It’s Independence Day in the United States, and that means time with family and friends. I don’t have any financial tips from the Founding Fathers today. Instead, I have three fine performances of the U.S. national anthem.

First up, a traditional rendition from Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians. (This group is virtually forgotten today, though popular enough in their day. Have I mentioned I have vast collection of music from before 1950? Yet another hobby.) This version is from 1942, and would have been used with the newsreels in movie theaters.

The truth is, I never much cared for “The Star Spangled Banner”. I always found it bombastic. I wished our national anthem was something more pleasant…“America the Beautiful”, perhaps.

Then I heard the Dixie Chicks sing the anthem before the Super Bowl in 2003. I had no idea the song could be so beautiful:

More recently, I’ve been fond of another version that features close harmonies. Here The Cactus Cuties, five girls ranging in age from 8 to 13, wow the crowd with their vocals:

Have a terrific (and safe) Independence Day, my friends. (And if you’re outside the United States, enjoy your weekend.) I’ll see you on Monday.

I’ve written a lot lately about finding balance. It’s important to save for the future, but how do you balance that with enjoying today? Each of us has to address that question in our own way. A reader named Max wrote to share his own dilemma:

I’ve been working as a web designer since I was 18. I made a few financial mistakes in my early days: leased a car for four years, bought a couple of motorcycles, spent money on Stuff that had no value. I’m 25 now and I’ve owned a condo for four years. I was lucky to buy it really cheap and only have $100,000 mortgage left to pay.

Things have changed in the last two years. I’ve traveled a lot. I’m constantly increasing my knowledge and working on new business ideas. But I don’t have the time to do anything about it because I’m always working…to for pay my condo.

Fortunately, I have no debts other than the condo. I have $5000 in savings. My total expenses are about $1700/month and I make about $2600/month. I made some calculations and I can easily bring my expenses down to $1000/month if I didn’t own the condo.

After working as a web designer for nearly seven years, I’m sick of it. I want out. I want to bartend a couple nights per month and travel the rest of the time. Actually I’d be happy just traveling and doing any kind of work outdoors: bartending by the beach, teaching motorcycle riding classes, gardening, surf instructor…

Would it be wrong to sell my condo (I could get $160,000), take the profits, and go travel the world? Do a few side gigs here and there and enjoy life while I’m still young? I don’t have kids. I’m not married, no girlfriend. No car, no debts other than mortgage. I’ve been wanting to live in Australia, California, Japan. I’m sick of cold winters in Maine.

I’m also scared to just “save money” eternally until I’m too dead to enjoy it. I don’t understand the point of saving my money and working to pay my bills when I can just cash in now, take as much time off as I want, and still get by on a small salary doing work that I really enjoy — outdoors, where the weather is great.

I need advice, and my parents keep telling me to keep my “good” job.

This is an interesting question, one that many GRS readers wrestle with. The good news is that Max is in fairly good shape financially for this stage in his life. He has $5000 cash and $60,000 in equity in his condo. He has no debt. He has no ties.

Based on this, I think there’s a balance to be found. I’m sure many folks would recommend simply finding another job, moving from Maine, and pushing forward with a sedate (but safe) life. And there’s value in that. At the very least, Max should stay away from debt.

But at the same time, I can’t help but remember my friend Sparky. Sparky didn’t have $60,000. His wealth was more like $6000. But when he was Max’s age, he packed up and traveled the world for five months. Sparky loved it.

Because he was not burdened by Stuff, Sparky returned to a financial position similar to the one he’d left. He didn’t have a mortgage or other debt. His core savings and investments were still intact. He lived for five months without an income, it’s true, but he spent exactly what he budgeted, and he had the experience of a lifetime.

Max has an opportunity that may never come again. How many of us at age 40 can simply pack up and travel the world? How many wish we could? (I do!) Knowing what I know now, if I were in his position I would sell the condo, put half of the money in savings, and then use the rest to travel on the cheap. I might even take a job in another country and live there for a while.

When I returned to Maine (or to Texas, or wherever), I’d start again from scratch, either as a web designer or as something else entirely. Maybe go to school. I’d use the remaining condo money to jump-start my life, to stay away from debt.

