Couponers say: 1 newspaper per person in your house
Psst. Have you heard? Serious couponers such as Bargains to Bounty recommend their readers get more than one Sunday paper each week. The suggested formula is one newspaper per person in your home. The reason: More Sunday papers results in more coupons available for your coupon box or coupon binder. Therefore, when the really great [...]
Continue reading Couponers say: 1 newspaper per person in your house …
From Monroe on a Budget.
Common Items Found for Sale on eBay
Common Items Found for Sale on eBay
Are you interested in doing your online shopping through eBay? If you are, you are one of millions of Americans who are. What is nice about eBay is that you can find just about anything on there, within reason of course. If you are interested in [...]
Continue reading Common Items Found for Sale on eBay …
From Frugal Simplicity.
Spring Cleaning One Room At A Time – Bathrooms – Tidy Tuesday
I’ve decided this year that tackling spring cleaning one room at a time may make more sense for my family than ripping the whole house apart.
The reason cleaning one room at a time is a better idea for our family is it should make living in the house a bit more sane as we clean. What doesn’t work so well for us is disrupting every room in the house at the same time.
How about you? Would you rather tackle one job at a time, say all the floors, or one room at a time? I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.
I’ve divided the house into five areas – bedrooms, dining room, living room, bathrooms, and kitchen - for spring cleaning. As I plan my strategy, I’ll be covering one area each week on Tidy Tuesday.
The last three weeks we tackled cleaning the bedrooms, cleaning the dining room and cleaning the living room. You can see what each area involved by clicking the links above. Then come back and see how we’re going to get the bathrooms clean and shiny.
Depending on how many bathrooms you have, this project could take all day or even several days. Here is where I take some tips from the pros. Cleaning bathrooms can be back-breaking work, so I appreciate all the help I can get in time saving and effort saving tips.
For our discussion here, we’ll just assume we’re cleaning one full bath; that is a bathroom that has a tub with shower. Then just reapply all the cleaning strategies to any other, smaller bathrooms and powder rooms.
Trick of the pros: choose only two cleaning solutions for entire bathroom. It makes the job go faster and easier.
Choose one cleaner for scrubbing and one for shining. In other words, you’ll want one cleaner to scrub the tub, tile and countertops. You’ll want another cleaner for the mirror and faucets. (Note: NEVER mix bleach, even products that contain bleach, with ammonia or products that contain ammonia. The fumes are toxic, even deadly.)
Following a professional’s guidelines, we start with the toilet. Use a good cleanser. That doesn’t mean you have to use a “toilet bowl cleaner.” You can use any good disinfectant scrubbing cleanser. Fill the toilet bowl, close the lid and let it stand while you continue. Some folks prefer just using plain bleach for this job. You may want to start your exhaust fan if you choose to use bleach as the fumes can get a bit obnoxious. Close the lid and move on for now. You’ll come back to finish the toilet later.
(Note: Again… NEVER mix bleach, even products that contain bleach, with ammonia or products that contain ammonia. The fumes are toxic, even deadly.)
Remove your shower curtain, liner, and any rugs, etc. Launder or replace as necessary. If you have a window, remove those curtains, shades, or blinds (if possible) and wash accordingly. Using a mixture of vinegar and water, wash the inside of the bathroom window and the surrounding woodworking with soft rags.
Grab your scrubbing cleanser and sprinkle (wet shower surround and tub first) or spray on the bathtub-shower walls continuing down into the tub. Start scrubbing with a good stiff brush or scrubbing pad, top to bottom, all the way into the tub.
Trick of the pros: it’s much easier on the back to climb into the tub to scrub it. Put rags in the bottom of the tub to prevent slipping and climb in barefoot.
You’ll want to have a large bucket and large sponge on hand for rinsing if you don’t have a detachable shower head. Once you’ve scrubbed the entire surface, begin rinsing until you hear the surfaces squeak when you rub it.
Trick of the pros: install a detachable shower head and use it like the spray attachment on your kitchen sink to rinse your shower. For around $20 you will solve the back-breaking chore of rinsing your shower, bending and dipping a sponge in a bucket of water over and over again.
This is a good time to get yourself a cold drink and do a slightly different chore. Grab a couple boxes or bins and empty your medicine cabinet and under the sink area into them. Take the boxes out to a comfortable area where you can sit and sort.
