Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Melissa writes in: I’d be interested in knowing if its economical to make your own pasta. I did it the first time the other day to make noodles for my chicken noodle soup because i didn’t want to run to the store. The noodles were far superior, but it did take a bit of time as opposed to dumping a bag of egg noodles in the pot.

This is fairly hard to quantify, actually. Making your own noodles can be surprisingly inexpensive. All you really need are eggs and flour to put together noodles at a lower cost than what can be found in a store, and, as you mentioned, they are just fantastic noodles. Once you start using them, it’s really tough to go back to purchased noodles because the quality difference is immense.

The challenge here is time. To make your own noodles, you’re going to have to invest some significant time in making the dough, rolling it out thin enough to make noodles, then cutting it up.

Just to measure the time, I made a batch of egg noodles in my own kitchen recently. You just take four cups of flour, plus four eggs, plus enough water to make the volume of the eggs equal a cup (if needed, it might not be depending on your egg size). Knead the eggs and flour together until it makes a dough, then roll it out flat repeatedly, folding it over, and rolling it out again on a floured surface, then cutting the noodles and leaving them out to dry. This is about $1.20 worth of ingredients, and it took about forty five minutes to convert all of the dough into noodles working at a steady pace.

I then went to the store and found a pound of extra wide egg noodles for $2. In terms of cost, I saved about $0.80 on the batch, but the noodles I made were light years ahead in quality.

If you’re doing a strict cost comparison, I saved about $1 per hour of work making the noodles from scratch in a typical home kitchen environment. If you’re making them from scratch just to save money, it’s not worth it.

The problem with that simple conclusion, though, is that you’re not quite comparing apples to apples. The quality of homemade noodles far surpasses what you’re ever going to buy in a store.

If you really value the food you make at home, then making homemade noodles is going to be worth it. It’s enough to turn a regular meal into a memorable one and a great meal into a fantastic one. It’s the kind of thing that will leave your guests truly enjoying the meal you prepared and leave you with a satisfied mouth and stomach.

It’s also going to be healthier, because you control the ingredients. If you want to use whole wheat flour and egg whites, you can. If you want to make your own specific flour mix, you can. If you want to use farm fresh eggs, you can. You control it all. There’s no hidden ingredients or preservatives or mysterious industrial processes or anything else.

Such value, though, is incredibly hard to quantify because it comes down to the value you hold in such things.

If it were all about the dollars and cents, you’d probably never make your own noodles.

But sometimes, it’s not about the dollars and cents.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Will and/or trust
2. Setting monthly savings goals
3. Buying a SUV
4. Geocaching
5. HAMP concerns
6. Credit card to fund Roth?
7. Television as cheap hobby
8. On depressing career track
9. Online personal finance software
10. Splitting IRA and loan payments

Several parents wrote to me and asked how we handle the annual tradition of “trick or treat night” with our children.

Simply put, we allow our children to go trick or treating in our neighborhood. One of us goes with the children, while the other stays at home to hand out candy to the (literally) three hundred children that will stop by our house.

When they get home, we allow them to eat three pieces of candy that night, then we put the rest into a shared “black tub.” If they behave well, they’re allowed to have one piece of candy out of the “black tub” per day. Of course, they have to remember this themselves, and they often don’t.

We usually end up having more candy on hand than they ever eat.

Q1: Will and/or trust
I have 5 children, whose ages are 25, 28, 29, 45 and 48, and I have two grandchildren, 2 and 5. I am close only to tne youngest child. I have a substantial amount of money invested, and am trying to decide how to split it among my children and 2 grandchildren. 4 of my children choose not to include me in their lives, don’t come to visit, or even, in some cases, don’t write or call. When I was in the hospital recently, the youngest took time off his construction job (where he has no benefits) and came to work on my house and help me for a week or so.

One of my daughters told me I should leave my money to all the children and grandkids equally, so there won’t be fighting. I lean toward a small amount to each child, and then dividing a large amount according to the care and concern each has shown me–if they don’t care about me, why should I leave them money?

I am torn but my failing health and advancing age (I am 68) tells me I had better decide or I will die intestate and that isn’t how I want things. It would solve the problem for me though. Another of my kids, when told I might want to leave a scholarship or a charitable trust, told me I shouldn’t be considering spending “her” money that way. My children can be very selfish, but I don’t want to punish them, I just can’t decide how to divide what I have. Can you help
- Mary

Leave your money how you want to leave it. Include a note in your will saying exactly what you said here, that you gave money according to the care and concern they gave for you, that it was your own decision, and that you spoke to none of them about it before or after making it.