Along the way, I’d read The Razor’s Edge, Vagabonding, and The Art of Non-Conformity.

This advice may be counter to what you’d expect from me. I’m a huge advocate of saving and investing early. But I think Max already has a good start, and he has a chance to pick up something even more valuable than home equity: He has a chance to build life equity.

What would you do in Max’s situation? Would you travel the world, too? Or would you parlay the good financial start into a stronger foundation for the future? What advice can you offer Max?

Programmer photo by evhead. Photo of Japanese garden by One man’s perspective.

Money can’t buy happiness. Or can it? The TierneyLab blog from The New York Times recently conducted an informal survey. Based on Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior, a new book from Dr. Geoffrey Miller, readers were invited to:

List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.

Yesterday’s TierneyLab column examined the responses. The results are fascinating. Things appearing much more often on ‘expensive’ lists than ‘happy’ lists include:

• children
• marriage ceremonies
• divorces
• taxes
• most cars
• boats

Items that were on far more ‘happy’ lists than ‘expensive’ lists included:

• meals with friends
• alcohol
• bicycles
• pets
• hobbies
• adult education
• church and charity
• books, music, artwork
• quality beds

And, finally, there was some overlap where things were both expensive and fulfilling. These include:

• houses
• higher education
• travel
• electronics
• certain vehicles

Obviously, these results are not scientific in any way. But they’re interesting.

For myself, I was hard pressed to list ten items on each side. I just listed six or seven. Believe it or not, my Mini Cooper makes both lists. So does our current home. (If I had paid for college, that would have definitely made both lists; I was fortunate to attend on scholarship.) Other than that, though, there’s not a clear relationship between money spent and happiness received.

Dr. Miller offered a brief analysis of the survey results, noting a handful of trends, including:

• For many, there is an overlap between expensive purchases and happiness.
• Many people — including myself — find that paying for experiences is more likely to bring happiness than buying physical Stuff.
• Many commenters emphasized the value of thrift in daily life so they could afford to spend on the things that mattered.
• Some people noted that the act of saving money for the future brings them happiness.

If you find this topic as interesting as I do, I recommend you read the full post, which contains a lot of additional information and a fuller analysis. Also, the comments on the article are quite good.

[TierneyLab at The New York Times: When money buys happiness, via e-mail from Robin B.]

This is a guest post from Robert Brokamp of The Motley Fool. Robert is a Certified Financial Planner and the advisor for The Motley Fool’s Rule Your Retirement service. He contributes one new article to Get Rich Slowly every two weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to a group of elementary-school teachers about their 403(b) plan (the 401(k) equivalent for non-profit employers, in case you didn’t know). Like most investors, they were a bit shell-shocked over what’s happened over the past 20 months or so.

Many asked whether they should be contributing to their retirement accounts at all, given that the S&P 500 is still down approximately 40% from its October 2007 high, even after the rally we’ve seen since early March. It’s understandable. By some metrics, the past decade has been even worse than what happened during the Great Depression.

My answer was, yes, you should still contribute to your retirement accounts. The tax breaks are just too good to pass up. Money you contribute to a traditional 401(k) or 403(b) reduces your taxable income, so it’s essentially a tax deduction. Plus, you don’t pay taxes on any interest, dividends, or gains until you withdraw the money in retirement. That’s known as tax-deferred growth, and ends up providing more money in retirement.

Now, if your boss doesn’t match your contributions to the company plan, you might be better off in a Roth IRA, which doesn’t give you a tax break today, but gives you one in retirement. Whichever account you choose, you should still keep saving; it’s the only way you’ll be able to retire. If you can’t stand the volatility of the stock market, invest in bonds or even cash. Just keep saving!

Stocks for the Really Long Run
That said, I do think most investors should have some of their money in stocks. Especially the 30-something teacher who told me that she couldn’t stand seeing her account balance drop, drop, and drop last fall, so she sold everything and has been in cash ever since. Again, I understand — it’s not easy watching years of savings seemingly disappear in a matter of months. But it’s important to remember that investment success isn’t based on how much you have right now, but how much you’ll have when you need it. Staying too conservative for too long can increase the chances that you’ll come up short.