You’ll want to start with your medicines. Check expiration dates and put any medicines (prescription or over-the-counter) that have expired into one box. Add to that box any medicines that you simply no longer use. Anything you haven’t taken in over a year is suspect. That box of medicines should go to a medicine disposal place – call your doctor’s office for information about these safe disposal sites. Most clinics and hospitals allow people to bring their drugs and medicines there for collection and proper disposal.
Continue sorting out all the items from your medicine cabinet and under the sink area. If you have items like broken or unused curling irons, brushes, combs, clips, etc. dispose of those items or put in a separate box for donation. Spring cleaning time is a great time to dig out from under the stuff that keeps accumulating in our bathroom cabinets. Be brutal with your clutter! Still have soup can size hair rollers you haven’t used in more than a decade? Wash them up and give them away!
Okay, now that you’ve handled the clutter, it’s time to wipe out the shelves. Use a mild cleaner and a sponge or rag and get the interior of your cabinet and cupboards wiped out. I like vinegar and water for this chore as it freshens as it cleans. Leave the cabinet doors open and let the interior dry completely. Then neatly restock with your bathroom items.
Now you’re ready to clean the mirror, countertop, and sink. Using your tub cleanser, sprinkle or spray your sink, faucet, and countertop. Take your scrubber pad, brush, or sponge and scrub up your surfaces. Rinse well.
Next, spray the mirror, countertop, and sink with a glass cleaner. My preference is a vinegar and water mixture because it’s safe to use and it removes soap residue. That is the reason you spray down the countertop and sink after you scrub it. Plus, you’ll get extra shine on the faucet. Wipe the mirror, countertop, and sink with clean rags until they are dry and shining. Take your glass cleaner over to your tub faucet as well and give that the same shiny treatment.
Trick of the pros: always follow up your sink and tub scrubbing with a spray and wipe with glass cleaner on the faucets and handles. That’s where the shine comes from.
You are ready now to scrub the toilet. Use a good solid brush, scrub up and around the rim, and flush. Spray the entire toilet down with your glass cleaner (vinegar and water works well) and wipe down with clean rags.
Your floor is the final step. Using a mixture of vinegar and water, start with a bucket and mop or a sprayer and rags, and work your way out the door.
Speaking of the door, now is the time to wipe down the door, door frame, and door knob. Using a mixture of vinegar and water (which makes a good, safe disinfecting spray) spray down the entire door and wipe dry. Pay close attention to the handle.
Once the floor is dry you can go back in and hang the shower curtains, window curtains, and any rugs.
Now your bathroom is shiny and clean, just like if you had the pros come in!
See you next week when we tackle the kitchen.
p.s. Would you like to get all the rooms in your house spic-and-span? Click on and get even more Spring Cleaning Tips for Mom to get your whole house clean – one room at a time.
Continue reading Spring Cleaning One Room At A Time – Bathrooms – Tidy Tuesday …
From Hillbilly Housewife Blog.
Guilt and Charitable Giving
Monica writes:
My biggest “financial leak” is charities. I constantly see people in need and I feel deeply guilty if I don’t help them, especially since I know I have plenty of financial resources with which to help them. The result is that I end up with less money than I expected and it’s hard to make ends meet. I still feel guilty, though. What do you suggest?
Giving to others is a great thing. Giving to the right charities can have a profound positive effect on many lives and it can also make you feel really good about yourself and the positive impact you have on the world. If you have the financial resources to give, I strongly encourage you to do so.
However, I don’t feel guilty about charities that I don’t give to. There are more good causes out there than I can possibly give my money to. Because of that, I know that I have to decide between various causes.
For us, that’s an important decision. We use a few criteria to determine what charities to give to.
The only charities we give significant money to are either ones where I directly sit on the executive board, immediate family members are deeply involved with, or we’ve been able to strongly certify how their money is spent. If one of those three are not true, we don’t give them money.
If a charity attempts to use a sense of guilt as a reason to convince me to give right now, I don’t like it, to the point that I resent the charity and actively do not give to them.
For one, if they’re using such tactics, they’re investing a lot of money and energy into marketing, not into helping the people they’re trying to help. If I feel guilt in response to a charitable plea, I know it’s marketing at work above all else.
My dollar to a charity very rarely goes 100% to a cause. Every charity has overhead in terms of hiring people to handle the donations, handle the taxes, and handle the distribution. However, but I want the vast majority of it to go to the cause I’m supporting. I also prefer to decide on my own what causes are most deserving of my money without guilt-based marketing pleas. Whenever I see a sob story, both of those principles are violated. When I reflect on it, I usually wind up irritated at that charity, actually.
