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

It fills a special warm place in my heart when a fellow blogger, one of the first people to take an interest in The Simple Dollar and someone that I’ve communicated with pretty regularly over the past two years, gets a book published. It’s even better when that book is about frugality and the tone is witty, light, and humorous throughout.

The Frugal Duchess, by Sharon Harvey Rosenberg (of the blog of the same name) was a lot of fun to read, with a very down-to-earth tone and a fair amount of humor - just as I’ve come to expect from her blog and from her other writings.

That’s all well and fine, of course, but does it actually contain a lot of good information and tips on frugal living? Let’s dig in and find out.

A Dip Into The Frugal Duchess
As this book is actually broken up into a ton of very brief chapters, I’ll toss aside my usual review format and instead dig through the book and pull out twelve of my favorite frugal tips from the book.

Use organic cider vinegar as a hair conditioner. (p. 11) I tried it and this actually worked really well. It worked so well, in fact, that I’m considering filling up my conditioner bottle with it. Only one minor tip, though - you have to rinse really well if you use it.

Most “sales” are scams. (p. 35) Rosenberg runs the numbers on a lot of different kinds of sales tactics (like “buy one, get one half off”) and comes up with one conclusion: don’t bother with sales unless you’re going there to make a specific purchase and you know in advance what it is.

If you work a second job, segregate that pay. (p. 59) Instead of just having it all run together in your main checking account, put the cash from a second job directly into a savings account and do your day-to-day living from your primary job. Then, you can let that cash from the second job just build up into an emergency fund, a car down payment, a house down payment, or whatever else you need.

Get your “first furnishings” from a hotel. (p. 66) One great way to furnish your home is to buy from a hotel liquidation sale, where a hotel is either going out of business or massively changing the look and feel of the interior. You can often get stupendous deals on quality, sturdy furniture this way. Such sales are usually advertised in newspapers, so keep an eye out.

Don’t give a gift holiday basket; make your own. (p. 81) If you actually consider what you’re getting in most gift baskets, it’s not really much of a bargain - most of the stuff isn’t really wanted, anyway. Instead, buy your own basket and fill it with some homemade things and maybe a few small thoughtful items. It’s far cheaper and will mean a lot more.

Use a one-in, one-out policy. (p. 83) For every new item you buy or gift you receive, one item of yours has to be sold or given away. This encourages people to be very careful about the things they might buy - and also provides a great opportunity at Christmas to give things away to charity.

Don’t pay for plants for your garden. (p. 89) Stick with heirlooms, save your own seeds from year to year, and harvest seeds from interesting plants you discover. You can also often trade seeds with other frugal gardeners - gardening clubs can be a blast.

Get unlimited free soda at Disney World. (p. 99) For some reason, this one just tickled my fancy. Go to the Cool Club exhibit at the Future World section of Epcot and find the soda fountain exhibit. Grab a paper cup and taste away - there are tons of sodas to sample and they’re free.

Don’t bother with internet cafes when traveling. (p. 102) Instead, seek out local libraries. Another good tactic: find businesses that offer free wi-fi. I haven’t paid for net access on the road in years.

Use WD-40 to remove crayon from walls. (p. 109) Wow, does this work! I wasted a lot of cleaning supplies and effort getting some crayon marks off the walls around here. Two little squirts of WD-40 and a dishrag took care of the same problem with much less wasted material and time.

Dressing frugally keeps you safer. (p. 137) While flashy accessories might look good, they also look like money to potential muggers. When you’re out and about in a city environment, especially later at night, dress simply and conservatively (and thus much more cheaply) - and don’t keep a lot of cash on you, either, as that reduces splurging temptation and also means you have less to potentially lose.

Make a low-cost arts and crafts project the centerpiece of a child’s birthday party. (p. 184) Rosenberg tells an anecdote about getting door hangers (like a “do not disturb” sign) in a package of six for $2 and then getting a few other materials for decorating them - and these became a big centerpiece for a girl’s birthday party. Each guest decorated one and it occupied them for hours, plus gave them something to take home as a memento.

Some Thoughts on The Frugal Duchess
Here are three things I think I think about The Frugal Duchess.

This book is like the bizarro world version of You’re So Money. The target audience seems mostly identical - professional women with some modicum of self-control and an intelligent head on their shoulders. Yet the advice given comes from such a vastly different angle. Rosenberg repeatedly taps into the idea that frugality is cool - not something to be disdained - and she places it in a personal and family context. The other book, which I criticized for this very reason, largely acts as if frugality is a waste of time and seems to accept consumerism as the norm - that book’s strength is in investing and money management.

There’s more pop culture references here than in any personal finance book I think I’ve read. I find them humorous and also find that they make ideas in the book more relatable. The only problem is that it can date the material - this book might come off as really stale in ten years because of the references. For now, though, it’s quite fun.

