I’m super excited — and more than a little bit scared. My book project is beginning to seem very very real. My publisher just finished laying out the manuscript yesterday, and this morning I received a printout of Your Money: The Missing Manual in its current state.

For some reason, seeing the book laid out makes the project more tangible than it has been before. There’s just something about holding this pile of words that’s now coalescing into something that other people will read.

It also makes me giddy to see the book listed at Amazon. I know this won’t ever be a best-seller like a Suze Orman book or a David Bach book, but it’s fun to see it climb from #540,000 on the Amazon best-seller list to #17,777. I have to say: If I even crack #5,000 I’ll be happy. (Honestly, I’m happy already!)

Ultimately, though, my goal isn’t to get rich by selling a ton of books. (Good thing, too, because that ain’t gonna happen.) My goal is to reach some folks who need help with their money: If I can give them the info they need to turn their financial lives around, then my work is done. I feel like that’s what I’ve been put here for. (Well, that and reading comic books…)

Here’s the copyright stuff and the table of contents:

I’ll spend the next week hunting for those last pesky errors. I’ll read the book aloud (at least once, if not twice), check for typos, double-check my links (the book has tons of links), and make sure my facts are correct. (I’ve been working with FICO, the credit score people, to correct a couple of charts, for example.)

Have a good weekend, everyone! The sun’s out here in Portland, so I’m going to take my first bike ride of the year…

Last weekend, The Washington Post published an article from Mike Rosenwald about the recent resurgence of haggling. To get a feel for the art of the deal, Rosenwald spent a week putting haggling to work in his own life:

For consumers like me who have spent decades shopping at full retail, getting a deal on previously no-deal items is liberating and invigorating, as I found out during a recent week I spent haggling. At first, my wife and friends asked me if I was crazy, but when I reported saving $3 on steak at Giant and $50 a month on our Verizon bill, they asked only one thing: How?

Just before Christmas, I spoke with Rosenwald about haggling. Though none of my tips made the final article (which is no big deal; that’s how journalism works!), he did profile long-time GRS reader Stephen Popick (who also volunteers as the GRS discussion forum admin). Rosenwald writes:

Popick is a well-paid guy — he can afford things. But he looks at price tags merely as suggestions. (Call him cheap, and he’ll thank you for the compliment.) For years, Popick has haggled down prices on ground beef, videogames, beer, bicycles, magazines, satellite TV and even the his-and-her plastic reindeer that adorned his front lawn for Christmas.

“I’ve always wondered why more people don’t do this,” said Popick, who lives with his wife in Alexandria. “This is your money. It would be wasteful not to do this, right?”

Taking lessons from Popick and others, Rosenwald gave haggling a try. He negotiated on everything from DVDs to steaks to cell phones. Final result? Rosenwald saved $730 in seven days.

As I’ve said before when this subject comes up, haggling isn’t for everyone. But if you’re brave enough to negotiate — and willing to put up with occasional rejection — you really can save money.

Here are some past Get Rich Slowly articles on this subject:

• How one reader uses haggling to save big bucks
• How to haggle
• You can negotiate anything
• Negotiate once, save thousands every year
• How I cut my Comcast cable bill by 33% (without losing any service)

Do you haggle? How often? Only on the big stuff? What rules have you set for yourself? How successful are you?

[The Washington Post: In tough economic times, shoppers take haggling to new heights]

Last August, in the midst of a growing debate about taxes in the United States, I decided I’d had enough. I was sick and tired of the histrionics from both sides of the political fence, and I wanted to find the facts. I spent twelve hours researching the federal budget and the U.S. tax system, and in the end wrote two articles:

• Understanding the federal budget
• The truth about taxes

I didn’t have any political agenda in mind; I just wanted to know the facts. What I discovered is that there are a hell of a lot of numbers involved with taxes, and plenty of conflicting information from a variety of sources. Based on my research, I concluded that at the federal level at least, our tax rates are low when compared to both our own past and to other countries. (You can see the 2010 federal income tax brackets at Five Cent Nickel.)