Our solution is a charity budget. Once a year, we sit down and evaluate what causes we want to give to far away from guilt-based charity advertisement. We use sources like Charity Navigator to help us determine what charities will actually do with our donations and we make a pretty firm decision about our giving.
Whenever I see pleas for charitable giving, I simply remind myself that (1) this is marketing at work and (2) we’ve already given a substantial amount this year and have already decided what to spend the rest on. These two facts knock down any focus group designed charity marketing that we see.
Don’t feel guilty about charities you can’t afford to give to. Know what you can afford and plan it in advance. Recognize that the heart pangs you feel are just the result of marketing intended to make you feel that way. Walk away and make your decision with an unclouded mind.
Good luck.
Continue reading Guilt and Charitable Giving …
From The Simple Dollar.
Spring Cleaning One Room At A Time – Living Room – Tidy Tuesday
I’ve decided that tackling spring cleaning one room at a time this year may be the way to go.
The reason is because cleaning one room at a time may make living in the house a bit easier while the work is being done. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.
I’m dividing the house into five areas – bedrooms, dining room, living room, bathrooms, kitchen. I’ll be covering one room each week on Tidy Tuesday.
The last two weeks we tackled cleaning the bedrooms and cleaning the dining room. You can see what that involved by clicking the links above. Then come back and see how we’re going to get the living room spic-and-span.
Because my family uses the living room as an entertainment center, we need to spend time on all the movies, games, and other electronic paraphernalia that piles up. Many families have the same situation, so let’s begin there.
Start by sitting down with a couple empty boxes. Mark one “keep” and one “give away.” Gather all the dvds, cds, what-have-you for movies and games. Pull them into a pile in the center of the room and spend time sorting them into these two boxes. Pull the movies and games off the shelves, too, and include those in the sorting. Take the “give away” box out to the car, and set the “keep” box aside.
One suggestion is to take any loose game components and put them in decorative boxes. That way they’re out of site, but still handy.
Do the same sorting for any magazines, books, or newspapers. Add another box for this task labeled “sort” for those magazines you know you want to keep, but you’ll be tearing apart and keeping just the relevant pages. Take your “give away” box out to the car and set the other boxes aside.
Now, clear any other knick-knacks off the bookcases, setting them in bins and moving the bins out of the room. You can start the actual dusting now, beginning from the top to the bottom. Start with your ceiling fan, wood trim around the ceiling, doors, and windows. I like using a micro-fiber cloth for these areas to trap the dust instead of sending it flying
This is a good time to remove and air out or wash draperies if necessary. Then, you’ll want to wash the windows and wipe off any dirt, scuffs, or smudges around the door frame and window frame or window sills. Use a cloth dampened in a cleaner that is safe for wood.
Once this task is done, dust the entertainment unit and components. You may want to use a special “canned dusting” blower to really get that dust out of the grills and from underneath the television and all the players you have attached. Use your micro-fiber cloth again to gather all the dust bunnies you’ve unearthed.
You’re ready now to do the “nice” dusting. Start with your bigger furniture, like the entertainment center, then move on to your lamps and end tables.
Get out your vacuum and, using the proper tool, vacuum out under the cushions of the sofas and chairs. (Put any money you find in a special fund for a treat for yourself!)
If you have area rugs, remove them now and hang them outside if you can, or just roll them up and put them aside. If you have large rugs and space available, put your rugs upside down and vacuum, then flip and vacuum. They’ll be ready now to bring back into the living room once you’ve finished with the cleaning. Just roll them up and set them aside.
Hook up the crevice tool and extensions and vacuum around the edges of the room. Then, put your vacuum back together and give the entire carpet or floor a good vacuuming, using a back and forth motion, then changing directions, and go over the carpet or floor again.
You’re ready to bring in the draperies and area rugs. Put your room back together and bring in the bins with your knick-knacks. Keeping a clean micro-fiber cloth in your hand, remove your knick-knacks, wipe them off, and return them to their places.
That’s it! There are all sorts of special considerations for cleaning a living room. If you have leather furniture, you’ll want to take time to clean and treat it properly according to manufacturers directions. If you have a fireplace, that’s a whole separate cleaning task which is very specific to each home. If you have slip covers on your furniture, it may be time to have it professionally dry-cleaned or laundered.
