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This is a guest post from my friend Kris, an American writer living in India. She and her husband are in New Delhi to participate in an educational exchange program. The juxtaposition of cultures has been interesting.

When you think of grocery shopping in New Delhi, please don’t imagine your local Safeway or City Market, with aisles wide enough for two pushcarts passing as shoppers stroll, browse, select.

Our grocers — or rather, “departmental store” — is a packed-to-the roof little cubby that requires deft yogic moves just to enter and exit, let alone exploring a row of goods. When it’s time to restock, they open a hatch in the ceiling and toss down from storage the items they need, calling directions back and forth as they go.

Some grocers have no rows at all, but stand at a walk-up counter with all their wares behind them; you request your purchases like ordering at a coffee bar or pharmacy in the U.S. Others display their goods on pushcarts, and still others spread out on the sidewalk.

Some tips for getting what you want at our market:

1. Buy it when you see it. When you go back tomorrow, it may be gone, or it may be hidden so that you can not find it again.
2. If it is manufactured and packaged in India, the price will be fixed and printed on the wrapper.
3. If its label includes a small green dot inside a green-outlined square, it is vegetarian. Eggs are not vegetarian in India, though milk, yogurt, and cheese are.
4. If its label includes a small red dot inside a red-outlined square, it is non-veg (includes eggs).
5. Choose the butter and the bread packaged in plastic. Sorry. I know it’s not environmentally sound, but if you buy the butter and the bread wrapped in paper, it will taste like the shop’s insecticide. And you will be bummed out when you can’t have your toast.
6. Speaking of butter, you can also buy it at government milk kiosks. “Mother Dairy” products are considered safe and hygenic.
7. For real chocolate flavor, splurge on the Swiss stuff. Cadbury, while perfectly satisfying in both England and Canada, is perfectly bland when made in India. Nestle too.
8. Mentos, however, taste the same the world over!
9. If the label highlights “no onions or garlic,” you can serve it to those following the Jain religion.
10. The young man on your heels is to carry your items to the checkout. In fact, if you speak Hindi, you can send him to select from the shelves for you too.

I recently bought some food in a can, and on the way home I remembered that we had no can opener. So I turned into another little market street where there are a bunch of hardware stands. I chose the stall with all the plastic colanders hanging on hooks and strings around its perimeter. It also had a big sign: “pressure cookers repair.” I figured the pressure cooker repair man would surely have a can opener. Plus, he had a nice white mustache.

There wasn’t really anywhere to come to, but I stepped up onto his floor next to his service counter. His narrow stall was stuffed with household goods, most of them dusty, dirty, and balancing in precarious stacks. It looked like a mad jumble to me, but of course he knows exactly where it all stands. He rummaged around and brought out a small box, from which he presented this handy gadget:

Meanwhile, some young women stood behind me fingering the colanders, napkins, rubber rings. “Uncle,” one spoke up. “Uncle, have you got…?”

I handed him a 100-rupee note which he took with both hands. He touched it first to his chest, then to his forehead. Then he turned around in his chair and waved it around in the incense smoking behind him, then circled it over the head of the goddess Lakshmi in her little niche. He unlocked his cash drawer and waved the bill over the money inside, then brought it to his chest and forehead again. All the while chanting a little prayer.

When he noticed me watching, he said:

And gave a little shrug as he passed me my change.

So the opener doesn’t work. But the conversation was worth it, don’t you think?

Previously at Get Rich Slowly, my friend Kris asked, “When is it okay to give?” This is the third of three posts I’ve shared this weekend about personal finance in other countries. All photos by Kris (the writer, not my wife).

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Use a Grocery Price Book to Slash Your Food Spending
• The Grocery Game
• Don’t Underestimate the Value of Comparison Shopping
• Daily Links: Grocery Shopping, Stuff, and the Value of a College Education
• Save on Groceries with ‘Strike-Point Shopping’

This is a guest post from Danny Kofke, author of How to Survive (and Perhaps Thrive) on a Teacher’s Salary.

Times are tough. Many are finding it more difficult to stretch their dollars. I know this first-hand because I am a school teacher, and my wife is a stay-at-home mom with our two young daughters.

Despite earning a modest income, we have managed to own all of our possessions (including two cars!) except our house, set aside a six-month emergency fund, and invest so that we are on track to retire as millionaires. We live a financially secure life on a teacher’s salary.

One strategy that has helped us is to use cash to pay for our purchases as much as possible. Here are three reasons I believe that cash is king:

We know where our money is going
I believe that one reason so many people are in financial trouble is that they do not know how much they are spending. It’s not the big-ticket items that are hurting most of us, but rather the $10 lunch here and $5 coffee there. These add up over time.

Pulling a set amount of cash out of your account on a weekly basis for your expenses can help eliminate this mindless spending.

We spend less
There are studies that show you will, on average, spend 12-18% more when using a credit card instead of cash. For most people, it’s much easier to swipe a card through a machine than to pull out the green stuff.

Using cash causes my wife and me to think twice before making many of our purchases. This leads us to buy only those things that we truly want, since we’ve paused to consider before opening our wallets.