On Tuesday, USA Today shared a fun toy that basically takes all of my wordy research and converts it into a simple interactive tax-rate calculator. You put in how much you earned in any given year, and the calculator shows your effective tax rate and where your tax dollars go.

Here’s how USA Today describes the calculator:

Tax rates and federal spending priorities have fluctuated quite a bit over the years. This interactive graphic makes it easy to chart both. Simply enter a salary and see how much goes to federal taxes and how that money gets spent. Then, look back in time to see how that income compares with he past when adjusted for inflation, and what the tax rates and spending priorities used to be.

For instance, here’s a breakdown for three income levels: $25,000, $50,000 (roughly the U.S. median household income), and $100,000.

    
Click on any image to open a larger version in a new window.

It’s also fun to see how much different folks at different income levels pay. If you earn $10,000, you have an effective tax rate of 8%, though that’s been increasing with time. If you earn a $1,000,000 a year, you have an effective tax rate of 35%, though that’s been falling with time. Is this good? Bad? Just right? I don’t know, but it’s interesting to see.

This really is a great educational toy, and I highly recommend you spend five or ten minutes exploring it. It’s probably the most fun you’ll have with taxes this year!

Andy sent me a tip by e-mail the other day. This isn’t long enough to be a reader story, but I think it’ll be useful advice for some GRS readers. Andy says he’s learned that if he pays his bills as they arrive, he feels a lot less stressed than if he puts them off to the end of the month.

When he got his first credit card, Andy made a habit of paying his bills when he got them in the mail. But: “Then I got laid off. I didn’t pay my credit card bill until a day or two before it was due. I waited as long as I could because I needed that money elsewhere.”

Even after he got a job again, Andy kept paying his bills just before they were due. And he kept feeling stressed. Why? “Because I still am struggling to pay off my credit card bill each month before the due date. I have the money, I’m not carrying a balance or paying any interest…but instead of being ahead of the game I’m trying to base-slide in that home run at the end of each month.”

Andy writes:

I recommend that people do two things. Even if you’re carrying a balance on your credit cards, send your payments as soon as the bill comes due. Then you’ve got a buffer of about 30 days if for some reason you can’t make the payments immediately. If something does happen, do everything possible to get back your buffer ASAP.

Andy says there’s a real psychological difference that comes from paying his bills early: “That 30 day window makes me feel more secure.”

Long long ago, back when this blog was young, I wrote about my own personal discovery of this technique. When I was living paycheck-to-paycheck, I always waited until the last minute to pay my bills. Four years ago, I finally realized there were several advantages to paying my bills as they arrived:

• It saves time. Rather than spend half-an-hour batch-processing bills, I can take a few minutes at a time to pay just one bill.
• It saves worry. I’m no longer concerned with late payments. I know my bills are mailed on time.
• It saves mistakes. Sometimes I would forget to pay a bill. If I pay the bills as they arrive, this can’t happen.
• Most of all, it saves money. When I got paid, I used to buy my fun stuff first, and pay bills out of what was left over. Now that I pay bills first, I’m more inclined to invest any remaining money instead of spend it.

Even if you live paycheck-to-paycheck, you can profit from this advice. Try it for a month. You may not be able to pay all of your bills this way (your mortgage, for example, might have to wait), but you should be able to pay most of them. See if it doesn’t take a load off your mind!

After having used this technique for four years, I can’t imagine doing anything else. In fact, I barely remember that I used to struggle with paying my bills on time. But I did. Amazing how far I’ve come! And it’s amazing that smart personal finance is made up of regular small habits like this one.

This is a guest post from Robert Brokamp of The Motley Fool. Robert is a Certified Financial Planner and the advisor for The Motley Fool’s Rule Your Retirement service. He contributes one new article to Get Rich Slowly every two weeks.

Over the holidays, we said good-bye to an old family member. It was definitely her time to go. She leaked, she conked out at odd times, and she stank. Of course, I’m talking about our old vehicle: a minivan with 182,000 miles on it. I didn’t let go of her easily; after all, we didn’t get rid of our previous car until it had 264,000 miles on it. I figured we could get the minivan to at least 200,000.

