It’s been a long month. I spent a lot of time writing about personal finance in March, but I think the results have been worth it. I feel like I’ve helped a lot of people. The hard work paid off in record traffic and record subscribers, too. When the dust settles, more than 285,000 people will have dropped by, and the site will have gained roughly 4,000 new subscribers (including 300 new e-mail subscribers!).
Best Entries
Here are some of my favorite posts from the past month:

Mar. 1st: Cheap alternatives to cable television
Mar. 4th: An introduction to making money selling digital photos (a guest post from Mike Panic)
Mar. 6th: A review of Maxed Out, a new film about the credit industry
Mar. 7th: Building a personal finance library: 25 of the best books about money
Mar. 13th: Why I love a huge tax refund
Mar. 15th: Financial education: Are schools doing enough?
Mar. 19th: What’s it like to borrow money [...]

More and more people are contacting me about advertising on Get Rich Slowly. So far I’ve kept things simple by using only third-party ad networks, such as Google Adwords/Adsense, Text Link Ads, and the FeedBurner Advertising Network. But I’ve received enough requests for direct advertising that I’ve taken some time to draft an advertising policy.

The most important thing for potential advertisers (and existing readers) to know is that my objective with this site is to provide solid personal finance information. I want to help people learn to manage their money while I’m learning to manage mine. I will not accept ads that run counter to this site’s philosophy. If you have a product or service that you believe will benefit Get Rich Slowly readers, then I will probably accept your ad.
I’d prefer to see or use your product or service first, but I understand that’s not always possible. For the past week I have [...]

Kids conjure up riches in ‘Fairy Godmother Tycoon’ - USATODAY.com
“A hilarious new business simulation.” Actually, anything that gets kids thinking about money and entrepreneurship gets the thumbs up in my book…
(tags: games kids entrepreneurship money)

Several weeks ago, Liz Pulliam Weston at MSN Money pulled together a list of 12 cool money tricks. Some of these have come up here before, but it never hurts to review them. Here are a few of the ideas she shared:

The four-penny hack: always carry four pennies with you so you don’t get pennies in change. (This one only works once per shopping trip.)
Learn to use online shopping tools like MyBargainBuddy.com and AbleShopper.
Get companies to compete for your business: call around to find the best deal.
Get a month-long interest-free loan by charging expensive items to a credit card on the first day of the billing cycle. (Though I don’t use credit cards, I admit I think this hack is particularly clever.)
Prepay big bills. Christmas shopping get you down? Save up for it by making small monthly payments to a specific savings account.

Get more detail on each of these money hacks (and find seven more) [...]

Vincent wrote to tell me about “lazy portfolios”:

Paul Farrell of MarketWatch tracks a group of portfolios composed of index funds, and watches how they are performing vs. the S&P 500.  He writes an update a couple of times a year, with both a long-term and short-term perspective.  The portfolios consist of as many as eleven funds and as few as three funds. I like reading the series because year-after-year, without exception, these lazy portfolios beat the S&P 500 over the long term. 

Farrell’s most recent analysis of these portfolios was in January. He wrote:

Unless you’re working full-time in the financial world, you don’t have the skills, tools, information, time or interest in playing the market, especially the bond market. And even if you do play the market, the odds are you’ll lose because the more you trade the less you earn; transaction costs and taxes kill returns. So for 94 million out of America’s 95 million [...]

Sometimes I’ll be talking about frugality with somebody who says, “Why bother? Pinching pennies all the time makes me feel lousy. Besides, you can’t really save that much money. You really save money on the big stuff.”
This is a common response to frugal living. I have some standard replies:

It is true that it’s important to save money on the big stuff, like a home or a car. Any time you make a large purchase, your opportunity to save is magnified. Take special care with these sorts of decisions. Don’t buy more than you need. Don’t buy more than you can afford. Strike the best deal you possibly can.
But large transactions are rare. How often do you spend more than $100 on anything? You have more opportunities to save when shopping for groceries. Saving fifty cents a week on milk is inconsequential as a one-time occurrence, but over the course of a year, it amounts to [...]