Free Coffee During March
Dunkin’ Donuts is offering a free medium coffee or iced coffee, every Monday during the month of march. No coupon or purchase required. Just stop by your local Dunkin’ Donuts.
To see if your store is participating, click here.
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From Econobusters.
Freezer Cooking Made Simple
Freezer Cooking Made Simple
Where to Buy:
http://www.frugalology.com/freezercooking
Also Available:
Crockpot Cooking Made Simple
Meal Planning Made Simple
The Hillbilly Housewife Recipe Collection
About Freezier Cooking Made Simple
Description: This ebook is filled with all the information necessary to learn how to freeze foods and make those dollars stretch. With information such as how to get started, what items you need, [...]
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From Frugal Simplicity.
Here’s how I plan out those 10 for $10 sales
Both the Meijer and Kroger ads for this week in Monroe, Mich., are featuring 10 for $10 sales.
Now while one can pretty much consider the Kroger deals to be a “dollar menu” – buy whatever you want, each item costs a $1; the Meijer ad has this buy 10 items get 11th item free special. [...]
Continue reading Here’s how I plan out those 10 for $10 sales …
From Monroe on a Budget.
Review: The Little Book of Behavioral Investing
Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book or other book of interest to readers of The Simple Dollar.
If you’ve been reading The Simple Dollar for a while, you know that I love the “Little Book” series by Wiley Publishing. It’s a book series of small, relatively short hardbacks with about twenty short chapters. Each book in the series focuses on a specific personal finance or investment topic, striving to spell it out in plain English. Often, it’s written by a leader in the field, particularly by someone who believes deeply in the methodology being described. Almost unanimously, the entries in the series have been well worth reading, particularly if you have even a minimal interest in investing. The books do a fantastic job of breaking down ideas into little, comprehensible nuggets.
The most recent book in the series that I have yet to review (there are actually two more that have been published very recently that I’ve not even laid eyes on yet) is The Little Book of Behavioral Investing by James Montier, a renowned value investor. This entry in the series focuses on how normal human behavior often works against us when it comes to investing, a phenomenon that’s been covered in other personal finance books. Unfortunately, those other books have often been dry ones, often failing to relate the concepts they talk about to your day-to-day behavior.
Does The Little Book of Behavioral Investing succeed where the others fail? Is it a book worth reading? Let’s dig in.
One – In the Heat of the Moment
Poor decisions are made in the heat of the moment. Just think of impulse buying at your local supermarket. Montier proposes, sensibly, that the route to financial success is almost always preparation of and pre-commitment to a detailed, clear plan. Spend some time figuring out exactly what you’re going to do, what your goals are, and what your parameters are before you even dive in. It’s no different than writing a grocery list before you go to the store – you’re curbing impulse buys.
Two – Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Market?
When people experience financial loss, they often react much in the same way they do when they’re bitten. They retreat. They certainly don’t want to invest more. Yet, quite often, the correct response to a loss in a stock investment is to invest more because you’re essentially paying a sale price on the same exact company that cost quite a bit more just a month ago. If your fundamental gameplan hasn’t changed, don’t react to a downturn by selling – react to it by buying.
Three – Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
On the other hand, when people see a positive trend, they tend to get overoptimistic. They believe that it’ll continue on forever and they dive in like crazy – often when things are hitting their peak. This is why bubbles form – a good investment reaches a reasonable peak, but keeps on going because the blind optimists dive in, driving the price far above what it should be rationally. When the blind optimists then try to sell, there aren’t enough buyers and the price collapses.
Four – Why Does Anyone Listen to These Guys?
Experts are not perfect. Although they might be more knowledgable about the market, they also tend to be overconfident, as they believe that they know more than the other investors. That’s a bad mix that often causes investment experts to do worse than the average person on the street. Overconfidence can completely ruin any advantage that you might have.
Five – The Folly of Forecasting
No one can predict the future, but lots of people certainly try. Unfortunately, past performance is never an indication of future results. The best thing an investor can do is understand where they are right now. Have they met their goals? If you create a plan in advance and stick to it, you don’t have to try to predict the future.
Six – Information Overload
There’s an overabundance of information available for investors. While on one level that can seem like a great thing, the truth is that it can actually be a terrible thing. People can get lost in the data. They can get sucked into “analysis paralysis,” where they won’t take action until they can analyze all the information – and by the time their analysis is done, the situation has changed. The key here is to focus your analysis on very specific elements that you understand.
