don’t want to see those solid performers leave.

At one job that I had several years ago, we had a dysfunctional person on staff. Our immediate supervisor gave us a lot of leeway when interacting with this dysfunctional person. We were allowed to leave work for short periods to avoid potential confrontations, for example.

Assuming that the coworker is going to be retained no matter what you do, the best thing you can do is come up with a plan that gives you and other coworkers some breathing room. For example, you might want to have an informal plan where a worker who has just been berated can escape the office for a while to get their mind back on track. Work with your supervisor on this, because a good solution that can make everyone feel better is something that will help everyone in your workplace.

The best solution would be to send this top performer in for some anger management, but it sounds like that’s not in the cards, unfortunately.

Q4: Credit cards for other debts?
We are diligently and aggressively paying down about $10,000 worth of credit card debt accumulated during graduate school and a few years afterwards. The CC debt should be paid off by this time next year (hopefully earlier, though). After that’s paid, we have a private student loan we’d like to tackle. The current payoff amount is around $9,000 and it has a 9.9% interest rate. We’ve had lots of success transferring high interest credit cards to lower interest ones and knocking out debt with either 0 or 1.9% rate, so we’re considering paying the full balance of the loan off with a credit card and then paying the credit card, rather than the loan company. We could have it gone within a year if we do it. What do you think?
- Linda

In my eyes, that’s a fine plan.

Essentially, you’re just shifting debts around to reduce the interest rate you’re paying, which is a solid debt repayment strategy. In this case, you’re shifting student loan debt into credit card debt, which is a good thing because student loan debts are very difficult to discharge, even in bankruptcy. They just stick with you. Credit card debt is much easier to handle in a situation of severe financial distress.

I’d make this move.

Q5: Handling too many vegetables
I joined a CSA a few months ago and the first few shipments have been awesome. In terms of the cost of the vegetables, it’s really a great deal per pound. But that’s also the problem. There are so many vegetables that we just can’t eat them all. We threw out about ten pounds of vegetables a few days ago and it felt like a giant waste. Do you have any suggestions?
- Shelley

I’d simply learn how to preserve some of the stuff coming in from the CSA. Freeze some of it. Can some of it. You can even share some with neighbors, if need be.

Of course, this works well here in Iowa because our CSAs are seasonal. In some southern areas, CSAs can go year-round (or nearly so). If this is the case for you, preserving isn’t going to help, so I would suggest finding a neighbor to split the CSA with.

For example, if you’re paying $300 a month for this abundance of vegetables and fruits, see if you can find a neighbor or friend to pay $100 or $150 a month for a third or a half of your share. This way, you have a more manageable amount for yourself and your friend is getting a reasonable amount, too.

Q6: Promotional emails
Another good tactic is to unsubscribe from promotional emails. I get 10-12 per day, all from companies I’ve ordered from in the past. Each one has some kind of offer – free shipping, percentage off, etc. I’ll catch myself looking for something to buy just because I don’t want to pass up such a great deal!
- Andrew

This is a good idea if you’re getting such promotional emails mixed in with your normal email.

My tactic is to use a special email address just for these kinds of promotional emails. If I sign up for a customer rewards program, for example, I’ll use that other email address. That way, the promotional emails go straight into a separate account.

When I am considering making a purchase, I go into that account and search the emails to see if there are any coupons available. You’d be surprised how often I actually find a useful offer using this tactic.

Q7: Evicting a child
I have a 28 year old son who lives in our basement. He hasn’t even looked for work in three or four years. We have insisted over and over again that he try to get a job, but he mostly just spends his days playing computer games and reading books from the library.

My husband wants to make him move out, but he has no way to feed himself with no income or keep a roof over his head. I’m just not sure what to do.
- Lois

My suggestion would be to save up a lump sum – say, two months of living expenses in a small apartment – and then kick him out with that lump sum in hand.

If you don’t do this, you’re going to have him living in your home for the rest of his life. He does not believe he has any reason to move out, and you’re not giving him one. He has shelter, food, water, entertainment, and clothing. Why leave?