The truth is, folks, your investment time horizon might be longer than you think. Let’s assume the teacher I met is 35 years old and plans to retire at 65. That’s 30 years of investing ahead of her. But she won’t sell all her investments on the day she retires.

Sure, she should have at least 40% of her money in bonds at that point — and perhaps even more, if she’s more conservative — but she can’t play it too safe. Because at age 65, the average woman lives another 20 years; the average 65-year-old dude lasts another 17 years. Marriage actually increases the chances that one spouse will make it even five years longer (my wife doesn’t believe it). And those are the averages; half of the population will live longer.

Add in lengthening life expectancies, and our 35-year-old teacher could reasonably expect to be living — and investing — well into her 90s. Of course, by then she should be playing it very safe, perhaps with only 10% to 20% of her assets in stocks. But it means that a stock (or mutual fund) that she buys today could still be in her portfolio by the year 2070.

Historically, with a timeframe that long, stocks have been the investment of choice. The chart below indicates how often from 1871 to 2006 that stocks beat bonds over various holding periods, courtesy of the fourth edition of Jeremy Siegel’s classic Stocks for the Long Run.

If 2007 and 2008 were included in these numbers, all those percentages would be lower, including a 30-year period when bonds beat stocks (assuming that the bonds used were long-term Treasuries). So I’m definitely not saying that stocks are riskless investments as long as you hold on long enough.

But I still find the historical odds very compelling, especially for a multi-decade investment time horizon. And let’s face it: Most of us will need stock-like returns to be able to retire and ensure that our portfolio keeps up with inflation over such a long timeframe. But that’s a topic for a future article.

In the meantime, have some fun (or grim reality) with the longevity calculator at www.livingto100.com to get an idea of how long your portfolio will have to last.

As of today, Microsoft Money is no longer available for purchase. Microsoft has essentially conceded that there’s no demand for the product. From the website:

With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed. After suspending annual updates of Money Plus in 2008, Microsoft is announcing today that we will no longer offer Microsoft Money Plus for purchase after June 30, 2009.

Now that Microsoft has thrown in the towel, where does that leave existing users of Money and Money Plus? Some of them are worried. I’ve received several e-mails about this recently, including this one from Lee G.: “Microsoft just left us in a lurch by killing Money. Any suggestions on finance software? I’m not really a fan of Quicken, but would entertain it.”

First, it’s important to note that Microsoft intends to support Money Plus at least through 31 January 2011. Until then, you can still get stock quotes and use the software’s billpay feature. After that time, the online functions may (read: “probably will”) expire. If you’re a Microsoft Money user, you still have 18 months to find a replacement. The Money FAQ offers this helpful advice to guide you:

A number of online personal finance management and planning tools are available, many for free, on the Web. Other software solutions may be for sale from companies other than Microsoft. For general account information and transactions, your bank Web site may provide the best solution.

It would have been nice if Microsoft had provided a list of these “personal finance management and planning tools”. Since they didn’t, I spent a couple of hours surveying the current options. Here are 16 powerful personal finance programs to take the place of Microsoft Money:

