Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki

Posts Tagged ‘family’

A long time ago, after posting several articles about using a crock pot to save money and still produce great, quick meals, readers asked me to post ten of my favorite crock pot recipes. Since digging through my recipes and typing them out again in an comprehensible format takes a while, I started by posting five of them.

And I never got around to posting the other five. Today, I’m completing that post.

So, after you’ve perused the art of the slow cooker and five of my favorite recipes, here are five more for you to try. I have no idea where these originally came from, but each was experimented on and modified more than a few times and seem to only exist on my own handwritten cards.

One big tip! If you’re going to leave these on for more than eight hours, add an extra half a cup of water before you go. The biggest danger for cooking things in a crock pot longer than that is having the food dry out.

Let’s go!

Chicken Chili (our current favorite crock pot recipe)

1 1/4 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 15 oz. cans great northern beans or navy beans (I prefer to soak dry beans myself)
12 oz. frozen sweet corn kernels
1 4 1/2 oz. can chopped green chiles (or you can chop your own)
3 tbsp. chili powder
16 oz. chicken stock or chicken broth
8 oz. half and half (you can use skim milk if you want it healthier)
1/2 tsp. corn starch (if you want it thicker)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup chopped onion (optional)

Dice the chicken into 1″ cubes and put them in a slow cooker. Add the beans and corn and optional onions. In a bowl, mix the chili powder, the peppers, the half and half, and the chicken broth or stock (and the starch, if you want it thicker). Stir until well-mixed, then add to the chicken. Cover and cook for 8-10 hours on low. Just before serving, stir in sour cream until consistent.

Wild Rice Turkey

1 1/2 cups wild rice
2 cups finely chopped onion
1/4 cup golden raisins
2 apples, chopped
3 cups chicken broth or chicken stock
1 1/4 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. marjoram
3/4 tsp. sage
1/2 tsp. pepper
whole turkey brest (4 lbs. or so)

Mix rice, onion, raisins, apples, thyme, salt, pepper, sage, and marjoram until consistent. Put thsi mixture on the bottom of the pot. Cover with chicken broth/stock and make sure all of the rice is covered with at least a quarter of an inch of liquid – if not, supplement with some water or additional stock. Place whole turkey breast (thawed, of course) on top. Cook on low for eight hours and be sure to check the temperature of the turkey before you remove it (it should be 160 degrees F or roughly 75 C).

Stuffed Zucchini

1 medium zucchini or squash, halved lengthwise, with seeds removed
1 cup tomato sauce
1 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp. minced or powdered garlic
1/4 cup brown rice (uncooked)
1 tbsp. parsley
1 tbsp. basil
1/8 tsp. black pepper
Mozzarella cheese (optional)

Put the zucchini halves in the bottom of the crockpot. Mix the tomato sauce and vinegar together in a small bowl – a cereal bowl works. In another bowl, combine the onions, garlic, rice, parsley, basil, and pepper and mix thoroughly. Add two tablespoons of the tomato-red wine mix to the onion mix and stir thoroughly. Put the onion mix on the zucchini halves, then pour the rest of the tomato-red wine mix on top. Cook on low for 6 hours.

Three Bean Stew

1 cup dried lima beans
1 cup dried great Northern beans
1 cup dried chickpeas / Garbanzo beans
4 cups water
16 oz. carrots (baby or sliced full carrots)
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
2 1/2 cups or 1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes
2 tbsp. tomato paste
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp. parsley
1 tsp. basil
1/2 tsp. thyme
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 bay leaf

Soak the beans together overnight in water by putting the beans in a pan, then adding water until there’s an inch of water on top of the beans. Drain the beans and place in crock pot. Add the water, carrots, oinion, garlic, parsley, basil, thyme, pepper, and the bay leaf to the crock pot. Cook on low for eight to ten hours. Add the tomatoes, the paste, and salt and cook for another hour on low. Remove bay leaf and serve.

Barbecued Ribs (it doesn’t beat slow-cooked on a grill, but it’s very good!)