The overarching themes of the book definitely point towards living in a city. There are a lot of good suggestions here that simply don’t apply to me, as I live in a highly rural area (not all of it, mind you, but most of it). This is often a frugal guide for city folk.

Is The Frugal Duchess Worth Reading?
I’m not entirely in the book’s target audience. When I was reading it, I kept thinking that this book really would have fit my wife well just before we were married - she was in her mid-twenties with some strong family values, a good head on her shoulders about most things, a strong pop culture sensibility, but lacking some good decision making when it comes to money.

The Frugal Duchess does the best job I’ve yet read of getting across the idea of frugality (and a lot of specific tips, too) to a younger, pre-family audience without entirely abandoning the older family-oriented folks, either. Most books that really hit well with a younger audience avoid the concept of frugality entirely - Rosenberg doesn’t shy away from it a bit and instead wears it as a badge of honor.

I probably would have marketed the book slightly differently, but if you can convince someone to open the cover and pay attention to what Rosenberg has to say here, it could make a world of difference.

Winter is approaching and in much of the United States, that means very cold temperatures, snow, and ice. Here in the upper Midwest, it gets particularly nasty: we had some amount of ice or snow on our driveway nonstop from October to April last winter.

As a homeowner, this change in the season means one thing: what do I need to do to protect my enormous investment in this house from the brutal change in the weather and keep money in my pocket?

One big first step is to minimize your winter heating bills. I wrote a lengthy post covering twelve tactics for doing this - here they are in a concise list:

Air seal your home.
Make sure the attic is well-insulated.
Dress warmly inside and keep the temperature low.
Get a programmable thermostat.
Minimize or eliminate use of vent fans.
Turn off the heat in unused rooms.
Use space heaters.
Make sure you have a fresh furnace filter.
Use an insulation blanket on your hot water heater (if it needs one).
Keep blinds and curtains open on the sunny side of the house and closed on the other side.
Cook at home using the oven.
Microwave a hot water bottle before bed each night, then dip the temperature.

What else? Here are twelve additional useful steps for preventive maintenance for your home. These steps will help minimize the wear and tear of the changing of the seasons of your home, putting off potential major repairs for many years.

Call an HVAC professional to inspect your furnace and your ductwork. You should always do this before the first winter you spend in a house, as well as every few winters thereafter. It’s essential that your furnace remain in good working order with clean ductwork that’s in good repair, and a professional can properly evaluate things for you quite well.

Prepare your fireplace (if you have one). Make sure the chimney’s swept and that the damper opens and closes. Also, if your chimney is made of brick, examine the brick and mortar to make sure it’s in good repair. Have plenty of firewood cut and on hand for use. You may also want to install a screen on top of the chimney to keep pests out.

Check your roof shingles and do any minor repairs you can. Ice and snow buildup on a roof can wreak havoc, so make sure that your shingles are in good shape. At the very least, do a careful ground inspection of your roof, but it might be better to just go up there on a ladder and look around for yourself. Replace any worn out tiles you find.

Clean out your gutters. Similarly, when the temperature hovers around freezing and you’re facing a lot of melting and freezing water, clogging in your gutters can create a huge logjam of ice on your roof. Prevent most of this by cleaning out your gutters in advance of the winter season, removing leaves and bird nests.

Prepare your lawn-care and garden equipment for winter. Drain the oil and gas from your mower, tiller, and weed eater. Put into careful storage any lawn and garden equipment. Drain all of your hoses and put them into storage as well, as sitting water freezing and re-freezing inside a hose can really damage it.

Service your winter equipment. Make sure your snowblower starts up after you’ve properly tuned it and put gas and oil in it (as per the directions). You don’t want to go out there and fire up your snowblower for the first time and discover that it needs oil or new spark plugs.

Pull all vegetation away from your foundation. Vegetation near your foundation can continue to grow near the warmth of your home, possibly causing the roots to grow towards your foundation. Pull any vegetation near your foundation away from it to keep your foundation in good shape.

Check (or install) your carbon monoxide detector and smoke detectors. You should have a carbon monoxide detector near your furnace and a smoke detector in all rooms in the house. Check them all to make sure they’re in proper working order.

Trim any nearby trees. If you have tree limbs near your house, particularly ones anywhere near windows, trim them back. When they get weighted down with snow and ice, they’ll bend and perhaps break - and that can spell disaster for your windows or your roof.

Seal your driveway and deck. The constant freezing and thawing of a winter season can wreak havoc on unprotected outdoor surfaces. Spend some time in the next few weeks sealing your driveway and your deck to keep the freezing water from damaging your property.

Move in your potted plants. As the weather gets colder, your plants will be affected by the temperatures more and more. Move them inside for the winter and place them in an area with adequate lighting to ensure that they live through the cold season.

Prepare an emergency kit. Major winter storms can sometimes result in multi-day power outages. Have an emergency kit with plenty of flashlights, an emergency radio (that’s powered by batteries or hand crank), plenty of blankets, and some food and water on hand in an easily-available place.