If your children are selfish and show you no care or concern, forget about them.

If you’re worried about their relationships after you’ve left, ask yourself how good their relationships are now, and also ask yourself whether or not jealousy and anger will exist no matter what you do. Trust me, equality does not make everyone happy. In your picture, for example, does everyone have the exact same number of children? Does everyone have the exact same economic status? If not, there are going to be people claiming that they deserved a different share or that they got ripped off. I have personally witnessed this happen.

Do what you want to do. Let them do whatever they may, because they’ll do it with or without you.

Q2: Setting monthly savings goals
I am a temporary resident living in Canada. I’m single, 27 years old and graduated this May with Computer Science Degree. I work as a Programmer and make $44,700 basic+$11,000 worth of perks on top. After federal tax and health insurance I end up with around $2,300 per month. I have $3000 in student loan to pay back to my parents and no other debt and no credit card (I want to get one considering it makes online purchases/flight tickets possible). I put 5% to my pension plan and the company matches it. I have no emergency fund yet.

Regarding my spending habits, I am neither frugal nor spendthrift. I like shopping but I do so based on need of the apartment I’m living in (Rent= $750) and if I like something I want and it’s less than $50 I buy it without hesitation. Usually for bigger expenses such as if I want a gadget say laptop worth $1000, I look at my savings or I target for X amount of saving before I buy the prized possession. I love to plan and use excel spreadsheet for everything – from work, home expenditure to my 1-5-3 year goals. My parents will retire soon (dad next year and mom in 2014) and are hoping to come live with me here in Canada, I want to support, provide them with whatever their needs and wishes are openly as they age. I also travel once/twice every year to California(sister) or India (parents).

I don’t have any financial goals yet (Monthly,Quartery or yYearly). I plan and save ONLY when I want something such as some thing(gadgets, shoes, handbags etc). My fixed expense is $950 (Rent $750,Phone Bill $50, Starbucks $ 150) My Boy friend buys all the groceries as he is living with me until May 2012 before moving back to his home in U.S permanently. For snow storm days I take the local transit which is $2, in rain, hail or sunshine I walk to work which is aprox. 25 minutes walk (to and back- keeps me fit). So given those figures, What monthly savings goals should I have?
- Sandra

Your email tells me little about what goals you should have. All it mentions are the things that you’re doing now, not the things you want to achieve.

What things do you want to achieve in the future? When? What money is going to be needed to achieve them? That, right there, is your list of financial goals.

Your savings goals should exist solely to meet your highest priority financial goals. I can’t tell you what those goals are. That’s something that comes from your own life. Financial goals are intertwined with the life you want to live, not someone else.

Sandra then followed up with a goal-oriented question.

Q3: Buying a SUV
I want to purchase an SUV next year and then eventually a two bedroom house. Also I want to save some amount for my wedding (not until i get citizenship i.e roughly 3 years). How much do I must need to save?
- Sandra

Let’s look at each one, then.

Let’s say you want to buy a SUV in one year. If you’re buying a used one, let’s say it will set you back $10,000. You’ll need to start saving about $850 a month to make that goal.

If you want to have a wedding in three years and want to start saving now, you’re going to need an estimate of how much you’re going to budget for that wedding. If we say it’s going to be around $10,000, you’ll need to start saving about $300 a month to make that goal.

All told, you’re going to need to sock away $1,150 a month for these goals starting today, dropping back to $300 a month when you get the SUV.

Alternately, you could focus entirely on the SUV saving first. Save $850 a month for the SUV now, then save about $425 a month for the wedding starting when you get the SUV paid off. This is probably a more financially reasonable plan.

Q4: Geocaching
Several families have told me recently that they participate in geocaching as a cheap and fun hobby. What is your take on geocaching?
- Randall

It’s fun, inexpensive, and family friendly. All you really need is a GPS unit, a functional mode of transportation, and some spare time to enjoy it.

We’ve used GeoCaching.com to find some caches in the past, and have also been given coordinates by friends.

The thing to keep in mind with geocaching is that you’re not expecting to find an awesome treasure. Instead, you’re mostly trying to enjoy the experience of finding the cache, and when you do find it, you get to see something (usually) interesting inside and perhaps swap it for something you bring with you that someone else might find interesting. For example, I did some geocaching where I left behind signed copies of my book in a waterproof bag.

