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Much of our day-to-day lives has personal finance implications. We’re constantly making choices that either directly spend money or use up resources that are going to have to be replaced. When we eat, we shop, we go to work – all of those things, and many many more, have financial impact.

At the same time, humans are routine-oriented people. We like patterns, and it’s not hard for us to get stuck into a daily routine filled with familiar ways of doing things. Even the craziest of lives is filled with little patterns that repeat themselves over and over again, because we tend to just do what’s familiar when it comes to the day-to-day process of living our lives.

For various reasons – marketing, bad role models, an addiction to momentary pleasure – some of the routines we choose in our life aren’t the best ones in terms of our money. Yet, they’re familiar and we understand them, so we keep using them.

One of the most common requests I get from readers is for detailed information on how to start a side business of some kind. With minimal equipment and ample time, how can a person construct a side business in order to earn a little extra money?

This is the first in a series of articles describing exactly how to do this. In each article, I’m going to discuss exactly how to build an income stream on the side, what effort goes into it, and (approximately) what kind of income you can expect from it.

These articles will naturally be spaced out so that I have time to actually construct each side business and keep it going until it earns a respectable income. However, with blogging, I’ve already done this and due to a lot of luck and hard work, it became successful beyond my wildest dreams. You’re reading that blog, in fact – it’s The Simple Dollar.

Over the years, I’ve read more personal finance and career books than I can possibly count. For the first several years of The Simple Dollar, I actually reviewed a book each week on the site. Yet, for all of those books, there were really only a few that had something inside the covers that stuck with me.

Of the hundreds of books related to personal finance, careers, professional growth, and other related topics that I’ve looked at over the past decade, only fourteen have retained a place on my bookshelf. I keep these on a shelf next to the desk where I write and actually refer to them now and again, because I find all of them to be treasure troves of inspiration when it comes to money issues, career issues, and career-life balance issues.

The simple maxim of spending less than you earn stands at the heart of personal finance success. If you can consistently do that one thing, you’re going to succeed when it comes to personal finance. I repeat that idea all the time because it’s so true – it’s the core of everything.

People get into financial trouble when they don’t follow that maxim. If you consistently spend more than you earn, you’re going to dip into financial trouble.

The result of this is that the first financial move people have to make when they’re beginning to turn their finances around is to get a grip on their spending.

For some, that’s a really hard pill to swallow, not because they don’t know how to do it, but because they view a reduction in spending as something to be personally ashamed of. They don’t want to feel “poor.” They don’t want to put forth an appearance of being “poor.”