• AceMoney is a Windows desktop app that offers all the features you’d expect: downloadable transactions, budgeting, investment tracking, and more. AceMoney costs $30, but a free “lite” version is available.
• Budgetpulse is a free “upbeat” way to manage your money. It offers standard budgeting and tracking features, as well as international compatibility. One of this program’s stated goals is simplicity; it doesn’t try to do a whole lot other than track your core accounts.
• Buxfer started as simple tool for tracking debts and has grown into a more comprehensive financial management tool. It allows users to import data from their bank and credit card accounts, set spending limits, track shared expenses, and more. iPhone app available.
• ClearCheckbook is “an extremely easy to use tool that helps you balance your checkbook and manage your money. Think of us as an online checkbook register with the added bonus of viewing reports, setting budgets, creating reminders and more.” A premium version adds features. iPhone app available.
• Expensr seems to be similar to Budgetpulse. It too offers simple account tracking. Expensr includes some social networking components, allowing you to compare your money habits with other broad groups that you select.
• Geezeo allows users to create and manage a budget while obtaining support from other members. According to the intro video, Geezeo also has the ability to track investments. Mrs. Micah tried Geezeo and liked the goal-setting and community aspects of the tool.
• Mint has become the Big Daddy of online personal-finance apps, with almost a million registered users. Mint offers support for investment accounts, which is cool, and allows users to create personal budgets. I’ve heard both praise and complaints from Mint users, so it sounds like something you’ll need to try to see if it’s right for you. (Here’s an early Mint review from a GRS user.) iPhone app available.
• Moneydance is a full-featured desktop personal-finance manager. It’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Moneydance offers budgeting tools, investment tracking, and many built-in reports. Because I prefer a desktop money app, I’m very tempted to try this.
• moneyStrands is the new kid on the block. Based in part on a financial management tool from Spain, moneyStrands offers all of the features you’d expect (though no investment-management yet). This tool offers lots of budgeting goals with highly-configurable alerts (”let me know when I’ve spent $30 on coffee this month!”). It also allows you to compare your finances with other demographics (not individual users, but groups of users). If you prefer Spanish, this app is for you. iPhone app available.
• Mvelopes is a web-based version of the envelope budgeting system. It automatically connects with most banks and offers a free billpay service. This looks like a slick product, but it’s by far the most expensive program on this list. At a minimum, it costs $7.90 per month.
• Quicken is perhaps the most popular personal-finance software available today. It’s fairly comprehensive and well-supported, but not without problems. Old versions are “sunset-ed” at regular intervals, forcing users to upgrade if they want to continue using certain features. I use Quicken for Mac, which supposedly updates investment portfolios automatically. Supposedly. My copy is broken though, and I can’t get it to update correctly. There’s an online version of Quicken, but to be honest, I haven’t heard good things about it. iPhone app available (though users don’t like it).
• Rudder sounds like a tool for those who don’t want a lot of extras. As with all of these programs, it allows you to connect to all of your accounts. It also helps you schedule upcoming bill payments. Rudder claims that its “secret sauce” is a widget to help predict your future cashflow. iPhone app available.
• Thrive is another online tool similar to Mint. It offers a budgeting component, as well as prompts for when to pay bills and how much to pay. It also encourages users to save. (This feature sounds neat.) Thrive features tools to help users plan for the future.
• Wesabe was one of the first online personal-finance apps. It sports a dedicated base of hardcore users. In fact, one of Wesabe’s strengths is its active community — users draw support from each other, sharing tips and ideas. Here’s my review of Wesabe from 2006. (Disclosure: I am on the Wesabe advisory board.) iPhone app available.
• YNAB is popular among GRS users, especially those for whom budgeting is important. I haven’t used this software myself, but I know that it allows you to import bank transactions, pay bills, etc. YNAB isn’t for users who want to track investment accounts, but is good for those who want to emphasize budgeting.
• Yodlee is the grandpappy of online money-management software. It’s the platform on which many tools, including Mint, are based. But Yodlee also offers its own personal-finance product called MoneyCenter. As you’d expect, it provides the same account-tracking functionality that most of these applications have, but it doesn’t feature budgeting as prominently. Yodlee offers tight integration with most banks, and also has a billpay feature. iPhone app available.

From what I’ve seen, these apps are a lot alike: the desktop programs offer similar feature sets, and the online tools are all close cousins. There’s not a lot to differentiate them. Wesabe has a great community, Mint tracks investment accounts, and moneyStrands offers a Spanish-language option. Each program offers something unique. But is there any one app that knocks it out of the park? I don’t know. What do you think? Which option would you recommend for refugees from Microsoft Money?

For myself, I’ll continue to use the desktop version of Quicken on my Mac. It’s not perfect, but I know its quirks.

Addendum: Many commenters also recommend gnucash, a free Open Source money-management tool. I considered listing gnucash, but discarded the idea because the software is billed as an “accounting” package. GRS readers report that it’s actually very suitable for personal finances.

Note: There are many other specialized personal-finance apps out there: PearBudget for budgeting, Fuelly for tracking gas mileage, etc. I’ll do a run-down of these in the future.

