Frugal people are often the hardest to buy winning gifts for. Quite often, frugal people don’t want things that don’t have obvious utility or that don’t match their tastes well – it’s just “stuff” that takes up space. At the same time, they don’t often go for the obvious gift stuff, either – they really don’t need another tie or so on.

So what’s a person to do if they’re going to buy a gift for a frugal person? At the same time, what kind of sane answer can I give in response to that question?

Over the last few years, these questions have confronted me face to face many times. After some careful consideration (both for my own purposes and for The Simple Dollar), I’ve come up with a handful of general guidelines that will help in purchasing gifts for any frugal person – or might help a frugal person come up with gift ideas.

Focus on core passions. Get to know the person you’re buying for. What are they passionate about? What do they spend their free time doing? For me, the answers are pretty easy – I read, I write, I cook, and I play games with friends. So, for me, books are a good idea, as are nice notebooks. Good kitchen items are good, as are quality food items (like great cheeses). Board games are also good.

If you don’t know what specific item to get, get a passion-focused gift card or gift certificate. For example, a gift card for me to Barnes and Noble or Williams-Sonoma or Funagain Games wouldn’t be a bad idea. Why? This lets the person indulge in what they’re passionate about without feeling guilty about spending their hard-earned money on something extraneous.

Buy a single quality item instead of several of lower quality. Frugal people value things that are well-made and that will stand the test of time. Get a frugal person one good gift instead of three low-quality ones. Get them one good knife instead of a block of mediocre ones.

Consumables usually work. If you know a frugal person who likes chocolate, get that person a few bars of really good chocolate. If you know a frugal person who likes cheese, get them a chunk of Maytag Blue. If you’re gifting a beer loving frugal person, get a six pack from your local microbrewery – or if the person likes wine, go to a local winemaker.

A high quality food item in line with their tastes is usually quite enjoyed for several reasons. For one, it’s an indulgence they would likely not spend their money on. For another, it’s not yet another item that takes up space in their home because it’s consumed.

Avoid stuff that isn’t obviously useful or isn’t in line with their core values. Frugal people are often utilitarians, which means they don’t see great value in items that don’t fulfill a specific need or a specific use in their life. Avoid the kinds of gifts that rely heavily on aesthetic appeal unless you intimately know their aesthetics. If you miss their aesthetics, you’re just going to give them a gift that frustrates them.

In general, these are good gift-giving strategies for most people. The real core of the message here is to simply put a bit of thought into the gifts you give. “It’s the thought that counts” is often said tritely, but it’s really true: a little thought at gift-giving time goes a long way.

Quite often, I’ll see people spend exorbitant amounts of money on lavish Thanksgiving spreads. While I completely understand the reason for doing this – often, it’s the one time in the year that we can gather around one table with a lot of people we love – there’s still a lot of simple things we can do to reduce the financial outlay and the stress of the meal without reducing the quality of the day in any way (and often improving it). Here are ten ways to do just that.

Cook and slice the turkey on Tuesday. What? No beautiful turkey on the table? Whatever will we do? In truth, though, the turkey on the table during Thanksgiving dinner often results in lots of problems: it keeps someone away from the meal because they’re carving the bird, the bird is often dry because it hasn’t had a lot of time to rest, and the finished bird often arrives later than expected, delaying the whole meal and often reducing the quality of the other food. Solve all of these problems by cooking the bird on Tuesday or Wednesday, slicing it at your own pace, then putting all of the meat on a platter along with all of the juice and a few pats of butter. Cover the serving platter and put it in the fridge, then just turn on the oven (or the electric roaster) on Thanksgiving to thoroughly warm the meat.

Use nature for your decorations. During the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, there are thousands of colorful leaves all over the place, free for the taking. Be picky – go outside and look for some nice, clean, colorful leaves. All you need is a plain tablecloth and a row of colorful leaves sprinkled down the middle to create a very festive setting.

Get the slow cooker into the act. Many Thanksgiving side dishes can easily be prepared in a slow cooker. Slow cookers consume less energy and quite often can be used in a “fix-it-and-forget-it” mindset. It’s the perfect tool to make cranberry sauce, for example.

Be creative with your Thanksgiving dinner leftovers. By the third day, turkey sandwiches start to get tired. Instead of allowing that to happen, share some of your extra food with people in need (for example, make a couple plates of food for shut-ins you know and deliver the plates) or make something interesting, like kugel or tetrazzini, out of the leftovers.

Round up when you estimate. I’ve been to two different Thanksgiving dinners in the past three years where there was just barely enough food to make ends meet for the number of guests (to put it politely). People showed up bringing unexpected dining companions and estimates for how much each person would eat were strangely low. Don’t fall into that trap. Estimate high, but estimate realistic. After all, you can always eat leftovers, but you can’t undo unhappy guests.

Don’t be afraid of potlucking it. Ask your guests to bring a dish or two with them so that you can focus your time, energy, and money on a few key dishes. Most people are quite willing to help (provided, of course, that they’re not coming from out of town).

Save the bones. Seriously. Put the entire carcass in a large Ziploc bag and save the bones and small pieces of meat for a day or two. Then, take all of the leftover vegetables (potatoes, corn, non-glazed carrots, etc.) and the carcass, stick them all in a crock pot, then add enough water to just cover the bones. Turn it on low overnight (this is perfect to do on Saturday evening after Thanksgiving). Then, in the morning, save the liquid. What will you do with this delicious turkey broth? Freeze it (along with a pound or two of leftover diced turkey meat). Then, in a few weeks, use it as the base for an amazing soup – just add vegetables and/or dumplings to the stock and the turkey (along with perhaps a bit of water to thin it).

Have appetizers. Inexpensive appetizers – like a selection of vegetables – helps people keep the edge off of their appetites and keeps them from over-eating during the main meal. Not only does this make the overall meal more healthy, it often makes it cheaper, since a vegetable tray can be really inexpensive. Much like the turkey, this can also be assembled the day before.

Don’t try to “impress” with your wine. There are countless great wines under $10 (here are five of my favorites from a few years back). Don’t feel the need to buy an expensive bottle of wine to impress anyone. Just stop by your local wine and liquor store and ask for a low-cost full bodied wine for the Thanksgiving table. They’ll be happy to point out something great for you.

Save your recyclable containers for leftovers. Instead of just tossing large containers of items like margarine or whipped topping, save the containers. Then, on Thanksgiving, fill the containers with leftovers and give them to your guests. There’s no responsibility at all for them to return the container and it gets an extra use out of the items that would normally be tossed.

What is the 40-30-30 rule? Simply put, it’s an argument that when you prepare for anything in life, only 40% of the preparation is physical – the rest is mental. Thirty percent of preparation is technical skill and experience, and the second thirty percent is the willingness to take risks.

This “rule” comes up again and again in all different areas of life. Here are several examples from my own life where I’ve seen it.

When I’m playing a game I’ve played a lot of times before, I have an intuition as to what move to make next, built from years and years of experience (the 30% that comes from technical skill and experience). However, I also find that it’s very easy to just keep using the same strategy over and over again because I’ve somehow come to the conclusion that it’s the best one. So, if I combine that technical skill and experience with a risky new strategy I’ve devised (the other 30%), I might lose – but I might also devise a way of playing that’s even better.

With investing, I have a good understanding of my own risk tolerance, an understanding built up over a long period of time (the 30% that comes from experience). Howver, I also know that if I don’t push against my risk tolerance a bit and look at new investment opportunities from time to time (the other 30%, risk), I’ll likely miss out on great opportunities.

I also see it in my career, both now and when I worked for a large organization. I would often have a well-worn daily routine that worked and got the things done that I needed to get done (the 30% that comes from experience), but if I really want to excel, I sometimes have to step outside the box a little (the risk-based 30%).

The 40/30/30 rule really does provide a great framework for success, no matter what you do.

Do something worthwhile (the first 40%) means that you’re willing to get up off the couch and do something. Maybe it’s getting ahead in a career. Maybe it’s getting into a new hobby. Maybe it’s simply getting a grip on your investments. 40% of the journey is simply trying.

Keep at it (the next 30%) is simply encouragement to not let a new initiative slide, because the more you work at it, the easier it becomes. Even more important, the more you work at it, the more the basic skills that make up the task begin to become natural to you.

