Money Tips Network

Recently, I’ve been reading the wonderful book The Up Side of Down by Megan McArdle, someone whose writings I’ve enjoyed for a very long time.

The premise of the book is that, at some point in our lives, we’re going to fail. We’ll fail at a relationship or at launching a business or at a college course. Most of us will fail quite often.

McArdle’s argument is that failure is usually far more illuminating than success. When you fail, you have to deal with that failure. You learn internal coping mechanisms that show you how to emotionally handle it, for starters.

It’s almost Spring – which means it’s time for a bit of garden planning.

This year, I’m keeping things very, very simple:

I am going to plant vegetables that do well in our climate and are relatively easy to care for.

I am going to use a single raised-bed for the garden.  In the past, I’ve started out with several beds – only to get frustrated with local deer, the lack of rain, and the lack of production.

I’m focusing on quality over quantity.  I’ll grow cucumbers, peas, watermelons, butter beans, and some peppers.  I may add a few more plants, but I want the gardening experience, for 2014, to be enjoyable!

Note: This article is from J.D. Roth, who founded Get Rich Slowly in 2006. J.D.’s non-financial writing can be found at More Than Money, where he recently wrote about the difference between moderators and abstainers.

When my father died in 1995, he left behind a small life insurance policy that awarded each family member $5,000. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do based on the fact that he had cancer. He hadn’t been much of a planner, and hadn’t been good with money, so that $5,000 per person was actually a significant amount.

Most winters, I get a strong case of the “winter blues.” It usually manifests itself in a sense of feeling really tired, particularly in the darkest parts of winter.

This winter, strangely enough, I’ve barely had any blues at all. I’ve felt largely normal throughout most of the winter.

This is particularly strange, because this has been one of the coldest and snowiest winters in a very long time. We’ve run our snowblower at least a dozen times and had many cancelled days of school.

There must be something different in my routine or my diet, but I can’t figure out what it is. It’s a mystery to me.

This article is by staff writer Kristin Wong.

Over the weekend, a friend of mine came to visit. She’s a career counselor and, while I wasn’t looking for free advice, the conversation naturally turned to my job hunt.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“It’s bleak,” I complained.

“Oh, I know.” She told me about clients she’s worked with who went on second and third interviews. Those clients were sure they got the job. Then they found out they just…didn’t.

“Employers can choose from the cream of the crop right now,” she told me. “Some companies aren’t even actively hiring. They put out job ads just to see what else is out there.”

She’s gotta be kidding, right? I might be applying to companies that are, for all intents and purposes, keeping their options open?

“That’s like asking someone out when you’re married,” I joked.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama introduced the myRA account. It stands for “My Retirement Account.”

WHAT IS IT?

The myRA is a new variant of the Roth IRA, with the following features:

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The one part about turning around your personal finance situation that everyone dreads is the cutbacks.

It’s easy to see why. Your normal, everyday life is what has led you to this financial corner. In order to turn the ship around, you’re going to have to make some changes to your normal, everyday life.

People don’t like changes.

Even people who seem to have the most carefree and the most varied lives have lots of patterns and routines in their lives. They like certain things. They prefer certain activities and foods and drinks.

Human beings are all about routines and patterns and the mere suggestion of seriously altering those routines for very long seems rather dreadful.

What makes it even worse is that the first things people imagine cutting are the things that they know are non-essential but that they also deeply enjoy.

This post is from staff writer William Cowie.

The science fiction author Isaac Asimov, inspired by his visit to the New York World’s Fair back in 1964, wrote down some predictions of life 50 years hence. Fifty years from 1964 brings us to today, and the New York Times recently re-published the piece in honor of the occasion.

What did Mr. Asimov foresee that came true? To me, his most impressive predictions were flat-screen televisions and Skype on iPads. However, anyone projecting life 50 years hence can be expected to whiff on a few calls, and Mr. Asimov didn’t disappoint. We do not have colonies on the moon and Mars, which means we’re spared the communication problems Mr. Asimov predicted we’d have.

How long?