Seven – Turn Off That Bubblevision
Many people obsess and stress over every little fluctuation in the stock market, and channels like CNBC fuel the obsession. Unfortunately, such obsession often leads to oversensitivity to little fluctuations and thus causes hair-trigger responses that are usually poor. Turn off the bubblevision and seek out real, hard information that matters to you instead.
Eight – See No Evil, Hear No Evil
Most people look for evidence that confirms the ideas they already have (think about talk radio, for example). However, doing that will often be disastrous for your investments. You should instead constantly look for information that disproves your assumptions. If you think a company is successful, for example, you should seek out signs that indicate that it’s not successful.
Nine – In the Land of the Perma-Bear and the Perma-Bull
Some people believe the stock market is always headed in the right direction (”perma-bulls”). Others believe that the stock market is always headed in the wrong direction (”perma-bears”). Obviously, neither one is right and, obviously, neither one of these folks can ever be a truly successful investor. Every market has ups and downs – if you constantly believe one or the other is about to happen regardless of what’s happening now, you’ll always make mistakes.
Ten – The Siren Song of Stories
A good story is incredibly appealing to us because it makes things that seemingly don’t make any sense make, well, sense. We do this all the time – our memories are a perfect example of this. We take random events in our lives and polish them until they make a coherent story. The problem is that with investing, the data rarely tells a simple story like this. When we try to mold it into a simple story, we overlook big parts of the picture and often end up making poor choices. Don’t worry about the story.
Eleven – This Time Is Different
All markets have bubbles – and those bubbles eventually burst. Every time, though, as people are buying in like mad, you hear stories about how this one is different than the rest because of some reason. That’s basically never the case. What happens, inevitably, is that too many people buy in because they believe they’re going to get rich. Suddenly, there are too many people holding the things they’ve bought and no one’s around to buy them. Every time a market begins to seriously diverge from long-established fundamentals, there’s usually a bubble involved and you’re better off avoiding it.
Twelve – Right for the Wrong Reason, or Wrong for the Right Reason
As was mentioned earlier, we tend to gloss over the past to create nice stories about it. That glossing, mixed with our optimism, often results in our blaming others for the mistakes we made in the past. The truth is much harsher: whenever we lose money, we’re at fault, and there are valuable lessons to be learned from figuring out what exactly went wrong.
Thirteen – The Perils of ADHD Investing
If you’re an attentive investor, it’s often tempting to jump in and make changes all the time. We hear some good or bad news and we want to react quickly to it by buying or selling. Unfortunately, our snap decisions are often absorbed right into the market and the only person that makes money is the stockbroker. If you have a plan in place – and you certainly should – stick to that plan. Don’t let a sudden piece of news or a sudden impulse steer you off of that plan.
Fourteen – Inside the Mind of a Lemming
It often can feel very uncomfortable to zig when others are zagging, particularly when we have money at stake. If we see lots of people doing a certain thing, it’s easy to convince ourselves that it must be the right thing to do. The key here is to step back and look at it objectively without the influence of other people. Make your decision based on the information, not on what everyone else is doing.
Fifteen – You Gotta Know When to Fold Them
A big part of your overall plan – remember, the one you decided on before you started investing? – is when to sell. You should decide before you even begin how much volatility you’re willing to accept and how big the losses have to be before you would sell. The decision needs to be made before you even put a dollar in so you can react in accordance with your plan, not in accordance to your nerves.
Sixteen – Process, Process, Process
What does all of this add up to? You need to always be examining the world around you and, most importantly, you need to try to remove the human element from your investing decisions. Come up with a plan, refine the plan, invest, then stick to the plan. Don’t let your nerves or the actions of others get in your way.
Is The Little Book of Behavioral Investing Worth Reading?
For the most part, The Little Book of Behavioral Investing reiterates much of the basic material on behavior and personal finance that can be found in other books. The Little Book of Behavioral Investing works, though, because it’s written in such plain language and, perhaps most importantly of all, it includes a lot of very vivid explanations and illustrations of our behavioral quirks.
A book on behavioral investing should be something that everyone reads before they jump into the investing pool. The Little Book of Behavioral Investing is as good a place as any to pick up that information. It’s approachable, clear, and, dare I say, fun.