Take risks (the final 30%) simply means to not do things the same way every single time. When you’ve become skilled at something, it’s easy to become wedded to the same routine. Never stop looking at what you do and trying out alternate paths. Not only does this grow your skills (making your basic routine even better), it also helps you to uncover new ways of doing things.

Great… so how do you do this? How can you apply the 40/30/30 rule in your life? The best first step is to figure out the area of your life where you want to improve. Do you want to get out of debt? Do you want to improve your skill at a musical instrument? Do you want to get a promotion at work? Do you want to become a writer?

Once you’ve figured out what you want to do, research it a bit. Figure out what things you’ll need to do to accomplish that goal.

After that, start practicing and building skills. The best way to do that is to start doing the thing you want to master every single day. For me, a thirty day project works well for this. I just commit to doing a certain thing every single day for thirty days (if that’s possible). At the end of it, I’ve usually vastly improved at whatever skill or attribute I was trying to develop.

Quite often, thirty days is enough to establish a positive new routine in your life, so keep it up. Keep doing that thing every day until it becomes truly normal and seemingly effortless.

Then, take a risk. Change what you’re doing a bit. Make it more difficult, or at least different. Explore something new. If you’re taking a walk every day, increase your walking pace a bit and use a stopwatch to slowly trim your time around the block. If you’re trying to break through at work, volunteer for a task that you might have avoided before, like giving a presentation. If you’re playing a game, try a completely different strategy and see how it works. If you’re investing, dig into some new investments that you haven’t looked at before and consider putting some money into them after you’ve studied them.

What you’ll find is that your already-built skill will help carry you through this new challenge and that the rewards of this new risk are great. You end up in better shape, with a better career, with a better gaming experience, and with better investments – or with improvement in anything you’d like to take on in life.

The average square footage of single-family homes under construction fell dramatically, from 2,629 in the second quarter to 2,343 in the fourth quarter. (from USA Today)

The average credit card debt per household — regardless of whether they have a credit card or not — was $8,329 at the end of 2008. (CreditCards.com statistics)

The average 401(k) fell 27% in 2008. (MSN MoneyCentral)

Those numbers seem fantastic. I grew up in a home that had about 800 square feet and currently live in a home that feels huge to me at times and is just shy of 2,000 square feet. The average home has over $8,000 in credit card debt? That’s well over $100 a month just in interest!

However, if you start teasing those numbers apart a little, a few interesting truths reveal themselves.

Let’s look at the first one. The average new home has 2,343 square feet in floor space. Well, let’s assume that one in five homes is a 7,000 square foot McMansion. That means that four out of five newly built homes are just 1,200 square feet. In other words, if you lined up all of the houses that were built in the last year side by side ranked by their size and chose the one in the middle, it would be far less than 2,400 square feet.

How about the average credit card debt? Again, the huge ones skew the average. If you have three homes with no credit card debt, one with $10,000 in credit card debt, and one with $30,000 in credit card debt, the average credit card debt of those homes is $8,000 even though three out of five of the homes have no debt at all. The facts back this up – the majority of American homes carry no credit card debt.

That third one is also interesting. The average 401(k) fell 27% in 2008, yet the stock market (as judged by the S&P 500) dropped 37%. What does that mean? Lots of investors out there didn’t have all of their eggs in the stock market basket.

Whenever you hear a news report or read an article where someone quotes an average, you should get your guard up because there’s a solid chance that a skewed story is being presented.

How is it skewed? Quite often, when we hear “average,” we compare our situation to that number. Yet, as we’ve seen above, the vast majority of people are often well under (or in some cases over) that average. That average is misleading, and if we compare our own situation to that average and use it as guidance for moving forward, we can often mislead ourselves.

How can you figure out the real story? One big first step is to look at the exceptional people on either end. Take the house square footage example. The biggest houses built would be over 10,000 feet, while the smallest ones would be around 1,000 square feet. Then, look at the average. The end that the average is closest to is where most of the people actually are. After all, if there are 9 people building 1,000 square foot homes and 1 person building an 11,000 square foot home, the average is a 2,000 square foot home – but none of them are actually building a 2,000 square foot home.

Good luck.

I’m interested in replacing a piece of home audio equipment that is experiencing occasional malfunctions, but works OK most of the time. The receiver I’m looking at costs $500 on Amazon. I’m a little conflicted. The more frugal side of me says to not even buy it. Make do with the broken receiver until it’s completely unusable. The less frugal side says to save up for it and buy a new one. That sounds perfectly logical and responsible. Save for a few months, instead of putting it on my credit card. The receiver I’m looking at is highly-rated and is considered a great buy for the price, according to CNet. I’ve done research and think this is a good value for what I’m getting, compared to other similar items. I feel like I’ve done everything right but still feel a little guilty in thinking of buying it.

This is one of the biggest challenges for a frugal person. When is it appropriate to just “make do” with what we have on hand, and when should we bite the bullet and buy a replacement? And when we do, is it appropriate to buy a high-end replacement, or should we just go for the best bang for the buck every time?

I think both questions come down to the same key factor: how truly important is this item to your quality of life?

Let’s look at Andre’s case. Let’s say Andre is a serious audiophile. Every evening when he comes home from work, he puts on a series of jazz albums that play all evening at his house while he reads, works on personal projects, and does housework. Perhaps Andre is even a musician himself. The music is one of his biggest passions in life – he can’t imagine an evening without that soundtrack to his life playing.

If that’s the case, Andre should maintain his home audio equipment. He should save up for that replacement component and he should buy a high-quality one that meets his needs.

On the other hand, let’s say Andre listens to his audio system once a week at most. He turns it on when there are guests over and perhaps he’ll turn it on on a lazy Saturday afternoon, but other than that, it sits there silent. He enjoys music, but it’s not his life’s passion.

If that’s the case for Andre, he should make do with what he has and, when it breaks, get a “bang for the buck” replacement for it.

I think this is largely true for everything in life. All of us have a few key central passions. Once you know what those passions are, it’s completely fine to spend a little more on it, provided you can afford it and can save for it.

The problem with overspending comes in when we begin to overspend on areas that are less important to us. For example, if Andre wasn’t passionate about music but he still convinced himself to drop hundreds/thousands of dollars on his home audio system, that’s probably a misuse of money. If he’s not deeply in love with the driving experience, dropping thousands extra on a luxury car probably isn’t a good use of money.

I’ll use myself as an example. I’m passionate about cooking at home. A big part of that for me is getting great, fresh ingredients. Thus, I’m willing to spend quite a bit more to get great ingredients. I don’t feel bad when I spend $30 on cheeses or I buy organic fresh produce or when I replace the old casserole I had in college with a top-notch French oven.

On the other hand, I don’t value having a perfect living room set. I’m more interested in something that’s simply comfortable. So I don’t go out and spend a ton of money replacing our living room set all of the time. It’s just not something I value beyond the minimum function of it.

In the end, I have about three or four key passions in my life that I don’t feel bad spending money on if I can afford it easily. Outside of those passions, I’m as tight as a drum.

Andre, the answer to this question really comes from you. How much do you value the audio listening experience? Is it something that’s central in your life, or is it just something on the periphery? That alone will provide the guidance you need.

Until last night.

I was digging through one of our closets and came up with a few tapes depicting the day our son was born, his first Christmas, and some other moments from early in his life. We watched them together and he really enjoyed them. He had tons and tons of questions about what was going on and we had to pause it several times to talk about things.

Home movies seem pretty useless when you take them, but they can sure create a magical evening a few years later.

The Science of Success Science is beginning to show beyond a doubt that genes have a huge effect on positive traits in people. Even more interesting, it benefits us to interact with people who are wired differently than us. (@ the atlantic)

11 Steps in Becoming Educated for Your Dream Job These steps can really be boiled down to one thing: push yourself in your education every chance you get. Choose the hard classes. Choose the hard school. A hard-earned C teaches you far more than an easy A. (@ productivity 501)

Slow and Steady Wins the Race The biggest challenge of personal finance is the battle with patience. Patience is hugely rewarded when it comes to personal money management, but many people simply don’t have it. (@ get rich slowly)

Some Counterintuitive Facts about Loneliness If you work in a job where you’re alone much of the time, these are some very important facts to keep in mind. (@ the happiness project)

The Cost of Money People often make some very unusual sacrifices in the name of a bit more money. (@ free money finance)

Whenever I head out for a few hours of visiting yard sales and thrift stores, I take my backpack along with me. I usually have several items in it that help immensely with a big day of yard sales and thrifting. Here’s what I pack.