4 lbs. baby back ribs, lightly peppered and salted
2 cups catsup
1 cup finely diced tomatoes
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/8 tsp. cloves
1/4 cup vinegar
2 tbsp. pepper
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp. oregano
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
hot sauce to taste

Rub the ribs down with salt and pepper. Put them in a shallow baking pan and bake them in the oven for 15 minutes at 400 F / 200 C. Turn the ribs over and brown for another 15 minutes in the oven. While it’s browning, mix the other ingredients in a bowl. Take the ribs from the oven, place in a slow cooker, pour the sauce over the ribs, and flip the ribs around to coat them. Cover and cook on low for eight hours. Delicious!

Good luck!

See original here:
By Request: Five More Essential Crock Pot Recipes

The more of life I experience, the more I realize that the most valuable thing a person has in their life is time. The cost of a book is trivial compared to the value of the time spent reading it. The cost of raising a child in terms of dollars is far less than the value of the time spent rearing the children.

Time is the one thing I wish I had more of.

I just found out that I will be unemployed come mid-August and I am just wondering what steps I should start taking in savings and job hunting until then. I am currently an Americorps*VISTA, which means that I cannot start a second job until the completion of my term (again, August). I live very simply, but only make about $800/month take-home and have about $1400 in CC debt (started the year at $4000; I’ve been working to get rid of it) Your thoughts?

Related to that, my position generally only winds up taking about 25 hrs/week, while I’m required to ‘work’ (be in the office) for 40. How would you utilize those extra 15 hours?
- Tessa

The first thing I’d do is figure out what I would like to be doing with my time come August. What exactly is the next step for you? If you don’t know, start investing those fifteen extra hours a week (and more) to figuring out what comes next for you.

Once you know, then you should be able to fill in the blanks as to how to fill your time until the change happens. It might mean building up a resume. It might mean spending a lot of time firming up old connections and relationships. It might mean applying for college or for scholarships.

In short, you need to figure out what comes next, make a plan for how to get there, then spend the remaining time executing that plan as strongly as you can. The key, though, comes from you. What do you want to do next?

My husband is irresponsible with money. I knew when we got involved that he had a student loan and some credit card debt (about $5000 dollars combined), and that he felt no obligation to pay these off. He also hadn’t filed his taxes for several years. I probably should have listened to my gut then and run for the hills, but i didn’t, and I’m not looking for marriage advice here. Once we became seriously involved, I made sure his taxes were filed. The government garnished his refunds until the student loan was paid off, and we paid off the cc debt too with the understanding that he is unable to control his spending and should not have access to a cc in the future.

Once again, he got another card, and now has a $2000 balance, and is not making payments. I am done bailing him out. I am just wondering how his bad credit is going to affect me if he doesn’t pay this off? Whether or not we stay together, what can I do to protect myself from his debt? Is there anyway a spouse at the end of her rope can call the credit card companies and get his cards cancelled or say “Stop issuing this man cards!” If we do split up at some point, am I going to be responsible for half of his debt?
- Michelle

The important question is to consider whose names the debts are in. If he’s applying for credit cards on his own, are they just in his name? If they are and you file for divorce, they will remain his debts and are not your concern. If they’re in both of your names, you need to get your name removed from as much of it as possible if you’re considering a separation.

That being said, I think some professional counseling is in order in this situation. Clearly, there are serious trust issues going on in your relationship and your husband has some significant self-control problems. These are the types of issues that need counseling – they will not go away due to your sheer force of will.

If you care for him at all, seek help for him and for your relationship. I can’t tell from your email whether you’re beyond that point or not.

After I finished school I went to work for an outdoor education center for nine months. I loved the job but, wasn’t happy with the management so I came back to my parent’s house and found a job there. It is in a similar field but most of the work is in an office. I originally planed to stay at this job for three or four years but now the program might lose its funding. This wouldn’t affect the funding to my job but it would nearly make it pointless. My supervisor encouraged me to be on the lookout for other jobs. I sent out several resumes to some outdoor education centers and have interviews soon.

Do you think it would be foolish to go back to that type of work?
- Beth

Your father’s frustration is probably stemming from the fact that he does not see you heading down a path that leads you to financial independence. He wants to see you being at least successful enough to fly under your own power through adult life. If you take another minimum wage job and continue to live at home with your parents, you are shifting a significant portion of your life’s expenses off to your parents as well as intruding on the privacy of their adult lives. He likely sees your choice as not moving at all towards repairing that situation.

Regardless of what job you choose, you should be working on a plan to be independent and they should be in the loop about that plan. What form that takes is really up to you, your situation, your skill set, and your passions.