You can get a great deal
Here’s the fun part. Most stores are hurting because people aren’t spending as much as they used to. Many are willing to lower their prices if you offer cash when buying their products.

A month ago, a friend told me she was going to an electronics store to buy a television that was listed for approximately $1,000. I told her to walk into the store with $700 in cash and tell the sales associate that she really wanted that particular television but this was all she could spend on it. After some talk, the associate agreed — my friend saved $300.

This approach might not work at all stores, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

I know that not everyone will be able or willing to use this approach. But I hope that my examples have shown you that there are advantages to using cash. With the credit markets tightening, I really believe that cash will be king during the next few years.

J.D.’s note: I know that GRS readers are divided between the “cash only” and the “wise use of credit” camps. I believe both have their merits. Though I’ve elected to join the “wise use of credit” folks, I support those who opt for a cash-only lifestyle. For more on this option, check out my pal NCN at No Credit Needed. Photo by Refracted Moments.

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job
• Twenty Things Everyone Needs to Know
• links for 2007-01-19
• Don’t Raid Your 401(k) to Make Mortgage Payments
• links for 2007-05-15

This is the second of three posts I’ll be sharing this weekend about personal finance in other countries. While my U.S. readers are spending their Thanksgiving holidays eating turkey, watching football, and visiting with family, it’s the perfect opportunity to perform my annual roundup of personal finance sites from around the world. As usual, if you have a favorite non-U.S. personal finance site, please let us know in the comments.

Canada
For additional Canadian financial sites, check out Canadian Capitalist’s lists of Canadian financial blogs and Canadian financial links.

• Four Pillars — “We specialize in investing, real estate, personal finance and even some frugal posts too.”
• Canadian Capitalist — “I used to record down my thoughts and observations and actions about credit cards, loans, investing etc. in a spiral-bound notebook. When I discovered blogging, I thought some of this stuff might be interesting to other people.”
• Canadian Dream: Free at 45 — “Saving to retire by the age of 45. I started this blog because I thought the world could use a bit more coverage on retirement planning than it normally gets in the media.”
• Million Dollar Journey — “I hope to grow my net worth to at least $1 million by the time I’m 35. Is the goal too high? Am I naive? I don’t think so but only time will tell and this blog will be here to keep track along the way.”
• A Dawn Journal — “A blog on personal finance, investing, entrepreneurship, and more.”
• Canadian Financial DIY — “Personal experiences, analysis and assessments of a mid-50s Canadian. I take a do-it-yourself approach, covering taxes, investing, ETFs, portfolio and asset allocation, insurance, annuities and related book reviews in Canada and the UK.”
• Michael James on Money — This blog bills itself as “an amateur’s clear explanations of personal finance and investing.”
• The Dividend Guy Blog — “One guy’s journey to passive income through dividend investing.” I’ve been reading this blog a little lately — I’m fascinated by dividends, and am weighing them vs. index funds.
• Canadian Personal Finance Blog — “Personal finances and consumer concerns, essays, stories, examples and how-to articles with a distinctly Canadian point of view.”
• Canadian Money Review — “This is a blog that cares and advises you about growing and safeguarding your money: personal finance, investing, consuming, saving, etc.”
• My Money — A big-name Canadian personal finance portal, sponsored by Canadian Business Online.

Latin America

• El Blog Salmón — “El Blog Salmón es un weblog colectivo dedicado a la economía, las finanzas y el mundo de la empresa, sin olvidar la economía doméstica.” Or, according to Free Translation: “The Blog Salmon is a collective weblog dedicated to the economy, the finances and the world of the business, without forgetting the home economics. “
• Ahorro diario — “Ahorrodiario es un weblog colectivo dedicado al ahorro: compras y hábitos inteligentes para gastar menos y sacarle más partido a nuestros recursos.” Which, in J.D.’s translation, means roughly: “Savings Diary is a group weblog dedicated to savings: shopping and smart habits for spending less and removing the things that part us from our resources.”
• Dinero.com — Based in Colombia, this is a companion site to a Spanish-language personal finance magazine.

Australia/New Zealand

• Sorted — This is a New Zealand government-sponsored site about saving, budgeting, and other finance topics. Great stuff.
• Simple Savings Australia — Recommended by a GRS reader. Most (all?) of the content is “for-pay”, but it looks like there’s a lot here.
• Cheap as Chips — “A personal finance blog with an Australian spin…. I am just a simple person trying to save a few cents here and there.”
• Debt Diet — “Working hard to eliminate $56,722 of consumer debt and become debt free by May 2010…”
• Retire at 40 — This personal-finance blog from Andrew Chilton is based in New Zealand, and features some excellent discussions of topics like budgeting, lifestyle inflation, and financial independence.
• Money Minded — “MoneyMinded consists of two adult financial education programs developed to help people build their financial skills, knowledge and confidence. The development of the MoneyMinded programs was initiated and funded by ANZ with contributions from community sector and education experts, including the Australian Financial Counseling and Credit Reform Association.”
• Finance Viewpoint — “I am just a regular investor trying to make a buck. I have lived and grown up in Australia and for now working in the states. This site provides a way to share my views and keep in touch with the Australian finance scene.”
• Enough Wealth — “How much is wealth is enough? How do you get it and keep it? How can you pass it on to future generations? An Aussie’s thoughts on all these topics and more.”
• My Journey to Eliminate Debt — “My goal is to pay my $152,377 mortgage in 5 years: 30th June 2012. I started this blog to stay motivated and I would love to hear from other pf bloggers out there!”
• Good Returns — A finance blog out of New Zealand.

