“It’s been a long time since you shared a recipe at Get Rich Slowly,” I told Kris last week. “What about that pot roast recipe?” she asked. “You love that.” “Yes. Yes, I do,” I said. This guest post from my wife may be the best thing I’ve ever shared at Get Rich Slowly. It’s certainly the tastiest.

I’m usually a from-scratch kind of cook, and the sort of “semi-homemade” ingredients for this pot roast make me cringe a bit. But although I’ve tried other recipes and other methods, this one beats them all hands-down. I got the recipe from an old friend after enjoying it at her house a couple of times and wondering why my pot roast was never as good as Kim’s pot roast.

This recipe has one cardinal rule: You must start with good beef. Otherwise why bother? We use a roast from the beef we buy in bulk; it’s pasture-fed on a local farm and the resulting beef literally falls off the bone in succulent shreds of savory goodness. This roast cooks all day at a low temperature. It’s simple enough to start before you leave the house so that it’s ready when you come home for dinner.

I use a Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid for this recipe. If you don’t have one, you can line a roasting pan with foil, then cover the meat with another piece of foil, and then crimp the two all the way around to make a sort of meat packet. The goal is to hold the moisture in while the beef becomes completely tender. The roast forms its own gravy as it cooks.

Separately, I like to roast vegetables to serve as a side dish for this beef. In a shallow pan, I cook carrots, onions, and russet potatoes, drizzled with a bit of vegetable oil and seasons with salt and pepper. I cook them for 80-90 minutes at 400 degrees or so. If you aren’t lucky enough to have two ovens, make mashed potatoes on the stovetop instead.

I don’t recommend baking vegetables at the low oven temperature needed for this pot roast. Don’t try adding them to the roast; their high moisture content somehow messes up the texture of the beef.

Internet versions of this recipe exist using a crockpot on low for 8-9 hours. This might be worth a try someday, but I’m reluctant to meddle with perfection! I’ve also heard you can start with two cans of soup if you’d like more gravy at the end.

I like to serve this meal with a salad, homemade applesauce, and our favorite homemade bread.

Do you have a favorite low-effort recipe? What do you make that offers maximum flavor with minimum fuss?

J.D.’s note: This pot roast is fantastic. I cannot rave about it enough. In fact, I’m tempted to call Kris right now and ask if we can have this for dinner tomorrow. Yum. Photo by Merelymel13.

This article is by GRS staff writer Adam Baker. Despite his best attempts, Baker struggles to budget while adapting to life in New Zealand.

Earlier this week J.D. tackled an important issue with his tenet Large Amounts Matter Too.

This concept goes by many names:

• Focus on big wins.
• Pick the low-hanging fruit
• Attack high-leverage areas.

You get the point: It’s efficient to do things that have major impact with minimum effort. J.D. wrote:

Some people spend so much time sweating the small stuff that they don’t bother to do the same on the big stuff. They’re penny wise and pound foolish, negating their daily scrimping and saving by making poor financial decisions that burden them for years. Kris has a co-worker who once bought an SUV for $43,000. After a year, he decided to trade it in, but could only get $23,000 for it. Ouch!

His advice is spot on. An intense dedication to frugality can often do more harm than good. Getting caught up in the details can lead to mistakes or oversights in areas that cost us thousands.

But there’s another less-talked-about side of the coin.

While you certainly don’t want to miss the opportunity to capitalize on a major event, you also don’t want to develop the habit of relying on them either. These type of large gains for minimum effort can make us lazy.

After all, why should you clip coupons when you could spend that time planning your next pay negotiation? Why would you save money by making your own products at home, when you could be aggressively monitoring the classifieds for the next killer deal on a car?

Why casinos want you to win money
People that have been around the gambling industry will tell you that winning on your first trip to the casino is much worse than losing. Why? It changes your mindset. Most people will go from “I’m probably going to lose, so I’ll just plan to have a little fun” to “Wow, that was easy! Next time I go back I’ll be playing off my winnings”.

Next, you convince yourself that the losing streak you’ve bumped into is just a natural part of how things work. Hitting just one hand will make up all your loses. From there, it only gets worse.