It’s mostly just an excuse to get outside with the family and explore with some semblance of purpose.

Q5: HAMP concerns
I owe approx. $121,000 on a house that is worth $90,000 now. I have an FHA loan. Two months ago I contacted my mortgage company, Bank of America, about the HAMP program to see if I qualify. One month ago they sold my mortgage to another company, Greentree, that does not participate in this program. I heard on the radio that all of these programs are ending Dec 31st this year. Can I do anything about my underwater mortgage without actually selling my house and moving. I still have 20 yrs until I retire so I really do not want to move. I can pay my house payments but really do not want to pay more for a house that its worth. Any suggestions?
- Paula

If your lender is not participating in HAMP, you can’t benefit from it. HAMP only works if the lender is cooperative to the process.

If you’d like to try anyway, you can always call the HAMP Hope hotline at 888-995-HOPE and see if they have a suggestion for you.

However, I wouldn’t expect a loan modification. Banks that took federal bailout money were somewhat pushed into the HAMP program, and banks that didn’t take such money don’t have the motivation to participate in loan modifications unless they’ve determined it is in their financial best interests.

Q6: Credit card to fund Roth?
My husband and I are both 28. We are in the 15% federal tax bracket. This year we have put a lot of money into our house and we are unable to fully fund our Roth IRA’s for 2011.

I received some checks from one of my credit cards with 0% interest for 1 year and a 3% balance transfer fee.

Assuming we can pay off the credit card before the 0% interest ends, would you recommend we use the CC offer to fund our Roths this year?
- Charlene

This is an extremely poor idea. You are far better off just skipping the Roth contribution for this year rather than borrowing money to make the contribution.

There are a multitude of things that can go wrong in your life in the future that can cause you to regret this move, from personal crises to simply forgetting to cover a bill. By having a large amount of debt on a credit card, even a 0% one, you’re simply giving yourself a helping of financial risk.

Let’s say you do this and the stock market takes a dive, which it very well might after the strong run it’s had recently. One of you loses a job, then you find yourself needing that money. Not only have you lost your Roth contribution for the year, you’ve also taken a healthy loss on that money, which means you can’t pay back the bill at a time when money is tight.

Recognize that you did invest that money this year – into your house – and plan so that you can contribute next year.

Q7: Television as cheap hobby
I don’t understand why you deride television so much. It’s an incredibly inexpensive hobby. For the hours of enjoyment I get out of it, I pay pennies.
- Monica

Television is an incredibly passive and addictive form of entertainment. Your brainwaves actually slow (from beta waves, which indicate active thought, to alpha waves, which are almost sleep-like) when you watch it for more than a moment.

It’s embedded with a constant stream of advertisements and even product placements within the programs with the sole purpose of either convincing you to buy or altering your viewpoints on public policy.

The vast majority of viewing is done in a physically sedentary state as well.

It requires electricity to run and requires a paid programming service for most of what you see beyond the four or five broadcast networks.

I just don’t find it to be an effective use of my leisure time or leisure dollars, given the vast world that’s available in the outdoors, with friends, or at my local library.

Q8: On depressing career track
I live in Eastern Europe, and i am remotely working for a French Company. I do get great salary (would be considered good even in US – about 40k after taxes), mainly because taxes here are very low. I can work whenever i want, as long as my job is done and i can do it from any location in the world. So far sounds great ? well it is not, i lack any motivation in what i do. There are no companies that can pay me better in my own country, nor can give me same freedom. I am not willing to relocate to other country , as i do have a family here. Basically i can not get promotion as i am outsourced employee. So i am kind of stuck here. Don’t like much what i do, but i can’t say i hate it. The way economy is going i see myself being in the same situation for many years. This is utterly depressing. I can’t leave it and it is not easy to live with it too. Any recommendations how to deal with all this?
- Alan

If you don’t have the kind of work available to you where you live, your options are limited. You either can move to find work (which you seem to have ruled out), you can try to find work in a different field where you live, or you can telecommute if you have the right kind of career.

You seem to be unhappy with the choice you’ve made – telecommuting – and you’ve ruled out moving to find work, too.

My suggestion, then, would be to try to find work in a different field where you live. This may involve re-education or training, of course, but at least you’ll be in a career path that you have more control over in the area where you choose to live.

The key to fighting depression with your career is to take action and seek a different path than the one you’re on.

Q9: Online personal finance software
Our family dynamics are changing and I am having a difficult time adjusting what I do to monitor the family finances.

