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13 Books Well Worth Reading: The Cream of the Book Review Crop

Robert Wilkinson — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 02:20:02 +0000

Every week, I review a different book on The Simple Dollar (those reviews appear on Sunday afternoons, for those who are new to the site). Over the years, that’s amounted to a lot of book reviews – 259 as of today. Here’s a full list of all of the books I’ve reviewed on The Simple Dollar.

Obviously, I don’t currently own all of these books – 259 such books would overstuff a bookshelf. What I find myself doing instead is keeping them around for a bit to see if I return to them as any sort of reference, and if I don’t, I then trade them or give them away. If the book was originally from the library, I see if I find myself wanting to check it out again, then I seek out my own copy of the book.

In any case, what eventually happens is that my personal library of books is small and it consists of a handful of books I return to over and over again for ideas on personal finance and personal growth. Right now, that library consists of thirteen books, with another one on the verge of joining for the long term.

In short, I found each of these books well worth reading on the first read and they’ve also stuck around on my bookshelf, providing continuous insight and ideas. Each of these books is well worth your time to read.

Getting Things Done
David Allen
Getting Things Done does something no other book I’ve ever read has done: it meshes time and information management together in a natural and intuitive way. Rather than treating your time and your information as two separate things, Allen essentially treats them as the same thing – you process appointments in the same way that you process reports and other things you need to read. They all go through the same process and they all wind up on your “next actions” list. The system described in the book is so elegant and filled with so many modular pieces that it has transformed my life and my ability to, well, get things done.

What really sets this book apart from the others is that the system itself doesn’t focus on micromanaging every sliver of time that you have. Instead, it’s all about simply having a trusted system that keeps track of everything going on in your head, no matter what that everything happens to consist of. That’s why it works for me – I handle my professional obligations and my personal appointments and my intellectual concerns all in the same system, with little need for borders.

Sound interesting? Check out my Getting Things Done review series.

The Complete Tightwad Gazette
Amy Dacyczyn
Reducing your spending is often a matter of taking little steps. The Complete Tightwad Gazette is a giant tome that collects more little steps together in one place than you could possibly tackle in a year. The joy of this book isn’t in the tips, though. It’s in the writing and attitude of the author, Amy Dacyczyn, who clearly relishes frugality and pairs it with a crisp and yet down-to-earth sense of humor throughout. Dacyczyn does a brilliant job of making even the most extreme of frugal ideas seem normal, completely accessible, and often incredibly fun.

This book clicks because the multitude of ideas it presents are fun. They practically beg you to have a yard sale or make a price book or make a homemade Halloween costume (could this be an October post?). When you find that those interesting activities put some jingle in your pocket as well, it’s both exciting and empowering.

Sound interesting? Check out my Complete Tightwad Gazette review.

Making It All Work
David Allen
Making It All Work is a follow-up of sorts to Getting Things Done, but it has a much different focus. While Getting Things Done focused on developing a system to handle all of the information in your life, Making It All Work focuses on why you’re handling all of those things in the first place. To put it as simply as possible, Getting Things Done addresses the how, while Making It All Work addresses the why.

The why is absolutely key, though. The why provides your motivation to get things done. It also helps guide you with regards to the constant choices we make between different things that need to get done. How do we prioritize? It all comes down to what our greater goals and priorities are, and Making It All Work does a brilliant job of tying the mundane day-to-day work to the larger things we want out of life, no matter what those things are.

Sound interesting? Check out my Making It All Work review, plus the upcoming series focusing on this book.

Raising Financially Fit Kids
Joline Godfrey
I have three children under the age of five. Teaching them about money is a constant adventure, as they’re also learning about impulse control, patience, and the idea that money is merely a means of exchange between very different kinds of things (work and goods). Even the simplest step of putting a found quarter into a piggy bank is an opportunity for financial learning, let alone big things like running a lemonade stand.

Children don’t come with manuals. On some level, all parents are making it up as they go along, but many parents find it useful to turn to the advice of others on some issues to get more insight on dealing with specific aspects of parenting. To put it simply, Raising Financially Fit Kids is the most thorough guide I’ve yet found for parents looking to teach their children lessons about personal ...

Getting Real Value from Budgets

Robert Wilkinson — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:20:03 +0000

When I reached my financial bottom in April 2006, one of my first responses was to simply start reading a lot about personal finance. I checked out a pile of books from the library on personal finance and tackled a lot of different suggestions from those books, along with some of my own ideas that I came up with as I went along.

One idea that was repeated over and over was how incredibly important and valuable having a budget was. I tried several different budgeting approaches and stuck with them for short periods, but the idea of a budget just never really stuck with me. The constant recording of expenses and estimates of spending in the future and so on always seemed like a bunch of busy work that never really went anywhere at all for me.