Casinos make their profits when they can detach you from the value of your money. If you win the first time you visit, that process has already started. They know the average person will be back and will spend far more money than the guy or gal who lost it quickly on the first visit.

Encouraging lifestyle inflation
In our finances, the big wins have the potential to detach us in the same way. The value of these events is lost if you use them as an excuse to not attack your impulse spending or creeping lifestyle inflation. We are a culture that loves to celebrate shaving $200 off our monthly mortgage with a new $300/month car payment.

The problem is that all to often, we create a zero-sum game. We end up shuffling back ten steps in our daily lives and then trying to make it up in one big leap. That works well as long as we can keep leaping back up. Occasionally, though, we stumble when trying to leap. And when we do, we fall flat on our faces.

A constant reliance on these big wins is not sustainable. They aren’t meant to be Band-Aids to cover our daily financial boo-boos.

Reversing the curse
The cure for this curse is balance: Neither obsessive frugality nor an intense concentration on the big-ticket items will lead to long-term success. Balance will.

These big wins can be powerful influences in our financial lives. We can use them as sparks to turn around a desperate situation, or as fuel to build momentum on our existing progress.

For Courtney and me, focusing on correcting our day-to-day habits has actually fostered more big wins. Getting the basic principles of money management and frugality under control has given us more time, relieved stress, and provided more freedom to pursue larger activities.

What about you? Have you experienced the curse of the big-win mentality? Which has been the leading focus in your financial life: the small daily habits or the higher-leverage large amounts?

Photo by Haundreis.

This post is from GRS staff writer April Dykman.

A college professor once told my journalism class that freelance writing is something you should do on the side. It’s not anything you could make a living at full-time. 

I graduated and worked at an office job until I decided I wanted to become self-employed and do something that would give me more free time to write. A real job and a writer on the side, just like the professor had suggested. I went into real estate.

To say it was an awful fit would be an understatement. The very thought of cold-calling made me want to stay in bed with the covers over my head. What’s worse is that I wrote a total of one article that year. What in the world happened?

“Freelance writing can’t be a successful business.” That was my limiting belief. (To be fair, it was a belief I held long before the well-meaning professor reinforced it.) So I took a full-time job as an editor, and on the side I’d write maybe one or two magazine articles a year. I didn’t believe I could have a thriving freelance business, so I didn’t even try.

One small step
Early this year, I made the decision to put more effort into my freelance writing. Not too long after, J.D. mentioned that he was going to hire one or two staff writers. It sounded like a great opportunity, but I was scared to death to send the e-mail just asking to try out. What if I wasn’t selected? Even scarier was the possibility that I might get the job. What if I ran out of stuff to write? Freelance writing can’t be a successful business!

Soon after getting the staff writing gig, I picked up another writing client who found me through GRS. It was a breakthrough. I’ve since added two more projects to the list. I was actively pursuing and attaining everything I passively dreamt about for years. I took one tiny step that scared the hell out of me, and it snowballed.

Separating from limiting beliefs
My limiting belief shrinks every day because I’m slowly proving it wrong.

The funny thing is that once you stop identifying with a limiting belief, you start to recognize them everywhere. There was the well-meaning friend who thought writing the GRS try-out articles without being paid for them was a bad idea (when in fact it insanely boosted my business in less than a month). There are the people who stay in jobs they hate because they have a kid in college. There are the ones who say they have no time for a side business, or so-and-so only did it because they had money or the right contacts (Ramit calls this The Shrug Effect). I empathize with their reasons because I did the same thing for years.

No matter what your limiting beliefs, the steps to knock them out are the same. I only realized it in retrospect, of course, but the steps I took to grow my freelance business aren’t much different than the steps I took to overcome some of my other limiting beliefs, such as:

• Only people who are rich can travel to Europe.
• Getting into a boxing ring will end with a trip to the ER.
• I’ll see a shark if I scuba dive, and I’ll panic and die.

Round one: Set the intention
Thoughts have a significant effect on reality. Truthfully, this has always sounded like new-agey stuff to me, and I agreed wholeheartedly with J.D.’s review of The Secret.

