June was a good month: I was finally able to complete my Roth IRA series (look for the final part soon — I’m still researching answers to your questions); I was able to devote time to writing a couple of personal entries about the psychology of personal finance, which is one of my favorite subjects; and, best of all, we had some excellent discussions. You guys are awesome.
July is going to be crazy. I leave mid-month for three weeks in London, Dublin, and New York. In the real world, we have our housesitter planned and all of our bills paid. On the web, I have a roster of great guest articles slated. I think you’ll enjoy them. (If you want to contribute something, drop me a line.)
Here are some of the best GRS articles from the month of June:

June 1st: Ask the readers: Is it better to invest or to prepay a mortgage?
June 5th: What [...]

How much do you need to earn to be happy? Could you get by on $12,000 a year?
The folks at W4 Resistance advocate withholding all or part of your Federal income tax in order to resist the war in Iraq. I am not interested in the political motivations here — Get Rich Slowly is a personal finance blog, not a political blog — but I am fascinated by these techniques. Here’s how it works:
File a new W-4 form with your employer for 2007. On line 7, you can claim exemption from payroll withholding. All you do is write in the word “Exempt” on line 7, sign and date the form and give it to your employer. No more income tax will be withheld.
Can it really be that easy? Of course not. There’s one gigantic catch:
Unless you can really claim no tax liability (such as by having a very low income or a lot of [...]

Eleanor wrote with a question that could test even the mightiest personal finance expert. “What,” she asks, “can you do when you want to save money and your roommates don’t care?”

I share a house with four roommates.  This saves me at least $200 a month from what I would be paying if I lived in an apartment.  But roommates raise expenses in other, unexpected ways.  I have been trying to cut down on monthly bills and am finding it incredibly difficult.
For example, I live with roommates that want digital cable and high-speed internet bundle.  I can live without the cable (I don’t watch TV) and don’t mind having a lower-speed connection.  But because three of my five roommates want the more expensive package, that’s what we get, and instead of splitting a $60/month bill five ways we’re splitting a $100/month bill.  I end up paying more money overall.  While I can simply not watch [...]

My friend Gillian called the other day — she’s been having money trouble and was looking for help. “I’m not really a financial advisor,” I told her. “I write about money, and I try to help people at my web site, but I’m not qualified to coach you one-on-one.” Still, she’s a friend, so I resolved to at least give her some advice. I asked her to explain the situation.
“Tom and I are working all the time, but we’re always broke. He just wrecked his car, but we don’t have money to get it repaired. We’ll have to use the credit cards again. We don’t have any other choice. There’s never anything left at the end of the month,” she said. “I need some help budgeting so that we don’t keep having this problem.”
“Well, let’s see what we can do. I guess the best place to start is with your monthly income and your monthly [...]

Sometimes you can find personal finance tools in the most unlikely places. The University of Illinois Extension Service offers a collection of consumer money resources, including tips for thrifty living, credit card smarts fact sheets, and a guide to consumer and family economics.
I was most impressed with A Working Woman’s Guide to Financial Security.
This series of planning guides has been designed to help women of all ages develop skills they need in order to handle their financial affairs successfully, now and in the future. Their mothers probably taught them how to shop, pay bills, and balance the checkbook, but most women didn’t learn money management skills from their mothers or their peers. They may be learning the expensive way, from the school of hard knocks, which can be a very harsh teacher!
The information here is divided into three broad sections:

Planning for financial independence
Developing your financial independence
Thinking ahead

Each section contains a series of articles, such as [...]

This is a guest post from Lisa Lessley Briscoe.
My friend (and fellow Bearcat) Lisa writes: “I was just poking around on GRS (I don’t usually read) and noticed that you’d posted an entry for college graduates recently. Funny how summer rolls around and you start thinking about stuff.” She’s passed along some additional advice for those just entering the workplace.

Congratulations, you just graduated from an excellent liberal arts college!
You worked incredibly hard to complete your degree and now it’s all behind you: general education requirements, a wealth of extracurricular activities, those classes for your major and minor, perhaps a semester abroad, and a thesis and its accompanying oral defense. You’ve invested a great deal of time, effort, and money into your degree and now you’re ready to conquer the world.
Where to live? Pack up that futon and wave goodbye to your family! You find a city that suits you (say, Seattle), settle in [...]