What did I do instead, then? I focused mostly on just watching what I spent. I did find a lot of value in simply jotting down every dime that I spent in a pocket notebook and, soon, I began to resist spending because I didn’t want to write it in that notebook any more. I began to really focus on how I spent my money in a few key categories – books being the big one. I set up some automatic transfers to take care of specific bills and to start saving for specific goals. Perhaps most importantly, though, I began to really change my behaviors and how I spent my time.

There are two big things to recognize from this story.

First of all, the actual personal finance choices I made were budgeting. Writing down my expenses, setting up automatic payments and savings, focusing on problem categories – those are exactly the type of things that make up budgeting.

More importantly, however, they led me to the same theoretical goal that budgeting has – a more responsible relationship with my money. That’s the destination of budgeting – a relationship with your money that enables you to have the freedom to effectively not worry about the money too much and just get on with your life.

If that’s the case, then why do so many people fail at budgeting – and why is it still recommended so often in personal finance books and on personal finance sites? I think the answer to that question explains why budgets are so often described in personal finance books – and also explains how people can get real value from “budgeting” their own way.

Budgets, Budgets, Budgets: Why?
Take a look at the people who are typically authoring personal finance books. They’re CPAs, CFAs, and other folks who deal with finances for a living. They’ve likely always been strong with math and never been afraid of dealing with large chunks of numbers – it always came natural to them.

I’ve always enjoyed math – in fact, I was just a few credits shy of a minor in mathematics in college – but I’ve never been much of a fan of business or accounting math. Large rows of financial figures have always caused my eyes to glass over. I enjoy chasing down a problem, but ...

Professional Home Inspection Service Checklist – Tips & What’s Included

Robert Wilkinson — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:20:12 +0000

If you are about to purchase your first home, there are several things you need to do. It does not matter if the home is brand new and has never been lived in; get the inspection anyway.

The first and most important thing you need to do is get pre-approved for a mortgage, unless you are fortunate enough to be paying in cash. By getting pre-approved for a mortgage BEFORE you start shopping for a home, you will know how much home you can afford and avoid wasting time looking at homes that are beyond your price range. There is nothing worse than finding the home you like, then applying for the mortgage only to be told you can't afford the house.

The second is to find your perfect home. One piece of advice I can offer here is to look at as many homes as you need to to ensure you get the home that is perfect for you. You are probably making one of the largest purchases of your life so you want to get it right. If you don't like your home after you purchase it, you can't take it back and ask for a refund.

One you find that perfect home, the third and perhaps, the second most important thing to do behind getting a mortgage pre-approval is to get a home inspection. This is one expense in the homebuying process that you do not want to overlook.

A home inspection can help identify those problems that may be hiding deep behind the walls of your potential home. As a buyer, you may be too busy checking out how many bedrooms the home has, how many bathrooms the home has or how large a lot the home is. You may even be too busy thinking about the neighborhood or the school district. You probably aren't looking at the little cracks in the wall or know that there is an electrical issue that could cause your home to burn down.

Spending a few hundred dollars on a home inspection can save you from making ...

Review: Better Groceries for Less Cash

Robert Wilkinson — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:20:02 +0000

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

Better Groceries for Less Cash by Randall Putala has a subtitle that pretty clearly describes what you’ll find inside the covers: 101 Tested and Proven Ways to Save on Food. While organized into chapters, this fairly short book’s main purpose is to simply relate a lot of methods for saving money on food purchases.

My wife and I already do a lot of things to reduce our grocery bill, from using grocery lists to making meal plans and clipping (some) coupons. Yet we still look for ways to trim our food costs even more, so this book was a welcome read.

While Better Groceries for Less Cash is organized into chapters, the focus of each chapter is simply to deliver a few specific tips on how to save money on some aspect of grocery shopping. So, rather than giving my usual chapter-by-chapter review, I picked out ten interesting tips to share and discuss.

Start your own cookbook The key to saving money on food preparation while still getting delicious meals is simply knowing how to cook. Randall suggests simply making up your own cookbook where you jot down notes on what works for you for every new thing you try. Just list the steps you take in a way that you can understand later. If it doesn’t quite work, note that and make a change to your steps (changing cooking time from seven minutes to eight, for example). Then try doubling the quantity (six eggs scrambled instead of three) and seeing how that works. It’s all about learning how to do it so you feel confident with raw foods.

Ignore lying signs Just because there’s a big sign advertising a great deal doesn’t mean that it’s really a great deal. Often, it’s the same old bad deal you’d get otherwise – they just put up a sign to make it look good. Stick to your list and ignore the “sales” you find inside the store unless you’re absolutely sure that they’re great buys.