A list of thrift stores and yard sales. I’ll usually check the local newspapers a day or two before I plan on heading out to see where the sales are going to be. I make a list of those sales. I also usually make a list of local thrift stores, but I pretty much know where they all are within a twenty five mile radius, so that’s reached the point of being unnecessary.

A map and/or a GPS unit. Just because I have an address of a yard sale two towns over doesn’t mean I know exactly where that is. A local map can help somewhat, but I’ve found that the GPS is even more useful. I simply punch in the address and go. Quite often, I’ll punch in all of the unknown addresses the night before so that I can just click a button or two and go when I’m out and about the next day.

A simple meal. A sandwich, a few vegetables, and a few bottles of water take care of any food or rehydration needs I’ll have when I’m out. This way, I’m not tempted to overpay for some unhealthy food on the go, which would pretty much undermine any benefit of hitting thrift stores or yard sales.

Cash. Yard sales usually operate on a cash-only basis (and thrift stores are quite happy to take cash). Thus, when I’m out, I do my shopping on a cash-only basis. Part of that means making sure that I have an adequate amount of cash on hand before I leave to cover anything I might possibly buy.

Sizes. What size clothes does my wife wear? My kids? Me, for that matter? I make sure to have them all written down so that I can easily identify clothes that would fit each of them.

A list, along with certain measurements. Are there any particular items I’m looking for? Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn’t. When there is, I make a list of those items so I don’t forget. For example, if we need boy’s shirts, I’ll write that down. Also, if I’m looking for items of a particular size – like a desk, for example – I’ll measure the desired dimensions of the desk and write those down.

A tape measure. If I’m going to be measuring an item – like a desk – I need to have something to measure it with. A tape measure is perfect for that task.

A notebook. I usually have this on hand anyway because I always carry a pocket notebook with me. However, if I spy something interesting at a yard sale but I don’t know if I need it or not, I’ll make a note of it, go home, and check. Sometimes I’ll even return to the yard sale to pick it up.

A rope or short bungie cord. Yes, every once in a while, something comes along that’s just too big to fit properly in a car trunk. In those cases, you might have to tie it down for the drive home. That’s why it’s handy to have a rope and/or a bungie cord on hand to secure the item.

All of this stuff fits easily in a backpack and can be packed the night before (excepting the food, of course). Going prepared makes it much more likely you’ll find the things you actually need when you go thrift store and/or garage and yard sale shopping.

Good luck!

In order to accomplish this goal, we decided to get him a Money Savvy Pig for his fourth birthday. Here’s the happy birthday boy with his pig (and an over-the-top goofy grin):

What is a “Money Savvy Pig”?
As you can see from the picture above, a Money Savvy Pig is a bank with four distinct compartments: Save, Spend, Donate, and Invest. The bank has four slots along the top – one for each compartment – and each of the pig’s feet provides access to one of the chambers to empty it individually.

The idea behind it is pretty simple – it makes it very easy and tangible for children to separate (and effectively budget) their money.

How We’re Using It
Each week, we’re giving him $2 in quarters for his allowance – $0.50 for each year he’s been alive. Thus, next year, he’ll get $2.50. We may at some point in the future change this rate, but it works for the time being.

He then splits the money into four roughly equal amounts. Two quarters go in the “Spend” slot, two quarters go in the “Save” slot, two quarters go in the “Donate” slot, and two quarters go in the “Invest” slot.

He is completely free to spend all money that goes in the “Spend” slot as he wishes. If he wants, he can take that money and put it in the other slots in his bank, or he can put it in his pocket and take it to the store with him to buy something small.

With the “Save” slot, we had him identify something that he wanted that was much more expensive than a dollar or two. We told him to think about it and later he told us he was saving for a Batman action figure that costs about $10. So, we told him that he could keep adding to the “Save” slot and in a few weeks, we’ll count it up and see how close he is to it.

With the other two slots, we told him that for now, they’re going to just build up.

For the “Donate” slot, we’re talking right now about the various things that people can donate money to – the local church, the local food pantry where people who don’t have much money can get food, Heifer International, PBS, and so on. We told him that when he gets $5 in that slot, he can pick something to donate to. He has expressed positive interest in donating to PBS, so I more or less expect that to be his first donation in two months or so.

For the “Invest” slot, we’ve told him that it’s just going to build up for a while. Our plan with that is to wait until there’s a “lot” of money in it (from his perspective). Then we’ll use that money to introduce various ways to invest, starting with a savings account at the local bank.

Does a Four Year Old Understand All of That?
No, nor do I expect him to.

We’ve started doing this when he’s young so that saving seems like a completely natural thing to him as he becomes more aware of money and how a person can use it.

I don’t expect him to fully understand, and he doesn’t. For now, he really only understands the “spend” part and the “save” part of the bank – the other two are mysterious.

We are quite sure he understands the “save” slot. We told him that he’s free to put any money he gets as a gift into any slots he wishes and he chose to put almost all of it into the “save” slot because he wants the Batman action figure that he had chosen as a goal. He put a smaller portion of it in the “spend” slot and a bit each in the “invest” and “donate” slots.

We’re also quite sure he understands the “spend” slot, since he wanted to take a dollar out of it a couple of days ago to buy a Hot Wheels car for the race track his grandparents gave him for his birthday. We, of course, approved this, since it’s money he can spend as he chooses.

The other slots are a mystery at this point – they’re clearly there for him to grow into it.

What About Sibling Rivalry?
Joe has a two year old sister who loves to do exactly what her big brother is doing. So how are we handling that? We decided to start her on an allowance, too, but a much simpler setup is in the offing for her.

For her, we’re just giving her four quarters on allowance day (again, fifty cents for each year) and allowing her to put it in her bank. We don’t have any rules on how she can use it, but for now they’re really not needed. She simply enjoys putting “monies” in her bank, just like her big brother.

When she’s four, if Joe is seeing success with his bank and we’ve seen it as a valuable tool, we’ll get her one, too.

One big reason for doing this is the idea of peer reinforcement. If they’re both saving together, it seems more normal. It isn’t just them doing it – one of their peers is saving, too.

As I shop for the minivan, I keep coming back to one central question: what exactly am I buying here? On the surface, it seems obvious – I’m buying a minivan. But that’s not what I’m really buying.

First of all, I’m buying something that will get me, my wife, and all three of my children from point “A” to point “B”. The entire point of buying such a vehicle is for transportation.

That being said, I am not buying a status symbol. As long as it’s clean and safe, I really don’t care what it looks like. It doesn’t have to be shiny, new, or top of the line. I don’t really care what the opinions of the people around me are about the minivan I bought. Does it meet my needs? That’s what matters.

Is a status symbol a need for you? Probably not. Is it a want? Probably. The question you have to ask yourself is how much extra money you’re willing to pay for a status symbol whose luster will fade in a year or two.

I have three primary concerns when buying this car.

First and foremost, it must be reliable. Next April, I will have three children under the age of five. I don’t want a vehicle that has repair issues bubbling just under the surface. For me, reliability is more important with this vehicle than it was with my wife’s commuting car that we bought earlier this year, in which our priority was fuel efficiency. I’m using Consumer Reports as my primary guide for this, which is pointing me towards the Toyota Sienna or the Honda Odyssey.

Second, it must be safe. I require a vehicle with good safety ratings and a history report that shows that it’s never been in accidents. Again, my concern in this area is raised by my specific requirements – this vehicle will be used to transport myself and my children.

Third, it must have storage space. We often go visit family for a week two or three times a year. In order to accomodate two younger children, a baby, and two adults for a week, there’s going to have to be some significant storage space in the vehicle. On top of that, It’s this need for additional space which is pushing us toward a minivan instead of a large car.

Beyond that, fuel efficiency is a secondary factor, as is ergonomic seating (chairs that provide lumbar support and don’t result in numbness and back pain after a long drive).

I do not care about having a drop-down Blu-Ray player. I do not care about leather seats. I do not care about having a perfectly silent ride, nor a perfectly smooth one. If those features came for free, I would take them, but I’m not about to pay much for them at all.

I am the one buying the car. Because I’m buying early, I can wait until the right vehicle comes along. I don’t merely have to choose whatever is available on the lot. This enables me to look at other options, such as what’s being sold on Craigslist and other sources directly by individuals. Given what I want, I have the cash on hand to buy pretty much anything within those requirements.