About two years ago, I wrote a very popular piece for The Simple Dollar called 30 useful Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows. In it, I talked about how I had a new Dell laptop and that I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on additional software for it, so I went hunting. I sought out open source software so that I knew it would be not only free, but the code would be peer-reviewed and it wouldn’t have any bugs or malicious elements in it. And, eventually, I found thirty pieces of software that really met my needs.

Eventually, though, I switched to using a Mac. And, just as with my PC, I wanted to find a lot of open source software to meet my basic computing needs. I didn’t want to shell out the big bucks for Office or other such expensive pieces of software - I’d already spent enough. So I went hunting.

What follows is a list of twenty five pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Macs. Not only is every piece of it free, many of them directly replace expensive software packages.

1. Firefox
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Replaces Internet Explorer and Safari
Safari is a very solid web browser out of the box, but it’s not nearly as extensible or useful as Firefox. With add-ons like Book Burro, FareFirst, and Package Mapping, plus the speed and reliability I’ve come to expect, Firefox is the only web browser for me.

2. Quicksilver
http://www.blacktree.com/
Unique but useful (productivity)
Quicksilver lets you set almost anything you can imagine in Mac OS as a keyboard shortcut. This allows me to do things like start iTunes and have it auto-play a specific podcast with a specific keyboard shortcut (I have one that auto-plays This American Life, for example). It’s a bit complicated at first, but once you get used to it, it makes you feel massively productive and it becomes almost an essential part of the OS.

3. Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/
Replaces Mail
For most purposes, the default Mac OS Mail does the trick, but I find Thunderbird essential because it allows me features like auto-replying to certain kinds of messages and far better IMAP support, and it’s faster, too. Even better - it works identically both on my PC and on my Mac.

4. Sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
Replaces iCal
I like iCal, but Mozilla Sunbird does one thing that iCal doesn’t - two-way syncing with Google Calendar. When I’m traveling, I’ll use Google Calendar at any terminal I’m at to print out tomorrow’s schedule, make little changes, and so on. When I get home, it’s just a click of a button and it all syncs up with Sunbird. That’s an amazing feature for me and it makes Sunbird far superior to iCal.

5. AbiWord
http://www.abisource.com/download/
Replaces Microsoft Word
This is, by far, the best open source word processor for Macs. It functionally replaces Microsoft Word for almost every purpose I’ve come across and has a fast and slick interface to boot. This is the word processing program I used to write my book with, in fact.

6. OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/
Replaces Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint
Need to make spreadsheets or presentations on your Mac? OpenOffice provides the tools you need for that (as well as word processing, but I prefer AbiWord for that). I often use OpenOffice Spreadsheet for the number calculations you see on The Simple Dollar, as well as using it for tracking my net worth (as in this tutorial I wrote).

7. Seashore
http://seashore.sourceforge.net/
Replaces (for most uses) Adobe Photoshop
This is a fairly simple image editor that takes care of most of the basic uses of Photoshop and is simple enough for most users to pick up. This is a great solution for those who want to do simple image manipulation but don’t want to shell out the big bucks for Photoshop.

8. Scribus
http://www.scribus.net/
Replaces Adobe Pagemaker (desktop publishing)
I’m actually elbow-deep in Scribus right now as I work on a special side project. It’s a very powerful desktop publishing program, giving you tons of freedom to lay out pages however you like. Another use: I’m thinking about making a family newsletter to ship out in the Christmas cards this year.

9. Adium
http://adiumx.com/
Replaces iChat
iChat is pretty slick, allowing me to chat in AIM and GTalk at the same time, but what about all of the other chatting protocols out there. Adium allows you to be on YahooIM, Windows Messenger, AIM, ICQ, and several other messaging services at the same time with the same program.

10. OneButton FTP
http://onebutton.org/
Replaces “command line” FTP
On occasion, I need to FTP some files from one place to another (usually from one computer to another within our home network, when I’m too lazy to use a memory stick). OneButton FTP does the job in the simplest and easiest way possible - much easier than the default “command line” FTP.

11. Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Replaces/supplements GarageBand
Need to make audio recordings of your own? All you need is a microphone of some sort and Audacity - and you can create podcasts, record music, or pretty much anything else you can imagine. I’ve actually considered using it to read aloud some bedtime stories for my kids in advance of any traveling I might do.

12. Cashbox
http://www.fadingred.org/cashbox/
Replaces Quicken
This is a very nice personal finance data manager for Mac OS. It doesn’t have quite all the bells and whistles of Quicken, but it provides a strong feature set and a huge number of different views of your personal finance state. If you’re a Quicken fan but don’t want to drop the cash for a Mac version, look into this one.

13. Vidalia
http://www.vidalia-project.net/
Unique but useful (privacy)
Many people are concerned about online privacy and don’t want their IP address shared with web sites that they visit or file servers that they access. Vidalia easily allows you to use proxy servers for your accessing needs, enabling you to disguise your computer on the internet.

