This post is from staff writer Sierra Black. Sierra writes about frugality, sustainable living, and getting her kids to eat kale at Childwild.com.

The summer heat has taken a toll on my debt snowball. Two months ago, I paid off the last of my credit card debt, but I still have thousands of dollars in loans. I started the summer with over $10,000 in my savings account, no credit card debt, and a solid plan to pay off my remaining loans within the next few years.

Then life happened. I’ve been living out of suitcases for the past two months, traveling to New York, Buenos Aires, and Bangor. (I’ve blogged quite a bit about how travel is one of my budget weak spots.) So I spent some money. Not as much as I was afraid I might, but more than I probably should have.

Also, I have kids. Those of you with children may have noticed that they’re expensive. There are a thousand articles out there on how to keep the cost of having children to a minimum. I’ve written some of those myself. But I’m here to tell you that whether you do your back-to-school shopping at Bloomingdale’s or Goodwill, kids will add to your monthly expenses.

So here I am. Summer’s ending. I’m writing from the lake house in northern Maine where I’ve been holed up for much of the past few months. In the peaceful quiet hour around sunset, I finally steeled myself and looked at my bank balance.

Resting on my laurels
It’s not as bad as I’d feared. The numbers are still solidly in the black. My savings have a dent in them, but a smaller one than I expected. My checking account is in good shape. My bills are paid.

The shadow in this rosy picture: I haven’t made any extra debt payments all summer. The hot weather arrived, my credit cards were paid off, and instead of rolling that debt snowball right into my car loan, I sat back on my laurels. No wonder I have more money than I expected: I’ve been letting all my debt snowball money (which adds up to almost $2000 a month) sluice around in my regular budget for two months!

I was going to try to slide this under the radar. I figured I’d turn a new leaf when the leaves changed colors, keep paying my debts off as quick as I can, and no one needed to be the wiser.

But then J.D. pointed out that my recent posts here haven’t had a lot of “me” in them. That’s not just because I’m focused on other things. It’s because I don’t want anyone looking too closely at me. I’m a little ashamed of where my finances are.

Not that there’s anything wrong with taking a few months off from my debt snowball. I wanted to do something indulgent and special to celebrate being out of credit card debt. Taking a summer off would have been an expensive but reasonable choice.

The problem is that I didn’t choose it. It just sort of happened. I let things slide. I put “set up increased loan payments” at the top of my financial to-do list in June. (A to-do list I literally left sitting on my desk when I packed my bags and left for the summer.) But I neglected to do set up those payments, or to do any other active management of my household finances for months. There was money in my checking account, and that was good enough for me.

Now there’s a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach as I look at my bank balance and have no idea where my money has gone or what the numbers mean.

Failing forward
I’m not actually in any financial trouble. But my timeline for being out of debt has slipped, and it’s slipped through some of the same cracks that led me into debt in the first place. I don’t know where all that extra money went. Some of it went into preschool tuition and plane tickets and new shoes for the kids. Sure. But I was also careless budgeting for groceries and any number of small purchases. Those add up to a lot of dollars.

My shame isn’t about my bottom line. It’s about my bad habits. I’m making some of the same mistakes I made for years. The mistakes I’m prone to making with money when I don’t pay attention. That’s embarrassing, no matter what my bank balance is.

Of course, shame and fear about money was what led me into this debt trap. I didn’t want to look. For years, I simply refused to know what my spending habits were, or even what my regular bills added up to. By the time I turned 30, that head-in-the-sand approach had saddled me more debt than the total income I’d earned in my life. I’ve spent the past two years digging myself out, and I’m starting to see a light at the end of that tunnel.

I’ve been living on a skinny budget for years. I’ve paid off a mountain of credit cards. But even though I had a lot of credit card debt, the credit cards were still the low-hanging fruit.

Now I have to pay off loans. They have lower interest rates and higher balances than my credit cards did. The bills just come quietly every month and I pay them. The balances only move down, but they move down slowly.

There’s no exciting struggle. No relearning old habits to keep the plastic in my wallet and out of my hand when I’m standing in line at the checkout. No lifestyle changes that will suddenly free up hundreds of dollars to wipe out the debt.

