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• How to hold a monthly family finance meeting

  Posted Jun 05 2008, 09:29 PM by Karen Datko
  Filed under: Spending, Family, Saving, Simple Dollar
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  This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar.

  Prior to our financial meltdown, my wife and I never sat down and talked about our finances. Right after the meltdown, we talked about things almost every day. Through our recovery, the number of meetings slowly declined to a monthly family financial meeting.

  The meetings have become a big part of the financial glue of our marriage.   Read More...

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• Personal finance and the fundamental choice

  Posted Feb 15 2008, 07:11 AM by Karen Datko
  Filed under: Spending, Family, Saving, Simple Dollar
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  This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar.

  A while back, I reviewed in detail the excellent book "The Path of Least Resistance" by Robert Fritz. He posits that most of the time our lives take the path of least resistance around and through the obstacles of life, both those dealt to us by others and those within our own minds.

  An extension of that is the idea of a fundamental choice, as opposed to a primary or a secondary choice. A fundamental choice is one that actually affects the definition of who you are as a person. The others are merely suggestions about how to act. For example, a fundamental choice would be to define yourself as a frugal person, whereas a primary choice might be to decide to try to make frugal choices, and a secondary choice would be an individual frugal decision.

  For a lot of people, this seems like mere wordplay, but there's something deeper at work here. A person who makes the fundamental choice to be a frugal person is a person whose default choice is the frugal one. A primary choice to be frugal doesn't change that; you're merely deciding in harmony with your default choice whenever you can think about it.   Read More...

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• You're frugal but your spouse is not

  Posted Feb 08 2008, 05:04 AM by Karen Datko
  Filed under: Spending, Family, Saving, Simple Dollar
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  This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar.

  Readers often leave comments at The Simple Dollar complaining that they make frugal choices, but their spouses see their savings not as a long-term financial benefit but as more money to spend right now.

  Thus, their frugal ways go without a long-term reward. They're careful about spending their money, but their bank account balances don't grow.

  I'm lucky. My wife is very frugal, and we share the same philosophy. In fact, she's probably more frugal than I am. Her only weakness is books, but she participates in PaperBackSwap to keep the cost low. She's in line with my goals: freedom from debt, saving for major purchases so we don't have more debt. Our goal as a family is to eliminate all of our debt by my 40th birthday.

  Unfortunately, many people aren't in such a lucky situation. They may be in sync with their spouses in a number of ways, but in terms of personal spending, they're in different worlds. Naturally, the frugal spouse is going to be frustrated, watching his or her efforts dissipate in a spending binge. On the other hand, the spending spouse probably feels frustration too, because his or her partner won't "live a little."   Read More...

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