But while visiting relatives in Florida, we had the opportunity to buy a used minivan from my sister’s meticulous neighbor for a great price. So we took it. I have to admit, it’s been a huge upgrade. It has all kinds of luxury features that our old minivan didn’t have, such as:

• When you turn it on, it stays on until you turn it off.
• When it rains, the water stays out of the vehicle.
• There’s an electrical device in the cigarette lighter that I can use to charge my cell phone, rather than just an empty hole where an electrical device used to be.
• The speedometer is an accurate reflection of the speed I’m traveling, rather than a number to which I have to add five to 15 mph.
• The brake light comes on only when the emergency brake is actually engaged.
• It has this thing called “air conditioning.”
• It doesn’t stink. (The smell in the old car came from water coming in and getting the carpets all moldy.)
• It has a “keyless remote,” which is a device on the key ring with buttons that, when pushed, cause the side doors to slide open.

(Regarding that last feature, here’s a trick you can play on the uninitiated: I put the keyless remote in my pocket, and told my mom and my aunt that the doors were voice activated, but you had to use the secret word. In this van’s case, I told them, the secret word was “monkey _____.” Since this is a family website, I can’t print the actual word, but use your imagination and you’ll be close. So I got my 70-something mom and aunt to yell, “Monkey ____!” at the van, pressed the button in my pocket, and — voila! — the doors opened. They just couldn’t get over it. “I have to get me one of those!” my aunt exclaimed. I let them yell, “Monkey ___!” at the van for another 15 minutes, closing and opening the doors, until I told them the truth. If I had videotaped it, we’d all be YouTube heroes by now.)

Drive a lemon, save some cabbage
I take my share of barbs from family and friends for driving clunkers. But for me, there are two driving (no pun intended) factors: 1) money, and 2) safety. Let’s look at the first one.

At what point is repairing an old vehicle just throwing good money after bad? Here’s one way to look at it: According to Comerica Bank, creator of the Auto Affordability Index, the average cost of a light vehicle last year was $25,500. If you had to finance that total amount over four years at the going rate of 6.56% (according to Bankrate), it would cost you $605.44 a month. If you spend less than that on repairs of the old vehicle, then keeping it saves money…at least for the next four years. At that point, the newer car would be paid off, and the old car would be really old.

But in the meantime, if it cost you only $200 a month to maintain the old vehicle, you saved $405.44 a month, or $19,461.12 over four years. Not too shabby.

While that’s helpful as a way to begin to think about the question, it doesn’t really help with determining a bottom-line number for an actual person because it’s based on an average number, 100% financing, and the purchase of a new car. To help someone like you — who is non-average, who likely wouldn’t finance the entire purchase, and who might be buying a “pre-owned” car (which, to me, is an inappropriate term, since “pre-owned” should mean “before it was owned,” that is, new) — you’ll have to whip out a spreadsheet and factor in all the costs. That includes assuming higher maintenance costs for the older car, but also higher insurance, higher property tax (if you, like me, live in a state that charges such things), and transaction costs after replacing your jalopy. It’s not an exact science, since it involves forecasting future maintenance costs — an impossible task. But it will give you some numbers to think about. In most cases, I bet the analysis will show that keeping the old car is the way to go, financially.

But then there’s safety
Did I do just such an analysis when I decided to replace our old minivan? Not exactly. We had reached a point where we were spending more than $2,000 a year on maintenance, and I had a rough idea of how much it would cost to fix the major problems with our van. Then this opportunity came up, to buy a van from one of those people who perform regular maintenance and have the records to prove it, at a price $2,000 to $5,000 below what it would have cost me to get the same vehicle from Craigslist or Carmax.