14. Books
http://books.aetherial.net/wordpress/
Unique but useful (book cataloguing)
This one’s just for fun, but I’ve found it very useful. It allows you to catalogue all of your books, create reports, and so forth. I’ve been using it heavily in conjunction with PaperBackSwap to help me as I read through a pretty big pile of classic literature.

15. Bean
http://www.bean-osx.com/
Replaces TextEdit
I use this software for the editing of virtually every post that appears on The Simple Dollar. It’s a slick little editor with features like automatic word counting that really help when you’re trying to keep some semblance of control on the length of your articles.

16. GanttProject
http://ganttproject.biz/
Replaces Microsoft Project
This is an excellent tool if you’re involved in the management of large projects with many staff members, particularly if budgeting is tight (as Project can be expensive). One of my closest friends uses this for mission-critical projects in the workplace.

17. Nvu/BlueGriffon
Now: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15699
Soon: http://bluegriffon.org/
Replaces Dreamweaver (HTML editing)
I prefer coding my HTML by hand, but many people prefer the aid of a tool to help them with layout, and that’s what these provide. Nvu is a bit outdated but is still very useful - the creator has moved on to a new project, called BlueGriffon, which should be available soon.

18. Blender
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
Unique but useful (3D graphics creation)
Blender is a magnificent tool if you like tinkering with 3-D graphics creation. It’s perhaps overkill for most people, but if you’re involved in graphic design at all, using and knowing Blender can be invaluable.

19. Colloquy
http://colloquy.info/
Unique but useful (IRC)
If you chat on IRC, Colloquy is essential software. For the uninitiated, IRC is a very large network of chatrooms on various specific topics, often developing their own culture. Colloquy is a wonderful solution for IRC chatters on Macs.

20. FreeMind
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
Unique but useful (brainstorming)
Whenever I’m struggling to organize my thoughts and ideas, I open up FreeMind. Basically, it’s a tool that lets you toss out your thoughts in an unorganized structure, then build connections between them however you like. I often use it for posts where I have a collection of thoughts and research notes, but I haven’t really decided how to order them or tie them all together. It’s brilliant in any brainstorming setting.

21. Celestia
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Unique but useful (planetarium)
If you’re a space buff (like I am), Celestia is incredible software. It’s a great way to create star charts, help you identify good nights for viewing constellations and other stellar objects, and simply stumble around different views of the sky. I simply love looking at the night sky, and Celestia is a wonderful free companion for this hobby.

22. Transmission
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19378
Unique but useful (file sharing)
Many people like to upload and swap their own files with other users, such as live recordings of concerts, recordings of their own performances, free application software, and so on. BitTorrent is one of the most popular protocols for doing this, and Transmission is easily the best of the open source Mac clients for swapping them.

23. MacLibre
http://www.maclibre.com/
Supplements Software Update
Many of these software packages are updated fairly regularly by their authors. MacLibre serves as something of a “Software Update” tool for these things, fetching updates for you and helping you to easily install them with just a click or two. It’s a great way of keeping up to date on software updates for open software on a Mac.

24. Aleph One
http://source.bungie.org/get/
Gaming
Like games like Quake and Half-Life? Aleph One is an excellent open source game in this vein, available for the Mac. The graphics are a bit on the simple side, but online play is quite slick and one can’t argue with the cost.

25. Battle for Wesnoth
http://www.wesnoth.org/
Gaming
The final choice on this list is a turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. Battle for Wesnoth presents you with a wide array of scenarios that require you to take turns moving pieces around the landscape, thinking about your moves, and engaging in skirmishes. This one ate up a lot of my hours a few years ago!

Over the last few days, I’ve been dealing with a deep personal disappointment, one that I’d rather not discuss in public (don’t worry, it’s not relevant to The Simple Dollar - it’s wholly personal). It’s left me feeling empty and rather sad and - frankly - not very motivated to write at all. I’ll sit down, intending to write or get other tasks done, and find myself staring out the window, thinking about other things and usually feeling miserable.

This is something that a lot of people go through. A sudden death. A major fight or the end of a relationship. A long-hoped-for event falling through. They can hit you in the chest and make it feel as though the winds have completely fallen out of your sails, no matter how well other aspects of your life are going.

A few months ago, I reviewed the excellent book After the Darkest Hour, which dealt with this very problem: how do you get your professional and other personal aspects of your life back on track after a disappointment? I turned to this book over the last few days, and here are the pieces of advice it provided that really clicked for me and helped me to find the strength to write this post and others.

Focus on helping others Part of the impetus of this post was the realization that part of my “job” when it comes to The Simple Dollar is to help people. I’m dealing with something painful, but dealing with such things is a key part of the human experience, something we all deal with.

