Kris and I are preparing to ring in the New Year. Before we close out 2007, here are a few links that I’ve been collecting in my mailbox.
First, Flexo at Consumerism Commentary has some suggestions for getting your finances on track in 2008. Among his tips: take advantage of higher IRA limits, focus on high-interest [...]

With Christmas past, most of us have begun to focus on our plans for the coming year, making lists of resolutions to improve our lives. But Chuck Jaffe at MartketWatch suggests that this year you ditch the resolutions to focus on goals instead:
Concrete goals don’t evaporate in the face of adversity, hardship or laziness. Resolutions [...]

Jeff Yeager calls himself the Ultimate Cheapskate. He’s serious about saving money. He’s the sort of guy who soft-boils his morning eggs by putting them in the dishwasher while it runs. In a package he sent me recently, he included his business card, which is simply a rubber stamp printed on a piece of a [...]

Kris and I went out for a nice dinner last night to celebrate a wonderful 2007. While we ate she told me, “I was just thinking this morning how happy I am. I have a great life. I love my job, my friends, my marriage, my home.” That, my friends, is true wealth — happiness, [...]

I wasn’t raised in a culture of giving. My parents tithed to their church — irregularly — but I can’t recall that they ever made contributions to charity. This was probably because we were poor; we barely had enough money for our own needs!
As an adult, I have a more comfortable lifestyle than my parents [...]

I hope you all had wonderful Christmases. My extended break has been great: filled with friends, family, and time for myself — I’m taking time to recharge my batteries. I still plan to be scarce around here until after the first, but meanwhile here are a couple of stories from elsewhere:

“You can be happy. You [...]

This is a guest post from Daiko, who previously shared how to feed yourself on $15 a week.
Asking questions can be a powerful tool for developing financial resilience. Two weeks ago, for example, I received an overdraft charge from my bank. My first reaction was to curse and pound my head against the desk, but [...]

Did you get a lot of gift cards for Christmas? Would you rather have cash? Would you rather have a card for another store? Richard O. Johnson at the fascinating Beyond Barter has created a page highlighting smart gift card strategies: how to best acquire or dispose of them.
This page offers a wealth of sound, [...]

Nearly three years ago, in the original Get Rich Slowly post, I compared smart personal finance to building a house. This is the first part in a series that will explore that analogy.
In his excellent Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method, Gerald Weinberg describes a simple metaphor for the writing process. Writers, he says, gather [...]

Here’s a holiday video from 1950 depicting Christmas celebrations around the world: in the United States, England, Holland, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Korea, Japan, Canada, Mexico. (Note the conspicuous absence of Germany and Russia.) It’s a homey little clip, perfect for today.

As the spirit of Christmas unites all humanity, men and women everywhere reaffirm their faith [...]