Clip for products, not for brands If you need toothpaste, clip every toothpaste coupon you can find. Then, when you go to the store to buy the toothpaste, you can match the coupon to the toothpaste brand with the best price (possibly one on sale in the store). This often results in items that have an extremely low price, sometimes even free.

Ignore the picture ...

How to Save Money During the Early Days of a Startup

Robert Wilkinson — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:20:08 +0000

P&L / Project Costing

Damon Duncan

This is very important. Upon starting your business, it should quickly become apparent that you have some customers that are more profitable then others. Ones that take less time and generate more profit. Conversely, there are the customers that take more time, and generate less profit for you. Breaking down each customer into its own profit & loss (P&L) statement helps you understand who they are and what characteristics they have in common. Once you’ve identified the characteristics of the ‘high profit’ customers, you can then go after them. It’s worth spending the time to analyze your clients in a cost-benefit way, so that you can scale your business’s operations and your profits.

Generate Financial Reports Monthly

University of Denver

“What you measure gets managed” Peter Drucker once quipped, and that is why its important to review your financial reports monthly (if not more often). Much like it is important to monitor the profit/loss of your customer base, it is important to see where the money is coming and going each month. Many companies start out with several types ...

How to Check the Status of Your Tax Refund

Robert Wilkinson — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:20:41 +0000

It seems a little early but I’ve been getting a lot of “where is my refund?”-type of emails lately. While I won’t know the answer to that question (and I shouldn’t, the IRS should be that loose with your personal information!), the IRS will. While not usually known for tech savviness, the IRS does have an online tool that lets you check the status of your refund.

You can access the Refund Status tool here.

Check Status of Tax Refund

To use the tool, you will need three pieces of information:

Your social security number
Your filing status (single, married filing jointly, married filing separate, head of household, or qualifying widow(er))
Your exact refund amount (as shown on your tax return).

If your above data is correct and they cannot retrieve your refund status, they will ask you for:

The approximate date you filed your tax return
The method (paper ...

Surprise! Peer to Peer Lending is Risky

Robert Wilkinson — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:20:48 +0000

Earlier this week, Mark Gimein wrote a great article on TheBigMoney.com detailing, statistically, how risky person-to-person lending really is. I’ve always known it to be peer to peer lending or social lending, but the article calls out the riskiness of Prosper.com, the first and one of the largest of the peer lending networks.

To look at the results of Prosper’s loan marketplace, though, is to see not a solution to the credit crisis, but a microcosm of it. Loans to unqualified borrowers; reliance on mathematical models that turn out to be a lot less useful than they seemed; failed hopes that high interest rates could make subprime loans profitable; sky high default rates—Prosper has it all. Prosper’s Web site advertises returns of 6 percent to 14 percent for lenders. But the reality is that the lenders who loaned $188 million through Prosper have not earned anything like these returns. On the contrary, the majority of them have lost money, as they’ve watched their loans go bad at shockingly high rates.

The takeaway from the article isn’t that you should avoid Prosper, it’s that you proabbly ...

The Dangers of Long Term and Interest Only Loans

Robert Wilkinson — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:20:22 +0000

There are two new trends in the banking world that may actually be very dangerous for consumers. Long term personal loans and interest only loans are gaining in popularity, especially in the wake of the housing crisis. While these may seem to be a great option at the time, there are many risks from these loans that should be avoided if at all possible. If you’re considering refinancing your home to an interest only loan, or if you are looking at getting a personal or car loan, it is very important to understand exactly what you are getting into before you agree to any loan.

An interest only home loan means that each month, you only pay the interest that you owe. At face value, this can save a lot of money and it may help you keep your home if you are refinancing. Even though interest rates are going up, when you’re not paying on the principle, your overall monthly payment will be lower. However, the part about not paying on the principle is the kicker.

At the end of your interest only loan you will not own your home. Instead, you will have to pay the principle, in full, in order to get the deed. Now, if you’re planning on selling your home after the loan is paid off, this may not be as dangerous. However, with falling property values and a down market, this can be disastrous. In addition, by only paying interest, you will end up spending a lot more at the end for your home. In most cases, homeowners with this type of loan find that they spend $25k to $50k more for their actual homes.

Another issue with interest only loans is that you will not have the benefit of gaining equity in your home, even though you are making payments every month. If you end up with an emergency on your hands and need to get money quickly, you will not be able to draw on the equity in your home. This is a big problem that many people do not consider. Would you rather have lower monthly payments, or the ability to earn equity in your home with every payment that you make?

Next up, long term loans are becoming very popular as interest rates go up. Most people prefer to keep their payments as low as possible, but right now, that is pretty tough. The solution has been to roll out new long term loans, particularly for cars. As an example, you may be paying only $300 a month for your car, but you will have to keep making those payments for the next seven to eight years. Compare this to the usual time period of three to five years.