So I turn the question around. What can I do right now to help someone else through a problem? It leads me back to my real purpose for The Simple Dollar, gets me to the keyboard, and gets me writing.

For you, the solution might be simply helping out a friend or a relative with a task that they have, or putting in some extra time with a volunteer project you’re involved with. It’ll make you feel better, just as actually sitting down and writing this is making me feel better.

Allow yourself to go ahead and grieve Instead of lightly dwelling on the item at hand and continually pushing it off into the future, allow yourself to grieve. If you need to cry, just let the tears come now rather than later.

Pushing off the grieving process does nothing more than extend the problem. Sitting here, staring out the window, and dwelling lightly on the issue while also feeling guilty about the work I’m not doing isn’t really helping at all. I’d be far better off just taking a walk or going someplace by myself and just letting it all come out at once. Then, I can get back to the tasks I need to do with my full concentration sooner rather than later.

Meditate No matter what I’m going through or how I feel, meditation improves my mood and my calmness. Just go into a quiet place for twenty minutes or so and simply relax and empty your mind.

Don’t know how? Here’s a suggestion. Sit back, close your eyes, and try to clear your mind of every thought - make it as empty as possible. Then slowly imagine each part of your body going to sleep - I like to imagine it slipping into a warm pool of water. Start with your feet, then your calves, then your knees, and so on. Nice and slow. Once you’re up to your neck, then slowly do it in reverse, all the way back down. It really does work, and it makes you feel refreshed no matter what you’re going through.

Talk to others about what you’re feeling If you’re facing a difficult personal situation, don’t just let it build up inside of yourself. Share it with others.

My wife and I have had several long conversations recently, mostly taking place as we sat on our bed together. I’ve talked to a few additional family members and friends as well. Each time, I felt better about things and was more able to concentrate on tasks at hand.

Look for role models Do you know anyone who rolled through a similar experience and got themselves right back on track? They’re likely a great source for advice and thoughts - and also a great source of inspiration from afar.

I have a friend who went through a nearly-identical experience about fifteen years ago. Today, I’ve been using her as inspiration - and it’s helped quite a bit. If she can do it, I can do it.

Watch a funny movie - or do something else that’ll make you laugh Humor is a natural and healthy mood-lightener and it works impressively well.

What I often do is turn to hulu.com and watch the previous episode of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. I usually get a few laughs and, at the end, I feel quite a bit better. In fact, as I’m writing this, an episode of The Colbert Report was playing in the background … and it does work. I do feel better.

Spend time with someone who naturally makes you happier For me, that’s easy. Few things make me feel better than spending time with my kids and my wife. Their mere presence - their ordinary behavior - tends to lift my mood quite a bit, making painful things much easier to get through.

And with that thought, I’m walking away from the keyboard early today. I’m going to go take my kids to story time at the library and then go to the park, as this is likely one of the last nice days before winter begins to set in. I can’t think of anything better than waving at my son as he stands at the top of the tall slide and helping my one year old daughter slide down the small slide.

This is the third in a weekly series of articles providing a chapter-by-chapter in-depth “book club” reading of Benjamin Graham’s investing classic The Intelligent Investor. Warren Buffett describes this book: “I read the first edition of this book early in 1950, when I was nineteen. I thought then that it was by far the best book about investing ever written. I still think it is.” I’m reading from the 2003 HarperBusiness Essentials paperback edition. This entry covers the third chapter, which is on pages 65 to 79, and the Jason Zweig commentary, on pages 80 to 87.

“Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.”

That phrase (or variations on it) is something you read over and over and over again if you read much about specific investments in the modern era. In fact, it’s printed so often that many people simply breeze on past it, not giving the phrase a second thought.

Yet virtually everything we can know about the stock market comes from past performance. Believing that the stock market will jump when the Federal Reserve cuts rates? It’s based on past performance. Believing that the stock market will fall on poor economic numbers? It’s based on past performance. Believing that a certain stock is undervalued compared to the rest of the market? It’s based on past performance.

That’s why it’s so valuable to look in detail at the history of the stock market. How has the market typically reacted to certain events? How have individual stocks reacted to certain events? How have things gone when the economy is thriving … and when the economy is slow?

This study is never a guarantee of what will happen, but it’s a pretty good guide. And that’s why Graham spends twenty pages or so delving into the past here.

Chapter 3 - A Century of Stock Market History
Graham spends this chapter drawing on a century’s worth of stock market history to come up with some general investment principles as to how to invest in the stock market in early 1972.

Now, at first glance, that might seem incredibly boring. “Why do I need to know how to invest in the 1972 stock market? Tell me what I need to know now.” If that’s your perspective and you’re merely seeking a specific investing recipe to follow, I suggest that you put this book down immediately and pick up a good book of investing recipes, like The Lazy Person’s Guide to Investing.