Once upon a time I was a Microsoft Money Junkie. Our computer with that software died many moons ago, but we had a plan in place so I was able to handle/monitor things through Excel. Now my husband wants to start a side business, and our children are approaching moving out/college age, so I think it is time to adjust or create a new budget/plan.

The computer that I currently use, is for teleworking. The company I work for does not have an issue with me using it for personal use (though there are the standard exceptions); however, I cannot load software on it (company owning the licensing on whatever is on the computer). I have looked at many of the online software available and find them lacking. The feature I am missing is some sort of cash flow statement. One that looks at the end of the month/quarter/year with reoccurring bills/ income and states what the balances will be. To me this is key.

In your exposure to this subject, do you know of a software that has this function?
- Jennifer

The software that immediately comes to mind here is Mint, which does most of what you describe in the convenience of a web window.

The software they have is very impressive and I have no complaints about how it works.

However, my concern with using Mint has stood since it first became popular. I am uncomfortable aggregating that much personal information about myself into one place. It has nothing to do with the quality of their information security. It has to do with human security. All it takes is one person to do something unethical and all of my personal finance information is in someone else’s hands.

To me, there is almost no software that’s worth that. I don’t even keep my personal information on my internet-accessible computers at home. It’s just not worth the risk.

Q10: Splitting IRA and loan payments
My two main sources of debt are a car loan (~$18K @ 3.75%, $336/month minimum) and students loans from 8 years of college (~$26K @ 4.25%, $174/month minimum). I also have a mortgage on my home (~$105K @ 4.25%, $825/mo including property taxes and insurance), but I’ve left that out of this scenario as I’m more concerned about paying off the car and student loans right now. I have no credit card debt. I currently have enough money in my emergency fund to last about four months, which is an amount I’m comfortable with.

I make $46K/yr, and have about $850 each month left over after all my necessary expenses (the minimums on the loans above are included in the necessary expenses, so everything that follows is on top of the minimums). Out of that $850, I put aside $100/mo for “goals” (road trips, hobbies, etc) and $100/mo for renovations I’m doing on my home. This leaves $650/mo to split between my IRA contributions (my employer doesn’t currently offer a 401(k)) and paying down the loans. In addition, I have the 25th and 26th biweekly salary payments of roughly $1471 each that I don’t factor into my monthly budget at all.

My question is this: is there an ideal way of splitting the money between the IRA and loan paydowns? I could do something like this:
IRA – $171.50/mo plus $2942 (both extra salary payments)
Loans – $478.50/mo

or

IRA – $294.09/mo plus $1471 (one extra salary payment)
Loans – $355.91/mo plus $1471 (one extra salary payment)

or

IRA – $416.67/mo
Loans – $233.33/mo plus $2942 (both extra salary payments)

In all three, my IRA is maxed out each year and the same amount goes into the loan paydowns, but I’m wondering if one method is better than the others. For example, to minimize the interest accruing on the loans, would I get better results with two bigger and ten smaller payments each year or twelve equal payments that are somewhere in between?
- Jeff

Generally, with debt payments, the earlier the extra payment is, the better. The reason is that an early payment locks you in to lower interest over the lifetime of the loan. An early payment in January will cause you to have a lower loan balance all through the year (accruing less interest) than an early payment in December.

With an IRA, it’s impossible to tell which is better because investment markets are very unpredictable. You can’t know for certain what they’re going to do in the future. The common tactic is to just invest the same amount every week or month and hope to ride both the ups and downs to a good conclusion.

If I were you, I’d pay the IRA as steady as possible. If you have any “bursts” of money available, I’d apply them to your loans the first moment you can. That would point me toward your third plan.

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

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance or other book of interest. Also available is a complete list of the hundreds of book reviews that have appeared on The Simple Dollar over the years.

If you’ve read The Simple Dollar for a while, you know that I’m a big believer in the maxim that time is money. I’m quite passionate about time management, because I see it as a way to maximize what I earn from the time I spend working so that I can spend more of my time doing other things that I’m passionate about, like spending time with my family or reading engaging books.

In fact, one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read was David Allen’s classic time management book Getting Things Done. It drastically altered how I managed my time and made it possible for me to hold down a full time job and build The Simple Dollar at the same time while also maintaining a home life with a good marriage and two very young children.

Since then, I’ve read a lot of good time management books. For the most part, they’ve simply supplemented the GTD system that I already use with specific tactics or made me re-evaluate some life choices in a philosophical way.