United Kingdom (and Ireland)

• Plonkee Money — “I’m Plonkee, I live in England and have absolutely no personal finance qualifications whatsoever, except a little personal experience. I love to write about personal finance, especially thinking about why I and others do things in a certain way — including those times when it’s not exactly the best way.”
• Notes From the Frugal Trenches — “When desperate times call for desperate measures - British woman in her 20’s who used to love handbags, shoes, days spend @ the shops & nights @ restaurants and bars - instead now I’m on a journey in eco, frugal living while living in London and somehow getting in control of my finances instead of letting them control me; it’s about time!” This blog makes me long to return to England.
• The Student Finance Blog — “Here at studentcashflow.co.uk Goldie will show you the way on important issues such as student banking, budgeting, saving, and even making more money.”
• This is Money — A sort of U.K.-based MSN Money. “This is Money’s simple aim is to help you save money and make money in all aspects of your life. We do this through our award-winning news and advice-packed features which can help you fight back against profit-hungry financial companies.”
• Rob Thomas Blog — A U.K.-based property blog. “If my blog stimulates you to action, makes you a more savvy investor, opens up ideas for new approaches I will have achieved my goal.”
• Moneywise — I picked up a copy of Moneywise at Victoria Station &mash; I thought it was great. This magazine (and web site) offer a great balance of information for people at all levels of money management.
• You and Your Money — This is the official web site for an Irish money magazine. I think this is a great choice if you’re looking for Irish personal finance advice.
• The In-Debt Net — A great blog about fighting your way out of debt. Excellent stuff, Annie!
• The Simple Pound — “SimplePound is a blog about personal finance from the perspective of a recent graduate. The recent graduate - you might have guessed - is me. My name is Kirsten, I am 21 years old and about to move to London to start my first job in the City. I am determined not to waste (most of) the money I’m earning but to learn how to make it work for me instead.” Dormant?
• Money Saving Expert — “The aim is to help you save money on anything and everything by finding the best deals and beating the system…UK’s most popular independent money site with over two million visits per month.”
• Simple Savings UK — Recommended by a GRS reader. Most (all?) of the content is “for-pay”, but it looks like there’s a lot here.
• Moneywell.co.uk — more personal finance advice from a U.K. perspective.

Europe

• La parole est d’argent — The Word is Money is a French weblog about personal finance and small economies. (Ugh. My ability to translate French is terrible.)
• Plus Riches — A French money blog, and a good one from the looks of it. I can’t actually read French, so I’m going of the look and feel of the place.
• Espirit Riche — “Changez votre point de vue sur largent.” In English: “Change your point of view on money.” This blog recently reviewed a book I’m reading now: The Magic of Thinking Big. Unfortunately, I cannot read the review, and the free translation sites aren’t really useful for big articles like this.
• Banche, risparmio, investimenti & trading — An Italian personal finance blog! I love the free translation of the blog’s about line: “Opinions, you comment on and reflections on economy and finances, confront and tables of synthesis of the offers of the banks and of the online accounts of depot, discussions on the investments for the small savers.” Right. Enjoy!
• A fin de mes — A Spanish money blog. “A Fin de mes es un blog sobre economía familiar, donde ofrecemos trucos, guías y recursos para ahorrar mes a mes. También hablamos de buenas ofertas que podemos encontrar para que nuestras compras salgan más económicas.” Or: “A fin de mes is a blog about family economy, where we offer tricks, guides, and resources to save from month-to-month. We also discuss good deals so that we can make more economic purchases.”
• Sin Dinero — From Spain: “A modest website that seeks to fight against consumerism and to promote free things over things that cost money.”
• Finanzas — Another personal finance blog from Spain.
• Milionarul Mioritic — Last year Luca shared his Romanian personal finance blog, which he says is about learning to make money.
• Geldsligkeiten beim Journalistenbüro Stroisch — A German money blog! And if my German were not so rusty, I might be able to tell you a little about what it says.
• Konsumfreiheit — Another German money blog.