What’s actually worth studying here is the process. How does Graham come to the conclusions that he does about the stock market in 1972? He walks step by step through the logic, showing how the market in 1972 is very similar to earlier bull markets and patterns. He concluded that the bull run was likely somewhat near the top - he didn’t worry too much about actually guessing the specific top - and thus one should invest with that situation in mind.

Another thing worth noting is that Graham’s advice for the 1972 market really applies well to any stock market that’s riding a year-plus long bull market. His advice is basically don’t go into debt to invest right now and also don’t have more than half of your investment money in stocks - the rest should be in bonds, cash, real estate, etc.

Graham’s advice is conservative, but he doesn’t hide the fact that he doesn’t want investors to lose principal - that’s a constant theme throughout the book. Graham vastly prefers very conservative moves and patience, waiting carefully for a great investment opportunity instead of throwing the farm at any old piece of fool’s gold.

Commentary on Chapter 3
Zweig deftly takes Graham’s arguments about the 1971-1972 stock market and applies them to the stock market of 1999 and 2000. In both cases, that peak was followed by a drop and, if one had followed Graham’s general advice of how to invest conservatively at the peak of a stock market, you would have rolled right through it without much loss.

Zweig also makes the argument that, based on Graham’s calculations and the numbers in the stock market from 1993 to 2003, one could reasonably expect the 2003 to 2013 stock market to return roughly 6% - or 4% after inflation. Looking at the first half of that range, from January 2003 to October 2008, the stock market (by most metrics) is roughly back to where it started, with most of the gains coming in the form of dividends.

I couldn’t help but speculate, while reading this chapter and Zweig’s commentary, that this same exact “peak investing” philosophy applies very well to 2006 and 2007. I know that if I had gone very conservative in late 2007 with my investments - even if I just left what I had in stocks and merely started buying bonds instead - I’d be in a much better place financially right now. My retirement accounts wouldn’t be hurting nearly as much.

Next Friday, we’ll look at Chapter 4: General Portfolio Policy: The Defensive Investor.

Several days ago, I wrote an article about the influence of the Fruity Cheerios brand on my two year old child. That article spurned such a tremendous number of responses (including more direct email responses than I’ve ever received to any individual article) that I thought it would be fair to post a follow-up article discussing some of the ideas brought up by the responses.

The cereal “lie” Many people made the astute point that, while it may save money, simply putting generic cereal inside of a Fruity Cheerios box is tantamount to lying to my child and, when he discovers the subterfuge, he’ll have reason not to trust me. Furthermore, it doesn’t really help with the branding issue at all, because the cereal is still coming from a box marked “Fruity Cheerios.”

Both points are quite true. The solution of simply putting generic cereal in a name-brand box doesn’t help at all with branding and it also eliminates trust just to save a buck or two. Not worth it.

Freedom of choice Other readers argued clearly and effectively on behalf of preserving my son’s freedom of choice. I should allow him multiple choices at breakfast and encourage him to choose the healthier and more cost-effective options. Better yet, I should make sure that all of the choices I do offer him are already rather healthy options.

This is something we already do at home. Most breakfast opportunities are choices between toast (my son’s favorite, actually), oatmeal, and two (or so) types of cereal, with other choices sometimes popping up on occasion (bagels, eggs, etc.). He usually either chooses toast (or bagel) or one of the cold cereals, even if other options are available. I do make an effort to ensure that all of the options are at least reasonably healthy, though.

Don’t sweat it; just use coupons Quite a few people argued that a two year old isn’t really that affected by brand recognition, so it’s not a big deal. Plus, with coupons, Cheerios can be purchased very cheaply, so why not simply get him the cereal that he wants?

I disagree pretty strongly with the brand recognition aspect. I can name several brands that my son identifies and looks to very positively: Cars, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Bob the Builder, and Thomas the Tank Engine. He expresses clear preferences for any kind of item that is branded with one of these marketing gimmicks, regardless of how subpar the items are inside. What I’ve been doing to help correct this is showing him how much further his money stretches if he avoids the branded items: “You have enough change to only get one of the Cars toys, but you can get four of these other cars for the same price!”

With regards to where to buy cereal for cheap, if you buy it in bulk, Sam’s Club’s normal prices on an enormous double-bag box of various kinds of Cheerios is cheaper than either the generic or the coupon-reduced Cheerios at other grocery stores per ounce. So, when we buy cereal, we buy it in absurd quantities that usually last a couple of months at least.

Eat generics together A few additional readers suggested that I eat the generic cereal alongside my child to demonstrate that I approve of generics and like them.

This was actually my favorite suggestion of the lot. My children and I eat the exact same thing for breakfast every time we sit down together to eat. However, this does bring up the very strong point that you should talk to your kids about what you’re eating and consuming. Talking to your children (actually, to any children that you might be close enough to to eat breakfast with) about such things is a vital part of teaching them about life.