Get Rich Slowly keeps humming along! Thanks to your participation, it was another great month around here, with a lot of interesting discussions. I’ve managed to collate most of the results from the recent reader survey, by the way, and will share them with you in a few days. Meanwhile, here are some of the best posts from the past month:

• June 1st: Where we’re starting from
• June 2nd: The lazy way to investment success
• June 7th: The loneliness of the long-distance debtor
• June 11th: 25 essential books about money
• June 16th: Online banking: 13 choices for high interest rates
• June 19th: How to handle a windfall
• June 22nd: Remnants of things past
• June 24th: My sister’s keeper: Sharing financial goals with an accountability partner (a guest post from Kinley Levack)
• June 25th: The first three steps to financial freedom

The blog isn’t the only part of this site. If you have burning questions about personal finance, one of the best places to get answers is the Get Rich Slowly discussion forum.

The forums are a great place to chat with your fellow readers. Have questions about emergency funds? Ask! Want to chat about cheap vacations? This is the place to do it. The forums have 3200 registered users and over 38,000 posts.

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This weblog is a success because of you and your support. As always, I welcome reader contributions, either as ideas for stories, or as guest entries. If you have any comments or requests to improve this site, please feel free to pass them on.

Your financial choices do not stand in isolation. They have a cumulative effect. As you pay off debt, as you save for retirement, as you reduce your spending, you are creating a snowball of right action.

Or, to use a better metaphor, each smart choice you make creates ripples throughout your life. As you work toward financial freedom, you make it easier for yourself to accomplish other goals.

With the help of my Twitter followers, I’ve drafted a list of several ways that financial freedom makes it easier to accomplish other goals. Financial freedom means:

• Freedom to choose your work. “Financial Freedom means choosing a job or career I want to work at,” tweets @squawkfox. “I don’t need money to be the sole deciding factor.” I think this is huge. For sixteen years, I worked at a job I hated: I sold boxes for the family business. I couldn’t leave because I felt trapped by debt. Once I repaid my debt, I could consider other opportunities — like becoming a professional blogger.
• Freedom to live where you want. Do you like where you live? Would you rather live elsewhere? New York? South Dakota? Rome? There are other considerations than money, of course, but when you are financially secure, you’re better suited to practice “geographic arbitrage”, to explore location-independent living. In other words, if you have the money, you can live where you damn well please.
• Freedom to do what you want. Wealth doesn’t just open doors with work and housing. It also gives you freedom with your time. On Twitter, @MillionMommyND writes, “For me, financial freedom = The freedom to choose how I spend my time: wake when rested, play when playful, work when/if I want.” My friend Sparky had financial freedom, if only for a little while, and it let him travel the world.
• Freedom to seize opportunities. On Friday, I met Tsilli, a long-time GRS reader. She explained how being out of debt and financially secure allowed her to refinance her mortgage when the opportunity came along. She was financially prepared, so she could act. My friend Rhonda practices what she calls “predatory shopping”. She can afford to delay purchases until she finds what she wants at rock-bottom prices. On Twitter, @healthymcm suggests, “Financial freedom means no worry about paying everyday bills. Means able to give back, able to invest when opportunities arise.”
• Freedom from worry. Most of all, financial freedom means freedom from worry. When you’ve eliminated debt, when you have money in the bank, you can sleep more soundly. As @crowgirl tweeted: “Financial freedom means freedom from worry to me. It means knowing I’ve done the best I can to spend and save wisely.”

I think @MoneyEnergy provided the best summary of financial freedom: “For me, it means never having to work to further someone else’s goals instead of my own. It means options and more opportunities.” Financial freedom means options and opportunities. I like that. I believe it’s true. Debt is slavery because it limits your options and prevents you from seizing opportunities. But financial freedom allows you to pursue your own goals, to build the life you’ve dreamed of.

What does financial freedom mean to you? Have you reached it yet? Do you have a plan to do so? Or do you think the notion of “financial freedom” is just a marketing ploy?

Summer’s here, and for many homeowners that means it’s time for projects around the house. Since we bought our current home, Kris and I have spent a lot of money to make improvements. (At this very moment, contractors are painting the house!)