Everyone’s living room is different. But, one thing is common among them all – when springtime rolls around, we want to get the living room freshened up again so we can relax and enjoy it.
See you next week when we tackle the bathrooms.
p.s. Would you like to get all the rooms in your house spic-and-span? Click on and get even more Spring Cleaning Tips for Mom to get your whole house clean – one room at a time.
Continue reading Spring Cleaning One Room At A Time – Living Room – Tidy Tuesday …
From Hillbilly Housewife Blog.
The Love and Hate of Work
I recently had a conversation with a 66 year old woman who had retired from a fairly lucrative career, only to take on a completely surprising job as her “retirement job.”
She’s a grade school lunch lady.
Why did she choose to take on such a job? The reason was simple, she told me. Her grandchildren, her grandchildren’s friends, and the grandchildren of some of her friends attended that school. She had a lot of experience working with food over the years working at soup kitchens and the like and she really wanted to put her skills to work making great meals for the little kids she cared about.
To put it simply, she loves her job. She really, really enjoys doing this, and I could tell by some of the stories she told me.
I told her that her job seemed like it could be pretty thankless – the kind of job that Mike Rowe might shadow. She thought about that for a minute and said something pretty profound.
If you hate your job, a good situation can become a bad one. If you love your job, you can turn a bad situation into a good one.
What do you do if you hate your job, I asked her. She dropped another piece of wisdom on me.
If you hate your job, stop doing the parts you don’t like and spend more time doing the parts you do like. The worst that can happen is that you get fired from a job you hate, and is that really a loss? The best that can happen is that you start producing much better work that helps you move up the food chain.
She told me that her job was to put healthy, tasty, and fun meals on the table for the kids. She knew what guidelines she had to follow and she followed the health-related ones, but she would often spend her food budget in creative ways to get healthy and fun food out there. She also didn’t “waste time” on unnecessary paperwork and meetings, stating that if there’s something important, they’ll find her in the kitchen actually doing her job.
I think every job benefits from a bit of her perspective. At my previous job, I loathed the bureaucracy and paperwork aspects of the job. Eventually, I reached a point where I pretty much ignored them until there happened to be downtime – in other words, I moved the aspects I didn’t value to the lowest possible priority. I missed a few minor deadlines, to be sure, but it made my job a lot more enjoyable and, unsurprisingly, more productive, too.
I keep this same philosophy in my writing work. If I’m not enjoying the work, I do something else, and almost always, it works. Why? Because if I move to something that’s fun within the range of stuff that I do professionally, I usually produce something great. If I grind against the boring stuff, I hate it and produce stuff that’s poor.
This is true of almost any job, from flipping hamburgers (some people are better in the kitchen and some people are better at service) to office work. If you hate your job, find out what you hate about it and do less of that. Figure out what you like about it (or at least hate less) and do more of that. You might miss out on a few details, but you’ll produce much better stuff in the areas that matter. Any boss worth his salt will see that and reward you for it (or at least overlook the little things that you miss).
I’ll leave you with one final anecdote from a friend of mine who manages a convenience store. One of her high school aged employees seemed really down, so she took him aside and asked him what the problem was. “I hate working the counter. I hate talking to all these people.” She made a deal with him – if he turned it up a notch with the other tasks, she’d take him off the counter completely. He brightened up quickly. Now, the bathrooms are spotless, the floor is mopped, the products are stocked, and the other employee working the counter is happier, too, because she likes dealing with the customers.
Everyone wins when you don’t hate your job. Find the parts you like and do more of that instead. The happier you are with your work, the better you’ll produce. If you’re worried about how it’ll go over, talk it over with your boss first, but give it a go. You’ll do better in your career, go home happier at night, and be much more likely to receive better pay.
Continue reading The Love and Hate of Work …
From The Simple Dollar.
Spring Cleaning One Room At A Time – Dining Room – Tidy Tuesday
Last week we got going with our spring cleaning job. We’re tackling this by cleaning one room at a time.
We started by cleaning the bedrooms. Click on here to review how we tackled cleaning the bedrooms, then come back and see how we’re going to spruce up the dining room.
The reason we’re spring cleaning this year one-room-at-a-time is because living in a house during spring cleaning time is a little easier when only one room is disrupted.
We have decided to split the house into five sections (bedrooms, dining room, living room, bathrooms, kitchen) and cover one room each week on Tidy Tuesday.