What are you buying when you buy a car? Do you know what you want? Do you know what you don’t want and aren’t going to pay for? Have you planned ahead enough that you have the time and ability to explore lots of options to find what you want?

After all, the last thing you want to do when buying a car is to find yourself on a car lot needing to make a purchase and having no idea what you really want or need. Such a situation is delicious prey for car salesmen.

I’m 34 years old; live and work in Washingon, DC for a non-profit organization I’ve been with for 10 years. My salary is quite good, and the benefits are great. Those benefits include a current 13.5% contribution to a 403b (they start at 7.5, then add a point for every two years of service, add a couple of points when you cross each decade threshold, etc) without needing an employee match. So, confession: I don’t contribute to it on my own at all. In the early years, I was wasteful, and now I’ve been focusing my money on getting out of debt first and foremost, and rebuilding my emergency fund (which has gotten tapped to pay for mother’s funeral, emergency veterinarian bills, etc in the last year).

Am I making a mistake not contributing some of my own cash as well? I feel like 13.5% of my salary puts me in good stead over the long-term, and that there will be time enough to contribute more in a couple of years when I am out of debt. My parents both died long before retirement age, too, and I am not planning on having kids who can inherit the retirement money if I have the same fate…).
- Karen

First of all, your benefits are stellar. There’s simply no other word for an organization that puts 13.5% into your 403(b) for you without you having to contribute to it. That’s a benefit most of us would kill for.

At this point, you need to step back and look at the big picture. Are you on pace for the type of retirement you want? I’d take a look at a good retirement calculator.

Two key questions worth thinking about: when do you intend to “retire” from your current career, and at that point, how much of your salary will you need? If you like to work, your intended retirement age will probably be higher than it would be if you can’t wait to retire. If you want to try a second career in your retirement years, your percentage will be lower than if you want to spend your retirement traveling.

Many will argue that you can’t know this. My belief is that the truth is somewhere in the middle – people usually know if they’re of the type who’s happier working and being productive and who’s happier with pure leisure time, but the specifics of your life can change.

Run some appropriate numbers through that calculator and aim a little on the high side. Of course, with 13.5% already being saved, you’re probably fine no matter what you do.

My question, which is prompted by your fall cleaning post, is whether people have been able to find a market for their stuff in this economy, or, to put it a little more optimistically and pragmatically, what strategies have people used to sell their stuff? My neighbor and I have a yard sale in late spring every year, but this year, for the first time ever, we hardly sold anything, making the whole event seem like a waste of time. Along the same lines, I am wondering whether people have found it harder to sell stuff on EBAY, or whether they have had to change their strategies for such sales.
- Barb

My experience in buying and selling on eBay and Amazon auctions, as well as a semi-frequent thrift store visitor, is that the secondhand and discount marketplaces are thriving right now and that it’s a perfectly good time to sell used goods. Most of the economic downturn is coming at the expense of more upscale retailers.

People tend to focus more on bargain-hunting when the economy is down, but rarely do they make true changes to their behavior. They might choose to shop for the thing they want on eBay or Craigslist or at a thrift store, but they’re still going to buy an item if they want it. A retail economic downturn usually means only a 10-15% drop in sales, which means 85-90% of the items they were selling before are still selling.

In short, if anything, now’s a better time than usual to dive into selling used stuff, because there are plenty of buyers out there.

My boyfriend and I are traveling to Prague in the Czech Republic over Thanksgiving weekend and are trying to figure out the best way to exchange money. Is it best to a) change cash in the US to travelers’ checks, b) change US cash in Prague to Czech crowns, or c) take out cash in the form of Czech crowns from local ATMs while there? I also have about 40 Euro left from my last trip to Europe that hasn’t been changed back to US dollars.
- Valerie

Your best bet is to look at your various conversion options before you leave and choose the one that gives you the most crowns for your dollar now. Your best option depends heavily on the policies of the bank you use compared to other options.

Depending on your credit and personal responsibility, it might make the most sense to simply make most of your purchases on a credit card. Visa and MasterCard are widely accepted in Czechoslovakia and you are simply billed for the amount. Be sure to tell your credit card company that you’re traveling before you leave. Assuming that you pay the bill in full when you return, this is a safer option than traveler’s cheques.

One guaranteed piece of advice: avoid currency exchanges at the airport. Their rates are atrocious. I would also probably advise doing the currency exchange there because your options are more limited than they are here in the States.

You’ve talked before about how you don’t like consumerism. How does that affect how you buy Christmas presents for your children?
- Ed

I’m more of the philosophy that you get children a small number of quality presents instead of piles of unnecessary stuff. I also am a big fan of gifting experiences to people.

So, for example, I would have no problem wrapping up a picture of Disney World or of Yellowstone and giving that as a gift along with a promise of a family vacation there. That would be one of, say, three gifts they would receive.

I have no problem with giving gifts or receiving them. However, I’m not a big fan of giving gifts or receiving gifts that are unwanted and just result in more “stuff” for people to manage that they don’t really value.

So, for all of my friends and family reading this, if I ever give you a gift that you don’t want, absolutely feel free to take it back or re-gift it. Please don’t keep unnecessary stuff in your home.

I’m a public school teacher, and as you can imagine, this was a bad year for our union to be re-negotiating the contract. Bottom line is, I’ll be bringing home less money per week next year than I am this year, and I’ll be getting fewer benefits. Though many teachers are well-paid for their efforts, young teachers like me typically start out very low on the pay scale. Next year will be tough.

Could you give me the lowdown on HSAs? I understand the basics. What would be the risks in going with an HSA plan? What would be the benefits? Who would you see as the optimal candidate for HSA, and who would be a person that should stay with a PPO?
- CT

In a nutshell, HSAs are just savings accounts that your employer deposits money in that you can withdraw solely for health-related expenses. This is usually done through a reimbursement system or via a debit card that accesses the account which can only be used at health-related businesses.

In general, HSAs are a solid option for younger workers who are in good health. The older you get – and the more known conditions you have or know you will develop – the better off you are sticking with the PPO.

Given that you’re young and healthy, it’s likely that the HSA is a reasonable option for you. However, it does carry a risk. You’re basically betting against a very expensive medical emergency in the next year or two. While that’s potentially a good bet for you, it becomes a much worse bet for people with pre-existing conditions and people who are older.

When you just close your eyes and let yourself dream, what do you dream about? If everything goes perfectly for you, where will you be in ten years?
- Adrian

I dream of being a best-selling fiction writer. I dream of having a house out in the country with a large office for writing, a small barn in the back, and some woodlands there. I dream of happy, healthy, and curious children.

More than anything, though, I dream of not being afraid of what the future holds. Even with all of the positive changes in my life over the past few years, I’m still afraid of what might come. I haven’t reached the level of financial security I’d like to reach.

My husband and I put aside money into a few mutual funds to save for a house shortly after we were married (about 6ish years ago). The money is in 3 Vanguard index funds: an S&P 500, a long-term bond fund, and a European fund. We are getting closer to buying a house (probably 3-4 years away now). How do I decide when to take the money out and put it in something more safe. Honestly, with the rocky stock market, I don’t think we’ve made any money at all on our investment. It’d be nice to get some more stock market gains seeing how low money market accounts are now, but I don’t want the money to be too volatile, as we would really like to put down a large downpayment on a house once my husband finally gets a real job (i.e. finishes his postdoctoral training and gets onto the academic market).
- Amanda

The real question to ask yourself when deciding whether to move money into something more conservative is to ask yourself whether you can tolerate the worst possible outcome.

For some situations, like retirement, the worst possible outcome – losing 20-30% of the investment over the next few years – is intolerable. For others – perhaps yours – it’s not nearly as vital.

If losing some of that money you have now would really hamper your plans for the future, move it into something more conservative. If that house you’re talking about isn’t an absolute requirement within four years and you’d be fine if it didn’t happen right then, leave it there.

My biggest problem during my workday seems to be uneven energy. I seem to run out of steam at about eleven and so I go eat lunch with some people. After that, I feel almost exhausted for a big part of the afternoon.

I know the solution to this is eating breakfast, but I can’t get into a routine of eating breakfast. I don’t like most breakfast food. What is your breakfast routine like?
- Payton

I usually eat breakfast with my kids each morning. We usually eat something different every day. One day, it might be oatmeal; another day, it might be scrambled eggs. We might have a bagel or toast for breakfast along with some fruit.