This book, 18 Minutes by Peter Bregman, comes very highly regarded from multiple readers of The Simple Dollar who recommended it to me (I get about ten book recommendation emails a week). Bregman writes a column for the Harvard Business Review on managing yourself, of which a significant focus is time management.

The focus of this book is on eliminating distraction, finding focus, and making good choices about what to do with your time. His approach is a bit different in that he talks about making proactive distractions for yourself, so that when you’re distracted from the task at hand, you stumble right into something else that’s useful.

Pause
So many of us with busy lives are so caught up in the overabundance of things that we have on our to-do list that we never bother to stop for a moment and ask ourselves why we’re doing thse things. Often, we’re filling our day with things that are, in the big scheme of things, pretty unimportant, and those unimportant things are crowding out the genuinely important ones.

Bregman’s advice is to simply “pause” for a bit and get things in perspective. A “pause,” in Bregman’s book, is a time where you simply look at the things you’re doing and order them in terms of how important they are to you in your overall life. Where do we want to be going in a general sense? What kind of person do we want to be?

Recognize that all of the choices we make have costs and they have benefits. A choice to work late might mean less sleep or less time building a deep relationship with our spouse or our wife. What’s the right choice? It can be a challenging question, but without pausing sometimes, we don’t have the time to give it the thought it needs to be sure we’re coming up with the right answer.

What Is This Year About?
One big part in determining what’s important is thinking about the things you want to achieve over the medium term and the long term. Where do you want to be a year from now? Five years from now? Which of the things on your plate is most likely to help you get to that place?

So much of what we do on a daily basis has little impact on our lives from that perspective, and thus it’s worthwhile to actively lower the importance of such things. The things that are actually important are the things that have long term impact on our lives and we should strive to focus on those as much as possible.

What Is This Day About?
This, of course, brings us to today. Once we understand what big things we want from life, it’s easier to prioritize the things that need to be done today. In other words, if we have a long checklist of things to take care of, which of those actually has a significant positive impact toward our long term ideas?

One way to effectively do this is to simply surround yourself with things that all have a positive impact toward our long term goals. Load your office down with things you’d like to make progress on over the long term, and do the same with your home.

Thus, when you are distracted, something that Bregman more or less describes as inevitable, the things you’re distracted by are also things that relate to a long-term goal. For example, if one of your big goals is improving your fitness, put a resistance band near your desk. That way, when you’re distracted, you’ll see that band and do some stretches, filling your time with something goal-oriented instead of something useless.

Is 18 Minutes Worth Reading?
The entire focus of this book seems to be dealing with our overcrowded lives, where our day-to-day activities don’t match up with the things we want out of our lives. I found that it offered a lot of good, sensible advice, but the specific implementations seem to be extremely varied in that you’re going to find some that work for you and a lot that do not, and the ones that work for you are going to be different than the ones that work for someone else.

For me, I felt like I got quite a lot out of this book. The ideas in it made me reorganize my office in a more “goal-oriented” fashion, as described above, as that was the most powerful idea that came from this book for me. If I can get one “home run” idea from a book, then it was a worthwhile read for me, and I think there are a lot of “home run” ideas in this book for people struggling with time management.

Check out additional reviews and notes of 18 Minutes on Amazon.com.

When I worked for an employer, one thing that sometimes frustrated me was having a boss. Although we had a good relationship, there were often times where I was instructed or guided toward doing something that either seemed to be way outside of my typical job (and thus way outside of my expertise) or didn’t seem to be an efficient use of my time.

Naturally, I did these things. I might not have felt it was my job to do these things, but I usually felt that my employment was on the line.

A few times, it was made known to me how replaceable I was, just to drive home the point.

Part of the problem was that in some ways, I felt trapped in that job, regardless of whether I liked it or not (and I largely did like it). I was in a financial situation where I felt I needed that job.

Whenever you’re in a situation where you feel you need something, the more power you cede to the people around you that provide it. In this case, it was my boss.

Even though I was largely happy at my previous job, this lack of control or power over a large part of my financial destiny made me uncomfortable, and it was part of the reason why I spent an awful lot of my free time over the past decade trying to build an independent career path for myself.

Simply put, the worse your financial situation is, particularly in a poor economy, the more power you hand over to your boss. That person is often aware how much you financially need your job and they’re also aware of how difficult you might find it to find a new job.

So, what can you do about it? What can you do to reduce the relative power of your boss and you in the workplace? Here are some tactics.