Join Jim and me this afternoon for the 14th episode of The Personal Finance Hour. We’ll be discussing home improvement: what projects are worth the money, how can you keep costs down, and how do hire a good contractor?

We would love to have you call with questions and share your own experiences! There are four ways to hear the show. You can listen through an audio feed at the show page, or you can dial the call-in number at (347) 327-9144. You can also listen through this widget:

Note that the widget always holds the archive of the most recent episode. So, right now it contains last week’s discussion about credit scores (with special guest Liz Weston). Later this afternoon it will contain episode number fourteen.

We’re also on iTunes! You can subscribe to The Personal Finance Hour as a weekly podcast by following this link (which will open iTunes).

Jim and I do this every Monday — and we hope you’ll join us. We think this is a fun way to connect with readers and to help everyone learn more about money management. You can catch The Personal Finance Hour live at 3pm Pacific (6pm Eastern) every Monday.

Last Friday, I attended a workshop put on by Pamela Slim, who writes about entrepreneurship at Escape from Cubicle Nation. Before this meeting, I didn’t know much about Slim or her message, but her work came highly recommended from my friend, Chris Guillebeau. “Pam is the real deal,” he told me. “Her book is what a lot other books have tried to be.”

Based on this recommendation, I drove to hear Slim speak. I was impressed. Chris is right: She’s the real deal. I was so impressed, in fact, that I spent the weekend reading her book, which is also called Escape from Cubicle Nation.

Opening up to opportunities
Escape from Cubicle Nation starts at the beginning of the entrepreneurial journey: deciding what to do with your life. Slim spends several chapters discussing how to get in touch with what’s important to you. At times, this almost seems touchy-feely. Almost.

Even if you currently have no intentions to quit your job, Slim’s advice can help you protect yourself from future layoffs. She recommends:

• Developing a wide social network
• Investing in personal development
• Pursuing a small business on the side

Slim advocates a philosophy of “life first, business second”. By becoming clear about what you want from life, what your ideal life contains, you can craft an entrepreneurial vision that helps you to pursue this goal.

Slim says that it’s important to choose work you’re passionate about. She cites the “sweet spot” described by Jim Collins, which is the place these three sets of skills overlap:

• What people will pay you to do
• That for which you have great passion
• That which you are “genetically encoded” to do

In my case, that seems to be blogging. For you, it’s going to be something else. It may take time to find that “something else”, but when you do, you’ll be ready to create a business plan.

The reality of entrepreneurship
“Hating your job intensely is not a business plan,” Slim writes in the book’s introduction.

Although I think it is a tremendous idea to work for yourself and live a life of happiness and financial success, I don’t believe that is possible to become an overnight sensation with a few magic techniques or systems.

Slim doesn’t candy coat things. While she encourages readers to pursue their dreams, she admits that the path is often difficult. She also offers “a few horror stories for good measure”, real-life examples of how things can go wrong. She wants her readers to escape from corporate environments, but she wants them to have realistic expectations.

Escape from Cubicle Nation also covers topics like:

• Drafting a business plan
• Building and using a social network
• Lifestyle design
• Developing a personal brand

There are a lot of buzzwords in that list, but Slim handles each topic thoughtfully, with examples that readers can relate to. (Rachael Ray, for example, is a perfect example of personal branding.)

Make the money work
“Nothing will cause you more pain than ignoring the financial side of your business,” Slim writes. “Not horrible sales calls, crashed laptops, surly employees, or even bad press. When the financial side of your business is not working, life is miserable.”

To begin, however, your personal finances must be in order. Slim offers solid advice (the sort you’re used to seeing on Get Rich Slowly), and encourages readers to have realistic expectations about their financial situations. (This section even excerpts an underrated GRS post about facing and fighting financial trolls.)

There’s also a chapter on benefits for the self-employed, including health insurance.

Making the leap
It’s one thing to draw up a business plan and to embrace the idea of entrepreneurship, but it’s another thing to actually make the leap. It can be scary to quit a safe job to pursue the unknown. In the final section of her book, Slim offers advice for smoothing the transition.

First, she tells readers to expect resistance from the people they know. “You are crazy if you think you can convince all your friends and family that starting a business is a good idea,” Slim writes. She provides techniques for handling common questions, and she stresses the importance of open communication with your spouse or partner.