I just need to roll that snowball over and keep paying it. I suspect that even being very aggressive about my debt payments, it will be two years before I hit another financial milestone worth throwing a party about. This approach is effective — but boring. That’s what getting rich slowly is all about.

It’s the beginning of September. The beginning of fall, and of a new school year. A great time for new beginnings. I’m back on the wagon with my budget, and making those extra loan payments this month.

I’m writing about all this publicly in the hopes that it’s a teachable moment. The lesson I’ve learned so far: Sometimes we all slip. The key is to fall back on the skills and strengths you know you have, and start over from wherever you are.

What else can I learn here? You’re a bunch of extremely smart readers. What do you do to stay motivated while paying down debt or saving towards a goal? What helps you keep your good financial habits going?

Have you ever wondered what the panhandlers you see on the street would do if you actually gave them a bunch of money to spend? Like many people, I generally give my pocket change to anyone who asks. I figure that if they have to ask, they probably need it more than I do. (Yes, I know that there are just as many folks who think this is ridiculous, and who never give anything to folks on the street. What can I say? The empathetic J.D. almost always get his way over the logical J.D. Exception: I never give to aggressive panhandlers.)

Last weekend, the Toronto Star featured a fascinating article from Jim Rankin about a little experiment he conducted. He actually decided to give a few handlers more than just pocket change:

Over the past two weeks, I wandered Toronto’s downtown core with five prepaid Visa and MasterCard gift cards, in $50 and $75 denominations, waiting for people to ask for money.

When they did, I asked them what they needed. A meal at a restaurant, groceries, a new pair of pants, they said. I handed out the cards and asked that they give them back when they’d finished shopping. I either waited at a coffee shop while they shopped or — in the case of those who could not buy what they needed nearby or were reticent about leaving their panhandling post — I said I’d return on another day to pick up the card. That’s when I would reveal that I was a journalist.

Some were unbelieving at first. All were grateful. Some declined the offer. Some who accepted didn’t come back, but those that did had stories to tell.

As you might expect, different people did different things with the gift cards Rankin gave them.

• With a $50 card, Jason spent $8.69 at McDonald’s before returning the card.
• Mark used his $50 card to buy a $21.64 meal at a local restaurant and then spent $15.50 at the liquor store. He didn’t return the card.
• Rankin gave Joanne a $75 card, which was stolen by an ex-boyfriend. He used it to spend $24.95 at McDonald’s and $38.35 at the liquor store.
• Al took a $50 card, but never used it and never returned it.
• With her $75 card, Laurie bought $74.61 in food, cigarettes, and telephone minutes. She returned the card.

Though there’s no real Big Message to be taken from this feature, I think it’s fascinating. Most of the time, homelessness is used to polarize people on one side or another of a political issue. But sometimes we forget that panhandlers are real people who have stories behind their predicaments. Rankin’s project was a clever way to get at some of those stories.

[Toronto Star: How panhandlers use free credit cards]

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

We hear a lot about the doubts over the future of Social Security. Here are a few I’ve come across:

• “Three-fourths of those 18 to 34 don’t expect to get a Social Security check when they retire.” — USA Today
• “My husband and I are both 28, and we laugh every time we hear [‘yes, you’ll receive Social Security’]. No, we won’t receive Social Security, even though we’ve both been paying into it since we were teenagers…I can’t think of one of my peers who expects Social Security to still be around when we’re retirement age. Call us bitter.” — A comment to my last column (“When Will You Be Able to Retire?”)
• “Six in 10 Americans who have not yet retired believe they will get no Social Security benefits when they retire, more pessimistic than at any time since Gallup began asking this question in 1989.” — Gallup
• “According to one survey, 100% of people married to Robert Brokamp wish he would shave his head rather than try to pull off a comb-over.” — My wife

If you’re among the doubters (of Social Security, not my hairdo), then listen up: The following paragraph is the most important group of words you’ll ever hear regarding Social Security. It’s key to understanding how the program works, and whether you’ll get anything. Here it is:

Social Security is predominantly a pay-as-you-go program. Most of the payroll taxes that are collected from today’s workers go into the checks of today’s beneficiaries. Thus, as long as there are people working and paying payroll taxes, there will be money to pay Social Security benefits.