But what I’m talking about is clearly defining an intention or goal and writing it down. I set the intention to expand my freelance business this year. No, it didn’t happen magically and without any effort on my behalf. I did the work, but first I had to be clear about what I was setting out to do, and I had to believe that I could do it. As I progress, I distance myself more and more from the limiting beliefs that held me back. 

Round two: Find mentors who are already doing what you want to do
Some of the most helpful, friendly people I know are people I’ve “met” online. I have a mentor in Canada who I have never met in person, yet she’s willing to take time out of her schedule to talk with me over the phone. She is making a living doing something that several people have told me is hard or impossible to do. I choose not to listen to them. I choose to hear how she is already doing this impossible thing.

Mentors also keep you positive. If you are feeling stuck or uninspired, contact one of your mentors to ask a question or reread an inspiring e-mail they sent. Block out the noise.

Round three: Ignore others’ encroaching limiting beliefs
It’s easy to be discouraged by other people’s limiting beliefs. Maybe you know someone who loves to tell others why something can’t or shouldn’t be done. If it’s legitimate constructive criticism, by all means, don’t dismiss it. But you can recognize limiting beliefs pretty easily, especially if you used to be the one coming up with them. Just smile and move along.

Or, use it as fuel. Sometimes nothing gets me more fired up than hearing the reasons I can’t do something. (Especially if that reason is because I am a female!)

Finally, keep a Word document with positive statements people have made. It’s cheesy, but consider this: How many times do we remember the nice or positive things people say to us or about us? Most people fixate on the negative, and that’s what they remember. You probably can recall dozens of awful moments all the way back to kindergarten, but do you remember the professor who told you you have a talent for writing profiles or the editor who said you wrote a killer article? Write down the good stuff, and read it when you need a pep talk.

Round four: Make a move.
Do something small to get the ball rolling, even if you think you will fail, cancel, or back out later:

• One e-mail to rev up a freelance business.
• A $400 deposit on a trip to Europe.
• Weeks of training in the boxing gym on heavy bags and focus mitts.
• Reserve a class at a dive shop.

Once you light the fire, it’ll be harder to put the brakes on.

I can still list limiting beliefs I’m holding, and I’m sure there will be many more in my future. The solutions to overcoming these fears start with a desire to take action. What limiting beliefs do you hold? How are you working to overcome them?

J.D.’s note: For more on this subject, check out my advice on how to fight financial trolls.

Whew! It took a long time — nine days instead of the scheduled seven — but I finally finished the frugality chapter for my book. Do you know how difficult it is to compress that topic into a single chapter? It’s worth an entire book by itself!

The version I just submitted to my editor is 11,643 words and includes April’s should I buy it? flowchart. I expect the published version to be significantly shorter, but we’ll see.

Though I’ve been writing nearly non-stop for the past week, I have managed to collect more articles than usual to share. Rather than provide extended commentary, I’m just going to bullet-point the good stuff today:

• The Consumerist has a story how Radio Shack charges 24 times more for the same product than the dollar store next door. You should comparison shop whenever possible, folks.
• The Art of Manliness (still one of my favorite blogs) explains how to change your motor oil. This is something of a lost art. I used to do this on my first two cars, but haven’t done it myself in 15+ years. Have you?
• The Simple Dollar just celebrated its third blogiversary. To mark the occasion, Trent listed ten things he’s learned about money and life since he started the site. Good stuff.
• Baker doesn’t just write for Get Rich Slowly. He also has his own blog. Or does he? Over at Man vs. Debt, guest author Jenny Newcomer posted a great story about how she paid off $15,000 in nine months by selling stuff on eBay.
• Did you know Goodwill offers on-line shopping? ShopGoodwill.com features the good stuff donated to Goodwill thrift sores. You can browse and bid on art, antiques, and collectibles. Cool beans.
• Wojciech from Fiscal Fizzle seems to have a permanent spot on these round-ups! This week, he’s written about how to send the SWOT on your money, where SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Wojciech explains how to use this framework to tackle your personal finances.
• Lastly, I wanted to point out that Kiplinger.com has finally re-vamped their website. It’s no secret that I hated their previous layout. It was an abomination. The new site is much more user-friendly.