Don’t worry about tying yourself into a “traditional” breakfast food. Eat whatever sounds good to you that’s reasonably healthy and provides some energy. If it’s fruit, great. If it’s a salad, great. If it’s a beef and bean burrito, great. Just find a food that works for you in the morning.

I need to have surgery on my left jaw joint. I’ve had various appliances and procedures over the years, all of which have helped (or not) to some degree, but now things have degraded to the point of constant pain and not being able to eat more than pudding (and even that hurts, believe it or not). However, I just found out (literally on Friday, three days ago) that my employer’s health insurance has a specific all-encompassing exclusion for jaw-related treatments of any kind (I have paid for the smaller procedures and appliances out of pocket in the past, so I didn’t realize there was such a total exclusion that would zap me now), and this surgery will be $11,200 minimum. My oral surgeon already sent off an impassioned plea to the insurance company, which was met with a total denial because of the exclusion. I’ve been told there’s no point in appealing, again, because of that exclusion. The dental plan also will not touch it. I can get along awhile longer without the surgery, but the pain and inability to eat much will only get worse, so at some point I pretty much have to have the surgery. I refuse to go the narcotics route.

Short of quitting my job, divorcing my husband, giving away all my assets and applying for medicare/caid, is there any other option I’m not seeing? Or any other way to handle the finances that might make it less painful in the wallet?
- Cindy

You’re likely far more informed about your options in this situation than I am. However, three things pop into my mind.

First, have you sought out multiple opinions on the subject? If you have not sought a second opinion on your jaw, you might be missing out on a treatment option that drastically reduces your costs and gives you the results you want. Your oral surgeon could be one of the best in the world, but he still might be missing some detail.

Second, have you simply tried negotiating? Tell your oral surgeon that it would be difficult to pay for the procedure. Offer to barter what skills or time you have in exchange for some part of the payment. See what’s possible.

Finally, have you looked at any form of third-party dental insurance? There may be forms of insurance that will cover your procedure. It might not be a bad idea given your spouse has also had oral issues.

Whatever happens, good luck!

Peyton Manning or Tom Brady?
- Evan

Drew Brees.

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

If you’ve been reading my weekly roundups for long, you know I’m a big fan of the Unclutterer blog and its chief writer and editor, Erin Doland.

I link to Unclutterer frequently because I believe there is a strong connection between clutter and financial problems, since clutter represents having more physical possessions than you can manage and all of those possessions cost money. Plus, dealing with clutter requires a time investment and in our busy lives, time has a very high value.

Unclutter Your Life in One Week essentially offers a “detox” plan for getting clutter out of your home, office, and life, ostensibly in one week. I should say right off the bat that I found actually accomplishing all of the ideas in this book in one week to be impossible. That doesn’t mean the book has value, but you should not expect that all clutter in your life will be gone in one week if you follow this plan. Although, I will say that there is some function of how cluttered your life is when you start and how thoroughly you’re going through your life with the plan.

That being said, the advice in this book is stellar, in my opinion. Let’s dig in and look at some of the specifics.

The Foundations
Most of us have lives that are overbooked, overworked, and overstuffed. We have more things that we want than we possibly have time for. I’m certainly in this boat myself – I’d trade all the material items I have for another four hours in my day.

In our rush to jam even more into our lives, our lives become inherently complicated. We accumulate more things than we can deal with and some things begin to slip simply because there aren’t enough hours in the day. Those “things that slip” often take the form of clutter – items in our lives that we simply don’t have the time to process. These tend to build up throughout our lives, filling up our homes and our day planners with a backlog of things that need to be taken care of and things we don’t have the time to actually enjoy or use.

Dealing with clutter is an intense process, because it not only requires dealing with this backlog of stuff, but it also requires dealing with the elements in your life that are causing clutter.

Monday
Monday is the best day of the week to begin establishing new routines. It’s also a good day to tackle the “firsts” – the elements of clutter you face first throughout your day.

For example, many of us face a cluttered closet in the morning when we wake up, so a good first step is to get your clothes in order. If you have more clothes than you can adequately fit in your dresser and closet, you need to eliminate some.

At work, the first thing we often see is our desk or workspace. Figure out a place for all of the stuff that you see – and don’t be surprised if the space for many of those things is the trash can.

Tuesday
Tuesday is the most stressful day of the week, so it’s the best time to tackle the areas of your life that cause you the most stress and require the most work to keep up.

At home, Erin encourages decluttering the bathroom (with the goal of being able to easily find all of the things you need but tossing the things you don’t actually use that tend to fill up your bathroom closet) and also streamlining your household chores. I find in my own life that when I have a household chore routine, things are more likely to work well.

At work, one should take a look at filing all of their papers so that the documents one needs can easily be found and the less-important things are out of the way. At my previous job, I found that having a filing cabinet split into two pieces worked for me – a single drawer for stuff I actually used sometimes and the rest for stuff I needed to retain but would rarely look at. 99% of the time, I’d just look in that one drawer and find what I needed.

Wednesday
Wednesday is “hump day” and a perfect day to focus on communications and processes in our day.

At home, take a look at your kitchen and your bedroom. For us, at least, the kitchen alone can be a major project for de-cluttering. One big tactic that works is simply reducing your kitchen implements, replacing fifteen low-quality single use items with one high quality item that simply does the job. You don’t need a butcher’s block, you just need one really good chef’s knife, a bread knife, and a paring knife. You don’t need tons of casseroles and Pyrex, you just need a few high-quality French ovens. A more streamlined shopping plan helps, too.

At work, re-evaluate your commute and your communication processes. How do you get to work? Does your trip fill you with unnecessary distractions and angst? Look for the least stressful way to get to work. When you’re there, look at how you communicate with others. Does it happen in an orderly fashion with appropriate emotions? I find that “communication sessions” work well for me, where I spend a period of time each day just handling communiques, then I turn off those communication channels to allow myself to focus on other areas.

Thursday
On Thursday, the focus should be on organizing your living spaces at home and focusing on your workflow and processes at work.

At home, look at the places you spend your time during the day. For us, that means our family room, and the obvious place to look there is our entertainment center, which is often a mess thanks to kids pulling out DVDs and playing with various items. Another spot to look is our book collection in the laundry room, which could sorely use some time.

At work, examine how you work on projects. Do you have difficulty completing them? Do you have too many projects? Start using the “five whys” and dig into the reasons for this. Quite often, there are some simple things blocking you from a much better workflow.

Friday
Friday’s focus is solely on uncluttering your schedule. Most of us have schedules that are so full to the brim with activities that we scarcely have time for important things in our lives. How many of you read the previous activities and thought, “That sounds awesome, but I don’t have time for it!”

The best way to do this is to simply prioritize the things you’re doing. Figure out what elements are truly of low priority and either treat them as such or find ways to completely eliminate them. Then, look at the higher priority things and look for ways to compress them – perhaps, instead of watching a show live on Tuesdays, you can record it and watch it commercial-free on Wednesdays. Perhaps instead of unwinding after work, you can spend a brief bit of time truly relaxing and then get on with the things you need to do.

The Weekend
The biggest benefit of unclutterinig is that it truly frees your weekend. If you have established routines for handling everything throughout the week – and you’ve uncluttered your time enough to allow for it – your weekends go from being “catch up” time to being big blocks of free time with which you can do whatever you want.

That’s really the reward, isn’t it?

Is Unclutter Your Life in One Week Worth Reading?
Absolutely. This is the single best book I’ve ever read on organizing your life. Much like my favorite book on time management, Getting Things Done (and, incidentally, Unclutter Your Life in One Week has a foreword by the author of GTD, David Allen), Unclutter Your Life in One Week shines because of the small implementable details, like the few pages devoted to how to organize your clothes and fold your shirts (seriously – I started using that method and it works really well).

If you were to do everything in this book, it would take much longer than a week, without a doubt. However, the modularity of it allows you to pull out pieces to tackle the most egregious parts of your life and then gradually move to other details as the “de-cluttering” advantages become clear.

This book has found a semi-permanent home on my bookshelf as I move towards decluttering some of my own life (like that nightmarish junk drawer and the train wreck that is my closet and, frankly, my time schedule).

I agree with J.D.’s general conclusion that there is some sort of gap between spenders and savers, but I think the age thing is merely incidental. In my eyes, the real difference between spenders and savers is that the savers realize that they have something to lose.