Let’s look at a simple room-at-a-time plan for the dining room.
Just like the bedroom, you begin by dusting from top to bottom. If you begin with the window and door frames, the doors themselves, and any trim along the ceiling, you’ll get the dust knocked down where you can vacuum it up.
Windows in your dining room would also be washed at this point, once the trim around the window is dusted and wiped down. Also, if you have any window treatments, it’s time to take them down and air them out, or wash them as necessary.
If your dining room lighting fixture is large or complicated, or requires special attention, tackle that next. Then continue your dusting (I prefer a microfiber cloth) of the buffet, side tables, main tables, and any decorations and centerpieces you may have.
If you have a buffet filled with dishes, you may want to remove those at this time and put them in the kitchen to be washed.
You are now ready to vacuum and mop. If you are able, move any furniture such as the buffet away from the wall so you can vacuum next to the floor boards and wipe the floor boards as well. If you can’t move the buffet, use your extension tools to vacuum under the buffet and get as close to the wall as possible.
Continue vacuuming and mopping the floor as necessary.
Re-hang your draperies or other window treatments at this time.
It’s a good time now to give your table and buffet any special treatment it needs, such as oiling or waxing. Take care to include the chairs in this treatment.
Now, bring in your washed dishes and put them back where they belong and replace any other knick-knacks you may have removed while you were cleaning.
If you find you have more time and lots of energy, now is a good time to clean out the buffet drawers or shelves and wash any linens stored. Washing or polishing any special service pieces would complete your task.
The dining room is often the easiest room to spring clean. It can also be the most rewarding as you wash and polish some of your favorite dinnerware, keepsakes, and decorations. Take your time and enjoy.
See you next week when we spring clean the living room.
p.s. Click on and get even more Spring Cleaning Tips for Mom to get your whole house clean – one room at a time.
Continue reading Spring Cleaning One Room At A Time – Dining Room – Tidy Tuesday …
From Hillbilly Housewife Blog.
Never Cosign a Loan Unless You Want to Pay It Yourself
One of the most common questions I get is whether or not a person should cosign on someone else’s loan – a car loan, a student loan, or so on.
I have a single response that I always give to this type of question:
You should only co-sign a loan that you’re perfectly happy paying off yourself.
If you would be unhappy with being forced to pay for the loan yourself, then you should not be cosigning that loan.
Here’s why.
First, the reason a lender wants a cosigner on a loan is because they believe that the person they’re lending to has a high likelihood of not paying back the loan. Usually, a person that needs a co-signer is a person with poor credit or, in some cases, a person with no credit history at all. This means that either they’ve never dealt with the ins and outs of paying a loan back before or they’ve attempted it and failed to pay back their obligations.
Second, if that person who the bank has deemed untrustworthy proves the bank to be correct, you’re left holding the bag. Co-signing isn’t just a way to help a friend. It essentially means that you’re hung with the debt if the primary signer decides not to go through with actually repaying the debt.
Third, when you turn a personal relationship into a financial one, you introduce a lot of strain in the personal relationship. If they default on this loan, what will that do to your relationship? It will be very, very hard for the two of you to be as close as you once were.
These three things together make for a dangerous mix. They put your finances at significant risk without any direct benefit to you. You’re betting that someone is reliable when someone else who is not involved has looked at the evidence without emotions clouding their judgment and came to the opposite conclusion.
To put it simply, you’re saying, “Sure, I’ll take on more risk than the bank.” You know, those paragons of financial stability who were quite willing to hand out adjustable rate mortgages like candy and almost tanked the United States economy.
“But I really want to help!” This is often the reason that people use to talk themselves into such large amounts of risk. The person asking for their help is someone who they genuinely want to help and so they let their emotions cloud their judgment and sign away.
Here’s the thing: you can usually help quite a lot without signing on the dotted line.
Offer resources that you can give them. If you want to financially help someone, don’t do it in a way that puts you at risk and don’t enter into a financial arrangement with them that could damage your relationship. Instead, make it a gift. Give them some cash to buy a beater to get back and forth to work or to put a deposit on an apartment. Let them live in your spare room for a few months. If they want to pay you back, let them, but make it clear that you don’t expect repayment.
Offer intangibles. Invest your time in them by driving them to job interviews or taking them around to buy a car. Invest your contacts in them by calling someone you know who can help them get a job. Listen to what they’re talking about and going through and offer your advice and whatever else you can offer.