According to the most recent Social Security Trustees report, from 2037 to 2084 payroll taxes will be enough to cover 75% of projected benefits. That’s not great, but that’s not nothing, either.

People who think that they won’t receive any Social Security benefits must believe one or all of the following three things:

1. In the future, people won’t work.
2. In the future, the government won’t collect payroll — a.k.a. FICA (Federal Insurance Contribution Act) — taxes. Currently, workers “contribute” 6.2% of their paychecks to the Social Security system, and their employers match with another 6.2%; the self-employed pay the whole 12.4%. Another 2.9% goes toward Medicare. As you know if you’ve looked at your paycheck, it’s a separate withholding from income taxes. In fact, the majority of Americans pay more in FICA taxes than they do in income taxes.
3. In the future, Social Security will be means-tested to such a degree that the “wealthy” (an arbitrary designation, to be sure) won’t receive any benefits. Those who don’t think they’ll receive Social Security assume they’ll be among these “wealthy.”

I don’t think Nos. 1 and 2 are likely. No. 3 is possible. The program is already means-tested to a degree, since the percentage of income that is replaced by Social Security decreases as lifetime earnings increase. However, I think that if changes to the means-testing formula result in a group losing their benefits completely, it will be a small group — certainly not 60% to 75%, as the aforementioned surveys suggest. I find it very unlikely that a future Congress — elected by future citizens — will change the program in a way that the majority of people who pay FICA taxes won’t get at least some benefits.

Those crazy trust funds
For many years, the payroll taxes collected were more than needed to pay current benefits. The surplus went into the Social Security trust fund, which invested the money in special-issue U.S. Treasury bonds. However, this year — thanks to the stinky economy — benefits will exceed revenues. That’s projected to temporarily reverse, but at some point in the middle of the next decade, the retirement of the baby boomers will cause benefits to exceed taxes. This is where the trust funds come in. They’ll be sold to cover the shortfall.

In my opinion, this is the essence of questions about the future of Social Security: What, exactly, are we to make of these trust funds? Are they truly assets? Here are the two arguments:

• Those who think that the Social Security system is essentially sound will point out that of course the trust funds are real assets. They’re full of U.S. Treasuries, which are considered the safest investments in the world.
• Those who think otherwise point out that since Treasuries are federal government debt, the trust funds contain just worthless pieces of paper with a note written on them that says, “Dear Uncle Sam: I owe you lots of money. Love, Uncle Sam.”

I have to admit, I haven’t quite decided to which camp I belong. I’m inclined to go with the latter. After all, when, say, 2020 rolls around, and the Social Security Administration needs some money from the trust fund, it will take one of these special-issue Treasuries to Uncle Sam and want to exchange it for cash to be sent to retirees. Where will that cash come from? I almost think I need to see a spreadsheet or detailed flowchart or something to fully understand how all that will work. If you have suggestions for how to accurately think about the trust funds, I’m all ears.

For now, plan on getting less
That’s enough talk about Social Security for now (assuming you’re still reading). From a financial-planning perspective, I’ll reiterate my advice from my last post. If you are in or near retirement, plan on getting your benefit. If you’re younger, play it safe and plan on getting 25% to 75% of your projected benefit. But plan on getting something.

I’m sure you have your own thoughts and opinions about Social Security, and I encourage you to share them below. However, let me say this: Often, discussions following articles about Social Security turn into political brawls that degenerate into name-calling and general silliness. So please, all you right-wing nutjobs and left-wing commies, let’s keep it civil. Stick to the topic of Social Security and the facts. And maybe advice for creating a sweet comb-over.

This post is from GRS staff writer April Dykman.

A couple of weeks ago, J.D. highlighted research that showed that rewards cards cost the poor (in higher prices overall) and benefit the rich (who are more likely to use the cards). But what if retailers offered you a discount if you paid in cash?

It might not be so far-fetched. In Will Financial Reform Kill the Rewards Card?, Brett Arends writes that a provision in the financial reform act allows for such a discount.

If competition works its magic, that discount should end up worth as much, or more, as the points you get from a card. We may end up saying goodbye to the rewards card, and go back to old-fashioned money.