In my own life, I was a big spender during my early professional years. I lived in an apartment with my wife and, in essence, had very little to be responsible for outside of my job and my marriage. I worked hard at both of those, but in terms of worrying about taking care of the future, there really wasn’t much to take care of. I didn’t have a house. I didn’t have dependents. I wasn’t established in the community yet – most of my friends were holdovers from college who were similarly unanchored. I had lots of free time.

Roll the clock forward several years. At that point, we’re living in a house. We have two children. I’m involved in several community projects and serve on multiple boards. We have lots of friends and acquaintances in our town, too.

Before, I didn’t really have too much that I could lose. If I spent all my money, there really wasn’t any risk involved with it. As long as I kept up with my career, I could live through my money mistakes. I felt very free to spend with reckless abandon because there was little real-world consequence to spending in that way.

Today, if I spent like that, there would be serious consequences. Would we be able to keep our home? Would we have to leave the community we’ve worked hard to establish ourselves in? What about our children? Am I doing what I can to take care of them? As I write this, I’m sitting in a home that’s a huge six-figure investment of our money – I need to make sure it’s not falling apart, either. The income from my writing career is notoriously unstable, too.

I save because I now have things in my life that I need to protect. That wasn’t true earlier in my life.

I think the idea that “saving is for old people” comes from the journey that people take in life. Early on, we have fewer elements in our life that we need to protect. We don’t have a home. We often don’t have a marriage. We often don’t have children. We often don’t have an established role in the community. We often don’t have an established career.

Later on, many people do establish these things. They begin to realize that they can indeed lose their life’s work. They want to protect all the work that they’ve done. So they begin to save. Often, this is coupled with other shifts in life perspective as well.

In that context, there is something of a correlation between age and saving tendencies, because older people have more to protect and are more aware that it needs to be protected. Older people have the fruits of many years of labor, something that younger people simply have not had the time to bring to harvest yet.

Of course, looking back on my journey, I regret not saving during my early years. Most of the things I spent money on then have left me with nothing at all now except for a worse position in life. Spending so freely for so long directly means more worries today – a result that I could have easily prevented by looking with even the slightest critical eye at my purchasing choices.

Did I need to learn that lesson? I don’t know. I think that some people need to learn it. I think that others have it ingrained in them from an early age.

One Year Ago (November 8-14, 2008)
The Readers Speak Out: Their 25 Best Actions for Saving Money I asked the readers for their single best action for saving money. They responded – big time. Here are the twenty-five top ones, all of which received multiple responses.

Accountability For a lot of people, accountability is a four-letter word.

Taking Dramatic Change One Day at a Time Whenever I want to make a major change in my own life, I find it works far better if I take that change one day at a time instead of committing to big, long-term things that may be impossible for me to reach.

Paying Others to Provide a Service: When Is It Frugal? I think it is if you’re directly replacing the time you’d spend engaged in that service with something truly more valuable to you. This requires a keen sense of how valuable one’s time is, something a lot of people don’t have.

Some Thoughts on the Small House Movement: Is It Something Worth Considering? I think the size of our house is about right (perhaps with slightly bigger bedrooms and perhaps one more bedroom to accomodate our next child), but I know couples without children that have substantially larger homes than we do.

Two Years Ago (November 8-14, 2007)
Should I Report Ethical Misconduct At Work? I don’t think it’s always as cut-and-dried as people want to make it out to be. If I see my boss taking some extra coffee, I’m not going to try to get him fired. But where’s the line?

Should You Report Sexual Harassment in the Workplace? Similarly, I don’t think it’s as black-and-white as many would like to think it is. Sexual harassment is wrong, but I’ve seen threats and blackmail involving sexual harassment for calling someone “dear.”

Toy Catalogs and Children: Are They a Good Match? As of yet, we have never plopped our kids in front of a toy catalog near the holidays. Here’s why.

Fun I must be a real bore if I talk about money all the time.

Melancholy and Spending I believe there’s a huge connection between low self-esteem, sadness, and a lack of control over your spending. A positive attitude makes it harder for advertising to work its magic.

Three Years Ago (November 8-14, 2006)
Review: The Millionaire Next Door The first book I ever reviewed on The Simple Dollar is still one of my favorites.

The Road to Financial Armageddon #8: Meltdown Here’s the story of how I hit financial bottom. It’s painful.

Building a Financial (and Personal) Idea Diary I use one of these every day. I keep a little spiral notebook in my front pocket.

Setting and Meeting Daily Personal Finance Goals Microgoals are a big part of personal finance success. In fact, The Simple Dollar would fail without daily goals.

Applying the Peak-End Rule to Personal Finance The peak-end rule pops up over and over again in life. If you can figure out how to use it to your advantage, it can really help you save money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In order to get customers into the stores on Black Friday, many retailers offer enormous sales on a handful of specific items. These items are often sold at a loss in order to simply get people into the store, because the logic goes that if a customer is in the store, they’re likely to buy other things. Plus, it provides some positive word-of-mouth promotion for that retailers, as people will talk about where they got enormous bargains on that day.

As a result, many retailers heavily advertise their “Black Friday” sales in the week or two leading up to that day. Websites proliferate online, tracking the bargains to be had.

And, through it all, the big goal is to whip consumers into a buying frenzy.

Such a frenzy is bad news. Getting caught up in participating in Black Friday just to get “deals” on stuff you don’t really want or need or items that may or may not be good gifts for others is a sure way to watch your money float away.

That’s not to say that Black Friday can’t be useful to someone with savvy – it certainly can. It just requires a bit of finesse and forethought.

Here’s exactly how I handle “Black Friday.”

I make a very careful list before looking at the fliers. In other words, I already have my Christmas list in hand. I know who I’m buying for, how much I’m spending on each person, and I also ahve a few ideas for each person to help me shop.

Beyond that, there’s often a specific item or two I’m looking for for myself. This year, for example, I’m looking for a replacement laptop. The ol’ frugal laptop has served me well for quite a while, but it’s suffering from a number of hardware issues. So, my eyes are open for a replacement, probably a middle-tier Windows 7 machine capable of photo editing and a bit of gaming.

Thus, before I even take a peek at a “Black Friday” flier or website, I know exactly what I’m going to be looking for.

Next, I use the internet to view lots of flyers at once and compare them. My preferred website for doing this is blackfriday.info, but there are lots of them that provide a similar service.

Why do I do this? First, browsing through lots of ads online – because they’re usually just lists of items – cuts down on the impulse buy possibilities. I’m not sucked in by intriguing pictures of items I’m not interested in buying.

Second, websites provide tons of sales lists to me at once. Instead of having to dig through lots of newspapers on Thanksgiving Day, I can just visit a website and get all of the details I want in one spot.

Once I’ve done that, I come up with a plan of attack. I’ll usually identify an item or two that’s got a strong price and matches something I’m looking to give out as a gift. On Black Friday, I’ll get up early and visit only those stores, and when I go, I’ll take a list for each store and get only those items. Everything else is just a leech on my wallet.

Finally, I’ll check online retailers a few times on Black Friday. Online retailers, particularly Amazon.com, offer all kinds of sales throughout the day on Black Friday (and sometimes even on Thanksgiving Day). I’ll check these a few times, looking for items that are actually on my list.

The big rule for all of this is simple: unplanned buys on Black Friday (or any day) are usually really bad ideas. Step back and think about what you’re buying and you’ll find value on Black Friday. Dive in head first waving your credit card like a mad man and you’ll come out of the day with a bunch of stuff you don’t need – including some fat bills.

As I dug around in the cupboards and refrigerator to make sure we had everything on hand, I came across a few scary outdated items in the back of the refrigerator. They looked scary. They smelled scary. And, sadly, they headed right to the trash can.

One of the most disappointing things at our house is food that’s gone bad. It finds its way to the back of the refrigerator or cupboard and, eventually, gets too old to use. I look at such things with disappointment, as it’s good food simply going to waste.

Throwing away food – just like throwing away anything else – is a waste of resources. Our money and/our our time was invested in acquiring and preparing that food and simply throwing it away means that your time, money, and energy went to nothing. That’s a conclusion that doesn’t make anyone happy.

Of course, much like anything else, food can sometimes be recycled to a spectacular second use. Before you decide to toss out the food, give it a serious second look and ask yourself if the trash can is the best ultimate destination for it.