Recognize, though, that your parents are people, too. They’re providing for you now because they care deeply about you, but every time you drink from that well, you leave them less water.

We took up a mortgage of $200k, with $140k being fixed and $60k in what’s called a revolving credit account here in New Zealand. We thought the revolving credit facility would allow us more flexibility if we are disciplined enough with our spending.

For all these, we are paying a service charge of $12.50 a month. To me, the revolving credit facility seems like another good alternative, what do you think?
- Art

It sounds an awful lot like a money merge account, something I wrote about in detail in the past.

In the United States, such accounts are generally pretty expensive and can ring you into the thousands of dollars. For that kind of cost, I don’t view such an account as being worth it unless you have little financial discipline. In your case, I think it actually might be worth it, though.

I’m not entirely sure, though, why you’re taking money out of the account and putting it into a savings account. I’m assuming that this is for extra payments on the mortgage, but if I understand the account correctly (based on my understanding of money merges and the documentation on revolving credit accounts in New Zealand), leaving the money in the account has the same effect of paying down your mortgage faster, plus it decreases the risk that you might go over your credit withdrawal limit. If that’s the case, I would put a severe cap on how much I transferred out of the account, only keeping enough to serve as a true emergency fund.

You don’t talk about Lost enough in your mailbags so I’m going to keep emailing you Lost questions until you answer one. So here goes. Who is the good guy of the series? Jacob or UnLocke?
- Kelly

Neither one is. I think you have a prison-like situation where the inmate (UnLocke) has been held in solitary confinement for a very, very long time. He’s like a rat in a cage. But does that mean the guard (Jacob) is a saint?

I still think there are two real heroes in this series: Jack and Locke. I still believe that to be the case. My belief is that Locke on the island will come back to life at the same time as Locke off the island walks again thanks to Jack’s spinal surgery, and Locke will eventually become the guardian of the island. Jack has been searching for something to fix for the entire series – he will get to fix Locke.

Or maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about and the series will end with a “Cop Rock”-esque singing montage.

My partner has about $8000 worth of credit card debt and I’ve been trying to help her figure out the best way to pay it off. We’re in the process of refinancing our mortgage (to 5.25%) and are wondering if it makes sense to wrap it into our mortgage, since she pays a higher interest rate on the credit card. She also make the monthly mortgage payment (I made the down payment, and am making the monthly payment on a second property we own, so she says it’ll still be her responsibility, as we’re keeping track of who put how much into each property). I’m skeptical, not wanting to add any more debt to our mortgage (and feeling that HER debt being added to OUR total will make keeping track messy), but can you clarify just how much this is or isn’t an okay thing to do?
- Heidi

Yes, in a strict sense, it makes sense to wrap that credit card debt into the mortgage.

The challenge comes in when you look at the self-control issues. If you guys have no credit card debt at all, will she have the spending control to resist simply charging those cards up again for purchases you don’t really need?

I’m not sure about your domestic arrangement, however. You seem to want to distinguish heavily between HER debt and YOUR debt. If this person is genuinely your partner, then that includes your finances. There is no HER debt or YOUR debt. There’s OUR debt – you deal with it together because the debt is affecting you both.

I just realized that paying extra every month decreased my minimum payment amount and not the length of the loan. (Mostly because I just started paying extra.)

I’ve been trying to figure out how early my auto loan will be paid off if I add extra in every month. All of the loan calculators I’ve found online that calculate don’t seem to take into account that the minimum payment amount decreases every month while my payment does not. I keep paying my original amount that included the extra. Is there a formula to figure all this out?
- Susan

It’s simple: ignore the minimum payment. Instead, calculate what your payment should be right now. Tack a small amount on top of that. Pay that amount every month, regardless of what the bill says. Soon, your loan is gone.

If the minimum payment is getting smaller, it’s because the lender wants you to pay on the loan for a longer period in order to maximize the amount of interest they get from you. They don’t mind receiving smaller payments in the short term if it means more income in the long term. Thus, they’ll show you the minimum amount you’d need to pay to stick with your original payment schedule – and if you’ve overpaid in the past, that minimum amount will be nice and small.

Ignore it. Use Bankrate’s great loan calculator and figure out when you’ll get the debt paid off if you add in some extra to each payment.