Our solution So what’s our solution to the whole situation? We dug into the cupboard and pulled out a few clear Rubbermaid containers into which we’ll be putting the cereal from now on. We’ll show our son what we’re putting in each one, but afterwards we’ll let him choose from among the unlabeled, unbranded containers, basing his choice solely upon the contents.

Most important, though, this is a great opportunity to talk about why we purchase stuff. Having Dora the Explorer on the box might make the packaging more interesting, but we’re not going to eat the packaging, are we? What matters is what’s better inside the box - and what food (not container) is the best value for the dollar.

Today is the two year anniversary of the launch of The Simple Dollar. Last year, to celebrate the site’s one year anniversary, I selected my twenty five favorite articles of the first year of the site. I thought I’d continue that tradition by selecting my twenty five favorite articles from the second year of the site. These aren’t necessarily the best articles of the last year (though many of them are), merely the ones I enjoyed writing the most and also generated interesting discussion. Enjoy!

Homemade Bread: Cheap, Delicious, Healthy, and Easier Than You Think This is a handy visual guide to making homemade bread - I focused on making it seem as easy as possible. I tend to really enjoy these “photo diary” kind of posts because they let me step outside the box a little bit and do something different.

52 Books, 52 Weeks: The Top Ten Early on with The Simple Dollar, I made a concerted effort to read and review a personal finance each week for a year. Here’s the top ten of all of those books (along with a ranked list of the other 42 books I read).

Seven Ways To Get Books For Free (Or Close To It) These are the tactics I use to keep up with my reading. I rarely have any problem getting and reading any book I want when I use these tactics in concert with one another.

Organization 101: A Visual Guide to How I Manage the Information in My Life I did this visual guide because, for a time, I was not only managing The Simple Dollar, but also working a full-time job and focusing on being a good parent to two young children and a good husband to my wonderful wife. That took some juggling, indeed.

Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on the Back of Five Business Cards This is perhaps the slickest and most concise summary of sound, basic personal finance that I’ve assembled. In fact, it’s the backbone of the speech I give at speaking engagements - really, not much matters beyond those five business cards.

Does Peer Pressure Keep Us From Succeeding? It’s often surprising, when you step back and look at it, how much influence we allow the people around us to have in the choices of our day to day lives. Do many of those choices lead us to failure?

Heroes, Role Models, and Mentors: Finding People to Believe In My hero is Warren Buffett. He lives frugally, invests better than anyone, and has given most of his wealth to worthy causes.

When Is Frugality Stealing? I really liked the discussion generated here, mostly due to my comment that I consider it okay to take notes from books.

Wallet Hacking: Six Tactics for Modifying Your Wallet to Minimize Your Spending and Maximize Your Time I liked this one because it took a different look at something most of us think of as utterly commonplace.

Defeating Superman Syndrome: How to Progress Beyond the “Need” to Be the Financial Hero This was something that took me a long time to overcome. I used to have a very strong tendency to want to always pick up the tab. It took some serious self-evaluation to realize it was only hurting me.

“Freegans,” Dumpster Diving, and the Limits of Frugality There are certain lines I won’t cross when it comes to saving money. Dumpster diving for food for my kids? That’s well across that line.

Making Your Own Laundry Detergent: A Detailed Visual Guide This is another fun “picture diary” post. Interestingly, I need to make another batch of this stuff very soon, as my current batch just ran out.

Hyundai’s “Dollars and Sense” Ads: My Take If you’re attempting to palm yourself off as a “personal finance guru,” I’m not sure that this is really a good way to do that.

An Interview With Amy Dacyczyn, The Author of The Tightwad Gazette My telephone conversation with Amy was one of the best experiences I’ve had since starting The Simple Dollar. It was truly fun.

The Essential Bookshelf: The Only Eight Books I’ve Kept (After Hundreds of Reviews) I need to update this one a bit - I now have a few more books on my shelves that I’ve kept since writing this one. Most notably: I finally came across a free copy of Never Eat Alone.

Seven Ideas for Preparing Food at Home Cheaply with Minimal Space and Resources Food preparation need not be expensive, and this pretty much sums up how to do it on the cheap. You can do most of this stuff in a dorm room.

Ceiling Fan Hacks: Save Big on Energy Use Similar to the wallet post, I love looking at alternative ways to use things that seem intimately familiar and boring. The switch-flipping is just a great idea here.

A Clever Trick for Automatically Finding Deals You Want at Amazon This is a great way to use the Google homepage to automatically search Amazon for great deals on stuff of interest to you. I actually have this on my iGoogle homepage and utilize it every day.

Seven Websites That Saved Me Money in the Last Week I thought this to be a strong illustration of how the internet directly saves me money in an average week. I continue to use these sites (and several others).

Overcoming a Habit of Lying to Yourself About Money It’s often hard to create a personal economic turnaround if you’re continually feeding yourself a giant money myth about your current financial status. Here’s how to break through.