Improve your finances This is the first step, and it’s a big one. Think about your financial state if you lost your current employment tomorrow. What would happen if you went without a job for a year? Would you lose your house? Would you have to declare bankruptcy?

Those things become a weight over your head, one that your boss holds the leverage on. The simplest way to take away that leverage – and improve your own situation and reduce your stress about your money – is to take control of things.

Start by building an emergency fund that consists of at least a month’s worth of living expenses. After that, get rid of all of your debt. All of it. If you accomplish these things, you’ll have already accomplished another big skill you’ll need, which is spending less than you earn. Keep building your emergency fund.

Build your skill set, especially skills that transfer Few things assure your independence from your employer like a strong skill set, particularly a skill set that other employers will find desirable.

Of course, this means you have to work on your skill set. What kinds of skills would make you a very hot commodity in your field? What kinds of skills do the top people have in your field. What kinds of experiences do they have?

Often, this includes both technical skills for your field as well as transferable skills like the ability to speak effectively in public. If you can build a resume of success that shows off accomplishments using a lot of these skills, you’ve suddenly got a lot of maneuverability in your field – and perhaps even outside of it.

Build a strong network of contacts The more people you know in your profession, the easier it will be to rebound from an unexpected job loss or move to another position if you need to due to other reasons.

The easiest way to do this is to attend conferences with the primary purpose of meeting people and building relationships. If you can do this through your job, great. However, you may need to do this on your own without the help of your job. If that’s the case, it’s well worth it.

Once you build some contacts, put in the effort to keep in touch with them. Send them regular emails asking how they’re doing. Send them a holiday season greeting card. Send them opportunities when you can and help them when you can. This will build a great relationship with them, which can come in handy later on.

Build your own side business This is another option for decreasing the power your boss holds over you. If you have a side business, a forced career change simply means that you now have the easy option to build your side business into something bigger.

The best side business is one that taps into something you’re passionate about, but doesn’t necessarily mean turning a hobby into a job. For example, I’m passionate about writing, but my hobby is gaming. I would not want to turn gaming into a job, but I really enjoy writing for a living.

Think about the things you’ve done as work in the past that you’ve really enjoyed and you’re probably going to find yourself somewhere near where your small business should be.

In the end, though, the key is financial independence, of which professional independence is a big component. The more free you are, the more opportunities life will hold for you.

When I stand in a bookstore (or a clothing store or whatever it is that excites you) and ask myself what I want right now, that’s short term thinking.

When I stand in a bookstore and ask myself what I want for my life over the next five years, that’s long term thinking.

Short term thinking leads to a better moment. Long term thinking leads to a better life.

One of my biggest personal goals over the past few years has been to try to shift as much of my thinking as possible toward the long term. If I’m in the bookstore, what’s the best move to make with the long term future in mind? If I’m spending time with my family, what’s the best move to make with the long term future in mind?

Here are some specific tactics I’ve found during this process.

I mostly stick to entertainment that makes me think or improves my health. When I’m trying to decide if I’ll watch a movie or read a book, I’ll look at reviews and see if it can make me think along the way.

This doesn’t mean that I’m sacrificing entertainment for that sake. It means that I’m looking for things that can both entertain and engross me while also making my mind work and grow in some fashion.

On the other hand, I also like to look for leisure activities that improve my health. A hike in the woods can do that, as can playing at the park with my children.

Simply put, I look for things that will provide some long-term benefit beyond just providing enjoyment in the short term. I have fun now and build a better person for later.

I try to look for items and activities that have a lower cost. If you’ve been reading this site, that’s not surprising. That doesn’t mean, however, that I just buy the cheapest thing. I usually try to identify a good version of something using resources like Consumer Reports, then I strive to minimize the cost of it.

Cost, however, doesn’t just mean money. Is there a space cost associated with this? Is there a time cost, both in actively using it and in maintaining it?

Take buying a DVD, for example. It might cost $10 at the store. However, I have to have a spot for it in my home. I also have to maintain it – take it in and out of the DVD player, put it in its case, keep it on the shelf, keep the shelf clean, and eventually deal with selling it or donating it. Money. Time. Space.

I’d much prefer to pay $2 to stream that movie once to my home. The only way I would actually be behind in terms of money is if I watched it more than five times, which I can name only a few movies or programs I would ever do that with. The storage space is almost nonexistent (there’d have to be some sort of multipurpose device for viewing) and the maintenance time and effort is extremely small, too.