If you’re interested in my reviews of earlier books in the “Little Book” series, here’s a list of those reviews. I’ve almost universally enjoyed them.
The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
The Little Book of Main Street Money
The Little Book of Safe Money
The Little Book Of Value Investing
The Little Book That Beats The Market
The Little Book That Builds Wealth
The Little Book That Makes You Rich
The Little Book That Saves Your Assets
Continue reading Review: The Little Book of Behavioral Investing …
From The Simple Dollar.
The unexpected hand-me-downs
My husband and I are clearing out my late father-in-law’s house and sorting items into family hand-me-downs, thrift shop donations, and luckily not a lot of rubbish.
On one of our previous visits, I noticed a glass ice bucket among the bar supplies. I told my husband I thought that ice bucket was in the pattern [...]
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From Monroe on a Budget.
The Financial Realities of Growing a Family
Anthony writes in:
My wife and I have two children, ages 2 and 1. We’d like to have more; we both think that four would be a great number, although there’s no particular logical reason for that number. The problem is the expense. With daycare costs, adding each additional child will cost another $260 a month. If we stopped paying extra on our student loans and cut our savings per month to $145, we could afford the daycare for the third child, but a fourth would require more painful cuts. We already live frugally: buy used clothes, drive used paid-for cars, make almost all of our food at home, etc. I’ve looked into second jobs, but there’s very little IT work in the area, other than what I already do. And with our county having the highest unemployment rate in the state, I suspect even paper-route jobs and that sort of thing would be hard to find.
My job pays decently and is very secure: her job also pays well and is less secure, but still not much in jeopardy. In Michigan, that’s significant. We can’t sell the house without taking a loss, but it is big enough—barely—for two more kids. If we need to upgrade the car to a mini-van, we’ll have enough in our car fund that we can pay cash, so that’s not an issue.
I hate to make children about mere numbers, but purely by the math it seems like more children is unwise. On the other hand, I constantly hear stories from other families about how they it “somehow just worked out.” Any advice or suggestions?
Much like you, my wife and I have two children – ages four and two – and another one due to arrive within the next few months. The issue of escalating child care costs is one that we’ve dealt with many times throughout our child-rearing process and, through it all, we’ve come to some conclusions about that very occurrence.
First of all, the idea that it “just worked out” is a bit misleading. What often happens in that situation is that people go through a period of re-prioritizing after the child (or children) arrives, and it’s often a shift that happens without a lot of conscious thought. You choose to eat at home more because it’s easier to corral children there. You don’t go out as often as you used to because of the cost of babysitting. Over time, these shifts just seem completely ordinary – parents adopt a new normal along the way and often feel like it “just worked out.” Our memories often work to make things seem smoother than they actually were.
At some point if you continue to have children, the cost of child care will likely eventually meet or exceed the net cash benefit of one of your jobs. If you have three preschool-aged children (as we will soon), your weekly costs are immense. If you, at the same time, figure up the true take-home of one of the people in the household – after taxes, commuting costs, vehicle upkeep, wardrobe upkeep, and son on – you’ll often see that working outside the home is a financial net negative. Add on top of that the financial benefits of not working (even less reason to eat out, more organized grocery shopping, etc.) and you create a compelling case for one partner to leave the employment scene for a period of time.
What if you can’t afford to do this because you’ll be burying your career path? At this point, it’s really a values thing – your career is more valuable to you than more progeny. It’s one of those value comparisons where there is no real right or wrong answer – however, because it’s such an emotional one, people often convince themselves that one answer or the other is absolutely right for them and thus absolutely right for everyone. It’s not. You have to decide for yourself what you value.
If you decide that more children are the real priority here, then plan for it. That may involve selling the house and moving elsewhere – even to another part of the country. It may involve selling a vehicle. It may involve leaving a job. If your children are your priority, then sacrifice those life elements that aren’t directly benefiting the children.
If you decide that your continued career trajectory is the priority for you, take precautions to not have another child.
Your situation – much like our own – is basically asking you to choose between the two paths. Choosing one path doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the other one, but it does mean postponing it to a later point in your life and it may mean that you’re unable to pick it back up again.
It seems to me from the email that you’re having a hard time choosing between the two. Right now is the time to sit down, talk with each other frankly about it, and make a choice. Is it career maintenance as the top priority or is it more children?
