I had dinner with two friends from high school last night. We shared good wine, good food, and, especially, good conversation. Much of our discussion focused on our shared history: the things we did twenty years ago (or 25!) that now seem as if they might have been done by a stranger. (Yet those strangers were us.) We talked about how we perceived money when we were younger.

Sparky and Stew grew up down the road from each other. I didn't meet either of them until junior high school. Stew's family was poor. They lived in a single-wide mobile home. His father built bar stools in the garage; his mother waited tables. "I remember your dad as an entrepreneur," Sparky said last night. "I remember him building those stools. I admired that."

"Yeah, he was a sort of entrepreneur," Stew said. "He tried, but he could never really make a go of it. We couldn't survive on the money he brought in making bar stools. In fact, he financed that operation on credit cards. We lived on the tips my mom brought home from waiting tables. It seemed like she was always working to get us money. She hoarded her money. She watched it. She had to make it last."

Advertising is powerful. Avoiding it — in print, on radio, on television — is one of the best ways to control your urge to spend. When you willingly expose yourself to commercial pitches, you risk spending more than you intend. I've posted two articles recently about how marketing manipulates us to buy things. Allow me to belabor this point one last time before I move on. It's important.

Corporations manipulate us in subtle ways. We know television commercials are designed to sell us things, but how many really understand that their power is felt primarily at a subconscious level, beneath awareness? It's not that a Taco Bell commercial makes you go buy a chalupa now; it's that weeks later you'll find yourself pulling into a drive-thru when you could have been home in a few minutes preparing a salad.

The other day I wrote that people who watch the Super Bowl just for the commercials may be sabotaging themselves. But it's not just television — marketers target us constantly. I could just as easily write about my own foolish choices. Every time Steve Jobs gives a keynote address, for example, I follow the live text updates. When the speech is over, I download the video. I willingly expose myself to these marketing machinations. And wouldn't you know it? My life is filled with Apple products. (My mind is working overtime trying to find a way to rationalize an iPhone.)

You can make money from your hobby.

Whether you knit, or write, or make photographs, or grow a vegetable garden, or tinker with cars, or build websites, or collect ancient coins — you can make money from your hobby.

I'm not saying it's possible to get rich by playing your violin at weddings, or by weaving baskets from pine needles, but earning money from a hobby is a nice way to get paid for doing something you would do anyhow. Continue reading...

In 1913, Wyoming ratified the 16th Amendment, providing the three-quarter majority of states necessary to amend the Constitution. The 16th Amendment gave Congress the authority to enact an income tax. That same year, the first Form 1040 appeared after Congress levied a 1 percent tax on net personal incomes above $3,000 with a 6 percent surtax on incomes of more than $500,000.

— A Brief History of the IRS

It's February. Tax season is in full swing. Employers, banks, and investment firms have mailed out W-2s and 1099s and other miscellaneous tax documents. These are beginning to pile up on kitchen tables across the country. Over the next few weeks people will sit down to puzzle out their tax situation. Continue reading...

I recently posted two articles for frugal carnivores: a guide to cheap cuts of beef and another one on how to buy a side of beef. GRS-reader Sally has produced an introduction to eating vegetarian for cheap. Though her tips are for herbivores, many are useful to omnivores, as well.

About a year-and-a-half ago, for health reasons, my husband and I committed ourselves to a mostly vegetarian lifestyle. At home we eat entirely vegetarian; when we eat out we allow ourselves to choose meat. It's also a priority for us to avoid the pesticides in non-organic produce and the hormones that come with non-organic dairy products. Here's how we eat a ton of fruits and veggies at a fraction of the price you might expect.

Our top strategy is to eat locally-produced foods as often as possible. (Actually, eating locally is a priority for us based on both our physiological needs and the need for Americans to reduce oil consumption. Produce at the grocery store has traveled, on average, 1500 miles to reach us!) Because we live in an Atlanta apartment with no yard or porch, we are unable to grow anything ourselves except for herbs — so we seek out local farmers. (If you'd care to try an urban garden, this video is a good resource.) Locally-grown foods are sold to us at the peak of their flavor and nutritional value, making them more enjoyable. Buying from local farmers, we are also able to ask whether the foods we are buying have been grown using pesticides. (The organic certification process is expensive for small farmers, so some small farmers may use organic methods but not have government certification for years, if ever.) Continue reading...