A Frugal Guide to the Iowa State Fair (or Any Similar County or State Fair) This is another fun photo diary. I truly love attending the Iowa State Fair each year - it’s one of the high points of the summer for me.

Everything’s So Easy for Pauline: Thoughts on Luck, Fate, Money, and Life This is my single favorite post I’ve ever written. Something about it just clicks with me.

The Aldi Question: Does One Bad Experience Spoil the Soup? This turned into one of my favorite discussions that has ever appeared on the site. I stick with my premise, though: a bad experience at a store can make you never want to shop there again at any price.

A Visual Guide to Saving Money with a Baby This is yet another photo diary, this time showing off some of the cost-saving measures we use with our own kids.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself Here’s a strong reasoning as to why panic in the face of a financial downturn (like the one we’re in) is foolish. Be patient and avoid the fear.

As longtime readers certainly know by now, I like to post articles rather regularly on the subject of time management. I’ve reviewed a small mountain of books on the subject (Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything, Do It Tomorrow, Leave the Office Earlier, and Find More Time were the best among these) and written dozens of pieces about how I manage my own time and tasks.

But why? Why do I find it so important to talk about time management on a personal finance site? We’ve all heard the trite “time is money” catchphrase, but what relevance does it have in day to day life in terms of improving your financial situation? Let me lay it out for you.

Time management at work Most time management material focuses on workplace concerns, because the workplace is where the most obvious connections between the time you spend and the money you earn appear. In the office, time management provides room for:

Extra polish If you can free up some extra time during the day because of effective management, you can afford to invest more time polishing your projects, taking something that’s average and making it good, or taking something good and making it great.

Extra projects Good time management also enables you to be involved with extra projects, enabling you to add many more positive contributions to the production of the organization.

Extra opportunities Extra time also lets you follow up on other opportunities: building relationships with other workers, finding a mentor and building a bond, or connecting with peers in your field outside of your office.

Increased likelihood of promotion and raises The end result of these extra steps is an increased chance at promotion and greater pay, plus more opportunities to spread your wings and fly elsewhere if the opportunity provides itself, all of which put cash directly into your pocket.

Time management at home The more subtle effects of time management show up in the home.

Enhanced frugality If you’re effective with your time, you’ll find time to be involved in frugal activities that save you money over and over again. Can you come up with fifteen minutes every few months? Then make some homemade laundry detergent that saves you twenty cents a load. Use cloth diapers instead of paper ones to save a quarter with each change. Cook at home and save a few bucks per meal. Many people claim not to have time for frugality - in truth, the time is there, it’s just not being managed well.

Extra time for self-improvement Finding an extra half-hour a day gives you ample time to learn about a new topic or to get some exercise. This can easily be done if you apply some clever time management principles to your home life, and such activities can directly lead to better earnings in the workplace.

Extra time for a “side hustle” Similarly, freeing up some extra time can give you space for a small side business - writing a blog, repairing computers, or so on. Again, just a half hour or an hour of free time - which you can easily build up with good time management - provides all the space you need to get started.

Extra time for personally important matters You may also find that you spend money to help ease the pain of a difficult situation in your life. Better time management can enable you to give that personal situation the attention it deserves, which can help you get over the figurative hump.

Five tiny steps for getting started Here are a few basic tactics for freeing up time in your life.

Set a reasonable extra goal beyond what you’re doing right now You might want to simply make a particular project at work gleam. Perhaps you want to get into better shape by jogging three times a week. Whatever it is, define a single goal that you’d like to accomplish beyond what you’re doing right now. Make it a reasonable goal, however - not one that requires time far beyond what you have right now.

Carry a pad and a pen with you Wherever you’re at, have a pad of paper and a writing utensil on you. Then, whenever an idea or something else comes up, jot it down and forget about it - go back to concentrating on whatever you were focusing on before. This allows you to stay focused on the task at hand, getting it done more quickly and with higher quality than you would if you were busy dealing with interruptions and remembering little tasks.

Do something different with thirty minutes of your evening Almost everyone has a period of relaxation in their evenings. Some of us have much more than others. Instead of vegetating for an hour or two, take half an hour of that time and devote it to something else. Maybe it’s jogging. Maybe it’s reading a challenging book. Whatever it is, pencil it in every night. Make it as important as any other appointment on your schedule.

If something takes less than two minutes to do, do it now instead of later If you need to pay a bill online, write a note to someone, make a quick phone call, add an item to the grocery list, or some other very simple task, do it immediately. Don’t put it off. Putting it off means you have to waste focus, time, and energy remembering the task. You’re far better off just doing it right now.

Learn more about time management One final tip: pick up some strong reading material on time management and look at ways you can apply those ideas to your professional and personal life. For professional life, I’d recommend Getting Things Done, Do It Tomorrow, or Leave the Office Earlier; for personal time management, Find More Time is the best book I’ve found. Spend your half hour of “doing something different” reading one of these books and figuring out more time management techniques to free up even more time.