My husband and I both have student loan debt of $10k each at around 3%, and a mortgage for $140 k at 6.75%. We have the option to refinance down to 5.1% but it would cost $3,000 into the principle. We’ve been paying the mortgage for 2 1/2 years, but have no plans to ever sell. The house is a rental property that we also live in, so the amount of mortgage, taxes, and fees and repairs we pay after the rents come in is only around $400/month, therefore allowing us both to save alot. We have no other debt.

Or would it be better for me to open a Roth IRA, or put my money somewhere else, or even pay my student loan off?? I doubt we would pay the mortgage down because we use the expenses against the income we get from the rents. My personal cash savings is earning no interest in my checking account (i know, i know, but this is why I’m working on this.)
- Danielle

First of all, funding a Roth IRA won’t get you a tax reduction, at least not today. Roth IRAs are funded with after-tax money.

Second of all, if you’re six months away from buying a property with a $25K down payment and have only $32K in joint cash savings, it is probably prudent to hold onto the cash until you have the purchase in hand. You do not want to find yourself in a position without a cash emergency fund, because when things go wrong at an inopportune moment, they can seriously snowball.

If I were to do anything with the savings, I would take $3,000 of it and refinance the loan. If you can drop the interest rate on $140,000 by 1.65%, you’ll be saving yourself a couple hundred a month in loan payments, which would pay back that $3,000 in a year or so and then leave you in better financial shape for the length of the mortgage.

Other than that, I’d sit tight until you’ve bought the property. I don’t see any major reason to change anything, assuming that the property buy is a definite thing.

Read this in your March 5 post: “…when my contract expires, I’m going to simply cancel the phone and get a pay-by-the-minute el cheapo phone.” I’d be curious to know how you go about choosing a pay-by-the-minute cellphone plan when the time comes. My husband and I would like to switch to a prepaid option as well, but each company structures their charges so differently that it’s hard for me to decide which plan would be best for us.
- Lynn

This is one of those times when I turn to Consumer Reports. What do they recommend when it comes to such pay-by-the-minute plans?

Right now, looking it up wouldn’t really help as I won’t be doing it for at least a few months yet. When it gets close, I’ll visit my library and start digging through the back issues of CR to find their most recent article about such cell phones (likely, it’ll be found in their most recent cell phone roundup). I’ll move on from there.

My choice will probably be the best “bang for the buck” phone rather than the cheapest one, at least with the “bang” being call quality. It’s not worth my money if I can’t easily place calls with the phone at my convenience, after all.

I’ve just read a document on “travel hacking” that gives tips on how to maximize your frequent flyer miles for free tickets. One of the tips is to “cycle” credit card applications where you are applying for a new Citi card (to get the American Airlines miles) every 60-90 days. It’s legal, but I wonder what it will do to my credit score. If I don’t need to apply for any loans in the near future, does a decrease in my credit score (now 790 I think) really matter? Thanks for your help!
- Jill

This will have a mild negative effect on your credit rating. However, with a credit rating near 790, I don’t think the negative effect will be strong enough to affect anything you might use your credit rating for.

My concern with such rampant credit card hopping is identity theft. To get each of these cards, you have to apply for a new card, which is another opening you’re giving yourself to identity theft. The threat of theft on any one application or card you have is minute, but if you have lots of cards and applications floating around out there, the chance multiplies.

Unless I’m already flying a lot and can directly save a lot of money by doing this, I would not view it as being worth the combination of time and personal risk. If you fly several times a year already as a normal course of life, then the benefits might outweigh the costs here, but if you’re only doing this to try to build up miles in case you might choose to fly somewhere someday, then it’s not worth it.

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag. However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

Originally posted here:
Reader Mailbag: Time

My two children are extremely blessed in many ways. Perhaps their greatest blessing is that they’ve surrounded by a family that loves them dearly and truly cares about their future in a deep, fundamental way – and I’m not merely talking about myself. I’m talking about their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, even some of their cousins. They are surrounded by a cadre of people who love them, care for them, and truly want them to have a wonderful life.

Because so many people care so much for these two children, they’re often the recipient of gifts. Yes, their birthdays and Christmases are full of presents, but it even goes beyond that. Their grandparents often buy them spontaneous gifts. Their cousins sometimes literally give them their old toys and clothes. We even do it ourselves, though our influence is often in the form of books for their bookshelves.

