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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

This is a guest post from Kelly Whalen, a mostly stay-at-home mom who writes about personal finance at The Centsible Life.
As acting chief financial officer of my family, Kim Snider’s How to Be the Family CFO provided me with an education I wish I had received 15 years ago! The book is easily digestible, with [...]

While I’ve been coping with the recent drama in my personal life, Get Rich Slowly has quietly posted its best month ever. Roughly 850,000 visitors have dropped by to learn about personal finance. A quick calculation shows that I’ll finish the month with nearly 950,000 visitors.
So close to one million! And yet so far…
This [...]

This is a guest post from Lynn Brem, who writes one of my favorite sites, Take Back Your Brain! TBYB! is all about advertising to yourself, about using marketing tools to help meet your goals.
Persuasive messages are all around us. In fact, Adbusters estimates that we’re exposed to as many as 5000 marketing messages every [...]

In yesterday’s USA Today, Kathy Chu offered tips to help consumers with disputes on credit card charges. This is a nice companion piece to this morning’s GRS post about thwarting credit-card company tricks.
“No industry statistics are available about how often such disputes are won by consumers,” Chu writes. “But to maximize their chances, consumers [...]