The new cash is, er, cash…According to both the Public Interest Research Group and the National Retail Federation, when you pay for a purchase by credit card, it costs the retailer about 2% in transaction fees. So, logically, that’s about how much they can afford to discount if you pay cash instead.

Arends points out that the value of your rewards can be difficult to determine, especially with points for purchasing items or airline miles.

…experts explained that the average card user is doing really well if they get back about 1½ cents on the dollar. That’s why cash-back cards paying 2% seemed like the best deal for most people.

But why wait to get 2% back if you can never part with it in the first place?

Getting More for Your Money
Paying with cash could yield even bigger discounts, since the new law allows retailers to offer other benefits, like vouchers and gifts, in lieu of cash back.

Stores, naturally, sell products at a profit. So they may be able to offer you $2.50 worth of goods, say, as a bonus for settling your $100 bill in cash. You effectively get rewards worth 2.5%. But it may only cost them 1.8%. (At a high-margin retailer like Tiffany, the deal could be even better. Tiffany’s gross markup was about 75% last year. So the company could give you, in theory, gift vouchers worth $35 in return for settling a $1,000 bill in cash.)

Coming Soon to a Store Near You?
It’ll probably take time before cash discounts are offered by retailers and restaurants, but there’s interest. Before, it was difficult to implement such an offer since the law was unclear and credit card companies employed lawyers to make it harder.

But does this mean rewards might be a thing of the past if the rewards lose their allure?

Store Discounts Could Cost You
Arends is decisively anti-credit card, and that’s not a viewpoint I share for those who use them responsibly. Personally, I haven’t paid interest on a credit card purchase in years, nor have I paid late fees. I have, however, racked up some serious rewards.

For me, it’s worthwhile. But I had to ask myself, given the opportunity to get an instant discount, would I take it? Maybe. But only if I actually got cash back. With vouchers and discounts, it’s easy to feel like you’re getting a good deal, when really you’re just spending more money. In Learning to Discount All Those Juicy Discount Offers, Karen Blumenthal reports that stores that offer discounts through loyalty programs count on people not redeeming their rewards:

…we are likely to spend more to qualify for a coupon or earn cash back—and then forget to spend it. All loyalty programs count on a certain percentage of consumers not redeeming,’ Prof. Nunes notes. In addition, he says, ‘once you get closer and closer to a reward, you want it more and more’ and may spend more to get it.

Second, vouchers are a bigger win for the merchant, or else the programs wouldn’t exist. Take the example of Tiffany’s that Arends gives to show how higher markups can mean bigger rewards. How many things can you buy in Tiffany’s with a $35 voucher? Not much. The cheapest thing I could find on their website was a sterling silver ring for $100. You’re still shelling out $65 to use your voucher. If you were going to buy the item anyway, it might be a good deal. If the discount found you looking for something else to purchase, you aren’t coming out ahead.

So readers, what do you think? If you use a rewards card, would you trade in the rewards for an instant discount? Would you trade them in for vouchers or gifts?

This is the second part in a short series about insurance basics. Last week, I explained how insurance works. Next week (or possibly the week after), I’ll offer some tips on car insurance. Today’s article offers some general insurance tips useful for most situations.

All insurance works pretty much the same way: You pay a premium (a set amount of money) to the insurance company, usually on some sort of schedule (monthly or yearly, for instance. In return, the company issues an insurance policy to you, which is a contract that gives you certain coverage, or financial protection. When you suffer an insured loss, you file a claim and the company pays you a benefit.

Insurance is meant to protect you against catastrophes, not day-to-day annoyances. You use insurance to guard against things that aren’t likely to happen, but which would cause financial hardship if they did occur.

Your goal should be to have just the right amount of insurance. If you have too much, you’re wasting money. For example, if you have a $50 deductible on your car insurance, you’ll probably end up paying the insurance company far more in premiums than they’ll ever pay you in benefits! Or, if you’re young, unmarried, and have tons of credit-card debt, life insurance usually isn’t a good place to put your cash.

On the other hand, if you’re a 40-year-old small-business owner and father of five, term life insurance could be an excellent way to hedge against the risk that you’ll die tomorrow. Or, if you’re a millionaire who likes to drive fast, increasing the limits on your automobile liability coverage could save your fortune if you get sued for the damage you cause when you plow into the back of a school bus.

