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I'm not sure why I didn't try this trick a long time ago to get a cheap phone bill. Plus there's more service …

I grew up with a rotary dial phone. That dates me a bit.

For literally my entire life I've had access to a phone (either my parents' or my own) that connected me to the outside world through traditional phone lines.

Maybe one in fifteen calls is legitimate

Our landline phone service was about as basic as Verizon offered.

It had almost no extra features. No call waiting, or caller ID, or anything really extra. Our number was listed.

It rang in at $42/month. (Hah! Rang! I'll be here all week, folks …)

And we got garbage calls all the time: charities, surveys, robocalls, scams, telemarketers, political calls, bill collectors for people who either lived here before or gave the number out somewhere.

Well over 90% of the calls were just plain bothersome.

There are lots and lots of side hustles out there — so many that it's impossible to try them all out! Here are the ones that I tried out …

There are many ways to make extra money through side hustles. To get an idea of the breadth of what people will do for money, just check out Fiverr.

We can't do everything. We must specialize. There are only so many hours in a day, and so many days.

Here are most of the side hustles I've tried, and what I learned.

1. Silk-screen designs on clothing

About 2005 or so, my wife and I had the idea to do funny/cute baby clothing.

And, not knowing any better, we pretty much immediately bought a six-color silk-screening machine.

The weather is starting to turn, and Christmas is on the horizon! How to save for Christmas? Here are a few things to try in order to save up for the holidays …

Christmas gift-giving isn't for everyone, of course, but it is a tradition for many families.

Almost as much of a tradition is the “January Blues” — paying for all of it the next month!

This is a tradition that we all can do without, right?

How to save for Christmas when you're a few months out

We're not that many weeks away from Christmas now. Assuming for the moment that you are looking to save up $300 for Christmas shopping rather than charging it on credit cards — (hint: you should save up for it) — then one way to go about it is to save $30 per week for those ten weeks.

Here's a Pinterest-friendly illustration of this plan, which I call the “Save $30 for 10 Weeks to Save $300 Saving Plan”:

Tonight I had my own version of a marshmallow experiment, and it turned out really well …

Bags of marshmallows in our house do a couple of things if they're not eaten in one sitting. The smaller ones get a bit hard and become marsh-not-so-mellow. The larger ones stick to each other and get really gooey.