Before I start on the next chapter of my book (Chapter 6: Boosting Income), here are some recent personal finance carnivals. These round-ups are great ways to explore other money blogs:

• Money Crashers hosted a spooky Carnival of Personal Finance #228.
• PT Money curated this week’s Carnival of Money Stories.
• My Journey to Millions presented Carnival of Debt Reduction #215.
• And Mike from Gather Little by Bittle rounded up Festival of Frugality #201.

Have a good evening everyone. I’ll see you in the comments of April’s post tomorrow morning…

I used to wonder why my colleagues’ blogs became strangely silent when they were working on their books. Haha. I don’t wonder anymore. Writing a book is an all-consuming process that’s difficult to describe. I’m thankful I recruited April and Baker as staff writers before I began working on my own book.

Progress on Your Money: The Missing Manual actually ground to a halt this week. Well, that’s not strictly true. I did miss my deadline on Monday, but it’s not for lack of trying. I’ve already written as much (~12,000 words) for the frugality chapter as for two normal chapters combined. The problem is that there are too many ways to save money! So, I’m producing a ton — I just didn’t finish the chapter on time.

The topic I’ll be tackling this morning is frugal fun. As I plotted the section last night, I realized we haven’t discussed this subject much at Get Rich Slowly. Why not? There are lots of cheap ways to have a good time.

While I finish pulling this section together, I thought it would be fun to poll you for suggestions. How do you have fun without spending a lot of money? Better yet, do you have hobbies or pastimes that actually make you money? I’ll go first.

Here are some of the ways I’ve learned to find maximum fun with minimum cost (and yes, some of these will be in the book):

• Take a class. Community ed classes usually cost about $50. Classes at the community college might run up to $200. While this may not seem frugal, remember that you’re not only having fun while you take your course, you’re (theoretically) picking up a skill that you can use to improve your life.
• Read a book. Boring, I know, but this is still one of my favorite ways to relax. For the past few years, I haven’t had much reading time. That’s changed in recent months. (Well, until I started the book, anyhow.) Now I remember how much I love Dickens and Twain and, yes, even Proust. If you use the public library or a used bookstore, this can be a frugal hobby, indeed.
• Exercise. I love activities that do double duty. When you find an exercise you love to do, you’ll not only enjoy yourself, you’ll also enjoy improved fitness, which in turn will save you money.
• Volunteer. I admit that this isn’t something I’ve done yet, but I’ve heard of other who have. The idea appeals to me. Find a way to do something that you love while also helping others.
• Make use of what you already have. Ah, this is a big one for me. I’ve shared before how much Stuff I have. At one time, I owned over 3,000 books. I still have about a thousand volumes, many of which I haven’t read. Plus tons of comics and music and movies. If I started using the stuff I already own, I’d probably never run out of things to do.

Last week, I interviewed Trent from The Simple Dollar to get his suggestions for simple pleasures. He had some great ideas. My favorite thing he said was this:

The mistake most people make is looking for the free stuff first. Look at the things you really enjoy doing. Once you know what you like to do, there’s almost always ways to do these cheap.

This is very true. If you know what it is you like to do, there are always people doing the same thing for very low cost. (Well, maybe not if you’re into boating. I’m not sure how you make boating a frugal hobby.) If you’re patient and clever, you can find out how others are doing what you want to do without going broke.

So, how about it? What sorts of frugal things do you do for fun? What info should I pass on to the readers of my book?

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.

Every summer, my wife and I cull our closets for stuff we and our kids no longer use. This is followed by a yard sale (complete with the obligatory lemonade stand from our kids), and the items that aren’t sold get donated to a local thrift store that uses the proceeds for charity. In the end, we have more closet space, some extra cash, an entrepreneurial opportunity for our kids, and a tax deduction.

And a little bit of regret.

Many of the items that get sold or donated were gifts we purchased for our kids or each other. They were enjoyed for a short time — or, sometimes, not at all — then relegated to the Pile of Misfit Stuff. It’s like that Marla Singer line from the movie Fight Club:

Someone loved it intensely for one day, and then tossed it. Like a Christmas tree. So special. Then, bam, it’s on the side of the road.