How to Save on Insurance
The number one thing you can do to save money on insurance is to self-insure as much as possible. That is, set aside your own money to cover minor and moderate catastrophes, if possible. Try raising the deductibles on your auto and home insurance policies. Then take the difference between your old premiums and your new premiums and put it into a “self-insurance” online savings account every month. It won’t take long for you to have more than enough to cover the deductible.

You can also save by reviewing your coverage from time to time, and following these suggestions:

• Read your policy. As with all legal contracts, it’s important that you read your policy so you know what’s covered and what isn’t. Pay attention to policy changes that come in the mail. If you have questions, ask. And make it a habit to review your policies every so often to be sure you understand them (and check whether anything has changed).
• Don’t duplicate coverage. Know which policies provide which benefits. If you have a AAA membership, for example, you don’t need towing coverage on your car insurance. And if your credit card doubles the warranties on the things you buy, don’t pay for extended warranties. I try to go over my policies once a year to remind myself of my coverage. (I’m a forgetful guy!) I recommend you do the same.
• Consolidate. Get all of your insurance from one provider. Insurance companies often give a discount if you have multiple policies with them. Plus, this saves you the hassle of having to pay more than one company.
• File fewer claims. Don’t nickel-and-dime your insurance company. If you file claims for every little thing, they’ll raise your rates. Insurance is meant to cover unexpected large losses, not every ding your car gets from shopping carts.

• Shop around. To find better rates, harness the power of the web. Visit the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and click the “states and jurisdictions” link to find your state’s insurance department. From there, you can find info about your state’s insurance laws and, in some cases, get quotes. You can also get quotes from multiple insurance carriers at sites like insweb.com, insurance.com, insure.com, and even our insurance page at Get Rich Slowly.
• Buy only what you need. Insurance agents are happy to sell you more coverage than your situation calls for. Do some research before you buy. Figure out how much and what kind of insurance you need, and don’t let the agent talk you into more.
• Raise your deductible. The deductible is the amount you pay on a loss before the insurance company kicks in money. For example, if your car takes $400 in damage because you drive over a curb and you have a $250 deductible, you pay the first $250 and your insurance company pays the rest. It’s up to you where to set the deductible, but the lower your insurance deductible, the higher your premiums. Ask yourself how much you can afford to pay if something goes wrong; more specifically, how much is too much? Set your deductible just below “too much”.
• Take care of the things you insure. One of the best forms of insurance is routine maintenance. A well-maintained car is less likely to have an accident due to mechanical failure. If you take care of your house, it’ll weather the ravages of time. And if you exercise and eat right, you’ll get cheaper life and health insurance.

These tips help you save on most types of insurance. Still, not all insurance advice can be generalized; each type of insurance has its quirks. Next week, we’ll look at specific ways to save on the most common type of insurance: auto insurance.

Note: Much of this material was drawn from the “Death and Taxes” chapter of my book, Your Money: The Missing Manual, which was published earlier this year by O’Reilly Media. You can download a sample chapter here.

It’s Sunday morning and I should be editing articles in advance of my upcoming vacation. Instead, I just got done playing another game of Starcraft II. Since the game was released on July 27th, I’ve played many games of Starcraft II. In fact, I’ve played at least 150 games of Starcraft II. (I know this because the game keeps track of your record. I played 50 training matches, and have since won 47 and lost 42 against human opponents, putting me near the top of my division in the “Silver League”. Plus I’ve played some single-player games.)

How much time has playing 150 games of Starcraft II sucked from my life? At about 30 minutes per game, it’s safe to say I’ve spent about 80 hours over the past month — or about 20 hours per week — building virtual armies and blowing stuff up.

Now on the surface, there’s nothing wrong with me having a little fun. I’ve been waiting for this game for almost twelve years. Plus, I’ve been working hard for the past two years, and I’ve been stressed because of it. I deserve some time off, and have intentionally been downshifting to a simpler life, one that gives me time for computer games.

However, having said that, in this case there’s a problem. Recently my game-playing — I’ve also been obsessed with Carcassonne on the iPad (getting close to the global top 100 list!) — has been obsessive, and has come at a price.