Quite often, the food really is bad and needs to be discarded. If something is moldy, I don’t mess with it (well, excepting certain kinds of cheeses, of course – blue cheese is all about the mold). If something has a smell that indicates that it’s gone wrong, I’ll just toss it. If it’s opened and past the date, I’ll almost always toss it immediately.

Sometimes, though, food that I’ll pass on in its current form has value if it’s used in another context. Here are some examples.

Stale bread If you have stale bread that’s gone dry and hard, get out the grater and grate it into bread crumbs, then save those crumbs in a jar. After all, this is exactly what bread crumbs are. Bread crumbs make a fantastic breading for fish, chicken, and vegetables, helping to seal in the moisture and flavor while making a crunchy outer shell.

Old fruits As long as they’re not genuinely rotting, most over-ripe fruits can easily be turned into an excellent bread. One great example of this is banana bread, which just requires a loaf pan, a spoon, some over-ripe bananas, a bit of butter, sugar, an egg, vanilla, baking soda, and flour. Just mix them in a bowl with a spoon until it’s consistent and put it in a loaf pan. You can make something very similar with many overripe fruits – I’ve made strawberry bread, pineapple bread, and zucchini bread and all were good (we just tend to eat a lot of bananas, so banana bread is a regular thing).

Old vegetables I save these in a small box in the freezer. When I have a full box, I’ll use the vegetables to make a vegetable soup. I’ll just put all the vegetables into the crock pot, add water until it’s got about half an inch of liquid over the top of the vegetables, and then season the whole thing like crazy. It makes for a pretty good – and pretty healthy – meal.

Another old vegetable and fruit tactic Add them to a compost bin. If you don’t have one, ask around, particularly among your gardening-oriented friends. It’s far better to return the leftover materials to the earth than to put them in the trash and watch them head to a landfill. You can use coffee grounds and eggshells in a similar fashion.

Here’s the real message: don’t look at old food as something to immediately be thrown out. Sometimes, it’s a resource that can be used in future meals. It’s far less wasteful to approach things in this fashion, which means that you’re not only conserving your own resources, time, and money, but you’re also sparing the earth.

All of these problems can be solved by one simple change in your perspective about gift-giving this year: give experiences instead of things.

What do I mean by this? Instead of giving a material gift that would require you to spend money on something you’re unsure they’ll like and them receiving something that they’ll have to now take responsiblity for, give them something that isn’t material.

Six Ideas for “Experience” Gifts
Here are six quick ideas to get you started, but there are hundreds more just like it if you let your creativity go.

For a child, give a field trip. This could be a trip to a zoo, to a kid-friendly science center (like the wonderful one in Des Moines, Iowa), a wilderness hike, or to a baseball game. You’ll handle all the logistics of the trip for them.

For a food lover, offer a home-cooked version of a meal they’ve longed for. Try making them something challenging like coq au vin or beef bourguignon. Get out your fine china and linens for this dinner, too – make it something special. It could be a romantic gift for a food-loving couple.

For an art lover, plan a trip with them to the art museum of their choice later in the year. Buy the ticket and handle the transportation yourself.

For a spouse, pledge to do the dishes for a year – or give them a few weekends where they can do whatever they want (with or without you).

For a gamer, give them some invitations that allow them to choose a game to play with you. This is a great way to understand someone’s hobby better (and perhaps find it interesting and exciting yourself).

For a parent, give a free night of babysitting. To them, this means an evening doing whatever they’d most enjoy doing without having to worry at all about their children.

Barter for Services
If you have some good ideas for experiences but don’t have the cash, look into a barter with the person that could provide that service. For example, you might be willing to work 40 hours at a museum or a zoo for a certain number of tickets. Perhaps you could provide IT services at a spa in exchange for some gift certificates there. Many businesses are quite willing to offer credit in exchange for your skills and/or your time. Take advantage of that.

The Presentation
Many people balk at such gifts because they’re unsure how to present it. With a home printer and some time, you can create an elegant presentation of any gift.

First, spend a little on a decent stationery set that you can use for many such gifts over the long haul. Look for something tasteful and simple that doesn’t necessarily have to be holiday-oriented.

Second, use a straightforward layout in your word processing program of choice. There are thousands of templates for Word, most of which are compatible with most word processing programs out there.

Fill out the document with the details of the gift, print it on the best printer you have access to, and also print the envelope with the recipient’s name on it in an elegant font.

Here’s the kicker: include some visuals within the envelope. A brochure that shows what the event is all about is perfect, as is a photograph that provides a visual reminder of what you’re going to do. It can even be something as interesting as snapshots from a past event you’ve enjoyed together.

Why This Works
Aside from the fact that it’s less expensive than giving traditional material gifts, giving experiences works for three reasons.

First, it doesn’t give a material item that the other person will have to deal with. It’s not going to wind up needing maintenance or taking up storage space in their home or requiring a trip to customer service.

Second, it will stand out in a positive way in comparison to the items they receive. When you receive several items for Christmas, something distinct like this will definitely stand out from the crowd. Most of the “experience” gifts I’ve ever received still stand out for me.

Third, it often allows you to experience the gift together. If the gift is an event you can both participate in, it becomes a shared memory, something far beyond what a material gift can offer.

For us, unfortunately, “experience” gifts are a bit of a challenge since we don’t live near many of the people we exchange gifts with. Of course, we have another solution for many of those folks for frugal, unique Christmas gifts… but that will have to wait until next week.

Three Examples
In order to illustrate this, I thought I’d use three real examples from my own life recently, as I’ve been using “the five whys” more and more lately to uncover the roots of some of the problems in my life.

Example 1: Crunching the Numbers
I usually calculate my net worth in a spreadsheet because I like the layout and the reports, but I don’t update it as often as I might like.

Why? It takes quite a lot of time to dig out all of those numbers.

Why? They’re stored in a lot of different databases and on a lot of different websites, which I have to visit individually to extract the numbers.

As a result, I’ve decided to give Quicken a shot again. In the past, I used Microsoft Money for about a year until I found that I didn’t like the reports it generated – I preferred what I had in my own spreadsheet. Quicken may be able to provide better reports (it looks like it will from the reviews I’ve read) and, even if it doesn’t, it’ll make it easier to retrieve the numbers I want to see. (And, yes, I’ll be posting a review of it in the near future.)

Example 2: Broken Exercise Routine
During the final push to complete my book, I abandoned my regular daily exercise routine because I needed absolutely every spare minute. Since I finished it, I’ve been having difficulty getting back into that exercise routine.

Why? Every morning, I feel fairly pressured to write content for The Simple Dollar instead of exercising.

Why? I have (post-book) writer’s block and my usual protection against it (unpublished posts that I have in reserve) isn’t there any more, because I used many of those in the final push to finish the book and the few days afterward when I simply needed to do something besides write.

Why? I’m lacking the “idea juice” I usually have and without it, my entire daily routine is disrupted.

So, my solution is to find ways to reinvigorate my creativity. Over the last few days, I’ve been spending time on brainstorming exercises, simple writing exercises, and so on, as well as just reading a lot – all of that while avoiding the keyboard. It’s really starting to help. Then, as I get back in the flow, I’ll be able to build up a backlog of articles again, enabling me to feel free to exercise in the mornings.

Example 3: Laundry Backup
We often wind up with a large backup of laundry, then find ourselves doing several loads on a single weekend day.

Why? Our laundry routine doesn’t work.

Why? One big problem is that our laundry room is literally as far as possible in our home from our bedrooms, plus the laundry room is back in the corner near the guest bedroom. Out of sight, out of mind. As a result, we often don’t even think about the laundry until the evening, when we’re just about ready for bed. Then, in the morning rush, we walk right by it.

Why? It’s more convenient to just ignore it in the morning and we’re too tired to deal with it in the evening.

A solution presents itself. Fill up a laundry basket in our bedroom in the evening and place it right in front of the door so that we’ll trip over it in the morning if we don’t deal with it. Then, when we go downstairs in the morning, we carry the basket down and we’re pretty much ready to drop in a load of laundry on our way out the door. I’ve started doing this and it actually really works.

Why It Works: The Path of Least Resistance
In the normal routine of our lives, we almost constantly take the path of least resistance when it comes to choosing what to do. What’s the path of least resistance to get from where we are now to where we want to be? We do this over and over and over again.

The only problem is that when we choose this “path of least resistance,” we often aren’t choosing the best path. If only we would choose to take some extra effort right now to remove some of that resistance, we might find a much more effective path to get where we want to go.