If you can’t do that, then cut off his services. Eliminate his cell phone and internet access, for starters. Tell him that they have a cost and he’s old enough to start covering that cost.

Q8: Investing small amount for retirement
I’m a college student looking to invest $1,000 for retirement. I currently have no debts, nor am I considering accumulating any in the foreseeable future. I’m on the hunt, but currently unemployed, so my first choice of a Roth IRA is currently ineligible. What would be your advice as to where I should stick this money? I’m intending to leave it there for the long term.
- John

You can have a Roth IRA whether you’re employed or not. Roth IRAs are independent of employer. You set Roth IRAs up yourself with your brokerage of choice.

In fact, that’s exactly what I suggest. Open up a Roth with a good brokerage (I suggest Vanguard or Fidelity), put the money into that account, and invest it in a target retirement fund that aims for the age when you want to retire.

You may find, though, that you want to hold onto that money until your employment situation gets resolved.

Q9: Getting funding for a dream
I have a really really good idea for a simple product that I think lots of people will use, probably most Americans and Europeans. I don’t even know how to start with this, though. What should I do to get funding to start making this thing?
- Andrew

The first thing I would do is try to prototype it. Can you try building a version of the item yourself?

If you don’t have this level of technical skill, you’re going to have to partner with someone to move forward, whether it be a person with that level of technical skill or a company.

If that’s you’re situation, you’re going to want to make sure that person doesn’t steal your product. The best protection you’d have in this case is a nondisclosure agreement. Your first step here is to look for a lawyer that focuses on intellectual property to help you draft such a thing (and perhaps give you additional suggestions on what to do with your idea).

Q10: Is television really that bad?
I hear so often that TV is terrible for you. I watch a lot of TV. I love TV. And I’m also not sure what else to do at night. Every day I get up early and go for a run around the river, make a nice breakfast and pack a nice lunch, go to work for 9 hours, read during my lunch hour, ride my bike to and from work, and make dinner with my boyfriend. Sometimes we’ll have dinner with friends, but we always end our day with a couple hours of TV on Hulu.

It seems like people are against TV because (1) the commercials (but we have Hulu programmed to only show previews for shows and movies) and (2) it takes time away from more important things like spending time with loved ones, getting exercise, reading, being outside– all things that I do every day.

By the end of the day, I don’t usually feel like playing games, and if I feel crafty, I do crafts while I watch TV. It doesn’t seem like my lifestyle is unhealthy in any way, except that it is so ingrained in me that watching TV is a bad thing.

Can you tell me other “healthier” ways to veg out at the end of the day– Or tell me that my lifestyle is balanced enough that 2-3 hours of TV per day isn’t so bad?
- Charlene

I don’t think television in moderation is inherently bad. You’ve named most of the criticisms I have with it – the commercials and the time consumption (it’s a pretty sedentary activity, both from a physical and mental perspective). I’d add a third – the product placement in the programs, which is advertising that you can’t really avoid.

I think the big concern people have with television is that it takes away from the balanced life you describe. Many people are employed nine hours a day and also enjoy an hour commute. They also sleep eight hours a day, and spend an hour on hygiene, an hour and a half on food prep and eating (across all meals), and an hour on household tasks (I’m estimating here to make a point). That leaves two and a half hours for other activities a day. If you fill those remaining hours with television, your life consists of work, sleep, television, and basic life maintenance. That’s it. That’s a pretty tiring life.

In my own life, I watch very little television. Sarah and I watch perhaps three programs (half an hour or an hour long) per week together, and Sarah watches perhaps one or two more beyond that. I mostly do this because I’d simply rather be doing something else. Television in abundance just isn’t my thing.

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

There are several parts to that simple suggestion, though.

First of all, how do you know what features you need? Often, the assumption is that you have to know some things about what the product can do before you can decide which ones you need.

That’s a bad assumption. Not knowing what you want before you go shopping makes you into a target for a salesperson.

The best approach is to sit down and ask yourself why exactly you’re even thinking of making this purchase in the first place.

Why are you thinking of buying that camera? That phone? That washing machine?

You might think the answer is really obvious, but when you actually think about the question for a little bit, it becomes much harder.