Focused family time is invaluable. There are many times when I’d rather engage in an adult activity than play with my kids or engage in a solitary activity. Yet, I find that time spent with the family tends to pay off again and again due to the deeper bonds that are built.

I can see the many hours spent doing family things in the behaviors and relationships I see in my home. My children aren’t constantly clamoring for attention because they’re confident in the relationships they have. Everyone seems happy, comfortable, and unafraid at home. Our children ask questions of all kinds and aren’t afraid to dig deep into what they’re curious about. Will this always remain in place? Probably not, but we have a good foundation and things are going well so far.

Everything we do today builds toward the future in either a positive way or a negative way. How we spend our money. How we spend our time. The things we bring into our home. How we interact with the people around us. All of these things sow seeds for the future. Either those seeds will grow a beautiful garden or they’ll grow weeds. It’s up to you to decide what to plant.

Each week, I highlight ten things each week that inspired me to greater financial, personal, and professional success. Hopefully, they will inspire you as well.

1. Pumpkins
Pumpkins are sitting on our front step. Our garden has more squash and similar vegetables than we know what to do with. Leaves are falling from the trees.

Yes, October is here. Thanks to Yaxzone for the great picture (better than my own of the pumpkins on our front step).

2. Garrison Wynn on the fear of change
Change is scary and challenging. It involves upending things we hold dear. Yet, quite often, it can result in much better things. What can cause us to do such a thing?

“When the pain of what we are going through becomes greater than the fear of change, we change.” – Garrison Wynn

The trick is to realize just how much pain your current path is causing you and just how little you have to fear from the change.

3. Fitocracy
If you’ve ever wanted a good online motivational tool to push you to exercise, sign up for the beta now. This is a wonderfully well thought out tool that works well no matter what your fitness level. It does a great job of turning fitness into a game.

4. MAKE Magazine’s Youtube channel
I’ve been really looking for fun projects to do with my kids lately, particularly ones that are fun to do and end up with something useful at the end. The wide array of projects available from MAKE Magazine’s YouTube channel have really hit the spot with this.

I particularly enjoyed this video of making a messenger bag out of plastic shopping bags:

5. Aristotle on quality
Doing something well shouldn’t be an unexpected surprise.

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.” – Aristotle

It should be a standard you live by. Think of all the great people you’ve known and relied on over the years. Quality wasn’t just a one-time act by them.

6. Northern Fantasy by Kseniya Simonova
I’ve linked to this artist’s work before, but I just love it when I find something by her that I’ve not seen before.

I am just stunned at what Kseniya can do with sand and a light box.

7. If by Rudyard Kipling
This is a pretty strong standard to live by.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream, and not make dreams your master;
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

That’s something to aim for.

8. Andrew Carnegie on empty money
Money doesn’t really mean a whole lot if there’s not substance behind the person possessing it.

“There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.” – Andrew Carnegie

Just being rich isn’t enough to make one a success. I’ve met my fair share of people who never had to struggle for anything and it’s not pretty.

9. New Beginnings
I’m always inspired whenever I see a plant fighting for survival in a completely inhospitable place and winning that fight. There’s no reason that plant should be living there, but somehow it’s making it. Why can’t I do the same?

Thanks to Ingrid Taylor for the wonderful picture.

10. Smiley Faces by Gnarls Barkley
The song is catchy, but it was the video that really hooked me with this one. It’s basically an encapsulation of the visual identity of popular music and culture during the entire twentieth century, done very tongue-in-cheek. Unfortunately, embedding this video is disabled, so you’ll have to click through to see it.

It’s a few years old now, but I saw it again this week and couldn’t help but put on a smiley face.

Dinner with My Family is taking a one week break this week.

Most of the time, when people mention frugality, the first thing that comes to mind is doing without little pleasures. They think of giving up something that they deeply enjoy, like their morning coffee or their weekly lunch out with coworkers.

I’ll be completely honest: this was my first impression of frugality, too. When I was starting to feel some financial bumps because of my overspending in late 2005 and early 2006, I looked at some basic frugality tips in magazines like Money and, frankly, I came away with a negative taste in my mouth.

The reason was that my attention was always drawn to the things I didn’t want to get rid of. My focus was on the things that I felt would impact my happiness. I would look through a list of a hundred frugality tips, pick out the two that I felt would have a big negative impact on my happiness, and choose to believe that frugality was terrible and not fun and would make my life a boring misery.

Guess what? If you start with that approach, frugality is going to be pretty awful for you.