Asia

• KC Lau’s Money Tips — An English-language blog “about personal finance topics from a Malaysian’s point of view. Hopefully with better financial education, you will live a better and balanced life.”
• Financial & Legal Matters — This blog offers a mixture of financial, insurance, and legal-related tips and advice. It’s written from an Asian (Malaysian) perspective.
• Wonder, Wealth & Wisdom — A Malaysian blog that focuses on three topics: developing purpose, building wealth, and striving for personal development.
• MoneyLIFE — Published in India, but written in English, MoneyLIFE is “is a fortnightly magazine with unique features and powerful pedigree. It empowers the individual to invest and spend wisely by offering hard facts, insightful opinions, wider options, useful tips from the world of money.”
• Personal Finance 2.01 — “Welcome to India’s first online weekly on personal finance. The purpose of this site is to increase our Financial IQ. This site aims at organizing information on personal finance.”
• GalaTime — GalaTime is a little more specialized than most pfblogs I link to. It’s specifically about Indian capital markets.
• Moneylando.com — This site is written in Chinese. (It may be based out of Taiwan.) I have no idea the nature of its content, but somebody e-mailed it to me when I asked for foreign-language personal finance sites.

While compiling this list, I also stumbled across Gumtree, which is like craigslist for the rest of the world. Finally, for Americans serving in the armed forces, Money for Military is a daily blog about personal finance, investing, taxes, etc. as they apply to military members.” Cash Money Life also shares stories about “military money“.

Things have changed a lot in the past year. International personal-finance sites have become much more organized, and networks have appeared. Each network contains a blogroll listing many other sites, and I don’t have the time to look at every one. (It used to be easy because there were only a handful!) As a result, this list is losing much of its utility. I’m not sure I’ll publish it next year.

(I still haven’t found any African personal finance websites, and the only one recommended to me (Today’s Naira) seems to have gone dormant. If you know of one, drop me a line.)

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Daily Links: Greed at the Gym Edition
• Ask the Readers: Non-U.S. Personal Finance Sites?
• The Personal Finance HOW-TO Library
• Daily Links: Chocolate Chip Cookies Edition
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This is a guest post from Steve in Bibai, Japan. He’s offered, several times, to send some interesting tidbits about how money is handled differently in Japan. Our recent discussion about stashing cash finally prompted him to follow through on his “threat”.

One Japanologist said a mouthful when he tried to point out the quintessential difference about Japan — every country knows it is unique from other countries, but the Japanese pride themselves on being uniquely unique.

I’m not sure what that actually asserts, but anyone who’s spent more than a few days here, gotten to know more than a couple of people here, will be quick to agree that Japan is different than other places, and proud of that fact.

Credit cards
When it comes to handling cash, short books could be written to show the differences between (North) Americans and Japanese.  I don’t know the actual statistics, but Japanese are well back of the curve when it comes to using credit cards habitually.

One 1988 movie had a swanky night club owner pointing out to his apprentice how to tell the difference between the truly rich and the merely affluent at his club: rich people always paid in cash, but anyone with financial limits would pay by credit card.  Several 40-something civil servants (upper middle class) in my office have never even owned a credit card.  Those who do have a credit card nearly never buy things on credit.

Cash-advance machines
Maybe one reason for this is the ubiquitous cash-advance machines — once you step off public transportation (much more common here than in North America) at any largish station, you’re never more than a minute or two walk away from cash-advance machines, operating 24/7.

Once you’ve contracted with one of the many instant loan companies (for which you need never actually make human contact) you can use your ATM card to hand yourself a cash advance.  They can even make it painless by automatically deducting your minimum monthly balance (with your authorization, of course) from your salary so that only the borderline obsessive type would notice the difference in salary deposits.  Minimum balances here are often only one or two percent of the outstanding balance, and when coupled with 18% to 29% APR, a small purchase might never get paid off.

These quickie loans made it so easy to spend a huge pile of money during Japan’s bubble, and there were many stories of young office workers who got too deeply into debt when these cash advances were the “cutting edge” of personal finance.  We don’t hear nearly as many of these stories in the papers or on TV any more, but I know of several people who’ve dug themselves into pretty deep holes.

Recent waves of swindles, stings and outright fraud have made the government order the ATM owners to lower the amount you can withdraw on a single date from 5 million to 1 million yen.  That’s right, until recently, you could write yourself a quickie loan for well over $40,000.  With the yen strengthening recently, even this new, lower limit of 1 million yen has gone from just under US$9000 to nearly 11K.

This just makes me wonder about the financial wisdom, from the consumer side, of course, for the whole cash-advance system.  Why would I willingly write myself a $10,000 cash advance if I had the credit to pay that amount using plastic?  Did that movie make an impact on the night club patrons’ psyches, I wonder?

A different culture
Every ex-pat in Japan has a favorite story about Japanese money handling.  I was only here 3 weeks when I first saw a very elderly man walking out of a bank into noon rush sidewalk traffic, serenely oblivious to what was going on around him, and basically counting the Japanese equivalent of hundred dollar bills.  ”Thirty nine, forty, forty one, forty two…”  Right out loud!  The Japanese have a word for this: anbiriibabou!

J.D. recently mentioned that he thought the average amount of cash that Americans carry to be on the high side.  Well, if you’re carrying one or more credit cards (I hear the average credit customer has nine…!), one or more debit cards, the odd ATM card and whatever other items that you can use nearly the same as cash, then walking around with $175 really does seem like a lot to me, too.  But then I’m still operating with a sense of cash values from 1989, when I last lived in the US.  Back then, the only people who regularly saw US Grant’s picture were 19th century historians.

