Money Tips Network

I am a strong, strong believer that the good life involves having some time that you’ve set aside for leisure activities that you do solely for personal enjoyment and personal enrichment. I block off significant portions of time in my daily and weekly schedule for hobbies, and although I do sometimes jettison those blocks of time, it’s become readily apparent to me over the years that having such free time is incredibly valuable for my level of happiness and my mental well being.

In the past, I’ve written about my 11 frugal hobbies, as well as 40 free (or very low cost) activities I enjoy doing in my spare time.

It may not be easy to get a credit card with bad credit, but the effort you put forth to do so will be worth it in the end. Good credit is the key to being able to buy a home or finance a car, after all.

Who am I kidding?

I can't go an entire month without publishing anything here at Get Rich Slowly. I need to write. And judging from the feedback regarding my planned sabbatical, you folks want me to write! Tell you what, let's change the premise.

Instead of taking all of September off from publishing, I'll instead vow that for the next four weeks, I won't tackle any major articles. If there's something that I want to share and that thing can be shared in 20-30 minutes, I'll do it. This plan will serve the same objective — freeing my mind to focus on the other tasks that need to get done around here — while also giving me an outlet for my writing (and giving you something to read).

Sound like a plan?

If you’ve been saving for retirement for a number of years, all the while advancing in your career and moving between jobs, you might have a number of different retirement accounts spread out across a number of different companies.

Managing all of those accounts can get confusing. You might start to lose track of where each account is, which ones you’re contributing to, and how you’re investing within each one.

It can also be inefficient. Maintaining multiple plans might keep you invested in higher cost mutual funds than are available elsewhere, as well as making it difficult to both implement your desired investment plan and to rebalance over time as the markets shift, all of which can make it harder for you to reach your ultimate investment goals.

Last month, my family decided to eliminate our cable service. We had already disconnected it from our television for a trial run and learned that we could easily live without it. Given that, we just chopped that bill out of our life.

Let’s get caught up on the full story of our use of cable television over the last several years. We’ve always been a one-television household with just a single TV that resides in our family room. I rarely watch it aside from the occasional live event, on family movie night, or when Sarah and I are cuddled under a blanket binge-watching something.

We’ve been a cable subscriber for many years, and I suppose that I should put “cable” in quotes because we’ve bounced around to satellite providers as well. Mostly, we’ve hopped around in an effort to take advantage of competitive pricing when possible.

Editor's Note: Congratulations to Jenny, Imari, and Terry for winning this week's contest!

There are many skills that help you live more frugally, and negotiation is one of the big ones.

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. Afraid to invest in 401(k)
2. Cutting off child
3. Musings on a difficult house
4. Sabbatical and job risk?
5. Sharing Simple Dollar information
6. NY Times on early retirement
7. Cloth kitchen towels are inconvenient
8. Twine app question

If you live in an area where homes are selling like hotcakes, you may be feeling exceptionally confident in the value of your property. And as a result, you may be considering a home upgrade you’ve been dreaming of for years. Perhaps you want to add a pool, or maybe you want to add more […]

The post Seven Renovations That Could Backfire and Hurt Your Home’s Value appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life.

1. Mark Epstein on talking to your past self

“It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.” — Mark Epstein

I can certainly vouch for this. There are many, many posts on The Simple Dollar that are the result of me working through some financial (or other) issue in my life, trying out something, seeing if it works, and sharing the results. I’m writing it as much for myself as I am for anyone else.

That’s because, in the end, who else can I really advise? As a reader, all you can really do is take what I’ve found and shared and apply it to your own life if it fits. I can’t know whether it does or doesn’t fit – that’s up to you, and that’s a key part of all of this.