Saturday, October 8, 2011

The Simple Dollar Time Machine: October 30, 2010

Many newer readers of The Simple Dollar haven’t been exposed to the hundreds of great articles in the archives of the site, so this is a weekly series that highlights the five best posts from one year ago this week, two years ago this week, and three years ago this week. I call it … the Time Machine.

One Year Ago (October 24 – October 30, 2009)
The Ten Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Money and Life Since Starting The Simple Dollar This article really sums up the valuable things I’ve learned over the past several years.

Ethical Frugality Week: Regifting I don’t think regifting is necessarily a bad thing. If you can put an item into the hands of someone who will genuinely enjoy it more than you, I’m fine with it.

Stress and Overspending When I’m stressed, I simply spend too much. There’s a deep connection between the comfort level in your psyche and your ability to make good choices in the moment.

14 Ways a Notebook in Your Pocket Can Save You Money Quite seriously, my life would be far less productive without a note-taking device of some kind in my pocket.

Why Windfalls Make Many People Unhappy We’ve all heard stories about the lottery winner who discovered that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Two Years Ago (October 24 – October 30, 2008)
Brand Preferences and the Two Year Old Child What can make a very young child prefer some brands over other brands? I was mystified by this when my first child was two, so I dug into the question.

Some Follow-Up Thoughts on Fruity Cheerios and Branding Our Kids My investigation into marketing to very young children continued a few days later. I was really stunned by this.

Should an Entrepreneurial High Schooler Go to College? My answer was yes, but part of that is fueled by a sense that college is often wasted on people straight out of high school.

Eleven Tactics for a Cheaper Christmas It’s so easy to overspend during the holiday season. Here are seven ways my family commonly reduces holiday spending.

Exploring the Connection Between Time and Money I think that money is simply a representation of time spent, and the more money you get for your time, the more effective that time was.

Three Years Ago (October 24 – October 30, 2007)
Spam Emails About Individual Stocks: What’s The Scam? The scam is “pump and dump” – they want you to escalate the price so they can sell the stock at a profit.

A Deeper Look At Dave Ramsey’s Seven Baby Steps To Financial Freedom – And How They Apply To Us I have a strong respect for Dave Ramsey’s straightforward debt management tactics (even if I’m not a big fan of the product upselling).

Preserving The Things That Money Can’t Buy Relationships are the big one here. A relationship with a loved one or a close friend can’t be represented in dollars.

The Eternal Question: Am I Doing The Right Thing? I find myself pondering this question quite a lot, actually. I’m never quite sure.

The Ten Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Money and Life In The Last Year This summarizes many of my revelations during the first year of The Simple Dollar’s existence.

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

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

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

2. Comment. Each article on The Simple Dollar has lively discussion. Just click on the green square in the upper right of each article on the website and join in!

3. Become a fan of The Simple Dollar on Facebook. I put up questions and other materials about once every week or two on Facebook (so you won’t be flooded with Simple Dollar updates). Join in the conversation with other Simple Dollar fans and occasionally get some interesting freebies, too.

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

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

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

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

8. Send me your questions and suggestions. Send me an email and let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like to see, and any questions you might have. I try to respond to as many emails as possible and I read them all. I may even use your question in a future article!

9. Become a “Friend of The Simple Dollar.” If you find the stuff on The Simple Dollar valuable and are willing to spend five minutes or so a month to help me out with small things, please consider signing up to be a “Friend of The Simple Dollar”.

10. Email a great article you find to a friend. Find an article that you think your friend would love? At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a link that says “Email this” – just click on that, type in your friend’s address, and send it right along to them!


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