In other words, offer all the help you can without introducing unnecessary risk into your life. Don’t co-sign, but offer help in every other way you can.
From my perspective, there is one exception to this. I think that the intangibles related to a parent co-signing on a student loan for their freshly graduated child likely add up to more than the risk of signing such loans. In that case, a parent is often a fairly good judge of the situation and if they view the risk of co-signing in this situation as acceptable, it seems to me to simply be an extension of the risks of parenthood.
Continue reading Never Cosign a Loan Unless You Want to Pay It Yourself …
From The Simple Dollar.
How do you decide where to shop for the week?
People love routines and convenience. That is the reason the big box stores in Monroe, Mich., and many other communities, are so crowded on Saturdays.
That’s the day most people decide to run shopping errands because Sunday will be busy with church and family visits; and Mondays through Fridays are busy with work, school, club meetings [...]
Continue reading How do you decide where to shop for the week? …
From Monroe on a Budget.
Reader Mailbag: The Trent Hamm FAQ
I receive so many questions about who I am, why I write this blog, and so on that I thought it might be worthwhile to simply answer all of them in one place. That way, when I receive such questions in the future, I can just point to this page.
I suppose I might update all of this in the future, maybe in a couple of years, but the answers are quite accurate as I write this.
What made you start writing The Simple Dollar?
- Jenny
In April 2006, my family experienced a near financial meltdown. We simply did not have enough money in our checking account to cover our outstanding bills – and there were a lot of outstanding bills. We had less than $10 in our checking account and a big pile of bills that were due well before the next time either of us would be paid. I was also working at a job that, while I liked it, wasn’t the job I had always dreamed of. What was I working for?
That’s the point at which we decided to turn things around. We sold off a lot of our stuff and I started reading a lot of personal finance books.
Eventually, we came to realize that an awful lot of people our age were going through similar issues as they struggled with their finances and their place in the world. I decided to start writing The Simple Dollar mostly to reach those people and make them realize that they’re not alone in that struggle and that there is a way out.
Do you write full time? What do you do for a living?
- Kenny
I don’t know if I would go so far as saying that writing is my full time job, but it does provide a healthy portion of our income. I don’t have a typical “nine to five” job by our family’s choice. Instead, I write and engage in other income-earning opportunities as they come along.
The biggest reason for doing this was so that I could spend more time with my children. At my previous job, I was often distracted in the evenings by work tasks and I also traveled a fair amount, even missing my son’s first coherent words and first steps. I didn’t like that – and neither did my wife.
We were quite happy to take a serious pay cut in order to add some major flexibility to our lives, allow me to stay home much more, and give me a chance to work on things that I loved. My wife, thankfully, has already found a career she truly loves.
What are your hobbies? What do you do when you’re not writing?
- Cam
My primary hobby is reading. I read about three books a week – two for personal enjoyment and enrichment and one for review purposes for The Simple Dollar. I also read quite a few articles of various kinds throughout the week.
I enjoy board games. My wife and I host an all-day event once a month or so where we invite several friends over to play board games all day long. Not Monopoly or Pictionary – games more like Ticket to Ride or Power Grid. Games that require a pretty sharp mind but also offer tons of room for conversation and socializing.
I also enjoy cooking. About two or three times a week, I’ll cook up some sort of special meal, usually riffing on a recipe or an idea I found somewhere.
I don’t watch much television outside of Lost. We’ll slowly move through itneresting series on DVD on rainy days and late evenings, but that’s about it.
Why don’t you post your novel that you’ve talked about, “Rings of Saturn,” for us to read?
- Irene
I enjoy writing fiction a lot. I usually write a short story a week and also polish up an older one. I also have a largely-complete novel that I’ve kicked around for a long time, tentatively titled Rings of Saturn. I would love to someday publish some of my fiction.
I have never shared more than a scrap or two of my fiction with anyone other than family and a few very close friends. I once made the mistake of convincing myself that my fiction was good and it was met with a big pile of rejection letters and only one remotely interested tug.
Since then, I do believe I’ve improved as a fiction writer. However, I’m still not comfortable sharing it. For some reason, the fiction I write seems more personal to me than the essays I write for The Simple Dollar.
Don’t worry – if I ever do decide to do something with them, I’ll announce it on The Simple Dollar.
What is your family like?