Finally, Slim provides some pointers for getting organized — and deciding when it’s time to leave your job, to escape from cubicle nation.

Conclusion
I thought Slim’s workshop last Friday was great, and not just because of her content. I was impressed with the dynamic people in attendance. The flood of tips, ideas, and experiences was inspirational.

But Escape from Cubicle Nation — the book — is even better. Some people might be put off by how often she quotes from other sources. Not me. I love it. I like that she synthesizes advice from a variety of books and blogs to give the readers the best information possible. I wish more authors did this.

If you think Escape from Cubicle Nation might be useful for you but aren’t quite sure, you can give Pam Slim’s ideas a test drive at her blog. (Slim has also made the first chapter of the book available via PDF.) Based on the number of Get Rich Slowly readers at the workshop last Friday, it seems that many of you are looking to escape your corporate jobs to pursue your passions. That’s awesome.

Every month, my wife and I track how much time and money we spend growing food. This is the report for June 2009. (Here are the results for 2008.)

It’s the beginning of summer, and that means our garden is lush and green and growing. It also means there’s nothing exciting to write about. We’ve begun to harvest a couple of things, but mostly our chores have become routine. We weed and fertilize while we wait for the crops to ripen.

One problem we’ve encountered this year is weeds. There are always some weeds to be pulled, but as many GRS readers warned, spreading horse manure on our vegetable garden caused more weeds to sprout. Kris is the weed-puller (and plant-fertilizer), so she puts the most hours into the garden. She spent four hours working on food crops this month, while I spent three, all of which were harvest-related.

Harvest
As our harvests begin, I want to remind you of our methodology. For the purposes of this project, we’re using “best match” pricing. Based on GRS reader suggestions, we’re obtaining typical pricing from our local farmers market. In some cases, we use pricing from a local organic produce stand. In all cases, we’re trying to be fair, but this is more art than science.

Also, last year we established through repeated measurements that a pint of berries weighs roughly 300 grams. I’ll use this approximation frequently throughout the summer.

Those ground rules established, here’s our harvest for the month of June:

• 13.55 pounds (6.151 kg or about 20.5 pints) strawberries @ $2.99 per pint = $61.30
• 5.17 pounds (2.344 kg) snow peas @ $2.99/pound = $15.45
• 0.31 pounds (0.139 kg) raspberries $3.49/pint = $1.62

Our harvest this month was worth a total of $78.37. In June 2008, we harvested $50.83 worth of food. That’s a 54% increase in the value of our crops!

Despite the correct pruning we gave them this year, our raspberry harvest looks as though it’s going to be pitiful. The culprit? They’re overcome by the monstrous marionberry vine that has taken over the entire trellis. We may relocate the raspberry canes, so will evaluate the yard for a suitable spot and decide later this summer. However, there is a silver lining; we love marionberries (a type of blackberry-boysenberry cross).

Summary
And so the profit portion of our project has begun! July, August, September, and October will be even more productive as we begin to pick our caneberries, our tree fruit, and, especially, our tomatoes.

For now, here’s the monthly summary for June, including comparison data from 2008.

As always, we’ve been supplementing our own produce with food picked elsewhere. Last weekend, our friend Jolie joined us for a trip to the strawberry patch. Kris and I picked 24 pounds of berries (about two flats), for which we paid just over $20.

On Friday, our neighbor came over to let us know that her cherries were ready to harvest. We’ve decided not to preserve any cherries this year, but we picked about 10 pounds just for snacking.

Final word
This garden project is not a formal experiment. Kris and I are long-time hobby gardeners, and we have set ways that we do things. This year, we’re trying to incorporate some new ideas from GRS readers, but most of the time we’ll do things the way we have for nearly 15 years.

We’re not trying to be 100% organic (though we are mostly organic through our normal practices). Nor are we trying to be 100% frugal. Instead, we’re trying to see just what our garden costs and produces based on our normal habits. We hope the results of this experiment will help us find new ways to economize and to improve our crops.

You can read about my goals for this series in The year-long GRS project: How much does a garden really save?