Prepaid cards
The government here did a lot to encourage responsible money use long before the real estate speculation got out of hand in the late 1980s.  Before cell phones, you knew you were in the boonies if you could only see two public phones from where you were standing.  Some time after 1980 or 81, these phones all accepted prepaid cards, which were sold in all sorts of denominations — anywhere from 500 yen to 10,000 yen.  Businesses often gave them away as freebies or door busters — before the bubble, 500 yen was only a couple of bucks.  My wife has an unused phone card with a (young) Hideo Nomo’s photo, a present for buying cosmetics, and this is her version of a rookie baseball card.

When the underworld became tech-savvy enough to counterfeit the more expensive cards, Japan’s Ma Bell stopped allowing any denomination over 1000 yen to be used in any phones.  Anyone who needed to spend more than that on a call could buy more cards and use them in sequence, so the new system was quite adequate.  I understand some counterfeiters still make a go of things with the lower denominations, but since cell phones came along, the number of public phones has dropped to nearly nuisance scarcity.

The national railroad has also sold prepaid cards for over 25 years, and because it’s much more difficult to counterfeit these, there are still 3000 yen denominations for sale today.  I keep several (used) 10,000 cards in my scrapbook for nostalgia sake.  Even 7-Eleven used to sell 3000, 5000, and 10,000 yen cards.

The big draw for most prepaid cards was that they came with a users’ value higher than the price paid.  During the bubble days, railroad cards gave you 8% and phone cards had premiums up to 10.5%.  The Sapporo subway lines kept tight control over their computer processing system, so they still offer 10% premiums on 1000, 3000 and 5000 yen cards, and a whopping 15% on their 10,000 yen cards.  But nowadays you’re lucky to get 1% anywhere else — it’s better than nothing, but I get nostalgic…

Some cell phone users buy IC chips that operate like prepaid cards for their cell phone bills.  There are recent attempts to make IC debit cards, used in the same way as prepaid cards, the basis for electronic money.  Automated highway toll deductions are also available, but tolls here are so outrageous (often more expensive than the price of public transportation!) that the sensors didn’t make the splash here that they did in the US.

What’s in your wallet?
Just to see how I stack up with other GRS readers, I took stock of the assets I was holding in my wallet.  We had just gone shopping last night, so the results are a little skewed.  I make a habit of carrying less than $20 (2000 yen) with me, but last night I’d grabbed $150 from the family cookie jar before heading out the door.

I spent a total of $90 or $91 on our monthly sushi dinner, educational magazines, Halloween costume materials, breakfast cinnamon rolls, 4 DVDs (again, educational, from the dollar store) and a 500 ml bottle of mineral water, my first in over a decade.  (Good sushi should make you thirsty…)  I find I’m now carrying $74 or $75 cash (one third of that in coins!) because I forgot to return the banknotes to the cookie jar.

So this may be an interesting insight into how one physically handles money in Japan.  Banknotes are 1000, 5000 and 10,000 yen denomination, while coins range from 1 to 500 yen.  (One yen is very close in value to one penny.)  Little wonder that the lady at the register will triple count the bills before handing you the change.

What was perhaps more interesting was what else I found: point cards from 14 stores (book stores, used video shops, grocery stores, second hand shops, a convenience store chain, and Mr Donut) currently worth just over $200 even though I try to keep these assets to a minimum.  I have my prepaid cards for public phones, railroad tickets, books (a present), worth just over $100 total.

Finally, I have my debit card for a different convenience store that also tallies points — currently $62 debited and $29 in points.  Toss in my credit card (brand new, never been used for credit but it doubles as a point card at a local chain store, plus it accumulates air miles) and I figure I’d lose well over $400 in real value if someone were to steal it all.

I was a little surprised that I was carrying around that much value, but I’m not going to worry a jot, or change my behavior — this is Japan, where people don’t steal wallets.  Or if they do, police make (very) public announcements for months afterwards, cautioning people to be careful with their purses, etc.  I’ve heard no announcements in the past six years, though.

Extreme honesty
Most ex-pats will be happy to share their favorite stories of Japanese extreme honesty, too.  More than one of my non-Japanese friends have left wallets or purses containing over $2000 in a public restroom or on a train seat and had their possessions returned to them, intact, very shortly after losing them.  And the national railroad’s lost and found service is the stuff of legend.  Whenever any of my friends lost or forgot their wallets or purses anywhere, no one has ever lost any of the money in them, as far as I’ve heard.  I network extensively here, so this is certainly an enviable record.

But personally, I seem to be have found the other side of Japanese society — I bought my first bicycle here in 1991, rode it out of the shop, padlocked it in front of Sapporo’s busiest train among hundreds of other bicycles, and had the seat stolen off of it within 6 minutes.  Most Japanese won’t believe this story, but most Americans I know here budget for bicycles as an annual purchase.

Thanks to Steve for sharing his story. This is the first of three posts I’ll be sharing this weekend about personal finance in other countries. Cash machine photo by bato93. 10 yen photo by sirqitous.

