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We are all looking for financial help in one way or another. Whether it’s getting out of debt, cutting back on expenses, saving more or making more money, the surprise is that the general rules that govern sound financial management are fairly simple. The difficulty lies in getting ourselves to do what is necessary to implement the solution. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

This website is dedicated to helping us all think about the choices we make as they pertain to our finances, to hopefully help us make better decisions and lead more fulfilled lives free of financial stress. Thousands of pages of advice on this site remarkably boil down to 14 simple rules.

Financial Help From The Founder Of The Simple Dollar

Trent’s “Money Rules” were developed in a series of posts on simple financial help. Each rule below is linked to the original post and gives a more in depth explanation of the rules.

Last year, I was invited to contribute to a collaborative book on personal improvement. Each contributor – there were ten or so of us – was charged with writing a section on one aspect of self-improvement. Mine, naturally, was personal finance, so I started to write a ten step guide to turning one’s financial situation around. Earlier this year, the publisher went out of business. After sitting on my portion of the book for six months, I’m sharing the basics of the book section with you. Enjoy!

The numbers are dire.

76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

50% of Americans have less than three months of living expenses in total savings.

26% of Americans have no savings at all.

One of my core principles of personal finance is that you should cut back in the areas that you don’t find very important so that you can preserve spending in areas that are important.

That’s a great philosophy to have when you’re on the road to financial recovery or when things are going well, but it doesn’t help too much when you’re actually facing a scary pile of bills and don’t have an obvious way to start tackling them.

Most of the time, at the start of a financial turnaround, you’ll have to cut back even harder for a little while so that you can get a few bills paid off and get a little bit of money in the bank to handle emergencies.

Sarah and I certainly went through a period like that. We cut back on everything. We cleaned out our closets, sold off a large chunk of our possessions, and lived as cheaply as possible for the better part of 2006 before we were able to breathe a little.