• I haven’t been cycling (though I have been going to the gym).
• I haven’t been doing my work around the house.
• I haven’t been studying my French. (One of my goals was too be able to speak a bit of French before our upcoming trip to Paris.)
• I haven’t been prepping my Animal Intelligence blog for re-launch (which is still scheduled for Wednesday!).
• I’ve been scrambling to get articles ready for Get Rich Slowly.

I say I’m going to do all of these things, but I never do. Instead I play computer games. Basically, I’ve turned into the old J.D. — the J.D. of five years ago. I’ve become a Talker instead of a Doer.

Talkers vs. Doers
Five years ago, I was full of hot air. Well, that and I was clinically depressed. And lazy. This was not a good combination for Getting Things Done. I talked a lot about the things I wanted to do, but I never did them. I found reasons not to. I even had trouble keeping up my end of the household chores, which my wife found very frustrating.

I was a Talker.

Maybe you know somebody like this. A Talker seems to know the solutions to everything, has great plans on how he’s going to make money or get a new job. But the funny thing is, the Talker never acts on his solutions and his great plans. And he never gets that new job. He’s out of work or stuck in a job he hates. To everyone else, it’s clear that the Talker is full of hot air, but he believes he’s bluffing everyone along, or conflates talking with doing. When confronted, a Talker always has excuses for not getting things done: he doesn’t have time, he doesn’t have the skills, the odds are stacked against him. When a Talker does do something, he often takes a shortcut.

That, my friends, was the man I used to be.

But something changed in the autumn of 2005. I began to read a lot of books. Not just personal finance books (though, as you know, I read plenty of those), but also self-help books and success manuals. I read Feeling Good to deal with my depression, How to Win Friends and Influence People [my review] to learn how to talk with people, and so on. And gradually I began to take the advice in these books to heart.

I began to take small steps, began to be more active in my world. Instead of just talking about doing things, I did them. I stopped looking for shortcuts — I had been a huge fan of shortcuts — and started actually doing the work required to get things done. Shockingly, this worked. By doing the work, I got the expected results. By doing instead of talking, things started to happen.

I became a Doer.

We Are What We Repeatedly Do
Author Kevin J. Anderson has a fantastic post on his blog about the similarities between the Olympics and writing. Here’s a lengthy excerpt:

I’ve had many people tell me, “Oh, writing is easy. Anybody can do it if they just sit down and put their minds to it.” Here’s how the conversation goes:

Somebody at a book-signing: “I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I could write a novel.”

Me: “Oh? Why haven’t you?”

Person: “I just don’t have the time.”

Me: “Hmm. Nobody gives me the time, either. I have to make the time, set priorities, discipline myself to get my writing done each day, no matter how tired I am. I worked a full-time regular job while I wrote my first novels, scraping out an hour here or there in evenings and weekends. That’s how I’ve become a successful author.”

Person: “Yeah, right. I think you’re just lucky.”

[...]

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was five years old. I sat in my dad’s study and plunked out my first “novel” on a manual typewriter when I was eight. By the age of ten, I had saved up enough money to buy either a bicycle (like a normal kid), or my own typewriter. I chose the typewriter. I got my first rejection slip by the time I was 13, had my first story published when I was 16 (after I had gathered 80 rejection slips), and sold my first novel by the time I was 25.

I have a trophy in my office proclaiming me to be “The Writer with No Future” because I could produce more rejection slips by weight than any other writer at an entire conference. My files now bulge with more than 800 rejections. On the other hand, I also have 100 books published, 46 of which have been national or international bestsellers, I’ve got a shelf full of awards, and my work has been translated into 30 languages. I’ve written more than twelve million words, so far.

Anderson is a Doer. He doesn’t just talk about writing — he writes. He writes over and over and over again. Through the sheer act of writing, he became a writer.

People often ask me about the secret to this blog’s success. “How did you get so many readers?” they ask. “How can I do the same?”

My answer is similar to Anderson’s. There aren’t any secrets. Write and post great content on a regular basis for a long, long time. In short, you can’t just talk about building a great blog; you also have to put in the work. Simple, right? But it’s not easy.

(I appreciate the folks who come up to me and say, “You know, J.D., I don’t know how you do it. I tried to keep a blog for a few months. It was hard.” Yes, it is. It’s work, just like anything else.)

