Cap at Stop Buying Crap recently asked: "When did you start caring about your finances?" This is an interesting question. I've always believed that my finances were important to me, but I never actually acted on this belief until a few years ago.

My parents set poor examples for managing money. In high school, I ignored the mandatory personal finance class. When I was offered credit cards in college, I signed up, and I used them, and began a lifestyle of debt. For the first few months after college, I was in a lousy job, and felt lucky to have a credit card with a $10,000 limit. I maxed it out buying clothes and paying for hotels and taking cash advances for living expenses. I bought a new car.

By the mid-nineties I was deep in debt, but I didn't have the discipline to stop myself. I paid minimum payments. When my credit limits were raised (always a joyous day), I viewed it as a license to spend. In 1995 I got a $5,000 windfall. Rather than pay off my credit card debt — which had swelled to $20,000 — I bought a new Macintosh Performa 640CD DOS-compatible personal computer and loads of games to go along with it. I bought new clothes.

One of the most puzzling things about money is knowing where to begin. You get out of college and suddenly find yourself in the real world, with a job, with rent, with student loans, and wonder how you're going to make ends meet, let alone save for retirement. Retirement seems so far away. It's easy to just forget about it.

Ignoring retirement could be one of the biggest financial mistakes you'll ever make. Compound returns favor the young. Time is money. Invest now and your 40-year-old self will be grateful. But where do you start?

Frances Leonard's 1995 book, Time is Money, is an excellent introduction to retirement for people in their twenties and early thirties. Leonard preaches the important message: start now.

Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, recently shared his thoughts on a New York Times profile of Russ Whitney, a real estate mogul who charges thousands of dollars to learn the secrets of his success. (Whitney helped inspire Casey Serin's foreclosure odyssey. John T. Reed has extensive information on Whitney, not all of it negative.)

Ramit's post prompted me to read the original New York Times article. I began the piece planning to offer my own criticisms of Whitney and his get rich quick schemes. But two-thirds through the article, I realized there were actually two stories here: one about Whitney's brash hucksterism, and another about the people — like Casey Serin — who are so desperate to get rich now that they lose touch with reality.

Midway through the article we meet Tracie Taylor, who is leading Millionaire U, a three-day real estate training course for "advanced" students. Most of the students don't actually know much about real estate, so Taylor is giving them the basics. She's also touting goals, positive thinking, and visualization (all excellent tools when used correctly).

On Monday I mentioned that it pays to shop around for the lowest price. This skill is specially important when making large money decisions. You should always shop around when purchasing a car, obtaining a mortage, or hiring a contractor. We've discussed getting the best deal on a car before. We've touched on mortgages, and are sure to discuss them more in the future. Today I want to share my approach to finding a contractor.

The New Roof

We bought our first house in the spring of 1993. The roof was in bad shape and needed to be replaced before we could close the deal. Fortunately, we had a good working relationship with the seller: he offered to grant us a $2,000 credit if we would take care of finding a roofer.

I had never done anything like this before, nor had any of my friends. I looked in the phone book and found a local roofer. When I called, he could sense that I was confused, so he talked me through the process, asking about the size of the house, the slope of the roof, the material we wanted to use, the condition of the existing shingles. He gave me a quote of $2300.

One recurring theme of personal finance books is that it's easier to accumulate wealth by working for yourself than by working for others. Many have heard this maxim, but few have heeded it. Some want to, but don't know how to begin.

A century ago, Russell Conwell was famous for his traveling lecture in which he encouraged listeners to find the "acres of diamonds" in their own backyards. Conwell was born in Massachusetts in 1843. During the Civil War, he served as a captain in the Union army. He studied law, but ultimately became a Baptist minister and a popular public speaker. "Acres of Diamonds" was his most famous talk. (He delivered this lecture over 6000 times!) Conwell also founded Temple University.

Conwell was one of the original motivational speakers.

Kris and I received $2789 in tax refunds this year.

Already I can hear the sound of hundreds of heads thumping against hundreds of desks. Many of you are wailing, "Why?! Why?! Why?!" Of all the financial choices a person can make, getting a large refund is universally considered one of the dumbest. Magazines advise against it. Books advise against it. Blogs advise against it. Yet every year, millions of Americans like me use their tax refund as a sort of forced savings account.

Why do we do it?

Reading books on investing money is a great way to learn more about what you should do at each point in your financial journey. In some respects, it doesn't really matter where you are in your journey because, no matter what you need help with, there's a book that covers it.

Deciding which book to read when, though, can be a bit of a challenge. So we created this huge collection of personal finance books to help with that. Here's how it works:

Who doesn't want to make a little extra cash these days? The price of digital cameras is dropping on what seems to be a daily basis. Why not put yours to some use? For the past five years, I have been selling royalty-free stock photographs and will share my thoughts, ideas and concepts with you, along with some suggestions for getting started.

What is stock photography?

The Wikipedia entry for stock photography states:

Stock photography consists of existing photographs that can be licensed for specific uses. Book publishers, specialty publishers, magazines, advertising agencies, filmmakers, web designers, graphic artists, interior decor firms, corporate creative groups, and other entities utilize stock photography to fulfill the needs of their creative assignments. By using stock photography instead of hiring a photographer to perform on location shooting, customers can save valuable time and stay on budget.

Note: I've received many questions about Prosper, but I've never used it. Here's a post from Frykitty, the very very quiet second author at Get Rich Slowly. She recently set up a Prosper account and has written to share her experience.

Last December I discovered Prosper, a site that connects private lenders and borrowers, and manages the resulting loans. Because I'm not a fan of the stock market, this looked like a perfect opportunity to invest on my terms, to help individuals with faces and stories, rather than contribute to the bottom-line culture. I decided to start the new year by testing Prosper with a set amount of funds to see how it performed.

Borrowers sign up on Prosper, then post a request for a loan and the maximum amount they're willing to pay in interest. Lenders then bid to fund all or part of that loan, at an interest rate of their choosing. You win a bid by coming in at a lower interest rate than your competitors.

You've heard that to take control of you finances you sould track every penny you spend. You'd like to try this, but it sounds like such a pain. There's so much paperwork involved. You lose receipts. You forget when bills are due. It's hard enough making sure the bare necessities are tackled — who has time to track every penny?

I've been there. My financial life used to be a mess. Whenever a bill was due, I had to play a game of hide-and-seek to find it. I often overdrew my checking account because I'd lost track of how much money I had. Eventually I learned that it's easier to track your finances if you keep them organized.

To stay on top of things, you need to have a system. You also need to reduce the amount of information coming in; you need to keep all of your information in one place; and you need to process your finances regularly. Continue reading...