- Sally
I have a wife, Sarah, and two children, a four year old boy (Joe) and a two year old girl (Katie). We are just about to have a third child (a boy) and, in fact, that child may have arrived by the time you read this.
We don’t live anywhere close to any of our extended family. My parents and Sarah’s parents live fairly close to each other (and my extended family is in that area as well), but her parents are transplants – most of Sarah’s extended family lives fairly near each other in another state.
We travel back to visit our family several times a year. This is one of the big reasons we own two vehicles – a Prius (with great gas mileage) for Sarah’s work commute and a Pilot (with tons of seating) for family travel.
Do you actually do the frugal stuff you write about, like make your own laundry detergent?
- Ed
I try all of it at least once just to see if it actually works. I usually wind up adopting quite a few of the ideas in terms of my normal routine.
My process usually goes something like this. I hear of a frugal idea from some source – often, it’s a friend or a family member. I’ll do the math on it to see whether it’s feasible or not. If it’s not, I’ll usually toss the idea out immediately. If it is feasible (I usually check the hourly rate to see if it is – if I can save $10 or more, I’m interested), then I’ll give it a whirl to see whether it’s something I could easily incorporate into my routine and whether it’s something I could write about.
I usually wind up discarding more ideas than I end up writing about. There are a lot of ideas for saving money out there, but most of them only save a dollar or two for an hour’s worth of effort. That’s not worth it to me – my time is more valuable than that.
Isn’t your friend ticked off at you because of that post?
- Kelly
No, I’m pretty sure he’s not.
Whenever I write about others on The Simple Dollar, I usually do one of two things. I either get their explicit permission to write about them or I edit enough details so that the exact person I am referring to would be impossible to identify.
I don’t think it’s right for me to expose the private details of a friend or anyone else on this site unless they allow me to do so.
I can’t believe you actually make money writing obvious and stupid stuff like this. It’s so easy that even a chimp could do it.
- Bill
That may be true.
The challenge of The Simple Dollar isn’t in writing an individual article. If each of you merely had to write a single article on a frugal topic once, most of you could do a bang-up job of it.
The challenge comes in writing two articles a day. Every day. Without cease. Every day of the week. Every week of the month. Every month of the year. In order to build an audience, you have to be consistent and worthwhile in your writings. That doesn’t even include the other writings I do – articles sold to publications, the two books I’ve written since The Simple Dollar started, the promotion of my work elsewhere, and so on.
It takes both discipline and passion to do that. There are a lot of days that it would be easy to convince myself to skip out and just go do something else. I have days where I have severe writer’s block. I have days where I can’t come up with a good idea or a good phrase choice.
If it’s so easy, I encourage you to start your own. Write enough worthwhile content to grab an audience (meaning it has to be of at least minimal quality and have enough ideas in it to intrigue people – oh, and you have to write consistently, like clockwork), then put in all the footwork necessary to build it – sending your best articles to other sites for links, participating in carnivals, designing your site so that it’s easy to read, trying to get media mentions.
It certainly can be done, but it requires a lot of footwork to do it.
Why do you allow negative comments on your blog? I’d just delete them all.
- Chelie
Not everyone thinks alike, nor should they. Nothing good has ever come out of everyone thinking in lockstep.
Yes, many comments could be worded a lot better. You can offer criticism and alternate ideas without being bitter and negative. If your comment comes across as just full of anger and rage and hate, no one will take you seriously.
Sometimes, there are comments that seem to be nothing but bile. I usually delete the worst of these – the ones that contain personal threats and the like. I’ve seen enough of these kinds of things that many of the “tamer” attacks don’t really seem very bothersome to me.
To a degree, I think I’m so steeled against negative comments that they just don’t bother me at all any more. If someone makes a “scathing” comment, I just really don’t care what they have to say. If they can’t be enough of a human being to word a thought, criticism, or disagreement in a reasonably polite and respectful way, I don’t have time or energy to concern myself with what they’re saying.
The Simple Dollar is great. I’d like to read some of your other writings.
- Andy
The best place to start would probably be my personal site, TrentHamm.com, where I post all kinds of different things. They’re mostly short snippets, but there are some good bits there.
You would probably also enjoy my two books. My current one, The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams, will be available in bookstores on June 24. My previous book, 365 Ways to Live Cheap, is available in bookstores and libraries everywhere.
Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag. However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.
Continue reading Reader Mailbag: The Trent Hamm FAQ …
From The Simple Dollar.