Simply put, it’s those little key pleasures that should be the last thing you cut. They’re the ones that carry psychological and emotional weight for you. They’re the ones that tell you that life is good on a day to day basis. They’re the ones you care about.

If you’re first getting started on frugality, start by focusing on things that have little or no direct impact on the things you enjoy about life. Focus on projects like air-sealing your home. Give some generic products a try when you’re shopping. Fill up your car tires to the maximum recommended pressure. In fact, I have a great starter list of 100 frugal tactics to get started, and I wrote a book containing 365 such tactics.

Here’s the key part, though. Keep track of every dime you saved because of your frugal moves. Write them down in a notebook. Then, once a week, move that much out of your checking account into your savings account.

This way, the money you save with frugality isn’t going to just go toward other unnecessary expenses. Instead, the money in your savings account can go strictly for things like extra payments on your debt, building an emergency fund so you don’t have to rely on credit in a pinch, and so on.

What I began to find, though, was that frugality was actually quite fun.

At first, I started to view the amount I was saving as a “high score” that I needed to beat. I would keep a careful eye on the amount I was saving and constantly strive to save more. I’d view my frugality for the previous month as a record I’d want to beat for the next month.

This motivated me to start to choose to give up or alter some of the perks I previously enjoyed. I wanted to see how much of an impact not going to the coffee shop might have or not eating out for lunch might have or not stopping at the bookstore every little bit might have. On the whole, choosing frugality was more fun than the alternative at that time, mostly from a “keeping score” standpoint.

Eventually, though, I began to appreciate many of the frugal things I was doing for their own sake. The first thing I remember is I began to really enjoy going to the park with my son instead of trying to find the perfect educational toy for him or something along those lines. We’d just go to the park, run around in the grass, go down the slide, and make up adventures along the way.

Some of it, of course, is just establishing new life patterns and getting used to them, but there’s also a lot of merit in simply trying new things that we previously ruled out for some reason and discovering that those things are surprisingly good.

It turns out that those small economies of pleasure work a bit differently than I originally thought.

Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Aimee writes in: how many loads of laundry do i need to do to have an energy efficient pay for itself?

Obviously, this is going to vary quite a lot depending on the specific “normal” washing machine and the specific high-efficiency washing machine. I’ll go into the calculations using some aggregated statistics to show how many loads, on average, you’d have to do in a high-efficiency machine to make up for the extra cost.

CNet reports that you can buy a normal top-loading washing machine for $300-$650 and a high-efficiency machine for $600-$1,600. We’ll take the 40th percentile in both ranges, as it will more or less average the ones readers might actually buy and ignore the very high end ones with unnecessary bells and whistles.

This means we’ll be using a cost of $440 for the normal machine and $1,000 for the high-efficiency machine. That’s a difference of $560.

What about energy and water use? I used the energy calculator on the Mr. Electricity site and calculated that a top-loading (normal) washer would use $0.62 in energy and water per load, while a front-loading (high-efficiency) washer would use $0.41 in energy and water per load. I assumed that you’d be doing equal amounts of hot, warm, and cold washing and an electric water heater with a cost of $0.12 per kilowatt hour in obtaining those numbers.

That means, for each load of laundry done, a high-efficiency washer would save you $0.21 per load.

At a rate of $0.21 per load, you’d have to do 2,667 loads to make the high efficiency washer worthwhile.

That’s a lot of loads at first glance. However, the average American household does almost 400 loads per year, which means you’d be at that level in about six and a half years.

Of course, much of this calculation is dependent on the exact numbers used. Let’s say, for example, you’re comparing the lowest-end top loader with the lowest-end front loader, you’d have a difference of $300 instead of $560. That would only require you to do 1,428 loads to catch up. That’s about three and a half years.

Let’s say you’re living in an area with an energy cost of $0.15 per kilowatt hour. Your savings per load would jump to $0.22 per load, requiring you to have to do only 1,364 loads to catch up. You’re getting down to three years and a few months.

Here’s the real truth: the big cost in washing clothes is the cost of heating the water. If you want to start saving money on each of your laundry loads, the best way to start is to minimize your cost of heating your water. A simple step would be to turn down the heat level on your water heater. A more drastic (and expensive up front) step that would save money in the long run is to use a tankless water heater.

For me, it would come down to cash on hand. If I were buying on credit, I would get the least expensive washing machine I could, as the interest on credit card debt destroys any energy efficiency savings I might get. If I were paying cash and could afford either option, though, I’d get a reliable energy efficient one, sticking with recommendations from Consumer Reports.