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Cat and Girl on Halloween
• Traveling to Save: How to Get Paid to Live Overseas
• links for 2006-10-19
• Cat and Girl on Wants and Needs
• links for 2007-06-10

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States. Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing a series of guest posts, as well as some updated favorites from the past. I’ll be back on Monday with lots of new articles about smart personal finance (and , I hope, a guest appearance from one of my favorite videobloggers — confirmed!).

As we head into the holiday weekend, here are some assorted links from around the web. Because I’ve found a lot of interesting stuff lately, I’m going to share the first few links as simple bullet points, followed by two stories worthy of special mention.

• Paul Williams at Crackerjack Greenback has some points to ponder when you choose a financial adviser.
• Trent at The Simple Dollar writes that clutter is money. This reminds me of my ongoing series about the tyranny of Stuff.
• Kimberly Palmer at U.S. News & World Report’s Alpha Consumer blog has been struggling lately with how to give money to family members (or not).
• Emma Johnson at MSN Money recently posted about home-buying the old-fashioned way, a look at traditional mortgages.

Priscilla forwarded a story from ABC News that describes how going-out-of-business sales are not such a bargain. Those great deals you think you’re getting? They’re not great deals.

One example: We saw a Samsung HDTV that was only available as an open box item at the liquidation store and cost $1,799 with all sales final. But at Circuit City’s regular stores it was available for $1,599 brand new — $200 less, plus we could return it.

I didn’t used to believe this stuff until I had a conversation with a friend whose family used to own a large department store in a major U.S. city. He described the liquidation process, and it’s just as jaw-dropping as this report suggests. Yes, you can find good deals at these sales, but don’t assume they’re all good deals.

Finally, one of my mantras is: “Money is more about mind than it is about math.” Ron at The Wisdom Journal believes this doesn’t go far enough. He writes that money is 100% emotional. “Mastering your money means facing your fears, overcoming them, and then taking concrete steps to redefine how you look at and relate with money.” Great stuff.

Happy thanksgiving, everyone!

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• How to Win Something from a Claw Machine
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• Daily Roundup: Bringing Home the Bacon Edition
• links for 2006-09-12
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Yesterday, USA Today published a piece describing how you should invest in a bad economy. Though the market is in shambles, the authors write, it’s no time to panic:

Enough. The stock market — and your savings — have gone down steadily, day after day, for more than a year. You’ve lost thousands this month alone. It’s time to do something. But…what? Should you shift more money into stocks? Put it all into a savings account? Pay off your mortgage? Hop a freight and become a hobo?

The authors talked to top financial advisers from around the nation. Here’s a summary of the experts’ advice. (For details, please read the entire article.)

• If you’re in your 20s, take comfort in the fact that time is on your side. You probably haven’t lost much, and you have decades to make up the difference. Now’s a good time to focus on paying off your high-interest debt.
• If you’re in your 30s, prioritize retirement savings. “Don’t let fear squander your opportunity,” says one expert. Protect yourself from unemployment by maintaining an adequate emergency fund. Be cautious about moving money out of the stock market, but be open to diversifying with new contributions.
• If you’re in your 40s, prioritize saving “even if it means cutting back on spending.” Don’t abandon the stock market. One financial planner tells USA Today that “nervous investors who stash all their savings in certificates of deposit and money market funds ‘are committing financial suicide’.” Still, stay diversified, and don’t take unnecessary risks.
• If you’re in your 50s, don’t do anything rash. Keep your investments balanced. Continue to save. In fact, the article suggests that you should look for “any way you have to boost your savings, no matter how small.”
• If you’re 60 or older, your position is tougher. You don’t have as much time to recover from the market downturn, but you’re not without options. Put off Social Security as long as possible. (This is a strategy advocated by Scott Burns when I interviewed him last summer.) Take a part-time job. Adjust your expectations.

It seems to me that the advice to every age group (except the last one) is essentially the same: Don’t panic. Diversify. Cut spending. Boost savings. Or, in other words, do the things that we’ve been talking about here at Get Rich Slowly for the past 2-1/2 years!

In a related note, Daniel Gross writes in the latest issue of Newsweek, “Don’t get depressed — it’s not 1929!” Also see this past post at GRS: Why it pays to ignore financial news.

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Fast on the draw, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance published their “2008 Best List” earlier this month. While this is a quick and easy read in magazine form, the Kiplinger web site makes it almost impossible to peruse on the web. I’ve mucked through the lousy popup slideshows to find direct links to the individual parts of this report:

• Best financial services. I was surprised to see the Kiplinger’s pick for “best online savings account”. Though FNBO Direct advertises heavily at Get Rich Slowly, I don’t know much about their account. Maybe I should check it out. The “best checking account” is from Charles Schwab.
• Best retirement tools. The magazine named the Roth IRA as the “best all-around retirement account”. It picked TD Ameritrade’s WealthRuler the “best new retirement tool”. I’ve never seen the WealthRuler before, but you can bet I’ve bookmarked it for future review at GRS!
• Best stocks and funds. The magazine chose Fidelity as the best online broker. (I recently chose Fidelity for my own brokerage accounts.) They also list some funds and stocks, but you know how I feel about magazines making picks like this — they’re no wiser than you are.
• Best credit card offers. Kiplinger’s recommends four cards for different situations. Their “best card for cash rebates” is the American Express Blue Cash, which I mentioned in my guide on how to choose a credit card.
• Best tech gadgets. Kiplinger’s likes the iPod Touch mp3 player and the Casio Exilim EX-Z150 digital camera. (This is personal finance?)
• The best in travel, cards, home and fun. Best airline: Southwest. Best low-cost vacation destination: Panama. Best low-cost prescription drugs: Wal-Mart. Best mail-order barbecue sauce (!?!): Maurice’s Gourmet BBQ.