For example, you don’t buy a cell phone because you “need” a cell phone. You buy it because you need to communicate in a mobile fashion with people in your life.

Well, then, how do you communicate with those people? By phone call? By text message? By Twitter? What methods do you actually use? Don’t consider what you think you might use someday. Consider what you use right now. How do you carry out that communication?

You might come to the conclusion that you just need a device that enables you to make phone calls and send text messages while you’re out and about. For the vast majority of us, that’s really all we use our cell phones for, other than an occasional “gee whiz” moment. It’s a mistake to pay very much at all for those rare “gee whiz” moments.

To put it simply, the question “what am I really going to use this for?” should lead every buying decision that you make. It’s the key question. If you don’t have an answer for it, you shouldn’t be buying a product. If you do have an answer, make sure it’s a realistic one in your life, meaning that you will actually be using this item because this is a real need for you.

Make a list of those real uses. Then, figure out how those uses translate into actual features on the item you’re considering buying. Most of the time, you’ll find that your actual uses translate into a pretty bare bones model, which means you’ll be saving a lot of money.

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

If one of us knows that we really need to get something done, we can both slip into this zone-like state where almost nothing will interrupt us. This often happens in the evening when the children are in bed, for example.

The only problem is when one of us tries to get the attention of the other, we’re sometimes ignored or the situation results in someone being irritated because their concentration is broken.

That’s why we often schedule “date nights” where we do things together and “alone nights” where we focus on individual projects. It just works for us.

How To Setup A Custodial Account For A Minor To Help Them Save Or Invest This is a really good alternative for people who want to invest for a young child, but don’t want the commitment to educational savings that a 529 implies. (@ bible money matters)

Saying Goodbye to a Sixteen Year Old Car My wife got rid of her Toyota Celica several years back when it was near the sixteen year mark (it was a 1986 and she got rid of it in 2002). It’s hard to get rid of something when it’s served you well. (@ )

How to Focus When You’re Juggling Lots of Tasks For me, it always comes down to eliminating distractions. I shut down Skype, turn off my cell phone, block distracting websites, and bear down on my work. (@ dumb little man)

Avoiding false metrics Stop using a number that doesn’t really matter to judge whether or not you’re succeeding or failing. What is really your goal? (@ seth godin)

10 Clues You Are Trying To Keep Up With The Joneses A lot of people are wise enough to avoid the more obvious methods of keeping up with the neighbors. It’s the more subtle ones that are really the tricky ones to avoid and root out. (@ saving advice)

The big one is that many companies issue products in cycles. Every so often, they replace the version of the product currently on the market with a new one that’s usually just a fairly small tweak on the old one.

There’s also the simple “new” factor, which pops up on things like video games and DVDs. When they’re new, companies charge a premium price for those items. When they’re not new, the price begins to sink.

My solution for taking advantage of both of these factors is to simply decide on the product I’m going to buy, then putting that decision aside for a while. The time can vary based on how much you “need” the product.

Cell phones are a perfect example of this phenomenon.

Like many people, my cell phone eventually gets beat up with heavy use. Whenever my cell phone contract is up, I typically replace my phone with a new one, usually a very low cost or free one that comes with the contract.

The thing is that many of the models that the company carries go through a pricing cycle. They start off with a fairly high price, but when they’re replaced by newer cell phones with just a few more bells and whistles (that, in all honesty, you’ll barely use), they tend to see their price drop pretty steeply. Eventually, they’re replaced.

The thing is, most of those slightly outdated phones do everything I want a cell phone to do.

So, what I often do is look at the models a few months before I’m going to be upgrading my phone. I figure out the one that works for me and then walk away.

A few months later, when my contract is up, I stroll in and, most of the time, the phone I decided on is still there, often at a lower price. Sometimes, it’s a recently discontinued model that’s free with the contract.

Want another example? Whenever a new computer game is released that I want, I simply add it to a list and wait until the following December. There’s a good chance that the game will be available at 75% off or better at some online sale or another. I’ve been doing this very thing for years.

Patience saves you money. If you don’t need the thing, wait a few months. You’ll save some money in the process and won’t lose any of the quality of the item you desire.

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