If there’s something you want to be or do, the best way to become that thing is to actually take steps toward it, to move in that direction. Don’t just talk about it, but do something. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Just take a small step in the right direction every single day.

If you want to get out of debt, take small steps toward becoming debt-free. If you want to save for a trip to Africa, save a little bit at a time. If you want to get a new job, make moves in that direction. But take action. That’s the most important step.

Action Not Words
Of course, there’s more to getting stuff than just taking action. It’s one thing to say you want to become a commercial airline pilot and another to actually do it. Here are some of the things I learned as I made the move from Talker do Doer:

• Make time for the things you want to do. One of the keys to getting things done is setting aside time for the things you want to accomplish. You have to make time to get stuff done. As the Kevin J. Anderson article I mentioned above demonstrates, you don’t just become a best-selling author or an Olympic athlete. Talking doesn’t make it so. You have to carve out time to do this stuff. You have to put your Big Rocks first and fit the small stuff in around them.
• Have a goal in mind. I truly believe that the biggest reason I used to struggle with getting stuff done is that I didn’t have any sort of plan. I had no goals. Goals give you purpose. It wasn’t until I became committed to digging out of debt that I was able to actually start moving in the right direction. Part of my current problem is that I’ve recently achieved a bunch of big goals, but now have nothing planned for the future.
• Don’t take on too much. While it’s important to set goals, don’t take on too many tasks at once. I try to set just one or two major goals at a time. Any more and I find I can’t pursue any of them effectively. This year, my one goal is to lose 50 pounds. I’m on pace to do that. Why? Because I don’t have anything else on my schedule competing for time. This is my Big Rock.
• Don’t let failures deter you. This is huge. One of the reasons I used to talk so much without acting is that I was afraid of failure. I’m not sure where I learned to be afraid of defeat, but that’s the way I was. And when I did try something but failed, I’d give up. This is no way to get stuff done. Talkers let fear of failure keep them on the sideline; Doers overcome fear and move on, and when they fail, they simply try again.
• Don’t find reasons that something can’t be done; instead, find ways that something can be done. This is a pet peeve of mine. I hate when people come to me for advice, but when I give it, they tell me all of the reasons it won’t work for their circumstances. (This often happens when I suggest people take a second job to boost their income, for example.) One of the biggest difference between successful people and those who aren’t is that the successful don’t make excuses. If something looks difficult or impossible, they find ways to make it happen anyhow.

In the past five years, I’ve learned that I can do anything I set my mind to. Get out of debt? After I stopped talking and started doing, I got out of debt quicker than I thought possible. Losing 50 pounds? Well, I’m not there yet, but I’ve lost over 30 pounds since January 1st — but it didn’t happen until I stopped talking about it and started working hard to make it happen. Learning French? Well, there’s one where my talk outpaces my action right now, and it’s a perfect example of what I mean when I say actions speak louder than words. I don’t study my French as much as I should, so basically all I can do is count and tell you what color my clothes are. (”J’ai deux chemise noir.”)

For five years, my doing slowly increased until this past winter it reached a frenzied pace. I was burning myself out. I was writing and speaking and working and exercising and…well, it seemed like I never had a spare moment. This was the dark side of doing, and it’s what triggered my desire to downshift. It’s what led the pendulum swinging too far in the direction of Starcraft II.

Finding a Solution
So what’s the solution to my current problem? How can I stop playing computer games so much? How can I stop just being a Talker and become a Doer again? Well, making this public confession is a first step. But the thing that I think will really help is the “decision tree” I came up with the other day. Whenever the urge to game strikes, I’m going to ask myself the following questions:

• Have I exercised today?
• Are the house and yard tidy?
• Have I run all of my errands?
• Have I written and/or edited at least two articles for Get Rich Slowly?
• Does my inbox have fewer than 20 messages?

If I can answer “yes” to these five questions, then it’s okay to play Starcraft II or Carcassonne. But if I answer “no” to even one of these questions, I need to have the discipline to let the gaming go. I believe this will help me strike a balance. It’ll help me return to the world of Doing again. Because you know what? Life is a lot more fun as a Doer than a Talker.