Yesterday The Consumerist pointed to a couple of Curbly posts about how to buy stuff on Craigslist [one, two]. These articles have some good tips, but I think there's more to say.

My Craigslist Experience

Cragislist is one of the seven wonders of the internet. You can use it to find a job, buy a car, get a date for Saturday night, and sell that old couch. The site is free to use for almost everything. It's community-policed, which means spam is taken down as users flag it. Kris and I made extensive use of Craigslist when we bought our new house. Over the past three years we've purchased:

• 67" x 36" antique mirror with beveled edge: $45
• Another mirror, battered but okay: $20 and a long wait in traffic
• Solid cherry Dania shaker desk: $175 and buyer's remorse
• A housekeeper to perform a final, thorough cleaning when we moved out of our previous house: $75
• A futon bed/couch in excellent condition: $100
• "Cool, stout wooden chair" for my smoking porch: $25
• A 30 x 60 folding table: $30
• Two shelving units stolen from Borders by disgruntled employees: $20
• Free-standing metal cabinet that matches those in our kitchen, delivered: $75
• Newer double bed with metal frame: $50
• Doctor's balance scale: $30
• Box of 40+ wine glasses: $20
• An old rototiller: $50 (which I sold two years later for $30)

We've also swapped some stuff, too.

This was an actual weekend harvest from our garden last August.

At Get Rich Slowly, we get many requests for information about starting a vegetable garden. This is huge topic, and really enough fodder for an entire website. If you're a novice gardener you will benefit by asking yourself six questions before mail-ordering seeds or heading to your local nursery. Now is the time to do your research so that you'll be ready for planting season.

Do you actually like to eat vegetables?

If not, focus on fruits and herbs, edible and ornamental flowers, and a favorite veggie or two. A well-tended garden will produce a lot of vegetables. If you are lukewarm about zucchini then pass up that beautiful seedling. (Or go introduce yourself to your five nearest neighbors so that you can share come July).

What is your gardening space like?

This is probably the most important question for the novice gardener. If you are starting from bare dirt or, more likely, a patch of lawn, you have some work to do. The plot needs to be evaluated for sun and wind exposure, moisture/drainage, soil pH and elemental content, pests, and other factors.

For 35 years, Bay Area finance revolutionaries have been pushing a personal investing strategy that brokers despise and hope you ignore. [This is] the story of a rebellion that's slowly but surely putting money into the pockets of millions of Americans, winning powerful converts, and making money managers from California Street to Wall Street squirm.

So writes Mark Dowie in a recent issue of San Francisco magazine. Dowie describes how Google prepared for its IPO in 2004. Aware that hundreds of young employees would soon be millionaires, the company brought in a series of financial experts to teach them to make smart investment choices.

Elizabeth has a lifehack that allows her to manage both money and space. She writes: "This helped me curb my lifestyle choices when I was in high school and first on my own." Here is her guest entry.

Possessions scare me. My parents are pack-rats, and their house is full of things that have no right to be there. Desk space is taken up by dirty coffee cups, stacks of notebooks, and priceless, irreplaceable piles of loose paper. My Mom's office, the biggest room in the house, has three narrow pathways: one to her computer, one to her bathroom, and one to her closet (which will not open because there is too much stuff inside and outside of it). Scary!

When I became a college student with a (very small) room of my own, I learned how rewarding it is to be in control of your living space, and how important thriftiness is on a student-sized budget. This is how I came up with the following method of worth assessment: the cost-per-day expense chart. How much does something you own cost per day you use it? And how long until your assets break even?

You don't need to buy a side of beef to get cheap, great-tasting meat. Excellent inexpensive steaks and roasts are available at every supermarket. Here's a brief guide to common cuts. The information in this article is derived from two Cook's Illustrated pieces: "An Illustrated Guide to Beef Roasts" (Nov/Dec 2002) and "Tasting: Inexpensive Steaks" (Sep/Oct 2005).

Inexpensive Steaks

These steaks were priced $6.99/pound or less when Cook's Illustrated tested them in 2005.

Best Cuts for Pan-Searing

Boneless shell sirloin steak (a.k.a. top butt, butt steak, top sirloin butt, center-cut roast) — Very tender texture and beefy flavor. Look for a one-pound piece of uniform 1-1/4 inch thickness. Continue reading...