This has a challenging side effect – the kids have accumulated an awful lot of stuff. Their toy boxes are overfilled. Their bookshelves are stuffed with books.

Several problems are made evident by this. First, it’s difficult to keep all of this stuff in order, simply because of the clutter problem. Second, it encourages our children to be overstimulated because as soon as they even have an inkling of being less interested in a particular item, they can just bounce onto another one. Third, they’re often much less enthusiastic about the wonderful gifts that their grandparents give them because they already have so many.

The solution is obvious: reduce the toy count. But how do you do this without upsetting the children?

My goals are very straightforward.

First, I want to reduce clutter. Dealing with clutter means more money sunk into stuff and more time spent cleaning it up. That means less money for the things that are important (like a less stressful career, deeply meaningful experiences, and so on) and less time for them as well.

Second, I want my children to enjoy life with less stuff around them. I do not want them to feel that lots of stuff is the norm.

On a smaller note, I want my children to increase their attention span. With a huge number of toys easily at their disposal, it’s very easy for them to just jump from toy to toy. By strongly reducing the availability of such items, the opportunity to jump around is less.

Here’s my solution for this problem.

First, I’m taking an inventory of which toys they like and play with frequently – and which ones they do not. I’ve actually been making a list of the toys that each child plays with over a multi-week period. If toys are on this list, they’re probably going to be kept. Toys that are not on this list are going to be targeted for removal.

Second, I’ll talk about the process with them. I’m going to ask them what their favorite toys are. I’m going to also tell them that I’m going to take some of the toys that they never play with and give them to other boys and girls that don’t have many toys to play with. Believe it or not, this works very well with our children, even the two year old.

Third, I’ll take advantage of a period when they’re visiting grandparents to reorganize and minimize their toys. When they return from their grandparents, I will have removed many of the toys from their sight, minimizing the clutter. What will remain are the toys I’ve identified as their favorite ones. The toybox will be only about half full (if that) instead of overflowing. The bookshelves will be filtered a bit (though I’m not as interested in reducing their book count).

Finally, I’ll keep the excised toys in storage for a short period, then either yard sale many of them or take them to Goodwill. The reason I’ll keep them in (hidden) storage for a short period is so that if I discover that I removed a toy accidentally that the children really value, I can retrieve it.

One thing I won’t do is discourage family members from giving them gifts. I understand that this is done as an expression of love for children that they don’t get to see as often as they’d like. Instead, I simply want to create a situation where these toys and gifts are deeply appreciated.

For a long time, we did some toy rotations so that the children would always have something new to play with. In my eyes, that doesn’t really achieve the goals I listed above. We still have a lot of stuff. It still doesn’t subtly teach patience and attention to the children.

Any thoughts on this plan?

Read more here:
Children and Excess

One frequent question I’m often asked is whether or not paying half of a mortgage payment twice a month versus paying a full mortgage payment once a month is actually worthwhile.

Let’s say, for example, you’re in the situation that Paul, one of my readers who wrote in recently, finds himself in. He just took out a $219,000 mortgage. His monthly payment on that mortgage is $1,300.89. Paul wants to know whether paying half of the mortgage twice a month will save him a significant amount.

The first thing he needs to do is make sure that his mortgage allows early payments – and how they work. Make a call to your lender and ask them how often interest is compounded (this needs to be daily or compounded monthly based on the average balance of the month – if it only compounds monthly, paying in advance won’t help), plus how multiple payments during a month are applied to your loan (they must be applied as soon as received for this to work). Most loans work this way, but not all.

There are two options with making early payments.

First, Paul can literally make two payments a month – say, on the fifteenth of every month and on the last day of every month. This means, over the course of a year, Paul pays the exact same amount in principle that he would otherwise pay. The only difference is that on the fifteenth of each month, he pays in half of his payment and at the end of each month, he pays in the remainder of his payment.

In my calculations in Excel, I assumed monthly compounding using the average balance of the last month. Using this method, I calculate that this method will save Paul just over two months’ worth of balance on the mortgage. He’d save $2,931.33 in interest, which would mean he would be able to skip his final two payments and make only a partial final payment.

