Every month, my wife and I track how much time and money we spend growing food. This is the report for January 2009. (Here are the results for 2008.)
Even with the other stuff going on in our lives, Kris and I found time to begin planning our summer garden this month. Soon the winter days will warm, teasing us with thoughts of working in the yard. But true gardening weather won’t arrive for about three months.
The fruit of our labor
There may not be much gardening to do during the winter, but we still eat plenty of food we’ve grown ourselves. Last week, Kris made several fruit smoothies and a fantastic berry cobbler from blackberries she froze in August. (Just thinking about this cobbler again makes me drool!) We’ve also been consuming canned pasta sauce and salsa, cream of tomato soup, pickles and applesauce.
Meanwhile, we’ve also made use of the herb garden we’re growing indoors [...]

Wow. Am I glad that month is over. January started off with a bang and flew along full-tilt until the fifteenth. In the two weeks since my friend Sparky died, my life has been a confused mess. I delegated to guest authors while I dealt with my personal life; fortunately, they provided some great articles. Now, however, I’m looking forward to finding some semblance of normalcy again.
Here are some of the best posts from the month of January:

January 2nd How to make your New Year’s resolutions stick
January 5th: 9 methods for mastering your money in 2009
January 11th: 7 tips for starting your own vegetable garden
January 13th: Hustle and patience: What it takes to succeed in 2009
January 14th: How to replace bad financial habits with good ones (a guest post from Leo B.)
January 18th: The razor’s edge: Lessons in true wealth
January 21st: Why I drive a 13-year-old car (a guest post from Joel B.)
January 26th: 5 [...]

Last month, Alison from Diamond-Cut Life shared a guest post about providing lodging to a housemate in exchange for work (instead of rent). Her story prompted a number of readers to ask about the mechanics and practicalities of actually renting an extra room to generate income. For example, Penny wrote with the following:

In August, my brother-in-law moved in with us. By December, he couldn’t find a job, so moved back out. While I had mixed emotions about his leaving, I did lament losing the potential income, because I thought my husband would never agree to renting a room to a stranger. Imagine my surprise when I mentioned the idea and he agreed to it.
I need some advice as to some things we should consider when finding a renter.

What would be the best way to charge for rent?  Flat monthly rate with utilities included? Weekly rate plus a third of the utilities? In our immediate [...]

The current issue of Newsweek (cover-dated 02 February 2009) has a fantastic article from Ben Sherwood entitled “What It Takes to Survive”. Ostensibly, this piece is about how people handle crises. Why do some people panic, some people lead — and most people stand around in a daze?
This larger topic is fascinating, of course, but even more interesting is the article’s sub-theme: some people are lucky and some are not. But what we think of as “luck” has almost nothing to do with randomness and everything to do with attitude. According to Richard Wiseman, a professor in the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in Britain, only about 10% of life is purely random; the remaining 90% is defined by the way we think. Our attitudes produce our luck.
Sidenote: Professor Wiseman’s research focuses on “quirky areas of psychology, including deception, humour, luck and the paranormal.” He has a new and [...]

Normally when I share link roundups, I write something interesting or pithy in the opening. I have nothing interesting or pithy to say today. I’m still in the midst of my flood of work, and won’t be able to come up for breath until Friday. My brain is numb. So, let’s just jump straight to the links!
Jonathan at Master Your Card has scathing piece on what the banks are doing with our money. Want to know what the banks are doing with the $700 billion bailout? “Our money is being used to make the banking industry even less competitive than it already is, and create a whole new bunch of unprofitable, incompetent businesses that are ‘too big to fail’.” Well said.
USA Today writes that as consumers get frugal, retailers get creative. I confess: I love news stories about how frugality has gone mainstream. If only I believed them. I do think there’s increasing awareness of [...]

Several GRS readers have asked me to recommend a “stock market game” so that they can learn the basics of investing without risking actual money. Though I’m aware of such tools, I’ve never used one myself. During my recent interview with The Motley Fool’s David Gardner, I asked him if he could suggest one. He recommended CAPS, which is The Motley Fool’s stock evaluation tool. But that’s not really the same thing. 
I was recently contacted by a representative from Young Money, the personal-finance magazine for college students (which I reviewed in 2007). It turns out Young Money has their own stock market game, and it’s open to everyone. Here’s info from the site and from the promo e-mail I received:

Young Money Stock Market Game is a free game that allows members to practice trading in a lifelike brokerage simulation.  By participating in the community, you can learn the ins and outs of Wall Street by [...]