Kinda depressing. And expensive.

I know: It just turned November — do we really need to start talking about the holidays already? Well, if you’d rather not, read the rest of this post with your eyes closed. But my wife and I are already planning, because this year we are trying to avoid spending money on gifts that only provide a onetime squib of joy.

We know that no gift will be enjoyed forever, and that part of the fun of the holidays is letting lose a little bit. Also, we’re a little surprised each year by which presents turn out to be the favorites, so just limiting the number of gifts makes us a little nervous. Maybe we’ll cut out the wrong ones!

Our solution is to make an extra effort to spend less on the presents we give, and to give presents that will survive next summer’s closet-culling. Here are some things we’ve learned through the years:

Give things that provide repeat pleasure
Obvious, I know. But it’s not so obvious when you’re shopping. Two Christmases ago, we bought our son a Spider-Man action figure that climbed on doors. It looked so cool! And it was pretty fun…for about five minutes. Compare that to the Roku box I bought my wife last year. It allows Netflix subscribers instant access to thousands of movies and TV shows (though not necessarily the recent blockbusters). We don’t have cable TV, so NetFlix is our main source of movies. By getting the Roku box, we cut our Netflix subscription down from three DVDs at a time to one, saving $8 a month, which paid for the box in less than a year. And we use it several times a week.

When it comes to kids, we’ve found that gifts with narrow uses get used the least. Conversely, gifts with multiple uses, in all sorts of places, and in all sorts of spaces, get the most action. The classic example is Legos, which my kids play with in their rooms, in the bathtub, in the car, and even use for homework projects. (In fact, the Legos I was given as a kid serve as the foundation of my kids’ Legos collection; that’s a gift that has retained its usefulness!) A slot-car racing set, on the other hand, requires set-up, takes up space, and the cars just go ‘round and ‘round and ‘round.

Get it used
We’ve already started prowling Craigslist for things our friends and family might want. If items on your “To Buy” list are suitable to be given pre-owned, now’s the time keep an eye on the classifieds and (if you have an open-ended “To Buy” list) sites like Freecycle.org.

Buy year-round
This is something my wife does very well. She buys potential presents at all times of the year, when she finds them at excellent prices, and keeps them in the “gift box” in our basement. It’s also handy to have when you’re invited to a birthday party and don’t have time to get a gift.

Give experiences over stuff
This may seem to contradict our goal of buying things that last, but you know what they say about memories and all that. For my mother’s 70th birthday, my sisters and I took her on a trip. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but she valued it more than anything I could have wrapped. Plus, some experiences really can be the gifts that keep on giving, such as art, photography, or cooking classes (complete with providing babysitting services, if required for the recipient to attend the classes).

Buy in bulk
Sierra Black recently wrote about the pitfalls of buying in bulk, and I agree. But if there’s ever a time to save by buying a lot of stuff, it’s the holidays. It works for gifts, and for food if you’ll be entertaining or hosting relatives. As an experiment a couple of years ago, I looked at how much I’d save by shopping at Costco compared with my regular grocery store. I bought nearly identical items at both places and spent 37% less at Costco.

Underwear!
One holiday season, I bought pairs of white underwear in bulk, decorated them in ways not appropriate to discuss on a family blog, and gave them to my friends. I assume they were gifts that got multiple uses, though I didn’t perform any random spot-checks. The point, of course, is that homemade gifts really can be the most memorable…and least-expensive.

Be honest about what you don’t want
I have a very spotty record when it comes to buying things for my wife. In the past, she was too nice to tell me when she didn’t really like something I bought her. So it stayed in our closet until the next summer, and then…well, you know. Now, I keep all receipts, and she’s much more comfortable returning items that I gave her. (And I’ve been better about getting her friend’s help at holiday time.)

J.D.’s note: Robert may be worried that it’s too early to write about Christmas, but if Google traffic to this site is any indication, the Christmas season started weeks ago. Last year’s article on homemade Christmas gifts has been on fire!