Kiplinger’s also compiled a list of the best web sites for shopping, services, and cheap travel. Some of their picks include:

• Investing in Bonds, for learning about the bond market.
• AnnualCreditReport.com, the only official site for requesting your free annual credit report.
• myFico.com, for checking your credit score
• The gethuman database, a gargantuan list of numbers for finding live humans in corporate bureaucracies
• Energy Star, for energy-saving tips from the U.S. government
• RetailMeNot, for online coupon codes
• Kayak, for cheap travel deals

There’s a lot more to these lists than I’ve shared. For more top picks, and for the reasoning behind them, check out the links to each topic. (I’d link to a central “Best of 2008″ page at the Kiplinger site, but there isn’t one. I’m constantly amazed at how user-unfriendly that place is — and so little content per page!)

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This weekend will be important for U.S. retailers. They’ll be counting their pennies carefully. With retail sales already down sharply from 2007, merchants are eager for a strong start to the holiday shopping season.

The day after Thanksgiving — now dubbed “Black Friday” — has become something of a ritualized cultural experience, and one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Many people view the day as a chance to grab stellar deals on Christmas gifts.

But will people be spending this year? With the economy wobbling like a top, will the American consumer come through to prop up flagging retail sales?

The merchants hope so, as do many economists, but a new study from the American Research Group shows that the amount Americans plan to spend on Christmas gifts this year is half what they planned to spend last year, and the lowest number in at least a decade.

Planned spending on Christmas gifts
(via the American Research Group)

If you plan to shop this weekend, check out:

• PC World: The insider’s guide to Black Friday bargains
• Yahoo!: Your ultimate guide to Black Friday 2008
• Price Protectr, which will alert you if the price drops on an item you purchased (in many cases allowing you to get a refund on the difference)

While some of my friends subscribe to the “take the day off to find bargains on Black Friday” school of thought, I’ve traditionally sided with another camp. On the day after Thanksgiving, I observe Buy Nothing Day.

For the past decade, I’ve elected not to shop on Black Friday. It’s one way for me to avoid consumerism. Subscribing to a consumerist mindset helped to put me in debt in the first place. I don’t begrudge others their bargains and shopping fun, but I choose not to participate. This year will be no different.

Ramit at I Will Teach You to Be Rich has taken things one step further. Rather than feel obligated to buy gifts you can’t afford, he says, why not do something different — like spend time with those who are important to you:

I’ve come up with a site that I hope you can share with your friends and family. It’s free, and it’s very simple, but the point is to share the idea that you can do something for the people you love without spending money.

At No Christmas Gifts This Year, you can send customized e-cards suggesting alternatives to buying gifts.

If the idea of abandoning gifts entirely is too extreme for you, consider creating homemade Christmas gifts this year.

Regardless of which path you plan to pursue — Black Friday, Buy Nothing Day, or No Christmas Gifts This Year — please spend responsibly. Buy only what you need and can afford. Don’t be lured into impulse purchases. Avoid debt. And most of all, enjoy the spirit of the season.

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• Free Professional Financial Checkup This Friday

I drove down to clean the moss of the roof of my mother’s house last week. I spent several hours on top of the house with my cousin Nick, scraping and hosing and blowing away years of green growth. We chatted as we worked. I told him that I was going to speak with a literary agent on the following day, and that I hoped I might soon have a book deal.

“How does that work?” he asked me. “How do you make money on that?”

I did my best to explain, but it was difficult. I’m not sure I fully understand the system myself. “When a writer sells a book, he gets an advance on the profits,” I said as I scraped moss from between the shingles.

“For example, I might get a $10,000 advance. The publisher pays this to me before the book is even printed. As the book sells, I am entitled to a share of the profits from each copy. However, I see none of that until my share of the earnings is at least $10,000. Then, if sales are strong, I get paid for anything beyond that initial $10,000. The advance is guaranteed money — they can’t take it back unless I don’t write the book — but I don’t get any more unless the book sells well.”

“And the agent?” asked Nick. He was hosing away the moss and debris I’d scraped from the cracks.

“The agent gets 15% of everything I earn,” I said. “But that’s okay. In theory, she’ll more than make up for it by getting me a better deal, a bigger advance. It’s sort of like hiring an accountant to do your taxes. It costs you something, but in general you get more than you pay for.”

“If you do sell a book, what will you do with your advance?” Nick asked.