But what really got me was that the old van just didn’t feel safe anymore. Something was always going wrong, and I didn’t want something major to happen while my wife was on the highway with our kids. And I must admit, it’s nice to have a car that stays dry, has A/C, and doesn’t stink…yet. If I ran the numbers, I suspect my spreadsheet would have said, “Keep the old car.” But as readers of this website know, financial decisions don’t always come down to dollar and cents.

So I feel comfortable with the decision we made. As for our old van, my sister and brother-in-law got the major problems fixed and arranged to have it donated to a church they work with, so we’ll get a tax deduction out of the deal (another factor that would have gone into the spreadsheet) and the van will hopefully last long enough to do some good. My relatives in Florida approved of the trade-off, especially those who make jokes about the heaps we’ve driven, and believe that any car should be replaced once it reaches 100,000 miles.

Yet the math clearly shows that driving a car well beyond that point is the right thing to do for your net worth. According to Comerica Bank, the purchase of a new car costs 21.9 weeks of a median household’s income. That’s working 42% of the year just for a car. To me, acquiring a new vehicle before it’s necessary is a bunch of financial monkey _____.

For a personal finance blog, Get Rich Slowly hasn’t been very personal in recent months. That’s partly because of the book project, but also partly because I’ve moved to a stage in my financial life where not a lot happens. I’m not repaying debt, I’m not learning lots of new stuff; mostly, I’m “getting rich slowly”, letting my savings accumulate, and pursuing long-term goals.

One goal that Kris and I share is to take a trip to Europe later this year. We’ve been saving for nearly a year already to make this happen, and I’m sure to write more about it in the future. (In fact, I have one short post about our trip coming up soon.)

But I want to take a moment to get a little more personal than I have lately. In mid-January, I shared a brief summary of my 2009 discretionary spending. I pointed out two things:

1. Last year, I spent an average of $286.97 per month on dining out. We typically dined out about six times per month, and paid nearly $50 per meal.
2. Despite this, my spending on other discretionary items was down. In fact, I noted that I as experiencing what I called a “waning of want”; I didn’t feel the urge to buy Stuff.

More than in past years, I’ve been thinking about the results of my 2009 discretionary spending survey, and I’ve actually tried to act on them. During January, I did my best to keep my spending in check. How’d I do? Let’s look.

Last month I spent:

• $83.09 on Entertainment ($13.98 to purchase two multi-record sets at a thrift shop; $69.11 on iTunes downloads, including multiple seasons of The Amazing Race)
• $125.69 on Dining Out (we dined out five times, for an average of just over $25 per meal)
• $14.78 on Pets
• $5.97 on Books (again from a thrift shop)
• $12.20 on Cable TV and $45.99 on Internet

That’s it. For me, this is a huge victory. I didn’t feel deprived in any way, but spent less than $300 on discretionary items. (And that’s including cable and DSL, which I don’t usually lump with discretionary expenses.)

To some of you, $300 will seem like a lot; for others, it’ll seem like a pittance. For me, it’s pretty skimpy, especially compared to past spending levels. (Again remember: I spent nearly $300 a month on Dining Out last year alone!)

Now, I’ll admit that I don’t think this level of spending will last indefinitely. The longer I put off buying comics, the more things I want to buy (Dick Tracy and Little Lulu are calling my name at this very moment). Plus, being holed up working on my book for the first three weeks of January played a huge role in my decreased spending. So did saving for our trip to Europe.

But still, the larger point is that it is possible for me to spend less if I put my mind to it. Just yesterday I decided I wanted to play a computer game. I’ve worked hard lately, and I deserve some time to goof around. I considered buying something new (or re-activating my World of Warcraft account), but instead I downloaded the free Battle for Wesnoth. Turns out it’s a fantastic game. Instead of buying new comics, I’ve been going through the un-read stuff I already own. And for entertainment, I’ve been trying to exercise. (My one goal for 2010 is to lose 50 pounds; I’m down five.)

There’s nothing earth-shattering in this article, no profound lessons to be learned. I just wanted to take a few moments to share the personal side of my personal finances. I’m pleased with how things have gone so far this year. How about you? One month into 2010, are your finances where you want them to be?