Open Source Blogging

Roughly a year ago, I wrote an article entitled Goals and Plans for 2008 that specified the things I intended to do during this year: eliminate all of my family’s non-mortgage debt (didn’t quite make it), start an investing plan (yep), double the readership of The Simple Dollar (yep), pull the trigger on three writing projects (two out of three ain’t bad), and spend more time with my children (yep). All in all, a pretty good year.

Just like last year, I find myself looking forward to 2009, identifying the things I want to accomplish during that year. … Continue Reading

The Christmas season is trying to be festive and thoughts of the upcoming holidays are filling our heads, or at least our eyes and ears. But it is especially difficult with escalating financial responsibilities, disappearing work hours and eliminated jobs. How can we make it all balance?

Each year the Christmas time of year is intensely emotionally charged with the desire to be like all other families and parents and provide a happy Christmas for our children. Christmas parental guilt is a common emotion. It is created by feeling that we have not been there as much for our children as … Continue Reading

I’m always sad when someone says to me that they feel like a failure when they break their budget. Just by it’s very nature, a budget is a self-defeating document that will most likely lead to failure.

You see most budgets are not based in truth, they are based in wishes. Here is how I would like to spend my money or here is how I think I remember spending my money is the approach most people take.

If you created a budget for yourself that you were not able to live by, I would not call you a … Continue Reading

Our economic life cycle is dependent on all all parties doing their fair share of the heavy lifting. Finance companies and banks lend - consumers buy stuff using credit - stuff must be built - jobs are created and so forth.

We keep hearing about a crushing windpipe grip on banks and the government pleading to them to lend again. And even though banks have taken billions of dollars from the government to start lending again, they are holding on to that money and hoarding it for a rainy day.

This recent tidbit in the Wall Street Journal made me realize just … Continue Reading

Gift cards have been a great tool to give people for rewards and presents. And not that we are creeping towards that holy and special gift giving time of year and gift cards will line the racks and fall first into our consideration of things to give, WATCH OUT!

With the danger of so many retailers not making it through the holidays or early next year, the valuable gift card you give today will be next to worthless if the retailer goes bankrupt before the gift card is used. And with the bleak outlook for retailers this holiday season, it is … Continue Reading

I just did an interview with the Christian Science Monitor and we were talking about holiday shopping. The question was if I thought people were going to significantly cut back on holiday shopping to live within their budgets. Sadly, I don’t think they will.

Gift giving and shopping at this time of year are ingrained in our consumer DNA. While we have the best of intentions of spending within our budgets, the runaway shopping fever sweeps many up and leaves them with a regrettable January credit card hangover.

The reason I don’t think there will be a significant change this holiday … Continue Reading

I entered a fantasy baseball league this spring with the owners of several other personal finance blogs. While I did well (my pitching staff had almost 100 combined wins. led by Ryan Dempster, Johan Santana, Carlos Zambrano, Ben Sheets, Adam Wainwright, Jake Peavy, and John Maine - yep, I had ‘em all, and all won at least 10 games), my hitting was atrocious and I came in in the middle of the pack.

Anyway, as a “friendly wager,” we all agreed to highlight some of the best posts of the blog of whoever the winner was. Since we … Continue Reading

Most weekends, I tackle one significant project around the house, usually with the goal of saving money or learning how to make or do something myself. Usually, I think to myself “This would make a good post for The Simple Dollar” (and sometimes I go ahead and do it) but most of the time I find something more money-oriented to talk about.

Today, I had an epiphany: why not just compile a bunch of those projects into a single post, along with links to some resources to get people started? I made up a list of the projects … Continue Reading

Each Monday, The Simple Dollar opens up the reader mailbags and answers ten to twenty simple questions offered up by the readers on personal finance topics and many other things. Got a question? Ask it in the comments. You might also enjoy the archive of earlier reader mailbags.

As usual, we’ll start things off with a few links to older articles that directly answer questions I’ve heard recently.
How to make your partner happy (for free)
Psychological tricks of department stores
How I deal with a cold on the cheap

And now for some great reader questions!

How can … Continue Reading