For example, the “path of least resistance” for me to figure out my finances was to use a spreadsheet because Microsoft Money didn’t do what I wanted. Of course, as I found out, the spreadsheet itself had significant resistance, so now I’m trying to use Quicken along with my spreadsheet (and maybe not even with my spreadsheet) to reduce that resistance, making the whole thing much more usable.

Another example: the “path of least resistance” for doing laundry was to just let it build up then do a bunch at once. The only problem was that we essentially would devote an entire day to laundry (usually Saturday was laundry day). I can reduce that big resistance by just filling up a basket before bed (a tiny resistance) and then carrying it down in the morning (another tiny resistance).

When you do the “five whys,” you’ll eventually find your way to the resistances in your life that are keeping you from what you want to be doing. When you dig into those resistances and find ways to break them, you make it much easier to go down the path you want to go down.

Why do you spend so much money each month? You might dig down and find that certain places tempt you, so just by avoiding them, you don’t spend as much. You might find that certain friends convince you to spend more, so focus on spending more time with your other friends.

Why aren’t you succeeding at work? You might dig down and find that it’s because you’re afraid to volunteer for projects, so you might overcome that by simply resolving to take the plunge on the next project that comes through. You might find that the politics of your workplace encourage you to avoid stepping up or that the entire company is poisoned, which might indicate it’s time to move on in your career.

You can use “the five whys” in every aspect of your life. If you spend some time thinking through the problems in your life in this way, you’ll almost always dig down from something that seems insurmountable to something that you can fix. That fix might lead to the big change you want or it might not, but no matter what, it’ll almost always change the dynamics of your life for the better.

Unfortunately, he also had a “pack rat” compulsion – he was always buying more and more and more things to fill (and then eventually over-fill) his home. In the end, the dollar store wasn’t really a bargain for Ken – he eventually had so many tchotchkes and stored bulk goods that not only was he often broke, his home was overloaded with stuff.

Quite often, the stuff was of (at best) moderate quality as well. While he’d often find some incredible bargains, he also would buy a lot of things that I would identify as junk (but I suppose that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure).

After Ken’s passing, he left behind enormous piles of various dollar store purchases, most of which were simply tossed out. It was almost painful to watch all of those things that he had invested his time and energy in simply get handed out and thrown away.

Earlier this year as part of a discussion on haggling, I outlined a similar tale in which a woman who bought “plastic doodads” (her words) in bulk at the dollar store under the belief that she was getting a bargain.

To me, Ken’s story defines what a dollar store is. It’s a place where you can occasionally find tremendous bargains on the things you need, but the cost threshold is so low that quite often you end up buying far too many impulsive things. It’s easy to convince yourself to throw a thing or two into your basket that you don’t really need because, after all, it’s only a dollar, right?

Does this mean I don’t ever go to the dollar store? Of course not. The dollar store can be a good place to find great values on certain things. However, you need to approach it with a plan.

First, look for the staples you already use. Dishwashing detergent. Diapers. Bath soap. Hand towels. Focus on finding the dollar store version of the things you already use.

Second, try the store brands, but don’t expect greatness. I’m always willingg to try a store brand if it means I’ll save significant money, but quite often I’ll find that the quality of the item isn’t up to snuff. Trash bags that rip, aluminum foil that’s too thin, and plastic wrap that doesn’t stick to anyting but itself isn’t worth anything, even if you’re “saving” money by buying it.

Third, avoid the other stuff. Most of the items in a dollar store are there to convince you to make an impulse buy. Ignore all of it. Focus exclusively on the list of things you want to check out – your staples. If it’s not on that list, don’t buy it. Don’t even look at it. If you end up buying something you didn’t intend to buy when you arrived, it’s not a bargain. It’s a loss of your hard-earned money to an impulse to acquire stuff.

Dollar stores can be really useful for finding bargains on certain items. However, they’re prone to impulsive buys and low-quality items that can end up quickly undoing any benefit one might get from shopping there. If you go there, go there with a plan and you can come out a winner.

This effect, in which we act “better” when we believe we’re being observed by others, is called the Hawthorne effect, and it’s surprisingly powerful.

It’s easy to see examples of this almost every day in our lives. If we’re out with people we don’t know well and are trying to impress, we’re going to focus intensely on putting our best foot forward. We’ll dress well, attempt to be good conversationalists, and try hard to put positive character traits on display. On the other hand, when we’re home alone watching television, we’ll often put on old raggy comfortable clothes and curl up on the couch without combing our hair or anything like that.

Let’s carry that forward a bit. Let’s say we’re at a store with a friend and that friend is watching us as we make up our mind about whether or not to make a purchase. Simply by observing, that friend has an effect on whether we buy.

I see it even in my own life. If my financially conservative friend John is watching, I’ll tend to not buy the item and walk away. On the other hand, if one of my other heavy-spending friends is watching, I’ll lean more towards buying the item. The observer doesn’t have to actively participate at all in my purchase – simply by being there, they impact my choice.

In short, I tend to lean towards a “best behavior” in the eyes of whoever is observing me. That “best behavior,” though, changes based on who is doing the observing.

Some of you may scoff at this at first glance, but imagine yourself in situations in your life and how your actions and choices in those situations change depending on who is there and who isn’t.

For me, the intriguing part of the Hawthorne effect is how it can reinforce positive behaviors in your life. Just choose to surround yourself with people who reinforce the behaviors you want to exhibit.

So, for example, if I’m going to go do some comparison shopping for Christmas gifts with a friend, I’m far better off choosing to go with John than with other people. Why? John’s mere presence encourages me to dig for values in the gifts that I buy and not just go for the splashy gift, while others, by their mere presence, will encourage me to just go for the “awesome” gift without strong planning or thought.

If I’m trying to break a habit of drinking socially, I’m better off spending social time with friends that don’t drink. Again, just by their powers of observation, I’m more likely to make the appropriate choice. Of course, the reverse is true – if I enjoy drinking socially, I should choosse friends who also enjoy it.

If I want to go the extra mile at work and look like a winner, I should try to get into group projects with people who are really productive – the “stars” of the company – instead of people who just sit around and complain. On the other hand, if I’m just interested in passing the time at work, I should seek out those who are doing the bare minimum.

What kind of person do you want to be? It’s much easier to find the path to where you want to go if the people around you are on that same path. Just by their presence, you’ll innately want to please them with your actions, so you’ll make choices with them that lead you towards your own personal goals.

The Hawthorne effect really works. More and more, I gravitate towards friends and work associates that are the kind of people that I want to be.

At first, I didn’t think this was true, as early last week, I got a lot of writing done. Now, though, I know what they mean. In some ways, it feels like the well is dry.

I’m not saying I have no ideas – I have plenty of those. It’s just that when I sit down with an idea right now, the words don’t flow as quickly as they once did. It’s almost as if I pumped too much water out of the well for a while and now I have to pump really hard to get even a slow flow of water.

So, I’ve been using the time to read, write down ideas, and follow up on other pursuits until the flow gets back to normal – which, according to some of my friends, it will in a few weeks.

For now, here are some interesting articles from other sites.

Do What Works For You I agree with this idea to an extent, but I can also see how it can be detrimental. If you always do it your way and ignore what others have done successfully with the same task, you might find that you’re doing it pretty poorly. Do what works for you – but never stop learning new things. (@ get rich slowly)

Saying farewell to a hobby, part two I’ve had to let go of hobbies several times in my own past and it’s always been difficult. Part of me has wanted to hold onto the items from that neglected hobby as some sort of nostalgia – but that’s a really bad idea unless you have acres of storage space. (@ unclutterer)

Act the Way You Want to Feel For a large part of my life, I thought this kind of thing was complete foolishness. Until I tried it. It works almost all of the time. If you consciously act happy over and over again, you begin to feel happier about your life. (@ happiness project)

How Do I Make My Resume Stick? This article describes the “keyword test” – figure out what words the person hiring is looking for and make sure those words get noticed on your resume. (@ fast company via behance)

Secrets of Telemarketing From an Industry Insider My sister-in-law was a telemarketer for a while. She was quite good at it, but she loathed the work. Perhaps I should convince her to write a bit of a “tell-all” about it. (@ wise bread)

How to Make Money as a Soccer Referee This is an excellent, detailed guide on how to turn a passion into a nice side income. I know some people who do such refereeing in different sports for a living and they love it. (@ free money finance)