“That’s a good question,” I said. “I don’t know. What I really want to do is buy a Mini Cooper. I’ve been saying that for a long time now. I hate my car, and every time I see a Mini, I covet it. My advance is likely to be small, but if I got a really big advance, maybe I could afford to buy one outright.”

I stopped scraping shingles and began scooping crap out of the gutter.

“That seems so crazy, though.” I said. “I barely drive now as it is. I don’t need a brand-new sporty little car. I could put that money into savings. Or into the stock market.”

I paused to think.

“But I really want that car. I’m obsessed with it. I’ve got to get over that. I’ve got to stop wanting.”

“Why do you have to stop wanting?” Nick asked.

“Wanting is bad,” I said. “Wanting makes me buy things.”

I was remembering Yoda’s speech from The Phantom Menace: Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

I imagined that the personal finance equivalent might be: Want is the path to the Dark Side. Want leads to spending. Spending leads to debt. Debt leads to suffering.

Nick set me straight. “It’s not bad to want things,” he said. “Want is good. It keeps you motivated. It makes you save and earn. Look at you. You wouldn’t be where you are today if you hadn’t wanted to get out of debt.”

“That’s not the same thing,” I said.

“It’s close enough,” Nick said. He stopped his work, pulled off his cap, and wiped his brow. “It’s okay to have something in your life that you hate. And it’s okay to have something you want. It’s natural. The problem is that once you get that thing, you’re just going to hate something else, you’re just going to want something more. It’s not want that’s the problem, but the habit of constantly satisfying wants.”

I was about to argue with him, but then I realized that he was right. Wanting isn’t the problem. Problems occur when we develop the habit of indulging every want, or wants we cannot afford.

When I accumulated debt in the mid-1990s, I was constantly satisfying my wants. I wanted a new computer, so I bought it. Because I had the new computer, I wanted a bigger monitor, so I bought it. I wanted a better graphics card, so I bought it. I wanted new games, so I bought them. The wanting never ended, and neither did the spending. I didn’t know how to say, “Enough!”

“I want things too,” Nick said. “But I’ve learned that it’s okay. It’s fun to want things. It’s even okay to buy the things you want sometimes, too, if you can afford it. It’s like when you were a kid, and you cut pictures out of magazines showing the things you dreamed about. You’d save up to buy a football or a bicycle or a BB gun. That was fun.”

“I think I see what you’re saying,” I said. I picked up the rake and began to sweep the oak leaves over the edge of the roof, watching them whump to the ground. “Wanting keeps us motivated. It gives us goals. So it’s not a bad thing in and of itself. And it’s not even a problem to satisfy some wants. The problem is when we try to satisfy all of our wants, when we get caught up in a never-ending series of wants.”

“Exactly,” Nick said.

After we’d finished working, we climbed down and picked up our tools. I was cold and tired and wet. I was hungry. I wanted a hamburger. I wanted a big, juicy bacon cheeseburger, a side of fries, and a coke.

My initial reaction was to dismiss this, both for health and financial reasons, but then I thought of my conversation with Nick. I thought of the five dollars I had in my pocket. I thought of the four hours I’d just spent on the roof scraping moss. I made up my mind. On the way home, I stopped at a drive-thru and I bought a hamburger. It was delicious. It was just what I wanted.

Today, as I was writing this story, I found myself craving a hamburger again. And fries. And a coke. But today, I didn’t fulfill that desire. I knew better than to fall into the cycle.

Sometimes it’s okay to buy the things we want, but the constant fulfillment of desire can lead to the Dark Side of personal finance.

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Weekend Update: Dark and Stormy Night Edition
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• Ask the Readers: How Do You Keep from Losing Control?
• Daily Roundup: Interviews, Charities, and Bike Mortgages

Last week I appeared on a local television news magazine to discuss approaches to a frugal Christmas. I was able to make use of several reader suggestions — thank you! All of these recent public appearances have been challenging, but I’m getting better at them as time goes on. What does not kill me makes me stronger — right?

Meanwhile, I’ve been sitting on some good articles. I keep thinking I’ll have time to write about them, but I never do. Instead, I’ll share them as quick links:

First, Ben at Trees Full of Money sent me the story of his neighbor, a man who built his own 105mpg car. The vehicle took him 1000 hours and $2500 to construct. This “microcar” is street legal and, reportedly, fun to drive. To read more about it, check out the official website.

If you’re after a more traditional motor vehicle, Reader’s Digest has a quick list of tips on how to haggle when buying a car. None of these are new, but if you’re in the market for a new vehicle, it cannot hurt to refresh your memory. If I every get a chance to buy my Mini Cooper, I’ll be back to take a look at these.

Kristina sent me a link to a USA Today article about urban farming in San Francisco. Here’s how the innovative My Farm works: If you have an unused backyard, MyFarm installs and maintains a vegetable garden. As they harvest produce, they leave some of it with you, and sell the rest using a CSA-style system. It’s a neat idea.

Finally, Random sent me a piece from Australia’s The Age. Louisa Deasey wrote an article in praise of frugality, explaining why she just says no to credit cards. She wonders why people think it’s so crazy for her to live within her means!

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