However, a superior method of doing this would be to simply make a payment equal to half of the amount of the monthly mortgage bill every two weeks. Over the course of a year, this adds up to one extra full payment: since there are fifty two weeks in a year, you’d make 26 half payments, and thus 13 full payments.

In my calculations, I again assumed monthly compounding using the average balance of the last month. I calculated that this method will save Paul $41,117.09 over the course of the loan. His final, partial payment would be issued just shy of five years early.

This method falls perfectly in line with many income schedules (the federal government, for example, issues paychecks every two weeks), which means that you can just allot a certain amount from each paycheck directly toward your mortgage and then not think about it again.

For me, at least, twice-a-month payments would not provide enough benefit to be worth the management hassle of them unless it happened to line up directly with my paychecks.

On the other hand, biweekly payments – once every two weeks – do provide a lot of financial incentive to give them a shot. Add on top of that the fact that it’s directly in line with many pay schedules and that would seem to be a winner to me.

In a nutshell, simply paying twice a month doesn’t save much at all, but paying once every two weeks saves a lot. Yes, one or two fewer days per payment can save you tens of thousands at the end of the payments.

Good luck.

Go here to read the rest:

Originally posted here:
Run Your Car On Agua, Hydro Fueler, Home & Family

Earlier today, I did a lengthy interview with Dean Voelker on his Improving Your Financial Health radio show. Dean’s very much into preparation, so I actually wound up doing a substantial amount of prep work for the interview.

Since I had accumulated such a pile of notes for the interview in advance and Dean asked so many worthwhile questions, I made something of a transcript of the interview and am sharing it with you.

Tell us about your background.
I grew up in rural Illinois. My parents didn’t have much money and, sometimes, they struggled to make ends meet. I learned a lot about frugality from them, but I didn’t learn as much about pure money management skills. I attended Iowa State University and graduated with a degree in the hard sciences, after which I spent about six years working in various jobs in research fields. Recently, I’ve been a full time writer.

How long have you been writing The Simple Dollar?
I started writing the blog that would become The Simple Dollar in October 2006. I launched The Simple Dollar publicly in November 2006.

How did you decide to do that?
In April 2006, I experienced a personal and professional meltdown of sorts. I had always dreamed of being a writer, but it felt as if my dreams for doing that were slipping away in the flow of my professional life. I was unhappy with some aspects of my current job. To make things worse, we were in dire financial straits, with a large pile of consumer debt over our heads.

I decided that things had to change. After a while, I began to see that a lot of people my age were going through similar crises – a “quarter life crisis,” if you will. They were finding themselves in serious financial problems and sometimes were deeply questioning the path they had chosen in life. However, most people my age were very reluctant to actually talk about these problems with anyone outside of their immediate family and maybe a very, very close friend or two.

I started The Simple Dollar because I felt that this was a conversation that people needed to have. I felt that by sharing my story and my experiences, both in the positive sense and in terms of my own failings, I would open people up to think about their finances and career more and talk about it, whether by sending me emails or comments or by talking to people in their own lives.

Where did the name ‘Simple Dollar” come from?
One night shortly before the launch of the site, I just brainstormed a long list of names. I crossed some of them off that I didn’t like and my wife took a turn at the list, too. Eventually, The Simple Dollar is the name that stuck out.

Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t choose a name like “Trent’s Financial Failings.”

About how much time do you spend on this per week?
On The Simple Dollar alone, I probably spend fifteen hours purely writing and composing posts. I spend another five to ten researching posts and doing reading related to it. I probably spend another ten hours on site management, approving comments, and answering emails – but, frankly, I have more emails and comments and other things like that than I can cover in ten hours, so I sometimes have to pick and choose.

I spend additional time on other writing projects, such as my upcoming book.

Where do you get most of your information?
Books. I’m a voracious reader. I read, on average, three books a week, of which one is usually something geared towards personal finance or careers.

What are your “14 Money Rules”?
My 14 Money Rules is simply a list of what I think are the true core values and ideas of what I talk about on The Simple Dollar. I keep these rules posted on every page on the site, in the right hand bar. The 14 Money Rules are:
1. Spend Less Than You Earn.
2. Don’t Over-Think Your Investments.
3. Stop Wasting Time.
4. Eliminate (and Avoid) High-Interest Debt.
5. Talk About Money (And Be Honest).
6. Stop Trying to Impress Other People.
7. Watch Your Progress (But Make It Fun).
8. Take Care of Your Things.
9. Do It Yourself.
10. Plan Ahead Every Time You Spend.
11. Find and Work Toward Your True Passions.
12. Build Real Friendships and Relationships.
13. Improve Yourself Every Chance You Get.
14. Give Without Strings or Regrets.