Give the decision time. Also, perhaps most importantly of all, give each other respect here. There is no right or wrong way to feel about the question and if you disagree, that’s okay. You both have reasonable perspectives on the issue.
You don’t have to make a decision tomorrow on this, but whichever way you choose, it doesn’t hurt to take a serious look at your spending and find ways to minimize it now. Build an emergency fund. Learn to live on a little less. No matter which path you end up choosing, doing that now will help you with the ramifications of that choice.
Good luck.
Continue reading The Financial Realities of Growing a Family …
From The Simple Dollar.
Monroe MI sales fliers March 14
If you read bargain and shopping blogs, you have seen detailed reviews of advertising promotions, and the coupon matches that go with those ads.
I don’t do that on Monroe on a Budget, and here is why: It is very difficult to write exact coupon matches for the Monroe, Mich., shopping market.
My local readers, depending on [...]
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From Monroe on a Budget.
Two coupon books today
There are two coupon books each in my home-delivery editions of The Monroe Evening News and the Detroit Free Press. (I live in the 48162 zip code).
The Monroe coupon stack includes promotions for Lysol, Dannon, Easy-Off, Neosporin and Domino sugar.
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From Monroe on a Budget.
Coupon books vs coupon binders
When I give my grocery shopping on a budget classes and public appearances, I’ve been taking along my coupon box. It’s an index card box, with index cards as dividers. I’ve organized my coupons that way for more than 20 years.
After seeing what my friend Candy does with her coupon binder, I made a sample [...]
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From Monroe on a Budget.
Spring Cleaning Your House/Your Mind
Spring has sprung. This immediately will throw many of us into Spring cleaning mode. We have all kinds of cleaning tips on the blog and website to help you but they are of no use if we aren’t in the right frame of mind so here are some things to think about as you get started.
Often we feel our homes are out of control with piles of things all over and so much stuff. We need to remember God doesn’t give us things for them to control us but for us to control them. I want you to really think about what I just said. Are your things controlling you? If you aren’t sure here are some things to help you decide if they are.
Do you wake up every morning feeling as if things are out of control before your feet even hit the floor?
Everything in your home should be there for your pleasure, enjoyment and to help you in your daily living. If it doesn’t you need to get rid of it (no not your husband, I’m afraid you must keep him : ) 
Notice in the things I listed I didn’t say sentimental value. A good portion of what what people save is saved because it has sentimental value and that is a major thing people need to come to grips with.
You can keep a few things of course but not a room or two full. People have bemoaned the fact their closets are packed and they have no more room and don’t know what to do.
I have helped them clean it out and a lot of the time 1/2 of what we got rid of were “memories” they forgot they even had. I have pulled down large boxes of their children’s school papers they have saved. I’m talking every single math, English etc. homework page they ever did. One small file folder is enough for each year and by the time they graduate you should be able to fit all 12 years of important school papers in one folder.
Then there are boxes of stuffed animals and favorite blankies. One or two is fine but not boxes full. I have seen people who have been so busy dealing and taking care of their children’s “memories” and things like it they haven’t had time to enjoy their kids. Is there something wrong with this picture?
This is just one example of how we need to really to get a grip and let it go.
Are you at the mercy of your things? Are you continually finding yourself washing, polishing, dusting, moving, storing and cleaning things which really have no purpose and aren’t useful to you. Next time you pick up something to move, clean, polish etc. really look at it and think why am I keeping this and what does it do for me. How much pleasure does that ugly vase from Aunt Mable ( who died 25 years ago and you only meant once in your life) really give you?
Sell these things or give them away to someone who might get pleasure out of them or could use them. Really pay attention to what you have sitting every where. I once laid a stack of things on my fireplace mantle and forgot about them. I got so use to them laying there it was weeks before I noticed they were out of place. We tend to get “use to” or so comfortable with the things around us we don’t realize we really don’t need a lot of these things.
Just start looking at your things but most of all take control don’t let them control you any more. You will be amazed at how free you will feel and what a burden will be lifted. We don’t always realize how much responsibility we feel for these “things” and what a relief it is to have these responsibilites lifted from our shoulders.
Spring is here so let’s dust off those cobwebs that have been choking us all winter long and make our homes start working for us instead of the other way around. : )
Jill
Continue reading Spring Cleaning Your House/Your Mind …