“Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.” — attributed to Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order

Though there are many fine books about money available for the general reader, I’ve always been disappointed that there are so few movies about money. Anything directly about finance tends to be sensationalist in one way or another.
Despite this, I think that excellent films about money do exist — you just have to know where to look for them. Two years ago, for example, I reviewed The Farmer’s Wife, a poignant six-hour documentary about a Nebraska family struggling to make ends meet. “This is a great film,” I wrote. And it is. Today I want to share a series of documentary films that’s just as good.
In 1964, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) produced a short film called Seven Up that explored the lives of fourteen seven-year-olds from various cities and [...]

Previously in my semi-regular Extreme Personal Finance series, I’ve highlighted:

A couple who paid off their $220,000 mortgage in three years
People who live on $12,000 a year
Don Schrader, the man who lives on $10 a day
Rina Kelley, the reporter who lived for one month as a freegan

Yesterday, my friend Castle sent me the story of a man who makes these other folks look like spendthrifts.
The man without money
Writing for Details magazine, Christopher Ketcham profiles Daniel Suelo, the man who lives without money. From the article:
Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit. His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He’s either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo.
Suelo lives in a small cave. Much like those [...]

“Did you listen to Rick Steves this afternoon?” Kris asked me on Sunday. I shook my head. “That’s too bad,” she said. “It was about the relationship between money and happiness. I think you would have liked it — and so would your readers.”
“But I just wrote about happiness!” I said.
“J.D.,” she said. “You can never write too much about happiness.” And so I tracked down last weekend’s episode of Travel with Rick Steves and listened to his discussion with Eric Weiner about “the geography of bliss”. Kris was right. This is good stuff.
The geography of bliss
Weiner is a long-time correspondent for NPR. His new book, The Geography of Bliss, is about “how place — in every aspect of the word — shapes us, defines us.” It’s about finding the happiest places on Earth.
In Steves’ interview with Weiner, they compare and contrast “national happiness” in countries around the world. What makes some cultures happy and [...]

Today is the last day of Financial Literacy Month. To tie everything together, I thought it would be fun to share an interview my real millionaire next door, a man we’ll call John. He used the basic tenets of money management to build wealth and to retire early. Here’s how I described John when I first wrote about him last year:

John is a 71-year-old retired shop teacher who lives in a modest ranch house on half an acre, the same house he’s had for over forty years. He has an old barn filled with salvaged lumber, outdated appliances, and who knows what else. When he’s around, he drives a junkie 25-year-old station wagon. But most of the time, he’s not around.
He spends his winters in New Zealand helping friends on a dairy farm. His summers are spent fishing in Alaska. For a couple of months each year, he’s home, puttering in the yard. Year-round, he [...]

As part of its 30th anniversary, Public Broadcasting’s Nightly Business Report is airing an interview with Warren Buffett tonight (Thursday, January 22nd). Susie Gharib spoke with “the oracle of Omaha”, asking him about the economy, about President Obama, and about investing. Here are some excerpts from the transcript, posted with permission. Update: Video of the interview is now online.
Susie Gharib:  One thing that Americans aren’t buying these days is stocks. Should they be buying?
 
Warren Buffett: Well just as many people buy a stock everyday as sell one, so there are people buying stocks everyday and we’re buying stocks as we go along.  If they’re buying into a business that they understand at a sensible price they should be buying them. That’s true at any time. There are a lot more things selling at sensible prices now than they were two years ago. So clearly it’s a better time to buying stocks than a couple of [...]

Earlier today, I reviewed the new book from The Motley Fool, Million Dollar Portfolio. I had the pleasure to interview author David Gardner at the end of December. This post contains excerpts from that interview. The complete interview will be included as part of the hypothetical future Get Rich Slowly podcast.
J.D.
Earlier this year, you met with Stephen Popick, a government economist who writes for Get Rich Slowly. During the first part of your interview, you talked about teaching children about personal finance and investing. You talked about a long-term version of the stock-market game.
I like the idea of a stock-market game, and I’ve had some people ask me about similar things. They want to know if there are similar tools or methods for adults who want to learn about investing without risking their capital just yet.
David
First of all, I enjoyed meeting Stephen a lot. He’s a very nice guy. I think at the time, he [...]