Which ‘Rules’ generate the most discussion?
Doing it yourself tends to generate the most discussion. Many people argue that it’s better to pay someone else to do something for you if you’re earning more than that person’s hourly wage. My argument against that is twofold: first, you only earn more than that person’s wage if you’re earning more post-tax and you actually spend the time you’ve hired someone in gainful employment. Two, and perhaps more importantly, doing things yourself teaches you things and makes you more resourceful. Almost every skill you have in life has value – if nothing else, it can help you build relationships with others. If you know how to fix a toilet, for instance, you can share that skill with a new friend or acquaintance in an effort to forge a stronger bond.

Tell us about your free E-Book “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page.”
A long time ago, I wrote a very popular post entitled “Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on the Back of Five Business Cards“. After posting it, several people contacted me and suggested that I try to turn it into a book of some sort.

Over the next several months, I tossed the idea around and eventually developed it into a fifty page short book, intending to use it to shop around to various book publishers. I incorporated a lot of original writing, pieces of various Simple Dollar posts, and lots of other interesting elements.

At some point, I just decided that it would be a very worthwhile move – in terms of helping people with their finances and encouraging people to think about it and talk about it – to simply give the short book away, which is exactly what I did.

What are your thoughts on the new credit card regulations which just went into effect this week?
I think, on the surface, they protect consumers. However, the credit card companies are businesses that are out there with the purpose of making money. If you close one door on them, they’ll open another.

I think we’re in a period where they’re going to try different methods of earning money, since some of their previous methods have now had the door shut on them (such as young card holders). What form will that take? Whatever it is, the end consumers will be the ones paying for it. It might be the return of annual fees. It might be higher interest rates. It might be something entirely new, like a minimun number of uses required per month. Only time will tell.

You also have some downloadable books. What can you tell us about that?
The “downloadable books” on The Simple Dollar are simply collections of older posts on a common theme. I’d write a series of posts on a certain topic – say, building a blogging business – and then I collected all of the posts together, edited them a bit so that they made sense as one long document, and turned them into a downloadable PDF. Since the posts are available for free anyway, I have a minimal charge on these donwloadabe books – they cost two dollars a piece. Some people buy them because it’s convenient for the purpose of printing them out for a trip or something like that; others buy them simply as a way to support the site.

The Simple Dollar has some great open discussions which readers participate in. How were you able to come up with 25 Gadgets That Save Money?
One big thing I like to do when writing an article is look for things that have something interesting in common, sometimes in an unusual or unexpected way. In that case, I simply collected a list of items that can actually save you money, including paying for themselves, over a long period of time.

The idea started from looking at programmable thermostats. If you buy one of those and set it so that your furnace doesn’t run when you’re not at home or when you’re asleep – or the same thing with the air conditioning during the summer – your energy bill savings will add up to much more than the cost of the thermostat after a few years.

A few of the items in the article were a bit extreme, such as a wind turbine, and I think most of the discussion came from those items. You can, indeed, save money with the purchase of a wind turbine, but it takes quite a while.

I loved the McDonald’s article! You compare a McDonald’s double cheesburger to making a cheesburger at home. What did you learn?
If you take all of the short term costs into account – time and money, in other words – the two roughly balance out. The homemade burger is slightly more expensive, but it’s also more tasty. Of course, I did add a lot of toppings to the homemade burger that weren’t on the double cheeseburger from McDonald’s, such as lettuce and such, but it wouldn’t be a homemade burger if I didn’t.

If you’re making just a single burger for yourself, then there’s a decent argument that McDonald’s provides a better value in the short term. If you’re making several burgers, the homemade ones are much less expensive. The real advantage of fast food is the convenience – it’s not really all that cheap, as you get lower quality food than what you can make at home for a similar price.

How long did it take to gather your research?
It took a surprising amount of time. I had to plan out what I intended to do – make a burger and compare it to the McDonald’s one. I had to shop for the ingredients for the homemade burger. I had to visit McDonald’s to get the double cheeseburger. I had to make the actual burger at home. I also spent time documenting all of this with pictures and time recordings as well. I spent on the order of six hours on the post.

