Money Tips Network

For many people, the start of a new year signals an opportunity to start again. The turning of a calendar page, exposing an unblemished run of 365 days, feels like fresh opportunity. It’s not full of the mistakes of the past year; rather, it’s a new opportunity to begin again on whatever that journey may be.

It’s an incredibly powerful feeling, especially at first. The first days of a new journey are always the most exciting as you’re reveling in the novelty of a new routine, with new challenges and new ideas and new experiences.

But then that feeling of newness fades and many of the old impulses show up again, often in force, and it’s at that point that many of our best intentions fall apart.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Upset about stock advice
2. Bicycle recommendation
3. Family debts after holidays
4. Standing desk update
5. Using iPad for work purposes
6. Starting company on tiny budget
7. Drawing down 401(k) in retirement
8. Selecting easier chores

I grew up with both fireplaces and wood stoves, but neither experience really prepared me for tending to my own fireplace or buying a wood or pellet stove of my own.

Each year when the temperatures drop, the sky grays, and the heating bill starts to inch upward, I am reminded of my family’s first fireplace. In 1984, we moved into a home in Belleville, N.J., that could best be described as a Craftsman Colonial — complete with a covered porch, dark woodwork along the stairs, windows, and trim, and a prominent fireplace in the front living room flanked by two small windows.

My mother had never lived in a home with a fireplace, so she left the fire-tending duties to my stepfather. He’d keep an eye on the newspaper’s classified section for people offering free firewood, tow it home in a utility trailer, and spend hours splitting and stacking it into a lean-to beside our garage.

One of the big tricks of frugal living is to know when it’s worthwhile to sweat the small stuff and when it’s better to just let it be. There are times when paying attention to a few cents can end up making a big difference, and there are times when paying attention to a few cents is a complete waste of your focus. The challenge is being able to instantly tell which is which.

At this point, I’ve developed something of an “instinct” for being able to tell when the pennies are really worth my attention or not, so I don’t even have to think about it. I just run subconsciously through a series of criteria to decide whether it’s worth my time and attention or not. Here are most of the criteria that I use.

Over the course of the past year, I read somewhere in the realm of 60 books. I track what books I read and came up with 58, but for some reason I think I missed a couple this year, so we’ll call it an even 60.

My reading mixes fiction and nonfiction and spreads across all kinds of genres and topics, but personal finance and personal growth are always topics near and dear to my heart.

On that note, I thought I’d share with you the five books that really had a strong impact on me in terms of personal finance and self-improvement, along with a quick list of five books on my to-be-read list for next year that I have very high hopes for.

Join our Tweetchat this Thursday at 12:00 pm Pacific for lively conversation and a chance to win one of two $10 Amazon GCs! Use #WBChat to participate.

This week's topic: 2018 Finances in Review! Learn about money-saving strategies, checking credit reports, paying off debt, and more!

Five years ago I left my full-time job to enter the freelance writing world. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to best organize and manage my days so they were productive and meaningful. At some point during that first year, I discovered the Bullet Journal methodology, and while I’ve picked it up and put it down a couple times since then, I recommitted to the analog process earlier this year, around the same time I chose to intentionally disconnect more from my phone.

Vicki Robin, one of the authors of the truly great personal finance book Your Money or Your Life, wrote an article for Marketwatch entitled Suze Orman missed the point of retirement, and that’s why she went back to work. The article discusses the decision of financial guru Suze Orman to return to work after retiring three years ago, digging into her reasons for doing so and coming up with some interesting conclusions about retirement and financial independence.

Let’s dig into some key quotes from the article to break it down bit by bit and then I’ll summarize my thoughts on the article.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Pulled out in a panic
2. Collection of old autographs
3. Saving enough for retirement?
4. Trusting bloggers for financial advice
5. The cost of high expenses
6. Inexpensive way to learn chess
7. Overcontribution to 401(k)
8. Worried about stock market