That is a lot of extra interest and many people may not even realize just how much extra they are paying. At the end of the loan term, you will have spent thousands more than the car is worth and by then, the vehicle has depreciated to the point where you will never get that money back. Long term loans do make it easier to make payments, but at the end of the day, you’re worse for the wear.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2008-08-19 05:21:57. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Teach Your Kids about Money Management

Robert Wilkinson — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:20:21 +0000

It is never too early to teach your dren the fundamentals wht comes to good monanagement. Teaching your children good habits is usually smart, and money management is certainly a set of good habits that is better taught sooner rather of later. If you teach your children how to value and handle their money very young, then it will be useful for them in the future. In order to make children discover the value of their money and money management, parents and guardians can practice a few very easy actions, such as the following:

- Parents can include their children when they are speaking about actions relating to money. They can consist of their children when they sit down to discuss household budgets and other similar money associated subjects, so that they can teach their children what actions include money and what elements of the family require money in order to run easily. When children comprehend why money is essential, they can better comprehend its value.

- These days a lot of our money is being used in the form of credit score cards and checkbooks. When you make use of these alternative payment types, you should explain to your children what you are doing and how it works. Tell them about the ease that financial institution accounts and credit score cards can provide, and detail the role that they play in the money management procedure. You should also make an work to teach them the difference between credit score cards and debit cards so that they can make good use of all the money mediums accessible to them in the future.

- As early as possible, it would be advantageous to allow your children to handle, organize and save their own pocket alter. They can be taught more than time to count their money, use financial institution accounts, open a financial savings account, draw money out through checks, and maintain their own distinctive private spending budget and so on. When you first start to teach your children about money management, they will probably be more most likely to mess issues up than to get every thing correct.

-In order to assist them in this regard, you can introduce your children to online money management software and other choices like a checkbook register as quickly as possible. This will display them how to keep track of their financial savings and their spending. This will also assist them set up alerts and reminders so that they can keep track of spending, earning and saving. As children, individuals are simply not very adept when it comes to money management. Teaching them early and impressing them with the ideas of money management frequently will assist them overcome their issues with money management, allowing them to get better control of their finances from day one.

When it comes to money management, the previously you teach your children about taking care of their money, the better off they will be as they start to have their own financial savings, incomes and expenditures.

Photo Credits: one

Originally posted 2008-12-22 05:25:49. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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It’s Sew Easy to Save

Robert Wilkinson — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:20:27 +0000

By Sarah Winfrey

Unless you're particularly crafty, sewing might seem like it's totally out of your league. And it IS intimidating, especially when you've never touched a sewing machine before and you take your first look at the instructions for getting the thing threaded. However, learning to sew some basic items can also save you a lot of money, so it might be worth spending the time to learn.

Luckily, there are some easy projects that don't require very much know-how to complete. All you need to get started is a sewing machine, someone to teach you how to use it or a good instruction manual, and some cheap fabric.

Primary Considerations

If you're not quite sure sewing is the thing for you, see if you can borrow a sewing machine before you purchase one. You might be surprised how many people have them sitting around, packed away somewhere and never used. Make sure you get a good manual with any borrowed machine, and that it has all the working parts (check particularly for bobbins, bobbin covers, and a foot pedal).

Make sure you don't spend too much on fabric. Remnants are always good, as is fabric from Wal-Mart. Think creatively when it comes to getting cheap fabric. Old sheets can be reused, or you can purchase some when they're on sale. In addition, you can use fabric from old clothes. Don't even throw away your scraps. Small pieces of fabric can be used for pillows and quilts.

It's usually easy to find patterns for free, particularly for the basic items listed here. Check the internet, or look up one of the sites listed at the end of this article for some places to start.

Basic Mending and Alterations

One of the easiest things to practice your sewing on is your own clothes. If something gets a hole in it, don't automatically throw it away, use it as a rag, or throw it in the back of your closet. Instead, try to fix it. If you fail, it won't be in any worse shape than it's already in.

You may not even need a sewing machine for this type of stitching. If there's not a good way to get the machine to the place where the hole or tear is, don't hesitate to sew it by hand.

Basic alterations are also a great place to practice. Many professionals charge quite a bit to make your clothes fit the way you want them to, but you can do it yourself without a hassle. Depending on the type of material you're working with, it's easy to hem pants or skirts, change sleeve length, even add a zipper or some buttons. Look up your particular project and material online to find specific instructions if you're not sure where to start.

Diapers and Baby Blankets

If you have a baby or want to give a great gift to someone who does have a little one, homemade cloth diapers can be made cheaply and easily. Note that these aren't useful only for someone who is diapering with cloth, as the diapers are useful as burp cloths and many parents keep them around ...