Have you seen the documentary film “Super Size Me”? (2004 by Morgan Spurlock)
I think that movie touches on what would be my real concern with eating fast food – it’s unhealthy. It causes you to gain weight. The high amount of salt in the food can cause high blood pressure. It can definitely leave you feeling lethargic. It’s not exactly good for your heart.

Thus, the long term costs of that double cheeseburger is quite a bit more than the ninety nine cents you paid at the drive-thru. You’ll have health care costs and lost productivity costs as well.

I see the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” books and seminars by Robert Kiyosaki everywhere. What should people know about him and these books?
I am not a fan of Robert Kiyosaki’s work. For starters, he severely underestimates risk in nearly everything he discusses. He paints a picture that makes it seem as easy as a run down to the courthouse steps to make thousands of dollars. It’s no different than any other “get rich quick” scheme – there are opportunities out there, but it takes a lot of hard work to find them and there’s a lot of risk for failure along the way.

The biggest problem, though, is the utter disdain he has for people who make the choice not to do things the “Rich Dad” way. He actually refers to people who work at a job and make an honest wage as “hamsters,” right in print in the book.

He’s right in that a steady job will not make many people wildly rich. A 401(k) will not make a person wildly rich. What it will do, however, is make a person secure, both in the sense of not having to worry about the future and in the sense that their future life won’t have financial need. That’s the goal that a lot of people have in their life, and achieving that goal revolves around low-risk choices. Kiyosaki ignores risk and calls such people “hamsters.” I don’t really have much respect for that attitude. Different people value different things in life, and an awful lot of people value steadiness and security – that doesn’t make them “hamsters,” it makes them the backbone of America.

Have you met anyone who said that his advice really worked for them?
I’ve never met people face to face who have said positive things about Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I’ve read many positive comments from Simple Dollar commenters about the book, but it’s often hard to tell whether the people are legitimate or whether they’re people who have paid thousands of dollars for a seminar and want to feel as though they’ve made a good decision.

You also wrote an article about buyng your car – 2009 Toyota Prius. What were some of the main reasons you bought it?
We bought the car for two reasons: fuel efficiency and reliability. My wife commutes almost forty miles one way to work about three days a week, plus all of our family lives about four hours away from where we live and we visit them regularly. Thus, we rack up a lot of miles on our cars.

We sat down and ran the numbers several times on a multitude of cars available, both new and used. We took the Consumer Reports reliability data on makes and models into it, and we also calculated fuel costs up to 200,000 miles on the car’s odometer assuming gas prices at $2 a gallon and at $3 a gallon. We simply couldn’t find a better deal than the Prius that we purchased, even after a multi-month hunt. We found ones that exceeded it on total cost of ownership questions – the cost of buying the car, getting it road-worthy, and paying for fuel up to 200,000 miles – but they all had reliability concerns.

What types of concerns have you had with recent news about Toyota?
Every large manufacturer is going to eventually have some sort of product problem that warrants a recall or a fix. You simply cannot test everything – you just have to do as much due diligence as you can and ship the product.

The current Toyota issue is a tricky one because it’s apparently very hard to replicate. I’ve read on messageboards where one person claims to have caused the problem by doing some specific thing, then another person can’t replicate it.

The real question is how Toyota deals with all of this over the next six months. They have to absolutely make it right by their customers, but we won’t know the full story for a while yet.

I know you are not an advisor, but what are your thoughts on municipal bonds?
I think they’re good choices for people in a high tax bracket who want something pretty safe that has returns that aren’t a big tax burden. Municipal bonds definitely have a place in a larger portfolio. However, I’m not sure that they’re the best choice for beginning investors who are often not in a really high tax bracket and would often be better off chasing larger returns with a bigger risk.

There is a lot of information out there. What is ONE THING someone listening today should do if they are having financial difficulty?
Talk about it. Don’t be ashamed of having financial difficulty. There are many, many people out there going through similar problems to what you’re going through. If you feel you can’t talk to your friends about it, go online and look for others sharing your problems.

Knowing that there are people out there who share your concerns and are willing to offer you helpful words and helpful advice can make an enormous difference when it looks as though the chips are down.

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